Children of Gallifrey Fear the Dark
Why does the Doctor run? The answer is simple, for it has always been the same.
It starts when they are small, and the inevitable words are spoken by almost every child on Gallifrey. His own had been no different than the ones spoken for centuries before his existence.
"Mother, I cannot bear to close my eyes" He said, as his mother brought the blankets to his chin and pressed her lips against his forehead.
Clutching the sonic screwdriver he'd built with his father, he felt cool fingers brush through his hair and the familiar melodies of Gallifrey filled the room.
He would stare at the starry representation of the sky that lit his ceiling and hoped it would stay when sleep inevitably took him away from the present.
His mother crooned ancient lullabies to him until his eyes would fall shut. She had insisted the darkness was safe, but all children of Gallifrey knew the danger of the darkness. They all knew that the Time Lords lied about what lay outside the edges of the universes and within themselves.
It was darkness. Inevitable. Everything and Nothing. Harmless and dangerous.
He had sung the same lullabies to his own children as they locked eyes with him in the night. Their tiny, soft voices professing confessions of fear as though it was a crime to feel fear, and as though thousands of generations of their race hadn't felt the same dreadful twinge.
He never told his children that the fear never left. He never told them that the darkness could never be overcome, for there was darkness before the universe and there would be darkness after it ended.
Darkness was waiting for you on all ends of time and space, and that's why the Doctor made it his imperative to make the universe shine as brightly as possible in the time that he had.
He told his children to brave the darkness, but to look at the stars when all seems lost. He had always hoped that his children would someday make it to the stars, but the most they got were the same wishes and dreams that all children of time experienced.
Children of time forever wished to hold the stars in their hands, and bring that light to every corner of space and time. For Gallifrey's two suns had always pulsed with brightness which caused their eyes to ache with pleasant warmth. Red heat and exhilaration flooded their laughter, sweeping beneath their red robes and clinging to their skin as if it were the wind. The time vortex shone behind their eyes and through their smiles.
Reminiscing on the light that Gallifrey brought to the life of a Time Lord, the doctor opened the doors of the Tardis and sat at the entrance, staring into the endless expanse around him.
"1200 years and I still cannot close my eyes on the universe" He muttered to himself, rubbing old hands over his face as he had done for centuries.
Soft footsteps approached him from behind, and he almost expected to see one of his ginger, floppy haired children behind him. A moment of thought disproved him, bringing unimaginable sadness and disappointment. A question that he had never been asked penetrated the silence in his companion's unmistakable voice.
"Doctor, why don't you sleep?"
"Superior biology." He said, but his companion knew he lied. It was the first rule of the Doctor.
She crouched next to him, and her thumbs traced gentle trails across the dark expanse beneath his eyes. He wished to recoil from the touch, but he couldn't. Not when he felt the darkness of his hearts seeping into every vein of his body.
"It's more than that." She whispered to him, and she pressed her lips against his forehead as his mother did for his entire childhood. As he and his wife had done to their children.
He could not find the words to explain his fear.
"Do you know why we run?" He asked. She shook her head almost unnoticeably.
The doctor gripped his companion's hand tightly and desperately wished that she could know and understand the only fear that seemed to shake him to the bone.
When the doctor closed his eyes, he didn't just fear that the stars extinguishing around him; but he also feared the darkness within. He feared the endless possibilities behind closed eyes.
It was an undeniable truth. The doctor has always been running from the space between the stars.