Chapter 3
"What do you mean you're sorry, Doctor? Why is that day special?" asked Vincent as the two men walked the streets of Arles.
"Vincent, time is being rewritten. It's being changed." he replied.
"Rewritten? But Doctor, whatever is in my future it hasn't happened yet. It is still for me to make."
"No it's not, Vincent. Time isn't what you think it is - it isn't a straight line of cause and effect. I have seen the future, I know the history and the future of the human race and it has been changed. Your timeline is being altered from what it should be and that is not good because whatever it is has to be pretty strong."
Vincent paused and once again looked at the mysterious man in front of him and wondered.
"What must we seem like to you?" he asked. "You know exactly what is going to happen a thousand years before it occurs. We are merely colours on a canvas acting out the painting of the universe, not knowing how it will look, while you already have it framed and know every brush stroke. If there is no changing history or our destiny then what is the point of life, Doctor?"
The Doctor breathed a deep breath. "That's for you to figure out yourself I guess. Sure history is set in stone but it doesn't stop people from living or making their own choices. All it means is that somehow all those choices, all those decisions end up coming together and forming the events that make up history itself."
"You have a great way of looking at the universe, Doctor."
The Doctor smiled. "I could say the same about you."
Eventually they reached Vincent's house. Stepping inside The Doctor could see numerous pieces of his work adorning the walls and the floor. He stood in the corner of the room while Vincent rooted around in his drawer looking for something. As he stood and watched he began to think about what could have happened to change the course of events of the life of one man so much.
"Vincent, the day that you moved back to Arles was it planned?"
"Now that you come to mention it it wasn't," he replied, turning towards him. "That day was the darkest day of my whole life. I was in the throes of a deep depression and could see no way of pulling myself out," explained the artist. "I had toyed with the idea of ending my life and I lay in my room and cried hoping that the pain would end but it didn't. I had reached my breaking point but at that moment when I couldn't take any more I found hope. It came from nowhere and so fast but it was there. I decided that I would pack up my things and head back to Arles. I realised that instead of ending my life I should reinvent it; cast away my old self, kill off the person I used to be and start anew with only my love for painting remaining. I would be born again."
"That's it," said The Doctor quietly. "I said that whatever changed your timeline had to be strong and it was. The strongest force in the universe: the human will to survive. Vincent, I'm so sorry, I am, but you were supposed to die that day. That day is the day on which Vincent van Gogh took his life, but one thought on one day sparked the tiniest bit of hope for a man almost unable to be saved and that was enough to change the course of history."
Vincent sat himself on his bed and thought about what he had heard. He was a clever man and he knew from his conversations with The Doctor what changing the past would mean. There was a reason that it was his new friend's duty to stop instances just like this one from occurring. He had made up his mind. He got up and looked once more into the eyes of the Time Lord. Without either of them saying a word they both knew that the two of them had realised what had to be done. Vincent had to die.