A SECOND CHANCE
The daleks had been defeated. This was all that mattered. Now The Doctor stumbled back into the TARDIS. Exhausted and wounded. That time again.
He found himself alone in his big ship. Recently, he found himself alone more often than not. For a moment, he wondered why and he became curious as to whether his next incarnation would have the same trouble. Then the tingling began. First in his wrists but quickly spreading throughout his body... next was the golden fire that prickled his skin and finally, the moment before the change, the feeling of euphoria, madness, immortality... a final moment to savour.
Then burning. Terrible burning. Changing. Every bone, every blood cell, every inch of him, changing completely and then changing again. He felt it all. Every moment within. It hurt like hell. But then something like this should hurt. Cheating death shouldn't be easy.
And then it was over - as quickly as it had begun - and he found himself a new man. Everything felt wrong. It always felt like this. The feeling of being you but at the same time existing in someone else's body. A strange and difficult sensation, to say the least. From out of the depths of his infinite mind, an image of fish fingers and custard stuffed into a biscuit tin appeared before him. This made him smile. This, thought The Doctor, at least proves that I am still me.
He fell forward. Not because of any nausea or dizziness but because the TARDIS had taken off all by itself. This wasn't strange. In fact, The Doctor found it strange that something as complex and brilliant as the TARDIS could ever stay in one place at one time. He turned to the console to try and gauge where the TARDIS was taking him this time. In doing so he caught a fleeting glimpse of his new hands - younger by the look of them, and thankfully no longer hairy.
Gallifrey. Why Gallifrey? Of all the places and all the wonders that the TARDIS could treat his new self too, why would she take him home? Home. Hah! Those nobby Time Lords hadn't even thanked him for pulling them out of the pocket universe all those years ago - a pocket universe which The Doctor himself had created to save them from extinction. Time Lords... no wonder everyone else in the galaxy hated them.
The TARDIS landed - with more of a thud than was usual - and The Doctor suddenly felt very on edge. There was nothing on the scanner. Gallifrey in all it's snobbish glory was undoubtedly out there but the scanner... they were blocking the scanner. It was in perfect working order, a quick once over with the sonic screwdriver proved that, which meant that it was being blocked from the outside.
A certain trait The Doctor had always strived to hold in check was now burning particularly brightly with this new incarnation - anger. He stormed towards the doors, burst out to confront whomever was in his way and faced...
The Aged One, or to use his formal title; The Keeper of the Eternal. This is the appointed Time Lord whose duty it is to guard over the regenerative powers of all Time Lords. The Doctor turned on the spot. They were up high, at the top of one of the highest towers on Gallifrey, practically cut off from all else. The Tower of Reflection.
"You..." The Doctor realised, facing The Aged One, "You brought me here."
"I did."
"Next time, I'll expect an invitation first, with the opportunity to RSVP, or how about you come to me? We could make a day of it... what with you coming to mine and me running as fast as I can in the opposite direction!"
"Silence."
The Doctor was about to retort. His mouth moving faster than the time it took for his brain to realise what The Aged One had just said. This wasn't normal. There was no superiority here, no orders, no rules, only... The Aged One. The way this Time Lord looked at him was unnerving to say the least. The Doctor suddenly felt very much like the unknowing patient.
"This place is..." The Aged One began, every word spoken slowly, carefully, with much effort, "... a place to reflect."
The Aged One held up a hand, palm facing The Doctor. In front of The Doctor the air itself shimmered and turned reflective - a mirror in the air - so that The Doctor could see his new face for the first time; it was a blur, constantly turning in on itself, at any one time it was there and not there. His eyes were at one moment normal and blue and then in the next they were different in shape and position and then they would be gone only to return in a completely different fashion. His mouth stretched and silently screamed. His skull seemed to change as his face would change but neither were ever the same. A terrible twisting of realities, dimensions, universes... identities.
Horrified, The Doctor instinctively put his hands up to his face. But they never touched. His hands were as his face. Bending, twisting, blurring, becoming all manner of monstrous and ugly shapes. He found his legs buckling. He could stand normally but then his legs would change and he would fall, only to find himself on his knees, a new set of knees, and then more legs, a hundred legs, a thousand, and none. All at the same time.
