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It was a dark, cold and starry night.
Crickets sang to the stars while the full golden silvered-like Moon shone its light into the crystal clear lake.
Susan Campbell—Foreman—Who walked calmly while enjoying this dream-like moment in a rebuilt world, so long after the Dalek Invasion and her return after a time and reality spanning war.
After walking for some time, she saw a tall white-haired man at the bench. Something in his eyes made her soul tick with a transcendental cosmic feeling and, in the moment she would move her lips to say or ask anything, a noise, a groaning-like breathing and feeling noise, something almost forgotten like a dream from Neverland, was remembered. And a Question, the oldest Question in the Universe, started to bang, like the beating of a Time-Lord dual-heart, in her mind, and to be broadcast into the telepathic ether...
She was standing there, for a moment, amazed. And this man, for a second, either in reality or just for her eyes, became a ghostly, glassy figure. But as quickly as the smile of a newborn, to a pair of wet eyes, his figure changed into a long-white haired old man with a Victorian style-clothing...
— Hello Suzie...
She smiled, and ran at him, in a long, delayed, embrace. For the first time in years, or even in Eternity, Susan was feeling like a little girl, from the old days back in the Tardis. The Doctor is back - his face has changed, again, but he's back nonetheless.
— How, why, when did you arrive? — She anxiously asked, almost biting her tongue.
— Calm down Suzie, calm down! — he said while glancing at the stars with a playful smile. — I'm just wandering...
His voice was lost to the night while his eyes lost themselves at the stars and Susan noticed, in his hand, the powerful golden glow in his veins.
— You're going to regenerate... — Her pupils expanded with surprise and admiration, while remembering that it was something she has never experienced in herself.
— Yes, I will. But first I wished to see you one last time, with this silly old face of mine. — He said, with a sympathetic playful, but weary look in his eyes. — I'm happy to see that you were far more careful than I was ever capable to be, and are still on your first appearance.
Susan bit her smile, but with a sorrowful groaning, she felt in her bones that she had to ask:
— How many?... — She left the question unfinished in the air, but he heard everything she allowed him in her mind.
— 20th, or maybe more — he delivered it in a sight, while the weight of several timelines weighted in his mind — since the day we left Gallifrey...
She was taken aback, surprised and worried. After all, Time Lords weren't supposed to have that many lives.
He laughed, because he knew what she was worrying about, and his mind returned to the epic moment in Trenzalore, when everything seemed lost, allowing her a glimpse of when some rules were bent for a silly bow-tied old guy.
She smiled with amazement and sat at the bench with him and Time — always harsh, always powerful — played its tricks, while the Doctor told Susan, like the young Amelia Pond of so long ago, the greatest story in the Universe, having only the distant stars of the Constellation of Kasterborous, and a blue police box up in the horizon, as their silent witness...
The night went on and she heard about all of his wanderings across Eternity — like in a perpetual exile, always with friends, but eternally alone — while telling him something more of herself since they last saw each other in that desolate wasteland, and figuring it out how that terrible war and everything else had kept them apart. But Susan was noticing, with a feeling of apprehension, the golden lights getting each moment past even more expressive. In her soul she knew the Time was near, and the Doctor nodded in agreement. Thus, they started to walk towards the Tardis.
The old friend was here. Susan felt her from a distance, and smiled after noticing that the Doctor had indeed never cared to fix the old chamaeleon circuit since it glitched way back in 100.000 BC. Like so long ago, Susan felt the Tardis Mind and noticed how strong she had grown since the early days from before meeting Ian and Barbara. That remembrance made her smile, and she smiled when she remembered how unearthly she might have looked to everyone else but the Doctor at the time. The Tardis was also happy to see her again.
They entered the Doctor's eternal home. Her interior, always transcending beyond mere human dimensions, was so far ahead from anything she had in her mind's eye. The Doctor walked with a determined resignation to the console and, the time rotor, now looking like an divine skyscraper, opened a door.
The Doctor walked in, and he and Susan hold their hands for one last time. She felt his warmth and the electrifying regeneration energy touching her skin and sparking her brain.
The door was closed. The Tardis started to sing, feel and react across her systems, while the cloister bell with its dangerous warning flowing in the air like electricity, and the time rotor synced themselves in an otherworldly breathing.
The Time is now. The stellar energy from the regeneration started to erupt from the Doctor like Creation itself, and to be safely drained by the Tardis systems right into her Heart. Susan looked in an amazed surprise, while the space itself round the console seemed to warp in a golden yellowish sphere, like the influence of a cosmical black hole...
The last time-witness we see is Susan, drowned by the divine light, looking at this personal cosmic event. Her voice, in a shy but emotive tone, resonate across a multiverse spanning gravity wave:
— Grandfather...
The End
