Chapter Text
My first incarnation was a Romantic. Born before the Last Great Time War but after the escapades of renegades like the Doctor, the Master and the Monk were made more well known, he was a joyful blonde man with an eye to the sky and a habit of wearing literal rose tinted glasses.
I remember coming of age on Gallifrey shortly after the Zagreus crisis, when the Web of Time was nearly unraveled and the Doctor saved us by nearly sacrificing his TARDIS. He was a stylish rapscallion at the time and, to be honest, saving all of us was more of an afterthought. He was really more interested in saving his companion, an adventuress that went by Charley I believe? But that’s a story for another day.
All Gallifreyans have names, of course, though they tend to be long winded to honor our Houses and status. Of course, my generation was a rebellious one, and we had no interest in protecting the legacy of people like Rassilon, who we had all recently learned had a far more dark history than we were led to believe in our studies (see: the aforementioned Zagreus crisis). Rejecting this history and legacy, many of us took to taking renegade names, names like those great individuals whose stories had exploded in fame and recognition during our childhoods.
Many took great and powerful names to honor those great individuals, such as the Physician or the Nun. Others adopted names to showcase their power or authority like The Warrior and The Sovereign. Still others chose odder names with more personal reasons, like the Hermit, who lived in the lonely planet of Samiead after losing his family to the Third Great War against the daleks, or Oberon, who decided to ignore tradition entirely for a new style that rebelled against both the traditional Gallifreyan naming conventions and the renegade variations.
As for myself? I never really had a name that stuck. My birth House was destitute long before I was born and I never could come up with a name that really fit my personality. Sometimes, I would jokingly call myself Timelord Jim. After all, in most tongues, names like “The Rani” and “President Romanadvoratrelundar” sound just as ridiculous; why shouldn’t there be a Timelord named Jim? Of course, a name that simplistic never really caught on, so instead most chose to call me a name fitting of my present regeneration, not that I minded much at all. I tended to be far more easy-going in my first life than most of my counterparts, so I was known by most as The Bohemian.
Although my House was destitute, I had a habit of taking the “Lord” part of our species’ title to its illogical extreme. I dressed in the most pompous of garbs and partied frequently and excessively. The Bohemian was a prolific poet and spent more time in a tavern than most bards and town drunks. He partied with gods, introduced alcoholic beverages to planets a couple thousand years too early and once had a very unfortunate mishap with a bear in Moscow that inspired a certain Leo Tolstoy. It was a hedonistic lifestyle, one that many of my future incarnations were embarrassed about, but it was mine. That is, of course, until the Last Great Time War.
The details of the Last Great Time War need not be repeated. There are billions of species on trillions of planets who have detailed accounts on nearly every detail that ever happened. It was a cataclysm that affected every major civilization. No catastrophe like that was ever seen prior and was never seen again until the Flux Event. No, recounting those specific details is redundant. Anyone who has ever talked to an archaeologist or seen the ruins themselves could tell you about that horrid time.
But back when it first started, we had no idea how bad it would get. Time Lords may have control over time and space, but we never managed to reign over our own vanity and ego. Gallifrey was led by cocky braggarts who were too convinced in their own success to ever even consider the possibility that we could lose until it was too late. And that unchecked confidence spread into every nook and cranny of Gallifreyan culture. During the onset of the War, hordes of people volunteered to serve their species for just the chance at glory.
I was a child. A very stupid child at that. So of course I volunteered. With no real connections or qualifications, I was pretty quickly put into a platoon that was meant to serve as cannon fodder; not that the upper brass would EVER tell us that. Well, maybe they did and my childish incarnation was too busy writing poems to seduce his fellow soldiers to notice but somehow I highly doubt it.
Ultimately, I think serving in that platoon helped me though. I saw more closely than most Gallifreyans just how horrible war can be. I saw my fellow Gallifreyans burn through regenerations to hold down positions, planets turn to dust after being glassed by the enemy and time erase eons of history in seconds. I saw the Doctor, with a hatred in his eyes that I’m sure would have caused any of his human friends to quiver in fear, do unspeakable things to a group of Daleks after what they did to poor Josie Day. In fact, if I were still as much of a gambler as my 5th and 6th incarnations, I would have bet that that was one of the final straws that led to the Doctor renouncing his name.
When you see that amount of pain and suffering, it changes you. The Bohemian stopped smiling after seeing those opening barrages of the War. Looking back at all my lives, I don’t think any of them were as happy as the Bohemian was back when he lived in blissful ignorance.
Ironically, the Bohemian did not die because of an unstoppable enemy or even from being a “necessary sacrifice” from any wild gambit caused by the Master, the Doctor or some other rogue agent. When it became clear to me that we were sent to the front lines just to die, I ran. I ran after seeing my closest friends get tossed aside like broken dolls, after hearing the screams of fellow Gallifreyans die in a pointless war that we brought to ourselves. The other Time Lords mocked me for this. They thought I was a coward. Deciding that the only good coward was a dead one, my own commanding officer shot me in the back, twice at each heart, depriving me the chance to even regenerate for the first time. I would’ve died if Rassilon himself didn’t intervene. Normally, the punishment for fleeing was to get court-martialed. If you were lucky they’d kill you. If you weren’t you got written out of existence, or be made an example out of by having all of your remaining regenerations burnt out of you in the middle of the city. Perhaps my commanding officer saw his actions as a mercy to me. Alas, Rassilon had other plans for me, and he decided to discipline me by using the worst kind of punishment for people of my ilk: a forced regeneration. Nothing is more painful than being forced to regenerate, as it is the only time a Time Lord loses all agency, being denied a choice to live or die. To this day, I have never had an experience quite as painful as that first regeneration.
Though still too vain to realize it was all in vain, Rassilon and Tecteun saw that the War was not going in their favor. They needed a figure that could rally their armies to glorious victories. More importantly, unlike the Doctor, who was always gallivanting off on their own adventures, or the General, who at the time was starting to see some success at Vortis, they wanted someone to control.
And so, with the help of that fiendish Sisterhood of Karn, my first regeneration was specifically designed to turn me into the ideal soldier. The young, idealistic Bohemian, who was always more interested in poetry and romance than the nuances of war, was forced into the body of a cold and calculating menace. Gone were the rose-tinted glasses. The time had come for the Commander to take up his dreaded blade.