On A Cloud

The TARDIS was finally blue. Oh, she had always been blue (Damn chameleon circuit!), but his best friend left was finally blue inside and out. Lights flashed around the walls like one of those arcade games where you have to press the button when the light was at a specific point to win. Gallifreyan symbols stood proudly above the control panels and the light in the middle. Button-y keyboard thingies lined the walls, below walkways circling the main control room.

The Doctor wasn't having fun. Amy and Rory, the girl who waited and the Roman centurion, were gone. Stolen. Taken. Murdered. His companions had been zapped by a Weeping Angel and sent back in time. He could never see them again.

Raggedy Man, goodbye.

Amy Pond's last words echoed in the too-still air around him and he slammed his fist on the console. The TARDIS whined softly in protest, but her Doctor was too deep in his own mind to hear her. It was his fault, all his fault, it was always his fault. He should've known about the last Weeping Angel, but he didn't and Amy and Rory paid the price. The Ponds, even their daughter, had departed.

River had piloted the old girl into the Horsehead Nebula, then gave him a look full of sorrow and regret and pain. Her hand went to her wrist, and Melody Pond flashed back to her lonely prison cell.

Oh, Rassilion. Rory's father. He had promised him that nothing would happen to his son and daughter-in-law, but like all his promises he had broken it.

Arthur took the news in silence, standing there as if all of time and space had frozen and wouldn't restart. The Doctor simply stood there, knowing that there was nothing he could do or say that would soften the blow.

"Go. Get out. You have no place here," The man's words washed over the Time Lord like the inevitable tide, a death sentence he knew was coming. The Doctor obeyed, noticing as he closed the door that it had begun to snow. The soft flakes drifted downwards and landed on his floppy hair as he trudged back to the TARDIS.

"Just you and me now, old girl," His throat closed up as the key slid into the lock to reveal that a new interior had developed. All buttons and keypads and pale blue light, she was mourning as well. That was it, he decided. No more. No more interference in puny human affairs, no more rules that were created to be broken, no more waiting five and a half hours. He would find a nice little patch of cloud, start drifting, and forget the pain of watching a loved one die. Though he had seen far too much of that to ever forget it.

He pulled button and pressed levers, and soon his oldest friend had herself a nice little bit of cloud with which to enjoy the view. Meanwhile, the Doctor once again set out to find the kitchen and the library, not necessarily in that order.

And a long time ago, and decades and centuries later, a small boy named Walter began to make a snowman.