When lifelong partners die, people often find themselves alone in a big, empty house. Rooms that were once cluttered lay empty and unentered for days. They prepare meals meant for more than one, accidentally filling the fridge with leftovers. The quiet is filled with sparkling memories of times gone by, and with every turn they find themselves expecting someone, anyone, to be there, instead of dust swirling through the emptiness.
It is a fact of life that all must end. Humans grow and age and change and reach for the heavens, ignoring the fact that their bones will one day crumble to dust. But perhaps the only fate worse than lifelong loneliness is having a home full of love and then losing it, watching it be torn away or simply fade.
The TARDIS had revamped itself the day he dropped off River with a peck on the cheek and a grim sort of understanding look. She had tried to help, tried to offer some small comfort, but they understood each other well enough. It was no good like this. And so she left, the last bit of golden light stepping away as she had always said she must.
Staying in the TARDIS, that TARDIS, was a torture with no one to distract him. For someone with the attention span of a five year old, his mind was incredibly focused, spiraling in an absolute grief. He couldn't bear to look at the colorful whizzing and spinning parts, not when the ghosts of the Ponds flitted around in the corner of his eye and their laughter still echoed faintly throughout the room.
The sleekness of the new room was a comfort, for a time. And he tried to forget, to put them into the carefully treasured box with everyone else he had loved and lost. But the TARDIS is different from an empty house. The TARDIS thinks, it breathes, it remembers. No matter what form she took, he would still find scattered reminders: a forgotten sweater here, a book left idly on a shelf for later, one of his bow ties that had been hidden as punishment by a spitfire redhead with a heart that shone like the sun.
He stayed on the cloud with his box full of memories and an aching heart for far too long. At first, he had tried to help, to interact again. But there was something dark in his countenance, and the humans could not look at him with a spark of instinctive fear in their eyes.
Until one night, a waitress in a red gown decided to follow him.
And then he received a phone call.
The Universe is full of strange coincidences. The people and things that we love always seem to come back to us in the end, whether they haunt our memories or make us smile fondly.
And the promise that someday he will be able to smile again is enough to keep the TARDIS spinning and the Doctor moving, through space and time and everything in between.
Thanks for reading. Leave a thought?