Drifting Away
Standing in that kitchen was my worst nightmare. Maybe it was my fault that this had happened, but I didn't like it nonetheless.
Anytime. I just couldn't understand how time could change so easily.
"Listen, Blue, you weren't paying attention, and you didn't do as you were told! That's why we're shouting at you!"
"So you think it's OK to do that? That shouting will make it bett-"
"Don't you DARE talk back to me!"
"I'm merely answering your stupid question!" I retorted, scrunching my nose up at my mum, her sparkly party dress already getting on my nerves. Where did she get the idea that her and my dad could just wander off any time they fancied, and argue with me at the same time? It sickened me. They were rubbish parents – absolutely crap.
"Blue, just do as your told!"
"No! I won't! Because you leave me here nearly every bloody night on my own and you think that's OK?"
"You're not on your own-"
"I AM!" I shouted, and I could already feel my chest hurting. This was the sort of thing that happened daily. Arguments over nothing. Or over stupid things. Parents or not, they certainly didn't know how to look after their daughter, the one who was supposed to be loved and cared for properly.
I was having those moments were you couldn't possibly understand how such a good day had turned so sour – how when, that morning, it would have been impossible to think that this argument would happen in the future. I hated those moments.
"Maybe if you weren't so unreasonable, and selfish-" My dad began.
He had taken that too far.
"I AM NOT SELFISH!" I yelled, slamming my foot down on the tiled floor. My mum sighed heavily in the background, as if this was just a silly little tantrum from a 2 year old who couldn't get their way.
If she wanted to see a tantrum, she'd need to hang around a little longer.
My dad narrowed his eyes at me, as if my outburst was something new to behold. As if it needed examining. Why? Did he expect me to be his good little girl all the time? I had never been like that.
He pointed the tissue he was putting in the bin at me.
"See, I've hit a nerve," he muttered, his grey eyes calculating.
The urge to strangle him wasn't even a funny thing to think about.
"I AM NOT SELFISH! Because there are there more selfish people out there than me! You think I don't care about anyone?"
"I think you need to grow up," my mum murmured, and when I whipped my head around to stare at her, she was examining her blood red fingernails with an intense gaze, lips pouted in annoyance at one little imperfection, only serving to irritate me further.
I could feel the hot, stinging tears beginning to build up in my eyes, blurring my vision so much so that I felt like I was underwater. I didn't dare swipe them away – they weren't winning this. I'd had enough of their haughty attitudes. It always felt like I was the criminal, standing in the kitchen like I was in the firing line, always up for a wrong-doing that was either unintentional or just an accident. I wasn't saying that I had never done anything wrong – I'd be naïve to say that, not to mention stupid – but the things they accused me of were always the same – not doing as I was told, when all I'd ever done was that. Stay at home, cook your dinner, do your homework… the list was endless.
The tears had now caught onto my eyelashes, blinking them into my eyes even more.
I hated this.
"Blue, you need to stop this. This fantasy notion you've latched onto. It's a load of nonsense – you need to start concentrating on reality for a change! I won't have you trailing behind in your studies because you think you want to gallivant off into the country to go and be 'different' from everyone else! It's not happening!'
Inside, it felt like a crack had split in my heart.
The tears were getting thicker.
"Look, you know what? No. No. I'm not having this conversation," I held up a hand, turning my back on the both of them and walking out the kitchen door. I couldn't stand it.
But I didn't shout. I didn't scream. I didn't slam the door or stamp my feet as I went upstairs.
I just walked away, and that was the worst part.
Sometimes I wondered if I really was the problem here, with no control over my ridiculously combustible attitude towards things.
But I figured that parents shouldn't treat you like that if they really did care.
I also began to wonder if the Doctor had made me a better offer than I could ever have been given down here, in this trash pit.
Of course, you didn't think I'd forgotten him, did you?
I hadn't seen him since that night, with It climbing around my house, feeding of the empty and hopeless loneliness that had been consuming me whole. It was hard to believe that that had been over a year or so ago. Maybe it was more than that. I'd written something about it down in my diary, a quick reminder to myself that aliens were in fact real and could look like us, but I'd never mentioned it again. As if it had never happened. As if he didn't exist.
He had been wrong about a lot of things. That boy hadn't ever liked me, even though I'd had some inkling that he did, like me with him. And he'd been wrong about someone else coming along. No one ever had – nothing had changed. I was still the obscurity, hanging out with my meagre but incredibly strong and creative group of friends, doing stupid things 'cause life was too much of a bore to do anything else.
He'd also been wrong about It.
