There's but the twinkling of a star, Between a man of peace and war.

Samuel Butler

Hudibras, Canto iii

Back when I was still the Doctor, back when Romana first tried drafting me into the war, I refused. Oh, how I dug my heels in and refused to fight, like a lamb refusing to be led to slaughter. That was before I was the one with the stick and shepherd dog, leading they of the wool covered eyes- leading them all merrily off to the charnel house.

Before...

"Are you impugning your own honor as a Time Lord of Gallifrey and as former Lord President."

"What I am impugning is your sense of credulity, Romana," I retorted, ignoring the incredulous and scandalized whispers around us. Chalk this up for another story that'd be making the rounds, one more nail in the coffin of my reputation. But then, my reputation was for being a renegade. What else did they expect? "The nerve, believing that I'd enter into battle. I'm the Doctor, mayhem and bloodshed are the antithesis of who I am. Helping you wage war is hardly 'making things better' is it?"

"Doctor!" Romana protested, face flushed with embarrassment and anger as she darted a look at the others watching. She was puffing herself up inside her robes; perhaps to look more imposing and authoritative. Peh, laughing in the face of authority had long been a pastime of mine. Well beyond a hobby now, more an ingrained trait, nearly written within my genetics.

"You were expecting someone else, my dear?" I grinned at her, raising my brows with a certain lack of the scraping and grovelling that was expected.

"Perhaps we should take this somewhere more private, discuss this act of... treason... elsewhere." She gave me an arch look, not looking away as she wordlessly reminded me of the armed guards standing by, ready to haul me somewhere where I could wait until I was feeling more obedient. They already had the TARDIS surrounded; there was no escaping this.

Deciding to be compliant for once, I turned back, smiling broadly and dipping into a low, courtly bow. "I concur, Madam President. Shall we adjourn to a more suitable environment for discourse?" I'd lull them into a state of complacency, thinking I was going to be the proper Lord- yes, I would. Fool them into believing I would submit that easily and slip away when they least expected it. I gave it no more than a span. But then, judging from the hardness in Romana's eye and the set of her jaw, I edged my initial estimate a bit further. A month, tops.

Little did I know, it would be far, far more.

I started out as a noncombatant, a medic, administering aid on the battlefields where ever they might be. But what good was it, when you've got a squadron run afoul of a chrono-loops that've all been aged to dust? Boys, mere boys, barely past the time they'd looked into the Untempered Schism, gone to dust. They'd never even had the chance to get as far as becoming inspired or go mad from what they'd seen, practically. Hardly even the option of running away before being drafted into the ranks. And I, with my broom and dustpan, bags of elixirs and poultices slung over my shoulders, could do nothing to bring them back. Dust couldn't regenerate, nor could it be revived by any of the potions meant to restore life. All I could do was stand by in horror and shame, as I watched a hundred worlds laid to waste and millions die around me. It sickened me, deep down in my soul, a little part of me hardening like to stone.

How much more? I thought to myself. I watched the strange carrion birds on an alien planet, wheeling in a sky that was rapidly turning to cinders, the dust of another world gone to a mire with the blood of the slain. I could step back into my TARDIS, put in different coordinates and still find myself in the same place - or as good as. Past, present, future: they were all dying out there, planets burned to a crisp or frozen when their suns were forced into supernova, just so one side or the other could harvest the energy. And in the middle of it all, Gallifrey stood, crouched behind her defences as a billion, billion warships were barely held at bay. Those formerly devoted to ritual and tradition and benevolently observing the rest of the universe, did it no more. Now, they gathered the hearts and souls of our young, primed them for battle, and sent them off to kill or be killed. Benevolence was passé.

Only once did I find someone I thought I could aid, a injured Sontaran who'd got caught in the crossfire. Bandages and plasters in hand, I rushed to his side, ignoring the overwhelming futility of the deed as I assessed the damage. "Leave me. I wish to die here, in the face of the valorous honor that is battle," he said weakly, staying my hand with his dying strength.

"Believe me, there is no honor in this," I rebuffed him, refusing to accept defeat.

He looked at me, disapproval and condescension starkly painting his features as he said, "Go, Time Lord. The might of Sontar might be denied the glorious challenge of war, but you are not. Go join your brethren, in hopes that you, too, may enjoy the such an honor as mine. I die here, as I wished."

