Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to various persons and corporations that are not me or associated with me. This piece of fanfiction is written with the admiration and respect for the original work. I claim no ownership of Doctor Who's creations. No profit is made from this material, now or in the future.
Thanks to Armity for all her help as a test subject and beta reader.
Entered into evidence:
Excerpt of:
Testimonial of River Song:
Part Six
Interviewer: Bishop Benedicta
Witness: Servant Kai
Time-Stamp: 30-28-5108/08.20.41
Bishop Benedicta: You murdered the Master.
River Song: Yes.
Servant Kai: Verified.
RS: He has a terrible habit of pissing off women with guns. Of course, he didn't have those memories. Still, common sense.
BB: Why didn't he just regenerate, like the Doctor?
RS: He couldn't. The Daleks made him imperfect. Maybe they didn't have the technology to make a proper Time Lord. Maybe they thought it would be a way to control him. I don't know.
BB: You knew this when you shot him?
RS: No.
Servant Kai: Verified.
BB: Then you weren't aware he would stay dead?
RS: No.
BB: Would you have done it if you knew?
RS: Probably not. I didn't mean to make the Doctor relive the Valiant. I am not intentionally cruel.
BB: There is a ten minute gap between visual file 4 and 5. What happened?
RS: Gallifrey was destroyed.
BB: Do you have any documentation of this?
RS: No.
Servant Kai: Verified.
BB: Why not?
RS: I destroyed all footage of it.
BB: Why?
RS: It was obscene.
BB: How much footage did you destroy in all?
RS: Everything not on that data crystal. I only saved what I thought the Doctor needed to see and hear, to understand why.
BB: To understand why you did it?
RS: No, to understand why he should stop me before I ever get the chance.
BB: Is that why you called for the Doctor a second time?
RS: I hoped he could fix it.
BB: Didn't he?
RS: Yes, but at too high of a cost.
BB: How did you contact him?
RS: I used the TARDIS. I knew she'd make sure he got the message. Poor girl must have been in agony with an End Event unfolding all around her. She wasn't terribly pleased with me. But she did it. I want to cry when I think of how we rewarded her.
Servant Kai: Verified.
Entered into Evidence:
Burnings Way Data Crystal:
Visual File 5
The world shudders. The bodies on the ground writhe and scream as if in terror. Even the corpses seem to seize in the dirt as the sky tears into bloody ribbons and the crypt twists the rock around it. The inside of the cavern is filled with sharp, white light that seems to fall and flow on the floor like water. The Doctor has somehow pulled himself to his feet at the console and has begun to dismantle the key. He pauses to hold up a hand covered in blood; it shimmers gold for a moment. He clenches it into a fist before returning to work with his screwdriver.
Over the shrieks and weeping of those victims still unfortunate enough to be alive, there is a wheezing sound that amplifies and coalesces with the appearance of not one but two blue police boxes behind the Doctor and the key. The doors open and from the left, River Song comes running out.
"Doctor!" she yells and rushes to his side. River wraps an arm around his shoulders to help him keep his feet while the earth quakes around them. Her hands are dried with blood and the hand print is already on her chest. Behind them two young men and a woman fall out of the right police box. The one in the tweed jacket and bow-tie seems to be the only quiet thing in the picture, not only in terms of sound but also presence. Everything around him seems to still as he takes in the scene. Meanwhile, his companions physically recoil from the sound and sight of it all.
"Oh my god," the young woman cries. "Doctor, what's happening?" She's not asking the dying man at the controls but the quiet creature beside her. Still, both turn to look at her.
"They shouldn't see this," the older Doctor tells himself.
"Rory, Amy, back in the TARDIS," the younger Doctor orders.
"But-," Amy objects.
"That's time and space tearing apart over our heads right now," their Doctor explains to them. He tries to herd them back inside the police box. "There's nothing you can do. You're safe in the TARDIS. Well, safer. Now, get!"
"End of the universe?" Amy says. "Been there. Done that. We're not going anywhere."
He huffs and gestures. "Rory, take Amy inside."
