Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who.
Author's Note: The Christmas Special left me thinking about what regeneration means and what each of the companions have meant to the Doctor and taught him throughout their time in the TARDIS. This is my goodbye to Eleven, but also a nod to the New Who Doctors and companions. Enjoy!
And now it's time for one last bow
Like all your other selves…
He'd never thought he'd taste it again. That strange mixture of fresh energy and dying bitterness – something rotten and something gleaming.
Regeneration energy spiraled off his fingertips in shoots of pale gold, lighting up the TARDIS walls.
Of course. Resetting for one last goodbye. After all the years spent in this body, it was fitting that he be granted one last moment to cling to everything he was.
Before I forget.
So hold on to not only this life, but the ones before, the memories slipping through the changes of regeneration.
He remembered the Time War.
Flames sparkling across crumbling walls and the screaming…
The icy whisper of his conscious and the aching will of his head and his hand.
It never really happened.
But that couldn't stop the memories of when the sky of a world exploded into fragments of flame, burning the screams to ashes.
Gallifrey would always burn in his mind.
And that was one memory he carried from life to life. Since the TARDIS changed with him all those years ago, his eternal companion by his side as he buried his war-torn guilt in his hearts and his eyes and yearned for a new life. Like an escape.
In a way, that's what regeneration was.
That day, it tasted like ashes.
Earth was there.
Never like Gallifrey, but there – a dazzling world unlocking its potential over the ages, there to save again and again. There to give him its best – its heroes who ran with him, towards him, from him.
Its humans who would always save him.
Rose Tyler. The first to run beside him after the Time War, see that "bigger-on-the-inside" blue box, watch the end of the world and strive for greater things because of him. Stand beside him with a pure type of kindness and a wide-eyed optimism, and a courage that expanded over the days.
She taught him to believe. In her, in himself, maybe even in the human race.
You were fantastic. And you know what? So was I.
It was only fitting that she was there as another life fell away, keeping him locked in that one reality. Where he wasn't a weary alien, but part of humanity.
Or maybe it was that humanity was part of him.
That day, it tasted like starlight.
That fear in her eyes, that he wasn't the same. Well, he never was. The old life flung off like a shell, a burden that he was finally casting away into the ocean of the past. Taking it apart bit by bit and reconstructing it into something new. Something new and still ancient.
In that life, he learned about vulnerability. What it meant to break, what it meant to live.
He lost her at Canary Wharf, at Bad Wolf Bay, in a lingering sea of not-quite-there. Not-quite-done.
Martha Jones. Replacement was never the word, but always his reaction.
But she was the one to make him tell her about Gallifrey, with its spiraling towers and orange sky. To hold his hand when he was falling to pieces, to be his guardian angel when he was human, to be the strength he needed when old enemies resurfaced.
She taught him to heal. Himself first, so he wouldn't rush in with anger and pain, but with peace.
He lost her too, in a way. Because she was done healing him.
Donna Noble. Who had turned him down, but now yearned for the stars.
She challenged him, never accepting the rules, always willing to save someone. Loud and brilliant, lonely and wise, snappy and kind. Throwing herself out into the universe with a kind of confidence that only came from quiet sadness.
She taught him to dare. To keep running, to save another, to keep fighting harder, to keep holding on.
And she lost herself in the end.
But for one shining moment…
Traveling alone always did leave an ache in his hearts, something indescribable, something dark. It left him wanting – wanting to believe, to heal, to dare, but finding it harder and harder.
In the end, he lost himself in their void, their echoes. In the end, his vulnerability, his humanity, tore him apart.
I don't want to go.
Because he had known he would lose everything he was, everything they made him.
And he could never be quite sure where those parts would find themselves in a new life.
The pain made him who he was, so he clung to it.
But there was still relief in letting go, letting the TARDIS cradle him once more.
That day, it tasted like rain.
Crashing down in a whole new life made everything strangely fresh and beautiful and important.
And it gave him his next missing piece.
Amelia Pond. Sweet and sassy, brave and haunted. Little Amelia and fish fingers and custard. Grown-up Amy who ran away, but always came home. Who let him become a story, her story, a piece of a memory of a life of something wonderful.
She taught him to choose. What was important, who was important, to choose who he wanted to be, the stories he wanted to be told.
A hard lesson, a lesson that would never be quite complete.
Rory Williams. Sidelined and glanced over far too often, but always there. An enormous heart and a tremendous courage. Willing to fight for his family with a loyalty that could outlast the universe.
He taught him to stand. To never give up and to walk forward despite the fear, to do what was right. To stand there for others because you couldn't not.
The Ponds. Always saving each other.
River Song. His bitter mystery in the early days, a future he was running from. Slowly becoming his present as timelines entwined, finding and choosing who she wanted to be step by step and fighting every obstacle, every pain that ever struck her, blocked her, tried to pull her down. And giving in to the future, the present, the everything, and loving when it hurt.
She taught him to fall. To not hold himself above the Earth, but to take her hand and never let go, not really, to trust and accept and open his hearts despite all that could…already had…would always…go wrong.
His Ponds – all of them. The family of this life.
But like everyone, lost eventually.
Yes, now he knew what he'd been running from all these years in this life.
Or running towards, like he'd said.
He lost Amy and Rory in a graveyard, in the touch of an angel, in a broken goodbye.
He lost River in a night of Singing Towers clouded with past and future and secrets.
And again when he found a goodbye.
Something else he'd learned.
Clara Oswald. More than the strange curiosity and loss in the beginning. Bright and gentle with an edge of hope, loss, pain, and wonder. A touch of pure kindness and a willingness to run. To take his hand and save him…from darkness, from death, from hiding.
She taught him to search. For the questions that needed asking and the stories that needed telling. For he was, really, and what it all meant in the end, the end that was certain to come.
In a way, it was ending.
So Clara would be there this time, and a part of him would endure. So many years of saving, of trying so hard and yet giving up so much with every breath.
It wasn't his humanity this time.
Maybe he would never know the why of this time.
Maybe it was tied to the secrets and names and founds and losts and ashes and starlight and rain.
He felt old. For once, he felt old.
All those years running from an ending.
And he had felt – no, not ready to die, but tired enough to. Weary traveler, having worn himself out running.
He had been done.
But now it came again. And was it ending or beginning he feared more? There was something new in this light – a new cycle of lives, like being born a little.
A cycle. Slipping from one to the next, around and around. That was him, cycles within cycles.
Circles within circles.
The Doctor in the TARDIS.
Ready to sleep, yes, time to change, but first...willing to make one last promise.
To choose to remember the pile of good things and pile of bad things.
To stand for who he was, everything he was, and everything they were, too.
To fall into another night, another dawn, but keep the yesterday as tomorrow struck.
To search for the old in the new, the new in the old, the beginnings and endings in their entangled mess.
I will always remember when the Doctor was me.
That day, the taste was something he never knew would have a taste. Something that felt inevitable.
…Eleven's hour's over now.
The clock is striking Twelve's.