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Forsaken
By Taleya
Am I supposed to let this go now?
Let darkness come, take you away?
--VNV Nation, Forsaken
"Will it stop, Doctor? The drumming? Will it stop?"
In a twisted sort of way he's glad Martha has left him. It makes things easier,
in the long run. Secrets and tales and games he no longer has to play.
He'd tried not to look at Lucy Saxon, at the way she had sat in the UNIT plane
on the way back to England, shattered, blank, more like an elegantly painted
china doll than a woman. Instead he had stared at his hands, feeling the blood
that slicked them dry and flake into obscure patterns. He'd lost himself in his
own mind, ignoring the questions and concerned glances from his companions, the
commentary from the news screens, the heavy weight of the silent form wrapped in
its black plastic shroud on the seats behind him.
The pyre had been so easy to arrange, a shroud-wrapped form on a temple of
kindling. UNIT had asked him no questions and he had told them no lies. The
Brigadier's legacy had left him that much.
And so he had set it to burn. As their race had burned, flames spiralling high
into a night devoid of stars.
And then he had simply walked away, lost in his own thoughts. Remembering Axons
and Daleks and Daemons and more. Academy days, a serious young man with a gift
for science. So moralistic. So duty bound. A friend, once. A lover, a parallel,
an equal, destined for greatness, all of it washed away in the flames of
madness.
"We're the only two left. There's no one else. "
A Time Lord has many deaths. Thirteen in total, each one nibbling away an
infinitesimal slice of time. A taste of mortality, a promise of rest,
bitter-sweet to the tongue. A single scent, burnt away as life began anew.
"... just regenerate!"
" .... I refuse."
It's not that easy. It's not a conscious choice, not a toy to be switched on and
off at will. It's coded into their bones, into their blood, millennia of genetic
manipulation, tried and tested and honed into an exquisite art. Bodily
regeneration, on a massive scale, poised and primed to trigger in the event of
catastrophic injury and cell death.
Oh it could be artificially triggered, stopped - even reversed...if you had the
knowledge. Knowledge of a race long gone.
There had been tales, back in the days of Looms and Houses, Panopticons and
perigosto, tales whispered behind furtive hands and furrowed brows of Time Lords
who had attempted to will their own deaths. Of twisted minds and mutilated
bodies born into a crippled half-form. It wouldn't work. It couldn't. Not when
the instinctive desire to live was so strong. Not with all those delicately
programmed and woven exons waiting to be unleashed.
"Will it stop, Doctor? The drumming? Will it stop?"
The TARDIS door closes behind him, cutting off the sounds of the 21st century.
The lights in the console room are dim and muted. He prefers it that way.
The mewling starts in his mind again, and he feels a sick fission of joy deep in
his belly at the sensation. Confused, pain-filled drifting thoughts, he can feel
them, hear them. After years of silence, years of darkness, he can
finally hear the sweet sing of another Gallifreyan mind in the back of his own.
It's screaming in agony.
His footsteps lighten, quicken, taking him past the console and deeper into the
TARDIS, towards the heart of her architecture and the dark secret hidden within.
He won't ever be alone again.
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