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preserved_gingerRating: PG-13
Beta(s):
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principia_cohSetting: post-Voyage of the Damned
Character(s): Ten. Mentions of Six, Four, the Valeyard, and Rose.
Pairing(s): Ten/Rose
Spoilers: Mentions of events from Trial of a Time Lord, Genesis of the Daleks and Last of the Time Lords
A/N: A series of ficlets that looks at how a member of a people "peaceful to the point of indolence" could turn into the Valeyard. The title comes from the book of the same name by Terence Blacker.
Summary: He's looked at what he has become … and shrinks from it.
On occasion, in some of his more rational moments — moments scarce in supply since the Battle of Canary Wharf, and scarcer still in the aftermath of The Year That Never Was — he's looked at what he has become and shrunk from it.
His sixth self had been put on trial centuries ago by his people, his prosecutor an apparition that allegedly was him, created by the Time Lords through a process — never adequately explained — between his twelfth and final incarnations. He'd not relished the experience and, once it was finally over, he'd promised himself he would find a way to prevent that possible future. He swore that he would not permit himself to become someone capable of either the Valeyard's brand of calculated cruelty, or the casual thoughtlessness of the Time Lords who had brought that creature into existence. Yet here he was, showing every sign of turning into precisely that. What had caused him to go so far off-course?
The Time War, he thinks, did most of the damage.
He's still devastated by the role he was forced to play in that unmitigated disaster, to the point of burying the War and anything that recalls it deep in his mind so he doesn't have to spend every waking moment constantly being reminded of what he'd done. In the very darkest days, he had a tendency to blame himself for the whole damn mess anyway; had his fourth self done what had been asked of him and destroyed the Daleks at their inception, carrying out his mission rather than waxing all moral about whether or not he had had the right, wouldn't things have been so very different? If he hadn't shown that compassion on the day, would the Universe still have lost a countless number of lives to that blasted, final war?
But had he not taken the decision he had, though, then that surely still would have been one of the steps toward becoming the Valeyard. Sometimes it felt as if whatever he did, he couldn't ever win against the demons, external or internal. Was it worth even making the effort to try?
Trying to forget it all, his usual MO, has never really worked: every time he has to think of how to extricate himself from the latest mess he's managed to get himself into, each time he’s reminded of someone who might be alive if it weren’t for him, every time he takes a breath, the endless emptiness where the minds of his people used to be brings his new reality into terrifying closeness.
Rose didn't, couldn't, understand the agony that such a separation caused him, to be a member of a mind-joined race now forced to go without that connexion he'd had since infancy, and above all knowing that its absence was his own doing. It's the cruellest part of the War’s legacy; the part that never gives him rest, never gives him the peace of oblivion even for a second.
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 05:28 am (UTC)He NEEDS his Rose to keep him sane! Bring her back!!
Sorry...still miss her myself :O(
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Date: 2008-04-03 09:27 pm (UTC)Good introspection & background info about why the Doctor holds such anguish inside, and how he's drifting closer & closer to eventually becoming the evil Valeyard.
It's one of the things about the general darkness in Season Three that made me wonder ... is RTD trying to steer us in that general direction?
Sorry...still miss her myself :O(
No problem; I think you're preaching to the choir on that one, though ;)
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Date: 2008-03-27 05:41 am (UTC)PS Thanks for liking my icon!
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Date: 2008-04-03 09:44 pm (UTC)And I was glad to see you pay attention to the idea of a telepathic losing the noise he's had in his head for his whole life being damaging. I'm surprised they don't go into that in the show more.
I think I've had this conversation with someone before, on another of my fics. Wasn't you, by any chance, was it?
PS Thanks for liking my icon!
Parrots, what's not to love?
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Date: 2008-04-03 09:56 pm (UTC)I don't specifically recall, but that's more than possible. Rose goes over that idea in my fic, "Looking Within," after all, so I didn't just start thinking about the concept. :)
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Date: 2008-04-03 10:05 pm (UTC)I don't specifically recall, but that's more than possible. Rose goes over that idea in my fic, "Looking Within," after all, so I didn't just start thinking about the concept. :)
Must go and read (re-read?) that one, so I have half a clue what you're on about.
An idea I've entertained, on and off, is that Rose's experience of holding the Time Vortex inside her has changed her to the extent that a psychic link between the two of them (Rose and the Doctor) is not only possible but likely.
Thoughts?
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Date: 2008-04-03 10:19 pm (UTC)And I might've mentioned it more than once in "Looking Within," but here's a bit, so you don't have to search:
“And now, when I reach out, there's nothing. It's... lonely. Empty.” Later, in more composed moments, Rose would call it the very definition of an 'audible silence.' “It's this yawning hole where he used to sit, and it can only be worse for him. Time Lord, he is, and there's no one else. But while I sit here, worrying for his mind, I can't help but think selfishly, too. And that's... awful.”
...Yeah, Rose wasn't real coherent in that chapter, but we'll just have to forgive her. ^^;
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Date: 2008-03-27 08:38 am (UTC)Lovely and wonderful use of old school stuff. :-)
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Date: 2008-04-03 09:42 pm (UTC)Lovely and wonderful use of old school stuff. :-)
Thank you! :D
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Date: 2008-03-28 01:18 am (UTC)If i don't see him completely happy for a full five minutes next series, I'm going to write a strongly worded letter, i swear.
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Date: 2008-04-03 09:41 pm (UTC)*huggles Doctor tight*
Good thinking there!
If i don't see him completely happy for a full five minutes next series, I'm going to write a strongly worded letter, i swear.
I think I'll join you on that, y'know.
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Date: 2008-03-28 04:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 09:40 pm (UTC)You know I have always wondered if the Doctor is always kicking himself for not destroying the Daleks from ever existing when he had a chance?
I think so. If not after Parting of the Ways, then definitely after Doomsday; you can almost feel the regret pouring off him in the Season Three episodes with the Daleks.
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Date: 2008-04-02 03:00 am (UTC)Wonderful!
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Date: 2008-04-03 09:29 pm (UTC)Wow! Your insight is keen. I loved the voice here...this feels so true. Sad, but true. I have been endlessly curious about this fic ever since you mentioned it and I'm delighted to get to read it now! I love it and can't wait to see where you take it. I like your dark--it's not too dark, just genuine.
The darkness of Season Three has to have meant something, after all (apart from the manifestation of deep, desperate grieving, that is) and this is one of the ways of explaining it.
The Valeyard came from somewhere, after all!
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Date: 2008-04-16 11:52 pm (UTC)Is any of the background information cannon?
I wouldn't know cos I only got into DW with the new ones.