Moment Forty-nine
Amy and Rory were gone forever. Just when it seemed the Weeping Angels had been defeated, one of them had caught Rory and zapped him back in time. And Amy, rather than face the prospect of never seeing her husband again, had deliberately allowed herself to be caught by the same Angel. The Doctor had tried to stop her, tried to persuade her to come back to the TARDIS with himself and River, but her love for Rory was just too strong.
So the Doctor had lost two more companions. He could never see Amy and Rory again, partly because their struggle against the Weeping Angels had tangled the timelines to the point where it was now impossible to land the TARDIS in New York, but also because of the gravestone he could see nearby. A gravestone bearing Amy and Rory's names - that meant they had lived out their lives in the past. A fixed point in time that couldn't be changed without causing a major paradox.
Knowing there was nothing he could do, he and River had got into the TARDIS and left the cemetery. Once more, he felt the crushing burden of loss and, as he stood at the console, he thought of everyone who had travelled with him. He had lost them all in one way or another, but there were those whose departures had been particularly difficult to bear. Some of them were companions to whom he had been particularly close, others he had lost under circumstances which meant he could never see them again.
And now Amy and Rory were gone too, destined to live out their lives in the past. According to the gravestone, both of them had survived into their eighties, a good age for humans. But that did not make the loss of Amy and Rory any easier to bear; if anything, it reminded the Doctor of how fleeting life was for most races. When he was in his eighties, he was still a student at Prydon Academy. A human in the same age group was nearing the end of their life.
In any case, Amy and Rory had joined the list of companions whose departures had broken the Doctor's hearts. Companions like Adric, who would almost certainly have become one of the greatest mathematicians in the Universe had he lived. Even now, the Doctor still felt a pang of guilt when he recalled how the boy had died. Unlike Adric, Amy and Rory had lived out their natural lifespan, but that did not lessen the Doctor's grief.
He recalled how River (Amy and Rory's daughter, though the circumstances of her birth were, to say the least, unusual) had advised him not to travel alone. So he'd asked her to travel with him - she was, to all intents and purposes, his wife - but she'd declined. Indeed, it seemed the bizarre story of himself and River Song was coming full circle; she was now Professor Song and that meant it was only a matter of time before she and his previous incarnation would meet in the Library. And that was the point in time when she would die.
The Doctor had shed many bitter tears, not just for Amy, Rory and River, but for everyone whose lives he had screwed up over the centuries. Screwed up - some of his previous selves would have had something to say about that choice of expression, but there was no other way of putting it. He'd never allowed himself to dwell on the consequences of his actions before, but he was becoming increasingly aware that he tended to leave a trail of death and destruction wherever he went.
Never again, he vowed, would he allow himself to become involved in the affairs of others. He had far too much blood on his hands, including (or so he thought) that of his fellow Time Lords; he still believed he had killed his own people at the end of the Time War. And that meant there was only one thing he could do. He must cut himself off from other people.
Ironically, he was doing the very thing for which he had often castigated his fellow Time Lords. But what other choice did he have?
