Text Key

"Audible speech."

'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'

Rise of the Cybermen / Age Of Steel

Chapter 23 – Restoration

Trigger warnings for vague/implied body horror. Other than that, maybe some feels punching.

Most of the volunteers to go first were recent converts, still caught in the cycle of denial and bargaining that made it easy to look me in the eye and demand that I put things right… and I was able to do that, for the most part. They didn't ask for flashy additions, but they did stick on things like wanting old scars replicated or insisting that their hair be put exactly how they remembered.

They wanted to forget the events that had brought them to my workshop and when they learned that there were some things I just couldn't put back to the way they were, like arms and legs that had been removed in their entirety, they got upset and then demanded the next best thing.

A few were a little more flexible, taking their new transhumanism in perfect stride, asking that I make additions that would keep all but the blind and most obtuse people from identifying them as cyborgs on sight. One even asked if I could replace the skin on their arms with an electronic surface they could draw on and then clear at will.

I had to point out that the 'at will' bit would require something like the Earpods be installed again.

Eventually, it was her turn. This universe's version of me, the girl that couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen before Lumic had cut her up and shoved the remains into that walking metal coffin and then shoved that into the metal mausoleum he called his 'factory'.

"Hi!"

The Cyberized girl shuffled awkwardly, the body language making the massive Cyberman frame seem a lot smaller than it actually was. "…hi."

I remembered being her age. The confidence with the structural integrity of sugar glass, worn down by abuse at home and at school and rendered all the more fragile by that mess known as puberty, and the fraying nerves that had finally, finally started snapping under the pressure.

The breakdown that had followed had been ugly, with all the emotions that had been shoved to the side or choked down being released all at once, a flood of emotions too extreme to allow even the barest control over thought or action. If not for a stray thought that had come from a place of pure spite – 'if you die, that just means that they've won' –, I might not have survived the experience.

Even an eternity later, I couldn't say who 'they' were supposed to be beyond a long list of suspects, only that even when I was halfway out of my mind, the thought of spiting that ill-defined enemy by making the choice of life had been just the lifeline I'd needed.

I pulled the Cyberized child over to a convenient bench, guiding her to a table and pushing her down into a reclining position as the AI running the medical suite found a place to put in the painkillers.

What I had to kill the pain wouldn't work quite so well as the Doctor's psychic anesthetic – I was going to have to copy that piece of equipment –, but it would work well enough to make the worst of what I had to do painless.

As automated arms began disassembling the Cyberman shell, starting with the back so other systems could take over the life support, I turned my attention to the girl inside.

"So, what's your name?"

My counterpart jumped slightly, the loosening armor rattling with the abrupt motion. "What?"

"What's your name?" I asked again. "I mean, I can call you Fred if you don't feel like sharing. Or maybe Steve. You seem like a Steve. Spidery."

She shuffled again, running metal fingers over metal arms. "…my name's Delaine," she mumbled.

"Oh, that's nice name. My mom gave me one just like it."

"Really?"

"Cross my heart and hope to fry, I too am known as Delaine," I said honestly, going through the motions. "Though I don't know if yours is the Irish version or the French. Personally, I favor the Irish. Can't exactly go wrong with 'dark challenger', can you? I mean, unless you translate it as 'descendant of the dark challenger' or 'dark river', but honestly all of those are better than 'from the elder tree grove'. Not that there's anything wrong with trees. I'm very good friends with a tree."

"How's that working out for you?"

"He won't leaf me alone."

The other Delaine gave a small noise of amusement at that, sounding like a kid in a much better way than she had before, before it turned into a sigh. "I didn't know it had a meaning. My dad said that my mom named her after herself and her mother. Delora and Eileen."

I snorted before holding up a hand at the vaguely offended look my counterpart was giving me. "Sorry, I was just thinking about what kind of mental gymnastics he must have gone through to reach that point. Or if he just addressed his mother-in-law as 'Elaine' for the entire time, thinking that was her actual name. Must have made any written correspondence awkward."

From personal knowledge, I knew it was more malice and a desire to be mean on his part, but the alternative answer of him being just that pigheaded and stupid had been funny for too long for me to willingly discard it.

"Is there anything else you'd like to tell me about yourself?" I asked, changing the direction of the conversation. "I mean, you can stick with the physical facts, if that's what you're comfortable with. How tall you are, what color your hair is, etcetera, etcetera. Bit boring, but safe enough if you're worried about 'stranger danger'. Or you can talk about music or your favorite TV shows. I'm not particular, though personally I'm more of a book person."

"Oh. I… I like books alright. Haven't had anything to read in a while."

I removed the plating on one of her arms, revealing that the flesh and bone stopped at the shoulder. Inconvenient for restoring the organics, but easy enough to remedy with inorganic materials. "Too bad," I said, motioning for the nanomachine computer to start modelling a new one, this time a few inches shorter and much more suited for a young girl used to having to stretch for almost every shelf she encountered. "Anything you recommend though? From one bookworm to another."

The rest of the armor came off cleanly, each revealing less and less person underneath. I winced at the ruin of her torso – almost nothing of the original organs were there and Lumic's life support only covered the bare necessities – but set to installing the necessary replacements as this universe's Delaine slowly revealed bit by bit of her interests. Sherlock Holmes, thankfully, was a constant and deep enough interest that we could get into a decent conversation about it while I worked on things the girl was better off being unaware of.

"Alright. I'm going to start working on the head. You might experience some momentary sensory disturbance," I warned her as I directed the AI to go after the boxy helmet next.

The helmet came apart and I was brought face to face with… well, something a lot better and a lot worse than what I'd expected. Her human face – still too young for this – was mostly there and just as familiar as I expected it to be, right down to the sad almost black eyes and the scar on the chin, but everything behind the ears had been removed and replaced with a smooth metal plate over – or perhaps even replacing – the skull.

"Is it bad?" the other me asked, a clear note of worry entering her tone.

The last bit was something that would take a touch more effort to fix, especially considering that the others I'd de-converted had only had implants instead of this near full-metal coverage. Considering how many of the older models had opted to wait instead of going first, this was at least a warning of how those reconstructions would go. "It's not great, but it could be worse," I said, only lying a little bit as I tried to use the Rider's healing abilities on it. The scalp might have been a loss, but I was getting a reaction from the other tissues and already color was returning to her skin. "Do you have any strong opinions about wigs?"

Dark eyes flicked over to me, a faint worry creasing her forehead. "No?"

"Oh, good. Then you can have fun with this. Because you can't grow your own hair anymore."

"What?!"

"Or I can just like… permanently install some short hair that's your usual color. Makes wigs a touch trickier but I guess that'd be better-ish. Or maybe do something fancier. Maybe try to put together some sort of retracting system…"

Shock was already giving way to tears, fat oily drops of black liquid coming from glands that I hadn't switched back over to saltwater yet. "Do you know what they did at me at school when I showed up with short hair?"

