by Iwillneverchange » Mon Apr 14, 2014 1:29 pm
The Doctor squeezed Mercy's hand softly, a gesture of affection quite unlike the hug he had given her-it signified a strength he showed to few, a strength that said 'if someone hurts you like this again, if someone makes you cry, I will be there to stop them'. That kind of gesture. The brown-haired Time Lord didn't try to brush away her tears for her-he knew that crying was actually a soother for most people and that it would most likely help her to get the pain out. As he waited for the river of tears to slow a little, he thought about where to start.
Sighing, he began to talk.
"I grew up on another planet, on the planet Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborous. I had a brother there, he was older than I was, and I had a mom and a dad like any other kid. I grew up with my family until I was eight years old, which was when I was chosen to attend the Time Lord Academy. It was an honor for any kid to go there, not everyone got chosen and if they did no more than two thirds of them had ever graduated. I was brought to look into the Untempered Schism-a place where you can look straight into the Time Vortex and see all of time and space." He took a deep breath. It was painful to tell the next bit, of his friend he had known since childhood-the Master. (Okay before I continue here I have to tell you that a portion of this is fan-made but is widely accepted as canon for the entire storyline of the Doctor and the Master at the Academy.)
"When I looked into the Time Vortex, I was scared. I ran. I've been running since, running all my life. But I saw so much there, and I knew then that I wanted to see the universe, to touch the stars instead of watch them like my people always had. There was another boy there, one who was brilliant, just as I was...
He was the only one to ever get something in return from the Schism. He heard a drum beat, a beat of four. Tap tap tap Tap." The Doctor emphasized the rhythm of the drumbeats.
"We became friends, after a while. No one else really talked to either of us all that much. I grew up a loner and he grew up a rebel, always fighting the High Council and the laws of Gallifrey itself, for that matter. We were close friends, we shared a room, we did everything together. We graduated at the same time from the Academy, and I stole a TARDIS, this TARDIS, on the day we graduated. I was going to take him with me-we were going to see the universe together. But he said he didn't want to go. He told me he'd catch up with me later-he had rebelling to do, and 'overthrowing the government' as he put it. I was more upset than you can-well, no, I wasn't more upset than you can imagine. But that was only where it began."
"After a long time, I decided to travel with my granddaughter, Susan Foreman. We traveled together for a while, but it didn't last, just like my friendship with the Master-his name was Koschei at the time-and that was where it all went downhill.
I tried to find people who would travel with me. I had companions, I had friends, I had loves for a while, but none of them ever stayed. Some of them left me...some of them got left behind...and some, not many, but some...died." He paused, stray tears running down his cheeks already.
"After a long time, I finally appeared into the world again. That was right after the Time War-the last great Time War. It was fought between my people, the Time Lords, and the Daleks-the most fearsome race in the entire universe. And we lost. Well, everyone lost. I had no choice. Mercy, I swear, I had no choice." He choked back sobs.
"I killed them all. I ended the Time War. I was the only one who could. The Time Lords-they wanted to destroy all of the universe, to become beings of consciousness alone, to rule as gods. I couldn't let that happen, but I couldn't let the Daleks win. So I destroyed all of them. I should have died...but that was my punishment, you see. It was my fate to live when everyone else was gone."
"But then I met her. I met Rose. She was my first companion after the Time War, in my ninth incarnation. Have I explained incarnations to you yet? No? Well, I'll explain them when I'm done anyway. But she was the first person I saw that I could really think about wanting to stay with forever after all that pain in my heart. We traveled together...and eventually we found the Daleks again. They weren't gone-and all I had done was for nothing. I really lost it that time. But she was there, she helped me, she fixed me. I was cold when I came out of that war. When I regenerated again, when I took the energy from the Time Vortex that she had absorbed to save my life into my own body, when I did that to save her, I died for love. I loved her." The Time Lord was full-on crying now, sobs choking him and cutting into his speech slightly.
