Disclaimer: I own nothing anyone recognises.
A/N: this is entirely the fault of stomach cramps and the resulting attempt to distract myself, which led inevitably to Doctor Who. Because providing Jack with the name of a young man didn't seem like a whole lot when Jack had just had the whole Children of Earth mess happen. And then I figured - there wasn't really anything else that could have been done.
To Relieve Pain
It was never an entirely mundane feat, the attempt to calculate where the TARDIS had landed, or why. Alterations, and loops, and anomalies, twists and turns in even the simplest sectors of the continuum. Introduce anything in the realm of time-travellers or fixed points, and sorting out personal timelines and chronologies and their intersections suddenly became several degrees harder. But the Doctor had senses that nearly no one else possessed anymore, and the TARDIS had taken him here for a reason. And if he had occasionally stumbled trying to understand her logic, he wasn't now.
He knew when this was. Not where, but he knew why, and that made the where less important. He didn't need to politely request an explanation from the TARDIS, or scan a newspaper for the irrelevancy of a local date. He knew that the TARDIS could never stand idly by and watch one of her children grieve, and tear themselves up into tiny pieces they could scatter and lose amongst a trail of worlds, and pubs, and willing bodies. She never would. And so now the Doctor stood in a spaceport bar's shadows, clinging tight around the insidious spreading poison of radiation and watching in silence.
The man he watched felt Wrong, but even more he felt wrong, sick and denying and fading. And the Doctor didn't know how to fix that, because that couldn't just be fixed. He couldn't heal that wound, gaping and ragged, stinging pangs of loss and guilt leaking surreptitiously through the makeshift bandage of casual charm and easy innuendo. To try would have been too much arrogance, even for him; and in the short time he had left he could not even try.
And so he – didn't.
To try, to make some serious gesture, would never have succeeded, never have been adequate. There was nothing the Doctor could offer. Nothing available that was not already in use, and even that – he knew too well that to avoid the issue, to run from it, to hide from irreversible deaths in his own demise, would never be the solution.
But there was nothing he could give, no cure, not then, not there. Maybe not ever. It was after all one ailment that the Doctor had never known how to truly combat. And he couldn't stay, because he was slowly dying and he had never known how to stand still. He could not apologise, could not do aught but watch in silence as an aged, timeless man drank alone.
The Doctor could not heal him.
But he could make an introduction. And he could hope, trusting devoutly in the TARDIS' judgement that now was a time of flux and opportunity, that a young man could here do what the Doctor couldn't. That a young man, with a perfect name, could be there when he was needed. Maybe he could find them all a solution that didn't entail running or hiding or pretending.
The problem couldn't be fixed, because it wasn't a problem. It was time, and pain, and death, and the universe itself. Loss, inevitable and achingly permanent, was the price paid for living, the cost of loving. But maybe that young man, currently staring glumly preoccupied into his drink, would be able to help relieve the hurt, and have his own pains relieved in turn.
-end-