WIP Amnesty Week - Day 2
Mar. 23rd, 2010 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficThe suspect: The obligatory Journey’s End fix-it fic.
The charge: I just wrote a fic where Donna’s head exploded a lot. Six of one…
The judgment: I still kinda like the idea of 10.5 becoming fully human so that Donna can become a full Time Lord. But oh well…
When the universe is ending, it’s easy to panic. The secret to saving the universe is this: Don’t.
The new Doctor had taken to calling himself John, which suddenly seemed a very suiting name instead of the almost-epithetic nature it had as a disguise. John stretched out his time-sense, and though his human half cast what amounted to static over his perception, he could still see that Davros had never left the Vault. He was a prisoner.
Everyone else was at work defusing the Reality Bomb or holding off the Daleks. Donna (who was a Time Lord now, that was different) had disabled the Daleks’ forcefields, giving Team Earth home field advantage. John was a fifth wheel, but he had something no one else did. He both remembered Davros and had human instinct enough to understand him. Davros would have a way to take back power after the Reality Bomb went off. But what was it?
Jack had disabled Davros’s chair with a strategically-placed gunshot. His life support was barely hanging on, venting gas like sulfur from the hell Davros carried with him. John advanced on the madman, feeling that sulfide char the back of his throat.
“And what shall we call you, tainted Doctor, defiled Doctor, deformed Doctor? The Resident, perhaps? The Attending?”
“How were you going to go it, Davros? How were you going to depose the Supreme Dalek?”
Davros’s voice rose in pitch, madness. “The same way YOU laid claim to the Time Lord Empire! By being the very LAST!”
A Dalek broke through the TARDIS walls, which had grown to encompass the entire Vault. Mickey blasted it out of the sky. But it was like the little Dutch boy, trying to stick a finger in a dyke (which, if Donna’s memories were right, John had actually kinda done). The Daleks were cutting into the TARDIS, burning through, like his beautiful old girl was a body covered with stinging bees.
Jack grabbed Martha. “Doctor Jones, if I teleport us down to Earth, how many UNIT soldiers can you get me in twenty seconds?”
“The garrison in Alberta reported no losses. They’ll have a CRAK team on black alert.”
“Coordinates?”
John blocked it out. He’d have to stop worrying about his companions. They could handle themselves. “How!?” he demanded of Davros. Davros just laughed, head craned back, third eye glowing like a sun. “I don’t have time for this.” John grabbed the sides of Davros’s rotting skull and forced his way into his mind.
Hate.
John had never known hate like this. He’d seen ponds of it, lakes of it, puddles of it. This was an ocean, breaking through the dam of his mental shielding, drowning him. His heart stopped from the sheer intensity of Davros’s hatred.
Don’t worry, I’ve got you. It was him, the other him, his double, his creator, his mold, his standard. The Doctor. They were going to have a complicated relationship, John could just tell. Fight back.
John caught echoes of the memories the Doctor was feeding into Davros’s volcanic rage. Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Romana and Tegan and Jamie and countless others. John didn’t call on those memories. He called on Donna’s. Wilf. Her father. Himself, the Doctor. It cooled Davros’s rage and laid bare the secret. The one solution that could do them no good. Davros had built a self-destruct into his own children. The dictator’s mad laughter chased them out of his mind.
Davros was laughing in the real world as well, peals of insanity mocking the UNIT soldiers fortifying the room. John staggered back.
“You’d destroy the Daleks and start over?”
“What else should be done with an obsolete prototype? If they cannot even exterminate your pathetic children of time…!”
The Doctor spoke over him. “Sarah-Jane, Reality Bomb?”
It was Martha who answered. “Defused. We teleported Jack to an uninhabited planet in the Crucible and had him drop off the Osterhagen bombs. With only twenty-six planets, the Reality Bomb is useless.”
“I could kiss you!”
Jack reloaded his gun. “Next time, I’ll defuse the doomsday device.”
“Wait, what about Sarah-Jane? Where’d she go?”
Martha looked helplessly over at an arm, sticking out from behind a crate, sonic lipstick lifelessly in hand like a sixth finger. “She…”
“No.” It was such a quiet word from the Doctor, so devoid of any feeling. Then came shame: “No.” And anger: “No!”
“You were in his head for ten minutes, the Daleks compromised the hull…”
“NO!” The Doctor grabbed his sonic screwdriver and clutched it with whitened knuckles, as if he could squeeze it hard enough to force a setting that would bring her back. “Ten minutes… just ten minutes… I was supposed to have time, I always have… to put things right, I’ll never…” He began spinning it around with slow, eerie calm.
