A/N: Woohoo, Doctor Who one-shot. Written for a Figment contests. If you want (and only if you want), you can help bump it up a bit. figment books/610060-The-Great-Ones
There are days when it wears on him. He closes his eyes for a moment and he sees their faces, so many running together in light and shadow, all becoming a single terrified face. And their voices – so many that he has trouble telling them apart – laughing, crying, chattering, questioning, choking, screaming, and from it all he can only make out one word –
"Doctor!"
It calls him forth from darkness and stillness and silence, from timelessness to light. And yet, pain of pains, when he opens his eyes, the TARDIS is heartbreakingly still. He has chased everyone away or lost them. Or both.
He is alone.
Disgust and fear, too, rise in him. They run up his throat like bile. He is alone with himself, the most miserable old man in the universe. He knows the stupid, even cruel things he can do (all in the name of life), but almost always there is someone to stop him. Someone who will sacrifice themselves to stop him. But he wants, no he needs – no, he –
"Because you should never be alone, Doctor."
He shakes his head. He should be alone, should always be alone, so that he can't screw anyone else up. And, oh, oh, what all he has done. He has let them die (a shot and blond hair on the ground); he has broken their hearts ("I can't stay here"); he has broken them (eyes wide, fear, "it hurts"); he has pushed them away (a false smile to say goodbye with); he has let themselves sacrifice themselves for him (hair shines in the light as they fall, red); he has abandoned them (eyes wide, an accusation)…
Yes, it must be better be this cold man on a cloud. When frozen over, there is no pain. He is ice in eyes and hearts and mind. He is above everything. He looks down; sees nothing. Up here, he cannot hurt anyone. They cannot hurt him by their vanishings. They cannot scream for him because their voices cannot reach him.
Why must there be people who try to drag him down to earth? The question arises as the phone rings. He refuses to answer it for a moment. It is a childish resistance, but he wants to hold himself off. No weapons-wielding idiots nor clever lizard-women, no bright young ladies and certainly no mysteries with crying children.
The phone rings again and he picks it up. Again with Madam Vastra trying to bring him back, again with her pointless one-word test. Irritation rises in him, swallows him, as it always has whenever someone tries to touch him.
"What'd she say?" he grumbles. "Well? Well?"
"Pond."
And then, the spark.