Doctor Who

by Paul Cornell

  ‘What have you done?’ whispered the First Doctor.

  ‘Nothing much. Just moved everything forward about an hour.’

  ‘That will not change the outcome,’ said the Glass Woman.

  ‘Not normally, no,’ said the Doctor. ‘Not on any other day. But this is 1914.’ And now he allowed himself a grin, in the face of death. ‘This is Christmas.’

  And faintly on the wind, he actually heard it, the sound he’d been waiting for. Yes, and a sudden lack of sound with it, that allowed it. The big guns had stopped firing. The thunder had ceased, while they were talking. The sound that had started while he had caught the Glass Woman’s attention was the sound of the greatest hope of all.

  It was the sound of enemies singing together.

  Archie wondered what this new dream might be. A dream in which the war had suddenly ceased. It was a bit like that dream, that fairy tale, that he couldn’t quite remember. The German opposite him had clearly heard it too. He was looking around, lowering his gun. Oh dear God, had peace been declared? Was the war over, just in time? Or was it just …?

  ‘I say,’ Archie called to the German. ‘Is that singing? Is that … Christmas carols?’ Yes, it was, it was ‘Silent Night’! ‘You know, I could swear it’s coming from …’ Because yes, the songs were the same, but from different directions, in different languages. ‘From both sides!’

  The Doctor stepped forward, looking down into the crater, at where the German soldier had lowered his weapon, at where Archie, unaware of the Doctor, was starting, shivering, to clamber to his feet. He looked up to the fields beyond, to where the songs rang across the miles. ‘If I’ve got my timings right, and clearly I have, we should be right at the beginning.’

  ‘Of what?’ asked the Glass Woman. He hoped she’d continue to have a fine appreciation of the weave of established history, and of the neat little stitch in time he had just made, to save not nine, but hopefully these two at least.

  ‘The Christmas Armistice!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘When they all just stopped fighting! When everybody just stopped! Because it was Christmas. Christmas 1914. When the human miracle is about to happen.’ All around them, soldiers from both sides were climbing from their trenches, advancing into No Man’s Land, waving white flags and offering bottles, starting to meet in the middle, to shake hands, to embrace and start to laugh in sheer, giddy relief.

  The Captain hauled himself out of the crater and stood beside the Doctor, oblivious, calling out to the soldiers of both sides and pointing down into the crater. ‘Excuse me! Hello! Wounded man here!’ He took out his whistle and started blowing on it. ‘Wounded man!’ Stretcher parties from both sides started to make their way over.

  ‘It never happened again,’ said the Doctor, turning back to the Glass Woman. ‘Not in any war, anywhere. But for a few hours, one Christmas Day, a very long time ago, everybody just put down their weapons, and started to sing.’ And he recalled his own battlefield, of only a few hours ago, a battle it felt like he had never left. ‘Everybody just stopped. Everyone was just … kind.’

  Archie had helped the German soldier out of the crater, and was aiding him now to stumble towards his comrades, as if the whole deliberate slaughter were a road accident everyone was helping with. What a fantasy. What a fairy tale. Lives saved by a story, by songs.

  ‘You’ve saved him!’ chuckled the First Doctor, at once delighted for Archie and tickled by the Doctor’s naughtiness.

  ‘Both of them,’ said the Doctor, glancing at the Glass Woman, who was indeed letting them go. ‘Never hurts. A couple fewer dead people on the battlefield.’

  The First Doctor became suddenly serious, stood straighter, seemed to be looking at him now with a new respect. ‘So that’s what it means,’ he said, ‘to be a Doctor of War.’ And he smiled in appreciation of what his future self was capable of.

  It was a generous interpretation. But wasn’t today about generous interpretations? The Doctor smiled at his old self. ‘You were right, you know. The universe generally fails to be a fairy tale.’ He put an arm around the old boy, and, pleasingly, he accepted it. ‘But that’s where we come in.’

  And around them, as the Glass Woman looked on, accepting … the battlefield became a celebration.