Steadfastly, I denied his words once again. It may have been a truth, but it was not my truth and I wouldn't accept it as such. "No, you cannot, I won't let you. There's no point in dying, not in such a folly as this... there has to be another way."

"Sontar-ha!" was all he said, light fading from his eyes as he went limp in my arms. Around me, burning bits of wreckage from a hundred ships cast their glow. My eyes burned from the smoke as a stray bit of flame licked at the edge of my coat. By the time I stood, having closed the Sontaran's eyes and taken a moment to pay my respects, night had fallen. Ash and dust swirled in orange-tinted vistas, the smell of defeat heavy in my hearts and the winds of change carrying me inexorably onward.

Back to the Citadel I went, striding into the Panopticon itself. It was chaotic, with all the robed fools flapping and fluttering about, not a single person I knew in sight. They all did their best to step out of my path; one look at my soot darkened features and my ragged clothes and they knew. They all knew- the frivolous, soft old men, all who'd never left the safety of Gallifrey once in all their millennia worth of lives.

"Romana!" I turned about, casting my eyes for her familiar features, not caring that the assembled Cardinals and Lords had drawn even further away. They looked at me with a mixture of distaste and pity, like one would gaze upon a madman and shun him. Madness it was, but a madness not of my own making. Someone else had poured the petrol on the embers, setting to the flames of war. "Romana, where are you?"

A doddering elder stepped forth from the mass of red, orange, yellow, and green robes. He hesitated at first, jaw working, but then raised his chin arrogantly as he spoke, "She is addressing the Council, in regards to the news from the War Room. Arcadia has fallen."

My hearts froze, even as confusion battled with apprehension and dismay within. "But it fell last week."

The elder tucked his arms into his sleeves, nodding as if to himself. "For sooth, it is so. And this is this week. Arcadia will fall again and again, until the correct outcome is gained. It will be so."

Apprehension and dismay, indeed. "That's against all the laws of time; against all we have stood for," I protested. All those faces just looked at me dispassionately, unruffled, like this wasn't an abomination of all our principles. "There's a hundred planets, just this day alone, lost. Billions upon billions of lives lost, with no survivors on any of them, and you're telling me we're now initiating a massive paradox on our own soil? Do you realise the sheer madness of it all, what could be born from this? Have you any idea what we're inviting upon our own heads? And not just ours, the stability of the timelines is crucial; a million worlds out there could be destroyed with one misstep. All those lives, all those innocent lives, do you really think you can live with that? Can you, can you?!"

The words echoed back from vaulted ceilings, no one answering or even meeting my eye as they looked away in shame. Hoarse now and struggling to catch my breath, I heard a voice speak from behind me. "Time itself is bleeding. The Daleks have mastered the art of time travel and are using these very tactics against us. Every victory we earn in wages of blood and flesh, every inch of ground we retake, all is undone and turned to another defeat. Dare we not do the same as they do?"

For a moment I stayed there, refusing to look back, refusing to acknowledge her words and her presence. When there was naught else, for she stood between me and my ship, I slowly turned and met her eyes. An aching hollow had taken the place of my hearts it seemed and I could still smell death and destruction still clinging to my clothes, wafting along like a constant companion. Oh, Romana...

I mourned even as the dull heat of rage warmed me from within. I had to make a stand. That's what you did: you made a stand, especially when no one else would. I wasn't ready to lay down my principles, even if everyone else apparently had done. "Not if it means we become the same, not if there's no difference between us anymore. Time Lords destroying the universe to stop the Daleks from conquering it are not better. If we stoop to their level, become like them, what better are we than they are? What difference will it make in the end, when all is in death and ruins?"

I hadn't met Cass yet, hadn't given hope of a better way back then. I still thought there was some other way I could stop this, keep the destruction of the war from spreading any further. No, I even thought I might be able to push it back, reclaim what had already been lost. If the Council had authorized the use of paradoxes and interference with one's own time stream, so be it. I would snatch as many as I could from the jaws of death or die trying, I would. But, in the end, she was so right and I was so wrong. What difference was there? What had I become as well? Because sometimes when you refuse to fight, you're also refusing to take up arms against injustice; just letting things happen, even when it's wrong. 'Thus does cowardice make a mockery of us all.'