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Missing scene from S3x09, "Family of Blood". Spoilers, obviously.
It wasn't the thought of dying; it was the thought of going on.
Quite the opposite of how he'd always thought it worked. To die like any other man, whether for King and Country as the Headmaster said or at peace, of age, in bed—none of that was supposed to be so terrible when you thought of living on, in a better world. With a grander perspective and greater power, greater freedom, greater everything. And it didn't seem terrible, those deaths. With your boots on or without, although of course anyone would prefer to die at home, with family, with friends. He thought there was nothing wrong about that, nothing cowardly. But either way. Death was not the end.
What had sounded soothing enough from the pews of St George's on a Sunday was now the worst twist of his execution: he would go on, and who knew how much John Smith might continue to see and hear and feel in the person of the Doctor? Whether he might share in that, perhaps locked away or perhaps allowed to speak, occasionally. Like a puppet, an actor's mask.
A branch broke under his foot, and he stumbled.
He didn't know how far he could trust what lay in his past tense. Two months, Martha Jones had said. Two months only. The rest was only sketched in, like Nottingham. Not even enough to make conversation with a dancing-partner. And yet no matter how they insisted he wasn't real, the watch had shown him that he could have been. As real in the end as anyone else, in every way that mattered.
Hadn't it? The voice was whispering about possibilities and futures, too much for him to understand.
John Smith was not a coward. No man had been made to face a thing like this, never really, never with proof. The kindest thing about all those sermons had been their unbelievability—he could keep them some paces away, never forced to walk through these dark woods alone towards them. No pastor could divide him as Martha had, split and shadowy. Another man had spoken with his mouth, in that dead cottage. Another creature. He'd lost his grip that easily, the watch warm in his palm from Timothy's hand.
He was ashamed of crying. Standing before the scarecrows with the boys had not been like this. I faced death then, for all I knew. I stood my ground. And, deeper, the whisper of that other, without passion other than a springy slivery curiosity: but you could not fire. He was ashamed of his tears but far beyond the point where shame could stop him. But they had stopped falling, because there was no time left for them, and nothing else in him; he was dry.
No fiat, he had wanted to tell Joan. No giving up the course of my life, my body and my soul. For fire and ice and rage.
But she was too absolutely brave. She had kept her composure while he had lost his—but she had lost before, and he had not. You could not lose what you never had. Two months old, that was all he was. And he had used up too much time on denial and dramatics when he already knew what he had to choose. He could not fire his gun and he could not let the bombs keep falling. Of course not. Nobody could really do a thing like that, no matter how idyllic the future in the watch had seemed.
The light that continually fell from above illuminated the way to the field, in between the trees by flashes brighter and darker, and he felt suddenly naked and terrified even as he knew he was dying, that the watch was doing and had done its work. His body could die and it would all be for nothing, he thought, all for nothing. That was the last gleam of John Smith, the tip of the candle wick, engulfed by air.
The Family had done nothing that others weren't guilty of. Crave the eternity of a Time Lord, certainly, but that was hardly a novelty. But they craved it at the wrong time, when his patience, eaten away by time and circumstance, was at an end. John Smith had consumed it, and it was for that lost life that he lost himself to fury.
It was selfish and it helped absolutely nothing. There was no reason not to show them mercy, more mercy, except that he was under that weight of years once more, and a small part of himself that had always been a fantasy before was crushed now. I'm capable of that too, he had told Joan. He'd been entirely sincere. But humans were defined by limitations that he no longer had. Humans might rage, and he thought perhaps John Smith had, inside himself—although he needed no outside explanations for what he'd done. Sheer weakness, though, led a man to so many places that a more powerful being might not go. I'm capable of that too, I can choose it, I can stumble and stutter in the ways you found charming, I can speak in his voice and say what he would say—but not because I have to say it. Not because the alternatives were unthinkable. The Doctor knew alternatives were infinite. He was living one now.
John Smith had not chosen to become the Doctor again; he had been driven to it. That did not make the man a coward, the Doctor thought. He still felt echoes, like the shadow of the girl in the mirror, whispers passing through the bottom of his mind. Dissolution might have been kinder—forgetting—easier on both of them (or were they really one? He could hardly discuss it with anyone). Moving on was as good as forgetting, or as close to it as Time Lords got.
But he did not forget.
In the end the thought that came to him was plain and Earthly, surfacing from the past. Like the man himself. The Doctor was like paper, came the whisper, on which—in one small part—a photograph had now developed, after the right exposure to the light: an image of a man whose face was almost his.
Except around the eyes.
There is a crying in my heart
That never will be still,
Like the voice of a lonely bird
Behind a starry hill.
There is a crying in my heart
For what I may not know,
Infinite crying of desire
Because my feet are slow.
My feet are slow, my eyes are blind,
My hands are weak to hold.
It is the universe I seek
All life I would enfold.
There is a crying in my heart
That never will be still,
Like the voice of a lonely bird
Behind a starry hill.
Note: "The Cry of Man" - Mary Margaret O'Hara recorded this for Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys. From the liner notes:
Here is a musical setting of a poem by Harry Kemp (1883-1960). Kemp was famous (or infamous) as a bohemian and boxcar poet. He lived much of his life in Greenwich Village. He also lived in shacks, rode freight cars, and as a young man, ran away to sea.
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