//------------------------------// // The Sun Rises: Epilogue // Story: An Equestrian Girl needs a Doctor // by jidbrony //------------------------------// Epilogue He stopped and thought about it. He thought that changing would either be difficult, or worse, the usual, he would pretend he was a completely different person to cope with regeneration. Neither was the case. He was still the same Doctor as he was before, the same Doctor as his First incarnation, the same as his Second, the same as his Fourth, the same as his Fifth incarnation, he was everybody he was before. They were all a part of him. Feeling balanced for the first time in a long time in his life, he admitted a change of hearts. He was ready to move forward, without any regrets or hesitation. Then as if to confirm this, he saw a very familiar figure by the TARDIS console. He was a tall, slender man in a brown pinstriped suit, with wild chestnut hair, prominent sideburns, and mysterious amber eyes. The Doctor’s mouth opened in surprise at the sight of the taller man: “You!” The taller man looked up at the Doctor, and replied, ‘yep, me!” The Doctor could not believe what he was seeing! “What are you doing here? You can’t be real!” Never did the Doctor ever see a previous incarnation separate from himself, unless of course one of them went to the same place from different times. “I’m not - well… sort of.” the prior incarnation took a moment to gather his words. “I’m not here, but I’m a part of you...and I always will be.” The Doctor huffed: “Came here to gloat?” That would be so like his past incarnation, who, taking much after his Fourth and Sixth selves, sometimes had few qualms of projecting an open air of superiority. The Tenth looked down for a minute, and then shook his head. “No. I...I came to say goodbye, to her, this old TARDIS..and to tell you...be there for her.” “I will always be with her!” “Not the TARDIS. Her,” he nudged his head towards a screen showing Sunset Shimmer. “She needs you, more than anything else right now.” “A tad uncouth wouldn’t you say.” Ten shrugged. “Hey what can I say I attracted nutters-but look at you, with that bow tie and jacket, look like one of those highschool nerds befriending the stereotypical Queen Bee. Not the weirdest match we’ve had. Eleven began to get nostalgic. “Yeah-we’ve had quite a list of companions,” he mumbled, thinking about eveyrthing and everyone he lost. “Listen. Be there for her. Because whatever you’re feeling right now...I think she is too?” The Doctor looked at him questioningly, without so much as saying a word. What did he mean by that? She seemed like a smug and self-assured teenaged girl to him. The Tenth seemed to understand this, and took another moment to think about what he wanted to say next. “I know that this is new, and you are probably scared, and confused...but something about her...I think she is too. Like...she isn’t a part of this world, of this reality. And I think...I think you should guide her through it.” “And beside-” Ten said before he left. “If you think about, she hasn’t done anything that bad like he did. Food for thought” The Eleventh nodded. “The one we traveled with.” He nodded, not saying anything in direct reply. “Anyway, keep watch over her, be there for her, and forgive her…Trust me, that part will be hard.” “Atnoment must come before forgiveness.” Eleven said. “Wasn’t that what you were all about?” “Yeah-but I never got to the forgiving part. Especially, to be honest, to myself.” He then took a time to stroke the TARDIS walls, and he sighed. “It’s never going to be easy. Moving on.’ The Doctor remembered again how he felt back when he was this person. He said thoughtfully, “no, until you’ve finally settled in the next chapter, and then...you have to move again and turn again.” ‘Yeah… But I think you’ll see me again-before the end, I think you’ll see all of them’ he sighed again. “Still….You know, I don’t want to go.” And he was gone. “And I won’t either,” the Doctor smiled amid stinging eyes. “We never did.” Normally, the Doctor felt revulsion towards his previous incarnations when he was so new, as they were often a challenge to a new incarnation’s very definition and existence, but now? Now that he actually had a last word from an aspect of his psyche? He felt differently. But he was still no longer that man. He was no longer going to be the man who regrets. The memory of pain was fading from him as his new self was beginning to complete. He just wanted to run away from any of it. He meant to forget the pain of it, all those fine details that gnawed away at him. He was now the Man who Forgets. And he was going to dash away from world to world until he forgot every regret that ever weighed him down and with this new companion by his side, rough around the edges definitely, perhaps needing a good teacher or mentor to help her out the two would make some grand stories together. “Yeah...You know what?” He stepped away from the console and grinned that cheeky grin of his: “I want to go!” A new song began to continue the ongoing story. Salvete Unidecem! *** In another place, Samsara, Washington State, as the sun continued to set, a new crisis beset other people far away. A petite young woman, nearly 30, with bleached