John felt nothing besides the pang he would feel for any loss of life. He had no memories of Sarah-Jane Smith; the Doctor’s adventures with her were like history read from a textbook. He tried to think of the words to say, the words that he would’ve liked to hear, but they didn’t come. And he didn’t have time.
He sprinted to Davros’s console and typed in the Dalek self-destruct code. Even without the Reality Bomb, the new Dalek empire could kill billions. That was enough to make him shudder, even with the gulf of life and memories between him and the Doctor who had actually seen the Dalek’s holocaust. He stared at the screen, the button that would give the order.
“I’m sorry, Doctor…” Though his words were sympathetic, Davros’s voice was incapable of compassion. The very sentence was the cruelest mockery of all. “So very sorry...”
Without meeting Davros’s eyeless gaze, the Doctor aimed his sonic screwdriver at the damaged life support system and shut it off entirely. Davros gasped and clutched at his throat.
“What are you doing? You can’t kill me! You’re the Doctor!”
The Doctor calmly holstered his sonic screwdriver. “I’ve already killed you. I’m just finishing the job.” Without another thought to Davros, he approached John. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“It’s my human half,” John said shamefully. “The Master was right about them, at least partway. I have urges within me… violent, irrational, dangerous. He threatened my home, he threatened my friends, he threatened the woman that I… that we…”
“Fight it. Humans have had thousands of years to develop maliciousness, hatred, barbarism… but I’m a Time Lord.”
The punch was fast, hard, knocking John for a loop without a second’s warning. The Doctor shook his hand as he stepped over John to the console; he’d forgotten how much that hurt. He thought of the Rani, the Meddling Monk, and his old friend the Master.
“I’m a Time Lord… and we’ve had time to do it right.”
He pressed the button.
***
“Why?” John asked, his back to the heart of the TARDIS as it purged itself of the Dalek race. The section of the Crucible it had temporarily fortified, the Daleks that’d been destroyed within, and Davros’s corpse, not as ugly now that it was freed from its casing, spindly legs unfurled as it drifted through space. The only evidence that the Daleks had ever existed was Sarah-Jane’s body, covered by the Doctor’s brown coat.
The Doctor was already at work returning the Earth to its proper coordinates. The others numbly did as he said, manipulating the console like automatons. Like they were Daleks themselves.
“You’re something new. Fresh. I couldn’t let you debase yourself like that.”
“I wanted to,” John said. “I could’ve.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” The Doctor managed a weak smile. “I guess now we’ll never know.”
“But what about you?”
“I’m alright.”
Donna took the Doctor’s hand, and in her eyes was the Gallifreyan sadness mirrored by the Doctor’s. John imagined it was in his own eyes as well. He knew what alright really meant.
***
Sarah-Jane had a hero’s funeral. No one knew about it.
It was within UNIT, within Torchwood. The Doctor thought he saw some of his previous incarnations in attendance, but that of course was impossible.
Truth be told, he barely remembered any of it. He cut out pretty soon. They’d understand. Times like these were what made him run.
John was waiting for him. As was Donna. She was getting worse, popping Advil like it was candy. It wouldn’t be long now before the human-Gallifreyan metacrisis finally stabilized. The Doctor gave her a long hug and John waited, picking at his fingers.
“I think they’re a wee bit longer than yours, actually.” John brushed a hand through his hair. The red roots were clearly visible now, growing to replace the dark hair he’d clipped. He looked different with close-cropped hair. More responsible.
The Doctor nodded at Donna and she left, leaving them alone with the dead men. They walked. It was a beautiful day, with the excitement of the celebrating world brimming over even into this somber atmosphere. It just made John feel worse, and if the Doctor were anything like him it made his hearts heavy as well.
“There’s a way to save her,” John said. “You know it, I know it.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m ready.”
“No. Stop…” The Doctor shook his head. “Let me at least look at you.”
John turned around, spreading his arms. The Doctor suddenly seemed to see John, as if for the first time, and John wondered what he looked like to another Gallifreyan’s time-sense.
“I’m sorry,” John said.
“For what? I’m not alone anymore.” It was a horrible lie, but the Doctor managed to put a little bit of the truth in it. “You have no idea how important you are. To me, at least. You’re what the universe needs. The freshness of humanity with the wisdom of Gallifrey. That’s why I need you to do something for me.”
John nodded. “Anything.”
“Take care of Rose for me.”
“She wants you, not me. I’m just a cheap knock-off of the original.”
“Hey, so was I, once.” The Doctor tugged at his ears. “It would never work out between us. There’s no fixing what I am. I will always be the oncoming storm. But you’re someone new. Me, the me I could’ve been if fate didn’t keep forcing the hard choices on me. You’re what she deserves, not this… damaged tenth incarnation.”
