just_the_doctor

They step out of the TARDIS and into -- some sort of room. They're inside. And when the Doctor turns the lights on, Rose peers down the aisle curiously.

It's a museum.

An alien museum, and she studies each exhibit as they walk along the row. Some of these things she's never seen, but some--

"That's a bit of Slitheen!" She remembers the aliens from her present day (seven years ago here), the ones who infiltrated the Government and tried to take the planet. "That's a Slitheen's arm, 's been stuffed..." She leans down to examine it and squint at the label.

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And she's right. Someone's gone to a lot of trouble to collect all these relics and store them here. He looks a little farther down the row of cases and sees something that freezes his blood.

A Cyberman's head.

Like the ones he stared into before he found Milliways. He spares a moment to miss his friends there... his family. How long has it been since he left? He can't remember anymore.

"I'm getting old," he concludes, staring at one of his deadliest enemies reduced to a museum exhibit. He puts a hand on the case, wondering idly if this was one he destroyed in one of his many frays with them. How would he know, after all?

An alarm goes off at the contact, and they're suddenly surrounded and ushered up to the office of Henry van Statten, professional git, apparently. Actually, as he listens a little longer, he realizes his mistake. The man is a professional collector; he's just a git as a hobby. And now he's captured a living alien, which explains the distress signal. Anyone would be in distress having to spend more than a few minutes in the company of this little twit.

The Doctor demands to see it, and van Statten happily complies, eager to show off his find. He's shown to an enormous vault -- no, prison cell -- and moves into the dark room, scowling when the door shuts behind him.

"I'm here to help," he calls out across the space. "I'm the Doctor."

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As soon as the being enters the cell, something along the Dalek's mind prickles. This one is ... different. It has a different air to it than the humans. Older, more powerful and a fraction closer to a Dalek than a human could ever get. It would be interesting.

And then it speaks it's name.

Destroyer of Worlds, Bringer of Darkness, Oncoming Storm.

"Doctor?" Disbelief is not something Dalek's experience. It is a weakness of inferior beings, and inevitably leads to extermination. But the idea that the Doctor is there to haunt it in it's last few days triggers something that is almost disbelief. "The Doctor?"

It has it's orders.

"Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!"

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That voice -- synthesized voice -- is unmistakeable. How many people on how many worlds had heard that voice just before the end?

It's a trick. It has to be a trick. It's impossible. They're gone, all of them. They have to be.

Then the lights come up, and ohgods it's not a trick. It's really here, and there's no escape. The Doctor scratches furiously at the door, screaming at the men on the other side to let him out. But they don't respond. For those long several seconds, there's just... nothing. No chance, no answer, no hope. Just those four syllables repeated over and over, like a death knell before the final strike.

But the strike never comes. "It's not working!" he cries in relief. And it's true; the laser cannon is damaged. He can even watch as the thing's eyestalk peers down at the weapon hopelessly.

He laughs. "The great space dustbin," he calls it. Worthless, useless, pathetic.

(From Hell's heart, I stab at thee.)

He heaps onto the wounded creature the combined hatred of an entire race.

(If his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon the beast.)

And all it can do is listen.

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The Dalek just watches, silently processing the words, and storing them without any deep thought over them. It has no reason to listen - the Doctor is the enemy of the Daleks, and the Dalek knows that he is worthless except as a target. He will be exterminated.

The Dalek knows it is only a matter of time until the others are here, because if the Doctor heard it's distress call, the Daleks must have.

And then, one piece of information passes by that the Dalek does pay attention to. The Daleks are all gone. Destroyed by the Time War.

"You lie!"

But the Dalek knows he didn't. Slowly, the story unfolds. The Daleks and the Time Lords - wiped out in the same battle. Only the coward survived. The last Time Lord and the ... last Dalek.

"I am alone," It's voice reflects all the dejectedness it's feeling. If there are no Daleks, no orders, then it has no purpose. The Doctor still has a purpose. The Dalek hates him for that. "So are you."

It pauses, just for a beat.

"We are the same."

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He lashes out at that. Of course, they're nothing alike. But then he stops. He remembers the other Dalek -- the one at Milliways.

("You are more like a Dalek than a Time Lord.")

And he knows what to do. He knows what should happen.

