Title: "Journey's End," Take Two, Part 1 of 2: Judgement.
Author: Yours truly, at box_in_the_box.
Beta-Reader: persiflage_1.
Rating: PG. No sex, no violence, not even any swearing, but plenty of angst.
Characters: Where do I start? Tenth Doctor, Donna Noble, Martha Jones, Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler, Mickey Smith, Sarah Jane Smith, Luke Smith, Maria Jackson, Alan Jackson, Clyde Langer, Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, Gwen Cooper, [spoiler hero] and [spoiler villain].
Spoilers: Did you not see the title? All of NuWho, through Season 4, Episode 13, "Journey's End."
Summary: He might deserve to die, but the Doctor still saves him. She deserves to be saved, but the Doctor might still lose her …
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The TARDIS landed back on Earth with a solid thump, and its crew of pilots cheered and clapped and exchanged hugs.

Rose Tyler and Martha Jones threw their arms around each other, and Donna Noble shoved Sarah Jane Smith out of the way to squeeze Jack Harkness, but Mickey Smith gently broke away from his embrace with Jackie Tyler to take Sarah Jane in his arms, surprising her by planting a chaste but tender kiss on her lips, while even the Doctor and Jackie were willing to trade quick touches of affection, with Jackie tugging at his waist, as the Doctor rested his arm on her shoulder.

Only the Doctor's double stood apart from the rest, his arms crossed over his chest as he stared into one corner of the TARDIS console room. "Now that we've dropped the Earth back in its proper place," he called out to the companions, bringing them out of their reverie, "what are we going to do with him?"

"Yes, Doctor," the raspy metallic voice agreed, as everyone else followed the gaze of the Doctor's double, toward the figure lurking in the one corner of the console room, who resembled nothing so much as a spider crouched on his web. "You chose to save me," Davros reminded him. "So … what will you choose to do with me now, I wonder?"
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"And once again, it seems that we've come full circle," Davros observed, as he sat in a force-field whose column-of-light configuration bore a striking similarity to the ones in which he'd imprisoned the Doctor and Rose on board the Crucible. "As it was during the genesis of my children on Skaro, it seems that a small, cowering cadre of would-be moralists has taken it upon themselves to try and determine my 'proper' fate."

The pilots and crew of the TARDIS' most recent flight were all there, gathered in the Cardiff Hub of Torchwood Three, but they'd gained company. Luke Smith had insisted upon joining Sarah Jane, albeit over her objections, and he'd brought Alan and Maria Jackson, as well as Clyde Langer, with him. Likewise, as the only survivors of Jack's team, Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper had no intention of walking out on him now, no matter how many times he'd walked out on them.

After a period of uncomfortably contemplative silence, it was the Doctor's double who finally spoke.

"We should kill him," he decided, his expression as listless as if he'd just announced his dinner plans.

"What?" the Doctor nearly squeaked, squinting at his double in shock.

"Smartest suggestion I've heard all day," Jack stood and went to fetch the nearest lethal weapon.

"Oi, Captain Cold-Shoulder!" Donna bellowed. "We're not killing anyone, you got that?" She now shared enough of the Doctor's memories that she knew exactly what sort of dreadful déjà vu he was experiencing, since she was flashing back to the rising sense of panic he'd felt, on board the Crusader on the planet Midnight, when the passengers began to turn against him.

"The Doctor's right," Martha rushed to defend him, before she spotted the confused stares she was drawing and clarified, "I mean, the real Doctor – no offense –" she apologized to his double, then shook her head as if to clear it, "but what matters is, how many of us were prepared to do … unspeakable things, just to defeat the Daleks? I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm actually grateful that the Daleks managed to prevent us from carrying out our plans, because no matter what else happens, I need to be able to live with myself, and with the things that I've done."

"Yeah," Mickey frowned, "the key word there being 'live.' Because if we're all dead, the fact that we held the moral high ground won't much matter, now will it?"

"Just look at him," Rose gestured toward Davros, whose thin, dark smile clearly delighted in his enemies' internal ideological strife. "Even now, he's getting such a kick out of all this, AREN'T YOU?" she shouted at Davros, scowling with contempt, before turning back to Martha. "I made the mistake of showing one of them mercy once, and look where it got me. Never again."

