The drums in his head drown out everything else. They're deafening, demanding, and they're taking over him. They always want the one thing, always the same single-minded demand: war, violence, destruction. He doesn't want to give it to them, it's not what he does, this is the one thing he never does, but they are strong, and he isn't, he's disoriented and dizzy and small and frightened.

And there is someone here to destroy, someone who he may have needed to destroy anyway (not destroy, heal, he was trying to heal him), and him is what the drums focus on. They want to hurt the other, to break him, want to make him a part of the universe again. They are entropy, and they want to reclaim him.

So the Doctor reaches out, pushing himself off the workbench and swaying, needing to reach, to touch and to kill. He almost does, the drums nearly win, they nearly manage to turn him into what they insist is his true self; a killer, a murderer, a man who doesn't care, a man who takes what's rightfully his, just because he can. But then the other speaks his name.

It burns through his mind, through the drums, to the very center of himself, where he is keeping it, always has kept it, safe from prying eyes and minds. The other speaks it, and the Doctor can now feel the other in his mind, and they are so much more, so much bigger. Against them, the drums are nothing, they're insignificant. He gives himself up to them almost without thinking - it's not up to the pebble if it gets claimed and formed and relocated by the tidal waves, it's just what happens. It's nature.

They touch him, and he grows completely still, his own mind passive, an indifferent observer to what the other plans to do with him. They are the sea, he's the pebble, and this is how it's supposed to be. The drums will have to accept that, too, they're nothing more than nature, either.