Prophecies of Paradox - Prologue: Shadows of the Future, Echoes of the Past
Series: Prophecies of Paradox
Author: stormandwolf
Characters: The TARDIS, Ten, Eleven, Thirteen, The Valeyard. Mentions of Rose Tyler, Ten2, Jenny, Donna Noble and River Song.
Pairings: Mentions of Nine/Rose, Ten/Rose, Ten2/Rose, Thirteen/River Song.
Beta: magali29 (many thanks for retroactively proof-reading this prologue and all its edits)
Rating: Teen (subject to change during the series)
Disclaimer: Doctor Who, Torchwood, and everything else recognizable from the Whoniverse belongs to their respective owners. This is just a fan's attempt to tell a story and share it with like-minded people just for fun. I do not make any profit from this, nor do I own anything Doctor Who-related. Wish I did, though.
Summary: "The past, the present and the future, all hers to glimpse through the mind of her charge, her Time Lord."
During Ten's violent regeneration into Eleven, the TARDIS gets a glimpse of the future, and discovers a shocking secret - the Doctor's timeline has been tampered with, the events designed to ensure the rebirth of one of his mortal enemies. With the Doctor's Thirteen incarnation's premature death, all of time and space is at risk. How can anyone prevent the Reign of The Valeyard, and what exactly are the Prophecies of Paradox? Spoilers: Doctor Who Seasons 1 to 4.5, Journey's End and End of Time specifically.
Author's Note: This idea started as a fix-it for Journey's End and End of Time, and took on a life of its own. The basic premise is that everything we saw on Doctor Who Seasons 1 to 4.5 and Torchwood 1 to 2.5 really happened, but that is the timeline altered by The Valeyard, given his knowledge of how the original events should have developed. Certain events from those seasons will be altered to account for the time change and its consequences. Events and characters MIGHT be borrowed from Season 5 if they fit the storyline. This is the tale of how the proper timeline is restored, and how the Doctor, Rose and their friends triumph against all odds. Constructive criticism is more than welcome. I admit to having a very bad case of writer's cold feet, given that this is my first fanfic ever, that English is not my native language, and that Britspeak is almost as foreign to me as Gallifreyan.
Prologue: Shadows of the Future, Echoes of the Past
"I don't want to go."
Pain knifes through her, invades her, like nothing she has ever felt before in her centuries-long existence.
His pain.
"Your song is ending..."
Regret that does not belong to her cycles through in a never ending loop, sharp, bitter, the staccato beat of its relentless song driving home each wrong turn taken, each missed opportunity, each lesson left unlearned, each instance of procrastination, of believing that there would always be Time.
His regret.
"I don't want to go."
A cry of rage and anguish tears through her consciousness, the sound her own, but... not quite... not yet... merely a reverberating echo of the turmoil she is feeling now. Or perhaps it is one she is yet to feel?
This, it is almost more than she can handle, to feel nothing except for this chaos, this all-encompassing cacophony of pain and anger and guilt and loss. The parody of a song that should soothe the heart, but that torments the soul instead, a bitter symphony that even the song of the universe cannot abate.
Those feelings are not truly hers, yet they are felt as acutely as if they were, a testament of her ages-long vigil, of her role as an everlasting witness.
Shared anguish, shared rage.
His.
"Your song is ending..."
It is merely a golden glow at first, from hand to arm, from arm to shoulder, from shoulder to chest, then like an arrow through both his hearts, and from his core it flows like quicksilver, like living fire, enveloping his whole body. The physical pain is unbelievable, augmented by the fact that it was fought against until the very last moment, its violence merely a mirror of his desire to deter it.
Still, the pain of his body pales in comparison to the mental anguish he is feeling, a mind that, even through her own pain, she seeks to soothe as it is her duty, both burning together in that bright instant of communion, when all of time and space is open to her senses for one bright, shining instant...
The past, the present and the future, all hers to glimpse through the mind of her charge, her Time Lord.
...shadows of the Future...
...echoes of the Past...
Something is Wrong.
The TARDIS can feel herself screaming as she is torn apart, as her defiled insides become the seeds of Paradox.
...but that has not happened yet.