"I can imagine," I said, remembering exactly what had happened and how I had to ignore calls of 'It' and other dehumanizing nicknames for the rest of the year. "But depending on what material I use, anything longer than a few inches could very easily get so messed up that you'd have no other choice but to cut it all off."

"But," I added before the wat-er, oilworks started up again, "If you want, I could make the permanent wig out of some smart material so you can change the style at will, provided it's like three or four inches or shorter. Pretty simple nanotech. Never have to muck around with hair gel again. Maybe set it up so you can change the colors too. Might have to put in a rudimentary AI if I make it that complicated to help smooth over the technical difficulties, but it's not like you don't have enough room for that. And here –" I pointed at the rudimentary beginnings of robotic limbs. "Nothing stopping me from putting in some bells and whistles in other places. Chrome on the joints, maybe a hidden compartment or two. Maybe some Heelys in your Achilles?"

The other me wore a speculative, though still somewhat watery look as she flexed what would become her new fingers. "Can you put in a grappling hook? I know you said no weapons but –"

I smiled. "If you don't mind me putting in some heavier reinforcement in the back and shoulders. Gotta make sure that your new body can take the hits," I said, going through the quick motions of a boxer as the girl started giggling, the sound pushing my initial assumption that she was twelve down to somewhere around ten or so. "Going to take up mountain climbing or vigilantism? I bet you'd make a pretty good Batgirl."

The other Delaine dragged the back of one of her new hands across her cheek, smearing oil across her skin as the exposed artificial bones and tendons failed to absorb it. "Heh. Maybe."

An idea that was a joke for her was something I'd done plenty of times in more universes than I cared to count. "It's a good gig," I said with a shrug as I took her hand back and started adjusting the existing layout to make room for the reinforcements that would been needed. "Get to wear a cape, throw things at people, dispense justice like quarter machine. It'll be up to you to study martial arts though. Can't just hand everything to you on a plate."

"I'd been taking a class. It was mostly just on breaking holds though. Learned a little spear work when I was younger, but it was all practice stuff."

"Mm. Might want to try something else then. Maybe capoeira. I'm a little more Kung Fu, but I'd wager anything I've got more power to throw around than you do," I said as the AI started pulling together the designs needed to make what she wanted, colorful holograms overlaying black nanotech to create a piece of living art that would be just as much form as function. "Now, did you just want the grappling hook in just one arm or do you want to Spider-Man this?"

Waiting had never been one of the Doctor's strengths. The title of 'Time Lord' had little bearing on that fact, save for the little convenience of being able to skip over waiting times via the TARDIS… at least, whenever the time machine didn't have other plans for her thief.

Thankfully, he had found ways to work around it. Anything that kept the hands or the mind busy – and unfocused on unpleasant thoughts – made waiting just another time to practice, and each incarnation had found their own preferred activities.

Two and Seven had taken up music and people watching with a seasoning of armchair philosophy, Six usually entertained himself with words – regardless of if they were his own or of others' creation – and whatever bright colors were available, while Three had filled his exile on Earth with tinkering and Four had idled between yo-yos, lofty but ultimately meaningless prattle, catnapping, and knitting, though he'd never properly gotten the knack of the last, leaving Eight to finally figure out the exact series of actions needed to turn yarn into something more than just haphazardly tangled string.

The latest model, however, was still figuring out his preferred idle hobby, which meant trying out the old ones to see if any had come to fit again and that meant that – in the lack of literature, yarn, interest in sleep, or access to his usually dimensionally transcendent pockets – people watching was the order of the day.

More specifically, the Doctor was watching Tsela interact with the people he'd help rescue.

The cyborg soldier was an interesting puzzle, managing to duck past the Doctor's usual reservations about guns and military minds despite being both a sniper and saboteur by his own admission as he presented all sorts of delicious mysteries all along the way – a body built with technology that was at least a decade or two ahead of what this world regarded as the cutting edge, a history only partially dusted off that teased at conspiracies and historical intrigue, and that sword! Inherently violent nature aside, there was no question that that sword was a work of art and that the man had clearly put work into mastering his use of it.

Of course, as fascinating a subject Tsela was, that fascinating nature didn't stop his other incarnations from finding their own puzzles to poke at.

'So which do you think is Raguel?' Nine asked. 'The Rider or its host? I'm inclined to say the first. It fits the mythology better, especially with what we know about the 'Professor'.'

His Third hmmed. 'Of course, we haven't gotten any such indications from Seven's counterpart, unless we are supposed to mark 'Ezeqeel' and 'Zeke' as separate entities.'

'Hm. I want to say we have evidence for it, but that might be impulse speaking…'

'Ace.'

'What?'

'The Rider's host could be this universe's version of Ace,' Seven said again, his tone making it clear that sharing his theory was like pulling his own teeth. 'It – they've displayed some similar personality and behavioral traits to Ace, though somewhat exaggerated. The height and build is off, even from what little could be discerned through the protective gear, but what we saw of the bone structure seemed… consistent with Ace's facial type. And their connection to their… Professor.'

Here, the Doctor's past self paused awkwardly, as if getting past that word had been a hurdle he'd barely been capable of clearing. To be fair, most things related to Ace counted as that these days.

'It would fit with the pattern of mirrored relationships and backgrounds we've seen so far,' he finally finished lamely. 'And it would follow my own course of action in trying to send Ace through the Academy, if one can presume the angelic names indicate a legitimate connection.'

Picking up on the thread of theory, the Doctor's current incarnation continued the chain of thought. 'Except instead of turning her into a Time Lord, this Ace's Professor turned her into…' A psychic abomination inhabiting a human skin? A spirit of vengeance empowered by the suffering of others? An angel in the most biblical sense of the term? '…into whatever the Rider is supposed to be.'

It was an interesting theory. Disturbing, but interesting.

'It could also be entirely wrong,' Two pointed out. 'You know what sort of sayings humans have about assumptions.'

'Oh, I would like nothing more than to be wrong about this,' Seven replied. 'But what I would like is rarely what–'

"You wanted to talk to me?" Tsela asked, breaking the Doctor out of his thoughts as the old Indian sat down next to him.

"Oh. A little bit. Did your 'Professor' tell you that?"

The cyborg soldier gave a small laugh. "No. You just kept staring at me like you had a question."

Ah. That was embarrassing, being so easy to read, but it did neatly present the opportunity the Doctor had been waiting for. "A few, actually," the Time Lord admitted. "But I didn't want to be rude by demanding your attention."

"And here I was under the impression that 'rude' was your natural state of being."

Ow. "That was actually hurtful," the Doctor said. "Just a little smudge, because that's not too far off the mark, but still. To think you think so little of me."

