By all rights, I should be dead. Even if I had not met with the fury of a Time Lord, my life span has long since run out. Yet I live, for now and forever. Once, that was what I wanted.
I suppose I am the most fortunate out of my family. I may not have my own life, but I am able to participate in others. I am the unknown flicker in the corner of your eye—that uncomfortable feeling that makes you look over your shoulder when you're alone. You won't ever see me though. No one ever does. Or at least, no one but the Doctor.
I can go anywhere. I can watch anyone. At first, I decided to follow the Doctor out of an obsessive hatred. I was certain he would face a greater enemy, and I wanted to watch him die. It didn't take long for me to see the price he paid for being who he was.
That human woman he had left behind on Earth seemed to haunt him for a while. Once, he returned to that time just to stand behind a tree and look at her house. He caught a brief glimpse of her in the window where she was followed by a child, and then he simply went away. He had been someone else when he loved her, but that other version of himself was still buried inside, and he hurt. I loved how much he hurt. I wanted him to hurt more, and I didn't have to wait long.
There were many others that followed. He suffered at the loss of complete strangers (and there were many), and it seemed that he was unable to make a friend without losing them in one way or another. I continued to follow him, when I could have watched anyone in the universe, purely because I wanted to watch his sufferings.
He visited me after one year. He stared into the mirror, into the corner where I hid, and his dark eyes burned into me. I could still see the fury in them, even if it had grown old and dim. John Smith had not forgiven me, even if the Doctor had. I screamed at him then. I felt so angry with him looking at me like that when all I had done was try to survive. I had already spent a lifetime and more peeking out from my mirrors and he still dared to look at me with those eyes.
He stood and listened until my breath ran out and my energy ebbed away into nothing but the pathetic sobs of the little girl I had taken. His face did not soften, but his eyes seemed to grow a little more kind.
"I know," he said. "And I'm sorry."
When he walked away relief washed over me. I couldn't stand for him to look at me anymore. For a moment I sat alone in my misery, cursing him for being able to run to his companion for comfort whenever he felt the need. But the machine hummed in a way I hadn't felt before, and I welcomed the distraction.
It had taken me a long time to figure it out, but by listening to the machine itself and to the brief pieces of information I could glean from the Doctor, I had learned that they could communicate to one another. This sound was different than I had heard before, but it was calm.
I flitted to another mirror—a small reflective piece on the console of the ship's control room. The door was open and he leaned against its frame, staring out into space. We were simply floating, and before us laid a sea of stars lost in the purple and red swirls of some nebula. The machine hummed rhythmically and the Doctor stood very still as he listened, his fist clutching tightly to some piece of blue material. It took me a moment to recognize it, but I realized that it was a strange jacket I had seen lying around before. I couldn't imagine why he would be holding it now.
Suddenly he took in a deep, shuttering breath and turned quickly away from the stars. His face looked red, and his eyes wore the unmistakable glimmer of water gathering at the surface. He laid the jacket over the rail nearest to him as the door shut away the universe, and without warning he looked up. He saw me immediately. Despite the tiny size of my mirror, his eyes found mine.
"What are you doing?" he sounded surprised at first, and then suddenly he was angry. "What are you doing here? Get out! I left you alone, didn't I?"
I quaked before the anger I had hoped to never see again, and for a moment I could not move.
"Get out!"
"Doctor?"
His companion's voice called out from another room, and her footsteps approached. The Doctor's face immediately changed as he stood up straight and tried to compose himself. I ran to another mirror out of his sight while he was distracted and watched as Martha appeared in the doorway. Her servant's garb forsaken since my capture, she wore an oversized shirt and some undersized shorts now.
"What's the matter? Who are you talking to?"
"No one, just muttering to myself," he busied himself with pretending to look at a screen on the console. "Sorry, Martha. I didn't mean to wake you."
"It sounded more like shouting to me."
She lingered a while longer, hoping that he would talk to her. She made a few more small attempts to stimulate a conversation, but he quickly ended them and soon had her trudging back to bed.
I watched him while he tried to distract himself with work, taking a savage pleasure in the tiny, occasional moments when he betrayed himself. A second where his eyes returned to the abandoned jacket, a moment where his face faltered, and once a full minute where he had to stop everything just to breathe. Finally he gave up, took the jacket in his hands, and made his way to his own sleeping room.
When I tried to follow him there, I found he had covered the mirrors.
It was months later that he was taken captive, and though I stayed to watch his torment, I found it did not please me as much as it once did. He was made old and disabled, and mocked each day without mercy. He was beaten, starved, humiliated, and forced to watch the species he loved so much die away. I should have enjoyed every moment, but sometimes I found myself looking away.
I was amazed when the time came. It had been another year to the day and, despite all his sufferings, he remembered me. He waited until everyone had gone for the night and his bones creaked as he pulled himself across the floor far enough to see the mirror on the wall.
The face had changed to one I could hardly recognize, but the eyes stayed the same as ever.
"Now I really know how you feel," he chuckled and raised a wrinkled finger to point at me. "At least you don't get hit. Or deal with arthritis. Oh, how I hate arthritis. It's like your own joints are trying to eat you from the inside!"
He talked a lot that night. It made me think of how hard he had tried to work that night in his machine, and I realized that I must have only been his distraction. I tried to enjoy that knowledge, but somehow I couldn't.