  16

  The Long Way Round

  The Doctors, their footsteps dogged by the Glass Woman, spent the best part of a day wandering the sights of the former battlefield, unobserved. Every now and then they would stop, and have to deal with their mutual pain, the doom that was still rushing towards them, but then they would rally. The hope all around them kept them going. They talked at great length, about old friends and foes and things yet to come, for one of them at least. The Glass Woman watched and recorded, and never decided to be Bill – or to let Bill speak for herself, whichever it was – which was perhaps for the best, because the Doctor still didn’t know what he thought about that.

  At the setting of the sun, the Doctors found themselves on a small hill above the lines, watching the troops play an improvised football match. Along the way they had found sweet tea in army mugs, with a dash of whiskey in there somewhere, and decided that there was enough for them to share. They stood there and drank it together. In the distance, some other soldiers were singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. The Doctor recalled that a friend of his who’d compiled a collection of fairy tales in the Scottish language had begun each one with ‘in the days of auld lang syne’, meaning what was old a long time ago, or ‘once upon a time’.

  The First Doctor was looking at the setting sun, at the long shadows it cast. ‘“Oh, look, it’s dark,”’ he quoted. ‘“My day is done”.’

  The Doctor recognised the poem. ‘“The moon so cold was once the sun”.’

  ‘“Each longed-for day that comes at last …”’

  ‘“Becomes, too soon, the longed-for past.”’

  They clinked their mugs together. ‘Borusa,’ sighed the First Doctor.

  ‘Worst poet ever.’

  ‘Absolutely the worst.’ The First Doctor nodded to the battlefield. ‘Remarkable, isn’t it? Truly remarkable.’

  ‘Tomorrow they’ll all be fighting again, of course.’

  ‘And it seems there will be no more Christmas truces.’

  The Doctor didn’t want to tell him that the following year there were attempts, attempts which were cruelly stamped out, that there had been executions about Christmas. His eyes sought out Archie, somewhere safe out there, but he could no longer find him. He looked to the Glass Woman. ‘But it happened, that’s the point. This, all of this, actually happened.’

  She inclined her head. It was fixed now. He had been allowed his final stitch. Then she turned, and gestured to nearby, where stood the First Doctor’s TARDIS, and his own.

  ‘I think, Doctor,’ said the First Doctor, ‘it is time we returned to our battle.’

  The Doctor felt fear grip him once more. ‘You really think so?’

  The First Doctor grasped his own lapels. ‘The good fight must go on. It never stops. No. So, we cannot stop either. Can we?’ It was a pointed question.

  The Doctor didn’t feel up to answering it. Instead, he grimly shook the man’s hand. The power of their contact flared energy between them, flared the flame on their palms again. They both had to take a step back. They had done their damage to the timelines. It had been good damage. It had been poetry. But they must not insult that moment of grace by pushing their luck.

  ‘You haven’t decided yet, have you?’ the First Doctor said.

  ‘I can’t do this for ever. There has to be an end.’

  ‘But does it have to be today?’

  ‘Why not? Why not right here, at the only war that ever turned into a Christmas party? I could do worse.’

  ‘Why do you think the TARDIS brought you to me, hmm?’

  At least he’d finally gotten on board with the idea that she could do that. But the Doctor had to grudgingly admit he might have a point. She had, after all, risked universal disaster
to unite them. She couldn’t have known that instead she’d get universal justice. ‘No idea.’

  ‘Perhaps it was so I could set you an example.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Hold tight to what you believe and jump into the dark. Isn’t that what you said?’

  ‘You’re going to change, then?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think I am ready now.’

  The Doctor allowed himself a smile of relief. So he didn’t remember this moment of not wanting to regenerate simply because they had met, and the natural forgetfulness brought on by such meetings had worked its magic on them. The First Doctor was not shortly to cause a cosmic catastrophe that would have made the Doctor’s memories of anything beyond his first life a mere fiction.

  ‘But I should like to know,’ the old man continued, ‘are you?’

  All the Doctor could give him was a sad smile. ‘You’ll find out. The long way round.’

