Chapter Text
Colin Alderdale was squeezed into the corner of his bed, only his atoms keeping him from merging with the wall, in complete shutdown, while outside of his room, his mother was shouting and banging against the door, which he had barred with his desk chair jammed under the handle. How long the whole scene lasted, he couldn’t have said. He didn’t even remember what his mum had originally accused him of doing when she finally gave up trying to get into his head and into his room. He just kept staring into nothing; it had gotten dark, it was an early March night, and the only thought on Colin’s mind now was that his mother would hopefully go to sleep as soon as possible or at least fall asleep on the couch. After half a bottle of wine per evening that usually happened, and with the television running she was so fast asleep even a bomb dropping beside her would barely wake her up.
Colin had tears streaming down his face but didn’t even notice them anymore. His head was pounding, his eyes burning, but his whole mind was fixed on one thing. All the past months, he had tried to push it away, bury it underneath other thoughts, but it kept digging itself up almost ceaselessly now. He had no one left here who understood him. All he had ever clung to in the past was gone, had been gone for several months now during which he had given his all to just stay afloat, but not even that was being acknowledged. They all said they were worried, but they didn’t understand, they couldn’t even come close if they tried. Just like he was sorry, but not sorry enough.
He hated everything in here; it was packed with stuff and messy and people were too loud and too fast and too slow at the same time; it all kept him from dissolving into a mere existence, something he knew wasn’t possible anyway, but there were places he’d gotten at least close to it. He wanted to slip into a cave forever, a ghostly little olm in the sheer murk, dive and sink into a deep-sea trench or launch himself into space. He wanted to become a ghost. He wanted to become an orb of nothingness, utter indifference, matter-less. But none of that was possible; the world kept him within its confines and reminded him with every single breath that the one he missed was not a part of it anymore. And he wanted to follow. He finally wanted to join him in being…nothing. For a time that no one counted, he fell into a dark, empty brooding devoid of thought.
Out of his nightstand, he grasped a thick, black knife, forged from one piece and so sharp it would cut a one-inch rope in one go. He also took a torch. He wasn’t sure why he took the knife when in the breast pocket of his jacket he had an unopened packet of razor blades. Maybe it was because he didn’t know them, had never handled them before. He also took his iPod, which felt weird – was that a thing people did?! -, and a framed photograph. It wasn’t fair, he knew that. To his loved ones. But fairness was just another construct that didn’t stick to the bare, skeletal reality of depression and grief. He knew that now.
He stood up, went to the bathroom, which felt odd as well, and switched off the lights in his room with a maybe, which he knew was just a mask before himself.
He slid silently through the corridor to the door, looked into the living room, only lit by the rapidly changing colours of the television, at his mother, sunk together and asleep on the sofa, bag of crisps in her lap, an image both revolting and pitiful. He had seen it like this hundreds of times, it was no different right now. Except that it was. It was the last time. But he didn’t whisper anything to her. Perhaps he thought it, he wasn’t quite sure of it himself, before he slowly pressed down the handle of the door, slipped into his shoes, and closed it with a soft click. That was it. That was all.
He knew the forest like the back of his hand. He had grown up here. Never thought he’d die here. Never planned for it to happen like it had. He didn’t need the torch. Not yet. There was but a thin sickle of a moon, only occasionally showing through the quickly wandering clouds, and a cold, sharp wind in the more open places. The trees had their roots in the night sky, one blacker than the other. For a while he listened to the wood, but there was too much city noise behind the still wintery whispers of branches, it was too much of this world. So he listened to space sounds instead. That was where he was going. Out there, in particles of dust, free of sorrow. With him. To be stardust, together.
He found his place in the thicket, by the towering root of a fallen beech tree, under a holly bush. He’d been here a couple of times before during the past months; this earth had already tasted his blood; he would be no stranger to the rotting leaves.
He sat on a horizontal holly stem. It was cold. The backs of his hands were cracked and his sleeves hard to shove up. He felt the scabs and scars on his forearms rub and burn as he did.
Arms exposed, each hand on the opposite side’s cuts, wandering, tracing, he leaned back and closed his eyes. His cheeks were iced with tears of grief and stinging air. Still he was burning up underneath, his eyes hurting, and the night felt good on his skin.
A couple more breaths now. Just a few more minutes of materiality. He let his head sink back, and breathed, and wept, and was.
The razorblades were in his pocket.
A razorblade was in his fingers.
A razorblade was on his wrist.
Small. Cold. Keen.
Ready.
