Chapter Text
The TARDIS didn’t land quietly.
That was to be expected of her, temperamental as she was, but this time it was something different. All three occupants felt it in the air seconds before it happened, a sudden, sharp panic that leeched through the metal walls and bled into their own minds with an almost invasive intensity. The Doctor only had time to furrow his brow and part his lips in confusion when everything fell apart.
The console exploded in a spray of sparks and smoke, the entire room jolting with enough force to send the trio off their feet and tumbling to the glass floor. Amy and Rory, who had been gripping railings and planting their feet with the usual expectation of a bumpy landing, managed to keep partially upright. Bruised knees and sore backs, but they escaped the initial shock mostly unscathed.
The Doctor, completely unprepared, went flying sideways, sliding across the ground until the jumpseat suddenly and violently stopped his momentum. He let out a pained groan and barely managed to grip the base of the chair before the ship jolted again.
An alarm began to screech from the wall, the lights dropping to a dull red that barely shone through the thick haze of smoke. The room smelled like fire and fear and the Doctor tried to call out to his companions, but couldn’t find the words in his throat. His sense of time grew frazzled and knotted, choking out his words in a violent tangle like someone had wrapped a noose around his neck and pulled, pulled, pulled, till he was nearly blue in the face.
The TARDIS gave one, final lurch to the right, as if being yanked by an impossibly strong force, then nothing. Silence, save for the quick, panicked breathing of Amy and Rory. Total darkness, save for a small green lightboard pulsing like a quickened heartbeat under the console. Anxiety and tension building and building before-
“Everyone alright?” the Doctor called out from his place on the floor, strained. “Sound off! Amy? Rory?”
“Here!” Amy called back. She stood unsteadily to her feet, wincing at the dull pain of new bruises across her body. Instinctively, she reached out and grabbed Rory’s arm, helping him up alongside her. His equally pained inhale told her he was in much the same state.
“What’s going on?” Rory muttered. “That’s never-”
“It can’t.”
The two humans startled. The Doctor was closer now, right beside them at the console. They could just make out the edges of his form, enough to see that he was wound tight like the tense moment before he had lashed out at the TARDIS and shattered her screen. Now, he was merely staring at the lifeless buttons.
After a long stretch of silence, Amy cleared her throat. “Well… what now? Sit here till the power comes back on?”
“How long till that happens?” Rory inquired gently.
“...Not long now,” the Doctor said. His tone was too even. “After the last time, I made some adjustments. Extra diesel for the engine so we don’t have to use petrol.”
As was typical, he was creating more questions than answers. Amy tightened her hold on Rory's hand, poised to open her mouth and ask the next, obvious questions about their state, but she was interrupted by the quiet squeak of unoiled hinges.
The TARDIS doors had unlatched, revealing nothing but milky grey light leaking through the crack. That, and the distant noise of waves crashing against the shore.
The small bit of light was enough to illuminate the group. Enough to see the cold grief painted clearly across the Doctor’s face in exhausted strokes.
“No,” he murmured. “No please tell me…”
“Doc-”
Amy’s extended fingers only grabbed air as the Doctor rushed past her. He was completely ignorant to anything else save for the now open doors and whatever lay beyond them. A beach, it seemed, as was promised. But something more. Something wrong. Something so, so, so very wrong.
The Doctor yanked the doors fully open and stumbled onto wet sand, the feel of it sinking slightly under his loafers painfully familiar. The air was the same kind of salty, stinging his face and whipping his hair about in all the same ways, and the sky was the same shade of milky grey that met the dark ocean at the horizon. White-capped waves pushed and pulled out of the corner of his eye, washing up on the rocky shore and crashing into cliff face down the distant way. And it all felt much the same.
Because it was.
It was the same beach, the very same.
He could feel it itching beneath his skin, the same wrongness that permeated this body like a cloud now buzzing in the air around him. It swarmed his skull, pierced his skin with the pinprick feeling of atoms that didn’t click with his own as the air brushed against him and sent a shudder down his spine. As he scanned the coast, he only vaguely registered Amy and Rory tumbling out behind him.
They weren’t alone. Someone was on the beach with them.
Human as they were, the Ponds had to squint to make them out. It was a man, they realized, an older man, with a really brilliant head of thick, grey hair tousled by the salty wind. He was staring out at the water with his hands shoved deep in his trouser pockets. His profile was fuzzy at distance, but cut quite uniquely with a sloping nose and pouting lower lip, the hollows of his cheeks sallowed by age and eyes crowded liberally with smile lines. Keeping him warm was a dark blue jumper and a simple grey coat, contrasting oddly with his choice of shoes: cream-colored converse chucks.
Amy thought he looked a bit familiar.
The Doctor didn’t seem to be thinking at all. His face had gone pale as a sheet, as if looking at a ghost, and the pinprick size of his pupils betrayed an animalistic fear. Goosebumps raised on his sickly flesh that Amy guessed had nothing to do with the wind.
The man looked their way. He seemed remarkably unsurprised by the sudden appearance of a blue police box on an otherwise empty beach, simply staring patiently at them. Waiting.
The Doctor stumbled forward, one unsteady step at a time. Amy and Rory looked at each other, unsure if they should follow, but when the man spoke up, they decided against it.
“Was wondering when you would get here,” he called to the Doctor. His voice was gruff with age, a rich estuary tenor that sounded the slightest bit amused.
