Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who-or even the Nigtmar Child.
A/N: All right, y'all, here it is. The last chapter. Now we get some answers-some more thorough than others. My thanks to those who have reviewed. I always find it so encouraging that someone would take the time to comment on my work.
The Doctor dragged his hand over his face, long fingers pulling at his features. He blinked. Suddenly, he was working off his tie, pulling at it with nimble fingers. He wrapped it tight about his wounded wrist, tucking the ends into a messy knot. He frowned. The Doctor grabbed the end of the tie in his teeth and pulled, trying to tighten it.
The Nightmare Child sighed. She pulled the Doctor's hand to her, ignoring his yelp of pain as her fingers closed over his wrist. She twisted the ends into a savage knot.
The Doctor tried to stretch his grimace into an appreciative smile. His features settled into an inquisitive expression. "Why?"
The child blinked, surprised. "Why not?"
"Well, I'd hate to be the one to break protocol, but typically a torturer doesn't help the torturee," the Doctor leaned back, "I am the torturee, aren't I?"
The child threw back her head and laughed, the sound scratching out of her throat. "Oh Doctor, we're only playing." She drew her toe through the ash. "You like games, don't you?" She finished sketching something like a hopscotch grid in the drifts. She hopped through the intricate pattern, little feet flashing from square to square. There was something sickening about her movements, as if she had to move every bone in her body one at a time.
Her mess of hair spread out around her as she spun on one foot. It drifted back around her shoulders as she paused, peering out from behind the greasy strands. "I can never finish it." A series of red scuffs marred the game board. With an irritated wave of her hand, the child blew it all away.
"You've made a mess of your feet," said the Doctor.
"I also made a mess of your face."
"Seems to me, though, that it's getting worse," mused the Doctor, thinking aloud.
The child gritted her teeth before sliding up beside the Doctor. For an instance her shadow pulsed and the Doctor shied away.
"What were you doing at the Medusa Cascade, when you tried to steal Davros from me?" the child purred. "Out on the far reaches of the war in that funny little box. Oh, your TARDIS hated me. You could hardly get her near me, the repulsive wreck."
The Doctor glanced at the child. Then he shrugged.
"Don't you want to swap the stories of war, Doctor, with an old soldier at arms?" asked the child, perching on the rocks.
The Doctor watched her in silence. An air of distracted curiosity settled over him as he turned in a circle, gaze flicking over the clearing. He managed a smile of weak bravado.
"Aren't you a bit old for story time?" he asked.
"I'll tell one then," she patted the rock at her side. "Sit."
"I'm fine really. Standing that is. Been," he swallowed, "dying of radiation poisoning all day. Much rather stand. It's been more than a day now hasn't it, though. Time's got a way of getting away from you here. Even from me."
"Sit. Down," said the girl.
The Doctor stumbled as a tremor ran through the ground. The child smiled, like a viper stretching its lipless mouth over its fangs. The Doctor sighed. "All right." Pulling his coat tight he perched as far from the Nightmare Child as he could manage.
"Once upon a time," she paused, "that is how these go? Once upon a time, long ago, in a faraway land, something like that." The girl twisted her hair. "That's how stories start. I think. Once upon a time." The child curled her mouth around the foreign phrase. "Upon time. There was a man, the most bloodstained pacifist to ever walk among the stars…"
The Doctor leapt to his feet. "You know what I think? I think I've heard this one before." He gazed at flames long since burnt to ash that wouldn't start to spark for centuries. "I know how it ends." The silence snatched at his words as they hung on the still air. "Still, let's hear the part about how the fear made flesh got thrown back into the Timelock with all the other monsters." He leaned down, a superior tone creeping into his voice. " 'cause that's all you are now, just a monster under the bed."
A gleaming smile split his features. "Look at you. A demon embodied and here you are playing mind games." Leaping to his feet, the Doctor waved his good hand expansively. " 'Cause all of this, this is nothing for the Nightmare Child. A parlor trick. I was there at the Third Cacophony when you crawled out of a rift, the heart of a TARDIS clenched in your jaws. Time wept." He raised his eyebrows. "But look at you now."
The child clenched her fists at her sides, shaking.
"You're just an echo that bled through with Gallifrey. The Timelock snapped shut," the Doctor snapped his fingers, "and you got stranded here. You've got nothing to feed off now, no war, no lost regenerations." He leaned in. "You've been using up what power seeped through with you."
The Doctor mused. "Like a chick feeding off its yolk."
A snarl curled the child's lips. Her shadow boiled up, dark shapes writhing. Tendrils snaked about the Doctor's ankles and yanked his faded trainers out from under him. Ash billowed as the Doctor landed on his back with a grunt.
He yelped as the dark tendrils jerked him forward, leaving a long trail through the ash. Vaporous shadows swarmed over the child's body, twisting it into a perversion. Venomous eyes snapped open, swirling with dead men's souls.
"I starve," she said, her voice shaking.
