"…What you sow does not come to life unless it dies."—Paul, 1 Corinthians 15: 36b
The scene around me should be chaos incarnate, full of laughter and shouting and ceaseless movement. There should be friends and relatives bustling to-and-fro, chattering idly to one another as they wait in respective seats, the sound wafting to my ears. There should be straggler-guests hurrying, hurrying in, eyes stretched wide at the possibility that they are late, that the ceremony has already begun. That they've missed this, my shining moment. My brightest, breathless point in history, the moment when I leave on life behind to embrace another—or rather, mingle with another. Become one with someone else's story, our tapestries woven together seamlessly.
That's what I need to focus on today, I suppose: not on those absent and missing and so very, very not here, but on what is. On what's happening. Me—I'm getting married. And in just a few minutes, my father (of sorts) will be escorting me down the aisle, our arms linked so tightly that it will seem impossible to let go. To shear myself from him, even though I must. To embrace something, to fully and truly hold something dear, you have to let another thing go, allowing it to drift and dance through the coming wind.
Today, I will let my father go…and latch onto him. To the Doctor. My Doctor, who's nervously shifting from foot to foot at the head of the sanctuary (We're in a cathedral-ish thing, in case you were wondering. Lots of glass, here. Very official and proper and wedding-y.) as he waits. Waits for me. For my entrance, when the meager gathering of guests will all rise in honor of me and my gleaming white moment.
And that's when the thought reenters my mind: there should be more people here. More guests. More bored-out-of-their-bloody-mind relatives who I scarcely know, stifling yawns as they fan themselves with repurposed wedding invitations. There should be children squirming in their seats, their writhing bodies anxious to take flight down the halls or the aisle or God-knows-where-else; there should be harried parents to scold or shush, to demand that they sit still and look pretty. Should be groomsmen and bridesmaids bustling before me, awaiting for the moment they'll glide over the aisle to precede me, the girl in un-tempered white—but they aren't. Hardly anyone is here, really: just the minister (a severe, tight-collared man who bears an uncanny resemblance to every severe, tight-collared teacher I had in grade in school); a dozen or so friends I've made since I've been here; my mum and dad, whose faces are bubbling over with resplendent smiles; and the Doctor. Because no one else is here, after all; after the Battle of Canary Wharf, I've been separated from everyone I know by…well, several universes. Alternate universes where I may or may not also exist, where I may or not may be garbed in all white, preparing to forge a life-path anew.
But then I toss aside the nasty reverie, and try to remember. Remember how many things I've had to overcome to get here, to this moment. All the heartache, all the black, starless nights where even hope had refused to interrupt the dark. All the mountains I've crested before I reached this valley, where everything is new and verdant and ready for a fresh start. These things—all I have, all I've worked for—should be here, and they are. Are here.
I wonder, in passing, if the Doctor has is remembering, too. It took him a while, getting to this soft, quiet right place—longer than me, in fact. Because he wasn't quite where he'd always been, wasn't the man I remembered before Canary Wharf or the meta-crisis or everything else. Something had changed, been stolen from him. And even though he had the memories, he had reverted back into his old self: the Doctor who hadn't known me. Hadn't loved me, hadn't burned straight through a star to simply make his good-bye.
Because in reality, he isn't the original Doctor. Not quite. Same memories, same face, same bright, yet too-old gaze—but he had a new body. One that had been formed out of some spare regeneration energy and human DNA during a meta-crisis, coming into the world new and innocent but alive with memory. Painful, angry memory, grating on his brand new everything like teeth over bone.
I am the same, he'd written once, but then again, I'm not. I am young yes, so very, very younger—but I am also old. Too old, in fact. And I remember…everything. It's as if my mind is coursing with a chorus of thousand echoes that I are rising, rising in strength. Are getting louder, until it's too much to bear. That's the real curse of the Time Lords, I suppose: age. Always growing older, older, older while your body stays fresh and new, your impossibly ancient mind trapped within a youthful cage.
That's one of the curses of the Time Lords, the oldness. The growing ancient. Acquiring years beyond counting, beyond memory, and yet never aging. Always staying youthful, healthy, vibrant while those around you bow under the weight of entropy.
But now that he's part-human…he'll die. He'll end. No regenerations, no new face to plaster over the too-old mind. Just death—the normal kind, the type you reach after a long, full life filled with smile lines and silvering hair and tired, old bodies. With aging, which is the curse of humanity, really. Or of mortals in general, I guess, so there's kind of no escaping it: take one curse, or swallow the other. No opting out, getting the best of both worlds. Linger on forever while your loved ones die-or hunker down and die with them.
