Archive of Our Own ^beta

He dies in old age.

Such a rarity for a man of his activity, his accomplishments and his works, but he is too clever to be caught, stopped or killed.

(But, really, being the only Harbingers left is not what he expected, if he is honest with himself.)

His life ends in the snows of Snezhnaya, the cold, and the night without stars.

And his life begins anew in the blizzard of another world's equally cold north. He does not cry when he is born; he does not behave as a child should; he is not about to start his life from scratch. He has devoted his life to science, to research, and to open a new book of his life in an uncharted and different world — is his Tsaritsa's blessing; he does not doubt her mercy.

His name is Michael, but that name is as insignificant as his parents, as his older brothers and younger sisters — he knows who he is, who he was, and who he will be for a long-long time.

(Dottore is no stranger to change. After all, he has cloned himself more than twenty times, knowing that his younger versions do not always get along with his elders. He changes, as is typical of man, and only his passion, his life, his madness remains unchanged — science).

In this life he has softer facial features, no sharp teeth or wrinkles, which he has grown accustomed to. There is no blond hair or red eyes — absolutely normal brown irises and brown wavy hair. A man who could get lost in the crowd quite well — he smiles at it, and the reflection is already more like himself.

He doesn't care about the people he's related to by blood, he doesn't care about studies he considers mediocre, he doesn't care about the laws of this country when he comes home a day or two later, when he catches other kids younger and weaker than his body, when a little drop of blood is left on the bottom of his shoes — he's too fascinated by this world to stop.

They call it quirks.

He, on the other hand, considers it a mutation gene; a virus that most of humanity has contracted (and, oh Archons, he was in such indescribable delight and shock when he learned that the population of this world numbered in the billions); something he would have preferred to avoid.

Oddly enough, among his family of five children — he is the only one who did not get the quirk's. Not a restoration on his father's part, nor a transformation of his mother's inanimate objects. And he breathed an inward sigh of relief, though the pity of the others annoyed him.

(Anyone in his first world could have felt anything but pity for him).

His physical body is thirteen years old when he disappears into the snow, stained red, blaming wild animals for everything. (The younger sisters of this family are far from convinced because the animals are smart enough to avoid him, unlike humans.) From there begins his journey along the Altai Mountains southward and across the plains of Mongolia. He earns his reputation without much concern for it or even always hiding his face — he is dodgy, resourceful and clever enough for any member of an international search party.

China meets him with a history filled with something akin to Geo Archon's possessions, but primarily the birthplace and spread of the superpower gene — he follows his trail, hopping down steps of skulls, flamboyantly and playfully, never stopping himself before a scientific discovery.

Of course, they try to stop him; of course they try to catch him (and even kill him, as far as the shadow people are concerned, to whom he is used to much more than the colorful heroes); of course, none of them succeed in even slowing him down, let alone trying to appeal to his empathy and compassion, which he lost somewhere between his first and third cybernetic augmentations.

Of course, one day he will be asked about the name, without any desire to leave him with the name Doctor, a worthy profession to which he has nothing to do.

He thinks about it, his long synthesized explosive earring bobbing in time with the tilt of his head as he looks at one of the pro-heroes of the underground world between the bright streets of South Korea and the New Year's Eve holiday. Snowflakes frame his hair and he smiles, not about to betray himself.

"Dottore".

Because that's the name the Tsaritsa gave him, and he will honor her in this little gesture of worship without doing anything more specific than he should.

The funny thing is how law enforcement agencies in some of the countries he's been to try to hide his recessive quirk gene is pretty ironic, if anyone asked him. People keep clinging to someone's once made-up formations to keep their fragile minds at peace. How... boring.

Very boring. And almost makes him want to declare to the world that he's above any of them, tearing apart their paper egos... but then again, he's smarter than that. Just little weaknesses of an old man in a young man's body.

In sunny and crowded India, which reminds him of his time at the Academy, he meets a girl, pure and mad, as much in love with research as he is, albeit with a contentedly limited subject. He takes her with him because, though his followers, whom he did not ask for, are quite helpful, there is no one who shares his passion.

(They worship him; they kiss the ground he walks on; they are willing to give their lives for him — Dottore can't say he hasn't had a hand in their behavior, but he needs to somehow keep his multiplying labs clean and tidy, without clones of himself).

Sadly, his paths with Ari were not long, but productive. Her death will serve the greater good when he holds a child with golden eyes and brown hair. He hopes this experiment will answer his question of whether the quirkiness gene depends on both parents not having quirks.

(Unfortunately, this was not the case, and he threw the baby away while he was in Japan, sighing over his failure and fixing the plague mask he was used to using in Asian countries.)

He meets the man he most wants to dissect here and now — he's sure the man feels his bloodlust, but he can't help himself from the pure delight he hasn't felt in years.

All For One is the man he wants to see on his medical table.

(All For One will never admit this to anyone but himself, but the "mad scientist" he has been seeking for so long is more than he is willing to digest, and so he decides, at one point, not to offer him cooperation. Dottore — man only the second true and suicidal madman is willing to cooperate with. And All for One does not consider himself to be one).

Dottore has a reputation that exists separate from himself when he lets himself get caught by the Japanese police. He looks behind the glass-mirror, knowing that there is most likely the same novice detective with a lie detector quirk. Dottore plans to muddle the investigation as hard as he can, answering the truth but thinking about his first life. This world is so incredibly absurd that he begins to feel better and better about himself in it, the more research and opportunity he has to annoy his pursuers.

He escapes through the front doors, adjusting his white robe and smiling into the camera before he puts on his mask, disappearing miles and seas from the Japanese archipelago.

There is something wrong with pro-hero Number One when he first meets him in the United States, Dottore's intuition is honed so sharply that he searches and searches for what is wrong with this man, like a shark walking on a trail of blood, his own boots crunching with detritus from the explosion and squelching blood as he introduces himself to the man in blue and red. Oh, how flattering, this man doesn't smile when he looks at him.

Of course, even the All Might can't catch him if he wants to stop two more explosions, which he left on a timer at three and seven minutes. He is generous today because he has a thin syringe of stolen blood in his hand, and a long-awaited uncovering of other people's secrets and a soothing of his own mania awaits him.

Oh, this is amazing, he thinks, looking at the tangled DNA strand, laughing inwardly; his eyes light up ghostly red, and his hair is wildly ruffled and and crookedly trimmed as he brushes it back.

He needs more.

Another ten years pass before he also gets the blood of All For One.

He does not interfere in the battle between two old enemies in the middle of the Kamino, it is none of his business, but he comes out at the end, having already stolen blood and looking at the skinny pale Peace Symbol, he is polite no matter who says what, so he bows his head in gratitude and smiles, removing his mask.

"Nice doing business with you", he also says toward All For One, definitely not spared by time (Dottore thinks he could have fixed his face and internal injuries, but no one invited him).

Of course, he disappears as easily as he came, his light laughter making the pillars of the two worlds, light and dark, tremble.

"Well, now it's time to see if I can create God again?"

(This world is full of wonders and nightmares, and one of them is definitely the villain without pity or compassion, Dottore; whose victims number in the tens of thousands over the last twenty-five years, and, worst of all, it is done without quirk).