It's always been there, the drumming noise.
Dun dun dun dun.
Echoing in the back of his mind, whispering underneath every conversation, twining its way through the Doctor's life, insinuating itself into every memory and defining moment of the Doctor's life.
Dun dun dun dun.
He tried to run from it, once. Stole a TARDIS, old as she was, desperate to run and run and keep running until that godawful noise finally went silent. Silence. That was his dream: for the drums to cease and silence to fall. He ran from one end of the universe to the other in search of it, threw himself into hundreds of deadly situations on the slightest of leads.
Dun dun dun dun.
None of them worked.
Dun dun dun dun.
But in all that time running from his own mind, the Doctor discovered something else.
Dun dun dun dun.
He couldn't silence the drums, but if he ran fast enough he could drown them out with his own racing heartbeat. And it was exhilarating, freeing. So he turned and instead of running from it he ran towards it, confronted it, challenged the drums with the sound of his own two hearts, swearing to run until one of them gave out first.
Dun dun dun dun.
Faster
Dun-dun-dun-dun
And faster
DunDunDunDun, DunDunDunDun
Until his lungs burned and his legs wobbled and finally, finally
-
It stopped.
(He ran so fast but he never remembered what he was running for, the gaunt faces in suits and their horrible hoarse whispers that promised him, silence will fall but never told him when, no matter how he pleaded or demanded, no matter how he chased them through the universe – them always a step ahead, always wriggling out of his memory until he caught a glimpse of the next one and tried to keep it in his sights, only to fail and begin all over again.)