AN: I'm still being delayed with writing Ch. 2 of my MLP Story (working on trimming down some stuff with my co-writer) so in the meantime, please enjoy the first of (hopefully many) Doctor Who one-shots
Master No More
War.
For more of my lives than I can count, I have fought and died in this accursed war; but even if I run out of lives, even if I'm too injured to regenerate those bastards who call themselves the war council reach their filthy, greedy hands into time itself and drag my lifeless corpse back to existence. If I didn't know better, I would think they have a lease on my soul; but I lost that long ago, we all did...even him.
I know what you're thinking; aren't I a genocidal madman? Was I not driven insane by own power and driven to ruthless aggression? Had my soul not been lost long before the war?
Perhaps you are right; but before the war is an alien concept to me now. We've all forgotten what it was like before the war: first we clung to the memory, then the memory of the memory, and then nothing, Rassilon took that from us too. Even my greatest friend became naught but a puppet, yet another mindless drone forced to serve Rassilon for eternity. He was not easily broken, but in the end we all crumbled; but no matter how broken you are, no matter how hard you try, the war haunts you, horrifies you and breaks you.
That is what I have grown to hate about this war; even when you nothing left, it finds something new to break.
And so we found ourselves trying to cope: Dalek and Time Lord alike were forced to adopts the mantras that the war had forced upon us.
First: No One is Innocent. No One is Spared.
We slaughtered indiscriminately: men, women, children, Daleks, Time Lords. At first, I relished my resurrection and took joy in the destruction and chaos; after all it was my craft. Within the first year however, even I was disgusted by the horrors that I had witnessed, by the cruel acts that my fellow Time Lords were forced to commit. Evil is not the word. There are no words.
Second: Time is an Illusion. Eternity is a lie
If there was once thing I very quickly learned it was this. You learn at the Academy that Eternity is unfathomable, that Eternity is the embodiment of Time itself; but during the war, time shattered. I lost track of how many Eternities passed, how many forevers that we left in the dust; but I felt all of them.
Third: No is Sacred. Nothing is Sacred.
This was not the first rule we learned, but it was the one that had the greatest impact on us. We destroyed planets, monuments and artifacts, we annihilated fixed points in time and used the consequences to our advantage. We created monsters the likes of which you would never believe.
The Nightmare Child
The Skaro Degradations,
The Horde of Travesties
The Could've Been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres
The Paradox Matrix
The Absolute and his annihilators
The Ruthless One
The Multiverse Eater
But none of the travesties could account for the worst thing that the Time Lords ever did: they turned my best friend into a weapon.
He did such things, committed such atrocities the likes of which I couldn't fathom. Despite being side by side with him, despite being there to witness the horrors I could not fathom the scope of destruction and horror he left in his wake. The moment that I watched my greatest friend turn his back on who he was, was the moment that I abandoned all hope.
It was for the better perhaps, lack of hope was our greatest strength and fear was our greatest ally. For a time we we're an unstoppable force together, our enemies crumbled before us and begged for mercy. But like all good things, this too came to an end.
The tide of the war first changed in the favor of The Daleks at the 104th Battle of Axgoroth during the final segment. After countless eternities of research, The Daleks had finally developed technology that would allow them to wipe out not only T.A.R.D.I.S.'s but Time Lords on a whim. The War Council was forced to employ every weapon conceivable in order to combat this new threat and they opened up the Eternity Vault
All of the worst weapons created by the first Time Lords were unleashed, and I watched helplessly as reality was torn asunder by the unimaginable. The war's final days made the rest of the fighting look like petty Earthlings playing with children's toys; for the first time in my lives, fear overwhelmed me completely.
And then it happened: The Fall of Arcadia. On the war's final day, the last great safe haven of Gallifrey had fallen to the Daleks. I knew that this was the end, and I accepted my fate.
Accept it wasn't, as I closed my eyes waiting for death to come, a familiar T.A.R.D.I.S. had materialized around me, my greatest friend had come to speak with me.
"You can't save me you know" I told him plainly. "You can't save any of us, this is it"
"I know" he told me, attaching a strange device to my head and placing a fob watch in it. "But I have to try. If I can do one good thing..."
"But what's the point!" I screamed. "How can you fix this? You're just going to die like the rest of us! It's over!"
"Only the war is over" he said coldly. "There will no winner today, and only two of us are walking away from this"
"You can't seriously mean...?" I suddenly realized with horror. "I heard rumors that you planned on using The Moment, but I didn't think even you were that insane"
My old friend smiled weakly. "Well you were wrong. I cannot allow this war to go on any further, it must end; no matter the cost"
I couldn't help but smile too. "So you're finally doing what it takes? I'd say I was proud of you if it weren't for my own pride" I help up the strange device. "What is this?"
"The way out" he told me simply. "Grab a T.A.R.D.I.S. and flee as far as you can. The device is pre-set, when you reach your destination it will turn you human"
"Human?" I spat in disgust. "Why would I want to be human? What would I get out that"
"Survival" he put simply once more. "And that after all, it's all you really care about is it not?"
"Perhaps" I told him. "But what do you get out of this?"
"Freedom" he stated. "If I do this; all of the war will be wiped from existence. Time Lords, Daleks and all; I'll be the only thing left. I probably won't remember doing this; but if I do this one good deed, then perhaps it won't all be for naught"
"Always the hero then, Doctor?" I asked, expressing my disdain at the last word.
"No" he put simply. "Doctor no more"
I hestitated for a moment, lingering between my own pride and my own survival instinct and my friend's T.A.R.D.I.S. left my line of sight for the final time, but in the end I rose to my feet and stole a T.A.R.D.I.S. from an unsuspecting soldier attempting to flee himself. By the time I had set the controls on the console though, I could feel my war-torn body fail. My eye-sight was blinded by the familiar golden aura of regeneration, an aura I lost track of how many times I had felt, and when I had finished I was disgusted with the result.
Here I stood, nothing more than a child; and as the time vortex surrounded my T.A.R.D.I.S. I smirked at my fate, cursed by my greatest enemy to live out my life as a lowly human, dying naturally of an age that primitive creatures few as old: a fitting punishment for my crimes
Well played, Doctor. Well Played.
Master No More.
I hope you enjoyed, I'll update whenever I come up with a new idea.
TheStoryWizard