a/n: you might want to read the first book in this series first. it's on my profile, simply titled "supernova (11th doctor)". big huge thank you and all of my love to everyone who is actually reading this second book!
falling in love with a god
is not a death sentence.
the story is only a tragedy
if the god loves you back. -o.g.k.
I endured the midday heat, leaning against the diner walls outside, bracing myself: both against the pain of inter-universe travelling, and for what was going to happen next.
It felt like the first time I landed in this universe all over again. I was hiding behind a wall, afraid of going inside and facing the Doctor. Except this time, it wasn't because I didn't know him-- it was because he didn't know me.
Not like I thought he did, anyway.
After Dylan and I had gone through the agonizing 24/7 process of finding a new counterpart from the technology department to replace Meredith, we were given a three-month break: combined time from the protocol of receiving a new counterpart, and the time necessary after being involved in a court ruling. We had caused an explosion, and it needed a lot of time to blow over.
The truth was, I didn't really want to be here. At least, not with the Doctor acting like I would betray him at any moment; not seeing me. But after everything Dylan said to me last time-- I realized that I had to be here. I belonged here. I was a part of this as much as it was a part of me; I couldn't be cowardly and leave forever. Besides-- now I had three months to spare.
Much like before, I forced myself to open the door and enter the diner, knowing that I could stand outside and over-think forever.
"Nova," I heard the Doctor say immediately, as he stood from his spot in the booth with River and moved over to me. He stopped in front of me abruptly-- as though he meant to keep walking or reach out, but forced himself not to.
He looked at me like I was glass: something that he could break, and something that he could see right through. "How are you?"
"I'm... confused." I admitted. I didn't expect this reaction from the Doctor.
"Why?"
"Well..." I looked around the diner for a moment, noticing its interior and the fact that Amy, Rory, and River were standing around us now. "We're in America, and..." I turned back to him, "You look older."
The Doctor smiled. "I am older."
"Yeah, you've been up to something," Amy noticed.
The Doctor moved to sit in a booth, all of us fitting in. I sat next to River, across the Doctor. "I've been running...faster than I've ever run, and I've been running my whole life. Now it's time for me to stop. And tonight I'm going to need you all with me."
Amy thought he was being weird with his serious tone, but went on anyway. "Okay, we're here, what's up?"
"A picnic!" He smiled. "And then a trip. Somewhere different. Somewhere brand-new."
"Where?"
"Space... 1969."
888
"Salud!" The Doctor held up his wine bottle, while everyone else held up their glasses and cheered, sprawled around a picnic blanket by a lake in Utah. "Salud!"
"So when are we going to 1969?" Rory asked.
"And since when do you drink wine?" Amy followed.
"I'm 1,103-- I must have drunk it sometime," The Doctor took a swig from the wine bottle only to immediately spit it out behind him, his face going sour. "Oh, wine's horrid! I thought it would taste more like the gums."
"1,103? You were 908 the last time we saw you." Amy said.
The Doctor looked to me, sitting criss-crossed right beside him while he laid back. He almost looked regretful. "Yeah..."
"What's that?" Amy asked, looking at a hill in the distance.
"What's what?" Rory asked, not being able to see anything in the direction she was facing.
Amy looked to him, and suddenly forgot what she had seen, and I knew what it was-- the Silence.
An old pickup truck drove in the distance behind us, and I remembered what was going to happen. Everyone stood up as an old man got out of the car and waved to the Doctor-- and when we turned back to the lake, an Apollo astronaut was standing in it.
"Oh my god," River breathed.
"You all need to stay back. Whatever happens now, you do not interfere. Clear?" It sounded like a stern order, but the Doctor spoke sadly.
I was mad and hurt before-- but after the Doctor had been looking at me so strangely all this time and I knew he was about to face his death, I couldn't help but be terrified for him. "Doctor," I tried, my voice quivering.
We were the only ones who knew what was happening, but I was the only one who knew that.
The Doctor turned back to me for just a moment and sighed, brushing a strand of my faintly radiant hair behind my ear, before cupping my face in both hands. The Doctor's eyes were glassy, and completely honest-- something I was not used to seeing. He stared at me like I was the last thing he was ever going to look at and he didn't know what to do about it, so he quickly leaned forward, pressing his lips long and hard to my forehead. "I'm so, so sorry," he whispered in my ear so only I could hear, before tearing himself away.
