Title: Wrong

Author: ninedaysaqueen

Beta: openedlocket – No matter the fandom, you're always there to read my ramblings!

Disclaimer: No ownership of Doctor Who is claimed or implied. The Doctor, in all his glory will always belong to the BBC.

Rating: G/K

Genre: AU/Romance/Angst

Word Count: 430 (approximate) – Excluding author's notes.

Summary: AU on Doomsday. He sees her in the crowd. Something is wrong.


Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.

- Emily Dickinson


He sees her in the crowd.

A flash of blond hair. Smile wide and innocent. Steps fast and eager to join the nightlife of London.

One of many on the busy streets. The neon lights of nightclubs and bars lulling in the young, the old, the weary, and the foolish—thrill seekers, sick of their dull nine to five existence.

One of many.

One of millions.

He follows.

Pushing his way through the crowd, he mutters an apology here and there, but he never takes his eyes off her. Something is wrong. Something is bent and warped and misshapen and, and... wounded.

The neon lights scatter and refract and ever urban, metal surface is aglow with bright pinks and greens. The waves of time pull and shift on her form, always reaching yet never touching.

Something is wrong.

"Excuse me, miss." She turns, smile wide and eyes full of life. He feels like he's come home.

"Sorry, mate. Do I know you?"

He stares for a moment, mouth agape and even though he's never met her, the lack of recognition on her face is devastating.

Something is wrong.

"No... No, I don't believe you do. Sorry." He turns and leaves. She stands in the street, watching him go.

-X-X-X-

Only a Time Lord could do this.

Place a time-shift on an entity, a meeting, a time, a place to ensure it never happened. Dictate that it couldn't happen.

Playing with time is a dangerous thing to do, and the rainbow waves and remnant of threads of what should have been hang on her like funeral garbs—mourning and dying ever so quietly.

He is the last of his kind.

He doesn't know where he met that girl. Whether it was in this world or one far across time and space. A small human, with yellow hair and pink skin; a little life, short and meaningless.

He doesn't know what happened.

War, sickness, starvation, and blood. One of them took her. Before his eyes, in his hands. Only time washed away the stains. A time that never was, because he made it that way.

He risked a paradox, a shift in worlds, a fragment in the wave of reality for one tiny life.

It was worth it.

Because she's out there. On the streets of London, hair spruced, makeup done, walking to a bar with her friends. Tomorrow, she'll wake up and do it all over again.

She's alive.

And somewhere deep in his soul, a life so ancient and damaged, he knows that is all that matters.


Thank you for reading.