The Legend of Gallifrey Part Seven: The Confessions of a Time Lord
The Doctor knew something was going to go wrong when the bald, withered man appeared in the TARDIS control room.
Bald men who mysteriously appeared in control rooms were never good news, especially when they were ancient Time Lord legends. The Doctor recognized the man instantly as a member of an ancient Time Lord legendary species called the Shakri, who served something called the Tally. Normally, this led them to wipe out races that would one day infect the universe, but they'd also been known to act as judges over other species as well. They also had a thing for the number seven, which explained why they were appearing to the Doctor now. This was his seventh form.
The Shakri raised its hand and pointed at the Doctor. For a moment, nothing happened, but then something in the Doctor's pocket began to heat up. Before it could set him on fire, he pulled it out and dropped it on the ground.
It was a disc of golden/bronze colored metal with one side covered in Gallifreyan writing, the Doctor's confession dial. Bigger on the inside and psychically aligned to the Doctor, so on the eve of his death he could enter it and make peace will all his demons. They were created on Gallifrey by the very best of timesmiths and were given to all Time Lords as they graduated.
The disc spiraled open. The Doctor had once heard a rumor that the inside of a confession dial looked different every time it was opened, but he'd never opened his dial before, as it wasn't meant to be opened until a Time Lord's death day. The inside of the confession dial in this moment looked like an ancient maze made of stone with vines hanging everywhere. In the center was a large patch of grass, likely where the Doctor would start out.
"You will enter," said the Shakri.
The Doctor looked up at it. "Why?" he asked.
"The Tally sees that it is your time to confess to us your seven deadly secrets to us," is said. Then it raised its hand and the open dial began to glow fiercely, and the light began to envelop the Doctor.
A moment later, the Doctor stood in the middle of the clearing he'd seen earlier. The walls were much higher than they'd seemed from the outside, there was no chance that the Doctor would ever be able to climb them.
Through the sky, he could see the ceiling of the TARDIS until the dial began to close. Then a normal sky was visible way over the Doctor's head.
The Shakri appeared in the sky. "Your worst fear is chasing you, Doctor. If it catches you, you will have to confess to it or die."
Behind the Doctor, something shuffled through the grass. He turned to look. There were six people shuffling towards him slowly, all with rotting skin and milky white eyes. One was an old man who dragged a walking stick behind him. One was a black haired man with a crooked bow tie and a recorder hanging from around his wrist. One was a man with curly white hair and frilly sleeves. One was a man with curly brown hair, a hat, and a long scarf that dragged behind him. One was a blonde man with a stick of rotten celery on his lapel, and one was a man with curly blonde hair who wore a brightly colored coat. They were zombified versions of the Doctor's past regenerations.
The Doctor turned and ran towards the opening of the maze. The zombies were relatively slow, but the Doctor would tire out eventually while the zombies wouldn't.
The Doctor ran for what felt like hours, taking every left and every third right. He remembered this as he ran in order to find his way back. He finally stopped for a breath at a dead end.
Something behind him scratched. He spun around. The old man with the dragging cane slowly stumbled towards him. A zombified version of his first incarnation was coming to kill him unless he confessed something to it.
The caneless hand reached out towards him. The other hand seemed to struggle with the cane for a moment, but it didn't appear to have the strength to lift it.
The Doctor's mind raced as the hand reached towards him. "Susan!" he said.
"It was a mistake to leave her on future Earth. If she ever found out what would happen in that future, just on the edge of her lifetime, she'd lose all faith in me!"
The hand froze. Then it spun around in an unmistakable 'go on' gesture.
"As Susan enters her thirteenth form, the Daleks will attack Earth again," the Doctor said. The zombie in front of him was slowly dissolving, but it stopped whenever he stopped talking. "Susan will be caught right in the middle of it all, and a virus meant for Humans will kill them all. I imagine she'll find a way to escape, but she'll have witnessed the death of a whole planet. That can do a lot to someone, and who knows what Susan will have become by then?"
The hand dissolved completely, and the Doctor breathed out. He'd regretted never going back to see Susan again, but he still had six lifetimes until he was out.
The Doctor began walking again. That confession didn't really count as a secret, the Dalek re-invasion of Earth was a well known event that the Time Lords had seen long ago, but apparently the confession that he knew of it was enough.
He came to a clearing, smaller than the one he'd started in but still relatively large, filled with tall grass. The Shakri appeared in the center and smiled at him, with a hint of malice in its face.
"You set up your own granddaughter to be emotionally damaged, and you never thought twice about it, Doctor. What does that say about you?" it said.
"You talk a lot," the Doctor said. "In the old legends, the Shakri never talked about much except their precious Tally."
The Shakri grinned. Then it vanished, and the second zombie plowed its way through the grass towards him, its recorder making a faint whistling noise as the air rushed through it. It held out both its hands as it shuffled towards him.
The Doctor's mind raced. The Shakri seemed very sure that the Doctor has seven deadly secrets, but his mind had gone completely blank. Then his mind turned towards his future.
