A/N: This story contains spoilers for the Big Finish Eighth Doctor Adventures up to series 4 episodes Lucie Miller/To the Death. If you haven't listened to that yet and plan to do so one day, you probably should stop reading right here. I did warn you.
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who (the TV show nor Big Finish).
Summary: The Eighth Doctor was the kind of man who wouldn't sacrifice one person for the sake of many. He had no right to decide to do things in the name of the greater good. Now he gets confonted with his future and he doesn't like what has become of him and his friends.
The Good Man
"Are you absolutely 100% positive this will work, Doctor?" Clara questioned as she stepped out of the TARDIS onto the surface of the alien planet fiddling with the sonic specs in her hands.
"I'm never absolutely sure. Where would be the fun in that?" he gave her one of his trademark manic grins as he made to follow her outside. Then he seemed to notice something in the distance and terror crossed over his face.
"I'm sorry, Clara. Turns out that you have to do this one on your own," he addressed her.
"What?" she managed to say and before she could get out any more he had ran off and slammed the door to the ship behind him.
Oh no, he wasn't doing this to her again. She retreated back to the TARDIS and tried to open the door. It was locked.
"Let me in, Doctor," she cried.
"Sorry, can't do that," came his voice from the other side.
"Why not?"
"Because you have to do this," came the response.
"Well what about you?"
"Can't be here, could damage the timelines and all that."
"What timelines? I don't understand. What are you talking about, Doctor?"
"You'll understand eventually," was the last thing the Doctor told her before he walked away from the door.
Whatever she said there were no more answers. The Doctor had already walked away and approached the console to put in the coordinates and was preparing for the start, she assumed.
"Doctor! Come back here! Do as you're told!" she tried one last time.
For a second she contemplated jumping on the TARDIS in the hope that the ship had taken enough of a liking to her that she would protect her just as she had before on the way to Trenzalore, a place and time that seemed so far away now.
The TARDIS was however gone before she had the chance to jump on and when she turned around she found herself faced with two strangers.
A blonde girl who was perhaps only a few years younger than her and a man who turned out not to be such a stranger after all.
Clara knew that face, the memories were somewhat hazy and she had only ever gotten a glimpse of it when he walked past her inside the Doctor's time stream but she still recognised it. Without any shadow of a doubt she was looking into the eyes of the man who called himself the Doctor. She stumbled a bit as she felt a sharp pain inside of her head. She rarely revisited the memory of jumping into the Doctor's time stream. She couldn't remember all those lives which her echoes led but she could still recall the pain of being fragmented into a million pieces. It wasn't a good feeling at all.
"Are you alright?" the young Doctor asked kindness reflected in his eyes.
"Yeah, sure," she sighed as she looked at him properly for the first time and considered him carefully. She didn't find those big sad eyes that she was so used to seeing on the faces of her two Doctors. But she had seen them before on an old Doctor. So this was a younger Doctor from before. Before the Time War. Was that why her Doctor had run?
"So who are you then?" the girl wondered.
"Clara, I'm Clara," she answered.
"Well, nice to meet you, Clara, I'm Lucie Miller and this one over here likes to call himself the Doctor."
"I know," Clara said.
"So Clara, you're from my future then, eh?" the Doctor smiled.
Clara pursed her lips: "You know, I can't really tell you anything."
"I understand, rules of time and all that," he smiled at her.
"Blimey, and here I thought you were all about breaking the rules," Lucie teased the Doctor.
"Anyway, Clara, what are you up to? And why would I leave you behind on Toccalone?" the man wondered.
"You didn't leave me behind."
"I have. Well, I will have...it's all a bit confusing," the Doctor stumbled over his words.
"You're not making any sense, Doctor," Lucie commented.
"Yeah, well, you haven't yet," Clara answered disregarding the confusion of the Doctor's companion.
"No. But I will. Why?"
Clara crossed her arms in front of her chest: "You didn't really leave me behind. Just gave me a job to do."
