Nurse Carter bustled around the ward, looking on with ready smiles for the ageing figures who lay propped up by pillows on their beds. Some were reading through distorting lenses others writing letters painstakingly to those outside the bleak walls of Oak Terrace Nursing Home who were unlikely to care for a single word. She found the object of her search, sat as she always was, staring with sad eyes into nothing at all. "Miss Redfern? Joan?" The Nurse shook the old woman's shoulder gently as she slept, dreaming of impossible things. She stirred, turning her head to smile kindly at the girl as she spoke. "You have a visitor to see you."
"A visitor?" The smile dropped in a deluge of thought. She wrinkled her brow further than the folds of time that had marred it for decades, scanning her memory for a trace of any who would even know her name. Her neighbours perhaps? No, she could not truly say she had ever known them. Spoken yes, exchanged Christmas cards, true, but known them? No, Joan knew no one. Had never dared to for fifty years for fear of what harm she may do without the slightest trace of intention. "Who, who is it?"
"A man, he's very enthusiastic about seeing you Joan, you didn't tell us you had a secret admirer tucked away did you!" She chuckled as she moved away, motioning the figure who stood awkwardly by the door brandishing a beautiful bouquet whose petals he plucked at absently as he approached.
Her heart skipped as she saw him. A tall man, lanky, wearing the same pin striped suit and the same expression of unfathomable depths of sadness. She focused on his eyes, the eyes of infinite sadness that was to follow him forever. Alien eyes. "You, why, why are you here?" She paused as she lifted herself up, standing as erect as her stunted figure could manage, she reached out for her water jug, her hand trembling as the water veered dangerously from side to side, he offered a hand forward in help after hurriedly discarding the bouquet to the floor, but she ignored him pouring with intricate care. She turned to face him, eyes flaring, "why now?"
"I – I came to, to," he trailed off. Like a small child explaining to his mother in words of ill-meant stilted apology.
"Yes?" She took a swig of the water glaring at him, locking with his eyes as she saw tears rise. The years had hardened her, she had read of so many years, so many glorious rose-hued fantasies nothing surprised, nothing shocked. And it made her so very sad. So angry. "I do not wish any pity you have to offer, Doctor, had I wished for your pity, do you not think I would plead with you now to return for me in my youth and spirit me away? I ask nothing of you. Say what you must, then I will request that you should leave."
He swallowed, raising his head to accumulate composure before lowering it to speak, his voice that of shame, of residual sorrow that had haunted him for too many years to ignore. "I came, to say that I'm sorry." Joan opened her mouth to speak, but he continued on, voice speeding up as his mind calculated more to say at a furious pace. "I, I never meant to hurt you, never wanted this. Do you really think this was what I wanted? Truly?" He grappled for her hand, seizing it, staring at her eyes wide with the hope for her forgiveness.
"You are an alien. How I am suppose to comprehend one such as you? And you came to apologise? It took all these years, when I'm here, when I'm dying for you to return."
"You have no idea, I've felt so guilty, truly I have, you must believe me. I've spent so long, and, I wanted to, to make things right." His eyes glittered with promise, as he wrung her hand, hurting her without realising it, beaming at the pleasure of his redemption. "Anything Joan. I'm a Time lord, anything you want, ask me, and I can do it. All you need to do is ask." He smiled once more, it would be so utterly charming to any other. Joan considered how one so old, how one who had known so many faces, could radiate such childish eagerness, such a blindness to reality.
"Can't you see? Doctor, oh dear Lord, you are more lost than I. Look at you, you've learned nothing. The only reason for you being here," she paused. Placing careful intonation on her words, "is for your own, selfish, inflated peace of mind. You are a Lord of Time, and despite what you may say, I am to you, nothing more than a nuisance. A burden to be harboured. An object of pity to whom you wish to adopt the role of protector in all your glory." Her words stung, and he cringed, not daring to speak as she continued. "It is not I in need of pity, poor, lonely Doctor. The last of your kind they say? It is you. You are lonely, and it pains you, for you will ever know the loneliness is that of your own making."
"You couldn't possibly know all this." His voice was low, horror struck, as the memories, the memories of seeing a world flare up. The memory of the screams of countless lives blotted out in an instant.
"That alone shows just how little you recall. How little how little you care. And just how slight a relation you bear to the man," she paused, her throat tightening as she summoned an image of the man she had so loved. The bumbling, dishevelled figure of John Smith. The man who had encapsulated so beautifully what it meant to be human. "The man, who I loved. The man, whose life you extinguished as it were nothing." She felt the tears rise as her breathe tightened, and breathes became laboured as she struggled to speak, he reached out for her, clinging hold to her like a limp doll looking on with the most terrible sense of powerlessness. "He, that man, was braver than you could ever be. For he renounced all hope of a life, a happy life, love, marriage, children -" Her breathe caught, as her heart slowed and the man who held her in desperation murmured no, no, no, over and over in between screeches for help.
She summoned enough breathe back for her final words to him, as he looked on in stricken horror. "All things you shall never know, poor, wandering prince. All things that you snatched away from me as I could only watch as you replaced my love with little less than a murderer." She near hissed as her eyes dropped and any trace of her breathe faded beyond distinction.
The last Time lord, clinging onto a dead woman's body on a pathetic steel rimmed hospital bed, choking in grief for little more than the haunting guilt that tortured him for every waking moment.
My first Dr Who fic, all reviews and advice are very welcome. I hope you like it! Sorry for the angst and the ambiguity!