Vigoratus Senior Part I
"I don't want to be alone."
No one answered. The TARDIS hummed along its course in the Time Vortex. She was busy traveling, and her Doctor was safe inside. He wasn't safe from those thoughts though. They weren't Time Lord Thoughts. They were the thoughts of a man a sad, old man who couldn't settle and who couldn't hold on no matter how tight his grip was, or how strong his attachment.
When no one answered he wasn't surprised. It was expected, but there was always a chance of an answer. Perhaps someone like Boe could hear him. Someone who had lived for thousands of years and knew pain like no one else could. That would have made the Doctor feel better.
It would have made his pain feel selfish, trifle-like really. It would have bruised his ego enough for him to suck it all in for a few moments and move a few controls, read a few scans visit a few new worlds perhaps. Some fuel to a dying fire, to a dying man.
The thought of someone answering made him save a moon called Cranlicka, save a ship from a black hole, disable a time loop on a tour cruiser with an ambassador aboard. Stuff like that. He even named a nebula that had been mapped out by a mute astronomer from a Druid like people who lived on a rocky planet.
He named it Rosa Belle Poitevine. He could have named it Rosa bonica, but those roses weren't as fragrant. His Rose had been fragrant. And as soon as he had seen that nebula, glowing and swirling in dust and rock. He had been captivated. It was like if Rose could have regenerated. It would look like the pulsing pink of that nebula all bright and warm looking, glowing and happy with those swirling particles. It was like his Rose was regenerating, trying to come back to him. Trying to find him and skip across time and space with him again with eyes as bright as that nebula.
"Oh that color." He had whispered in the mute mans cave. "That color."
The mute astronomer had smiled and handed the Doctor a parchment and slanted wooden stick to dipped in ink.
"I don't understand." The Doctor had said the light of the rose nebula glistening still in his eyes.
The mute gestured to the map and then pointed to the sky. The map was filled with labels of stars and planets. There was a rosy mist in the outskirt middle of the parchment. The nebula needed a name. So the Doctor gave her one.
The mute astronomer had smiled and shaken his head when he had seen what name the Doctor had given it, amused by the oddness of this other being who traveled in the stars.
An Astrum Res-a Star Being-the elder astronomers had called him.
They treated him as an elder and gave him such a name. Curatio Senior, the Healing Elder. The Doctor didn't quite understand what his name was supposed to mean. But he went along with it.
He sat with them in their hollowed mountain with no roof as they gazed and talked about the sky and it's wonders. They were thousands of years old this race and they could have made advancements to visit the sky and be with the stars. But they nodded and smiled at the Healing Elder when he had asked. "Why not?"
"We are content to watch the beauties of the sky, Curatio Senior. We are watchers, gazers, appreciators of all that is beautiful. It is a peaceful life of looking. Why search for what you have found?"
The smoke from the large ritual fire had burned and burned all night. And while the Elders slept the Doctor had gazed at the stars. He watched and watched that nebula, missing Rose and Donna and Martha. And everyone he had ever loved. He missed the life of John Smith. He wished the impossible things had stayed impossible, and that he could have been happy with a strong woman who loved him, who could give him another family that would stay alive this time. He was at his wedding , he saw his first child with Jane being cradled in his arms; he saw his sons and daughters laughing with him as they were thrown up into the air as they were walking in the woods. He saw himself old and dying peacefully. He had asked if his grandchildren were safe, taken care of. His sweet wife had been there to hold his hand and say "Yes, John, they are safe. And they send their love." And then he had passed, softly without pain and fuss. A life lived. His very life loved by another. He had seen this, and had let it go.
It had made it harder that future life as John Smith was just in his reach. Like when you reach for something high on a shelf, and you know that if you stretch a little further, reach your hand up higher you can get what you want. It was that knowledge of "That life could be mine." That killed him. That it was just arms length away. The Doctor knew that he was no man to do what was simple. There came a time when he had to choose between what was right and what was easy. He didn't regret his choice, but he still mourned at the loss of the one he could have had. Because he imagined it, saw it. Kissed his future on the lips, and still the right thing was to let it go.
"Families have been made because of me. They are all alive because of me." He vented to the mute man over a high cliff on the mountain. He had made the climb with the old man. Something about enlightenment and the Universe speaking to you.
The Doctor dreamed that night about voices, whispers in a colorful void. Something that was just beyond his reach. The whispers never scared him they just made him curious. He wanted to know their secrets. He wanted to know what they were hiding, what they were telling him.
"Curatio Senior, follow the mute man."
He could not see the voice but he heard it, loud and clear as if it was spoken right into his ear.
He looked at the mute man who had already started down the narrow path of the mountain. He turned to look at the Doctor for a moment and beckoned him with a wrinkly phalange.
The words of the deep voice seemed to repeat in his mind, but it was more like he was repeating them via memory, dissecting them as Doctors do. Picking at parts like they were new and strange an alien. He wanted to understand quickly and suddenly like he had known already. He went for the obvious, and then the obtuse and then outlandish even by the Doctors standards.