There was a sudden rush of air and it was not a wind. It was a draught. And through the space sounds in his earphones Colin heard a strange, growing noise that was unlike anything he’d ever heard before. It was like a siren, but hoarse, a siren with a bad cold. Irritated, Colin opened his eyes – and beheld the strangest thing. Right in front of him – that’s right, directly among the bushes, between the two closest-standing trees – there emerged, in flashes, an odd-looking blue box. It…materialised. There was no other word coming to his mind for what was just happening. And then it was all there suddenly, after one last wail of the siren and a burst of blue light – a blue phone box, it seemed, in the middle of the woods.
What.
Colin slowly, very slowly pocketed his razor blade. Then, he sat absolutely still, unsure of what to do, or if to do anything at all. He was far enough removed from everything earthly already not to question what was happening. He had never seen a ghost, but he refused to not believe in them. In the light of all recent events, this wasn’t very incredible. Only surreal. But surreal of that sort seemed like a good surreal.
He barely noticed it, but right now, for the first time in months, Colin felt not tired, not sad, not guilty – he felt curious.
He had waited so long – now a ghostly encounter that delayed him a bit more couldn’t quite upset him. Maybe it would even grant him a different kind of passage, take him into the beyond, without so much pain, which he undeniably, yet unchangingly feared. So he sat on his branch and waited.
For a while, nothing happened at all. But Colin had time – all his life, quite literally. And eventually, there was movement behind the whiteish window panes. There was a door, apparently, and it opened. Out stepped a man. Against the bright background, Colin could only see his silhouette – quite tall and rather square and unexpectedly human. Colin barely breathed. The man was no three yards away from him, and yet-
“Is there anybody out there?” the man asked in a distinctly Northern accent.
Colin held his breath entirely.
“Are you out there?” the man called. “Because I don’t know who you are or what, but I’ve been receiving a distress signal and-“
He suddenly produced a tiny blue light and it fell directly onto Colin’s face.
“Oh there you are. Hello there.”
Colin blinked into the light orb. Was this a will-o’-the-wisp, perhaps? Luring him into its strange twilight realm? The man’s silhouette extended its hand towards him; still it might have been no more than an absolute shadow, it had no face, no shades, no depth.
“Don’t be scared. I won’t harm you. I’m here to help you.”
With that, the silhouette dropped to its knees in front of Colin, into a squat, and the light fell over its shoulders and onto the man’s face, for he had one, and it was smiling kindly up at Colin, arm still stretched out.
“I’m not…I’m not scared”, said Colin. The man’s smile got a little brighter; a dot of light swam in either of his eyes.
“I know you’re not”, he replied. “I’m the Doctor.”
“That’s an odd name for a ghost. I’m Colin.”
“Ghost?!” the Doctor asked, amused. “I’m not a ghost.”
He hooked one hand into Colin’s. A shockwave ran through the boy like dark matter, full of knowledge he did not yet understand. Apart from this.
“I know you’re not”, he replied. “But…who are you?”
“Come with me and I’ll show you”, said the Doctor. Colin, still holding his hand, got up and followed him. He trusted him blindly. He had no fear, nor any reason for it.
And together, they entered the blue box.
“Welcome to the TARDIS”, the Doctor turned to Colin with a certain pride in his shiny eyes.
“This is…” Colin didn’t finish his sentence; he was too occupied gazing around the huge hemispheric space that was contained inside the box. After a while, his gaze came to rest on the Doctor, who was at least a head taller than him. “Is this your…realm?”
The Doctor chuckled. “Oh I like that”, he said. “You could say so. But it’s actually an abbreviation.”
“The name? Or the, uh, place?”
“Now that you mention it – both.” The Doctor grinned cheekily. “But I meant the name. Means ‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space’.”
Colin’s glance had wandered off again, to the large round console in the middle of the circular room, which had levers and buttons and tubes and strange rune-like signs, except that they, too, were circular. There was a perpetual sound in the air that Colin couldn’t quite pinpoint where it came from, it felt like the gentle vibrations of a living, breathing creature, all around them.
“Quite impressive, isn’t it?” the Doctor smiled. “And very generous of you to call it my realm. It’s actually a time machine. And a live one, that is. It channels time and space, so again you were right when you asked if it was an abbreviation, because it’s-“
He didn’t get any further. Colin paused and his hand shot up.
“Yea?”
“You were saying…it’s what?!” His voice was suddenly almost all breath.
