leafyscientist07 - Tumblr blog

leafyscientist07 · 3 months ago

Note

I can't even begin to describe this. The grief felt so real, and the way Dottore deteriorates before letting himself grieve and cry- I just can't. Almost cried reading this too - it's beautifully written.

Heyyoooo! I want to request something that would probably destroyed you, me, and everyone. Mwahhaha! The request is the child loss, his own child, that Dottore lost. His mask is shattered by the loss of his child, his Segments struggles to cope with the reality of the situation, where they are stuck in a cycle of grief, each one reliving the pain.

Dottore's child was also a part of him, and with their passing, he feels a piece of himself has been torn away, consumed by guilt and self-doubt after failing to save them. As he searches for a way to redeem himself, his other Segments, despite their shared pain, must intervene to prevent him from succumbing to his darker impulses.

You're quite evil anon😭, just wanna let you know this took me days to think through and trying not to tear up at it

The lab was in ruins.

The air was thick with acrid smoke, curling from the shattered remains of glass tubes and smoldering machinery. The scent of burning chemicals stung Dottore’s nose, but it was nothing compared to the metallic tang of blood—fresh, seeping into the cold floor beneath him.

His coat, usually pristine despite the chaos of his experiments, was soaked in red. But it was not his blood. It was yours.

His child.

His hands trembled as they hovered over your still form, unwilling—unable—to touch you yet. You lay there, unmoving, your once brilliant eyes dull, your lips parted slightly, as if you were about to speak but never got the chance.

Something inside Dottore shattered.

“No… No, no, no, no.” His voice was barely a whisper at first, then broke into something raw, something frantic. His hands shot forward, grasping your limp shoulders, shaking them. “You are not allowed to die on me. Do you hear me? You do not get to leave.”

No response.

His grip tightened, his nails digging through the fabric of your clothes, as though the force of his desperation alone could will life back into you. His mind, sharp and logical, the mind that had solved impossible problems, could not comprehend this outcome. It had to be a mistake. A miscalculation.

He had contingencies. There was always a way.

Shallow breaths turned into ragged gasps.

His hands moved to your wrist, fingers pressing against cooling skin, seeking—begging—for a pulse. A flicker of warmth. A sign. Anything.

Nothing.

His breath hitched. His mask—cracked from the explosion, slick with blood—felt suffocating. He tore it off with shaking hands and let it fall to the floor with a dull clink.

His chest heaved, agony clawing its way up his throat like a beast desperate to escape. He was choking on it, drowning in it. His child, his creation, his blood, lay dead in his arms, and there was nothing he could do to change it.

Behind him, the Segments stood frozen.

Zeta had his mouth open, as if he wanted to say something but could not find the words. Theta’s hands twitched at his sides, his entire body stiff with tension. Sigma’s fingers were curled into his palms, his nails digging into his own skin, expression caught between horror and disbelief.

None spoke. None moved.

For the first time, they were without direction. Without an answer.

A strangled noise clawed its way out of Dottore’s throat—something between a sob and a snarl, something that did not sound human. He crushed his child against his chest, pressing his forehead to their cooling skin, gripping them as though they would disappear if he let go.

And the lab, for all its destruction, was drowned in an all-consuming silence.

His mind, usually a place of precision and control, was now spiraling, thoughts colliding and breaking apart like brittle glass. I should have seen this coming. I should have prepared for this. I should have saved them. I should have—

The truth hit him like a death blow.

I cannot fix the dead.

A harsh, ragged breath escaped him, followed by another, and then another, until he was gasping, his entire body trembling violently. No, no, no, this isn’t right. This isn’t reality. I do not lose. I do not lose.

But he had.

And the world, for all its cruelty, did not care.

----------

The mask shattered first.

It cracked under the weight of grief, brittle against the force of his own hands as he tore it away. The remnants clattered to the cold floor, forgotten. The last remnant of the man they had always known lay in jagged shards at his feet.

Then, the man beneath it broke.

The Segments had seen many sides of their Prime—the genius, the tyrant, the scientist. They had seen him consumed by ambition, driven by an insatiable hunger for knowledge. They had witnessed his cruelty, his cold, calculating apathy, and his moments of triumphant arrogance.

