All of Time and Space
Summary: The Doctor has two hundred years to waste, two hundred years to run before his appointment at Lake Silencio. Inevitably he picks up a few people along the way. Minor references to Mark of a Time Traveller.
X
The first fifty odd years he spends alone and it drives him mad. Every time he goes to explain something he turns to that empty space behind him and feels empty when no one is standing there listening to every word with rapture. The companion he imagines, sometimes hallucinates, changes regularly but it always hurts the most when it's someone he's let down. Eventually he realises that he has to find someone or he won't make it to Utah in one piece, he needs someone to watch his back, but still he's reluctant to find that person. In the end the Tardis acts upon her initiative and makes the decision for him, taking him to where he needs to be.
X
Interestingly it's only his fourth companion that the Tardis marks as her own, but then again she's special. After the disaster that was the end of his previous partner in crime he doesn't want to be near anyone ever again but when this student in an alien library starts to recite her notes in Gallifreyan he can't contain his excitement, his hope. It's unfounded of course, she's a historian, piecing together all she can but she's hit rock bottom and her instructors are all for chucking her out and leaving her with nothing. It was the ultimate shame in her society to be left with nothing so when he makes the proposition she can hardly say no.
In the beginning she regards him as a saviour, saving her from a lifetime of misery. He's racked with guilt because he knows that this life will do so much worse to her. He underestimates her, it takes her barely a day to discover that he's only interested in her because she can speak his native tongue, albeit trippingly. But she doesn't mind, she's young and this is an opportunity she won't turn down, to pay him back for taking her through time and space she starts to speak Gallifreyan all the time.
After the first few years she's fluent in Gallifreyan and her native tongue is shaky and uncertain, he convinces himself that he's corrupted her.
Occasionally he forgets that she's an academic, clever and resourceful. But when she starts saving him more than he saves her he realises how much he's come to rely on her. In his mind she was young and innocent and saw the word with wonder but now she's matured and the wonder is replaced with an almost scientific curiosity. He explains everything with patience and when he hasn't the time because they're too busy running from whatever species they've upset this time he makes sure to come back to the points he's missed when they're safe.
He forgets when it moved from you and me to us.
Eventually he defines their relationship and a brotherly, sisterly, love and closeness. They watch out for each other and with her long lifespan, nearly as long as a Time Lords, they could be together for as long as they wanted. But then the Tardis marked her, beautifully carved Gallifreyan across her back and up to her shoulder, it mirrors his. That's when he realises it has to end and he drops her off back home, leaving her a final parting gift of a Gallifreyan book that will get her back into her instructor's favour. He hopes she will find it in her heart to forgive him one day.
In his little Tardis blue journal he writes about their last adventure and finishes the entry as he always does, only this time in the past tense.
Her name was Sefira.
X
His third companion gets off to a bad start but he's only got himself to blame. After all it is his fault that this man is still standing in front of him and not buried in the remains of Satellite Five.
His name is Captain Jack Harkness.
It's awkward to have the wrongness around him constantly because Jack is wrong but he bears it because Jack deserves some unconditional friendship, especially from him. It takes time but old wounds begin to heal and Jack becomes his closest friend. So close that he shows him the journal and laughs when Jack steals the pencil off him and underlines the captain in his name.
Jack accepts that he's not the only one who's important to him.
That's why he decides to show Jack the room. The walls are covered in photos of old friends. There are so many that some are hanging from string from the ceiling. When Jack asks who they are he tells him that this room contains everyone he's let down. It takes Jack only a few seconds to find his picture and seconds more for him to wrap the Doctor is a firm hug and tell him that despite everything he's never let him down.
When Jack next dies for him he leaves before the Doctor tells him to, Jack understands.
X
The first person he finds has been searching for him for almost as long as he's been running. She's running to, from so many things. He takes her in warily, remembering what happened the last time they met. But after saving someone she could have killed without blinking he is happy to write her name down.
Her name is River Song.
He need not write anything else.
River begins to become the person he knows in their sporadic journeys together. He sees now why she keeps a diary because it can get confusing when he always meets her at different points in her timeline. He doesn't have to worry so much about River, he knows she can look after herself but whenever he sees her he can't help but feel guilty because he's always wondering how far she is from the library. Knowing how she's going to die pulls him down and he can't help but feel both upset and happy whenever he drops River back to Stormcage, her house or from wherever he picked her up, because the library is still so far away.
At some point he falls completely and utterly in love with her.
They grow closer the closer he gets to Utah, but even though he wants to he never proposes to her because he knows what happens next will break her heart and he won't put her through that. Instead he's happy with a ring box in his pocket and River by his side. He wonders why the Tardis has never marked River but then again the Tardis knows just as well as he does how it's going to end.
The last time he sees her before Lake Silencio he shows her his name, written in stars at the Medusa Cascade. She says it's beautiful.
X
His final companion is short-lived. He only picked him up because he was lonely and he quickly found that he couldn't stand him. He was a soldier and he acted like one. It drove the Doctor madder than being alone had. In the end he dropped him off back home without a word. He only got one entry in the journal.
His name was Rykan Laurence, stay away no matter what.
X
Once he'd dropped River back home he met his second companion. Well technically she was actually his first companion because River hardly counted. In many ways she reminds him of Amy Williams because she has that childlike wonder whenever she sees something new. It makes him feel young again and he knows it's selfish but he can't help it.
He shows her the wonders of the universe but he knows it won't last, she'll realise how dangerous it is and back off. He was right of course, she left him, but for different reasons than the ones he thought would drive her away. She lasted longer than he expected at any rate.
After one particularly nerve-racking adventure she'd asked for somewhere quiet and relaxing and he'd taken her to a sunny beach in the middle of nowhere, with friendly locals and no need for sun cream. She'd loved it; he'd had time to reflect. By the end of the week they spent on the coast she's found someone who will appreciate her for who she is and he can't deny her that.
Even though he receives an invitation he doesn't go to the wedding, she didn't need him anymore and quite frankly she wouldn't approve of his dancing.
Her name was Evelyn Jackson, now it's Evelyn Summers and she's happy.
It's the first name he writes in his journal. It also has the happiest ending so in a way he's glad that whenever he opens the blue book he'll always see the happy ending first.
X
For two hundred years he had been running. Now it's time for him to stop. For one final adventure he acts as outrageously as possible to get himself into the history books for Amy and Rory and whoever else might remember him.
He writes more letters to companions than he can count and numbers them. The first four he seals away in Tardis blue envelopes and posts them, one for Amy and Rory, one for River, one for Canton and the final one to start the whole cycle turning. The rest he leaves in his journal along with the final entry.
His name was the Doctor.
He hopes that one day the rest of the blank pages will be filled by him, that he'll find a way out but he leaves the book in River's pocket with the ring box for safekeeping just in case.
X
Fin.