“A time machine.” The Doctor’s smile now seemed to reach from one ear to the other. Colin had never seen anyone more beaming with childlike pride in his entire life. Somehow that was what steadied him right now. “It channels the time vortex. Complicated thingy. But”, and he, too, raised a finger, “it can transport us anywhere you want, at any time you want. It’s our abbreviation to the universe. The whole universe is my realm; my lapdog.”
Colin flinched.
“Us?!”
“Sure, us, what do you think I got you in here for?! To show you everything and then toss you out?!” He looked a bit offended.
“Anytime, anywhere?” Colin blinked at the Doctor. “So you’re…a time traveller?”
“Yup”, made the Doctor and nodded. “Time-travelling alien, to be more precise. And the TARDIS is my ship.”
“So you can…go to the past?!”
The Doctor’s smile widened, then froze.
“Ah.” He looked at Colin, or, as it actually felt, into Colin. Then his smile re-emerged, but it seemed sad.
“Now”, he began and took a deep breath, as if getting ready for a long explanation, but Colin was faster.
“There’s a catch, isn’t there? There’s always a catch.”
“…kinda. Yeah. So we can go to any place, at any time, but we can’t change things. Well actually, some of them, yes, but we can’t…we can’t save him. We can’t make people live who are supposed to be dead.” He cast his eyes down. “I’m sorry.”
“How do you know-?” Colin began, but he was too speechless. Sad, yes, but more bemused now than before.
“Telepathy. I can do it when I want to, it’s-“ He broke off and looked back at Colin. “Tell me, Colin: if you could go anywhere, right now, where you’ve always wanted to go?”
“Uhh…” He pondered for a moment. “North Rona, off the Scottish coast in the North Sea, I guess. It’s a-“
“Hold up”, the Doctor interrupted him, hurtling over to the console, spinning a small wheel and pulling a lever and then the siren went off again, the phosphorescent green pistons in the tube above the console started pumping, and there was a little shake of the ground, then everything quieted back down.
“That was easy.” The Doctor stood back from the console and crossed his arms.
“Wait, are we-“ Colin gasped.
“Open the door and see for yourself.” The sly, proud smile was back on the Doctor’s face.
Colin rushed to the door, threw it open – and almost got it thrown right back in his face. There was a strong, beating wind, and he had to cling to the doorknob so the door wouldn’t in some way or another be ripped from his grasp. When he looked ahead, there was – nothing. Only the pure black of night and the harsh crash of waves against rock. A few stars in the sky above, cloudless here, and the thin moon. They really were on the Isle of North Rona, in the middle of the North Sea. Colin had wanted to come here for years. For the first time in months, a warm, happy little smile spread on his face. He turned around to the Doctor, blinking the tears of the biting storm from his eyes.
“Now, you’re easy to impress”, the man chuckled. “Want to have a proper look?”
And before Colin could even answer, the Doctor had clasped his hand and pulled him after himself onto the weather-beaten grassy plain. They ran through the night, Colin almost blindly, but the Doctor seemed sure in his every step, and although he was fast, Colin found it strangely easy to keep up. There was a sudden lightness within him that he had almost forgotten ever existed.
Finally, they came to a rough break, the Doctor blocked Colin’s path with one arm, and the boy found himself at the stark, jagged edge of a cliff that dropped several dozen yards vertically into the depths. Directly below them, the sea was grinding its steady grind against the island’s rocky foot.
“This is beautiful!” the Doctor exclaimed, gleefully, squeezing Colin’s hand that he was still holding. “Good choice. I like you.”
Colin looked up and saw the Doctor smiling at him with a drop of starlight in his eyes, and he smiled back.
“I like you, too.”
“Good. I’ve got to talk to you.”
Colin stopped short.
“Let’s get back to the TARDIS.” And just as quickly as they’d come, the Doctor pulled him away from the cliff and back across the meadow towards the faint glow of his ship. Once they were inside, Colin panted for air while the Doctor closed the door behind them and slumped onto a battered little couch-like construction (that was probably actually some sort of driver’s seat, or two of them merged, but it looked like an odd, high sofa on a probably hydraulic metal stalk), long legs stretched out and spread at a ninety-degree angle.
“Why-“ Colin started as soon as he had his breath back, but the Doctor interrupted him again.
“We can look at the rest in the morning. Now-“
“Morning?!” Colin stared at him. “I can’t just stay here overnight, I’ve got to go home!”
“Come on now – you were going to kill yourself!” the Doctor interjected resolutely, with a sharp tinge of anger in his voice. “You were never going to go back home. I still don’t have any idea how, but I received your distress call and came in to help. I’m not going to just…deliver you back home now. You owe me a few explanations, don’t you think?” He had his elbows propped on his knees, his eyes piercing, his brow creased. All of a sudden, Colin didn’t feel quite so safe.
