Author's Notes:

Inspired by this magnificent poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay (the most anguished howl of grief I have ever read in rhyme), and the extraordinary 1985 miniseries 'Edge of Darkness.'

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, - but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Dirge Without Music, Edna St. Vincent Millay

"And this is the way the Cardinals wore it," he said, adjusting the sash around his neck.

She leaned her chin on her hand, her elbow on the solitary table in the TARDIS wardrobe. "Wasn't that uncomfortable?"

He made a 'pah' sound with his lips. "Probably. Actually, now you come to mention it... yes." He pulled the heavy headdress off and rolled his shoulders to work the kinks out. "Never liked these things."

"You were never a Cardinal, then?"

"Naah. I was Lord High President, though."

Her hand hit the table, her eyes wide. "No!"

He grinned at her. "Didn't take it seriously, though." His mood shifted, a shadow passing over his smile. "Never took it seriously."

"Dad," she stood firmly in his silence, walking over to where he stood, trainers sticking incongruously from under orange Gallifreyan robes. "How did you wear them?" she asked softly, hesitantly.

His dark eyes met hers. "As little as possible."

Her head tilted, birdlike and delicate. The silence pulsed between them, waiting for them to fill it.

He sighed, and dropped the headdress to the floor. "I hated Gallifrey."

She let the silence ask her questions for her.

"My... our people were parochial, arrogant and confident in their superiority. I felt... somewhat differently." He sat heavily on the edge of the table.

"I'm here," she said gently.

His jaw tightened. "Aren't you just."

"What's that?" She had stilled, like an animal sensing danger. Like a warrior.

"Hmm?" he raised his head from the open panel to give her a quizzical look. "What?"

"Someone is laughing," she frowned. "Someone... close?"

It was his turn to frown. "You hear laughing?"

She nodded emphatically. "A woman."

He shrugged. "You're the only woman on board," he pointed out. "Everyone else is gone, now."

"I know," she scoffed. "But I can hear it."

He stared at her for a beat longer, before turning back to the wiring with the sonic screwdriver. "I think you need some sleep, little missy," he muttered.

She jumped down from her perch on the rails, her hand held up for silence. "There it is again!" she exclaimed. "Laughing!"

His eyes flickered from her, to the screwdriver in his hand. "I wonder..."

Well, it was purely in the nature of speculation. Wouldn't hurt to try... "Jenny?" he called. "Come here?"

Her walk was jaunty — as jaunty as his sixth body's. "What do you think it is?" she said, a hint of worry in her tone. "Are we under attack?"

"No, no," he assured her. "Just... tell me if you hear it again..."

And he reattached the haendric capacitor cables with the sonic screwdriver.

She grabbed his shoulder. "There! A woman, giggling!" she said urgently.

He gaped at her for a moment, before throwing his own head back and laughing, laughing until the tears came.

"Dad? Dad?" Her voice sounded concerned. "Dad, what is it? Dad, tell me!"

"Aaaah," he wiped his eyes. "Oh, my Jenny. My amazing Jenny. You're a marvel, you know that?"

"What?" Her jaw was set in frustration. It was disconcertingly like looking in a mirror.

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her slightly. "The TARDIS is slightly ticklish. Always has been. I've learned to ignore it — when I have to do repairs."

He felt the muscles in her shoulders go slack. "I'm... hearing the TARDIS?" he said weakly.

He gave her one solemn nod. "You're hearing the TARDIS."

There was a moment of breathlessness between them, the connection between their gazes almost palpably physical. She took a long, shuddering breath, before whooping like a child.

"I. Am. Hearing. The. TARDIS!" she hollered, and he lifted her in his arms and span her until they were both laughing too hard to continue.

His feet stirred the dust on the dead world. Hers made no impact at all.

"Why did you do it?" she asked him.

"Do what?"

"Treat me that way?"

He stopped. "Jenny."

"I'm your daughter," she said with some rancour. "I was a newborn, a child. It wasn't my fault, the way I was made."

"I know."

"You treated me badly." She folded her arms.

His face landed in his hands. "I know. Jenny, I'm sorry."

She watched him, eyes so like his, hard and lost and alone. He rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes briskly, before inhaling sharply and straightening.

"You're always sorry," she said levelly.

He started walking again, his feet creating eddies in the ashes of a civilisation.

"Yes," he said, and his voice was hollow. "I always am."

"Now what?" she asked hesitantly, the helmic regulator handle in her nervous grip.

"Now!" he leapt around the console, his face a rictus of glee. "Now, kiddo, we set the temporal co-ordinates!" He pointed triumphantly at the dial. "Where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere?" she breathed.

"Anywhere!" he confirmed, his eyes twinkling. "The whole of time and space is yours, my girl."

"I want..." she screwed up her nose. "I don't know!"

He jammed his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels. His expression glowed, watching her encompass the idea of anywhere. "I'll make it easier," he offered. "What would you like to do?"

She bit her lip to stop the smile. "Could we..."

"What? Anything!" he said, a bit too quickly.

"Could we go somewhere where you can fly?" her voice thrummed with longing.

She'd said the right thing. His face flickered from expectant glee to pride. "Aw, brilliant! Haven't done that in... well, literally, ages. Not ice-ages, more like dark ages..."

"Done... flying?" she followed him as he scurried around the console. "Where?"

"Here," he grabbed her hand, pulled her to the dials. "Now, we're going to... low gravity, yep, lessee, Bethronal Keppit, in the... the..."

He looked up. "Jenny?"

"What did you think you were doing?" he roared at her. She stood impassive.

He pulled at his hair, his reddened eyes wild. "Taking a bullet! For me! For me! Jenny, I regenerate! I had no idea — no-one knew if you did! No-one knew the first thing about your physiology! I would have survived! And you, I — I said those things to you, horrible things, and you had no reason to... You — you, Jenny, you..."

He trailed off as she walked towards him. He gave a half-hearted sob, and turned away from her, sitting in a cloud of misery on the pilot's chair. "Why did you do it?" he managed. His voice was quavering, he noted with horror.

"Dad," she knelt before him, took his hands. "Dad, I saw him. No-one else did. I couldn't think of anything else to do."

"You could have killed him before!" he wept in rage. "Why did... why did I stop you before? Why did I think I knew better? You were right... Jenny, Jenny, so new, so young, my little Jenny..."

"Shhh," she squeezed his hands. "Dad, listen to me."

He fell against her, his head butting her chin. She wrapped her arms about his shaking shoulders. "Dad, you toldme."

"And you listened," he whispered hoarsely. "You listened to your dad, didn't you."

"Yes," she smiled. "I listen to my Dad. He's cleverer than I am, after all."

"No. No, I'm not."

She gave him a little shake. "Stop this, Dad. You don't mean this. You couldn't have killed Cobb — you couldn't have watched me kill him. You never would."

"Never would," he choked. "A man who never..."

"See?" she shook him again. "Please, Dad."

"I'm a dangerous, stupid fool who's lived too long, Jenny," he managed. "You know... you knew, even then... that I could, I had... I did, worse than you can ever imagine... I am..."

"All soldiers together," she confirmed. "But someone cleverer than I am once told me that we always have a choice."

"Can I choose for you too? Should I always choose for everyone?" His voice was heavy with bitterness. He pushed away from her, long spindly arms wrapping about his knees.

She shook her head in amusement. "Don't dads do that for their kids?"

He gave a wordless cry of horror and grabbed her again, tucking her head under his. "Jenny, Jenny, Jenny, I'm so sorry, so, so sorry I failed you, I failed you and I never really knew you, I never let you know me, and I'm sorry I called you an echo, I'm sorry I lied, I'm sorry I never told you the whole truth, I'm sorry, sweetheart, so sorry..."

"Dad," her voice was muffled against the soft, buttery leather of his trenchcoat. "Dad, you never lied to me."

"Yes, yes I did," he gasped, his words tumbling and sputtering. "I did, I called you..."

"Dad," she looked up at his ravaged face, at his maddened eyes and wild hair. "I am an echo."

"That's it!" he gave her a proud smile. "You're getting it!"

She beamed. "I really got it, that time! Do you think I could, one day..."

He shrugged. "Don't see why not. You've got the basics now... soon you'll be sending fully-formed sentences."

"And images?" she pressed, her eyes wide with hope and expectation.

"Indubitably!" he chucked her chin fondly. "Once more, for luck?"

"Da-ad," she moaned in exhaustion, but put her small, strong fingers to his temples anyway. "Contact."

"Contact." His lip quirked. "I can guess you're tired, no need to send that," he told her. "Try telling me something, anything at all that comes into your head."

Her mind was like a butterfly, flittering rapidly against his, unsteady but so familiar, so right. "Uhhh," she hedged, her brow wrinkling. The brow that looked like at least two of his.

"Anything at all," he repeated, and closed his eyes.

She was so light against his old, scarred mind — so new and curious and excited. "Dad, I can't think of anything!" she burst out, and then began to giggle. His traitor mouth began to form a grin, but he managed to school it, keeping his eyes firmly closed. He knew if he looked at her, they would both lose their composure utterly.

