He opened his eyes. He must have passed out. His face was tingling and he had a headache. One of those ones that stretches over the top of your eyes and bites down into your skull, refusing to let go.
He sat himself up and the room span around him. The bright, white room.
He tried to focus on something - anything. Things were blurry and out of focus, but he could make out some kind of mushroom-shaped control panel in front of him. The room he was in was circular and like a big, giant dome with round, off-colour-yellow circles indented into the white walls.
The TARDIS! He remembered.
Thank goodness, he thought to himself. And then more memories began to flood back to him. He had regenerated. He had been an old man, that particular body having lasted longer than many of the others. His body had become weak and he had no choice but to regenerate, his body ravaged by the effects of the War…
The War…?
The Time War…
His face fell, his racing hearts slowing to a steady rhythm. Had that really just happened? His memories were clouded. He felt like they were fading. He was sure he had been there with two other Time Lords at the end…but it couldn’t have been. He must have imagined it.
He started to piece together the events in his head. He had stolen the Moment and taken it to the barn. He had fully intended to die there. To die with his own people.
The War had raged across the galaxy, destroying whole planets and whole time lines. The Time Lords - the High Council that is - had become as bad as the Daleks. He only saw one way out of it. Skaro had already been burnt to a cinder, barely still existing, and Gallifrey had to go the same way.
So he had stood there with the Moment. His memory was still hazy, but the Moment had spoken to him…and then he pressed the button.
He remembered flying away in his TARDIS and seeing Gallifrey disappear in a devastating explosion. And then he had regenerated.
How did I manage to escape, he thought to himself. Why did I run? Am I a coward?
This was his sentence. To go on living after he had killed them. After he had killed what remained of his family. He had once been the Doctor, but that man that had committed those atrocities was not the Doctor. He had already refused to continue to call himself the Doctor during the War.
I’ll banish him, he thought to himself. He was ashamed. He couldn’t let that man be remembered. He had to start again. He had to start anew.
The Last of the Time Lords.
Later…
He closed the TARDIS door and took one more look inside. It was dark. The TARDIS had undergone some damage to its internal dimensions and he needed to let her repair herself. Her machinery groaned as he closed the door and locked her up.
He turned to see where he had landed, not even bothering to have checked the readings upon materialisation. It was snowing, his feet a few centimetres into the soft, fluffy white stuff. He smiled sadly to himself and held out a hand. A flake landed on his palm and he watched it melt away into nothing.
Nothing. Just like his people were now.
He surveyed his surroundings. The TARDIS had landed him in a park. He sighed, put his hands into his pockets to keep them warm and then trudged on through the snow. He didn’t really know where he was going, but he needed to be away from the TARDIS. He needed to clear his head.
A young couple walked past him and eyed him up with amused faces. He hadn’t yet changed his clothes. He was still wearing the long, leather coat and waistcoat complete with the bandolier. He must have looked quite strange to them.
He reached the edge of the park where a row of grand, old houses stood. Beside the road a small, blonde girl of about nine years old was busy trying to build a rather pathetic looking snowman. She looked up at him and smiled.
“Do you like him?” she said. She had an accent. He thought about it. Manchester maybe…?
“What’s his name?” he said, realising that this was his first time using his new voice. He sounded different. He sounded…rougher.
“He doesn’t have a name, silly,” said the girl.
“Everyone’s got a name,” he said.
“What’s your name then?” she queried.
“That’s enough questions, kid,” he said, trudging on past her. He didn’t want to discuss the recent events with a silly little girl.
“What’s wrong?” she said, dumping the partially rolled up snowball to side, brushing the snow from her mittens and following him.
“Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to talk to strange men?” he said, refusing to turn around.
“I don’t have any parents,” she said, catching him up.
“What?” he turned to look at her. “No parents?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head and looking up at him. “My parents died when I was young. I live in the home over there.” She pointed towards one of the big, old houses.
“What time is it?” the Doctor asked, noticing the house in darkness.
“Nearly 1 in the morning.”
He stopped and crouched down in front of her. “Did you sneak out?”
