Act I, scene i
-~- Skaro -~-
First, there were the Daleks and then there was a man who fought them. And then, in time, he died. There are a few, of course, who believe this man somehow survived, and that he will return in time to fight them again. For both our sakes, dearest Hanna, we must hope these stories are true.
The smell of coffee and the sounds of lively conversation were in the air. The hiss from steam from the espresso machine and the sound of an Edith Piaf song filtering over hidden stereo speakers only added to the afternoon cacophony, while beautiful smells from the chocolate shop across the cobblestone Montmartre street threatened to carry him off with them on the warm summer's breeze.
The last time the Doctor had come to this particular Parisian café he'd been travelling with another of his brethren from Gallifrey. They'd decided to take some time off from their usual adventures and cool their heels for a while in the City of Light some time in the mid-seventies. Of course, like all of the Doctor's holidays, it hadn't gone quite that smoothly.
An artist had taken to drawing the Doctor's companion, Romana, and a time loop had temporarily bamboozled them. And driven them to offend the artist.
As usual, that had only been the beginning. They'd ended up chasing copies of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa through history, trying to prevent an ancient, evil alien from destroying Earth's history, which was all in a day's work, really.
Now, though, just as he had been since he'd said goodbye to Madge before his aborted visit with the Ponds, the Doctor was trying to keep a low profile. What were the odds, he'd reasoned, of the same café being the site of more than one temporal anomaly? So he'd come here, taken his tea and scones, and chosen the quietest table he could find.
He had spent a while people-watching, reminiscing about the days he'd spent travelling with Romana, when he noticed he was being watched.
With a scone perched at his mouth, he turned to see a robed figure staring at him from beneath the cowl of its hood. He could make out no distinguishing features aside from an air of close menace.
The Doctor's eyes narrowed and he set the scone back down on the delicate china plate before him. The hooded figure did not look away. The sounds of conversation and music died away, and the Doctor looked away for a brief instant, only to find the hooded figure sitting across from him at his quiet table.
"I don't believe I asked you to sit," the Doctor said, a hint of anger in his flat tone.
"There is a woman who wants to meet you," the figure said, ignoring the Doctor's veiled threat. Its voice was a low rumble, without tone or emotion or anything to give away the identity of the speaker. Indeed, the Doctor had the feeling that he was actually speaking to a person.
"That's nice, but I'm married."
To the Doctor's surprise, the figure said "Help is required."
Keeping any emotion at all from showing on his face, the Doctor said simply "I don't discuss my business in public."
"I know," was all the figure said, and with a flick of a grey-skinned hand he made every single person in the café and on the street outside vanish in an instant.
The Doctor tried to hide his shock and confusion, but only partially succeeded. Sizing the hooded figure up, the Doctor realised that he wasn't dealing with the standard-issue threatening individual. This was someone, or something, with great power and the ability to use it.
"Who are you?" the Doctor asked with a tight, wolfish smile.
"A messenger."
"A messenger?" the Doctor repeated, as though the idea was distasteful to him. "For who?"
"Darla von Karlsen," the robed being answered, but the Doctor didn't recognise the name at all.
"Never heard of her," the Doctor said, and pushed up from the table. In the split second it took to get himself to a standing position, his surroundings had changed entirely. No longer was he in a Parisian café, but in a darkened, gloomy chamber with only the robed figure for company. "Where's the tea room?"
"You were never in a tea room."
"Oh, of course," the Doctor said, the truth dawning on him. "Psychic projection. Someone's sending me a dream message. Well I hope I fell asleep somewhere comfy."
"Do you recognise where you are?" the figure asked.
Flittering across the edge of the Doctor's perceptions, he heard the tittering of a child at play. It was unsettling noise in such a dank, depressing place. He chose not to answer the question, but he did recognise the location: he was in the catacombs under the planet Skaro, where he and Romana had encountered Davros soon after she'd regenerated. "How do you hang up on this thing?"
"You can't," the figure answered; it wasn't making a threat, merely stating a fact.
The Doctor wasn't sure which upset him more. "Yeah? And what if I just wake up?"