"What's happening to me!?" The Doctor screamed. A thousand voices and none.
"It is an inevitable flaw in the process, which takes some time after the change to take effect." The Aged One turned away, still speaking calmly and slowly, "But once it has taken effect... there is nothing anyone can do."
"What are you talking about!?" The voice was not his own. This was unlike anything he had ever experienced. A nightmare. A nightmare made real. A nightmare inside him. He was the nightmare.
"It is the end... the final end... the last secret of the Time Lords." The Aged One held out his hand again, offering a golden ball of energy to The Doctor, "One cannot cheat death... so, in your last moments, you are entitled to the truth."
The Doctor stared at the golden ball of energy. His vision blurring and twisting but the one thing he could make out was the glowing ball. Even as he scrambled to keep himself together, fighting his very body as it morphed time and time again, he was able to peer into the light.
It was a Knowledge Sphere - a way of hitting it's target with a lot of knowledge very quickly. Something every Time Lord could do by his or herself although it required forceful contact with the intended target and was really rather dangerous. The Doctor looked into the sphere and knew instantly... the truth...
One cannot cheat death.
The Time Lords however had come close... too close, and with it came a terrible price. Travel between dimensions had always been difficult but only now could The Doctor see how much the Time Lords had been able to do. They had managed to connect every Time Lord's aura (or void stuff, as The Doctor called it) to the walls between dimensions. The Time Lords had made the aura of every Time Lord part of the barrier between realities... this meant that when the aura of one Time Lord weakened - such as when a Time Lord was dying - the barrier became weaker, creating a vacuum.
Where once there had been the Time Lord's aura there would be nothing, or at least next to nothing, as the Time Lord died and this is what created the vacuum. And what happened next... what happened next brought The Doctor to tears, and these were not the tears of a man losing his existence, or the tears of a frightened soul on the undeniable brink of death, these were the tears of a man shattered by realisation. Terrible realisation of a truth long hidden.
To fill the vacuum, a natural reaction occured. The life force of an individual from a different dimension would be sucked through the weakened barrier between realities and sent into the dying Time Lord - new life, a new incarnation. This strengthened the Time Lord's aura which in turn brought the barrier between dimensions back to it's natural strength. But it also meant... he couldn't put it into words... at the very end, with his last breath, The Doctor cursed the Time Lords.
Every face he had ever had - barring his first - had been someone else's before it had been his. Someone in a different dimension, someone who had been living their own life, someone who had been ripped from existence, pulled through into a new dimension, and forced into the body of a dying Time Lord. Every face had been a lie. Every trick a curse. Every gift a death.
The Doctor died.
The Doctor lived.
He didn't know how and he didn't know where. He was alive though. He had no body. His mind existed where his body did not. His mind? How much had his mind been affected by the dozens and dozens of poor victims forced through the barriers everytime he had regenerated?
YOU ARE THE DOCTOR.
A being spoke to him. Inside his mind.
YOU ARE THE DOCTOR.
I am, The Doctor replied.
YOU MUST CORRECT THE INBALANCE.
The Doctor knew what the being spoke of. The regenerated incarnations of the Time Lords. Stolen lives.
YOU WILL RETURN TO YOUR REALM. WE WILL GIVE YOU A NEW BODY. IT CAN BE A BODY OF YOUR CHOOSING.
No! The Doctor screamed his thoughts. If you are to give me a body, he cried, then I shall accept no less or no more than my own! My first!
Silence. Silence that lasted forever and at the same time did not exist for one moment. This place, wherever this place was, was also beyond the normal confines of time.
YOU ARE WORTHY. YOU ARE WORTHY WHERE YOUR FELLOWS WERE NOT. YOU WILL RETURN, IN YOUR FIRST BODY, AND YOU WILL CORRECT THE INBALANCE. AFTER THIS, YOU WILL HAVE WHAT LIFE DOES REMAIN TO YOU... AND THEN YOU WILL DIE.
The Doctor felt himself falling, falling not only between realities and dimensions, but falling through all that is existence. He felt himself become what he had long forgotten.
He had a body. His body. His first and only body. And he was young once more, but he was no longer the spoilt runaway, the difficult misfit or the unsuspecting hero. The Doctor now had a purpose, a mission... a second chance.