EPILOGUE
It was evening. Outside, the rain fell in sheets, drenching everything until it all glistened in the street lights. Even at this late hour, people in the village ran, dodging the downpour, umbrellas bobbing.
Inside a quiet room, a man lay on a bed, alone, listening to the rain pattering on the window. His breathing was labored, showing that his time on this earth was slowly coming to an end. An hour earlier, he'd sent his wife home to get some rest, since she'd been with him almost continuously for the last twenty-two hours since he'd been brought to this surgery. She didn't want to go, but he'd begged her to, promising her he wouldn't die while she was away. It was the only way he could get her to leave.
A machine monitored his heart rate, making little blip noises to itself. That and the rain were the only sounds in the room, until the man started to hear something else, something that touched on a memory from long ago. As the noise rose in pitch, whining and groaning like several angry Scotsmen playing leaky bagpipes, a vague outline of something boxlike began to materialize across from his bed.
Landing with a loud thump, a large blue box solidified into existence, taking up quite a bit of space. The man stared at it, wondering if he was hallucinating, now that the end was near. Just then the door in the front of the box opened, and he was positive he was seeing things, as what appeared to be his wife stepped out. She looked around the room, then saw him.
The man on the bed blinked twice as right behind her he saw himself stepping out of the box. Then he realized just who it was.
"Doctor?" he whispered.
The Doctor strode across the room to the bedside. "Hello! Long time no see," he greeted Matt, for Matt Smith it was, here in this bed in U.N.I.T.'s surgery, his heart on the way to beating its last. Matt gave the Doctor a weary smile.
"It really is you," he whispered. "How did you know where I was?"
"We met your daughter," his wife's doppelganger stated. "She told us all about you and my echo—your wife, Claire."
"Echo?" Matt queried, puzzled.
"It's a long story," the Doctor replied, pulling up a chair next to the bed so he could sit near Matt. "We'll be glad to tell you all about it, but Clara suggested we come here so I could tell you about something else. I have some good news for you…about Gallifrey…"
Several hours later, the morning sunshine sparkled into the room. Matt, still holding on to life, lay in his bed thinking about all the things the Doctor and Clara had revealed to him during the night. About how he—well, the Doctor—hadn't destroyed Gallifrey, how he had saved it instead. About the Doctor and Clara, and how Claire had come to be because of them, and why Claire had been so driven to save not only the Doctor, but himself. And he had learned about how, because of his daughter Eleanor, the story of his romance with Claire had actually inspired the Doctor and Clara in their own love story. So much so that not only had they got married, but Clara was now pregnant with their first child.
As he reminisced over the previous evening's unusual visitors and their news, the door to his room opened, and his own Claire came inside. The Tardis was long gone. Matt decided, to preserve the timelines, to keep their visit to himself.
Claire came over to his bed, a tender smile on her face when she saw he had kept his promise to her about not dying just yet. She sat down and took his hand.
He squeezed her hand in return, smiling at her with love and affection. Now that he knew Claire's origin, he understood the powerful love Clara Oswald must have had for the Doctor, to sacrifice herself so that her many echos—like Claire-could make sure to sacrifice themselves every moment the Doctor's life was threatened by the Great Intelligence. And that incredible love showed itself through Claire toward him.
As Matt Smith, ganger to the Doctor, holding onto the hand of his beloved wife Claire, breathed his last, he left this world knowing both he and the Doctor had both done the impossible-secured the love of a very good, very great woman.
Several years later, sometime in 2013…
Claire had been straightening up display models of laptops in the shop when a very strong feeling hit her, something she hadn't experienced in a long time. It was that inexplicable urge to save the Doctor. But where was he? She hadn't heard anything about his exploits in London in quite some time. The last picture she'd seen in the papers showed him with spikey hair and sandshoes, running around with a redheaded woman.
The feeling persisted, however, especially when a young brunette woman entered the shop, and headed for the counter. Julian, the young man who also worked there, had come over to talk to her. She had a laptop, and was tapping its case as she talked in a rapid clip about not knowing how to use it, and could they give her some help?
Feeling strangely drawn to the brunette, Claire quickly stepped over to the counter. "Can I help you?" she asked the young woman.
She was stunned when the girl turned to face her. Claire could have been looking into a mirror—one that would have shown her what she looked like at the same age as the girl. It was uncanny how alike they were, even with Claire's wrinkles, greying hair and thick lensed glasses. Suddenly, something seemed to fall into place in Claire's mind. Everything started to make sense as she gazed into those brown eyes so like her own.
She knew this was her last chance to help the Doctor, as the urging in her insides reached a crescendo. Thinking over the unhappy news her doctor had given her about her recent diagnosis, it was obvious that it wouldn't be her directly to do it—no, it would be through this young woman somehow. This girl was going to take up the baton from Claire, and carry it forward to protect the Doctor somehow. Claire wondered how many others like the two of them had already done so, and how many more would. It was a staggering thought.
The girl held her laptop out to Claire. "I just got this, and I don't know the first thing about using it. Can you help me?"
Claire smiled. Instinctively she knew exactly what to do. Picking up a pen and a note tablet off the counter, she quickly wrote some numbers on the paper, tore it off and handed it to the girl. "Call this helpline," she said, remembering a fluffy haired man in a smoking jacket, and a strange, white skinned lonely man. Now she was going to help the Doctor one more time, even though he might never know it. "You'll find this number invaluable. It's the best helpline in the universe…"