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Will stands up and looks at the Doctor with an impassive expression on his face.

"Is it only you, now?"

Doctor watches Will closely, trying to ascertain how he is really doing, but he thinks he doesn't really need to look to know. With his responses that have felt clipped and guarded, the Doctor doesn't blame him one bit for them.

"Will. I'm so very sorry." He's exhausted and it should be obvious that he was injured at some point by now, but he has to make this right first, if he can at all. "Just me. You could sense it, couldn't you. Tell me what you sense now Will. Please."

Cautiously, Will opens his mind and casts out his mind. And he relaxes for the first time in more than a week as his mind touches no stain of darkness.

"I can sense it. Its gone."

Will hesitates, and takes another step toward the Doctor.

"...I'm sorry."

Feeling the query from Will he slowly lets down a little of his mental guard for him. Will's words that it's gone are a relief in more ways than one. Of course in seeing Will's, and the Doctor knows it's gone, but to be told by someone that could feel the traces of the Mara, it's still a relief.

Closing the distance to Will, he kneels on one knee before him and his good hand goes to Will's shoulder.

"Why would you be sorry? You have nothing to be sorry for. I tried to stop it, Will." Gently he squeezed Will's shoulder and his voice next was quiet. "I couldn't."

"Because I failed. I could feel the darkness and the wrongness in it. I should have been able to drive it away. To stop it. That was my duty, and I-"

And he cannot bear to say it aloud.

I could have hurt it. I could have burned it out of your mind and unmade it. I should have done that, for my duty. But I did not want to kill you.

And Will felt horribly guilt-ridden about that. Had he failed in his duties? As an Old One he should have done what was necessary, even if he hated it. But he hadn't. He had tried to save the Doctor instead. And in doing that he could have doomed everything. An Old One could not stop to save one person, he knew that. Because the price for saving that one person could be everyone else in the world.

Edited 2014-02-08 02:45 (UTC)

At the things the Mara had done, what it had wanted to achieve, the Doctor had been there before. Bearing witness to what his own hands had done and fighting for his own mind to bring a stop to it. It wasn't him, but does the Doctor feel culpable, guilty? Yes. He would go to any lengths possible to stop what evil the Mara had wanted, and yet he had been stuck, hoping that someone would be able to stop it or that the castle would end what was happening in time. He'd been beginning to lose hope.

He hears Will's voice on that other level but doesn't respond in kind. Right now it's too much energy than he has reserves left for.

"You could have done that?" It's a hard realisation. Chances are, Will would have burned out more than just the Mara. "I'm so sorry. You had to make a choice, Will. There's nothing wrong with making a choice, no matter how unfair, and..." It was bad enough what the Mara had done already. Hurting more people, or God forbid, ending them in his form and name, it was everything he found abhorrent and stood against.

"You tried to save me and I owe you a debt of gratitude so great. But if I ever pose a threat, if I become a danger to those around me and whom I care about, if you can finish it Will, you must. These are the choices we must make." His words are careful but the implication is there; Will should have done it. It's a choice he's had to make before as a Time Lord.

"Everything that has ever been known of magic in my world, I also know," Will says heavily. In a conversation like this he could take no joy in his power. "And I bear the Signs. I was born to fight a war against something that could not die. I know the spells of destruction and of the elements and of the mind. But none of them were made to save anyone."

Will drops his gaze and looks down on the floor. "I understand."

He hated the very idea of it, but Will understood the necessity. Next time he would not hesitate.

"I think... this is one of the times my master once told me of. That there would be times I would come to hate my burden and wish to be rid of it. I did not understand him then, but I think that I can understand what he meant now."

If Will had done what he was made to do... Well, the Doctor knows that he doesn't want to die. But he also knows he is powerful. The things his people can do compared to lesser species like the humans, a Time Lord that abuses those skills and gifts becomes... He becomes the Master.

