A/N: This is set after Doomsday and disregards the Runaway Bride. The TARDIS brings the Doctor to a man about to kill himself. Enjoy!
The Doctor circled the central console of the TARDIS, wondering where to go and what to do next. Rose was really gone now. He was alone.
He blinked his tears away, wiping the wetness from his face with his sleeve and took a few deep breaths to steady himself.
He stared at the controls, unsure of where and when he should go. Rose had always given him direction. When she didn't request something herself, he would usually want to show the universe to her…taking her to the most beautiful and interesting places…or he liked to show off. Whatever the case, he was usually seized with the desire to go somewhere, be somewhere, meet new people, help out wherever he could. Now…now he felt dead.
He couldn't just orbit this supernova forever. He had to move on. Like always.
The Doctor sniffed and put in some coordinates at random. He didn't care where he went, he just had to go somewhere.
He went to several places. He went to a planet of forests full of natives with spears, he visited India in ancient times and mediated a dispute between two kings while posing as a god, and he walked the empty, abandoned plains of a planet whose name he couldn't guess at. Always alone, not really caring what he was doing or if he got out of it alive.
He materialized again at some unknown destination. He sighed, puffing out his cheeks as he let out a deep breath. He shrugged his coat on over his suit and walked down the ramp to the door, hands in his pockets.
The Doctor opened the door with a creak and stepped out, his deep, sad eyes trained on the ground. It was raining, the ground was concrete and not interesting. He looked up.
"No," he breathed. He looked back to his TARDIS, the traitorous device. Why bring him here?
The tall slum buildings of the Powell Estate loomed over him, and he stumbled backward, leaning against the blue doors. He shook his head in denial. He wasn't ready for this. Not yet. Not that he felt he would ever be ready to come back here. He went to open the door, but a morbid desire to keep looking around forced his gaze upward.
Something caught his eye, and he squinted, screwing up his face in the rain. A silhouette on the very top of the building was pacing back and forth, just a dot against the gray sky. The Doctor frowned, thinking it odd that someone would be on the roof in this weather. A thought gripped him, and he headed for the long staircase going all the way to the top.
The Doctor took the stairs two and three at a time, running up to the pacing dot. He had a bad feeling about what the dot was going to do.
He remembered another time when he had stopped a man from jumping to his death. His approach in those early years had been almost indifferent. Now, though, he wasn't sure what to do.
He arrived slightly out of breath. He was getting old. But he was just in time.
An unshaven young man with greasy brown hair was standing on top of the wall, wind blowing his plaid sweatshirt behind him. He was staring down at the ground, his face wet with either tears or rain.
Uncertain of how to proceed, the Doctor decided to rely on his usual techniques.
"Hello!" he said cheerily. "Rainy day, isn't it?"
The man turned to him, sputtering in the downpour. "Go away!"
"I know, I really should go away," the Doctor said. "But I like the view up here." And he sat down on the roof.
"Are you going to go away or not?" the man asked impatiently after a minute or so.
The Doctor was looking elsewhere. Then, "Sorry, what?"
"For God's sake," the man said, climbing down and joining the Doctor in a defeated slump, "Can't even jump off the roof without someone interrupting."
The Doctor nodded, sighing heavily. "Tell me about it."
The two men sat awkwardly on the roof in the rain for several minutes. The Doctor clicked his tongue and clapped his hands occasionally, but didn't say anything. The stranger crossed his arms and stared at nothing.
"Have you ever lost anyone?" the man asked.
Images of a blond nineteen-year-old girl with enormous brown eyes came to the Doctor's mind. He swallowed. "Yes."
"I lost my wife," the man said, his voice shaking. "My beautiful wife."
"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, almost automatically.
The man waved the apology away, sniffing loudly. "Oh, it's not your fault, mate. It's no use apologizing for things that aren't your fault."
"Quite right, of course," the Doctor agreed. "Sorry."
"You said it again," the man pointed out.
"Oh. Sorry," the Doctor said. He winced the moment he said it.
"You, my friend, are a very troubled fellow," the man said.
"No denying that," the Doctor said. "You are too, you know."
The man snorted. "You don't know me. I'm not that troubled."
"Oh yeah, how do you figure that?" the Doctor asked. The rain continued to fall and this was the longest conversation he'd had in days, he reflected sadly.
