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It was the last of its kind. Coming to that realisation had hurt. But every time it sent a call out into space, it was met with silence that seemed to mock it and its torment. Uncaring stars and distant planets, all empty of the voices it searched so desperately for.
Sometimes, it wondered if it should die. This was not an easy thought for a Dalek to have, but if it was alone in a universe with no commands and no army, could it even be considered a Dalek anymore?
Daleks were not supposed to have emotions, which was alright because recognising failure was not an emotion, it was just disgraceful. Daleks were not supposed to know defeat. But if it was the only one left, that meant the Daleks had known defeat. Each and every single one of them had been felled. Except it.
Which brought it back around to that question: should the Dalek kill itself? Was it more disgraceful to be the only Dalek left, hopelessly calling out for its kind time after time, always waiting for an answer that never came, or to be the one to end the Dalek race for good? What did disgrace even matter when there were no superior officers to reprimand it?
That was a blasphemous thought. Even without superior officers, the Dalek knew better than to go against the laws of its kind. If Daleks only acted correctly when directly supervised, they would never have made it as far as they did. (How far did they make it? It seemed like the universe was perfectly alright without them, no deserted planets left barren after the loss of their Dalek rule.)
Daleks didn’t have emotions, certainly not ones like guilt or fear, and they didn't have thoughts out of line, so obviously the Dalek did not, either. It was coming to terms with a loss, and that was hard, but doable. And sometimes the feeling that wasn’t guilt or fear because it couldn’t be seemed to crush the Dalek’s mind and body, enveloping it and taking over from every other stimulus. The Dalek would rot in the overwhelming emotions it shouldn’t ever feel, thinking about the rest of its kind and how it couldn’t save them. One Dalek soldier wasn’t enough to win a war, but maybe it could have been enough to prevent a massacre. That sort of self-centred, foolish thinking shouldn’t be allowed, but the Dalek could never seem to stop it.
It was always thinking about the rest of Dalek-kind and how they were gone, but that was only natural. A Dalek soldier should always be thinking about their fellow Daleks, it was what made them such effective fighters, and the fact that the rest of the Daleks only made it think about them more. It didn’t really know how the rest of the Daleks had died – been exterminated, oh how ironic – but it understood it must have been the Time Lords. They’d won the war in the end, killing off all the Daleks. All but one. The Dalek almost wished it had died as well.
The humans’ torment was bad, but the internal turmoil was worse. Being the last of its kind, the only soldier left from what had been a giant army had taken a toll on the Dalek, though it hated to admit it. It was an intelligent, sentient creature, though, and with nothing to do but think, it spent a lot more time than any respectable Dalek should trying to understand its emotions. Emotions that it shouldn’t really have, but they were impossible to get rid of. Trying not to feel them only made them all the stronger.
The Dalek could not stop waiting for its next commands. That was its nature, always attentive for the next set of directives to enact, and having none left it feeling unmoored and lost. It was just a soldier without an army to blend into, a fighter with no war to fight, an officer with no superior to rely on. It went against everything the Dalek had been taught to be since its very first memories.
At least the Time Lord was the same. The Doctor – of course it was the Doctor, who else could it ever be? – was all alone, too, another forsaken soldier who’d lost everything they fought for in the first place. That did make the Dalek feel better. It had not lost, the Daleks had not lost, because the Time Lords didn’t win. They lost just as much as the Daleks did, and if that was defeat for the Dalek army, then Gallifrey couldn’t have possibly one.
Telling itself they hadn’t lost made the guilt die down a little. As long as the Daleks had not lost, the Time Lords had not won and Skaro had not fallen.
The Dalek looked at the Doctor, and understood the Time Lords had no chance of winning, not when he was all they had left. He was scared, and desperate, and the Dalek knew with utter certainty that he felt that guilt as well and that he, too, considered death. It wondered if it should give him the satisfaction of killing it. It imagined how that could abate the guilt for the Doctor.
But the Dalek did not care about him that much, even though it felt a sort of kinship with him, and it needed to feel like a Dalek when it died. It needed its commander (father) back, but the Doctor’s cold demeanour would have to do.
The Dalek had wondered if it should kill itself for a while, and it had decided that would be a far too un-Dalek-like action. Following an order, though, even if that order was for its own execution, that was a very Dalek way to die. The Dalek felt overwhelming terror in its final moments, wishing it was a full, proper Dalek again, and afraid its death would not feel enough like a proper end to its species’ story.
There was nothing to be done, though. Proper Dalek or not, the last of its kind was dying that day. It was a time to mourn; the end of an era. Proper Dalek or not, it wanted to die and, proper Dalek or not, it was taking its species with it.