Rule One

888

"It is you, isn't it?" a voice asked cautiously from the end of the alley. It was an old voice, male with a deep candor. A light mist was falling from the cold, Spring London sky. The sound of slow, aged footsteps and the click of a cane echoed up the alleyway towards the man standing in front of the blue box. "It has to be you. The Cybermen, you destroyed them, yes? That was your doing, wasn't it, Doctor?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." The man in front of the blue box said, he didn't turn to face the voice's owner. The man's voice was thin and graveled, weary sounding as if weighed down by the world.

"I don't know how you did it." The footsteps stopped a few paces behind the man standing by the blue box. "I mean UNIT could barely get past the walls with a battalion."

"I didn't do anything." The man said, he turned and looked at owner of the voice. "It wasn't I who destroyed the Cybermen."

The owner was an older man, dress in military fatigues that weren't quite comfortable looking. He leaned on a cane with a metallic handle. His face was marked with stress lines and sagged off his bones with a beard and a moustache that were as gray as his eyes. His hair was covered by a small military beret with the word UNIT written on it.

"You've changed your face again, Doctor."

"I'm not the Doctor." The man in front of the blue box said sternly. The man in front of the box had a rugged face as well and a small white beard and moustache, his eyes were hard and cold but infinitely sad.

"You may have thought me a dunderhead in the past, but I know for a fact that the only person in the world that would appear with a blue box in the middle of a Cyberman invasion is the Doc…"

"The Doctor is dead." The man said shooting a look up at the military man.

The military man visibly staggered, gripping his cane and taking a step back. "Impossible…" The military man quickly regrouped though and straightened up. "How?"

"Alone and in pain…" Replied the man. "He died being the Doctor, unloved and unwanted." The man turned back to the blue box, and slid out a key from the pocket of the leather jacket he wore and leaned forward placing the key into the box's lock. "I simply am the man who found his TARDIS in the wreckage."

"I find this very hard to believe." The military man groused, and stepped forward grabbing the other man's shoulder, turning the other man around to face him. "The Doctor was one of my best friends, a mentor and a confidante. He was well respected and loved at UNIT and on Earth and for good reason, he was by far the most heroic, most moral, most insufferably intelligent person this universe has ever produced, and I refuse to believe that he would be allowed to die in such an undignified manner!"

"The Earth is not the universe." The other man replied. He pointed up into the gray British sky with a gnarled and wrinkled finger. "This damp, little island is not the full extent of the universe. Things are changing out there. There's a war going on, a war beyond your comprehension and despite what you think you know about him, the Doctor was a criminal of his own people and a deserter and hated and feared across the cosmos. The Doctor died because the universe would no longer tolerate his kind of heroism. His hopes, his ethos were incompatible with how things are done now. He died because he could no longer adapt to the ruthless and barbaric chaos that is boiling out there beyond the horizon of your puny human understanding."

The military man took a deep breath and gave a glare at the other man. "I don't know you think you are, sir, but I would caution you to speak such slander about my friend."

"Old war hero, be glad your fight is over." The other man said quietly as he turned back to the blue box, he shifted a munitions' belt that hung over his shoulder across his torso. "Be happy that the Cybermen were defeated. Let the Doctor go, his time has passed and his sun has set. Let me go, for tomorrow it all changes again. Be happy that this world is safe for now, because tomorrow everything ends."

"What's that mean?" The military man said looking sternly at the other man.

"This TARDIS has one last trip to make." The man said quietly. His wrinkled hands turned the key of the TARDIS in the lock and a quiet click could be heard. "The longest and hardest trip this old ship has ever taken." The man looked back at the military man. "A trip the Doctor could never take in her."

"If you are implying that you killed the Doctor." The military man said, clutching the handle of his cane tightly.

"No, the Doctor died trying to save a life, trying to have one last victory in a war with so many defeats." The other man said quietly, leaning heavily against the door, trying to force it to yield. "He made a decision that he couldn't live with and died alone in the wilds and the fire. I simply came afterwards."

"Why didn't he ask for help? Most assuredly he has friends, allies, companions out there and he could always have come back…"

"He could never come back. The war was too savage, the players too powerful, he would never have allowed his friends to suffer the wrath of the enemies that he was fighting." The man said, almost angrily. "He was the Doctor, remember, not me. He couldn't send his friends into war, knowing they would die. You asked how the Cybermen were defeated…I can tell you how. An enlisted woman, Cassie Yates, I gave her a miniature cloaking device and an explosive. I told her where to go, and how to arm the explosive. I didn't tell her that the explosive would go off as soon as it was armed. When you file your report, tell them she died because an old man tricked her into becoming a suicide bomber, because he could find no other way to get into the Cybermen's base of operations."

The military man raised his cane, but it was too late the other man had pushed through the doors of the blue box and shut them tight. The military man pressed his finger on an actuator on the cane handle and a single shot pinged off the doors of the blue box. A gust of wind swept up and blew the beret off of the military man's head showing his scruffy gray hair. The light on top of the blue box started to flash and then a deep rumbling followed by an ancient screeching noise erupted as the box started to fade in and out.

"DAMN YOU!" shouted the military man loudly. "Come BACK HERE YOU COWARD!"

From within the box, in the impossibly huge console room, the other man leaned against the console listening to the screams of the military man.

"Rage, rage, all you like, Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, it will do you no good." The old man said staring at the screen as watched the brigadier rage in the alley. "The Doctor is gone; no more shall he save the Earth for you. There is only me left now, and I go now into war, into one final battle and I pray that one day, you can all forgive me for it."