“If I owe you explanations, what am I supposed to say?!” he retorted, although his voice was wobbly. “I have absolutely no idea what’s going on!” He felt like crying again, and not with happiness, crouched down on the grid floor and hung his head.
He almost fell over backwards when the Doctor touched his hand; there was another shockwave like the one before, only that it didn’t quite pass. It stayed in every cell of his body like a warm, soft buzz.
“Are you feeling this too?” the Doctor asked.
“Uh, yeah, I…I guess I am.” Colin stared blankly up at him. “Is that…normal? Like, is it supposed to happen when you touch people?”
The Doctor slowly shook his head.
“It hasn’t happened like this before, actually. As I said, I’m telepathic, but the other doesn’t usually feel it. I can just pop inside their head and”, he snapped his fingers, “poof – that’s it.” He grinned in a flash, then turned earnest within a split second again.
“It’s like I could feel some of what’s inside your head, if that’s possible”, muttered Colin. “I don’t understand it. But I feel it.”
“So do I”, the Doctor replied, softly, deep in thought. He let go of Colin’s hand, and the buzzing stopped at once. Then he turned to Colin and fixed his intense, pale blue eyes on the boy.
“Did you actually send a distress call?”
“I don’t know how I would have. Or why. I mean, you’re right, I did want to…” Colin shrugged. “Why’re you asking?”
“Usually”, the Doctor began, “the TARDIS warns me, she’s the one receiving distress signals, they’re mauve-“
“Why mauve of all things?!”
“Oh, don’t…” There was a short, pained twitch in the Doctor’s face, but then he continued: “It’s the universally acknowledged intergalactic colour of danger. Sort of like red here on Earth.”
“Have you been on Earth before, Sir?”
“Oh – oh, yes.” Now he smiled an inexplicable, distant-eyed smile. “Just ‘Doctor’ will do, though.”
“Sorry.”
“However – on you, the TARDIS didn’t pick up. My psychic paper – don’t ask, it’s exactly what it sounds like – didn’t, either. It was more like an alert inside my own mind, never been like that before, at least not…” He paused. “It’s like when I open the passage to your mind, I open the one to mine as well. But only when I touch you. That’s not normal. Neither is the fact that you can feel it too. And that you can see inside my mind as well. It’s…not supposed to be like that. It’s dangerous.”
“Why’s it dangerous?”
“Because you’re human.” He stared at Colin. “You are human, aren’t you?”
His face scrunched up as he seemed to drive away a notion or a thought. It got quiet in the TARDIS; there was only the soft murmur that Colin had heard before, and the wind hitting the outside walls, trying in vain to shake the little blue box.
“Aren’t you?!” The Doctor’s voice got loud, and there was a tinge of despair in it.
“I think so”, Colin replied, voice breaking. “But how should I know for sure?!” And after a pause he added: “Never felt entirely human my whole life, to be honest.”
The Doctor turned his torso towards him and grabbed Colin’s hands with both of his own. But this time he didn’t open the mind passage.
“Why don’t you just…go ahead and read me to find out whatever it is you want to know?” Colin muttered.
“As I said, it’s dangerous. Too dangerous, as long as I don’t know for sure that you’re not actually human.” Still that didn’t keep the Doctor from staring deep into Colin’s eyes. “Explain to me why.”
“Why what?!”
“Why you’ve never felt entirely human.”
Colin laughed bitterly, averting his eyes, and when he looked back at the Doctor they were brimming with tears.
“It’s just an awful lot of very…human stuff, it’s not important.”
“Not important”, the Doctor spat. “Tell me what it is and I’ll tell you if it’s important.”
Colin was intimidated, sad, and curious, and there was no reason not to give in to what the Doctor was asking. So he took a deep breath, gazing down at the floor between his shoes, and began.