The memory flows through her, a memory of a distant future, a desperate attempt of her own self to convey the only message she can, to try and save what can be saved. The flood of images and emotions is overwhelming, and if she initially perceives this precise moment in time as unbearable, what she feels next when she sees what is to come makes her want to scream in despair unending, makes her rage at the unfairness of it all...
The images come unbidden, a charged shock through her whole system. Even if she wanted to, the TARDIS cannot stop their desperate assault.
. . .
She can see her Time Lord dying, the lifeblood of his last incarnation dripping across her controls, falling through the grille beneath the console, the surprised expression on his face giving way to one of horrified understanding.
His long, final look at his executioner feels like seeing himself clearly for the first time.
No. It goes beyond that.
It is understanding himself truly for the first time in more than a millennia, no excuses, nowhere to hide, a broken mirror showing him with stark clarity the light and the dark that have always resided in his soul.
In the stillness of near death, he can finally face himself, see the whole chain of events that led him to this precise moment. It is when he finally stops his near-perpetual motion that he truly sees what he should have seen from the start, what should have been obvious to him, what he forgot because of the one rule he still could not deal with properly, the one rule that, after more than a thousand years, he still cannot grasp its proper execution.
"Time can be rewritten."
Fixed points in time. It is their impact that is fixed, their significance, their outcome.
Not how exactly they come to pass.
Bowie Base One should have taught him that.
Time Lord Victorious, indeed. What a joke.
Looking at his mirror self, he wonders how did it get this far, at what precise point in time did he splinter, become divided, when exactly did all his anger and pain and guilt and regret take form, developing a life of its own, those emotions burning past boiling point to melt together into an embodiment of hate and madness.
He knows there were times in his life when he was close, so very close, to succumbing to his dark side. He just never thought it could be this literal.
He forgot it once was.
His fault. No one else's.
The irony.
Does it count as suicide if the hand that kills you used to be a part of your body? When the shape it now belongs to was once born from yours? Is it still yourself when your blackest emotions become so powerful that they can even reach through time, reshaping events to ensure its twisted birth, even more powerful than before, darker, crazier, relentless.
A Time Lord should never cross his own timeline. Does it still count when it is only a fraction of yourself that does it? The worst part?
"Valeyard," he says, staring at his dark twin, the blood from his head wound almost camouflaged between his wild ginger strands, blue-green eyes watching the shape that becomes his judge, jury and executioner, a bitter parody of a shape he once wore.
Brown eyes return that gaze, a look that was once warm and vibrant now filled with coldness and hate, tainted with madness. His whole expression makes a once familiar face virtually unrecognizable.
"Doctor," his almost-doppelganger answers, the icy disdain in his tone as palpable and cutting as the myriad wounds he skillfully inflicted, regeneration no longer an option as a means to survive. The Valeyard made sure to invalidate all possibility of invoking that ability.
In his moment of death the Doctor finds the acceptance, the complete understanding he denied himself before, his capacity for both good and evil, and how in not fully acknowledging that evil he merely gave it strength.
He cannot outrun himself.
With one last effort, his mind searches for the point where everything began to spiral out of control, the moment it all started to go downhill. Pain has always been a constant in his life, same as guilt, deserved and undeserved, but there is one catalyst, one trigger...
He needs just one more moment to be able To See...
It is a strange stillness, this, a moment that seems to stretch on forever even as his life is finally fading, his consciousness seeming as if suspended in time.
Guilt.
It started with the Time War. His role in the destruction of not only his race, but also of his home planet. His guilt at understanding that he would do it again if needed in order to save all of creation. His guilt at reprising his role when the moment came and not even doubting it. Guilt at what he felt... and at what he no longer felt.
But that was guilt he could have lived through, it served a higher purpose, he could have let go of it in time...
Loss.
The Curse of a Time Lord. Doomed to see everything turn to dust, everything dying around him, all those he lost, all those he could not save, all those taken from him, all those he had to hurt to save, lost to him even while standing in his presence. Lost because they were killed even while alive, no longer the person they fought so hard to become, fought so hard to not let go of.
Donna.
