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"They're you. That's what you become if you destroy Gallifrey. The man who regrets..."

He never, not even once, managed to forget. He had never, not even once, managed to stop thinking about it. He ran from it, day and night, from an adventure to an adventure, running as fast as he could, just to avoid thinking about it. It was always in his mind, always remaining somewhere in the back of his head, where he could see it and sense it but also ignore it if he needed to. It was there, every waking moment of his life, and in his dream he saw those moments all the time.

He regretted it. He regretted so many things he's done. Everyone regrets things and everyone runs from things, but never the way he did. He was over nine-hundred years old, and in his nine-hundred years of time and space he's done more things he regretted than anyone else.

Oh, he's done good. A lot if it. He saved people, planets, empires. He changed so much for the better. He had saved the universe at least half a dozen times. He travelled through time and space and saw incredible things, but had also seen death. For him, his job was to prevent that death, prevent that destruction. Unless, of course, it had to be done for the greater good, like the time he and Rose met Sarah Jane, or the time they went to 1869's Cardiff. But what he tried to do, at least, was to save as many people as he could, whether they were human or not.

And those good things that he's done brought him recognition and care. People admired him and honestly cared about him, simply because he has done so much for them. They knew who they ought to show their gratitude and they did, the best they could.

But that still wasn't enough.

Not because he wanted more. He didn't. He didn't even need their love and care and gratitude. He didn't mind having it, and sometimes it felt good to have it, with all the friends he'd had in the universe, but that wasn't what he needed. No, what he needed was forgiveness. Not from the people around him, not from the people he'd lost, but from himself.

Because in these hundred years that had passed since the Time War, he never stopped regretting. He never stopped beating himself up for all that he's done. He's never, not once, let go of those events. He could never, no matter what happened, let go of the memory from the day he destroyed his own home and people. The Doctor, they all called him. But in his mind, he was always the bringer of doom.

And no matter which adventures he'd had and which species he'd met, he could never let go of that. Around Rose, or sometimes around Martha and Donna, it was easier to pretend to forget, to be excited about everything he'd seen and found, but he never truly forgot. In his days he could feel them, every day, the eyes of the dead, watching him and begging him to avoid destroying his own people. In his nights he watched them fighting their last battle, over and over again, just like he saw himself, with a different face, activating the weapon that destroyed all the Daleks, but also every one of his people.

And in his heart, he could never stop wishing that things would have been different.