"Your old grandfather is going a tiny bit around the bend." - The Doctor (The Edge of Destruction)
"It is done, as we agreed."
It was Susan's voice, yet he knew it was not Susan. He couldn't remember why he was so certain, but the awareness of that incongruity drew him out of the blank darkness, demanding answers.
"As for your side of the agreement..." Susan's voice continued, trailing off into uncertainty.
The ship! It was her ship, taking Susan's form and speaking with her voice. Why had she done that? There was a gap in the world. He saw it clearly. Susan was. Then was not. He had agreed to bridge that gap. Hadn't he?
"I will bring her to you. Your timelines will join, and she will live again," he told the ship. He opened his eyes and found himself standing in the control room of Susan's TARDIS. Standing? Hadn't there been a chair? Yes. He saw it in the corner, the restraints now hanging limp, empty. He hadn't needed to touch them in order to free himself. He was simply - elsewhere.
"Will she blame me?" came the ship's plaintive question. "The paradox..."
"Why would Susan blame you for restoring what was stolen from her? What's one more paradox in the grand scheme of things?" He could sense the ship's unease. He smoothed it over with a reassuring thought before withdrawing back wholly into his own mind. He had no more need to hide inside the ship's intelligence. Susan's paradox would be the first of many, now that he was free to do as he wished. Now that there was no one to stop him.
He looked across the console at Missy. She was frozen in place, an almost comical look of surprise on her face. Her lips were rounded, stuck in the middle of saying something. "No," perhaps, or "No, that's not possible!"
The Doctor (not the Doctor) moved around the console to her side. A slight distortion of light betrayed an edge of discontinuous space. The ship had generated a stasis cell around her. It was a standard security feature on all time capsules constructed during the Time War. He reached out to straighten the metal circlet perched crookedly on her head. Underneath it, her hair was still short after a few weeks of growth in the other timeline.
Then he drew his hand back with a gasp. The control circlet. The sight of it was enough to call up old associations in his mind. He was... he was... not Zagreus. He stumbled backwards until he hit the wall, fighting for possession of his thoughts.
"What's wrong, Grandfather?" asked Susan's voice. "Are you all right?"
"It's nothing," he forced himself to say. He pushed off the wall, drawing himself back upright. Vague memories surfaced. The TARDIS medical bay. Programming the surgical bots. Freedom. He shook his head violently, then turned to the scanner and checked the readings. "Skaro. We're on Skaro."
"Yes, Grandfather," said the ship patiently. "You set the coordinates."
"Of course I did." He fumbled for the door control. "Susan. I have to find Susan. As for you... try to be inconspicuous."
"No one will see me," said the ship. "You will bring her back?"
"Yes, isn't that what we agreed?" The Doctor half-ran, half-fell out the door. He collided with another wall. Letting it support his weight, he turned around to look back at Susan's TARDIS. It had faded into a mere hint of a woman's outline. If he hadn't known to look for it, the shape would have slipped quietly out of his awareness.
"She will live again?" The whisper seemed to emanate from empty air.
"Yes," he repeated, not knowing if he was lying. He felt his way along the wall, the roughness of the bricks restoring his sense of order. He remembered that he had a physical presence in the world. It was right for his motion to be constrained by solid objects; the Doctor existed in a universe ruled by the laws of physics. As long as he held on to that knowledge, he could be the Doctor.
By the time he reached the corner of the building, he felt solid enough to stand without the support of the wall. He peered around the edge and recognized the front of Klade House. Kaled soldiers stood on guard at the entrance, keeping back a loose crowd of journalists and curiosity-seekers. The familiarity of the scene jarred loose another memory: he had seen this before, from a higher vantage point. Shading his eyes against the sun, he peered up at the rooftop he and Missy had occupied. They weren't there. No. The angle of the sun was different. He was here an hour or more later. He was relieved not to be crossing his own timeline; that was one less destabilizing factor to worry about.
He needed to get inside Klade House and the peace conference. That was where the Emissaries of Harmony would be recruiting. (He didn't ask himself how he knew. He didn't dare look again.) He mustered enough concentration to flash his psychic paper convincingly at the guards, who didn't know enough about Thals to realize that he wasn't one. They quickly passed him through, wary of offending a Thal dignitary in the midst of an important diplomatic meeting.
The inside of Klade House reeked of anti-time. The corridors were empty. The Doctor walked down them, flinging each door open as he passed. Nothing. Yet in the back of his head, he knew they must still be there.
They have been displaced and frozen a microsecond out of alignment.
"Who asked you?" growled the Doctor. Nevertheless, he took out his sonic sunglasses and ran a temporal scan. The displaced staff and soldiers, both Kaled and Thal, showed up as faint ghosts. He thought about trying to bring them back, then decided to wait until after he had dealt with the main problem, that being the Emissaries of Harmony. And Susan. He had to find wherever they were holding their peace conference. He took another scan and found the likeliest location: the oversized chamber up on the second floor.
It was the quietest "diplomatic meeting" he had ever seen.
