Trial's End
by Ewen Campion-Clarke
based on a script by Eric Saward
Chapter 6: Seventy-Two Seconds
The Valeyard did not move or react to the offer, but continued staring at the Doctor.
Glitz swallowed noisily. 'Do you think it wise to provoke psychotic sociopaths to extremes of violence?' he croaked, terror constricting his throat.
'You overestimate him,' the Doctor told Glitz, not taking his eyes from the Valeyard. 'He's just a pathetic old man.'
'And you are a liar,' the Valeyard replied calmly. 'Or did you really intend to surrender your lives to me?'
'Not for an atto-second,' the Doctor confirmed grimly.
'So, you too are afraid of death?' the Valeyard asked.
'Who isn't? Nothing to be ashamed of,' the Doctor shrugged.
'Nothing?' the Valeyard echoed.
'Except for what you do to prevent it,' the Doctor replied. 'I am not going to let you have my remaining regenerations. Ever. So, now you can go ahead and destroy everything. After all, isn't that what you want?'
'It's not what I want,' Glitz wailed. 'Do you know what you're doing, Doc!'
The Time Lord wasn't listening, just staring across at his future self. 'However did I develop into such a pathetic individual?' he murmured. 'You've allowed the High Council, of all people, to manipulate you from beginning to end! You even connived in their pathetic endeavours to cover up the near destruction of Earth - supposedly your favourite planet! You've destroyed the credability of the Matrix , along with whatever was left of the Time Lord's reputation. And for what? So that you may extend your miserable life.'
The Doctor strode across the gloomy chamber towards the Valeyard, who backed away from him, into the control console. Even Glitz could understand the problem - the Valeyard could not harm the Doctor for fear of cancelling out his own existence, but the Doctor could harm the Valeyard, as long as he didn't mind depriving himself of a future. And judging by the dark look on the Time Lord's cherubic features, he didn't.
'Keep back!' the Valeyard shouted.
The Doctor continued remorselessly. 'You don't deserve to live!' he growled, raising his hands to grab at the Valeyard's arms.
A look of blind panic crossed the future Doctor's pale face, then he turned, grabbed the handle on the console and wrenched it hard out from the desk. Glitz barely registered what this meant when the hatchway opened, an iris expanding in one violent movement to reveal a blinding, scalding whiteness that flooded into the control room, bleaching eveything inside it. The tortured growling of the light were louder, almost deafening, the primeval roar of Pandora's Box being opened.
Glitz dived for the exit doors but the TARDIS around him was already rocking and twisting like a planet hopper in an asteroid storm. The floor dipped and rose unpredictably and Glitz crumpled onto the polished floor next to the roundeled wall. He felt groggy, as though the raging whiteness was pushing at the edges of the time machine, bulging outwards, trying to break free...
And then Glitz just couldn't think any more. For a moment he saw himself riding through the twelve galaxies, Dibber and the Nosferatu, conning and nicking and killing and maiming... his entire, unhappy life torn to shreds and then hurled at him in no particular order. Then he saw himself as a normal, law-abiding technician on Salostaphos, the product of a normal childhood, who'd never carried a gun. Then himself as a hardened, mass-murderer being executed for his crimes. Then as an old man dying alone and lost in an escape pod. So many possibilities, he couldn't concentrate, and he slipped into catatonia to avoid the enslaught as it grew worse and worse.
The Doctor suffered worse. Glitz had only one life of possible realities to torment him, the Doctor had thirteen. He saw his old selves making different decisions, he saw future selves haunted by his actions at this moment. He saw himself muddle through on Thoros Alpha and save everyone, and then he saw the Valeyard gripping the control console as the Eccentric Time flowed around and through him.
How many seconds had passed, the Doctor wondered. He remembered some ancient school lesson that the universe could assimilate and repair damage done by Eccentric Time, as long as the exposure to it was less than seventy seconds. Or maybe more. And then it would all end.
Because of the Valeyard. Because of him.
The Doctor was damned either way.
Fifteen seconds.
A tremor ran through the trial room as Eccentric Time seeped through the plasmic shell of the Valeyard's TARDIS and swept through the Matrix and out into the space station that was linked to it. The distant, howling moans could already be heard. Mel gripped a pillar as she felt a sudden baffling wave of deja vu.
The Inquisitor and the others were staring straight up at the Matrix screen as the picture flared and tumbled. The Doctor was lurching his way through the pestilential light towards the dark shape of the Valeyard. Ten seconds had already passed, and already the Eccentric Time was spilling out into reality, twisting it, changing it...
'What has he done?' the Inquisitor croaked as she felt her lives swirl before her senses.
Twenty-one seconds.
The roar from the Time Vent was louder, the glare brighter, and the control room was distorted like a carnival mirror, its hard lines now curves that flapped like spider's threads in a hurricane. The Doctor's right hand gripped the edge of the console, wondering if he could reactivate the TARDIS defenses - assuming they were not already riddled with Eccentric Time.
Thirty-two seconds.
The floor seemed to be tilting first one way then the other, bouncing lightly against the Doctor's shoes. He fought off the sight of a little man with an umbrella, and focussed on the black-clad figure gripping onto the console for dear life. If he was going to die, the Doctor would have some control over it.
Thirty-seven seconds.
The room titled so the raging Time Vent was at the bottom of the room, and the Doctor leapt forward, swinging out his arm to strike the Valeyard's chest as he fell. The impact jolted the other Time Lord free from the control panel. The trenchcoat-clad figure reeled backward, trying to regain his balance as the Doctor locked both arms around his shoulders.
Forty-two seconds.
The Valeyard flexed his muscles, twisting against the weight of the Doctor. The room had tilted again and, though still steep, the Valeyard was able to regain his balance. The Doctor hurled every ounce of weight against his enemy, and they skidded on the floor, closer to the gaping mouth of the Vent. The Time Lord swayed for a moment, unable to plot out the countless unrealized realities dancing around them like butterflies. So many possibilites. Too many to understand, let alone count.
Forty-five seconds.
The Doctor managed to clear his head. They were at the edge of the floor, beyond which was the scalding white potential of the Time Vent. The Valeyard redoubled his efforts to be free, and it took all the Doctor's not inconsiderable strength to keep him in place. Finally, the Valeyard relaxed slightly, and in that single moment the Doctor had the upper hand.
He took it.
Fifty-one seconds.
Mel felt very lightheaded, unsure what was happening. The Time Lords too seemed distracted. Mel could see her life unfolding, and then curling back, see herself living other lives, other Mels in other places and times. For brief, sickening moments she would claw her way back to the court room and see it trembling in some earthquake, lit by a ghastly white light.
And, on the screen, the Doctor and the Valeyard were struggling and wrestling in front of a trapesium of burning whiteness. Then, suddenly, the tangled silhouette tumbled into the glow and began to fall. A split second later the shadow was burnt up in the glare. The screen was a window of white.
'No!' she screamed unhappily, before suddenly being lost in the myriad reflections of her past.
The old Keeper of the Matrix peered up at the screen, fighting to stop the Eccentric Time from consuming his thoughts and history and rearranging them at random until he no longer existed. 'That wasn't an accident!' he raged over the vortex howls.
'What does it matter now?' the Inquisitor shouted at him. 'Nothing can be done now!'
Fifty-eight seconds.
And so they fell, linked by their tangle of limbs, into the depths of the Time Vent. The scorching white funnel of the Vent was lined by a surging froth of Eccentric Time, flowing upwards from the primeval cauldron of time and space. Despite the endless outrush of energies, the two shapes continued to plummet down the spiralling Vent.
Mindless, endless freefall.
Sixty-one seconds.