The Ninth Fold of the Eight-Fold Man
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He growled as the TARDIS landed roughly, shaking inside and out. Even with all the work he had done, the Time Lord defenses around the Omega Arsenal weren't fully eliminated. Centuries of work, of leading battles and fighting in the war, he thought he deserved at least this, considering what was coming. His head pounded; a migraine that had slowly been building as he had approached Gallifrey was exploding across his brain.
"Stop it." He mumbled as he pressed against the console.
He knew what it was. He gripped the console as another wave of pain shot through his mind. He pushed away from the console, shook his head hard and then walked towards the TARDIS doors. He reached forward and pressed against the doors and they fell open and he staggered out.
"I dare say, young man, this is quite the state of affairs, hmmm?" A grandfatherly voice said.
He looked up, shook his head, trying to shake the pain and the cobwebs. His vision blurred and then drew into focus in the sterile, white room. Standing before him was the frame of an old man in a black cloak. The old man turned, he had a cane that he braced himself against.
"Bah…" He said as he walked towards another set of doors. The time vaults were partitioned; there were eight sections between himself and the Moment. "I haven't time for this."
"No time? No time?" The older man frowned. "You can make time." The grandfather tapped his cane on the ground. "This is important."
A searing pain shot through his head and he fell to his knees. "You wouldn't understand, you old fool. Content to flee, to run away from responsibilities to run away from your family. Did you ever go back and see her?"
The grandfather stiffened, clutching the upper part of his cloak drawing it closer to himself. "I know what you're planning, don't act like I don't know what is happening. I don't approve of this action, most unwise, yes, most unwise. It will have repercussions I'm not sure you're prepared to deal with, I've made similar decisions, we both know about the regrets these big decisions produce. I'm not entirely sure you can do it, that body, it's wearing a bit thin."
"It will last, long enough to finish my work." He growled as he struggled to his feet.
"Your work, this massacre of your orchestration, I never believed it would be possible to see things come to this." The grandfather stared at him as he stood back up. "I can't decide whether you're a rogue, a half-wit or both!"
"I am simply what this war has crafted me into." He reached towards the doors. "You don't have to like it, you don't have to accept it," He looked back at the old man as he pushed on the doors to the next partition. "It simply is what it is."
He slid into the next partition. He frowned as he looked forward.
"Oh my, we have been hard on ourselves, haven't we…?" The small man was dressed in a tatter black jacket with tattered checked pants. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the partition, a recorder laid in front of the man, his mop-top hair cut, dark black. His face almost as if it was made of plastic. "Is this really what you want to do?"
"Want to do?" He replied. "No, I have to do." He pushed forward, hoping to ignore the impish man. As he crossed the man, he looked down at him. "Some corners of the universe have bred some horrible things, after all, and they have to be fought, isn't that right?"
"Pity that you've become the monster's monster. The thing that the boogeyman hears going bump in the night." The hobo said. "Why do this?"
"It is all that's left to do." He replied, walking past the hobo.
"Destroy everything? Blow it all up, probably something with a big red button?" The hobo asked, turning.
"Reality was craving me to enter this conflict. It begged me, and in the end this is what it has wanted, what I have been driven to since the first day." He said, stopping just before the door.
"I see. Well, now I know you're mad, I just wanted to make sure." The hobo said. "I had hoped, maybe there was some reason left in you, some glimmer of something, but, no, just madness."
"I tried being sane in a universe gone mad." He said reaching out towards the partition's door, and he pushed against the door. "People died, anyways."
He walked into the next partition.
"Good grief, man!" The tall man with the made white hair said. His hawkish nose preceding him as he turned, he wore a frilled red velvet jacket. "Is this your best plan? The Brigadier could come up with something better on one of his worse days."
"It's war, endless war. It isn't like your leisure days, swanning about that drippy island." He said derisively.
"You could try something else, fight this, face it! You're avoiding…"
"I've been avoiding this, my whole life. This is me, facing this, now." He snapped, he looked at the man, who looked like a scarecrow dressed in disco fancy dress. "I'm fighting this."
"No, you are being a coward and taking the easy way out!" The scarecrow snapped back. "I expect better from the likes of you!" The scarecrow shook his head. "I'm beginning to lose confidence for the first time in my life…"
"I lost my confidence a long time before now. This is the best I can do. The alternative is endless torture of reality." He pressed forward past the scarecrow. He pressed against the doors, laying his head against the door's surface as his head roared in pain.
He took a deep breath and pushed.
"I've often wondered what something like this would be like." The deep drawn out voice intoned. "I wonder if Sarah would approve."
He looked up and saw the tall man, the long brown and yellow scarf, the bohemian clothing.
"You have no room to speak to me." He replied, and stood up straight.
"Oh? Funny, as I believe this is precisely the room where I speak to you." The bohemian reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a paper bag, picked out one of the contents and ate the sweet. "It isn't too late, the moment isn't prepared yet, it isn't the end."
"It's been too late since Karn." He said.
"Oh, yes, those insufferable, old mares did mix their potions…not what they used to be, I have to say." Said the bohemian, eying him. "Do you think you have the right?"
"Did you have the right?" He replied, his growl barely covering the true contempt of the question. He glared at the bohemian and walked up to him and pointed his finger forward pressing the bohemian's chest. "Did you have the right to inflict this on me? On the universe!? You were there, you had the opportunity! But, no, like always YOU ABDICATED that responsibility, and ran off and fooled around…and like always, someone else had to pick up what you left to clean up!"
