Unified Doctor’s Journal Entry #0013: “Truth, Fiction, and the Lies We Choose to Believe”

A meditation on stories we tell ourselves, and the falsehoods that protect or imprison us.

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There is a curious trick that sapient minds share across time, space, and species: we cling to narratives more tightly than to facts.

I’ve stood on worlds where memories are currency, where myths are sculpted into architecture, and where entire civilizations enforce a collective fiction because the truth would unravel them. And still—still—what astonishes me most is the human capacity for self-deception. It is not a flaw. It is an adaptation. And often, it is a kindness.

You see, the most powerful lies are not the ones told to us.

They are the ones we tell ourselves.

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I once asked a dying king on Theta Minor why he insisted, with his final breath, that his empire had stood for justice. He had enslaved six races and rewritten history to erase them. He knew this. And yet, his voice trembled not with guilt, but with conviction. “Because,” he said, “a just lie dies more beautifully than a cruel truth.”

And there it was.

Not the lie, but the need.

The need to be remembered kindly. To be the hero in the story written long after the facts have faded.

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Even I am guilty of it.

Especially me.

Each regeneration is a rewriting—an edit. A new author inheriting an old manuscript and crossing out lines they cannot bear. I’ve worn faces that smiled through war. I’ve spoken peace while carrying a weapon. I’ve whispered hope into the ears of children whose worlds I could not save.

And in the quiet of the TARDIS, between one world and the next, I have told myself: You did what you had to do. You couldn’t have saved them. You’re still the good one.

Perhaps I am.

But I’ve stopped believing that means I’ve never lied.

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Raven once asked me, on a moon thick with whispering metal, “How do you know what parts of yourself are real?” We were surrounded then by half-converted survivors—men and women who remembered emotion as a kind of infection, a glitch in the system. The Cybermen had found a new way to conquer: not by erasing the body, but by rewriting the mind.

And in that moment, her question struck deeper than any enemy blade.

Because that’s the danger, isn’t it?

Not being lied to.

But forgetting that we lied.

When enough time passes, the fiction hardens. Becomes sediment. Becomes structure. You no longer question why the foundation trembles—because you’ve lived in the house so long you believe the quake is just part of home.

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There was a girl once—paint-streaked and furious with joy—who wandered into our story through a gallery built of memory. Her name was Roxi. And she saw the lies, not as flaws, but as brushstrokes.

“Darling,” she told Raven, “truth is a restriction of medium.”

She was right. And wrong.

Truth is not a restriction. But neither is it infinite.

It is a lens.

And every lens distorts.

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I have sat at the edge of time and watched the last star fade. I have stepped through corridors of preserved histories, each curated for effect, edited to avoid discomfort. I have seen the Master turn curation into conquest, building galleries not to honor life—but to rewrite it.

Because what is a lie but a more beautiful ending?

What is fiction but a way to reorder pain?

And what is memory… but fragile, selective fiction we mistake for fact?

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Still, there is a difference.

There are lies that protect. And lies that imprison.

To say “I am not afraid” when you are shaking—that can be a tether. A first step. A way through the storm.

But to say “They deserved it” when you raze a city?

That is not a shield.

That is a cell.

And the longer you stay inside it, the harder it is to leave.

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Raven carries lies inside her.

She doesn’t yet know which ones she chose and which were imposed.

Some were installed by Gallifrey’s Matrix—threaded into her mind like false memories in a child’s diary. Others? Others were her own creations. Survival scripts. Shields. A whisper: I didn’t break. I was never weak. I never needed anyone.

But she did.

She does.

So do I.

So do we all.

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I have learned to forgive the fictions.

Even mine.

But I no longer worship them.

I unpick them gently.

I let them breathe.

And when I am strong enough, I rewrite them—not as weapons, but as windows.

So that the next time I step through a lie, I recognize the draft lines beneath the paint.

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Truth is not a sword.

It is not meant to be wielded.

It is a compass.

Sometimes spinning wildly.

Sometimes stuck.

But if you’re very quiet, very still… and very brave—

—it always points you home.

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Let that be enough.

Let the stories we tell ourselves be soft enough to cradle the heart, but not so tight that they choke the truth.

Let us remember the difference between a tale to survive and a fiction to forget.

Let us tell our stories forward—together.

And when we lie, let it be only this:

That we were always brave.

Even when we were not.

— The Unified Doctor