Title: Split
Characters: Ten
Summary: Another Post-Doomsday fic
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, nor am I doing this for any profit.
A/N – This is my very first Doctor Who fic, so be gentle. Special thanks to Matriaya for the beta. Any mistakes are my own. I hope you enjoy it!
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The wind whips around a tall man in a great coat, tangling itself in his hair. He walks alone along the shoreline of a great lake, quite literally a superior lake, and waits for the moment… the first light….
Five years ago, a storm so great that they named it swept along this coast and sank a ship, just there, (along with twenty-eight others) and so the coast guard decided that a lighthouse should be built on the top of the cliff to warn others away from the same fate. Ninety-six years from now, a different sort of storm swept through the entire world. The battleground of a tower remains as a beacon of sorts, but this man, this doctor, prefers not to see it at the moment.
The wreck, while so close, is unreachable.
But what the Doctor lost in the storm was so much more valuable than a ship with all its cargo.
A ship is on the horizon, going so slowly that it looks to be stopped. But the Doctor knows better. The ship is alone, but must keep pressing on, to the next port…. The stars begin to come out and shine (but so far away, they hardly seem to glow at all… yet they still watch with the intensity that he once saw in her eyes…). They shine silver.
She was golden.
The Doctor turns his gaze back to the short tower on the tall cliff. While perched on the end of the mainland, it will be many years before any road connects it to civilization- supplies for the keeper are hoisted up the side of the 130 foot cliff. The light will cast its beam across the lake, turning every 9.5 seconds, warning… warning… a gull cries, but for the Doctor, and the wreck under the waves, the warning is much too late.
Apart from the gull and the waves, there is no sound. His shoes make no sound in the soft sand, like another beach, so far away… he checks to see if he leaves tracks in the sand. He does.
And then suddenly, a flash goes out across the water, turns a circle away from him, only to come around again 9.5 seconds later. Perfectly in time. The captain of the ship on the horizon must know which lighthouse it is, even without a sense of time as acute as the Doctor's.
The light of the beacon against the dark clouds is warm, and welcoming, which is the exact opposite of what its purpose is (warning… warning…). But apart from the tall purple stars, there is no hint of a storm approaching. The storm is past. The wreck (the vessel? or the man?)is proof enough of that.
Despite the unbearable pain in his soul, the loss of someone who he can no longer see, the light seems to give him hope (I quite like hope) and something he had thought he lost- a sense of direction. A couple more rotations (9.5 seconds… and another… and another, it is almost hypnotic with its perfect sense of time), and the Doctor makes up his mind.
Of course he has not recovered what he has lost (even the steel companies will later see the wreck under the waves as junk), but he carries her memories with him. The stars have her gaze,and the lighthouses will send a warning. Or serve as a beacon.
Lighthouses are more helpful than churches… a wise man once told him. Who was that? Oh yes. Benjamin Franklin… brilliant man, even with the penchant for flying kites in thunderstorms. Of course, it had been the Doctor's suggestion to add the key.
Turning around, he marches resolutely back to his own magnificent vessel (though more lasting than the one at the bottom of the lake), and sets a new course. The light on the top of the TARDIS flashes faster than the beam from the lighthouse before fading into the darkness.
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Additional Author's Note: the lighthouse Ten is visiting is Split Rock Lighthouse.