The Doctor groaned as the nightmares wrenched him to his knees, the child's hands gripped his temples, digging into his hair. Needle fangs showed beneath curled lips as the child rumbled deep in her throat. "All the lives you've ruined, the people you've turned into weapons. Admit it Doctor, you're a plague. Everything you touch burns."
A cry ripped from the Doctor's lips as the child tore through his mind. People were dying. In Pompey their lungs melted and families huddled beneath the falling ash. Hundreds of people flared under the heat of a Dalek's malice. Soldiers fell in heaps, carcasses of war across the universe. A little girl with a red balloon stared out from the depths of a mirror. Gallifrey screamed.
Tears spilled onto the Doctor's cheeks as the child bored deeper into his mind. Rose tumbled toward the void. He couldn't reach her. She fell into eternity. The cold ocean crashed behind her as salt tears ran down her chin.
And then Rose's arms were around him as she buried her head in his chest. His arms snaked about her, holding her tight. He lifted her up and spun. When he set her back on her feet Martha stared up him instead, giving a bright smile. The Doctor bent down and hugged her. Martha's dark hair blushed red and Donna pulled away from him. She smirked and elbowed him in the arm, motioning to the side with a jerk of her head.
The Doctor blinked. For a moment the images of Sarah Jane, Mickey, Wilf, and a dozen others ghosted across his vision. The presence in his mind faltered. A brief sob echoed in the darkness. The Doctor reeled as the child fled. As she bolted, he caught a glimpse into her mind, just a flash.
A bare shouldered girl clambered through dark trunks, silver leaves caught in her hair. Laughing, she spun in the dappled light. She paused as if listening to a far off call. Suddenly she shrieked, curling on the ground, clutching her head. A concussive wave of energy tore through the forest, smashing against an unseen barrier and rolling back upon itself. The Time War rippled through the ages and crashed against the farthest edges of the Time Lock. The child shuddered and writhed in the ash, the silver leaves falling in cinders. Naked trunks stretched above her.
A jagged rift in time tore open. It swallowed her. Her scream echoed in the emptiness. Then a sallow hand grasped at the edge of the rift. The child heaved herself up, one arm and then another out of the hole. Suddenly, a man in red robes stood before her, his high, sculpted collar shadowing his face. She reached out a hand to him, pleading. He threw her back in and the rift snapped shut.
The Nightmare Child's mind jerked away from the Doctor, hidden behind a tangled mass of dark thoughts. The shadows melted and for an instant the Doctor thought he saw dampness on her cheeks. She threw herself away from him, clutching her arms against her chest. Back stiff, she refused to look at him. "I don't understand," she whispered. "All that in your mind, how can it be?" She turned and looked up at him, searching. "You are rage and pain and malice. You are sorrow and death."
The Doctor watched her. She seemed to diminish somehow and for a moment he was able to forget she wasn't a little girl.
"You are joy and fun and hope and," she hissed as if the word burned her, "love. So very many love you. Even after the monsters you've become." She blinked rapidly. "I do not understand."
The Doctor smiled thinly, giving a weak shrug. "You're not the only one."
A bitter laugh escaped the girl's lips as tears trailed through the grime on her face. She reached a tentative hand to her cheek, confused by the wetness there. "This is weakness." She looked into the Doctor's face. "Get out. You wanted to live so much. Live," she sneered.
"You're—letting me go?" he said glancing down at her.
She gave that pained smile. "Letting? I'm just an afterimage. A fading echo. You've taken my war. What is one more lost death after that?"
The light was growing brighter and the Doctor realized he could see farther into the shifting clouds than ever before. A vast emptiness stretched beyond his sight. The world about him began to blur and change. The rocks and battered trees faded. Even the ash beneath his feet curled in on itself.
"You get a second chance, Doctor." The girl haltingly furrowed her brows, control of her body slipping, "This thing is irony." The not-world of the Nightmare Child's creation ate itself, the edges dissolving into brilliance. "Go on Doctor," she curled her lips, "be loved."
Dropping to his knees in front of the child, the Doctor looked her in the eyes. He looked past the grey glass and burning pits, down into black loneliness. "Thank you," he said, and wrapped his arms about the girl's little body. She stiffened at his touch and he felt her mind jerk back. She pushed away for an instant before sagging against him and dropping her head onto his shoulder.
"I escape the Time War," she mumbled and gave a little hacking laugh, "and you are still my death."
The Doctor whispered, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, little lost child of Gallifrey."
The brilliance engulfed him and he felt the child begin to burn away. And then, there was nothing. No ground beneath his feet, no air in his lungs; he was blind and deaf and mute. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard Donna commenting on it not being such a bad thing for him to be speechless. Throwing back his head, he laughed into the vacuum. Slowly, the sound reached his ears. He couldn't feel his hearts or his hands, but his laugh echoed.
And then he stood on a hillside, green, green grass beneath his feet. The last ring of his laughter drifted across the sunlit sky. He lifted his battered face, drawing in the sweet air. A muffled cry caused him to look down. He still clutched the child to his chest.