Then came the day of his victory. I watched as his body grew young and defied gravity with nothing but the hopes and thoughts of the tiny human race. I found myself thinking Doctor with the rest of them, but I noticed I wasn't the only one to surprise myself.
I thought he would obliterate his enemy without a second's hesitation. I thought he would make the Master suffer, the way he made us suffer. I waited for the Time Lord's fury—for his justice. Instead, I found him on the floor, cradling his foe like a child as he bled on the floor. He begged the Master to save himself, and cried when he didn't.
I think I should have been angry about it, but somehow the anger never came. I had grown so old. It had been over two years—several lifetimes for my species—and somehow my heart had changed. I felt no anger toward the Doctor, and yet I found myself feeling anger towards his companion when she chose to leave him. He smiled kindly, hugged her tight, and wished her all the best, but he could not fool me, and I hated her for it.
He spent many years alone after that, though no one but I knew it. To the human race and any others who knew him, he might have been gone days or even minutes, but I stayed with him all that time. He tinkered with his machine and went to many planets. He watched people die, and saved many more. He wandered aimlessly through small towns and giant cities, ever the outsider, ever alone.
Once we landed on a planet that was nothing but uninhabited wilderness. He stared through the open door for a very long time, his fingers fidgeting nervously.
"There must be people somewhere," he murmured to himself. "There are always people of some sort."
After a few more minutes of silent debate, he stepped through the doorway. I could not think of why he would hesitate so much when he never had before, and when the door closed I was greatly frustrated that I could not find a mirror outside to follow him in.
Suddenly the door burst back open again and he looked directly at me. "You!" he shouted in glee, pointing at my mirror. "You'll know if I don't come back." Then, as abruptly as he had burst into the room, he ran off again looking very pleased with himself.
He would still visit me every year. Sometimes he talked nonstop, and sometimes he said very little. I tried to ask him about his home world, but I only got tiny snippets of information such as an orange sky or red grass. I found that he held that part of his life very close to his heart. Those years were precious to him, and yet he seemed afraid to ever face them.
One year he did not come to the hallway where my original mirror was hung. Instead his machine hummed in such a way that it vibrated in the glass around me. It was calling me.
Once I left my mirror to follow it the machine changed its sound, and became the unmistakable sway of music. I found the Doctor in his sleeping room, sitting on the floor. He had an incredibly old and tattered piece of material laid on his knees. Any colour it once held had turned a sickening grey with age and it appeared to have been singed around one edge. A few more small items lay on the floor with him, decayed and ruined beyond recognition by time, while in his hand he held a small silver ball.
The ball was certainly old and had lost all its shine, but I could still see the engraved patterns that covered it. They reminded me greatly of the pocket watch he carried when we first met.
He turned the ball over and over in his hand, looking at it while he sang so softly I barely heard him. The tune was the same song that his machine was singing, and his eyes glistened as he whispered words I could not understand.
When he was finished I waited for him to see me. He didn't, and I found myself speaking instead.
"What is that?"
His head swung around in surprise and I half expected him to shout at me the way he had so long ago. Instead he smiled, despite his moist eyes, and held the ball up for me to see it better.
"It's kind of like a music box," he said cheerfully. "From my home planet. They would put these in the rooms of children to help them to sleep. This one doesn't work anymore, but I remember the song."
"This belonged to you as a child?"
"No." The answer came out quickly and his face told me that it may also have come without his permission. Suddenly he smiled wide. "I was planning to see you today. I just got caught up in..." he gestured the rotten items before him. "Cleaning out some old things. But don't think I forgot! I never forget your day, though mainly because it's how I keep track of how old I am now. Tough thing to do when everywhere you go the calendar's different by a few millennia."
He was speaking very quickly and smiling too much. I noticed that the items were carefully returned to their box instead of being thrown away. Finally he looked up at me, with the faintest of smiles.
"Do you like bedtime stories?"
"I've never heard one."
"Well, then that's perfect! First time for everything," he turned his body towards my mirror completely, rolling the metal ball between his fingers. "I haven't told it in a while but I suppose you won't know the difference. Right! How do you start again? Ah, yes. Once upon a time there were these tiny little creatures called the Toclafane..."
That night when our visit was over, I travelled through the mirrors one at a time so that he could walk with me. Through the many hallways of his machine, to the small room hidden away from prying eyes, we found my mirror. It was the mirror that he used to seal me away which meant that I could always find it with ease. It shone in my mind like a beacon in the dark. No matter where I was or where his ship was, I was always able to return to the Doctor through this mirror.
He gave the ornate frame a stroke of his hand. "Perhaps next year I'll tell you another story. I rather like telling stories. I suppose I've missed it a bit."
"Who did you tell your stories to before?" I knew the answer, just as I had known that the singing ball was never meant for him, but I felt I needed him to tell me.
"Children," he answered softly, with a small smile on his lips and an old sadness in his eyes. "Lots of little children."
"Where are they now? Did they grow up?"
"No," the smile was fading. "No, they never grew up. At least, not all of them anyway."
"And the ones who did—what happened to them?"
His eyes met mine with an odd coldness, and I knew the game was over. "You know I'm the last of my species. Why are you asking me this?"
"I lost my family lifetimes ago, but I never forget them. We may have been wicked but they could also be kind, and if I had people to talk to I would want them to know that. I think it must a strange creature to forget their family. I wanted to know how strange you truly are, Doctor of mine. Why don't you speak of them?"
