relativity
Time is relative, Doctor.
Back on the fields of Galifrey, you ignored the clock - tick tock tick - as it counted down the minutes and seconds and milliseconds to something you couldn't dream of even with all your smarts. But back then, you were invincible and it was all a game to you.
Aged 8, so so young but old too (relative relative), you looked through the Untempered Schism into the swirling Time Vortex. You didn't understand time when it wasn't linear or sensible because you believed in logic - but then there was that little boy friend called Koschei who looked in there too and saw madness and you weren't quite sure about much after that.
So you forgot to watch the grains of time fall and pretended your friend wasn't a lunatic with a marching band inside his head because there is something brilliant in madness, something free that you were secretly jealous of.
You were infinite then, weren't you? Those were the years when you didn't feel old or young because time couldn't touch you. The elders told you tales from across the timeline and you learned that there were no boundaries for a time lord so maybe time didn't have to exist for you apart from a destination.
After all there was a little thing called regeneration on your side. You were practically immortal, you thought with the blinding veil of youth covering your little eyes, not realising the curse it could be. Even if you were bound by time, you had so much of it stretching out before you that it seemed meaningless to some extent.
And that made you reckless.
Do you remember Torvic? He was the boy who didn't have to die but you killed him, all for Koschei. You were a ruthless son of a bitch. It wasn't quick and it wasn't clean - the rock that you smashed into his brain left a pool of blood thick enough that it stained and not only the ground; you weren't quite the same after that.
Violence was churning in that brilliant mind of yours. Blood on your hands, you passed through Prydon Academy and then you found yourself thrown into a war where blood would be encrusted onto your clothes and your hair and your skin and remained there forever.
You led so many to their deaths at the battlefield of Arcadia. Riding on your high horse that felt more like a lie than an honour, you fought and fought and lost and lost. You thought you had known death when you killed Torvic. You knew nothing. Death wrapped itself around you, interwoven in every thought and every sense until it felt odd to not be surrounded by it. Its carress became a constant even when everything else was crumbling and burning.
The war felt timeless still though, even as every agonising minute dragged and you came closer to some kind of end. You fought like a savage - they called you the oncoming storm and when you blew away, they couldn't call anyone anything anymore - and in the end, your savagery ended the war.
Dead. All of them were dead. Extinct. It was only you and the single TARDIS you had managed to steal from the wreckage that Gallifrey had been before being frozen inside the time lock, condemned to spend eternity fighting a war that neither sides could ever win.
You learned not to think about it.
The universe was limitless to you then. Time meant nothing when you kept running away, changing bodies and names and clothes -
-and then walked in bad wolf Rose from London. She was like a sun after so many years alone. Wasn't she beautiful? She was humanity and fun and you think you loved her. Even after all your years alone that felt like nothing at all you were still a broken warrior pretending to be normal and she helped you. She loved you too maybe.
But then she was gone. Parallel universe. You didn't deserve her anyway.
Without her, you started to understand time. You weren't infinite anymore. You felt old (relative relative). Seconds weighed heavily on your black battle worn soul and you missed her, goddamnit. Time had actually meant something with her - though it took the absence of her to notice that.
So you checked into the hospital with Doctor Jones, first name Martha. You showed her the starts from the moon and unravelled her world. Imagine if you hadn't met her, little Martha with her clipboard and white coat. Her mum would've been happy, at least.
Instead you changed her into a UNIT soldier. Doctor to solider - ironic since you went from solider to doctor but you forced a bitter smile at the irony and moved on because that's what you do when they don't want you anymore.
Time to move on (haha).
You'd think by now you'd stop ruining people's lives but you didn't. Enter Donna. Feisty Donna who turned left at the junction and changed the world. You liked donna and she waited for you to invite her into your little blue police box, even after she came in uninvited the first time around in her white dress.
And you ruined her life too. Roll with the punches, Doc, save the world, take a hit for a friend. All in a day.
But then your life came to a halt. Time was suddenly running out. Of course you'd still live on - 13's the lucky number and you're on 10 - but you had accomplished so much in this life. You had loved and lost and thrived and you were so alive. You thought you finally understood time in all its wibbly wobbly ways.
Yet you didn't want to understand that you would have to let go. Time runs out even for those who are timeless, Doctor.
"I don't want to go." you said and then you were encased in blinding yellow and time was up.