Doctor Who: Sinnerman

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It all starts with a loose panel in a corridor near the TARDIS library.

He could have missed it. He’s just turning around the corner, fingers trailing absentmindedly on the nearest wall, when he sees it out of the corner of his eye, stops, and changes direction. It’ll only take a minute.

(The Doctor lies; and the Doctor is very good at not thinking about things he doesn’t want.)

It’s only when he kneels down beside it, instinctively reaches in his jacket pocket and his fingers meet a sudden emptiness, a disconcerting void, that his mind freezes, and his stomach twists and clenches in blind panic, and his hearts and lungs seem to stop and he’s unable to draw breath.

He knows what he’s supposed to be looking at but nothing registers, his eyes refusing to focus. He can’t think. He doesn’t want to think.

His hand draws back as if touched by flame–

…Ten million ships on fire, there was a war, your own planet, it burned, we lost, everyone lost, they burnt with you, gone, no more, how many children on Gallifrey, not one line, how many, unless there’s children crying, someone please, help me, what couldn't you do then, how many, my final victory, such divine hatred, you promised, I have shown you yourself, what couldn't you do then, could you then kill that child? –

And it all comes rushing back, shock and shame and guilt and horror, a chocking flood that doubles him over; he tries to get up, to run, his trembling feet fail him, and he slides down the wall and remains sitting there, his back leaning against it, unable to scream.

What have you done, Doctor?

He runs his hands over his face, tries to muster his breathing, his heartbeat. He can’t tell how long he stays there, silent, unmoving, staring at nothing and listening to the constant mantra drumming in his head, both unwilling and incapable of shutting it out.

What have you done, Doctor? What have you done?

When the moon is on the wave,
And the glow-worm in the grass,
And the meteor on the grave,
And the wisp on the morass;
When the falling stars are shooting,
And the answer'd owls are hooting,
And the silent leaves are still
In the shadow of the hill,
Shall my soul be upon thine,
With a power and with a sign.


The Doctor is also very good at noticing things –although in this case, one doesn’t really need to be; and he soon realises he now has to run because he needs to.

Sick, dying, looking for him.

(Why? He knows why.)

He visits a dozen uninhabited planets at random and just gazes at the landscape without setting a foot outside the door. He finds the damned bookshop he was looking for and goes on a small shopping spree. He searches the remotest corners of the TARDIS, tidies everything up, and repairs any and every device or control that could possibly malfunction.

(He’s not hiding. He’s definitely not imagining in how many horrible ways he could, and is very probably going to die. And he’s not avoiding Clara –or anyone, really; not at all.)

The blue box drifts aimlessly through the vortex, and every book is boring and any equation he tries to solve turns out wrong. But he keeps going, doing things, in a frantic, exhausting pace that manages to keep him busy.

He practices magic tricks; he looks the part after all, and it turns out he’s quite good too.

He finds an electric guitar and decides to dust off his musical skills, until it becomes clear that music doesn’t allow him the luxury of not thinking and he abandons the attempt.

He could go, of course he could; he would, straight into a trap, his enemy sneering at his compassion. And that would be acceptable.
But the line is now irreversibly blurred, and he would never be able to tell: is it really compassion that compels him or is it shame?

And he realises that he is horribly scared. So he hides.

He denies himself rest, food, sleep.

(His body fails him eventually and he’s trapped in a battlefield, the screams echoing in his ears, one particular scream persisting, growing louder, distorted, hateful, until there’s nothing human left in it.)

He jolts awake wan and shaking, and he desperately smashes his fist against the console, again and again, relentlessly, until sparks fly and he’s bleeding badly and the voice seems to die off.

Then he staggers to the medical bay, ignores the inevitable blood smears on the clean surfaces and the throbbing pain in his hand, and empties very specific cupboards he generally avoids. Worth a try; every try.

He makes absolutely sure that it doesn’t fail him again.


Though thy slumber may be deep,
Yet thy spirit shall not sleep;
There are shades which will not vanish,
There are thoughts thou canst not banish;                 
By a power to thee unknown,
Thou canst never be alone;
Thou art wrapt as with a shroud,
Thou art gather'd in a cloud;
And forever shalt thou dwell
In the spirit of this spell.

