"The Benevolent Doctor"

34. Options, Doctor

Sometime in New New York

Brittany had had her fair share of strange dreams in her life, but the ones she dreamed that day might have been the strangest. After she'd woken up, they had fled out of her mind before she could properly grasp them and hold on to them, but they still left a distinct expression of deep oddity. They left her to wonder if everything she'd experienced in the past two days had truly happened, talking cats, aliens, ships…

She opened her eyes and after a few seconds she did recognize the room. This was the cat girls' room, she'd seen it before… So then it couldn't be fake, not that part. She held up her hand to look at it, but where she expected to find a cat hand, she found her same old, boring, pink and fleshy palm. She felt her head, found her long blond hair, her cheek, where the most hair she could expect to find was the fine little hairs that they all had. Her teeth were just as they'd been before… She was human again, but then if that was the case, then why was she seeing Agnes Brannigan sitting nearby, still human?

"You're awake," she smiled. "Santana's downstairs eating, Dad's orders."

"How long was I asleep?"

"Half a day, easy."

"Why are you not a cat? Did I dream that, too?" she frowned, but Agnes smiled. She reached into a drawer next to her bed and pulled out a syringe.

"The Doctor said I can take it whenever I want, and it will make everything the way it was before. I thought maybe I'd stay this way a while. Always been like my dad, now I can be like my mother instead."

Eventually, Agnes told her about all that she'd missed while she was sleeping. The cure which the Doctor had engineered in Benedict's lab had been passed on to all of his subjects with a rousing success. Some were too far gone for a complete recovery, but it would at least fix a great part of the wrongs they had suffered. Alfred was a more difficult case, but the Doctor had fixed him, too. First he'd had to make him go the rest of the way through his transformation, but once that was done, he was able to give him the cure. He would still be sleeping, off in his own room.

"The Doctor, he had… those needles, he put some in his pockets, I saw him…"

"For you and me, and Alfred, and those others who were with us," Agnes nodded.

"What about them, how are they? Mr. Arpen, and Erlin and Risha, and the other guy?" Brittany asked.

"Mr. Arpen is all better now, he can see again. Erlin got her memory back. You should have seen when she figured out it was her daughter with her all this time. And Risha, they couldn't fix her, not completely, but she still looks so much better now. The other one, turns out his name is Sorner. The Doctor thinks his head should go back like it's supposed to be, but it might be longer. I think Sorner almost wants him to leave him like he is, because he deserved it."

"But he helped us."

"That's what we're telling him." They sat in silence for a moment. It was really over.

"I'm hungry," she breathed, and Agnes smiled, heading downstairs.

She wasn't the one who came up with her breakfast. Santana had the tray, and she nearly dropped it, seeing how Brittany was back to normal.

"Are you okay?" she asked, and Brittany nodded. "How do you feel?"

"I… I kind of miss being a cat," she admitted, and Santana laughed.

"Well, you were cute, yes," she sat, offering her the food. "But I think I like you much better this way."

"That's fair."

X

Back at the mansion, quiet now reigned. Benedict's personnel, guards and others, had been removed. In the basement of the nearby hospital, there were guards at the door where the Doctor and Martha presented themselves. "I think I changed my mind, I don't want to go in there," Martha shook her head.

"Alright," the Doctor bowed his head, tapping her shoulder. She smiled apologetically, moving back and taking a seat. The Doctor was let into the room.

Benedict was sitting up on the bed, staring at the sliver of a window at the top of the wall. He was changed into hospital clothes, a robe… He looked like a harmless old man, up until you looked into his face, and then you saw the pride.

"Recovered from your swooning?" the Doctor asked, pulling a chair up to sit with him.

"Come here to gloat?"

"You won't get it back, give it a rest. See, I don't think you were like this, not before. It corrupted you. It was supposed to inspire you, to solidify your ideas, give you new ones, better ones, smarter ones… What was wrong with the scientist you were before that you had to resort to… gadgets?"

"If you knew what I had to go through to get this thing you call a 'gadget.'" The Doctor fixed him with a look, a shrug that said 'I hear that a lot.' "If you want to know, 'the scientist I was before' was a hack, a failure. But then look at what I did. I came here, I cured those people."

"And they were very thankful, they were," the Doctor agreed. "But then you went too far, Benedict. So you ended up here."

"Going to leave me here to rot?" he scoffed.

"Is that what you want?" the Doctor leaned forward, leaning his arms on his knees. "It doesn't have to be the answer. Not everyone knows what you did, most don't. The others, well they know that without that… booster… you're not much of a threat anymore. That other man died with it. So I'm here today with their proposal. They will let you be, to live out your life in peace, if you reacquaint yourself with the man who came here as a healer. Who knows, you might still have some good to do."

TO BE CONTINUED (MONDAY)