  The First Doctor raised his nose, in that dinosaur way of his, as if he was about to argue, but then subsided again. His sense of fairness had prevailed. ‘Whatever you decide … good luck. Doctor.’

  ‘Goodbye. Doctor.’

  Honour had been accorded in both directions. There were to be no silly names, right at the end, and no talk of ridiculous warrior titles.

  The First Doctor nodded, turned, marched off towards his TARDIS without looking back again. His mind had been made up by this whole poetic curlicue, thank goodness. The Doctor could feel the change welling up inside him again, demanding its due. He looked to his palm. There was the fire. He clenched his fist. When he opened it again, the flame was gone. All it would take was a continuing insistence on his part, and then, at some point, the flame would not reappear, the change would disconnect from him, this body and mind would be left alone to die. He would not be collected into the Matrix on Gallifrey as the Glass Woman had collected the denizens of Earth. He would die a more traditional death than any of her subjects, than any stay-at-home Time Lord. It was, in some ways, what his story had always been leading to.

  But he’d always had such trouble with endings.

  He heard cheers from some distance away. A party of British soldiers were heading back to their trenches, still celebrating. At the rear walked a familiar figure. Ah, there was Captain Archie! The Doctor was pretty sure he would now make it back to Cromer. The figure turned and looked around.

  He seemed to see the Doctor. Yes, he had! He was staring at him. As if he impossibly recognised the man he was impossibly seeing, somewhere in the back of his mind. Perhaps the power of the regeneration was starting to interfere with the perception filter. Whatever the explanation, the Doctor wasn’t about to argue. He raised his tin mug in a toast. Archie stood to attention and saluted him back. The Doctor smiled at the splendid chap. Then Archie turned and walked off into the gathering dusk.

  The noise of a TARDIS launch made the Doctor turn to look. The First Doctor’s TARDIS was vanishing. Off back to the Antarctic he went – if the old fool had remembered where the Fast Return Switch was. The Doctor sat on some crates and folded his coat around him. Snow had begun to fall, great flurries of it. Was this an apt place for him to die? He didn’t want to be cold as he did it. He was sure his former self would want him to keep warm. On the edge of falling into a sleep from which he might never wake, he heard a voice from behind him. ‘You okay?’

  It was the voice of Bill.

  17

  Fear Makes Companions of Us All

  The First Doctor held on to the console of his TARDIS as it plunged back through the Time Vortex. He could feel the change starting … in that he could feel sensations he had never experienced before and did not understand. He also felt very cold, although his hands were glowing with energy. He hoped that showy nonsense would be over before his young friends saw him. He was pretty sure he was going back to them. ‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘Here we go. The long way round. Hold tight.’

  But he couldn’t hold on to the console in that moment. His grip failed him and he fell, but only to the floor, so far. He lay there looking up at the intricate design of the white ceiling fittings. He was aware of the time rotor slowing to a stop. He was aware of the TARDIS landing. He was aware of an indeterminate length of time before he heard a key in the lock, and the door opening, and then his young friends Polly and Ben were rushing in. They were fussing and fussing, saying things, in the way his beloved humans did, but he was away now, on his journey, the memories of his last hours informing him and yet also fading. His journey would go on, for such a long time. He would change so much. He had so much to do. He had to change to do it. That was something that would always be true about him.

  It was far from being all over.

  Okay? The Doctor opened his eyes. You okay, was that what Bill—or the thing that said it was Bill—had asked? ‘Oh, you know,’ he replied at last. ‘Basically dying.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ she said.

  The Doctor thought for a moment, then allowed her a smile. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Scary, handsome genius from space?’ She said it just like Bill would, like she was taking the mickey.

  ‘Apart from the obvious.’

  ‘Ready. You look ready.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘Choose.’

  The Doctor nodded. He set down his tin mug for a soldier to find and use. ‘Shall we go for one last stroll, Miss Potts?’

  She smiled, and he realised it was because he had used her name. He kept doing that. ‘Well, it’s such a lovely evening.’ She took his arm.

