When the Sun Sets ☼ Eleven x Reader

XXIV - Sorting Seals

'Rory used to have one like that.' you noted, indicating towards the bureau on the left of the door as you walked into the office. The carpet was a muted navy blue colour, pigment stripped from it by years of evident wear. There was a tall mahogany bookcase opposite the door, stacked full with beautifully bound classics in deep shades of green, blue and red. The desk positioned in the bay window had a photo frame on the top, which the Doctor scooped up and held in his hand as you spoke. He looked up briefly, nodded over to the bureau in acknowledgement, and then craned his head back down onto the photo.

'What's so interesting about that then, hmmm?' you ask, peering over his shoulder to look at his hands. 'Oh god, another one?'

'Another one.' he repeats.

It was a picture of the field at the back of the house, with the TARDIS parked in the back. It was a candid shot, of you bending down and catching a girl of about four or five years old, while the Doctor held a small boy aloft above his head. The sun was bright, and the grass was green. It was the perfect family photo.

'I can't get over this. This whole life we seemingly have here.'

'Neither can I.' the Doctor replies. 'Although it doesn't bother me. We've got bigger fish to fry at the minute- finding this wax seal.'

He dismisses the comment quickly, and begins rooting through drawers around the room. You nod in agreement, and open the door to the bureau. With your knowledge of concepts like this, you almost expected it. A large box full of wax stamps.

'Great.'

You pulled it onto the table in the middle of the room, and the Doctor joined you on the opposite side. Spilling the stamps across the table, you began to lift them individually, and register the symbols they bore. After the first few, you discovered there were actually only a few to choose from, just a lot of duplicates. On the far end of the table, you began to line them up, stacking each of the same type behind one another. There were three. A dove, a rose and an angel. No attention was really paid to what they meant, but the piles gradually stacked up.

'Doctor, you said you needed to talk to me?' you say, letting out a breath you didn't realise you had been holding. 'Back on the TARDIS, before the Dream Lord showed up.'

'Ah, yes.' he replies. He clears his throat quickly, avoiding the subject. 'It's easier to explain to you now we're here, I think.'

You simply nodded in response, placing a dove shaped stamp on the pile.

'I didn't know when she first arrived.' he continued. 'But that little girl was more important to you than you thought.'

'Go on.'

'Did you notice anything special about her? Something that you thought at the time was a little bit... weird-y. Like you shared a connection?'

'Well,' you say, remembering Rory's comment after you'd managed to lull her to sleep so quickly. 'There were a few, why?'

'Because...  because you two are connected.' Reaching over to the desk again, and pulling the frame across towards him.

'What? How am I connected to your daughter?'

'You mean our daughter.' he emphasises, pointing down to the girl in the photo.

Your eyebrows knit together as you connect the dots. 'So... if that's our daughter, then this is our future? The Dream Lord has placed us in our own future.'

'Well, potentially one of the possible futures. Each decision you make influences the future you end up in, even as small as picking up that stamp on your left as opposed to the one on your right. There are infinite timelines and infinite universes created across those timelines depending on choices we make. It just so happens that in quite a few of them, we end up married.'

You took a minute to think about what he'd said. 'So how come Amy and Rory weren't at our wedding, then? There's no way they wouldn't be there.'

The Doctor guides the final stamp over to the correct side of the table, and you move the box back into the bureau behind you as Amy and Rory burst through the door. You look at them expectantly, awaiting whatever news they came to deliver.

'We found a calendar,' Amy says, breaking the silence. 'But there's no year on it. We don't know when we are.'

'But we do know that whoever lives here has left their kids with our mum and dad.' Rory adds. 'Just for the weekend.'

'That would explain that.' the Doctor says quietly as you join him on the near side of the table. 'I was starting to wonder where the little ones would be.'

Amy and Rory both pull a face at the mention of 'the little ones'. You registered this, and remembered they didn't know about the life you appeared to live in this 'dream'.

'We can work out when we are,' you realise, looking up to the Doctor. 'How old would you say the girl is there?'

The Doctor follows your finger to the frame, and tilts his head to one side as he thinks. 'I would say five. Ah, yes, look. She's got a birthday badge on. She was five.'

'So that means we're in at least 2019.' you reply. 'If she was born four years after we think is the present, and she's five there, that's nine years. Let me see it.'

He passes you the frame, and you flip it over to reveal the clasps that keep the photo enclosed. Pushing your thumb across them, you notice they move easily. Turning to place it down on the table, you remove the back of the frame, and the photos inside.

'I always used to do this.' you continue. 'Putting lots of photos in the back of one frame instead of filing them into an album or something. The clasps move considerably easier than they do when they're new, meaning the photo in here has been updated pretty frequently. You can tell from the ages of the photos too, look. We get older as it goes on, but not by a lot. I definitely think we're in 2019.'

'Wow.' Rory simply says. 'That was quite scary, actually.'

Amy leans in closer to his ear. 'Not really. She's just watched a lot of Sherlock.'

'But, you are right.' the Doctor says. '2019 is an incredibly good guess, all things considered.'

'So that's one of the three things sorted. You've started on the wax seals, I assume?' Amy indicates to the stamps lined up on the table.

'We did indeed!' the Doctor smiles. 'There's three different types, all as cryptic as each other. A dove, an angel and- and a rose.'

You noticed how he stammered as he said 'rose'. Remembering back to the conversation you'd had with him in the Prince's Bliss hotel, you could tell that whoever Rose was, and whatever she meant to him, it was a sore subject.

'Well, they mean nothing to me. Anyone else?' Amy says, bouncing from one foot to the other as she craned her head around the group. She was simply met with a shake of Rory's head.

'We still don't know what the wax seal is for, either. Surely there's something significant that we stamped.'

'Oh! That reminds me.' Rory says, reaching into his jacket pocket. 'There were two letters downstairs, both sealed with wax. I didn't know which one might be important, if any.'

Amy slaps his arm with the back of her hand. 'Why didn't you say something earlier?'

'Well you started banging on about calendars. I didn't think to mention it until now.'

He turns the letters over, revealing a black wax seal with the dove symbol, and a red one with an angel.

'So that makes the rose null and void.' you remark, placing them back into the box. Amy reaches for the red letter, carefully peeling back the seal and reading the contents.

'It's your wedding invites.' she comments. 'Still a bit annoyed we seemingly weren't invited.'

The Doctor scoops up the other letter, and you read it over his shoulder. Your face drops.

'Oh god.'

'What?'

'It's... it's a funeral invite.'