I didn't realize I was holding my breath. Shakily I breathe outward, and I feel something wet leak from my eye. I don't bother trying to wipe it away, because another follows it. And another. Their descent is silent but it rocks me to my core. It still feels cold in here, much colder than I would normally keep the TARDIS.
With staggering steps I make my way back to the chair in which I started, and sink down into it like I hope it will devour me whole. My legs are weak, and they shake even after I'm seated. Tears are still slipping out of my eyes, though I can't necessarily feel when they're coming, nor do I know how to stop them. The strangest part is, I don't really feel anything. I've numbed all the pain out. I've blocked it. I'm not letting it in. I can't let it in.
Two perfect, hollow circles collide inside my hand, the metals grinding together in a way that causes it to create a gritty sort of vibration on my skin. Very gingerly I unfurl my fingers, and my eyes take their sweet time in looking down. I try to will them to speed up. I try to make them get it over with, because I want this anticipation and this suspense to end already, because I can't take it anymore, because I still can't let it in.
Gold glistens purely in a greenish light from across the room. One band is thicker than the other; it's a bit bigger in circumference, as well. I touch the smaller of the two with my left index finger, flipping it over onto its other side. I can see the angular letters carved on its inner loop, and the tip of one letter curls gracefully into the next, and it just looks like a never-ending trail of thinly-lined promises that went forgotten for far too long.
"My impossible girl," I whisper to myself. The air does not seem to want to cooperate and bend itself so that my words can have leverage, but I suppose that it isn't all that important for them to be audible. Nobody can hear me. Nobody will ever know what those words mean, other than myself. Nobody will ever be able to grasp the depth behind them, stretching for three thousand or more years. Nobody could ever understand why the Doctor, the man who cannot love, is crying as he slips a thin wedding ring into his coat pocket, and the other onto the third finger on his left hand.
Impossible, indeed.
I close my eyes, and the room around me sways, probably due to the fact that I've lost so much water with my crying. My head feels light and the floor tilts sharply upward, almost like it's angling itself to ninety degrees. I scrunch my eyelids tighter together, attempting to ward off nausea and the urge to pass out, and suddenly a light beams through them. It's so bright, so warm and natural, that it catches me off-guard momentarily. I don't think I can stand to look at it, because even with my eyes closed, it's near blinding. Carefully I inch my lids apart, peering through my eyelashes at what I expect to be the grated floor of the TARDIS.
That is not what I see.
Beneath my knees is reddish sand. It ripples slightly in a wind that blows through my hair and chills my bones. In my periphery vision I see buildings rising several stories high. People walk along the sides of the dirt road I'm kneeling on, chattering and carrying on as if they haven't noticed me. Their clothing immediately strikes me as odd, and I pick up my head, blinking hard so I can adjust my eyes more quickly to the brightness. Everyone wears robe-like attire, heavy-looking and billowy. Some are a deep color, crimson or navy or black; others hold happier hues. Shorter people -- children -- scurry past in identical storm cloud-gray tunics. None of them have on shoes. Bare feet poke out from beneath the folds of the sweeping cloth. A skyline whose grandiosity instantaneously tops every other I've seen rises in the distance, sparkling as the rays of three boldly orange suns shine down upon its tiers and glass roofs. At the dead center, miles and miles away, is a huge, spherically-shaped building, its height at least triple the size of the next tallest in sight. It glints with the same glorious luster as a freshly-cut diamond first seeing the light of day. There's a smell to the atmosphere here: sort of musty, with a hint of sugar and just a little something floral. It's a combination that brings to my consciousness the memory of spectacular soothing sunsets, beautiful hymns sung in perfect harmony, warm soup in the afternoons, and a war that broke the universe.
A word flashes in dangerously red letters across the inside of my head.
Gallifrey.