He hadn't really left.
I'd been making myself toast one morning, after my parents had gone off to work again, and he'd been there. It had returned. Since he was stubborn about not having a name, we'd come to an awkward agreement to call him It from now on. We had what was probably the weirdest of relationships – he (now confirming his gender even though he added that he didn't technically have one of them either) was still scary as hell, with the freakishly long-limbed, marble white body and spooky ice blue eyes -that appeared human- staring out blankly from his face, but he didn't so much as make me scream than just weird me out. He just stood there, and said hello, and then left, and maybe returned in a week or two's time. It was now one of my very few companions when I was home alone.
Don't get me wrong – I definitely didn't want him there. He'd been the nightmare I'd feared my whole childhood. But I was weirdly OK with him being there now, so long as it was in the morning light, when everything seemed less scary than it could seem in the darkness of the night.
Because, of course, It was the epitome of scary.
As for the Doctor, God knows where he'd gone off to.
As I stamped towards the front door, looking for some fresh air, I wondered absently if I'd made a very bad decision. The Doctor had offered me a chance to get away from the one place I couldn't stand – the place I felt like I was drowning in every minute of my life. I'd argued that I'd had a life here, with friends and family, but really, if I was being perfectly honest with myself, the school was more of a home than this place.
It had never really been a place I felt safe in; a place I felt loved and comforted in; a place I looked forward to returning to every day. It was worse than the nightmares It had constructed from my loneliness. And they'd come from this place too.
Which kind of meant that this house was shredding my soul into pieces so small there was no way you could put them back together.
Really, I could be such an idiot sometimes.
I flung open the door, allowing myself the one luxury of slamming it behind me. I could at least allow myself one outburst, couldn't I?
The night air was deadly cold, making me wrap my navy blue hoodie around me, staring flatly at my star-patterned jeans, and turquoise canvas shoes. Hmm. Yet again, I'd managed to wear stars to suit the man I'd been thinking about. That seemed a little weird.
The grass was wet, after some unnecessary rainfall, the last drops hanging onto the trees' leaves. The air was still. Somewhere, I could hear a fox screeching in the distance.
Had that really happened? Had that argument really taken place? It was hard to remember it, even imagine it, when I stood out here, nature's sheer majesty taking over. Seemingly endless forests of trees, and the most vast, deep, beautiful blue sky above my head, littered with the tiniest specks of silver, linking up constellations in the sky. They were just burning balls of gas, fading out from the universe before long. But down here, on this hard lump of rock?
They were the most lovely things ever.
I shivered, wrapping my hoodie tighter around myself. I tilted my head back, for a moment ignoring the chilling cold.
Why had I refused him? He had given me a chance to escape forever, to be free. To wander in places no real teenage girl could dream of.
That sky. I could've been up there.
Something slithered down my cheek, but I didn't even want to guess what it was. It hurt just a little…too much.
"It's still up there, you know."
I froze on the spot, my heart stopping short, before frantically beating again to make up for the small lapse in routine.
It couldn't be. It just…couldn't be.
My lips parted, the cold air turning them bone dry.
The foxes had stopped calling out across the street. The wind had ceased to a gentle breeze, only blowing against the very limp leaves of every tree.
Still cradling my arms for some kind of warmth, I turned my head to look right behind me, a quick thought speeding through my head.
It's not him.
But it was.
He was here.
The Doctor.
He'd come back.
"You," I whispered, my lips still trying to get around the idea of saying his name.
"Hello, Blue," he smiled sensitively, making his fern green eyes sparkle a little.
I did the only thing I would possibly consider doing, faced with the man I'd been wishing for, for so long.
At first, I think, my feet didn't really know what to do with themselves.
I ran to him.
Slipping, crashing and tumbling into his arms, holding him to me, feeling so lifted by him just being there. His scent of cloves was still there, lingering in his skin as I remembered it had, even weaving itself into the threads of his tweed jacket and his cotton shirt. I could sense his arms around me, holding me as tightly as he dared.
When I pulled back, he had a sad, soft smile on his bow-shaped lips, green eyes looking more old and tired than I remembered them being. I lifted a hand up to his cheek, still trying to process that it was him. He was here. This wasn't me finally losing my sanity.
"Doctor…how…?"
"You think I'd leave you hanging?" He smiled a little, which made me tear up more than I would have liked. I had been hoping that I could just forget about him, all those times before, hoping that friends and work and teachers and exams would brush away any remaining thought or dream or wish I ever had about him. But that smile – so full of hope, joy, wonder.
How could I ever forget that?