"Exterminate," he says cheerily, flipping the big knife switches across the room and sending an insane amount of voltage into the... thing. He watches with more than a little sadistic glee as the Dalek pulls futilely against the chains while the electricity pours into it.

But then he's pulled away and the switches are thrown off. The security guards drag him away from the still-living Dalek, ignoring his protests and his screams that the creature must be killed. They don't understand what a Dalek is. But they will. They always learn.

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The boy, Adam, takes her to where he does his work. The room's cluttered with alien artifacts, machinery, and total junk -- Rose peers round at it all curiously. But then he starts to ramble, trying to impress her, tells her the big secret that everything's real.

His naivety makes her smile, but it's endearing and she goes along with it, flirting just a little.

She does try to find out about the living alien downstairs, though Adam doesn't seem to know much. But when he offers to let her see on the computer, she grins and watches the screen over his shoulder as he pulls it up. And her cheer falls away as she realises what's going on.

They're torturing the poor creature and the Doctor's nowhere in sight.

She's got no room in her voice for arguing when she tells Adam to take her down there, now.

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No, the Doctor's definitely nowhere in sight. And, as usual, it was his own big mouth that's the cause of it.

He tipped his hand a little too much in the elevator; gave away too much information. As soon as that prat found out that the Doctor wasn't human, the security man had popped him in the back of the neck.

He comes to shirtless and bound by the wrists in some kind of examination room. And that's where the truth comes out. He's not a collector. He's a scavenger. He loots and pillages, reverse engineers them, and then patents them and makes a killing. Which is why no matter what he says to van Statten about the Dalek, he won't listen. He just keeps scanning him with that really sodding painful machine.

And now it's just a matter of time before everything goes wrong. Again.

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The Dalek didn't measure time anymore. There was nothing to measure it. But sometime after the Doctor left and that prickling sensation faded away, it started up again. The Dalek hadn't recognised it before, but it knew what it was now. It remembered. Time-Traveller.

It wasn't the Doctor.

Human: Female: Caucasian: Blonde (Brown? Analysis Inconclusive) pigmentation to hair: European descent: Time-Traveller.

She didn't know what it was. The Dalek affected a pained voice, and spoke half-truths. It was dying, it was in pain, they tortured it. The human seemed to show a degree or sympathy. Evidently, this was an inferior strain of humanity to the ones that occupied this area.

"Are you ... afraid?"

It took very little more coaxing. She pressed one hand against it's armour. And the armour burned.

The Dalek had immolated the last being that had touched it, scouring his body for a cell with a DNA pattern that could be of use to it. It had found nothing. With this time-travelling human, it barely had to scorch the first layer of skin. It took the DNA and reproduced it, twisting it into something closer to Dalek DNA and regenerating.

There were sirens and the human that had tortured it came hurrying in as the Dalek snapped it's chains.

"What are you going to do, sucker me to death?" The human laughed.

Primary Order: Exterminate.

The manipulator arm shot out, closing around the human's skull and crushing it. The Dalek moved onwards, with an odd feeling of satisfaction.

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Rose and Adam flee the room, running out to the control station where the two guards are.

"It's killing him -- do something!"

They can't help the man in the room -- he's already dead -- but the guard puts out a red alert, lets van Statten know what's happened, then seals the compartment.

The Doctor's on the other end of the comm screen now and Rose tells him it's her fault. The guard thinks they're safe now, the Dalek won't be able to crack the code -- but the alien's a genius. It can do it and, while Rose, Adam and the soldiers watch, tense -- it does.

Shooting at it does no good, and when one soldier tells the other to get her and Adam out alive, Rose doesn't argue. She hesitates just a second, then runs.

The Doctor'll think of something to save the day. He always does.

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The Dalek ignores the fleeing humans. They can run all they like, the Dalek knows that they can only run so far and eventually, it will catch up with them and exterminate them. There are more pressing matters to attend to.

It locates the comm screen, and the manipulator arm snaps outwards, smashing it and connecting up to the base's systems, and from there, an information network. The Internet, the Dalek finds it's called a moment later. It drains the power from the base, and around it, it's armour heals.

Weaponry: Active. Forcefield: Active. Travel Systems: Active. Armour: Intact.

It downloads the Internet, and when it has explored every corner of the network, it disconnects.