I raise my head toward the sky to glare at the stars, which are visible and twinkling smugly. My shoulders rolling backward so I don't break my neck, I start calculating their positions in my brain. Stars move over time. Some die, some explode, some multiply, some expand. I can always tell exactly when and where I am by the position and number of the stars above my head. When you've been running as long as I have, you learn the importance of knowing when and where you're at.
I finish calculating, and now do it again. Double-checking. Always a good idea. It takes me less time to complete the second go around, but my conclusion leaves me no more at ease. I am on Gallifrey. That is of no question. I would know the smell of my planet, and the layout of its skyscrapers, from across a galaxy. But what doesn't make sense, what forces me to get up off my knees and brush the red dust from them as I continue to stare at the sky, is when I am.
This is Gallifrey from when I was a child. From far before the Time War. From far before the Doctor.
But that can't be, a voice inside my head says unexpectedly. I haven't heard voices since my last regeneration, I think. It sounds young, younger than this body I'm in now, and both afraid and curious. Sounds familiar. This part of history is time-locked. Nobody, not a single soul in all existence, can come back to this time period. The Timelords have it protected.
So I haven't traveled back in time. Easy enough to gather, given the circumstances and the information provided to me by one of my past selves. Probably one of the more recent ones. The Tenth or Eleventh. I can't tell my own voices apart but I'm sure it was one of them. Regardless. If I haven't physically gone back, then that means that the people who are casually strolling past, seeming to completely ignore my presence, really can't see me. That also means that I'm either witnessing a hologram simulated by the TARDIS, or I'm dreaming. I've never dreamt of my home before, but I assume it's possible. Probably.
"Come on! Why are you so slow?"
I look directly in front of me as two children come barreling down the middle of the street. One of them, brown-haired and a tad scrawny, is significantly farther ahead than the other, who seems to be struggling to catch up. The first skids to a halt less than a foot in front of me, panting slightly but otherwise elated. He waits for his companion to get a little closer before he shouts, "At your rate, we'll get there just in time to regenerate!"
"It's not my fault you're faster than me!"
"I'm just a little better, that's all. S'why they call me 'the Master!' I'm a master of everything."
"You're the only person who calls you that, you twit." The second boy jogs to the first's side and leans over with his hands on his hips. His breathing is deep and quick. The first boy shakes his head adamantly. "Not true," he contends. "Just you wait. After initiation tomorrow, everybody's gonna be calling me 'the Master.' Because I'll master the test. Get it?" He elbows the out-of-breath child in the ribs with a sideways grin, and the latter grunts irritably.
Together they start walking, passing right through me as if I am nothing but a ghost, a mist. I start to follow, but my legs don't listen to the command my brain gives them. I take a second to process. The child who was slower has golden brown hair, and it shines in the late afternoon sun. His skin is white but fairly tanned, dotted with freckles along the bridge of his nose and his chin. His face is rounded and young; when he opens his mouth, a row of somewhat crooked white teeth can be seen. Big, curious green eyes, the shape and color of emeralds, are visible as he bats his eyelashes to rid himself of the flying sand.
Another face that was long forgotten. Another face buried in the back of my memory. And yet, another face I would be able to recognize among a crowd of millions.
"Whatever you say," he replies in a nonchalant manner, breath returning to him more steadily now. He straightens up and playfully raises his eyebrows at his friend, who rolls his deep brown eyes. "Hey, it's better than your stupid name. Who chooses to be called Doctor? What does that even mean?"
"It means whatever I want it to mean. It's not a contest."
"Well, if it were, I'd win." The Master smirks lopsidedly, and his friend laughs.
I manage to move myself, now, and catch up to the pair of them in a few short strides. They approach the edge of the city, marked by a plain yet beautiful sign in the ground. It rises about twelve feet into the air, and over the top of it I can see one of the suns beginning to set. In another half hour, the second will follow. Forty-seven minutes after that, and the last one will be laid to rest. The timetables of the natural cycles are still burned in my memory, though I've never had any use for them until now.
Thank you for visiting Arcadia! the sign cries.
"My mum won't like that we lied," says the young, soon-to-be Doctor. He looks uncomfortable as they stroll around the back of a squat, square building on the exact border of the city's end. They continue toward what looks like a steep drop-off. The inside of the valley it leads into is filled with various scrap parts, a majority of which looks to be scientific in nature. This whole scene tugs at my memory, but I can't call anything to mind. "You told her we were going to your dad's house."
"We always go to my dad's house. We've been playing in that field by Mount Perdition ever since we could walk. It's time for a change, Mister Surgeon." He winks, and the other boy shakes his head at the bad joke. "Close enough," he mumbles. The Master races ahead of his friend again, digging his heels into the dirt just feet away from the brink of the precarious precipice. "Besides," he calls, "what'll take your mind off of stress more than a daring adventure?"
My younger self furrows his eyebrows, pretending to think. "I'm not stressed, but if I were, it'd probably be my mum's food and a good night's sleep!"
"That's just because you're lame!" the Master replies, waving a hand around dismissively. The young Doctor grins as he shakes his head, and now goes over to his friend's side to peer into the valley. "Take a look." I step forward as well, to see what they see.
I was correct in assuming it was scientific equipment, but I had not gotten the full story. Just a simple gaze tells me everything I need to know about this spare parts wasteland. The energy that soaks through my clothes and into my skin is carried in the air itself, undulating up in clouds of unseen power from the metal far below. The cliff is steep, much more so than I had anticipated; its drop is probably about seventy-eight degrees. At the foot of it, about twenty feet down, begins a mass of broken and discarded machinery from the most remarkable invention to ever come to fruition. Lying below me is a sea of moribund TARDIS parts.
"Wow," breathes the boy Doctor. The Master nods his own appreciation. "Decades of them are down there, just rotting away. This is kinda like a graveyard for them. My dad told me about it. This is where they bring old ones to let 'em die in peace. They take them apart first, though, because Dad said when they're dying, they get really, really big."
"Did he say why?"
"Nope. Said we'd have to learn that in the Academy."
The adolescent version of myself swallows hard, glancing at his friend on his right. "Are you scared?" he asks lowly. The Master looks back at him, and though I expect him to be feigning unconcernedness or confidence, the veil falls away and all I see is a little boy who's facing a big future. "Yeah," he answers. "Very."
The Doctor rubs the back of his neck; I can see the thoughts spinning around in his youthful head. He's only barely eight years old, and about to go down a road that's much more twisted than he could ever imagine. I want to hug him and lie to him, to tell him that everything will be okay when I know full well that he'll know that it won't be. I want to grab him by the shoulders and sit him down and explain all the mistakes that I've made, so that maybe he won't make them. So that maybe so many people won't die, and so many more people will be happy. I want to tell him that the Academy will turn him into a cruel, grumpy old man, but he should fight it, because he'll unknowingly miss out on the last few years he will ever have with his family. He'll squander away the precious moments he has with his mum and his dad and his brothers and sisters. And he'll grow to regret those mistakes every single day of his life. Even when he doesn't quite remember what he's regretting or why, he'll still feel it, and he'll always feel it.
"I wish I knew what the initiation was gonna be," my younger self muses aloud. "I think that's what's making it so scary. I don't know what it is, so I don't know what to expect. My dad says that's called the fear of the unknown."
"Does he say how to not be scared of it?"
"He says there's no point in fearing the unknown because of the fact that it is unknown. He says we've just gotta look it straight in the face and believe we're tougher than it is."
The Master nods, and just by the look on his face, I can see that his spirits have been considerably lightened. He looks up at the sky, now, and jolts. "It's half past the first sunset! My mum's gonna kill me!" He turns and sprints a few feet away, back toward the city, but stops short, like he's forgotten something. He faces his friend and says, "Your dad's right. We are tougher than the unknown." Now he winks mischievously. "I'll see you tomorrow, Doctor."
