Counting

There were certain dates and anniversaries that he couldn’t forget; days that were too deeply marred by regret to be forgotten. The mind behind every different face still seemed to fall back upon the dark memories of a certain time. He could even still remember his childhood, those days of growing up on Gallifrey, despite how long ago it had been. With those memories carried too close, he started to sift through the information from the final census ever taken on a certain planet. He still had access to a massive amount of data from the archives of Gallifrey.

His expression was blank as he started to scroll through the interminable list of children who lived on Gallifrey, right up until the planet’s final day. There were more names than any human could count, so many names that no one fully sane would even try to read every single one. Yet still he started at the top of the list, reading every single name, letting every letter become engraved into his memory. He counted quickly, but even in just a few minutes, the quantity of children who had passed on was staggering.

No, no; he couldn’t think of it so gently. They hadn’t merely passed on, like a peaceful person who had lived long enough. He had killed them. He killed them all with his own hands.

He had heard her footsteps, but he trusted her and they didn’t make him feel the need to keep a constant eye on her when in the TARDIS. He didn’t quite pay attention to just how closer her footsteps had come and glanced up, caught off guard when her hand settled on his shoulder. Her other hand was on the control panel of the TARDIS beside his own, so close, so comfortable, and so unaware of just how much blood was on those nine century old hands. She peered at him worriedly, evidently having picked up on any trace of regret in his expression that he didn’t realize he had betrayed.

“You alright?” Rose asked, casually yet still concernedly. “You look like you just saw my mum in her summer bath robe.”

“There’s a reason why I don’t do families on this TARDIS,” he said with a nod so serious that it made her laugh.

He closed the achieve of the names of the deceased before she looked at it in any more detail. He didn’t have to count all the names; there was no point when she was there, they had too many new destinations to explore, too many places they wanted to go.


~oOo~


She wasn’t there.

Everything looked the same, but she wasn’t there.

Her belongings were still there; the traveling bags, her curling iron, and her sloppily packed clothes were still in the area reserved for her use. The TARDIS had more rooms than he could ever use or ever fill, but they felt emptier than ever.

There was no one to stop him or distract him from opening up those archives from Gallifrey. It was just him within the too vast, too empty TARDIS and the names of all the people he had killed. He read and remembered the name of every single child who had their days robbed from them in the Time War.

The night was dark and he was beyond where any sun could rise; he just kept counting.

He killed two billion and forty-seven million children.


~oOo~


He was the one who could never forget. As the doors of the TARDIS closed behind him, separating him from his next self, a humorless smirk pulled at the corner of his lips. It seemed ironic, in a cruel way, that he would soon forget that something as important as the fate of Gallifrey would soon be void from his memory.

His home was frozen in time, sent off into a secondary – an alternate – universe. He couldn’t dare to hope that she would be there.

He would never make it there in the life that was only his anyway.