In fact, the conference room had more in common with the haunted restaurant on Kroseterre than any gathering of the living. He glanced automatically at the security cameras. They were dark, disabled. In any case, none of the security staff were around to monitor them, nor would they have been able to offer any help even if they were available. The diplomats, officials, warlords, and their staff were arrayed around a large U-shaped table, all of them motionless, their eyes shocked and staring at horrors that ate away at their timelines.
All except one. A man stood at the head of the table, a strip of white cloth bound around his face, covering his eyes. He turned unerringly towards the Doctor and said in a voice hissing with anti-time, "Time Lord. Have you come to join us?"
"Us? What 'us'?" The Doctor stepped across the threshold and let the door swing closed behind him. "Who are you?"
"I am Hakkendar, first disciple of the new order."
"There will be no new order!" The Doctor (not the Doctor) felt a sudden fury. This was the Thal warlord who had started the Thousand Year War, started Skaro down the path that ended in Daleks, always and only Daleks, in this timeline and every other one. He took a step forward, then another. He slammed his fist down on the table.
A flood of anti-time gushed from the point of impact, whirling outwards to envelop each of the seated figures. With a thought, the Doctor (not the Doctor) washed the vision from their minds. He lifted his fist, and the anti-time swirled back into him, leaving behind the seared timelines of the Thal and Kaled officials and their staff. They slumped forward in their seats, unconscious. Some would survive. Others would not. He had more pressing concerns.
Hakkendar had withstood the anti-time currents, had forced his way through them to attack the source. Forgoing the warrior's sword for a battle of wills, Hakkendar gripped the Doctor (not the Doctor) by the hand as if in greeting. The force of revelation battered at his mind. Hakkendar had been strong enough to conquer the thirty kingdoms of the Thals and throw all of Skaro into war; his new devotion to peace was more powerful yet.
"Peace! " spat the Doctor (not the Doctor), who had already destroyed so many like Hakkendar that annihilation was no more than a thought away. "A peace that's worse than war." And with his next thought, the warlord was gone. As simple as that. Until-
"Grandfather?" A woman walked through the far wall, her gaze fixed upon the Doctor. Her face was ambiguous, sometimes that of a woman who had never lived, sometimes that of a woman who had lived too long. As a Neverperson, Susan gained substance in the real universe through devouring the timelines of the living. And what better sustenance than Ashildr, who had taken the long road to the end of the universe?
"Susan." He noted the long dagger she held, remembered its power. He remembered endless hammering in Rassilon's forge. It was a weapon that rendered physical barriers meaningless; its merest touch could unravel existence. The memory of that same blade driven into his chest chilled the Doctor awake. History repeated itself.
"Are you here to kill me?" she asked softly.
"You're the one holding the blade," said the Doctor. "You planning to use it on me?"
Susan cast a glance around the room before returning her gaze to the Doctor. "You've already killed at least half of the people here."
"This infection must end," said the Doctor. "I'm sorry."
"And Niall? Did you kill him, too?" A hint of anguish crept into her tone.
"Niall never existed." The original Niall had been dispersed, while the version that ersatz-Susan had known was merely a block-transfer echo generated by Missy.
"Grandfather, you know that's not true. Something that has been erased still leaves an impression behind. The soul, the essence, whatever you want to call it, it survives." Susan's eyes pleaded for understanding, for validation. She stood there in front of him, daring him to say that she did not exist. "But you've destroyed even his ghost, because you... you think that's what you have to do."
"You can believe that if you want." The Doctor sighed. Even though he wasn't directly responsible for Niall's destruction, he had played a part in it. And if Niall had survived the temporal blast, it was likely that the Doctor (or Zagreus) would have killed him later. "Stand there in the timeline of the woman you've murdered and accuse me, if you like. We're none of us innocent."
"She was already dead, Grandfather." Susan turned the epithet into her accusation. He wasn't even sure who he was, but it didn't matter to Susan. He knew she would always see him as her grandfather. "How many billions of years did you give her? You can make immortal a Viking girl you've known for barely a day, but you won't lift a finger to save your own great-grandson?"
"It wasn't like that." It wasn't that he had thought Ashildr was more important. It was because his plan had killed her, but he had the means to resurrect her. The Mire medical chip was accessible. And at that moment, the weight of all the deaths on his hands had crushed him. Had broken his self-restraint. He tried to explain to Susan.
"Not merely a medical chip," said Susan. "More than that, something that could defy time and entropy past the end of the universe itself. You did that."
"No," said the Doctor, but her eyes compelled him to honesty. "Maybe. I don't know."
"And you couldn't do the same for Alex?"
"No. You think what I did to Ashildr was a blessing? If any good came of it, it was no thanks to me. Immortality is a curse," the Doctor said, not for the first time in his life. "But I'd forgotten, until it was done to me. And then to find Ashildr sitting at the end of the universe, unchanged after all that time. She might as well have been turned to stone..."
"I never asked for Alex to be immortal! Just a little more time, that's all," said Susan. "If you refuse to act, then what can I do but take matters into my own hands? He's my son! And if that isn't enough to move you, what about everyone else slaughtered by the Daleks?"
