This story came from the scourge known as the 'plot bunny'. I watched S6E12 aka 'Closing Time' again, remembering how much I love Craig and Alfie, and then, I watched James and Matt on Doctor Who Confidential. From then on, the plot bunny wouldn't go away.
I'm not sorry.
It took a series of knocks on an unfamiliar door for everything to come rushing back.
The Doctor didn't have to paste the brilliant smile on his face when the door opened, just as he had the last time he'd spoken to anyone who cared about him. This smile was genuine, for a man who knew him better than most of his companions ever had.
Blond, stubble- and exhaustion-marked Craig Owens.
He'd never understood wanting to stay in one place. The Doctor had traveled for a bit more than the millennium he admitted to, traipsing through danger and laughing through his terror and frankly, far too mad for most people. But the special ones understood; they followed him through the universe with tears running down their faces and beaming grins as bright as the Sun. He loved each and every one of them, and mourned them as they left.
Craig was blatantly different. Craig was perfectly happy where he was, pizza booze telly call center 9 to 5 couch keys front door girl football takeaway alarm clock sleep. Not even a crash interface could pull him away from the life that may not have made him blissful, but kept him comfortable and content. He loved a normal woman and never told her, even though he wanted to, because what he'd had was good, if not magnificent.
One thing the Doctor knew: Craig wouldn't ever come away with him.
That was why the Doctor was standing on the outside of a house he didn't recognize, smiling at a man who looked too tired to deal with any more excitement. He needed a stretch of time in which he could stay. Just stay. No TARDIS, no life about to end, no Ponds, no Doctor (Professor) River Song cluttering up his head with guilt and loss that hadn't happened yet. Craig was the one thing that had stayed separate from the Doctor's messy, perfect disaster of a life.
(The Doctor had never disappointed Craig.
He was determined to never disappoint this one strange and wonderful human.)
He let himself inside Craig's new house, noticing that Craig and Sophie had gotten married. He didn't figure out there was a child involved until Alfie (Stormageddon) began to cry.
Well, he should have guessed.
Peace was hard to come by these days. Amy and Rory weren't exactly tranquil, and River Song wasn't even on the spectrum. But holding Alfie (his real name was Alfred), the Doctor felt a sense of peacefulness descend. He may have spoken to the baby as if he was speaking to Craig, reminding him of 9 to 5 jobs, and pizza booze telly, and the mundane things humans did that made them so special to him.
But what did it matter? Alfie was a human baby, and yet, he looked at the artificial stars on his bedroom ceiling and the Doctor could feel him, feel his awe and his overpowering love that only a certain amount of innocence could keep alive.
There was nothing to hear in that moment, only the softest of bedtime stories to this child whose father had taken portions of his two hearts and hid them away in jumpers and a set of keys and a messy house.
Don't you want to stay?
(Maybe he did.)
However staying wasn't an option. The Cybermat came alive again, and Alfie left outside in a sort of swing, crying. Alfie was scared, scared for his dad, scared for the Doctor, and he just wanted to go back to sleep. The Doctor never slept if he could help it, not with the countless faces in his mind, screaming.
He knew babies needed more sleep, though. They were growing, still forming, a soul inside a body that could barely speak its mind. And Alfred Owens' soul wanted to rest so that when he woke up, he could run and explore and fly through the stars that had painted themselves on his bedroom ceiling while the Doctor was distracted.
After the Doctor disabled the Cybermat, Craig fell asleep on the couch with Alfie on his chest. The Doctor finally said something, finally spoke aloud how scared he was, how much he didn't want to go, even though his death was a fixed point, and hell if that was something he could fix, not now, not ever. He couldn't change this one thing, he couldn't repair everything, couldn't mend the shell-shocked look in Amy's eyes, nor the pain in River Song's, nor the sense of betrayal in Rory's. They deserved to live without the ugliness he'd dropped on them, the ugliness Craig and Alfie and, to a lesser extent, Sophie wouldn't hear about until it was too late, and he was already gone.
His brilliant, beautiful companions, his humans, they deserved everything. But he couldn't give them that.
The Doctor let his fingers dance over Craig's shoulder and then Alfie's cheek as gently as he could manage. He kissed them both on the forehead, barely brushing his lips against their skin because he didn't want to wake them up for a long while. The house was so quiet, only the buzz of the refrigerator and the faint tingling of the lights touching the Doctor's ears. He flicked all the light switches, made one last brief contact with Craig's arm, and walked out the front door.