The Doctor's eyes narrowed: "Oh? And why would I let you do it alone?"
"Some nonsense about taking the stabilizers off my bike or something of that sorts. Possibly. Probably," Clara tried to cover up.
"Well. Now that we've settled that. What's the job?" Lucie wondered curious.
"We've been hunting this creature, Saphoxisomething...can't really recall the whole name. Disguises itself as a member of a community and then kills them off one by one from the indside."
"The Saphoximari, they're not truly evil, it'just that it's in their nature to devour. They live on an abandoned planet where they can't cause much evil in their natural habitat. But in case they somehow infiltrate a humanoid or some other life form it can prove disastrous. That's why all the attempts to terraform their home world were abandoned long ago. But someone must have visited it and brought one back, right?" the Doctor provided an explanation as to the nature of the alien and bit his lip in thought: "And you believe it's here."
"We're pretty positive about it. Even got a plan how to beat it," Clara smiled.
"Going into things prepared and with a plan, that doesn't sound like you at all, Doctor," Lucie chimed in.
The Doctor ignored her jest and addressed Clara instead: "What's the plan then?"
She tried to lay out the plan for the Doctor and his companion in as much detail as possible hoping that they might catch any flaws in it and offer some kind of improvement. Deeply inside she wasn't quite as convinced about its effectiveness as she tried to pretend.
The Doctor seemed to echo her sentiments: "I'm not sure this will work."
"What are you going on about? It's you who created it in the first place, mate," Lucie admonished: "would have created it, will have created it or whateer. Don't you even trust yourself, Doctor?"
"Well, regeneration you never know what you'll come up with," the Doctor smiled at her: "so tell me, Clara, where is the Saphoximari hiding?"
The Doctor fiddled with the screen inside the TARDIS trying to pinpoint the exact location of the man whose appearance the Saphoximari had taken the form of while Lucie and Clara watched him at work. After a few minutes of playing around he sent Lucie to get him some supplies. He kept working and analyzing the data in front of him but every so often he would steal a glance Clara's way.
After a while when she could no longer take it, she blurted out: "What is it, Doctor?"
"Do you enjoy it? Traveling with me. Well, the other me, I mean?" the Doctor wondered.
"Of course. I love it!" she answered quickly, perhaps a little too quickly.
His eyes never left hers and she couldn't quite shake off the feeling that he was seeing somewhere deep into her soul. He was so different from her Doctor. Not just from the old grumpy Scotsman but also from her younger Doctor with his big sad eyes behind which he buried centuries of pain. This Doctor didn't feel the need to hide away the kindness. He would never question if he were a good man, he just aspired to be one and gave it his all day in and day out.
She could no longer bear the scrutiny of his gaze and suddenly found her fingernails very interesting to look at.
"Then why are you so sad?" he asked his voice soft unlike the gruff one of her Doctor.
"Sorry, what?" she asked confused.
"Your eyes, they're so sad," he mused.
She raised her eyebrows and laughed: "Sorry, it's just so strange seeing you like this. The Doctor...well, my Doctor, doesn't usually notice those things...," she trailed off.
The Doctor pursed his lips: "Oh? Doesn't he?"
Clara thought about all the times she had been crying or feeling sad in the presence of her Doctor and of the utter confusion on his old face and of the comments he'd make about her face malfunctioning and asking her to stop doing the thing with her eyes: "I don't know. Perhaps he does...in his own way."
"But he never asks."
Her silence is all the answer he needs: "Well, seeing as it seems that I will not be capable of it in the future as your Doctor, I might as well ask it now. So tell me, Clara, what makes you so sad?"
She sighed: "I just had a few very bad days, is all."
"I see," he sighed: "Does it help?"
"What?"
"The running, does it help you?"
She finally met his eyes again: "I suppose it does."
Lucie chose that very exact moment to barge in back into the console room hands full of bits and pieces: "Couldn't quite figure out which one you wanted, so I brought it all."
