Todays picture
His body wouldn’t stop burning. He could practically see the flames emerging around him. It was so hot… It wouldn’t end.
Martha told him it had been a fever and nothing more. She’d said he needed some sleep.
Hah.
The Doctor bristled with anger as he tossed and turned in his bed. Sleep. He hasn’t slept in years. He probably didn’t even know how to do it anymore.
But he couldn’t have convinced Martha.
“Try” she’d said. “Just try.”
And so his lids became heavier…
Close your legs.
That’s what he’d always said.
“Close your legs and don’t let anything come between them.”
My father’s words.
Sometimes he used to alternate between “anything” and “anyone”.
But back then I didn’t care. Back then I didn’t even know what he meant.
I was a child. I can’t remember when it started or why it started.
Of course, if I look at the past like I do know…
But back then I didn’t know why he always said that. I just didn’t understand it.
It sounded stupid. It was just stupid to say something like “Shut your legs” to a child. I would have expected something like “Shut your mouth!” or “Keep quiet!” or even “Behave!”
But no.
Always: Close your legs.
Tie them together at night.
Never put your legs up in the air.
Don’t spread your legs for anyone.
And don’t let anybody come near you.
His words. Every time I played with others. Every time I stayed out. Every time I met friends.
Close your legs.
Gosh, he was horrible!
Now I know of course that he had tried to protect me. He’d wanted me to be safe. To be protected, always. He never wanted me to suffer; he’d wanted to shield me from the bad things of the world.
From him.
My father tried to protect me with every means, stupid as they were.
But in the end it was of no use.
He got me nonetheless.
He.
Koschei.
He’d always been there. He’d always been around. He’d played with me when I was a kid. He’d comforted me when I was growing up.
Always Koschei. Always by my side.
My father must have known what awaited me. He must have seen the future with his own eyes.
One day he just started to stare at me, stony faced, like if something had changed, if I had changed, if something wasn’t right.
I was still a child back then, I was twelve, I reckon, or fourteen, at the most.
Still a child. An innocent child…
My father had seen it. He knew what awaited me within a few years.
He must have seen the negative impact Koschei would have on my future. And he tried to change the prophecy. He tried to thwart the inevitable.
And of course he failed.
Decades later he would tell me what he had seen, back then. And he felt guilty.
He always thought he should have tried harder. But you can’t evade the inevitable destiny.
And he had to learn that.
In the meantime I kept running. Always running. From everything.
But the only thing I should have run from was Koschei.
And I didn’t.
Mistakes.
That’s what life is all about. It’s about taking wrong turns, making wrong decisions, and ending up in a deadlock where you’re unable to move. Either forwards or backwards. Simply everything’s a mistake.
And I must know.
I’ve been a mistake myself. At least it’s what my mother always used to say.
I was a mistake.
And she was probably right about that.
I ought to have known better. I never should have tried it. I never should have started it.
I should have stayed away from Koschei, just like my father had told me. But life was full of choices and you ought to make the wrong decisions.
I was a mistake and I couldn’t do anything except making mistakes myself.
But it was so hard to run with closed legs…
Gallifrey had been beautiful back then. Or it was only in my memory. But in my memory it was beautiful. Perhaps the best place for a child to be raised. Calm. Quiet. Well situated. And peaceful.
So peaceful.
Well, that was before the war. But at the time it was still far away. Decades…or even centuries.
I lost track of time, I suppose. And I can’t even remember how it all started.
Was it when I stayed with my friends up all night on a hill just to watch comets fly past and dead stars burning out? Or was it when Koschei and I lay on the red grass, observing the golden clouds in the sky getting torn apart by heavy storms and he told me that it should stay like this forever?
No, that wasn’t what he said. He’d said: We should stay like this forever. And I didn’t even know what he meant by that. But it made me smile nonetheless.
Anyway, I can’t remember. Must have been one of these days.
That’s when it started. In one of these nights he said it for the first time.
“Close your legs. And never open them again.” And I was too young, too irritated and too scared just to ask him what he meant by that. I simply nodded, back then. And he figured that I understood.
But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to swear to him.
And a week later or so he did it the first time: he tied my legs together.
He simply came in with a rope, grabbed my blanket off of me, wrapped the rope around my ankles and fastened it with knots. Then he left my room without saying a word.
At first I was shocked. Then I was scared.
And last but not least I refused to accept it.
But my father wouldn’t tolerate contradiction.
And as soon as I started untying my feet after he’d left my room, he tied up my hands as well.
And if I dared to protest he’d tie my hands to my back. But he wouldn’t give in.
And he wouldn’t explain it to me.
He thought it best to give me the time I needed; he thought I would, in due course, become accustomed to it.
But that didn’t stop me from offering resistance.
And maybe it was wrong of my father to get angry at me. And I guess he shouldn’t have hit me or even beaten me up during some of the nights, when I resisted against getting tied up, either.
But the worst I could have done was to admit defeat and simply accept that I’d have to tie my legs together night after night.
And that’s what I did.
I obeyed and I never would have opposed.
If it hadn’t been for Koschei…
