Live
Wake up, wake up
And let the cloak
Of life
Cling to your bones
He cannot take it. The pain, the emptiness, is too much.
He falls to his knees, unable to stand any longer.
It feels as if his life is being sucked away from him, out into space, into the sun before him.
The maybe-fake God of Akhaten.
"Take it all," he whispers, his voice as weak as the rest of him, "so that they can live…that she can live."
And then it's gone.
The pull, it recedes, and the sun is swallowed in darkness. But that's not all that's gone.
Something in him has gone with the beast, the massive sun god has taken it with him to the grave.
His life.
Weakly, so very weakly, his hands rise to his chest and he waits, feeling, listening.
One heartbeat. One single, solitary heartbeat, softly pounding away on its own for the first time in a very long time.
And even as it beats away, keeping his frail shell alive, he can feel the hollow place the other has left in its wake. Two hearts only become one with a price, he thinks to himself.
"I'm human," he murmurs.
Again.
But something this time around feels permanent.
"Doctor!" he hears, and Clara appears beside him.
Her arms are around him and then she's lifting him back up on his feet. "Are you alright?" she asks quietly.
He forces on a sad, small smile. "I don't know," he whispers. "But I'm sure I will be, someday."
Being human was something interesting. He could still pilot the TARDIS, and he got them back to Earth, to London even. But he knew the TARDIS wouldn't let him keep going on like that.
So he parked her. For good. Locked her doors and slid the key into his pocket.
Clara helped him find a flat, a job. She helped him adjust to human life.
Eventually, she moved in with him. Found a new job, apart from the Maitland kids, but she still came around a few times a month.
The Doctor adopted a new name, or a not-so-new name. John Smith. The most common name in the world. And Clara, with her brilliant computer skills—courtesy of the Data Cloud—rearranged some things so he had a birth certificate, a social security number, et cetera.
He aged. As much as he had lived, all thousand and some years, he finally began to age.
River found him, once, and he told her what had happened. He made her promise not to tell her parents, where they were in 1940's New York. She kissed him goodbye and, most assuredly, went off to New York to tell Amy and Rory. They were her parents after all, and his closest friends, once.
Maybe five years after his becoming human, Clara moved out of the flat. Got married, settled down with a bloke in suburbia, had kids.
She still called him The Doctor, even then, and that's what her kids called him, too.
She was an excellent mother, Clara. And he knew she would be. Her mother would be proud, he tells her one day, long after everything.
He stays there until after his body grows weak. He stays there until the day he can feel it, the darkness, closing in on him.
He goes back to the TARDIS.
One last farewell tour. But a real one, this time.
He says goodbye to Clara, his last companion. He visits Craig and Sophie, and Alfie, all grown up. He goes by Wilf's grave, and says a tearful goodbye to Donna, who doesn't recognize him. Martha, Mickey, anyone else he can manage to remember.
And then he goes to Amy and Rory. The Ponds, the Williams, somewhere in the late 1940's, almost ten years after they left him. They are surprised by his age, and he is surprised by their son. Adopted. Anthony Brian Williams.
And then, with the very last of him, he goes to Rose. He saves her for last for two reasons: because the TARDIS will hate it, and because he…well, she knows.
She's older now, almost as old as his body would be. When she answers the door, it's with a smile, and he collapses at her feet. He tells her who he is and why he's there and she cries, holding him in her arms.
Her Doctor, the one he left her with to ease the pain, he only died a year before, and she'd prayed every night for one last chance to say goodbye, say it right and properly the way she hadn't got to the other times.
And it's there, in her arms, that he fades away. His last heart stops beating and his eyes slide closed, his grip on her loosens and she sobs against him.
He is buried there, on the beach where it all happened, with the other one. And the TARDIS.
And The Doctor's gone. Really and truly gone. Though, in essence, The Doctor had been gone for a long time, the last of him dies there, in the arms of someone he loved, someone who loved him.
And all of them, all the lives he ever touched, they all hope it's enough.
And it is.
Rest now
My warrior
Rest now
07-23-2013
A/N: This was something that I got an idea for while rewatching Rings of Akhaten, and then it became something else, something more. Something painful for me to even write. The last bit actually hurt, like I was almost crying just thinking about it.
And if you're wondering why I didn't have Clara and The Doctor together, read my story 'Clara Amelia Song'. It has nothing to do with this, but it shows you that I don't ship Clara/Doctor. Really, I don't even ship Rose/Doctor all that much, but writing her in felt appropriate. Because it was real. And it was part of him, even then.
Even though I wrote this, I'm really glad this isn't what happened. Because it would ruin me to see this, or to say goodbye to The Doctor, period. And not just a regeneration, but the character as a whole. The end of Who. I don't think I could handle it. I won't do well, when the time comes, I think. And if I outlive Who, then props to the crew and good luck to the next generation, I guess.
Sorry to get all weird on you. Just had to get this out of my system, I suppose. And in case you don't recognize it, the lyrics are from the song Merry Galel (sp?) sang while The Doctor made his huge speech to the sun-god-thing.