This man- despite all appearances of immortality and time travel and dimensions- is closer to human than he has ever been. Desperate hearts beat blood throughout his body, shadows seep into his veins, breaths coming in short, frantic bursts. The adrenaline pumps around his body twice as fast and he realises. He can do anything. No limits. No one to stop him, not anymore.
The universe seems to have been waiting for this final downfall.
Generation after generation, it has watched as he has seen, fought, loved, lost too much- saying goodbye more times than he had any other word in his approximately nine hundred years of existence. It recognises the true essence of him, the fire burning in his eyes, desperate to save, never to lose again. And yet now he knows: he could change (destroy) it, all of it. Go back to the beginning, save them all, his world, the fierce orange skies casting a warm luminescence on those he once spoke of as his family, all those years ago. The building blocks of the world, isn't that what the Krilitane leader had offered him? And oh god, if he had just taken it, what he could have done. A God never has to lose anything, does he? The ideal, the immortality not just for his own unfortunate self but for everyone else, those he could save.
The suppression of emotion is another basis of so many alien races, merely a battle strategy, a way to ensure discipline, dictatorship, rank. But the Doctor thinks maybe it's really the only semi-rational way to deal with immortality.
Nine-hundred-and-something year old sanity begins to unravel of its own accord and he doesn't try to stop it. The possibilities! Running his fingers through his hair, an inane grin is released from his mouth. He could bring him back and her, and stop them. The Daleks, the Time War, Rose. Splitting the walls between parallel universes and rebuilding better worlds.
Oh, the things he could do.
As he travels, changes, the memories disappear from his mind. He crafts the history, the past, the future to his own vision, all at once. The TARDIS walls seem to close in on him, the luminous red of the walls grows more intense, bathing him in a warm, psychotic glow and he doesn't care, he just can't stop. A whirlwind of addiction, the echoes of lives he has never lost whisper through his mind. He is a junkie to his own adrenaline, the rush, the need ripping holes in his rationale. But then, he has never been particularly calm.
And then, everything stops. The memories fade from him, torn from his grasp. He feels their breath sweep past him as they fly away into the confines of the solitary police box standing on a street corner on London.
He staggers from the clutch of it, the sudden claustrophobia. More confused than ever, he is not the man he was. A strong London accent breaks his attention and he stumbles from the intense sunlight only just blocked out by the figure's head. It elicits a faint whisper of a memory but then it is gone, and him along with it. The last of the Time Lords, consumed by his own mortality, how fitting. And yet no one knows to appreciate it.
"You alright?"
But the space in front of her is empty. Shaking her head, she wonders how much she's had to drink and continues on her way to a life of sleeping, working, eating.
Chips.
(fantastic)