“Never did I mean to imprison you, here in my garden.”
-Running Through the Garden, Fleetwood Mac
There’re people that come to him for many reasons. Sometimes it’s accidental, but it can be purposeful as well. He’s the Doctor. His name is sung across the stars, popping up through history – the man and his blue box. He does no good alone, so he seeks them out just the same. He often needs them more than they do of him. He asks for too much, maybe. Just wants a traveling companion… that’s what it appears to be.
There’s more to it, sometimes. It creeps up and chokes him, the ever-burning darkness of his soul. The truth of what he does to people. Davros and Dalek Caan… they weren’t showing him lies. The Doctor made others do his dirty work for him, trying to make himself look innocent, but oh no he’s so far from it. He’s so very old.
They always leave him. He doesn’t want to cling – that isn’t becoming of him – yet his life is so much more important than theirs. He’s significant. He can do things in the universe! He can make differences! On such grander scales than the little people ever –
He’s the Doctor, with his song rippling through the universe, and he’s so old. Too old. He’s missing the picture that he could once reach out and grasp and feel pleased of who he is. His confidence in that is wavering. The man and his blue box are running across the stars to find his song so that he knows it is still out there. He doesn’t want to go.
Why do they so often say that they will stay with him forever?
They can’t. He can’t keep them. He wants to shut them in the TARDIS and stay with them forever, traveling the stars and showing them everything that their minds would never have dreamed of. His mind is great and vast. These things need to be known and shown and time is running out and there’s no one left he’s alone and it’s too quiet the silence is crushing. He’s never felt as though his hearts were divided, opposites beating around each other.
Forever.
He named a galaxy Alison. It should have been Rose or Martha or Donna – his saviors that made surviving the brutal, hellish war bearable. Donna’s song intertwines with his amongst the stars; he finds it, and he breaks down. His TARDIS sings with it. He keeps running.
Rose and Donna were taken from him. Martha left him.
They never stay, they always go. He’s alone and the darkness aches. He’s done things he isn’t proud of. How far can he run… from himself?
He can’t keep them. He can’t lock them up and keep them safe. “What was I supposed to do?! Wrap her in cotton-wool? Tell her, ‘Here, I could give you the universe, but I’m not going to in case you get hurt’!”
Maybe it’s himself that needs to be locked away, imprisoned. The man and the blue box are far, far too old. Lived too long. He could just… make it simple. Beat out the prophecy. None of this knocking nonsense…
…simple…
But no.
The Doctor runs.
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