"The Daleks live on in me."

It continues on, and when the humans try and stop it, their bullets dissolving as they hit the forcefield around it, it exterminates all of them. When the sounds of gunfire and screaming has stopped, it trundles onwards.

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They run through corridors, keeping as far ahead of the Dalek -- and the fighting, the shooting, the dying -- as they can. Rose is in the lead and she's the first into the stairwell, where she grasps the railings in a wild sort of relief.

"Stairs! 's more like it! It hasn't got legs, it's stuck!"

Then the American's in behind her and Adam, urging them up the stairs, telling them the Dalek's coming. They pause halfway and Rose watches with anticipation, and then almost triumph when the alien seems to stop -- defeated by a flight of stairs.

And then it floats.

Rose tries to convince the soldier to run with them, but she's determined to try and beat the Dalek, and there's nothing that'll change her mind. So they run again and leave her behind, looking back over their shoulders at the scream that follows.

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Van Statten thinks he can negotiate with a Dalek, as though it were nothing more than a corporate raider. But the Dalek isn't interested in possessions or demands or anything that van Statten can give. The Dalek wants only genocide. The destruction of race after race, until only the Daleks remain.

And nothing makes that more apparent than the systematic and brutal way that it wipes out the entire security squad. It even turns on the monitor screen so that the Doctor and van Statten can watch -- as though showing off its superiority. The bullets do nothing -- the squad disregarded the Doctor's advice, naturally -- and the Dalek remains unharmed.

Then, it lifts off the ground with its repulsor field. It fires just three shots -- one to the sprinkler system, and then, when the ground was saturated with water, one to the ground, electrifying it and all those upon it, and finally, one to the catwalk with similar effect.

The three in the office stand in silence for a long moment. Then, and the meekness of it makes the Doctor want to laugh until he vomits, van Statten suggests listening to him after all. Only now it's too late, and they can't leave. They can only hope to route enough power to the emergency bulkheads to seal off the lower portion of the compound.

The part where Rose is.

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The Dalek turns and directs it's eyepiece towards the camera. It knows the Doctor can see and hear it.

"I have gone through all the satellite readings of the space surrounding Earth and it's solar systems," The Dalek says, peering up at the camera. "I have found no trace of the Daleks. I am the last of the Daleks. I will recieve no commands," It almost feels sad, lost forlorn. Almost. Daleks do not experience the feelings of inferior beings. "Therefore, I must follow the primary command: All inferior lifeforms on this planet, this galaxy and the universe will be exterminated."

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"What for?" he splutters. "What's the point?! Don't you see, it's all gone? Everything you were; everything you stood for."

And when he says it, he knows that he's not just talking about the Dalek, but about himself as well.

Then the Dalek asks him what to do. Him, the scourge of the Daleks, who watched in helpless silence as the Time Lords burned, as Gallifrey burned.

His answer is therefore predictably venomous. "Why don't you finish the job and make the Dalek's extinct? Rid the universe of your filth. Why don't you just DIE?!

The Dalek responds with six words. Just six. But it's enough to cut through the Doctor's anger and hatred and steal the breath from his lungs as surely as a punch to the gut. It simply says, "You would make a good Dalek."

He's almost numb as he works opposite van Statten to reroute the power and seal the vault. The woman reminds him that Rose is still down there -- as though he had any other thought or care in his mind. He warns her on the phone; it's the best he can do. If he waits, the Dalek will get out.

He holds off as long as he can, gives Rose every chance to make it out. But when he can delay no longer, he just whispers, "I'm sorry," and hits Enter.

She doesn't make it.

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Rose watches as Adam rolls under the closing barrier and tries to run faster, tries to follow him -- but then it's all locked down and she's not quite there. And when the Doctor asks where she is, she tries to stay calm as she apologises for being "a bit slow."

Still holding the phone, she turns to watch as the Dalek rounds the corner and approaches. She waits for the terror to hit, the blind panic that'll make her break down and scream and react. But it doesn't, and she's not quite sure whether this numb feeling is better or not.

"See you then, Doctor," she tells him quietly, facing the door again. She needs to reassure him, because he still has to go on, and he can't waste time worrying about her, can he? "It wasn't your fault, remember that, okay? It wasn't your fault."