I buried my head into his chest, noticing his change in dress. Instead of the comfy, friendly, and slightly geeky brown tweed jacket and red bowtie, his clothes had changed to fit what looked like a much sadder, more wrecked, and more heartbroken man than I could ever believe would exist.
His musky purple coat, now knee length, was sober and dark, with a slightly warm and comfortable look to it, a pale plum waistcoat and black jeans, his cotton shirt having a cool, cloud blue tinge to it. His dusty Indiana-Jones boots were there, looking a little darker and shinier than before. His bowtie was the darkest mauve.
What had happened?
All these colours – sadness, hurt, pain; all these anguished shades, deepening the colour of his already dark hair, his green eyes tinted grey.
"What happened to you?" I said quietly, stepping back to look at him. The TARDIS was still her beacon of hope, her title shining a ghostly blue in the cool night. I remembered faintly what he'd been like the first time: a bumbling, gangly idiot, pretending he meant to do that, after having tripped over his own heels. He was a grinning idiot back then, grabbing my hand and carting me off to hunt down the monster hiding in the closet. He made it fun. Dangerous, yes, but so much fun. He made you feel safe.
The man in front of me. He had his face – the high cheekbones and low brow and noticeable chin. But there was just something…wrong.
This Doctor…my Doctor. He face was holding a permanent expression of underlying guilt and regret, eyes not really sparkling the way they used to. He was frowning more. Like he was still remembering some old memory best forgotten.
Like…he was trying to let go,
But couldn't.
How could he change like that?
"What do you mean happened? Nothing happened," He smiled, but I noticed its forced sense. He was hurting. So deep that even his own mother probably wouldn't see it.
Was it Rose? Had something happened to her?
Or was it Amy, still pining for the family he'd so bitterly lost?
Or was it just time? Eating way at him like it does to everyone, the man travelling the stars finally learning what it meant to get old. To feel so deeply that not even time could heal it. A pain so deep that it was a part of your being – of your existence.
He'd suffered too much. And Amy had been the last straw.
That purple, so deep and dark and solemn. He was mourning her more than anyone else.
The Girl Who Waited for the Doctor.
"It's her, isn't it?" I whispered, hugging myself despite not being all that cold anymore.
He looked at me carefully, his eyes widening a fraction.
"You lost her, and it's consumed you whole. And I'm sorry."
All the hope in his eyes drained away. He just stared at me, like I'd just become a clear vision to him.
He dropped his gaze a moment, staring at the ground.
"Yeah," he said, his voice strangled, choked with tears.
But he looked up at me again, and just for a moment, I saw a flicker of the old him in his eyes, and I smiled a little.
I took a step closer, looking up at him.
He was still my Doctor.
"So, why'd you come this time?"
"Well, the TARDIS takes me wherever I need to go. She told me that once…"
"But how-"
"Blue, what's happened?"
I froze on the spot. He'd asked me that once before and the answer had been just as painful as it would be now.
"…I…"
"Blue, please."
I couldn't. Not after everything. The last time I'd dumped my own suffering on his shoulders without even realizing what he was going through. And if the man in front of me was anything to go by, he was already suffering too much.
"S'nothing," I muttered quietly, turning back to gaze up at the stars.
"Blue, please. You have to trust me,"
I looked round at him. His green eyes had taken on a defeated look, almost as if time had plunged its claws into him, tearing him apart bit by bit, so that every loss was like an arrow to the heart.
The Doctor always suffered.
I gazed up at Orion, his bow poised, ready to shoot. I always wished there had been a constellation of Artemis, the Greek Goddess of the Hunt. I kind of admired her – she was a virgin, and she was as tough as they came. With her band of maidens, hunting down the monsters that plagued the Earth. She also happened to have supposedly been the protector of girls. And really, such divine protection would have been nice about a half an hour ago.
Maybe I really was losing it.
"Parents," I said absently, sitting down on the grass. It was damp with dew, but I couldn't really care. Even just thinking about what had happened was enough to make my eyes sting.
I always wondered if I really was weak. I wanted to be strong, but not in a 'I'll-kick-your-head-off' type way; I wanted to be strong enough to make my own choices without anyone else's help. To be confident enough to do my own thing, to be who I really was – not some shell that fitted all sizes, for everyone else who wanted me to be someone different for each of them.
I casually asked myself if the Doctor had ever suffered such pain. Had he ever had to put on a face to be what everyone wanted him to be? I had already guessed that he had not always appeared to be young and youthful. He was an old man, with a lot of memories trapped inside himself, and even a young face such as his couldn't hide all the pain. You always saw glimpses of it, like when I'd first met him, tumbling into my room like he was still in shock over discovering his own limbs.