A few feet away, the Doctor stopped. The wind buffeted his face with sand and mist, but he couldn’t be convinced to close his eyes, not for anything. Perhaps if he kept them open long enough, the man in front of him would assume a different shape because this couldn’t possibly be-
“You’re a bit late,” the man said with a frustrating degree of calmness. “Missed her by a couple of weeks.”
The world narrowed to a sliver, the two of them standing by the shore. There were no cliffs, no roiling waves. Not even Amy and Rory a ways off behind him. The Doctor couldn’t hear his own heartbeat. It was just that maddeningly cryptic sentence that, in truth, could only mean one thing.
His throat seized, causing him to choke on nothing as a pained sound escaped from deep in his chest.
His counterpart looked at him with eyes aged by two types of time. The softer kind carved wrinkles into the planes of his face and canted his head with sympathy while the other bore a pain so masterfully hidden, the Doctor was sure he wouldn’t have seen it had this been anyone else.
Who better than himself to wear grief so well?
The human Doctor, product of a metacrisis regeneration, smiled ever-so-slightly. “So this is who we became?” He gave a considering sweep, head to toe, and nodded. “You look a hell of a lot younger. Remind me what that’s like again? I’ve forgotten.” His face cracked into a grin, familiar but oh-so different now. “Imagine that!” When it wasn’t returned, he sombered slightly. “Right. Not one for small talk.”
The Time Lord Doctor stared at him, unmoving. As it was, he couldn’t find his voice, nor the strength to ask the question burning his throat. He could already feel tears pricking the back of his eyes, the way his hands balled into fists to stop the gentle tremors of his now unsteady nerves. He stood at the shore of panic and the only thing stopping it was ignorance.
His counterpart dragged a hand through his hair. The motion was a familiar one, but the parts weathered now. His bony hand, slightly unsteady, veins protruding from the skin. His hair, grizzled and grey and thick, no sign of the rich brown it used to be.
“If you’d gotten here a couple minutes earlier, you could’ve met Mia,” the human Doctor continued. He thumbed over his shoulder at the clifftop. “She’s up there now, waiting for me. Something about wanting to give me some time alone. Like I don’t have too much of that nowadays.” He glanced towards his Time Lord self and smiled softly. “Mia’s our daughter. Brilliant, she is, every part as clever and kind as her mother and every part as stubborn as me. I still can’t believe she’s an adult. When I look at her, all I can see is a toddler about-” Palm parallel to the ground, he indicated knee height. “-yeh big. Nevermind she’s in her forties now with a family of her own.”
His smile grew to something sweetly aching. “I’m a grandfather again. Funny, how the universe works. Speaking of, when you get back, you should go see Susan. Tell her hello from me. You have all the time in the world to do it, might as well, yeah? Believe me when I say it is much better than running.”
When he was met with nothing but continued silence, he let out a long sigh. “Really not one for small talk. I take it back, we became someone unbelievably boring.”
The Time Lord Doctor couldn’t take ignorance anymore. The not-knowing, it was killing him.
“Where is she?” he choked out.
His human self raised both eyebrows in mock surprise. “He speaks!”
The Doctor scowled. “Don’t give me that.”
All he got in return was a small scoff and another distant stare over the water. Even aged, his previous body still wore the same hallmarks with grace, the furrow of his sharp brows telling a story all their own. A different story was told in the new way he worried his hands, spinning a dull gold band around his ring finger.
The simple motion poured new dread into the Doctor’s thoughts, his mouth tasting like salty grit and old fears.
The human Doctor took a deep breath. When he spoke, his voice was thick.
“She went peacefully. Surrounded by friends and family, without any pain.” His grip on the ring tightened, bony knuckles turning pale white. “I held her hand in the end. Of course I did. My only regret is that I couldn’t go with her, not yet anyway.” He tilted his head skyward, wistfully. “Soon.”
No.
No, that wasn’t right.
Sand slipped beneath the Doctor’s feet, spilling out from under him.
This was all wrong.
He couldn’t mean-
“She wanted to be cremated. Half of her ashes are still at home, in this little wooden box we picked up in the Deridum Markets, ooo, ages ago. Before Mia graduated from university. The other half…” He gestured to the beach. “Out there, somewhere. The wind is good today, nice and strong. She’d like that. Off to every corner of the world.”
Suddenly, the grit in his mouth soured, the sand in the back of his molars digging into gums and tasting of blood and soot.
“When I go, half of my ashes are to join her out there, scattered on this same beach. The other half get interred with hers up in the Highlands. Half in the ground, half off to who knows where. Y’know, I suggested scattering them in the Medusa Cascade, but Rose-”
The first time he’d said her name, so delicate on that tongue.
“-thought here was more fitting, said it was the start of our new forever. It makes sense it should be the end of it too.” The human Doctor looked at his Time Lord self, tears brimming in his wide, dark eyes. “And like always, here we are at the end of everything.”
It was too much. The idea alone was too much. Rose, pallid and wrinkled and lying on a cold bed without the strength to open her eyes. Peaceful, yes, but still steeped in the stench of endings, the finality of a last look, a last touch, last words.
What was the last thing he said to her? The last thing she said to him? How had she touched him last? A hug? A kiss to the cheek? A simple brush of a hand against another?
Why couldn’t he remember?
