The last days of the Time War are some of the longest of the Doctor's life. They are marked by the fall of Arcadia, it's glass dome and grand architectural city crashing into little more than debris under the attack of the Dalek fleets and their Deathsmiths of Goth. They are marked by a hurricane of temporal shifting and manipulating. Time pulling and distorting into weapons against the sensitive time sense of his people, who simply cannot keep up with the grotesqueness of the altered timelines, cannot fix what they have been in charge to oversee; the smooth passage of time. It drives many Time Lords to madness, to screaming, gut-wrenching madness, as their senses become overwhelmed; their whole lives changing and shifting and rearranging, being molded and pounded like clay. Time distorts so sickeningly that many Time Lords even begin to de-regenerate or simply cease to exist at all.
Mostly, though, the last days are marked by death; death on the grandest of scales.
Paradoxes ravage around Gallifrey, their temporal distortion nearly visible in a thick hazy cloud amidst the smoke, fire and various aircraft that have laid claim to the burnt orange sky; Dalek saucers and n-forms and bowships alike. The eastern sun of Gallifrey is not even visible behind the sickly black cloud of the Nightmare Child, a creature of the thirty-fourth dimension that has come to existence simply through the continual beating and disturbances of the vortex. It devours the fighting ships in it's unforgiving jaws, trapping them away forever into an unknown depthless fate.
Through the snowcapped mountains of Gallifrey, the Would-Be King marches with his army of Meanwhiles into the small outlaying villages that house the pure Gallifreyans. Destruction and death lay in their path and only a small fleet of Gallifreyans and an even smaller regime of Time Lords take on this threat to their outer regions. There are simply not enough soldiers to spare when thousand upon millions of Dalek fleets are busy destroying their main city, the center of their knowledge and academy and history. And every day as the hybrid Gallifreyan and Time Lord army desperately fight off the front, the Would-Be King and his army only lay more destruction to the beautiful wilderness of Gallifrey; the forests of silver leaved trees going up into burning, scorching flames; the red grass trampled and crushed under stomping feet. And all the while they march closer and closer to the main city where already so much hopelessness and destruction lay.
Like in most wars, betrayal marks these final days as well, with madness and Dalek treachery being the main culprits. There are tricks and alliances and unforgivable acts performed by the desperate and despairing, all in the hope for any reprieve they can get from the harrowing war.
Multiple incarnations of Time Lords begin showing up in these final days in a last ditch effort to help stop the war. The Doctor himself, his current incarnation that is (if anything can be called current in a place where time is as twisted as it is on Gallifrey), his tenth incarnation (he has regenerated three time now over the course of the war), has memories (constantly, constantly shifting and changing memories) of the fight taken by his previous and future incarnations in the hopes of ending the miserable war. He remembers clearly in his eighth form staring down the Nightmare Child as he tried desperately to rescue an n-form ship from being dragged down into it's clutches (he had failed). He remembers in his fifth incarnation being commissioned to lead a group of Time Lords against the first outpouring of temporal attacks (they had only been able to hold out for long). He remembers in his fourth incarnation being teamed with the Master, who was brought back simply for the purposes of the war, to develop a way to utilize black holes as a weapon source to drag hundred of Daleks into it's dense pull (time at this point had been too degraded for the proper stabilization they would have needed for such a plan to work). He even remembers in his future incarnations, the way he was and is and will be desperately working to save anyone he can. Over and over just one person who would not have to suffer the travesty of the war. His eleventh incarnation focuses on those in Gallifrey who are suffering, while his twelfth uses his Tardis to dangerously pilot through the paradoxes and breaking timelines in order to aid other temporal species whose home worlds, whose minds, are being crushed under the assault.
The Doctor dares not even wonder if those future selves come from a time when the war is over, or if even then it is still raging on; that he will regenerate into those faces while Dalek ships still litter the sky, while the Nightmare Child continues to grow and feed and eventually overtake the western sun, bathing his home in darkness.
Right now though, or at least the relative right now that this tenth version of the Doctor lives in, he stands in front of the High Council of Gallifrey and he is given ancient scrolls that detail out the building of a weapon, one he is ordered to begin construction on immediately. It is a weapon unlike any other the Doctor has seen, one more based in theory than actual tested results. It is such a weapon that makes the Doctor's feet itch to run and his stomach turn over as revoltingly as the war around him does.
He also knows that at this point, it is the only way.
