Midnight ⋆ Doctor Who²

59. The Finish Line

BACK AT CHARNEL HOUSE, DORIUM IS TELLING EVERYTHING TO THE DOCTOR. Literally, everything. Every... boring... little details. The Doctor wonders how long it would have taken Aurora to lose her mind over this. Dorium, who worked with Madame Kovarian, worked to take everything from her, was now playing games with him when his life's on the line? She'd be positively enraged.

So he has to be. In place of her, because she isn't here, and he promised he would fight. If he wasn't oh so tired, maybe he'd put more spirit into it. Lived too long...

"Oh, it's not so bad, really, as long as they get your box the right way up," Dorium is telling the Doctor, as he paces through the shadows of the pillars, in front of the talking head. "I got a media-chip fitted in my head years ago, and the Wi-Fi down here is excellent, so I keep myself entertained."

He'd shut the trap if he could. "I need to know about the Silence." Maybe the stern tone in his voice is enough to get Dorium to realize just how bad things are going to be for him if he doesn't answer.

"Oh." Dorium frowns. "A religious order of great power and discretion. The sentinels of history, as they like to call themselves."

Charming. Doesn't help. "And they want me dead."

"No, not really. They just don't want you to remain alive."

Is he joking? Is he actually joking? Does he know I'm going to use him as a Rubik's cube– Not now, Aurora.

"That's okay, then," he ironises. "I was a bit worried for a minute there."

"You're a man with a long and dangerous past, but what you make of that tiny friend of yours is infinitely more terrifying. The Dawn, she's called – did you ever wonder why they call it the break of Dawn? What is she going to break?" Dorium would have shuddered if he had a spine. "Whatever it is, the Silence believe it must be averted."

Dorium observes as the Doctor suddenly stops pacing. All it took was a mention of her name, and all his attention was redirected. People should really know better, by now. They should be careful how they speak of her, of them.

Yes, he thinks to himself. Yes, I've thought about it, I've been trying to avoid it, if you care to know. "You know, you could've told me all this the last time we met."

"It was a busy day and I got beheaded." He figures that's fair enough.

"What's so dangerous about her? She's not..." He rarely stumbles on his words. "She's not some kind of monster. She's not what people made of her."

"Not yet, maybe. But on the Fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely, or fail to answer, at the break of Dawn a question will be asked. A question that must never, ever be answered."

The Doctor frowns a bit. Yes, he remembers that last bit. He's heard it before. "Silence will fall when the question is asked."

"'Silence must fall' would be a better translation. The Silence are determined the question will never be answered. That the Dawn will never break anything."

Frustration washed over him. "I don't understand. What's it got to do with her? With us?"

"The first question," Dorium starts cryptically. "The oldest question in the universe, hidden in plain sight. Always misunderstood. Never complete. Would you like to know what it is?"

He doesn't even question it. Why wouldn't he?

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

The skulls slowly turn to him. That's oppressing. But he has to know, and then he won't ever answer it and he'll come home to Aurora and that black cat she has, and the plants in her living room, and the dimples in her smile.