Disclaimer: The characters and planets of Doctor Who are copyright of the BBC and BBC Wales. All references to the Time War and basic events therein are copyright of BBC Wales. Themes from the show have been used at times. Any reference to real historical figures is purely fictional in this context. Any reference to real people is purely coincidental and is not intended to cause offense.
Disclaimer Addendum: It has recently come to my attention that there is a published story called "Museum Peace" by James Swallow, published in 2006, which exhibits remarkable similarities to this story. I would like to stress that these similarities are purely coincidental, having only just heard about the James Swallow story, with this story being published a year and a half ago.
Warning: Minor character death.
Everything Has An End
His name is The Doctor. He's a Time Lord, from the Planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. He's 851 years old, and he has seen many lives come and go. This is the day that everything changes. Everything has its time, and everything has its end. The Doctor knows this, but if ever for one moment he accepted it, all the skies of all the worlds might just burn into oblivion.
Museums. Why did it always come back to museums? The Doctor supposed it was because he needed to keep tabs on how his adventures had been interpreted, as well as to point out the numerous faults in the majority of the exhibits. This particular museum was his favourite, and he never missed a chance to pass it by if he was in the neighbourhood, although technically it wasn't a "museum", it was more of an archive... a big, museum-y... archive, thing. The Delirium Archive, he thought it was called, but that didn't matter. What mattered was the large, stone creature behind the nearest glass exhibit. It looked like a dalek, but he'd never seen daleks like this. It was large, much larger than the daleks he had encountered on Skaro in the past, or on Earth during their somewhat pathetic attempt at an invasion. It was also covered in dust and seemed to be decaying, and the Doctor crouched in front of the case, trying to get a clearer view. He'd heard stories from survivors of the War that the daleks had been reconstructed, with a brass coating, but he'd heard they were similar to the old daleks... This wasn't right. He looked around for the plaque that would hold the exhibit's information, and read slowly, absorbing the knowledge.
Species: Dalek
Sub-species: Paradigm
Time Period: 1941 AD Earth Time
Description: This sub-species of Dalek is rumoured to have come into existence spontaneously in 1940's London, Earth. It is believed there were five "Paradigm" daleks, though evidence for the other four remains inconclusive. These daleks were not involved in the Last Great Time War between the dalek race and the Time Lords of Gallifrey, though it is believed The Doctor was present at their creation. It is believed that this particular dalek held the title "Eternal".
The Doctor blinked, then blinked again. He reached inside his pocket and withdrew a wooden screwdriver, flicking it at the sign and holding some sort of button down. A strange, red light emitted from its tip, and a whirring sound, as of cogs, could be heard echoing within the Archive. He flicked the screwdriver again and stared at it. As far as he could tell, the information was accurate, though he was sceptical of it. Surely he would have known if the daleks had invaded 1940's Britain, especially during the height of the Second World War... He looked back at the sign. "These daleks were not involved in the Last Great Time War..." What did it mean, "Last Great Time War"? This couldn't be referring to the ongoing War between his people and the daleks... No. The information must be wrong.
He shook his head, then took a final glance at the information. "It is believed The Doctor was present at their creation." The Doctor raised his eyebrows. He certainly hadn't seen this incarnation of the daleks before... or perhaps he had, only in a future regeneration... He shook his head, he didn't like to think about the thought of regenerating right now.
He turned from the dalek and spotted an ancient artefact of the Arcadian Empire, not noticing the brightening of the dalek's eyestalk, or the slight creak of its weaponry attempting to aim. He was staring at the artefact, something he himself had salvaged from the wrecks of one of the Empire's archaeological shuttles, when a child, Zocci by the look of him, ran into him. As the Doctor turned and looked down at the child, smiling and picking him up from the ground, he saw something out of the corner of his eye, as he heard a terrible sound.
"Doctooor! Exterminate!" He saw the eyestalk of the dalek he had examined fade and die as a blue beam of light shot from the dalek's gunstalk, shot straight at where the Doctor was standing, shattering the glass exhibit case. Or rather, where he would have been standing, had the child not run into him.
"NO!" But the Doctor didn't have the time to push the child out of the way before the beam struck him. The red-faced child glowed with excess radiation from the blast, before crumpling to the ground.
The Doctor stared at the lifeless body and a dark fury filled his eyes. He had only been a child. An innocent child, and the dalek had killed him. The Doctor had made excuses in the past against joining the War, but the slaughter of an innocent child pushed him too far. He stood, lowering the body to the floor, and raised his screwdriver. There was a cracking of glass as the case of a nearby cyberarm shattered, and the Doctor picked it up, aiming the screwdriver at it. A red beam of energy seemed to travel from the screwdriver to the cyberarm, which appeared to magnify the energy, before it shot from the arm, straight at the Stone Dalek, which shattered into thousands of pieces, the mutated Kaled inside a dead mass of flesh. With no regret in his thoughts, the Doctor turned and strode towards the doors to the room, without a glance to any other exhibit. His TARDIS waited for him, as it always would, as nothing else ever would, and he stepped inside.
Sighing heavily, he punched in the co-ordinates for the Capitol on Gallifrey, preparing to submit himself for service to the High Gallifreyan Army, created purely to combat the daleks in this War.
As the TARDIS started to dematerialise, the Doctor thought to himself, contemplating what would happen in the coming months, years and decades that would be wasted in battle against the daleks, with the whole of creation at stake. Everything had its end. That child had met his too soon, and the dalek had met it too late. And the Doctor's resilience, his utter belief in a pacifistic lifestyle, was shattering around him. No longer could he pretend that there was no War.