A/N: Hello again folks! I didn't get far in the episode's story line as I'd hoped. The chapter simply took a life of its own and dragged me along with it. So there's a lot more dialogue in here that's very charged and I'm still not sure if I got it right. Please let me know if I made it too cheesy or not logical in any sense. I wanted to get the full impact of Jessica seeing the Doctor's dark side for the first time and how she'd react to it.

As always, thank you for your reviews and opinions. They really help me figure out what I'm doing right or wrong so I can make following chapters even better for you.

Dalek

Part 3

"So we're locked in a vault with an alien who might have a serious grudge against humans. Great. Just peachy." I had to press my lips together until they hurt to keep the adrenaline from making me even more of an idiot. My heart had never pounded so fast or so hard. I'd clamped down on my barriers until I couldn't sense anything, too afraid of what I'd feel in that room.

Out of the gloom, the Doctor's hand actually reached out and took one of mine. "If something had wanted us dead, I think it would've tried to kill us already." He flashed a smile that only came across as half-real.

Ah well, the effort made up for it. That and I could hardly tear my mind off of how his hand felt around mine.

More importantly: why did he take my hand in the first place? With his thick armored walls once more wrapped around himself, I couldn't tell if he knew I needed the comfort or if he needed it instead.

The last thought scared me more than anything else.

What could the Doctor possibly be worried or afraid of?

Just as I entertained the notion of giving said hand a squeeze, it vanished as the Doctor took a few steps towards the other end. A looming shadow of a cage filled it, but I couldn't see inside. "Look, I'm sorry about this. Mister Van Statten might think he's clever, but never mind him. I've come to help. Well," he added with a head gesture my way. "We've come to help. I'm the Doctor and this is Jessica Gale."

"Thanks for remembering," I muttered, skittering to join him, though I let him remain in front of me. Snap out of snarky mode, missy. Taking a deep breath, I lowered my barriers. Not much. Just enough to try and project our good intentions towards whoever Statten had imprisoned. "We don't mean any harm, really. Maybe we can …."

"Doc … tor?"

The metallic, almost groggy sent chills along my skin, but it affected the Doctor far worse. He froze, dread exploding from him in a wave so strong it made my own gut clench. Perhaps even a little bit of fear? No, I had to be imagining that. Nothing could scare the Doctor … could it?

"Impossible." I'd never heard the Doctor so quieted, full of a dread that screamed at me to run.

"Doctor, what's going on?" My words could've fallen on deaf ears. I could barely hear myself over the chaos and rage that threatened to drown me.

"The Doctor?" Rising in volume and strength, the alien's robotic-like voice carried every ounce of anger and … hate that I felt burning my skin. Such hate!

With a bang, the lights blazed to life, revealing some sort of robot that came up to my chest wrapped in chains.

The hate smacked into me with such purity that I stumbled backwards. Pressing my hands against my head, I struggled to get control of my barriers again. Almost as impossible as swimming upriver against a rampaging current.

The alien's voice screeched around me. "Exterminate! Exterminate!"

I found myself being hauled towards the door. Yes, the Doctor was definitely afraid. It bled through the contact whether I wanted to know or not. With his arm around my shoulders shoving me towards the corner, I couldn't exactly fight him.

His fists pounded on the door. "Let us out!" No, the Doctor didn't sound like himself. I didn't have to feel the strength of his terror to know that he'd become truly afraid.

Gaining enough of a mental foothold, I tried to move past him to get at the other side of the door. My efforts were thwarted as the Doctor shoved me back. "I can reach the …."

"No!" The Doctor yelled in frustration as the door refused to budge. "I'm not letting them take you again, Em."

"What?"

The Doctor's head jerked my way like I'd stabbed a white-hot poker in him.

"Exterminate!"

Swearing, the Doctor shoved us both into the corner, placing himself between me and the creature. "I'm sorry." The apology came out so quietly I would've missed it if I hadn't seen his lips move.

Nothing happened.

No explosions, no guns. Nothing but an odd clicking sound.

For a moment, the Doctor stood frozen, as if he couldn't believe it himself. It lasted long enough for me to become very aware of how fiercely he'd pressed me into the wall. How very warm he felt. The smell coming off of his jacket.

The Doctor spun around, the fear burning away in surprise and … something I couldn't make out due to my addled brain. "It's not working." Even he didn't sound like he believed our good luck. As the machine's eyestalk glanced down at a twitching arm, the Doctor barked a laugh. "Fantastic! Oh, fantastic! Powerless! Look at you, the great space dustbin! How does it feel?"

