Time would bend to his will. The universe whose indifference toward the lives of humans he had suffered quite enough, thank you very much, would pay for all the grief he'd let it put him through. He wielded the last TARDIS; he was the last timelord. He would not be denied, not by some watery corpses, not by anyone ever again!
The righteous rage which pulsed through his body felt good. But the looks on the faces of his too few passengers, reminded him of something else.
He had not saved their comrades. He could have, he could have gone back and saved them. But he hadn't.
They lived only because of he'd taken a shine to them, because he'd suffered his revelation after things had gone bad.
He'd doomed their companions with his own indifference and pulled them into his impossible ship out of complete caprice. Of course, he had, struggling to prove what a hero he was, what an absolute genius he was, to outwit creatures millions of years behind him in the evolutionary tree.
He looked at the watch. The watch which he sometimes held and meditated over, which he occasionally opened to hear the whispered thoughts of an old friend.
If Donna were here, she never would have stood for it. Not for him giving up on them, and then changing his mind. Not for him forgetting about the deaths of their friends so quickly, so caught up in his own fantasy, in his little distraction. He remembered how she had chided him, time and again for his morbid cheer, for his gloomy talk of predestination.
How quickly he'd forgotten her.
If she could see him now, she would have slapped him, for his stupid, puppy grin and the glint of adventure in his eyes, while the humans he saved, grieved for everything they'd ever worked for and the people who'd helped them build it.
He'd seen billions die. He had become all but inured to it, the only bit of him left to care, it was locked away, shown only in the moments when the pounding of the drums overcame him. He tried so hard, to save so many, but only because he knew they would all die anyway. He knew that no one lived forever. Especially not him.
He glanced over at Mia, who had just been introduced to aliens and interplanetary travel, who looked around her with utter terror at the ancient machine in which he'd brought her, without explanation, without the time for one, admittedly.
She didn't deserve to die. But she didn't deserve for it to be him who was the one who saved her. He was tempted to crush down this thought with a little "Tough." No one had ever said the universe was fair.
But no one had told Mia, that it could be this terrifying. No one had prepared her for the terrors of The Doctor.
He flipped a switch and instead of landing in front of Adelaide's home, they were miles away. In front of the British equivalent of the space needle.
"You two, off. Now." He said, pointing at both Yuri and Mia and directing them toward the door.
Shaken, still staring at him with apprehension and disorientation, they opened the door and stepped out into the snow.
He liked snow. It reminded him of Christmas, and Christmas reminded him of Donna.
He held a hand up to stop Adelaide from following. "Hold steady Captain. You and I need to take a little trip."
Adelaide glared at him, but he could see that she, having accepted her own death, was reluctant to set foot on Earth as well. For now, she bore his commands
Then he closed the doors of the TARDIS behind him, as he climbed out and glanced around their exterior. Nearby was a chain-link fence, a series of security cameras. Actual troops would be here soon, to investigate the strange sound and the strange police-box which had landed within a classified area without setting off their radar.
"How is that…possible?" Mia said, staring at the TARDIS with eyes wide with terror. Terror he'd seen before. "It's bigger on the inside?"
She looked at him for some kind of explanation and for the first time in a long time he decided someone deserved one.
"I'm a time traveler." He said, sticking his hands in the pockets of his coat. "I go from place to place, helping people…preventing the Earth from being destroyed…I heard about the two of you, dying along with your captain, and everyone else on Mars."
"We were supposed to die…?" Yuri asked, with the despair of a dead man.
"No. You are supposed to live. You will live to warn Earth about the Flood…to warn anyone else who returns to Mars about what is waiting for them…you are supposed to tell the story of your captain, of all the brave people who gave their lives stopping The Flood from reaching here." The Doctor said. "Do you understand?"
They glanced at each other and then Mia nodded, hard. She seemed just happy to be outside of his ship.
"What about Captain Brooke?" She asked, unsteadily.
The Doctor was quiet for a moment. "The future needs her…" He finally said. "…but I want you to tell her family why she set off the reactor. I want you to tell them she was a hero."
"We will." Yuri said, in a tone that indicated they didn't need cajoling.
The Doctor winked and shut the doors behind him. No one ever said the universe was fair. Still, they all deserved warning before they headed off into the stars, to go bumbling around the place looking for life.
He turned back to face Adelaide.
"I'm supposed to be dead…" She said, unsteadily.
He smiled, finally. It was a warm smile, not a smile of the giddy self-infatuation he'd allowed to overcome him only a moment ago, but of pride at the nobility and the loyalty of the human race.
Then he folded his arms and shrugged. "Aw, dead, missing, same thing as far as your granddaughter's concerned! She'll still search the stars for you and humanity will still end up as a space-faring race…although maybe they'll be a little bit more careful about what they drink, given what Yuri and Mia have to tell them about alien life."
"So, what happens to me? I'm supposed to live out the rest of my life in hiding?" She asked.
He climbed up the steps and moved to the console. "No, Adelaide…I know I've done you and your crew wrong…and I want to help you."
She stared at him for a moment and then looked away.
"If you trust me…I can give you what you want." He said. "And I can do it without killing you."
She looked back at him and gave a solemn nod. He smiled again and then he flipped a switch.
Susan Fontana Brooke had been on trying to establish a rudimentary form of communication with the race of Centauri III, strange bug creatures who not only were vastly ahead of human technology but claimed to have visited Earth in the past.
They had brought her to a cave, using a series of clicks and gestures to get her to follow and she, along with two of her best lieutenants had accompanied her, telling them both to prepare for the worst. They had all heard stories about the Flood, the Weeping Angels, and of course, humanity had remained unwilling to forget about atrocities of The Daleks. They were not unfamiliar with the hostilities of alien life or the virtually infinite forms which they could take, and so as they entered the cave, Susan fully expected to have been faced with some immense, insectile queen, whom their new hosts might be eager to feed them to.
What she found instead, was a human. A human she had seen before. In picture, after picture. Captain Adelaide Brooke, the savior of humanity, who had disappeared with the one called The Doctor. There she stood, not ten feet away, wearing a spacesuit that must have been almost a century old. There she stood, not a day over fifty.
"Hello, Susan." Adelaide said, tapping into the exploration's radio channel and smiling at her granddaughter.
Susan was reluctant to believe her own eyes, but after her crew had scanned the mysterious woman and proved she was indeed human and not some blood-sucking alien which used your memories to create illusions, she embraced her grandmother. She had imagined this moment many times, but never dared to dream it might come to pass.
The Doctor spun off into space, happy with the knowledge that a family was reunited and a time-line stabilized. Of course, Christmas Dinner would be a little awkward, what with Adelaide being younger than her own daughter, but they would make it work.
And Adelaide would live to walk on planets, outside the solar system, to marvel at the mysteries of the universe and tremble at their implication.
And the Doctor would stay in his TARDIS. No, he was not a lord of time. Down that path lay only ruin, the kind of ruin from which even an incredibly intelligent alien did not come back from. He had seen the results of hubris on a cosmic scale, and it was just as terrifying as the xenophobia of the Daleks, or the bloodlust of the Sontarans.
Or the curiosity of the human race.
He turned to stare at the pocket watch, which hung above a station covered in levers and knobs. Hadn't Donna wanted to meet Charlie Chaplin? Although he was the world's most recognizable comedian, the Doctor would always remember him for the speech he gave, in The Dictator.
How had it started again? Oh yes: "I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone."
The Doctor ran his hand along the edge of that beautiful, gilded watch and thought about Donna, back on Earth. Living an average life, with an average husband and an unfulfilling, average life. What a wonderful gift it was...the ability to be normal.