Such a weapon as this, one so unpredictable, so untested in principle, is something that would be bound to take nigh on years, hundreds of them, to safely perfect. The Doctor has days, less than that. He also has no aid, as there is no one that does not have vital duties elsewhere in keeping Gallifrey standing for as long as possible in order to give the Doctor enough time to complete the weapon. He is, he realizes with despair, the last hope.
It is with great resignation and tiredness of the death that hangs so repugnant in the air, of the various innocent species suffering, of last ditch hope that makes the Doctor spend these last days of the Time War constructing this weapon. It is a weapon ambitious unlike any other that has been developed during the war, more so than even the failed attempt at harnessing the power of black holes. It is a weapon that has the power to turn everything to dust: the Daleks, the Deathsmiths of Goth, the Nightmare Child, the Would-Be King and his army of Meanwhiles, the Time Lords, Gallifrey, and any other time sensitive species that have become caught in the cross fire of the war.
And he will be the one to use it.
The construction of the weapon is almost as horrible as the result of it will be. Many TARDISes throughout the war were forced to cannibalize into paradox machines in order to withstand the massive and indescribable temporal tears created by the war. But this, what he is going to do to a number of TARDISes is even sicker than that. He will be forced to rip out their very hearts to construct a weapon that will let him control the unpredictable power of the Time Vortex itself.
It is murder, simple as that, but he has no choice. Not anymore. Choice has become as stripped from him as his home land.
When the weapon is completed it is no more than the size of his palm. But unleashed and it will hold enough power to rip through the Time Vortex itself and make it do his bidding. It is the reason he was given the project. The Doctor, the renegade, the one man who may still have enough of his peace-loving compassion and rebel ideas (unlike the corrupt Time Lord's below) in order to yield the vortex into only taking out the Daleks and the Nightmare Child and all the other threats to Gallifrey, and leave his planet and his people in safety. The chance of this actually happening, however, is terribly slim. At this point, just by even making the weapon, he feels as corrupt as the rest of them. The vortex is too powerful anyway, it is likely to burnout his mind before he can even sway any influence over it's destructive powers.
The plan does not go as expected like most things in the Doctor's life. His mind holds out and he uses the ebb and flow of the vortex (he, the controller of time itself) to aim the pure essence of time like well placed darts. The Daleks are erased from time, turned into dust by his hand, the Nightmare Child is folded in on itself until it is trapped in it's own dimensions. The Would-Be King and his army of Meanwhiles are placed back into the proper reinstated timelines, and like a true Doctor, he stitches time back together piece by piece. The power is exhilarating as it runs through his veins, his eyes a bright golden, masking the former brown that had held only hopelessness. He realizes that somehow he can hold it, that time bends to his will, that his word is law and he has become a god with the addictive flow of raw, unnatural power in his veins.
It should be killing him, but it's not.
The Doctor doesn't understand how he finally makes himself let it go, how he finally puts the power back in it's proper place, back into the various TARDISes he stole it from. The memories never fully come back to him. He doesn't know how he gave it up or how his mind possibly held it in the first place when it should have made him burn. When he had taken on the building of the weapon, he had planned to die. He had planned (not wanted, never wanted), but he had expected that his planet and people would burn with him.
Now instead he is vey much alive, a hero on a still standing Gallifrey, and his hands are painted red with genocide.
And he will have to live with that.
Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterbous, was once the shining world of the seven systems and now as the Doctor moves through the ruined remains of his home his chest aches and his eyes sting with bitter tears at all the death and destruction that has befallen the universe. His people mourn with him, their soft humming presence in the back of his head evidence enough of that. Still, when they pass him on the ruined streets he feels the pitch of their presence change to that of gratitude. His people who had once looked at him with mockery, who had once not even thought him to be a proper Time Lord are now bowing to him in the streets.
Could they not see the blood staining his hands?
To them, the sky is no longer filled with Daleks and that is cause enough to rejoice, but he knows that when he held that power, that damned power within him, that even if it hadn't burned out his mind, he still hadn't been able to control it fully. He could not reign in the power, and it spilled over and through the crevices in the vortex, erasing whole planets, reducing them and their people to dust. The same fate he'd expected for his own home.
The High Council, he knows, has already begun tracking the damage done to the universe, has already begun counting the planets and species that fell at the hands of the Time War. What they don't know is that truly they fell at his hands. At his inability to hold time. It sickens him, these unsuspecting people on the streets; they are praising a killer.
