Chapter Text
There would be temptations, he had warned Rose and Mickey. But that was just for them. There shouldn’t have been anything that he couldn’t leave behind. He had Rose, he had the TARDIS, he had everything he needed. Or so he thought.
----
Koschei, or Mr. Oakdown as he was known amongst this crowd, absolutely detested most of the rich socialites at Jackie Tyler’s party. Currently, he was hiding from some girl named Lucy on a curtained off balcony, wishing he could leave. The pomp and pageantry reminded him too much of the ones his father would hold back on Gallifrey, but he had an image to maintain. His place in London’s elite was too valuable for him to throw away offending his ‘peers’.
He had caught wind of some human experimentation that might have had alien influence, which had led him here, where he probably would have been anyway.
“Well, you look like you’re enjoying yourself,” a voice spoke behind him and he nearly jumped. Instead, he turned around and leaned back against the half-wall that surrounded the secluded balcony he’d found.
“Sorry,” the owner of the voice, a girl in a server’s dress, said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Koschei frowned, looking the girl up and down. She wasn’t wearing an earpiece, though her blonde hair covered it well, but Koschei didn’t comment. He couldn’t judge, his were fake.
“It’s fine,” Koschei shrugged. “I was just lost in thought.”
“‘Bout what?” the girl asked, setting her tray down and coming to stare out onto the grounds next to him.
“Parties,” Koschei said. “Hate ‘em. Especially this kind. They remind me too much of childhood.”
The girl cocked her head and Koschei felt the words start to spill out of him. Why was he telling her? They’d never met before, and Koschei wasn’t one to go around sharing his story with anyone.
“My best friend was never invited to the parties,” Koschei told her. “My father considered him ‘too poor’ and ‘too lower class’ to associate with, but he never failed to sneak into every one I was forced to attend. We would sneak out and escape to the fields of my father’s estate. It was bordered by mountains, and Theta and I would run and run until we reached them.
“He sounds lovely,” the girl commented.
Koschei nodded. “He was.”
“What happened to him?” the girl asked softly, sliding her hand next to his.
“He died,” Koschei answered shortly. “Everyone did. I’m alone now.”
Something flashed across the girl’s face, but was gone before Koschei could decipher its meaning.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I have this friend, something like that happened to him. I’ve seen how hard it can be.”
The corner of Koschei’s mouth turned up despite itself. “Lucky man,” he said.
“What?” the girl asked.
“Your expression,” he explained. “I used to look at him that way. Like he’s the greatest thing in all the universe, and you have no idea what you did to deserve even a moment of someone like him’s time. Like you don’t think you can ever be good enough to deserve him. Like you’re terrified he’ll someday wake up and see you the way everyone else sees you, or worse, the way you see yourself. So you don’t tell him how much you love him, hoping it will hurt less when he inevitably does.”
The girl winced, glancing away, and Koschei knew he had hit the mark dead on.
“Do yourself a favor, darling. Tell him. Tell him every chance you get. Do that for me?”
“Did you?” the girl asked.
Koschei shook his head. “Not enough. Not everything.”
The girl nodded, looking back out at the grounds, thinking.
“Tell me about him?” she asked suddenly.
“He was an idiot,” he started, and the girl snorted. Koschei felt himself smile against his will. “He really was. But he was also a genius. I was one of the few people who could keep up with his rambling. And god did he ramble. He would see something and it would spark a hours-long speech about who knows what, and he would always end up ten subjects away from where he started. And he was always getting into some sort of trouble, but he would somehow manage to flip the situation and make it better than before. He asked me to run away with him once, and I almost did. I should have.”
The girl laughed. “Have we fallen in love with the same man?"
“That would be something,” Koschei snorted, his laugh dropping from his face again a moment later. “God, I regret not going. Maybe if I had, he wouldn’t have-”
Koschei swallowed painfully, stubbornly blinking back tears, and the girl put a hand on his shoulder, silently reassuring him. Grateful, he shot her a crooked, watery smile. They stood in silence together for a minute before a crash sounded from somewhere inside the building and both of them jumped.
