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.
