THE MAN WHO FORGETS, doctor who [book 02]

vii. the last of its kind

     "Yeah, I know. You're only Human."

     "What are you doing?" Liz asks.

     "The worst thing I'll ever do. I'm going to pass a massive electrical charge through the Star Whale's brain. Should knock out all its higher functions, leave it a vegetable. The ship will still fly, but the whale won't feel it."

     "That'll be like killing it," Amy exclaims.

     "Look, three options," the Doctor says, turning to face everyone. "One, I let the Star Whale continue in unendurable agony for hundreds more years. Two, I kill everyone on this ship. Three, I murder a beautiful, innocent creature as painlessly as I can — and then I find a new name, because I won't be the Doctor any more."

     "There must be something we can do, some other way," Liz pleads.

     "Nobody talk to me. Nobody Human has anything to say to me today!"

     Violet grits her teeth and turns to face her husband, just about fed up with how everyone is acting. Amy and Mandy sit and watch while the Doctor adjusts the machinery, children entering a moment later. Mandy rushes over to the children, hugging a boy that looks to be a few years younger than her before a tentacle flails behind Mandy, then gently taps her on the shoulder. Violet watches as the young girl pets the tentacle as if it were a pet of sorts.

     "You're really going to kill a Galeen, lover?" Violet murmurs. "Possibly the last of its kind? I never thought I'd live to see the day you'd do such a thing."

     The Doctor stares at his wife, noting how her expression is blank but the rage of Time glows in her blue-grey eyes. "Unless you have a better idea, then yes, I'm going to put it out of its misery. We both know too well the weight of being the last of our species, Adrenilda."

     "Calling me that name now, are you? You've never once called me that since we met again in Australia, so what's brought it on?"

     "You're not Violet right now, and we both know that. You're no more Human than I am, otherwise you'd be pleading for the Galeen's life to be spared no matter the torture it's going to face."

     "I suppose you're right, Theta, because you're not the Doctor right now, are you? You're just a man trying to do something so Human, and, because of that, you don't know what you've missed."

     Ignoring the sound of her husband calling her by name, Violet walks over to Liz and drags her over to the voting buttons. She hears everyone yell out in horror as she slams Liz's hand down on the Abdicate button, but she simply smirks back at the dark expression of her husband as the Galeen roars and Starship UK shakes briefly, causing everyone to panic. The Doctor stalks over to his wife and rips her away from the voting machine, hands clamped on her upper arms as he glares at her smirking face.

     "What have you done?" the Doctor demands.

     "Nothing at all," Violet retorts. "We've increased speed, right? No more torturing the Galeen, so that's got to help just a little."

     "It's still here," Liz says, completely baffled. "I don't understand."

     Violet turns her gaze to the Scottish woman. "Go on, Amy. How about you tell them? After all, you were going to do it if I didn't."

     Amy grins. "The Star Whale didn't come like a miracle all those years ago. It volunteered. You didn't have to trap it or torture it. That was all just you. It came because it couldn't stand to watch your children cry. What if you were really old, and really kind and alone? Your whole race dead. No future. What couldn't you do then? If you were that old, and that kind, and the very last of your kind, you couldn't just stand there and watch children cry."

✩

     BACK ON BOARD THE TARDIS, Violet is sitting on the new chair facing the console, listening to the time machine make all sorts of sounds that shift to words inside her mind. She knows that the blue box is simply trying to get her to talk, but the almost [500-year-old] girl can't bring herself to say anything when there's really nothing to say — or maybe it's because she has everything to say to the man talking to Amy.

     Amy holds out Liz's mask. "From Her Majesty. She says there will be no more secrets on Starship UK."

     "Amy, she could have killed everyone on this ship," the Doctor stresses instead of replying to the ginger woman's words. "How are you okay with that?"

     "You could have killed a Star Whale."

     "And she saved it. I know, I know."

     "Amazing though, don't you think? The Star Whale. All that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made it kind."

     "But she couldn't have known how it would react."

     "You couldn't. But both Violet and I've seen it before. Very old and very kind, and the very, very last. Sound a bit familiar?"

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Hey, readers.

So, like, I'm not even sure if I really want to
write a proper chapter for the next episode...

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the Daleks,
and the episode, but it's kind of a bitch to
try and fit Violet into without making everything...
you know, a pain in the fucking ass. I mean, this
episode was an utter bitch to write her into,
as you could maybe tell (if you couldn't, then I must
have done a decent job of not fucking it up).

If I just do a repeat of what I did for
the whole Family of Blood thing back in
10's timeline, then you'll know that I almost
threw my laptop trying to write Violet into the
next episode.

- Frosch xo -

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