The old soldier folded his arms in a classic pose of vague disapproval. "You're the one who wanted to kill immediately after meeting me."

Well. When he put it like that… "Suppose I should have apologized for that," the Time Lord admitted sheepishly. "Sorry."

"Iiná deiítʼééh." At the Doctor's questioning look, Tsela rephrased his answer in English. "Consider it forgiven. It's not like I haven't had plenty of meetings like that in my life."

"So what's next for you? I mean, maybe there's a few more Cybermen to deal with but…"

"They did say that Lumic had facilities all around the planet," Tsela replied vaguely. "But right now? I'm going to be helping with rehabilitating the survivors a bit. Give them tips on getting used to prosthetics, though th– the Rider will probably explain it as she works on kitting them out."

"Ah." The Time Lord tried to think of something else to say. Being at a loss for words was actually fairly uncommon for him, so when it happened, it was always a strain to come up with a new thread of conversation. "What is she like? I mean, I've gotten the 'violent' and 'vengeful' bits, but beyond that."

Tsela gave him a sideways smirk. "Fiery."

"Bit obvious, that bit."

"Always ready to go down in a blaze of glory. A real spitfire, you could say, not to be played with idly less you wish to be burned, though she's warm enough when you get close to her. Hot under the collar with an explosive temper, though her fuse is longer than most give her credit for. A deft hand with forge, anvil, soldering iron, and frying pan, depending on the time of day."

"Are you just making 'fire' jokes now?" the Doctor asked.

The cyborg grinned, the wrinkles of his face folding in interesting patterns to show off a well-maintained smile. "It is a distinct possibility."

The Time Lord put on an exaggerated pout. "Feh. I came looking for a straight answer and this is what I get."

"It's poor form to gossip behind a friend's back, Doctor, and I'm sure that you could get the answer yourself if you took the time to get to know her instead of sticking to your preconceived notions," Tsela said as he rose to his feet, the machinery that made up his robotic body giving an almost reassuring whirr. "Anyway, duty calls – I've got bodies to take to get prosthetics fitted. Was there anything else you needed to ask?"

A moment of silence passed between them as the Doctor considered if asking one question that had been itching at him since losing Delaine at the mansion was worth it. Then, he remembered another question that he'd shoved to the side on account of being somewhat silly.

"…you said something about curry earlier?"

"Finally reached the 'desperate' stage, I see," the cyborg joked as he reached into his backpack and tossed the packet over to the Time Lord, a small bottle of water following it. "Make sure to read the directions," he warned as he left, face plate closing before he was even gone.

Anthony Edward Stark had seen and done a lot of things in his life. A lot more of the latter than the former, if he wanted to be perfectly honest, and a good half of them had probably been undertaken with the aid of what might have been a little too much tequila – or whiskey, or vodka, or whatever was in the shiniest bottle behind the nearest bar – to ensure that good judgement continue to play a part in the proceedings.

Most of the time, there were no consequences for those things. A hangover, a couple scandals to cover the pages of tabloids that cared, or maybe an irate bedmate soured over the status of 'one-night stand' would be the worst of it and then Tony would move on to the next fleeting bit of excitement.

So perhaps it was natural that one of the few times that Tony did something that shouldn't have held any consequences, good or bad, that everything go to hell.

All he had done was go to a party held by one of the few people in his social strata that he actually kind of liked. Didn't bring a date, didn't 'adopt' someone else's, didn't bring any 'party favors', didn't even take more than a single flute of champagne which he didn't even finish. As far as Starks went, that was pretty damn good behavior.

Over the course of a few hours, Tony had been kidnapped by robots – designed by a man who wasn't even a competitor, which almost made it worse –, put in a line, and removed of his left leg and arm by a cheaply designed automated chop-shop before being hauled out of there by what could only be described as an album cover brought to screaming, blazing life. It had put its hands on the bloody stumps and, with the cold burn of a healing hand, had taken the blood and the pain away while leaving the stumps behind.

And now they were moving onto the next step of this mess.

"You've got to give me the number of your mechanic," Tony said to the robot man that was carrying him down the hall to their next destination, his eyes drinking in the complex mechanical biology in front of him. "I mean, out of all the robots I've seen tonight, you've got the sexiest set-up."

"I already have a boyfriend, Stark," the robot replied with a distinct tone of amusement, "so you can stop flirting."

"But I'm so good at it. That, and threesomes. Just putting that out there. Not every day that you get to fulfill a celebrity fantasy."

"And who said that you've featured in either of our fantasies?" the robot said as he pushed open a door that led into a space that had couldn't have been fully conceived by any of Tony's imaginings.

What he saw was a massive room full of shelves that went higher and higher without any clear sign of stopping, in no small part because there was no ceiling to require there be a stop, even though logic dictated that one should have existed seeing as they had just been standing in a storage room above a zeppelin.

More immediately attention grabbing, however, was the ten-foot tall statue of some Egyptian god complete with jackal head looming over them with a distinctly un-statuelike look of appraisal guiding its doglike nose up and down while its friends – different designs, almost to the point of looking like completely different creations, but the same massive size – loitered around the shelves as smaller robots of various sizes and makes busied themselves with various cleaning tasks.

Tony needed a minute to regain control of his jaw, but he knew exactly what question had to be asked first. "What the fu–"

"Watch your profanity."

Finally, the rest of Tony's brain caught up enough to start questioning the science. "How – this is physically impossible. You can't fit this large a space inside of –"

"It's not inside of the zeppelin. The door is, but the rest of it isn't. As far as we've figured, it's a pocket universe with its own laws of physics."

"You figure?"
"It's not like this kind of bullshit comes standard with an owner's manual, Stark, but one learns as one goes."

"The vague implication that there's more than one of these physics breakers is more concerning, if you want my opinion," Tony said as they passed through a doorway that gave way to a room that did have a ceiling, though it was still a lot higher than the dimensions of Lumic's zeppelin should have allowed.

Unlike the generic appearance of the last area, this room clearly screamed 'workshop', as there were tools and schemata mounted on almost every available wall. Dozens of robotic arms danced around from their rails on the ceiling, floor, and walls, carrying bits of machinery back and forth from one end of the space to another, with bits that could be recognized as Lumic's work being thrown into some obvious refuse bin in one far corner.

Tony didn't care a lot about that – or his ride's responding comment of "I didn't." –, but it was part of actual Candyland he'd been carried into and was now memorizing every detail of because why wouldn't he? This was what he would have designed his own personal Heaven to be if he'd ever thought he was going there and had assumed that this sci-fi stuff was an option.

It looked to be mostly empty, apart from the robots, but 'mostly' wasn't 'completely'.

