I had to die. I didn't have to die alone.
That's what he told Winston Churchill, but the real answer wasso much more complicated than that. He had to invite them all, Canton, River, Amy, Rory, because they'd already been there. He hates stable time loops—they give him headaches from trying to find a way out.
Amy and Rory. The Last Centurion and the Girl Who Waited. However dark it got, I'd turn around and there they'd be. If it's time to go, remember what you're leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.
Yes, his friends had always been the best part of him. But he's lost so many over the years. Starting with Susan and ending with Donna, both locked out of the memories they had once rejoiced in. Where was Ace now? Whatever had happened to Jamie after the Time Lords wiped his memories? Or Nyssa on the leper colony? And then there were the ones who died. Sara (not Sarah Jane, the first Sara), Adric… and River, her death a horribly fixed point in time.
Yes, he'd want Amy and Rory there. His best friends, his last friends, the ones who understood something of that horrible, empty loneliness of eternity. They'd have to be there together, so that they wouldn't have to leave alone. For all the mess he made of things, at least they had each other.
Canton Everett Delaware III. It started with him, didn't it? The search for Amy's daughter, the impossible astronaut rising from the lake. He was there at the beginning of it all; fitting he should be there at the end.
River. Yes, she had to be there. Twice over, she would be there. He had to impress upon her that this was inevitable. There was no way out; this fixed point could not be rewritten. But there was something else he had to convince her of. You are forgiven. Always and completely forgiven. Because he knows the guilt she would suffer, the nights of sleeplessness, the endless replays of his death. Since the war, that's all he's known. He can't leave River with that guilt.
They have to come. All of them, only them. It's a fixed point, his death by the shores of Lake Silencio. Who else would he invite, anyway? Rose is in the parallel universe with his clone; Donna can't remember; Martha and Mickey are happy; and Jack…he hasn't seen Jack in a long time.
Sarah Jane, maybe. He's seen her, he knows where she lives—even been to visit her twice. Since his first visit at Deffrey Vale, she's changed, found a family of her own. Her son Luke—brilliant boy—and his friends, Rani and Clyde. If he could invite anyone else, it would be her. She's seen so many of his faces—the dandy, the scarf, the lonely, the bowtie. She was there for his third regeneration (a tear, Sarah Jane? While there's life, there's…) and silently said goodbye before his tenth. She'd know what was going on, she'd understand what the flame and the light meant—
until it died. Until his regeneration failed. She'd have to watch Amy checked for a pulse, Canton poured gasoline over the body, Rory push the boat into the center of the lake and light the flames. She'd have to go home, knowing she'd never see him again.
No. Even if he could, he wouldn't do that to her. She'd said goodbye too many times already. Better she doesn't know.
She'd want to know. A voice in his head whispers, she wouldn't want to you to be alone.
But she couldn't do anything about it. The helplessness—the tears—the dull stillness afterwards—he couldn't do that to his best friend. Not ever.
partially inspired by Winjara's The Fifth Envelope