The Time of Change

The Doctor Stays

(author's note: unknown POV)

In the time that would come, the Doctor did everything in his power to protect the little town of Christmas. Under the watchful eye of the Papal Mainframe, of course. He grew ever cleverer, figuring out different ways to defeat those who he had always fought. He uncovered an invisible Sontaran field rover effortlessly, for, although they have always seen themselves as brilliant, the creatures were not so proficient in silence. He ordered every window in every home and building within the town to have a window placed in it, be it large or small. On the bottom of each one, he scrawled, With love, from the Doctor. When the Weeping Angels arrived, as they inevitably would, they came vengefully and in a flurry of stone, yet could do no harm. The Doctor's plan, though it seemed pointless at the time, rendered them incapable of movement. They remained frozen in place, until he sauntered along and destroyed them, one by one.

After defeat upon defeat, his foes found new, stranger ways to enter the town.

One day, a young boy played Blind Man's Bluff with his friends in the street. He wore a blindfold over his eyes, reaching out to find them by touch. As he wandered around, his fingers outstretched, he heard the sort of creaking that would come off of old wood. "Are you there?" the boy, called Barnable, called. He took a few more snow-crunching steps forward. "Hello? Am I getting warm?" Confused, he pulled the blindfold from his face, and blinked in the snowflakes. He stared up at a dark figure, seeming to be made entirely of timber. It had no eyes, and creaked and moaned with every movement. Barnable backed away, shouting, "There's another one!"

The wooden Cyberman fired a flamethrower from its arm, very narrowly missing the child. Barnable sprinted toward the clock tower in the center of the town. "There's another one!" he yelled, ringing an alarm bell when he reached the building. "Doctor! There's another one! Doctor!"

"Incinerate," the Cyberman growled mechanically. "Incinerate." Then it paused for a moment. "The Doctor is required."

The Doctor emerged, then. He had aged, more so than any of his other selves had. The hair on his head had grayed. His face was lined with worry, with laughter, with desolation. The mischievous, inquisitive shine in his blue eyes had not dimmed over time, but brightened. He leaned on a cane as he stood in the doorway of his tower home, and a smirk dominated his mouth. For the first time in a very long time, he looked old, and for the first time in his lives, he felt old. His head tilted upward a bit as he observed the scene in front of him. Barnable rushed toward him, and the Doctor tossed him a newly-repaired wooden toy rifle.

"There you go, Barnable," he said kindly. "Thanks," the boy replied, flabbergasted. "Working fine," the Doctor continued, hobbling forward a few steps. "Nice action. Don't leave it out in the rain again." Then the old man gently threw a wheeled toy to a little girl standing nearby. "Fixed the wheels and the antigrav," he told her. "The anti what?" she asked.

"Yeah, may have gone a bit far," he said, half to himself. Then he glanced at the Cyberman curiously. "Now, then, what do we have today?" The robot took a threatening step nearer, his giant foot creating a crater in the snow. "Don't you move one step farther," the Doctor commanded him. He was pointing his cane at him sternly, and it was shaking a little. "Wooden Cyberman," he commented. "Nice. Like it." He limped a bit closer, examining the creature. "Low tech, doesn't set off the alarms upstairs."

There was still around a ten-foot distance between them. All of Trenzalore was perfectly still. Then, the Cyberman raised its flamethrowing arm, but the Doctor was too quick for it. He used his sonic screwdriver on it in a flash, and the Cyber went totally still, its arm still pointed at him.

"Only a bit of tech allowed in," the Doctor said confidently. "Got in before the truce. Now, I just sent an instruction to your firearm to reverse the polarity and fire out the back end. And, as we're standing in a truth field" -- The Doctor gestured around himself -- "you will understand that I cannot be lying. If you like, you can scan my screwdriver, to verify that that's the signal I sent."

The Cyberman creaked, a bit of a whir shivering through the air, then croaked out, "Signal verified." Almost at once, its arm flipped around and pointed at its own chest. It sent a thick stream of fire directly through the wood, burning into a perfect circle. "Ah," the Doctor sighed, looking intrigued for a second. "Yes. I probably should have mentioned this doesn't work on wood." He walked over to the robot and leaned very close to its face. "You send your friends up there a message from the Doctor. You tell them, the Doctor stays."

With one finger, he pushed the Cyber, and it fell backward into the snow with a thick thunk. He smiled. "Next?"

As the days passed, and then the years, the Doctor stayed true to his word. On the fields of Trenzalore, he stood as protector of both his own people and his new home. In time, he seemed to forget he lived any other life.