He’s sitting by his workshop fiddling with wires and scrap pieces of metal, when the bulb of the desk lamp flickers and goes out. The only other light source is the cold glow half the roundels cast, the time rotor with its orange warmth dark and unmoving, and every other light shut off for giving him a headache.

He calmly produces a torch in the almost darkness and switches it on. Nothing. He sighs, and setting it against the table, hits it with a small wrench near the top twice. To his satisfaction, a bright yellow light appears, and he places the torch on a stand near him, going back to his work.

(He’s all too aware that his tired brain consciously avoided offering his sonic screwdriver as a quicker solution, that he has long since stopped reaching instinctively for the absent valuable tool.)

“See, I was right. This…dependence is a bit pathetic, honestly. I never needed one either”.

He whirls around and knocks over the stand in his haste. It crashes to the floor and the yellow light dims a little. He briefly thinks of picking it up but decides not to, and just stands there slightly disoriented, gripping the chair.

“Who’s there?” he shouts.

The lower level has been plunged into shadowy darkness and he measures every step carefully until he finds the stairs.

“Hello? I know you’re there.”

He can see better as he nears the top, but it’s not much. His footsteps echo in the silence. The main level is apparently empty but he knows better than to trust his vision.

“Who are you? Speak!”

"Thy evil spirit, Brutus."

He freezes for a second and then turns towards the doors.

Someone is leaning on the wall near them, a colourful umbrella hanging from the nearest railing. A hand reaches out of the shadow and gives it a push, making it sway back and forth.

“All right, Mel would probably say that this was needlessly melodramatic, but really, I couldn’t resist.”

Ah. Your big, blond, Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat-clad self. And yet you feel nothing, no stir of remembrance, no threatening paradox, no change in Time whatsoever.

“You are not real,” he whispers.

“Define real”, comes the arrogant reply.

“You’re not… really there”, he concedes.

“Oh, he’s finally figured it out! And here was poor me thinking you were smarter than the others”. The figure walks nonchalantly towards him but he holds his ground. “Then again, maybe it’s not a matter of intelligence. It’s not that you don’t need your screwdriver…you just don’t have it anymore and you’re adjusting. You make do”.

He simply glares at him. The other man walks past him and pushes a few buttons on the console, glancing up at the screens every now and then.

“But the thing is, the poor dear here is all set to make you a new one. Blueprints and everything”. He turns around abruptly and plops himself down on a chair with a flourish of the garish coat. “So the real question is…why do you not want one?”

The other’s eyes are now fixed on his own. After a while he looks down and walks away.

“But we both know the answer to that, don’t we?”

He paces up and down, avoiding him. Then he decides to check the atmospheric conditions and run a scan for anything unusual. Sentient gases, alien pollen and parasites are never to be ruled out after all.

“You won’t find anything there”. The grey head bows in angry resignation.

“Aren’t you gonna complain about the new look? Or the redecoration? Everyone always does”.

“Oh, you want me to complain, Doctor?” Now he’s offended. “There are far more important issues to complain about! All my hard work wasted!”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Valeyard! After all I went through trying to stop him!”

A shiver runs down his spine but he forces himself to look at the apparition or whatever it is. “You think I’m the Valeyard”.

“Why shouldn’t I?” He gets up and walks around the console, hands in his pockets. “Darkness. Selfishness. Cruelty.” He stops right in front of him. “Even if you’re not, you are certainly getting there.”

“No…no, you can’t judge–”

“The Master never said how he came about. That is a way to start, I suppose”. He wanders off again and he seems to drag all the light along with him.

Breathe, Doctor.

“Somewhere between the twelfth and final incarnation”, recites the voice, now echoing around one of the stairs to the upper level; but he stubbornly refuses to look at him. There’s a small pause.

“It fits; no? We both know, Doctor, you’re not really the twelfth.”

He turns around now, furiously, and the other is no longer there.

He backs up to the console which is shrouded in total darkness, trying not to panic, taking deep breaths. Every move he makes echoes harshly in the vast, empty space making him jump. He pushes a button blindly and light shines from somewhere in the upper balcony.

