Amelia Pond is four years old, with a tiny little dad (except she's four years old, and he's the biggest, strongest dad, and he'll protect her forever and ever) and a mum, the most beautiful mum in the whole wide world.
Amelia Pond is four years old, and she lives in an empty house.
It starts like this: the world ends.
It ends like this: they don't.
It doesn't end, really, not so much as it divides itself by zero in the heart of a living timeship, but if we're assigning a linear chain of events then we may as well assign nouns.
It's all shit anyway, the linguistic attempt at finite classifications to infinite objects which don't truly exist outside of sentient perception, so what does it really matter?
Amelia Pond is seven years old. There's a crack in her wall, and she prays for someone to come and fix it.
A lonely god crash-lands into her garden, bleeding red-orange, coughing silver-gold, and oh-so-broken inside.
These events are unrelated.
This is where it gets complicated.
It starts like this: a boy called Thete runs away from a broken home.
It ends like this: a man called the Doctor can't go back to fix it.
Amelia's mum runs to her room, looks scared but pretends to be calm, and says it'll be alright, that no one's been hurt, that Amelia should stay here and go back to bed and not come down and absolutely not, under any circumstances, look out the window.
Amelia's mum does not exist, has never existed, and there's a big blue box in her garden and it says "police" and is the answer to her prayers.
He climbs out of the box, slips over the edge, and falls to the ground.
Sometimes, there's a man standing there, when he drags himself up, looking threatening and severe.
Sometimes, it's a little girl, curious and unafraid.
Sometimes, there's no one, only a dilapidated ruin of a house, with too many rooms and cracks that aren't there, and those are the worst times of all.
Here, now, it's the man, and the Doctor's dripping wet, and coughs wrack his thin frame. He looks up, chlorine-water running down long strands of brown hair into his eyes, and it burns a bit, but he ignores it and pastes a grin on his face. "Hello!" he says, something like cheerfully.
The man looks at a loss for words.
"I'm sorry," says the Doctor, "but I seem to have landed on your garden shed."
A woman comes rushing out of the house in a dressing gown and bare feet. "I told Amelia to stay upstairs," she says. "Shall I call the police?"
The Doctor tries to stand, but collapses again and coughs up regenerative energy—it should be blood, it feels like blood as it drains in his throat, but the regeneration burns it away.
"Perhaps an ambulance," says the man worriedly. Considering he's crashed into their garden and broken their shed, they're being awfully kind, kinder than he feels humans should be.
Or, at least, kinder than they should be to him.
"No!" gasps the Doctor as he realises what they're saying, "no ambulances, really, I'm fine! I just need to take her—" he gestures vaguely at the TARDIS, "—to Cardiff to refuel, we'll be out of your hair in no time, and you can forget we were ever here at all, really. Just, please," he adds (begs), "don't call anyone, don't tell anyone I'm here. Please."
The woman frowns. "You'll catch your death of cold," she says uneasily.
"Hah!" says the Doctor, "I should think I'd catch my death of Daleks, first."
The man and the woman look at each other, having a silent conversation that the Doctor can't quite understand.
He always ends up in the house, whether it's empty and he staggers in because he can smell-taste-feel the fear it's soaked in, or whether he's invited in with some varying level of mistrust.
"I'm Tabetha," says the woman calmly, as though he's an abused dog that might lash out, "and you've met my husband, Augustus. Our daughter is asleep, upstairs." She hands him a chipped mug full of Earl Grey, helps him rearrange the towel wrapped around his shoulders so that he can hold it. "This is tea," she adds. "You drink it."
"Thank you," says the Doctor helplessly.
Tabetha doesn't smile, doesn't soften, but she says "You're welcome" like it isn't a lie, and she rests her clasped hands on the table. "Do you have a name?"
"Yes," says the Doctor, and then: "I'm called the Doctor."
It starts like this: the question is asked.
It ends like this: he answers truthfully (or as good as) for the first time in millennia.
They're all dead, dead for good this time. What does some stupid tradition matter?
He pulls her aside in the kitchen, peering at the Doctor over her shoulder. "That isn't a human name," says Augustus. "Is it?"
"Augie," says Tabetha tiredly, "it fell out of the sky. Of course it hasn't got a human name."
"It fell out of the sky in a police box," Augustus emphasises.
The Doctor shivers, an affectation as much as anything, and coughs, which isn't. They come back into the room, and he looks up at them and grins. "Fish fingers!" he says, "Brilliant!"
Tabetha's smile gets a little more sincere, and she refills his mug.
"Tea!" he exclaims. "Even more brilliant-er!" He takes a sip gladly. "She likes the shape," he says, like it's an explanation. "The TARDIS. And no, it's not a human name; you're right."
Oh.
The house has been empty for decades and never has been, a contradiction in ten million parts. The Doctor hears screams coming from rooms which don't exist, from people Time's forgotten, from years long past and not-yet come.
It starts like this: the oldest thing in the universe, the greatest thing in the universe, is the Medusa Cascade.
It ends like this: the only thing in the universe, the worst thing in the universe, is a Type 40 TT Capsule.
It burns all at once and never again; all is lost and Zagreus sings.
"So," Tabetha begins, and has to break off because she can't pronounce his name.
"Doctor," the Doctor provides.
"Doctor," she repeats, gratefully. "What brings you here?"
"My ship crashed," he says, as though it's the most obvious thing in the world, and he takes a sip of tea. "She's a bit mad at me, I think, because I put off my regeneration."
It's silent, the nothingness of something never there. Ghosts of life exist even in abandoned places, and he sees them out of the corner of his eye. Here there are none, and it reminds him of the constellation of Kasterborous and a planet wiped out of time as though it never was.
He walks through the ruins and feels, suddenly, like a trespasser.
A little girl stands on the staircase, her arms wrapped tight around herself. She has bright ginger hair. "You're all raggedy," she says.
He looks down at himself, at the tatters of his clothes—the towel strung over the back of the chair when it had served its purpose—and he nods. "I suppose I am."
"Are you the policeman?" she asks. "Are you here to fix the crack in the wall?"
He smiles, pulling the sonic from his pocket. "I suppose I am."
"It ate my homework," she says, "just the other day! Mum and dad believed me but my teacher said I just didn't do it, 'but good job coming up with something other than blaming the dog, very creative' she said. We don't even have a dog!" She pauses halfway up the steps, turning to frown at him. "You're weird. Are you an alien?"
"I suppose I am."
It starts like this: the world doesn't end.
It ends like this: they do.