But they had never seen this.

Never seen him silent. Never seen him empty.

Sigma was the first to step forward, hesitance clear in every movement. “Dottore—”

“Don’t.”

The word was hoarse, raw, barely more than a breath. He did not look at them, did not move from where he stood. His gaze remained locked on the ground where his child had fallen, the ghost of their absence carving itself into his mind like a scar that would never fade.

His hands hung uselessly at his sides, the blood on his gloves long dried, but he could still feel it. Clawing at his skin, staining everything he touched.

A phantom pain dug into his chest—suffocating, relentless.

You should be here.

You should be breathing.

You should not be gone.

Theta hesitated before speaking. "You need to eat. You need to rest."

A hollow laugh scraped from Dottore’s throat, sharp and brittle. "Rest? When there is work to be done?"

Beta, who had remained still until now, took a step forward, his patience fraying. “What work?” His voice was cold, tinged with something dangerously close to desperation. “They are gone, Prime. You cannot change that.”

Silence.

Dottore finally turned to look at them then, and it was worse than anything they had ever seen before.

No fury.

No arrogance.

No brilliance.

Only grief.

The kind that stripped a man to his bones, hollowing him from the inside out.

The kind that did not heal.

His lips parted slightly, but no words came. No sharp remark, no denial. Just silence.

The Segments had never feared silence before.

But this time, it felt like mourning.

--------

The lab was quiet now.

No longer filled with the soft, inquisitive voice that once questioned theories, no longer echoing with the rhythmic clicking of footsteps that always lingered too long, as if reluctant to leave.

It was a hollow kind of silence, the kind that settled in the bones, that turned time sluggish and unbearable.

The Segments had cleaned the blood, scrubbed every last trace of crimson from the floor, repaired what they could of the damage. Yet no matter how much they worked, the place still felt colder. Emptier.

They had not simply lost someone. They had lost you.

And yet Dottore still worked.

Night after night, he ran through formulas, spliced genes, combed through every record, every theory, every ounce of knowledge he had acquired over decades.

Searching. Desperate.

A cycle with no end, no destination, only the endless repetition of a man who could not accept the past.

He did not sleep. He barely spoke. His hands were trembling now, his movements slower, less precise. Yet he never stopped.

The Segments watched as he wasted away, swallowed by his own obsession.

Delta set down a tray of untouched food beside the cluttered desk. “You cannot keep doing this.”

Dottore did not respond. He did not even look up.

“They wouldn’t have wanted this,” Gamma added quietly, his voice uncharacteristically subdued. “You know that.”

Dottore's fingers stilled over the notes. His breath hitched, sharp and uneven. “What they would have wanted does not matter anymore.”

Sigma crossed his arms. “And if you collapse? What then? If you die, who will remember them?”

A sharp crack echoed through the room. The pen snapped in Dottore’s grip.

The ink bled into his gloves, but he did not move to wipe it away. His shoulders were tense, his face unreadable beneath the dim glow of the monitors.

The Segments said nothing, exchanging glances filled with quiet concern.

For the first time, they truly feared that they might lose him too.

------

Theta swore he heard footsteps.

Soft, careful, just like theirs.

He turned sharply, expecting to see them standing there—shoulders squared, lips curved into that ever-familiar teasing smirk as they asked why he always looked so serious.

But there was nothing.

Just an empty hallway.

The air was too still, the silence pressing against him like a vice. He lingered for a moment longer, waiting, hoping, before he forced himself to move on.

The cold pit in his stomach did not fade.

They were all feeling it.

The lab was too quiet now. Their routines had been thrown into disarray, not by chaos or disaster, but by something far worse—an absence that should not exist.

An absence they could not accept.

Theta had walked past an unfinished project of yours just yesterday, the notes still sprawled across the desk in your distinct handwriting—meticulous, yet just messy enough to reveal your excitement. No one had touched it.

No one could touch it.

