Because It Hardly Ever Works

888

The Doctor leaned against a Jurassic cycad looking at the gangly college lad exiting the TARDIS. He had already sent Bill to the outlook point with the scope where the great Rhamphorhynchus migration was taking place over the long yet to be German country side. Pete had blonde, messy hair and warm brown eyes.

"Pete, are you enjoying yourself?" the Doctor asked, a rather humorless smile playing across his lips as his icy blue eyes seemed to inspect the lad.

"Are you kidding!?" Pete said laughing and sweeping his hand into the air. In the distance a low rumble could be heard as stegosaurid called out into the wilds. "I'm in the Jurassic, yesterday I was at the edge of the universe, the day before that we watched the first marathon! I-I thought Bill was just making this all up…"

The Doctor nodded his head slightly. "Yes well…"

"And you're an alien!" Pete said walking up and slapping the Doctor on the shoulder. The Doctor flicked an unamused glance to the hand and Pete gulped slightly and removed it. "Sorry-"

"No, don't be…" the Doctor said a solemn tone washing away any sense of anger. He looked to Pete. "If anyone is to be sorry it is me…"

"For what?" Pete asked shaking his head.

"Well, that business with the Raxis, and then there was the whole thing where you got kidnapped by Incan highwaymen, and well-" The Doctor looked Pete in the eyes, the normal glacial frostiness of his gaze was suffused with a soft sadness. "The universe is complicated; it's very, very complicated."

Pete's eyebrows furrowed. In the distance he could hear Bill calling for them, the rustling of her through the Jurassic underbrush.

"Is something wrong, Doctor?" Pete asked.

"Nothing is wrong, and that's what's wrong." The Doctor said as he circled around Pete, his black overcoat wafting about revealing the crimson inseam, his checkered pants, oversized wafted as his walked. "I tried, I knew I shouldn't, I knew the moment I saw you in class, I knew what you were, or rather…"

"What are you talking about, Doctor?" Pete asked in confusion, a portion of him afraid that he'd said something, done something to offend the traveler.

"Pete, in a very short amount of time, you will no longer exist." The Doctor said rather resolutely. He was firm in the statement, but Pete could sense, beneath that blunt exterior there was something else, a sorrow, a condolence.

"I'm going to die!?" Pete stammered.

"No, something far worse than that…" The Doctor's aggressively bushy eyebrows furrowed. In the nearing distance Bill's footfalls could be heard coming closer. He looked up towards the direction she was coming from, and then continued directing his voice towards Pete. "What do you remember of my lecture on deterministic nonlinear systems?"

"Now is not the time for a quiz, Doctor!" Pete said frantically. "Please, tell me this is some kind of prank or joke."

"No, no, no…" The Doctor said looking to Pete. "I'm being quite serious…"

"Then you have to save me, right?" Pete asked, searching the Doctor for some glimmer of hope. "You can save me can't you?"

"The web of time is complicated you see…" The Doctor said ignoring the questions. "Completely isolated parts of history that from all logical objective analysis should be completely independent and non-causative to each other, can often times have secret linkages…one lynch pinning the other." The Doctor looked to Pete, "Sometimes these events have to happen." The Doctor swallowed quietly. "The universe can be perversely cruel in its ways."

"Doctor, what are you talking about…?" Pete asked, closing in on the elder man and clutching the lapels of his overcoat. The Doctor didn't flinch, nor did he seem to object. "Please, help me-"

"I don't think I can." The Doctor said, with a morbid chuckle. His eyes then hardened as he looked to Pete. "The only thing I can do, is what I've done, palliative care. When Bill pointed you out, the moment I saw you. I knew what you were; what this was going to be. I knew it was impossible, despite all attempts. So I decided that I would do the one thing that maybe for a brief instant might make it right, I gave you the best life I could, gave you everything the TARDIS could offer you….as much as I could….the best existence you could have before-"

"Before what?" Pete asked frantically.

The footfalls got louder, the brush nearby them shook. Bill shouted out again. Pete turned, releasing the Doctor.

"Doctor, Pete, the kettles are starting to begin!" She shouted at the top of her lungs.

"Bill, STOP!" the Doctor shouted. "FREEZE! DON'T MOVE!"

The rustling stopped.

The Doctor looked to Pete, a hopeful gleam in his eye, a light smile forming. "Maybe, just maybe; if we are lucky! Maybe kind-"

Bill screamed; the underbrush started swooshing loudly.

"DON'T-" The Doctor shouted quickly but the swatting sounds of hands slapping against brush were punctuated by a crunchy squish before the end of the word left his lips.

Bill walked out into the clearing. The Doctor sighing as he saw the broken remnants of an ancient Eriocraniid of immense size and stunning color in her hands.

"Doctor, is everything ok?" Bill asked.

"Everything is fine, as it should be…" the Doctor said quietly, looking briefly to an empty space to is right. His eyes then looked over, looking down at the broken body of the lepidopteran, before looking up at Bill.

"It flew up, from the ground, it was huge I was startled-" Bill said in broken rushed half statements. "I- are you disappointed?"

"No, not in you…" The Doctor said, a sad smile played on his lips as he looked at her concerned face.

"I got the scope set up-" Bill said quietly, meekly.

"Go, I'll be along soon enough." The Doctor said reaching out his hand and gently taking the broken insect from Bill. His eyes sharply but morosely locked with Bill's, creating this awkward moment of intimidation and sorrow. "Just be careful…"

Bill nodded, furrowing her brow in some confusion before turning and going back the way she came. The Doctor knelt down after she'd disappeared. He gently dug into the loamy soil of the forest creating a very shallow pit before depositing the dead insect inside and covering it slightly.

The Doctor bowed his head, and then gave a sidelong look to the empty patch of forest, it was new emptiness, fresh emptiness, emptiness that spontaneously formed when somethin-someone had been erased. The sensation was sickening to him, the memories of, or rather lack of them, up-welled memories from everything he experienced in the Time War. Those memories gnawed at the pit of his stomach. Two words wanted to form in the back of his throat but he swallowed them down, and bound them tight in the pit of his stomach until they burned.

"I'm sorry, because it hardly ever works…." The Doctor said to the emptiness. He stood up, looking to the sky, watching as the Rhamphorhynchus wheeled in the sky. He lowered his head and then walked onwards, with Bill, because he had to keep going forward.

AN: Maybe some inconsistencies with this one, but this is always a thing I've considered…as an interesting idea….