A woman wearing half-familiar leather biker gear was sitting beside a large round table near the middle talking to an eccentrically dressed younger kid with clear prosthetics replacing almost all of their visible limbs about basic mechanics using their left arm as an example. There was a vague resemblance between their faces, but how much of that was legitimate or just a coincidence of coloring wasn't for Tony to judge, what with his legendarily poor memory for faces and names and general everything that didn't have anything to do with cars, robotics, or cool – which more boring people might call 'mad' – science.

"– see, while you could technically use a wire-and-pulley system to recreate the motion and the general theory behind the organic version, the problems of winding and unwinding would make themselves apparent the first time something tangled. On the other hand, while pneumatics don't have such obvious issues, there is trouble with delicacy and, once again, repair, though that's mostly in finding a replacement in the first place, because believe me, you wouldn't believe how much of a pain it is shopping for that stuff at the 'measured in millimeters' scale," the biker woman was saying, gesturing at a few different holographic displays as she went. "Nanotech is a lot more flexible, but I try not to use it on anything that's not going to be in regular contact with someone who knows how to handle it, because when that shit glitches, it glitches."

The kid looked like they had gotten halfway through the spiel before deciding that 'smile and nod' was the best response, which they were now carrying out.

"Got your next patient, D," the robot said, hefting Tony up to rest on a table.

There was only a minor flicker of recognition in the woman's dark eyes as she looked at him, one that was impossible to label as good or bad save for the fact that there was a small smile to accompany it.

"Tony motherfucking Stark. I thought I recognized you on the floor."

So she knew him… though to be fair, most of the planet that had access to the internet or newspapers did by this point in his life. But it was the smile that threw him off. That was a smile that he only saw on the faces of his friends – too subtle and lopsided to be a proper press-release smile while being too rough and real to be the sort of false familiarity those cruising for a date usually put on –, usually when they were about to make an amused echo of some statement Tony had made and immediately ruined by doing something opposite that.

"Sorry, do I know you? I'm usually better about remembering people who are actually interesting."

"I'm not quite sure if that's supposed to be an insult or not, Stark."

"You know what I mean, Barb Wire."

That almost got him a snort of amusement. "Keep it PG, Stark."

Right, kid present. "Aren't you done with the kid?" he asked.

The woman – 'D', that had to be short for something, but what – shrugged. "Technically, but it's not like she has anywhere else to be right now."

"I like to watch the moving parts," the kid said as means of explanation as she tried to catch one of the automated arms, which dodged her hands at the last second. "Robots are cool."

Fair enough.

"You have to know me from somewhere." At the raised eyebrows, Tony clarified. "Somewhere that isn't the internet."

"That doesn't exactly round it down, Stark."

"You're smiling, so that rules out one-night stands."

"And here I would have thought the fact that I'm obviously not a model would have ruled that out."

"Hey, I don't discriminate when it comes to people I–" The presence of the kid, still within earshot despite being focused on the army of robotic arms riding the rails running around the entire lab, made Tony reevaluate the next words that would be leaving his mouth. "…spend my private time with."

The smirk returned with a vengeance. "A save and a self-burn all in one go – nothing less than what I'd expect from you."

"But I think I'd remember a set-up like this. Seriously, did I die and manage to sneak past Saint Peter or something? Because this has got to be some kind of Heaven and I seriously doubt that I'd forget about a setup like this on Earth," Tony said, playing with a hologram before attempting to catch another, only to find it an actual physical object that quickly fell apart into grains of black sand. "I thought I caught you saying that you didn't like using nanotech."

"Do I come into your house and okay with your toys without asking permission?" 'D' asked as the nanotech reformed in her hand, turning into a black polyhedral sphere dancing around her fingertips as it fell through what looked like models for a full set of nerd dice. "I don't like leaving it just anywhere for just anyone to misuse and break. In my super special secret lair where I do most of my science? Completely different thing. And as to your question if this is heaven…"

Tony flinched back as the black ball hit him squarely between the eyes.

"…I think the presence of pain should tell you what you need to know about current state of existence," she said as she settled back onto her stool.

"Hey," he said, rubbing the afflicted area with his hand. "You know you can't just drag a man into the Cave of Wonders and not expect him to touch anything…"

"Well, Aladdin managed it just fine… but we're not here to talk about how awesome I am, much as I may enjoy the praise," 'D' said as holograms started to sketch out the form of a new arm and leg where Tony's left off. "We're here to fix you up with some new limbs. So let's get started; what sort of fun features do you want me to install? I'd offer rollerskates, but it'd be a bit pointless with only one leg. But let's see… could always sneak in a compartment for a portable tool kit, you're the type who's always on board for shit like that… What do you think? Finger flashlight? Pez dispenser?"

"Might want to skip the last one – I've already found a couple dozen ways to ruin the regular kind – but the tool kit is definitely something I could and would use," Tony said as he looked over the holograms, noting the fact that the designs seemed to be adjusting to the suggested add-ons as they were speaking about it, the designer actively sketching out corrections that the computer was accounting for in real time. AI? "I don't see any connections to the nervous system – are you going wireless on this?"

"Yeah. I'm using a version of Lumic's Earpod controls – I didn't really feel like subjecting anyone to more surgery with technology that might not be as easily understood and most of the Cybermen I deconverted already had something similar installed. All I did was sleek it down – little patch you can put in your skin on your temple or behind your ear, depending on how open you want to be about it – and tweak it until it was what I needed it to be. Doesn't work as a communications device to avoid hacking and they're pretty strictly paired to their specific prosthetics, but the tactile response and reaction time is only a hair off of what humans naturally have. Saves on time, pain, and learning curve, though I won't try to say there won't be one."

"Eh. Sometimes you've got to fly before you can crawl," Tony said as he accepted the little patch and stuck it behind his ear. Despite being somewhere in the area of a half-inch the whole way around, the sensation of adhesive in a strange place made it feel conspicuous.

"That kind of advice ends up seeing people faceplanting on cement more times than they'd care to admit," 'D' replied, reaching up to receive a gift from one of the automated arms running around the ceiling. "Now, let's see how this fits you."

As the woman attached the robotic arm, Tony tried to keep a running tab on every sensation he was getting from it. At first, there was nothing but the same sense of conspicuous adhesive attachment as the control patch – that that was sufficient to keep it in place was almost conspicuous in itself –, but then there was a buzz of sensation, like his long-gone flesh-and-blood arm had fallen asleep and was now just waking up again.

"Well? Go ahead and try it out. Might want to try crawling before breaking it in with any more… 'delicate' tasks."

"And here you were warning me about being PG just a minute ago," Tony replied as he focused on twitching the fingers. Thumb, index, middle, ring, and pinkie all responded with only a hair of hesitation. "Seems a bit slower than you sold it as."

