oOo Doctor, oOo
It's a small planet, covered soft with heather, just the right place. No civilizations - uninhabited except for three people in black, who will leave soon.
Your jacket's stiff - new and starched through. You've pulled your bowtie off, so it hangs down, two dark, nonsensical shapes looped around your neck, and you didn't bother with a hat. For all the people that have died at your hands, you've been at precious few funerals, and don't know the protocol. But wearing a hat felt so wrong. You have to let the less-than-warm wind mess your hair, let it turn the hot tears to freezing fingers on your skin.
Amy and Rory hug each other, you kneel alone in front of the rectangular hole, staining the knees of your trousers. Arms wrapped around the grey bundle that you thought you lost so many times, trying to remember how to breathe. If you don't do it now, you never will, so you hold him in front of you and take the last look.
He's ice-white, little turned-up nose still perfect, hair still River-curly and Doctor-brown.
You move the cloth over his face - stop for a second, still staring at him - then let it go, let it cover him completely. Holding him in both hands, rest him in the shallow pit you dug (when you should have been building a crib).
It isn't till you stand up that you realize you'll have to cover him in earth.
"I can't bury him," you say, and your voice comes out as a whisper.
"You don't have to," Amy says, giving your shoulder a squeeze.
You turn around as Rory picks up the shovel.
oOo
You leave, wander back to the TARDIS, go down through her, opening and closing knick-knack drawers at random. Find one with a length of rope. Too short. Keep looking. Here's one long enough.
You only hope that Time hasn't filled your regenerations back up.
Ah, but who cares if it has? The Master didn't change bodies. You can refuse, too.
You're sitting on a box in an empty little room somewhere, lost in the middle of your TARDIS.
.
And Amy comes in.
.
"How did you find me?"
"The door's right off the console room," she says.
"Really?"
"Really."
The TARDIS gives a hum.
(She can change doors, change rooms, and change lives when she does. Can't she.)
Amy comes to sit beside you, looking at your face and not your hands. She doesn't know what you're about to do. She's just come to be with you.
"You look like you need a little help."
You shake your head.
"Are you okay?"
You stay still.
"Can you just answer me?"
"I'm always okay," you say.
"You're lying," she says, plain and simple.
You look at her, rubbing the rope in one hand.
"You think this is your fault," she says.
"Of course I do. It is."
"Why?" Pause. "Doctor, you never open up. Listen." She takes your shoulders. "Listen, right now, to what I'm saying."
You raise your eyes half-heartedly.
"This is not your fault," she says.
Stare, blank.
She sighs. "Doctor, at least be honest. Do you not trust me?"
"I -"
"Do you not - trust me."
"Of course I trust you."
"Then get over yourself and tell me what you're thinking."
"Get over -" You can't believe it. This cold, Pond? Maybe you will tell her the truth.
"I'm thinking that you can't understand how - you can't understand all the ways it is my fault."
"No?" She raises her eyebrows. "So tell me."
"My name -" you start.
"Yeah, the name," she says. "From what I understand, all you did is save Rory and me, and fix yourself up a bit. What's wrong with that?"
You look at her, mouth open. "I just used the most powerful force in the universe!"
"Yeah, for good."
Your mouth stays open.
"I shouldn't have taken Theta to Gallifrey," you say.
"Why not?" She says, hands on hips.
"I nearly caused -"
"But it didn't. So why are you still upset?"
"I wanted to hurt them," you say. "I wanted to hurt the Time Lords. How - how in - how could I want that?"
"But you didn't actually do it."
"That doesn't matter."
"Of course it matters."
That simple statement, as well as Amy's hand rubbing the back of your neck work together to loosen your shoulders. You give a trembling sigh.
"Theta's dead," you whisper.
"Yeah," she says sadly. "Theta's gone. But you tried as hard as a parent could. And that is nothing to be ashamed of."
"It was selfish of me to go to Gallifrey," you say. "Don't you get it? I could have caused the collapse of the universe."
"It wasn't selfish! Doctor, why can't you listen to me? You did a brave thing. You just need to stop blaming everything on yourself. You went to Gallifrey to save Theta, and doing something for someone else is not selfishness. Is - not - selfishness."
"But …" you trail off.
"But nothing," she says. "Theta didn't die because of you. And you saved us."
"You and Rory almost died," you say.
"We came with you because we wanted to," she says. "That doesn't matter." There's a long pause, then she speaks. "Come here."
She pulls you into a hug and whispers in your ear. "This isn't your fault."
But you can't accept that.
No matter how gloriously true (the closest you've felt to innocent for centuries) it seems.
"I killed the Time Lords," you say. "All of them. I felt it all. Not now, but I did it - I burnt them. At the end of the war."
"And that was the right thing to do," you say. "How many other people would they have hurt like they hurt you, if you had let them go on? Your problem is that you do the right thing, and that is not a problem."
She kisses your forehead and leaves you.
.
You sit there, feeling like life's being rubbed back into you. Open your clenched fist, let the rope fall.
Time to come out of the cold. Time to come out of the cold, Doctor.
-the end-
Thank you. So. Much. Everyone.