For a man who had lost everything, he sure put up a good façade.
"What about them?" I heard him ask in the background, his voice laced with some kind of underlying meaning.
Like he already knew what I was going to say.
Which, knowing him, probably wasn't all that impossible as I had once thought so.
I bowed my head, plucking at the grass. Although I couldn't see particularly well in the dark, I kept sending out mental apologies for all the destruction. The grass aliens (if there were such things) probably weren't all that pleased about it.
I'd learned to be even more open-minded than before. Anything was possible.
"They…uh, decided to dump me again, to go to some party, but not before they had a right tear at my emotions. Something about, being selfish. Like, as if I'm the most selfish person here! I mean, fine, I'm human – selfishness is a weakness for everyone, but-" I could already feel my voice cracking a little, mind still unsure of itself after the breakdown it had suffered.
Maybe I was being melodramatic, but being told by your parents that you were selfish, with their undying expectations of you plonked on your shoulders, I found it hard to believe that anyone could stand it for long.
"…but…it's…it's unfair to think that I'm…always like that, cause I'm not. They're the selfish ones, constantly telling me to do better than everyone else, and throwing their insults at me like a bone to a dog, expecting me to grin and bear it, and being so uninvolved in my life, like they don't care about me anymore, maybe because they don't care about me; no they don't care about me-"
"Hey, hey, ssshh, it's OK, it's OK," The Doctor's arms wrapped around me, pulling me up from the wet ground, which had unfortunately made my butt uncomfortably damp as well.
I curled up inside his arms, eyes still stinging from the tears yet to fall. This couldn't be happening – not again, not after everything.
Why was I always so childish? Why did I have to start crying and sobbing at the drop of a hat?
Maybe my parents were being reasonable – maybe it was just me. Maybe I really was the problem here.
The Doctor ended up sitting beside me on the grass, my head leaning on his shoulder as I breathed heavily, still trying to cope with the flood of tears that had ensued. I hadn't ever thought that the Doctor would return, least in these circumstances. He appeared when I needed him most. It didn't make any sense.
But I was disgusted at myself. I should've been stronger than this. I had been pining him for a year, yearning to know if that promise was still open to me- to travel with him among the stars, to see new worlds and experience time and space in seconds, flying before my eyes, sending my imagination into overload, and helping me dream with the electrifying reality of it all.
And yet, here I was, crying over the injustices of my parents, and staying stuck down on Earth.
It was almost funny.
"You know, the option is still open to you, if you want it," The Doctor said, glancing at me quickly. He swiped away a stray tear on my face, making me smile a little.
"Don't be stupid," I mumbled, resting my head into the crook on his shoulder, "That offer disappeared a long time ago,"
"No, never!" he exclaimed, but he suddenly stopped talking.
I looked at his profile, admiring him. I was flirting with the idea that I loved him, but I shook the thought away. I couldn't love him – not like that. This wasn't a love story. I knew better than to fall hopelessly and irrevocably in love with someone like him. He would travel the stars and live far longer than anyone, but he'd loved before and it had always ended in heartbreak and endless, sleepless nights of wandering the TARDIS, alone and forever lonely.
I could love him with every strand of emotion inside myself. To chase after him, and adore him, and pine for him when he wasn't there. To be angry at him and yet, fall ceaselessly in love with him again. He was that sort of a being. A person who, once you loved them, could make you cease to love again. I would never love another. I would forever have bound myself to both the hearts that beat away in his chest, and forget that there was anyone else. That had happened to Rose. That had happened to all of them. His companions. They had loved him, romantically or not, and they had suffered a complete surrender to his ways, and travelled the stars with him until their days ended.
And I could never do that.
I could never live like that.
It just wasn't in me. I couldn't let myself wonder what that life would be like, because I knew full well, that given the chance,
I'd never stop travelling with him.
Even if it cost me my life in the end.
"Doctor?" I asked quietly, gazing up quietly at the stars above my head, each one only a touch away if I accepted his offer to fly among those galaxies and planets and never-ending wonders that he promised me and had promised so many before.
"Hmmm?" he hummed to me, arm tightening around my back. He was more of a big brother to me, and I sort of wanted it to stay that way. I wasn't looking for a romance here – just some clarity that my life wasn't as rubbish and pointless as I thought it was. That better things were coming, even when it looked unlikely. Even impossible. Even unattainable, no matter what universe it was in. It was scary enough to make me want to cry again, but I disgusted myself with the reputation I was gaining as the helpless teenager who thought the only thing that could save them was the love of some boy. I'd read enough books to know that even I was stronger than that.