"I've become increasingly erratic," he said. The zombie stopped a foot away from him and its edges blurred.
"Oh, my first few incarnations were alright," the Doctor said. "But over time, they became more emotional and unpredictable. It was my last incarnation that had the most dramatic change in personality. Sure, it was only stubbornness, but it meant more when I regenerated into a person with hypnotic abilities. I'm afraid of what might happen to me given enough time."
The second zombie dissolved completely. If the Shakri was sticking to schedule, the Doctor would have a little time to catch his breath before the Shakri appeared to talk about his last confession, then the next zombie would appear. So the Doctor went for a leisurely walk through the maze, watching for the Shakri and waiting to chat about his future.
He came across a pillar engraved with gallifreyan writing, telling the story of his past. It spiraled down the pillar. It was talking about Ace leaving when it reached the ground.
The Shakri shimmered into view once again. It held a small device in its hand that it held towards the Doctor. The device lit up.
"I'm afraid of what might happen to me given enough time," it said.
"Your own words," said the Shakri. "You're afraid of what could happen to you in the future. What do you call someone who's afraid of himself?"
"Smart," replied the Doctor. "Everyone has the potential to be good or bad. Take me and the Master, we were both sent to look into the Untempered Schism, a hole in time. While I ran from it, the Master went insane, but what if that had been me?"
"Was it the Master who went insane, Doctor?" it asked, in a very holier-than-thou tone. "Look at all the people who've died for you over the years. Nobody could stand that except someone who's crazy, ready to wipe out a universe on a whim. And you would, wouldn't you Doctor?"
The Shakri's speech was interrupted by a rotting hand with a frilly sleeve reaching through it towards the Doctor. He instinctively leaned backwards, but the zombie continued towards him at the same speed as he went backwards.
The Shakri reconstituted itself, but this time it didn't vanish. Instead, it watched as the zombie stumbled towards the Doctor.
"I want to die," said the Doctor, in a small voice.
The Shakri grinned. The zombie melted immediately.
The small device in the Shakri's hand grew larger, extending into something that looked rather like a rifle.
"Elaborate," it said.
The Doctor took a deep breath. "All the people you mentioned; Adric, Kamelion, Jamie, Zoe- well, those last two aren't actually dead, only the versions of them I knew. But the ones who are dead, they weigh on my memory. I once visited a civilisation where they believed that the souls of those you have wronged are on your shoulders as you climb a mountain. Imagine the weight I will have to carry when my life is finally over. I can only look forward to the summit, if there is one. The myth never says if you climb forever or not."
The Shakri nodded. Then it vanished, and something landed on the Doctor's hair. He yanked it off and looked at it.
It was a brown hat.
He looked up to see a long, multicolored scarf hanging towards him, and the zombie of his fourth face staring down at him from the top of the totem with empty, milky eyes.
The zombie leaned forwards and began to fall towards the Doctor, but he jumped out of the way as it fell onto the ground. The Doctor heard a loud CRACK as several bones in the zombie's body snapped.
It gripped the ground with one hand and began pulling itself towards the Doctor. The other hand was twisted in a grotesque way and dragged on the ground. This one was the least threatening of them all, so the Doctor stood there a moment to see what it would do.
When it grabbed his foot, he howled in pain. His shoe looked damaged, like someone had poured acid on it. The zombie was undeterred by the Doctor's screech and continued crawling towards him.
"Me!" he yelled. "It was me who hid the vortesaur in the academy stables! It was me who released that small canister of Vashta Nerada into Professor Turley's pet house! I don't need the darkness to build up inside me, it's already there!"
The zombie crumbled into the ground, leaving the Doctor alone with a totem, a melted shoe, and an injured foot. He pulled out his umbrella and used it as a cane to walk himself into another passageway. This one was only maybe twenty yards until it opened up into a small forest. The Shakri stepped out from one of the trees.
"You have evil in your veins, Doctor. You wonder why all your heroes, like Omega and your own friend Koschei, or as you say, the Master, go crazy? They don't, Doctor. The evil is already in their veins, placed there when they enter the Academy by looking into the Untempered Schism. You yourself have confirmed that evil is in you, Doctor. You must remember this when your future self makes the ultimate decision."
"The what?"
"The paradox, Doctor. The one you can remember hearing about all through your travels yet can't remember ever entering. You were chosen by the Tally for more reasons than just being the seventh Doctor. Your friend M has already sealed the fate of your next form, so you were the next logical choice."
The Doctor remembered back in his second form, when M had given him that message that would open for his eighth face. Was that what the Shakri was referring to?
As if reading his mind, the Shakri nodded. "Your friend M is smart, Doctor, almost too smart. The Tally takes an interest in the Doctor as his actions have not only saved us, but stopped us as well. M knows we are most interested in the face that chooses to save or destroy the universe, but she also knows that your next face cannot face the Shakri, he would not survive. He has suffered too much."