“I’ve always felt a bit like a ghost, really. Like barely anyone sees me, and most of those who do hate me. Sometimes I’d rather be entirely invisible. I don’t like being among people, they’re loud and stupid and they scare me. They’re irrational, too, and hypocritical. I don’t understand most of their values or why they keep breaking them if they’re so important to them in the first place. I know it sounds arrogant, but…they all seem so ridiculous sometimes. And I feel…different. Like – older, perhaps, but not in a human sort of way. More like a luminary, a moon or something. My body’s always felt wrong, for one thing because I’m trans, and because I’ve probably been struggling with body dysmorphia all my life too, but it’s also always felt like a constraint, physicality in general; I’ve struggled with that a lot. I’d choose to be a ghost if that was an option. And although I’m no good with people, I tend to always…pick one and stick with them, whether they’re worth it or not, they’re like my connection to the human world, make it bearable. I recently lost that person; he killed himself. Days before…” Colin’s flow of words suddenly broke off and he buried his face in his hands, “…days before I could tell him what he meant to me. After years of failing to do so, because I barely understood.” He pressed his lips together in an effort not to cry in front of the Doctor, but there was already a tear running from the corner of his eye. Meanwhile, the Doctor just sat there, silently, his gaze still fixed on the boy, motionless. Colin collected himself and continued:
“Well, anyway…I’ve never really had friends, either…more like allies, or acquaintances, but barely friends. It’s as if I was just too far…removed, somehow. Too distant in a way I can’t define. I mean, I once left my own birthday party when I was three and told my mum there were too many children there. Guess I’m just not cut out for…domesticity.” He chuckled quietly. “When I was small, everyone thought I was a genius, and so mature for my age. But I actually always just ran away inside my mind because I couldn’t stand the world. I still can’t. Can’t stand it a little more each day. I lost half my youth to being trans, and I won’t get it back, and my dad has anger issues he used to take out on my mum and now she’s taking it out on me, when I’m around too much, and the world is a cage, there’s nowhere left to escape to, no adventures to have, no true darkness or silence, and I crave that so much. But I can’t get it, not even really in my mind, because my imagination is failing me and sometimes there’s intrusive thoughts. All the things I really wish for are practically impossible, and I’m here, undiagnosed autistic and trans and depressed and with some form of PTSD and now he’s gone too and I just don’t see any reason why…”
The last lines of what he’d said had come out faster and faster, the words were bursting out of him, he’d never said it like this before, it was all so much he rarely knew where to even begin, and now he broke off again and doubled up, hugging his own legs, sobbing and shaking.
Slowly, softly, the Doctor laid a hand on his back.
“That’s a lot”, he said. His voice was faint, like an echo from the other end of the universe. “But would he really be worth it, for your story to end now? Think about that. Now look at me.”
Colin turned his head and focused on the Doctor with red, swollen eyes. The Doctor gazed back, his contours blurred through Colin’s tears but his eyes like two bright blue stars, warm stars, and everything around them fell away into the growing dark of space, until they, at last, went out, too.
When Colin woke up, he found himself on the sofa, tucked under something he soon discovered to be the Doctor’s heavy, battered leather jacket. He felt drowsy and yet astonishingly peaceful; he remembered dreams of faraway moons and colourful galaxies, and sleep was still settled deep in his bones. He could feel a thin ray of sunlight falling on his face, and despite it being early March, it was warm and felt fuzzy, tingly, like the first sunlight of spring is supposed to feel, and he realised that had things gone according to his plans, he’d not have felt the sunlight ever again. An overwhelming, silent gratitude spread throughout his body, and he smiled quietly with a sting in his nose.
He hadn’t been curious to see a day unfold for months, but he was curious about today, and the feeling was as new and as familiar as spring itself. He was far away from home, in a place he’d never been, with a person he immensely liked and wondrously trusted, and there was something about this that made him feel as calmly excited as he had last felt as a small child. Something had changed profoundly, and he wasn’t any more whole than yesterday, but something suddenly made everything more bearable. The Doctor had given him hope.
He stretched a little and yawned the clingy sleep out of his lungs. Turning around and peeking over the dingy yellow sofa’s back rest, Colin saw that the door of the TARDIS stood slightly ajar – thus the sunlight – and through the gap, he could see a forget-me-not-blue morning sky and a far plane of swaying grass. The Doctor was nowhere to be seen. Colin sat up and slid off the couch. He slung the jacket over his shoulders and walked to the door, pushing it open and stepping into the clear, bright light. The wind had lessened since the night before, but apparently it had rained in the early morning; there were sparkling drops on every blade of grass, and the air had that inexplicable, but unmistakeable spring rain scent. Colin breathed in deeply, eyes closed, when he felt a hand lay on his shoulder. He turned and saw the Doctor, his frame astonishingly narrow without his jacket, smiling warmly at him.
“That jacket suits you. Should wear it more often!”
He himself was only in a thin night-blue jumper now.
“Aw, thanks, but aren’t you cold?” replied Colin.
“I’m coping”, the Doctor said. “Time Lords are rather cold by nature, body temperature-wise.”
“Time Lords?”
“Um, yup, that’s…my species. My people.”
