The blue box fled. It always did in the end, every time. A scruffy old man walked across the lawn. He looked down at the woman lying on the grass. He slowly knelt down feeling the twinge of pain in his knee. His hand gently stroked the woman's dishwater brown hair.
The corners of his wrinkled eyes twitched slightly. A heart attack, the irony of it was not missed. Of all the great and horrible things the universe had in store for this woman for it to settle on a heart attack. It was almost anticlimactic, almost insulting.
"So, then this is where the general goes." A voice called out from the far side of the lawn. There was a plinth, it wasn't marble, it wasn't stone it just was and before it stood a man. The man strode forward; he wore simple red clothes, pants and a vested jacket over a white shirt. "You have such an obsession over a tiny, little…"
"-Friend, once, long ago." The old man grunted; his blue eyes looked up.
"What, you planning to fix this, too?" The man in red asked.
"No, that would be inappropriate." The old man replied as he slowly stood.
The man in red nearly guffawed. He looked at the old man as he stood dusting himself off.
"You're serious!?" the man in red said incredulously. "You? Captain Change My Own History So I'll Be?"
"Some things are - sacred." The old man said solemnly. "I've watched too many robbed of their death to do it to again to someone else."
"Then why are you here?" The man in red asked.
"My duty." The old man replied as he stood over the woman's body. "I'm a Time Lord, my duty is to observe. It has to be done, someone has to bare witness; to hold an account, to preserve causality and bind it safely at its loosest end."
"I did not expect to hear that coming from you, old boy." The man in red said as he looked down at the woman. "So then who was she then? An old flame, eh?"
"Nothing like that." The old man said. "Just a friend, once, a long time ago, one I needed when I was lost."
"And for her you'll stop the whole of our operation?" the man in red asked. "You can't just disappear like that and not be noticed!"
"Then let them notice." The old man responded, looking up from the cadaver to the man in red. He glared to up to the sky. "Let them see what it means to be Lords of Time. Let them remember what they are meant to be, who we were supposed to be. What our ideals were, and let them see it in comparison to what we are now…"
"You rejected all of that, remember? This is what you wanted, remember?" The man in red replied circling the old man. "All those years ago, when you slipped away with your dear little granddaughter that's what you wanted, or have you forgotten. You were fed up, you wanted us to intervene; you wanted us to be a force of good in the universe weighing in to save the little guys from the bullies. So now, we're doing what you wanted-"
"I never wanted this!" The old man groused. "This isn't us being a force of good; this is us protecting our own necks!"
"And you stand right beside us wrapping your own throat!" The man in red shouted. "You sit and cry that we don't use our great power to fight the evil in the universe; so we use our great power to fight the most dangerous enemy the universe has ever known and now you cry because we're doing something. Really can't win with you can we?"
"You are chastising me for my hypocrisy?" The old man asked. "A person who once fell in league with the greatest force of chaos in the universe for a little pay day, a person who has more shady black market deals than any other person in the history of time? You don't stand too high on the ladder of moral actors."
"I never claimed to be a good guy." The man in red said quietly. "I've never claimed to be right…but I can see when someone who has, failed to stand up to his claims."
"The officials will be here soon." The old man whispered. In the distance the sirens could be heard, but his eyes were on the body on the grass. "I'm sorry that things happened this way. I'm sorry you got dragged into this. I'm sorry this was how things had to end…"
"She's the one that you used to-" The man in red whispered.
"I was talking about you." The old man said as he looked up.
"What do you mean?" The man in red asked.
"Drax, did you think I would not know you were transporting technology across the frontline?" The old man asked.
"What are you talking about?" The man in red yelped.
"I've seen the logs, Drax. I've had reconnaissance TARDISes following your movements. I have data logs that show you handing parts over to the Goths." The old man said sharply.
"Oh come on, you know that it's not what it looks like!" The man in red shouted.
"I can't very well see what else it could be." The old man replied.
"They were defective, broken, nothing I gave the old dust bins would've worked, if anything it'd have screwed them up!" The man in red pleaded.
"I have an entire battalion of dead Time Lords that tell a different story, all of them killed with technology that the Daleks could've only gotten from the things you gave them!" The old man growled, glaring at the man in red. "Why? Why side with the Daleks!?"
"You've seen what it's like out there-"the man in red returned. "You know we can't keep this up, the universe is almost done as it is, the sooner this war is over, Thete-"
"NO!" The old man roared and pointed to the man in red. "That is not who you are talking to. You are talking to me. To the man who walked away from the crater. To the man who stands as a warrior for Gallifrey."
"They are going to win anyways." The man in red said quietly. "I don't care what's crawled into your head, what Rassilon has told you, but they are winning. The only plan the higher ups have is to burn the whole damn thing down. They're just gonna crack the universe like an egg, and then they're going to flee to some higher dimension; leaving the rest of us in a universe hemorrhaging, burning, dying in perpetual agony as time and space fracture and splinter like so many wood splinters off of the axe's blade. So yeah, I gave the dust bins technology, yeah I conspired to give them a tentacle up…but only because at least the little squids would leave causality intact! Plus, they promised I'd be left be when they start executing their ultimate solution…"
"And you trusted them?" The old man grunted.
"You trust Rassilon?" the man in red asked.
"I don't need to." The old man said as he looked up. "They're here."
The man in red turned looking where the old man was looking. A pearl of light was falling from the sky. The man in red ran towards the plinth on the far end of the lawn, but as he reached it; it blinked out of existence. The man turned in a frantic search as the pearl of light dropped down and enveloped him. He screamed loudly as his physical form was dissolved. The pearl glowed brightly and then it disappeared; the man in red having completely evaporated.
The old man looked down to the woman on the grass. He took a deep breath. "Your end is safe. It cannot be re-written; it cannot be stolen or changed. I have stood witness. I've done what I had to do, and I'm sorry, Grace."