Someone To Watch Over Me
"So you've been watching me? All this time?"
"No. Because you're right, I don't look back. I can't. But the last time I was dying, I looked back on all of you. Every single one. And I was so proud."
-Josephine Jones and the Eleventh Doctor, The Sarah Jane Adventures: Death of the Doctor, part 2
...
Borrowed Time
The Doctor was dying.
His body had absorbed a highly concentrated dose of radiation. It was tearing through his body, breaking down his system molecule by molecule. His Time Lord physiology had already kicked in, the regeneration process slowly permeating his system as it followed the progress of the radiation and attempted to repair the damage.
He wondered if it would be enough. It felt strange this time. Different. It had never taken this long before.
"Don't go thinking this is goodbye, Wilf," he said, turning to Wilfred Mott, "I'll see you again, one more time."
"What do you mean?" asked the human, the man whom the Doctor had just sacrificed his tenth incarnation to save, "When's that?"
Wilfred Mott. The grandfather of his friend and former companion Donna Noble. An honorable veteran of the British Army, he had served in World War II without once having taken a life. When they first met two years ago, at Wilfred's newspaper stand in London, the Doctor had no idea the impact the human would have on his life.
He will knock four times.
It had been a prophecy. A clairvoyant foretelling of the impending end of his life.
Until recently the Doctor had thought the prophecy had referred to the Master, to the constant incessant drumming inside the rival Time Lord's head. A rhythm of four. The heartbeat of a Time Lord.
But when it was all over, after the Master and the Time Lords were sent back through the rift to their time-locked homeworld of Gallifrey, the Doctor heard four distinct taps.
Wilfred Mott. Inside the partitioned booth behind a radiation shield, about to be flooded with lethal radiation. The Doctor rescued him, but in doing so was irradiated himself.
"Just..." he paused for a moment, as if searching for the words to explain the ominous feeling he had concerning this prolonged regeneration, "Keep looking. I'll be there."
He turned and headed towards the tall blue box that stood waiting across the street.
"Where are you going?" Wilf called after him.
The Doctor paused at the TARDIS door and glanced back. "To get my reward."
...
Fate. Destiny. The Time Lord Victorious.
As the last of the Time Lords he had recently declared his total authority over all of time itself, refusing to be bound by the laws that had governed his people for so very long. He had taken the misguided view that Time owed him, that it should bend to his will and follow the course that he chose for it.
"Yes, because there are laws. There are Laws of Time. Once upon a time there were people in charge of those laws, but they died. They all died. Do you know who that leaves? Me! It's taken me all these years to realise: the Laws of Time are mine, and they will obey me!"
However, the death of Adelaide Brooke had put all his arrogance into sudden startling perspective.
Regardless whether or not Time itself owed him in any conceivable way, it still deserved his respect. He realized that he had to earn the right to shape its progress. So if this was indeed his fate, if this regeneration was to fail and his body burnt itself out, then he believed that Time was now allowing him that right. A final chance to shape his fate. His destiny.
It was his Time, and he was going to make the most of it.
...
The time rotor rose and fell within the central column of the control console as the Doctor walked past, slipping out of his long coat and folding it over the back of the leather sedan seat nearby. He stopped for a moment and slowly glanced around the TARDIS control room.
"A thing that looks like a police box, standing in a junkyard. It can move anywhere in time and space?"
The TARDIS was filled with echoes of the past. Memories clung to the walls and hung in the very air. They were clearest at times like this, when he was alone. With just the sounds of the TARDIS itself, and that of his own hearts beating. Clearer now, as his own life slowly ebbed away.
"Listen. Do you have any idea how long I've been operating this TARDIS?"
"523 years."
"Right! Five hund- What? Has it really been that long? My, how time flies."
"A common delusion among the middle aged."
He didn't have a particular destination in mind at the moment. Until one presented itself, he would keep the TARDIS on standby, hovering within the vast endless void of the time vortex. As reliable as the TARDIS was, there were still occasions where it chose to misinterpret the coordinates he set.
"Call yourself a Time Lord? A broken clock keeps better time than you. At least it's right twice a day, which is more than you are!"
However, the Doctor truly believed, after all this time, that the TARDIS sometimes purposely chose to ignore his direction, choosing instead its own destination. It may not have always taken him where he wanted to go, but it did always seem to take him where he needed to be.
"Oh I do love the spring. All the leaves, the colors..."
"It's October."
"I thought you said we were coming here for May Week?"
"I did. May Week's in June!"
"I'm confused."
"So was the TARDIS."
"Oh, I do love the autumn. All the leaves, the colors..."
He ran a hand along the edge of the console. "In the end, it always comes down to you and me, doesn't it?" he said aloud. After a moment, he patted the console. If only the TARDIS could talk, he found himself thinking, not for the first time.
Now, the next thing he had to do was figure out where he had misplaced a certain clipboard.
He strolled towards the inner doors that led further into the TARDIS and left the control room.
...
Walking the corridors, the Doctor discovered that the TARDIS had drained the pool. He was certain it would be gradually filled again though, as it seemed that the TARDIS was compensating for the leak in one of the several bathrooms. The temporal containment field he had set up some time ago must have failed.
The Doctor shook his head. He really needed to find a washer to fix it once and for all. That's all it needed, really. A small metal disc. He was sure he had a small plastic bag full of them somewhere aboard the TARDIS. If only he could remember where he had left them.
However, that would have to wait. For the moment, he was searching for a clipboard.
He stopped suddenly and glanced at the nearest door. He was fairly certain that the reconstructed zero room was supposed to come before the library, not the other way around.
"Have you been redecorating again?" he called out to the TARDIS.
Even though he was not really expecting a reply, he was still rather disappointed not to receive one.
