If I could attack with a more sensible approach, obviously that's what I'd be doing...
In the training room at the Main Gauche, there's a Slayer with her Christmas present, going through a few sword exercises she remembers from before. It's been a while since she's had a sword in her hands, but now that she does... It's easier to fall back into than she would have thought. Muscle memory comes easily to Slayers
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And, in a fortuitous turn of circumstance, the Doctor is nearby. The Other falls into step with him, waiting for the Doctor to notice him before he speaks.
"Doctor. Might I have a word?"
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"Ah... Well..." There's really no way out of this, is there? "'Course you can. In fact, I think you just had six."
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By which he means picking the Doctor's brain on the matter as much as he can without causing him any undue trauma. He can't imagine this will be a pleasant subject, but... He needs to know. In at least one possible timeline, his home was destroyed, and he would very much like to know why and how.
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"Yeah, I thought you would." At this moment, the Doctor hates everything. At this moment, the Doctor feels like a child being taken to task for scribbling on the walls, only... far more lasting and unpleasant than that. And the Other's hardly said anything yet. "You're going to have to be a bit more specific."
Because there's just no way of getting the Doctor to talk about the Time War without dragging it out of him, and usually some serious emotional distress on his part.
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He's not that cruel, not unless he has a reason to be.
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"Lots of things happened. It was the last great Time War. It was... It was a long time ago."
It was five years ago, on the Doctor's timeline. Not a fraction of the time he likes to pretend has passed. Not all that long at all, for a Time Lord.
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"The Daleks. They were... after your time. War machines, created by a madman, bred to hate and to destroy every living thing not Dalek. And that meant destroying the Time Lords."
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"That's one question answered. What about the other two?"
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Were destroyed. He can say it. He's said it before, to so many people, but... this is different. He's speaking to a man from the ancient past, even as Time Lords measure time, a man who's barely more than a name in Gallifreyan history, and... He can't say it.
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This was more recently than the Doctor wants to admit, he's certain.
"You were there." It isn't a question.
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"I was the only one left."
Yes, there was the Master. Here, there's the Vesmier and Donna and the Rani, and the other Doctor, and the Doctor in the watch, and obviously the Other. But then, when the war ended, there was only him, alone in his TARDIS, expecting to die. A million screaming voices in his mind, and then nothing but emptiness and silence and just him, in a new body and a scorched ship and more alone than he'd known it was possible to be.
...But he's not thinking about that, for all he's bleeding pain and distress to anyone sensitive to it.
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The thought just brushes across the surface of the Doctor's mind, but the presence behind it wraps around the Doctor's consciousness, a psychic weight which is both soothing and very difficult to escape.
And there's a very subtle emotional pressure, things not quite articulated into thought, per se. It might be conveying that here and now, the Doctor's not alone. It might be acknowledging that the Doctor isn't the only one who's had to do terrible things for the sake of a gamble on the greater good.
None of this is said, because the Other suspects the Doctor isn't quite ready to hear those words, but it's all there, in that gentle, inexorable mental pressure.
The Other doesn't judge. He doesn't presume so much. But this is a Gallifreyan, the last of the planet's children, and he's breaking apart.
He does what he can.
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"It was years ago and a universe away," the Doctor says softly. "I'm alright." He knows it's not at all believable, but he has to say it. If he just keeps saying it...
He glances over to the Other, just out of the corner of his eye. "I should probably be the one apologizing, anyway."
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"And you don't owe me any apologies. Believe me, you really don't." With all he's done for Gallifrey, all that's gone wrong because he thought Rassilon was the best choice to take the planet in a necessary direction... Well, he's not entirely sure he doesn't owe the Doctor some apologies of his own.
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"So that's not the reason you keep... appearing and asking me about it, then?" Like it's really happened that much. Well, it's not his fault if being around the Other makes him feel like a child being taken to task. Although considering he blew up the planet, it's really that or being treated as a war criminal... He's done that once already.
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