Archive of Our Own ^beta

A bare rock, too small to be a proper planet, winds a lonely orbit around the Silver Devastation where Gallifrey once shone orange against the unstill blackness. On this rock stands a blue box. Long ago, it traveled through time and sang through space. Now, it is just a blue box - but at the same time, it isn't just a box.

It is also a tomb.

In certain times and places in Earth culture, people lay flowers at the graves of the dead. In others, they leave sacrifices. On other planets, people leash guard animals to the grave to watch over the dead, or keep fires perpetually burning around it.

The Doctor never set much store by custom. His tomb is no different.

Each visitor leaves a tribute. Here lies a wooden steering wheel, left by a young midshipman; there grows a cutting from the Forest of Cheem. There is a great shattered jar with a neatly folded nun's habit inside, and an assortment of neural relays from 51st century spacesuits.

Jack left behind a nearly indestructible music box, forever crooning Glenn Miller into the dark.

The Doctor stands stiffly next to Jack in front of the derelict TARDIS, so like Jack's, yet so clearly lacking the spark of life. Some of the tributes around the tomb he recognizes; for others, he has no memories to give them meaning. A few items, like the meters-long pink feather and the ornately carved wooden spear, make him long to ask Jack who left them here and why, but he's not sure he has the right to know.

"How did he die?" the Doctor says suddenly.

"You didn't die to save the universe. Not even to save a galaxy." Jack seems to be lost in something warm, luminous, and greater than himself, like a dust mote caught in a sunbeam. "You gave your life to save one person."

The Doctor silently thanks him for not saying "just one person." He looks at the TARDIS, imagines that the windows are staring at him blankly like a corpse's eyes. "I haven't got anything to leave behind," he says.

Jack shrugs. "There's nothing here that's really dead."

The Doctor's not sure he believes that, or that he ever will. He's a different man. Jack's TARDIS is not his companion who once sang for him alone, and wheeled her singular dance across the Vortex. He steps forward, arms spread wide to embrace his TARDIS in body if not in mind, and presses a kiss to the door. The wood is cold beneath his lips. In this moment, he feels very old. He realizes he's tired of dead things.

The Doctor breaks away from his tomb, and turns toward Jack and a new life.