The scene around them changed once again, and the Doctor suddenly found himself on a beach chair. He recognised the stretch of coastline, the wide ribbon of sand stretching out to a choppy grey sea beneath a brilliant, cloudlessly blue sky: this was Brighton, another location he'd visited with Romana, all those lifetimes ago.
"No, Doctor," the hooded figure's voice assured him, "the beach isn't real."
Of course it wasn't, the Doctor knew. Why was his subconsciousness bringing him to places he'd visited with his erstwhile Time Lady companion? Had he just been thinking of her when he'd fallen asleep?
"You are still dreaming."
The Doctor leapt to his feet, and found himself standing in a starfield. Around glittered constellations and nebulae. He was staring at a sector of space. A sector he recognised instinctively.
"Space time coordinates," the hooded figure explained as its long, grey fingers sketched out ghostly images in the darkness between them. "You will meet Darla von Karlsen here. Her daughter is in danger and only you can save her."
The Doctor swallowed. He knew those coordinates. They struck fear into his hearts, and worse… they inspired hatred.
"You recognise the planet," the figure said, but it wasn't a question.
"Yeah," the Doctor nodded.
"Say it."
"No," he spat, infuriated and terrified to the point where he felt nothing but a dull ache in his chest.
"Name the planet," the figure pressed, and the Doctor got the impression that, whatever it was, it was taunting him.
"I will not say that name!" the Doctor roared, and jerked awake.
He was in the TARDIS control room, leaning against the console. The room was dark, the usual intrinsic light that glowed from the walls of burnished bronze, gold and orange somehow subdued. Indeed, the only light was the faint greenish glow of the console and the time rotor. The room was cold, and the Doctor felt more alone than he had felt in a very, very long time.
"Name the planet," the figure's voice echoed in the darkness.
The Doctor sighed, unwilling to face what that name signified. It was a planet he thought long destroyed. Perhaps the victory the Daleks had scored against him in London, back when he'd first started travelling with Amy, had been more sweeping than he'd ever allowed himself to imagine.
Perhaps, somehow, they had managed to reconstitute their long-destroyed homeworld.
"Skaro," he said, and the name gave him a shiver that had nothing to do with the chill that suffused the console room.
The Doctor found Darla von Karlsen in an enormous, skyscraper-sized idol built of stone. It was built to resemble his greatest enemies, the Daleks, and the sight of the construction, many times larger than the ruined buildings that surrounded it, was enough to terrify him with the memories of those creatures and all they had done.
They had destroyed entire worlds, killed his friends and massacred populations. Time and time again, he had fought them and time and time again he had won, and yet no matter how many times he defeated they always came back, stronger and more dangerous before. The Daleks were horrific creatures, beasts without mercy or remorse who killed without hesitation. They were his antithesis, his nemesis. The purest distillation of everything he considered wrong in the universe.
And here he was, on the planet that had spawned them, meeting a woman who could somehow reach into his dreams to summon him.
At the highest point of the statue, in the stone eyestalk that stuck out from the domed top of the monument, a woman in a cowled purple cloak stood looking out over the ruined city. Angry, red clouds threw sheets of radioactive rain through abandoned, muddy streets, and flashes of lightning occasionally cast the mountains in the far distance in harsh relief.
Darla von Karlsen heard movement behind her, and turned on her leather, stiletto heels to see the Doctor approach her.
With his pronounced, square jaw and mop of dark hair, the Doctor looked as bizarre as ever in his tweed jacket and bowtie, and only the uncompromising expression frozen on his face signified how furious and uncomfortable he was.
"I got your message," he said by way of greeting, not bothering with formalities. "Not many people can do that, send me a message. Especially not via psychic projection."
Darla, with a strong, aristocratic nose and a stark fringe of strawberry blonde hair framing large, expressive brown eyes, wasted no time in getting to the point. "I have a daughter, Hanna. She's in a Dalek prison camp. They say you can help."
The Doctor took note of the bags under Darla's eyes, the tight-fitting travelling clothes she wore beneath her cloak. He wanted to ask her any number of question. How had she known to send him a message? How had she come to be on Skaro? And, most pressing of all, how could she possibly have known that he was still alive?