"Thank you, Lucie," the Doctor smiled and took the piece which he was looking for.
A bit more of fiddling with the monitor and he exclaimed: "Got it."
The trio found themselves in a small house on the outskirts of the human colony. The man whose body the alien creature had taken used to live here with his family. As his wife had passed away it was only his daughter who remained. Right now she was staring at them with eyes full of hope.
"So you will save him? You will save my father?"
The Doctor opened his mouth to speak: "I'm not sure if..."
"Yes, we will save him," Clara cut him off as the Doctor glared at her.
The girl looked at her gratefully as she prepared to open the door and let in the creature which looked like her father.
The moment the alien stepped over threshold the trap fell over him. Clara turned on the sonic specs and a whizzing sound filled the room. The parasite which was at second glance very similar to an Earth worm couldn't bear the sound and slithered ou of the man's body through his mouth.
The Doctor kneeled down next to the man and put the creature inside of a glass jar.
"Got you, little one," he smiled as he tapped the glass with one of his fingers: "I'll drop you off somewhere where you won't be able to do much damage."
"Father," the girl cried out as she fell to her knees next to the man's body. She tried shaking him but there was no answer. The man was dead.
"You promised," the daughter cried looking at Clara with red rimmed eyes: "You prmised you'd save him!"
"I'm sorry," Clara whispered but before she could go on the Doctor dragged her out of the house while Lucie tried comforting the girl. Nothing Clara would say now coud fix things for the man's daughter, the Doctor knew.
"Well the plan went pretty well after all," Clara sighed relieved as they returned to the place where her Doctor had originally landed their TARDIS.
"Well?" the Doctor turned to her astonishment audible in his voice.
"Yes, we won," Clara declared.
"Yes, but the man still died," Lucie protested.
"And everyone else didn't and gets to live. On balance that's pretty good."
"On balance?" the Doctor spat out: "Is that what I taught you?"
"You taught me to do what is right. Sometimes all the decisions you have are bad ones, but you still have to pick one."
"And who are you to think that you get to decide what is right and what isn't?"
"I'm the person who is ready to take the decision when no one else will. Even if it seems hard."
"Is this what I made of you, Clara?"
"You merely taught me to do what needs to be done."
Their conversation was interrupted by a groaning wheezing sound of the TARDIS materializing. Out stepped the elderly grey Doctor his eyes first landing on the younger Doctor and Lucie and then finally finding Clara.
"Clara!" he cried out and stammered: "you're alive."
"Yeah, I am, no thanks to you seeing as you left me behind. Again," Clara complained.
Before she could proceed any further she was squished by a hug.
"OK, we're doing hugging again, are we? I can never keep up with that," she whispered: "doesn't mean I'm still not furious about you leaving me on my own."
The Doctor started to speak but Clara raised her hand to stop him: "Don't even say it. I know I could do just fine myself. That's not the point. That never was the point."
"Yeah, well, you can be angry with me later. Now step inside the TARDIS, we have to get out of here," he said and started to make his way back inside the box.
"Is that it then? Are you just going to run away?" the younger Doctor called after him, anger in his voice.
"That's exactly what I'm going to do, pretty boy."
The younger Doctor grabbed the older one by the sleeve: "I will not let you. First tell me what made you like this."
The older man tried to shake the hand off: "Why? What's the point? You'll forget it instantly. Now let go of me, boy, before you mess the timelines all up."
"You can't just run away from your past, you know."
"Of course I can. All I need is a time machine," the Scottish Doctor replied and gestured to the wooden box: "and it just so happens that I've got one right here."
"Blimey, what happened to turn you to Mr. Grumpy," Lucie wondered looking at her Doctor.
The older of the two Time Lords fought with himself. He would not turn around. It was a battle he knew he would lose. He had to spare her one last glance. Lucie Bleedin' Miller.
