Sarah was coming down the stairs in the bed and breakfast when she saw the Doctor walking in to collect the rent – and find out what he could about the town's latest, mysterious visitor.
She was ready for him to do something ridiculous and wondered how much she would have to help him out – when she saw him freeze as the blond woman gave her name to Granny as she handed her the key to her room.
Sarah remembered when the Doctor had regenerated, the moments when old habits and a new self coexisted uneasily.
This was the same face, but –
Something had changed.
"Emma," the Doctor said. "What a beautiful name."
He barely seemed to notice as Granny, looking as frightened as if he had horns and breathed sulfur, handed over the rent. Then, he beat a hasty retreat.
Sarah hurried outside. He hadn't waited for her.
She found him at the house, sitting in the dark parlor, staring at nothing. The curtains were drawn.
"Doctor?"
He didn't react at first. When he did, it was to look over at her, perplexed, as if he hadn't realized she was talking to him.
For a moment, she thought he didn't even know who she was.
Then, something seemed to click.
"Sarah," he said.
There was no particular warmth in his voice, just the quickly donned pleasantness of a businessman who has put a name to a face in his store.
"Doctor, what happened? Who – who was that woman?"
"Her? Oh, Emma Swan." He frowned, thinking over ramifications and complications only he could see (she knew that look) before remembering she was there and explaining. "She was born twenty-eight years ago. The day the town appeared. News reports – news reports will tell you she was found at the diner outside Storybrooke. The one people usually have the sense to stop at rather than come here."
"She's from the town, then? Originally?"
"Oh, no. She's never been here before.
"But, she's from the same world the rest of them are. She – she would have come here just before the rest of them, the child who can break the curse . . . ."
"The what? Doctor, you're not making any sense."
"Ah. There's a reason for that. I finally . . . I know what's happening here. I know what happened to Mr. Gold. I know . . . everything."
He was frightening her, but she forced her voice to sound light. "Care to share?"
"Of course, of course, you deserve to –" He stopped suddenly and looked at her – really looked at her. The intensity in his eyes frightened her almost as much as his previous blankness had.
He stood up and gathered her into his arms.
And kissed her.
She had imagined being kissed by the Doctor – had imagined it many, many times over the years she'd known him – and that was all it had ever been, imaginings. She had told herself, again and again, she was too old for foolish, schoolgirl fantasies. Whatever she and the Doctor were to each other – and she knew she was more than just a traveling companion or even just a very good friend – she knew he was centuries old and that there were some lines he could never bring himself to cross with someone he knew, no matter what he did, he was destined to lose.
Her schoolgirl fantasies, she decided, had not covered the half of it.
Finally, he moved away a little, and she was able to catch her breath.
"I'm sorry," he said.
Not the first thing a girl wanted to hear from the man who'd been kissing her.
"I'm sorry it took so long. I'm sorry it took till now – when I have to tell you."
"Tell me?" Sarah asked.
He kissed her again instead of answering. Somehow, he wound up pulling her down into the winged chair. She was sitting on his lap with his hands running through her hair. For a few moments, she thought the conversation – and his cryptic comments – were about to be forgotten.
He pulled himself away again. "I'm sorry, Sarah. I want – it doesn't matter. You're not – you're not going to want anything to do with me. Not once you know."
"Doctor, what are you saying?" There was something about this place, she decided, that rotted people's brains out. Even the Doctor was susceptible if he could say that to her. "You're not making any sense. Know what?"
He looked at her as though he were trying to memorize her face, as though he expected never to see her again. Then, gently, he pushed her away, out of his lap. She sat in the chair next to his, still holding onto his hand, afraid what would happen if she let go. "Doctor, you're frightening me. What is it? What's happened?"
"Frightening you," he repeated. His mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "Yes, that's what I do, isn't it? Frighten people."
"Doctor . . . ."
"I told you about the trick Time Lords have, the way we can hide ourselves – I told you how I did it, once, became a human, a school teacher back in the Edwardian era. And how the Master hid himself that way, too. After the Time War. At the end of time."
"Yes . . . ."
"You could say that's what Storybrooke is, an entire town hidden behind false memories. Hidden for a reason.
