The Beginning of the End (Doctor Who)

Chap. 45

The first thing you need to know is how you got the damn ring. You run all over the library, throwing books on the ground while trying to find something about Gallifreyan rings. You pull out one on Gallifreyan Technologies Volume IX.

You're about to throw this one on the ground too, but something about it won't let you. Your muscles literally can't seem to let go. Scanning the index you spot a section on concealed identities, the Chameleon Arch. Now you're just curious, flipping through the pages.

Everything clicks. The Gallifreyan, the TARDIS's translations of the language, the impulses, your ability to understand the Doctor when the rest of the humans couldn't... you take the ring off, tracing the symbols and looking for a way to activate it.

Frustrated at finding nothing, you squeeze it in the palm of your hand, hearing a crack as it falls to three pieces. A golden glow falls out, streaming right into your eyes. It's an agonising pain you never thought possible. It feels like you're being ripped apart, inside and out. Being stampeded by a thousand horses would be nothing compared to this.

When it's over, there's only a moment of complete silence before everything, literally everything comes flooding back. You stumble against a bookshelf at the force of knowledge coming back.

The first Time Lord to be experimentally grown, tested and discarded.

The burning of a thousand suns by your hand just after escaping Gallifrey. One of the best days of your life.

The destruction of the Thijarians, one of your proudest moments.

The screams of so many children, so many galaxies.

The first Time Lords grew you in a pod, as a test. To discover the best way to bring about their new species. You were seen as worthless when they were finished, but they had messed with your mind so much. You had so much anger, yet so much knowledge.

You wonder how your ex-accomplise is holding up in that prison... Swarm, wasn't it?

The flashbacks fade as you laugh. Of course the Doctor wouldn't tell you it was a Chameleon Arch. She didn't know what Time Lord you were, she couldn't have known. Your identity was never recorded, they considered you a pet to be discarded when they were finished. The Matrix was created a few hundred years after your escape.

You're The Darkness, the never ending darkness. The runt of the most powerful species in existence.

But why hide? You search your head, filing through memories.

Ah, the Time War. Of course. The perfect time to wreck havoc, you chose to stand with the Daleks, then betrayed them by blowing up nearly an entire fleet. Though that timeline became erased later. You had created so many enemies, collapsed against a corner with nowhere to go. You stole a Chameleon Arch, faked your final death and forced a regeneration into Y/n, placing yourself in a human orphanage in the 21st Century.

You don't know how many regenerations you have left, the Time Lords never said. This could be your last one, or there may be a hundred more to come. The limit was never spoken of.

You take a deep breath, feeling the invisibility of finally knowing who you are. The Time War's over now, no one knows you survived.

Laughter washes over you, the look on the Doctor's face when she finally learns... you don't even have to stay here anymore. You don't want to.

Running back to your room you find a short, lacy white bohemian dress and put your hair up. Though you keep her boots, and- oh! The thick black knife. You pull it out, literally breaking open the handle.

The circuits are still there. As a test you throw it against the wall, then think 'up, back to me.' It flies back to your hand. You slip the handle cover back on. Total telepathic control. One of your favorite creations. Back under your boot. You make sure to grab the glass and stone from Kinstarno.