  They strolled towards the TARDIS together. The battlefield around them was soon to be a battlefield again. The landscape mocked their formal gestures. They mocked it right back. ‘Little bit cold,’ the Doctor remarked.

  ‘It’s winter.’

  ‘Yes, it’s winter,’ he sighed. ‘Definitely winter.’

  ‘Do you know what the hardest thing about knowing you was?’

  ‘My superior intelligence. My dazzling charisma. Oh—my impeccable dress sense.’ He waved the tattered remains of his jacket. He hadn’t even started on the hair. He was getting a lot of pleasure from treating her as if she were the real thing. It was a comfort he could allow himself, as the end approached. They had reached the TARDIS now.

  ‘Letting you go. Letting go of the Doctor is so, so hard.’ She gently disengaged herself from him. ‘Isn’t it?’

  There! That was exactly the insight as if from a great distance that one might expect from an archive, rather than a person! ‘You see … that’s … that’s not the sort of thing the real Bill Potts would say.’

  ‘I am the real Bill!’ She was actually shouting now. ‘A life is just … memories! I’m all “her” memories! So … I’m her!’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Bill Potts found herself glaring at the Doctor in mounting frustration. She had been allowed the complete memories of her life back at the moment Professor Clay had decided she was happy with the Doctor knowing all about Testimony. There had been profuse apologies. Testimony was always, always, kind. That limitation had only been placed on her because they’d wanted her reactions from the time she’d known the Doctor, wanted to know who he really was, not what she’d made him in hindsight. She now recalled every Christmas with Heather, every birthday, the cats they’d owned, the decision to live by the sea, the decision to grow old as humans, the moment she, on her deathbed, had told Heather to go back to the stars and be free of these old bodies once again. She’d recalled the last kiss, and the whisper of water against her face, and that she had never seen Heather leave, because Heather had waited until after hope. And here was this man, this stupid, brilliant old and young man, denying her something she didn’t just believe, but knew, her own personhood. Her little immortality. More than that, here he was, being stupid enough to consider the luxury of mortality for himself. How could she show him? She had all the powers of Testimony at her command, like they all did. What could she do with that? Who was in here
with her?

  Oh. Well, all right then. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I’m going to prove it to you. I’m going to prove how important memories are. Because I’ve got a goodbye present for you.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ he snarked. ‘Will I have to pretend I like it? Because quite honestly, that rug …’

  ‘Oh, come here, you.’ She pulled him to her, to shut him up, and kissed him on the cheek. And in that moment she went back to being herself, in the shared world of far away, and gave up this glass body to the willing and actually pretty damn determined friend whose voice she’d found nearby.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Doctor,’ said a voice in his ear.

  The Doctor stepped back from the entirely different lips that had been kissing his cheek and stared at the face of a … complete stranger! No, this young woman was … familiar. No … no … He had to put a hand to his head as the memories swarmed back into him, transferred skin to skin, the memories of … an entire person, a great friend, a great travelling companion and hero, one he had forgotten! He had remembered her once before, hadn’t he? Yes, in trauma, after the battle, and then he had made himself forget again, because forgetting her had seemed so important, for her safety … and now he was looking at her face again, that concern seemed so small and ridiculous. Because this person looking at him was so utterly in charge of her own safety, and also, obviously, gone now too, into the same useful afterlife as Bill. She had faced her raven, in the end but doubtless in a surprising way, with style. She’d probably defeated that raven and found an entirely different one. She was smirking as if she had, anyway. Her face was that familiar beloved mixture of astuteness and concern, and there was, as before, not a straight line anywhere on her. ‘Clara!’

  ‘Hello, you stupid old man,’ she said.

  ‘You’re back!’ He wanted to let her inside his head and show her how much of her was in here now. It was like she was dancing through his neurons. The sound of her voice and the things they’d done together were in so many associations, so many connections to other things that he’d been shying away from lately, because they’d seemed so … dull. They had been dull because they had been without her. To see her again was to see hope. Because, after all, wasn’t the lesson of her story, the story he had been without, that there was always hope? ‘You’re in my head. All my memories, they’re all back!’