“And what about you?”
The charge: I just wrote a fic where Donna’s head exploded a lot. Six of one…
The judgment: I still kinda like the idea of 10.5 becoming fully human so that Donna can become a full Time Lord. But oh well…
When the universe is ending, it’s easy to panic. The secret to saving the universe is this: Don’t.
The new Doctor had taken to calling himself John, which suddenly seemed a very suiting name instead of the almost-epithetic nature it had as a disguise. John stretched out his time-sense, and though his human half cast what amounted to static over his perception, he could still see that Davros had never left the Vault. He was a prisoner.
Everyone else was at work defusing the Reality Bomb or holding off the Daleks. Donna (who was a Time Lord now, that was different) had disabled the Daleks’ forcefields, giving Team Earth home field advantage. John was a fifth wheel, but he had something no one else did. He both remembered Davros and had human instinct enough to understand him. Davros would have a way to take back power after the Reality Bomb went off. But what was it?
Jack had disabled Davros’s chair with a strategically-placed gunshot. His life support was barely hanging on, venting gas like sulfur from the hell Davros carried with him. John advanced on the madman, feeling that sulfide char the back of his throat.
“And what shall we call you, tainted Doctor, defiled Doctor, deformed Doctor? The Resident, perhaps? The Attending?”
“How were you going to go it, Davros? How were you going to depose the Supreme Dalek?”
Davros’s voice rose in pitch, madness. “The same way YOU laid claim to the Time Lord Empire! By being the very LAST!”
A Dalek broke through the TARDIS walls, which had grown to encompass the entire Vault. Mickey blasted it out of the sky. But it was like the little Dutch boy, trying to stick a finger in a dyke (which, if Donna’s memories were right, John had actually kinda done). The Daleks were cutting into the TARDIS, burning through, like his beautiful old girl was a body covered with stinging bees.
Jack grabbed Martha. “Doctor Jones, if I teleport us down to Earth, how many UNIT soldiers can you get me in twenty seconds?”
“The garrison in Alberta reported no losses. They’ll have a CRAK team on black alert.”
“Coordinates?”
John blocked it out. He’d have to stop worrying about his companions. They could handle themselves. “How!?” he demanded of Davros. Davros just laughed, head craned back, third eye glowing like a sun. “I don’t have time for this.” John grabbed the sides of Davros’s rotting skull and forced his way into his mind.
Hate.
John had never known hate like this. He’d seen ponds of it, lakes of it, puddles of it. This was an ocean, breaking through the dam of his mental shielding, drowning him. His heart stopped from the sheer intensity of Davros’s hatred.
Don’t worry, I’ve got you. It was him, the other him, his double, his creator, his mold, his standard. The Doctor. They were going to have a complicated relationship, John could just tell. Fight back.
John caught echoes of the memories the Doctor was feeding into Davros’s volcanic rage. Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Romana and Tegan and Jamie and countless others. John didn’t call on those memories. He called on Donna’s. Wilf. Her father. Himself, the Doctor. It cooled Davros’s rage and laid bare the secret. The one solution that could do them no good. Davros had built a self-destruct into his own children. The dictator’s mad laughter chased them out of his mind.
Davros was laughing in the real world as well, peals of insanity mocking the UNIT soldiers fortifying the room. John staggered back.
“You’d destroy the Daleks and start over?”
“What else should be done with an obsolete prototype? If they cannot even exterminate your pathetic children of time…!”
The Doctor spoke over him. “Sarah-Jane, Reality Bomb?”
It was Martha who answered. “Defused. We teleported Jack to an uninhabited planet in the Crucible and had him drop off the Osterhagen bombs. With only twenty-six planets, the Reality Bomb is useless.”
“I could kiss you!”
Jack reloaded his gun. “Next time, I’ll defuse the doomsday device.”
“Wait, what about Sarah-Jane? Where’d she go?”
Martha looked helplessly over at an arm, sticking out from behind a crate, sonic lipstick lifelessly in hand like a sixth finger. “She…”
“No.” It was such a quiet word from the Doctor, so devoid of any feeling. Then came shame: “No.” And anger: “No!”
“You were in his head for ten minutes, the Daleks compromised the hull…”
“NO!” The Doctor grabbed his sonic screwdriver and clutched it with whitened knuckles, as if he could squeeze it hard enough to force a setting that would bring her back. “Ten minutes… just ten minutes… I was supposed to have time, I always have… to put things right, I’ll never…” He began spinning it around with slow, eerie calm.