Best friend. Sister. As close to family as he can claim without sharing the same blood. He killed all that she became in order to save her life. A loss that kept on hurting long after its source was dead and buried, like all the others before her.
Jenny.
The daughter he didn't want, couldn't accept, the daughter he learned to admire, to love in the briefest span of time. The daughter he mourned for years until the universe decided to be strangely kind and return her to him, only to lose her again. This time, permanently.
Betrayal.
River Song.
How can someone die for you and betray you at the same time? It didn't hurt because he loved her the most. It hurt because he opened his hearts again, dared to believe that there could be hope for him, that perhaps, he was no longer a condemned man.
It hurt because what River destroyed was his Hope.
He should have known better, should have seen the trap as it closed in around him at the Library. There was only One Time he could Say It. Only one way he Could.
He Never Did.
Tricked by his own belief in Time, blindly following the script placed before him, not thinking to question it, too relieved at his perceived Second Chance. A Fool.
Pain.
His emotions always ran too deep, too strong, that is why he forever kept them in check. One of many reasons why he was the eternal outcast amongst his people. Like fire and ice, hot and cold, both at once, pushing and pulling, never stopping, afraid to stand still, yet standing calm at the centre of the storm, struggling to keep all of himself in such a tight control, all until the moment a small hand fit perfectly in his, tore away at his carefully constructed defenses and his battered soul started to heal.
He took her for granted, not admitting he loved her until she was torn from him, not realizing how much he truly needed her until she was with him no longer. Not saying the words HE needed to say and SHE needed to hear because he ran out of time.
Sending her away again with his human clone because he thought he knew what was best for her, decided for her, an act of pure hubris.
He has never felt such excruciating pain.
The Doctor thought it was all worth it, his pain for her happiness, his loneliness for her supposedly fantastic life. All those sacrifices worth it, until now.
Now there is only Regret.
He can only hope that Rose's death was quick, painless, not like his, not like this torture.
It is a futile hope, but still, he clings to it with his dying hearts.
His tenth incarnation was the key to it all. His best and his worst. His strength and his weakness. Happiness and pain, love and loss, the seeds planted and nurtured to lead to this exact moment in time.
"Rose," he whispers like a prayer as his body falls to the ground, glassy eyes no longer seeing his assassin. The soft sound carries strongly even though the words can barely escape his lips, the only source of his Faith, his shield against his Darkness. It has always been Her.
Not even the Valeyard can rob him of this.
At the moment of his death, the Doctor finally acknowledges that he has never stopped loving her, still loves her, beyond death even, forever His Rose.
Her. His one true weakness.
The moment when everything started to go wrong.
It was all His Fault.
"Rose."
With her name on his lips as his last breath leaves his body, he sets his hearts free at last, able to love her in death as completely as he never could in life, as he never allowed himself to love her, her image burning his soul as he finally fades into eternity.
. . .
The past, the present and the future, all hers to glimpse through the mind of her charge, her Time Lord.
"I don't want to go."
The TARDIS has never felt her Time Lord fight like this, so hard, so long, so desperately, as if he could somehow sense what is to come. He should welcome the comfort of detachment, the upcoming distance from the turmoil that rages within him, yet he clings to it, to this incarnation, feeling more alive than ever even as he is about to fade into nothingness. All because of seeing Her one more time.
When the golden fire envelops him completely, he finally lets go, not because he wants to, but because he is unable to hold on any longer, the name that has always kept him fighting no more than a strangled sound in his throat, the last, defiant cry of a dying man.
Her name. His one true song. The only song his hearts ever wanted to sing.
As his mind settles, as the link between TARDIS and Time Lord is reestablished, the sentient ship welcomes it only to see the detachment, the coldness, and in that instant she realizes what will go wrong, sees the loophole, the tiny little detail she would have missed if not for the warning from her future self.
The TARDIS protects his mind from the knowledge.
And forever faithful, she does the only thing she can before the temporal link between past, present and future is broken.
Back through the Vortex, back to the Past, sending the warning to the only time she could, to that precise moment when a valiant child looked fearlessly into her heart and became one with Time and Fate to save her Time Lord.
Their Time Lord.
. . .
"I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself."