Down by the waters
He had a name once.
A name that bleeds and spills like strings and waves until it got lost among the stars.
A name that now only lingers in soft places of dreams and time.
The burning skies, both near and distant worlds, and the blackest of holes can only share and whisper the name in vain.
The sound is harsh. It cuts through bone.
It's a piece of the universe that doesn't belong.
Light years away from Gallifrey and he's not just a man one simply calls the Doctor and leave it as that. He was a troubled youth then, the renegade, but now he's the Ninth incarnate to take the place though he still feels just the same.
It must have been the ghosts of his past incarnations that still cling to his new body that remind him it's merely another cage. It can never contain the old age.
But he can run. Oh, how far and brave he runs.
Savior! Healer! Hero! The choruses shout everywhere he goes.
But this final war bears down on him like a slithering thing of horrors that threatens to suffocate and tuck his beloved home away in the darkest of realms. His greatest foes, the Daleks, are built for grueling combats and massacre is the oil that keeps them running amok, sparing no Time Lord in close range.
The skies around Skarro and Gallifrey deepened in terror until everything is soaked in nightmares and the space holding the planets together begins to collapse.
It was in this utter desolation—this moment criminally bereft of choices—that Destruction crossed his path and the Ninth only stopped for him so he could his shake his hands. Any of the Ninth's fears melt away as soon as they clasped each other like old friends ought to.
"You mustn't," Destruction warns. "Don't leave this place in ruins."
His grip around Ninth's hand tightened like desperation, holding on in the name of Life.
Aware of fragile consequences, a man like the Doctor—savior, healer, hero—knows better.
But the Ninth has made his choice. And with that choice, he breaks the promise.
One simply cannot call himself the Doctor after that.
After that, there was Rose, a name that keeps him fighting.
The Tenth incarnate painfully wanted her that it scarred him. The Doctor hasn't sought anyone like this before. But he wanted Rose beyond the comfort and convenience of uncomplicated companionship and it almost destroyed him. He hasn't loved this much since the Time War stripped him bare and tender for plucking. He hasn't needed love, never granted it trespass, not since he lost all remnants of what family feels like.
It was the pitiful state of his feelings for the mortal Rose that he succumbed and willfully entered the Threshold where Desire poked holes into his two hearts so that the awakened lust would seep through them and drown his lungs with prayer and worship for Rose Tyler.
Desire wrapped Tenth in its cruel embrace while the softness and compassion in which Rose engulfed him during his travels devastated the Doctor unlike any other.
Forever, she whispers to him once when he asked her how long she intends to stay by his side. Forever; the word loops in his mind and saturates the dry earth that covered his soul.
But Forever is indefinite and everlasting and Rose was neither. She was human.
Forever, Donna echoes that wretched word, I was gonna be with you forever.
Tenth couldn't do anything else but hold her, to wrap her in an embrace she will never remember. Having her tucked away in his arms like this, she felt more human than he ever hoped to be. But the songs he filled her head with—the centuries of knowledge thick enough to bruise her membranes—it was his fault they were there and now he has to make her forget. He never really wanted Donna the same way he wanted and needed Rose.
But he loved Donna. He loved her just the same.
And he has to make her forget.
It was Despair who snatches their memories and eats them up. Bloated and naked, she sinks her rotted teeth and gnaws at Donna's marrows and plucked each piece of memory from the woman as if they're strands of hair. The pores closed up soon enough and Donna forgets.
When Tenth stops midway at her door to say goodbye, she glances briefly at him and waves a hand as if she was meeting him for the first time and will never know him again.
She has to remember; remember the madman who dropped into her life from a box and ate fish fingers and custard inside her home; the imaginary friend who took her away during the night before her wedding, who promised to keep her safe from the cracks in her walls.
She needs to remember the story of the little Scottish girl from Leadworth and her raggedy Doctor. She couldn't have forgotten for no amount of cracks in the universe could diminish who they are, or so the Eleventh hopes.
Humanity or the alien. Not long ago he almost made that choice if it wasn't for Amy. She said he was very old and very kind and it was the first time he felt exactly that.
She was always tempestuous, a child refusing to grow up, trapped in a woman's frame. She falsely exhibits maturity around her husband but even with Rory hovering between them and always standing in their way, it still feels like they're alone together, daring one to fall for the other, but then they just end up in some remote location for another adventure.
They're always trying to capture childhood's glee like it's the one thing that ever mattered.
But it's just another story in the end. The girl waited long enough and he wasn't even sure he was worth it. Eleventh tried to abandon her many times. He tried to let go while there's still something to hold onto…until there was nothing left but the last page of a book he didn't want to read and he's standing on her grave with his heart bloody and broke once more.
Amy left like Martha did. They chose to leave because he didn't dare to love either enough.
Despair, Desire and Destruction took their turns feasting on him that day.
All the while he hoped for Death.
Long-winding corridors and never-ending staircases—these are the best places Delirium often likes to play hide and seek. The first time he saw her, she reminded him of the girl who waited for him, because she had red hair like Amy and she smelled and felt just as innocent and vain. The Doctor chases after her in circles and once he pins her down, he could see the shade of her eyes, one green; the other blue. Both peered at him in delight and curiosity. Eleventh pulls her up and they begin to dance amidst the laughter and madness.
Afterwards Delirium took him to a misty labyrinth, an encompassing garden with so many corners and pathways that excited him to solve and get lost in. With Delirium stubbornly clutching at his hand, pulling him from one place to the next, they bumped against Destiny who dropped his book at the Doctor's feet.
