Fleeting (A Doctor Who Drabble)
Fleeting
A Doctor Who drabble
by Abby
Rating: G
Summary: Immediately following "A Good Man Goes to War." The Doctor muses on what he has left behind. Angst + General + Doctor/Rose
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Love is fleeting.
And it hurts.
If there was one thing that remained constant throughout his eleven lives, it was this knowledge.
Now that the recent regeneration had burned away the strong emotions of his last incarnation and packaged them in a way that he could now examine them with an objective inner eye, it was shockingly clear to him now.
The constant pace of his 900 years and the urgency to move on to the next exciting place had dulled him to any other need but flight. But after the Time War, he couldn’t even do that anymore. No matter where he traveled in the universe, he knew he couldn’t escape his own self-hatred and the image of his screaming homeworld seared into the back of his eyelids.
His pain had made him vulnerable. Weak and unable to see the trap he was setting himself up for, the day he reached out and took Rose Tyler’s hand. Her youthful innocence and sense of wonder refreshed him, and the way she looked at him, it gave him hope that somehow he was redeemable.
And the selfish, old fool that he was, he loved her for it.
But her faith in him was the faith of a child, he thought bitterly. She observed his feats of bravery, saw his youthful face, and called him wonderful.
She did not know him.
She did not know the old man that dwelt within, the old man that once had a face to match.
She did not know the contradiction that pressed on his soul, where he mourned and loathed the lost Time Lords simultaneously.
And she did not know that the one thing she asked of him was the one thing that would destroy him completely.
So when he left her on that beach for the last time, he gave her the only version of himself that was capable of giving her what she wanted. The metacrisis didn’t have his burden to carry, didn’t have the ability to destroy everything he touched. But it did have a human heart that was capable of giving love that was worthy of her blind trust.
He flipped a switch and went to work deftly entering the coordinates he desired, musing on his condition and where his life had brought him. Looking up from his console, he glanced at the TARDIS doors where outside Amy and her husband were drawing strength from his promise that he would indeed save their daughter. But then he thought of River, and that day in the library.
He never failed to disappoint the ones who love him. In the seemingly timeless span of his life, their love is fleeting.
And it hurts.