if on a winter's night a traveller
Author's Note: You're welcome.
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who, and if I did, we'd still have the same theme song arrangement we had in 2005.
For my own reference: 12th fanfiction, 4th story for Doctor Who.
He doesn't like endings, but having already read it, this one he keeps.
And he doesn't like sitting still, it goes against his very nature, but recently he's found it difficult to do anything but.
He feels the emptiness more strongly than he ever has before. The loneliness that comes with their absence. No more toast crumbs on the console, no more hairbrushes lying about. He wonders if any of them were left behind – surely there must be some – and that his old girl has simply been hiding them from him to keep the pain at bay. No more showers that seem to last forever, nor any countless bottles of shampoo and conditioner in the cabinet. The kitchen has lost the homey warmth of constant use, and when he passes by, they can no longer be heard bickering.
For him, there is no-one left to bicker with.
They're not the first to be lost – far from it – but for whatever reason, he takes it harder than ever this time. It's been so many years since he's found himself feeling this gutted, this numb – but there it is.
Maybe it's because this time there were two of them. Maybe it's because he had them with him for so long. Maybe it's because they still left behind traces of their presence – book, reading glasses, daughter – that he'll never be able to avoid or let go of.
Maybe it's because he was stupid enough to hope that this time, it could last forever.
He wants to forget and he doesn't. Because it hurts, it hurts to have another two names for his hearts to beat out mournfully at night, but he wants to keep their memory alive, too, because they mattered.
She told him not to go on alone, but he doesn't want to find anyone else. Doesn't want to hurt anyone else, doesn't want to be hurt again himself. The loneliness, he decides, is a better curse to face now and forever rather than at some vague but definite point in the future, worse than ever. For him the hurt is inevitable, so he may as well stop new hurts from coming.
It's been a long time, such a long time, since he's slept. Not since the graveyard to be certain. Nights have always been something he's chosen to avoid out of fear. He could of course always hope for a dreamless sleep, for once in a while those come along and they are blessings in their own right, but it's not a risk he's willing to take.
Most of his time he spends sitting and staring, or wandering aimlessly through the corridors. And reading, of course. The same words, her words, over and over again.
He remains locked away in his box, which he leaves in the middle of nothingness, just floating in the vortex, and decides he will never leave here. He has all he needs right here, and always has, for he no longer yearns to run.
Their loss reminds him of just how old he really is. He forgets sometimes; when he travels it is so easy to do so. The adventures he used to need, the adrenalin he used to crave so very much, were what gave him his youthful spark. But there is no-one to adventure with anymore, and he finds he no longer has the energy or the desire even to run. Perhaps, he thinks, it is for the better, for he does not know if he really caused more good than harm.
So he sits, and he walks, and sometimes he reads her afterword.
The last words always hurt the worst. He runs his fingers over the text, the ink pressed into the thin sheet of cheap newsprint paper. She had one final request of him, and he knows he will never be able to fulfil it. Aside from the paradoxes fulfilling her last wish will create, (he'd thought she understood that) he simply lacks the bravery needed. He cannot face her while she is still innocent, knowing just how much he will ruin her life.
Or does he?
As the days stretch into innumerable endlessness, his thoughts unravel. The doors in his mind he usually keeps well-shut open up. He thinks dark thoughts, considers drastic options he is too cowardly to carry out, and he loses any sense of reason he ever had.
As the days stretch into innumerable endlessness, the grief gnaws at him more and more with each passing second.
And so, he comes to a decision.
It is a stupid decision, and a risky one. Even with his mind not working straight (something he is only vaguely aware of), he knows it. And yet he feels he must do this thing, before the grief compels him to do things that are far madder.
He thinks to himself: he just has to see her, just one last time.
Just a glimpse, just for a minute.
He is not brave enough to speak to her, it is true. He only wants to look.
So one day, he stands up and lays his hands down on the console, and he does it.