I glance at myself as he beams happily, watching his friend dart through the street toward his father's estate on the other side of the city. The child looks back over his shoulder at the vast expanse of dead and dying time machines, and takes a deep breath. "One day," he says quietly, "I'm gonna have the best TARDIS ever made. And I'm gonna be a hero."
He puffs up his chest proudly. Something inside me feels the urge to laugh, while another, equally sizeable part deflates simultaneously.
Without warning, the Doctor loses his balance and his foot slips off the edge of the precipice. He lets out a single, strangled cry of fright before plummeting down the slope. I rush forward in an attempt to catch him, but he slips right through my hand because I'm made of nothing. I'm not even here. There's a loud grunt as he manages to grab hold of the root of something that's growing horizontally out of the cliff side. He's around seven feet from where he was standing, hanging unsteadily from the thick root, which appears to continue up to where I am. There's an arched little root sticking out of the ground. I see his eyes grow to the size of saucers. He's terrified. When I look directly beneath him, I see why. The fall would not be cushioned in any way. He'd hit the pile of sharp metal pieces at full force, and the impact might kill him.
Rationally, I know that I don't die at this point in time.
Irrationally, I feel a stab of fear as I watch my younger self clinging desperately for his life.
Out of nowhere, a blurred form shoots past me and plops down at the brim of the cliff, its feet dangling right above where the Doctor's head is, several feet down. I can see that the newcomer is another child; from the shape of it, along with the fact that it's wearing a skirt, I think it's a little girl. Long brown hair waterfalls down to the ground she sits on, and I approximate her locks to be at least three feet in total length. She kicks her feet, as if she's entertained by the episode unfolding before her.
"Somebody, please help me..." the Doctor whimpers from below us.
The little girl stops moving and grows very still. Her thin white fingers clench around a clump of grass nearby, holding tightly to it like she's angry. The knuckles on her small hands turn bone white. Her narrow shoulders tense up to the point where they look like tout wires ready to snap.
Something is happening.
She turns her head to the right, and even though I can't see her face, I notice little wrinkles at the corner of her eye, unobscured by spectacles or anything else, where she's got them firmly clamped shut. Her mouth is drawn into a tight pucker. It seems like her very bones are shaking. I try to become very aware of the earth around me, feeling for any disturbances that she may sense, but nothing moves. The grass around us waves lazily in the late afternoon breeze, and her long hair ruffles around her face, and a high-pitched, quiet gasp explodes from her lungs. "No," she breathes, almost inaudibly. I focus everything I have on her, attempting to understand. Who is she talking to? Why isn't she helping? Again the little girl jerks, a bit more violently, and crimson liquid leaks in a skinny stream from her nostril. She says the single word once more, even quieter than the first time, and blotchy redness overtakes her cheekbones. I start to worry that she may be seizing.
In an instant, as if nothing even happened, she relaxes again. She wipes the blood from her nose with the back of her hand, and I see her look down at it for a moment. Now she swivels around so that she's lying on her stomach with her torso over the edge. She hooks her foot around the curved root I noticed before, and slowly begins sliding herself down the side of the slope. I hear a sweet voice tumble from her petite body, and despite being juvenile in tone, the very sound of her voice seems to make the planet shudder to a stop for a millisecond.
"Reach up here and take my hand." She sounds calm, and comforting, and when I peer down at the Doctor, he's attempting to work up the strength to look at her. He can't seem to take his eyes off the certain death that lies beneath him, however. "I don't know if I can," he tells her. At once she replies encouragingly, "You've got to. You're going to be fine. Just grab my hand, okay?"
"What if you fall too? What if I pull you down here with me?"
"That'd be an interesting development, surely. But let's save the plot twists for another day. You need to grab my hand and let me pull you up."
"I really don't wanna hurt you!"
"Trust me. You won't."