"She stayed with me, even after I regenerated. I knew she missed the old me, but there was nothing I could do. We stayed together for another while. We saw things you wouldn't believe, Mercy, things you'll probably never believe. But then...then the Battle of Canary Wharf. That was when I lost her. A rift, a crack in the fabric of reality that opened into the Void-some called it Hell itself, the Void-was ripped open. Both Daleks and Cybermen, my two longest-lasting enemies and the ones I thought I'd never see again, came through. They would have destroyed all of Earth. They killed people, and there was nothing I could do."
"But Rose helped me. She closed the Rift with me. But...see, these creatures had come from a parallel universe. When the TARDIS crash-landed there, the Rift was given a way to open-and then something just had to come through. The people in the parallel world had found ways to jump between dimensions...they had, without knowing, made the hole even bigger when they did so. But in the end, it saved her, though it broke her heart." He took a minute to compose himself, sobbing uncontrollably as all of these memories passed by. The tears subsided a bit slowly, and he tried to put on another smile.
"She accidentally let go of what we were holding onto-we would have been sucked back into the closing Rift as well, because we had jumped dimensions as well. Rose's family was safe in the parallel universe-but she had decided to stay with me. And I nearly got her killed. But she let go-she flew towards the void, and all I remember was myself screaming-and then, her 'father', it's a long story-he caught her." He choked back yet another loud sob. "He saved her, with the dimension jumper, and took her back to the parallel world. But she was gone. I knew she was safe, but she was gone. And then, three years later for her, I burnt up a sun, set the TARDIS in orbit around a supernova, and found the one tiny link that would allow me to say goodbye. But that link didn't last long. The sun would have to go out, the final tiny crack in the universe would close. And I just...I didn't get to tell her I loved her. I'd never said it. And now I never would."
He didn't want to talk anymore. He didn't want to say any of this, but he kept going.
"Eventually, I found a new companion. I met Martha Jones, a medical student training to be a doctor, which was a funny coincidence." He laughed softly at that memory. "We traveled for a while too. And then..."
"Then the Master. We found him, at the end of the universe. He had hidden himself in human form, where I would never have found him. He locked his Time Lord consciousness inside a watch-and when he opened it he transformed back. He stole my TARDIS and returned to Earth-I had just enough time to lock the coordinates. But he took it over. The Master, or as he was known there, Harold Saxon, had become Prime Minister of Great Britain." The Doctor took a deep breath. This was one of the worst memories-the most physically, not emotionally, painful of them all-and he didn't like to think about this one either.
"He captured us. Jack and I-and Martha. Jack was someone who I'd traveled with a bit as well-he was immortal now, also. That was interesting. That threw a wrench in the dynamic for sure. But the Master captured us. He aged me into what I would look like at 900 years old with his stupid 'laser screwdriver' as he called it. My sonic invention was way better, I say. But he destroyed Earth, Mercy. He decimated the population, and then he killed hundreds, thousands, millions more along with it. Martha had been given a plan by me, you see, so I knew how I would get out of this-but Jack and I, we were tortured. For an entire year, while I was wiring myself into the Master's telepathic network-I'll explain that in a moment-Martha was telling the rest of Earth the message about me. She was telling them what I was. I never found out what she actually said, but I assume she was telling them some story about me being a hero, an amazing person-which I'm not. I've killed thousands, millions, BILLIONS, just as many as I've saved. But that was what she told them. And she gave them this message: "When the countdown hits zero, I need you to think one word. Just one word. And that word is 'Doctor'." So she gave them the message. Wired into the Archangel Network telepathically, when they all thought that same word, it gave me power. I de-aged, I came back to myself, and I was going to stop the Master."