“Wait – you’re not the only one who-“
“Yeh, actually I am though”, the Doctor muttered. “I’m the last of them. Last Time Lord in all of the universe. Long story.”
He pressed his lips together and shrugged, trying to keep up the cheery mood, but it didn’t quite work, and his eyes strayed into an unfathomable distance for a moment. Colin turned to face him completely, and considered for a second laying his hand on top of that of the Doctor, but then he just said:
“I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do? You want to tell me what happened?”
“Oh”, made the Doctor, “that’s really kind of you, but I’m afraid…I’ve told the story I can’t even remember how many times, and it’s quite long ago now too… I’d much rather you tell me how your night was. Are you refreshed?”
Colin nodded. “I fell asleep really quickly, didn’t I? Did you by any chance…hypnotise me or something?”
The Doctor made a shameful face. “I should’ve asked. But yeah, I did do something a little like that. You were so upset, and I…I didn’t know what else to do. So I tried to calm your mind. Glad it worked though!” He bounced on his heels, grinning again.
“It definitely did”, Colin couldn’t suppress a laugh. He didn’t quite understand himself, being so okay with all of this, but seeing the Doctor so smiley and excited made it impossible for him to feel any different. Then he had a thought: “Are you still inside my mind somehow?”
“Nope!” said the Doctor. “That’d be sort of creepy, wouldn’t it?!”
“Sort of”, Colin agreed.
“What makes you think I was?”
“Don’t know. Just an idea. I feel so…fine. I feel fine.” Colin pondered what he had said for a moment, gazing up at the Doctor, who was suddenly all serious. “Doctor, what’s wrong?”
But the Doctor didn’t reply. He just took a big step forward and wrapped his arms around Colin tightly, almost lifting him off the ground. Right now, despite his alleged low body temperature, Colin knew he had rarely ever felt anything warmer than the Doctor’s hug. When he let go of him, his hands still on Colin’s shoulders, he exclaimed: “That’s brilliant! Absolutely fantastic!”
He was beaming, indescribably so, sounded a little choked up and had tears in his eyes.
***
A while later, they were sitting together on a boulder by the edge of the cliff, sharing a handful of slightly ancient-looking vegan oat biscuits for breakfast that the Doctor had dug up from the depths of the TARDIS and enjoying the breeze tousling their hair. Colin’s was chestnut blond, thick and unruly, while the Doctor’s was indeed a lot more touslable; greyish, short on the sides but a little longer on top so that it stuck up in feathery tufts. Looking at the Doctor, something made Colin smile. Not taking his eyes from the horizon, the older man asked:
“What is it?”
Colin giggled. “Uh, nothing.”
“What is it?” Now the Doctor turned to him and pouted at him.
“Your hair – it’s just…it’s sticking up in all directions.” Colin tried to shake off the laughter, but the Doctor was already smoothing his head and actually started giggling as well.
“Guess my favourite barber shop closed.”
“You go to the barber’s?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?!” The Doctor sounded scandalised.
“Nothing, it’s just…with you being a time-travelling alien and all…can’t you just go back to when it was still open?”
“Nope. Too risky.” The Doctor shoved a last biscuit into his mouth and munched it. Colin gazed out onto the rough sea.
“Doctor?” he ventured eventually. “Have you ever actually tried…bringing someone back to life? Or avoiding their death?”
“Not me, really”, the Doctor relied pensively. “But a companion.” He turned back to face the boy. “Trust me, you don’t want to see that.”
“Guess it would wound continuity too much, huh?”
The Doctor’s eyes widened a little.
“Continuity is a tricky word, but basically, yes. It would change everything.”
Colin nodded. “Probably I wouldn’t even be here.”
The Doctor was silent, but still looking at Colin, for a long time. Then at last he asked:
“Do you remember what you said last night?”
“All of it?!” Colin laughed.
“No”, replied the Doctor, quite seriously. “Towards the end. You said you were undiagnosed autistic and trans and depressed and had some form of PTSD.”
“I think you just… Did you just quote me, literally?”
“Finally, someone uses the word ‘literally’ literally”, the Doctor almost rejoiced, then went back straight to his former seriousness. “And yes, I almost did. I think. Mind isn’t what it used to be, mind you. The centuries are beginning to show, I’m afraid. Anyway-“
“The what?!” Colin gasped.
“Never mind-“
“You’re centuries old?!”
“I’m a time traveller. And an alien. You believed that easily enough! Why not the nine hundred years?”
“Nine hundred?!”
“Yup.” And, seeming a little suspicious, he added: “Why?”
