Whistling as he tugged on his trusty brown trench coat, David strolled out of his trusty TARDIS, after landing somewhere that the TARDIS pinged him.
Catherine trailed behind him, wearing a fur-lined thick coat, feeling the harsh cold blasting them the moment she stepped out of the warm TARDIS.
Her hazel eyes slowly moving around, Catherine sees that they're somewhere on a grey planet, filled with crags, the skies above blackened, no stars or moon, just darkness.
Glancing around, David saw that they're on a dwarf planet, solid mass, million kilometers away from the sun, frightfully cold, frozen water underneath the grey surface, otherwise, nothing too dangerous.
Groaning as she joined his side, Catherine pointed out, "Why aren't you wearing something warmer, then?"
She's baffled watching David shrug his wide shoulders before saying that he doesn't get that cold, the benefits of two hearts.
Shaking her head, Catherine exasperatedly responded, "It doesn't work like that!"
David just gleamed at her before heading through the grey landscape while she caught up to him.
Cold, dark, uninhabitable, looked like a poster for a horror movie, something Catherine's well-aware of, now that she's acclimated to the modern era and having gone to the movies more than once whenever there's a lull in adventures since David typically spent time with Jenny and her father, there wasn't much in the way of things for Catherine to do back at the TARDIS.
It did bother her that the historical movies that played in the theaters were historically inaccurate, but David explained to her that embellishing's the norm for historical and documentary movies.
Still.
David convinced her to treat them as fictions, nothing more, and since Catherine did as that.
Strolling through the grey bleak path they found, David glimpsed around, seeing nothing but the darkness and the grey planet, looking at the black skies, there's no cloud coverage here, doubt they exist on this dwarf planet since the conditions weren't ripe.
All there is, the cold dark space looking down on them, too far to see even the faintest of stars, and there's at least one moon in rotation, smaller than the dwarf planet, masked by the lack of sunlight.
They're wandering the darkened dwarf planet, finding nothing of value, the only thing they heard's their footsteps, there's no ambiance, anything of interest, almost a waste of a trip for them coming here.
David took it in stride, though, believing that even if there's nothing worth coming here for, it doesn't mean he couldn't take a stroll, nothing wrong with that, long as there's no dangers present.
Catherine didn't think of that, so it alleviated her concerns that they're wasting time here.
His chocolate eyes moving around, David didn't see anything except what they've seen since they came here, and as he's venturing further, he briefly stopped when he saw something in the distance.
He couldn't see where he stood, but David swore seeing something glowing, and it's enough to draw him towards where he saw it, Catherine following him, her feet pattering against the coarse grey ground.
Coming closer, David didn't see the glowing, he swore it was right where he's standing, but he saw nothing, until he looked in the distance, seeing the glowing once again, and he continued going after it.
It seemed like the glowing's moving and Catherine questioned what it could've been, but David couldn't answer, he didn't know, and he couldn't know until they caught up to the glowing.
David continued the pursuit until finally coming across a sight that drew his attention.
Stepping beside him, Catherine looked where David's chocolate eyes stopped, and spotted a neat elongated pile of the grey coarse ground ahead of them, prim, unnatural.
Taking his large hands out of his trench coat pockets, David went ahead of Catherine, going to the pile, seeing something laying on top, and reached out to grab it.
When he pulled back, David sees that it's a wedding band, bronze, and as he looked it over closely, he spotted etchings on the inner band.
It wasn't the One Ring, it was… not in English… but it wasn't the One Ring.
Doubted Sauron could've set up in space, too vast his taste, surely, and the moon rocks, moon rocks everywhere!
He'll have moon rocks to contend with on top of a fellowship.
Staring with his chocolate eyes narrowing, David held the wedding band closer to him, seeing the familiar circles.
It's written in the language of Gallifrey.
Struggled, but David managed to translate it: Allons-y!
"What?" Catherine's baffled at the translation as David lowered the wedding band and held it in his palm.
Looking down at the pile of grey, David clasped the wedding band in his hand and went around it, looking at it at a different angle.
There's flowers resting at the bottom, with his free hand, David sees that they're not native to the dwarf planet, someone brought them here, and looking at them closely, David sees they're the mythical lithium rose, a flower once grown on Gallifrey hillsides, reduced to greenhouses and conservation efforts due to the radioactivity killing all wild flowers.
Someone placed them here, they're neatly cut at the stem, neatly wrapped in a silver string, hard to say how long they've been here, since lithium roses hold their form long after harvesting, hardy too, the cold didn't make them wither.
"How'd that get here?" Catherine wondered how the flowers wound up on a dwarf planet, far from Gallifrey, and David responded that he didn't know, but it gave him an idea what they're looking at.
A grave.
Whether the person died here or elsewhere, David wouldn't know unless he braved digging up the body, but it's against his principles to do such a thing, that he wouldn't if he could.
Seeing the ring in his palm and the lithium roses, made David believe, no, understand, that a fallen Time Lord was buried here, for what purpose, again, he didn't know.
Catherine's right, the dwarf planet wasn't anywhere near the same space as Gallifrey, no reason for a Time Lord ending up here, that it confused David.
They're alerted when the grey ground stirred ahead of them, David giving Catherine the wedding band as he went ahead of her, going to investigate.
Walking forward, David spots disturbance in the grey ground at his feet, like something was there, hard to tell, and he continued forward.
His chocolate eyes swayed silently as he walked until David spotted something in the yonder, picking up pace, he hurried to reach it, and stopped short of something swaying in the breeze.
A tattered brown trench coat tied to a metal object sticking out of the ground, like a flag.