The next day, there were Cybermen to deal with, as well as the kind shop lady thinking Craig and the Doctor were partners in the most untrue form of the word. They weren't married, not engaged or dating, but he wouldn't have minded. He had jokingly confessed his undying love for Craig in the lift/teleport, and tried to not feel lost at the lack of contact afterward.
Alfie knew, like Alfie knew his father needed to have more self-esteem. Alfie looked at him with this look Donna had perfected, the I-know-you're-hiding-something-and-you-had-better-figure-it-out-before-I-show-you-something-really-scary look. While Alfred Owens may have been a child, he saw right through him.
You have a thing for my dad? Well, duh. I already knew that. You think I didn't see the looks and the banter and the assumptions? I'm smarter than you give me credit for.
He said all of that in a very put-upon sigh once the Cyber-Ship exploded. The Doctor cradled Alfie against him and told him never to change.
You know I won't change, and neither will you. Say something, say anything.
But he didn't. He gave Alfie back to Craig, restraining the devastated feelings swarming his chest like a third, butterfly-loaded heart, and said goodbye.
(He wanted to stay like that forever, just the three of them, Craig and the Doctor and little Alfie who knew everything.
But Craig had a wife, and the Doctor had the end of his life, and Alfie had all the strife to come that couldn't be unlocked with a dramatic swipe of his sonic screwdriver, because human lives had to be lived without interference from an alien that would take them to travel because he got so lonely he could waste away.)
He couldn't stay. He never could stay, not in this place with its toys strewn across the floor and the set of keys that no longer fit the lock. The running didn't end here, however much he wished it.
(and he wished)
The first time he came back to that front door, he was so tired. Amy and Rory lived in London, he'd left them to their own devices since he'd pretended to die. They needed to have a normal life without him, but that entailed having nowhere to go when he couldn't sleep on the TARDIS for all his tossing and turning.
He hadn't meant to travel; the TARDIS had a mind of her own, and the Doctor couldn't go against her. What would be the point of that? Besides, she knew best where he needed to be right now.
And apparently, he needed this house, these people, once again.
The Doctor didn't bother knocking, he simply climbed up the side of the two-story building and fell through the open window. He wasn't in the mood to break in, nor to explain himself at this hour. Craig would ultimately interrogate him, but now was not the time for that.
He had to sleep.
He barely made a sound as he landed on the floor in a room he recognized immediately by the stars on the ceiling. The crib wasn't there anymore, though. In its place was a small toddler bed, and in the bed slept the tiny figure of a two-year-old Alfie Owens.
The blond-haired little boy snuffled and turned on his back, a sweet smile brushing his lips. "Oh, my darling, how you've grown," the Doctor murmured. His eyesight began to blur with his exhaustion, so he was saved trying to explain his words to himself. His prostrate form curled on the carpet as he began to breathe easily for the first time since he left his companions behind.
(Alfie would remember his strangely vivid dreams that night, dreams of a laughing man in a bowtie taking his hand and pulling him away from his parents. Mum and Dad were crying, and the man was laughing, and Alfie couldn't help but follow him into the painted stars.)
Upon waking, the Doctor took a careful look at his surroundings, noting how dark it was still. He still had time to leave before Craig and Sophie woke up and witnessed how weak he'd become.
"This place isn't mine," he whispered, his fingers pushing Alfie's hair back from his face. "I don't belong here, I can't mess this up for you. I can't mess this up for your dad." He bit his lip. "Bringing you into what I am endangered your whole family. I care about you too much to stay for long."
But he thought to himself: There must be a reason why I keep coming back here, why I come here when I've got no place else.
The thought was tossed away.
"I have to go. Things to do, places to see." The Doctor hesitated for much longer than he should have, wrenching his hand from Alfie's face with everything he had because the idea of leaving hurt. It hurt and it hurt, but he had to go. He had to.
(Rule one: The Doctor lies. That doesn't account for the quality of the lies, nor how many times the Doctor chose to lie to himself.)
"Goodbye, Alfred Owens."
He left before the toddler on the bed woke up. When the toddler did wake up, he ran to his parents, telling them he'd seen the Doctor again. There was no evidence, as the TARDIS knew how to land quietly, so Alfie was dismissed.
Alfred Owens never quite forgot. He believed in magic, in the stars on his bedroom ceiling, in the extra set of keys to the house.
(and he wished)
The Doctor stumbled from his TARDIS, wreathed in smoke and covered in blood. Battlefields were hardly his favorite places, in fact, he hated them, but there were rumors of a woman called Lupa intervening on that planet. They were friends, well, as much as someone could be friends with someone one had spoken with for five minutes. It would have been nice to see her, but he'd heard from a medic that she'd gotten shot by a blaster.