"I lost my wife," the man said. "Only person who ever loved me. Most beautiful person I've ever met, inside and out. I can't wake up each day without her anymore. I can't. When she was my only reason for living, well, there's no point."
"I guess that makes some sense," the Doctor said. He leaned back, closing his eyes as he faced the wet sky.
"So why are you still alive?" the man asked. "When you lost someone?"
The Doctor straightened and blinked. "I'm not sure. Force of habit, I suppose."
The other man was quiet, and the Doctor continued, "I've just lost so many people. All my friends, and my family. And now my…" He paused. "My companion. I always move on."
"I knew you were troubled," the man told him. "What sort of bloke comments about the weather when he sees a man about to take his own life?"
"A troubled one?" the Doctor smiled softly.
"Exactly," the man said. His hair was plastered to his face by the water now. "You, dear friend, have lost too much. It's messed you up. Was she special, this companion?"
The Doctor was quiet for a moment. "She was so caring. So full of life. She could find something to love about anyone in just a few minutes. I don't think I'll ever meet someone like her again."
"Sounds wonderful," the man said sympathetically.
"She was that," the Doctor agreed quietly. "She was."
They were quiet again. The rain slowed to a fine mist, and the man spoke up again. "Why did you come up here?"
"I saw you, of course," the Doctor replied.
"So you climbed all those stairs to stop me from jumping?" the man asked.
"Well, yes." The Doctor wasn't sure where this was going. "Did it work?"
"I'm not sure," the man said. "Maybe."
"There's other ways of dealing with grief," the Doctor said, sensing that his presence was merely delaying the man's fall. "I'm not going to recommend therapy or pills, because psychologists scare me, but isn't there anything you want to live for? There's so much to see and to do, things to discover and find out. You can fly all the way across the universe and still never see all there is to see. Stars being born, stars collapsing into black holes and swallowing their planets, people everywhere with their own sets of concerns and problems and little joys and cultures, new things sprouting up and old things withering away, banana groves and apple grass." The Doctor stopped speaking abruptly.
The man regarded him after a long pause. "Are you saying I should travel?"
"Well," the Doctor scratched the back of his head, drawing out the word. "It's what I do."
"So I should do what a troubled loon does?"
"Oy, I'm not the one jumping off of buildings," the Doctor said defensively.
"And I'm not the one with a false sense of reality," the man countered. "I think you want to die more than I do. I mean, the weather? Who comments about the weather as an intervention?"
The Doctor's mouth opened and closed, unsure of what to say. Finally, he hung his head and said, "You're right."
"Told you," the man said.
"I've lost my home and everyone I've ever cared about. And I'm afraid. I'm afraid of caring about anything or anyone because I know that I will always be alone with nothing in the end," the Doctor said, bitterly pouring out his secrets to this stranger. "I'm an old man who's ready to see nothing more."
"Old?" the man snorted. "You're not old. Plenty of years in you yet."
"I'm old," the Doctor said again. "Very old."
"What did I say about a false sense of reality?" the man said. "You're insane."
"There's that, too," the Doctor agreed. He stood up, feeling restless and jumpy. He grinned, realizing that for the first time since he had lost Rose, he felt like he had to get up and do something.
"Do you want to come with me?" the Doctor asked the grieving man, who stared at him with reddened eyes. "I'm going to get some chips. Do you like chips?"
"You know what?" the man said, standing up as well. "I think you should do what you're going to do, and I'm going to do what I'm going to do."
The Doctor's face fell slightly. "Okay," he said.
He said goodbye to the strange man and headed down the stairs, some bounce returning to his step. He produced his TARDIS key from his pocket as he got closer, which he dropped as he saw the words on the cheap tin wall next to the blue box.
BAD WOLF.
The Doctor smiled, looking up and around again. The rain had come to a complete stop now. He picked up the key and glanced upward to where he and the strange man had been talking. His breath hitched in his throat as he watched him plummet to the concrete below. He realized, with a sudden stabbing pain in his hearts, that he hadn't learned the man's name.
Smile and bounce in his step gone, the Doctor stepped into the TARDIS and set the coordinates for a world covered only by ocean. The weather was unpredictable, the resources obviously few, but the colonists were good-natured folk who sailed in floating cities. And they made the best fish and chips he had ever tasted.