The Doctor jerks his right hand up off the root for a second, but now slaps it back down, too scared to remove it again for a few moments. When he's collected enough courage, he stretches his arm upward, fingers trembling like branches during a storm. The little girl leans farther over the brink and extends her own arm down as far as she can reach. I hear a small groan of exertion from her as she winds her other foot around the convex root. The tips of their fingers brush, and she quickly swings her hand down just a bit more. Her right hand wraps around his fingers tightly. The world is deathly quiet other than the shifting of dirt under bodies and the labored breaths of heavy lifting.
Limbs quaver with strain as the girl grabs the Doctor's arm with her other. Now nothing is securing her to the ground besides her two bare feet and a root. The Doctor's forehead shines with sweat while he works at pushing himself up the steep slope with no traction to help him. "Don't let go," he breathes. Her immediate response is, "Never."
The four-word exchange was all I needed to place a name to the girl. I feel frozen, like I've been paused in a film.
After about thirty seconds, the Doctor's head surfaces over the edge of the cliff, and his upper body follows not long after. When he's far enough above the side to elbow himself to steady ground, the girl uses the last bit of her strength to yank him up all the way. His feet flop onto the dirt and red grass, and she scoots backward, her breaths heavy. Both of them are silent for a moment, just breathing. As if on cue, they look up at the same time and their eyes meet.
I'm suddenly bombarded by the powerful ghosts of emotions. It's like I can remember this happening now, but it's a different sort of remembering. That kind where you know you know something, and it's right there on the tip of your tongue, but you can't seem to verbalize or solidify it and it drives you mad.
I close my eyes, and I can see her through my younger self's point of view. I can almost feel my hearts pounding against my ribcage as they did then, stunned and awed and enraptured and a million other things that I couldn't name back then. Through the first eyes I ever had, I see her heart-shaped face, her forehead slick with sweat and partly obscured by the long hair that entangles her body. I see her tiny pointed nose, and innocently-freckled face, and the bluest blues to ever blue staring right back at me.
"Are you alright?" she asks, her expression concerned. I open my eyes again and watch the scene in front of me. I've already lived through it. I want to see what it looks like from the outside. The Doctor joggles his head a bit -- imperceptibly, thankfully -- and shrugs. "I think so." The girl stands, brushing the reddish dust from her skirt and the hem of her shirt before reaching down her hand once again to help the Doctor get to his feet. He accepts with a grateful half-smile.
Their grips don't loosen. Instead, the two eight-year-olds shake hands like adults at a meeting. Except with a rather intense gaze between them, sparking something in the air that refuses to fizzle out.
"Thank you," says the Doctor as their hands fall back to their sides. "For... y'know."
"Being in the right place at the right time?" she provides smilingly. There's a shy confidence to her words, and though that description should be an oxymoron, it's anything but. My former self gives a weak chuckle, still a bit rattled. "More than that. You just saved my life."
She shakes her head. "Nah."
"Seriously. I'm going to be the Doctor, by the way," he adds, somewhat proudly. She smiles. "That's gonna be my name, starting tomorrow. Only name I want, really. My real one doesn't matter. But yours does." He gives her a look, all raised eyebrows and restrained grins.
"Your real name does so matter," she tells him. Her countenance remains casual, and he's only a kid, so he wouldn't know to look for signs. But I've had centuries to learn the atmospheric changes that take place when people are avoiding a topic, or lying. And I've seen enough of this girl to know when she's hiding something.
My past self shrugs again, stating blandly, "Eh. I like getting to choose my name. Kinda lets me think that I'm in charge of what I do and who I am. But really," he adds, more adamant now, "what's yours? I'd kinda like to know the name of the girl who saved my life."
"Stop saying that," she laughs, but she's visibly uncomfortable now. "I just lent a helping hand."
"Hilarious. Are you a comedian?"
"Only on the weekends."
