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Epilogue One
‘It had to be done, Nick.’
Nick scowled across the small table at Alf. She scowled right back at him. Damn. There just wasn’t any way to beat Alf at scowling. ‘Time’s already been screwed around,’ he pointed out. ‘Why couldn’t it be a little more? Oscar should have lived.’
They were in Paris again. They had remained with Oscar after he collapsed and the Eternal disappeared and they had stuck around in the city until Robbie Ross, Oscar’s good friend, had shown up a couple days later. Apparently he’d supposed to have arrived in Paris ages ago, but had been drawn away and delayed by one of the Eternal’s manifestations. The Eternal hadn’t wanted anyone interfering with its plans while it worked on Wilde.
Oscar simply wasn’t the same after the Eternal vanished. Nick had confronted the Doctor about it, a day or two after the tumultuous events, and the Doctor had given him a grave look. But when Nick said they should do something for the writer, the Doctor had merely shaken his head.
‘We can save him!’ Nick shouted at the Time Lord, despite the fact that Oscar was sleeping on the chaise longue in the very same room. Oscar had spent a lot of time sleeping in the past couple days, and wasn’t very coherent when he was awake, names of family and friends often mixing with names of characters he’d created so that it became very confusing what was reality and what wasn’t when listening to him speak. ‘I know you can! He doesn’t have to die now, not like this. On Alpha Centauri, the medical technology -’
‘No, Nick,’ the Doctor replied gently. Alf was staying out of the way and out of the conversation, watching the Doctor’s face closely as he spoke. ‘Oscar Wilde is supposed to die on November 30th of this year, in this very hotel room. We - I cannot change that.’
‘Why not?’ Nick asked, attempting to keep a reasonable tone to his voice. ‘He just saved us all from that bastard Eternal or whatever it is; can’t we return the favour just a little bit and save his life?’
The Doctor held out a hand toward his friend, but it only wavered before he let it fall to his side again without actually touching the younger man. ‘I can’t change history,’ he said simply. ‘Neither could Oscar. The consequences are as great as they are unpredictable. He put it on the right course by what he did; me bringing him back to life would only set everything off-kilter again. And there’s nothing for him in this life any more; you know he’s lost everything.’ The Doctor watched Nick. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. It sounded almost helpless.
Nick turned to Alf, unsure what he wanted from her - support at least. She looked at him sadly and said, ‘I have to go with the Professor on this one.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he knows what he’s doing,’ she said simply. ‘He was right about what was behind this, how dangerous it was. We… we have to trust him.’
Nick turned finally to the figure lying unconscious on the bed. His friend. Oscar really had started to become his friend in the short time they'd known each other. A brilliant, witty man who had lost everything, even before he took that knife to his portrait.
It just wasn’t fair.
‘It’s not fair,’ Nick repeated to himself in the cafe, months later.
‘It never is, Nick,’ Alf followed his line of thought easily. She hesitated, then reached across the little table and held his hand for a moment. He looked up at her, forcing his gaze away from the scar on her cheek where it had automatically been drawn. ‘If you’d been a human longer, you’d have realised that by now.’ She smiled. He offered a small smile in return, knowing she was simply trying to cheer him up.
‘What’s that?’ she went on, releasing his hand and nodding to the compact, hardbound book sitting on the café table in front of him. Nick followed her glance, wishing she had held his hand a little longer.
‘My journal,’ he replied.
‘A diary?’ she blinked. ‘You’ve never had one of those before, have you?’
‘I just bought it today,’ Nick answered. ‘I’m gonna start writing stuff down now.’ A sad smile crooked his lips upward. ‘Give me some sensational reading when we’re travelling.’
Alf stared at him for a moment, and he knew she was working through where he had got the idea to start the diary. She nodded, sitting back in her chair. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
So was he. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to the whole grieving thing. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Look, why don’t you go? The Doctor’ll probably be looking for at least one of us.’
Alf snorted, interrupting him. ‘Oh, I think he knows better than to expect you there,’ she retorted.
‘Yeah, but you agreed with him about Oscar,’ Nick shot back, then held up his hands. ‘Sorry. You know what I mean. Just… you should go. He’ll need someone to talk to.’
