Work Text:
The Doctor was having a very bad day.
In fact, he was having a bad week. Month. Year. 900. 10 000 000 000 and counting.
Admittedly, he’d brought part of it on himself, wearing human form (or close enough to it the difference was virtually undetectable). But you’d think that, considering everything he did, everything he was, that it was a paper-thin disguise, that anyone would realise in a moment that he was far more than what he looked like, without ever noticing the skin that didn’t give off heat, the double heartbeat in his chest.
You’d think incorrectly.
It had been less common in the past (although it had certainly still happened), when Rassilon’s influence had shaped the evolution of countless species throughout the universe into something easily controlled, when there were dozens of influential races nearly identical to humanity, down to the telepathic blank. But with the Time War and the erasure of the Time Lords (and Rassilon's genetic experimentation), it was becoming a much more common problem, and hatefully so.
Sure, humans thought, at first glance, that he was like them. That was the whole point of the face. But when Companions—Companions!—could save the Earth with him, could see all that he did, still thought he was human, well. That was a problem.
“I can feel it,” he’d said. “The turn of the Earth.” Et cetera, et cetera, “that’s who I am.”
“What, like you’re not human?”
Stupid ape, of course he wasn’t human! What did you think he’d be, a lizard? H. reptilia may have been intellectually superior to their usurpers, but they were far from the genius of the Time Lords. And besides, he wasn’t green, and he didn’t have scales. Probably.
That would be an interesting malfunction of the perception filter, if somewhat problematic. Although Silurians did eat humans. Maybe he’d get more respect that way. Fear. Same thing, really. More or less.
What use is an alien menace that doesn’t look alien and isn’t a menace? He may as well live up to his reputation.
Ultimately, of course, the usefulness of a human face outweighed his displeasure of being thought one of them. And with new Companions, more of the same. Martha didn’t believe he was alien until the Judoon had confirmed it—and wasn’t that a sore point. As if he couldn’t convince her himself, given half a moment. They were in the midst of an invasion. On the moon. He’d had other things to worry about than his humanity or lack thereof.
There was Donna, with her incessant nicknaming, as bad as the Deca in their time. “Spaceman", like some human in a ridiculous suit! She was never afraid of him, not until the very end, when she saw firsthand everything that he was and understood what it meant, for her and for the Universe on the whole.
Younger faces, he was finding, were much harder to gain respect with. But in a similar way, older faces were much harder to trust. So he put up with it in favour of having Companions at all; it was lonely without his entourage. Boring without human minds to play with in his spare time.
Of course, there were complications. Complications like opening an unborn infant’s mind to the Vortex when it was still forming. Complications like not killing everything in sight every time the abominable creature was called “half Time Lord". As if it was comparable at all. As if some bipedal accident was anything compared to a Time Lord. As if it ever could be.
But this, this was ridiculous. Here he stands in front of his greatest enemies, here he is Ka Faraq Gatri, and they don’t know him. They don’t know of him. Oswin had done her job startlingly well, erasing him from their indices and histories.
He and Clara stand before the Skaro Degradations, Daleks encased in monstrous forms made with a stolen Loom, creatures he’d thought long-destroyed. And they should know him. They fought him.
The bipedal one with too-long limbs and a gunstick formed of bone stares at them with its glowing eye and it says with a breathy, creaking voice, “Exterminate the humans.”
There are limits.
He hisses with badly-restrained anger and at some point along the line it mutates to sybillant whispers echoing through Time herself, disjointed and continuous and he takes a breath but the sound continues, contrapunct to the breath he takes in. An inhuman shriek a second before he forms the shape and ending well after it, merging with the following words—or the precursors thereof—like a choir of the damned, the ten billion voices of Gallifrey.
The Skaro Degradations scream alongside him, crumpling to the ground with the weight of Time on their shoulders and their tongues. The bipedal abomination glares up at him, the half-formed muscles in its face twitching with the closest thing it has to pain. “Time Lord,” it says in its creaking voice, and it collapses. Everything stills as the screams fade to whispers.
“What the hell was—” Clara begins as the whispers end, but she never finishes.
“I’m sorry,” says the Doctor.
“Sorry about what?” says Clara. “Wait, what just happened?”
“What do you remember?”
“I remember they were about to kill us—exterminate us, that one had said? And then they… collapsed?”
“That’s right,” says the Doctor, waiting for her mind to fill in the gaps of her memory with a true-enough story. Human minds were good at that sort of thing.