"If I were a clipboard, where would I be?" he muttered as he continued down the corridor. A door opened as he stepped into the room beyond, then stopped briefly as he glanced around. "If I were a clipboard that had been misplaced by an absent-minded Doctor, where would I be?"
He appeared to be in a small storage room. Several crates, all of equal size, were lined along the walls. Many were stacked atop each other, as others were scattered about the room, some of which had been opened. Inside the nearest open crate could be seen a rather squarish metal casing, amongst loose circuit boards and cabling. On its side could be seen two characters of the English language: K-9.
He couldn't help but smile at the small familiar robotic computer. His last foray into this room had been to obtain a replacement for the K-9 unit he had given as a gift to his old friend and former companion Sarah Jane Smith. He deemed it only fitting, as he had been for the most part responsible for the destruction of its predecessor.
Also, it was pretty much time for it, as replacement parts were not understandably available in 21st century Earth, and K-9 had fallen into quite a sad state of disrepair.
At the moment, however, he had more pressing concerns than this brief pause of reminiscence. He glanced around and his attention fell upon the label taped to the wall next to the door. It was written in green indelible ink. Do not press the blue button.
It was also quite an odd message, as there were not any blue buttons in the immediate vicinity that could be seen. After staring at it for several seconds, he grinned. "Of course." He tore off the label and hurried from the room back out into the corridor.
A short while later, he entered another room and paused briefly to stick the hand written label onto the wall next to a large blue button. A glance around this room revealed it to be an indoor garage of sorts, containing several vehicles of various types and sizes. His eyes fell for a moment on an antique Earth-style bright yellow roadster. The license plates read WHO 8.
Part of the Doctor wished he had time to take Bessie out for one last spin. But he was running on borrowed time as it was. He didn't have any to waste on such minor diversions.
He approached the workbench set against the wall nearest to the afore-mentioned big blue button. It was there where he finally found the much sought after clipboard.
Firmly clamped to the clipboard was a small pamphlet with the title So You're Caught in a Rocket Attack.
Deciding that it wasn't needed at this particular time, the Doctor opened the clip and removed the pamphlet, placing it down on the workbench.
Empty clipboard in hand, the Doctor left the vehicle storage area.
He hurried down the corridor, heading back towards the TARDIS control room. Suddenly he stopped and glanced at the wall beside him. He took a step towards it, leaning forward slightly, as if he was listening for something.
"Is this...?" he began to mutter, then trailed off and nodded. "So that's where you've gotten to."
He straightened and tapped a hand against the wall. "Open," he called out, and waited as a section of the wall suddenly slid aside to reveal a dimly lit room beyond. He slowly stepped inside and approached the large tube-like canister in the center of the room. It appeared to be an alien escape pod made of a heavy dark metal alloy. Its clear canopy revealed a still figure within, frozen in a type of suspended animation more advanced than cryogenics. It was a female figure, her features obscured by the glowing blue liquid within the pod.
He placed a hand against the pod's clear surface. "I'm so sorry," he whispered, "But perhaps in my next life." He paused for a moment before adding, "If not... the TARDIS will take care of you."
He stood like that for a moment longer, then lowered his arm and stepped away from the pod. A slight flutter in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He looked up to see two dark bats dozing on the ceiling.
At least Jasper and Stewart were keeping her company, he thought as he turned and left the room. There was nothing more he could do for her now.
...
He returned to the control room a short while later with his clipboard in hand.
For all intents and purposes, it appeared to be just a basic Earth-type wooden clipboard. Nothing all that remarkable about it. Nothing that stood out or gave any indication that it was different than any other basic Earth-type wooden clipboards. It even had that rather unique wooden smell.
However, it was in fact not a basic clipboard at all. It was not from Earth. It was not even made of wood. It was still technically a clipboard, as it had a metal clip that could be used to hold in place whatever of sufficient size needed holding in place. But its main function was not that of a clipboard at all.
The Doctor tapped the seemingly apparent clipboard and the surface rippled slightly and flickered, revealing that it was actually a portable visual screen.
There was a device stored away aboard the TARDIS known as a time-space visualiser. It had been given to him long ago during a visit to the space museum on the planet Xeros. It was a rather large bulky machine, and the Doctor very much preferred not to drag it back and forth about the TARDIS. So although it had taken quite some doing. he had been able to interface this clipboard screen with the controls of the time-space visualiser.
It had indeed taken quite some doing, not as a reflection on his skills in any way, for he had on several occasions in the past stated that he was, in point of fact, a genius. The main reason it had taken quite some doing was due to the rather antiquated nature of the visualiser controls. It had been in a museum after all.
While the creators of the visualiser had been quite technologically advanced, they had still deemed it necessary to resort to an old fashioned and very much out-dated punch card system where the user would have to enter the desired information on a series of plastic cards.
Quite some time ago, back when he had the time for such leisurely projects, the Doctor had been able to bypass the necessity for the use of these punch cards, and had developed a more convenient and portable touch screen interface in the form of this rather plain-looking clipboard.
The time-space visualiser was a rather remarkable device in that it had the ability to show any scene from any point in space in any point in time, provided that the event in question had already happened. Simply put, it was only able to show the past. The visualiser was location specific, and showed the past based on where it was situated in time. However, time was quite subjective aboard a time machine like the TARDIS. So the visualiser compensated by showing the past in relation to the TARDIS, and in effect, the Doctor himself.
That being the case, the Doctor would not be able to look ahead to see if he survives this prolonged regeneration. He would, however, be able to look back. Back on his own life. His lives. And the lives of those he had met. Those he left behind.
So the Doctor was going to do something he had never done before. During what could possibly be the final moments of his life, he was going to look back on the lives of everyone that had ever meant anything to him. His friends. His companions.
And in his own way, whether it be indirectly or not, have the chance to say goodbye.