And no new memories to be made. No future, no running, no blissful ignorance. Reality was his old face looking at him with immense, familiar pity, ring still glistening dully in the grey light of Bad Wolf Bay. He would never know what she looked like the day a matching one was slipped on her finger. He would never know what she looked like a year after he saw her last or two or three or twenty. Picture perfect memory seemed to be failing him now, her face becoming fuzzy and blurred as he tried to remember.
But there was nothing. Just the wind and the coast and the waves crashing onto the shore in his periphery, the tide coming in, and his old self still watching, still pitying.
And she was gone.
The human Doctor watched his Time Lord self crumple under the weight of the news. Quite literally. He fell to his knees and clutched his arms tight to his body as his lungs began to work a little too well, forcing him to try for air he didn’t need. In and out too quickly until he was light-headed and gasping.
“There he goes,” the human Doctor muttered.
He should know. He had been much the same, albeit with the heavy acceptance preparation granted him. It didn’t dull things any less when he’d spent that first night in a cold bed, alone, the sheets still smelling like her, the mattress still indented with her form.
The Time Lord Doctor didn’t hear anything other than his two heartbeats thundering blood too fast through his veins. He was back in the grass at a baby shower. He was back in the reflecting pool from his dreams. Cracked columns rising all around as water seeped into fabric at his knees and he tore at skin like he was trying to peel it from bone again.
His human self tutted quietly. “Oh, don’t do that, please,” he murmured with new worry. He looked down at the last of the Time Lords reduced to a writhing mass of grief.
There was only one thing to be done about it. The Doctor - the human one - could taste it sizzling in the air, as clear as murky sea: the timelines in complete and utter uproar. Whatever had been happening in the prime universe - the unsteady path that had led his other self here - was wreaking havoc on the way things should have been, moving not only the Time Lord Doctor’s changing timeline, but those connected to him as well.
The human Doctor let out a long sigh and slowly got to his knees. Something shifted that certainly wasn’t supposed to and he winced, thinking of the berating Mia would give him for not being careful. He would worry about that later. This was a tad more pressing.
The Time Lord Doctor pressed his forehead into the sand, dampening and dirtying his hair, causing a mess of his clothes as he gripped his elbows, dug nails into the soft tweed fabric. Quiet, ragged breaths escaped him, punctuated by the occasional muttered “no”. The human Doctor lay a gentle hand on his shoulder, causing him to snap his head up.
The whites of his eyes were a bloodshot red, causing the green to stand out with startling intensity. Mourning contorted his face, twisting otherwise handsome features into something animalistic. Tears tracked steady trails down cheeks unfamiliar to the human Doctor, who took another second to observe the new face and how poorly it bore this weight.
“I can help,” he said quietly, “but you’re going to have to let me in.” He raised two fingers towards his counterpart’s temple, leaving no room for misunderstanding.
Instinctually, the Time Lord Doctor shied away, shaking his head and flinching at the offered telepathic contact. He already felt like an open wound. Why make it worse?
But the human Doctor persisted, keeping his hand aloft. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this. Can’t you feel it? The needles running down your spine?”
His counterpart shook, the sensation clashing with the words repeating in his head.
She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone.
“Let me fix this.”
The Time Lord looked his other self in the eye and saw his own grief reflected back. Understanding passed between them, the kind born not from being the same person - their paths had long since diverged - but from loving the same person. Being changed by her.
He nodded.
The human Doctor nodded grimly back and carefully placed both hands on the sides of his counterpart’s face, fingers at the temples. He knocked at the door and it opened, first slowly, then all at once.
If his feet hadn’t been planted, he would have been washed away. Eyes slamming shut, he was pulled off of the beach and into a mind awash with chaos. Winds buffeted him from every side in a collage of voices; some new, some old, and one louder than all, hurting the most. Memories washed up at his feet and soaked through his sandshoes, water dark as night lapping at the backs of his ankles. Every direction, everything, pounded by rain over and over again, soaking him to the weary bone with aching intensity. And it all tasted of want and desperation, of wasted hours and words unspoken and jealously, so much jealousy, that he almost started to hate himself.
The human Doctor steadied his mind. He couldn’t let himself get pulled under. He had a job to do.
Carefully, he reached out and touched the fractured air. As he moved his hand, streams slipped past his fingers like shattered glass, the fibers getting caught in his skin and digging in until he was awash with the prickly sensation of a mind in ruin. Memories that didn’t belong to him trickled in through the cuts, showcasing months of moments that led to this point which weakened walls to the point of breaking.
Had his counterpart learned this news a year back, it would have hurt - undoubtedly so - but it wouldn’t have done this kind of damage.
“I’m sorry,” the human Doctor murmured, twisting his hand this way and that to watch the scenes play out in shards of broken air. “I’m so sorry.”
It had to go. All of it.
The TARDIS meddling, the changes with River Song, Mickey and Martha (and he felt a bittersweet pang then, knowing he’d never see them again), a baby shower, dreams. Dreams, dreams, so many unfinished dreams. Dreams of the body rejecting flesh that made his own skin crawl. Dreams of the beach and Rose, walking away, that made his heart clench.
A conversation in a kitchen, a harmless question about flowers of all things.
A butterfly that started a whole new branching timeline, all leading right to this moment.
It had to go.
The human Doctor took a steadying breath and reached out with both hands, slowly clenching them into fists. The more he increased the pressure, the less the shards of memory felt like glass. They became thick, thorny vines, stems, wrapping themselves around his hands and protesting as he started to pull. Then he began to prune.