Eleventh asked what it was and Destiny merely responded that he collected stories; those that were written, are being written and yet to be. And then from his gray cloak, Destiny pulled a smaller blue book and placed it upon the Doctor's hands.
She awaits, he tells Eleventh and the Doctor looks down at the book and knew he could only mean Melody Pond. He was always destined to meet her though not in order.
One day in her future he will appear but he won't have the faintest idea who she is and how much he loved her in his past right now.
"The Ponds and their daughter," he tells Delirium as they begin to walk through the labyrinth again. "What I had with them—it's just like a fairy tale."
And Delirium giggles at him and runs ahead, chirping "aReN't wE aLL, arEN't We All…?"
He took Clara (Oswin) Oswald to Trenzalore where the tracks of his tears burned and the Great Intelligence laid waste to everything he ever held dear, everything that ever mattered.
The waves and strings have caught up with him, binding his legs so he won't be able to run. Not from this. Not this time. And now he's tangled beneath their weight and his blood dripped across constellations, snuffing the life from them. Billions upon billions of candles ceased to smolder at that moment. Billions upon billions of lives he saved are going down the drain with him as silence took hold.
It was harsh and it sliced through every vein and left open wounds bare.
But when Clara (Oswin) Oswald bent down and touched his face, something came alive within him once more. His Impossible Girl, who's half as clever as he and was a lot more trouble than any companion he ever had. He should have known this isn't going to end well.
What they had was simply too beautiful to live.
She stands before the festered wound of his life and prepares to take the leap.
Eleventh tried to stop her but as soon as he reached out his hand, it was Death who took it.
"Please," he begged her. "She cannot bear this burden for me. I have lived far too long and it's time I come with you, don't you think? I should be ready. I must be ready. For Clara."
And for the others before her; all his dazzling, beautiful and brave companions.
"It's her choice to make," Death leans closer and whispers his name.
A name he had once; that piece of the universe that doesn't belong.
And Death knew. Of course she knew.
"Run," Clara was saying.
Not from this, the Doctor thought. Not this time.
"A lifetime of deaths," the lady reaper tells him, "that's what she traded to save you. She will endure a lifetime of deaths that echo in time and space, hoping one will reach you."
The lady reaper brushes a stray of hair from Eleventh's face and sighs. "A lifetime of deaths…but you know how that goes. You and no one else and only too well, Time Lord."
"Run", Clara was saying.
"Forever", Rose and Donna's wretched words swept through Trenzalore.
Amy Pond was smiling down at him and whispers "Remember me."
Only he asked that of her during her wedding day and now Clara is asking that of him.
Melody stood next to him and plants a kiss on his cheek. Her ghost holds onto him long enough as she sobs into his ear, "Goodbye, sweetie."
And now Death has pulled him up from the ground and was going to tuck him away somewhere safe for good but the Doctor takes her hand off his arm gently and says. "Sorry. I know I said I'm ready this time but I was wrong."
He glanced at the tracks of tears, the way his life burned in those veins, and then he smiled at Death. With one foot already in place, he told her. "You watch me run."
And he jumped in.
His toes sank into the sand. The shore meets the horizon where the sun sets and it was as orange as it can get like the peeled fruit of the same name. Something unraveled within him as well and he wasn't sure anymore if he could ever go back.
A tall, thin wisp of a man was standing next to him and he was pale as milk. A large dark cloak covered him and its hems looked like it was disappearing into the sand where they both stood upon. "We are in the soft places," he heard the tall, pale man speak.
"Did you bring me here or did I come to you first?"
"It's always both when it's you who comes here," and then he says his name.
A name he shouldn't have, one that needs to be abandoned so he could choose another.
Often he'd like to think that the tall, pale man was his friend but an entity as lonely and so old as he doesn't have friends. What he had are names. He's been called with so many of them now that it's quite a thing to envy. What he lacked in friends, he makes it up for the names civilizations upon civilizations created so they have something to call him with every time they seek him. Oneiros. Lord Shaper. Morpheus. Sandman.
"Dream," he speaks up, "I could never thank you enough for the opportunity. And for this marvelous craft," he placed a tender hand on the TARDIS. "I call her Sexy."
"In private, I hope," Dream remarked. He looked thinner in his majestic dark robes than he could remember. After a long pause, he said. "Your nightmares will still follow you around so you must understand that there's nothing left to do but to run."
"You watch me run then," he said with a nervous chuckle.
They looked at one another for a while as if they suddenly became mirrors to gaze upon and in that moment they're able to know each other better.
As immortals, they're no strangers to brevities and awkward silences, but Dream broke it first when he said. "Have a safe voyage…Doctor." Of course he knew, the devious bastard. He must have glimpsed at his new name through his subconscious last night.
The Doctor gave him a smile as he stepped inside his TARDIS. "I'll drop in some time."
"You don't need a time machine to navigate the Dreaming," the other man replied. "Just find a quiet place, close your eyes and let your mind drift back."
The Doctor doesn't like silence and the way it falls between the cracks but he nodded his head at Dream and then closed the doors. Perhaps he will visit the Dreaming soon but for now he has other places to see and other worlds to prioritize.
He walked to his console and saw Susan still trying to figure out the buttons, exactly where he left her. His granddaughter lit up as soon as he approached her.
"So," his smile deepened in his affection for her. "Where do you want to start?"