The Shakri faded from view, and right on cue the fifth zombie stumbled out from the trees. The celery on its lapel was rotten, more so than it had been in the clearing, and the brightness of his suit added to the eeriness of his glazed eyes.
"Right on time," said the Doctor. "I think my next confession will continue along the lines of my previous one. How this: the paradox scares me, and what I've seen it do scares me. And yet, I can't wait to see what causes it and what happens to it, good or bad."
The zombie stopped in its tracks, but it didn't dissolve. Instead, it turned around and shuffled back into the forest.
The Shakri appeared again, but not from the trees like last time. Instead, its face appeared in the sky, causing its voice to echo all through the dial.
"You asked why I spoke more than the other Shakri, Doctor. It is because I am not a Shakri, I've only employed one to speak for me. I'm sure you've noticed that I told you that you had seven confessions, yet there's only six zombies? I'll be who you're facing for your last confession."
The Doctor stood still for a moment, taking that in. Then he hobbled through the forest without seeing the fifth zombie at all and continued through the maze.
He was surprised when he found the next stop to be the center, where he'd started. He was not as surprised to see the final zombie, the one wearing a multicolored coat. It was standing still, probably daydreaming about brains, when it saw him and began shuffling towards him.
"The confession dial, the Shakri, the zombies of my past selves, I know what this is all about," he said. "Someone is preparing me to enter the paradox. I figured that out quick, because I know what my final confession is."
The final zombie crumbled to dust, and the whole maze rumbled. The walls began to spin around him and retract into the ground, which was changing from grass to the same golden/bronze metal as the dial. The whole area began to shrink, until it was a small platform of maybe eight meters in diameter. Then a hole opened up in the center, and figure in a black Time Lord robe rose out of it. He turned towards the Doctor and grinned.
The Valeyard.
He was the Doctor's evil side, only given form once, back when the Doctor's sixth form was put on trial, but in truth he'd always been there, lurking at the back of his mind.
"You said you knew what your final confession was to be," said the Valeyard. "Come along, Doctor. The one secret you keep even from me. Tell me your name."
The Doctor had expected the question, but it still hit him like a punch to the gut. He couldn't tell the Valeyard his name, he needed to stall and think of a plan.
"How is it you have a physical form?" asked the Doctor.
"Stalling, are you? Very well, I was given form by the Shakri. Everything I told you about M and your future selves still applies. The only thing I have to add is that in order to judge you, they enlisted my help. They had a powerful psychic extract me from your mind in your future, the last time you met them. I know a great deal about your future, including what the paradox is."
The paradox was obviously centered around the Doctor, he'd figured that out a long time ago, but the exact nature of it was still a mystery. From what the Shakri had said earlier, it was his ninth face who started it, but something about those words didn't seem right.
"Okay then," said the Doctor. "I'll tell you my name."
The Valeyard's ears perked.
"My name is Basil."
His face tensed. "You think you're funny, Doctor? Wait until you are trapped here for all eternity, with the ghosts of your past lives!"
The zombies appeared from nowhere and began lumbering towards the Doctor, arms outstretched, and no confessions were going to hold them back this time, but the Doctor didn't need a confession.
A small circle of the floor underneath the Doctor lifted him upwards, about six feet above the reach of the zombies. The Valeyard's tense face melted into worry as his plan began to fall apart.
"You didn't expect me to remember, did you?" the Doctor asked. "Confession dials are tailored to a specific Time Lord. I can control the landscape as much as you can." The circle of floor began to rise again.
"I'm cutting off all my control over the dial," the Doctor yelled down. "All controls of the interior are from outside. You'll be absorbed into the dial and repurposed. In fact, I have a lovely design in mind for you called the Veil."
The circle of floor with the Doctor on it reached the dial's limit, and the Doctor's view was blocked by a blinding light. A moment later, he was in his TARDIS, the dial a few feet away. With a whir, it closed, smothering the faint cries of anger from the Valeyard within.
With a jolt, the Doctor realised someone was leaning on the TARDIS console; a woman with long black hair, a black jogging jacket over a blue collared shirt, dark red pants, and red converse sneakers.
"M," said the Doctor.
She nodded with a faint grin on her face. "Things seem to be coming together, I see," she said.
The Doctor nodded slowly. A paradox of cosmic proportions, caused by one of his future faces. The Doctors were entering the paradox to solve it. One of the Doctor's worst fears would one day come true: he would become someone unpredictable and violent, willing to sacrifice the universe for what he thought was right.
M apparently guessed what he was thinking. She scooted around the console and gestured towards the controls. The Doctor put the confession dial into his pocket and walked over to the console, grabbing a lever.
"Aren't you going to fade away mysteriously?" asked the Doctor.
She shook her head. "I've already visited all your faces that I need to, even the ones in the future. I knew you would need me most, so I saved you for last."
The Doctor nodded appreciatively. Then he shut down the shields, allowing the paradox to pull them in.
And the Doctor and M disappeared into the paradox.