Carefully, so as not to change any of the memories before the diversion, he removed moments with the care of a gardener tending to a delicate plant. A nip here, a trim there. Slowly taking away the past months of Rose-colored aches, pains, and longings until all that remained was a loose recollection of unrelated things. Everything else was locked away with as much strength as he could muster. Not to be reopened, not even in the distant future.
It would be easier this way. Things could begin to heal. He would still remember her, of course, still feel the same acute pain in the center of his chest whenever he saw something that reminded him of her, but the separation of time and space would keep that ache dulled, allowing him to keep moving forward. To keep running.
There.
Done.
The human Doctor slowly let go and receded. Carefully, he unknit himself from the tangles of the other mind, only looking back for a second to appreciate his handiwork: shards now sewn together with strands of golden thread, like Time itself had become a seamstress and stitched up the unrepairable. It was sickening as much as it was impressive.
He returned to his own mind all at once, blinking into the wind as he opened his eyes again. For a heartbeat, the Time Lord Doctor opened his own and met his gaze with a foggy expression that simply said thank you. Then, he slumped forward into the sand, unconscious.
This was, apparently, the final straw for his waiting companions. As the human Doctor carefully got to his feet, the ginger one was already storming down the beach.
“What the hell did you do to him!?” she yelled over the waves.
The skittish man trailing right behind her, presumably her partner or husband, tried to calm her to little effect.
The Doctor merely looked at the two, squinting his eyes against the glare of the cloud-shaded sun. “Ah! Good. You can give me a hand getting him back on the TARDIS. I’d carry him myself, but my knees aren’t what they used to be.” Surprisingly, he grinned, wide and wildly gleeful. “Never thought I’d say that! Isn’t it brilliant?”
Amy stopped dead in her tracks and stared disbelievingly at the strange man, caught between fury and utter confusion. At her side, Rory caught his breath with a lungful of cold air, then immediately kneeled to check the Doctor’s pulse, flipping him over to inspect pupils and breathing rate as well.
“He’s fine,” the strange man said with a flippant wave of his hand. “Simple telepathically induced coma, wouldn’t harm a fly. Well, I mean metaphorically. The mind of a fly is so simple and their lives so short that if you actually tried it on a fly, it would probably-”
“God, could you shut up for two seconds and tell us - in normal English - what happened to him?” Amy exclaimed, pinching the bridge of her nose.
The old man scratched the back of his neck. “Right, right. Sorry. Introductions are in order, I suppose?”
Rory stood and looked between Amy and the newcomer warily. “He’ll be alright. Hearts are slowed, but it’s more like he’s… sleeping.”
“Cos he is. That’s the ‘coma’ bit of ‘telepathically induced coma’, keep up.”
“Who…?”
He stuck his hand out, the other shoved in his pocket. “I’m the Doctor. Pleasure to meet you both.”
Rory blinked at him for a moment. Then, he looked at Amy and muttered, “I think I hit my head a little too hard when the ship landed. Did he just say-?”
She gave the man a good, long look. Whereas before cataloging his features had been simple observation, now she was searching for echoes of an old face. Ironic, then, that this was an aged version. The remembered details of a shaky camcorder video, a poor quality photo, began to show themselves in the wonky curve of his nose, the freckles slightly darkened by sun and age, and the tilt of his lips in a knowing smirk.
“You’re him,” she said bluntly, pointing to the unconscious form of her Doctor. “Old him, the him before this him.”
Sensing that his handshake wouldn’t be taken, he pulled at his jaw instead. “Yes. No. Sort of. I’m… complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
“Human complicated. Human-Time Lord metacrisis complicated. I’m him, but I stopped being him a long time ago.”
Amy crossed her arms. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
The alleged Doctor tilted his head in acquiescence. “And neither would the full explanation. To keep it simple, I split from him ages ago. Same man, new parts, no ability to regenerate and, clearly, I age. So that meant I got the privilege of being dumped here…” He gestured to the beach around them. “To live out my days.”
Rory narrowed his eyes. “But… that can’t be all of it, can it?”
A shadow fell over the Doctor’s previously cheery face. He took a deep breath and let it out in a long rattle that reminded them that, for his apparent good aging, he had to have been quite old. He nodded to his other self.
“Get him back on the TARDIS. Then we’ll talk.”
Needless to say, it took a bit of work. Amy lifted him under the arms and Rory took him by the knees, but his scarecrow-like form, all bony joints and flailing limbs, made movement quite a struggle. It didn’t help that they had the other Doctor keeping an easy pace alongside them, occasionally muttering things like, “there you are, almost got it” or “good enough” or, the one that almost made Amy lose her temper, “you want to get him there in one piece, don’t you?” It felt like a century before they’d maneuvered him through the doors, dumping him onto the glass floor.
The other Doctor was preoccupied at the entryway, craning his neck to take in the shape with eyes that sparkled in the now dully glowing lights. When he brushed one of the walls, they brightened with a wheeze that sounded both melancholic and joyous all at once.
“Good to see you too,” he murmured, giving a nearby fixture a stroke.
As he trekked up the ramp to the console, the lights began to pulse accompanied by a continuous, questioning hum. The longer it continued, the more it rattled, becoming tinted at the edges with odd notes of distress. The human Doctor ran his slender fingers over buttons with eyes closed, only opening them when Amy cleared her throat. He looked over at her and Rory with profound pity.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” he murmured.