If Will had stopped him, ended his existence, would he have come back in two weeks time? Would he regenerate instead? He doesn't know. He does know that if the Mara had gone too far - and it nearly did - if Will had ended him he still would have been saving him. Becoming something he was not he could not bare.

His hand squeezes on Will's shoulder, trying to reassure but not sure if he can. "I am so sorry. It is a hard and cruel lesson to learn. I've been there too. Questioning what gave... who gave me the right to make such a decision. You told me once that you could not make the choice to intervene, or rather to help, and--" He realises as he remembers the conversation. Trying in a round about way to tell the boy that he had free will, he could help others. It seems that Will exerted that free will after all.

And in that moment Will's sadness was no longer the sage sorrow of an Old One, but the all too human grief of the human boy that was also Will. An ordinary boy with a burden almost too great to be carried, who had never allowed himself to grieve for everything that he had lost. And would lose.

Ignoring his usual dignity, he wraps his arms around his friend in a hug.

"Even if I failed in my duties, I am glad you are okay.

Will had lost too many friends.

The Doctor thinks he has never seen Will look so young as he does right now. Just a lad, a child with a huge responsibility thrust upon him. Of course he sees the boy, and to see or hear Will truly acting his age is normally a gift indeed. But not now, not like this.

Still kneeling on the floor, his mouth is set in a line at the hug and Will's arms around his shoulders; as unexpected as it is, it's certainly not unwelcome. His good arm wraps around Will, returning that hug tight and putting as much reassurance as he can into it. Hopefully Will won't squeeze back too tight though.

"You didn't fail Will," he whispers into his ear. "You could have done what you learned you should do at any time. You made a choice instead, one I am of course very glad for, but certainly not at the expense of what the Mara did to you or what else it could have done. It might not have been the choice of an Old One, but something just as unique and powerful I dare think. You chose as yourself. As hard as that was and I'm sorry... That isn't failure, not truly. You're a good friend, Will. Thank you."

"A choice that could have destroyed everything," Will says quietly as he loosens his arms.

"I know better. I-" He breaks off as he tries to find the words. "I'm supposed to always think of the bigger picture. No matter how much I want to save people, I'm not supposed to turn back. I am the Watchman. If I fall there is no one else in my world to do what must be done."

But he was clearly miserable about the words he was saying.

He is right and it could, although how far the castle would have let the Mara go might be up for debate. Certainly not before it had done more damage the Doctor thinks. How do you reassure someone for making a decision they believe was wrong when you also agree it was the wrong choice? When making the right choice would also cause so much misery?

"Do you know how old that choice is Will? Of course you do. To take a few lives for the sake of the many... The guilt of a few lives lost will always weigh just as heavy as if it were a million. It would be your duty to take the few." It is unfair and Will is too young for the burden.

His arm squeezes tighter for a moment around Will's shoulders before he lets go and draws gently back. Going from the kneeling position to sitting on the carpet, the movement is perhaps closer to falling than being fully intentional. "Would you sit a moment with me Will? Please? I'll ask a question, and tell you a story, if, if you're up to hearing it."

In response Will lowers himself and takes a seat on the floor.

"I would hear it, if you want."

Nodding, he will start with the question first. "You can walk through time Will, be anywhere you want to be, at any point in history. Evil doesn't stay in one place. It's there at every point. If another person, fifty, or one-hundred years ago, more even, if they caused so much misery and pain, fear and anguish... And you were then told to go back and prevent that. Would you?"

"Yes," Will says slowly. "I have been there. I was with King Arthur and Merriman the night before the first great rising of the Dark at the Battle of Badon. I have seen the Dark rising in many times. Because wherever the Light is, the Dark has also been. If the Light asked it of me, I would go."

He nods again. "All right. No doubt you've spared many lives by doing that, but what of those that were brought together, united in a fight against evil, made stronger, lives intertwined and made for the better because they also stood to fight."