A long moment of silence with those piercing eyes, and suddenly he was someone very different. "I took your family from you. You remember that, don't you? It was me. You may not forget your family, but you seem to forget the one who brought them to ruin. You are alone because of me! For now and forever. All alone. How is it that you can look at my face and ever smile? How can you speak to me with kindness? How can you, knowing what I did?"
His voice had turned to a low growl, but that day he did not frighten me. "I have grown old . . . perhaps too old for such anger. I suppose I have forgiven you."
He put his hand against the glass and the machine began to hum loudly. "Then you have a stronger heart than I do." He turned and walked quickly to the door.
I had one more question to ask before he left and, as the others, I felt I already knew the answer. "Who took your family from you?"
"I did!" And the door slammed shut behind him.
The empathetic machine hummed for hours that night in a calm and soothing way. I wondered if it was working, or if he was somewhere on the ship filled with anger or perhaps grief. I fought with myself over whether I should check on him, but kept deciding that I would only make it worse if he saw me. That night I had wished for nothing more than for him to have a companion on board the ship to offer him comfort. There was no one.
It was not long before he found someone new. Despite how long he had been on his own, he was hesitant to allow her in, fearful of another tragedy. But the woman was determined, with just as much attitude as him, and he was simply too lonely.
For a long while he was happy. He was loved by a new-found sister who cradled his heart instead of trying to take it. His eyes shone with a joy that I had not seen in him before, and his laughter rang through the rooms of his ship. Even when sadness found him on his adventures, as it often did, he recovered much faster. He could miss the people he loved and she did not grow jealous, and he could seek comfort from her and she did not believe it to be anything more than the sadness of a friend. I found few nights where the machine had to soothe him to sleep, and few days when hid away to be alone.
She accompanied him to a planet of ice where they freed an enslaved species called the Ood. As they were leaving, one of the Ood implied that the Doctor was nearing his end. The comment disturbed him greatly for at first, but it took mere minutes of Donna's company to put him completely at ease.
That year, he brought her with him. The pair stood before my mirror while her eyes searched the glass, seeing nothing.
"I don't get it," she said finally. "It's just a mirror."
He grinned with glee. "I wouldn't say it's just a mirror."
"What, is it an ice-cream maker as well?"
"No . . . although that is a good idea."
"Well, are you going to tell me what it is or am I gonna spend all day guessing?"
"It's a mirror, but there are three people in it."
"It's just the two of us, Doctor."
He directed her to me, loving every moment of his little game. Turning her head slightly, telling her to look out of the corner of her eye, pointing straight at me with his finger. I moved a little to make myself more noticeable and she suddenly she jumped with a little scream and twirled around to look behind her. The Doctor laughed and I smiled a little myself.
"No, no, she's only in the mirror, Donna."
He guided her back around and pointed me out again.
"It's a little girl! How is she in there and not out here?"
"Well, it's rather simple really—"
"Never mind! I don't want to know! Whenever you say something is simple it means I'm about to have my ear talked off by a bunch of spaceman gibberish."
The visit was long and Donna had a thousand questions for me, but somehow we managed to dance around the terrible story of what had brought us together. I told her of my home and my family—the good parts. I was rather glad that the Doctor was there to hear that as well. I asked for the story he had promised me and he obliged to the delight of both Donna and myself. Then Donna told one about a little man made out of gingerbread, at the end of which the Doctor was horrified by the murder of the first member of a brand new species.
When they left Donna said goodbye with all the human niceties you might expect, while the Doctor gave me a wink and a nod of his head. He strolled away, hands in his pockets and head held high, while she chattered away and asked what other life forms he had hidden away in the ship. At the last moment he turned and gave another nod, but this time flicking his head in the direction where I would find his sleeping room.
Hoping that I had read the movement correctly, I found a mirror in his room and waited patiently. Meeting his companion had certainly been a treat, but I was glad to see that I would still be given some time with him to myself. He didn't make me wait long. Within a half an hour he entered, grinning from ear to ear as he removed his suit jacket and laid it over the back of a chair.
His room seemed different every time I saw it, but it was always filled with odd gadgets and knick-knacks. At first glance it looked chaotic, but much like the console to his machine, there was some form of method to the madness.
"Brilliant, isn't she?" he began, still grinning as he pulled a chair up to my mirror.
For a while he simply told me more about her. He told how he had met her so long ago, and the seemingly fateful way that they found each other again. He was thoroughly enjoying himself, in a way that I had not seen before.
"Why does she make you so happy?" I found myself asking, delighted by his bright smiles.
"She's clever!" he answered immediately. Then he leaned toward the mirror and spoke quietly as though it were some great secret. "And she's ginger."
I laughed, and laughed more when he protested. "Why does it matter that she's ginger?"
"I like ginger hair. I'd like to try ginger hair myself one of these days."
"I've heard most people don't like ginger hair," I pointed out.
"I do! It's so orange!" he chuckled a bit, and then a funny look came over him. He smiled in the way he smiles when I know he's thinking of something good. I worried that he might keep the memory to himself.
"What is it?"
"It reminds me of home." He smiled a little more. "My wife had ginger hair. Of course, you couldn't call it ginger, you know. She'd get very offended and insist that it was red . . . but really it was just ginger. It was the exact same colour as the sky back home, and sometimes it could look like she had no hair at all because it would just blend right in." His smile turned to a grin at that, and his eyes were somewhere far away but happy. "She was wonderful. And you know, I was so dreadfully dull back then. I mean it, I was boring! I couldn't even tell you why she married me."