The beakers remained where you had last placed them, your lab coat still hanging on the back of a chair as if you would return at any moment. The project had been incomplete, a mere blueprint of an idea, yet to Theta, it was as if the moment they moved it, you would truly be gone.

Delta had been the first to break. He still set aside an extra portion of food, his movements mechanical, mind caught in the routine of it. Every time he placed the plate down, he would hesitate, staring at it for far too long, waiting for someone who would never sit at that table again. And every time, he would leave it untouched.

Sigma, usually the most composed of them, had snapped at Gamma just the other day. A rare occurrence. The younger Segment had made an offhand joke—something light, something meaningless—but the air had turned suffocating the moment Sigma’s voice cut through it.

"Don't pretend everything is fine when it isn't."

Gamma hadn't argued. He had only lowered his gaze, guilt shadowing his features.

And then there was Dottore.

Dottore, who had not been seen outside his personal lab in days.

Dottore, who had not spoken unless it was to demand more data, more reports, more answers to a question that had no solution.

Dottore, who had always been a force of nature—untouchable, unstoppable—now reduced to a man drowning in the weight of his own grief.

The door to his lab had remained shut, locked from the inside. The Segments had tried to reach him, to speak to him, but he refused to listen.

They could hear him in there, pacing, muttering under his breath, papers being torn apart, glass shattering against the walls.

Sigma had tried once to override the lock, but Beta had stopped him.

"If he wants to be alone, let him," Beta had said, his voice quiet but firm.

"And if he doesn't come out?" Sigma had challenged.

Beta hadn't answered.

Because none of them knew the answer.

None of them wanted to consider the possibility that Dottore might disappear into that lab and never return.

And yet, as Theta stood there in the empty hallway, the weight of it all pressing down on him, he swore he heard it again—soft footsteps, just around the corner.

This time, he did not turn around.

Because for the first time, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to see what was waiting for him.

----------

It had been Beta who caught Dottore at the docks.

The sea was restless that night, waves crashing against the icy shore, the moonlight cutting silver lines across the water. Dottore stood at the edge of the pier, his coat billowing slightly in the wind, his mask discarded somewhere in the dark.

Beta approached cautiously, knowing better than to speak too soon.

“I wondered how it would feel,” Dottore said, his voice eerily calm. “To just let go.”

Beta swallowed hard. “You don’t want this.”

Dottore’s lips twitched in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Don’t I?”

He took a step closer to the edge.

Beta lunged, grabbing him by the collar and yanking him back, hard enough that they both staggered. Dottore let out a sharp breath, eyes widening for the briefest second as he stumbled, as if realizing—truly realizing—what he had been about to do.

Beta didn’t let go.

His grip tightened, and when he spoke again, his voice wavered with something dangerously close to fear. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to leave us too.”

----------

The first time he stopped eating, the Segments noticed.

The first time he refused to rest, they grew concerned.

The first time they found him collapsed on the floor of his lab, barely breathing, they panicked. Sigma was the first to reach him, shaking him roughly. “Wake up.”

There was no response.

Theta knelt beside him, fingers pressing against his neck, searching—praying—for a pulse. “He’s still alive,” he muttered, relief bleeding into his voice. But it was faint. Weak.

Beta turned to the scattered vials on the desk, his mind racing. “He overdosed.” His hands curled into fists. “The bastard did it on purpose.”

Silence.

Then Omega cursed under his breath. “We’re idiots.”

They should have seen it coming.

The way he avoided them. The way he retreated further and further into himself. The way his hands shook more and more with each passing day.

They had thought his obsession with fixing things would keep him going.

They hadn’t realized he was trying to break himself beyond repair.

-------

Dottore barely recognized the man staring back at him.

The reflection in the shattered mirror was gaunt, skin pallid and stretched tight over sharp cheekbones. Shadows clung beneath his red-rimmed eyes, his pupils blown wide—not with curiosity, not with arrogance, but with something raw, something hollow. His mask had long since been discarded, its broken remnants forgotten on the floor.

The man who had once commanded respect, who had built an empire of intellect and ambition, was gone.

In his place stood something fragile.

It had been weeks. Months. He wasn’t sure anymore.

