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Once upon a Time, there lived a most Wonderful and Improbable Man—though, in actuality, he wasn’t really a Man at all. He came from a most Wonderful and Improbable Planet, from a race that had mastered the whole of Time and Space in a most Wonderful and Improbable way. One day, the Man (who wasn’t a Man) stole away in a ship that wasn’t his, and he spent half a dozen lifetimes among the stars, visiting days and ages that were dead and gone long before his time. He met new people—new friends—and changed their lives, and they surprised him by returning the favour. He was Wonderfully and Improbably happy.
But happiness, like Time, is a horribly transient thing. When war broke out on his Wonderful and Improbable Planet, the Man (who wasn’t a Man) was forced to make a Terrible and Impossible decision. And in the blink of an eye, he was alone.
Being alone was a Terrible and Impossible sensation to adjust to. The Man (who wasn’t a Man) withdrew into himself. He thought of everyone he had known and loved—in his mind, he could see their Timelines ebbing, flowing and eventually fading into Dust. It was maddeningly slow and infuriatingly fast all at once. It made him feel things that he had thought himself immune to: sadness, fear, guilt…and something else. All of those people, the friends who had shared in his adventures—they had changed him; more than he had ever imagined. More than he had ever wanted them to. He felt contaminated by their humanity. Where once he had been grateful for the opportunity to take part in their lives, he now hardened his heart against the people of Earth. He vowed to himself to never allow another Human affect him in this way—to never allow their weaknesses to become his own.
In the days and months and years of solitude that followed, the Man (who wasn’t a Man) very nearly disappeared. He allowed the part of himself that had come to be known as the Oncoming Storm to reign absolute, for it was only then that he was able to ignore just how Human he had truly become. He regarded the race with a contempt usually reserved for the worst of his enemies—‘stupid apes’, he called them, and the derision was a whetstone on his mind and on his tongue. But try as he might, the Man (who wasn’t a Man) was still Terribly and Impossibly weak. He could not entirely close his hearts to the planet when it needed him. He kept a weather eye out for trouble on the Human horizon, and he was always there. And one night, so was She.
A Wonderful and Improbable Girl, who took his hand and ran with him when he asked. A pink and yellow Human Girl who ignored all his warnings and harsh words as she crashed head-on through the barriers he had worked so hard to create. It was Wonderful and Terrible, Improbable and Impossible, and there was not a thing he could do to stop it.
Many times, he hoped (and feared) that he had crossed some imperceptible line that would make her realize her mistake. He took her to see beginnings and endings alike, and she stayed with him through it all. And for the first time in his recent memory, the Man (who wasn’t a Man) was afraid. That fear stayed with him, a constant companion, boiling under his hard-hearted surface as a reminder the Oncoming Storm was never meant to have a happy ending.
***
He’d killed her. He had taken this lovely, nineteen-year old girl, made her trust him. Then the Dalek came—always the Daleks—and he’d had to make a decision that came at the ultimate cost of her life. And she had the nerve to apologize to him, right up until the end.
“Sorry I was a bit slow,” she said, and the sad smile in her voice made his hearts stop. Then she’d begged him to remember that it wasn’t his fault; that she wouldn’t have missed it for the world. When her voice cracked, so did his nerve. He ripped the headset from his ear and flung it behind him—anything to keep from hearing Rose Tyler’s final sounds. It was the Time War all over again. The human emotions he had buried all those years ago returned. He could have killed, could have wept, could have kept raging until he burned himself out like the twin suns of Gallifrey.
But suddenly—impossibly—she was alive. So very alive, so very brave, and even more beautiful than he had remembered.
“What use are emotions if you will not save the woman you love?”
This, from a Dalek—a taunt from his oldest of enemies—and he was undone. He loved her. He, an old man with two broken hearts and a past full of ghosts, loved her. When in Rassilon’s name had that happened? And if the Dalek, of all creatures, had been able to recognize it, why couldn’t he? He could think in six dimensions; could see the whole of space and time in his head on the slightest whim, yet he had missed this crucial point.
“You would make a good Dalek.”
And there was the crux of the matter. Somehow, when he wasn’t looking, he had shaped himself into the mirror image of those he abhorred. Shutting down emotions in order to protect himself had nearly cost him something impossibly precious. He watched Rose—his Rose—on the monitor in van Statten’s office, and he wondered how he could have made any other decision.
“I killed her once,” he said, striding over to the computer. “I can’t do it again.” And with a single keystroke, he willingly released destruction upon them all.