Amarantos

By TwinEnigma

Warnings: Character Death

XIII: The Last Journey

She knows the end is coming. She's known for a long time now.

Her Doctor is old now, with steel-grey hair and tired features. He sometimes takes her out on small flights, showing his grandchild how to operate the controls, and she remembers another Doctor, another grandchild in their places, ones now lost to the flow of time, a universe away. He leans heavily on a cane and has switched her theme back to the one of his fifth life – he'd always favored that form over the others, even in his thirteenth.

She hasn't flown to save the day for years – that is young Noble's domain now – but sometimes she dreams of it, of the old days and she thinks she longs for one last shot at saving the world, to go out in a fantastic blaze of glory instead of this damnable slow wasting.

One day, she senses Noble, but it's not the young, clumsy Noble she's known. This is a Noble she hasn't seen in a long, long time.

Her Doctor is dozing when Jimmy appears, lingering in the doorway like a ghost. He has aged a little, now very much the spitting image of her Doctor as he once was, and there is an immeasurable gravity to his presence. For a moment, she thinks perhaps it is not Jimmy at all, but she stops herself, because that is impossible.

Her Doctor wakes, as calm as though he'd known they were coming. "Now there's a face I haven't seen in a long time."

Jimmy enters, quietly sitting down next to her Doctor.

"Come to see me off, have you?" her Doctor asks, truth and teasing in his mind, and she can feel he already knows the answer even if it remains unvoiced. "Just as well. I have something I wanted to ask you."

Jimmy nods.

"Press the button – I've already set the coordinates," her Doctor instructs, wearily leaning forward. "Don't worry, it's safe. I've set it to the zone borders."

She knows where they're going and she whispers her gratitude to the barest reaches of Jimmy's mind, nearly recoiling at the churning sorrow beneath those shields. Again she wonders, but she is old and she sees echoes of the past where there are none sometimes.

"Back in the other universe, before the Time War, there was a planet near here," her Doctor says, ancient and unbearably sad. "The Shining World of the Seven Systems, Gallifrey. It doesn't exist here anymore, if it ever did to begin with."

She remembers it in splashes of color and light and burning death. She and her Doctor are cursed to never forget the beauty and horror of their lost home world. When they die, the memory of it shall slip from the world – as well it should, for all things have their time and Gallifrey's has long since passed.

This is her Doctor's goodbye.

They linger here for a while in quiet, until he's ready to leave.

"You know, you never did tell me your real name," her Doctor says, looking at Jimmy carefully. "Never did understand why you chose it."

"I didn't," Jimmy admits, guiding them back home to earth. "Noble gave it to me. I picked her locks when I was a kid, took her for a joyride. Always was good with opening doors."

She laughs with her Doctor, both remembering another who stole their TARDIS away in the night for a joyride that will only end after over a thousand years.

Her Doctor then gives him a level stare and asks, "Will you indulge a dying old man and tell me?"

Jimmy lets a little sad amusement slip through as they land. "If you tell me yours."

"Ha!" her Doctor scoffs. "It used to be there was only one time, one reason we could say such a thing! But it doesn't matter now, does it? They're all gone, all of them. No one left to care about a little old tradition but me."

His face falls and she can feel his exhaustion and sorrow keenly. "Damn the rules. I think I want at least one person to remember it."

Jimmy nods with a weary acceptance, leans in and whispers the burning, lance-like syllables of his name.

Her Doctor smiles, sadly, "I should have known." He then whispers his own, the terrible secret he has revealed to so very few, and it is the same.

Jimmy leans back, his mind churning behind his mental barriers, and finally asks, "What does it mean?"

She sighs and her Doctor shakes his head as he replies, "Nothing, everything. Funny universe, that."

She can feel her time rotor beginning to slow, the steadily dimming pulse of her Doctor, and Noble's quiet vigilance. It's not long now.

"You know, the Time Lords were cruel. Their power and their inaction was their eternal curse and eventual downfall," her Doctor admits. "The question is what shall you, humanity, become?"

Jimmy is silent a moment, watching as she begins to power down her systems for the last time. At last, he stands, moving towards the door, long coat swirling around him, and looks back. "We go where we're needed. And sometimes we bring revolution, and sometimes we bring peace, but we are always healers."

"That's good, then," her Doctor says, closing his eyes and smiling. "The Universe needs a Doctor."

"The Doctor in the TARDIS, forever," Jimmy says solemnly, a promise.

"As it should be," she murmurs, drifting off to eternity in time with the fading heartbeat of her Doctor.

A universe away, a deceptively young-looking man with dark hair and a tweed jacket pauses in his step, paling slightly as one of his hearts skips a beat.

"Doctor, are you alright?" a girl with red, red hair asks him. Her fingertips brush the panels of an antique blue police call box, which is shiny, shiny new.

He blinks, as though woken from a dream, and smiles thinly. "Yes, yes, of course. I'm alright."

Unseen, their observer turns away, radiating sorrow and the echo of losses remembered from the doorway of another blue box. His hand rests on the blue wooden frame of her weathered doors and she feels his eternal sorrow and so much more. Pity for the girl who does not yet realize she has opened Pandora's Box and will never be able to close it again. Empathy for the past version of himself who realizes the only other legacy of his kind is gone and cannot bear to tell the girl that he's not alright, because he's never really alright. Sadness for the impossible legacy, the metacrisis, who has gone on the one adventure he has longed for across the millennia.

She soothes him, her telepathic field wrapping around him like a blanket, and he welcomes it.

When the tears are shed, he stands again and looks up to her time rotor as he wipes his eyes. "What do you say, old girl? Who shall we visit next? How about Sarah Jane? Maybe Martha... Not Jack. Not yet. So many old friends to see – I guess that's what happens when you live thirteen lives, more or less."

This is her Doctor's goodbye and she knows it.

She does not think she will survive him very long.

AN: And I'm done. On to extensive TL;DR notes.

Why "Amarantos"?

Means never- fading. Refers to several things: 1, the TARDIS and her strength of will; 2, the legacy of the Doctor (and Gallifreyan race/Time Lords by extension) as represented by Jimmy and Noble, and at a stretch, 3, the paradoxes involved.

What is Jimmy's real name and why is it the same as the Doctor's?

Timey Whimey Ball of Wibbly Wobbly Stuff involved. Interpret as you see fit, but works into the sequel, The Other Side. Did I mention that I'm an evil writer? Might have forgot about that.

His whole "opening doors thing" is a reference to his apparent name, Jimmy, from "to jimmy," as in pry open a lock.

We go where we're needed. And sometimes we bring revolution, and sometimes we bring peace, but we are always healers.

Jimmy states earlier that he and his fellow pilots do just that, with a side order of fixing the potholes of the universe. Unfortunately, being humans, trouble is attracted to them and they end up buried to their elbows in it. You can infer that Jimmy has probably stirred up a revolution somewhere at least once. I'm sure that civilization was going to collapse on its own. Probably.

As to Time Lord business, Jimmy's not one - I'm assuming you need to be Gallifreyan, have looked into the Schism, gone to school for it, and obtained your silly robes and hat in order to qualify. It's insane, I know!

Why two parts for the end here and why end at 13 chapters?

Thirteen Doctors and a metacrisis clone.

Paradoxes involved?

Several - TARDIS's, Metacrisis Tenth's, Bad Wolf's, etc. You should see me when I try to explain the paradoxes to others. Apparently, it's hilarious.

Hints for the sequel?

Scattered throughout - happy hunting!

And that's it for this one really, so I'll just quote the Bard:

And if we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended,

that you have but slumber'd here while these visions did appear.