DOCTOR WHO
TEARS IN RAIN
WRITTEN BY ZARIUS
How many times had he died now?
How many lives had he been blessed with?
When is there a definitive beginning?
When is an appropriate end?
Everything begins with a question, everything ends with a question, and everything in between is about paving your path with answers.
For The Doctor, he who walks in Eternity, these questions were always a persistent mix of the new and familiar. New because the faces change, the circumstances are different, but familiar because many ask the same thing time after time.
They wonder if he is alright, or if he can make them better.
All they need is a response to the name and they're assured everything is well.
That word is ''Doctor''
They call out to him, even now, as he lay on the TARDIS floor, on the brink of death, at the very twilight of his twelfth age, they speak his name, like they have so many times before.
They call out to him, drawing him from his slumber, urging him to come home safe from the war, and to not let the TARDIS be his coffin.
Memories and moments spread far across time and space, through his more recent lives rather than the many others he had lived. Parts of him wondered why that was.
Another question in the long road he travelled down, and one the fates weren't seemingly compelled to answer.
All he could assume as his soul reached deep down to jolt him back into consciousness was that the TARDIS was trying to make a point, that those moments needn't be as lost in time as he was. That he could reach across the charmed winds of time and touch their lives in and out of sequence. Sometimes he would have to break the rules to make that happen.
In his endless quest to answer the enigmas of the universe, he had come across enemies from even his childhood that told him rules mattered little to them.
It terrified parts of him that he would echo such sentiments to his greatest of foes on the fields of Trenzalore also.
Never mention the rules to him.
He used to go by the book, until the horrors of the time war threw them out. Now anything was possible.
Even the most distant of elephants called out to him amongst the list of companions old, picked from trendier and more modern days. The last lifeline to feverish times spent on youth and vitality.
A life he thought he'd left behind for the benefit of the universe.
He even wrote a song for her.
And it was that song that reminded him now why it was crucial he resist change as long as he could.
He was remembering the person behind the name he could recall, and he feared that giving in would mean giving up on her.
He would not permit the miracle of the Time Lords to put his latest question to an abrupt and possibly permanent end before he could fully answer.
''Who was Clara?''
As his eyes snapped open, as he jolted upwards within the TARDIS console room, and he rattled away famous last words like they were old coats, his mind remained focused on the moments he was determined to hold onto.
Upon his forehead, the faintest drops of a tear dripped down on the floor. A part of him noticed, and remembered what came attached to it. Words he sensed another dearly departed friend had told him a fleeting few minutes ago.
''Where there's tears, there's hope''
And as The Doctor rebelled against the regenerative energies as they engulfed his body, he thought back to those moments in time, and how he might lose them if he were to change.
He vowed he would not invite in new questions until he answered the remaining ones in his lifetime.
He vowed he, and in turn those moments, would not become tears in rain.