Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who
A/N: I've been suffering from writer's block for a while, and I was working on the chapter for my other series, Alterations…but to make up for the long wait, I'm uploading a double post today.
The Witch's Familiars – Part Three
Clara was trying very, very hard to stay calm, as she manoeuvred the Dalek casing through the corridors. She was grateful that the Corsair was somehow telepathically boosting her, helping to keep her emotions at bay. She was terrified, but he'd pushed that fear to the back of her mind and let her concentrate. Forward, forward, forward, forward…
"Halt!" a Dalek approached them, and they all stopped, the Time Lords raising their hands in surrender. "Report" it ordered, staring at Clara-Dalek through its eyestalk.
The Corsair fed the words into her mind and Clara answered, "Humanoid intruders found on lower levels". It felt so weird and wrong for her voice to sound like a Dalek, but she tried to ignore it.
"Why have the intruders not been exterminated? Explain. Explain. Explain!"
"We're prisoners of special significance" Missy smirked at it from her place beside Clara-Dalek, "Count the hearts".
The Dalek stared at her. "You are Time Lords?"
"I'm a Time Lady, thank you. Some of us can afford the upgrade. Is it still the same old Supreme Dalek these days?" she asked in a bored tone, "I fought him once on the slopes of the Never Vault. Tell him the bitch and her band are back".
The Dalek processed this, and then ordered them to follow it to the Supreme Daleks chamber. "We're not your band" the Corsair hissed at Missy. She ignored him. He ignored her in return, focusing on helping Clara keep her wayward emotions in check.
/
The Doctor and Romana had fixed the unattached Dalek gunstick…but Romana was having second thoughts. They needed to escape, and few weapons could penetrate Dalek armour better than their own, but on the other hand… I don't know if I can use this she told the Doctor through their link, I mean, part of me wants revenge, but part of me wants to…honour Emily's memory, I suppose.
You think she'd want us to sit around like ducks and get exterminated?
No, I think she wouldn't want us to become like the Daleks. Why do you think I was so against the idea of genocide?
Romana, it's the Daleks we're talking about. I try to destroy them and they crawl back, like cockroaches. I try to show mercy and they threaten to take away everything I love. We have nothing left to lose anymore, except each other he replied darkly, getting to his feet and walking over to the screens. They were switched off, and he stared at his reflection without really seeing it.
"Make your confession, Doctor" Davros muttered, once more ignoring Romana. She wasn't sure if she felt offended or not. "Why did you really leave Gallifrey?" he inquired, his rasping voice threaded with hints of genuine curiosity.
"Why don't you mind your own business?" Romana muttered, not bothering to lower her voice, since Davros wasn't paying her any attention…until he looked at her and replied, "One should know one's enemies, Lady Romana".
"How long has it been, you and I?" the Doctor inquired out of nowhere, distracting Davros from Romana, just as he'd planned.
"Long enough" Davros answered simply, "Galaxies have burned".
"And now you ask me a personal question?" he asked sceptically. There had to be more to this than idle curiosity…or had he simply become cynical?
"You have slaughtered billions of my children, as I have slaughtered billions of your race. We have exhausted the conventional means of communication" Davros pointed out.
The Doctor took off his sunglasses and looked at Romana, asking her a simple question without telepathy. After a pause, she nodded slightly, a nod which he returned. "Our people are alive" he informed Davros solemnly, "They didn't die, we brought them back. We found a way".
"Is this true?" Davros inquired, shocked.
"Gallifrey is back in the sky. We don't know where, we may never know. But Gallifrey is back and it is safe… from both of us" the Doctor explained. Davros' reaction was one that neither he nor Romana could have predicted.
"Doctor, Romana…my most sincere congratulations" he croaked out. The two Time Lords stared at him, in suspicion and bewilderment.
"What did you say?" Romana asked in surprise. It was last thing she'd expected…and she hadn't known what to expect.
"This is wonderful news. Beyond all hope. I congratulate you".
"Why are you saying this?" the Doctor inquired, frowning in bewilderment. Since when does Davros congratulate people? He asked Romana, who could only mentally shrug in response.
"One should have a race, a people, an allegiance. One should belong, Doctor. Believe me, please. I am happy for you both. So happy" he told them, his wizened mouth twisting into what could be considered, just about, as a smile.
Romana's eyes hardened slightly, and she replied in a cool tone, "You'll forgive us if we find that rather hard to believe, considering that you let your creations murder our daughter and friends…and Missy".
"I could not have stopped them" he replied, "I cannot control the Daleks. I have not controlled them for centuries. In a way, I am every bit as much a prisoner here as you are, Lady Romana".
