'So what do Time Lords pray to?'
The Doctor idly flicked a finger towards one of many switches aboard on the Tardis control panel. It was a useless switch, really. He wasn't even sure what it for. He flicked it again; nothing happened.
"Silly old thing…" He murmured under his breath, to the emptiness of his home, "Why bother with a switch then, eh? What's it do?"
There was no response to his prodding; and how that drove him mad. What he wouldn't give for some retort, no matter how smart it might be, just so that he wasn't standing and mumbling to himself like an old coot who'd finally gone around the bin.
"Well." He drawled out, abandoning his switch in favor of sliding to a comfortable spot on the floor, "Maybe I am around the bin, then, eh old girl? It's not so bad, I suppose. Life is awful boring otherwise, isn't it? Maybe that's the problem-maybe I need to stop hanging about with such younger crowds. Might go find myself a nice old daft fellow to have tea with-certainly might have some fun bits of conversation, swap how-it-was's and complain that these kids don't know black from blue-but then, he'd be a bit of a kid too, isn't that right? It's tiring being so old; remember when I was young? No, of course you don't, you weren't there, but oh I was young once, not just physically young but young! And you know what? I wasted it! All that youth, all that energy, gone! Sapped away into a life of study and rules and regulation and responsibility, and isn't that just how it goes, isn't that just the way of it! You go all your life being told 'you better do this, or you'll regret it one day! Yes sir you'll wake up an old man and realize you wasted yourself!' but you know what? I did all of it, I did everything I was supposed to do, and it was rubbish! And now look at me! Why, I'm still old and still, I'm still realizing that I've wasted it, well, I'll tell you what, no more wasting around for me, oh no, you'll see, I'll climb the mountains of the planet Gabril and make a snowman at the top, a little Time Lord snowman, just like the humans do, and I'll visit the market of Bou and try their famous noodle soup-wouldn't that be lovely?-and, oh! I'll find a world made up of music! Wouldn't that just be marvelous? Everyone, all the time, just singing as they go all about, like a big, giant musical! Ah ha, old girl, we've got ourselves a plan!"
The Doctor hoped to his feet with renewed vigor and began to pull at every knob and lever he'd come to know so well, "Won't this be fun now, just the two of us, maybe I ought to start practicing a song, it's been quite awhile now since I've sung, maybe I'll-"
'So what do Time Lords pray to?'
The Doctor stopped mid-push as his hand gripped a large lever, his entire being stopping in that one moment.
Oh, this was not good. This was why he couldn't stay alone for long.
"No, no, no, come on now girl, let's get out of here, shall we? Come along now, lock onto the coordinates-" He was faintly aware that his voice was rising in pitch as he spoke, nearly breaking, but not quite; if he could just keep it together, just get to where he wanted to go, it would all be fine, he wouldn't break, he wouldn't think-
"Oh, you stupid old thing, lock on!" The Doctor smashed his hands against the control panel, and as much as he tried to push back the large tumor growing in his chest, he couldn't. It was too late; his thoughts betrayed him, leaking into the places he didn't want to go, didn't care to think about.
"It's that blasted rooms fault!" Suddenly he was shouting, and he wasn't sure why. His hands griped the soft bundle of hair atop his head, and he pulled at it, hated it. It wasn't his hair. It was this body's hair, a genetic mutation hair, and it wasn't even ginger. He wanted his hair, the hair he'd been born with, the hair he grew old with. The hair that had been combed back by his mother, cut by his grandfather, disapproved of by his father, mused by his brother, stroked by his lovers, pulled by his children and grandchildren and by himself in times like these, when he couldn't take it anymore, when he'd truly gone mad and just wanted to scream because what else was there to do when every God in the Universe refused to listen?
The Doctor slumped over the control panel, hands still tangled in his own hair as he tried to hold himself together, "That stupid door! Stupid hotel and stupid room and STUPID DOOR! Thick, thick, thick! I knew what would happen, and I did it anyway, I'm so thick!"
His loud voice echoed in down the empty corridors and bounced back to him, and try as he might the Doctor couldn't block out what he saw in room 11, the room made just for him. He saw it so clearly, no matter how tightly he shut his eyes, or banged his head, or shouted at the memory to go away. Those stares would always be glaring back at him, accusing him, demanding that he own up to what he had done.
"Ok!" He spit out, jaw clenched as he tried to suppress the emotions threatening to rip through him, "Ok, I did it! I did it! I had to!"
His head shot up just then, and he raged towards the heart of the Tardis, as if it were the one yelling at him, glaring and accusing, and tearing him to bits, "I had to! I didn't-I didn't want to-I had to! I am so tired of this-"
The Doctor began to pace, he throat beginning to redden at the unaccustomed screaming as he wrapped his arms around himself, stopping only to infrequent turn his wrath upon the Tardis, "Everyone always thinks it's my fault! It's not! It's not my fault, and I've done a lot of good things; a lot of good things! So just go away, you're dead! Do you hear me? Go away!"