The Doctor faced the Apollo astronaut-- his death-- and River looked to me worriedly, as if looking for a sign that I knew this would work out. I tried reassuring myself into remembering that I would see him again later, but his intense goodbye made my eyes water.
I stared intently as the Doctor bowed his head, and was shot once.
Unlike Rory, River, and Amy, I did not lunge forward into a sprint-- only barely registered my feet moving slowly, closer, as if only to observe.
The Doctor's hands and head began flowing with bright, golden regeneration energy-- and then he spasmed, as if shot by an invisible or internal bullet, and collapsed to the ground.
This time, Amy, River, and Rory ran forward, checking his vitals and sobbing, while I continued walking slowly-- wanting to cry but not being able to, hearing every single short, quick breath I took as loud as that first-- and only-- gunshot.
I reached them, and stared down at the Doctor's lifeless body, that one fact endlessly repeating itself in my head: there was only one gunshot.
There was only one gunshot.
His regeneration stopped automatically with his spasm. Only one gunshot was needed.
That wasn't supposed to happen. What had changed?
"I believe I can save you some time," The old man approached from his pickup truck, who we would all get to know soon. "That most certainly is the Doctor, and he is most certainly dead. He said you'd need this," he set a tank of gasoline at the Doctor's feet.
"Gasoline?" Rory was insulted.
River looked to me, about she were going to ask for an explanation herself, before seeing my wide-eyed face in shock, and continuing. "A Time Lord's body is a miracle, even a dead one. There are whole empires out there who'd rip this world apart for just one cell. We can't leave him here. Or anywhere."
Amy sobbed over the Doctor's body, hugging his chest. River picked up the gasoline can.
"There's a boat," Rory noticed. "If we're going to do this... let's do it properly."
888
I stared at the Doctor's burning body floating in a boat across the lake completely numb.
It was one thing to know that normally, the Doctor wasn't really dead.
It was one thing to see the Doctor dead in front of you.
And it was a completely different thing to have witnessed the Doctor's death happen the wrong way, leaving you clueless as to whether or not the Doctor was alive or not, and knowing it had to be your fault.
"Who are you? Why did you come?" River asked the old man, who came with the pickup truck and gasoline.
"The same reason as you," he pulled out a blue envelope with the number 5 on it. "Dr. Song, Amy, Rory, Nova. I'm Canton Everett Delaware the Third. I won't be seeing you again, but you'll be seeing me," He walked away.
When the Doctor died, it was as though he took some energy from us-- we all just stood in silence as the man walked away, drained.
"Tell me," Amy grabbed my arm, the moment he was out of earshot. "You know the future. Tell me he's not dead," she begged, tear stains on her face.
"I know a version of the future..." I clarified. "River, why was he only shot once? He was supposed to regenerate, but his regeneration stopped. That doesn't make any sense, does it?"
"What do you mean?" River asked.
"I mean... I really shouldn't be telling you this, but... he died the wrong way."
"So he could be alive?" Amy asked.
I shook my head and shrugged, finally letting my eyes water.
888
"Nova, where's your envelope?" River asked me, as we all walked into the diner.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"We all got an envelope-- Canton got 5, Amy and Rory got 4, and I got 3. We're missing 2 and 1." She pointed out.
I shook my head. "I'm not sure you can mail things across universes."
"What, you think he invited someone else?" Rory asked.
"Well, he must have. He planned all of this, to the last detail." River tried.
We all stood around the diner, none of us able to sit with the tension in the air, but Amy placed a hand on the back of a booth-- like she had to steady herself up. "Will you three shut up? It doesn't matter."
I sighed, realizing that even if he was dead, we still had to meet Canton. "Yes it does. Believe me, I at least know that. We need to find the TARDIS and get to space, 1969..." I trailed, spotting something on a table.
"Nova?" River asked.
I grabbed the two blue envelopes off the table-- one of them with my name on it. "He's here," I said quietly.
"That can't be," River said in disbelief.
"Really? This is the Doctor we're talking about."
Just like I expected, the back restroom door opened, revealing the Doctor fiddling with a plastic straw. Everyone stared at him with mixed emotions-- but the main one was shock.