"Do they?" he settled on asking, deciding to keep his cards close to his chest for a while yet. "I wish they'd stop. Hell of a meeting place."
"They said I'd have to intrigue you," Darla told him, indicating the vista beyond the viewport. "I thought that hell, as you say, would do the trick."
The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "Who told you about me?"
"Does it matter?" Darla answered, trying to steer the conversation back to the point. The Doctor wouldn't be swayed.
"Right now, it matters more than anything in the universe," the Doctor answered, stepping closer to the cloaked woman. "You're very well informed, and I've taken pains to keep certain things about myself hidden."
Darla swallowed as he came close to her, brushing aside the hood of her cloak. "My family have contacts."
"Von Karlsen," the Doctor said, as though tasting the name. "Of the Sirius von Karlsens?"
Darla nodded. "Yes."
The Doctor shook his head and took a few steps away as he spoke. "One of the richest families in the Sirius colony, one of the richest human families ever, and yet here you are. On Skaro. In hell. If your daughter's in a Dalek prison camp, tell me: why aren't you?"
Darla turned and stalked towards him. "My daughter was taken during the Dalek raid on the Sirius colony six months ago. I escaped their raiding parties, stayed hidden. I spent half my family's fortune trying to find her, and the other half trying to find you."
The Doctor laughed darkly. "No. No one escapes the Daleks' notice. No one stays hidden. They allowed you to go free, even after they'd taken your daughter. Why?"
Darla's mouth worked silently for a few moments, before she said quietly "I don't know."
"How did you find out about me?"
She frowned, as though searching for the answer. "I… I can't remember."
The Doctor shook his head and laughed again.
Darla seemed taken aback. "What? What's wrong?"
The Doctor closed his eyes tightly, thinking through the implications of what he'd just realised. "I should have known. The Daleks told you about me. They told you how to find me. They used you. You were a tool, Darla von Karlsen. You were a trap."
Darla, eyes wide and sparkling with unshed tears, shook her head. "No."
"And the worst part is that you didn't even know," the Doctor said, turning away from her. He decided in that instant that he had to get out of there, and fast. If the Daleks knew that Darla was here, if they knew she had summoned him, then he had only a few moments before they were on top of him.
"Wait, please!" Darla cried, clearly terrified.
The Doctor ignored her, instead making a beeline for the exit. His TARDIS was at the foot of the statue. He'd have to get there quickly if he had a hope of escape.
He was almost at the door when he heard a low-pitched, familiar electronic drone. He sighed, his shoulders slumping. He was too late. The Daleks had found him. A pair of the metal-armoured creatures, hidden in their Dalekanium casings behind their eyestalks, their plunger-tipped manipulator arms and their deadly gunsticks, came gliding into the chamber.
Darla gave a shocked cry, but the Doctor could only shake his head.
He was trapped in a small, stone-walled room, the only exit blocked by a pair of Daleks and the only window six hundred metres or more above the ground below. Even he couldn't survive a fall like that.
Then, to his horror, even that potential avenue of escape was taken from him.
A Dalek spaceship, a flying saucer studded with independently spinning spheres and bristling with weapons emplacements, fell through the red clouds and took up position directly across from them.
The Doctor and Darla shared a quick look, and in that moment he realised how terrified she was. Her strawberry blond hair reminded him, quite absurdly, of Amy Pond.
"I'm sorry, Doctor," Darla said.
"I know," was all he said in response, and turned back to face the Daleks. "Well, are you going to exterminate me or what?"
The Daleks studied him through their glowing eyestalks.
Instead of giving their usual cry of "Exterminate!" however, the Daleks, in unison, simply announced "The Doctor has been acquired!"
"What?" the Doctor spat in shock. "What?"
Before anything else could be said, however, a brilliant light swept through the viewport looking out over the city. The light swallowed everything, drowning out the stone walls, the Daleks and Darla. The Doctor tried to speak, but found that he couldn't even move. He felt a wave of tingling sensations sweep across his body as he was pulled apart atom by atom by atom…
A/N: please review and let me know what you think of the direction I'm taking!