It felt like he'd been shot by a blaster too. No one deserved to die that way, scared on a field of war.
He hadn't managed to escape unscathed, unfortunately. While blasters may have been involved, the Doctor's wounds were from a war prisoner who had been so tortured, she thought he was one of her captors and beat him until she had secured her freedom.
(Why did people kill? Why would they do something so horrible?
He knew this line of thought was useless; he'd annihilated two races all on his own, after all. But somehow, it needed to be asked.)
Without bothering to check where he'd landed, the Doctor collapsed on the ground. He was far too exhausted to do anything, much less ask for assistance. He ached all over, his muscles and bones shaking and cracking as if they knew exactly how old he was.
He would have slept if he thought he could, but he couldn't, so he was awake if not aware when a pair of child-size hands began wiping the blood off his head with a damp cloth. The hands then moved to remove his suit jacket, bowtie, and shirt, pulling what he thought was a t-shirt over his head in their place. His chest and arms ended up rubbed with ointment that made the bruises pain him just a little less. The hands wrapped his body in blankets, making him comfortable, and then, they disappeared. The Doctor didn't know where they went, but he wanted the sense of peacefulness back.
Just a few more minutes here, and then he'd find his TARDIS and fly away.
Just a few more minutes.
(But it was longer.)
When the Doctor woke, his eyes were suddenly wide open. He didn't know where he was, only that someone had seen him and taken care of him, judging by the blankets and new shirt. He wasn't covered in blood anymore, and his bruises had faded quite a bit.
"You've been asleep for a long time," a voice said from behind him. As the Doctor turned his head, he matched the voice to a young boy, maybe twelve years old. He carried a bowl of oatmeal in his hands. "You landed in my backyard yesterday, and I've been waiting for you to wake up so I could feed you. You're too skinny," the boy remarked disapprovingly. "Where have you been to get those kinds of injuries? I only see things like that on telly."
The Doctor looked at him quizzically. "I landed in your backyard yesterday?"
Making the Doctor open his mouth, the boy began feeding him the oatmeal with a sort of vengeance, saying, "Yes, I did mention that. Now shut up and eat."
Once the oatmeal was gone, the boy took the bowl away, running water in the sink nearby to clean it. As the Doctor finally looked around more, he noticed he was laying on a couch in a sitting room, a fairly generic sitting room with the kitchen only next door. "How did you get me inside?"
"By dragging you, of course. You aren't very heavy, not like some of the animals my mum works with every day." The boy came back into the sitting room, folding his arms. "Now, about your injuries. What fool thing did you do to get in your position?"
The Doctor smiled sheepishly. "I walked out in the middle of a battlefield to look for a friend, where I encountered a POW who thought me one of her captors. Sorry for the disruption."
"Oh, Doctor." The boy kissed him on the forehead. "You will drive us all mad someday."
Before the Doctor could wonder aloud exactly when this boy had learned his name, a familiar figure entered the room. "Craig?"
And it was. Craig was older, twelve years older, but he still retained that boyish smile. "Hi. I'll have you know we were worried sick about you. Sophie nearly had a heart attack when Alfie found you on the grass outside. That's a terrible way to greet someone after all this time."
"Sorry. Couldn't really control my landing." The Doctor sat up, the blanket falling off his shoulders, his eyes fixing on Alfie, who'd grown. Alfie had gotten older without the Doctor noticing. For a moment, he looked down at his lap, unable to meet the gazes of anyone else in the room.
(crow's feet, veins visible, loss of baby fat, gray hairs, height, muscle loss, muscle gain, heartbeat slowing, heartbeat speeding up, palms spreading out, hands curling in on themselves, rings digging into fingers, smile lines, smooth skin, wisdom, knowledge, opinions, beliefs, fixations, memories)
They had gotten older without him.
"So, how are you? Haven't seen you in a while," the Doctor said cheerfully, his fingers tapping absentmindedly on the arm of the couch. "Any new things, old things? Anything interesting?"
Craig smiled. "Yeah. Sophie went back to school and became a veterinarian. I kept my call center job, but I like it there." He paused. "Alfie goes to school on the weekdays, helps out his mum on the weekends. I'm sure you didn't recognize him, what with how tall he is."
The Doctor winced. He should have seen who he was talking to. How could he have forgotten these people already? How could he have forgotten?
In his thoughts, he didn't notice Alfred Owens take his hand. "Hey, Dad. I think he needs some time to heal and some space. He's already been through a lot."
