"If the stars could scream, their cries would be echoing through the infinite universe, through the hearts of every living being, against every burning star, and circling back again.

The Time Lords and the Daleks.

One side wins, one side loses. The cycle spins back again and again. The snake devours its own tail. Victories and defeats blend together into an opaque darkness of carnage and violence until the canvas of the cosmos is covered in this gruesome smear. The galactic holocaust they have created will remain on the skin of reality as a grisly scar, a warning that shouts 'this is the cost of war.'

It is a warning that will go unheeded.

The only hero of this conflict will be the one to wipe it all away.

And even then, this hero's brave deed would be just another fallacy of war."

-Excerpt from "The History of the Time War"

Though the exact date is impossible to comprehend by human understandings, somewhere in the middle of the Time War the Doctor found himself at the mercy of the Daleks. He had been captured, but not before crushing the Dalek Emperor's entire fleet. How the Doctor managed to accomplish this completely on his own, was simple. He drained the power of the stars in a nearby constellation, depicting the defeat of the Sontaran general Grek, into the power cells of his ship's hypothetical engines and forced the energy to vent into the surrounding area, trapping the fleet in a state of quantum nonexistence. The Daleks aboard those ships will spend eternity flittering between real and unreal, moving faster than the beating wings of a humming bird, unable to be whole again.

The Doctor's ship crash landed on a passing Battle Asteroid which had arrived to supply reinforcements to the Daleks.

"Just my luck," the Doctor said to himself. Before losing consciousness he heard the angry squawks of a fleet of Daleks as they carved open the hull of the ship.

The capturing of the Doctor was considered a major military triumph for the Dalek Empire. They had omitted the fact that his capture came by sheer luck, but their enthusiasm for their triumph could not be overshadowed by something as trivial as the "truth."

Endless debates in the Dalek parliament were held on what the fate of this Time Lord, the Oncoming Storm, the Predator of the Daleks should be. Ultimately, they decided that the Doctor was worth far more to them alive than dead. They knew that his loyalties to his own people often wavered, and perhaps it could be exploited.

From experience, they knew that the Doctor could not be held by any cage of prison they had built, but suddenly, a prize once thought useless in the war could be put to good use. To trap a Time Lord, it would take something built by a Time Lord.

The Doctor was locked away in the deepest cell of Shada, the prison of the Time Lords.

The cell was not what you'd imagine it to be, dank and rat-infested, with a perpetual dripping that slowly drove the prisoner mad. Instead, the room was a bright, empty space with no definable walls or floors or any geometrical definition. The Doctor floated through the nothing with his eyes closed. Even with through his eyelids, he could feel the stinging of searing light that slowly cooked and dried his eyes. Sleep was nearly impossible with the red light that reflected against his shut eyes. Time meant nothing in this place. He did not hunger or thirst, he simply existed in a torturous spotlight. Darkness, even for a second, was all the Doctor wanted.

And finally, after being held prisoner for somewhere between 100 seconds to 100 years, the darkness came.

The light vanished from the room and the Doctor found himself facedown on a cold metal floor. He shut his eyes and savored the perfect black around him. Laughter echoed through the chamber as he slowly got to his feet. He was without a TARDIS, a sonic screwdriver, or a decent pair of shoes, but the light was gone. His mind was clear. He could try to escape.

"Thrilled to hear you so happy, my old chum," a voice said. The sound of which echoed through the chamber.

A sliver of light cracked through the thick darkness revealing a lonely shilloute.

"Well, I certainly hope you don't expect me to carry you out of here, Doctor. Time is of the essence!"

Barefoot and battered, the Doctor staggered towards the light. His savior wore a dark cloak that covered his entire body.

"Who," the Doctor's throat was very dry, each word felt like sand along his throat "who are you?"

His rescuer pulled down his hood to reveal a bald head that was practically a perfect circle.

"Hello again, Doctor!"

Mortimus, the Meddling Monk, the last person the Doctor expected to stick his neck out for anyone or anything.

"How…why?"

The Doctor's confusion and dry mouth made him keep his statements brief.

"How is this daring rescue attempt going to succeed? Quite simple my friend, but I'll explain along the way."

The once crimson and purple halls of Shada had been turned a solid copper color. The Monk led the Doctor through the cavernous passage to the gravity lift opposite the doorway. Their walk took them past two rows of Dalek sentries that had been wrapped and crushed in tentacles that were the color of dying leaves.

"As you can see, I spent a bit of time helping an Axon find a new planet to devour. I was running a planetary real estate business which, well, in this galactic economy, it isn't my fault that the property didn't technically 'exist,' but I digress, I accepted a bit of Axonite as a finders fee for a planet that was…gently inhabited."

The Doctor was weak from his imprisonment, so he didn't have the strength to throw the Monk into his former cell and leave him there as punishment for that statement.

The lift rose and they arrived in the central hub of Shada. Levels and levels of metal cubes forged from dwarf star metal kept the most notorious enemies of Skaro and its citizens locked away. Startled, the Doctor suddenly realized how exposed he and his unfortunate savior were, surrounded by thousands of Daleks.