For River, it quickly turned to anger. "This is cold. Even by your standards, this is cold."
The Doctor raised his eyebrows, unphased. "Or hello, as people used to say."
"Doctor?" Amy walked up to him, looking at him closely as he rambled on about his special straw, finding it all hard to believe. "You're okay... how can you be okay?"
The Doctor noticed her somber expression and couldn't help but pull her in for a hug. "Hey, of course I'm okay. I'm always okay. I'm the king of okay!" The Doctor let her go. "Oh, that's a rubbish title. Forget that title."
He pointed to Rory, before going to hug him also. "Rory the Roman! That's a good title, Hello, Rory."
He moved on to me, plucking the opened envelope from my hand. "Nova-- that one's mine. Other one's yours."
I huffed at how easily he dismissed me in comparison to Rory and Amy, and reminded myself that no matter how weirdly pleasant the future Doctor was-- this one was still frustrated with me, and I was frustrated right back.
"And Doctor River Song. Oh, you bad, bad, girl-- what trouble have you got for me this time?" The Doctor grinned at her. I mentally slapped myself for believing anything he said to me before meant anything at all.
Thankfully, River slapped him hard.
"Okay. I'm assuming that's for something I haven't done yet." The Doctor rubbed his cheek.
"And for something you're doing right now." River glared.
"Oh, good..." The Doctor looked afraid.
Everyone kept bickering about how the Doctor could possibly be here, and what the envelopes meant-- but I went silent as I looked down at mine: number one.
The current Doctor did not trust me at all, but if I had number one, this meant that the future Doctor trusted me the most, and he wanted my current self to know it.
"Nova, what's going on?" Amy asked.
I looked up from the envelope, hoping that I could hide my emotions-- but the tears I felt in my eyes and the looks everyone gave me told me otherwise. Either way, I stared as hard as I could as I asked-- "Doctor, how old are you?"
The Doctor was taken aback. "That's a bit personal..."
"Fine! Since you don't want to talk to me-- Amy, you ask him."
"How old are you?" Amy asked.
"909..." The Doctor replied cautiously.
"Nova, what's wrong?" River asked, still noticing how shaken I was.
I showed her the envelope with the number one on it-- and she immediately snatched the Doctor's envelope from him, showing me what was on it. "He's number two."
Amy looked from me, to the Doctor, probably confused as to how he would choose to trust me the most in our current state. "I don't understand."
"Yeah, you do," Rory mumbled.
"I don't! What are we all doing here?" The Doctor asked.
"We need to go to space, 1969-- something about Canton Everett Delaware the third." I intervened, surprised the parasite in my mind didn't hurt me for saying it.
"Says who?" The Doctor asked.
"That's a very good question."
888
The Doctor spun around the TARDIS console, messing with the controls and rambling on as if everything was normal. "1969, that's an easy one! Funny, how some years are easy. Now, 1482, full of glitches. Now then, Canton Everett Delaware the third. That was his name, yeah? How many of those can there be? Well, three, I suppose."
The Doctor finally allowed himself to notice that only he and Rory were left on the console floor. "Rory, is everybody cross with me for some reason?"
"I'll find out," Rory spoke nervously, before coming downstairs where River, Amy and I stood.
"Explain it again," Amy demanded.
"The Doctor we saw on the beach is a future version, two hundred years older than the one up there." River offered in a hushed tone.
"But all that's still going to happen. He's still going to die." Amy crossed her arms.
I shrugged, sitting criss-crossed right beside her. "Well, Amy, I hate to break it to you-- but we're all going to do that eventually."
"We're not all going to arrange our own wake and invite ourselves." Rory grumbled. "So, the Doctor, in the future, knowing he's going to die, recruits his younger self and all of us to, to what, exactly? Avenge him?"
"That's not his style." River pointed out.
"Save him?" Amy tried.
River shook her head. "Yeah, that's not really his style either."
I stood up from my position on the floor. "Guys, stop trying. This is it. This is what's supposed to happen. We've told him enough already. If we do anything else, the universe might literally explode-- again."
Amy shook her head. "So we can't tell him anything?"
Everyone looked around at each other, the fact settling in.
"Now you know how I feel."
a/n: honeys, you got a big storm coming.
the doctor was only shot once.