"Part of that is you adjusting to it. The other half is it adjusting to you," the woman said as she grabbed a leg of similar appearance to Tony's new arm. "Same drill here. Start out slow so you don't acquire a taste for linoleum."

"How's this working out for the full body replacements?" Tony asked, nodding his head towards the kid, who had finally caught one of the robots and was now poking around the machine apparently in a quest to see the mechanism behind the movement.

"Pretty well. Like I said, they had a pretty similar set-up with Lumic's Cybermen builds, so most of it is just adapting to the weight differences and more involved feedback. Once they get those felt out, they shouldn't have much in the way of problems. The organs I replaced… well, they're about as good as the original ones, save for the fact that I couldn't make them wholly self-regenerating, what with the not being there to correct anything that might go wrong, so they'll have to get new ones in about thirty years or so, depending on how well they take care of themselves. The ones that decide to live on a diet of straight booze and solid garbage might find themselves quite unpleasantly surprised in about a decade."

"And where are they going to get these replacements? The way you're talking, you're not going to be hanging around–"

"From the only super-genius on the planet that I happen to trust with my tech, of course," 'D' said, holding a hand out over a computer, which quickly spat out a smartphone sized external drive into her waiting hand. She handed it to Tony. "Here's the schematics. Covers repair, upkeep, modification… and you're smart enough to make your own innovations to it if you care to. Pete Tyler will likely help you if you ask; he's a good man."

"Woah, woah. Hold up. You said you knew me – you're just going to hand the next wave of prosthetics and medical technology to the planet's premier weapons manufacturer? Why would you trust something like this with someone like me?"

Tony pushed the drive back, only to have it forced back into his hands again.

"Because," she said, wrapping his fingers around it with a firm gentleness that felt almost alien compared to most of the physical contact Tony had received in his life. "I know you, Tony. I know what you're capable of, good and bad, and I think that if you had the opportunity to do good, you would without hesitation. You might not believe me, but I believe in you."

Tony felt something start to crawl up his throat. "That's so corny," he said thickly.

"Sometimes corn is good for you," D said, her face and voice completely deadpan as she patted him on the should.

A half-broken laugh escaped his lips at that. "Just sometimes?"

"Has a lot of starch. Also the logistics of raising it can be a bitch."

The implication of first-person farm knowledge was weird, but Tony decided not to pursue it. "Thanks," he said instead.

D nodded before looking up as a knock sounded at the door.

"I'm going to be at this all night," she sighed before turning her attention to Tony. "Can you keep the munchkin occupied while I get to work on my next set of patients? Okay, thanks, bye."

Tony was left sitting there, an external drive full of world changing technology in hand and a kid that was mostly robot from the neck down spinning around in the chair behind him.

Okay, he could do this. Pick a topic, something harmless…
"See any good movies lately?"

"I've been in a storage closet for like two years."

Right. "Uh, what's your favorite movie then?" Kid had to be somewhere around ten years old, not a lot of options that could go wrong –

"Have you ever seen Weird Science?"

…so much for PG.

As I guided my last patient out of the Warehouse and closed the door – which revealed that there had been two loiterers that I'd missed as it expelled them –, I checked the time.

Half past eight. Measured up against an adventure that had started at seven the previous evening and only taken roughly two hours from start to finish, that meant that I'd spent almost eight hours working on fixing what victims we could salvage.

I might not have needed sleep, but the task had been exhausting in its own way and I wanted nothing more than to crash for a few hours, but I had places to be, a time crunch on them still being there when I arrived, and certain illusions to put in place before I got there.

'And if you go now, you may just manage to be back in time for tea, Dinah.'

'Alice, I don't drink tea,' I replied, brushing off the nickname as I teleported out of the airship to land in an alley near the Chinese restaurant we'd gotten take out from the day before. Once I was sure I had no witnesses, I called the maid dress back from where I'd shoved it into storage, slipping it on effortlessly and with no small amount of distaste.

Hm. A touch too clean and pressed to look convincing for someone who'd just escaped a fate worse than death. A little tearing and a touch of fire would fix that, though I wouldn't deny that there were other, less practical reasons for me to disfigure the thing.

'I never said you had to participate. Merely that you would be able to attend. Though some argue that attendance is as good as participation, particularly with regards to criminal deeds...'

I set a corner of the dress on fire before squeezing the flame out of existence before it could travel too far. 'Alice, please. I'm trying to work here.'

Snapping the limiter on, I considered my other options. The gravel could be scratched against my skin, roughing it up while leaving a convincing trace of dirt behind. Messing up my hair would be easy; 'mess' was its natural state of being anyway, all it would take to make it worse was a little deliberate action…

"Please. You need to put a little more effort into it than that," Zeke said, making me jump slightly as he appeared behind me. A little beyond him was Tsela, moving just as silently despite all the metal in his body. "You might have destroyed the dress, but one cannot be certain of convincing an audience of injury without going all the way."

"What are you – motherfucker!"

Tsela stepped back as I hopped around holding the foot he'd stomped on. "I would have gone for the hip or the knee, but one takes the opportunities presented."

"I'm wearing the damn limiter, bitch, this hurts at full strength!"

"All the more convincing the act will be then," Zeke said before flicking a small lance of energy at my head that I ducked just in time to keep the damage limited to my hair.

"Assholes. Why do I keep making friends with assholes?"

"Like attracts like?" Tsela offered as he kicked out my hip and knocked me to the ground.

"I'm going to superglue the insides of all your guns," I informed him from my facedown position in the gravel. If the foot hadn't been enough to leave me limping, the hip had pushed it the rest of the way there.

"Like I can't remove it just as easily."

"It's the principle of the thing. And that thing is 'fuck you, you broke my hip'."

"Displaced it."

I pushed myself upright, almost falling down again as I put weight on the wrong leg. "It still hurts so I'm still mad."

"Sorry."

"You know you aren't."

"Eh. I might be. Just a little."

Looking myself over, I figured my 'disguise' was complete.

My fall and Tsela's 'help' had seen one leg of the tights almost completely destroyed, with the holes outnumbering the amount of intact material by almost two times over, which matched the destruction of the dress well. The fact that the cyborg had mutilated the shoe almost past the point of being wearable was less helpful, but it was once again a livable sacrifice. The dress itself was rumpled, ripped, and ever so slightly singed thanks to my own contributions to the process, but not so roughed up that it made my own survival seem unbelievable.

Zeke straightened the collar and sleeves of my dress before dusting off one of my shoulders. "There. Perfectly presentable for the part you must perform."

"Which is to say I look like I crawled out of a dumpster fire behind a cleaning service."

"Exactly." A deft twist of the wrist saw my limiter disappear into thin air, leaving me to squawk at its theft. "You weren't wearing it at the party," Zeke said by way of explanation.

