Disclaimer: No points for guessing I don't own Doctor Who.
A/N: Despite how this has been labelled, this isn't about one specific Doctor (or two). You could say it's about all of them, actually. And many more people besides. ..But I'll just be quiet now and hope that this will make sense to somebody, somewhere. xD;
Over and Over
The Doctor died today.
..And yesterday. Probably the day before as well. Definitely tomorrow, and it's guaranteed 1258 years from now.
Don't forget 50 million years into the past too...
Yes. Every tense – past, present, and future.
The Doctor died.
Here and now and then and there, he has died so many times.
Your imagination could probably supply you with every way...- Literal, and figurative.
Sometimes he's shocked; just a short, sharp look of surprise on his features – a millisecond; terror and sheer understanding crammed into one very incomprehensible instant.
Other times he could not see it. Didn't and will not see it, because the enemy is cunning that way (or simply lucky). In those cases death smothered him in oblivion, quick and adept like the most ancient master. Understanding often never had the chance to blossom, or there were but a few tender petals before the fell wind snuffed the life force out.
Another and another and another. How many times.. How many times had his world gone black? (And green, and electric blue, and red and yellow and mauve and rainbow?)
...Death. He dies for something beautiful, did die for something ugly, will die for something a frustrating mixture of the two extremes.
He died with but an inkling, with incredible knowledge, rots away bearing the burden of his so very heavy insight. Judgement undoes him. Judgement made him. In spite and regardless he will only continue to die, as long as there is the universe.
There and here and everywhere. Brimming life, cut down. Or tendrils in a barren land, wisps to be carried away. From all sides, swooping and engulfing, his breath robbed from some angle or another.
Watch as he falls and he cradles him as he wheezes his last, helpless words that are clogging in his throat – as his own dried up long ago though they still roll out, undead but oozing fresh grief...
Terribly familiar news reaching his dulled raw ears as he died again – those eyes closed, another acknowledgement to the eternal tragedy while the other, set.. frozen wide, cold and emptier than an endless Arctic..
(More and more and more...)
The toll rises, but he lives on. He does not cease thundering, despite his corpses dotting the landscape. He moves but he collides incapable of avoiding and he; they – the good, the great the greater the bad the conflicted the cowards (he's a coward) fly like discarded doll after doll into the abyss.
Sometimes he jumps himself. With his attention or no, hearts arrested as a single spirit vanishes from arrest (of a 'cardiac' kind).
Motion damns him; the Doctor, just as a lack of motion does the same. Turn this way and that, the void awaited him (and him and him and each companion; every.. single.. him).
Yet he keeps running, running as far and desperately as most of us are (..exactly what else could he do?), and still... Of course..
It will not be enough.
It is never enough – death catches up with him.
Every..
Single..
..Time.