'So the blame falls to me does it, hmm? So be it! How convenient for you, that you do not have to bear the burden of that guilt.' I turned my back on the voice and started back the way I had come.
Fool! Turn around.
The venom behind the command stopped me dead in my tracks. This time I was sure I was not imagining the voice. Yet something about the voice seemed intimately familiar.
'I am not placing any blame. Any guilt you experience for your friend comes purely from your own feelings.' The first voice was now in front of me yet again.
'You’re saying I should feel guilty, hmm? Well I do!' I turned around, unable to face the voice. 'I feel guilty that I am going to have to leave my family and follow down a path that is unlikely to ever cross any of theirs. Guilty that I can’t tell any of them about the decision I made that shaped who I am. Guilty that my whole life with them they’ve never known my crime, my shame!' I collapsed onto my knees, tears flowing down my face.
'Guilty.'
'You are guilty of nothing. A decision was given to you to be made and you made it. Not for the first time and certainly not the last. That your friend took up your burden instead was his decision, not yours.' Kneeling all alone on the floor I suddenly felt pressure on my shoulder, as if a hand was resting there. I couldn’t bring myself to look up.
'But it was my fault that we were here at all.' No matter how I shifted my weight I could not lose the feeling of that hand. Was it offering to comfort? 'My fault that he came into this damn cave and my damned fault that the choice was even his to make! I should have accepted your offer.' Accepted that first chance to do things right.
'However you came to this place cannot change the fact that you did. Nothing can change that now.'
'Nothing?' I got back onto my feet. 'Then what is to stop me stealing an old TARDIS and interfering in the natural order of things that day and keeping us both from this cave?' What indeed?
'So, you would undo all the good work your friend has done?' Suddenly I could feel no pressure at all on my shoulder. 'You would condemn to death every soul he has ever saved? Enslave every world he ever freed? Would you?' Thunder seemed to fill the voice as it reprimanded me and the temperature dropped noticeably.
And why not?
'That is what I do everyday! I’m a Lord of Time!' I planted my staff into the floor of the cavern as I stood my ground. 'People die and worlds are enslaved due to our moral code of non-interference and nothing ever changes! Not really. Why should I be any different from the rest of them?' he asked 'I doubt you could hold me in any more contempt than I hold myself.'
But you could be so much more than just another Time Lord.
'You cannot change what has been, but you may yet change what will be.'
Do not listen to him.
'Why?'
'Accept responsibility to do what needs done. Take up the mantle that our friend has discarded and finish the work that he began.'
Do it better.
'What good would that do him? You’ve already told me I can’t stop him from falling.'
You could still save yourself from his fate.
'It would ensure that his sacrifice all those years ago was not in vain. It would mean that there would be someone to protect his legacy. Are you ready for that responsibility?'
'It was for me that he sacrificed himself, how can I not take it?' At least that was why I thought I had been brought here today. Now that I was here there was something else beginning to stir. Something I hadn’t felt in a very long time.
Take it.
'Because he made that sacrifice so that you would be free to make that choice it was never his intention to pull you down the road behind him.'
'He was only ever buying me time. He saw the look in my eye, he knew that I wanted to serve, but that loyalty to my House was holding me back. His sacrifice wasn’t to keep me off the path, it was to ensure that I got to tie up loose ends before starting on it.' And what good has that really done me, he thought. I’ve spent almost every moment with my family wondering what it would have been like to have walked down that road after him.
'This is the third time I’ve asked. There will not be a fourth. Are you ready?'
Was I? I was no longer sure. Now that I was here I found myself almost eager for the off. To follow my old friend, whoever her may be now, down the road. To set aside old regrets and start making up for older mistakes. To maybe, just maybe, make amends.
I didn’t have many loose ends left these days, my family were all grown and had families and responsibilities of their own. My wife had been the last really solid tie keeping me planet and time bound.
So this was it. Was I ready? Ready to finally accept the mantle that had been waiting here in this cave all these years? Silence hung in the air as I considered all of this.
The words finally escaped my lips, long centuries after when I had first wanted to utter them.
'I am.' Finally.
Finally.
'Then it is done. The mantle has been passed.'
'Am I to leave straight away?' How hurt would my family of been if they had heard the keenness with which I asked that question?
You have stayed too long already.
'No. You remained behind before to tie up loose ends. They must be tied off completely before you depart. The time of leaving will become apparent.'
'Will I see them forget?' The question hung painfully in the air for a moment before it was answered.
'Then you know what is to happen?' Could I hear hope in that question? I wasn’t sure, the voice had been so devoid of emotion, apart from that brief spell of anger, up til now that I almost missed the hint of it now.