The TARDIS fell silent.
He took a deep breath. “You weren’t supposed to be here. Not like this. The TARDIS, she… had something planned out. A scheme born of frankly irresponsible meddling.” His focus shifted to the gently glowing central column and he reached out to splay his hand against the glass. “Not your fault though, old girl. You were just trying to help.”
The rotor pulsed, once, with a noise like the cry of an injured animal, weak and frightened. It twisted Amy’s heart and spiked influenced grief through her lungs. She spoke without realizing, the words pulled from her.
“It’s Rose, isn’t it?” she asked.
The Doctor went still. Some things didn’t change from body to body it seemed.
“She’s gone.”
He nodded. “Old age. Ironic, isn’t it? Over 950 years and my completely human wife dies before me of old age.”
Amy didn’t know what to say. Sympathetic platitudes felt so empty after learning what Rose had meant to him, to both of them. The warm scent of a preserved room seemed to leech through the walls as Rory took her hand. She thought it was merely the few sensations she associated with the woman springing back up again, but the Doctor responded to it too, tilting his head to the ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “It’s not your fault.”
The dull hum pulsed with another feeble cry.
“I know. I miss her too.”
Grief stuffed the room, warming it to an uncomfortable degree. Amy felt it sitting heavy on her chest. She never even knew the woman, never met her, only saw her in a few brief snapshots from a life long passed. Regardless, she still had to push back tears when the Doctor let his chin fall to his chest, the weight of loss bowing his head in supplication. He allowed it to linger in a way the other Doctor never did.
After a long moment, he slowly lifted his head to look at them. Contemplation mixed with something neither Amy nor Rory could read. This face was so unfamiliar to them that the knitting of his brows could mean anything. The strange look in his eye impressed nothing solid. Incopereal, like the thoughts that flitted around the space between them
He let out a deep sigh.
“I need to erase your memories.”
Whatever they were expecting him to say, it wasn’t that.
Rory gaped in shock, his pale skin turning a sickly shade of grey that matched the sky outside. Amy’s response was a cage around her lungs, squeezing every side and emptying air until the only thing left was anger.
“...What?” she bit out through clenched teeth.
Pity overwhelmed his aged features again.
“You can’t remember this, any of this,” he explained, softly, coddling his words the way one would speak to children. “Not coming here, meeting me… and not anything before.”
Amy reflexively took a step back, gripping Rory’s arm to ground herself. “You can’t do that. It’s been months since we learned about Rose, nearly a year. You can’t just erase an entire-”
“I won’t,” the Doctor rushed to explain. He raised a hand in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring gesture, but it just seemed patronizing. “I won’t. Just the bits that weren’t supposed to happen.”
Rory found his breath again, letting it out in a scoff. “And how much is that?”
The Doctor nervously rubbed the back of his neck, eyes darting guiltily between the pair. “Based on what I saw in his memories, quite a bit. But not nearly everything. You’ll still remember most of your travels, so long as they had nothing to do with Rose or his past.”
All at once, the implications settled on their shoulders. Amy’s grip tightened not out of anger, but of fear, and she met Rory’s gaze with the same terror brewing beneath her pursed lips and shuttered eyes. It was reflected in his face, his emotions clear as day in a way she’d grown so wonderfully accustomed too. In the moment that passed between them, their looks said the same thing.
We are going to lose so much.
New friendships, changed relationships, revelations and reliefs that were born of months and months of struggle and patience. Gone, like they’d never happened in the first place. All because the Doctor’s ship got a bit too nosy and started tugging at a knot in the thread. She’d pulled and unraveled it, snagging other strings in the process until Amy, Rory, and the Doctor were contorted in a spider’s web of timelines.
They couldn’t feel any of this. They simply felt panic, plain and human.
“No. No, there has to be something else,” Rory insisted. “Right? I… I mean you’re probably a genius-”
The Doctor shrugged in false modesty.
“-like him, so there’s got to be something else you can do.”
For a long moment, the human Doctor stared between Rory and Amy, his expression nebulous. He planted his hands on his hips and let out a long, considering breath. “Well… I could let you keep your memories, I suppose. There’s just one problem with that.”
“Being?” Amy snapped. She was getting real sick of this Doctor’s proclivity to meander and drag, mirroring his full Time Lord self in a truly agitating way.
“You have to lie to him and maintain that lie.” His eyes grew steely. “Could you really do that? Day after day, look at him knowing what you know now? About me, him. About Rose. If he asks you what happened - why his memories of the last year are fuzzy - can you tell him you don’t know with enough conviction that he believes you?” The Doctor took a step closer, his breathing growing quicker as he became more and more impassioned. “Because if he doesn’t, he will press. He will ask you again and again, until the guilt of knowing eats you alive. Then you’ll either have to leave-”
“We wouldn’t,” Amy protested.
“-or tell him.”
Rory swallowed hard. “And… what happens if we do that?”
“My safeguards will fail and the memories will come spilling back in full force.” The Doctor ran a hand over his face. “It’ll be like a tidal wave, smashing against the inside of his skull. At best, you’ll see a repeat of the beach. At worst…” He gestured lamely to the other Doctor’s limp body, still slumped against the glass floor. “I don’t know. It won’t be pretty, that’s for certain.”
