He should have known.
He really should have known.
Can't he remember anything? It was a simple, yet significant, date. He should have at least remembered the day, month, year. The planet. The country. The county. The town. The names of any of the survivors.
No. Nothing had rung a bell inside of his magnificent mind. He knows all of pi's numbers, knows what's real and what is simply a dream. He has all of the universes's knowledge available to him, libraries in other galaxies and the whisperings of monks, headless or no. Languages in a pitch too high for others to hear, the songs of old resounding endlessly in the back of his head, memorized. Songs of past and future, dead, undead, ones yet to be born. Knights of gallantry and knights of traitorous hearts. Gelatinous masses 30 years ago procreating a queen destined to be a tyrant, far from the Milky Way, and the person who shall lead her poor people to freedom. The wisest, the fairest, the most courageous leader of all, not far from Earth, ruling fairly with his husband for more than 105 years. Everything is his oyster, and yet he had been too deep in his own loneliness and self-pity that he hadn't taken the time to remember a date.
The Doctor watches the last of the water receding, his skull bouncing around the screams of civilians. His eyes are haunted by the sight of the destroyed houses and the pale figures becoming visible in the light of the sun; it doesn't seem to want to shine today. The Doctor doesn't blame it; he could say the same about himself. It does so, yet unwillingly. The sunbeams are as white and as weak as the corpses sure to be below.
The Doctor waits, not for the living. The survivors left to cling to roofs and mattresses have already been saved. No, the Doctor waits for the dead. He wants to know if she is down in the town or even further away; the retreating water has been sure to wash many people away with it. He has hope, though it is very little, the puny fairy stammering at the bottom of Pandora's Box. She could have latched onto another roof or someone could have saved her.
The Doctor fears the worst.
The flood has left the place a desolate marsh: the houses are still clearly houses, yet are so completely bashed in that they can never be used again. Wood litters the place, hiding underneath the ground, sticking out of it like a war-weary flag (which is a better way to describe the Doctor, anything is) or leaning on larger portions of wrecked buildings.
His trainers sink into the malleable earth as he walks. They become filthy. He doesn't care.
The unmoving people the Doctor passes are not as few as they should be; the rest have washed away with the water. He wishes now only for a hat, to place on his unruly hair and then to remove and position over his hearts in utmost respect and sorrow.
The Doctor remembers now. He repeats the information to himself silently as he passes slowly, so slowly.
On May 31, 1889-
Soaked women holding soundless infants in their limp arms, men with unmoving limbs and closed eyes that will never open again-
-in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA-
-a pair of legs that don't twitch coming out from under a larger pile of collapsed wood of their own house, trapped but forever unaware that they are-
-the South Fork Dam failed, resulting in mass flooding of the town-
-a child of only fifteen, so very white, on his side, facing the lonely alien, one arm reaching out as if the Doctor can still help him-
-releasing a catastrophic torrent of twenty million tons of water-
"Run!"
He only tried to save her, no one else, no member of the family that adored her so. Their roof was strong, that's where he led her, and they lie on top of it, watching as the tsunami-like horror roared closer and closer. When it did hit, they were soaked. It felt as though it would be that way forever. He held her hand as tight as he possibly could without hurting her, too afraid of losing someone else.
-the town was utterly destroyed-
-a wrinkled hand revealing itself, the owner crushed underneath an entire barn-
"Just hold on to me," he whispered in her ear as they bobbed around, clinging to the roof for dear life. "Hold onto me, and I promise I will never let you go." She said nothing, but he felt her hand tighten on his jacket.
-and, out of the population of 30,000-
"Doctor!"
He had slipped when he got to his knees, peering around for other survivors, and was hanging off the edge of the roof, head and arms the only thing afloat. The roof bumped with the waves.
"Doctor!" the American child hung tighter to the structure as it became harder to stay on.
He tried- oh, how he tried to get himself up in time; the water was pulling him down on purpose, clawing at him with icy fingers and sending shudders throughout his thin frame. His brown hair hung down in his eyes, making it too hard to see, the roof shingle were so slippery, his fingers were so numb. His head went under for a moment as she screamed his name for the last time-
-over 2,200 perished in its watery depth.
The Doctor has to walk for a while before he finds her.
Her fair hair is soaked, as is the rest of her. She lies on her back, one arm spewed out her her side, the other lying across her chest. Her legs lay straight. Almost good enough for her coffin.
Except that her eyes are open.
The Doctor waits for her to move, to get up, to cough up water and ask for a hand. But she only lies quietly, staring just past his shoulder at the sad sun. The Time Lord kneels down by her side. He looks her in the eyes, deeply, for one last time, and then closes them. He knows that they will never open again. He almost doesn't do it, with that knowledge.
He stays there for a long time, not noticing that criminal tears have freed themselves from his eyes and are having a blue dance of freedom down his skin.
He should have known. No one deserves this fate. He could have gotten her to higher ground with her family in time. At least one family. She shouldn't have uttered her last when she was so young.
The last thing she did utter was his name.
"Sir," The Red Cross member places a benevolent hand on his shoulder,"I'm afraid we have to take the body away, now."
The Doctor takes one last, lingering look at this precious child. He stands, hot water making his cheeks and old eyes tingle, not caring in the least that he's crying in front of Clara Barton (The Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross!). He watches as they lift her, take her away from him. It makes his hands start to shake and his knees want to buckle and be of no use to anyone. He sucks in a deep breath; his breathing has become rapid.
The traveler balls his hands into fists, stuffs them into his never-ending pockets, and walks away, back to his TARDIS, ignoring Clara Barton's desperate calls and inquiries. All but one.
"What was her name, sir?"
That's when the Doctor stops. He turns about to stare into her eyes, eyes that are sparkling and full of life and determination and curiosity. They remind him of Rose's eyes.
"Her name was Madge Fisher," he says,"and she was only ten years old."
He turns back around and continues walking. Clara Barton asks him no more questions, and he will deck the next American that attempts to.
The Doctor stand in the Tardis alone. It is very silent. Usually, when it's like this, he'll listen for the sound of his heartbeats for comfort. So, he listens. The sounds are muffled and odd, and he knows why.
The Doctor's eyes are blank. Glazed and dead, just like Madge's. As he moves around, he is slow and melancholy, as if he is walking underwater. His heartbeats are gurgled and off. They don't work properly. Never have, really.
The Doctor needs a doctor.
Or maybe just a medical student will do.
For the present, though, the Doctor keeps an image of Rose Tyler's blonde hair and Madge Fisher's smiling face ready in his mind.
My first Doctor Who fanfiction, if that wasn't obvious enough already. The Johnstown Flood of 1889 was a real-life event, and the first major disaster handled by the Red Cross. Madge Fisher was a Johnstown citizen who unfortunately perished in the flood.
I don't have information of what she looked like or if she did or did not have a chance of survival before her death; this account is purely fictional in that sense. It got the information from a Wikipedia page on the Johnstown Flood (don't hate me for using wiki) and there is an entire list of the people who died in the flood at this website:
FloodMuseum/flood_