Better Than Before
Rating: PG
Prompt: #002 - Middles
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: None
Characters: The Doctor (7)
Summary: Sometimes doing the right thing is as easy as it should be.
Note: I badly wanted to write something that's not dark and not long, but this story hated me, and it's crap, crap, crap!
Destroying Skaro has been easy. Not the act in itself, the planning, the timing, but deciding to do so, considering the idea and accepting that it had to be done. He doesn’t take pride in having destroyed an inhabited planet
(There was, though, the satisfaction of outwitting an enemy.)
but it doesn’t bother him either, not much. Justifying it isn’t hard as he knows that all the creatures he killed were evil to the core and would have brought death to another thousand worlds. The choice between a thousand worlds and a species of unfeeling monsters is not a difficult one and there’d be no excuse for letting misguided morals get in the way. He curses, sometimes, the man who’s had the chance to make that choice so much sooner, who could have saved so many more. Only very seldom does he look back at the person he once was and wonders if he should weep for all he has left behind. He is what he has become, and what he has become is a child of the cosmos that shaped him, of seven lifetimes of memories, of bitter experiences and learning and, eventually, of knowing better than before.
Once upon a time he would not have been able to do what he did, would not have had the insight he now possesses, and he is glad he’s had the chance now to do this because he can not tell what the cosmos will throw at him in the future and if the person he will be shaped into by memories to come will be able to see the world just as clearly.
He was what he was. He is what he is and one day he will be something else. His view of the world is created by experience, not by the body he wears but it is easy to associate doubt and shame with curly brown hair and a tall body, the moral dilemma woven into a colourful scarf, and then put on his hat, take his umbrella and say: I know better. He likes to believe he’s more mature than he’s been before, yet at every point in his life he’s been what he though he should be, had to be, better than all he was before, and had he known what he would be now two lives back he would have been appalled, would have feared the day when murder became so easy.
Today he knows he has been a fool. Today he knows it would be unforgivable not to act when he has the chance to, and that morals aren’t worth the price the universe would have to pay for them. It might be wrong to kill a murderer before the murder but how can it be right to sit back and let it happen, let other’s die so their killers can live?
It’s not a dilemma, not really.
(And he’s still able to appreciate the irony of Davros and his Daleks causing the destruction of their own planet.)
Only very seldom does he look back and is sad a little more than he is amused by the thought that the man he was would hate the man he is.
And he (almost) never takes the time to wonder if he should fear the man he will become.
December 7, 2007
Prompt: #002 - Middles
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: None
Characters: The Doctor (7)
Summary: Sometimes doing the right thing is as easy as it should be.
Note: I badly wanted to write something that's not dark and not long, but this story hated me, and it's crap, crap, crap!
Destroying Skaro has been easy. Not the act in itself, the planning, the timing, but deciding to do so, considering the idea and accepting that it had to be done. He doesn’t take pride in having destroyed an inhabited planet
(There was, though, the satisfaction of outwitting an enemy.)
but it doesn’t bother him either, not much. Justifying it isn’t hard as he knows that all the creatures he killed were evil to the core and would have brought death to another thousand worlds. The choice between a thousand worlds and a species of unfeeling monsters is not a difficult one and there’d be no excuse for letting misguided morals get in the way. He curses, sometimes, the man who’s had the chance to make that choice so much sooner, who could have saved so many more. Only very seldom does he look back at the person he once was and wonders if he should weep for all he has left behind. He is what he has become, and what he has become is a child of the cosmos that shaped him, of seven lifetimes of memories, of bitter experiences and learning and, eventually, of knowing better than before.
Once upon a time he would not have been able to do what he did, would not have had the insight he now possesses, and he is glad he’s had the chance now to do this because he can not tell what the cosmos will throw at him in the future and if the person he will be shaped into by memories to come will be able to see the world just as clearly.
He was what he was. He is what he is and one day he will be something else. His view of the world is created by experience, not by the body he wears but it is easy to associate doubt and shame with curly brown hair and a tall body, the moral dilemma woven into a colourful scarf, and then put on his hat, take his umbrella and say: I know better. He likes to believe he’s more mature than he’s been before, yet at every point in his life he’s been what he though he should be, had to be, better than all he was before, and had he known what he would be now two lives back he would have been appalled, would have feared the day when murder became so easy.
Today he knows he has been a fool. Today he knows it would be unforgivable not to act when he has the chance to, and that morals aren’t worth the price the universe would have to pay for them. It might be wrong to kill a murderer before the murder but how can it be right to sit back and let it happen, let other’s die so their killers can live?
It’s not a dilemma, not really.
(And he’s still able to appreciate the irony of Davros and his Daleks causing the destruction of their own planet.)
Only very seldom does he look back and is sad a little more than he is amused by the thought that the man he was would hate the man he is.
And he (almost) never takes the time to wonder if he should fear the man he will become.
December 7, 2007