I mean, it wasn't like I didn't think love wasn't important. Of course it was – it was what made people who they were. But maybe my home life had impacted too much and for too long for me to have a heap of positive associations with it. I'd suffered a very loveless childhood, were I was left to my own devices. It made me question what had gone so terribly wrong in my parents' marriage. But again, I found it hard to figure it out – they never told me anything, and if I didn't know any better, they were putting on an act of being OK just to disguise even more just how rocky a relationship it was becoming.
I wondered if the Doctor did it too.
I wouldn't have put it past him.
"If I asked you to go somewhere, would you take me there?"
The Doctor looked down at me carefully, his arm tightening around my shoulder even just a little bit. He seemed so confused by me, maybe even more so than I was by him.
But if I could – just for a moment – I could imagine him with someone else, taking her away with him like some dashing prince atop a white stallion, whisking her off to show the universe, sprawling above and around her, everything open to her if she wished it to be.
All except Gallifrey, that was.
I wondered if he truly felt he needed it himself. Or did he feel he was doing it out of obligation. Did he feel that humans needed to see that wonder to help them have hope in life?
It was a sad, sad thought.
Did the Doctor always believe that he would be OK? No matter how lonely he was?
I remembered Its words that day, the day I met him.
Those names he'd mentioned, and I'd watched the Doctor's face slowly contort into some emotion I had never seen on anyone's face. One he'd created himself because of how he had lived. An emotion undefinable by human words.
Something that looked like a guilty love for people long gone because of his hands.
Something terrible and painful and heart-breaking,
And His Fault.
He pursed his lips, sighing heavily.
"Yes,"
I grimaced, wondering if what I was seeing was him finally breaking down.
Maybe there was a reason why he was looking so old.
"Then can you show me your diary?"
His eyes were so wide it seemed impossible to think he could be that surprised.
The journey to the place of his diary was hardly a joyous trip. The Doctor didn't ramble away like he would've done. He didn't mess around and grin like I needed him to, to help me forget why I'd asked.
When we landed, he held out a hand, signalling the door to me, eyes to the floor, almost ashamed of something I didn't know until I walked out those doors.
What on earth was wrong with him?
The previous state I'd been in was soon forgotten. Outside those doors, stood what I thought, in all my magnificent stupidity, was the biggest library I had ever seen.
It soared and twisted and curved its way above my head, smooth, white structures and a blinding, white sky that kept going no matter how much you thought it should end. The sun here was white too, casting the hazy, soft yellow light of a light very far away, only serving to brighten the place even more, hitting off the white towers around me. The whole place was a mix of silver metal and polished stone, neutral tones making it feel cool and powerful. Almost like an eternal summer villa.
I turned to the Doctor as he trudged his way up to stand beside me, face still carrying that solemn, heavy set tone that I already associated with his loss. He wore his wonder and happiness like a tightly fitted mask, and his sadness always crept through,
Especially when you saw his eyes.
I was annoyed at how I'd smiled at him. This wasn't easy for him, and I wasn't making it easier.
I was making it a lot harder than it needed to be.
I wondered briefly if I should have just kept my mouth shut, and saved him all this pain.
"So…where is it?" The blunt question jerked him from his daydream.
"S'over there. On the shelves. I'm just going to, uh…stay here," he smiled weakly, fisting his hands by his side.
My shoulders slumped, already feeling his pain. It seemed no matter how distant he tried to be, anyone beside him could still manage to feel how he felt without even trying.
I took his wrist for a moment, eyes looking up at him to try and get him to smile properly. He just gazed at me from behind his dark hair, quiff hanging over his eyes flatly.
I hated seeing him like this.
Letting go, I took my leave of his company, hesitantly heading for the balcony in front of us, black metal stairs spread out before me. I could see the motorways from here suspended in the air like tight wires, precarious and beautifully dangerous. The spires of the Library's towers soared up into the sky, the horizon settling into a dusky evening, the sun beginning to dip behind the buildings.
This Library really was massive.
I came to the balcony, leaning out over the edge to look up above. It just kept going, like the ocean's horizon, never stopping yet never moving either. It only changed when you weren't looking.
This was the first time I'd been on another planet – I'd thought I'd have turned him down again this time, but somehow, the ideas had gotten the better of me. All that stuff to see – so much waiting, hanging suspended, like paper cranes on threads, twirling around when the wind blew past. I couldn't grasp quite how beautiful, dangerous, amazing, frightening, dazzling, mind-blowing it would all be. I couldn't. He was offering me this because he was OK with it. He wanted me to have this.
