Disclaimer: Doctor who is still owned by the BBC.
10: [The Bad Joke]
There were probably very few intelligent beings in this universe who hadn't ever pondered the meaning of identity – What is your "self", what constitutes and shapes it, and how strongly so? What makes you "you", and what aspects of your life could be changed without turning you into someone else…?
Could you still be considered yourself – and therefore alive – with a completely different face, altered quirks and speech patterns, as well as a noticeably different temperament, but retained your memories? Would you still be the same person if you had grown up under vastly different circumstances, if you had been born to different parents, lived in a different place or a different time, or even on a whole other world?
These were questions for philosophers to answer – Too bad that these philosophers did not tend to be available whenever ghastly circumstances turned these hypothetic deliberations into his very palpable, very concrete, yet anything but escapable, personal reality.
When he came here, all he wanted to do was to save his own life… self-preservation, the simplest and oldest motivation of them all, ingrained into every form of life.
When he left, he found it hard to believe the notion that he might have such simple emotions left in him.
It was not that the tables turned and switched the ever-so-temporary definitions of predator and prey around, nor was it the desperate revenge of an anguished heart whose personal lines had all been crossed.
The punishment that befell them was absolute, eternal, ironic and executed without the slightest flinch or any chance for them to fight back.
It was judgement, like a god's.
That's what it must have looked like to them.
To them, to Martha, and to her.
He knew that's what it would look like, and he already knew how she would decide.
That's the sort of person she was, righteous to the core and ten thousand times better than him. That's why he fell for her.
He knew she would not be able to see anything but the eldritch entity he had become, the much-feared cosmic horror, the convolutes, horrifying story that was only fascinating to hear or read about because it wasn't real, because they had no consequences.
Now that she had seen his true self, there was no need for her to look for it, even if his "true self" had been what she was seeing all along, his self, his soul, his essence…
If that essence truly is what remains when the social role and the circumstances of life are changed or removed, that is.
Maybe that's really what he would have been like if he had been born and raised here, on this world, in this time, as a human. Certainly a product of his time, like everyone else was (As jarring as his condescending treatment of Martha looked to him in hindsight, it probably would have been considered fair for its day, and anything beyond that might have arisen suspicion – Still, he spent years fighting people like that… ), not knowing more than someone in that position may have seen and heard, but still him, still somewhat absent-minded, still subtly encouraging those around him to make the best of themselves, still being the one to act quickly in the face of danger… and still attracted to more or less blonde, strong-willed, smart women who had that air of being trapped in the wrong place about them. It was a dark blonde in this case, but otherwise, just his type.
Of course, he hadn't thought of something like this happening, he never did.
He always thought of everything but the obvious.
And at this point, he didn't want to think about such things… The wound that Rose had left had still been fresh, and he'd still doubted that he would ever love again.
That he still recalled her name after having his memory wiped was probably the best proof of the hole he had left… but while his soul was still tormented by Illusions of her image as he tossed and turned in violent dreams, his mind had not known that she, or, for that matter, the cold feeling her face left as it disintegrated into dawn, was real…
Ironically, those dreams hadn't been the only Illusions at work and, in a way, had contained more truth than the day-to-day life he led in the waking world, when he smiled at the widow who shared a loneliness he didn't know he did have, debating with her, impressing her, mesmerising her, mending her heart, treating her like a woman.
Not as wife or widow, a nurse or a matron, but as a simple woman. Just as herself and only herself, seeing her for what she was. Making her feel desired and beautiful again, after she thought she'd never feel this way again.
In the end, he had left her hometown devastated and bestowed more heartbreak on her… He couldn't blame her for thinking this was nothing more than the bad joke of a callous deity, for something like him to descend and to make her feel special when she was just a random short-lived ape he had met by chance, to see what it's like to be normal for his own entertainment, to drag dozens down with him, just to save his own skin, something he had often berated others for… She couldn't blame her for thinking him a coward, because he was one.
How could he possibly explain? What right did he have to ask anything of her?
He had just been inconsiderate… or maybe that was just the sort of existence he lead, the reason why Tegan left him, why the Pandorica was prepared for him, and why Amy did not get to raise her daughter… He kept wishing for a life he was never meant to have and dragging others down his maelstrom.
Maybe that's what he was. A monster.
One cowardly enough to show her his fond memories of what could have been, of a life he could never give her, a lie she would immediately recognize as such.
But even if it was all a lie, in the end, his feelings were real.
That is why he raged at the sheer unfairness of it all, resigning himself to being the monster she saw him as, unleashing all his pain, all his power and all his frustration at a few beings whose motivations hadn't been that different from his own.
So he left, knowing himself enough to know that he would have the audacity to continue on his path, hating himself for not just breaking like he should.
He soldiered on, falling, but not crashing, burning, but not charring, bleeding, but not dying,
like a wounded god.
So that's it! A little short, but I think it's OK. The next one, 11: [Innocence] will feauture the impossibly cute, but unfortunate Astrid Peth.