Chapter 13 Weakness
He bowed his head and said quietly. "You've already seen so much. What more could you want to know?" He was being patient with her. She could tell he didn't want to talk about it. "What isn't in your memories. And it all flew by so fast I didn't understand half of what was happening. Who started the war and why?"
He sighed and began. "No one is really sure. I can only tell you what I know from my point of view.
In my fourth regeneration, before the war, I was in trouble with the Time Lord high council, again, for interfering in a small skirmish on another world. They threatened to take my Tardis and strand me somewhere for a few hundred years. Again. A favorite punishment of theirs.
There was a rule about noninterference, unless it was in their best interests. Then the rule book went out the window and the Celestial Intelligence Agency would call on me to do their dirty work. I usually agreed, they were generally good causes, but, mostly because when I did, they left me alone to do as I pleased.
Well, they said all would be forgiven this time if I would just put a stop to the Daleks ever being created." He huffed a chuckle. "Is that all? I said, Just stop our greatest enemy from ever being created? A suicide mission if I ever heard one. Well, I laughed and then I refused. The first rule they teach you is you can't manipulate time to suit yourself because of the probability of a paradox!
So they scooped me out of my timeline and dropped me on Skaro, the Dalek home world, without my Tardis, in the middle of a civil war, at the beginning of the Dalek empire.
I won't bore you with the details. I failed, miserably, and worse. They captured and tortured me," Roses eyes grew wide with horror, but he seemed to take it in stride. "and I gave them proof that they would be the most powerful threat to all living things in the future. Before me, they didn't even believe life on other planets existed." The pain in his voice was palpable.
"Their ambition to rule the universe was born on that day. Because of me. Because I couldn't kill them all when I had the chance. I had rigged their nursery to explode. I had the leads in my hand ready to go. But then I had to ask myself if I had the right to commit genocide, even if it was for the greater good.
The Time Lords of old wouldn't have even hesitated. But I've never been one of them, and I just couldn't do it. I knew it would make me no different from a Dalek. To wipe out an entire species for my own purposes. I decided the future had to unfold as it was meant to. There was more at stake than just the Daleks and Time Lords!
Several alien alliances were formed in defense against the Daleks. It would have changed the shape of the universe. But then, I lived to see the irony of having to kill them all anyway, along with my own people" He fell silent, and she felt the weight that had crushed his soul for so long. "It was my fault." He whispered. "I began the war, because I was too weak to kill them all then."
"Stop it." she said sternly, shaking him from his guilt for a moment. "You always take too much on yourself." She saw the look on his face and softened her tone. "The Time Lords had no understanding of why it wouldn't be possible for you to do this thing. Mummies, who couldn't understand what compassion was." He was roused to defend his people.
"Whatever they were, they didn't deserve what happened to them! The whole planet paid for my weakness, not just the Time Lords. Do you know how many nights I spent counting the number of children on Gallifrey that day! There were 2.47 billion children who will never grow up because of me!"
He stood and left her sitting on the grass. Trying to run from the pain like he'd always done. He could never run far enough. Rose wasn't sure if she should go after him or not. Then she decided 300 years was enough time to deal with this on his own. She ran after him and planted her feet in front of him.
"Your weakness? You mean your humanity, your compassion, your sense of justice." Rose was on a roll. "Is that what this is really all about? You think you let your people down because you weren't smart enough, or fast enough, or strong enough. That feeling you've had since childhood, that you're not worthy. That, had you been a Real Time Lord you would have killed them all and there's an end to it. What rubbish.
They sent you because you were the only Time Lord alive with a backbone who might stare them down and do something! A human quality I think. Ten of them couldn't have done it. That's why they chose you for all their little pet projects. It's not because you were expendable, it's because none of them could and they knew it." She paused to make him think. To startle him into understanding. "And you know it too!
Deep in your hearts you saw how flawed the Time Lords were. But you were in such awe of them that it couldn't be true, and so it had to be your fault when it worked out the way it did. Don't you see they did it to themselves. If they hadn't arrogantly decided to send you back, without your consent, to do the impossible, the Daleks might never have left their world to try and conquer the universe. The paradox you knew could happen.
This is not about pushing a button, it never was! It's about you coming to terms with the knowledge that they were wrong, and you were right.
You've let it play in your head on an endless loop to cover your pain. You've been flogging yourself with it all these years. Covering the truth with a button you were forced to press, not only by circumstance, but because of their mistake. It must have made you so angry, but you swallowed it and blamed yourself again. Can't you see? They made their own fate." He wasn't listening. She had to find a way to make him listen to her. He tried to get away from her, but she pushed in front of him, and would not let him by.
"And if you hadn't pushed that button? What would have happened to all those billions of children? We both know it would have been horrific beyond imagining. Torment and pain and hopelessness, if they lived. Torment that would spread to every corner of the universe.
You did the only thing a compassionate being could do." She raised her hands to caress his face and said softly "The only thing left in your power to do. You ended it." He just looked away, thinking she didn't understand. She growled and shook her head at his stubbornness. He was still caught in his own trap as he answered her.
"Rose, don't you see why that makes it so much worse? My people died for nothing! The Daleks survived and it was all for nothing!" Rose would not let him get past her.
"All for nothing." she said flatly. "All right, Doctor, you like numbers so much. How many times have you fought the Daleks and won? How many people have you saved since the war? How many worlds?" He started to reply but she cut him off. "Wrong," She paused in the hope he would listen to her.
"All of them. You saved us all." She saw a flicker of light come into his eyes and continued. "Count, them, next time. Count how many creatures there are now or ever will be, that will not end up in a pile of broken bodies because of you.
I can speak for the 7 billion on my planet. If it meant saving the whole of creation, in that same situation, we would push that button ourselves, no matter what the outcome. Your people, who were so much more than mine, the common people you loved so much, would have chosen the same." There was hope for him. He was considering her words.
"I won't let you torture yourself anymore! You are the best of them in spite of it all. I even have faith that one day, you will find a way to save them.
But to do it you have to let go of your guilt and shame! You have to stop making this all about you!" She was shaking his shoulders, trying to reach his mind with the truth.
The last sentence hit home. He looked up at her, shocked at her words. Stunned into the realization she might be right. He had tied himself in knots as penance, never thinking he could change what happened by changing one of the other variables in the chain of events. Something he had no part in. He suddenly went weak with it and fell to his knees. Yes, he thought. Yes, it's possible.
The whole of the war is time locked and can't be altered. But the smallest breeze can turn into a hurricane. There may be a way.
