"What is this place?" Charlie asked, glancing around at a circle of doors.

They were in some kind of antechamber, free from any kind of decoration, or any indication of the purpose of this room. There were just doors – maybe thirty or forty of them.

Each door was unique, adorned with a different pattern, or style. Some were simple industrial bulkheads, much like the others in the TARDIS. Others were heavy, oak-panelled affairs.

In the centre of the space, there was an opening in the floor, protected from a fatal fall by a thin rail.

Charlie leaned over, and peered into the abyss. Immediately, his head began to spin, and he pulled himself away from the edge. It was a long way down.

They must have been hundreds of floors up. Each floor looked to be very similar to the one they were standing on now, filled with a number of doors.

"This is my storeroom," the Doctor informed him. "It's where I store people in my mind."

Charlie threw him a puzzled look as he pulled away from the railing.

The Doctor shrugged. "I find it helps to keep things in order. So many humans. It's difficult to remember them all."

"I'd noticed." Charlie nodded, walking over to the nearest door, and examining it.

There was a cracked painted pattern decorating this one.

Like all the other doors, it was inscribed with a name. He couldn't read all the letters on it; the hand-painted calligraphic script was peeling away. He wasn't quite sure what it should have said. Perhaps Johanna? Jovanka?

The Doctor appeared beside him, and pressed his fingertips against the wooden panels, tracing the cracks in the paintwork. He seemed lost in his thoughts.

Charlie hated to interrupt, but he was curious.

"Who's this?"

The Doctor turned to him, his grey eyes searching in alarm, before turning sharply away.

"Just a story," he muttered quietly, "They're all just stories, now."

As Charlie looked around, following the circle of doors, he saw more names – more stories, ones he didn't recognise. There was even a door with no name, only gold circular etchings.

Spotting a name he knew made his stomach lurch: Emily Simmons. One of the scientists on the Moonbase, whom the Doctor may once have travelled with.

So was this… everyone the Doctor had travelled with?

It must have been a vast complex, filled with the memories of everyone the Doctor had ever known. The floors descended further than he could see. There must have been hundreds of them. Hundreds of friends. Hundreds of names, and faces, and people the Doctor couldn't quite remember.

"You've had so many friends…" Charlie wasn't sure what to say. He was hit once again by the overwhelming feeling that he just wasn't important.

"And lost all of them," the Doctor mused.

He didn't dare ask what had happened to the others. Had they moved on? Had they just left him? Or had they grown old and died, while the Doctor remained in the TARDIS, never aging, never stopping to think about who was gone, who he'd left behind?

The Doctor had wondered off, examining some of the other doors more closely. His body language indicated a reluctance to enter any of them.

This left Charlie to his own thoughts, when he received a bit of a shock.

And there it was. He didn't know why he hadn't seen it before. A door with his name on it.

It looked rather like the front door to his house. Not exactly like it, but very similar. He put that down to the Doctor not having paid that much attention to it.

It was right next to what appeared to be a teacher's office door, graffitied with the words: 'Ozzie loves PE'. (Not sure what that meant). He grasped the doorhandle, but a heavy clunk told him that it was locked.

It didn't matter. Charlie was more curious as to what was behind his own door in the Doctor's mind.

He pulled out his house key, and tried it in the lock.

He hadn't expected it to work, but there was a snap, and the door swung open.

As he was about to place his foot over the threshold, the Doctor grabbed his shoulder. It made him jump. He hadn't heard the Doctor come back over.

"Don't go in there," the Doctor hissed sharply.

"Why not?" Charlie challenged him.

"You might not like it."

Charlie held his stern gaze for a moment, and broke free from the Doctor's grip, his curiosity overcoming him.

It was like stepping into a different world. Details blasted out at him; a thousand things called for his attention at once.

It was a small, dingy room, poorly lit with a single, naked bulb suspended from the ceiling. There was a large board in the centre of the room, covered with scraps of paper, newspaper clippings, and bits of string – like the scene of a murder investigation.

Charlie glanced through some notes, scrawled in what he took to be the Doctor's handwriting. His heart sank, deeper and deeper as he read the words the Doctor had written about him: 'Wraith?', 'Dreamer', 'Liar'… 'VYPER', 'Cleverer than he looks', 'Hiding something'…

He plucked off a UNIT memo, stapled to the board. There were only three words printed on it, beneath the winged logo: 'Don't trust him.'

It didn't make sense.

Why would UNIT, which he had only encountered once, think this about him? What did they know?

He turned back to the Doctor, stood in the doorway, the light from the bulb barely illuminating his face.

"What is all this?"

The Doctor chuckled. Clearly, he was amused by Charlie's distress.

"I knew you couldn't resist," the Doctor threw him a crooked grin.

Charlie faltered. The memo fluttered from his fingers.

The Doctor took very deliberate steps towards him, leaning uncomfortably close to his ear, hissing: "You thought you knew him, didn't you?"

"What?" Charlie uttered, his skin prickling. Words caught in his throat, and he felt sick.

Something was wrong. Those words… he'd heard them before.

He'd walked straight into a trap.