And there I'd been sitting trying to convince myself that my life down here – sorry, on Earth – was worth staying for. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was. Maybe today had made me lose it a bit. Maybe my parents were pushing me to this.
I didn't care in the slightest why I'd decided this.
I just knew that this was what I was made for.
Books were piled in stacks on the balcony's ledge, old and battered and strange looking. They were human books - that was obvious; I could see Charles Dickens there, for God's sake. They seemed like hands had flipped through them hundreds and hundreds of times over. They seemed…loved. Read. Enjoyed. Like they'd been picked up and taken away and returned carrying a piece of that reader with it.
I'd always loved books.
And that's when I saw it.
A book I wasn't quite sure fitted in with the others.
It was small, and blue, although a lot darker than the blue of the TARDIS. Like it had soaked up the sorrow of what was inside, and worn it like a cape, flowing behind to show how much blood had been spilt in the battle.
It wore the same shapes as it, large, definitive squares on the front, carved into the cover. The pages were yellowed and crinkling, smudges of black ink leaking onto the next pages. It had been pressed closed, the spine ready to fall off, looking like someone had opened and closed it long before I would.
Was this his diary?
Lifting it up, I smoothed my hand down the cover, feeling the indents each time as my fingers filled the gaps. Someone had loved this book very much.
I opened it carefully, and I stared at it, aghast. What was this?
The Doctor watched from a distance, his eyes tracing the line her silhouette made against the setting sun of the Library. Her head was bowed, engrossed in the little blue book's pages, having not moved since she lifted it. He sighed, watching her carefully. The idea that her head was to be filled with the secrets of himself that he didn't yet know was a rather odd feeling. There was no reason for it. He'd never let anyone else read it before. Only River knew him completely. The girl in front of him was merely a girl, and yet she was so much more. She was the light he'd needed when the pond had dried up. When the stars had faded and when the night had seemed unending. Her suffering was a reflection of his own.
He had always known that. She had never been just a girl. He'd seen it happen. What she'd went through.
The Doctor wondered what page she was on now. How her brow would furrow and crease at the words in front of her.
If she would be appalled at what he'd done.
The hand on my shoulder brought me out of my trance, and I swivelled my head to look at the Doctor behind me, the look on his face even sadder than it had been when we'd arrived. He seemed…ashamed, as if waiting for me to yell, cry, reprimand. As if what I'd read in his diary was nothing more than proof that the Doctor was never the man that he made himself out to be.
The diary had changed nothing.
"Doctor?"
The words snapped him out of his trance, and he smiled thinly, the ache still evident in his smile and his deep, green eyes, and I just wanted to tell him, implore him to believe that what I had read – some things, terrible, others unbearable, a few even terrifying – had not, in any way, changed how he was to me. What he meant. How I felt. What I would think or feel about him would always far outweigh any of his wrongdoings.
He'd destroyed his own planet for the sake of saving billions of others.
He'd run away in fear of what he'd done.
He'd lost his wife, children, friends and family. His entire life had been shattered, and yet,
To me,
He was still the sad, old man with a young face, adorned in the deep, velvet plums and magentas of mourning, loss enveloping him whole, as he sunk deeper and deeper into the endless ocean of despair and hurt, and regret he'd found himself in.
He needed people, and people needed him. He was a saviour, and a peace –bringer,
And a man who adored the stars more than anything in this universe.
"Yes, Blue?"
His voice was soft and calm, but the worry was threaded through it like the single thread was in a garment. Unnoticeable, but no less there.
The Doctor always worried.
"Let's go home,"
He stared at me, lips parting momentarily, as if to say something – maybe to ask why the diary was not the topic of conversation – but he instead smiled again, this time a little happier than the last time.
The trip back remained silent. The Doctor did what he always did – ran around the console, pushing buttons, pulling levers, making faces at the screen and smirking at me when he happened to glance my way.
It appeared that the Doctor had not only changed his style, but also his machine. The TARDIS was now a silver, grey and blue metallic fortress, arches curving around the ceiling, the turquoise light of the main control panel cool and serene, in line with his mood nowadays. It looked futuristic and clean, sweeps of violet and blue weaved into the design. My favourite part of it was how the rings around the top of the control panel were adorned in the language of the Time Lords, three ribbed disks, descending from biggest to smallest, placed on top of one another. The inscriptions were silver, intricate and delicately crafted onto the metal. I smiled inwardly - wonder what it meant.
