I do not own, nor make any income from anything Doctor Who related. I only own my plot and my original characters.
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Time and Space was once again the constant companion of The Doctor, as was all the trouble and running that came along with his reckless approach to "helping". He had his immortal team of earthly companions, had met the impossible girl, and once again he lay broken and suffering at the sight of his own demise, saved by another companion that loved her Doctor to the end of the universe. It pained her to see her thief surrounded by so much pain in so little perspective time. Yet, every second and every choice had led him here, to the place he must never go, to his end, to where he would find the key to the door that still stood just to the left, the door that wasn't a door, the door whose key didn't exist until just now, if only he could remember he was looking for it.
He had lost her, she was shattered into an endless number of pieces scattered across his life. She would always be there to watch him, to care for him from his beginning to his end. For the first time in his long life, the Doctor realized what it felt like to be cared for so much, to be utterly and suddenly left behind for his own good, hoping to see just a glimpse or glimmer of his watcher. He smiled, she wasn't lost, she wasn't gone, she was everywhere, she is the companion that always was and always will be.
He stood, surrounded by the decimation of his eventual death, the death of an era, his era. Death was always something that scared him, this place a cursed secret, a world of his failure, and it was time to leave that fear behind him. It was time to leave his fear, his darkest secret behind, the wonder and the unseen was calling him away from the darkness. Then he felt it, pressing so painfully jagged into his palm it was a wonder he hadn't noticed it before, a key, a very old key, a key from old Gallifrey, he could now feel it's age caressing his skin, calling him to find it's lock.
"A key belongs to a door, and a door has something behind it, something new, something I need to find" The Doctor smiled in the rubble of his death, the key he was never really looking for gripped in his ash coated palm, scanning the room for a door that begged to be opened.
Trenzalore was never a place he was meant to be, it was painful and ever so wrong for him to be snooping in the corners of his own demise with a key on a hunt for a door like some child playing hide and seek in a crime scene. The analogy was dark but honest if he said so himself, though he wasn't about to start thinking aloud, talking and responding to ones self was the first sign of insanity, and he may be crazy but he wasn't crazy, not yet anyways.
"There had to be a door someplace, a key doesn't exist without a door, and nothing suddenly becomes found unless it wants to be found. That was some number in the long list of universe rules he had stashed in some closest someplace, never once had he found something that wasn't wanting to, or needing to, be found." The Doctor thought to himself while peeking around yet another half melted corner into yet another endless hallway. "You know, musing about your own grave probably wasn't the best signs of sanity, a conversation is a conversation where or not you vocalize it or not" Also, internal dialogs are rather distracting as a whole when the whole point was to be looking for something. Hence why The Doctor suddenly found himself nose to the ground, tangled in some bit of something that has sprung free from a control panel, utterly astounded that his library pool, be it the graveyard version, still contained some water.