Craig nodded, squeezing the Doctor's shoulder in a friendly gesture before exiting, going out to the garage. The Owens family had a car. How domestic.
"Oh, Doctor," Alfie said again, sitting down next to him. "If you needed an out, you should have told Dad yourself."
"No matter how brave I have to be every day, it doesn't mean I can be brave when I need to."
Alfie frowned. "It's been years. I know you're happy to see him, so why aren't you seeing him like you want to?"
The Doctor let out a short, bitter laugh. He tried so hard to not...well, not show how much this weighed him down. Traveling was wonderful, but he was such an old man and had seen things no old man should have to see. And yet, he still tried. He flourished and flitted about in his rainbow scarves and glasses he didn't need and bowties, of all things, and fezzes, all because he knew the best methods to catch the attention of flourishing, flitting, fleeting people who would look at him and be drawn in. He wasn't a home to them, he was an escape.
And so, the escape himself lived on, until he found an escape of his own, an escape that had time and time again served as a home, a home he gave up because it never really belonged to him. Perhaps someday, someone would think he was home. But for now, the Owens house and Craig and Alfie were the things he wanted to come back to.
"I can't see him because if he asks me to stay, then I will tear your lives apart to do it. And I think nothing will be able to stop me."
The new few days were unspeakably awkward between the Doctor and Craig, and the Doctor knew that was all his fault. He was the easy speaker, the one who held conversations with countless evils and countless ordinary people, countless species and languages and dialects, but politely conversing with Craig Owens seemed beyond his ken.
Alfie did his best to run interference, especially when his mum came home from work. The Doctor appreciated the help, but this was something he had to work through alone.
Somehow, he had to fix it so that he had no nagging desire to come back here. It was a cruel thought, but one that would eventually benefit everyone. His impromptu intrusions could only strain this family further, could only tear a rift in this place he had built up in his mind as being imperfectly humanly perfect. He had a home: his home was the TARDIS. He had companions: Amy and Rory. He had a...River Song.
Well, that train of thought derailed.
"Alfred?"
"Yes, Doctor?" Alfie smiled at the use of his full name. He'd said before it made him feel like a butler.
"I have a very large and difficult question to ask you in a few words."
"Alright."
"Why have I never said 'I love you' to River Song?"
Alfie's brow furrowed as he thought about this. "To you, love is a very private thing. You keep your feelings to yourself more often than you share them. You might give looks or do things that show your feelings, but you don't say anything because if they die, or if they leave you, your hearts will be broken, and they will have taken your love away with them. The more you say that you love someone, the more your hearts will die and scar and rip when they go. You want to retain your ability to love at all."
The Doctor's lips turned down. "But she's supposed to be my wife. And I've loved before."
"You've learned from your mistakes, or at least, that's what you think. You believe you can love in silence, and that's enough. The same idea works here too. You want to scream, but you won't. You won't because you care too much about me and Dad to say what you're thinking, what you're feeling." Alfie took the Doctor's hand. "Doctor, you love us, and you love this place, but you're going to leave."
"You're right," the Doctor choked out. "I'm going to leave."
And this gentle look crossed Alfie's impossibly wise, twelve-year-old face. "Go on, then."
The Doctor stood up quickly, brushing invisible dust off his shoulders, straightening his bowtie, which he'd gotten back from the laundry, and walking out of the house to the backyard, where his loyal TARDIS was parked. Snapping his fingers jauntily, as he had to keep up appearances, he went through the blue door and shut it behind him definitively.
"Maybe we'll go see River Song, how's that, ol' girl?"
(But before the TARDIS could take off, he rushed to the door and opened it a crack, taking one last look at the house in Colchester. Slamming the door a little harder than he needed to, he pretended he hadn't seen a pair of eyes following him away, a pair of eyes briefly looking through a window, and then closing the curtains with an air of finality.)
(and he wished)
There were some things the Doctor knew for certain, like fixed points. Rules.
But there were no rules regarding how to recover from watching your companions be taken away by Weeping Angels.
And he could fight until he died and scream until his lungs gave out and cry until his tears dried up, but this was something he couldn't fix.
Alfie was right; he lost himself every time someone he cared about left or died. He may have been 1100ish, but that didn't mean he felt like it all the time. Now, he felt how Captain Jack Harkness must have felt after all these wasted years: so old his bones could have crumbled with a touch, his blood could have gone sluggish, and there would be no relieving of the weight of everyone he'd loved dying. His sense of morals was so skewed, and he was so angry.
