SPOLERS FOR THE WATERS OF MARS

The Temptation of the Time Lords

If you've lost all you've ever cared about – everyone, everything, everywhere – then who do you blame? Do you blame yourself, because you couldn't save them? Do you blame them, for leaving you behind? Or do you blame time?

You have lost everything, because you obeyed time. Because you adhered to the laws set out by time, and the Time Lords. You couldn't save Donna from the Time Lord mind, you couldn't break through to Rose on Bad Wolf Bay because you'd pull two worlds into the Void, you couldn't save Reinette from history, like you couldn't save the people of Pompeii. You couldn't save Harriet Jones, Jabe, the Controller, Lynda, Robert Macleish, Angela Price, Mr Skinner, Ursula Blake, Bridget, the Face of Boe, Chantho, Luke Rattigan, Jenny, River Song, Sky Silvestry, the Hostess. How many more have you killed? How many have died in your name?

The man who keeps running, never looking back because he dare not, out of shame. You couldn't even save the Time Lords, your own species, because they had to die. You had to lose your family, your friends, your teachers, your childhood, your home.

But you have to survive. You are the Last of the Time Lords. The only one left.

Time is yours.

Yours to change, to use. Yours to misuse, to control. You can disobey, because there's no-one left to stop you. They died. They're gone. They're never coming back.

There's no-one to stop you.

You can change the course of time, because you're the only one to bear witness to the shift in the future. You've done it before; in small ways, saved some little people. Little things, tiny things. Irrelevant things. Impossible things.

So if by changing time you can save someone you care about, you'll do it. The future can change. It will change. You will change it. You can do anything.

You can absorb the Time Vortex, defeat the Daleks, drain the Thames, and drag the Earth across the stars in your wooden box. You can deny the temptation of the Skasis Paradigm, defeat the Cyber King, and ride out of Vesuvius and save a family from obliteration under the ashes of Pompeii.

You can cross oceans and continents, traverse planets, solar systems and galaxies, explore universes and reality and existence itself.

But you can't control people. Ordinary, brilliant, stupid, selfish, indomitable humans.

You can't stop her.

You can't stop the bullet.

You can't forget her last words...

Is there nothing you can't do.

You are time.

The Last of the Time Lords. The vengeful god. The destroyer of worlds. The Time Lord victorious.

No one should have that much power.

I don't care who you are. The Time Lord Victorious is wrong.

You have to be stopped.

She stops you. She reminds you.

Captain Adelaide Brooke, 1999-2059. Survivor of the Bowie Base One.

Deceased.

Time is patient. Time just waits. In the darkness. In the past. In the future. In the Void of Time. Across oceans and continents, through planets, solar systems and galaxies, past universes and reality and existence itself. It wears down the cliff tops, the mountains, the whole of the world. Time always wins.

Time has its revenge.

Time punishes.

Time teaches.

You must never have this power.

Please drop me a review and let me know what you think.

In case you didn't notice, the list of names is in the order the characters were shown in in the flashback sequence of Journey's End.

~ Nia