Finally, the gruesome scene gave way to a forest, harshly overgrown with thorn bushes. A single path led through the underbrush, and in front of that path stood the Sixth Doctor.

 "What do you think?" he asked. "A touch baroque, I'll admit, but we've always gone for the melodramatic."

 "You are no part of me," said the Doctor, walking past him.

 "Oh, but I am," said the Sixth Doctor, taking up the Doctor's pace only a few steps behind. "I'm a part you denied, a part you hated, but a necessary part nonetheless. You claim to ignore me, but in the end, it's me who always has to finish the job, isn't it? Me who blows up the Daleks, me who orders the Nemesis to destroy the Cyberfleet. Without me, you'd have been dead a thousand times, and the universe with you."

 The Doctor sighed. "Perhaps. Perhaps you're right. There have been times when I've let my darker urges take hold of me. But I will not allow them dominance." He kept walking through the forest, his pace unabated despite the thorns that plucked at his clothing, tore at his skin.

 "Simplistic claptrap," scoffed the Sixth Doctor. "I am more than just your dark side; I am the essence of everything you once were. I am the truest part of you; I am your strength!" Oddly enough, the thorns seemed to shy away from his black robes.

 The Doctor harrumphed. "Strength. What do you know of strength, anyways? Crushing the weak doesn't make you strong; it denies you their strength. And an alliance of the weak is formidable indeed."

 "That's always been our -- your weakness, hasn't it? Needing others." He stopped, letting the Doctor proceed a few paces further. "And speaking of others..." The trail widened out into a small clearing, dominated by five crosses. As in the graveyard, the Doctor recognized them.

 "You didn't seem to have much to say to them earlier," said the Sixth Doctor. "So I brought them back for you. Just you...and those you failed to save."

 The Doctor stared unblinkingly at the crosses for a long moment. Finally, he walked to the leftmost cross and spoke.

 "Katarina," he said, haltingly. "I wish I could have made you understand the world I brought you to. I wish I could have found a place for you without violence and suffering. I wish I could have found such a place myself."

 His voice hardened, became more resolved. "But you did understand one thing, in the end. You understood that keeping your life endangered mine, and that I would have died to keep you alive. And so you chose to sacrifice yourself for me. For this you have my gratitude, and my sorrow. Pass on, Katarina. Be tormented no longer."

 The cross faded away. With a sigh, the Doctor turned to the one next to it. The woman stared down at him, her eyes filled with anger.

 "No, Doctor," Roz said. "You don't get to take the blame for me. I won't let you."

 The Doctor's face was a mask of anguish. "I'm sorry--I tried to warn you--"

 "You did warn me, Doctor. 'If you go out there into history, I won't be able to protect you.' Those were your exact words. Don't lay any guilt on yourself, alright? Sometimes you have to die to find something worth living for." And she faded away, sparing a single disdainful glare for the Sixth Doctor.

 The Doctor turned to the cross on the far right. "Sara Kingdom," he said, once again choosing his words carefully. "You were a pawn in so many games, of so many people. The Daleks, Mavic Chen, myself...your loyalties twisted and turned, your ideals betrayed by the people you cared about most...and your own brother, slain as part of that same game."

 "But your final move in that game was not one of a pawn, but of a queen. You assisted me, knowing that it would mean your own demise, deliberately going against my instructions. I don't know...perhaps you had ghosts of your own to make peace with. But you made your choice. Pass on, Sara. Pass on."

 Sara's cross faded as well. The Doctor looked at the cross next to it, on which Kamelion writhed and twisted. "My poor little robot," he said at last. "This, I fear, was not a world for you. I wish I could have found you someplace safe, free from the manipulations of puppet masters and tyrants, of tin gods and dangerous ideas. But I spoke to you once, on a world far removed from here. You forgave me then. Forgive me again." For a moment, Kamelion shifted again, and the Doctor stared at his own mirror image...then that image faded. Finally, the Doctor turned to the remaining cross.

 "Adric." He sighed. "There was always so much I wanted to say to you, so much time I wanted to give to you...you were like a son to me. And like any parent, I had problems expressing how I felt for you...until now. Until the only way I can speak to you is as a phantom in my mind.