John felt nothing besides the pang he would feel for any loss of life. He had no memories of Sarah-Jane Smith; the Doctor’s adventures with her were like history read from a textbook. He tried to think of the words to say, the words that he would’ve liked to hear, but they didn’t come. And he didn’t have time.
He sprinted to Davros’s console and typed in the Dalek self-destruct code. Even without the Reality Bomb, the new Dalek empire could kill billions. That was enough to make him shudder, even with the gulf of life and memories between him and the Doctor who had actually seen the Dalek’s holocaust. He stared at the screen, the button that would give the order.
“I’m sorry, Doctor…” Though his words were sympathetic, Davros’s voice was incapable of compassion. The very sentence was the cruelest mockery of all. “So very sorry...”
Without meeting Davros’s eyeless gaze, the Doctor aimed his sonic screwdriver at the damaged life support system and shut it off entirely. Davros gasped and clutched at his throat.
“What are you doing? You can’t kill me! You’re the Doctor!”
The Doctor calmly holstered his sonic screwdriver. “I’ve already killed you. I’m just finishing the job.” Without another thought to Davros, he approached John. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“It’s my human half,” John said shamefully. “The Master was right about them, at least partway. I have urges within me… violent, irrational, dangerous. He threatened my home, he threatened my friends, he threatened the woman that I… that we…”
“Fight it. Humans have had thousands of years to develop maliciousness, hatred, barbarism… but I’m a Time Lord.”
The punch was fast, hard, knocking John for a loop without a second’s warning. The Doctor shook his hand as he stepped over John to the console; he’d forgotten how much that hurt. He thought of the Rani, the Meddling Monk, and his old friend the Master.
“I’m a Time Lord… and we’ve had time to do it right.”
He pressed the button.
***
“Why?” John asked, his back to the heart of the TARDIS as it purged itself of the Dalek race. The section of the Crucible it had temporarily fortified, the Daleks that’d been destroyed within, and Davros’s corpse, not as ugly now that it was freed from its casing, spindly legs unfurled as it drifted through space. The only evidence that the Daleks had ever existed was Sarah-Jane’s body, covered by the Doctor’s brown coat.
The Doctor was already at work returning the Earth to its proper coordinates. The others numbly did as he said, manipulating the console like automatons. Like they were Daleks themselves.
“You’re something new. Fresh. I couldn’t let you debase yourself like that.”
“I wanted to,” John said. “I could’ve.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” The Doctor managed a weak smile. “I guess now we’ll never know.”
“But what about you?”
“I’m alright.”
Donna took the Doctor’s hand, and in her eyes was the Gallifreyan sadness mirrored by the Doctor’s. John imagined it was in his own eyes as well. He knew what alright really meant.
***
Sarah-Jane had a hero’s funeral. No one knew about it.
It was within UNIT, within Torchwood. The Doctor thought he saw some of his previous incarnations in attendance, but that of course was impossible.
Truth be told, he barely remembered any of it. He cut out pretty soon. They’d understand. Times like these were what made him run.
John was waiting for him. As was Donna. She was getting worse, popping Advil like it was candy. It wouldn’t be long now before the human-Gallifreyan metacrisis finally stabilized. The Doctor gave her a long hug and John waited, picking at his fingers.
“I think they’re a wee bit longer than yours, actually.” John brushed a hand through his hair. The red roots were clearly visible now, growing to replace the dark hair he’d clipped. He looked different with close-cropped hair. More responsible.
The Doctor nodded at Donna and she left, leaving them alone with the dead men. They walked. It was a beautiful day, with the excitement of the celebrating world brimming over even into this somber atmosphere. It just made John feel worse, and if the Doctor were anything like him it made his hearts heavy as well.
“There’s a way to save her,” John said. “You know it, I know it.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m ready.”
“No. Stop…” The Doctor shook his head. “Let me at least look at you.”
John turned around, spreading his arms. The Doctor suddenly seemed to see John, as if for the first time, and John wondered what he looked like to another Gallifreyan’s time-sense.
“I’m sorry,” John said.
“For what? I’m not alone anymore.” It was a horrible lie, but the Doctor managed to put a little bit of the truth in it. “You have no idea how important you are. To me, at least. You’re what the universe needs. The freshness of humanity with the wisdom of Gallifrey. That’s why I need you to do something for me.”
John nodded. “Anything.”
“Take care of Rose for me.”
“She wants you, not me. I’m just a cheap knock-off of the original.”
“Hey, so was I, once.” The Doctor tugged at his ears. “It would never work out between us. There’s no fixing what I am. I will always be the oncoming storm. But you’re someone new. Me, the me I could’ve been if fate didn’t keep forcing the hard choices on me. You’re what she deserves, not this… damaged tenth incarnation.”
“And what about you?”