He had to leave, go somewhere the memories of Amy and Rory had no right to follow him.
This time, he knew exactly where the TARDIS was taking him.
When he stepped outside, the Sun was just rising and he wanted to stare at it until he went blind. The grass that had been green when he was last here was brown and covered in snow in patches. This once, he went to the front door instead of barging in through the back glass sliding door.
He only pressed the doorbell once, because there was no point in enthusiastically pressing it at this hour, nor did he have the joy for such an act. There was some shuffling and scraping on the other side, and the Doctor fully expected Craig to be a bit peeved for waking him up this early. But it wasn't Craig who opened the door.
Alfred Owens, maybe twenty years old, stared back at him, blond, stubble- and exhaustion-marked.
The surprise hit his face for maybe a half second, and then he held his arms open, practically inviting the Doctor to climb inside, burrow in and never climb back out again. He settled for a hug. Alfie was taller than him now, and just the perfect height for him to lay his head on Alfie's shoulder.
"What happened?" Alfie asked quietly, lightly swaying them both side to side. And the Doctor remembered, he remembered the boy who loved before he could talk, who stared at his bedroom ceiling covered in stars and wished, because they had both wished.
"They're gone. Amy and Rory died," he replied, his voice muffled in the skin of Alfie's neck. "And I can never see them again. Not ever."
"You were right," the Doctor choked out. "You were right all along. I'm so angry, and I'm scared, and I want to use a gun. I've never wanted to use a gun so much as I do now. They were taken away from me, they were taken, and I can never get them back, so I might as well destroy everything in my path instead of trying. Alfie..." He looked up. "They're gone for good. And all I could think was that I could come back here, and everything would get better. Amy and Rory would hate me for thinking that."
"No," Alfie reassured, "they wouldn't think that. They loved you, and they would want you to be happy."
"How can you know these things? You're too young to know these things." The Doctor attempted to laugh, but it came out all wrong.
"I know, because if I died, I would think the exact same thing," Alfie said.
(And it was like a secret, the way he said it, all whispered and slow with his hands clasped behind the Doctor's head. [He hadn't let go yet.]
The Doctor's hearts were hard and cold, had been since he'd left New York, his face like stone and his eyes like ice.
He knew that this wouldn't end well. He knew.
Amy and Rory had died, torn away from him, but together. He couldn't give that admittedly small gift to Alfie.
But this house, this person in Colchester, was the only place he felt safe, the only place he felt loved right now.
He couldn't walk away, not easily, not now.)
"I want to stay, Alfred Owens."
"Go on, then. Stay."
(and he wished)
Later, he would deny ever having lived those years. In fact, when he counted how old he was, he ignored those years altogether, because he didn't age at all. His whole body lightened, his hearts grew back together. And he had Alfie.
The Doctor eventually learned that Craig and Sophie were abroad for a few years for Sophie's dream job with the orangutans, and Alfie lived in the house all by himself, going to uni, living an ordinary life. He accepted the addition to his house easily, as if he'd always been waiting for the Doctor to come back.
(Maybe, just maybe, the Doctor was waiting too.)
The Doctor repeatedly went to classes with Alfie, crashing parties and shopping trips, and Alfie just laughed, dragging him along to where the real fun was. He never pushed the Doctor away, said it taught them both bad habits.
The one thing the Doctor didn't expect (well, there were a lot of things, but this was particularly surprising) was how Alfie only got angry at him once. The one time Alfie got truly angry at him was the one time he didn't tell Alfie where he was.
Alfie came into the house like there were Daleks on his heels, running up and down the stairs calling his name, and when the Doctor replied, he fell on the couch next to him and let out a sort of incoherent screech. "I was so afraid you'd left again."
"You don't need to be afraid of that." And the Doctor was telling the truth.
And maybe, he'd regret this, but he asked Alfie one day, "Can I show you something amazing?" and Alfie said yes.
Maybe it wasn't just the house with its ill-fitting keys and stars on the ceiling. Maybe it was Alfred Owens, smiling at him over the TARDIS console, his hand pulling the Doctor along behind him instead of the other way around. Maybe it was Frank Sinatra performing all around them, the Doctor with his bowtie (of all things) and Alfie with his navy blue waistcoat sans jacket, dancing.
And if he never loved again, if his hearts were broken once more before he died, then he had this.
(There was no sense wishing anymore.)
(When he was two thousand years old, he gave in.)
(and he wished)
I hope you guys enjoyed. I always thought the Doctor needed a home, so I gave him one. Please review, I would love to know what you thought.