His sigh of relief dies abruptly in his chest when he sees a figure standing there, dark against the shining wall and bookcase.

“Well… I did mess up the numbering; that’s true.”

Oh, not him. You sink down into a chair, cross your arms, and gaze up at the man.

He moves a little to the left, leaning on the banister, and now the bandolier and the battered trench coat are clearly visible. His face isn’t and somehow that’s a relief.

“You know, it’s supposed to be just one Ghost of Christmas Past.” He does his best to sound dismissive and annoyed. “And I don’t think it’s actually Christmas in this time zone either. Middle of June, I’d say…Yeah.”

“Why?” the vision simply asks, blankly, disappointment etched on every line of his body.

He clutches his head in his hands feeling dizzy. “You…You of all people should understand.”

“I understand that I didn’t have a choice. That you did. That maybe I shouldn’t have hoped for great men. Just for a good one”.

He closes his eyes desperately, a moan escaping him at the last words. “Davros– we are talking about Davros–”

“A child.”

All self-control abandons him and he jumps to his feet. “And how many children were on Gallifrey that day? How many did you kill in the War before that?” he shouts up at him, pointing an accusing hand. “Oh, you didn’t have a choice. Ah. So you want me to die because I did and I made the wrong one. Just one. How did you live? How could you, why did you continue after that? Why shouldn’t I? This wasn’t war, this wasn’t mass genocide at least! This isn’t someone who had never harmed, never wronged me!” He pauses, panting for breath, shaking. The other one remains still, looking down at him from the upper level.

“You want me to go and surrender to the enemy of all creation, to a ruthless, evil being that deserves suffering, death, Hell a hundred times over, just because I made a horrible mistake –and I know how horrible it was, and I wish that I hadn’t done it– just because once, once I did something wrong?”

“No. I want you to go because he asks.”

The reply stops him dead in his tracks. The dizziness is gone, but now the room, the whole TARDIS seems to be spinning, expanding unnaturally in twisted corridors and nonsensical structures like an M.C. Escher painting, and he is distantly aware of the sound of lights coming back online one by one; near him or far away, the brightness never reaches him.

Nightmare, hallucination, madness, metaphysics. Take your pick.

He ignores everything, and stares into the older (but younger) face.

“Before we changed it, before Gallifrey didn’t burn… there was a simple truth and I knew it: I did what I had to do. And it wasn’t right.” He stops as if merely talking about the last days of the Time War physically pains him. It probably does.

“Of course, we did save it in the end. But I would have done it. And no matter how pure my motives, no matter how forced my hand…” he trails off, shaking his head. “Do you imagine that afterwards, if one of those children had somehow survived, if one man or woman came to me and said ‘I was on the Capitol that last day. How could you?’, that I wouldn’t be completely at their mercy, that I wouldn’t accept any punishment they might have deemed fitting to the crime?”

He chuckles bitterly and now the lined, tired face is illuminated clearly.

“It is amazing what an effect a witness who confronts you, a living victim who asks you to account for what you did, a righteous accuser can have. But there was no one. Oh, the dead do accuse, and they drag you down. But they do so slowly.”

He’s well aware of the feeling, countless bouts of reckless, borderline suicidal behaviour all fresh in his memory, and he averts his gaze.

(Hello, I have sins, would you like me to die for you, why not, what do you mean you care–)

“You ask me why you should face the one you wronged.” His voice is now just deeply sad. “Because he is alive, and he was wronged, no matter who he is, and he has the right to ask you to pay the price. You ask why I –well, not I, really, but still– kept on living. Because there was no one left, no one with the right to order that I shouldn’t.”

There’s a moment of silence. Then the light starts fading and his younger self seems to blow away with it.

“Wait…Wait, wait, wait!”

He is ignored, and soon he’s alone again in the blue shadows below. He looks –tries to look– around and he can feel his cursed, traitorous pulse accelerating.

("Every single creature in the universe has an irrational fear of the dark. But they're wrong. Because it's not irrational.")

He runs a hand over his face and he almost bursts out laughing. Because somehow, that seems so, so much better an alternative.


(t.b.c)