And with a deep breath, almost slipping, almost breaking down: "Y'know what? I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

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He hears the Dalek's screech, hears the shot fired.

She doesn't scream. Truly, he'd expect nothing less of her. She's one of the strongest people he's ever met. And she deserved better than this.

She didn't deserve to die in -- of all places -- Utah. Not when he could have stopped it. Not when he had the chance, he had the means, and he had the right.

But van Statten stopped him. This sniveling little weasel, this perverse excuse for a human being, this... ignorant, worthless, empty-headed hairless ape has killed her.

It's all he can do to hold back from ripping the man's arm off and beating him to death with it.

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It's with distinct confusion that she opens her eyes -- realises she can open her eyes, even -- and half-turns to find the Dalek just there.

This doesn't make any sense. Why is she still alive? After all that, why? She was terrified -- she still is, but it turns into anger in her voice when she tells the thing to just kill her.

Nothing happens.

So she turns almost all the way round to face the Dalek and confront it properly; to ask why it's doing this, tell the Dalek they're all dead because of it. Being angry doesn't make her any less scared -- just makes it a little more bearable.

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There's a pause, while the Dalek does a scan for targetting errors. It turns it's gun back so that it's pointing at Rose again, and fires.

(Nononononono)

The gun moves sharply to the side, and the beam hits the door besides her. The Dalek fires again, and again, each time moving it's aim before it can hit her and firing into the wall.

"Why can I not exterminate you?" It fires again. "What have you done to me?" And again. It asks questions, louder and louder, firing to each side of her and every time getting steadily closer to her, but never hitting her. The Dalek wants to exterminate her, but it can't. It can't bring itself to.

It orders her to come near, and has her stand, facing the camera, with it's gun at her back. With a flick of it's mind, it activates the camera.

"I have your assistant, Doctor. You will comply in opening the door or she will be exterminated!." The Doctor argues, and the Dalek doesn't quite care enough to listen. It knows he'll open it eventually.

When the Doctor is finished, the Dalek speaks again.
"What good are emotions," It asks slowly. "If you cannot save the woman you love?"

There's a long wait, and the Dalek doesn't mind that. Eventually, the door opens, and the Dalek trundles through.

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Of course he opens it. The thought of losing Rose once had almost stopped his hearts. No way could he do it a second time and survive. That makes it easy to stare down van Statten while his mind cooks for another plan.

And then Adam points out that he's got weapons in his catalog room. Most of them are broken (or, in extreme cases, hair dryers), but there's one. And one's all he needs.

He bounds up the stairs to the top level. Rounding the corner, he sees Rose and the Dalek, and he shoulders the gun. As distasteful as it would have been to him to hold something like this before the war, that's how good it feels to hold it now, just a flick of the finger away from the destruction of the last Dalek in existence.

"Rose, get out of the way!"

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"No. I won't let you do this!"

Rose stays defiantly in front of the Dalek, turning to face the Doctor with disapproval clear on her face. A killer the alien may have been, but she knew it wasn't the same now -- and after all, it wasn't the one pointing the gun at her. The Doctor says he has to end it, he's got nothing left. But she can't believe it and shakes her head, insists that he look at it, stepping aside so he can see, tells him that all it wants is the sunlight.

"It couldn't kill van Statten -- it couldn't kill me -- it's changing." She looks at him for a moment, and the disapproving expression returns. "What about you, Doctor? What the hell're you changing into?"

Her ire then fades as she listens to the Doctor and the Dalek, curiosity piqued by talk of herself -- it's got part of me in it now, changing it, and she wonders if that's better, because she thinks it is.

Not for a Dalek.

The Dalek addresses her, tells her to give it orders -- to tell it to die. But she can't do that, she can't. She doesn't want death on her hands; she doesn't want to be like that. But it continues, appeals to her, orders her to order it. And on, she pities it, and as she stands there watching it, she takes a breath and steadies her voice.

"Do it."

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The Dalek responds immediately to the command, as a good Dalek soldier always does. It rises up into the air, creating a bright, blue shield around it to keep the flames, debris and force of the explosion from reaching the Doctor and Rose.

The armour explodes, disintegrating the Dalek itself. The shield closes in around the explosion, and it all vanishes into thin air.

For a moment, as everything goes dark, the Dalek is sure it sees a door.

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