When one is in the TARDIS, the seemingly magical spaceship that can travel forwards and backwards through time at its own will, one will lose track of the world outside. The TARDIS itself is a whole universe packed into a small blue police box, with glorious wonders around every corner that would take all of natural time itself to explore only half of the mystery it holds. The man in charge of this beautiful machine calls himself The Doctor, a space and time healer and savior to those who know of him or have met him personally. The Doctor has had many faces pass by him in all his one thousand years of living, floating through the endless galaxies, a lonely drifter with a lost home. All these faces have made numerous impacts on his life and his perspective of the world, which he views as something to be explored forever.
The Doctor has never once divulged more than he ought to about himself to his companions. They only know what he is willing to tell him of his past, of the brilliance of his home planet and how it was lost in a terrible war that left him alone in the universe to wander from planet to planet, galaxy to galaxy, in search of some good to do for the creatures his people had been assigned to protect. The Doctor is a brilliant but frightening man, with secrets that would turn the blood of his friends cold if they ever knew what he had to do in order to save the universe.
Though many have tried to get close to this man, they have befriended him and comforted him; some had even become his lover, vowing to spend all of their natural lives with him. But fate as it would, never allowed them to stay more than a short while with him. This deadly pattern of lose prompts him now to issue warning to those newer companions who are willing to run away with him to the stars. He tells them at their own risk, they may not return alive and if they do, they will have seen fates worse than death at the hands of this mad man with a box.
Yet this does not seem to phase them, to the bemusement of The Doctor, they are more than eager to escape what they call a droll and dreary lifestyle to travel among the stars and see distant worlds. Each companion has an adventurous, childlike streak in them, a trait that The Doctor deeply admires, for he has seen it all, he has seen stars die and planets fall, he has seen the entire universe end and begin again in front of his own eyes. His eyes, they say, are older than he himself.
The Doctor longs for this childish curiosity that his companions give him, to fulfill their adventurous desires and hope to make them happy forever. But after some time, in some of his companions, he will notice a growing sadness. A faraway distant look in their eyes that tells The Doctor that having the universe at their fingertips is not all that they yearn for. This is when those that are lucky enough to be alive still take their leave from The Doctor and his TARDIS to return to their homes and start their lives.
They have families and friends; they have the opportunity to stay put in one place and start their lives from start to finish, as was the natural law of certain creatures. This The Doctor will envy of them, their ability to leave so easily without turning back.
He is a lonely man, The Doctor, who at some points in time will find himself walking the empty halls of his TARDIS quite like today. He thinks to himself that perhaps he would take a swim in the giant sized pool or read up his histories in the library that was filled with every book imaginable but he could not bring himself to walk down either corridor. Instead he wandered aimlessly deeper and deeper into the twisting halls of the TARDIS, its silver panels glowing blue and white, illuminating his face.
He walked for what would seem like hours to any other person until he came across a door he could not remember ever entering. The door was a simple wooden door with a brass knob and looked out of place in the metal and chrome TARDIS. The Doctor knew that his machine was capable of amazing feats and would often give him and his companions surprises in their times of need, but he didn't think that he needed anything at this point and time. Perhaps the TARDIS was just as lonely as he was and decided to communicate with him. Curiosity had gotten the best of The Doctor and he turned the knob on the door and it opened forward with ease.
Inside the room were simple stonewalls with candles on both sides illuminating the stone floor dimly. In the middle of the floor was a large full sized golden mirror. Strange, The Doctor thought as he walked toward it. The mirror was elegant and seemed to be from the early 19th century on Earth though the writing across the top of it was indecipherable, even for the TARDIS's translation function. The writing read: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.
The Doctor stepped closer to the mirror and peered at his own reflection in the dusty glass. He rarely ever looked at himself; he was not a man for vanity, but also because he was never sure who he would see looking back at him. He was a man of many faces with the power to change his appearance whenever he was in great danger of dying. It is a gift and a curse of his race, the Timelords, because it prolongs death. He can watch his loved ones die but he himself must wait for that experience. He will often muse how many times he has actually changed and this, he counted, would be his eleventh form if he included his very first form, the form that he had been born with.
