AN: Hello! I wrote this for a multigenre project on Pompeii in my creative writing class! It's a bit sad, but I tried to give it a hopeful ending. Hope you guys enjoy, and drop a review or favorite if you feel like it!
"History's back in place, and everyone dies."
"But your own planet… it burned."
"No more. No more. No more."
The Doctor jerked awake on the grated floor of his home, drenched in a cold sweat that was immediately followed by nausea. Grunting, the last of the Time Lords propped himself up, letting his head lean against the edge of the console. His breath was short. He rubbed an exhausted hand over his face, wishing that he could get a peaceful night's sleep for once. Not that he deserved it.
It was supposed to have been a safe trip. An easy outing for Donna's first proper journey in the TARDIS. Rome, she said. He'd gotten the flight wrong. But this Time… it wasn't just the wrong decade, he wasn't just off a couple cities. No, this was Pompeii. When they had landed, his Timesense churned; he could just feel the fixed point surrounding the place. He hadn't thought twice about it. Careless, really.
When Donna worked out that twenty thousand people were going to die that day, she did the most human thing: try to save everyone. The very mention of the idea made Time shudder around this point. Pompeii was always meant to be buried. Everyone was meant to die.
"History's back in place, and everyone dies."
And, as it so turned out, he was the one to put everything back in place. Every Time. Every damn Time, he had to be the one to put everything back together again, and, more likely than not, it involved a lever of mass destruction. Numbers flashed before his eyes.
"Twenty thousand people, you're going to let them all burn?"
"Did you ever count? The children on Gallifrey, did you ever count how many there were when they burned at your hand?"
"Two point four seven billion."
The Doctor flinched. Pompeii had brought back too many memories, ones he didn't sleep to avoid. The escape pod in the mountain was as blistering hot as his childhood shack in the middle of the Arcadian desert on his home planet, and he saw the Time Tots fresh from Pythia's Loom dancing and laughing and screaming and crying as the planet broke up.
He had cuts on his hands from an earlier battle of the War. The crystal on the Gallifreyan superweapon sliced them open, covering them with blood. Even when he regenerated, he could still see the deep scarlet.
He had scrubbed his hands until he drew real blood.
The Doctor swallowed the impending bile biting at the back of his throat. That memory was better left buried in the ashes of all the dead on his hands.
But it had been unearthed in Pompeii. He had been forced to kill them all, kill them all again. There was no volcano, there was just a big red button and an alien plot. It had been too close to Gallifrey, and he almost froze at the most important moment. Almost.
Humanity had saved him. Donna had.
"Not the whole town. Just someone. Save… someone."
Pompeii was destruction, but Pompeii also served as a reminder. A reminder that he had to be the Doctor when no one else could. A reminder that sometimes, he needed to have someone to bring him back to the ground. A reminder that the best of humanity existed in the simple, the common…
"Oi, spaceman."
He jumped again, this Time hitting his head on the lever above him. The TARDIS shook with uncertainty in the Vortex, but it probably wasn't anything significant. Probably. He'd investigate later.
He looked over to the new voice to see Donna Noble standing at the edge of the hallway in the console room. She had cleaned up, but even though the ash had been washed from her hair, he could still see the lingering sadness in her eyes.
"I thought I'd find you in here," she said softly, walking further inside to stand by the console. "Are you- how are you doing?"
The Doctor smiled, somewhat in bitterness, but mainly in fondness for the human instinct of knowing just the right questions to ask.
"I'll be fine, Donna," he murmured, standing up at the console, knees still slightly weak from the nightmare. At her incredulous expression, he added, "I will. I always am-"
"Look, I dunno how they do the whole emotions thing on Mars-"
"I'm not from-"
"Oh, don't be daft, I know," she rolled her eyes in mild, amused annoyance. "Not the point. What is the point, is that… well, I wasn't having the best of time sleeping. I know we saved Caecilius and his family and that has to count for something, but-"
"It does," the Doctor interrupted her, his tone making it clear this was not up for question. Even if he was just questioning it himself. "Trust me, Donna, it… it counts. It has to."
"I know, it's just-" her voice cut off, breaking off. "All those people- twenty thousand people. The rest of them, that remained there, they… they just… some of them must have died alone, and now all of history's gonna forget about them-"
"We won't." His voice was soft, firm. "Their stories will never be forgotten. I promise you, Donna, we won't forget them."
The ginger paused, opening her mouth for a second, but hesitating at the last minute, before deciding to speak.
"Could we… honor them? Hold some sort of remembrance, or something?" she asked, her words wavering. "I know it sounds silly, but maybe…"
"I think that sounds like a brilliant idea."
That night in the TARDIS, the two companions returned to the beaches, taller with hardening rock, and they buried Donna's purple stola in the sand, a grave for the lost souls of Pompeii. Years later, archaeologists would discover the stola and wonder just how it had gotten there in the midst of the destruction. They would also discover a piece of parchment paper that most definitely should not have been there, in a language that most certainly should not have existed.
"They will never be forgotten."