“You don’t look it, that’s all.” Colin blinked up at him, as the Doctor was sitting against the sun.
“Oh thanks”, he replied, suddenly all smiley again, in his thick Northern accent. Then he took a deep breath, went back into his frown, and said: “However – I know enough about depression and PTSD and trans-identity…”
Colin was once more taken aback by how woke the Doctor was; despite him being an almost millennium-old time-travelling alien, he seemed to know more about disadvantaged minorities and intersectionality than the average middle-aged white human male that he looked to be ever would.
“…but autism…” The Doctor stared ponderously at the grass between his heavy black boots. For a while, Colin just watched him as he brooded, his eyes galactic distances away from the here and now, or at least the one Colin knew. When he re-emerged, it seemed to be from the other end of the solar system at least.
“I’ve had an idea”, he muttered, gazing at Colin but also through him. “A thought. First had it last night, tried to dismiss it, but…” He shook his head vigorously. “…I can’t. It’s like a constant humming in my head, it’s…”
“Well, what’s so bad about it – the thought I mean?” Colin eyed the Doctor curiously.
“Look, I-“ He seemed to struggle to find the right words, or a start at all. “It’s dangerous. It’d involve me putting you at risk.”
Colin suppressed a snort.
“Doctor, as you said last night – I was about to kill myself. I’m not scared of…of death, or physical pain, really, or whatever. I’m scared of what was, and that I’ll never get beyond what my reality decided it would be. Never getting out of that cage in the future that the past built around me. I wish I could be something…more.”
“You might be”, mumbled the Doctor. “You might be just that. And if that’s your answer…” He fell silent again. Then, all of a sudden, he jumped up like a spring released, made a vague motion towards the TARDIS and said: “Come with me.”
Back in the Doctor’s ship, the Time Lord asked Colin to lie down on the little sofa.
“I’m going to test something now. In the best case, it might not affect you at all. In the worst case…it might kill you.” He looked at the boy getting comfortable on the yellowish upholstery. “You really alright with this? We could just…not do it.”
“You said you had an idea you were unable to get rid of, Doctor. I want to know what that idea is. But I presume we need to do this first for you to tell me. So just…get on with it.” And a little more quietly, a little less confidently, he added: “I don’t know why, but I trust you. You saved my life, and you won’t kill me now.” He smiled and muttered, now so quietly he thought the Doctor might not hear it at all: “And even if you do, it means I’d die on one of the greatest adventures of my life. And if that isn’t worth it, I don’t know what would be.”
The Doctor did hear him. He smiled, too, kneeled down beside the couch, mumbled “hold on, alright”, and laid his hands on Colin’s temples. Split seconds later, a beam of golden light shot from either of his pale blue eyes, encapsulating them both under a dome of bright, raw energy as the beams connected between the Doctor’s eyes and Colin’s. The boy gasped, dug his fingers into the sleeves of the Time Lord’s jacket, staring without blinking, bereft of all speech. There were no words to describe what he saw, felt, lived in this very moment. Because it was everything and nothing; all that was, all that is and all that ever might be, through all who were and had been and once would be, in the whole universe. He was looking directly into the time vortex, channelled from the heart of the TARDIS by the Doctor. In this moment, he was time itself.
And when he had been enough, he scooped the Doctor’s hands gently from the sides of his face, whispering:
“You lied to me, Doctor.”
With that, he for his part cupped the Time Lord’s face, wiped a tear off the man’s cheek, and closed his eyes. All the vortex’s energy was transferred into him, leaving the Doctor empty and crying on the floor while Colin stood up, all his movements smooth and one, stepped past the Doctor and towards the TARDIS console, which was opened up in one place. Only when he stood directly in front of there, he reopened his eyes and released the vortex energy to return it into the TARDIS’ core. The console closed, holding the vortex inside, and Colin propped his hand on its top, out of breath and shaking. Eventually, once he had retreated from the edge of unconsciousness, he walked carefully back to where the Doctor was still kneeling, bent forward with his face buried in the worn cushioning of the sofa. Only when Colin sat down and laid a hand on the Doctor’s, he looked up. His eyes were red and he was still crying, and in an inexplicable way, he looked as if he had just become both a decade older and younger, according to human standards. He looked worn but was also glowing, his eyes were bloodshot but shone like supernovae, and through all the regret and sadness in them he smiled brightly, wonderfully, as though the burden of Atlas was no longer his to bear.
The Doctor had lied to Colin.
He, too, might have died during what they just did.
He would have, had Colin not incurred the time vortex.
But they both knew things now, things they would never have learned, had they not risked this.