Time had become meaningless, a cruel trick played on a man who once valued precision above all else.

He knew the others were watching him. Knew they whispered when they thought he couldn’t hear.

"He hasn’t eaten again."

"He just sits there, reading the same notes over and over."

"What if he never stops?"

They spoke as if he was something delicate, something that might fracture under the wrong touch. And perhaps they were right.

Dottore had always known pain. Had been intimate with suffering in ways others could not comprehend. But this—this was different.

This wasn’t a wound he could study. Wasn’t a problem he could solve.

This was absence.

A gaping void where something vital had been ripped away.

And he could feel it, pressing against his ribs, sinking its claws into his lungs, suffocating.

His fingers twitched at his sides. The gloves felt too tight, suffocating. He tore them off, letting them fall to the ground. His hands trembled. He hated that. Hated the weakness. Hated that he could not fix this.

A part of him wanted to stop.

To let go of this endless cycle of grief and failure, to step into the abyss and disappear into the silence.

Another part wanted to vanish completely.

To erase his existence in the same way he had been unable to save yours.

But then—

A voice.

Soft. Familiar.

"Father."

His breath hitched.

He turned sharply, heart slamming against his ribs, but there was no one there.

Just his ruined lab. Just the shattered mirror. Just his own reflection, staring back at him.

Dottore squeezed his eyes shut, fists clenching at his sides.

He was losing himself.

And he didn’t know if he wanted to be found.

-------

They found him in the lower levels.

It was a part of the lab rarely visited, an abandoned sector filled with outdated projects, half-finished research, and things better left untouched. The air was stale, heavy with the scent of dust and chemicals long forgotten.

And in the center of it all stood Dottore.

He faced the containment chamber, its glass surface illuminated by the soft, pulsing glow of the lethal experimental compounds within. The kind that could end everything in seconds. No pain. No hesitation. Just… nothing.

Omega reacted first.

His footsteps were quick, sharp against the cold floor as he closed the distance. His hand clamped down on Dottore’s wrist before he could activate the release mechanism. “Enough.”

Dottore did not resist.

He simply stared at the chamber, his reflection cast in the glass, a ghost of a man he no longer recognized. His voice, when it came, was barely a whisper. “It is my fault.”

Theta was next, gripping his other arm, physically turning him away from the chamber. “No, it isn’t.”

Dottore let out a breath that was too unsteady, too broken. “I failed them.”

“You loved them,” Beta corrected, stepping forward, his own hands clenched into fists. “That is not failure.”

The words hit something deep, something raw.

Dottore’s lips parted, but no words came. His breath hitched in his throat, his entire body trembling—not from rage, not from exhaustion, but something more fragile.

Despair.

And for the first time since it all began, when Omega pulled him back, when Theta’s grip did not waver, when Beta’s words settled like a weight in his chest—

He allowed himself to be held.

--------

It was Beta who finally had enough.

“You are going to get up.” His voice was firm, unyielding, a command that brooked no argument. “You are going to eat, and you are going to live, because if you do not, then everything they were will be lost.”

Dottore did not respond.

He barely registered the words, barely acknowledged the weight behind them. He had become numb to everything except the ache, the unbearable emptiness that clung to his every breath.

Beta slammed his hands down on the desk, shaking the scattered notes and vials, forcing Dottore to look up.

“Look at me, Prime.”

Dottore’s red eyes flickered upward, unfocused and weary.

Beta’s patience was gone, grief replaced with fury. This was not the Prime they knew. This was a shell, a hollow remnant of the man who had once held the universe in his hands.

“They were ours too.” Beta’s voice wavered, but his resolve did not. “And you are not the only one suffering.”

A breath of silence. Then Sigma stepped forward, softer but just as firm. “We do not know how to fix this. But we will not let you destroy yourself.”

Gamma, usually the most indifferent of them, clenched his fists. “You think you’re the only one who wakes up expecting to see them? The only one who still hears their voice in the halls?”

Delta swallowed hard. “They would not want this.”

Theta’s voice was quieter, but no less determined. “You do not get to leave us, too.”

One by one, they stood before him, a silent, unspoken agreement forming between them.