"How long were you married?"
"A blink of an eye," he sighed and his eyes met mine again. "Though to a being that's only supposed to live for a few months, I suppose a hundred and twenty-seven years is an eternity to you."
"A hundred—!"
"And twenty-seven years, yes. Not that I would have been able to answer that question if she were still here, no. Someone would ask how long and I'd bumble about and spit out random numbers until the old girl took pity and answered for me," he chuckled and shook his head. "I don't know why it was so hard to remember then."
"Did your daughters have ginger hair too?"
A curious frown. "How did you know I had daughters?"
"I didn't"
"Ohh, clever."
"I've got to be clever if the only person I talk to is an expert at avoiding questions."
He grinned again, apparently pleased by my cheekiness. "Yes, one of our girls had ginger hair. I thought it was lucky." For the briefest moment, his smile faltered. "She regenerated during the war. My wife I mean, not my daughter. She got hit and I sat with her while she regenerated, and then she didn't have red hair anymore," he continued to smile, but the quiver in his voice betrayed him. "She asked me if I still loved her even though she wasn't ginger—a joke, of course—and I told her I'd have to wait and see."
I found out much later in the conversation that his wife had died only a couple of days after her regeneration. He dodged and danced and skirted around the fact that she died but in the end, he chose to tell me.
I thanked whatever force might claim responsibility for Donna Noble and the joy she had brought to give him strength that night. His eyes may have watered slightly and he did pause once or twice to collect himself, but his sadness did not overtake him. He chose to remember the good parts of his former life and when we parted, I left him with a smile on his face.
I like to think that he had simply chosen me to be the person to share his secrets with. I admit that I could have been one of many, but I prefer to think otherwise. I'm only an image in a mirror, and I believe that if a person is ever honest, it's while facing a mirror.
Not long after that revealing visit came the day when he finally saw her again. The blue jacket that I had seen him holding in the past belonged to the woman who had stolen away his heart. She had been trapped for so long, and she finally found a way back to him.
I hid in the mirrors of the cars parked along the street as they ran to each other. I had never seen the Doctor so blissfully happy that he would forget he was in the middle of a warzone. For a moment, it seemed that all his problems were forever solved.
I suppose we were both fools to think that happiness would last.
It all happened very fast. Suddenly everyone was crying and the Doctor was writhing in pain on the floor. The machine buzzed with panic and there was a long and terrible moment when I thought he wouldn't regenerate. I think everything that was to come would have been so much easier if he had just been given the chance to finish that moment and run into the arms of the famous Rose Tyler.
The Doctor lost everything that day. The woman he had been pining after for all the years I'd known him was once again trapped in another universe, and this time with another man. For one brief, sweet moment he had been given all he wanted, only to have it snatched away again.
And Donna Noble heard the very worst words you can ever hear the Doctor say.
"I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry."
I watched as he embraced her for the last time, letting his fingers brush her ginger hair as he tried to brace himself against one more heartbreak. His companion—the woman who cared for him as though he were a brother—had her mind wiped clean of the Doctor and all the wonderful things they did together. He left her on Earth with her family, believing she were nothing more than an office temp once again.
When he finally returned to the ship, soaked through with rain, the silence was unbearable. We had to leave but he could not think of anywhere to go, so we went to the emptiest place in the universe; we went to a dark pit of space where even the nearest star was nothing but a faint speck in the distance. For a long while he stood in the doorway of the ship, staring out into the darkness and dripping all over the floor.
I waited for sadness, for anger, for an outburst of some kind. What happened instead was much worse. He simply turned and walked away with empty eyes and a face pale and strained with defeat. When he reached his room he peeled off his suit and let it fall in a wet heap on the floor. He shivered all over from a combination of being chilled from the rain and being in shock from the day's events. His eyes never found me in my mirror, but stared blindly ahead as his trembling fingers fumbled with his clothing. When he finally climbed into bed and pulled the blanket right over his head, the machine around us began to hum gently.
The next day he fell victim to the rain chill and grew sick, coughing wretchedly and burning with fever. He did nothing. I watched him, hoping for signs of life and getting very few. He rarely left bed though he never seemed to sleep, he didn't eat, and when he did decide to leave his room it seemed that every step required more energy than he had. The fever passed within a few days, but the behaviour continued.
After a week he finally pulled himself out of bed and tried to find a distraction with work, but to no avail. He spent an hour staring at a book with blank eyes, never turning the page. He stood at the console of his machine doing nothing but idly touching a button now and again. The ship sang as she had never sung before, but nothing could erase his devastation.
On top of it all, the prophecy of the Ood was weighing heavily on him now. One day I woke in my mirror to a terrible storm of noise. The machine pulsed frantically and I ran from mirror to mirror to find him. The room he was in was one of his many store rooms, filled with the treasures from his many journeys, and he was destroying it all.
Around him laid the splintered remains of a luxurious arm chair, given to him by Marie Antoinette. A painting from Picasso had been torn to pieces and scattered. The costumes from the Globe theater shredded, the beautiful mirror from the High Priest of Jorica smashed, and the Book of Heavenly Giants from the Queen of the Second Moon of Buiranixa had been hurled violently against the wall, detaching several pages.