"I can tell by the look on your face you're worried about all of these nasty Daleks around us," the Monk said. He pulled up his sleeve and revealed a thin golden bracelet with ornate Gallifreyean carvings.

"A Time Ring fitted with a high-level perception filter," he said, "they won't notice us at all."

"Yes, but if any of these Daleks perform a biomass scan, they'll notice us right away. They may not see us, but they'll know we're here!" the Doctor's voice cracked as he spoke. He slowly felt the strength of his voice and his body returning.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," the Monk waved his hands away to brush the Doctor's concern out of the air.

"Which is why, Doctor, the key to a good jailbreak is to…break the jail."

The electric whirr of Shada suddenly cut out. Dalek eyestalks darted back and forth in the hopes of finding a solution to their problem.

"E-MER-GEN-CY!" they began to shout one-by-one. The silver boxes opened all in unison with a terrible hiss and every type of being from every corner of the galaxy was unleashed. Some were immediately cut down in a hail of laser fire from nearby Daleks. A pair of Zygons and a Draconian lifted a Dalek and hurled him over the edge of their level, sending it plummeting down twenty stories. A pack of Juldoon knocked the Doctor the Monk to the ground without actually noticing their presence. Grabbing his arm, the Doctor pulled his rescuer up and began to run.

"Wait! Wait!" the former faux Monk stopped in his tracks at one particular cell, "we need to wait for my 'inside man' as they say in those delightful Earth films."

The Monk's inside man was, in fact, a woman. She sat cross-legged with a statue-like stillness. She did not even making the necessary movements for breathing. In Earth years, she looked to be somewhere in her twenties, but the Doctor was making this assumption purely by her height. Her face was covered in a golden mask, shaped like the face of an Axon.

"Is she-?" the Doctor said.

"An Axon? Not at all. But, she was a former employee of the Axon I had as a client, until I decided to employ her myself. I remembered how useful those companions were for you, so I decided to pick one up of my very own."

The Monk leaned closer to the Doctor and whispered in his ear.

"Frankly, the mask gives me the willies, but she likes wearing it as a…sentimental thing, I suppose. She doesn't mind when I leave laundry around my TARDIS, so I don't complain either."

The woman stood and stared at the Doctor through the masks blank expression. Her head tilted slightly making her look a curious cat, or a lion sizing up her prey, but the blank expression of the mask did not provide any clue as to whether she was a friend or a foe. She marched past both men; her pace did not care if either man kept up. They moved quickly through the surrounding riot. Daleks fired randomly while prisoners destroyed anything they could get their hands on.

"Well, Mortimus, this rescue is going splendidly. Simply spectacular, I must say. If the sporadic hail of Dalek lasers doesn't kill us, I'm sure the violent criminals will!"

"Oh, Doctor, you're always such a pessimist! Where's your sense of adventure?"

"I must have left it back in my cell," the Doctor looked around, it seemed as though they were only closer to the center of the prison.

"Where, exactly, are we going?"

"I haven't the foggiest," the Monk said with a broad smile.

"You…haven't…the foggiest?" rarely had the Doctor heard a phrase that made him feel like he needed to have a good sit for a few minutes.

"Oh, none at all, I'm following her. She's been here for three months, going over the place, finding weaknesses."

The Monk had to stifle his giggle after the woman lifted her arm and stopped moving. She turned her head to look at the blank wall. Her hand reached out and rubbed along the surface of the wall in the shape of a circle. A small triangle dissolved into the wall. The woman held out her hand in front of The Monk's face. He gave her an orange ball, which the Doctor recognized as a piece of Axonite. The woman placed it gently into the triangular opening. Tiny tendrils burst from the orange skin as the material contorted until it fit the exact shape of the opening. The wall faded away, leaving a hallway that was crowded with aliens of different species, each with Dalek eye stalks protruding from their foreheads.

"Watch her work," the Monk said.

The woman ran forward toward two Slitheen who had reached out their green claws. She dropped to the floor and sliced both of their arms with a pair of golden daggers. She stood and spun to kick a Draconian in the stomach, knocking him backwards into a trio of Ood. A man with a sword in a dashing cape, who the Doctor assumed must have been from Pendalon, brought his sword down towards the woman's head, but she parried it away with one knife, and sliced off the eye stalk with the other. After the flurry of blades was complete, she stood in the middle of her violent work and breathed deeply.

"If we're done with the slaughter, can we move on, please?" the Doctor walked through the door, followed closely by his two companions. They reentered the same room.

"This can't be right…" the Doctor said in a whisper. The woman looked around the hall. Though her face didn't say it, she looked confused.

"Nonsense, you know Time Lords have no sense for aesthetics, they probably just built a series of identical hallways!" the Monk ran ahead, through the door, and reentered the room through the door behind the Doctor.

"Oh. Oh this can't be right at all."

The Doctor dropped to the ground and tapped his knuckles against the floor. He spun in a circle with his pointer finger sticking out and popped it into his mouth to taste the air for quantum residue.

"It's a Möbius Snare," the Doctor said with authority.

"A Moe-what?"

