Running from Time

Running.

His whole life, he had been running. So he figured, why stop now? Call him a coward. It takes a brave man to be a true coward.

Ever since he had stood at the centre of the Last Great Time War with the Moment in his hands, the destruction of two races by his hand, he had never stopped running. Never stopped running from the past, running from who he really was. The lonely Time Lord who could never go back. 

He had stood in the midst of all the chaos and watched Gallifrey burn; Rassilon couldn't stop him. He had felt undeserving of his title, undeserving of The Doctor: the universal term for healer, the man who made people better. He had caused the almost genocide of 2 races; one of them his own. He had hoped the universe would be kind, and let him burn with his people, but the universe was merciless. Forced to watch while his own people died, he had fallen to his knees and cried at the injustice of it all. Kill me, he had pleaded to every god he knew, let me die. But he left the Time War very much alive, and haunted forever by the screams of the Time Lords as Gallifrey faded from existence. The killer of his own kind.

 He had vowed never to touch a weapon again; vowed never to look back, to live up to his title. He was going to make people better, and he would always give them a chance to redeem themselves because he had been given the same chance by escaping the Time War alive. 

But there are points in life where you stop running from everything you are, everything you were, and look back, and wonder just how much of your life before this moment was actually worth your while. 

When the Doctor met Rose Tyler, he realised his whole life before that had not been worthwhile at all. He had been simply existing, a ghost of regret and pain leftover from the War, and when he set the timer on the bomb at Henrik's department store, he didn't plan on leaving the building before it went off. But he had found the blonde girl down in the basement, stupidly and bravely trying to fight off an army of plastic dummies, and he had grabbed her hand and told her to run. In that moment, he knew he needed to stay alive, if only to make sure that the girl was safe, and he realised, whatever else happened, the universe needed a saviour, and he was their saviour. 

So he kept going, kept running, and Rose came with him, and she taught him to live. Her fascination at the different worlds he showed her warmed his heart, the way she stayed even after the Dalek had revealed the killer side of him, the side he despised so much. He came to depend on her as a constant in his life, after everything he had loved and lost, but oh, she was human. He could never have a life with her; she would wither, and she would die, and he would continue on alone, with yet more grief and misery as his luggage. He would forever walk around with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and nothing could change that.

So the Doctor loved Rose Tyler, but he never let himself believe it. 

Because he could give her the stars, but he could never give her his heart.

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