He screamed with such anger and his eyes were red from crying. It wasn't fair, he said, he had saved every single life in the universe and the universe felt it was too much to give him just one back. More was asked of him, always more. Now the universe wanted his life too, and it simply wasn't fair.
He picked up a bust of the Grand Gorlia from the Temple of Peace and smashed it on the floor. The shards flew far and cut at his hands, but he did not seem to care.
"These are the rewards for my work," he shouted, picking up an elegant glass sculpture of a Lurian dancer. "Things! For my life, useless pieces of decoration!"
He turned to throw the glass at my mirror and froze completely. He looked stunned to see me, and his anger quickly subsided to further grief. His entire body shook with emotion as he carefully put the sculpture down, its glass painted deep red from the blood of his hands.
"And now I've made you afraid."
It always amazed how quickly his emotions changed, like flipping a light switch though the results were usually unpredictable. He leaned against a 17th century desk behind him and slid to the floor, his hands running nervously through his hair and covering his face. He took a minute or two to breathe, trying to calm himself, and his machine began to hum soothingly. Finally his dark eyes peeked over his fingers at me and his voice quivered as he spoke.
"I'm sorry."
"You're bleeding, Doctor of mine."
"I know. It's because I'm stupid." The last word came out aggressively and his foot kicked at a piece of chair before him. He took another deep breath and buried his face in his hands.
"What if the Ood were wrong? It could just have been words."
"How I wish that were true. But if there is anything I've learned in all my years of travel, it's that when someone tells you something like that, they're usually right," he had managed to smear the blood on his face now. "And if they are wrong, then what? I just keep living? Like this?"
That question reached my heart like a knife. "You will get better."
"No . . . you can only patch a coat so many times before it stops being a coat and starts being just a really big patch," he smiled ever so slightly, despite the water in his eyes. "I've lived too long and yet I'm too old to die. No one will even know that I'm gone; they'll just think I'm on some other planet, defeating some other monster. And when I never come back again, they'll just think it's so typical of me to run away and leave them all behind."
"I would know. I would miss you."
"You know there's a name for this. It's called Stockholm Syndrome. I'm the only person who knows you're there and I'm the only person who talks to you, so it was only a matter of time before you decided you like me despite the fact that I stole your entire family and imprisoned you. You have a mental disorder and I did it to you. That's what I do to people—I ruin their lives."
"I look at you through the eyes of a dead child, Doctor of mine—a child I killed. Then I killed more people. Then I tried to kill you." How strange it was to think that I had truly done all that. "My family was taken and I was imprisoned as a just punishment. And through that experience, I have been made a better person."
"I didn't imprison you because it was just; I imprisoned you because I was angry. There was absolutely no reason for me to extend your lifespan other than to watch you suffer," he snarled. "And you only call that 'just punishment' because you would rather believe that you're with a good man instead of being trapped forever with a monster who gives out cruel and unusual punishments."
My back stiffened. "I am still better."
"You're sick."
"I am better," I insisted. "I have no more anger. I feel for other species. I want other beings to live. I am better than I was before, and if that is illness then I take it gladly. You made me better, as a doctor should."
"I think you're wrong."
"Then you are a fool!" I spat the words viciously, and the flash of surprised hurt in his eyes made me feel sorry immediately, but I had to press on. "If you would tell me that I was better as the person I was when we met, then you should have laid down like a dog and let us kill you. If you think the gifts in this room are nothing more than objects, then you should never have bothered to save the people who gave them to you with love. If this quivering heap of self pity is all that is left of you then you really should just die. You are not the Doctor I know! Because the Doctor I know is brave, and selfless, and a person to be feared by his enemies. And a large part of what makes the Doctor brilliant is that he never gives up. I will go and wait for the real Doctor to return, and you may return to senselessly destroying the symbols of devotion of the people who are loyal to him. Destroy this mirror while you're at it so that I don't have to look at this waste again."
I fled the mirror for one in the next room. I felt terrible for the Doctor, yet somehow I felt angry with him as well. I would not allow him to tell me that all I had become was nothing, and I would not allow him to waste himself away like this any longer. I could not do much, but I could certainly shout at him.
The room I had left him in was deadly silent for nearly half an hour and I suspected he was simply letting the last of his tears leave him. Finally I heard the scraping of glass on the floor and a faint groan as he pulled himself to his feet. When the doors opened, I realized what a mess he truly was.
His hair stuck in every direction and contained pieces of shrapnel from his rage. His face was unshaven and dirty; the small patches of dried blood on his cheeks had been smeared from crying. His clothing was unkempt and ripped in places, and his hands were torn and caked in dried blood.
He marched silently past me, seemingly oblivious to my presence, and went straight to the bathroom. The steam was pouring out through the seams around the door by the time the water shut off an hour later. When his hand swiped away the fog and returned clarity to the mirror, I was waiting for him. He pretended not to see me as he ruffled his hair dry and brushed his teeth, a process done quickly and with purpose. He found a razor and held it to his stubbly throat, but instead of going to work he stopped and looked into the mirror.
For one terrible moment, I wondered what he might do. He knew I was there and yet he refused to meet my eyes. Slowly, very slowly, he put the razor down and reached for the tattered jacket that had been laid on the countertop. His hand slipped beneath the folds and returned holding a familiar leather wallet, his eyes wide as he carefully flipped it open. One long gaze at the writing, his brows furrowed together with unhappiness, and a quiet sigh.
