Meteorological Phenomena

There were times when the Doctor felt the need to retreat to think. On this occasion, the events he had witnessed in Venice drove him to seek the solitude his mind needed. He shuffled from the main control room of the TARDIS up a flight of stairs, down a long hallway…or was it two hallways? Then a turn;  left, right, right, and there they were – the two magnificent copper plated doors. He could see himself  in them. His olive colored eyes stared back at him, reflecting the confusion he felt.

He ran his left hand through his messy brown hair, while he pushed the door open with his right. Inside, there was a maze of bookshelves leading to one central point. The Doctor had relatively little experience in this new library, but he made a point of making memorizing the way in and out a top priority.

The library itself was large, and rows and rows of old bookshelves reached almost to the ceilings. In the middle of the book-maze, there was a chair, a lamp, and a table. He loved the plush, red chair. It was soft and comfortable; the kind of chair one could sink into and read for hours. He pulled a book from the drawer of the table. This was a drawer that only the owner of the TARDIS could access. The biometrics would let no one but the Doctor read the contents of the battered blue book.

His eyes scanned the book in his hand, a journal he had kept on and off throughout his life. While mostly off, some of his innermost thoughts, scientific speculations, and his own hand-drawn schematics of the TARDIS filled it’s pages. However, he wasn’t paying attention to the stories of his past exploits. His mind was buzzing. Maybe it was the silence in the library that made him more aware of the flood of thoughts in his mind. The silence was unsettling. 

“Silence, Doctor. Silence will fall.”

“Through some we saw worlds. Through others, we saw silence.”

06  26 2010

The voices and images echoed in his mind. They were like pieces of a puzzle, and so far, the puzzle’s solution escaped him. 

He knew it all centered around the day of Amy’s wedding. It surrounded Amy herself. But why? Did he have something to do with it?  What was going to happen on that day that would be enough to cause an explosion capable of ripping apart the fabric of space and time?

He sighed. Rory and Amy were somewhere on the TARDIS. “Most likely the pool.” He thought to himself. He’d finally found it in a spare closet - a very large spare closet, but a closet nonetheless. There were still places to hang clothes all along the walls. The Doctor himself wasn’t all that fond of himself in a swimsuit, and tended to avoid the pool. 

He was lonely. He hated feeling lonely. When he was alone, his thoughts went to places he didn’t like; places he wished he could avoid; places that couldn’t be avoided because they existed in the dark recesses of his own mind.

The destruction of Gallifrey and the Time Lords was never far from his consciousness. Even if the Time Lords had become a threat he could not let exist, he had still condemned the race to death. He, with a simple twist of his hand, and then again with a single bullet, had sealed the fate of all Time Lords, including friends and family members. In the end, even the Master died. Amy was right. He was now the very, very last. 

“Oh, Amy…” He sighed. He couldn’t ignore his attraction to the spunky human. But, he also knew that he couldn’t get close. His mind flashed back to Rose. He had loved Rose, but still couldn’t be with her. Her eyes, her voice… There was a reason she was the last person he visited before his last regeneration.

It was just as he had told Amy - a nine hundred and seven year old Time Lord with a human who was barely twenty-one? She had only about thirty to forty good years ahead of her, with possibly a few more in a nursing home or hospice. He still had the possibility of hundreds of years ahead of him. It didn’t help that he suspected that the problems with the cracks might have something to do with her feelings for him.

“What conundrum,” He whispered. Frustration at his situation bubbled in his veins. For a moment, he was filled with rage. “Is it always going to be this way?!” He shouted. “To love, and never be in a position to have it returned?!”

An image of River Song filled his thoughts. But rather than comfort him, it made him even more agitated. Father Octavian had warned him about her. While they had met before on good terms, and he had done what he could to preserve her digitally after her death then, he could hardly mask his annoyance with her during their time fighting the Weeping Angels. Who was she, and what had made him feel he could trust her? What had his future self been thinking? 

And what about the Pandorica? Both Prisoner Zero and River had mentioned the Pandorica opening. Supposedly, it was just a fairy tale. It was nothing more than a story told to naughty children. Of course, there were the legends that mentioned the Pandorica, but no one had ever thought that they might be real. Unfortunately, it was very real. 

He felt a slight headache coming on. All the stress was getting to him. He leaned back in the chair, his fingers on his temple. “What am I going to do?” He asked himself. “Surely I can figure this out.” 

He looked to his side. There were mirrors on the sides of all of the bookshelves. He found himself facing one. “Of course you can figure this out.” His reflection answered. “You ended the last Time War. You stopped Earth from becoming a desert…and worse, a fiery death trap.” 

“Yeah, I stopped the time war, alright. Murdered my race in the process.” The Doctor retorted.

“Don’t look at it that way.” The image replied. “You saved the entire universe.”

The Doctor smirked. “I really need to stop talking to myself. Gives me an earache.” He made a motion to shoo the image away, but he couldn’t escape from himself. He sighed and looked away. “You can see right through me. You know that I almost took Amy up on her offer when she kissed me. I’m distracted. I need to clear my mind or else I’ll never figure this out.”

“Have you thought about making Amy choose? You saw how she and Rory seem to have made up after your little adventure in Venice. I think you and I both know who she will choose in the end.”

The Doctor felt a sharp pain in his chest. He didn’t want to lose Amy, but he also couldn’t keep her around. The fate of the universe depended on her choosing Rory. 

“I can’t make her choose.” He said quietly. “I can’t force that on her. Not without feeling terribly guilty…and sad.” What if she chooses me?”

“What if she chooses me?” The thought echoed again in his mind.

He almost let himself get lost in a fantasy. He and Amy exploring the stars together…forever. He could take her to the future. He could have her body clock slowed, just as Liz Ten had hers slowed. It could work. 

“Don’t let that thinking get to you.” His reflection scolded. “You know good and well you can never be together.” 

“But how do I make her choose without actually making her choose? I can’t bring myself to do it. I know I can’t. I’m not ready to lose her affection.”

“Ah, the Doctor in the TARDIS doesn’t remember his travels to the Candle Meadows. Check page three hundred and seven of your little book. There is something that may help you there. You can’t do it yourself, so let someone else do it.”

The Doctor flipped to the said page. There were several glittering objects almost stuck in the crease of the pages. “Psychic pollen.” He said. 

“Throw it in the time rotor.” The image in the mirror instructed. “The heat will do the rest.”