Two Pieces of Wire
Rating: PG
Prompt: #081 - How?
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: None
Characters: The Doctor (4), Romana (2)
Summary: They dicuss genocide beneath a yellow sun.
„How did you do it?“
Her voice is curious, her face betraying genuine interest. It’s not the face of a person asking about attempted genocide and he wonders, as he watches her, if she knows what she is talking about, if she really, truly knows.
“It wasn’t very hard,” he lies. It was simple, but not easy. (Yet not as hard as it should have been and he isn’t sure what that says about him.)
“They were Daleks!”
“They were children,” he snaps, sharper than intended. “The real Daleks, the ones that moved around and killed, I couldn’t touch. That’s why it didn’t work in the long run.”
They’re lying in the grass beneath a yellow sun and she is playing with his scarf. There is no adequate setting for conversations like this.
“They were still evil. Had you given them the chance they would have done unspeakable things.” She says it with a shrug, not seeing the problem.
“No doubt they would have,” he agrees. “But they haven’t. Never got the chance.”
“What does it matter? We know they would have done it. Isn’t it better to stop a crime from happening than to simply punish the criminal afterwards?”
She doesn’t know, he decides, for she is only brilliant. She hasn’t been there, and if she is lucky she’ll never be.
“Is it?” he wonders.
“Of course it is.” She looks at him like a teacher would look at a particularly thick pupil. He’s often been looked at like that when he was a child.
But she is the young one here and doesn’t know it.
And if she is right, wouldn’t it be their obligation, then, to travel though the history of every world and stop every murder they know of, every war before it happened?
“So how did you do it?” she asks again, a little impatient.
“I blew them up.” He’s looking at the sky as he speaks and sees only his hands and the two pieces of wire they’re holding. In his memory bringing them together is easy and he tries to convince himself that in reality it has been harder but he can’t forget that it wasn’t, not really. He knew what he had to do, knew also that this was the only way to get his friends out of that place. There wasn’t any time to think about it, so he skipped the inner battle and just did what it would have come down to anyway (since he couldn’t sacrifice Harry and Sarah and countless other beings for a clear conscience).
Would it have been less of a crime had it been harder to commit it?
“You blew them up?” Romana repeats, with a hint of disappointment. She rolls onto her back and doesn’t see anything but the sky. “That’s so boring!”
He doesn’t answer, for once in his life preferring to stay silent.
The next time he tries to wipe an entire species out of the history of the universe, he thinks sourly, he’ll aim for something more dramatic.
November 15, 2007
Prompt: #081 - How?
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: None
Characters: The Doctor (4), Romana (2)
Summary: They dicuss genocide beneath a yellow sun.
„How did you do it?“
Her voice is curious, her face betraying genuine interest. It’s not the face of a person asking about attempted genocide and he wonders, as he watches her, if she knows what she is talking about, if she really, truly knows.
“It wasn’t very hard,” he lies. It was simple, but not easy. (Yet not as hard as it should have been and he isn’t sure what that says about him.)
“They were Daleks!”
“They were children,” he snaps, sharper than intended. “The real Daleks, the ones that moved around and killed, I couldn’t touch. That’s why it didn’t work in the long run.”
They’re lying in the grass beneath a yellow sun and she is playing with his scarf. There is no adequate setting for conversations like this.
“They were still evil. Had you given them the chance they would have done unspeakable things.” She says it with a shrug, not seeing the problem.
“No doubt they would have,” he agrees. “But they haven’t. Never got the chance.”
“What does it matter? We know they would have done it. Isn’t it better to stop a crime from happening than to simply punish the criminal afterwards?”
She doesn’t know, he decides, for she is only brilliant. She hasn’t been there, and if she is lucky she’ll never be.
“Is it?” he wonders.
“Of course it is.” She looks at him like a teacher would look at a particularly thick pupil. He’s often been looked at like that when he was a child.
But she is the young one here and doesn’t know it.
And if she is right, wouldn’t it be their obligation, then, to travel though the history of every world and stop every murder they know of, every war before it happened?
“So how did you do it?” she asks again, a little impatient.
“I blew them up.” He’s looking at the sky as he speaks and sees only his hands and the two pieces of wire they’re holding. In his memory bringing them together is easy and he tries to convince himself that in reality it has been harder but he can’t forget that it wasn’t, not really. He knew what he had to do, knew also that this was the only way to get his friends out of that place. There wasn’t any time to think about it, so he skipped the inner battle and just did what it would have come down to anyway (since he couldn’t sacrifice Harry and Sarah and countless other beings for a clear conscience).
Would it have been less of a crime had it been harder to commit it?
“You blew them up?” Romana repeats, with a hint of disappointment. She rolls onto her back and doesn’t see anything but the sky. “That’s so boring!”
He doesn’t answer, for once in his life preferring to stay silent.
The next time he tries to wipe an entire species out of the history of the universe, he thinks sourly, he’ll aim for something more dramatic.
November 15, 2007