He snapped the wallet shut and looked into the mirror, tugging at his hair. Then suddenly he was off again, striding quickly to his room and emerging within minutes dressed in a clean suit. He worked his tie and the buttons of his shirt as he hurried off to the control room, his hair still dripping down his neck.
When he began pushing buttons on the console and inexplicably cried out "Barcelona!" I asked him to tell me what was happening. He must have heard me but he pretended not to; I must have really angered him with my outburst.
The machine began to whine and the Doctor straightened his tie and cleared his throat. "I ruined my book from Buiranixa. I really liked that book," he grumbled quietly. "There's no point to being a time traveller if I'm not allowed to delay something, is there?"
I wondered if the words were directed at me or not, but I hoped they were. The machine screamed now, lighting up and singing, and finally I saw a spark in those dark eyes.
"My song will not end with a tired, sad little man in shambles," he said over the noise. "And it won't end today!"
The machine lurched to a halt, the Doctor's thin frame nearly being thrown onto the console. He snatched his coat from the railing that it hung on and marched to the door. He threw it open, turned, and shouted back into the room: "I'm going to get a haircut!"
When he returned, his grooming was trim and proper, though his step was slightly swayed and his clothes had been well worn. He'd definitely had a drink or two—not enough to make him drunk, but enough to bring the cheer out in him.
"I loved me a maid from Barcelona, as pretty as a flower in the spring," he sang, tossing his coat in the air and not caring where it landed. His tie hung loose about his neck, and his shirt had become untucked and wrinkled. If I had to guess, I would have said he had done a lot of dancing that night. He had a small smear of lipstick on his cheek, but I noticed none near his mouth. At least he had enjoyed himself.
He went straight to his room, tossing clothing aside as he went. He paused in front of a mirror where he must have clearly seen me and examined himself for a moment, frowning.
"I should get a tan."
I waited for him to climb in bed, clearly exhausted from the groan of relief upon hitting the pillow. He curled up comfortably, grabbed the blanket to adjust so that his feet were uncovered, buried one hand in his dark hair, and began to sleep within moments.
Despite his sudden change in attitude, I heard him whimpering in his sleep later that night. Nightmares had come to him often as of late and his new found energy didn't seem to change that. The machine that carried us hummed the Gallifreyan lullaby that he had once sung to his children, and he soon settled down and slept peacefully. I hoped that he was dreaming of them.
This year he stared at me for a long time without saying a word. He ached, I knew, and the ache stole his words from him. That day we both looked at each other in a way that was entirely new. His eyes begged me for help while mine begged to be shown how. There we stood in silence, old enemies with nothing in the world left but each other. Suddenly I realized how many lifetimes it had been since we were enemies.
"Friend of mine," I spoke quietly, reaching out and placing my hand on the glass. "You could not have known. You saved three lives today. It's not your fault if one of them decided to go with fate instead. Two more are still alive and happy."
"She was supposed to die in honour, as a hero," he said quietly, his eyes avoiding mine as he spoke. "I took that from her. I took it from all three of them."
"She will still be remembered. The others will get a chance to live well instead of dying well. Isn't that better?"
"Is it?" He put his hand on the glass now, his fingers meeting mine on the other side. "Can anyone live well after watching all their friends die? Seeing what they've seen will change them forever; perhaps letting them die with honour was the best thing I could have given them."
My eyes flicked to his jacket pocket, where I knew he kept his psychic paper, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. "You only feel this way today. A day or two to rest and you'll feel better. You always do."
"No," he sniffed and shook his head, but he kept his hand against the glass. "I'm only getting worse. I could have handled something like this when I was younger. Each time it hurts even more and I just don't want to do it anymore." A tear spilled from his eye and he quickly turned his head, hoping I wouldn't see. I wanted so badly to reach through the cold glass of my mirror and touch him—to take his pain for him and see him smile once more.
"Friend of mine, let me out," I asked, both my hands on the glass now. "Let me out and I will be with you. I will help with the hurt and when the time comes, I can hold your hand and make sure you are not alone."
He met my eyes now, another tear spilling forth. "Oh, look at you," he whispered. "Look how lovely you've become—how kind. I never even bothered to ask your name."
"I don't know yours."
A twitch of an amused smile. "Fair enough."
"My name no longer matters, as I am not who I was when I was called by it." I smiled at him as best as I could. "Look how you helped me. I want to help you now."
To my dismay, he shook his head again. "Your body is human, and a small one at that. You wouldn't survive a day with me, especially not the day that is to come."
"I don't need to. Doctor of mine, let me die with honour at your side."
I had said the wrong thing. I don't know what I should have said, but that was not it. The look that overcame him was nothing short of horror and he immediately pulled his hand away from the glass. He looked at me with a face full of heartbreak and it took a few seconds for his voice to come to him.
"I can't."
He turned and began to walk away.
"Doctor!" I called after him, desperately afraid. "Your song does not end in defeat! Do not go today!"
How terrified I was that he would not listen. His moods were strong and controlled him easily, and I prayed that his sadness would not lead him to his end. I was too afraid to follow him. Far too afraid that I might do something else to break his heart that I could not bring myself to go with him.
