The Mad Man With Two Broken Hearts

Note: Spoilers for Series 7, up to The Angels Take Manhattan.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just a mad man with a box.

That was what he had told her all those years ago and more than once. He wasn't special, just an alien, some weird old man from outer space clinging to a species that looked like his own because it was the closest thing he had to them. He needed humans because he was alone, he needed anyone because he was so alone, he needed Amelia Pond because he was so very alone.

The legend he had helped create was fast dissipating from the universe, by his own design. His name had brought too much attention, too much chaos with it. His interfering had needed to tone down, become a shadow, a forgotten whisper. Now when people caught his name, they all asked the same, the question. The Question.

It had been somewhat of a comfort, being known. He could pretend to be important even if he wasn't, he could try to be the hero everyone believed him to be. That was why he'd had to stop. People expected too much. He couldn't save everyone and sometimes he couldn't save anyone at all, least of all himself. Without his name, without the glorified banner, he was just that face-changing wanderer. He could make mistakes. He could make choices without an audience to judge him. He could be anything he wanted, and that was one of the most terrifying things to experience.

What was he if he wasn't the Doctor? If no one knew who the Doctor was? What was he supposed to do if he couldn't keep on running, when there was nothing left to run from? He'd started running to people instead. He needed them, chased after their fleeting lives, doing right by them and endeavouring to make everything as perfect as possible. Now they were gone, like all the others, so very gone. Hollow wasn't a strong enough word for his feelings. He realised that now – he did still feel. He thought he'd lost the ability; that it had all dulled over so many centuries, that perhaps his systems had broken after that last regeneration, but it was there. With his last face he had burst his emotions, flaring them fast like sparks, manic and passionate but quickly brought to heel. Now his anger and grief built, slow and sure, burning on and on until his problems were consumed. Where would it lead?

Did she know? That woman: that beautiful, baffling puzzle of a wife. He loved her, but where that had started he couldn't explain. When it had supposed to start had been rewritten. She had known his love before he had lived it, and he had learned of it without having the chance to discover it for himself. He loved her because he was meant to, because he had to, because he couldn't bear the thought of not doing so, after what she had done, what she was going to do. At what point had it stopped being because he felt guilty? Was he still just acting like a child, showing off because he knew she loved him, taking her out because he thought he should? Or did he mean it now? Had it become love now, because in that other reality, the one that had never happened, he had fallen?

Did she know? These times, these late times of hers that they had met, she had been so guarded. Was she afraid? At Demon's Run, she had spoken of what his future might come to be, seemingly disapproving of the pains he'd taken to rescue her from Kovarian's clutches. Calling in the favours he perhaps should never have called, raising an army and blitzing through the universe to save one baby. A lot had been at stake, but he couldn't honestly say it was the right course of action. Not for the Doctor. But who was the Doctor? What did River know? He had tried to change, made himself unimportant. Did they still call him a warrior now? What did she know? What did she know? The thought of her knowing his future was maddening and he could never, never ask.

The day he had lost his Amelia Pond, River had seemed cold under all her sass. She lied and kept her distance, she hinted at the pain of loving him. Could she feel the end of them approaching? Was he not connecting enough through the knowledge of the inevitable, not giving her the husband she deserved? Or was it something else? What did she know? Was it something he had done, or said? What was he going to do? She'd as much as called him a psychopath, and that was a wound he was still nursing.

What had happened to the 'man who never would'? Had he been erased with the legend that time forgot?

The Time Lord opened the TARDIS doors and screamed out into the endless black, "I am the Doctor. Please… please … help!"

And the universe yawned its empty reply:

"Who?"