Author's Note:
That's going to be the penultimate chapter. I know: It just got interesting and we're near the end again.
So thanks again for all the followers and favourites and of course the comments.
Tomorrow will be the final chapter of 'Secrets: Gallifreyan Nights'.
And I hope you'll enjoy the last twists. Thanks in advance for your continued support.
"Theta."
I blinked at the dark silhouette in front of me and turned over in my bed. The bloody night wouldn't end. It would never end. It was still dark, it was still night and it just wouldn't end.
"Theta."
Someone was shaking my shoulders gently before poking me in the side.
"Are you dead?"
"I wish I were dead" I replied quietly and cleared my throat. My eyes were burning and the skin on my face felt as if it had been abraded and was now slowly desiccating.
I wanted to sit up as a hand pressed down on my chest firmly. I groaned in pain and opened my eyes wider.
The smell. I knew the smell from above me.
Koschei.
"Please Koschei, let me sleep" I mumbled and tried turning around in my bed again.
The hand on my chest wouldn't budge.
"You look rather dead" replied Koschei and pushed back the duvet.
"I'm feeling rather dead" I whispered and covered my eyes with my hands "and I will be quite dead if you won't stop bothering me. Koschei, I want to sleep! I want to sleep, I can't take it any longer, I need to sleep... I need to..."
"You're leaking."
Koschei had nearly cut me off.
His words managed to scare me as well as irritate me. I tried sitting up again but was stopped by Koschei's hand once more. Then I felt his other hand reaching for my garment.
It was soaked. It was soaked to the skin...
I reached for the upper part of my stomach to discover that it had been the other way round.
My clothes weren't soaked to the skin.
The blood from the wound had not only bedabbled my skin but my clothes likewise. And probably even the duvet...
Koschei touched the fresh cut on my abdomen with increasing interest.
"Someone's cut you open" he mumbled quietly and fumbled around with the slipped bandage "and yet they had tried to keep you from falling apart."
I wouldn't contradict. Neither would I reply.
Koschei stroked my injured skin before slipping two fingers inside of the wound; my abdominal wall was probably too strained and actually I didn't believe that it was still attached to the rest of my body anymore; I didn't feel pain. I hardly felt anything.
Except for the overwhelming sleep, the draining feeling in my bones.
I was exhausted. And if my tears hadn't dried I would have been crying.
I had stopped making sense as soon as I had felt asleep. I hadn't thought. I couldn't think anymore. I felt my thoughts, my mind, my pure existing circling about a question I wouldn't want to ask myself. And yet it was still lingering in my head...
Koschei popped his head to one side and palpated my wound.
"Koschei let me sleep."
I couldn't reply anything else. I had been too weak, too exhausted to even speak to him anymore.
I stayed silent and wouldn't give him any replies.
Soon Koschei had lost interest and would snug me while I tried drifting back into sleep...
"Looks rather ripped to me."
"Why would Koschei do that to him?"
"Why does Koschei do anything?"
"I guess we should inform the headmaster..."
NO!
I had tried opening my eyes and sitting up after hearing the mumbling from above my head. But my body wouldn't budge, my eyes would stay shut and I wasn't able to move, not to move at all. I would stay like this, I would stay like this until someone would discover me, until someone would call one of the head-surgeons and until one of them could identify me as miserable, defiled being, until one of them would see what had been cut out of my abdomen...
"No!"
The Doctor arose from his bed and stumbled out onto the corridor. He couldn't stay in bed any longer. He simply couldn't. Theta's memories... his memories...
He pressed his hands against the doorframe. It couldn't have been described as walking; he tumbled. The Doctor tried to support his nearly upright position by propping himself up against the wall. But soon he had fallen; soon his vision had become blank again, the walls were darkening and closing in around him, turning into a fathomless abyss before he felt himself falling into a bottomless chasm, the fabric of time itself swallowing him up as he was pushed and pulled deeper and deeper...
A boy or a girl?
Had it been a boy or a girl?
Would I ever know? Would I ever find out?
I had wanted to know it... I had wanted to hold it... I had wanted my child.
Had it been a boy or a girl?
Why couldn't I know?
Why wouldn't they let me know?
Please father... I had always wanted to know...please, let me know...
Please...
Please...
The Doctor managed to get his eyes open and found himself clutching at the walls in the Tardis. He looked around irritated. The voice in his head had been louder than ever before.
Theta, where are you?, he heard himself calling in his head.
