Title: Doctor of War
Fandom: Doctor Who
Challenge: Swallow
Other prompt: DW_Allsorts, Sparrow, Raven, Dove
Rating: G
Length: 200
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Zhie, for encouragement & sanity-checking, and ThisBlueSpirit for the DWAllsorts prompts.
Summary: The War Doctor: Un-numbered, companionless, interstitial


The Doctor of War, they called him. And, indeed, war followed him like wings of storm. On raven-wing, crow-wing, the memory of sparrow, swallow, dove, lark, all now gone. War ahead, behind, to every side. But never his purpose, never his intent. He stood in the eye of the storm, saving whom he could, when he could, where and how he could. Rarely could he save everyone, and sometimes none at all. Those were the worst, when no one but he (and his companions) left the battlefield. Sometimes, — and this was the very stuff of nightmares — not all of his companions lived, sacrificing themselves, he unable to save them. Those names were graven in memory, never to be forgot. Katarina, Adric, Roz.... Cass, that girl -- no, give her her due, woman, adult and aware and deliberate in her choice however few her years -- there at the end of who he had been.

No companions now, no hostages to fortune, no wings to break, no close lives to watch fall, helpless, vainly reaching out. Or perhaps everyone was a companion now, without the particular, the immediate and specific; all in the storm together, the wind-twist, the deluge, the withering, unceasing fire.