"There are other worlds, other universes, where the laws of physics as you know them don't apply, where what you would call magic is as simple as action and reaction, universal laws everyone knows and everyone takes for granted. You know, Newton wasn't brilliant for seeing the laws of motion – everyone sees those, every day – he was brilliant stopping and saying, 'Hey, this means something.' Then figuring out what it meant."
"But, one of those other worlds, that's where Regina – and the rest of this town – come from. The stories you know, the ones you learn as children of princesses and dragons, they're rooted in that world, the heart of its reality.
"Regina – Regina is what you would call a witch, a wicked queen. This town is her curse, the people she hates are trapped here in a reality she created in a world where the magic they need to break the curse doesn't exist.
"And Gold – Gold is a wizard. No, more than a wizard – an imp, a demon, an evil being who helped her create the curse. He's – as old as I am." His mouth twisted as he said it, as if the words were a sour joke. "And cleverer," he said. His eyes darkened. "Much cleverer."
"Your coming here – this was a trap? Something Gold set up?"
He smiled painfully. "A trap, yes, but not the way you're thinking.
"Gold helped her create this place for reasons of his own. But, he knew he'd be caught as well, given a false life, false memories, and nothing to do but wait twenty-eight years for the child who'd escaped the curse, the child who's the key to ending it."
"Emma Swan."
"Yes.
"You don't need to worry about that. It will take care of itself now she's here. I'll – I'll take you home – you'll have to let me do that, Sarah. Even if you don't want to ever see me again, I did promise to see you safe home – and I always keep my deals."
"Doctor –"
"Right. Let me finish.
"Gold knew. Or the creature Gold was in that universe. And he expected to be bored and restless and didn't care for the idea of sitting around for twenty-eight years with nothing to do but collect rents and scare townspeople.
"Have you ever considered how . . . odd your world is, Sarah? The Loch Ness Monster has stormed through London, and no one seems to remember. Aliens crash in the Thames, and life goes on as normal. The Daleks are defeated, destroyed, and then they return. Again and again and again. And the universe goes on, unchanged. There's no real logic to that, is there?"
Sarah tried to fight down the fear bubbling up inside her. "You've said it yourself, Doctor. People don't like to believe the impossible. It's easier to forget those things and act as if they never happened than to wake up and realize you're living in a world where nothing is what you thought it was."
Bitter humor twisted his face again. "Oh, yes. That's true enough.
"Sarah, our – your universe exists because Gold wanted it to. It's like this town, little pieces sewn together from another world – or worlds, in your case. Leftovers. Things their own worlds didn't need, intersecting with this one as necessary. Even then, most of the beings there are just illusions, little bits of stage dressing filling in the corners. Memories. Echoes.
"A few – perhaps a few dozen, maybe even a few hundred in all the centuries and worlds we've seen – are real, bits and pieces scavenged from other worlds, other dreams, other realities. They exist and breathe and walk and live within the bounds that world has set for them, until its mad little rules find a need for them."
"That's – that's insane, Doctor. The world is real it –"
He cut through what she was saying. "You're real. And Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was real. And a handful of others were. Some of the things we fought were real. Some of Daleks. A handful. The same with the Cybermen and all the rest. Some were . . . people. Or had been.
"And the rest weren't.
"Stage dressing. Nothing more.
"You remember the Trickster? How he created a reality where you died instead of your friend?
"My guess is that's what really happened. Whatever timeline, whatever reality you originally belonged to, you died – or you were supposed to die. So, that world – the world you think of as yours – could pluck you out without changing the real world. It found a place for you and sucked you in.
"The Trickster, he's not the demon you thought he was. He's just part of that world's self-regulation, a mechanism to provide a bit of extra stitching on the world's frayed corners, disguising itself as a nightmare while it does its work. It sets the Daleks to play over and over again. It resets the game after London's been destroyed by monsters, fixing it up and letting people forget.
"And, when things are too slow and it has nothing else to do, it steps in as one of the monsters.
"I told you once, didn't I? About the dangers of traveling from universe to universe – and even those other universes I've seen, what were they except reflections of the one you know with just a few, minor changes for variation? A little pocket of space off of the main stage, that's all.
"That was the real danger, the danger I was supposed to avoid, the danger I wasn't even supposed to see. Step too far out of your world – or the little pocket worlds sewn onto it – and you might realize what it is.
