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When he closes his eyes, he closes them to the sound of victory trumpets. When he opens his eyes, he opens them to silence. Deep, echoing silence, louder than the trumpets, louder than the artillery at his final moments.
Donna is there, dressed in her purple dress from Pompeii.
"What—"
"Surprise! There is a heaven!"
"Donna?!"
She shakes her head. "Nope, just an interface" she said, smiling gently, and he's abruptly reminded of a long-lost memory of her in the TARDIS, consoling him after Jenny's death. "Here to acclimate you to your afterlife."
"My—"
"Turns out, you pompous Time Lords had a final secret after all. Whenever your bodies die, one part transforms into your next body and the other comes here, to fulfill your ultimate wishes and desires. You're the last one, so you get to be in on the secret. None of these other skinny white boys know it's only an illusion."
"Other…?"
"Oh, right. Getting ahead of myself." Donna lightly lays her hand on his torn jacket sleeve and gestures to the row of windows that suddenly appear on either side of the room that suddenly appears around them. "Take a peek."
He shuffles over to the first window, still dazed but for some reason entirely deferent to Donna's directive.
Through the thick glass, he sees his ninth body, improbably dressed in a white toga and sandals. He's sitting on white marble steps, holding a tray of—he squints but can't quite make out what type of—food. In between his legs is a young woman, dressed for some reason in a red Victorian-style dress and heavily pregnant, her face tilted away from the window and accepting the food Niney is feeding her directly into her mouth. His gaze to the girl is so soft, so excruciatingly tender that he knows before she turns her head that it could be no other than Rose Tyler.
And he's feeding her hot, steaming chips.
His hearts stutter.
"He's a happy chappy, that one," Donna commented and he startled, turning away and staring at the floor.
"I chose that?"
"Chose, wanted in the depths of your hearts: what's the difference?"
"A big difference," he mutters, scraping the toe of his shoe along the marble.
"True. You'd never choose something that made you truly happy, would you?"
"Maybe not…"
"Definitely not. Care to check on old skin and bones?"
"I wasn't that skinny…"
"You were. But enough procrastinating." Her tone turns soft again. "Remember, these are all what you wanted, in some form or the other. Your deepest and most potent desires; you don't need to be scared."
"I'm not scared," he pouts and drags his feet over to the adjoining window.
Inside, his tenth body is perched at the side of a sturdy oak bed, gazing down, awestruck, at a squirming bundle in a glowing Rose Tyler's arms. He's stroking the baby's cheek while his other arm is wrapped around his mother's waist and as Donna and the Doctor watch, he finds his voice and begins cooing at the baby. Tears are unashamedly streaming down Tenny's face and as he helps his daughter locate the nipple she's seeking, the Doctor catches a gleam of gold flash on his left hand in the sunlight streaming through the gauzy white curtains.
No sound escapes the thick-walled glass, but the Doctor wishes he couldn't read lips.
"You're my everything. My everything. Everything."
He thinks he's managed to furiously brush away the single tear rolling down his wrinkled cheek before interface-Donna notices, but she does and she says nothing. She takes his hand and squeezes before using it to pull him away from the window.
"Ready for the floppy-haired one?"
"No."
"Too bad. Come on, sunshine."
"I thought this was heaven. Shouldn't it be about what I want?"
Donna smiles. "It is. Come along."
Behind the next window is a large amusement park, teeming with the young and the old and the harried parents. Squinting, he looks around for himself but he's not obvious in the crowds. And then, from behind a sculpture of Peter Pan pops up his eleventh body, eyes wide and excited. All at once, three little children and a young teenager tackle him and he rolls to the dusty ground, letting them tickle him and squealing so vociferously the Doctor almost fancies he can feel the vibrations on the glass.