His sudden change in behavior sent all of my alarm bells clanging. I shoved every warm and fuzzy thoughts I had about him to the side, a frown working its way to my face. It could've just been the adrenaline leaving his system, but I never thought he'd gloat like that.

"Keep back!" The machine warned as the Doctor moved closer. The thing backed up as far as the chains would let it. Yes, I could still feel its hate, but I could feel its fear growing stronger than that.

That seemed to egg the Doctor on and he lunged close enough to where his face came inches from the eyestalk. "What for? What're you going to do to me? If you can't kill, what are you good for, Dalek? What's the point of you? You're nothing." Such a manic glee had overcome him that I didn't even think I looked at the same Doctor anymore.

I took several steps closer, worried more about the Doctor than the machine he'd called a Dalek. The crack I'd started focusing on blazed with such hatred and resentment that it felt like a sucker punch to my senses. For the first time since he'd found me in the bathroom, I began to fear him. What he might do with such blind rage running through him.

"So what the hell are you're here for?" I seemed to have vanished from the Doctor's mind as he all but pranced in front of the Dalek.

"I am … waiting for orders."

"What does that mean?"

"I am a soldier. I was bred to receive orders."

The Doctor's smirk chilled me. "Well you're never going to get any. Not ever."

"I demand orders!" The Dalek screeched, the lights on its head flaring bright.

Shifting my focus between the two of them strained my abilities. From the Doctor's rage and soul-devouring hurt to the Dalek's confusion and fear of a lack of purpose. My need to calm the Time Lord and a desire to save the Dalek held me in one spot. I couldn't side against the Doctor when I didn't know the full story, could I?

"They're never going to come!" The Doctor shouted, gestures becoming grand and erratic. "Your race is dead! You burnt, all of you. Ten million ships on fire. The entire Dalek race wiped out in one second."

That's when the name finally clicked. Dalek. The race that had fought the Time Lords. A war in which the Doctor's people had lost. He'd failed to mention that the Daleks had been destroyed as well. The pity I'd had for the Doctor split in two until both the Dalek and the Doctor demanded my defense. I pulled at my hair as the indecision tore at me.

"You lie!"

The satisfaction coming from the Doctor added to my dread. "I watched it happen. I made it happen." Less of a crowing victory, but the primal satisfaction still darkened every part of him.

The Dalek's spike of loss … of loneliness made my throat clench. "You … destroyed us?" Compared to the Doctor's the Dalek's fire had almost completely been smothered.

"I had no choice?"

How could the Doctor not have a choice?

Silence fell for a bit in which I dared to take a few steps closer, though neither of them paid attention.

"And what of the Time Lords?"

The sharp, burning grief that blossomed from the Doctor sent my senses spinning once again and tears burned. He became still. Not even the air seemed to move around him. "Dead. They burnt with you." What burned inside him roughened his voice past anything I'd heard to date. "The end of the last great Time War. Everyone lost."

I couldn't hold myself back any longer. The Doctor might hate me for reacting later, but I dismissed that thought. I stood beside him and put a hand on his arm. I couldn't make myself say anything before I fell under the gaze of eyes that burned like a dead sun. If I did, he'd hear the tears I tried so hard to keep out of sight. He'd caused the Daleks to burn, but his people were destroyed at the same time. I'd had no right to ask him about it the other night. I didn't think I ever would.

Don't. Those eyes warned. He didn't want any pity or sympathy. To him, he deserved to suffer knowing that.

Well, I never listened to him anyway. I let him feel everything whether he wanted to or not.

"And the coward survived."

The change in the Doctor was more vicious than ever before. Like everything had become swallowed up in the black hole of a hatred he'd born for who knew how long. Stiffening, the Doctor jerked away from me, a fury boiling in his eyes. "Oh, and I caught your little signal. Help me," he mocked, the malice souring his voice beyond recognition. "Poor little thing. But there's no one else coming 'cause there's no one else left."

He's going to kill it. The thought came as swift as that mood change. He's going to kill the Dalek.

Heedless or uncaring of the Doctor's fury, the Dalek's eyestalk drooped and such a despair came over it that I almost drowned myself. "I am alone in the universe."

"Yep." Never had the Doctor sounded so viciously smug. Not even when he became all snarky with me.

"So are you." An odd, faint hope glimmered deep inside the Dalek. "We are the same."