Their eyes meet again, and the Doctor's get sort of squinty as he gazes at her, trying to get her to open up without asking again. She looks back at him with a gentle smile and an amused twinkle behind her irises. As she tucks a strand of wavy brown hair behind her ear, I see the wheels begin turning inside her head. I hear thoughts and ideas clicking together in that beautiful little head of hers, and a dimple deepens at the left-hand corner of her mouth.
"Song," she says simply.
"Is there a first name with that?"
"You'll probably find out, one day. We can figure it out together."
"Sounds to me like you're saying we're gonna be friends."
"You know what? I think we will be." She beams at him, and it's the happiest thing I've seen since this memory began. "I've got a good feeling about you." Just like the Master did, the little girl called Song casts her eyes up toward the starry sky, where the third sun is already halfway set. She doesn't notice how her new friend just watches her with soft eyes and a small smile. "It's late," she says to the Doctor. "We should both go home and get some sleep for the initiation tomorrow."
The Doctor's eyes brighten slightly. "You're being initiated too?" She nods, and he grins. "So I'll see you tomorrow, then." Song nods her head again, gives one more brilliantly sweet smile, and walks off down the edge of the precipice, disappearing behind a row of buildings.
Two Doctors watch her go. One of us feels an excitement for a new beginning. The other feels a certain bittersweet understanding.
I blink, and I'm back in my chair in the TARDIS.
There's no red dirt anywhere to be seen. Nothing on the console flickers to indicate that it was a simulation. It is as if that whole scene never even happened, but it feels like everything should be paused. The magnitude of what I've just remembered should be enough to grab hold of clock hands across the galaxies and spin them in reverse. It should be enough to bring back every dead star and reset every black hole and fix all the wrongs in all the universes. I don't understand why time can't slow down, just for a few seconds, so I can try to assimilate and comprehend this sensation in my chest that feels something like the heaviest light to ever exist. I just do not understand how she always contrived to stop time from making its mistakes, but time never wants to stop to give her well-deserved attention.
Somehow, even though I've been looking for Gallifrey for years, I've never been so happy to be away from it.
Suddenly full of inexplicable energy, I heave myself out of the seat and walk briskly over to the staircase. I start down the endless hallway, passing by tens of hundreds of thousands of doors and not really knowing which I'm looking for until I get to it. The wood is Macassar ebony: sleek, naturally patterned, and dark. Its knob is opaque glass, formed into the shape of a perfect orb.
I've only been in this room once, when I asked the TARDIS to create it.
As I open the door, I see different sections of the walls appear before me. The portion closest to the far left of the room (from where I'm standing, at least) is from the first model of my TARDIS. The First's model. The piece beside that is a sliver of the Second's. Eleven little slices of eleven different TARDISes. Eleven parts of a whole room.
On a chair in the First's division is the outfit my wife wore when she died for me the first time. The top is a faded blue, with black jeans and those spikey boots to go with it. Each segment is home to one chair, a twin to the swiveling one I vacated a few moments ago, upon which lays clothing that was worn by the impossible girl. In the direct center of the room, in front of the nonfunctional console unit, which is split into elevenths, is a twelfth chair. This one cradles a pure white, lacy wedding dress. A pair of black high heels sits at the foot of the chair.
This is the one I walk towards. I rub a bit of the soft fabric between my thumb and forefinger, thinking about how absolutely breathtaking she looked when she wore this, and fish around in my coat pocket. Her ring comes into contact with my fingertip before too long. I pull it out and just gaze at it for a few moments, admiring the way it seems to create a light of its own to gleam with. Admiring how beautiful it is, even though it lost quite a bit of its appeal when she removed it from her hand.
People say things like, You never know what you have until it's gone. I've never considered that to be true. I think the phrase should be edited and redistributed in its rawer, more honest form, which is, You never know just how much it hurts to lose something until it can never come back.
Gently, I lay my wife's wedding ring on top of her dress.
I look up at the ceiling.
"Now and forever," I murmur.
And I know she hears me.