Ah. This one seems about right. Carefree and wandering the galaxy, playing hide and seek with local children—
And then Rose Tyler tiptoes up behind him, a finger over to lips to silence the children who smile open-mouthed up at her. Elevensie doesn't see her crouch down behind his head and the children smirk down at his confusion. Her arms dart out, poking him in the ribs and making him writhe in glee. The children groan as she bends over to kiss him and run away, looking over their shoulders with grins when she threatens to kiss them as well. All except the youngest, who holds up his chubby little arms for a cuddle, which she readily gives. Eleven stands up and takes the boy onto his hip and takes Rose's hand, walking in the direction of the older children.
Oh.
He's finding it difficult to swallow and wonders again about the nature of this so-called Elysium.
"I've had enough, Donna," he whispers.
"Not yet, Doctor. Don’t you want to see your penultimate body's wish fulfillment?"
"Absolutely not."
"I think you'll like it," she wheedles.
"I don't have a choice, do I?"
"Not really."
"Fine." He lumbers over to the last window on this side of the room.
His twelfth body reclines on a faded and chipped wooden rocking chair on the porch of a beach house. Sand comes all the way up to the front stoop and in the near distance he can see waves crash on the shore of an opalescent cerulean sea. The chair next to him is empty.
"You may have finally gotten this right," the Doctor murmurs. "Some peace and quiet: just what that body needed."
"Patience," Donna smiles, watching him instead of the scene behind the window.
The front door creaks open and out steps Rose Tyler (of course Rose Tyler) with two mugs of tea and a twinkle in her eye as she meets Twelvie's rapt gaze.
"There you are. I've been waiting my whole life for you."
She snorts and hands him his TARDIS-blue mug, brushing the back of her shaky knuckles over his weather-worn cheeks. She's older, now, maybe sixty or seventy, and her beauty has only deepened along with the crinkles at the side of her eyes. There's something majestic and wise in her slow, deliberate movements, and from the way his twelfth body's gaze refuses to abandon its sentry, he can see that he's never become complacent with her constant splendor.
"I love you," he whispers and takes her left hand in his right. They gently rock, sipping their tea and saying nothing as they watch the sinking sun on the horizon.
He's angry.
"What is the point of this exercise, huh?" he yells at Donna, who regards him calmly. "What does this accomplish? I couldn’t have her then and I can't have her now and this is just cruel." He narrows his eyebrows. "This isn't heaven, is it? It's hell. Suppose I deserve it."
"This is your heaven," Donna reassures him. "All your hearts have ever desired are right here."
"Sure, they're here. Locked behind unbreakable glass; might as well be the walls between the universes." He sighs, reaching up to flatten his palm across the window. "No touch."
"Everything you want is here."
He ignores her, lost in a sea of memory. "What about my first eight bodies?"
"They're through those windows on the other side. She's there too, if that's what you're wondering, although I think you already know the answer to that... In one she's a Time Lady, in another she's a companion, in others she's a life you saved. She saves your life every time. You play your recorder for her in a sheep-filled meadow in your second body: it's sickeningly sweet. Even before you met her, she was the fulfillment of your wanderlust and quest for completion: she's been in your hearts your whole life."
Words fail him and he only nods, unable to look Donna in the eye anymore.
"Your tour is just about complete, then. You're welcome to stay here, watching from your safe and secure antechamber." She pauses to catch his attention and he meets her eye for only a moment. "But I'd try that door at the end, if I were you."
A door appears before his eyes to the right of Twelve's window. It's wide and arched and it contains multitudes of galaxies on its surface.
He swallows and looks at Donna, already beginning to fade away. "Donna…" he rasps and she takes his hand one final time.
"She's here too, behind the windows. She's your best friend, your sister, your companion. Once even your nanny; that's by far my favourite one. Donna's well and happy in all your heavens, and you never have to say goodbye."
"Thanks," he chokes out as she vanishes into the ether.
He stares at the star-studded door.
He stares at the sterile safety of the white room.
He sprints to the door and flings it open, stepping inside without a backward glance.
He's wearing leather and he's clutching a warm human hand in the darkness of a department store basement.
"Run!"