"Susan, Susan, Susan." The Doctor struggled for words, mentally shuffling through his cue cards. None of them were adequate. "I wish it were that simple. Send out your Emissaries of Harmony! Universal peace!"
"There's been so much war. Why can't we have peace?"
"Because I've seen the universal peace you bring. Total success! Total annihilation!" said the Doctor. He saw the doubt in her eyes. "Don't believe me? I've been there. I can show you if you like."
He was still her grandfather. She believed him enough to drop her mental shields and allow him into her thoughts. Together they relived the Doctor's past few weeks, witnessed the fate of Gallifrey in a timeline corrupted by anti-time. The timeline created by Susan's intervention. At the end, she broke free, flinching away from the Doctor. "No. It can't be..."
"It is the truth," he said, still seeing the potential realities unfolding before them. Here, at this point, this was where it was decided. "It's what you wanted. Isn't it?"
Susan shook her head. She took a step back, away from what he had shown her.
He advanced, matching her step for step. "The power to remake the universe. That's what anti-time is," he hissed. "An end to everything that you hate. Everything."
"No!" Susan finally stopped retreating. The vorpal blade glittered between them, the edge sharp enough to cut him out of reality. "Grandfather, no."
He stopped and stared at her, seeing her properly again behind the blade. The other visions faded. "No," he mumbled. "No, I'm sorry, Susan. It takes me like that and I can't..."
Susan slowly lowered the blade. "I just wanted a universe where my son could live. Is that so wrong?"
"No." The Doctor dropped his gaze, unable to argue the point any more. He had nothing to console her with. Except- "Alex did live. He's restored to our reality, he exists, for the span allotted to him. That's all I could do for him."
"He was so young. The second Dalek invasion should never have happened."
"But it did happen." To think otherwise - was too dangerous. He continued inexorably, forcing himself to accept it, "Alex died. These are facts."
"It's not fair!"
It was a child's complaint, but it shook him to the core. The Doctor's head jerked up and his hearts stuttered at the expression on Susan's face. For a moment, she had sounded exactly like Bonnie, the young Zygon revolutionary. He opened his mouth to reply. The words died in his throat. How could he give the same glib answers to his own granddaughter?
Susan met his silence with her own silence. Her eyes held him, insisting on justice.
No one can foresee or control all the consequences of their actions, he didn't say. Susan already knew that, but chose to act in defiance of risk. Hadn't she learned that from him? After he had left Gallifrey, the Doctor had begun to interfere in the universe, because evil had to be fought. When had he changed? A good outcome had never been guaranteed. When had he started using that uncertainty to bludgeon people into accepting the status quo? When had he become one of the oppressors?
"Why? Why does it have to be this way?"
The Doctor shook his head slowly. Was it the Time War that had made him so fearful of revolution? To prefer a known quantity of death over the unpredictability of change? On the other hand, he risked the universe for Clara's sake. When had he lost the ability to keep his balance between danger and freedom? Action and inaction? Saving lives and damning them? When had he started reserving the privilege of that choice to himself alone?
"Do you know what the Time Lords did to me?" The Doctor finally broke his silence. "They gave me more regenerations. You're right. It's not fair. I'm not more deserving than Alex."
"You saved Gallifrey," said Susan.
"Too late for you." The Doctor looked away from the pain in her eyes. "If the Master hadn't run. If Rassilon had succeeded in dispersing me in the Oubliette of Eternity. The Cruciform would have worked. Maybe that would have been a better ending to the war."
Susan didn't reply.
The Doctor took a breath, then continued, "But the past is no longer ours. The only thing we have the right to control is what we choose to do next."
"And what's that?"
He didn't look at her. "Susan, give me the blade."
"Grandfather!" protested Susan. "You can't mean to..."
"The blade," he repeated. After a moment, she pushed the dagger, hilt first, into his palm. He gripped the dagger loosely, turning it this way and that, observing the play of time and anti-time over the blade. Its cold balance was a familiar weight in his hand. He glanced up to find Susan watching him.
"There must be some alternative," she whispered.
"No." The Doctor stepped forward, folded Susan into his embrace, held her tightly. "I've lived too long. You don't exist. Both of us are too dangerous to remain in this universe."
He shut his eyes and angled the dagger inwards, resting its point lightly on his granddaughter's back. It wouldn't be difficult, with this blade, to impale both of them on the same shard of anti-time, to cut themselves free of this reality forever. He hesitated. Was there really no alternative?
He could sense Zagreus seething with rage at his decision. Only a constant effort of will kept the anti-time creature in check. If he should slip, the Doctor might never surface again. And a slip was inevitable. Anti-time corroded his every thought. He knew he couldn't hold the monster back forever. Only Missy's circlet could do that. Missy would break free, eventually. If he submitted to her control, he would be as lost to himself as if Zagreus had taken him. As soon as Skaro was secured from anti-time, Missy would use the Doctor for her own ends.
No. There was no viable alternative. There was only oblivion.
"I'm sorry."