Dottore exhaled shakily, a long, slow breath that rattled in his chest. His fingers curled over the edge of the desk, gripping it like an anchor. His throat burned. His vision blurred.

For the first time since that day, something inside of him cracked.

Not the sharp break of his mask.

Not the endless cycle of grief.

But something fragile. Something aching.

And when he finally closed his eyes, for the first time in weeks, he allowed himself to grieve.

---------

They stopped leaving him alone after that.

If he locked himself in the lab, someone would break in.

If he went too long without speaking, they would force a conversation.

If he disappeared for even a moment, at least three Segments would track him down before he had the chance to think.

Dottore pretended to be annoyed.

He pretended it didn’t matter.

But deep down, in the spaces between grief and regret, he realized—

They weren’t just watching him.

They were saving him.

--------

The lab was quiet again, but not empty.

It had been months now. The wound of their absence had not healed—Dottore doubted it ever would—but the pain had changed. It was no longer a gaping void consuming his every thought, demanding retribution, demanding a way to fix the unfixable. Instead, it had settled into something heavier, quieter. A shadow that never left his side.

Slowly, carefully, the Segments had pulled him back.

At first, he resisted. Resented them for it. Their hands, their voices, their persistence—keeping him from following his child into the abyss. But even in his grief, in his bitterness, he knew they suffered too. They had lost just as much as he had. And so, little by little, they found ways to move forward, together.

Dottore still worked. Still searched. But no longer to undo the past.

Instead, he preserved what remained.

Your research, your ideas, the little notes scribbled in the margins of blueprints—“This formula is flawed. If I fix it, do I get a reward?”—the echoes of their laughter lingering in old recordings.

Sigma set down a datapad beside him, breaking the silence. “The new lab assistants asked about them today.”

Dottore didn’t look up. His fingers traced the familiar set of blueprints, the outlines drawn by a hand that no longer existed in this world. “And?”

“I told them the truth.” Sigma hesitated, his grip tightening around the datapad before adding, “That they were the brightest among us.”

Dottore’s hand stilled.

A pause—long and heavy—before he exhaled, slow and steady.

“Good.”

It was a simple response, but the weight behind it was anything but.

The Segments exchanged glances, the silence stretching between them before Theta finally spoke. “…They would have liked that.”

Dottore didn’t answer immediately. He simply sat there, his eyes scanning the notes in front of him—not to correct, not to erase, but to remember.

Then, in the dim glow of the lab’s monitors, something shifted.

A flicker—just on the edge of his vision.

Dottore froze. His breath hitched, and for a moment, he wondered if exhaustion had finally driven him to madness. But then he turned.

And there you stood.

Not in flesh, not in blood, but in something softer. Something ethereal. A translucent figure, standing just a few feet away, bathed in a soft, warm glow.

You smiled.

Dottore’s heart clenched. He could not speak, could not move.

You looked happy. Not in pain, not lost or suffering, but at peace.

How could you be at peace when he was still drowning?

As if reading his thoughts, you tilted your head, giving him the same playful, knowing look you had always given him when he overworked himself.

Dottore swallowed hard. His vision blurred.

“You’re not real,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.

You stepped closer. Not touching him, but close enough that he felt your presence. Felt the warmth he had lost.

A ghost of a laugh echoed in the air, soft and teasing. “You never believed in limits, Father. Why start now?”

His breath shuddered. The dam broke.

His body trembled as silent sobs wracked through him. For the first time since that horrible, shattering day, he cried.

Raw, unrestrained grief spilled from him, soaking into his gloves as he buried his face in his hands.

You didn’t scold him. Didn’t try to tell him to stop.

You simply smiled, as if telling him it was okay.

That it was finally okay to let go.

The Segments watched in silence. None dared to speak. They only stood by, mourning alongside him, as the weight he had carried for so long finally, finally came crashing down.

And when he looked up again, wiping his tears with a trembling hand, the ghost of his child was still there.

Still smiling.

Still his.

And this time, when you slowly faded into the air, leaving only warmth in your wake—

Dottore let you go.

143 notes · View notes