Random Doctor Who ficlet

[icarus_chained]

From a prompt on comment_fic . I haven't written Who in ages. It, ah, went a little strange.

Title:  Never Will I Ever
Rating:  PG-13
Fandom:  Doctor Who (Eleventh Doctor)
Summary:  Timelords, grief and ageing
Wordcount:  545
Notes:  For the prompt: Eleven, old age means more people to miss.

Never Will I Ever

Grief is a series of nevers. A series of realisations, sometimes gentle, sometimes shattering, that 'never will I do this again', 'never will I hear this again', never will I see this again'. Never will I see this face. Never will I hear this voice. Never will this world be the same. Never will this time be repeated. All that I have done, all that I have had, never will I have it again.

It's different, for Timelords. For the last Timelord. Or it should be. Time is his playground, the tool of his mastery, and 'never' is not the same for him as it is for others. Never should not be the same.

But there are rules. Imposed by others, imposed by himself, imposed by the very architecture of the universe. The rules he cannot break. And inside those rules, there are a hundred nevers. A thousand. Never without end, an infinity of grief, looped upon itself within him.

Never will I hear Barbara snap at me in frustration again. Never will I see Jamie, save from the distance of memory. Never will the Brigadier smile at me as he guards my back. Never will Sarah Jane walk without hesitation into my Tardis, to stay at my side. Never will Tegan step so carefully in high-heeled shoes around my world. Never will Ace strike out against a Dalek at my side. Never will Rose lean close and laugh beside me.

Never will I stand in the halls of my people. Never will I run from them, so scared, never will I stand before them, so defiant, never will I fight at their side, so furious. Never will I ever. Never again. Locked behind the Time War, locked by the constraints of personal timeline, locked away behind the inscrutable, insurmountable face of the universe. Never will I ever. Never again.

Grief is a series of nevers. And the longer he lives, the longer he endures, the more people he consigns to that endless loop of never. The more people he loses, never to see again. The more people he misses.

He looks at Amy, looks at Rory. Looks at them, so bright, so present, so there. Part of his world, part of his life, part of him. Looks at them, and wonders. Wonders when they will become 'never', the next links in that recursive loop of grief within him. The next lines in the etched arc of infinity, drawn to a close while he continues on beyond them, around them, before them. While he endures, ever changing, and they do not.

He is an arc of possibility, stretching to forever. His grief is a loop of never, coiled within him. One day, he thinks, never will outweigh forever. One day, entropy will rule, even him, and he will die. One day.

But first ... First he has a hundred nevers to meet, to make. A thousand. He is an arc of infinity, and the universe is yet his playground, yet his joy. He is a Timelord, the last of the Timelords, and he is yet alive. He has people yet to meet, people yet to love.

Never will I ever. Never will I ever, inescapable as Time.

But not yet.