His old girl is reluctant to take him, she causes a great big fuss, but with a good deal of begging and wheedling and stroking her the way she likes, she relents, and lets him go.
So it is that he lands on a quiet street one night in her village, in the year 1997. It is December. She is eight years old, and it has been nearly two years since she met him.
When he opens the doors, it is to a picturesque sight. Her street is empty, and it is snowing gently but steadily, the delicate snowflakes wafting down to earth. The scene is lit by the warm glow of streetlights, and the houses are strung up with fairy lights. The bruised black sky is clear of stars, but in the centre of it sits a plump, silver-gold moon, content to loiter in the clouds as she looks down upon the world and distance herself from its cruelty.
He stands, leaning in the doorframe, not daring to venture any further than that. He only steps out a moment to ensure that he is well-hidden by the shadows, and is satisfied to discover that he is. So he waits, knowing that if he waits long enough he will see her, maybe in the morning on her way to school.
He is just imagining her stopping to make a snow angel in a snow bank, knowing it's the sort of thing she would have done while walking to school without a care for tardiness, when he sees her.
She is small and lonely against the nighttime landscape of tall lampposts and huge houses with towering gates on either side of her, and her steps are slow. It becomes evident as she comes closer that she walks slowly for two purposes: one, to take in the simplistic beauty of the snowfall, for she occasionally stops to tip back her head and stick out her tongue to catch the flakes; and two, to take as long as possible in reaching her destination.
She is a little taller than she was when first they met, but she is a child and that is to be expected. Children at that age grow like shoots. She wears a snug-fitting grey peacoat that blends in with the darkness and a large white hat with a pompom. Though the hat is a little big on her, he can see her hair peeking out from underneath it, the same as always: just past her shoulders and nearly the same fiery red of grass.
He watches her as she treks towards home. When she is not stopping to try and catch the snowflakes, her head is down.
If he were brave enough, he would run out this very moment. Gather her in his arms, hug her fiercely, and apologise. He would fulfil the last request that she will make of him in twenty years' time.
But he is, of course, a coward, so he remains in the shadows and satisfies his desperation to see her again just by watching.
And he curses himself while he does it, because oh, he really is thick. So very, very thick, because he should have known that seeing her again would make it all the worse.
But he must wait until she has entered her house, where her aunt will probably not be waiting for her, because if she hears him leave she will run to him, sure he has come for her at last, and he will not be able to say to her, I'm sorry, but it's not your time just yet.
He is just thinking this when she turns, and sees him.
When she turns her head, she is sure she has imagined him. She has found that she's imagined him a great deal of the time. She always thinks she hears the sound of his box's engines, nearly every night, but it always turns out to be nothing but the wind, whose mournful howls echo her own mounting despair. So she stops and squints into the darkness.
But this time, it really is him, she knows it is. She has less than a second to take a good look at him, but he is here; he has come for her finally. His clothes are different and his hair is combed, but it is undoubtedly him. He even has his box with him.
In that moment, all the loneliness and desperation she has fostered for the past two years burst out of her in one smile. She beams and she runs to him. His name is on the tip of her tongue, ready to be shouted out, when he suddenly wheels around and disappears into his box.
This sudden movement takes her by such surprise that she stumbles to a stop and stares, beyond crushed, as his box begins to fade away with that same engine sound as she first heard that April night. She shouts out his name, in a plea this time, and then he is gone.
A new anguish blossoms in her eight-year-old heart, accompanied by a feeling of betrayal. Why did he never come back for her as he promised? Why has he come for her at long last only to disappear again? Will she ever see him again?
She stands there, a lonely little creature in the snow, for a long time, until at last she turns around and treks on to her house, her every step weighed down by feelings more complex and miserable than any eight-year-old girl should have.
She should be angry at him, and she is, but her loyalty wins out in the end. She heads straight to her bedroom, to the window seat, where she pulls herself up to sit on the sill and waits.
END