"Sorry, Doctor," Rory replies and he sounds genuinely contrite. His eyes are focused on the screaming and shaking bodies all around them. "There are people hurt out here. I'm a nurse. I have to help." He ducks around the Doctor and falls to his knees beside the nearest victims. Amy raises her eyebrows at their Doctor and pointedly follows Rory.
The Doctor opens his mouth but the next moment throws up his hands and gives up on them. He pulls out his own sonic screwdriver and joins River and his older self at the key.
"They only get worse," the dying Doctor says. "By the end, they don't even pretend to listen."
"Yeah?" The younger Doctor glances at River. "Spoilers." She cringes.
"I have an idea how we can fix this," her Doctor says. He pauses and it looks like what he's about to say is killing him. "We need a paradox machine."
Entered into evidence:
Excerpt of:
Testimonial of River Song:
Part Six
Interviewer: Bishop Benedicta
Witness: Servant Kai
Time-Stamp: 30-28-5108/08.25.16
Bishop Benedicta: What is a paradox machine?
River Song: It is a tortured TARDIS.
BB: Can you be more specific?
RS: No.
BB: What does it do?
RS: It cradles a paradox.
BB: How does it work?
RS: I can't tell you that.
BB: Because you don't know or because you won't tell us?
RS: Yes.
Servant Kai: Verified.
BB: River Song, you're not cooperating.
RS: I don't know how it works. And you should thank God that only one man alive does.
Servant Kai: Verified.
From: Overseer Gamma, The Time Agency
To: Doctor Holaday, The Great Guild
Servant Dmer Kotte-Ta, The Shadow Proclamation
Patriarch Thaddeus, Our Church of Supreme Authority
Message Content:
The paradox machine is the single greatest threat to the Empire and all of creation we have yet come across. The fact that River Song refuses to explain how it works is unacceptable. Right now, there is a paradox machine holding life as we know it together. The Time Agency is doing its best to protect this weak link, but no one is safe until we understand it.
From: Patriarch Thaddeus, Our Church of Supreme Authority
To: Overseer Gamma, The Time Agency
Doctor Holaday, The Great Guild
Servant Dmer Kotte-Ta, The Shadow Proclamation
Message Content:
How can River Song explain that which she doesn't understand? Perhaps she is right and we are all safer not understanding. Knowledge is a prerequisite of all sin.
From: Servant Dmer Kotte-Ta, The Shadow Proclamation
To: Overseer Gamma, The Time Agency
Patriarch Thaddeus, Our Church of Supreme Authority
Doctor Holaday, The Great Guild
Message Content:
If the Time Agency believes it cannot adequately defend the paradox machine, the Shadow Proclamation will provide additional security. As you say, overseer, it is a matter of universal priority.
From: Doctor Holaday, The Great Guild
To: Overseer Gamma, The Time Agency
Servant Dmer Kotte-Ta, The Shadow Proclamation
Patriarch Thaddeus, Our Church of Supreme Authority
Message Content:
Is the TARDIS alive? Does that mean it is still suffering?
Entered into Evidence:
Burnings Way Data Crystal:
Visual File 6
Another ten minutes has passed according to the time stamp on the recording. The dying Doctor is no longer present in frame. The door to the TARDIS on the left is gaping open and many of the cables running from the crypt have been redirected inside. Amy runs out the door, stumbling over the cables and the shaking ground, to where the younger Doctor and River Song are taking the key apart and refashioning it to a new purpose. They aren't looking at each other.
"Doctor," Amy says and the Doctor doesn't even glance up from the wires in his hands. He holds the sonic screwdriver in his mouth. River Song intently follows the readings on the console just inches from his side. "You said to tell you that you're about ready in there if you're ready out here. You also said that you linked the TARDIS controls into the key so you can activate them together. Wow," she crosses her arms, "that's not confusing." Amy pauses for a response but gets none. She glances over what they're doing, flicks her eyes toward where Rory is still busy trying to calm the screaming and shaking Hellades staff, before clearing her throat pointedly. "Do you have a message for yourself?"