Right. "Thanks for catching that," I said. While I might have preferred to keep it in place to avoid any unfortunate slips, continuity was a major part of this deception and the leather wrist strap played no part in it.

I smelled like burned hair, felt like shit, and probably looked like I'd just pulled myself out of a shallow grave with nothing but bloody-minded vengeance keeping me moving.

Considering how many times I'd actually done that, I was probably close enough to an expert to say that my current look was a few degrees off of what the usual result was, but it wasn't a point to be argued right now. I just had to show up and say 'guess who isn't dead' and move on with life.

…which, once again, had probably happened to me more times than was necessarily healthy.

"Right. You two going to keep yourself busy until the summon charge runs out?" I asked.

"Two days to deal with a Cyberman infestation. Not the best time table, but one makes due," Zeke said with a shrug. "At the very least, we'll be able to mitigate some future casualties and reduce their rate of conversion."

"Sounds like a plan to me." A step forward saw me stumble and catch myself against a wall. "As for me, well, I think that getting back to the TARDIS might be a task in and of itself." Gathering up my willpower, I took another step and another, which turned into a limping walk that, while slow, would eventually get me where I was going. "Right. Best be going."

It was only three blocks to the TARDIS from the Chinese restaurant, but with each step being followed by a stumble, it felt longer than that. And since I couldn't use any powers without risking discovery, that left lifting one foot up and putting it down in front of the other. Rinse, wash, repeat. Rinse, wash, repeat. Rinse –

"You alright?" Mickey asked. How the boy had managed to sneak up on me was an easily solved mystery – I'd been too focused on my feet to take any note of what was happening around me.

"Yeah. I'm fine." I grimaced as I put more weight on the bad leg than I should have. "Mostly fine," I corrected.

"You don't look fine. You look like someone ran you over."

"That was intentional," I said.

"You hurt yourself on purpose?" Mickey asked, slightly aghast. Well, he wasn't wrong, technically speaking. "Why would you do that? Because the Doctor doesn't know what you are?"

"And I don't particularly plan on telling him any time soon."

"Because of the Zero Room thing?"

"In part," I said vaguely, casting my thoughts back to a secondhand accounting of Time Lord history, particularly concerning things that Time Lords didn't trust. "I take it you told the Doctor you were staying behind to take care of your gran?"

"How'd you kn– never mind. That part's not important." Mickey shifted awkwardly, like somehow caring about someone was something shameful and embarrassing. "I know it's not exactly–"

I reached out to touch his shoulder, making the boy jump again. "I would have done the same thing if it was me. Just remember to live for yourself as well."

"Do you want me to look for this world's version–"

"She's been found." I smiled at Mickey's clear look of alarm. "And she's fine. Find Pete. He should be able to point you in her direction. Don't expect her to be just like me – she's only ten or so. Lot less experienced and a lot more fragile. Doesn't know how to play Blackjack either."

"And how old are you, then? You'd said you'd had time – how much? Cause you have to be older than you look."

I laughed. "Many times more than that, I'm afraid. Older than the Doctor, certainly."

"Sounds lonely."

"It is, a bit." Never being able to make plans for an actual life, always being on the outside no matter how much history might have been there to begin with, never knowing which friends will follow or get left behind… and learning to prepare for the last because the odds of one following were so slim. "But I'm used to it."

"Is it okay if I hug you? I know you're not big on touching –"

Mickey cut off as I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed.

"Mickey Smith. You are such a good boy. The best boy." I stepped back to look him in the eye as I touched him on the shoulder again. "Take care of yourself. You're too brilliant to let fade too easily."

He shifted awkwardly under the praise, though his small smile told volumes about how much it meant to him. "Thanks."

"Now, I've got a timeflight to catch and no skill at goodbyes. Must dash."

'Smooth,' one of the others said as I scuttled away from Mickey at full cripple speed.

'Shut up.' Neither statement was a lie. I was terrible at social situations, either existing at extreme distance or too close for anything less than casual bluntness. Neither hellos nor goodbyes came naturally to either position and I had nothing even close to approaching the middle ground.

Three blocks became two and two eventually closed to one as the TARDIS came into view. A faint psychic trill brushed across my senses as I approached and I couldn't help but smile.

'Did you miss me?' I asked, giving her a little pulse of energy.

The TARDIS's psychic signature chirped in response, though there was a faint edge of concern to it.

'I'm fine, I'm fine. Just a little dinged up. Nothing I couldn't fix myself if you and your thief don't get to me first.'

The time machine made a vague 'huff' response as she turned her attention elsewhere, though the vague sense of concern and worry remained.

A familiar form was circling the TARDIS, checking every corner and detail in preparation for her coming jump through the Void.

"Don't go rushing off just yet, Sonic," I called out as they reached for the door.

The Doctor spun around, eyes almost cartoonishly wide and widening further as they locked on me.

I must have been a sight. Ruined dress, scorched hair, dirt and gravel all over, Olympic-level bruising turning one leg into an angry display of red and purple in all possible shades… all of those things would drive a normal person to distraction, but to someone who'd taken a sort of responsibility for my safety…

Really, with that in mind, I shouldn't have been surprised by the Time Lord running straight at me and practically tackling me. The impact almost knocked me off my feet, but the Doctor's crushing hug was inescapable, even by gravity.

"I thought you'd died," he murmured into my hair before he pulled back to look at me as pain, relief, and despair crashed over his too-intense Aura like the ocean over a lighthouse. One could only imagine what he'd assumed my fate was before I had made my reappearance and even I could only make vague assumptions about that. "Are you alright?"

"Leg's messed up a bit, but I'll live," I said, making a point to avoid eye contact. "You don't have to poke me with the anti-zombie stick I'm all too certain you have stowed away in that doctor's bag of tools you have in there, but I won't argue against the trip to the infirmary you'll inevitably insist on."

"Mm. You know me so well. But it'll have to wait until we get the TARDIS across the void. The dimensional barrier's almost thin enough for us to make the jump and I don't want us to miss it," he said as he pulled me towards the TARDIS, watching my limp with a concerned eye the whole time.

I felt bad about the whole deception. If I wanted to, I could fix my leg right this second but that would tell the Doctor exactly what I was and was not, which would then lead into arguments about my lying which would then spiral further and further out of control until everything just blew up.

'Whereas that most definitely won't happen if you keep it going for the entire relationship.'

'Get out of here with your reasonable arguments that would have helped if you'd brought them up a month or two earlier instead of saying 'I told you so' now.'

"Mickey's staying behind, just so you know he's alright. I know you're friends with him," the Doctor said as he opened the TARDIS doors and led me inside.