The mute man led him to a dark opening.
The Doctor could see the lines in the walls where tools of the simplest kind had hacked at the ancient stone demanding to be obeyed and become subservient to the desires of the artist. The man beckoned the Doctor to come forward again by a small motion with his wrinkly finger. For a brief moment the Doctor wondered what those fingers had accomplished. Mapped stars and nebulas? Made prophecies about the Healing Elder or his future, the Doctor would have liked to know his future, just this once.
Large doors of stone were illuminated suddenly by torches that lay on either side of the decorated doors. The Doctor had failed to see how the mute man did it. It wasn't relevant. What did matter was how the stone doors mimicked the front doors of the TARDIS.
"These doors are the oldest of its kind. Never before have they been opened. Only labeled to know who was meant to know their secrets."
The Doctor was mildly shocked.
"I thought you couldn't speak?"
The not-so-mute-man smiled.
"I never had anything important to say."
The Doctor moved to the doors, examining them sonicing the stone. He felt as if he had shrunk, the stone TRADIS doors where much bigger than their originals about 50 feet bigger actually, if you want a more vivid picture. There was even a lock-like the one on the original TARDIS-and it was the same size to. Could his key really? No. It-it would be impossible.
The Doctor took out his own key cautiously stuck it into the doors, and turned it.
The loudest bolts he had ever heard moved behind the doors, shaking the rock around them, vibrating his vision.
The not-so-mute-man had gone.
"Never before have they been opened. Only labeled as such to know who was meant to know their secrets."
These doors were meant to be for the Doctor? He shook his head. And sonicked the doors again, this time carbon-dating the stone.
Just a little over 900 years old. 900 years.
The Doctor did the math in his head before he could ask himself consciously to do the math in his head.
These prophetic doors where the exact age of the Doctor.
In fact these doors where the exact same age as the Doctor. They must have been created the date of his very birth. A prophecy of him contained for a little over 900 years.
"Allon-sy." Murmured the Doctor pushing open the doors that lead to the inkiest darkness he had ever felt.
He saw nothing. He felt nothing. He heard nothing.
It was sensory deprivation.
He tried to struggle, but what could he struggle with? He felt no legs, no fingers. It was simply a state of consciousness.
"Do not struggle, Time Lord. No harm is meant for you."
The Time Lord attempted to struggle anyways. With what he had not a clue. Perhaps he just imagined himself struggling and that worked enough for him.
"You are not alone."
The Doctor stopped thinking about struggling. He stopped altogether. There was only one other being that had ever spoken those words to him-
"The Face of Boe."
The Doctor saw then an image of himself kneeling at the glass cage Boe was confined to. With his vapors floating around him in a broken hospital with a cat nurse standing a few feet away. He had an impression of someone else there. Mary? No. Marianne? Marilyn? Who was –?
"You're tampering with my memories stop it!" cried the Doctor in his mind.
"We are simply giving you what you desire most."
"What's that?" growled the 10th regeneration.
"Peace."
The Doctor thought long about the words of the mystery voice. Then-
"Whose "we" exactly?" asked the Doctor.
"We are not important what is important is what we must show you."
"Show me? I thought prophecies were told." The Doctor was being smart now. But the "We" didn't mind. They already knew he would be like this. And it was not their fault. They were simply the remedy.
"Not all prophecies can be explained. There exist no words in our language in which to communicate this prophecy."
"But-"
"What we can tell you is what you need to know to follow your Destiny to meet your Fate. We have decided to give you a contribution." The Doctor was suspicious now. He had been offered contributions before. Once it was even the contribution of being "deleted".
"It is the necessity that is required of all beings. Yours is often taken away. You have saved us for so long, Curatio Senior. It is our gift to you, to show you our everlasting love and appreciation. There is just one thing that we ask of you."
"What is it?"
"You must find your gift."
"Find my gift? What's the point of that?"
"She was found for you. Thousands of ages ago our people prophesized of Astrum Res, and his loneliness and pain were of great quantity in our prophecies; the empty hero who lost his true sight of the stars because he had not one for himself."
"You created woman for me?"
"No, Astrum Res. We prophesized of a single person."
"The person already existed they just had to fit the criteria" he murmured. "So-wait! You prophesized a soul mate?"
"Yes."
Flashes of a life flew before the Doctor's eyes as if they had been on a large movie screen. He saw everything of a single woman's life. Her childhood her obsessions her pet peeves. He saw everything and in an instant knew everything. Then it was just her. Sitting in front of what appeared to be a mirror. She couldn't see them. But they could see her. She turned her head from side to side. She pinched her cheeks. Which the Doctor now noticed had freckles on them. She hadn't had those when she was a child. They were beauty marks .She frowned at something and suddenly smiled laughing at something someone was saying to her in the doorway. It looked like her mother.
"She's lovely." whispered the Doctor.
"You are not alone."