"You like it?" The Doctor sounded hopeful as he spied around the main funnel of his ship, looking both amused and intrigued by my expression.
"Nah; preferred your other one,"
His face fell.
"There's just no pleasing you sometimes," he huffed, flicking a switch.
I smiled, laughing out loud, watching the Doctor's mouth quirk up a little at the sound.
So he still smiled at the sound of laughter. That was good to know.
Good to know that he hadn't lost all hope.
"I'm messing with you. It's lovely,"
The TARDIS hummed back in agreement, and I smiled wider.
I really loved her.
We landed with the resounding thunk that we usually did, the Doctor ignoring the angry hum that his ship made back at him, complaining that with the brakes on, there was no 'cool noise'.
Typical.
Stepping out, I took in my surroundings.
Bedroom. Dark. I glanced at the clock. 2:30am.
Huh.
I turned on him, just as he shut the door behind him, the TARDIS' light shedding a dim, blue light into the room.
Even her title seemed to make me smile. It was her mere presence; her majesty and beauty and elegance, so old and battered yet so vast and incomprehensible.
She was wondrous.
I stared at my feet a little while, unfurling my fisted hands inside the pockets of my dressing gown, grateful of the soft material – the kind of soft that only came with freshly bought dressing gowns. It made me feel warm, comforted.
Just like he always did.
I glanced to the side, hesitant. This wasn't the same as last time. How could it ever be? I'd read the diary of the Doctor's Life. I'd read him, not just a book. Him. That had been the Doctor as he was: all the faces; all the changes; all the pain.
It had been less of a surprise than I had thought it would be.
Finally I let my gaze rest on him, leaning against the TARDIS doors in a nonchalant way that suggested both calmness and tension. He was relaxing himself so as to relax me, because right now, the gravity of what I'd read was unbelievable. Even unmentionable. Maybe even a little unforgivable, given everything.
His eyes looked pained – deep, solemn, green as the forests and sparkling like the stars.
Those eyes were so, so, sad, and I knew, deep inside myself,
The pain the Doctor felt now was never going to go away.
And I knew that only hope, and friendship, and just a little love, could help mend it, but never heal it completely.
The Doctor had felt too much to forget so quickly.
"So," I said, the clarity of my words ringing into the silence.
The Doctor merely looked at me, eyes focussed and observant, so steeped in emotion yet as blank as the canvas before the painting. He was waiting for me to say the words.
It seemed the days of my Raggedy, haphazard, ridiculous Doctor were over.
In his place stood this man: solemn, serious and raw, now broken and repaired like some old, loved ornament; precious and something you became alarmed over when put in dangerous situations.
The Doctor was now a man I desperately wanted to protect from the universe's cruelty, and yet I knew that I was the last person who could protect the Doctor from anything. He was always of the opinion that he was the one who ought to be saving others. He had never viewed himself as a damsel.
Although, I guess, no one ever realizes when they need saving from themselves.
"What now?" I asked carefully, not sure of what to say. This was reaching the point I somehow always knew it would – the point where he left, and where I wouldn't see him for another good, long while.
And I'd wait, and he'd fly around, and then he'd come back, and everything would repeat itself.
It was tiring, and I didn't know if I wanted it again.
"Anything," he replied, mouth in a straight line, a little sparkle in his eyes.
"Anything like what? Because I can't keep doing this," he frowned at my words, but he didn't say anything.
I frowned back, pursing my lips.
"You can't keep coming back; dropping in; visiting. It can't work like this."
"But Blue, you said that-"
"I know that," I muttered. He didn't need to remind me of how I'd shot him down the last time we'd reached this point. I was being contradictory, and I knew it. I didn't need someone else to spell it out for me. I looked to my right, staring out the window.
Such a dark sky, and yet so many lights; lights I couldn't see.
Lights blocked out by so many others down here.
I sighed, feeling determined.
"So make a choice, Doctor. What am I to you?"
His eyes widened, and he stood up straighter, looking sad and frustrated and indecisive all at once.
He looked torn.
"Everything,"
"And?" An answer like that wasn't solving this problem.
I'd read his diary. A diary he hadn't read himself. I'd fought my nightmares, I'd travelled with him; I'd met him. That was enough proof that I wasn't just some one-way-tripper who he forgot about once the story ended.
When I'd first met him, I had thought, the minute he leaves, that's it. I thought I would never see him again.
I had thought about him, dreamed of him, wondered about him.
I thought the first was to be the last.