With a moan, she pushed away from him, her strength frail. He let her go and she tumbled backward onto the ground. Blinking, she threw an arm up against the sun. She trembled as her gaze jerked wildly from the bright sky to the ground beneath her to the Doctor looming over her.
"What did you do!" she hissed.
"Oh, I am brilliant." The Doctor grinned and rocked back on his heels. His hand fluttered about as he talked, doubly expressive as if to make up for the fact that the other hung limp at his side. "You bled through into this time, but not all of you squeezed through before Gallifrey got tossed back into the Timelock. You got cut off, didn't have anything to anchor yourself here, well you could have made something, course you could have, all that power, you could do whatever you liked. Thing is, you wasted a lot of your energy on me—rather petty." He shook his head. "Spiteful child. You couldn't get at the Time Lords; but you could get at me."
The Doctor's trainers rustled through the grass as he began to pace. "That's not quite right though is it? You couldn't get at me either, not really. The TARDIS kept you out, oh yes. She doesn't like you at all. So you couldn't just snatch me away. And that's why the whole cloning rubbish—I'm starting to rather hate cloning." The Doctor wrinkled his nose and pulled a face. "Really," he said, voice cracking over the word, "you could have just waited till I left the TARDIS, would have been easier." He paused and cocked his head to the side in thought. "Could have brained me with a cricket bat."
The girl shrieked and lunged at the Doctor. He caught her little wrist in his hand and held her as she struggled. "See, what you needed was something to anchor you in this time and place." The girl screamed again and struggled. The Doctor let her go with a swift step to the side. She landed in a heap in the grass. "You'd been in my mind, waltzing around, and that left a trail. It wasn't much, but it tied us together. That, and you really shouldn't have let me hug you. The mental link wasn't enough, but a nice big strong hug—nothing like it! And there you are, I'm your anchor." The Doctor held up his hand and waved his fingers at the child. "Hello!"
For a moment, the girl sat in a heap, legs sprawled, burying her hands in her tattered dress. Her fingers trailed up the fabric, scuttling onto her arms as she felt her way up them, pinching, pulling, and grabbing at her skin. Her hands roved over her face, tangling in her hair as she began to shake. Suddenly, she stopped, her arms dropping limp to her side.
"Show me your fury, Doctor," she said, her voice barely a whisper.
"What?" he asked.
"Give me just what I wanted." She raised her face, expressionless. "Make it poetry."
The Doctor paused and considered the child. "Poetry?"
"My judgment, be poetic."
"That's what you think this is? A sentence?" He laughed. He ran a hand over his face, suddenly solemn. "Well, maybe for me."
The girl hunched against the ground. "I do not understand."
The Doctor knelt in front of her. "Second chances."
The girl glanced away. She breathed out her words, low and weary. "Someone very close to you once said, will say, might have said…the first rule about the Doctor," she twitched her head up, "he lies."
The Doctor pushed away from her and shoved his hand into his pocket as a breeze tugged at his coat tails. Silence stretched between them as he looked up at the sky. "After nine hundred years," he said quietly, "you develop a few vices."
He dragged at his ruffled hair and gave a long sigh. "You did not deserve what we did to you. We were better than that, once." The Doctor turned. For a moment, even his lank, battered form could not hide that he was far more than human. The weight of ages sat in his eyes, their deceptively bright surface sheening over terrifying power. "I am a Time Lord, we made you, gave all our nightmares flesh. You are my responsibility."
The girl gave a strange hissing noise and pressed her mouth into a thin line. "Then know this, Lord of Time. You should not have done this thing," she dug her nails into her arm, "because I will kill you."
The Doctor blinked. Then he grinned. "Oh, well, I have no doubt you'll try. You'll find it a bit more difficult now that you can't draw power from a gapping rift in time. It certainly makes you easier to look at, not seeing time bleeding out all over the place." He offered her a weak smile. "Come on then." He held out his hand. The child refused to take it, glaring at him.
The Doctor shrugged. "All right, as you like." He sauntered off down the hill, good hand shoved in his pocket. He managed to work up a whistle.
The girl watched him go. Her gaze roved over the vast expanse of grass and the strange blue sky that hung so high above her head. She wrapped her arms around herself. Shaking, she rose to her feet and spat on the ground, a snarl stretched across her features. She winced, her tentative steps spattering the grass red. With a limping stride she hurried after the Doctor.
He didn't turn around, merely cocked his head as he heard the grass behind him crunching under little feet. He didn't smile then, merely closed his eyes in slow acceptance.
A/N: Thanks for reading everyone! Please favorite and comment if you like it-or if you see things that could be improved. I've always been fascinated by the mention of the Nightmare Child, and I wish we'd get to know about it in-story, but then again, mystery is part of the fun. I hoped to give some hints as to her origins without spelling out the headcanon I have for her. Thanks again for reading!