“I should probably get back,” the girl sighed, looking back at the hall. “If you ever need me, you’ll find me, yeah?”
Koschei nodded, shooting her a brief half smile. She took this as permission to leave, picking her tray up with one hand and making her way back to the room inside.
“Sorry,” the girl said, turning back as she reached the door. “I just realized I never got your name.”
“Kos,” he supplied without thinking.
“Kos,” the girl repeated and a smile spread across her face. “I’m Rose.”
----
The Doctor stood with his back to a wall, a tray held in one hand, the other behind him. As people passed he would hold the tray up, letting them absently swipe a drink.
Parties like this always made his skin crawl. Made him feel wrong. (Made him feel like Theta. Theta, who had loved parties like these. Who had viewed them as a challenge. Who had looked forward to the moment he found the hands that fit perfectly in his, wrapping his arms around a slim waist to pull his other half into a dark hallway. Theta, who he had buried so far down that he could almost forget.)
He had had Rose to distract him from the memories, but she had disappeared, swept away by the crowd, leaving him to their mercy. Now all he wanted to do was run. But he couldn’t leave Rose. He wouldn’t. She was one of the only good things he had left, and he would do all he could to protect that. Even if it meant he had had to stand here and hold his hemorrhaging mind together with just a sonic and some world-class repression.
----
As Koschei turned to finally rejoin the party, the sounds of hissing pistons and loud mechanical footsteps caught his ear. A second later a light flashed on and Koschei spun around. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the blinding spotlights directed towards the house, but when they did he began to make out the forms of metallic men marching towards him. He frowned, glancing around, and noticed Rose on the next balcony over, frozen.
Ducking behind the curtain, Koschei dashed over to her, pushing the next curtain aside and grabbing the girl’s wrist.
“C’mon,” he urged, ignoring how she flinched. “Rose, we’ve got to go.”
Tearing her eyes away from the oncoming threat, Rose nodded and let him drag her back into the Tyler Mansion.
“What are they?” She asked as she raced along behind him.
Koschei shrugged. “No clue, but I’m assuming not good. Let's go.”
“Rose!” A man's voice called, and a second later Koschei was tugged to the left by a man with spiky brown hair as he pulled Rose over to a window. Groaning, Koschei followed them and watched as the man pressed his face to a window, squinting through.
“It's happening again,” the man gasped, making Rose glance up at him in concern.
“What do you mean?” She asked, placing a hand on the man's arm.
“I’ve seen them before.”
“What are they?” Rose asked.
“Cybermen,” the man said, and a moment later a window on the other side of the room shattered, a metal fist coming through followed by one of the ‘cybermen’. The room full of socialites exploded in panic, screams filling the room as more windows shattered. A moment before their window broke, the man pulled Rose away, tugging her safely behind him.
‘Ah,' Koschei thought, following behind them. ‘So this was the man they had talked about.’
As the cybermen settled into a perimeter around the terrified socialites, Koschei found their trio just behind the President.
“Mr. Lumic,” the President said, and Koschei made a face. Of course it was Lumic.
“Mister President,” Lumic said, his voice just as nasally and annoying as Koschei remembered. “I suppose a remark about crashing the party would be appropriate at this point.”
“I forbade this,” the President protested, and Koschei rolled his eyes. Literally anyone could have told him that Lumic would ignore any opposition. It was almost sad that he seemed genuinely surprised.
“These are my children, sir,” Lumic proclaimed. “Would you deny my family?”
From beside him, he heard Rose ask her unknown man if they were robots, which the man denied.
“Who were these people?” the President asked, and Koschei heard Rose gasp.
“They’re people?” Rose asked, as Lumic continued his speech.
“They were,” Rose’s man said quietly, glancing around at the gathered socialites. Koschei could almost see him come to the same conclusion he had a moment before. None of them were meant to be leaving this party alive. “‘Till they had all their humanity taken away. That's a living brain jammed inside a cybernetic body, with a heart of steel. All emotions removed.”
“Why no emotion?” Rose asked.
The man’s voice became even lower as he responded. “Because it hurts.”