"I wouldn't kill him. No, I could never, NEVER do that to him. Not to the man who had once been my everything, and eventually my undoing. I cared too much. One of them tried to shoot him, once we had reversed the paradox and everyone else was safe. Earth had been fixed, those dead had been brought back, and no one remembered a moment of it, except the people on the ship we had been on for that year, the Valiant. I stopped her...but someone else got to him as well. They shot him, shot the Master, my best friend and the first person I'd ever thought I loved, truly loved. And I begged him to regenerate, I really did. I needed him to come back, to stay with me. But he told me he couldn't. He said he welcomed death, if it meant stopping the neverending drumbeat in his head, the one that had driven him mad, that had forced him to do every bad thing he'd done in his life. It wasn't his choice. And there he was-and he died in my arms."
"Since then, I had one more companion-her name was Donna Noble. And I lost her-just recently. That was the same time I saw all my old companions again-well, most of them. Rose, Martha, Donna, Jack, Mickey, who had been Rose's boyfriend, Sarah Jane, who I had traveled with in my fourth incarnation for the most part, and a few others. The Daleks stole Earth. They moved it, and they killed people, yet again. And they almost destroyed the Earth in itself. But Donna-she did something, I still can't figure out exactly how it worked-but I almost had to regenerate. I almost had to change, but I directed the energy into something else-the hand that had been cut off within a certain time limit of my regeneration, which allowed me to grow back a limb or heal any injury I had received. I didn't regenerate, but when Donna touched the hand, the energy was split between her and it, and it grew...well, a meta-crisis. A half-Time-Lord version of myself, half human, half Gallifreyan."
"We defeated the Daleks, we won the fight. Earth went back to normal. But I had to face my companions leaving me again. And I...I had to erase Donna's memory of all of it. A human-time-lord meta-crisis goes two ways. She absorbed all the knowledge of a Time Lord, everything I knew. That wasn't possible. Her brain would have literally exploded with the knowledge. So I wiped her memory of me, of aliens, of everything we'd done together. And it broke my hearts to do it, but I had no choice. I left her with her family. They would protect her. I left Martha back on Earth-after the whole thing with Harold Saxon, she had chosen to protect Earth in her own way, and I let her continue her life there. I let the rest of them go home. And then...then it was just the meta-crisis Doctor, myself, and...Rose."
"I took them back to the parallel universe. I let them stay there. I watched, as Rose said she would stay with this human Doctor. She said it wasn't me. I knew it wouldn't ever be the same. But I couldn't stay with Rose forever. I was a Time Lord. I didn't age, didn't die, I just changed. And she would die. I told her this: "He needs you. That's very me." I watched as she chose him. I watched as he said this: "I only have one life. Rose Tyler, I could spend it with you." I watched as he kissed her. And then...I turned, and I left. I left that world, I left Rose, I left everyone. And now I'm here. Traveling alone because there's no one else."
He turned away from her, tears streaming down his face. They'd been doing that for so long now, he wasn't sure whether he could stop crying, ever. It felt almost natural to have tears running down his cheeks now, there was even a small puddle of wetness on the floor in front of him from where he'd been crying so much. He failed to make any progress in wiping the tears from his eyes, and simply whimpered and cried for about five minutes straight before the tears slowly started to subside. He wasn't even sure he wanted to stop crying. It just hurt so much-but now, now that he'd told someone, it felt like half of all that pain had been lifted off his shoulders. And after so long from carrying it, his back hurt to get back up, but god, did he feel lighter. He didn't know what to say, didn't know what to tell Mercy, didn't know what she would think. He just looked at her, covered his face with his hands again, and sobbed.
(OH HOLY JEEZ THAT RIGHT THERE IS A LONG POST. YEAH SURE IT'S THE DOCTOR'S LIFE STORY OR WHAT I KNOW OF IT BUT STILL THAT IS A LOOOOOOOOOOONG POST. WOO. NOW I'M REALLY UPSET. I didn't even write that with motivational mood music on. I wonder how much more depressing that could have gotten with motivational mood music.
HOLY JEEZ THAT IS LONG.)