The rebuilding of Gallifrey has already started. Time Lords have been divided into committees and all work tirelessly to return Gallifrey to it's former glory. The Doctor wants to run more than anything, go back to his TARDIS and fly away, but it feels incredibly cowardice. For once he must face up to the consequences of the war like everyone else. Healing must be done, as a people, if Gallifrey is ever to become again what it once was, and the Doctor is highly aware that his people are now looking towards him to lead them back.
A few weeks in, however and he can no longer stand it. He breaks under his own guilt, and instead settles for a compromise. He goes before the High Council and requests the start of a new committee, one whose drive will be focused on the rehabilitation of those species who have lost their home during the war (at his hand, he doesn't add). The High Council, as expected, is reluctant at first as their main focus is on Gallifrey. The Doctor patiently reminds them that history will not go unaffected by the loss of these planets. That time is now setting new courses and it is their job to oversee this. That in such a drastic case as this, it will require a hands on approach that has always before been abhorred. He also blithely states that even if they don't grant permission, he still plans on leaving anyway and that there really is nothing they can do to stop him.
He predictably receives permission, and mostly he thinks it is because the High Council realizes what a massive debt they owe him and how much influence he now possesses over the people of Gallifrey, that one word from him could quite simply put the High Council to ruin. They'd rather him gone anyway, he thinks. No longer there to threaten their authority.
The request for a "committee" is a formality and they know it was well as he does. This is something he embarks on alone, something he will spend years fixing to the best of his abilities if he has to. He must set this right with his own hands if he ever wishes to wash away the blood that stains them.
He spends years visiting various planets, even if only seconds have passed for each of them since the war . He sees the destruction first hand, some of it his own work when he ripped through the vortex, others simply impacted by the war itself. He helps rebuild these planets and their history, and slowly as he sees them heal, he does with them. He might be running from Gallifrey, from his responsibilities there, but on these other planets he stays for the aftermath. Something that would have been unthinkable in the past.
He is still so very tired and the war, too often, is still painted behind his closed eyelids. It haunts him as he sleeps, the images so debilitating that they leave him gasping and crying out throughout the night. He is haunted by images of his time with the indescribable power in his hands, though these memories are hazy at best. Still he catches glimpses of the way he simply could not contain the power. He sees the Daleks and their ships ceasing to exist. Not even Skaro was spared. He has not only committed genocide, but mass genocide and he knows that not even his deeds now will ever atone for it. His dreams never let him forget that.
He has pills he could take, that would allow him a dreamless sleep, but he never takes them. This, he decides, is his punishment. Never forgetting.
His life, his lonely, lonely life, continues on in this way for years, until one day he is called back to Gallifrey, to the High Council. Rassilon himself greets him, dressed in full regalia, while the Doctor stands in the battered pinstripes he's taken up wearing like armor since he'd left Gallifrey. The other man says little of why he has called the Doctor back, but simply beckons he be followed and the Doctor does so with something like trepidation filling his hearts. If he has been called back it can be for nothing good.
He is brought to the meeting place of the High Council and Time Lords dressed up as finely as Rassilon sit solemnly in their high backed chairs around the intricately carved table. At the head sits Alonyarewer, an old women with curled long fingernails and wrinkled hands stained with ink from the parchment she writes furiously on as she mutters under her breath. Her other hand beats out a rhythmic tap, tap onto the table and her eyes are glassy and grey and infinitely far off, seeing into the void itself some say. She went mad, looking into the vortex, and now she sees time more vividly than any Time Lord. She is considered to have been bestowed with the gift of prophesy when she stared into the untempered schism, the raw power of time that the Doctor himself had held as if in the palm of his hands during the War. It is obvious from the tension of the other members of the council around the table, the way they frown and stare stiffly at her as she mutters, that her prophesy has rattled them.
The Doctor slowly enters into the room on the heels of Rassilon and as he steps in further, the old woman's eyes snap up to him with such intensity that the Doctor finds himself startled backwards. Her muttering turns to raspy spoken sentences, the broken words obviously meant for his ears. Everyone turns to regard his expression as she speaks, her rhythmic tapping punctuating her words.
"He has spared the Wolf and in turn she has spared him along with everything he loves. This has come to pass already. But now the Wolf is howling, howling, howling," the old woman pauses here and her grey depthless eyes bespeak a misery that goes beyond even the Doctor's understanding, "and soon her grief, the terrible grief and agony of her isolation, will shake the whole world to it's core. She will devour everything," her look pierces him in place and he is utterly entranced as her lips curl up and she finishes with the ominous sentence, "unless she finds a Doctor."