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The scene: the Hilton in downtown Manhattan, the building lit up and down with electric light bulbs, music drifting out onto the street for the passers-by. Inside, there is dancing and drinking, suits and evening gowns. The makeup is impeccable. The champagne is divine. Fitz Kreiner is drunk.
Not incredibly drunk, it has to be said. Fitz has a remarkably high level of alcohol tolerance. He’s just a little tipsy. He also doesn’t really remember how to jitterbug, which is making it difficult for him to find any dance partners. At least, not for very long. He also has the unfortunate gift of always looking a little suspicious, even though he’s attempted to clean up for the event.
He’s a little tipsy, though, which means he doesn’t mind so much. He’s at that stage where he’s joyous, perhaps too much so. If he keeps it up, there will be a complete one-eighty by the end of the night, and he’ll be sobbing in the arms of whatever poor bellhop happens to be nearest.
He casts his gaze around once more, taking in the room: the dimmed lighting of these old electric bulbs, the glorious band—Count Basie’s Orchestra, if he recalls correctly, dimly remembering listening to this group as a boy, the radio fizzing with static, his mother pulling him up from the floor to dance with her. He grabs another flute of champagne, even though he knows he shouldn’t, and attempts to clink glasses with the woman directly to his left. She’s short, in a way that’s nearly comical, and her gaze is mixed with fondness and disapproval.
“Fitz,” she says, and her tone is the same as her gaze. “You told me you’d switch to water.”
He raises his glass again, and she sighs but complies, clinking her own flute of champagne with his and watching as he tips it back like he’s doing a shot. “This is water,” Fitz informs her, with all the authority of the slightly drunk. “It’s just had some other things added to it.” He pauses, then leans on her head with his forearm. “C’mon, Anj. It’s New Year’s Eve. Live a little.”
Anji tries to suppress a grin, but can’t. “I am living a little, in comparison to last year. I stayed in. Went to bed by half-ten after Dave convinced me to watch some of his old Star Trek VHS.”
This revelation is apparently so shocking to Fitz that he takes his arm off her head, just so he can get a better view to gawk at her, openmouthed.
But before their conversation can continue, their mutual friend comes along and ushers them out of the hotel, promising them a new hotel and new music. Anji’s evening gown has been covered by a fur coat that nearly drowns her, and Fitz has traded in his usual leather jacket for a trench coat. Their friend, the Doctor, is dressed as he always is: silk waistcoat, cravat, green velvet jacket. His Edwardian sensibilities would normally look silly in 1946, but the Doctor’s Oscar Wilde curls and earnest expression seem to convince others to look past his costume. Besides, it’s New Year’s Eve and everyone looks interesting and fabulous, and the Doctor is no exception.
As they walk along the freezing New York City streets, the lights of the city around them, the Doctor excitedly recounts to them what’s going on around them.
“This is the first postwar New Year’s celebration,” he informs them, blue eyes glinting in the light of the streetlamps. “All of the famous Big Bands have gigs in hotel bars and ballrooms, playing the night away so that people can dance the night away. That was Count Basie, and now we’re going to see the Chick Webb orchestra with Ella Fitzgerald, and after that, who knows? Perhaps we’ll see Frank Sinatra or Billie Holiday or Artie Shaw. The best standard jazz musicians in history are all in the same city, celebrating the same event! It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”
Anji looks up at the sky, or what she can see of the sky between the buildings. “I never really understood the point of celebrating the new year,” she confesses. “It’s an excuse to party and get drunk, but I’ve never really gone in for either of those things. And anyway, time is relative, isn’t it? When the universe is as big as we know it is, it makes something like New Year’s seem a little...small.”
“C’mon, Anji,” Fitz says, pleading with her. He’s still holding his empty champagne flute. “Don’t get existential right now.”
The Doctor laughs. “The universe is big and impartial, certainly,” he tells them, “but that’s not what makes a life interesting or happy, it’s the people and events and the ways you make these things special.” He turns to face Fitz and Anji, arms spread wide, nose and cheeks tinged pink by the cold air. “Or maybe I just like the new year. For...nostalgia’s sake.” He grins at them, enigmatic, and continues to lead them down the frozen street, to another warm hotel with more champagne and more music and more dancing.
There will always be dancing, at least.
The stars above the city are bright, even if the residents can’t see them, and the stars in the city sing and dance all night long. Fitz and Anji will make it until about three in the morning, when the only people left have slowed down, and the bands are getting tired. They’ll dance together, as friends do, and Fitz will end up crying into the arms of some poor bellhop that happens to be standing nearby.
And the Doctor will watch it all, as he’s watched everything else. He’s danced with both Fitz and Anji, and he chatted with Billie Holiday while she took a cigarette break, and his cravat is starting to get limp.
When the morning comes, Fitz and Anji will be asleep in their beds, and the Doctor will take a walk to the bay, and he’ll watch the sun rise, wondering if he’s ever done this before. The actions seem familiar, like he’s done this countless times, but his past is obscured.
The new year is about new beginnings, he reminds himself. As the sun rises over the silence of the city that never sleeps, he contemplates this. Eventually, the new beginning he was forced into will wear out, and his past will come back to haunt him. But in the meantime, Fitz and Anji are asleep in the TARDIS. The outside air is cold, but the Doctor’s hearts are warm, and he decides that contemplation is better with friends than alone.
He should wake his friends up with fresh tea. He can’t think of a better beginning than that.