“And now I leave you in their capable hands,” Lumic was saying as Koschei tuned back into his self-righteous monologue. “Goodnight, Mr. President.”
“We have been upgraded,” one of the cybermen announced into the silence that Lumic had been taking up a moment before.
“Into what?” Rose’s man asked, taking a half-step forward to challenge the cyberman.
“The next level of mankind,” the cyberman replied. “We are Human point two. Every citizen will receive a free upgrade. You will become like us.”
“I'm sorry,” the President said, turning so he could face more than one cyberman at once. “I'm so sorry for what's been done to you, but listen to me. This experiment ends tonight.”
“Upgrading is compulsory.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Don't,” Koschei warned.
“What if I refuse?” the President asked again.
“Warrington,” Koschei repeated, “don't.”
“What happens if I refuse?” President Warrington insisted.
“Then you are not compatible.”
“What happens then?” the President challenged.
“You will be deleted,” the cyberman said coldly, bringing a hand up to Warrington’s neck.
As blue electricity flooded the President’s body from the cyberman’s touch, Rose’s man grabbed one hand, and Koschei the other, and together they dove out a window amidst the chaos.
“There's nothing we can do!” The man cried as Rose protested, trying to return to the manor.
“My mum's in there!” Rose cried
“She is not your mother!” the man shouted, and Koschei figured that was probably a story he would hear if they survived the next twenty minutes. “Come on!”
A row of Cybermen appeared in front of them as they tried to escape across the lawn. Koschei tugged them in the direction of the back of the house. As they passed a window, a figure dove out, and Rose turned to see who it was.
“Pete!” she called, beckoning the man to follow them. The man quickly obeyed, following them to the end of the house.
“Is there a way out?” Rose’s man asked.
“The side gates,” Pete Tyler called back, leading them towards them. “Who are you? How do you know so much?”
“You wouldn’t believe it in a million years,” Rose’s man replied, and Koschei’s snort was cut off as another row of cybermen rounded the corner in front of them.
They turned back, and were quickly joined by two more figures, these ones with guns. Rose seemed to recognise one of them, so Koschei half tuned them out, scanning the field for any escape routes.
A thought flitted across Koschei’s brain, that this party had ended with him running across open fields, and he winced, shaking his head to clear it. This was not the time. There were cybermen circling them.
“Put the guns down,” Rose’s man said when the newest figures’ guns didn’t work. “Bullets won't stop them.”
One of them, the one who didn’t look identical, ignored him and began shooting at the cybermen again, and Rose’s man grabbed the gun from his hands.
“No! Stop shooting, now!” he yelled, and then turned to the cybermen, raising his hands. “We surrender! Hands up. There's no need to damage us. We're good stock. We volunteer for the upgrade program. Take us to be processed.”
Koschei really hoped the man had some sort of a plan, as he felt for the twin screwdrivers in his pocket. One laser, that belonged to him, and one sonic, that had been his .
“You are rogue elements,” one of the cybermen said as they drew nearer.
“But we surrender!” Rose’s man protested.
“You are incompatible,” the cyberman continued.
“But this is a surrender!”
“You will be deleted.”
“But we're surrendering!” Rose’s man insisted. “Listen to me, we surrender!”
“You are inferior,” the cyberman said, ignoring him. “Man will be reborn as Cyberman, but you will perish under maximum deletion.”
Koschei groaned as the cybermen held out their arms, closing the circle. Sighing, he pulled the laser screwdriver from his pocket and sent a charge through the ring of cybermen, disintegrating them.
“What the hell was that?” one of the identical men asked, and Koschei rolled his eyes.
“Or, alternatively, we could run,” Koschei suggested.
“Everybody in!” A woman called, as a blue van drove up next to them.
There was a dash for the back of the truck, made by all except Pete. Before he could get too far, though, Koschei’s hand shot out and grabbed Pete’s arm, stopping him.
“My wife’s in there!” he protested as Koschei dragged him towards the back of the van behind Rose.
“She’s dead,” Koschei told him bluntly, and shoved him into the van. “Do you want her to die for nothing?”