The Doctor might be the last real Time Lord, but he was not the last with Time Lord DNA.
Colin had some of it. All autistic people did. It was what caused autism in the first place. What caused all those feelings of difference, not belonging, and created alternative ways of perception.
“You could have died”, Colin muttered.
“But I was right”, the Doctor replied triumphantly, though weakly. “My idea…was right.”
“But how?”
“You saw!” was all the Doctor said, and he was right again. “There have been stories on Earth about aliens from outer space ever since the inception of humankind.” His face scrunched up in a sneaky smile.
“But how did you never know, if you can…feel them? Your people?”
“I just knew all of them had died in the Time War. And they have. I never even considered…” He shrugged. “I may be a time travelling alien, but that doesn’t exempt me from being stupid.” Chuckling lowly, he picked himself up and slouched on the sofa.
“You’re the least stupid person I’ve ever known”, said Colin, genuinely. “I just think you were too afraid to hope.” He grasped the Doctor’s hand and squeezed it. “There’s more than just one way that you’re like me.”
Now that they had both looked into time itself, as well as deeply into one another, they knew almost equally much about the respective other as the latter knew about himself. They had seen the other’s past; Colin had seen some of what the Doctor had gone through in the Time War, and his time with Rose Tyler, his loss of her, how she had almost died for him and he had, after that, left her, broken all of their three hearts, but only to keep her safe. He had seen all of the Doctor’s adventures, before, with and after Rose, all the times he had already barely escaped death, all the friends he had made and lost again, and he understood the Time Lord’s harrowing loneliness in this vast universe that he seemed to be the sole protector of.
And the Doctor had seen all of Colin’s twenty-two years of life, every second of them, the entire pain of his first eighteen years having to pretend that he was something, someone he wasn’t; all the hatred for his body and the times it had almost killed him; his accidental origin as the single bond between two parents who should never have crossed each other’s paths in the first place; who in their own ways cared about their son but rarely ever understood him; his friendless childhood and youth, his benumbing fears and soaring dreams, and how much, actually, he did see the world not like a human being but like a Time Lord; how he could not help but always see the bigger scheme of things, and how sometimes, he felt the Earth falling through space but couldn’t escape it. At least not until now.
“Time Lord DNA”, said the Doctor, “is a funny old thing. It’s a bit like a, a recessive gene, it can remain hidden for generations, centuries, with no…let’s call it symptoms, and then it can suddenly emerge and create someone like you.” The Doctor rubbed his creased brow. “Only problem is, these people are – they’re clueless. They’re discriminated against by society, have been for ages, have been forced to hide. And despite all of that – I mean look at you!” He sounded high-pitched and quietly desperate. “You’re so incredibly strong! Stronger than me, in some aspects! You held the time vortex and it didn’t even harm you! Last time I did that, I almost would’ve had to regenerate.” That, too, was something Colin had seen in the Doctor’s past – his previous incarnations, although most of the memories of his former exteriors were, for some reason, blurry, like inklings of past lives. “After Rose…”, the Doctor paused grievously, “…I swore to myself I’d never take a human companion along anymore. It was too dangerous, they’re always at risk of being hurt, of dying, and I couldn’t account for that, I couldn’t bear that, the guilt of losing another one… But you’re…you’re not human. I mean you’re human, of course, but…different. Stronger. Part Time Lord.”
He mumbled this through his fingers, his chin in his hands, elbows propped heavily on his knees, and then peered up at Colin.
“If you’d like…you could be my new companion. Full-time. With a TARDIS key and all.”
There was a hope in his eyes of a man that had expected to spend the rest of his days alone – imploring, yet fearful and guarded, almost expecting refusal. Just looking at him made Colin want to cry. Because he knew his answer, but there was something so fragile in this moment.
Because this alien man with his two hearts deserved to receive all the love they could hold.
And because they were so alike.
“What have I got to lose?!” Colin teased, but then turned serious and said “I’d love that” and fell into the Doctor’s arms.
At first, they both didn’t notice the singing. Or if they heeded it at all, they just thought the wind was picking up again. The Doctor and Colin were back inside one another’s heads, unaware that the suddenly emerging visions of dark horizons and faraway constellations weren’t from the Doctor’s, and those of a glimmering, dark turquoise underwater abyss weren’t from Colin’s mind. As the sing-song got louder, turning into an otherworldly sort of chant, beautiful yet terrifying, they were already lost, and their visions were slowly absorbed by ultraviolet light, before the chant turned into a scream as though from the void itself, and everything went black.
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