The Doctor takes the sonic screwdriver out of his mouth and whirls it over the wires in his hands. He sticks the wires back inside the console. "Right," he says, pulling the covering back over the wires without securing it. "Amy, tell other me that we're ready." She nods and moves to leave, but River grabs Amy's arm to still her. "Rory!" the Doctor yells to be heard by the other young man. Rory glances up but is having a difficult time holding one unconscious, young woman's hands away from her face as she tries to claw at her eyes. "Get ready to run! Those people are going to start waking up soon and they're not going to be happy!" Rory nods.
"How does he look?" River asks Amy in so quiet of a voice that it's almost lost to the recorder. The Doctor beside her glances at her sidelong while she's not looking but his hands don't pause as they enter commands into the machine.
Amy moves her weight from foot to foot. "Bad." She can't meet River's eyes. "Really, really bad. I should-." River lets her go and Amy runs back into the open TARDIS, throwing a look back over her shoulder only once.
"River," the Doctor calls and she whips her attention back to him. He gestures toward her side of the console. "See that flashy red light sort of," he seems to search for a word and gives up in his distraction, "thing?"
She moves over and hovers a hand above the controls. "This one?"
"Yeah. That's the one. When I tell you, press it. That's incredibly important. Everything might rely on it. Of course, we all could still go boom any moment but it won't be for lack of trying!"
"Is this actually an important control for me to press, or are you just saying that to distract me from something else?" River asks.
The Doctor opens his mouth but waits too long to decide on an answer. He suddenly smiles. "Yes."
"I hate it when you do that."
"I know."
Amy leans outside the TARDIS doorway. "Doctor, we're ready!"
"And we're off!" the Doctor announces, zapping the controls with his screwdriver, which causes them all to turn red and flash.
"Doctor," River says, "what exactly is this going to do?"
"It's going to divert Time energy from the TARDIS into the End Event. That will free those people from the machine's hold. Then they should wake up. And the rest of us run because if I don't fancy surviving an End Event to be strangled to death by a mad cook."
"Okay." River nods. "I get that. How is the paradox machine supposed to close the End Event?"
The Doctor frowns and looks annoyed. "It's not."
"But-."
"The End Event is a paradox, River," he says and she swallows as his voice takes on a sharp edge. "Think about it. Really think about it. Right now, Gallifrey both exists and doesn't exist. It exists because I'm here and because other me's here and the Master's died here. It doesn't exist because I locked it away in Time. It exists because the Master and you unlocked it. It doesn't exist because it's been destroyed. Time is like an elastic. You can pull on it and twist it into other shapes but pull or twist it too far too many times and it'll lose its shape altogether. Or, even better, break."
"There's something you're not telling me," River replies slowly.
The Doctor pauses and looks at her. There's something in his expression, some emotional hesitancy alongside profound sadness. "Yeah."
Amy appears and stumbles out of the TARDIS door, with the other Doctor's arm wrapped around her shoulders. His face is almost gray but every few moments shimmers gold. River moves to help but the younger Doctor grabs her wrist.
"Stay with the controls," he says.
"I have to help," she insists.
"Haven't you already done enough?" the Doctor snaps back and she flinches. The way he presses his lips into a thin line and how his eyes flicker over her face seems to suggest he regrets it immediately, but he doesn't take the words back.
"I'd rather die than see you hurt, Doctor," River says and he looks stricken. "Please," she chokes on the emotion behind the word. "Please, believe that."
It appears that he squeezes her wrist, though there's no way of telling from the recording whether that's purposeful or reflexive. "I do," he tells her and dashes over to Amy and the other Doctor. River hesitates before turning back to the console. Between the younger Doctor and Amy, they half-carry the dying Doctor past the key, over the cables and toward the glowing white maw of the crypt.
"Rory!" the younger Doctor calls and the man looks up.
"Just another second, Doctor!" Rory says.
"We don't have one. You're going to get hurt if you stay there!"
"But-"
"Oi!" Amy yells at him. "You heard the Doctor! Don't be an idiot. You can't help them, Rory, if they kill you first."
"Right. You're . . . right about that." Rory stumbles to his feet, struggling to avoid the blindly outstretched arms of those around him while the ground shakes. He hurries to relative safety behind the controls.