"A Möbius Snare. Quite simply, it traps you in an infinite loop. We're running through a hallway that is essentially a circle. It will continue to loop us back to this point. Rather brilliant actually. A very simple trap. It can be broken though."

"I was wondering when you'd finally get around the breaking bit. Go on!"

"Imagine a circle. Now, the only way to break a circle is to rip it somehow. Tear it, and straighten it out. In this case, the only thing that could rip it would be a reality fluctuation. Something like two exact entities that occupy the same space."

The Doctor looked at the doorway, then at Mortimus.

"How quickly can you run?"

"What's that supposed to mean?!"

"It will take at least two of us merging with our looped selves to make this happen."

The woman placed her hand on the Doctor's shoulders, and silently nodded. The three of them began to run. The hallway repeated itself three, four, five times. As they began to move faster, they would catch a brief glimpse of themselves as they walked through the doorway at the other end of the hall. Each pass through the loop moved them a little closer. From behind, the Doctor could hear Mortimus' breath getting shorter and shorter with each step.

As they entered the door for what felt like the twentieth loop, the Doctor felt a cold, invisible hand grab him by the throat and pull him back through the door way. He was slammed against the wall and found himself face-to-face with a pale faced man in a top hat.

The man opened his mouth to reveal rows and rows of razor edged teeth. Before he could bite into the Doctor's throat, Mortimus and the woman emerged, from both doors at once. Two of them came back through the door the Doctor was pulled from, while the other two came from the opposite hall, with had their own Doctor.

"I assume you have a clever explanation for this as well, Doctor?" the Mortimus at the end of the hallway said when he laid eyes upon the gaping maw of the well dressed man.

The Doctor tried to speak, but the hands were wrapped too tightly around his throat. Shadowy tentacles tore through the fine coat on the deadly stranger's back and launched themselves outward, ensnaring each of the copies. The Doctor quickly reached out his hand for himself, they touched and a blinding flash shot from their bodies. The room shook with the vibrations of two timelines merging. Both Doctors felt as though a surge of lightning was shooting through his body. They opened their mouths to scream, but there was no sound until the two finally became one.

The shaking of time itself forced the stranger to release his captives as he regained his footing. The Monk and his partner had been merged back into one entity. The trap had been severed. Through the sleeve of the Monk's cloak, his Time Ring began to glow.

"They're coming," he shouted, "everyone needs to grab on!"

The Doctor looked around the room to find the dark stranger. He could feel a chill in the air, like a breath on his neck. The stranger seemed to be just out of reach. He turned over his shoulder and was face-to-face with golden eyes. The Monk's partner stared at him. Through the mask, the Doctor heard a kind voice whisper to him.

"Run…clever boy…"

The masked woman pushed the Doctor back to the Monk's waiting arms. Behind her, the dark shadow began to bloom like a terrible forest in a nightmare spring. The Doctor reached out his hand for her, but the Monk held him back. Before the Time Ring blinked them both out of Shada, the Doctor watched as the woman turned to the darkness and ran towards it with both of her knives slicing away at its ebony grasp.

The walls of Shada were now a circular room colored red and gold. In the center, a massive wooden table sat. Two Time Lords were at either end of the table. Their grand collars stood high above their heads and made them appear to be colossal in height, in spite of the fact that they were both sitting.

"Here he is," the Monk said, presenting the Doctor proudly, "Theta Sigma, the Doctor."

"Welcome back, Doctor," one of the Time Lords said with a rigid smirk.

"We do hope we won't have to rescue you again," the other Time Lord said.

The Doctor remained silent. His thoughts were with the golden mask which showed no expression. What had she been feeling in those last moments?

"Now," the Monk said, "I do believe you two owe me something?"

The Doctor scoffed.

"Of course they do," he muttered, "there had to be something in it for you."

"That's just good business, old friend," the Monk said.

"Yes, you were promised a new TARDIS and permission to be relieved of service in our excursion with the Daleks," one of the Time Lords stated.

The word "excursion" made the Doctor sick to his stomach. To call such a travesty, such a waste of life an "excursion" was disgusting.

"Unfortunately," the Time Lord continued, "since his resurrection, Lord President Rassilon has made it very clear he does not want anyone abandoning the war effort. Your request has been denied."

"But," the Monk struggled for the words to express his outrage, "I-I did what you promised! I did the impossible! I escaped SHADA!"

"And we thank you dearly, but we're afraid your other…undesirable qualities will become a problem for the new Time Lord paradigm."

"What are you saying? What does that mean?"

The Monk never received an answer. His body froze and blew away in small atoms, like specks of dust in sunlight.

"Why did you do that?" the Doctor asked, barely controlling his rage.

"He was unfit to carry on as a Time Lord," the two Time Lords stood from their chairs, "surely you can see that, Doctor. Would you not agree that your own life is of more value than his?"

No the Doctor thought to himself. He was worth more than all of you.

Outside the war raged on. Time was ending. And somewhere, deep in his mind, the Doctor began to wonder if he still deserved his chosen name.

Could he ever look at what he had done, what he had allowed to happen, and still call himself "the Doctor"?