A/N: My first LoTL fiction – another will follow – in which I try to get inside the Doctor's head a little and see how he might have felt as the events of ToTL unfolded around him.
Dr D did the usual and as usual did a great job. Thanks my friend
10 Million Beats
Each of my hearts beat 100 times a minute and that is how I kept track of time over this last long year, with every beat of my hearts.
200 beats… another minute.
12,000 beats… another hour.
288,000 beats… another day.
And so on and so on… hour after hour, day after day, month after month, every beat of my hearts bringing me closer and closer to the day, the final day of reckoning.
The Master kept me old, kept me weak and treated me like his pet. He made me watch the world as he tore it apart knowing I was helpless to stop him. He goaded me with words and actions, he lauded his power over me and I let him.
In the beginning I had placed my trust, my hope, in the hands of Martha Jones. I told her to leave me and to walk the Earth, to find those who still had freedom in amongst the brainwashed and the addled. When she found them I told her to tell them about me, The Doctor, and to make them believe in me, a man, no… not even a man… an alien who was their last chance for life. She had to make them believe in me for me to be able to save them.
It was the biggest risk I ever took. I didn't just gamble with my life or with Martha's life. I gambled with the lives of a whole planet, a whole universe. I didn't know if she would succeed, if people would believe her story, if she would be betrayed and the Universe would fall to the Master. Did I have the right to take that risk? Maybe not, but I didn't have the right not to try.
My hearts kept beating and I believed in Martha and in the strength of the human race and I kept preparing myself for that day when she would return.
In the beginning I tried to reason with the Master, tried to make him understand that this wasn't the way it should be, that we were the last of the Time Lords and we shouldn't be enemies. He laughed in my face, his eyes wide with a lust for power that I hoped I'd never understand. He showed me enough of his plans for me to know what he had done, why he had built the paradox machine. His ultimate revenge was to use the last of the human race to destroy firstly itself and then eventually to rule the galaxy until the end of all time with him as their leader, their Master, their God. I fell silent then, retreated into my own world, I swore to stop him when the time was right. Ironic, a Time Lord having to wait for the right time when we are masters of it.
My hearts beat on and time passes. I look to the heavens and wonder where Martha Jones is now.
Days passed, some in a haze of pain if the Master decided to torture me for fun, some in a surreal mixture of fantasy and reality as the Master sang and danced around his domain before unleashing another atrocity on the poor unsuspecting population. He tried to get me angry or sad, he tried to get me to laugh or cry and I gave him nothing. I had my plan and for all my inactions cost me and cost the human race I had to stick to it.
My hearts kept beating and I kept reaching out into the emptiness of space, searching for the strands of psychic energy that would help me and when I found them I left a piece of me on them, I wove my essence, my being all across the world and then I hoped.
10 million beats later and it was time, time for the last of the Time Lords to face each other.
Martha Jones was back and her legend was bigger than I could have hoped for. The one woman who could kill the Master, the one woman who could save the world. Only half that legend was right, she could no more kill the Master now than she could have done a year ago, I would never have asked her to do that. He is a Time Lord, like I am and that makes him my responsibility and I do not intend to shirk that duty. But she was the woman who could save the Earth although, until the final minute, we wouldn't know if she had succeeded.
The Master is madder than ever today, the news of Martha's return has tipped him further into the emptiness that has threatened to consume him since he was a child. He wants to send her a message, a message that says give up hope now for you have no chance of winning, you never did, you never will. I will be that message, my life all 900 years of it taken from me in a spinning ball of agony that leaves me….so very, very helpless.
My destiny, my life is now more firmly in the hearts and minds of strangers than it was a year ago, when I set the wheels in motion to save this world from the Master. Then I thought if Martha convinced even a few thousand people to believe in me it would be enough, my body was only 100 years old then, a youth in Time Lord terms and it was just a small step back from there. Now it is 900 years old, so tired and so weak, so old and I am so very, very scared.
Martha is here now and the entire world waits to see what the Master will do with her. I wish I could hold her, take her in my arms and tell her that everything will be alright, but I can't… and not just because I'm trapped in a gilded cage but because I don't know if it will be alright. I hate not knowing. For the first time in a year I no longer rely on the beating of my hearts to mark the passage of time I turn, like all the world turns, to the countdown and like all the world I wait.
It is time. I hear Martha's laugh and the Master's cries of anguish. For a second I fear that he will kill her but he stops and that is his undoing. For in that split second the cry goes up:
"Doctor."
"Doctor."
"Doctor."
All around the room, all around the world, not just a few thousand but millions of voices are raised, millions of thoughts are freed and millions of souls join with mine.
It is not a regeneration or a rebirth it is a resurrection.
The Master sees me and runs but he has no where to go. His plans are unravelling around him and his madness consuming him. I hold him and tell him the one thing that he has dreaded hearing. I tell him that I forgive him.
Now it is all over, I have stopped the Master again and turned the world back to a time before he even came to prominence. All the people who believed in me and gave me life have never even heard of me and I pray they never will.
I face him, the last Time Lords in the Universe together at last. I tell him that now it is time for me to stop wandering the galaxy, being its protector and time for me to be the protector of us. I tell him that I will keep him in the Tardis with me if that is what it takes. Then from out of the blue a shot rings out and he falls, he falls bleeding into my arms. He doesn't need to die, he could regenerate but he chooses not to. He chooses to do the one thing that will defeat me, he chooses to die. I try to stop him, I plead with him, I reason with him, I scream at him to regenerate. I even let him see me cry.
He wins.
I loose.
He dies.
I live.
Although live is not the word I would choose. I have lost everything. I could save the world but I couldn't save him and in failing to do that I also couldn't save myself.
There are just a few of us who know what happened, what really happened and we can never tell anybody.
Jack has seen this type of thing before, worlds lost and worlds saved. He has his own way of dealing with the memories so that they don't drive him insane. He'll go back to Torchwood and keep on saving the planet and keep on looking for the one thing that can make him human again. I wish him well, he is a good man and our paths will cross again.
The Jones family are lost and bewildered and look to Martha to help them, she has seen many things during her short time with me and maybe she will find something amongst those memories that will help her to help them. They need her which means that I must loose her. Another loss amongst so many I have had, but I understand why she has to go. She loves me and I can't love her back and not only for the reason that she thinks. I would never ask her to give up her life for me, to wait for me to love her because she deserves better than that. She deserves better than I can give her. Thank you Martha Jones. Maybe our next adventure will be a little less crazy… although I doubt that!
I am the Doctor, the Oncoming Storm, the lonely angel, a self appointed guardian of the Universe.
How am I supposed to cope with events like this last year and the year before and all the 900 others I have had?
When we were children growing up on Gallifrey we all had each other, all the Time Lords together and even when I went out into the vast uncharted regions of the galaxy, when I saw and did things that I didn't understand they were there for me. In the back of my mind, in the core of my soul, all the other Time Lords, supporting and encouraging me, even loving me.
Then I killed them all and now I am the last of the Time Lords and that is the loneliest place to be and yet my hearts beat on.
200 beats… another minute.
12,000 beats… another hour.
288,000 beats… another day.