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They
tidy up, once they're safely back in this universe, and everything has settled down, even the mulberry patch whose existence
he can't explain. There's so little of Nephew left, only a few shattered pieces of his communication globe.
The Doctor knows he ought to
take those pieces back to the Oodsphere. He knows how the Ood feel about home. But he's a coward and he doesn't want Amy and
Rory with him when he goes, because the Ood will be kind to him, call him hero and he doesn't deserve it. Wherever he goes,
Ood die. There are planets where his name is a curse, and his record in those places is nothing like as bad. He's spent whole
months on Bratilisk 6 where the worst injury to occur to anyone was a stubbed toe - his. He doesn't deserve the kindness of
the Ood, not at all. So he knows he must do it.
He drops Amy and Rory off at a galactic food festival. He thinks it's the safest place
for them, and at least they'll have a good meal before everything went bad. The Doctor had no illusions about how unpleasant
the foreseeable future was going to be for them.
He lands carefully on the Oodsphere, and begins the walk to the Ood citadel. It is Ood
Sigma who greets him, or one of his children, Sigma's family all look so similar.
"Welcome, Doctor."
"Hello. I, um,"
"Come inside."
The Doctor finds himself in
an Ood circle, the telepathic voice of the Ood reaching out to him.
"I bring the body of an Ood. I knew him only as Nephew." The
Ood began to sing. To the Doctor's mind the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard was the sound of starlight through the trees,
but this comes close. And they were so grateful. "I'm sorry." Because he'd killed Nephew, as surely as he'd not saved all
those other Ood. He tries to explain, to use his mind to tell them what had happened and how it happened, and if there had
been any other way and how he wouldn't have if he'd known.
The Doctor doesn't even realise he's crying until the Ood next to
him starts talking. "You brought him back. He was gone and now he is home." The Ood word for gone, it made the hairs on the
back of his arms stand up. The Ood accepted death as part of the great circle, but if you were gone from the Oodsphere you
couldn't part of it.
"It would have been better if he were still alive."
"Yes." There was no judgement in Ood Sigma's reply. "But you tried,
and for that, we are grateful."
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