If I owned Doctor Who, which I don't, I certainly wouldn't be sitting here posting this. Or maybe I would. Who knows. Anyways.
I wrote this for us. For all of us.
He stumbles through the snowflakes, through the freezing air, moaning and groaning with the effort of simply walking forward. And he's barely able to do that. He's staggering. Unable to balance himself on his own two feet or push past the agony in his body any more, he collapses. He catches himself before he falls face down in the snow. There on the ground he remains, distraught and on his hands and knees, unable to rise again.
His face is terrified. It is a painting of a man who knows his inevitable death has finally caught up to him, and will shortly take him down. He cries out, though so quiet either with lack of strength or perhaps strength enough to hide his fear, that he hardly makes any sound at all. The despair is hidden now, muted, as he withdraws as best he can. There is no one watching.
Even so, there in the cold with the white ash raining down on his head in the middle of the open, lonely street, forgotten and abandoned, he weeps alone in anguish. No one hears him, and he drops his head low, letting it hang limply off his neck. He is giving up. He is letting it in.
"This song is ending…" comes a voice.
"Like hell it is," comes a different sort of tone now, but it's not from the man. It's from the shadows off to the side; a euphonic string of choir voices of a higher pitched feminine sound.
The man is oblivious to the exchange. His remaining strength leaves him quite suddenly, and the arms beneath him give way and he plummets down the last few feet into the frozen slush he was kneeling in. Out of the darkness from whence the voice came scrambles a girl, a very typical, brown-haired woman. She is both young and mature, fresh in appearance but weathered in expression, as if she has already seen all the steps of life without walking them. Something about her makes it hard to tell her age. Her concern for the fallen man, though, is clear; she rushes towards him with the swiftness of urgency in her steps, half running, half sliding across the road. In her face is a deathly anxiety despite the startling confidence that possessed her voices only moment ago.
Knees slam into the snow beside him, and she touches his back lightly. She is frightened. She is shaking.
She calls to him in many voices. She slaps and pats at his shoulder, but gently. But he doesn't wake or respond to the touch. His face is smooth with the appearance of peace that unawareness brings. The girl can't rouse him from unconsciousness. "You can't go yet," she murmurs to him desperately with many tongues, though he cannot hear. With little effort at all, she rolls him over onto his back, pulls him onto her lap, and searches his face. The whole front of him is damp from the melted snow that was crushed beneath him as he lay there. The girl brushes some of the little icicles from his face and hair, shivering as she touches his skin. His head lolls backwards and drapes over her forearm, without life. Lax muscles in his jaw leave his mouth hanging open. Again, the brunette taps his face several times with her open palm.
"C'mon," her voices plead. "We came all this way. You can't die. It's not time. C'mon! Doctor! Doctor!" Her many voices are rising in panic. As she is holding him up on the tops of her legs with arms encompassing him, she rattles him violently; she is forgetting herself in her fear of him slipping away.
He comes to unwillingly, eyes rolling and unfocused. "Who are you?" he asks her, mumbling in only partial consciousness.
"It doesn't matter who," she tells him, and his eyes widen in mesmerized wonder at the collection of tenors that sing from her lips. "I'm here to help you." She jolts him a little on the "you."
The Doctor swallows with some difficulty and stares at her. "You can't help me." He nearly chokes on his words, and his own one lonely voice sounds small. "I'm dead."
"You're not dead and you're not going to die. I won't let you." The many girls' eyes in hers fill with tears. She is the one beneath the waves of despair now. "I won't let you," she argues stubbornly. "I won't let you." She is crying now, and the pitches rise and fall in mourning as she holds him tighter. "I won't let you go…"
"There's nothing you can do," he whispers to her quietly. He doesn't look at all concerned or bothered by the fact that he is being cradled by this strange young girl he doesn't know. He and her are sharing in this moment in time, sharing tears and sharing fear of the future; how she knows of the strife he faces is a mystery, but neither seems to need to question this.
"Don't give up," her voices plead, sobbing openly now.
"It's destined to happen. It's been foreseen. It's fact not. It's happening."
"Since when do you believe in fact?" she shouts hysterically. The many voices weave into a booming upset, and he flinches slightly at the power of it, but listens, transfixed. "Nothing is set in stone. You know this!"
Eyes break away from her, and he shakes his head with a pinched mouth, submissive to his fate. One tear slips from his eye to his jaw and down his neck. "Sweetheart, I'm sorry."
"No. No. I will change this. This…I won't let this happen. Please, you've got to try. Please tell me you'll try. Don't you dare give up now."