Arriving at it, David checked it closely, seeing the tears in the thick trench coat, similar to his, checking the trench coat, he found it stained with blood.
Old, the environment turned it into black blotches, couldn't get anything out of it, if he tried, even with the TARDIS scanning it.
"What is that?" David heard Catherine, having followed him, curious about what he found, and when he showed her, she remarked it looked similar to his, made her wonder what they found.
David assured her it wasn't some sort of paradox, he hadn't married Jenny, yet, he wouldn't go far as have a wedding band etched with a language he never used, and as he glanced around, if it had been him, he wouldn't want to be buried in a dreary place like this.
"Then, who is that?" Catherine pointed behind as she wondered who was buried there, if not some sort of paradox involving a version of David, which he couldn't answer.
Lightly touching the tattered brown trench coat, wrapped around a metal pole, David looked at it closely, as he did, he felt silent eyes on them, and when he looked up, something floated from above, he instantly grabbed it.
It's a bloodied picture, heavily stained, barely able to see it properly, but David managed to look at it closely, and his chocolate eyes fell to a familiar figure in the photograph.
Mum.
Her blue eyes bright and radiant, as they always were.
Beside her.
"Dad?" David let out as he sees a man bearing similarities to him standing next to his mother, his arm wrapped around her waist.
Returning to Catherine's side with the photograph, David showed her and her eyes fell to the photograph of David's parents.
Seeing them happy together, had to been before his father wiped her memories of him, it didn't look like she was pregnant yet, but the state of the photograph made it difficult for him to see properly.
His father wearing similar clothes to him, where David got it from, no wonder he took a shine to wearing these clothes, the apple didn't fall from the tree.
"H-how?" Catherine blinked as she looked up to David for answers as a film of tears covered his chocolate eyes while he stared at the only photograph, he had of his parents together.
David didn't have any answers, either.
Nothing could've explained this and he went on many adventures since he found the TARDIS on that fateful day.
The TARDIS never indicated what was on this dwarf planet, just wanted to come here, and for what purpose, David could hardly guess, but now that he found the answer to his long pursuit, it's evident.
Looking back to the raised ground where he found the lithium roses and the wedding band, David went back back, and stood at the side, overlooking his father's final resting place.
"He said my father was killed," David recalled what Peter told him, "But this isn't where it happened, he would've told me if he'd buried my father, and he wouldn't known anything about the roses, much less obtain them, they'd never let another human into Gallifrey."
Going by what Theodore told him of what happened with his mother, Gallifrey certainly wouldn't been accommodating to other humans, much less ones pretending to be one of their own.
No one could've cultivated lithium roses outside Gallifrey, either, if the Council's as bad as Theodore told him, they'd never sanction the saplings or seedlings exportations.
Sure, as hell wasn't who killed him that did this, either.
There's no way for David to know for sure who buried his father, and why he found his father's grave, now.
Giving him back his father's wedding band, Catherine sees the quiet man reflect as he stared at the wedding band, before putting it on his ring finger, in remembrance.
It fit him like a glove, the bitter cold the metal absorbed didn't bother him and he blinked multiple times, trying to repress the tears building up, but Catherine forced him to unleash them from their confines.
"I… I'm so sorry," Catherine tried to find something to say as David's faced with the knowledge that the TARDIS took him to where his father was buried, on a dreary dwarf planet, far from any sunlight, not even a star above, and a moon tiny enough that it wouldn't mattered.
Warm tears turned bitter cold as they went down the sides of his face, David looked at his father's grave, his hand clutching the bloodied photograph.
"He did it for us," David openly wept as he sees the happy expressions of his parents, "even if it killed him, he did it for us."
His father did the only thing one would, even though it meant he'd never see his rose, again.
Rose.
David remembered how his mother sometimes went by that nickname, but never gave reasons how or why she got it, now he knew.
Lithium rose.
The most beautiful thing on Gallifrey.
Somehow surviving in the face of adversary from the Daleks, becoming a status symbol among Gallifrey.
"What do you want to do, now?" Catherine asks David as she sees the tears run down his face like cascading rivers.
Blinking as he tried to clear away the tears from his eyelashes, David sniffed, before saying that he'd like to stay for a little while, and Catherine unquestionably agreed with his decision.
She opted to give David room to grief, but reminded him not to stay out in the cold too long, else he risked getting sick, and she'd make him some hot chocolate, the way he liked it, when he gets back into the TARDIS.
David thanked her for her thoughtfulness and she easily found her way back to the TARDIS while David knelt beside the grave, clutching the photograph in his hands, carefully turning it on its back, seeing the writing completely stained from the blood.
Despite what he knew, his father kept a photograph of him and his rose with him.
Whoever killed him never found it, presumably left as soon as he dealt a killing blow.
"So, that's where I got the chin from!" David studied his father in the only photograph he'll have of him.
With his mother gone, no way for him to show her, doubted showing her would've been enough to undue the effects, anyway, the way Herman described the technique.
As he stayed near his father's grave, David felt the silent eyes on him, again, and when he looked up to the cliffs above, he saw a pair of glowing orbs retreating from the cliffs.
Cyan blue, no, blue, but not blue, but what did it matter, now, it's gone, now, by the time David reached the top, he'll never find the orbs.
Shaking his head, his brown hair stiffly moving, David returned to look at his father's grave once more.
He's startled when Catherine came running back to him, saying that Herman's dead.
"Dead?" David's eyes widened.
Nodding, Catherine responded, "The telephone just went off and I answered, someone from the… the… network… thingy… wanted me to tell you."
THE END