[Fic] What does it matter how a man falls down?
At 3:47 AM Thane walks into the prisoners' room and tranqs everyone there, save one.
At 3:45 AM, there's blood on Thane's hand where he smashed it into a wall. He's beginning to get that there's something wrong here, and for a second he thinks that if he finds a window and walks out of it, he's not going to hit the ground, just keep falling.
There are plenty of chances to walk out, but when he steps into the prisoners' room he doesn't take any of them. He darts the breathers, never mind that one won't be conscious if Chicago started a parade for her and the rest are sleeping anyway, but he doesn't dart the Doctor, because he's the one who needs to see this. It breaks a long silence on Thane's part. He's been leaving them all unmolested, between fits of wanting to throw that paramedic out the hole in the wall.
What's he supposed to do to them, anyway? All of them are broken, except the ones he can't break. And he's getting tired of chasing after new ones.
There's a small bald patch on Lang's head where he shaved away the hair, sterilized the skin, and drilled down through the skull to extract a bloodclot from the surface of her brain. That clot could have killed her. Or it might not have. He took the job from the medic because of the two of them one was far more experienced working with blood and drilling, bone and damage, keeping someone alive when they shouldn't be. And it wasn't the one whose job it was to save people.
At one point - wasn't he - at one point - if he could remember-
Thane walks back out. Walks back in. Lays out all his guns, one by one, side by side in the middle of the room.
His concussion pistol is gone, which isn't a good thing as aside from the tranqs it was the only real nonlethal he had. There's the STEN dart gun, a few semiautomatics and automatics, more pistols than should really fit on a person but all of which came from Hart. Thane walks to grab his pack and lays out everything he has, the knives, skewers, corkscrew, pliers, clamps, fishing line, nails, needles, eyedropper, snips, everything, making a neat grid of the instruments for no real reason except that it seems like things should be laid out and clinical here. Everything should be laid out. He looks to the Doctor.
The Doctor looks at him. His eyes don't look broken, except for the ways in which they do - but how the fuck do you tell if you've broken a Time Lord, anyway? Maybe all of this was a miscalculation. Maybe they don't break.
...maybe Thane doesn't care any more. Calculations and clinically weighed options and he was good at this, for a long, long time, and now he can't sleep and he can't die and he can't keep himself together with two hands cuffs and staples and watching himself go through the exacting motions is a farce now if it was ever anything else. So while the Doctor is still eyeing him, still deciding what to say, Thane walks to him and drops to his knees and grabs handfuls of the Doctor's shirt and buries his face in the Doctor's stomach and then. Starts. Laughing.
The laughing wasn't intentional.
None of this is intentional any more.
The Doctor shifts, and discomfort is written in plain language in the way he can't pull away, the rattling of the cuffs that hold him to the wall, the hitch in his breathing. And how to respond to that? Thane doesn't know. One answer, a quiet You do know you're insane, right? floats in the air above him, temporal echo or auditory hallucination. Insane is the word they use when they don't understand.
"I think I was wrong," Thane admits. "This little sideshow I've put on for you. I don't think it matters to you the way it's supposed to."
And he's answered by the tightening of every muscle in the Doctor's body, a tight and trembling breath-
"It's not enough," Thane says, before the Doctor can speak. "It's not nearly enough, but I'm only human. What am I supposed to do, burn down the Earth? But this isn't your planet. You've got other places to go to for refuge." And just like that it's anger, now, not disgust, disappointment, shame - it was never exactly shame. Thane's fingers are twisting against skin, now, and his teeth are gritted, breath hissing, body trembling, and what the hell did he think he'd be able to do. Only human. Not even that, according to the Doctor. No. Seven years of hunting something he couldn't comprehend and where does that leave him but here, were all his allies turn on him, where he has all the cards and none of the advantages, and where he's only just learning that the final insult is that he can't win and he can't die.
He's left off talking for too long.
"You don't have the right," the Doctor says, voice all cold anger and worldless threat, "to come to me asking for - what is this? Absolution? Advice? I-"
"I am not asking," Thane says, looking up, "for anything."
"Then what do you want?" The Doctor pulls against the chains, and for a moment Thane thinks their expressions are mirrored. Pain hate rage, all of it thwarted, run up against something they can't be or control. The Doctor can't get out of here. Thane can't rise to match him. "What am I supposed to say to you?" the Doctor demands, like it was ever really a question, like words can be weapons and Thane would have left him with weapons. "Because I have tried to understand, to offer you another way, I have tried-" and there his voice breaks, just a little, and Thane stands up.
"I am going to break you," he says, "and if it's not like this, it will be some other way. I know lots of ways. I will find a way inside you. I will find a way to hurt you. I will do everything I can to you, and when you're on the floor bleeding and you don't have enough sense left to cry for yourself it still won't be enough and I will find your friends and start again. There are more Time Lords in Chicago."
Because if I step off a ledge, I will not stop falling. I have seven years behind me and eternity on the other end. There is nowhere for me to go.
"There is nothing I can do to you that will match what you've done to me," he says, searching the Doctor's eyes for meaning until he doesn't recognize them as eyes any more. "It'll be better for you. It'll end for you when you can't go any lower. But here's the thing. It'll never end for me."
All of that inability. That hurting and never being able to touch, that digging without getting anywhere. He thought this was a victory, capturing the Doctor. It's not a victory, is it? It's an open exhibition of what can only be defeat.
He reaches up and uncuffs one of the Doctor's hands, twining his own fingers through the Doctor's, bringing the Doctor's hand down to his lips. It's almost a benediction.
"So this is your opportunity," he says. The Doctor can't free himself, but there are... other things he can do. Contact psychic. You have the choice to condemn me to this. You can trap me here. Let me live. Or you can do what you've wanted to do since the beginning.
He brings the Doctor's hand to his hair, weaves it through, lets him feel the human heat radiating from his skull. Contact psychic. These were always the terms.
"Show me the quality of your mercy," Thane says.