Why shouldn't I know? It was my child! My child! And he took it! He simply took it from me!
The Doctor felt his inside catching fire again, but it was worse than before; something had melded into him. Something was emerging, entwining, and besetting him.
He was infested with something.
Theta, what are you doing?
It was my child! I had wanted it! I had wanted to hold it in my arms! I had wanted it so badly!
Theta stop that! Just stop! You're pulling both of us down.
You're diseased, 'Doctor'. You won't put up much of a fight. Not anymore. You're weakened. You're weakened by your own memories.
And so are you. Theta, stop that! Stop! I don't want to die!
Oh, but you're me 'Doctor'. So you've always wanted to die.
Stop it, Theta!
You can't stop me.
Stop it, for any God's sake!
Pray to any God you like; he won't help you. There are no Gods, 'Doctor'.
No, there are no Gods on Gallifrey. But we're gone. We're not on Gallifrey anymore. We've fled the planet.
Gallifrey is still in you, 'Doctor. It won't disappear. You're carrying it inside of you. Like the child you never wanted. And like my banished soul. I'll stay there. Forever. I'm inside of you.
No, you're me! Those were not your memories, neither were they mine; those were our memories. Which means that both of us had died. Which means that both of us will live.
The Doctor picked himself up by supporting his body with his hands pressed to a wall again.
You had died, Theta! You're dead! Together we have died and together we can live! You're me! And I can't change the past, you can't be stopped from dying inside of me. And neither can I stop you from becoming reborn once more.
I just had wanted to hold it in my arms... for a moment, only... just for a moment... my child...
The Doctor felt tears bedabbling his cheeks as he dragged himself out into the next room.
Don't cry, Theta. Don't cry.
Just hold it, just feel it... just knowing that it belonged to me...
It was getting rather hard for the Doctor to see a thing as his vision became blurred with the tears of grief of a hundreds of years' silence.
Don't cry Theta.
The Doctor crawled through the open door to find himself in a small kitchen. He heard sobs in his head. The crying wouldn't stop. And neither could he drown out the heartrending cries of his newborn child. They simply swept back, the sounds and the memories bursted in and gushed in his skull.
His newborn's cries... its helpless cries...
Tears dripped onto the small kitchen table as the Doctor hung his head while struggling for air. He had thought that he had no longer any tears to shed. But he had been wrong before.
No sounds escaped his firmly sealed lips but he couldn't stop the tears from welling.
Cry for the child, 'Doctor. Cry for the lost child's sake.
The Doctor sobbed barely audible and rested his head on the table as his shoulders started twitching again.
"Doctor?"
The Doctor had heard the footsteps but he had simply ignored them. Even they couldn't manage to drown out the terrible sounds in his head...
"Doctor?"
He felt a firm grip on his jerking shoulders.
"I hadn't known it!" he bursted out and started crying out loud "My father wouldn't have told me! And I had spent nights awake, whole nights while my head was a constant but painful concealment, I never got a grip on my thoughts again, just the same question was there, in my head, over and over again: A boy or a girl?!"
The Doctor sobbed and sniffled aloud; someone beside him pulled a chair and sat down quietly.
"I just wanted to find it! I just wanted to know it! I couldn't sleep anymore, I couldn't think straight anymore! I had to see it... I had to see my child!"
The Doctor let out a disastrous howl that made Jack beside him flinch; Jack had heard the Doctor escaping his bed once more and he had known that the Doctor had been in a weak state of health; but he hadn't thought that he would be in a weak state of mind, too.
And he never would have believed that someone as strong-minded and as poised as the Doctor would have been capable of producing cries and wailings that would freeze the blood in your veins.
"But I hadn't found it!" blurted the Doctor out; he wasn't talking neither was he screaming; his mind was a thundering waterfall; and his tongue seemed to be just the right thing to drain it out.
"I had escaped the academy a week later, I had run home during one of the following nights, driven by the never-ending question in my head. But when I got home I would find nothing! I found nothing! My father had promised me to take care of my child... and I found nothing!"
The Doctor got cut off by a couple of heartrending sobs and Jack felt himself patting the Doctor's back unintentionally.
"He had promised me, that he would look after it... NO, he had promised me that he would take care of it. But it never would have occurred to me that he had meant 'dealing with' instead of 'caring for' by that. And I came home to find nothing. I had neither given birth to a boy nor to a girl... there was nothing there!"