The machine sang a song from Gallifrey that echoed throughout every room, loving and sad. When I finally found the strength to find the Doctor, I cried tears of joy when I found that he had only gone to bed. A small metal ball sat on his nightstand, an old blue jacket hung over the corner of the bed frame, and the most amazing man I'd ever know laid listening to a song for his children and waited for sleep to take him.
Sleep, I prayed. Sleep the pain away and when you wake up and everything will be better.
He did seem better the next day. He stayed in his pajamas and let his hair do whatever it wanted, but I was pleased to see that his appetite had not abandoned him. He eagerly fed on eggs and toast as he flipped through an ancient tome.
I watched him throughout the day, pleased to think that yesterday had been nothing but a combination of stress and circumstances. At least, I was pleased until some cracks began to appear in the Doctor's behaviour. He didn't get dressed for the whole day, and when he got oil on his pajama shirt during some tinkering he simply pulled it off and neglected to find a new one. He had a moment where he got fed up with some device he was trying to fix and simply knocked it off his desk onto the floor and left it there. Then, the strangest of moments, he had gone to his library to retrieve a book and was singing loudly in a strange language (I could only assume his own) when suddenly his voice changed from upbeat and melodic to stressed and without warning hurled the book with all his strength at a large mirror nearby.
I was in that mirror at the time, but I was unsure if he had known that. He stopped and stared at the shattered glass curiously, seemingly surprised by his own quickened breath. Then, as if nothing had happened, he began to sing again and picked up his book. He shook the glass out from between the pages as he walked along, one foot leaving little droplets of blood in his wake.
The next day brought a different Doctor with it. He spent an extremely long time performing every single task. He seemed as though he were preparing for something important, the way that he was so thorough with his shave, the excessive amount of time smoothing out his clothing and straightening his collar, and the remarkably slow and deliberate work on his tie.
He looked as though he were prepared for a presidential speech by the time he left his room. He set his machine to an unsaid destination, and left without a word. When he returned hours later he looked much the same, except he now had a white rose boutonniere and his hair had been slightly tousled. He went straight to bed, saving the rose and leaving it on his bedside table.
I checked on him several times throughout the night, and each time I found him lying awake.
He continued in these bizarre patterns for a week, going to at least one destination a day. And he never spoke a word to me. I began to worry and wonder: is this what a Time Lord's madness looks like?
"Surprise me, old girl," he muttered once, giving the console a loving pat as the machine began to fly. When he returned that night he was breathless with laughter and dragged behind him a painted portrait of a pale queen with ginger hair.
Finally came the day when he looked at the summoning on his psychic paper, took a deep breath, and muttered to himself that it was time. He went to the planet of the Ood, walking out into the snow with all the swagger of a man without a care in the world. If he was ever anything, the Doctor was a brilliant liar.
And so came what was meant to be his last adventure. We never spoke, but I was with him for every moment, and when he was frightened he would look to me. I could do little else than give him a place to look, or to offer him an encouraging nod of my head. He was brave—so brave.
Nothing broke my heart more than the moment when he thought he had managed to escape. He lay of the floor, half laughing and half crying—shocked, amazed, and most importantly happy that he was still alive. The knock was quiet enough, but it echoed through the air like as though it were the only sound in the universe. And suddenly there were no chances left.
He cried a little, and he had some small bursts of anger. But in the end he was a too good of a man to do anything different. It was true that he could regenerate from this task, but he would only be alive in the way that the John Smith I met was still alive—a very small and forgotten piece of some other person.
"Let me out!" I banged on the glass before me. "Doctor, no!" I had lived longer than I could ever have dreamed, and I could go happily this way. But he wouldn't release me from my prison, just as he wouldn't leave Wilfred to die in a radiation chamber. Even if he wanted to, my original mirror was all the way back in his ship and we simply had no time. I cursed him then, angry that he had refused to release me when he had the chance, and yet I knew that this was exactly why he hadn't released me.
He had time to make his goodbyes, and I chose to let him do those alone. He had some small happiness in bending the rules in order to see those that he loved, and to make sure that they were okay.
When he approached my mirror for the last time, I began to cry before he even said a word.
"Who would've thought," he said, smiling gently. "That on my last day, my prisoner would cry for me." He held in his hands A Journal of Impossible Things—his very own and true love story written by a woman who might have been his wife, and published by a woman who might have been his own great-granddaughter. That is, if it hadn't been for me.
"I'm sorry!" I sobbed, suddenly realizing that I had never said it before. "I'm so, so sorry! I . . ."
Suddenly I couldn't breathe, and my heart felt like it had stopped beating. I barely managed to keep myself upright as the sadness overtook me. And all the while, his brown eyes stared at me with nothing but warmth.
He pulled his screwdriver from his pocket and pointed it at the glass. With a short pulse of sound, my vision was suddenly obscured by a thousand tiny cracks and next, the book pushed through. He used it to break away the shattered glass, falling harmlessly to the floor and leaving before me a doorway where there had only been a window.
I looked up at him, a strange blurry shape through my tears, and I realized that he was holding out his arms. I flung myself forward and he caught me with surprising strength, holding me tight against him and landing a light kiss upon my head. Despite my crying, my mind was distracted with how strange it all felt. I was so small! The top of my head barely reached his chin. He felt oddly cold against me, and with my head pressed against his chest I could hear a thunderous symphony of two hearts beating wildly.
For a long time he simply held me and was quiet, but when I began to calm down he spoke softly in my ear. "I can take you back home to your own planet. But, if you like, I have some friends who I'm sure will take good care of you.