"Amy, join River. I can take it from here," the Doctor says and Amy nods, helping to transfer the older Doctor's weight to the younger before running back to the key.
"River, do you remember that red flashy light I told you to press?" the younger Doctor asks as he helps his other self to the edge of the light streaming from the crypt.
Rory grabs onto the console to keep his feet and his eyes widen at the controls. "They're all red and flashy!"
"Yes," River replies to the Doctor. "But what do you think you're doing with him?"
"Remember when I tell you-"
"Press it, I know!" she snaps back. "But I'm not pressing anything until one of you tells me why he hasn't regenerated yet."
The younger Doctor opens his mouth to reply.
"River," the older Doctor says. "You heard the Master." Both the Doctors' eyes have so studiously avoided looking down in front of the key to where the Master's body lies that it can't be accidental. "Time is weakest around a regeneration. I've been able to hold it off this long but I can't much longer. When I regenerate, the last thread holding the Time Lock together will break and the End Event will spread. I can't regenerate."
"You can't die!" River yells back.
"Hush," the Doctor tries to calm her. "You're right. I can't. So. There's no other choice." He glances at himself and there is some understanding that passes between them. The younger Doctor nods and steps back. Somehow, despite his obvious weakness and the roiling of the ground around him, the older Doctor seems to keep his feet from the force of sheer will alone.
"What do you mean no other choice?" River demands. For a moment it looks like she's going to leave her post at the console but then she looks down at the light the Doctor told her she had to press and stays. "What are you going to do?"
"It's all right, River," her Doctor tells her. "I know you never meant for this to happen. I understand. I do. I've done terrible things for the greater good too. You tried to fix that for me. Let me fix this for you."
"You're going to join the paradox," she says in a dead voice. "You'll be stuck between life and death. Forever. Always dying."
"I know," the Doctor says. "It's not so bad really. Before the Time War, Gallifrey added the memories of dead Time Lords to a machine called the Matrix. None of us really died that way. I always expected some version of me to end up there in the end. It's no different than that. See? Not so bad." He begins to shimmer gold again. He closes his eyes and only opens them after the long moment has passed. "And not much longer now."
"You want me to do that to you."
"I'd never force you to but, River, it has to be done."
During their conversation, the younger Doctor cautiously moved from lingering near the mouth of the crypt to the side of the key. "River," he says and she startles, so focused on the other Doctor that she didn't noticed this one's approach. He reaches out and wraps his fingers loosely around her wrist. Her hand hovers over the particular light on the console set to redirect the key and start the paradox machine.
"I'm not trying to punish you," the older Doctor tells her, "I'm offering you a chance to help fix your mistake."
"You want me to kill you," she says. "The best man I've ever known."
"No," he replies. "You always sacrifice yourself for me. I'm asking you to let me do this for you."
"How will I ever look at you again?" River asks.
Despite the pain and the exhaustion, the shaking ground, the screaming men and women caught in their worst nightmares, the sky an open wound over his head, the crypt shining an unnatural stark white at his back, and the full knowledge of what he's asking, the Doctor grins. "With a smile," he says and steps back, to be consumed by the light.
River Song only hesitates a second. She sets the key and activates the paradox machine with the Doctor's fingers still around her wrist.
Entered into Evidence:
Visual Footage from the Lost Base Archives
Final Allocution of River Song
Witnessed by:
Servant Dmer Kotte-Ta, The Shadow Proclamation
Patriarch Thaddeus, Our Church of Supreme Authority
Doctor Holaday, The Great Guild
Time Stamp: 63-01-5108/06.30.32
The room is provided by the Shadow Proclamation and is a common example of their architecture, white chamber with high ceilings and blue and white lighting from crystal wall hangings. At the front of the room are four chairs made of metal and sitting in those chairs are the judges. Servant Dmer Kotte-Ta is a stark figure in the middle in a black dress and with the albino coloring of most servants in the Shadow Proclamation. To her right is Patriarch Thaddeus in his blue dress uniform, various medals and gold chord on his chest and shoulders denoting his numerous commendations. Servant Dmer Kotte-ta and Patriarch Thaddeus make a very intimidating but elegant chiaroscuro center of authority, his dark features to her light. He appears to be the oldest there, his hair short and steel grey. To his right is Doctor Holaday, a small woman with a stern expression on a face with many smile lines. She wears the dark green ceremonial gown of the chief professors of the Great Guild. To Servant Dmer Kotte-Ta's left is an empty seat where Overseer Gamma was meant to sit. In an attached document, the reason for his absence is listed as another Top Time Secret.