It was a battle of lesser evils with one clear victor. The moment it had been laid out in front of her, Amy knew which option she would have to pick. There was only so long she could last under the Doctor’s intensity, his needling need to know everything. And there was only so long she could keep pity out of her eyes; the thought of his two broken hearts beating purely out of habit was a burden she couldn’t bear. Not to mention that Rory had always been a terrible liar.
She could feel his agreement in the tight grip on her hand, nearly cutting off circulation to her fingers as helplessness resettled between them. Helplessness and resignation.
Amy looked down at the Doctor - their Doctor - still unconscious. Deceptive calm smoothed his features, slackened his jaw. His arm was trapped awkwardly beneath him, the other splayed oddly to the side, twisting his palm skyward. It was like he was reaching for something in his rest and Amy knew, with a spike of pain in her chest, that he’d be reaching for the rest of his long days. They would have to too.
Tears spilled from her eyes as she looked back at the human Doctor. She took a deep breath and held it in the top of her lungs, steeling herself against her next words. “What do we need to do?”
Rory’s grip on her hand slackened and tightened in wordless support as the Doctor visibly relaxed.
“I’ll need to go into your minds, like I went into his,” he explained. “It sounds invasive, but I promise I won’t look at anything you don’t want me to, and I’ll only be removing memories tied with the split in your timeline. The things that shouldn’t have happened.”
“Martha, Mickey, River…” Rory said hesitantly, dreading the answer.
The Doctor scratched the back of his head, squinting. “See that’s the tricky bit. Obviously, I can’t alter their memories myself and he won’t have the wherewithal to remember to.” He ran a hand along the console. “But I think the Old Girl has it in hand. Time has a funny way of smoothing out the gaps if you give it the right nudge.”
“We’re the nudge,” Amy surmised.
“Bingo.”
Playing chess piece to the whims of time and space was certainly not her preferred role, not a million years, but resignation settled heavy on her shoulders. Each delay only brought them closer to the inevitable and they didn’t have time to waste. The Doctor wouldn’t stay asleep forever.
Amy took a deep breath. “Give us a mo’, will ya?”
The human Doctor simply nodded and meandered farther around the console, inspecting the updated hardware with poorly concealed sorrow. Amy tugged Rory closer to the door, close enough that she could hear the roll of the waves beyond flimsy wood. Without a word, she took Rory’s hands in hers and simply held them, staring at their interlocked fingers as she fought back more tears.
This was supposed to ground her, or so she thought, but all it did was remind her of the weight of loss. Of missing ribs and grieving whales, drifting off the Norwegian coast. The wind past the doors started to sound like a low wail. More tears slipped down her cheeks.
Rory let go of one of her hands and cupped her face, wiping away tears and urging her to lift her head and look at him. Hesitantly, she did so and saw that he was crying too.
He leaned in and pressed his forehead to hers. “If I said it was going to be okay, I’d feel like I was lying,” he confided in a whisper.
Amy tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a sob. She pulled Rory in for a hug. Clutching tightly to the back of his coat, she tucked her head into the crook of his neck. As she breathed him in, tears falling faster, she felt lucky. Horribly, horribly lucky.
At the end of this, she wouldn’t be losing him. She’d still wake up in a bed kept by two, still see a second set of footsteps in the sand alongside hers. Still feel his arms around her in a vice grip, quietly asking her to stay. Amy held him tighter until it was almost uncomfortable so she could feel the press of his ribs against hers.
“It will be okay,” she whispered into the junction of his shoulder. “I have to believe it will.”
Rory nodded. “Me too.”
Neither of them wanted to break the embrace, but it had to be done. Rory offered Amy a soft smile. “I’ll go first,” he said simply. There was no room for debate.
Amy nodded. “See you on the other side.”
“Not if I see you first.”
That did pull a laugh from her, a fragile but real thing that sat between them as she pressed their foreheads together for one last moment of peace. A gentle kiss, and then they walked back to the console, catching the attention of the human Doctor.
He looked at them with pity, but not the same kind as the Time Lord’s. Not the pity for a lesser species, a baby with drool dribbling down its chin or a foal failing its first few steps. The kind of pity Amy saw on the face of neighbors as she grew or the kind Rory saw in the hospital when a loved one passed. The personal kind that knew the weight of their pains but didn’t know how to ease them, and instead resorted to platitudes and downturned faces.
A human kind.
“Ready?” he asked quietly.
They both nodded.
The Doctor smiled, slight and soft. “Suppose now’s as good a time as any to ask for your names.”
This entire conversation and they hadn’t given them. Too caught up in matters of the broken past and potential ruined futures. It was equal parts sobering and humorous.
“Rory Williams,” Rory said with an awkward smile back.
Amy splayed a hand over her heart. “Amy Pond. Legally, it’s Williams, but the Doctor insists Pond suits me better.”
This Doctor’s face lit up. “Amy Pond! Oh, that’s a brilliant name. He’s not wrong to prefer it. Very nice to meet you both. I wish it could’ve been under better circumstances.” His expression fell, resignation seeping into the lines on his face. It said one thing, plain and simple.
Pleasantries aside, it was time to forget.
Rory stepped up, his posture tensing. The Doctor moved closer and raised his weathered hands, pointer and middle fingers hovering over Rory’s temples.
“I’m going to ask for permission to enter your mind,” the Doctor said. “It’s going to feel like a knock on a door. All you have to do is open it. Remember, I’m a guest up there. Anything you don’t want me to see, I can’t see, and you can expel me at any time. Though, for the sake of our purposes, I’d really recommend you don’t. Got it?”
