He is too easy to trust, this man.

But no, he is not a man. This being, then. This being is too easy to trust, too easy to talk to.

It is too easy to spill your secrets to him, and too hard to stop.

And he has to carry those secrets with him for all eternity as he flees across the stars.

Two hearts. He can love with all of his heart and have enough space left to hate just as deeply. But I think all he has room for is loneliness.

Nine hundred years of shedding his face like a snake sheds its skin—instead of dying, he outlives anyone who ever cared.

Anyone who was willing to take the monsters with the man.

The last of his kind, the lonely little angel who never really learned how to dance.

He has left so much behind, but he can never forget. He has the whole world on his shoulders and the whole universe inside his head. He knows everything there is to know, and I don't know how he lives.

He has known grief and rage and pain and he can never be free.

I wonder. Day after day, I wonder what it would be like to live outside of Time, in his world of fire. I have seen him give others back their souls while losing pieces of his own.

And after a while, there is nothing left for him to lose.

Because when so much time has passed, when so many have died by your hand, all you can do is freeze your heart until it is as cold as any ice.

Colder, perhaps, for when you live forever, there is too much emptiness and nothing to fill the abyss.

With two hearts, there is twice the room for sadness and solitude.

He lives outside of Time, and only one who is the same could fill that void. But he stood on the front lines while his kind died around him, and there is no one left.

Even his memories hurt him now, and all he can do is save as many people as he can. All he can do is trade his happiness for a hundred thousand lives.

Because he is a wanderer, never to settle. He is a wanderer, and there is no power on this earth—or any—that can stop him.

He is the stuff of legends, the lonely god who can never go home.

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This is for the Doctor (obviously). I wrote it sort of in the point-of-view of someone who was maybe part of one of the Doctor's crises, who helped, maybe was the central part of the problem, but who wasn't quite... important enough. Maybe someone who wasn't his Companion, but who would be later - or who wanted to be.

I don't know. This is shamelessly filled with quotes straight from the episodes of "Series 2". (I just finished watching "Doomsday" again - I cry every time.) I'm not going to cite every one and their episode...

Oh yes, the title comes from the episode "New Earth", where Novice Haines (Haynes?) tells of the legends that say that the Face of Boe will reveal his greatest secret to 'one like himself, a wanderer, the lonely god.' Something like that.

...I think I have a Doctor Who addiction, especially to the Tenth Doctor, I've watched every episode of "Series 2" (10th Doctor - my favorite of them that I've seen, although I really haven't seen too much of the earlier Doctors - and Rose - whom I like a bit better than Martha at this point) in the past week, except for "The Christmas Invasion", which I may or may not watch today.. -shrugs-

So... hope you enjoyed it. It's not my best, but... Review?