Before them all, in handcuffs and gray prison uniform, stands River Song.
"Doctor Song," Servant Dmer Kotte-Ta speaks, "do you have anything to say to the court before we close this case and put the tragic occasion of the Hellades Incident behind us?"
"I do."
"Then please, speak."
"I do not apologize for my actions," River Song says. Doctor Holaday scoffs and sits up in her seat. "Because an apology is a question of forgiveness. I deserve no forgiveness. I am genuinely sorry for all the hurt I caused on 82-29-5107. That changes nothing. Despite appearances, in my heart, I am an archeologist. Our trade is founded in death and destruction. I took that too literally. In the end, it's also supposed to be about life. I took that for granted. The Great Guild paid the price. Doctor Holaday, you are right to hate me. Carry on."
Doctor Holaday sits back in her chair and watches River Song from the corner of her eyes. A new line appears between her eyebrows. She frowns.
"Patriarch Thaddeus," River Song continues, "your people have been very kind to me. For various reasons. I don't deserve it. I assure you, though the Hellades Incident did not go as I expected, many of my worst crimes I did with full knowledge of the cost and its evil. That is the definition of sin. I am guilty of every crime I am accused and more. I am no devil, but don't make me a saint."
Patriarch Thaddeus only nods once.
River suddenly smiles. "If Overseer Gamma were here, I would tell him, 'I told you so'. But I guess he already knows. Or soon will.
"And Servant Dmer Katte-Ta." River Song sighs. "Even I didn't see this coming. As you are the representative and police of all intergalactic law and bodies - a bit of presumption even the Empire doesn't aspire to- I am guilty of the most heinous crimes against you. All I ask, is that you remember who saved you. Your people have made the mistake of relegating the Time Lords to legend. The Doctor is more than a legend. He is a real person, with all the pain and love that comes with that. He deserves to be remembered that way."
Servant Dmer Katte-Ta blinks several times but when the silence extends beyond a few seconds, she agrees.
"Is that all?" she asks.
River nods.
"Then as architect of this combined court, I accept your guilty plea to all charges. According to your plea-bargain, you will spend the rest of your life in the Stormcage Containment Facility for your crimes. All your medals and commendations granted to you by the Empire for services rendered are withdrawn. Your title as honorary Servant and your special privileges within the Shadow Proclamation are voided. You are expelled from the Great Guild and are outlawed from taking part in any future official historical endeavors. According to the powers granted to the Time Agency, you are banned from time travel for life. Do you understand?"
River Song does not reply. Instead, she stares off into the middle-distance, almost in a trance.
"Doctor Song, please acknowledge the ruling of the court."
River sighs and shakes her head. Suddenly, she laughs.
"What is so funny?" Doctor Holaday demands.
"I just remembered something," River Song says.
"Wait." Patriarch Thaddeus raises a hand to his forehead. "What's happening?"
Servant Dmer Katte-Ta blinks rapidly. "Who is that? I remember - but - no, it happened. But it didn't."
"But that's not true," Doctor Holaday says. "That's not how it happened. I can still remember that's not what happened. It's not true!"
"Time can be rewritten," River Song replies. "So can truth."
Doctor Holaday rises to her feet but doesn't seem to know where to go. "It happened!" she says again. "It happened, no matter what is happening right now to our memories. I remember what you did on Hellades!"
"And you remember what happened now," River tells her. "Just like I do."
"You're still guilty!" Doctor Holaday insists.
"Yes," River Song agrees with the ghost of a smile. "I am."
TBC
If you enjoyed the piece, or if you didn't, please take the time to leave me a review. No matter how short, I really appreciate the feedback. Thanks.