hair and skin, Aryanne was writing down notes on a schedule pad, giving out in detail everything she had examined. So far, there seemed to be no security concerns, but her superior, Jo Lupo, always had a second opinion. Even the faintest displacement was concerning to her. Aryanne was tired, and in her opinion, overworked, and given that her job was to maintain the local Peacekeeping brigade as well as check all security scanners due to the unexpected disappearance of the last occupant of this job, and to check for potential outside intruders because the Guard Leader also unexpectedly disappeared, she probably was indeed overworked. Born to a Greek father and an Indian mother, who both followed a cult at one point, Aryanne was a former member of Our Town before she was bribed by an intergovernmental organization to work on the Eureka facility. Original, she was in charge of designing the software of the base; however, as each day passed, it became less and less clear what her actual job was. Her previous job in Our Town was not exactly ideal, but it was at least clear what she was supposed to do there. But then again, she grew to dislike the management of Our Town beyond any words in the English language (but she could think of some in Hindi). The previous employers severely underpaid her for her extremely difficult software design tasks and threatened to leak Aryanne’s past and crime records to the rest of Our Town if she didn’t comply or even so much as criticized them, and also threatened to sue her and spread the word so that nobody would ever hire Aryanne again. Aryanne decided she didn’t care enough about the opinions of the populace of Our Town to stick with them. She would never have thought that a UN organization would have saved her life from the wrath of Our Town, as almost immediately after an event involving massive embezzlement and an unflattering meme of the leadership, U.N.I.T. agents approached her hired her for the Eureka Facility tasks before Aryanne could be subject to full conversion. Aryanne’s original tasks were mostly coding and developing software so that nobody could hack into it and steal the billions that went into Samsara’s R&D, or worse, steal its secrets. They actually paid her enough for her surgery to lose all melanin in her once notably dark skin, which Aryanne believed was bad for her Kharma, according to the teachings of her mother. Now, Aryane believed she was truly beautiful, though this change came with the unflattering callsign “Michael Jackson” on Samsara. Granted, it wasn’t without its downsides. For one thing, on a very regular basis, a young man would approach Aryanne and frequently ask her the same questions, over and over again, about stuff she didn’t know about. She kept saying that the bosses didn’t tell her everything, which was true, and he kept asking like she wasn’t telling her the truth. It was as if he knew the answer and she didn’t. Then as she got bored with the almost daily and repetitive interviews, she began a more seductive approach, simply to spice things up a bit. As a result, she got probably the most boring boyfriend she ever had in her entire life. The there was the fact that her Swastika tatoos on her hips, which she got as a symbol of divinity from the Hinduism-derived cult she was raised with, meant something very different in parts of the USA outside of Our Town. No single-piece suits for her. She’d have to wear a bikini top and shorts when partaking in aquatic activities, and she wasn’t entirely comfortable with that. Then there was the fact that U.N.I.T. was always severely understaffed. As more and more of its soldiers and workers disappeared, she ended up taking more and more of their daily tasks. The increase of power seemed nice at first, especially because she was paid more for the extra work and possessed more authority on more the lazy slackers on-base, but eventually, the sheer amount of work became tiring. If this was what power meant, then she wanted no part of it. Just a lot of money. And sex. That was nice too. Jo kurtly handed her a list. “I have a list of items we need, these are all to be sent to the bunker immediately.” Aryanne looked upon this list and frowned, with tired eyes. “I can’t spare these parts...we’re going over budget as it is.” Indeed they were, they were spending far more than they originally needed. Jo Lupo was not one to be reseasoned with, and now this time more than ever. She huffed, and simply said, in an eerily less commanding voice than usual, “you’ll notice that the requisition is signed by Vardos himself. If you want to take this up with him…” Aryanne felt a chill go down her spine: “Very well, I’ll have supplies deliver this stuff by dawn. We’re going to spend a lot replacing them, but I think-” “By midnight,” Jo cut her off. “The order specifies midnight.” Aryanne huffed, feeling very defeated. “Yes. By midnight.” With that Jo Lupo left the list and stormed out leaving Aryanne alone, a massive headache beginning to form. It was days like this Aryanne really hated her job from the ridiculous demands to the overkill from management, it felt like it would never end . Still as the motto went... It wasn’t the end...It was only….The beginning. To be continued.....