"It was not my place then." The bohemian said, narrowing his eyes. "You know that, we all know it. The question is, is this your place now? Is this what you will become?"
He turned from the bohemian and walked to the partition door. "I have no choice; this is not something I do without a concept of the suffering that will come of it. I do this in the name of peace and sanity."
He pushed the door open, glad to be rid of the bohemian. He looked forward.
"It's not cricket you know." The young one looked at him. Adorned in cricketer gear and holding a small cricket ball in his hand. "All of this, you know deep down, that it's wrong. They won't praise you, none of them will. No one will love you for this."
"I know, I'm not worried about being loved, I'm not doing this for praise." He replied, taking a deep breath. "I have no interest in how people feel about me. I know they will hate me."
"There should've been another way…"
"You know better than anyone, that this the only way." He looked at the cricketer. "Two sides, fighting a war, where there can be no winners. The only winners are the ones that end it. I plan to win this war."
"This rage, it doesn't become you. I can't believe that you've become this. I thought you were in such good hands." The cricketer looked sorrowfully at him. "I had hoped you could escape this."
"We all hoped I could escape, but we all know that in the end, I would burn with the rest of it." He said walking towards the next partition. He pushed through the door.
"Well, now you've done. You've properly done it!" The robust voice flew forward as he pushed into the next room. The owner was wearing something that looked akin to what a rainbow had vomited up. The patchwork quilt stalked about in a faux rage. "I've seen lots of screw ups, but this takes the cake! This is your plan!? Blow it up? Blow it up!? BLOW IT…."
"YES!" He yelled, cutting off the patchwork quilt man loudly. "It's the only way. You know precisely why. They are degenerate, decadent and rotten to the core! And then there's the Daleks!"
"Not all of them are broken yet, there's a future yet, or rather there would've been." The rainbow quilt man replied. The red and green sleeved arms of the man folded behind the back of the patchwork coat. "I knew deep down, all that time that I was a peril to the universe, but in the end I thought I wasn't that bad, I even saved the universe once or twice, protected the odd civilization, or at least I thought. Little did I know that you were out there, waiting in the shadows."
"The universe will survive; I will save it one last time." He said, looking sidelong at the patchwork quilt man. He walked forward and opened the partitioned door and walked into the next partition.
"Save it?" The small form asked quietly. The owner wore a panama hat and leaned against a question mark umbrella. A dark jacket hung on his frame, and an inscrutable face peered at him. "At what cost, you know what you're doing don't you?"
"You don't have the moral high ground on this." He replied taking a look at the small inscrutable man. "You played with people's lives, manipulated them to their detriment and destruction. You acted as a god."
"Not a god." The man said. "I fought gods on their own battlefields, and I won. I made short term sacrifices for the greater good, yes, but this is not a short term sacrifice. If you use that weapon….there will be no long term, just death. Death gone mad, a child looks up at the sky, his eyes turn to cinders. No more tears, only ashes. Is this honor, is this war? Is this a weapon you will use?"
"Children are already dying out there, some of them are dying more times than they know, but they die still, screaming for parents who are melted before them, children dying as history erases them, then brings them back to life only to find a more creative and torturous way of killing them again." He said, looking in the little man's blue eyes. "There are no more ripples; the whole pond is a typhoon of distortion. I will end it. End it."
He walked past the little man.
"If you pull this trigger, you will end their lives. Yours, everyone's." The little man said. "Can you really do it?"
"I have to, to save everything else." He pushed the door and opened the final partition.
In the middle of the partition was a pedestal with a box. He took a deep breath and walked forward towards the box. He reached out and touched it. He could feel the power in it, the mind of it was there as well.
"My choice, I chose this." Said a voice from behind.
He turned and looked at the one behind him. The dandy cowboy, in a fancy velvet green jacket, gray pants and a brown vest stood there. The cowboy took a deep breath.
"Yes, this was our choice." He said looking at his past, as his past stared at his future.
"Warrior…" said the cowboy.
"Doctor…" he replied. "No more, children dying in the streets, no more, war."
"No more Doctor." The velveteen cowboy said. "That weapon will do the job. It will do the one thing that none of our enemies could ever do. It will end you, end us."
"That was the choice you made." He said; he sized up the velveteen cowboy.
"How many children do you think will die?" The cowboy asked quietly, no malice in his voice, no anger.
"I don't know." He admitted. "It's a little late to think about it. The choice was made; this is the only option on the table."
"So we're giving up…" the velveteen cowboy asked. "When I made this choice, I never thought it would result in me quitting."
"Quitting? There was never anything to quit. Tressail was the point where any vestige of hope was lost." He said, he turned back to the box. "I am doing this for her."
"Don't you dare." The velveteen cowboy growled. "Don't you dare turn this into revenge. If you do this, do it because you have given up. Do it because you have become that cruel. Do it because you're done. Don't tarnish that poor child's memory with this monstrosity. Do it because you're that monstrous now. C'mon then, if you're hard enough, then do it."
He put his hands around the box and lifted it. He turned and was alone. He walked back, through the partitions, all of them empty. The pain in his head was gone. It was true, he'd finally given up, all of him.