"Don't call me that" she snapped, glaring at him. In the next instant, the fire had gone from her eyes and she slumped down in the single available chair, putting her head in her hands. Her loss, especially Emily, it was a dark, sharp tear in her hearts, a wound that tore slowly deeper with every passing second. Romana felt ice freezing inside her soul, numbing the pain with hatred of Davros and his creations...and it frightened her.
The Doctor rested his hands on her shoulders, trying to be supportive. He wanted to tell her that everything would be okay, but…he didn't have it in him to lie to her. It would be far easier to comfort his wife, he mused, if not for Davros speaking to him. "Come closer, Doctor. Let me see your face" he requested, gesturing the Time Lord closer.
"You've seen it often enough" he pointed out, not moving away from Romana.
"Let me see it with my own eyes" Davros rasped…and the blue light of his bionic eye blinked out, as he leaned forward in his chair. The Doctor squeezed Romana's shoulder, and slowly stepped up to Davros, peering at his face. "Closer, please" Davros murmured, prising open ancient, rheumy eyes. Their gazes met, and the Doctor thought he saw a glimmer of something strange…guilt? Regret? – deep within the dark recesses of his arch-enemies' half-blind eyes.
"If you have redeemed the Time Lords from the fire, do not lose them again. Take the darkest path into the deepest hell, but protect your own as I have sought to protect mine… Did I do right, Doctor? Tell me" Davros murmured, resting his wizened hand atop the Doctor's, "Was I right? I need to know before the end. Am I a good man?"
"No" Romana interrupted, standing up and coming over, "You're not…you're a genius, Davros. You could have been so much more, something so much better…instead you wasted all that potential, for 'ultimate power'" she told him, shaking her head in regret, "And because of you, my daughter's potential was cut short as well. All because you wanted to see my husband one last time before you died…I wish we'd never come here" she finished, walking away and staring at the screens, hugging herself.
"Are you really dying?" asked the Doctor. He'd been suspicious from the beginning, considering how many times Davros had supposedly 'died'…but this time seemed almost genuine.
"Look at me" he rasped in reply, gesturing at his frail, shrivelled from, "Did you doubt it?"
"Yes".
"Then we have established one thing only".
"What?"
"You are not a good doctor" Davros joked; they both chuckled briefly, though Davros wheezed a bit at the end. "A pity" he sighed, when he'd got his breath back, "I had hoped to see the sun one last time with the eyes of my true self".
/
Missy skipped into the Dalek Supremes' control room, acting as if she didn't have a care in the world. "Oh, hello! Look at you all, with your nice, shiny domes. Oh, I am loving this" she rambled, walking right up to the Supreme Dalek and murmuring, "You're my secret favourite. Don't tell the others". She sat down on the edge of its dais, looking around at the assembled Daleks.
The Corsair was eyeing them warily, leaving one hand close to his blaster, and his other arm around Emily's shoulders. Emily, for her part, was doing her best to appear less frightened than she really was. Missy might have saved them the first time, but she wasn't sure she trusted the Time Lady to do the same trick twice. Missy obviously had a bigger plan up her sleeve; Emily didn't know what made her more nervous, the unknown plan or the Daleks.
"You are an enemy of the Daleks" the Supreme Dalek announced. Flavia wondered briefly if it recognised them, or if it had no way of differentiating between its victims. The Daleks did have an awful lot of them, after all. Why had they let themselves come back here, trapped once more? Surely they could have found a way to break into the chamber where the Doctor and Romana were being held…it was heavily psychically shielded, the whole complex, and she couldn't sense the other two members of their party, as if they were the ones who had perished. It was most disconcerting.
"Yes, well, anyone who's not a Dalek is an enemy of the Daleks, so that was an easy guess" Missy pointed out in a bored tone.
"You will be exterminated".
"Please, please do, because I have been on my feet all day" Missy complained, hopping to her feet again, "But before you get all exterminate-y, two things. One, I want to see Davros. Two, I have a lovely little gift for you all, if you take me to him right now".
"We do not negotiate" the Supreme Dalek replied. Missy smirked, and gestured to her fellow prisoners. "Emily Smith, and friends; I've brought you complete control of the Doctor and Romana, and better yet, one of them is canned".
Clara was speechless, her mouth hanging open. The Corsair tugged Emily closer, glaring at Missy for throwing them all to the wolves like that; they were not bargaining chips, except in her twisted mind, of course.
Wait – she might have a point Emily reasoned, It might be our only chance to get to my parents.
There was a pause, and then the Supreme Dalek stated, "The human is unaccounted for. Where is the human?"
/
"It is beautiful, my world, is it not?" Davros remarked, almost conversationally, as he sat in his chair looking out of a window. The landscape outside was a scoured desert; ravaged by war…the Doctor was beginning to see where the Daleks might have gotten their twisted concept of beauty from. He decided not to reply to Davros' question, and instead inquired, "How did you get it back?"