"STOP it!" Jackie cried. "It was bad enough when you two were still traveling together, and every time you came back, you'd become a little more like him … but now, you're acting even WORSE than him! You're saying we should do something that not even the bloody Doctor is inhuman enough to do! I don't care if that … thing is worse than Hitler … I just don't want my daughter to lose her soul."

"This is ridiculous," Alan pressed both hands to his forehead, then raised them in front of him. "Alright … surely, there's got to be some sort of … higher authority, to decide matters of this magnitude, hasn't there?"

Gwen swallowed, then flashed what fell far short of being a convincingly brave smile. "I –" here, she cleared her throat "– I think that's meant to be us."

"We could create a containment barrier," Ianto's pathologically mild tone belied his racing mind, "operating off Tosh's time-lock –"

"It wouldn't work," Sarah Jane snorted ruefully. She stepped slowly forward, narrowing her eyes at the stooped, withered figure who gazed up at her with such insufferable smugness. "He's too much of a cockroach, like his creations. No matter what, he'd find a way of escaping, and then …" her words trailed off. She didn't even bother turning back to face him, but the cold reproach in her voice stiffened the Doctor's spine, as she addressed him directly. "I told you then, and I'm twice as convinced of it now. They all deserved to die on Skaro. The Dalek race should have been wiped out before it was even born, and that goes double for its creator."

Maria gaped in dismayed disbelief, and went to her mentor's side. "Sarah Jane, you don't mean that!" she struggled to convince herself. "Everything you've taught us – all the stuff that makes us different from the ones who go in all guns blazing – even with the Kudlak, and the Slitheen –"

"Yeah, except that you were the one who killed the Slitheen who was posing as the headmaster, weren't you?" Clyde accused Maria.

"She was acting in self-defense!" Luke argued, angry and hurt at his family's fighting.

"And more importantly, this is NOT a Slitheen child!" Sarah Jane finally faced the children who had followed her so loyally. "This is DAVROS, creator of the DALEKS, and in all my travels, I have NEVER encountered pure EVIL more singularly personified!" She took hold of Maria's shoulders. "The … things that he did to me, on Skaro … I have nightmares about how horrible it would be, for you, or Luke, or Clyde, to endure even a moment of that same suffering." Sarah Jane's lower lip quivered, but she still managed to blink back her tears. "It might not seem like it right now, but this is for the BEST –"

Maria broke down into open, heaving sobs. "Sarah Jane … please, don't SAY that –"

"Oh, you're breaking her heart!" Davros chuckled throatily. "She idolized you so, just as you idolized your beloved Doctor … but now, she sees the darkness inside of you, just as you came to see inside of him. You truly have become the mirror image of your mentor … hasn't she, Doctor?" he tilted his head to the side, to force the Doctor to meet his stare. "Granted, she has yet to commit a genocide of her own, but then, you've already committed at least two, so between the two of you, I suppose it … averages out."

"All the more reason to complete a third," the Doctor's double snarled.

"Doctor?" Sarah Jane checked suspiciously. "What do they mean?"

Davros' mouth went wide, before he burst into hearty laughter. "Oh, you didn't TELL her!" he grinned through blackened teeth. "Of all the sins I thought you'd be guilty of, I never expected false MODESTY!"

"The Daleks and the Time Lords," Rose gripped Sarah Jane's arm, as much to muster her own strength as to support the older woman, "they had, like, this great big … Time War."

"And they lost," Martha continued for Rose, entwining her fingers with Sarah Jane's on her other side, as the younger woman paused to wipe away the moisture pooling behind her eyelids. "Everyone lost."

"He destroyed the Daleks," Donna stroked Sarah Jane's back sympathetically, even as she shrugged, "or at least, he thought he did, anyway … but, he lost his own people, too. The Time Lords, Gallifrey … they're all gone now."

Sarah Jane's tears at last spilled quietly down her cheeks, and even before she uttered the question, she could see the answer in his haunted eyes. "Is this true?" she choked out.

"Not quite," Davros flashed his teeth again, his penetrating gaze still fixed on the Doctor. "You're leaving out the best part. Tell them, Doctor. Tell them the true measure of who you really are."

The Doctor jammed his hands even further down his pockets. "I had no choice." He inhaled sharply, even as he began to tremble visibly.