Rory nodded gingerly. “Understood.”
The process was a surprisingly quick and simple affair. The Doctor did exactly as he described, closing his eyes and pressing his fingers to Rory’s temples. Amy watched her husband’s body tense and relax in succession, his hands loose at his sides. Another few seconds later, and the Doctor opened his eyes, taking a step back.
Rory stared off at nothing for a moment. Then, he began to tip backward, unconscious. Amy barely managed to catch him under the armpits before his head hit the floor.
“A bit of warning,” she growled at the Doctor.
He winced. “Fair point. I’ll fix your memories sitting down. I’m not as young and spry as I used to be, so I’m afraid I’d be no help in catching you.”
Amy gently lowered Rory fully to the floor and stood up, clapping her hands together. “Arms like yours, I think you’d snap like a twig in your thirties, nevermind your eighties.”
The Doctor barked out a laugh. “Sounds like something Donna would say.”
“Donna?”
“Old companion of mine. She was a ginger, like you. Loved giving me a hard time, like you. Said I was so skinny, she worried I’d give her a papercut every time I hugged her.”
“She’s not wrong.”
His smile saddened. “No. She wasn’t.”
Sorrow made him look even older, the shadows on his face deepening in the pulsing light of the rotor. He looked up to the moving light as it slowly washed away his settled facade, letting Amy see the cracks of age and loss plainly on his face. It was unnerving how similar, yet entirely different, he looked to his Time Lord self. His pose was a mirror of when the other man had looked to the soft ceiling fixture in Rose Tyler’s room.
“Are you alright?” Amy asked quietly.
He thought for a moment, tilting his head in consideration. Then, he chuckled, low and echoing. “No. But I will be. Soon.”
The conviction in his final word sent a chill down Amy’s spine. There was much about the Doctor that she knew and even more that she didn’t, but he’d always been very open about his hatred of endings. Closed books, shut doors. He’d tear out the last page, stop the movie well before the credits started to roll, even left some of his own tales on dangling cliffs, content to let suspense linger where most would beg for resolution.
This Doctor kept turning the pages at a steady pace as he reached the epilogue. It was beautifully unnerving.
“I’ve died nine times over,” he said simply, as though commenting on the weather. “I’m familiar with the feeling that comes over you. The certainty. One second, you’re all flailing arms and stubborn determination - ‘no, no, I don’t want to go, this can’t be the end, it can’t be’ - and then…” The Doctor shrugged, oh-so casual. “Your body accepts it before your mind does. You settle, you sink, give in, physically. In your bones, you know.”
He rubbed at his wrist absently.
“For the first time in my very long life, Amy Pond, that certainty is a comfort. And you know what?” He looked at her and grinned, his smile reaching every corner of his lined face. “I couldn’t be happier.”
Amy swallowed a protest, the instinctive response of the young swelling within her. “Aren’t you scared?”
“Oh, of course. Who isn’t? But I have faith it’ll be alright in the end.”
“You don’t strike me as the religious type.”
He scoffed. “Me? No. Not in the slightest. Not particularly spiritual either. It’s a lot simpler than that. Wherever Rose goes, I follow. Wherever she is now, then that’s where I’ll go.”
Like he was telling her the sky was grey, that it was going to rain. A fact of life. Amy felt a lump in the throat force its way up, and a few tears rolled down her cheeks. She tried to cover her mouth, stop a sob, but failed miserably. The Doctor smiled sympathetically and opened an arm.
On a different day, she might’ve thought twice. In so many regards, he was practically a stranger. But he was still the Doctor. At his core, behind his lined eyes, he was someone who she might’ve known had fate been a little less kind to him.
As he pulled her into a hug, Amy thought it really was for the best that she forget this. She wouldn’t be able to look her Doctor in the eye after meeting this one. She’d only be able to see the possibilities, the what-ifs. The un-sowed effects of a life full of love, patching up wounds she and Rory hadn’t seen before they were ripped open, one by one.
She hugged the human Doctor back and felt the difference in his tired arms. Arms that lifted children, that moved boxes, that held a lover. He’d no doubt lived fantastically - still the Doctor, so that never changed - but he had learned how to live simply. Day-to-day, as humans do. Instead of dancing through time, serving as a savant outside of its rule, he’d had to defer to it.
That surrender of control shaped him into something softer. A gentle hand holding the back of her head as she cried into his shoulder. Father to a daughter, acting on instinct.
When she reluctantly let go, he held on, tilting her head close to press a solid kiss to her forehead. Amy closed her eyes, more tears escaping. The gesture was unbearably comforting. It was something she would do for her Doctor and it felt like a burden getting pulled off her shoulders. Weight she didn’t know she’d been carrying. Time to leave it behind.
Amy looked the oldened Doctor in the eye and smiled. “Thank you,” she said, “and I’m so sorry. She must’ve been incredible.”
He beamed, eyes sparkling with memories and unshed tears. “Oh, more than that. More than words.” The Doctor took her hand in both of his. “And you! Amelia Pond. You’re brilliant, you are, never forget that. He’s lucky to have you, you and Rory both, and he treasures you greatly. I know he does. He’d be lost without you.”
“I think I’m starting to see that.”
“If there’s one thing to remember when the dust settles, it’s that.”
“You’ll keep it in my head?” Amy asked. Her voice shook against her will.