"The Daleks remade it. Like you, they have a strong concept of home" Davros explained. Romana watched suspiciously, as the Doctor unwound a length of cable from the mass of them in the centre of the room. Some of those cables looked awfully peculiar…
"No, like you" the Doctor corrected, drawing her attention as he walked over to Davros, "Everything you are, they are" he said. He was connecting Davros back to the life support system, she realised. Theta, what are you doing?
"Like both of us, perhaps" Davros commented, "How far we have come to go home again".
Trust me, Ro, I have a plan the Doctor replied, infusing their mental link with reassurance, before saying to Davros, "I'm trying to pep this up, but you've been going a long time. Every Dalek on Skaro isn't enough anymore".
What plan?
A plan! Well, it's more of a thing…but it's almost fool-proof.
Almost?!
"It is so good of you to help me" Davros interrupted their mental conversation.
You're not really helping him, are you?
"I'm not helping you" the Doctor answered both his wife and Davros in one fell swoop, "I'm helping a little boy I abandoned on a battlefield. I think I owe him a sunrise". He looked out of the window, where Skaro's sun…the Dalek's had created a new sun? He was almost impressed – was just peeking out above a distant mountain range. "Come on, chin up" he encouraged.
Davros moaned slightly, as if in pain, and shifted in his seat as if trying to sit up straighter. "Any minute now" the Doctor prompted him, as the sun crept ever higher into the sky.
Doctor, what is your plan? Romana asked once again, standing up from her chair and folding her arms across her chest, raising one eyebrow suspiciously. The Doctor looked over at her, right in her eyes, and asked, You trust me, don't you?
Well, yes, but that doesn't mean-
Then trust that I know what I'm doing, Romana he insisted quickly, still hiding the nature of his plan from her. Naturally, this just made her doubts grow even more. Asking me to trust you blindly only tells me that this plan of yours isn't one I would approve of. I swear to Rassilon, Theta, if you do anything stupidly sacrificial and noble, I will leave you stranded on Clom for a year.
Before the Doctor could reply to her threat, Davros muttered, "I have always admired you, Doctor…and you, Lady Romana, you have…exceeded my expectations. I wish, just once, we had been on the same side" he murmured, almost sounding regretful. Romana twitched slightly; she didn't want the mad-man's compliments, and she didn't care if he felt regret. It was too little, too late as far as she was concerned.
"Look, the sun's coming up" the Doctor told him, looking out of the window…and not at Romana, much to her displeasure. "We're on the same side now".
"I regret…I cannot open my eyes" Davros croaked out, his voice trembling. The Doctor looked down at him, and was surprised to find tears leaking from his arch-nemesis' eyes…he took a deep breath and steeled himself. Romana really wouldn't be happy with this… Pick out somewhere high and dry, then he told his wife, before saying aloud, "Okay, don't ever tell anyone that I did this". He summoned regeneration energy up from his cells and into his hand; Romana's eyes widened at the golden glow dancing around his hand.
"What? No, no, no, you can't – Doctor, you can't!" she protested, starting forward and stumbling on the trailing cables. The Doctor quickly darted over to the life support mechanism in the centre of the room, and grasped a cable with both hands. "I'm not giving much, just enough to – aargh!" he yelled out, in pain and alarm, as snakes slithered from the cables and bound his hands in place.
"No!"
Romana hurried to help him, but found herself beset by the legless devils, twisting up her legs and almost tripping her; and a large serpent, Sarff himself, coiled around her, pinning her legs and one arm in place. With the other she beat and scratched helplessly at the thick scales, and reached out to her husband, who was struggling in his own tightening binds and almost on his knees with pain. "No! Stop it! Davros, let him go, now!"
"Hold them firm, Colony Sarff. The Doctor is precious to us now…and when he is finished with, you may kill the other".
"Don't you dare!" the Doctor thundered, anger coursing through his veins at the threat to yet another person he loved. He fought the snakes holding him with all his strength, but it was rapidly waning and each painful tug only seemed to make them curl tighter around his wrists and fingers. "Let her go, now!"
"Such compassion!" crowed Davros, turning to face them with a twisted, triumphant grin upon his face. "I warned you that it would be your downfall, Doctor. Regeneration energy; the ancient magic of the Time Lords" he said, his voice strengthening as the Doctor's regeneration energy flowed through the cables to him, much to Romana and the Doctor's horror, "I thought I would have to tear you apart to take it from you, but you have opened your veins of your own free will, and all Daleks shall drink the blood of Gallifrey. They shall rise stronger than ever!"
Bound and helpless, the two Time Lords screamed in pain and protest; Davros ignored them, cackling as he straightened and filled out in his chair, his body rapidly gaining in strength…