"And, then, there's me. Last of the Time Lords. Last of a race no one else remembers – except at odd, very convenient moments. A people no one ever saw. The most powerful beings in existence who left no signs of their existence. I try to remember how many I've even spoken to over the millennium I've been alive. A dozen? Two dozen?
"And, Sarah, this is me. I can tell you how many stars there are in your galaxy and how many planets each one has spinning round it – but all I can remember of my people is I've spoken to maybe a couple dozen of them. More or less. I can't give you an exact number. Does that make sense to you?
"Your world existed because – because Gold – he didn't plan it, Sarah. It wasn't – it wasn't malice or a sick joke or anything cruel – you have to believe that – because he helped make the curse. And the curse made people twisted reflections of what they were in the world they came from. Mostly in ways that hurt them.
"But, Gold had some power over the curse. Not much. But a little. Enough. Gold . . . he would never admit it, not to anyone here, but, deep in his heart . . . he's a monster. But, he always wanted to be the hero.
"When the curse was cast, Storybrooke didn't need that part of him. It was spun off and set in a corner. It's the same way this town was woven out of its world and parts of this one.
"This town is larger than it seems, Sarah, and there are more people – real people in Storybrooke than there are in the entire universe you've seen back home."
Sarah shook her head. "That's – that's not possible. If my world's not real, then what about you? Where do you fit in?" she asked even though she already understood the answer.
"I once made myself into a human man, a teacher at a boys school, with all the extra bits stuffed into a watch. Gold made himself a human man, and most of the real things just slept. But, the rest . . . ." He looked at Sarah and cupped her cheek in his hand. She saw the pain in his eyes, the pain of knowing he was about to lose her.
No. She was imagining things. The Doctor always complained about how humans never saw the obvious – or saw it and put it together in all the wrong ways. The things she was thinking – the things she thought he was hinting at – she would see she had it all wrong, all back to front. As usual.
"He loved a woman once. She had hair about the color as yours. And your fire and independence. She was even about your height. I wonder if whatever he made went on its own to look for someone like you . . . . I should be grateful for that, that the curse saved you and let me find you, even if I wasted it . . . .
"He left me that, at least, whatever he kept for himself. The ability to love. A little.
"Not enough. Not enough to walk away from the story he'd written for me, to stay with you and love you . . . . He was a coward, you know. He ran away from love when he had the chance. I suppose I did the same.
"But, even now, with all these memories crowding in, I remember I could have loved you . . . ."
No.
No.
He wasn't saying – he couldn't be saying –
"Who are you?"
He wasn't letting his story be hurried. Maybe because he knew how it would end.
"I told you I could regenerate twelve times, thirteen incarnations. Gold's magic is dark and evil, Sarah, and I suppose the number appealed to him. Thirteen times. I could wear different faces of the hero thirteen times.
"And, then, the last time, I would wear his face. And it would be time to come home.
"That's why he vanished from the town. We had already merged back together – truly merged. I've done things since we came here . . . things you know weren't like – like the me you've known.
"The Doctor would never take a gun and shoot another being with it. I would. I have. Centuries before Storybrooke existed, I did things . . . I've killed men slowly and painfully. I killed a woman – she was barely more than a girl – because she might have heard a secret. She couldn't even speak, but her life was worth less to me than the risk she might pass it on. I destroy people.
"Even the Doctor – he's part of me, Sarah. I could almost wish he was the only part.
"But, he's not.
"And he's the weakest part. The good you saw in him was because I cut it loose to be on its own – and because, for me, it wasn't a risk. If he died, he died – but I lived. The dark part of me that's always been stronger.
"And, even he wasn't good enough – or brave enough – to love you instead of hurting you.
"If I have to choose between being him and getting what I want, he loses. He's lost. Because, I'm standing here right now knowing I have the choice – and I choose not to be him. I'm not the Doctor.
"I'm Mr. Gold."
o0o0o0o
The Tardis was no longer a huge box, bigger on the inside than the outside. Those parts of it had gone back where they belonged, into his house (there was a reason scrolls from Alexandria were in his library, marked with his handwriting; and a reason a Mona Lisa no one but he knew existed hung in a guest room). The Tardis, now, was only what it had always been, a doorway in his home, a place between here and there.
He led her through it, stepping into her home.
The Trickster, true to his purpose, was waiting for him – waiting for them both.
Sarah stiffened. But, for a moment, she felt a mad hope.