The Doctor held her hand tighter. “Promise.”
It was the reassurance she needed. Amy nodded, once, and glanced at the floor. “Let’s get this over with, then.”
They both sat cross-legged. Amy, predictably, had to give the Doctor a hand. Like he said earlier, his knees weren’t what they used to be. Once Amy had settled and taken a deep breath, the Doctor poised his fingers over her temples.
“You remember what I told Rory?”
She nodded.
“Good. Same rules apply. I’ve tried my best to make it so you’ll all wake up at the same time, and don’t worry about getting back to your own universe. The TARDIS and I will handle that bit.”
“It’d be a real arsehole move to wipe our minds and leave us on this stupid beach.”
“I’m rude, not sadistic.”
Amy chuckled. “Making us carry your other self all the way here was a bit sadistic.”
“What, do you expect an old man to do your heavy lifting?” he said with mock shock. “Shame, Amelia, shame.”
Had the situation been different, had this been any other day, Amy might’ve kept the banter rolling. The more she spoke with him, the more won-over she became. The differences were equally staggering as the similarities and although her and her Doctor had exchanged their fair share of barbs, this one was particularly skilled at it. Whether that was the influence of Rose - perhaps Martha and Donna as well - she would never know.
Her smile became sorrowful. The Doctor lightly set his fingers on her temples, initiating a gentle buzz between minds that felt remarkably like the humming of the TARDIS.
Amy took a deep breath and held it. “Goodbye, Doctor,” she whispered. She didn’t know if she was speaking to the man in front of her or the one she’d known for most of her life. The one she’d come to know so much more these past few months.
“Goodbye Amy Pond,” the human Doctor said. “Hold on to what you have. With both hands, if possible. Nothing is guaranteed, especially not a happy ending.”
She didn’t have time to nod before she felt a light, metaphysical rap underneath her skull. Amy opened the door and the world around her fell dark
~~~~~
Luckily, when he finished clearing up her mind, Amy tipped to the side inside of backwards. The Doctor caught her by the arms before she fell and he gently lowered her to rest on her side, as comfortable as she could be. He let out a long sigh and watched her for a moment, waiting for the slightest sign that something had gone wrong with the memory removal.
But Amy didn’t budge. Neither did Rory or the Doctor, still exactly where he left them. He estimated that he had about thirty minutes to finish sorting affairs before they started to stir, so he reached up and gripped the railing with gritted teeth.
“Should’ve done this on a jumpseat,” he grumbled as he slowly pulled himself up, his weathered body protesting every inch of the way. When he finally stood, he rubbed his lower back. “On second thought, it wouldn’t’ve been much better.”
The TARDIS hummed in droll agreement and the Doctor chuckled.
“There’s a smile.” He looked down at the console and winced, scratching his head. “Give this old man a hand, wouldja? Your new desktop is a complete mess.”
In the span of a blink, the entire console changed. It was, the TARDIS reminded him with a pained wheeze, a particularly tricky move, but the layout now resembled the grungy coral look he’d preferred when he was traveling the stars.
The Doctor smiled softly. “That’s more like it.”
He wasted no time in getting to work. Pushing buttons, pulling levers, falling into a familiar rhythm akin to a dance. Much slower now. He inputted the coordinates with practiced grace, only pausing to double-check a few discrepancies between the prime universe and the one he’d come to call home. The TARDIS helped him course correct a final time, giving a low, mournful croon as he set the dematerialization to a thirty second delay.
“He’ll be alright. Give him time,” the Doctor soothed, glancing back at his counterpart.
The Time Lord looked so much younger, achingly close in age to Rose when they had stopped Davros all those years ago. It couldn’t be coincidence. Not for the first time, the human Doctor thought about a spike of memory that wasn’t his, a moment Rose had shared one quiet January night. An innocent anecdote about a random New Year’s drunk on the Estates.
The Doctor closed his eyes and let out a long sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?” he murmured. He wasn’t sure if he was talking to the Time Lord or the TARDIS.
The ship let out another low groan and the Doctor huffed, dropping his hand.
“Right. That’s my piece done. Up to you to fix the rest.” He gave the console one last pat before lingering over the final lever. He looked up at the rotor with a small smile. “Word of advice. Some things are best left alone, good intentions or not. Violating your natural safeguards to tamper with the timelines is one of those things.”
A guilty hum echoed from the walls, accompanied by a dull pulse of lights. The wordless acknowledgement satisfied the Doctor and he pulled down on the dematerialization lever with a sharp nod. He walked to the doors as a dull, familiar screech revved up around him, vibrating the floors and echoing in his teeth. It reached its crescendo when he stepped back onto the sand of Bad Wolf Bay.
The Doctor turned around and gave the console room one last look before shutting the doors for good. He rested a hand against the box.
“Take care of him.”
Wood under his fingertips slowly faded to nothing. His hand pressed against air. The TARDIS was gone.
The Doctor stood there for a long moment, breathing in the familiar salty air and cool mist. The waves still rolled in and out, bringing the tide in, slow and steady. He let out a long sigh. Wind nipped at the back of his neck.
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his mobile, pulling up his daughter’s number without looking at the screen. His knee twinged, reminding him of his reckless maneuvering, and he winced, thumb hovering over the dial button.
“Mia’s going to kill me,” he muttered.
He pressed the button.
“Hi darling. Yeah. I’m ready to go home.”