As she is speaking, the man's face begins to glow. There is a light in his eyes, a dangerous yellow emanation, and it wafts away from his body in silken swirls and folds. The two watch it for a minute, one with horror, the other with miserable acceptance. The Doctor lifts his hands weakly into the air, above his chest; the girl gasps and breathes heavily at the sight. "It's starting," he whispers.
Starkly, she pushes his hands back down at his sides. "Don't look at that. Don't focus on it. Focus on holding it off. C'mon, get up." The youngster pulls her legs out from beneath his back and assists him as he gets to his feet on wobbly legs.
The two make their way tottering toward a tall, blue-painted phone booth standing gravely in the dim air. It is a sad gravestone, and moans a wail of mourning as the Doctor and the girlish entity wave slowly closer. Up toward the grouping of little windows at the top of the doors, a golden ray billows out, and the Doctor lays a gentle hand on the side of the structure as they come to it with open affection in his eyes.
By the time the pair comes through the quaintly creaking wooden doors, the faltering figure of the Doctor is nearly falling apart at the seams. He crumbles to his knees on the grills of the floor. The time diversion in the street has wasted his previous time; he cannot walk any further. Around them, the mechanism groans in time with his quiet cries of pain, responding to him as if it is crying with him.
The girl sobs, and again, behind her tears are the groans of thousands of others, all rolling with diverse tones and varying amounts of expressions of grief and loss.
"This is it," some of her voices muster the stability to utter, while the rest remain adrift in woeful sounds. "Now listen to me. Can you hear me?"
"Y-yeah," he groans through gritted teeth. He pulls himself to his feet in a struggle heartbreaking to watch, using the lip of the control panel to hoist himself. The girl eagerly reaches down to him to help him. Now he stands upright. The center of his ship holds his trembling body erect. The young woman lays her two hands firmly on his shoulders, one on each to try to squeeze and massage the sick exhaustion away.
"Remember Romana. Remember what she could do. When she died—"
The Doctor's face falls into anguish at the mention of this. The slaughter that awaits him is truly panicking him now. It comes out in his face, distorts his features and his voice. "I don't want to – I can't do this."
"Yes, you can. Just focus. Focus on what you want, on who you are, right now. Remember every detail, and I know you can, with that big brain of yours." The girl allows herself a chuckle at this. "Remember what you look like, your freckles and your hair and your eyes, your mouth, your hands and your feet, everything. Remember what your voice sounds like, how you laugh, the way you say all those jumbled words that come out of your mouth. Remember the things you like, the things you love, the people you love. Remember it all, and focus. You can do this." One of her hands leaves his shoulders, and she pets his face without hesitation or apology. "You're the most wonderful man in the whole universe. There are so many who love you, Doctor. We all love you. We love you so much."
"Who are you?" he murmurs, again asking her. The question, the query that is presently on his mind temporarily distracts him. The stubborn low glow that is about his body dissipates a bit, as does the horror in his voice.
The girl purses her lips, stitching all words inside her mouth. "We love you," she says again lowly, and all the voices whisper affectionately. The Doctor is much taller than she is, so when she reaches up to kiss his forehead, she has to stand on her tip toes. Despite the inconvenience, though, she lets her touch linger there, and only there where he can't see her face does she let the wall come down to reveal her true faces, all covered with sadness.
"What's that for?" he asks.
"For luck," she answers simply.
"Two seconds ago you and all your voices were very confident about this." A spasm catches him off guard, and he gasps and doubles over again. "Stay back," he grunts, and weakly pushes her away. "It's starting now. It's starting. Oh god." He cries out. "I don't want to go."
"I know sweetheart, I know," the girl mouths so he can't hear.
"Step back, away," he pleads with her, "I don't want to hurt you."
She obeys. The woman watches, and weeps silently with eyes large and freely flowing, as the man in front of her pants laboriously in the terror of anticipation. He knows it's coming, any second. The waves about his visage grow agitated in their movements.
"Remember who you are!" she suddenly screams, and the echo of a thousand voices off the walls of the great ship seems to rip the explosion out of him from where it was waiting. It jolts him. The unstable force of the continuing outburst throws his body this way and that like a ragdoll, and he is powerless underneath it. For the first few seconds, through the golden flames that are burning him, there is something of determination in his face just behind the fear. But past those seconds, his consciousness begins to slip away. The regeneration licks it away, and his eyes are deadening when the girl bravely steps forward, against his orders. She is scared, cautious, but she keeps coming. She stretches her arms towards him and the flows of energy burning over the changing skin. Her fingers break through, though she hisses from whatever unpleasant sensation shocked her because of it. The room around them is shaking, catching fire and burning, breaking apart and crashing down. She doesn't look. She has both hands on his face, holding him steady through the tremors that rock him.
