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More than anything, what he hates about being splayed out on the operating table is the exam lights, leaving nothing unexposed under their searing cold white.
His fingers itch for the brim of his hat.
“This last lock will be particularly difficult and painful to remove. We'll have to overload your entire system to burn it off.” The Doctor finishes closing the restraints over his wrists.
(“You’re free to ask me to remove these at any time, of course,” he had said in the first experiment. “These are just a precaution to prevent injury from involuntary movements.”)
Restraints that could be removed? If he wasn’t busy acting unresponsive and indifferent, he would laugh. The Doctor liked to dangle small mercies to see what might make him crack and beg, but he very well knew these were kindnesses the Doctor wouldn’t offer a human, much less a puppet.
He would never give him the satisfaction of falling for it.
“Any discomfort? Feeling afraid is normal for anyone in your position.”
He keeps his gaze impassive as he stares into the light above him, ignoring the crawling sensation at his side where he can sense Dottore turned toward him.
An eyeless mask contemplating his response. Any signs of emotion, any flaws to slice away.
Any hair-thin fracture lines he can dig his gloved fingers into and peel apart.
“I can’t promise it will hurt any less than our last five sessions. But it will be the last… either way.”
He was no stranger to begging; for his life, for others’ lives, for salvation, for forgiveness. But with clearing the fifth lock, he had learned what it meant to beg for death.
And if the pain had been increasing exponentially with each progressive lock, this final lock must be…
“Your mother,” Dottore muses. “It seems she really didn't want this one open.”
The bastard always knew when to push the right buttons.
He hates that mask, wishes more than anything at this moment to see it crumbled to pieces in his hands. Preferably with Dottore’s head still inside.
But not until their work is done here. Dottore is a bastard, but he works like a demon in his mission to spit in the face of gods. Is the Doctor’s hatred so personal as his own?
Whatever the reason, it’s useful to him. And so he chokes on the urge to run far far away and reminds himself why he’s here. He'll put up with any humiliation and excruciation, so long as it leads to what he desires.
His divine powers unsealed. His mother's head, dully thudding onto the exalted floors of Tenshukaku. His rightful heart, clicking into place in the cavern of his chest.
Everything he’s ever wanted.
(A snow-covered house cracking as it burns to ashes around him.)
The pain will be temporary.
The pain will be temporary.
The pain will be temporary. “What use have I with no powers. Proceed.”
The Doctor’s lips pull back in a mockery of a smile. “Very good. That’s why you’re my favorite.” And reaches for the lever at his side.
“Roll on one.”
He closes his eyes as the generators grind to life.
“Roll on two.”
The familiar sensation tears through the pathways of his vessel
“Roll on three.”
stronger now, until his entire self
becomes molten, tinder set ablaze
Roll...
until his entire self
becomes
agony
Roll...
Roll….
…