"All of that time Will, all of that changed, because just one person was stopped. Erasing evil doesn't change things just for the better. Everything that comes after it is also changed. Unities are lost. Great and beautiful things that could have happened, they are gone. People that in turn could have done so much more good in the world if the bad had been left to run its course."

"If it is the will of the Light, then it was meant to be that way."

The boy hesitates. "I don't think I have explained quite right. My kind does not travel to other times simply to fight any evil. We travel to other times because we are called. Because there is a task that the Light wishes us to complete. There are some things that cannot be changed. The First Rising of the Dark, the threats from the East.... There have been many dark times in my world's past where there was nothing the Light could do. We are bound by the laws of the High Magic and of the Wild Magic and by our own laws."

He pauses again with an unhappy expression on his face.

"If we are called to a time, it is because there is some task there that must be done. Even if we do not know what it is. "

He turns his face away.

"And as for people who are brought together against adversary, there are still many of those. My friends were like that. But even if they triumph in their battle, they may still be lost."

The last of Will's words come very quietly.

"In the end, all of them forgot. Because they were mortal, and magic no longer has a place in the world. Even Bran forgot, when he gave up his sword and chose to be mortal. All of them remember me as nothing more than a boy they once met during the summer holidays."

His hand goes to Will's shoulder. "If such a thing were permissible in my world, to change the past so drastically, the people would forget too." And it is permissible. Sometimes, when the Time Lords deem it so. "I've lost friends too because they forgot so much." Again because the Time Lords deemed it so.

"You've explained perfectly. I think it is I that hasn't. In my world the notions of the Light and the Dark I know of very well. But they are not the same as yours. I speak from my own perspective Will. I understand and figuratively step into your world as best I can. But what I've asked you I ask from experience."

And as he starts to speak again his own voice grows more tired. "A long time ago I was tasked with going to a point in time to stop the birth of a race so evil and so feared. They had lain waste to whole planets, killed billions and I would consider them to be my greatest enemy. They stand for everything I do not. And I was asked to commit genocide, to remove them from the face of Time." Asked is a rather loose term. Pushed into doing so by the High Council and his TARDIS taken away from him, they tried to leave him with little choice.

Will listens to all of this quietly. He knew that the Doctor would not be telling him this if it was not important.

"A hard choice to make."

He nods slowly. "Beyond measure."

"You and I are not so different, Will. I made a choice. I could carry out what was asked of me or instead condemn billions to a death that had already happened and to deaths still yet to come. No one person should have that right or power to choose something like that."

"Which choice do you think I made?"

Edited 2014-03-09 11:38 (UTC)

"Did you do as you were asked?"

Will was having a hard time even contemplating the scope of that decision. Billions? Genocide? He knew that he could never be asked to do such a thing. The Light did not kill. But if there was a situation of similar importance, Will wondered what his answer would be.

"They wanted me to avert their creation. The Time Lord said they had foreseen a time when all other lifeforms had been destroyed and this heinous race had become the dominant creature in the universe. What else could I do? What would be right?"

Turning his head to look at Will, there's the thinnest of smiles on his lips and it comes without the slightest trace of humour. He'd destroyed a room full of their young, halted Davros' plans for a while.

"I did. In the end, however, on my own terms. I only slowed them down, by a thousand years, just over. Do you understand why I took that course of action instead?"

He shakes his head.

"I don't think I can really understand it. Not without having been there myself. But... I think that if they were truly living creatures, they deserved a chance to make a better choice. Whether they chose that or not."

He shakes his head. "That choice they had already made. In my relative present at the... time, they'd already caused the deaths of millions. They couldn't have changed if they had tried. It was in their make up. Or rather, it wasn't in their make up."

"I chose the way I did because I remembered that even out of evil there must come something good. Even now. Do you see? It's a lesson that's relatable I think, Will. Even when a choice made feels like the wrong one."

"I think I see."

He still wasn't sure if that helped much.

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