Authors Notes:
A quick ficlet based on how I think the Doctor would have felt after the the events of Family Of Blood and my first attempt at a Dr Who story... I always thought it was far to dangerous a place to dip my writing toes (if you see what I mean) but this story just wouldn't let me be!!
Dr D did the usual - and for that I offer my usual grateful thanks.
FB is always welcome
The Sadness of the Time Lord
Looking back now I wonder if I did the right thing. On that day, at that time I was so sure, so certain that what I did was not only right but somehow it was just. These people, these creatures, this Family of Blood had stolen from me something I wanted and needed more, I thought, than this life I now have.
But this life is my life. The lonely life of the last Time Lord, doomed, cursed even, to wander the vast myriad of time and space, comforted fleetingly by those I choose to let into my world. Comforted but not loved because ultimately I can't love them back, I daren't love them back. I'm timeless and they are not. They leave me eventually, all of them leave me and even my two hearts can't keep being broken so I don't love them, I don't let them see the real me. This is the life of the last of the Time Lords.
Some days I would swap it all for a chance to be normal, to be human, to be loved and to be in love and I had that, so fleetingly I admit, but I had it and I saw what it was like and I felt what it was like and I wanted it never to end. Just because I am old and have seen the birth of a thousand planets and the death of hundreds of species, including I am always saddened to say, my own, does that mean I'm not entitled to be… happy?
John Smith was an unremarkable man, neither a hero nor a coward, just a man, a good man. He tried to do his best in a world that was plunging towards the darkest moment in its so far short history. Maybe that was John Smith's role in this world, to do his best or maybe that was me, deep inside him where even I didn't know I was. Did I, the Doctor, make John Smith the man he was or has he helped me to become the man I am now?
That is a question without an answer. I don't really remember my time as John Smith anymore only that I know that something is missing from inside me, something that he had and that I can never share. He was a braver than I because he saw the future, his and mine. They were not the same, they couldn't be. His was full of love and life and mine… well mine will still be being written when this world is long gone. He saw that if he stayed, took the happiness and the love that he was offered then people would die, and John Smith couldn't be the cause of that. He gave up his life for me… a man he didn't even know.
The fury and the vengeance I unleashed on the Family didn't really make me feel any better. It did at the time, for a brief moment I felt at peace but now I feel empty again. Even the yearly reminders of what I did fail to comfort me now. In fact they make me realize just how lonely it is to be the last of the Time Lords. In a way I'm just like the Family, trapped forever in a world that nobody can ever truly understand, and nor would I want them to.
To understand me, truly understand me I would have to let you know me. I don't even, after 900 years, know myself.
It's lonely being the last Time Lord, but I'm alright, I'm always alright.
I am the Doctor.