"EXTERMINATE!" cried the sinister crackling voice of a Dalek as the TARDIS materialised around it, part of the new empire. He had stopped them, but at a cost.
"To die in war is the most glorious death!" intoned the Sontaran commander as he ordered his platoon to fire upon the UNIT soldiers. The Doctor had stopped them, but at a cost.
"You will become like us," mono-toned the cyber-leader as he had staggered around the TARDIS. The Doctor had stopped them, but at a cost.
"Life is wasted on the living!" snarled the Master, attempting to kill the Doctor in his own TARDIS. The Doctor had stopped him, but at a cost.
During his travels he had met the stuff of nightmares. But four had had the most impact on him.
One had managed to kill his companion and was responsible for the loss of his first life. Another had managed to successfully invade Gallifrey. The third had brought nothing but death in his wake. The last... the last committed the greatest sin.
They were, in short, his horsemen. The four beings that brought the apocalypse down onto any place they happened to chose. Conquest, war, famine, death.
All four beings had managed to invade the sanctuary of his very own TARDIS.
The Daleks were conquest in a tin pot, destroying all in their path for their megalomaniac racism. Killing and enslaving because anything different was wrong and needed to be exterminated.
The Sontarans, forever opposing the Rutans, were consumed with war above all else. They were breed for it, lived for it, died for it. A war that had gone for countless millennia and would go for countless more.
The Cybermen were a famine upon the creativity of intelligence. They would starve the genius of love, of life, of emotions until nothing more than cold logic remained. Until the freedom of life laid barren underneath their metallic boot.
The Master brought death to all those unfortunate enough to meet him. Why he killed the Doctor hoped to never know. He just knew that The Master killed remorselessly and without reason. Often it seemed like he did so purely out of his own sick, twisted amusement.
The Doctor often blamed himself for the deaths of others. If he hadn't arrived when he did, would any deaths have happened? Was it his fault for stranding the Master on Earth, for letting the Sontarans get into Gallifrey? For not destroying the Daleks when he had the chance, for letting the Cybermen roam unopposed?
Should he stop running, instead accept his fate at Lake Silencio? Would that stop the bloodshed?
For if they were his horsemen, then he was the one that broke the seals that freed them. Perhaps it was time to finally pay for his mistakes. Perhaps it was time for the final revelation.
Author Notes: the prompts were 32 (Eleventh Doctor with Amy & Rory, specifically before his 'death' at Lake Silencio), 174 (The Impossible Planet/The Beast Below, using the reference to Satan to bring in Revelation and the Four Horsemen) and 2220 (since Revelation ends with 22:20).