Title: Always There
Summary: A companion's thoughts a few years after leaving the Doctor.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Disclaimer: See something you recognize? I don't own it.
The Doctor always thought he had it hard, always said he couldn't "trust us humans" – because we wither and die, and, in what must be such short time, leave him all alone again. Always alone… Always having to find someone new, someone to keep him company. Someone who will, inevitably, leave him alone, just as you yourself had done.
Such a lonely angel…
But he seems to ignore the fact that presses at his companions' mind every waking second. He'll have to go sometime – he'll just leave me. It's an overwhelming sense of unimportance, being a companion, because you're so easily replaced. Someone new will come to his side, a star in his eye, and you'll be long forgotten wherever you may be.
Or, never forgotten. Not truly. Someone with as many memories as the Doctor must always be remembering his former companions. But, as you grow older, the Doctor stops coming, stops visiting you, until you just… die.
And the last thought on your mind might just be where are you, Doctor, because that last bit of surviving consciousness you have is screaming out that you want back that little bit of hope he brings in his wake, and you just want to see his familiar, haunting face…
One last time.
But, before that, soon after he leaves you – before the thought of maybe he'll come back is gone – you look up to the night sky and the stars. You wonder if he's wandering on a planet, which one, and then you begin to think that, maybe, just maybe, he's thinking about you, too. Looking out at the same sky as you, and just thinking and regretting leaving you behind.
And then you remind yourself that he's a very busy man, who's always busy thinking up plans to save a planet, and you tell yourself that he's not bothering with insignificant you anymore. You even tell yourself that you were always expendable to him, just to try and make yourself hate him – but it never works.
It's the curse of the companion, that is – to remember, always remember, and never be allowed to forget the magic he's brought into your life. The glitters of stardust floating around outside the doors of his time machine, or walking through the streets of ancient Rome, looking at all of the statues that are fascinating, or studying book after book with him, sitting side by side, on the TARDIS as he preaches on about something you're only half listening to. Half listening to because you're so caught up in how very much he knows that you're forgetting to actually care what it is he's rambling over. You just think he's so marvelous.
He's opened your eyes to things you couldn't have even imagined, and then, abruptly, those things are torn from you and given to someone else. And, in time, you're forced to close your eyes to those things, and it kills you a little.
But you can't hate him, no matter what, no matter how hard you long to.
Because you tell yourself that you could live your life on the TARDIS, with him, but he could never do the same – and you know it's killing some part of him, too.
When people you know ask you where you've been, and you know you can't really tell them without them thinking you mad, it almost hurts you to lie and say you went on a vacation or something, because you want to tell them. You want them to experience, if only in stories you tell, the exciting adventures and the danger you faced with the Doctor. But then you remember that the Doctor wouldn't want to be thought of as a hero – he never did like being thanked, you remind yourself – and you tell yourself that you wouldn't want him mad with you.
It reminds you more that you can't forget the Time Lord and his ways; things will never be the same for you, and now you can't even go back to the way things were before. Because, now, you're waiting to hear the wheezing breaths of the TARDIS appear outside your house, waiting to see the man, in all his magical glory, appear at your door with an open hand. You're waiting to hear the familiar seven words that will make your heart jump, both anxious and excited, and for you to get that last chance to grab his hand and feel the world revolving under your feet. In that magic way he can make it revolve – the way that almost casts you off your feet.
But it never comes, or maybe it does – and it really does become the final time.
We humans are greedy though, and we always want more of him. We want him to look at us with that foolish grin, and the expression of him clearly having a plan to work things out as they come – the expression that clearly means he doesn't know what he's getting himself into.
Humans want more of anything – and his adventures are for free. So you tell yourself hey, why not? Could be fun and then you go with him. And you get so tangled up in the fun of his adventures, his world, his life, and you want desperately to keep it once it's gone. We humans will take anything for free, because we always think why not.
And before you accept, he's looking you up and down, humming quietly to himself as if judging you and how you'll act. Then he offers out his hand, with a welcoming, warm, addicting smile, and says those seven words.
"Do you want to come with me?"
And you take his hand, grinning, madly almost. Yes, you declare, and it's so soft and simple at first, but the words grow louder and louder as your travels with him begin to come to an end – until the end, where they're so very loud… until they're screams.
Yes!
You begin to thank the gods, if there really are any, for letting you meet him, and give empty promises of more love if they bring him back to you – but they never do, it seems like.
But you remind yourself, in one last hope to hate him, of the death, destruction, and monsters who also come, like the stardust, in his wake; you hope it makes you hate this lonely angel who you truly did love to be with – but it doesn't. The Doctor had told you that he couldn't save everyone, and he'd been blunt that it did have some effect on him.
You know this, because you'd seen the Lonely Angel – the Oncoming Storm, the Doctor – spending more time at the console of his precious TARDIS, trying to busy himself. He would say something about it, to no one – to the TARDIS, you knew – and the machine would sing softly to her Doctor.
Your Doctor – but, as time passed, Not-Your-Doctor.
The Doctor, destined to be alone forever and never forget anyone or anything.
The Companion, never allowed to forget and fated to die without seeing the Doctor ever again.
The Doctor and his companion were both cursed, neither having it any better than the other, you'd hum in your thoughts, and the sigh when you realized the fate was mostly the same.
He could never trust humans. They wither and die – they break his hearts.