It was the day before Alice's twenty-first birthday, and the Doctor was finishing a message to Captain Jack Harkness of Torchwood. He was about to send the message into time and space when he heard footsteps behind him. He knew it was Alice, but something still jumped inside him as he thought for a split second of Rose.
"Alright?" he asked, shaking off his memories of Rose.
"Doctor…I…I feel something." The Doctor frowned and looked at her, unsure of how to respond.
"It's…Doctor, I'm scared. I've never been scared before."
"What, never?" the Doctor asked. Many of his travels with Alice involved gruesome aliens and harrowing situations that would have been more than frightening to any of his human companions. Alice had been a small child during some of these encounters, so the idea that she'd never been scared before was extremely improbable.
"Never, Doctor. You always keep me safe."
The Doctor flinched a little. There it was again. Safe.
"Alice, I—" He stopped himself before he could finish. I'm not safe, he finished silently.
"I know what you think of yourself," Alice murmured. "You don't think you can protect me but you always do. I'm scared to leave you, Doctor," she finished. "And I'm scared that I might want to."
"Why does wanting to leave scare you?"
Alice absently touched a button on the TARDIS's console.
"There's a whole world out there, Doctor," she said, "Filled with people who live their whole lives based on emotion." She turned to face him. "I'm going to be twenty-one tomorrow. Think of how much the average human has experienced in twenty-one years of life. There's so much I want to see and do and feel… It's so overwhelming and so exciting and that's what scares me because I know how much easier it would be to just stay here with you."
"That's why you have to do it," the Doctor said in a low voice. "Because it would be easier not to." When Alice gave him a look, he swallowed and continued. "Nothing that's worth doing comes without a price. That's what makes it worth doing. That's what makes life worth living. Just think of all the things you miss if you stayed with me all your life. Not the sights but the interactions, the feelings. There's so much…humanity cooped up on that little blue planet and you'll miss all of it if you don't go."
Alice bit her lip.
"I don't know what I'll do without you, Doctor. You…you're like…"
"Your father, I know." It came out more harshly than he intended. He looked furiously at his shoes for a few moments. "Sorry," he muttered. "I'm sorry."
"Doctor—!"
Alice threw herself into his arms and hid her face in his chest. The Doctor opened his mouth to make an exclamation of some sort but the words choked and died in the back of his throat. He held Alice tightly as all the people who had trusted him to always know the right answer, to always save the day, flashed through his mind. Ghosts he thought he had wished away long ago drifted to the surface of his thoughts; he squeezed his eyes shut and quickly attempted to push them back down underneath the pile of rubble that was his existence. With every beat of his hearts, he could feel them; every year of his life felt like an anvil that slammed through his consciousness and left him short of breath. At that moment, the Doctor felt every second of his nine hundred-plus years.
"You will be safe," he gasped. "I promise, Alice, you will always be safe."
"I don't want to go, Dad," she whimpered, her words muffled by his shirt. "I don't want anything to happen to you."
The absurdity of it all would have made him laugh had she not called him Dad. Instead, the Doctor squeezed Alice tighter.
"Nothing is going to happen to me," he growled with all the conviction he could muster. "I promise."
Alice was silent for along time. She stood there with her arms wrapped loosely around the Doctor's waist and her face still pressed against his chest. Then;
"I don't believe you."
The Doctor closed his eyes and gently kissed the top of her head. You shouldn't, he thought.
"I know."