My breath caught as the tension snapped inside the room with the abruptness of a clap of thunder. I didn't know what happened during that war, but even I knew that comparing itself to the Doctor was the worst mistake that Dalek could've made. I had to do something now.

His face contorted into one of disgust. "We're not the same! I'm not …."

"Yes you are, Doctor!" Before I could consider the wisdom of it, I darted to place myself between them, keeping my back to the Dalek. It was in chains and its gun broken. And I must've had a death wish by supporting the creature, anyway.

"Stay out of this, Jessica," the Doctor all but snarled, only taken aback by a second or two. "You weren't there. You didn't see what they did to us."

"Probably no worse than what you did to them." Okay, now I had to come up with a way to calm him down and make sense in the process. My brain scrambled to come up with something that would reach him. "Can you honestly say that the Time Lords fought them with nicer means or that they didn't resort to cruel methods just like the Daleks?"

The death glare he leveled at me cause my whole soul to tremble. "Don't you dare compare the Time Lords to the Daleks. They're machines. They're born to hate anything that isn't one of them and destroy it." A brief pause and then he lunged across the room until he loomed over me. "You're empathy's making you blind. It'll kill you if you let it, just like all of its kind does."

I swallowed and matched him glare for glare. "You can't feel what I'm feeling, Doctor, because your own hatred blinds you. Okay, maybe some Daleks were cruel and evil, but I bet there were Time Lords who fell under the same category."

"Get … out … of the way."

"No." I pointed behind me at the Dalek. "This one's scared and lonely, Doctor. It just found out that it's the last one of its kind in the universe. Does that sound even remotely familiar?"

The Doctor's hands clenched into fists so tight, his knuckles paled. With maybe a foot between us, I had to buffer my senses towards him. So chaotic and tormented and unfocused that I knew I'd get swept away by them if I didn't get through to him somehow. A pressure grew around me until I could hardly breathe. I met the gaze of the furious Time Lord and refused to budge. I didn't care what he thought of me after this. I couldn't let him do something that he'd regret later on.

After a very long time, the Doctor stalked away. He faced the wall, fists still clenched at his sides, trembling enough to where I expected him to explode and hit anything nearby at any moment. "You know what? You have a point."

I knew better that to trust that calm, steady tone. I shifted, ready to run over and punch him again if I had to.

"We might just be the same 'cause I know what to do. I know what should happen." The Doctor spun on his heel, a dark, grim demeanor causing all of my fears to coalesce. "I know what you deserve, Dalek. Exterminate."

Before I could move to stop him, the Doctor's hand snapped to a lever nearby and yanked it downwards. Electricity roared to life in the air … followed by the Dalek's screams. A great big weight crushed my soul under its heel. I'd hoped I could reach him. He'd had no intentions to be merciful to someone who was suffering just as much as him.

"You … you son of a bitch!" I swore for one of the few times in my life and charged for that lever. The Dalek's pain crashed over me. I had to help it. Make it stop.

I didn't get there fast enough and the Doctor grabbed me by the shoulders, pushing me away. "It's what it deserves," he growled, daring me to come after him again.

Tears burst from me as another spike jabbed at my consciousness. Threatened to split my head wide open.

"Have pity!" The Dalek cried.

"Why should I? You never did." Ghosts from long ago haunted the Doctor's face. "You took everything from me."

People burst into the room shouting furiously. I stood there, holding my head to try and keep it in one piece, the Dalek's pain and my own threatening to drive me over the edge. How could the Doctor be that uncaring? That cruel? "You're no better than a Dalek," I breathed as we were swarmed by guards.

I knew he heard me. A tiny jolt of hurt cracked his purely vengeful soul. He said nothing to me, though, as the guards started hauling him away. "You've got to destroy it, Statten!" Came his shout just before he was shoved out of sight.

One of the scientists managed where I'd failed and the electricity dissipated along with the Dalek's torment. I gasped and shuddered at the sudden absence. Its ghost still echoed around me, but I could think once more.

A hand grabbed my chin, forcing my eyes to snap open. "I knew you two were too good to be true," Statten sneered. "He's an alien and he said you were an … empath? Oh, I'll have such fun seeing what makes you tick. Take her to a room next to our good Doctor's. We need to get on top of this as soon as possible."

I glanced back at the Dalek as guards started dragging me out of the room. It stood as cold as ever, but I could feel it writhing in the torment the Doctor's revelation had caused. Pity for it suddenly became dull and muted next to the realization that a man who studied and collected bits and pieces of aliens knew what the Doctor was. What I could do.

Out of the fire and into the inferno.