"Doctor, you're wrong, don't you see? The Trickster's done something, changed your memories, played tricks with your mind –"
The Doctor looked at her sadly and shook her head. "No, Sarah, he hasn't."
The Trickster bowed. "My lord?"
The Doctor gently touched her face one more time, his fingers brushing against her hair. "Goodbye, Sarah. I'm sorry." He turned to the Trickster. "Make her sleep."
Gold caught Sarah and helped lower her onto the couch.
"Her children?" he asked the Trickster.
"At school, my lord."
Gold nodded. "You must change her memories and theirs. Do nothing to harm them or anyone they care about, but you will rewrite her past.
"The Doctor loved her," he said quietly. "That is what she must remember. His fourth incarnation . . . ." He traced the line of Sarah's jaw, considering. The third incarnation had been too old. Yes, begin with the fourth. "He admitted he loved her." He smiled sadly, thinking of the story he was making for her, a story of the things he hadn't done. "He married her. Though he left her behind in the safety of Earth, he always returned for her – and, through her whole life, he took her for adventures." Yes, allow for his travels with the other companions without reworking their lives.
Or, he thought, without rewriting them out of existence.
"You understand, this is not to harm any of the others I travelled with," he said severely. "Or alter them or the lives they've made. Except when they need to remember Sarah.
"I returned to her, always. She was happy even when I couldn't be with her. Luke, Sky, they think of me as their father, despite my absences. They know they are loved."
"Rose," the Trickster said.
Oh, yes, Rose, who had travelled with the Doctor and who Sarah had been jealous of. Because, she had what Sarah wanted, time spent with the Doctor.
He had come dangerously close to loving her as well.
Rose, named for Belle's favorite flower, with eyes blue as gems.
Blue as Belle's.
"I thought of Rose as a daughter, though she had a crush on me. I hadn't seen it, not till Sarah made me that time she met her. I couldn't bring myself to disillusion Rose and tell her the truth. She'd saved her father only to see him die again because I let her touch that time. She'd given up so much for me." Or that was the story Sarah would believe, even if she may have been angry because of it, even if she would have been more glad than she should have been when he finally found a world for Rose where both her father and her mother could exist—a world without him.
He thought of the human created in another bit of the Trickster's tidying, a human with the face and many of the memories of one of his past lives.
One of the not-real people of this universe, a bit of illusion, a bit of echoes bound together.
"The human Doctor I sent to Rose . . . his memories had to be simplified, changed to fit a human form. Leave him as he is, but the reason, within the context of this world, is that the Tardis matrix changed his memories to ones he could live with and, when it did that, it used some of Rose's memories, as it had absorbed them over her time with me. They provided a blueprint, an outline for him as a human. Because that's how she saw me. She understood me in terms of her own kind. That was the basic form used to fit the restructuring of his mind – and it included her belief that he loved her.
"And I was content to let him love her, to give him a life in that world.
"With that restructuring, he didn't remember loving Sarah. It's an easy enough lie, isn't it?"
He leaned down and kissed Sarah, chastely, on the forehead. Then got up to leave.
"You will not return?" the Trickster asked.
"Unlikely. Protect her. Protect all of them, the real ones, in this little dream world."
"She will wonder why you don't return. She will think you are dead."
True enough. He closed his eyes. "Let her believe . . . restructure her memory . . . . No, don't restructure it beyond what I've already authorized. Create an illusion, a seeming of me. He will visit her till – till she dies. I want her to live a long, good life. You understand? You will see to this.
"When . . . when she dies, Luke and Sky are to believe he was nearing the end of his final regeneration. He'll leave and just not return . . . . No." No, Luke and Sky were real. They deserved better than what he had done to Sarah, letting her gaze up at the stars for decades, not knowing if he had lived or died. "They will know he was old, even for one of his kind. They will know he was holding on through the end of his time for Sarah. They will not be surprised when he lets go after losing her. According to your judgment, whichever solution will best reconcile them to his death, he can either die peacefully in his sleep at their home, the weight of his years finally catching up with him, or on some last adventure, saving everything.
"Leave them a body to bury. There should be nothing horrible about it to hurt their last memories of him, no injuries too terrible for them to see. And you'll look after them." He looked at Sarah, sleeping so peacefully.
"Look after her," he said. "That's all."
And he left through the archway that had been the Tardis, closing the door behind him.