bTitle:/b Cause and Effect
bDisclaimer:/b I neither own Doctor Who nor Transformers. Both belong to all respective creators, producers, and distributors. I make no money from this work of fiction.
bRating:/b PG-13
bCharacters:/b Sam, 11th Doctor, River Song
bSummary:/b Non-linear. They always leave. Sometimes they go because they have to, sometimes they go because it is no longer fun. In the end, I suppose, they break my hearts.
centerbuChapter 2: Bad Night/u/b/center
He is always alone in the end. It started on Gallifrey when he had still been a child. Eight years old, brought before the Untempered Schism, where he and all his peers learned their true natures. Some were inspired, some ran away, and some went mad. Like Koschei. For the better part of a thousand years, he had thought Koschei's drums were all in his head, just an auditory hallucination. He had believed that if Koschei, clever, skilled, focused, Koschei would only concentrate, the drums would go away.
It didn't work, and the day they graduated and chose their new titles, the day he had left behind Theta Sigma of Lungbarrow to become The Doctor, was also the day Koscheivaridamarille pae Oakdown became The Master. It was the day they stopped being friends and became rivals, and later, enemies.
He remembers the beginning, Theta and Koschei spending entire days running across the fields of red grass stretching past the sides of Mount Perdition, hollering their dreams to the orange sky as twin suns shone down on them. Then came the days when The Master would leave him a Clue, wait for him to find it, make his move, then counter it, a stately game of chess. A Gentleman's Battle, a struggle between two Time Lords who mirrored each other exactly. Later it got darker, uglier, it became less civilized and it was a struggle of figure out what he's doing and hit him before he hits you and ensure that he doesn't get to recover between hits. Until the end. The End of Time, when he'd destroyed the Time Lords for the second time, and in that moment, it had been their childhood again, Theta and Koschei, two troublemakers amidst the traditions of Time Lord Society, and the Time Lock was restored. Koschei was gone, living only in his memories, and The Master, created by the Time Lords in their push for power, just one more regret in a long line of regrets.
He remembers the early days: Susan, Barbara and Ian, Jamie and Zoe, The Brigadier, Jo and Sergeant Benton and Mike Yates. Oh, then the middle days, where he became older and wiser: Sarah Jane, Romana and Adric, Tegan and Nyssa. And then the days where he had been disturbed, because there was a storm coming, a big one, one he'd felt regenerations before it came: Peri, Ace, Grace. And the days after, those bright, ended too soon days when he'd been a wreck: Rose and Jack and Mickey, Martha and Donna and Astrid and Wilfred, Amy and Rory and River... Oh, but they had been so many, and many more in between, these bright, beautiful, magnificent people... And Tegan and Sarah Jane and Rory were right in the end. He took them, these sweet, innocent, brilliant people, and he changed them. Some became soldiers, some died, some were lost to space and time, some went home to muddle through as best as they could. They left because there was something better out there, an even greater adventure than the one he could ever provide, because frankly, lets face it, running through corridors gets old after a while, and even the Doctor wishes for the early days with Susan and Barbara and Ian and Sarah Jane where running for one's life was not the norm, no matter how brilliant it had been in the end, running with Tegan and Rose and Martha and Donna and Amy and River.
Sam stood beside the rusted remains of a strong Mech, green eyes fixed on the head, which had fallen off and rolled away at the last moment of his life. He'd run with Ironhide only twice, both times, he had been the one being protected, a change from the norm, considering that he'd always been the one to protect his companions as best he could. It seemed that even when he was the companion instead of the guide, his friends still left him.
Because Ironhide was not the only casualty. They had lost Jazz in Mission City. In Egypt they'd lost Arcee and Jetfire. And most recently, in Chicago they had lost Que and Dino and Skids and Mudflap and Brains and Wheelie. Good friends all, some he knew well, some he didn't, and most of all, some he didn't know as well as he would have liked, and some he liked less than they deserved.
There was a flash and the scorched smell of ozone behind him.
"Hello, Sweetie," a sultry voice purred.
He didn't need to turn and look to see the curly haired woman behind him, smiling secretively at his back.
"River," he acknowledged her presence with that one word, this woman, his wife, who had overseen the preparations for his life once he'd gone under the Chameleon Arch.
"They were good people," River said, walking to stand beside her husband, "and they were your friends. They wouldn't want you to mourn."
"They all leave me in the end," Sam said softly, "Even when I'm the Companion instead of the other way around."
"You, Doctor," River said sternly, "You leave them also. You pluck these people out of their comfortable, ordered lives, throw them into chaos, show them the stars and the wonderful things about the universe, then dump them back home to muddle through as best as they can. You run away with your Tardis, but they can't. Yes, they leave you, but you leave them just the same."
"Yeah," Sam agreed reluctantly, "I do don't I?"
River surveyed the young/old man beside her briefly before breaking out in a grin.
"Come on, Doctor," she said gaily, looping her arm around his, "There's a festival taking place on Danzilar Twelve in the Fifty Second Century. You owe me a Birthday Party, remember?"
Sam straightened his back and grinned just as brightly, "Off we go then!" He pulled out the Sonic Screwdriver and buzzed it over River's Vortex Manipulator, and the two of them vanished in a flash of light, leaving behind a wisp of smoke and the scent of scorched ozone.
A yellow Camaro with black racing stripes watched the two vanish, and a low whine of static, borne of fear and confusion issued from the radio.
TBC