Rose looked up almost immediately, some spark of excitement in her eyes quickly turning to something closer to horror as she recognized me. "Delaine? You look–"

"Like I just crawled out of a post-apocalyptic dumpster fire? Yeah, I am intimately aware of that fact." I reached up to pull the hair out of my face, only to end up pulling off a clump of it, all burnt and brittle from Zeke's contribution to my condition. "Fucking – at least I was planning on cutting most of this off anyway."

"Really?" the Doctor said, as if I'd just recommended kicking a puppy he'd just adopted.

"Don't sound so disappointed. You've seen what this mess looks like on a good day – it's too thick to style, it's hellish in the heat, and it frizzes like a nightmare. When it's fucked up this badly? Simpler just to chop it all off and keep it short."

"Then why have you been wearing it long?" Rose asked.

My mind blanked.

"Because," I finally said in as level a tone as I could manage, drawing out every sound as I tried to keep my many mixed emotions about the subject under a lid. "I am a fool with almost zero control over my life."

Silence reigned for a good minute.

I coughed. "Anyway, you said something about having to get across the dimensional barrier before I can get medical attention?"

"Exactly. The thickness of the dimensional barrier seems to be fluctuating madly around here and if we can time it right, we can hit the barrier at its weakest and go right on through with relatively little fuss." The Doctor paused before adding, "well, as compared to last time."

"Rather like the sound of that," Rose said, giving the command chair and the imprints left over from the death grip she'd had on it during our last crossing.

The Doctor went to the console, pulling the screen around to face him as he began twisting dials and pulling switches. Then, he laid his hand on the capital 'L' Lever.

"Alright. You better grab onto something, because this might be get a little bumpy," the Time Lord said, giving us all of ten seconds to anchor ourselves before pulling it.

The TARDIS screeched in and out of existence three times before making an unholy howl that was our one warning before we hit turbulence and everything went crazy. The lights were flashing wildly, parts of the console were sparking, and the Doctor was yelling direction, only half of which I could catch as actually understandable words. Rose had once more locked herself onto the command chair, holding onto it for dear life as the rest of us were thrown around with every buck of the TARDIS.

For my part, I locked my hands around the edge of the console, ignoring the pull of a gravity that couldn't decide on where it wanted up and down to be, battering my already bruised body with each fresh bout of turbulence.

'Take it!' I snapped at the TARDIS, shoving more power through the connection we'd made with each other the last time we'd travelled through this null space. The magic of Pete's universe might have been slipping away from me like so many grains of sand, taking my ability to feed off said magic with it as it became less and less reliable, but I still had enough to give the time machine the last boost she needed to get across the Void.

The TARDIS almost let go of me, but I only latched onto the connection harder, forcing everything that I could afford to lose through it. If I had to, I'd cut even more out of my metaphysical being for her to take. After all, I'd recover from that, but there'd be no recovery if we all died here.

'Take it! Take it! Take it–!'

Finally, just as I reached my limit, gravity went back to where it was supposed to be. I let go of the connection and the console, allowing my body to fall to the floor.

There. We'd done it. Everybody safe. That's all anyone could ask for.

The TARDIS hummed soothingly as my senses faded out and into the great nothingness of unconsciousness.

Author's Notes

Merry friggin Christmas, readers. I thought this chapter was going to take a couple days more, but instead of being a Birthday upload, it ended up being ready Christmas Eve, which is a lot more interesting so far as the rest of you are probably concerned. I'm a little 'eh' on some of it, but it seems functional to my eye, so this is how it is passed on to you. Delaine returns to faking normal, Mickey moves on to a new world with new possibilities, the Doctor makes more theories that suffer for lack of information, and we leave off on a cliffhanger, though, admittedly, not that big a cliff.

Also RIP Stan Lee, one of the great influences on my childhood via Spider-Man and all the other Marvel Superheroes.

Tsela's Navajo – it's been fairly sparse but I've been a bit too busy to do a lot of language research (says the person who keeps on going on crawls through ancient Norse).

"Iiná deiítʼééh." ― life goes on.

The 'Steve' thing is based on something one of my internet mutuals used to do with their anons. I think I ended up introducing myself to them talking about Spider-Man or something and ended up being 'Spider-Steve' for a month or two, but this was several years ago so I'm a little iffy on the deets.

Tony's reference of 'Barb Wire' is to a 90's comic book (and a movie – starring Pamela Anderson, so you can start making assumptions from there – very loosely based on said comic) featuring a biker chick protagonist in a Mad Max-like setting. It didn't last long, mostly on account of the movie. Beyond reading the Wikipedia article or someone else's review, I don't really recommend looking for it.

Really. Don't. It's not worth it.

I do recommend Weird Science, if only because it holds a special place in my heart, not only as a movie I probably not have seen at age 5/6, but as a fairly good 80's sex comedy. If you skip that one weird sorta-racist scene that adds almost nothing to the movie.

Deleted Scene

This was one of the earliest versions of Mickey's exit from Team TARDIS, but then I brought Tony back in a major role instead of being a sort of background shout-out, taking away any real chance for Mickey to interact with Pete's World Delaine and I also changed the last section from being from the Doctor's POV (which this section still is) to Delaine's because the way the planning was going would have required a lot of zig-zag that felt like a little much… anyway, it was still kind of cute, so I thought you guys should have it anyway.

A small figure leaned out from behind Mickey, an explosion of short white blonde hair swaying with the movement as the pale face underneath started at the Doctor with wide dark-brown eyes.

"Who's your friend?" Rose asked, looking around at the child, who ducked back slightly at the attention.

"Ah, those people from last night that helped us… they've – uh, what was it, er, re? Un? – deconverted a couple of the Cybermen that didn't go crazy," Mickey said, scratching at the side of his face. "And, uh, D here, seems to have decided that I'm the person she's going to be following around, seeing as her mum was one of the ones that didn't make it and she's just a kid –"

"I'm thirteen. That's a teenager," the girl – 'D'? That was a rather simple sort of name, especially considering the rest of her species usually had two or three – whispered as she ducked away from Rose's inquisitive looks again, putting herself within easier view at the same time. From this angle, it was clear that she wasn't completely human anymore – seams ran down her arms, interspersing sections of something that almost looked like artificial skin with glistening metal joints. An artistic choice, likely, because other parts of her skin were almost perfect mimics for the real thing.

"Entirely different sort of thing altogether," the Doctor agreed with a nod before tilting his head to the side. "You do seem a bit familiar though… have we met before?"

D jumped as switched her attention from Rose to the Doctor. "I – I, um. I'm–"

"I think she's trying to say 'sorry for almost crushing you in that Cyberman storage room'," Mickey said as the cyborg girl hid behind him again. As she whispered something else to the boy, he added, "Got the story from Tsela. And she wanted to thank you for being nice. And apparently your shoes and hair are cool."

