What War Makes of Us
By TeggieLady
Chapter One: Trenches
On the 11th of November, 1918, 'The Great War' ended.
Italy was split by the First World War. Separated by language barriers, created by the many different forms of Italian; divided by political views; ripped by depression due to mass debt, inflation and casualties of the war. Benito Mussolini claimed he had the answer to peoples' prayers for a single, strong country.
'Tinensmo' or comradeship of the trenches.
Mussolini - having fought in the army - believed war was what was needed to bring people together just, like it had brought soldiers together in the trenches.
He believed the horrors, the death and the pain of war was the only way to unite the people, and whatever the cost, it was worth it. Millions of people brought together through guns, grief and genocide.
In 1939, the Second war began. Many of the men, who had been in the First War, who had believed it to be the 'War to end all Wars' were still alive to see their sons fight in the Second.
The sound of a dying TARDIS was the only thing the Time Lord heard, inside his head.
The last man standing.
The last Time Lord alive.
Everyone else was dead.
Shame.
The sharp electrical crackle of the wires fizzing out, like the last beep on a life support machine before it shows a thin luminous green line in simple solidarity.
At one point in his life he prided himself with the need to be alone, the need to be winner of wars.
History with Daleks never did run smooth.
There never was any passion behind that love affair.
Now he was alone.
The Time Lord lay on the console floor and wondered why he should regenerate. All those times he had fought and stolen lives, and now he had a choice... Should he end it here and now, once and for all?
The Council thought he would have stayed and fought, when they brought him back.
They always were such trusting fools.
He had run.
Like the coward his Father had always claimed him to be, since that first moment he had glimpsed into time itself, at the tender age of eight and came back screaming like the small child he had always fought so hard not to be.
Now he had left him for dead, his brother.
Not the first time, that's to be sure, but certainly the last.
The Time Lord smiled as he remembered a time, far back in his younger days when he had recognised the Daleks shear power and importance to the Universe and tried to help them in their goal. They had bribed him, then turned, shameless in their betrayal, of course. Or he had bribed and betrayed them, he couldn't quite remember. So many years, who could keep track of these things.
The point of that exercise had been to kill his brother, to be the last one alive.
Well brother, thought that last Time Lord, this one's for you.
And with that the Time Lord regenerated.
A recording now sits in a museum on Balla, a fifty-year old recording no one listens to. The tape had only ever been played once, any more and it would have fallen to pieces.
There is a transcript for members of the public to read, for students to study and the elderly to sigh and reminisce about The Dictator and his downfall. Everyone over a certain age remembers what they were doing that day it all ended. The day the resistance finally won, slaughtering the evilest man their planet had ever known.
The transcript reads:
"It wasn't my fault, I couldn't have stopped it."
"He did what he thought was right."
"It was never meant to end that way, I loved him and he just…died."
The transcript shows the words, last words, of the off-worlders, when questioned by the authorities; the only witnesses of the revolution that lead to the Dictator's death.
The day the world was changed forever.
Now, history books mark the days before and after it. The Death of the Dictator. It had been too horrible to remember, yet too horrible for mankind to dare forget.
The Death of Harold Saxon.