And yet, nothing was going the way I had thought it would.
"'And'?" The Doctor flung my words back at me, voice sounding thin and weak.
I was cutting him deeply, here.
"And what? Is this it? Is this the final goodbye? Or will you turn up again, when I'm not looking? When I'm tired, and alone, and in pain. Is that when you turn up? Only when I need you, and nothing else?"
He blinked once, twice, slowly, trying to formulate words to make up for it.
I didn't want to do this to him – to drag the answer from him. But I needed to. I was fed up of being sprung upon.
It was heart-warming – that he hadn't forgotten me. That I was more than just another mortal being on this Earth.
And yet I wanted to know: was I a companion? Or just a passing company?
"Blue…" he took a step forward, lips parting slightly, trying to speak and words escaping him.
I nodded solemnly, once.
He took the last steps towards me, reaching out his fingers just a little, and I just smiled faintly, taking my own few, tentative steps towards him, clasping my own hands around his, as they rested on my cheeks. I studied his face, wondering helplessly if us meeting was just another cruel addition to the scrapbook I was collating of my life – of all the things that went wrong, or became lost, or remained as things I couldn't have.
The Doctor, to me, was all of that.
He was wrong – a person that, in my logical and scientific world, was not supposed to exist. There weren't supposed to people like us up there, in those stars.
And yet here he was.
Second: he was lost, just as I was. Two wanderers unable to end their ceaseless journey of emptiness and loneliness. Sometimes I hated my defeatist attitude: the whole 'I'm a waste; no one likes me' gig because I knew it wasn't true. I was loved, either right now or I would be. The Doctor liked me – that I did know. But the problem I faced there was that of relative ease: the Doctor never stayed, in the one place, for very long. He was a wanderer of a place far bigger than Earth, so the likelihood that I would be able to see him often was unlikely.
Lastly, I could not have him. The Doctor was no human man. He was a star-man; an alien; a vagabond; a child. He was no less amazed by the universe than I was, but sometimes it never excited him like it should have. So, he needed people to show him that all over again. And I'd made it clear that I was not that person. So I couldn't have him. Not in the slightest way. He belonged to no one and bowed to no one. The Doctor ruled his own palace, and always, in the end,
He did it alone.
I had never known just how many people the Doctor had shown the universe to, but I was guessing it was far more than a fair few exceptions.
"Doctor, I get it. You can't always be here. But-"
I glanced down at the floor, trying to hide my eyes. No tears, but certainly, I could almost see, outside of my body, just how desperate I looked.
"I'll always be here for you,"
I dared to look back up at him, and yes,
This time, it was him who cried.
We wrapped ourselves into each other's arms, aware that this maybe would be the last time we'd see each other for a long time.
Maybe it really would be the final.
Me: older, wiser, and yet still so young that I couldn't try and make out that I understood the world. I had no idea of what it was like. I had no true understanding of the deeper emotions that came with heartache of losing someone you'd known for years upon years upon years, or the loss of your own mother. It wasn't something I could comprehend. I'd lost my grandmother, but, in terrible guilt, it wasn't the same.
So I certainly would never be able to empathise with the Doctor.
But I'd still wait for him. Even if he never came back.
Even if I was a passing fancy, or a solid companion, one day, I knew, deep down, that I was going to wait for him, no matter the circumstance.
It was probably the greatest curse he'd lain on me after I met him.
Once you meet the Doctor, there's no going back.
You'll never forget him.
Finally, our arms untangled themselves, and he gave me one last fleeting smile, as he swept around, on his heels, to head to his only true love.
I watched him go, plum coat and bowed head, hands still twitching erratically with a nervous tension that just seemed to be a part of him.
A thought hit me.
"Doctor!" I cried, arms still folded in a defensive but comforting gesture to myself.
He looked behind him, eyes imploring.
I tried to smile, but it somehow didn't seem right to, so I just sighed.
"I forgive you, even if you won't forgive yourself,"
He froze, suspended in air, unable to blink or speak.
He merely looked at me, confused and bewildered and even just the tiniest bit…overwhelmed.
And then he nodded down, once, and turned once again to the wooden doors, raising a hand in farewell.
He stepped into the TARDIS, turning to face me, as he hung out from behind the closed door on the left.
The happy, satisfied, quiet sigh he gave told me he was leaving this place feeling…
Better.
I laughed lightly, watching the doors close, his face fading from my memory the moment I stopped seeing it.
And then the box faded too.
And I was left again, the darkness and the stars telling me surely, solemnly,
inevitably,
There he goes again.
17