He smiled bitterly at himself. A tuft of brown hair that loomed over an enormous forehead; a large nose that was rounded near the tip and complimented his overly large chin nicely. His sea green eyes flickered down to his attire, a simple brown tweed suit and a red bowtie because he thought that they were cool. He had had enough of this little assessment of his new features and was just about to turn to leave when he caught site of something almost impossible in the background of the glass.
He saw a woman who looked to be in her mid twenties with brilliant red curls walking toward him smirking. She stopped right beside The Doctor on his left side and blew a kiss right into the mirror, opening her mouth as if to say something.
"River?" The Doctor exclaimed loudly. He turned around quickly and was met with nothing but the emptiness of the room. Confused he turned in a full circle until he made himself dizzy but found no trace of the woman.
He looked back into the mirror expecting her to have disappeared there as well but was surprised to still see her standing there. She smiled sadly this time, as if she knew that she was not really there beside him, "But how are you? I mean, are you trapped in this mirror? Do I have to get you out? How do I-?"
His panicked musings were cut short when another red haired woman, only a little older than the first, stepped out from behind her; she had a stern face that broke out into a cheeky but friendly grin. "Donna?" The Doctor's mouth gaped open in disbelief at the two women.
Before he could speak again, more and more familiar people began appearing from behind him in the mirror and they stood, beaming silently by his side. A few women of varying ages and men of different sizes and statures, he couldn't believe his eyes. He blinked as a young couple on his right side beside held a baby wrapped in a pink blanket, the mother had ginger hair and a freckled face, she starred up at her husband, a man with short brown hair who stood awkwardly over them and waved sheepishly at The Doctor.
"Amy, Rory," he said slowly and the baby stirred but made no sound. Beside them were two women, a blonde and brunette, arm in arm with each other. "Rose? And Sarah Jane?" he laughed at this unexpected pairing.
He glanced around at all the people that had gathered into the small mirror, glancing behind him to make sure that they were not really there, "Martha, Grace, Jo, Astrid, Ian, Barbara, and Susan too!" he exclaimed as he said their names aloud. There were far too many people to count and he knew each and every one of them.
But how was this possible? He was seeing all his companions and family again, together in one place. This was a paradox yet nothing bad was happening, no time streams were being ripped open and no worlds were ending in fiery blazes. This brilliant device was showing him all that he had ever wanted to see, but what truth was to come of this?
The Doctor did not know how many hours he had spent looking into that mirror nor how many one-sided conversations he had started with the figures in front of him. He would have stayed there forever, watching their amused faces grinning down at him, happy and content. None of them harbored any ill feeling toward him or each other. This was the peace The Doctor had been searching for; he only wished that they could speak back to him. He wished that they could step through the mirror to join him in the TARDIS as one big happy family.
All too soon The Doctor was pulled back into reality by a buzzing against his chest. His mobile phone was lighting up inside his shirt pocket. The name across the screen made The Doctor's smile more thoughtful as he looked up at his friends in the mirror, he noticed Amy was rocking the baby to sleep with Rory cooing silently over them both.
The Doctor sighed wistfully, standing up and turning away from the mirror. He walked out of the room without looking back. He shut the door tightly and clicked his mobile on, holding the phone up to his ear, "Hello Pond," he said. "I was wondering when you'd ring me again."
"What have you been up to, Doctor?" the female voice said on the other end of the receiver.
"Oh nothing, just some reminiscing, was there anything you needed?" he asked, walking down the hall, trying to distance himself from the room as much as possible.
"Can't I just call to say hello, Doctor? You are my best friend, you know," the girl said laughing. "Rory and I've missed you, Doctor."
The Doctor turned around at the end of the corridor and saw that the door was no longer there, as mysteriously as it had appeared it was now gone, leaving little to no chance of it ever being found again. The Doctor blinked twice, feeling a sudden pressure build up in his throat, which he swallowed back. "I miss you too, Pond," he said still staring down at the end of the hall. "I miss all of you."