Author's note: Okay, wow, so I'm writing again. So, I was just listening to a lot of Johnny Cash, and thought "The Wanderer" was a lovely piece of work, and that it would fit nicely to a fic. Extremely loosely fitting, and I do recommend listening to the song if you haven't already. Ahm, I like to imagine this is during the Ten era, sort of when he was traveling alone between "The Waters of Mars" and "The End of Time", but I wanted to leave the reader to their own conclusions as to when it is and what's going on. Enjoy (or not, I'm a story, not a cop)!
He was just so tired.
He had been wandering the universe for so long, and had seen everything. He had seen the bones of everything golden. He had seen atomic skies, in cities where soil didn't turn and the rain burned as it fell. All through his journeys, he had nothing. Just his TARDIS and memories.
And yet he kept wandering.
He had seen so much glory, but for some reason was drawn more to the capitals of tin than capitals of gold. Something about the men who could neither freely walk nor talk and the sons that would turn their own fathers in. He always thought he could fix them, and maybe that was why he was always drawn to them.
And it was in one of these cities where he overheard two people talking, outside some place of worship, with names of deities or saints or something of the like carved in signs. These people wanted the eternal peace that their afterlife brought, but they didn't want the things they worshiped there. They spoke of how one moment, the deities or saints or whatever were kind and loving, and at the next moment they were genocidal. He paused at this, and wondered if his name was on one of the signs.
He supposed he could look. But that would slow him down.
He didn't even remember why he started wandering. Looking for experience, maybe, at first. He had lived in one place for so long, and wanted to taste and touch and feel as much as the universe as he could. He wanted to be a wise man, the wisest anyone had ever met.
And then his home was gone, and his reason changed.
He just wanted to find one good creature, to prove they still existed. Something that wouldn't bend, wouldn't break, something that was worthy of sitting at the right hand (He did love that old earth custom. Wonderful sign of respect). Something that would prove all the destruction he caused was worth it. Maybe he would become that good creature. He had his hopes and his screwdriver, and he knew he was the one to spread a message of peace through the universe, just to prove to himself that all that destruction wasn't an end all be all. And of course, he knew he would start on Earth.
He thought he would find it soon. He didn't know how long it took him to find her. And it was she who started to weigh on him. He hoped, in the back of his mind, he would find her again. His little piece of hope.
And so he kept wandering.