Disclaimer: Doctor Who does not belong to me.
something in those eyes
"Death(having lost) put on his universe
and yawned: it looks like rain
(they've played for timelessness
with chips of when.)"
.
The Doctor's eyes are full of stars, his breath of golden starlight. If you looked too close, too long, got lost in his brilliant, madman smile, you might just fall deeper than you've ever been before. Universes and galaxies and time, all contained in the mind of one – the Time Lords were thought to be mad, insane, drunk on knowledge and superiority, caged up behind barriers of Gallifrey; they were barricading others out, and trapping themselves in. A planet that burned under the suns, a body that worked double with pumping hearts; a level ten planet, one of the top, one whispered about; humans of a level five greenblue world with startling evolution that raced ahead into the sunlight, and they whispered, the Time Lords came first but the humans were so much alike, just slower and dumber and simpler and maybe even insane at their very core.
The Doctor's companions are young, and when he first runs and runs and runs and doesn't stop, there's that superiority there, that spark of madmen and mad wars and the Vortex, brutal and pure calling you in, showing you your future only to erase it all again. Some run, as fast as they can and others stare deeper into it, seeing the universe in mere seconds – and those that reach out to it, run not away but towards it, those are the ones you are told to fear for the universe pounds out a beat inside them, urging them on and eradicating whatever sanity a Time Lord may have left.
The Doctor didn't want it, no, and the Vortex knew that, yes it did, so the Doctor fled with his stolen machine away from a self-destructing race, towards a world of those opportunistic, those who survived where the fabled Time Lords didn't, reached all the way to the End of Time itself and struggled even further.
The Doctor's companions, their eyes never match those of his own – but he can sense that urge in them, that calling in the back of their minds and in the tingling of their spines, to run anywhere and everywhere, to taste adventure and to smell the moons and the suns and to feel that new sky, so he takes them along because he's mad, deep down he's mad and he's old, so so old but sometimes he feels new, and these humans are willing enough to run with him, faster and harder than they've ever had to before in their entire lives. They breath in the stardust he leaves behind in his wake and their eyes fill with wonder - and humans are just as insane deep down inside but they have feelings the Time Lords battled long ago: they know when to reach for him, to hold him back, when for those few moments they're reminded he's alien and the madness dances across his eyes, cold and stone and judging and almost eternal.
The Doctor's companions all leave, in the end, and he calls them friends but he buries them somewhere deeper, in a memorial not tangible but only existent in the one place he trusts not to burn – inside him, where feelings are still raw and fresh and from time to time he begins to doubt how much longer he can hold them in, hold on to this thread of sanity left but he tries anyway, he tries so hard because he's so very old, and the very very last, but through that ruthlessness he is also kind.
The Doctor can't find anyone with his eyes. Humans' eyes are empty to him, eyes that have barely the trace of time in them and have only flirted with mortality passing by. There was someone, once, no – there were several, people who dug in deeper, who saw everything with him, but even they forgot. Humans were made to forget, even those who were willing to run with him forever – beautiful Rose and magnificent Amy, brilliant Martha and wonderful Donna, fairytale names for fairytale women, those who tasted the thrill of the run, of the escape and they tried, oh how hard they tried, but humans were never made to run very far so they stopped. In the end they always stopped.
But the Doctor, he keeps running away, running from that Vortex that he can still taste in the air, of the energy and time and whispers, flashes, visions of a Time Lord Victorious and a madman, a madman with a stolen blue box that is old and new, and he is old and new, and mortality is not an acquaintance but almost a dear friend to him, one that smiles at him from behind her veil of secrets and beckons.
And he's resisting, smiling and laughing and breathing, because he can feel Time running through his veins, pounding and humming like the sound of the universe, like the sound of the TARDIS – he turns his back on this old friend, because she's patient and she'll wait, she'll always wait, because they both know that he'll come running to her soon, and then in every world the sky might just became a little darker, every star glimmer a little bit dimmer.