Brown Coat
'Janis Joplin gave me that coat,' he said. It had been a time of new-found freedom, with a generation's determination to write the future for themselves. It didn't matter to a young Time Lord that he had already seen humanity's future-a future with fears and hopes both realized or dashed, and new ones taking their place. The world was changing and people were embracing it, even if, deep inside, terrors still lurked. So he accepted the gift and brought it back to his Tardis to keep for the day he might find such clothing suited his style.
Centuries passed. Barely one day old in his tenth life, he was ready. On went the coat with exuberance and determination. On went the coat even though old grief and fears lurked within him. Gradually, over time, it moved from souvenir to treasured possession. Once it was abandoned to fellow travellers on a trapped vehicle. 'Look after this,' he said. 'I love that coat.' Helping hands returned it and its owner took it back with a smile.
Unfettered panels of material would almost brush the ground. But when its owner ran with the boundless enthusiasm and barely contained joy of discovery and adventure, the great swaths of soft, brown cloth would billow and flap at air rushing past. Its wearer had such lithesome grace side by side with careless clumsiness-a stumble always saved by a fancy step, or an elegant twirl overbalanced amid laughter.
But there is no such artless beauty in movement now. Regeneration has begun. The Doctor gasps and falls. He crashes to the ground, the nap of the coat ground into the snow. But the Universe sings to him, and when he staggers to his feet, the dry, light snow falls away.
The coat doesn't swing freely any more. As laboured steps carry it to the time ship, the panels hang almost stiffly. Once inside, the Time Lord throws it over a coral branch, a solid strut that weaves through the Tardis. It should be protected there away from what must come. The draped material does swing slightly but stills by the time the Doctor stops to look at his hand wreathed with energy-energy that circles like smoke over his palm and through his fingers. By the time the Tardis hurls itself into the sky, the Doctor has almost completed his last walk around the console. He is facing the coat even as he stands to face the death of his personality.
If it had ears, the coat would hear its owner speak, quiet words verging on plaintive: I don't want to go. Golden light drifts gently, almost caressingly over brown eyes, brown hair. Brown and gold, the colours of autumn, of the end before renewal.
The coat hangs still, forgotten on its perch. But when the rushing, streaming energy bursts free, there is no safety there or anywhere else. The Tardis is burning, burning and all is changing. Coral is falling, and brown weave is crushed against metal grid. Flames lick at the edges. Warp and weft start to singe as fire dances all around.
When regeneration is complete, the new Doctor grabs for the Tardis' controls, shouting Geronimo in a gleeful cry. But when the ship crashes and then slips quietly into its own regeneration, the brown coat is caught in the swirling eddies and streams of golden energy. When all is quiet, it is tucked away in a dark corner behind a myriad of other coats of distant past. No more will it hug a tall, bony frame. No more will hands stuff themselves into pockets with nonchalance. Never again will it billow out behind a manic, dashing adventurer. No. Like the improbably long scarf neatly wound over the rail near by, it is the stuff of past stories. It is done.