Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandoms:
Character:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2025-06-04
Words:
316
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
5
Bookmarks:
4
Hits:
48

"Everything Has Its Time"

Summary:

Inspired by The Story & The Engine, a reflection on The Doctor's many lives and deaths.
---
Not a typical Doctor Who fic, but I'm proud of this one :)

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Somethere, on the edge of a universe, or the depths of their subconscious, in a barbershop carried on a spider’s back, or the final note of an ode someone sung for them, a neat row of type-forty TARDISes, or rather, one type-forty TARDIS, are parked outside of a place that feels like home. It is somehow nondescript, and yet intensely specific in much the same way a dream flickers the moments before it fades from memory. 

This place is, was, and will be inhabited by renegade Time Lords, or rather one specific renegade Time Lord: The Doctor, in their many forms and faces. Their own timeline folded like an accordion, bringing them back to that point in time, that party, over again forever. They won’t remember having been there, not even the eldest among them, because there will always be someone older, waiting in the foyer to announce themself when the time is right. 

Someday, and also exactly at that moment, there would be, and was, a final Doctor, the one who would enter the party and look whitsfully at all the lives they’ve lived. They will dance to songs unheard for millenia, and listen to the other’s stories, recalling moments of their life that had long since been forgotten. They will leave the party and face the sobering realization that whatever death came for them next will be their last. Or maybe, they are already dying, and choose to go out with a triumphant laugh, waltzing around a ballroom with all their Doctorish flair, before simply evaporating into a curl of heat and artron energy. 

And though death is the eventual fate of all things, there is so much living to do in the meantime,  that The Doctor is hardly concerned by it. Instead, a white-haired man in a western bow-tie sits by the fire, marveling at all the people he has yet to become.

Notes:

I originally wrote this as a setup for a collection of oneshot/character studies where the different Doctors interact. I may still use it as that, but it feels like it can stand alone too. Thanks for reading.