“Yep,” she said. “I do it all the time.” She went into her pocket and pulled out a toy boat. “It’s nearly Christmas. I was in trouble the other day because I went raiding for presents and found this in one of the stockings.”
“It’s the Titanic,” said the Doctor.
“I know that,” she said. “We learnt about it at school.”
“It’s dangerous out here at this time,” he said, getting up again and marching towards the house.
“You’re not taking me back,” she said. “I’ll go back when I’m ready to go back.”
“I can’t leave you out here either.”
“Then why can’t I go where you’re going?”
He frowned. “And where am I going?” he asked. It was a question he hadn’t even considered. Just what did he do now?
“The box with the funny sound. I saw it through the trees.”
“Nah,” he said. “I don’t want to go back in there.”
“Why not?” said the little girl.
He sighed and then sat down on the ground next to her. “I’ve done some…bad things.”
“So have I,” said the girl. “That’s why I’m always in trouble.”
“Not as bad as this,” said the Doctor, looking towards the darkened houses. “I hurt a lot of people.”
“So?” she said.
“So? People got hurt.”
“So make it right again,” she said, as if that hadn’t already occurred to him.
“Easier said than done I’m afraid,” he said, grabbing a handful of snow and letting it melt in his hands, oblivious to how cold his hand was feeling.
“I don’t really know you, mister, but you seem like a nice man.”
“How do you know I’m a nice man?”
“Because if you were a bad man you wouldn’t be feeling sad about hurting people.”
The Doctor smiled down at her and she gazed back up at him and broke into a grin. “You’re a smart one, kid.”
“If you can’t put right what you’ve done maybe you can try and make up for it.”
“Meaning?”
“When I’ve been naughty I always try and say sorry by helping around the orphanage. Cleaning up and things. It makes me feel better, and then and I feel like I’ve done some good.”
“But what I did-”
“You might never be able to make up for it, but you can at least try. You can try to be the good man that you know you are.”
The Doctor didn’t answer. He just sat there, his legs crossed, still looking at the little girl.
“What’s your name?” she asked again.
He sighed. “The Doctor,” he felt like it had been such a long time since he’d said that name. People had still called him the Doctor over the years, but he gave up that title a long, long time ago. He had to give it up. He wondered if he could ever reclaim it again?
“You made a mistake,” said the little girl. “You’ll always have that pain in your hearts,” she put a hand on his chest, “but you can be the Doctor again.”
He nodded, listening intently to her. Who would have thought a nine year old would have had such wisdom? he thought to himself.
“I better go in now,” she said to him, getting to her feet and brushing the cold snow off her pyjamas. “I don’t want to push my luck.” She threw him the toy Titanic and he caught it. “You can have that.”
“Where do I go?” he asked, almost laughing at himself for thinking the girl would have the answer.
She turned and looked back at him. “Go and save someone. Go and make a difference.” She turned to leave and then looked back one more time. “Live for the moment.”
He nodded to himself. He would make a change. He would save someone. He would become the Doctor again, his previous self buried firmly in the past. He would have to bare the responsibility of his actions, but he wouldn’t ever let him be a part of who he is now.
He got up to leave and then turned to say goodbye to the girl.
But she was nowhere to be seen.
He frowned and then made his way back to the TARDIS. He stopped by the door and looked back one more time in the hope that she’d be waving from a window or something. But there was nothing.
A thought occurred to him. Wait a minute...How does she know I have two hearts?
A little while later he stood at the TARDIS console. The ship had almost completed it’s regeneration and he set it in flight. He went to his pocket to retrieve a small mirror so he could look at his new features, and then stopped himself.
No. Before he could look himself in his new eyes he had to go and make that difference. He had to change something. To save somebody. Instead he pulled out the toy titanic the girl had given him and smiled at it.
He inputted one time and location into the console panel:
Southampton, April 10th 1912.
“Unsinkable,” he said to himself.
He looked down at the bandolier still strapped to himself and removed it, before dropping it to the ground with a clatter. He stared at it for a good, long time whilst the TARDIS engines signalled her materialisation.
“Warrior no more.”
The End?
This story is also available as a narrated audio reading:
Copyright © 2015 by Jim Allenby
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