The last detail apparently wasn't supposed to be shared if the duck and squeak that followed it was any indication, but the Doctor would take the win anyway. "Well, I think they're pretty cool myself, so I give you points for excellent taste," he said, looking down at the girl. Couldn't have been more than a few inches over five feet tall and spindly for her given age, though how accurate her reconstruction had turned out was a mystery. Her demeanor – in the storage locker and here – felt like it should have belonged to a smaller child, but perhaps that was the shyness and trauma at work. "And I'm not going to hold a grudge against someone who was scared and didn't know any better. It would just be petty, really. Are you feeling better now, though? New body not giving you any trouble?"

The girl shook her head. "This one fits a lot better. Doesn't hurt either. The lady who put it together was very careful, even if she was fast. And she said that she'd be leaving some plans behind with Mr. Tyler in case I want to have it fixed to change as I get older."

"Smart." Lady? Ah, right, the Rider. Hard to think of that force of destruction as a person with skills, interests, and personality. The Doctor turned his attention to Mickey. "I'm not usually in the business of taking children aboard…"

"Oh, you don't have to. I'm staying."

"What?" "What?"

"Figure I can do a bit more good here than I could at home. Help rebuild, clean up whatever Cybermen are still wandering about… fix my gran's carpet. Ricky's probably going to become a Preacher full time, so that leaves me to mind the home front." Mickey scratched behind his ear awkwardly. "Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just got different priorities, that's all."

DJMegamouth – you really thought so, didn't you.

PoisonCupcake101 – as Fanfiction won't allow me to put in links, I will verbally direct you to the compilation videos 'the Doctor is gonna bust a cap in your ass' (featuring the many, many times that the Doctor pulled a gun, normal or otherwise, in the classic series, including the time the Fifth unloaded a full clip from a regular semi-automatic pistol into a Dalek in what turned out to be THE bloodiest and most violent episode TO DATE) and 'the Doctor is gonna bust everything in your ass' (featuring the many, many times the Doctor has actively killed/beat the shit others in the classic series), both tastefully set to the Geto Boy's 'Die Motherfucker (Still)' and Eminem's 'Go To Sleep Bitch'.

Alright, time for the more professional response.

The Doctor himself (themselves? Eventually I mean to switch to those pronouns for the Doctor what with Thirteen now being part of the line-up but I'm still feeling my way through the process) has never been a stranger to violence, even though they have rarely been one to endorse it as a first resort (as a last resort, however…). Ten in particular makes a big deal about not liking violence or guns, going so far as to say that, 'He's the man that never would', even though in practice, he has deliberately killed and done worse than killing (the Family of Blood might have gotten their immortality, but at what cost, Jesus Christ) on multiple occasions in his regeneration alone, with his first kill being within maybe ten to fifteen minutes of regaining consciousness in the Christmas Invasion (he kills an alien with a satsuma – okay, technically by hitting a button dropping a trap door with it, but still).

More than a few people have theorized that this extremely negative response to killing in the Doctor's character is a response to the Time War (which, as far as the Doctor knows until later) was a genocide committed by the War Doctor, rendering the Doctor the only (as far as the Doctor knows until later) Time Lord/Gallifreyan in the universe and inflicting them with survivor's guilt and PTSD for multiple regenerations.

So when Ten says that he 'never kills', he's affirming his ideal self, not telling the audience that the Doctor is not a killer because… the Doctor lies, after all, especially about themselves. While violence might not be their first choice in any situation, they are not above grabbing a gun or using explosives or poison (on at least two occasions in the TV continuity – the Fourth and Sixth Doctor respectively) if that's what's needed to end the conflict.

As to the Doctor's feelings towards the Rider/Delaine and their actions on Lumic… I meant for the Doctor to be extremely unsettled and slightly freaked out by the experience even though he wasn't the one being threatened. The Doctor might not be above killing, but they generally abstain from torture (the only thing that sort of comes to mind with this is Four threatening to turn off Davros's life support in the Genesis of the Daleks to get information and that feels like a bit of a stretch) and their personal oath – 'Never cruel, nor cowardly. Never give up, never give in.' – immediately sets them against the practice. He can understand why the Rider, who was introduced as a spirit of Vengeance – the 'revenge' aspect of the Rider that the Doctor doesn't try to argue in any of his internal theorizing –, would want to hurt Lumic but when that hurting involves actively keeping the victim alive just for the sake of causing more pain, that is definitely a line the Doctor wouldn't cross.

And if there's a slight parallel between the Doctor stopping Delaine last chapter and Delaine stopping the Doctor in Chapter 12… well. That's just art, innit?

On the Doctor's paying more attention to Rose for most of this conflict – he has plenty of reason to think that Delaine was dead when he couldn't find her at the Tyler's mansion. He's seen what these Cybermen are like, knows how the Cybermen from his own universe operate… it's not an unreasonable conclusion to make that, 'Oh, the Cybermen that are all over this building are murdering everyone they can get their hands on here and I can't find my completely defenseless human companion in this confusion, there's a very, very high chance that she's been killed and if not that, dragged off to be converted'. At that point, keeping the companion that he knows for a fact is alive and intact safe is a reasonable reshuffling of priorities.

RamblinRacounteur – thank you. The inherent unreliability of a limited POV was one of the things that I've been playing with for this story, what with characters making assumptions about other characters (the Doctor assuming things about Delaine's fragility, Delaine letting her dislike and trauma color her interactions with the Doctor and Rose, etc.) and all that. The fact that they become more likable as they discover what is likeable and real about each other is part of that.

As for your Persona recommendation… I haven't played the games, because budget and relative skill levels, but I do read about them and follow the fandom. Unfortunately, I decided not to use it in this series, partially because I'm making an effort to avoid video game physics (which the whole ranking up of Social Links ends up falling under by my measure) and because I couldn't figure out a way to convincingly weave in the powers and metaphysics into other settings without completely structuring the story around it.

But! I have been working on another story idea (still largely in the planning stage, though I have more than a few things hammered out, like a couple character designs and certain aspects of the world) that will end up being a sort of Persona/Marvel fancomic with a Gamer-type setup. Seriously, doing a convincing Gamer-type setup (that isn't completely arbitrary with regards to skills and level development) is hard. I ended up supergluing the Fallout SPECIAL to the Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP tabletop setup and I'm still not done hammering out the details like skills and perks and drawbacks...

*distant sound of nerd screaming*

If/When I finally get to sharing that story, I'll try to put some direction to it in the Author's Notes or on my profile page because I'll probably have to find some place different to host that because PICTURES.

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments / review section. I will either answer them in-story or in the next Author's Notes. Reviews, criticisms, and commentary are, as always, welcome.

Anyway, you all have a very happy holiday, regardless of it that holiday is Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Years, or whatever observances you… observe.

In closing, let's let the last word be – Excelsior!