"Nothing. I just finally understood that the universe doesn't care," he blurted out and turned on his heels and walked inside his TARDIS. He could not let them see the tears which were forming in his eyes. He couldn't risk messing up his own timeline or Lucie's for that matter. Even if that was something his hearts ached to do.
Clara stepped from foot to foot undecidedly in front of the TARDIS, looking from the younger Doctor and Lucie to the wooden box.
"Clara! Get inside or find someone else to drop you off on Earth. I'm not your taxi service or the school bus!" the Doctor called after her.
"I'm coming!" she shouted without moving from the spot.
Finally she decided for a course of action. She approached the younger Doctor and hugged him tight.
"For what it's worth, you didn't turn me into anything," she whispered in his ear: "You might have given me the means but I'm who I am because of the choices I have made myself. You gave me something to live for when I was lost and for that I am eternally grateful."
If he intended to protest or to respond she didn't give him the space or time as she quickly ran back to their TARDIS before her Doctor ran out of patience and left her behind.
"Are you alright?" Lucie asked the Doctor as they were back inside their own TARDIS.
"No, I'm not."
"So, you're brooding then. You really should stop doing that, you know?"
"Should I?"
"Most people just beat themselves up about what they did in the past. Should have known that you would find a way to beat yourself up about what you will do in the future as well. It's kinda pathetic but sweet at the same time."
"What do you think I should do then?"
"Stop worrying so much for starters. Take it a day at a time and stop thinking so much about being a good man, just be one. Stop dwelling on the past and the future and live in the moment for a bit and all that, you know?"
"Have you been reading some of those motivational books in the TARDIS library, Lucie?"
"Perhaps I have. Or maybe I have just become wise all of a sudden. Anyway, how about an adventure?"
"Lucie Miller, what would I do without you," the Doctor wondered.
Lucie laughed: "I dunno. Probably die of brooding."
The TARDIS dematerialized the moment she closed the door behind her. The Doctor was nowhere in sight, he must have programmed the ship to take them home the minute Clara got on board.
In the end she found him sitting on the stairs under the console a small transmitter in his hands.
She could hear the sound of Lucie Miller's voice "...say something like..." trailing off to which the Doctor answered: "Well, what if I don't want you to travel with me any more, Lucie Miller?" as a single tear trailed down his lined face.
Clara sat down next to him, for a minute contemplating putting her hand onto his, then deciding against it.
"So she's dead," she stated softly: "Lucie, she died."
The Doctor nodded.
"You can talk to me, Doctor. It's not like you're the only one who ever lost somebody."
He finally faced her: "I couldn't even look at her today. That's why I left you to deal with it on your own. And do you know why I couldn't look? Because every time I looked at her, I saw you. And I kept thinking what if something similar happens to you, Clara? What then?"
"Why didn't we both just leave then? Why did you leave me to do with it?"
"Because I remembered something important...something you told me a very long time ago," he started: "Clara, you really ought to find something else to live for."
"I don't. I already have something to live for," she protested.
"It's not good for you."
"You don't get to make that choice for me, Doctor," Clara shook her head.
"When Lucie died, it was a very bad day, a lot more bad stuff happened even beyond her death...I lost more people on that day than on most others...but it's also the day that it all started."
"What started?"
"The descent into darkness. I tried very hard to be the best man those days and I didn't do anything crazy about Lucie...but if I lose you now, I'm not sure I still can...," his voice trailed off.
"Then we will just have to make sure that you don't lose me, silly old man," she smiled as she leaned into him. He carefully put an arm around her shoulders.
"You're a foolish girl, Clara," he whispered.
"Perhaps I am. But you wouldn't have it any other way," she laughed.
"I suppose I wouldn't," he admitted.
A/N: Ok, this sounded way better in my head and turned out kinda meh but I hope at least someone enjoyed it. Also the lines "...say something like..." and "Well, what if I don't want you to travel with me any more, Lucie Miller?" from the last paragraph are taken directly from the 8th Doctor Adventures, 4th series episode To the Death and are by no means mine. Thanks for reading!