Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. This story contains depictions of both physical and mental injuries. Read at own risk
The Final Day
He stumbles out of his burning TARDIS and crashes onto his knees barely outside her. He is struggling to breathe through smoke and ash, coughing out his own blood. He has regenerated, the atrocious injuries healed, but some blood from his previous body's crushed lungs remains in the new ones. A few fresh drops of crimson on the already blood-stained, torn and burned Victorian velvet. The gentle body as destroyed as the gentle dress, ripped apart, proven a lie, a murderer all along.
Silence echoes inside his head, the silence screams. They screamed and fell silent, still screaming, but silent, had to be, so silent, so alone, alone, alone and alive, why still alive? He can't breathe through the suffocating loneliness, he wants to scream, manages a shattered, shaking sob. No tears, his eyes are dry. Didn't he once know how to cry?
His wounded TARDIS would shed tears if she could. His beautiful old girl, her song turned to scream, then to lament. For her sisters. For her birthplace. All torn from everywhen at once, torn from the fabric of the history, torn from her – still in pain she reaches towards him. A shaking consciousness brushes against his and he lashes back like a wounded animal, blindly, furiously. Don't you dare with your comfort, your sympathy, care, worry… A violent snarl in his mind transforms into more dry sobs and she doesn't retreat. He hates himself even more, shouldn't be possible, but he does, sends shuddering mental apologies to the only presence left in his mind – and to the ones forever gone, begging for forgiveness he doesn't deserve. Is never going to receive.
Everywhere around him timelines fluctuate, unstable, snapped possibilities trying to realign themselves with the new reality. All that was and now never could be, should have been, never might, what if never had been and then so be it forever and ever and never-ending possibilities changing, wrong, wrong, wrong…
He wants to whimper, wants to scream, wants to be unmade and locked away with the rest of his kind. He never was like them, but worse in the end, dropped the mask of peace and became the perfect soldier he had known he would be. War turned into Hell, then worse, it had to end, they had to stop and no one to stop them but him. He had to do it, but did he have the right? Bitter, convulsive laughter; what an innocent thing he had once been, what a stupid fool believing himself a power for good. All illusions gone now, the promise broken, burned away with the fierce force that tore apart the Homeworld. All gone. The charred, once crimson grass, blackened snow on broken mountaintops, the shattered dome no longer protecting the burning Citadel. But oh, the sky! The warm orange sky was still the same, unstained, and gone now, gone with everything else as if it had never been.
He lifts his gaze to the sky of this world, the pale blue, blue, blue sky dotted with white clouds, above the planet he'd come to love so fiercely. The Sun is high and the sky is blue and it is fleeting, so fleeting, no more but a beautiful illusion that will burn away one day. Everything burns in the end and leaves bitter cold and stale darkness without stars.
He draws a calming breath – count, one, two, three – exhales and repeats, mechanically. Storm rages within him still, lightnings strike through what is left of his psyche, thunder crashes, deafening, but never loud enough to drown the silence. His mind is a storm, but the surface is calm, a mask settled unbidden on his new features. Breathe in – one, two, three – exhale. He stands up slowly, taller than before and wipes from his mouth the last of the blood his former self had shed. His shoes are too small, now and the clothes don't fit him. They are too ornate, too soft, too luxurious and he doesn't fit them. He kicks away the shoes, tears off his old jacket and throws it aside. He wishes it were as easy to cast away himself as well, rip away what he has done, what he has become, what he always knew he might become. Slowly and steadily he walks the few steps to his TARDIS, no emotion on his face. He feels like his hands ought to be shaking, but they are quite steady.
He lays his hand carefully against the TARDIS, strokes her side gently with new fingers, caress's her consciousness with his. She is in pain as well, rebuilding herself after the catastrophic damage of the War. He exhales remaining cellular energy in a cloud of golden mist and sits down again, almost collapses against her. He is so tired. He's already on ground, but falling still, drowning in himself, curled against the TARDIS both physically and mentally. His consciousness is shutting down; he falls deeper into the bottomless, silent darkness, his last thought fumbling towards her presence in his mind.
x
Donna was startled awake from her nap by a deafening crash somewhere outside. Her mind was all dizzy from her dream, her first coherent thought: Thank heavens Shaun's still in the grocery shop; I'd never hear the end of it for falling asleep on the couch in the middle of the day. Because, apparently, old ladies take lots of naps. Just because there's some grey in her hair doesn't mean she's old, thank you very much, Mr. Receding Hairline. She did feel tired though, and felt the first symptoms of a migraine attack. It had been years since she'd told anyone about the strange vivid dreams she sometimes had, and how they seemed to be the cause of blinding head-aches. She knew her Gramps and Mom had always been so worried about her dreams. They'd told everything was okay and that stuff like that happened to everyone, but Gramps's reassuring smile had been all rigid and wrong and Mom had usually spent the day treating her like she was made of glass. Telling how proud she was of a daughter like her. Excuse me, but since when exactly?