When the regenerative energy fades away, he collapses to the floor.
The girl stands wide-eyed. The man on the floor in front of her feet, lying senseless on the metallic lattice, leaves her speechless. His hair is long brown and hangs down over his face. Slender nose, thin mouth, skinny in his suit, with closed goggle eyes. She had a feeling, though, that they were sweet and brown.
The same man.
The young woman gasps and cries and throws herself laughing and still weeping onto the floor beside him. She gently picks up his head from where it rests on the harsh floor and holds it in her lap. "You did it!" she tells him with such hushed excitement. "You did it! It's over now, and you did it."
The only movement from him is a breath of yellow leftover energy leaving his mouth.
"Just stay here," she instructs him. "She'll take care of you. Won't you?" The woman smiles up into the still cracking and creaking rafters above them. "You'll be fine now. You're safe. Just sleep, lonely angel." Another kiss is lovingly pressed onto his forehead, and she hugs him to her for a long time.
He moans in his sleep and shifts his head. Eyes flit behind closed lids. Still she is reluctant to move from where she is, sitting on the floor with him in her embrace. She clings to him as if she fears being ripped away at any moment.
"You won't remember me." The statement is dry. The expressions from the voices on her tongue are mixed; some are hard and embittered, some are still calm but watery, others are flat with suppressed emotion. Some are more accepting than others, but none are exactly happy about this acknowledgment. "You won't remember us. We were never here, don't you see? We have never existed, not here. Not quite a figment, not quite a dream, but not quite real either. But, real or not, we cannot stay."
The entity carefully lets him back down to the floor, nudging him until he is beneath the covering of the console, protecting him from any falling debris. "Clean up, old girl, and take care of him," her voices say to the ship. The woman's being begins to phase, sparkling with silver and starlight. Her ordinary face changes, morphs, and beings to fluctuate through thousands of faces per second. Old and young, of every race, origin, and walk of life, each smiling as she fades away into the background of the TARDIS walls. "'Doubt that the stars are fire. Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar,'" she says, each pair of eyes filled with its own tears. "'But never doubt we love,' Doctor."
The last face evanesces into the air with a final whisper, repeating her last sentiment.
Many hours later, when the Doctor finally lifts his dizzy head from the floor, his oldest and dearest traveling companion has swept her control room clean. The columns of coral have resurrected themselves, and the old familiarity of the place makes him smile. Quickly getting up, and almost bumping his head on the underside of the controls in the process, he scrambles to find a reflective surface. But when he spots his hands, he is seemingly overcome and stops dead in his tracks, staring. Those hands begin to shake as they trail very slowly to his face. His fingertips skim over his cheeks, eyes, and mouth. Frantic now, he grabs at his hair, pulling it into standing on end. He can hardly believe what his eyes have not even glimpsed yet.
A shout erupts from his throat, and then his hands are at his throat, feeling it. Another pop of sound, to test his voice. Astonishment is in his face as he shakes it back and forth in disbelief. But when it all finally sinks in, he puffs out a breath of air and a cautious smile hooks the corners of his mouth.
"I'm alive," he ventures. The large empty space that surrounds him takes his words and boomerang them back to him. "I'm alive!" he shouts, whooping and hollering with glee. "I'm alive! I'm alive! I'M ALIVE!" The Doctor dances about the room in his pinstripes and converse plimsolls, happy as a clam.
The TARDIS hums and sings. Though he hasn't touched her, she is moving. "What? What? Where we going?" he implores her. She answers by opening her doors for him as she lands, and curiously he pokes his head out. "Oi! Hello! Who might you be?"
"Amelia Pond," comes a fresh young girl's voice. "Who are you?"
When he answers, he is smiling from ear to ear. "I'm the Doctor. That's exactly who I am."
"What are you doing in my yard? Are you the police? Did you come about the crack in my wall?"
"Absolutely positively – to the second one, not the first one – er, the last one." The Doctor steps out and closes the door behind him. Outside are the mumbles of their voice and the diminishing crunches of their footsteps walking away. Already, the Doctor's voice is quickening with his excitement of a new adventure ahead, and inside the TARDIS, there is a human hum coming through the air. A new song is playing, with an old tune.