"What do you mean?" It was so odd to see him so closely and from such angles; I had never noticed the small wrinkles around his eyes before. "I can't leave you. Not now!"
"I'm afraid you must. The TARDIS isn't safe for you."
He does this to everyone. I had known that all along, and yet I had convinced myself that I was somehow different. He would find me some little corner of the universe and leave me there, saying that it was for the best. I wondered if he would mourn for me like he had all the others. The idea of him doing so was terrible, but thinking that he wouldn't was worse.
I felt a pulse of heat against me and his skin lit up with energy. How could he be dying? He looked perfectly healthy and his arms were so strong. How could he just be dying before my very eyes?
"You're running out of time," I said, hoping to distract him. "You haven't said goodbye to Rose."
"I know. We better get you going then."
I suddenly was aware that he was pulling me. Very gently he had been pulling me towards him. If I had learned anything about the Doctor, it was that he lied and he tricked people. He was tricking me now, I knew it.
"I won't go," I said stubbornly, pushing away from him. His eyes flicked down to my feet for a split second, and then back up at me. My feet hadn't passed through the doorway. I was still in the mirror.
"I don't have time for this." He tried to sound stern, but I knew him too well. He was afraid. His skin was glowing again and he was so quickly running out of time. He couldn't die without seeing Rose again.
"No, you don't," I answered, swallowing hard. "So you better go."
His whole body twitched, and he stifled a groan of pain. "The seal is broken," he said quickly, putting a hand against the mirror frame to support himself. "You can leave through any mirror. When you do, you should go to Torchwood and tell Jack I sent you. He's a good man. He'll keep you safe."
"And once I leave, can I get back inside?"
His eyes met mine and they spoke to me, even if he wouldn't.
Then, very quietly: "I've done this so many times. I've been so many other men before, and no one thinks that they're gone. Just new. No one remembers them," His breathing was harder now. "If you ever meet me again, when I'm someone different, will you remember me? Will you remember who I was?"
"I could never forget," I promised. "I'll remember you always."
He gave me a weak smile. One of his knees buckled a little, but he managed to hold himself up. He tried to pretend it didn't happen, but the fear was written on his face. It was happening now.
"Go!" I screamed at him. He didn't need to be told again.
I waited in a mirror in a shop window outside his machine. I saw Rose walk past me, completely oblivious that something so important was happening. I saw him speak to her from a distance. I saw the funny smile on her face as she watched him in amusement, assuming he was nothing more than a drunken stranger. I'm sure he smiled bravely, but it must have broken his heart.
Then suddenly it was all over. Rose was gone, and he was stumbling his way back to the machine. There was nothing left for him to do but get inside and die. He fell in the snow, crying out in pain. I wanted to go to him then, but if I left my mirror I would be stuck and he would likely lock me outside. I refused to let him die alone.
I waited for him to pull himself to his feet again before I moved, shooting to one of the small reflective surfaces of the machine's console. He came inside, supporting himself by the hand rails and his face was a mixture of emotion that I couldn't even begin to understand. What must it be like to die without anyone knowing? As far as everyone else was concerned, the Doctor would still be alive and well, just with a different face.
But I had promised to remember him, and I meant it. He had to know that.
His skin was bright and glowing constantly now. Waves of energy were flowing from him, taking pieces of him away with them. He was breathing hard, so afraid. He looked at the console and saw me, looking straight into my eyes. I fought my tears and tried to smile for him, tried to give him comfort.
I began to emerge from my mirror. My fingers pressed through the glass as easily as water as I reached toward him. He would not be alone. I would not let him go alone.
His eyes drifted away from me slightly, looking at the room around him for the last time. "I don't want to go."
My fingers touched his, burning hot with energy. Then suddenly his whole body was on fire and his arms flung out to the sides as the light left him. He burst with a force of violence, blowing out the windows of his ship, lighting fires, but worst of all shattering my mirror.
Only my arm had left the glass and I felt myself get yanked back inside. I called out to him, but it was too late. The mirror was gone. I tried desperately to find another mirror on the ship to emerge from. Different Doctor or no, I still owed my life to him and he still needed a companion to ease his loneliness.
But the ship had no mirrors left for me to find. Either they had all been destroyed, or the ship had travelled in time and was lost to me. I could not find my Doctor anywhere, and I was nothing but a reflection in a mirror.
I choose to remain in my prison, constantly moving from mirror to mirror, in search of an old friend I have yet to meet. I don't know his face, his voice, or even his name. But I know what he did for an angry, murderous wretch such as myself. I know what he did for an old soldier and his family. I know what he did for every life in the universe.
He is a good man. He is the sort of man who sacrifices everything he has for the good of someone else, no matter how unfair it might be. He is the sort of man who will cry at the death of his own enemies if he thinks there was any chance they might have changed. He is the sort of man who will carry all the world's pain in his heart and still smile, if it means saving another parent from burying their child. He has lost everything a hundred times over, and he still gives.
He is a good man. In every sense of the word, he is good. So I may not know his face, or his voice, or his name, but I know his heart. And it is beautiful.
So if you happen to see me in your mirror, know that I am still looking. And if you happen to meet the most wonderful man to ever live, be sure to let him know. I will never forget him, and I will never stop searching for him.
Because a man like that doesn't deserve to be left alone.