Fic: The Road to Hell
Title: The Road to Hell (is paved with chaos and destruction)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Summary: Act. React. Carry on. Chaos and flame. He carries the dark in his soul. He is always the hurricane, never the hero. AU. Dark!fic. Sort of companion to 'Reap the Whirlwind' (In progress).
With thanks to Mandy (a_phoenixdragon), master of the Dark!fic for getting me psyched about writing this. Beta by the wonderful themuslimbarbie. I don't own Doctor Who or the line I borrowed from LOTR. Inspired by the Sick Puppies album 'Tri-Polar'. Please comment.
"Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, chaos is being yourself" - Emile M. Cioran
"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be" - Voltaire
He doesn’t rule the universe, at least not as much as he wants to. Several far flung planets worship him as God (occasionally the Devil), which is enough to satisfy him (for now). So many of his lives have been spent keeping watch over those ungrateful worlds (they can never just stay saved). It certainly keeps him busy: diving in at the last second, playing the benevolent and lonely traveller, stopping the big bad aliens.
Nobody realises that he isn’t the great hero the legends make him out to be. Sure he has done several ‘good’ deeds, saved several planets from certain doom, but he has committed far more atrocities, and more crimes that he can never forget. He has started more wars than any psychopath could ever dream of, killed billions of people, committed genocide hundreds of times. He has spent centuries trying to forget what he has done, lifetimes trying to wash the blood and ashes from his hands. He has lived in a state of constant denial, refusing himself the simplest of selfish desires. The pressure of having to monitor his every waking thought is exhausting. He cannot breathe without having to stifle a memory of standing over a pile of corpses. He cannot move without having to smother the memory of launching the first missile into a war that wiped out two thirds of the planets population.
Eventually, after more nightmares than he can bear, he does what any sane person would do under that amount of pressure - he relents. He wholeheartedly accepts the darkest parts of himself. He reaches into the depths of his mind and pulls the memories of war and bloodshed to the front of his mind and refuses to look away.
It is torture.
The knowledge of what he has done tattoos itself across the inside of his skull. It burns. After some time, he picks himself up, and he no longer hurts. For the first time in his memory the thudding sensation in his mind abates. It doesn’t fade completely - some faint rhythms dance across the surface of his mind - reminding him of the time he has spent at war with himself. A warning for what he has to avoid in the future. His first free thought is not happiness at his freedom or anger at the time he spent ignoring the obvious solution - no, instead it is simply:
Let the good work begin.
The world whimpers.
He grins.
Now, he doesn’t take human companions to show them the wonders of the universe, but rather to show them the horrors. He wants to make them realise that there is no such thing as an untainted planet. That there are planets that have spent eons in war over disputes a child could settle, that the history of their species is not dry and boring as the history books make it out to be, nor as bright and shining as everybody believes it should be. Instead it is sordid and covered in the mire of human greed, human suffering and human mess. He airs the dirty laundry of the universe and he does it with a smile on his face and a song in his hearts.
The truth of the universe (all universes he thinks) is that there is always darkness hiding just outside of the light. That, without exception, an empire’s entire glittering history will always be stained by death and pain; tainted by the random act of cruelty of a single person (or army of people). That there is no such thing as a perfect world. And there never will be.
(At least, not while he’s still breathing).
Some break, of course, under the immense knowledge he is shoving into their minds and hearts - the knowledge that the world is not a place of sunshine and fucking rainbows. Those ones leave quickly, finally seeing his burning intensity and realising that is not madness, just honesty (with the barest hint of anger).
Other companions, surprisingly, do not break but instead adapt. He has always admired the human ability to evolve to suit their surroundings; he is thrilled he gets to see it in action. The humans adapt to the life of destruction and become as dark as him. Those are the best ones. He keeps them longer and they take longer to tire of the running and the danger and the bloodshed. Some do not tire; he just grows bored of them. Some get too old to keep up. Some are killed (although usually not by him). They leave him; fading from recent memory and becoming a part of the black tapestry that is his life.
Some think that they can stop him, end his ‘insanity’. The never succeed. Once or twice they come perilously close to getting inside his hearts, to breaking through his defences, to making him feel - something that he has no use for. Those lucky few he disposes of personally, not waiting for fate to do the job for him. He gets rid of them in various ways, but all are dealt with quickly and without fanfare.
Sometimes he still has to play the hero in order to convince people he’s not leading them into the mouth of hell and leaving them there to fight their way out. He hates those times - for the pounding in his head increases - the ignorable warning becoming a screaming alarm behind his eyes. After the survivors have clawed their way back into the sunlight, they say he has a storm in his eyes. He cannot bring himself to hate the analogy. They like it because the storm leaves ground swept clean in its wake. He likes because he sees himself as a hurricane, raining destruction on anyone (or anywhere, or anywhen) stupid enough to get in his way. Or, let’s face it, whenever he is bored and needs some entertainment.
Eventually he meets one like him. One who is containing the blackness in his soul, though not by his own choice. One who should not have to spend his lives as broken as he was. This one, unlike countless others whom he saved out of necessity, he actually wants to help. He wants to release his darkness from its corner of this twisted and warped soul that it longs to call its own.
It takes much convincing to pull the realisation of what should be obvious to the front of the man’s mind, to where it cannot be ignored. There are screaming, raging fights. It isn’t until he shows him the true freedom of chaos that he finally accepts the help he needs so badly.
For him to embrace the dark, he explains, is to be truly free. He can be chaos and flame and answer to no man. No restrictions, no worries, no thought or consideration. Just act.
React.
Carry on.
Repeat (to the devastation of those left behind).
Provide a counterpoint (a melody almost) to the rhythm in his skull and in his chest.
Once the man accepts the great truth of the universe, it is simple to show him how to accept the part of his soul he has denied all his lives.
A mental connection
embed the rhythm
shift his thinking
and it is done!
“Breathe the free air, friend,” he says to break the moment holding them captive.
The no-longer-warring man sucks a deep breath in - finally able to do so without having to control his every thought. After a moment, the man collapses, brought to his knees through sheer joy.
From the outside they must look strange, he thinks. Two men, on kneeling in front of the other, his hands upon the others face. One shivers, the other trembles. They both breathe deeply. One stands and pulls the other to his feet. They stare at each other. One moves first, clutching the other with a tight grip. They step back in perfect accord. Four heartbeats pass. Then eight. Before the twelfth can pass, one speaks - deep and gravelly. A word, one simple word. A name.
“Doctor.”
The other speaks in return, voice strained but light.
“Master.”
The universe shudders.
"A word carries far, very far, deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space" - Joseph Conrad
"All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness" - John Ruskin