"Go on," he urged her gently, trying to keep the chuckle from his voice. "No really, just the first thing that pops into your head."

Love you, Dad

He was suddenly trying to swallow a needrax egg. "I..."

Her fingers were torn from his temples. "Oh Dad, sorry, I didn't mean — I know it's too soon, I mean..."

Her yellow hair had come slightly undone as she back-tracked in agitation, babbling nineteen-to-the-dozen

just as he did

pulling her hands through the soft blonde strands

just as he did

small hands with long, strong, nimble fingers

he'd owned them, once

the soft blonde hair he had worn a time or two

he even knew the cowlick at the temple

"Jenny," he grabbed her hands, "Jenny!"

"And so, I'm so sorry if I stepped over a line, Dad... we're not really there yet, I know, I'm so sorry, but it was the first thing that..."

He placed his fingers on her temple and her babbling stopped abruptly, her small, pink mouth open in shock, her small hands trembling.

Love you too, Jenny. My little Jenny.

"Daddy..." she breathed, her face as open as the summer sky. A special smile — one for him alone. A real daughter's smile for her Dad.

"But Jenny," he opened his eyes to look at her. "You're dead."

That special smile never faltered, her eyes still full of her joy. "I know."

"Why are you doing this?" he growled.

"Doing what?" she twirled, showing off the skirts.

"Why are you here, in my mind, in the TARDIS?" He followed as she picked up the heavy robes and swished from the costume room to the console room. "Am I just torturing myself? Talking to nothing?"

She studied the TARDIS Information System. "Of course you are," she said fondly. "Where next?"

He stared through her, his hearts beating so loudly he could hear the blood rushing through his ears. "Take off my robes," he said finally. "Go get changed."

"But Dad, if you were a Prydonian, shouldn't I be..."

"I said TAKE THEM OFF!" he howled.

She gave him a sharp look. "Dad, stop this."

"Please, Jenny," he pleaded. "You stop this! Leave me alone, stop flogging me with what could have been, with what I did wrong..."

"Not you," she gave a long-suffering sigh. "Dad, not you, how many times do I need to tell you? Not your fault. I chose."

"I told you that you... I treated you..."

"And I chose." She turned to face him fully — a young Prydonian student in her father's robes. She plucked at them. "These are too short for you."

"I was shorter in my first body," he said, for lack of anything more pertinent to say. "Jenny..."

"Dad," she tilted her head — her birdlike head, so like his, always moving, looking, searching. "It wasn't your fault. Let it go."

He gazed at her helplessly through a rising curtain of water. "But if I..."

She nodded. "Let me go, Dad. I got places to run." She gave him that smile, that special smile, a daughter proud of her father. "I want to learn to fly, Dad," she said softly.

"I know," he gasped. "I know you want to fly, sweetheart. You'll... oh, Jenny, you'll fly, you'll fly higher than anyone..."

She took his hand. Her skin was as cool as his. "Teach me the words, Dad. Teach me how to say goodbye."

He gripped her little hand, smoothed her hair, crushed her shoulders, kissed her forehead again and again until it was wet with his tears. "Jenny, Jenny..." he wept. "I..."

"Save planets," she whispered. "Rescue civilisations. Defeat terrible creatures. And run. That's what you do."

"There's an outrageous amount of running involved," he managed breathlessly, but his traitorous voice broke on the last word. He breathed in her yellow hair (so like his, just like his), felt two hearts beating inside her, a percussive counterpoint to his own. "I... can't, Jenny."

She regarded him sadly. "I'm not your last chance, Dad. Neither was Koschei."

His head whipped up. "You can't possibly know that name..."

"I'm not here," she reminded him. "I'm in your head. Remember?"

"Oh yes," he choked. "In my head."

"Dad," she kissed him on the cheek softly — a butterfly batting against glass. "Teach me..."

He couldn't meet her eyes. "The Gallifreyan for good-bye," he finished bitterly.

She nodded slowly.

Moving as though his limbs were made of lead, he kissed again the forehead he had worn once, and cradled her, his little girl he never knew. He could feel the moments that might have been theirs. They were flying from him like leaves in a breeze.

Then his fingers slipped to her temples - and he stopped. "I can't say it, Jenny," he whispered. "Not out loud."

"Then say whatever pops into your head," she whispered back.

She gave him that smile again, the smile only for him, before his eyes slid shut.

The Doctor dropped the headdress onto the console, his footsteps echoing hollowly on the grating of the empty TARDIS.

The robe he had brought out from the costume room was flung over the pilot's chair. He picked it up and stroked the orange fabric reflexively, thinking of a shared loss, a shared suffering.

~FIN~