A/N: I'm really obsessed with the Moment. Also, this is slightly AU.
After so many eternities of being locked away in some drafty store-house, surrounded by barriers and wards that make it so hard to breathe, it's almost a relief when he steals me away, even if he does stuff me in burlap sacking and drop me rather unceremoniously on the floor of the TARDIS. I can feel it breathing around me, sense the burning light of the time vortex spilling around me, and I wonder at his audacity. You would think a man who calls himself the Doctor would take a little more care with something so easily jostled, but then again, he doesn't really consider himself the Doctor anymore, does he?
It's a pity, really, I reflect as he treks across the expanse of desert, his boot-prints the only trail of where he's been, before the sand blows over them. The only hope, the last hope, encased in a single worn vessel, with eyes that have seen so much pain, yet are still so young. So very young. Why, he's practically a baby, toddling out to do battle, to fulfill his destiny with the last possible harbinger of anything approaching victory.
But I must remind myself, this is but a hollow one. Gallifrey will burn, if he so chooses, and so many children with it. The children, that's what haunts me. Did you know-even locked away in a storeroom, floors and floors down, amidst the dust and cobwebs, it's still possible to hear a child's laughter?
Did you know it's still possible to hear a child's terrified screams as their world burns around them?
But he must decide, and I will accept his decision, no matter what he so chooses. Never let the world say that the Moment does not fulfill what is required, when she must. When she passes her judgment and the Doctor accepts his calling. It's been such a long war, and his shoulders sag when he locks the door, when he leans against it for just a second, as if the aged and roughened wood can take away his cares.
It can't, of course, and deep down, he knows it can't. There is nothing and there is no one-not yet-who can smooth the wrinkles of pain from his face, who can take it away, if only for a moment. But that's why I've been preparing this form, isn't it? I smooth the ragged edges of my skirt, popping into existence on the box that houses me, and smiling as innocently as I can. The monsters are coming, and only he...and I...stand before the world burning.
"Is somebody there?" he calls into the blustering wind, and I wiggle my fingers behind him, though I know he can't see.
"It's nothing," I say, watching him whirl around, shock stamped on his face. "It's just a wolf."