Donna had become so paranoid about it she had actually gone to cancer screenings all in secret. Just in case she had a brain tumour or something and Gramps and Mom knew about it, but she had somehow forgotten. She'd never been particularly forgetful, but you never knew, especially if there was something wrong with your head. Nothing there, healthy as a horse, and would the Mrs. kindly stop berating the oncologist for sounding condescending and trying to refer her to a psychiatrist. Some shrink would just love to hear her story, she was certain. "Excuse me, doctor, but sometimes I dream about Converse shoes and far-away stars and get a migraine attack afterwards. And by the way, none of those 1001 Explanations for Your Dreams - types of books help me find the significance of sad, singing noodle-faces; what's up with that?" Yeah right, that'd go well. She and Shaun hadn't lacked for money since their wedding, but she didn't see any sense in paying someone to tell her she was an old lady going dotty.
She got on her feet, rubbing her sore back, and walked to the window to see what had caused the crash. Shaun had told her some of the old trees were probably dangerously rotten at roots, but she didn't feel good about cutting down trees. Something about trees and shadows had flickered just on the edge of her consciousness when she'd insisted that the trees were perfectly fine just where they were, and that she wouldn't have anyone cut down something that had stood in the yard for decades just because – There was a small wooden box outside. Judging from the crater, a box that had fallen from the sky, a blue box with a column of smoke rising from it, a blue box that made Donna's mind scream with recognition, although she knew she had never seen one before…
Breathing heavily she stared at the blue box – not small but big, infinite, the rooms go on and on and on and outside there are stars, outside there are new planets and old times, spaceship, it's called a TARDIS, rocks and dust spinning around a star made of webs – she gasped as pain shot through her head. She has never seen anything like the images now running through her mind. Her brain struggles to ignore them, but she can't, no more than she can ignore the shape of a man lying against the box. The man is all hard angles and big ears, his figure slim, but not skinny. So why does she think of skinny and excited, with a tuft of hair sticking up, he pretends it just stays like that but he styles it up when she's asleep, big coat wouldn't fit a rat, a hand grasping hers, brilliant, get a papercut hugging him, manic grin, and sparkly eyes, brilliant, you're brilliant, I'm sorry, best of times, so sorry, so sorry, so sorry…
It's so much, too much, her mind tries to shut down, but she forces herself to stay conscious. It burns, all the strange images, the strange golden light, the Doctor. The Doctor! The realisation hits her like a lightning and hurts worse as she remembers, she remembers all of it, everything, even the – Oh, she is going to kill him, how dare he, she told him no, she told him to let her die and spare her memories, she told him no, but he did it anyway, he… He wears a different face and his clothes are so stained with blood they're unrecognisable and he's not moving at all, is he even breathing? What the hell has the stupid bloody Spaceman been doing to himself now?
The pain in her head cuts like a million red-hot knives. She needs to help him, she can always murder him later. Her entire body is on fire, heart clenching in her chest as it tries to beat through the pain, through the golden sparks in her line of vision – No! He needs her help! He needs her…
Her world explodes in streams of gold and clouds fill her mind.
x
Donna wakes up on the floor, her whole body aching. Her left arm is numb and she struggles for breath. She has been unconscious, but it can't have been for long. She can't just lie here, she needs to stand up, he needs her help. The Doctor always needed her, she has to help him, help the… the…
He needs help, an unbidden mantra in her head. It makes no sense, but he always needed help, he…
He…Someone… Needs help… She can't get up. She fumbles to feel her pulse and it's weak, uneven. She feels so tired, exhausted. She hasn't really been doing anything that straining, has she? She'd remember if she had.
She can't think clearly. She can't feel her fingers, that can't be good, she's still lying on the floor. Help! Shaun, help, someone else, there was… Was there someone else? Why does she think there might have been someone else?
There was never anyone else, never, who'd need her help, no one needs her-
She needs help.
Her vision is going dark.
Please not like this, someone…
Help…
x
He wakes from the regenerative sleep feeling oddly peaceful. The silence is still there, the wrongness, the agonising memory of what he did, what he had to do, no choice… But he can choose now.
He can still be the Doctor. Can't he?
Yes. He is the Doctor.
He struggles to his feet. The TARDIS seems to have finished healing herself. All for the better. He sees a big nice house, with a big nice garden, the owners probably wouldn't take too kindly to a blood-stained stranger and his box hanging around their property. There was something strange in the air, though, something that almost felt like… like resonance to the regeneration energy still running hot through his veins. That wasn't normal… But it was probably just his brain readjusting to the massive reality shift. Nothing to worry about. Or maybe the regeneration went a bit wrong and he ended up being a nutter this time. That might be something to worry about. Though a full score of humans he'd known would probably leap to testify no one'd ever tell 'normal' him apart from 'batty' him.
He fumbles with the TARDIS key, fitting it to the lock while stealing looks to the house behind him. The lights were on, but no one had come to investigate the massive crash in the yard. That was a bit odd, as well. Maybe he should go have a look…
Then he hears something from the other side of the house. A car pulling down to the drive-way. Right. Time to really be off, then, before he got chased off. Times were he wouldn't have minded a bit of chasing, but he didn't feel up to it at the moment. Maybe he'd just wander around and stay out of trouble for a while. Just for novelty's sake. He snorted mentally. Yeah, right.
The Doctor shook himself mentally and stepped inside the TARDIS. He needed to find some new clothes and then…
Krakatoa was really nice this time of the year…
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