Time
hide from the mirror, the cracks and the memories.
Time is selfish and unkind. Time does not hold back; it does not think twice. Time does not hesitate or vacillate or fluctuate. Time has never been prejudiced or inequitable, conventional or predictable. Time has never taken sides. The balance of life and death must be kept equal. When one is given, another is taken and nothing has been able to change that. Nothing – save for time itself – can alter the fabric of reality without taking the consequences as they come.
Time is the most ruthless killer in the universe. It cannot be stopped, cannot be held back while one runs away. It cannot be controlled or changed or inhibited. Even after surviving everything else that life has to throw at you, after surviving the knives and the swords and the guns and the wars and the brutality of the human race itself, you cannot escape time. Time snatches you away before your time and draws the wrinkles onto your unblemished skin. Time is that which ages you, sets the creases into your flesh and draws out the perfection until your hands shake and arthritis creaks in your bones.
For Rose Tyler, time caught up with her at the age of forty-three. To think that after all she'd been through in her life – her amazing, wonderful, brilliant life – she would be shot down by a malignant cancer in her liver that didn't seem to want to leave her alone. She had escaped the cold, hard grip of death so many times that she thought she was invincible, and when the harsh bite of fatality caught up with her she wasn't ready. There were so many words she had yet to say, so many places she had yet to go, and so many things she had yet to do.
Martha Jones died by accident. It wasn't her fault that she walked into the path of an oncoming car. It wasn't the driver's fault either. Sometimes such a significant memory can be forgotten, and a significant life can be taken, in the blink of an eye. He had that effect. He gave them their moment to shine, their fifteen minutes of fame, but then it was forgotten. Nobody ever remembered the sacrifice Martha Jones made for the sake of the Earth because, thanks to time, she never had to make it.
Donna Noble died unnecessarily, in place of another. She wasn't to know that if she hadn't stepped in front of the small girl, the man would not have pulled the trigger. She wasn't to know that if she had stayed where she was instead of taking action, not one bullet would have left the gun. Time is cruel like that: time can take people away faster than you can blink, in the form of a metal shell pulsing through the air and ripping through the skull of the woman who was, for a brief second, the most important woman in the universe.
The Doctor – their Doctor – died after four knocks on a panel of glass. Nothing more, nothing less. "I don't want to go," he whispered in a coward's voice, crackling and weak. After all he had done, after everyone he had preserved, after every time he had saved the world, he died alone, with nobody to watch him go. Some may argue that it was what he deserved. He deserved such a cruel fate, to be left alone at the end of his life, because he took the laws of time into his own hands and moulded them to fit his own needs. He was the last of his kind and the universe belonged to him. But others pressed that he had done so much more good than evil, saved so many more lives than bad. He was never quick to judge. He apologised and forgave no matter what had happened before. But still he died, still he disappeared from the earth, still his body was ripped away from him and replaced with another. And so a different man with a different face wearing different clothes wandered the universe and preserved lives and saved the world, and the man in the pinstriped suit was forgotten and discarded as the people who knew him and loved him were clasped in death's bleak clutches.
Time cannot take the Time Lord, but it can try.
Time is the most ruthless killer in the universe. It cannot be stopped, cannot be held back while one runs away. It cannot be controlled or changed or inhibited. Even after surviving everything else that life has to throw at you, after surviving the knives and the swords and the guns and the wars and the brutality of the human race itself, you cannot escape time. Time snatches you away before your time and draws the wrinkles onto your unblemished skin. Time is that which ages you, sets the creases into your flesh and draws out the perfection until your hands shake and arthritis creaks in your bones.
For Rose Tyler, time caught up with her at the age of forty-three. To think that after all she'd been through in her life – her amazing, wonderful, brilliant life – she would be shot down by a malignant cancer in her liver that didn't seem to want to leave her alone. She had escaped the cold, hard grip of death so many times that she thought she was invincible, and when the harsh bite of fatality caught up with her she wasn't ready. There were so many words she had yet to say, so many places she had yet to go, and so many things she had yet to do.
Martha Jones died by accident. It wasn't her fault that she walked into the path of an oncoming car. It wasn't the driver's fault either. Sometimes such a significant memory can be forgotten, and a significant life can be taken, in the blink of an eye. He had that effect. He gave them their moment to shine, their fifteen minutes of fame, but then it was forgotten. Nobody ever remembered the sacrifice Martha Jones made for the sake of the Earth because, thanks to time, she never had to make it.
Donna Noble died unnecessarily, in place of another. She wasn't to know that if she hadn't stepped in front of the small girl, the man would not have pulled the trigger. She wasn't to know that if she had stayed where she was instead of taking action, not one bullet would have left the gun. Time is cruel like that: time can take people away faster than you can blink, in the form of a metal shell pulsing through the air and ripping through the skull of the woman who was, for a brief second, the most important woman in the universe.
The Doctor – their Doctor – died after four knocks on a panel of glass. Nothing more, nothing less. "I don't want to go," he whispered in a coward's voice, crackling and weak. After all he had done, after everyone he had preserved, after every time he had saved the world, he died alone, with nobody to watch him go. Some may argue that it was what he deserved. He deserved such a cruel fate, to be left alone at the end of his life, because he took the laws of time into his own hands and moulded them to fit his own needs. He was the last of his kind and the universe belonged to him. But others pressed that he had done so much more good than evil, saved so many more lives than bad. He was never quick to judge. He apologised and forgave no matter what had happened before. But still he died, still he disappeared from the earth, still his body was ripped away from him and replaced with another. And so a different man with a different face wearing different clothes wandered the universe and preserved lives and saved the world, and the man in the pinstriped suit was forgotten and discarded as the people who knew him and loved him were clasped in death's bleak clutches.
Time cannot take the Time Lord, but it can try.