What He Saw

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The whoomfs of battle were distant as Time Lords and Daleks wrestled in the sky and in the distant fields. The Doctor grasped the young girl's hand and poked his head out of the remains of the house they had been hiding in. The war had come to Tressail. For centuries now it had been the refuge, but the as the rest of the universe fell apart the scraps of stable time and space had become fewer and farther apart and Tressail was now strategically valuable. Fortunately most had escaped before the battle proper had started, and now only there was only the stragglers and the left behind.

The Doctor looked back to the girl and flashed a smile. Her face was smudged with mud, and her hair was filled with muck. Her hair must have been at one point blonde, and her eyes were a soft brown. She wore a tattered blue dress that had at one time had lovely frilled edging. He'd found her in the debris of the building they were now hiding in. She had been hiding under a table, crying, silently. When he had approached her she retreated away from him and it had taken him several minutes to convince her that he wasn't one of the soldiers in the war. He asked where her mother and father were, but her face when the question was asked was all that was needed to answer the question. She was an orphan and alone amidst the fire and the wild.

"I have a magical box that will take us away from all of this." The Doctor said, he knelt down to her level and gently place his hand on her head. "All we have to do is get to it. Do you trust me?"

The little girl nodded slowly. He could see the fear in her eyes. It was warranted. The war was destroying her home, had killed her parents, and now it was aiming to finish her family off.

"We have to go quickly, though." The Doctor looked back outside. "My box is a few blocks away, it'll be like playing a game, like chasing." He turned back to the child. "So we need to run, can you run?"

The little girl nodded.

He smiled; he licked his thumb and cleared away a smudge of mud from her cheek, revealing the pearlescent skin underneath. He gripped her hand tightly. "When I say 'run', run, and don't let go for anything."

And with that they were in the streets. The Doctor was jogging and the girl sprinting held together by their grip. He could smell the smoke and the death and the ozone, the smell of a war that was going bad. He could hear the screams of soldiers and the shriek of Daleks, and the moans of the innocent trapped in between. The street was littered with vehicles and remains of buildings.

He pulled her behind a slab of concrete. There was a flash and an explosion the concrete shook cracked against them and chunks fell to the ground around them. He drew the girl under his jacket, shielding her from the rubble. He quickly asked if the girl was injured, to which she shook her head, 'no'. He took a deep breath and looked over the concrete. The artillery must have been a stray from the battle, the street was clear. He grasped the girl's hand and told her to get ready, and then they ran again.

The rolling thunder of bombardment was getting closer. The front line must have shifted. The Doctor's boots pounded the broken pavement. He turned a corner and kept running. Only a couple of more blocks left. He could see the TARDIS in the distance, wafting into and out of vision through the smoke and the dirt and the flashes of explosions in the sky. He looked back down at the girl and smiled, they were almost there.

And then he tripped. The Doctor's foot caught a rock in the street at a bad angle. He pitched forward and rolled. His hand pulled from the girl's hand. He struggled to his feet, clambered to get up right to he looked up, and his face paled, and then he heard it.

"EX-TERM-IN-ATE!"

"NO!"

The bolt of energy flew from the gun stalk, blue-green k-alpha radiation thrust itself through the girl's chest, lifted the child off the ground and flung her several feet. Her limp body rolled into a pile of twisted buildings and ambulances. He rushed to her, hoping beyond all logical hope; he gripped her arm and wrist. He held her body, broken in his arms, clutching her against his chest. He screamed loudly and then he looked up.

Through the smoke and the rubble the burnished copper war-casing hummed forward. The dome turned and the blue light at the end of the eye-stalk, narrowed as it pointed at the Doctor. The rest of the machine turned.

"You – are – a Time-LORD!" the Dalek screeched, the lights on its dome flashing in time to the voice. "You – will – stand - down! You – will – come – with – me!"

"You killed her. She was a child, and you killed her." The Doctor whispered.

"Ir-rel-e-vant!" The Dalek screamed.

"Irrelevant?" The Doctor said; he looked up at the Dalek. He stood up, straightening himself up. "THIS WAR IS IRRELEVANT! I have sat here, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, over and over and over again, watching the Daleks and the Time Lords bashing each others' head against the pavement, in a street fight across time and space, and cleaning up the messes you've all made, tried to help, tried to clear up the collateral damage." He looked straight into the Dalek's eye. "All this senseless, evil killing! She wasn't a threat, she wasn't a soldier; she was a LITTLE GIRL! This was simply murder, and I am done with it."

The Dalek lifted its plunger. The plunger twisted in the air. The Dalek backed up slightly as the readings coalesced into the creature's brain. The eyestalk light widened and stared in the Doctor's eyes.

"YOU – ARE – THE – DOC-TOR!" The Dalek screamed, the terror in its voice coming through the electronic distortion. "YOU ARE THE ENEMY OF THE DALEKS! YOU WILL BE EX-TERM-IN-ATED!"

The gun stalk whined as the energy built up. The Doctor narrowed his eyes. A fluid motion, not even seconds in the making. The sonic screwdriver roared. A sonic pulse fired from the resonator and resonated with the gun stalk. The gun sparked. The Dalek's eyestalk dropped down.

"WEA-PON – SYS-TEM DAM-AGED!" The Dalek shook in rage, brought its eye back to the Doctor. "WHAT – HAVE – YOU – DONE!?" An alarm started to go off. "A-LERT! A-LERT! WEA-PON SYS-TEM COM-PRO-MISED! POW-ER BUILD-UP DE-TECTED! OVER-LOAD EM-IN-ENT!"

The Doctor didn't say anything. He turned calmly and scooped the little girl's body up. He turned towards the TARDIS.

"DO – NOT – MOVE!" The Dalek raged, as the whine of the thwarted gun-stalk raised in pitch. "STAY – WHERE – YOU ARE! DOC-TOR! YOU CAN-NOT DO THIS! RE-CORDS IN-DI-CATE MER-CY!"

"I suggest you update your records." The Doctor said quietly, as he started to walk away.

The Dalek turned, it screamed in its impotence as the Doctor strode away, and then the gun stalk screamed as the k-alpha wave built to critical mass. The Dalek exploded as the Doctor opened the TARDIS doors. He didn't look back, he simply slipped into the vessel, closing the door behind him, and then the ship disappeared.

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They say that in the later part of the war a TARDIS landed at the Eye of Orion and a lonely man walked forward onto the Plains of the Soul where the serenity never ends, where the peace is never broken as smoky mists lay down a meditative calm. There is a single grave on the Plains of the Soul, a small stone marker, without a name, without any dates. Only two words were carved into the stone.

"No More"