Warrior

888

"Is it done?" asked the old woman as she looked down at him.

He sighed quietly, slowly standing. He looked down at the girl laying on the stone slab. Another sacrifice in the war. Another fallen victim, birthed simply so he could be. He narrowed his eyes and reached out for the bolero strapped across her torso. He unclipped it and pulled it from the girl's corpse. The name of the child was gone now, the regenerative wildfire had swept it away along with so many other names and places and things. It left nothing but char and ash in his mind, it would take time for the shoots of memories to regrow, regenerate themselves back into that lush forest of his experiences.

He turned as he clipped the bolero around his own torso and caught his reflection in one of the goblets. His face flickered and shook in the flame light. His hair was curled and stringy about shoulder length his eyes were old but set in a youthful face. He was still wearing the Doctor's jacket. The Doctor that name had survived the regeneration's firestorm, like an ancient oak it was resistant to the flames of rebirth, unscathed by the fires of destruction.

"Is it you, Doctor?" the old woman asked.

He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "Doctor no more…"

His voice was deeper and gravellier and his mind was still a fog. The old woman seemed to appraise him. She nodded slowly.

"What will you do now?" the old woman asked.

"What the universe has always wanted since this all started." He said as he turned again to the girl on the slab. "It has expended so much effort to get me here." He narrowed his eyes and looked back to the old woman. "It would be horribly rude to deny it after all of this."

"The girl was never going to survive." The old woman said as she walked forward. "There was nothing we could do!"

"No, but you were more than willing to play your part." he replied looking to the old woman. "Even I was willing to play into its hands, one forgets, the little things one does that locks their fate into place. I manipulated the timeline, knowing that this was going to happen."

"Then you know what must be done." the old woman asked.

"The war must end." he replied narrowing his eyes and looking to the corpse on the stone table. "It has to end. So many are just like her. So many are worse than her. Dead, dying, cycling between death and undeath over and over again. The universe blazes like a crematory furnace, so many corpses, so many bodies turned to ash."

"The war is alive, it's it own entity now. It is loose and raging out of control." The old woman said. "It is beyond the scope of the Time Lords and the Daleks. It feeds upon their hatred and fear. As long as one exists…."

"The war will never end." He said, turning and walking out of the chamber and out into the open air.

He looked out over the fields of shattered starships. The orange sky burnished in smoke. Beyond the fires burned, flames of death gone mad. Deep down inside he could feel them, their terror, their pain; he could hear their screams for mercy, their plaintive whimpers for it to end. The old woman was by his side.

"So then, Time Lord, what will you do?" The old woman asked.

"I will fight it." he said as he took another step forward and then walked out onto the fields.

He searched the rubble, the piles of broken ships. He searched until his eyes fell upon it, in the middle of twisted metal and knotted cords. He pushed forward, worming his way through the metal wreckage. In the middle there was a clearing of metal, a perfect hemisphere in the middle of the twisted metal, and there she was. She seemed to sit serenely. The eye in the middle of the storm. Her blue paneled doors were scorched, there was a crack on one of the windows. The lantern on top flickered slightly. He took a deep breath and reached out.

There was a sizzling crackle that snapped and bit at his fingers as he put them against her surface. He pulled his hand back shocked. There was a gong sounding somewhere deep inside of her. He narrowed his eyes. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a key on a long chain. He took a step forward and tried to push forward.

There was a soft screech of reverberating piano string and he felt a force pulse outwards pushing him backwards. He gritted his teeth.

"I know, you don't like it!" he growled at the box loudly. "I know you liked him, but he's gone now, I'm what's left! You know this has to happen, you better than anyone else. You have to know! I know you have to know because I saw you there, all those times, with me! For you to object now…"

The box gonged again. The windows shifted as red lights filtered out from within. The box seemed to growl softly like a feral cat trapped in a corner. He pursed his lips.

"There's nothing you can do, you don't have to like it, but you know I won't give up until this war is ended, we are going to fight!" he said as he walked forward again.

The air sizzled around him as he felt the atmosphere become denser around him, constricting him. Slowing him down. The air was becoming porridge . He grunted and gritted his teeth pushing through it. He struggled to put his hand forward to grasp the door handle. He hauled himself forward, pressing himself against the box. He reached up with his free hand and pointed the key towards the keyhole. The key grew hot in his hand, it burned his flesh. He growled as he felt his skin bubble against the metal, he pushed the key into the hole.

The box shook angrily. He tried to turn the key but the sound started. First a slow bouncing rumble, then the metallic screech of the great engines pushing against the fabric of reality. Wind was sweeping up around him.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" he shouted to the box.

He looked around him, the world around him was fading in and out slowing being replaced by the swirling maelstrom of history that flowed through the universe. He grabbed the edge of the box with one hand and curled his fingers tightly around the key with the other. The box bucked and threw itself in all the directions afforded to it. It pitched and yawed, spinning like a top as it dipped and dove through time and space bouncing across centuries and millennia and leaping across parsecs and galaxies like some mad spinning bouncing ball. He groaned as he felt the cold sapping his strength. He pressed his body tighter against the warmth of the box, placing his cheek against its surface.

"I…don't want this…" he said against the wood. "Please…don't make this harder than it is…."

The box seemed not to listen as it jolted through a battle of starships and then shot off towards a star. He gritted his teeth. He closed his eyes and felt the tears freeze against his cheeks.

"It's for them, all of them. Cass, the girl at Tressail, Lucy, Alex….Romana…" he shouted loudly, pleadingly. "It has to end! This can't continue! We have to fight to end this war, you know this! Please! You have to understand! PLEASE! DON'T LEAVE ME, TOO!"

The box came to a stop, slowly twisting in the dead of space. Several astronomical units from a giant, blue star. He felt the key turn. The lock clicked. The door swung inwards. He fell through the entry and collapsed onto the stone masonry of the cathedral floor inside the box. He grunted as his body shook from the cold. It took him a few minutes to get to his feet and stagger to the console. He put his hands on the angle surface. The machine chimed soothingly to his touch, he reached up and touch the center column, there was the distant sound of steam being released, like from a locomotive and the crystals inside lowered slightly as if relaxing.

"I'm sorry, I tried, I tried avoiding it." he said quietly, leaning his weight against the console. "But…this isn't something we can avoid. Not any longer. No more…"