You know, I've often wondered if the Doctor's afraid of death. Of dying. I mean, it's not like he's had a reason to before, what with his regenerations and everything; he worst he has to worry over is if he comes out looking hideous or something, or not having all his limbs. Or, Gallifrey forbid, isn't ginger. Or a million other things that course through his mind as his body begins anew, things that don't plague normal, mortal minds because they're swamped with their own brevity.
I asked him about it, once. Only a few weeks ago, to be exact, when we were on our walk. When we were weaving between crammed city sidewalks and urgent, bustling people. It hadn't really been quiet—like I said, we were forced to navigate through fat, swelling, writhing throngs—but there was a loll in conversation. A comfortable silence that billowed between us like new clouds, the ones that aren't dark or heavy with rain. The ones that made me feel sort of guilty for breaking it, as if I'd destroyed something young and delicate and that would never, ever exist again.
When I finally asked him, he'd grown very still and subdued, like a chastened school boy. He'd stopped in his tracks, letting the passers-by stream by him in living eddies, ignoring their huffs of disdain when he wouldn't get out of their way. Wouldn't step aside. Actually, I don't believe he could; his eyes were too distant, too otherworldly to register anything. It was as if he'd abruptly slipped between the fabric of this world into another, his entire being engaged as that other place danced before him. As it came alive.
And without meeting my eyes, he'd said it. He'd spoken. Answered in a small, weary voice that embodied all he was: a young man bellying an impossibly ancient soul.
"I'm scared to die after you, Rose Tyler."
He meant it, too. I could tell, see it in his eyes. Hear it in the tone of his voice, in its sheer fragility, and I've known since then that it's over: he's human. So long Curse of the Time Lords, and hello scourge of mankind.
To die after.
As my father begins escorting me up the aisle, his arm looped through mine and his eyes brimming with tears, I wonder if this thought is plaguing the Doctor's mind. Plaguing it right now, during what should be his brightest moment. But it's impossible to tell: his eyes are always tinged with an echo of melancholy, of regret. Of the span of years that stretch behind him, reverberating loud and clear.
But…maybe not. Maybe he's not thinking this, isn't caught up in thoughts of mortality and death. Because right now, he's beaming, his face alight with his charmingly boyish smile. His eyes are bright, gleaming—and although I can still detect that hint of melancholy lurking somewhere beneath, he actually appears happy. Truly, genuinely joyous as he watches me draw toward him, my gown billowing around me like a white cascade.
When I finally reach the altar, he gives me little wink. Just like he did back on earth, when the Sicorax invaded. When he'd been newly regenerated, and I'd been unsure of whether I could find in myself the same love for him as I'd had for the previous Doctor. When everything had seemed so clouded, so muddled. So lost. When he'd banished all those feelings with that tiny wink, making me flush as glanced downward, both abashed and totally endeared.
"You wanna run, Rose Tyler?" he asks in a hushed voice, his eyebrows dancing playfully.
As the Preacher—Minister, Priest, whatever—opens with the infamous "and we are all gathered here today too…" line, I cock a brow. "You're giving me an out, Doctor? How charming…"
"Nah, not an out. An invitation, if you like. To do our timey-wimey…stuff."
My brow cocks higher. "Timey-wimey stuff?"
"You know, the things we used to do. Traveling. Seeing the world. Well, worlds, I suppose."
As we recite our vows and slip on our rings, I find myself seeing it. His first words to me, back when I'd been that droll, mundane Rose Tyler who'd worked in a droll, mundane shop: run. Nothing else. He'd simply grabbed my hand, given me this urgent, urgent look…and told me to run. Which is what he's been doing all along, all his life: he's been running. Travelling, but not simply to see take in the light of the cosmos or to see the stars. Not to merely embark on adventures, but to escape something, something that's clung to his hearts…and to every Time Lord to ever set foot off Gallifrey.
He was running from the dying after.
And not that that can't happen here, either. I mean, I could die right now, leave him to grow old and weary in universe devoid of me. But that's a risk you have to take when you're human, and besides: it's better odds than that Time Lord business. Because then, the dying after part had been practically ensured, had been a veritable fixed point in time.
And really, dying isn't all that bad. And neither is loss. After all, to die, you have to have lived; to have lost, you have to have had.
Better the having and losing than to have a life without a pulse.
So after we've said our I-do's and we're leaning into one another for our first married kiss, I whisper "no". Just that one word. Just that no…and he nods, understanding filling his dark eyes.
"Good," he whispers, his forehead pressed to mine. "Because that timey-wimey stuff was starting to get a bit old, if you ask me."