"Of course not," Davros condescended. "None of history's greatest monsters ever do."

The Doctor wanted to scream and cry and curl up into a ball and disappear. He wanted to chew ground-up light bulbs, until his gums and cheeks were gushing blood, and smash his own face into a mirror, until it was a glass shard-spackled mess of pulpy flesh, and tear his own teeth out, so that all he could do was wordlessly howl his agony and outrage.

Instead, he did far worse.

He told the truth.

"I wiped out the Daleks," he breathed raggedly, as loudly and heavily as a bellows, "but I did so knowing full well what the cost would be. I killed them off, even though the price was the extinction of my own people. I murdered the Daleks and the Time Lords both, and even though there was no other way, I know I can never make that right."

He shut his eyes tight, but he could feel their eyes on him … their pity beaten back by their newfound revulsion, their compassion for him now overwhelmed by their fear of him.

"And THIS is why you are all so hopelessly flawed," Davros declaimed triumphantly, "because you have all remade yourselves in the image of this … flawed god. THIS is why STRENGTH is superior to weakness, and HATE is superior to love, because your so-called 'love' has made you a pack of IMPOTENT HYPOCRITES! If you choose to kill me, then you will become me, and if you don't, then I WILL kill you all."

"Stop it, just stop it," Alan hugged Maria, kissing her forehead as she continued to weep into his chest.

"Such a loving, protective father," Davros complimented mockingly, "and yet, you allow your daughter to risk her life with that reckless woman … why is that, I wonder?" He then snapped the fingers of his prosthetic hand in a pantomimed "eureka" moment. "Because you love her, this Sarah Jane Smith … how pathetic. Both of you, such sad, lonely, limited little creatures … she allows you to nurse your unrequited affections for her, because it serves her purposes, and because it flatters her. With you, she can pretend that she's still the fresh-faced young girl she once was, and not the withered old woman she's become since. And in return for sacrificing your child to her cause, she allows you to live in the false hope that you will ever matter to her, as much as she matters to you."

Alan and Sarah Jane glanced briefly at one another, but found they could no longer bear to look each other in the eye.

"Make no mistake," Davros went on to condemn the rest of his audience, "you are ALL just as transparent, in the profoundness of your dependencies upon the Doctor. You," he pointed to Rose, "cling to him like a drowning woman clutching a sinking anchor. YOU," his accusing finger moved to Martha, "tell yourself that you never needed the validation that he never gave you, and yet, you still secretly yearn for it all the same. YOU," he turned toward Jack, who was flanked protectively by Ianto and Gwen, "well … I never imagined I would say this to anyone, but you're even more broken than he is. At least he possesses some sense of awareness of his own irreparable damage. Oh, and you?" he suddenly directed his attention to Donna, as if the thought had just now struck him. "I'm surprised that it hasn't occurred to your newly minted Time Lord mind yet, but … a human/Time Lord meta-crisis can never happen, and you're enough of a Time Lord now to know what that means … aren't you?"

Donna's hands flew to cover her mouth as she gasped in horrified realization.

"What is it?" Rose demanded frantically of Davros. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?"

"He didn't do it." The Doctor caught Donna, as she clutched her head and fell to her knees. "I did. This is my fault, it's all my fault –"

"It's burning her mind." The Doctor's double ran both hands through his hair, as it dawned on him, too. "The regeneration energy came from him, but it was a mutual exchange of energy between her and me … she took on my Time Lord mind, and it's too much for her human side to withstand."

"There must be SOMETHING we can do!" Martha insisted, as she reflexively checked Donna's pulse and temperature. "THINK, Doctor! WHAT CAN WE DO?"

"Only one thing," the Doctor lamented, reaching out to press his palm to Donna's forehead.

"No," Donna wept, "please, no … no, please, no …"

"I have to remove all her memories of me." The Doctor's fingertips brushed the side of Donna's face.

Sarah Jane slapped his hand away. "You CAN'T!" she objected furiously. "After all she's done … after all she's become … it's a VIOLATION!"

"YES! DO IT, DOCTOR!" Davros ordered, pumping his fist in the air victoriously. "SAVE her life, by KILLING the person she's become! END her existence, even as you fight your own friends to PRESERVE mine!"
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TO BE
CONTINUED …