The man standing in front of him wasn't who he thought it was. This was a trick of the mind. An imitation – and a startlingly good one at that.

Even so, he couldn't believe he'd been fooled so easily.

"You're… not the Doctor?" The words barely escaped his lips in an estranged whisper.

"No, of course not," the Doctor answered, after a while, "I am a nightmare."

The Doctor's eyes flashed with a hint of malevolence.

Charlie took a step away, but found that the board was blocking his way.

"Are you one of those shadows?" he guessed.

"A shadow of the Doctor? I am far more than that. I have followed you all this way, and yet,"

The Doctor tilted his head thoughtfully. "Always in the Doctor's shadow. The shadow of the Valeyard. Perhaps I am his dark side…"

He broke into a malicious grin – a remorseless curl of the lips which did not belong to the Doctor.

"It's funny," The Doctor snaked past him, his fingers brushing against one of the notes on the board. "You're struggling to make sense of the Doctor's thoughts, but you can see this so clearly.

"Does this room scare you?"

Charlie watched as the Doctor's fingernail zigzagged across the word 'VYPER'.

"No."

"That's a lie," the Doctor casually dismissed him. "The very idea of this room terrifies you."

The Doctor stroked his chin for a moment. "Not 'terrifies'… unsettles, perhaps."

That fierce, alien gaze pierced him. "You thought he trusted you?"

"No," Charlie uttered, a little more confidently this time.

"No? What?" the Doctor queried, glaring at him in confusion. "What do you mean, 'no'?"

"I never thought he trusted me," Charlie answered honestly, "Not really. This just confirms that he's been lying to me."

Charlie pointed at the scribbles on the board behind him.

"But I don't blame him."

The Doctor shook his head, embers of anger flaring up.

"No, no. You were supposed to say 'yes', and then I was going to say 'does he really? Then why don't you know his real name?'"

"Well obviously, he doesn't tell anyone his real name," Charlie argued, matching the shadow's fury, "Besides, he's an alien. I probably won't even be able to pronounce it."

He shrugged, feigning confidence, despite his fear.

"All right then, smart-arse," the Doctor rounded on him, flecks of spittle spewing from his teeth. "Answer me this: do you trust him?"

"Yes." Charlie's response was almost immediate. It scared him a little, how quick he was to admit that.

"Really?" the Doctor laughed.

The Doctor's laughter turned sharply to contempt. "Because if I'm not mistaken, you've just seen the Doctor's true self. A coward. He left a whole planet to die because he was scared. And the Time War. The horrors of the Time War! He butchered Daleks and Time Lords alike. Billions of innocents were slaughtered in the crossfire."

Charlie struggled to hold the shadow Doctor's furious gaze.

"He wields so much power, and the universe suffers in the wake of the Storm."

"I trust the Doctor," Charlie maintained.

"No you don't," the shadow Doctor snapped, pressing his fingertips against Charlie's chest. He was pinned in place by a powerful amount of pressure.

"I…" Charlie faltered.

"You don't even know who he is," the shadow growled, "Everything you think you know about that man is a lie."

The Doctor pulled his fingers away, sliding them across his face to conceal a smirk.

"How can you trust someone you don't even know? Especially when you know he doesn't trust you."

The Doctor chuckled.

"He doesn't trust you because you're a liar, Charlie," he simpered.

"You've been lying to the Doctor. You've been lying to yourself."

"No… I'm not lying… I'm just not… not ready…" Charlie protested.

"It doesn't matter. I see through your lies. I know what you fear. I can almost… taste it."

"I don't know what you mean."

The Doctor shrugged, taking a step away.

"It's time to end this little adventure," he said simply. "I could give you everything you want, but it comes at a price."

"What price…?"

"The Doctor."

The shadow sighed, exhausted.

"It's time to end the Doctor. Let him die."

Exhaustion. Fury. Emotions turned to manipulate him; make him feel afraid.

"Let him die, Charlie," the thing roared.

Charlie's perception of the room began to shift. The Doctor grew larger, as the walls began to extrude into oblivion.

The unimaginable horrors from the Doctor's mind began to skulk towards him, swirling at the heels of the commanding shadow.

"No, no…"

"Let him die! And I shall rise!"

The shadow Doctor's words echoed around his mind, ringing and burning.

"No!" Charlie screamed.

He made a break for the door. It was drifting further away from him – faster than he could run.

"You can't escape from me, Charlie. I will find you. I have already found you."


He began to fall, smashing through something on his way down. It took him a moment to focus on the police box doors spinning away.

He fell straight through the control room, unable to grab onto something – the console, a railing – anything.

Nate's voice spoke to him; the words of the TARDIS rang out all around, as Charlie was swallowed up in the depths of the time machine.

Every TARDIS you enter takes you deeper into the Doctor's consciousness.

Be careful how far you fall, lest you never return.

How far will you go?

Never return…

How far…?


++INCOMING MESSAGE++

Man, how many references can you get away with cramming into one chapter?

So of course that wasn't the Doctor. It was an evil shadow thingy.

Now of course, I wouldn't know anything about that...