He choked out what was reminiscent of a sob as he leaned both hands on the panel and gripped its edges, and he could feel himself losing as those eyes haunted him, staring right into him even as he was a thousand miles and life times away.
"Please, go away." He began to mutter through his teeth, faintly aware that his body had begun to quake and sway to and fro, "Please, please, please, just go away, just leave me, just go away, just please-"
His jaw unclenched, snapped open by an indistinguishable bawl of suppression, and before he knew it the Doctor's cheeks had become wet and red. He flopped to the floor, gripping his shirt as though his emotions were a physical object he could force back together, and banged his head against the Tardis in frustration. Their faces hurt him so much-just seeing them hurt him so much, but their eyes were what killed him inside and tore him to shreds. Those angry filled eyes, those eyes that screamed, 'You did this to us. You let us die. You did this.'
He had loved those eyes though, so very long ago; the eyes of his people and past, of his family. He could just see his little girls eyes now-so wide, always little. He never remembered her older, when she grew to disapprove of him, when Gallifrey and their dull social conviction turned her against him because he didn't follow the herd like sheep. They were like his granddaughter's eyes; still innocent and trusting, still willing to love, but not this time. This time they had been narrowed and vengeful, they had hated him; even the eyes of his tiny little girl had absolutely hated him. Just like his mothers glare, and his fathers, and everyone else's, down to the very first woman he had ever loved.
They hated him, and he knew why; because he had let them burn. He had let everything around them burn, their flesh and homes; everything. What it must have been like, burning to death; had it been quick, or had some lasted longer than others? Had his little Arkytior, his little Susan, died while crying over the bodies of her family? Did his mother hide in his fathers arms as her skin was scorched away?
Those eyes told him the worse of it, those damned eyes in room 11. It had hurt. Oh, how it had hurt them. They had suffered, and they had screamed, and they had hurt; and it was all due to him. No matter how he spun the story, no matter how he justified himself, it always came down to the fact that he burned them all. That day, no one had lived.
"I'm sorry-" His cheeks were sopping now, and his voice came ragged and caught in his throat as he wheezed in puffs of air, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so so sorry. Oh, God-"
The Doctor clenched his jaw again, and tried to block out the pathetic sound of his high-pitched whine as he tucked his head between his knees, unable to stop crying even as he ran out of breathe. He sat alone and sobbed, holding himself tight, and prayed. To everything; to whatever would listen. A Time Lord didn't believe in just one thing; he didn't have to. They knew so many wonders of the universe that it was hard to believe that only one being was behind it all, but even so, in moments like these, when his pain overtook him and he wished that it would all just stop and go away-
Yes, in moments like these he prayed, and he believed in every God and every prayer, because if it meant salvation from his living hell he would gladly serve any of them; false or true, kind or cruel, it didn't matter, just so long as it stopped.
"Please." He sputtered, and it occurred to him how weak his body felt, tired and drained of whatever energy he had once held dear. The Doctor swallowed and breathed, his head resting against the walls of the control panel, "Please…I'm sorry. I am so…so sorry…"
He sighed against the warm metal of the Tardis and sniffled, gulping down the feeling of raw bleeding in his throat. He didn't notice how the lever moved above him, or how the computer at last locked on to the coordinates he had requested. By the time the Tardis arrived at its intended destination, the Doctor had already fallen asleep at his place on the floor, cheeks still damp and blotched from his emotional episode.
When he awoke, he would blink, and promptly try to forget the entire thing had ever happened. He would pick out his best bow tie and find a disaster to avert, or a civilization to save. He'd be a hero for a day, and maybe, if he was lucky enough, there would be someone on this foreign planet with a sense of longing and adventure, and he could steal them away from everything they knew and loved; all so that he'd have someone to distract his thoughts away from room 11, and the eyes that hated him.
For now, though, he slept, and dreamed of better times; of fish and chips with a red head and her boy toy; of exchanging words with a hot tempered Earth girl; of walking barefoot on the moon with a fellow doctor; and of running with a blond haired girl in a Britain nationality shirt. Such better times though were.
The Tardis hummed and warmed him as he slept, and somewhere in the depths of his subconscious the Doctor thought back to the day where he stole her-or, rather, when she stole him-and where she had taken him since then.
In his dreams, they ran. The Doctor and the Tardis; and it faintly occurred to him that he had never once bothered to pray to her. Then again, why would he bother; she was just a time machine. As he lay against her though, her soft vibrations of life surging through-out his comatose body, he began to think that maybe he had it all wrong once again. Maybe he didn't need to pray to every being; maybe he just needed to pray to one.
The thought was quickly diminished as he heard a familiar voice call out to him in the dream; he took their hand, and together, they ran.
I know, I know, "Speak Now" isn't finished...it's in the works, I promise! I've finally caught up with Doctor Who though, and I just loved it, so I had to get out my first piece of fanfiction it.
...I am so, so sorry!