Warnings: Character Study, Speculation, Introspection
A/N: Written for who_contest's Prompt: Void. Truly, I have no idea what happened with this one. I didn't even have one planned out! It was a complete and total blank, one that I thought would continue to be a complete and total blank. Then the Musie said 'we'll write THIS' and I just...went along with it. I don't even know if it is remotely readable, as it is fueled by Exhaustion and Coffee, but as always, I shall leave that up to those who read it - and thank them for taking the time to do so! As per usual, this fic is mostly unbeta'd and written in one go, so please forgive any mistakes and/or blatant vagueness. And (as always), I apologize for any repetition, misspellings, sentence fails, grammatical oh-noes and general horridness. Unbeta'd fic is overly-thinky/wandery/blithery and unbeta'd.
Disclaimer(s): I do not own the scrumptious Doctor or his lovely companions. That honor goes to the BBC and (for now) the fantastic S. Moffat. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about!
There is a moment, a span of mere milliseconds, where the slightest change can affect the greatest impact.
Even something as simple as turning right instead of left. Stepping back into your ramshackle, rundown apartment, instead of stepping into the alley to investigate that familiar, yet alien sound you thought you heard. Going back to bed instead of waiting all night for someone who won't come.
Great thinkers call this the Hand of Fate.
The Time Lords called it the Void Equation.
The Doctor (who had more experience with these twists of the future and past), called it the Breath of Time.
Time isn't always a straight path, a loops or even a series of the same. It has dips and valleys, forks in the road and bumps where it is least expected. Any decision made can void the decision you might have made. And any decision you might have made can come back to haunt you when you found that you might have chosen the wrong one.
Each path is a new destiny. A new destination.
So what happens to the paths you didn't choose?
They can still be seen, those paths. Like mirages in the desert. Heatwaves rising from the road on a hot summer's day. Never very clear. Always shifting and turning in on themselves. But they can be detected. They can be tracked.
Some become fully formed, take on their own life (but this is usually seen as branches into parallel universes and dimensions and it would take too long to explain and frankly, it isn't near to the point); but others linger: dim, barely there – like ghosts in the vortex – awaiting the choice to be arrived at again. One where they will be the outcome. The choice made. The decision reached.
Turning left instead of right.
Stepping into that alley and seeing what you were expecting (even as you were half not).
Grabbing your suitcase, teddy bear and jacket to wait all night in a garden.
So many choices. So many made to get to the current future. These are not things that people (ordinary people, anyway), contemplate too often. No, these choices are thought upon by the unordinary (and those who look like people, but really aren't).
What if those school-teachers kept going past that old junkyard; leaving curiosity for another day (that would never come)?
What if the Child of Gallifrey decided to stay with her old Grandfather and leave the fate she truly wanted behind her?
What if the air hostess decided to take a later flight at a different gate?
What if the doctor who killed a man and saved his life all in one day, decided to travel with that man – instead of saying goodbye on the steps of an old fountain?
All choices left to the equation of the Void. All made within a breath of time.
They are all gone, now. Though none of them are ever truly gone.
They all made their choices: some of them absolute, some of them less so. All of them the designers of their own fate – even as they wove the design for others – be it themselves, those closest to them and those who had not yet come to be. They carried their destinies within their own grasp, even as they left those destinies in the hearts of the man they had come to call a friend, maybe even family. In doing so, they bound his fate with their own, gave him freedom of choice with the tying of his own hands; something he thought about often when his Companions slept and the Old Girl was quiet.
He would never give away those breaths. He would never deny them the time, the adventures that they all had together. But he often wondered where he would be, if he had gone with the sidrat of his own choosing (ignoring the suggestions of the maintenance technician).
Sometimes he could see them…those trails of might-have-beens, maybes and never-wills. Branches of choice and destiny spread like a path of gold and white before his eyes – never ending, always pushing ahead – even as some of those branches petered out to nothingness, every second like a heart-beat. They would fade, sometimes. Other times…well…
You get the idea.
Over his long years, he had discovered that there truly is no Hand of Fate. It is a name that people give to an idea when they feel powerless and naming things makes them feel more in control. There is no fate but what each individual makes – and that is truly where the funny (and sad) bits come in.
There is no Void Equation, as nothing is truly voided. A decision is never final. A choice is never absolute.
But each choice is like a breath. Simple, natural, without conscious thought. Some are guided, some are lead and some are leaps of faith – but each sends a ripple through time. Even when memory does not hold, Time always will.
All you have to do is take in that next breath – and step forward.
And so he finds himself here in this place: one that is familiar in so many ways, but is not in others. A place that holds memories from another era, even as it erases (slowly, inexorably) the more recent ones. It is here that he takes that first step (unguided, with no one to hold his hand), hoping it will lead him forward.
His guitar sits heavy and yet too light across his shoulder. His jacket is too snug, too close in the heat of the Utah desert; but he finds he doesn't mind this. Not really. In the long-run, these things truly are not important.
No. The important things lie just ahead. A mirage in the desert. Trickles of heat from the burning sands under the baleful, steady gaze of the setting sun.
He thinks of the void of his own memory, he thinks of turning wheels, of the will of Time and lets the diner door close behind him, never minding the soft thump and a puff of cool air that follows. Somewhere out there, Time had held its breath, waiting for him to make his next choice; even as there was no one beside him now to help him do so.
Time was waiting for him. He could no longer be subjected to the void of what could have been. That equation was done. That branch of fate had passed.
It was (long) past time to start a new one.
With a shrug of his shoulders (and a small tug on the strap across his chest), the Doctor takes that next breath, prepares for that next step –
And turns left.