 "You never listened to advice. You were always so certain, so confident. The right way was the one you'd thought of, and you stuck to it -- right or wrong." The Doctor smiled. "Like me when I was your age.

 "Do you know how many times I stood there, in the darkest hours of the night, laying in the co-ordinates for the freighter? Do you know how hard it is to erase them again? To know that I could save you?

 "But I cannot. A TARDIS materializing on board a freighter in an unstable time warp...I cannot. All I can do...is grieve."

 "You will never pass on, Adric. You are a part of my heart and soul, and when you died, a part of me died as well." The Doctor took the blue badge from Adric's chest, and pinned it to his lapel. The cross vanished, but the star remained.

 Mocking applause came from across the clearing. "Very nice, Doctor. Shall we proceed?" 

 "Of course," replied his sixth persona. "There are three. You've passed the first, those you failed to save. Now for the second...those you left behind." The clearing lit up, as though a spotlight was trained on it.

 "How disgustingly melodramatic," said the Doctor, even as his eyes took in the woman standing in the clearing.

 "Hello, Joan," the Doctor said, looking down at his shoes in embarassment. "I suppose...I suppose there's something I need to tell you, but I'm not sure exactly what to say." He smiled. "That's not something you usually hear from me. Usually, I'm the one with the gift of gab, the speeches that convince monsters and madmen to give up their guns and lay down and die. But staring down a Dalek is one thing...telling the woman you love why you had to leave her is another thing altogether."

 He sighed. "I loved--no, I love you, Joan. John Smith loved you when he was alive, but when I touched the Pod to my head, everything came to me like a storm of summer lightning, and I understood who and what I was, and why I had to leave you...but my feelings didn't change. I wish they had. It would have been so much easier.

 "I remembered everything then...you touching the Pod, holding it in your hand...feeling what it was like to be 'The Doctor', and I wanted to scream that it wasn't fair, that I only put in the parts of myself that couldn't feel emotion...but I also knew what would happen if I stayed with you.

 "The Master enjoys killing people. The Daleks and Cybermen would have seen and exploited you as a weakness of mine. Fenric would have used you against me...two weeks with me turned your home and school into a smoking crater. I couldn't risk further destruction. Better to leave you alone, but alive.

 "I've never told anyone this. Ever. I wanted to tell you, but I was afraid you'd tell me to risk it. I knew I wasn't strong enough to leave if you'd asked me to stay. I couldn't tell Bernice...she'd pity me. I couldn't stand that. So I kept it inside. And I'm sure I'll keep it forever."

 The Doctor gently stroked Joan's cheek once, tears glistening on his cheek, before he finally turned away. "Someday, Joan...someday when I've vanquished all my foes, and the universe is finally a peaceful and calm place, and I don't need to worry about pain, or evil, or death...someday when I can just be an ordinary man...then I will come back. Someday, Joan, I will come back to you...until then, simply follow all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine."

 Joan vanished with a grateful smile. The Doctor turned to his other self and said, "If we've quite finished here, can we proceed?"

 The Sixth Doctor said nothing, but his smirk had vanished and his cat-like eyes gleamed with malice. 

 Davros sat in the center of the clearing.

 "Is this the best you could do?" asked the Doctor. "I doubt that he's even really dead."

 "He is a representation, Doctor. A representation of every living thing on Skaro that you callously exterminated--"

 "No." The Doctor's voice was calm, collected. "I will not have that accusation thrown at me again. I knew the Daleks were attempting to steal the Hand, yes. I knew when they would strike -- am I not Time's Champion? I reprogrammed the device to strike at Skaro instead of Earth.

 "But Davros activated it. I looked him in the eyes and asked him not to, I appealed to every hint of mercy and compassion within the man and found none.

 "I _begged_ him to stop. And he refused."

 The Doctor walked past Davros without another word.

 The answer came sharply, suddenly, in the form of a hard strike just underneath the collarbone. The Doctor crumpled like a ragdoll. Dimly, he saw a woman standing over him in a black combat suit, her mirrored sunglasses reflecting his agony.

 "Three...three tests..." he gasped weakly.

 "I'm the villain," said the Sixth Doctor, looming over him. "I get to cheat."

 TO BE CONTINUED...