Alf raised her eyebrows. And you’d rather be left alone right now? she didn’t ask aloud.
He nodded in reply.
She stood up and surprised him by taking his hand again and giving it a squeeze. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We’ll meet up with you in a bit, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
He watched her walk away, pushing through crowds when she needed to, heading out to the cemetery. He had turned away when the Doctor told them where he was going today; he refused to be a part of a ceremony he believed should never have taken place. He shook his head and glanced down at his new journal. Opening it to the first page, blank and clean, he picked up the pen that had sat next to the journal and started writing.
The Doctor had something going on, Alf and I could tell, so we were prepared when he told us to dress up for a night on the town in the year 1895. I don’t think he was prepared for Alf’s choice of dressing up, but I thought she looked dead sexy. In any case, we ended up going to see a play. A play about the vital Importance of Being Earnest…
At the corner, Alf looked back at Nick. It wasn’t time yet, she thought, but sometime soon she’d introduce him to an album that was in her recently restored memories. “The Queen is Dead” by the Smiths. It might help.
As she walked on, she sang to herself, ignoring the looks of passers-by: ‘A dreaded sunny day / so let’s go where we’re wanted / and I’ll meet you at the cemetery gates / Keats and Yeats are on your side / but you lose because Wilde is on mine!’
Epilogue Two
There were few mourners at this grave.
A surprising number of people had come to the actual funeral, considering how little popularity Oscar Wilde had had after his fall from grace and years spent in gaol. But not all of them had come to see the body, laid to rest in a cheap and shabby coffin, set into the ground in its numbered tomb, the eleventh grave in the seventh row of the seventeenth section of the Bagneux cemetery. Robbie Ross was there, of course, as was Lord Alfred Douglas, Bosie himself, carrying on in a suitably histrionic manner. The Doctor also joined the mourners, though he had not gone to the funeral.
He stood separately from the rest of them, not wishing to interfere and not wishing to be asked awkward questions. He was noticed though, as his gaze drifted wistfully toward the blue sky and around the other graves. At last the other mourners left, and the Doctor was alone in the quiet graveyard. He stepped closer to the newly dug hole and stared into it.
‘“And, though I was a soul in pain, / My pain I could not feel,”’ the Doctor recited quietly, whether to himself or to the body laid to rest, it was unclear. ‘“None knew so well as I: / For he who lives more lives than one / More deaths than one must die.’”
The Doctor reached into his inside coat pocket and drew out two objects. A red and a white rose, both rather crumpled from their time pressed against his broad chest. He laid them at the foot of the grave. It was a maudlin act, melodramatic, he knew, and not his usual cup of tea, but he had been unable to avoid the gesture. He wished one of his companions had joined him. Nick had outright refused, still angry at Oscar’s death. Still not understanding why it had to take place. But he’d hoped Alf might have understood…
The Doctor stood up heavily. ‘“For he to whom a watcher’s doom / Is given as his task, / Must set a lock upon his lips, / And make his face a mask,”’ he said to the grave with conviction. His thoughts turned back to Nick. ‘“Or else he might be moved, and try / To comfort or console: / And what should Human Pity do / Pent up in Murderers’ Hole? / What word of grace in such a place / Could help a brother’s soul?”’
‘Might help the living,’ Alf’s voice commented from behind the Time Lord. The Doctor turned to look at her. She met his gaze.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Nick’s waiting at the café. We’ve done our bit here. Time we were off.’
‘Nick…’ the Doctor started, but was cut off by his friend.
‘He’ll deal. He’s good at the whole bouncing-back thing, or hadn’t you noticed?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Quite right, Alf. It’s time we were off to a new place.’ She nodded once sharply in reply, then headed for the cemetery gates. She paused when she reached them, turning around to look back at him, and then she slipped out of the graveyard, perhaps realising he wanted an extra moment.
The Doctor still stood by the grave. He had one last phrase to speak. ‘“Yet all is well; he has but passed / To Life’s appointed bourne: / And alien tears will fill for him / Pity’s long-broken urn, / For his mourners will be outcast men, / And outcasts always mourn.”’
Taking one last look around him, the Doctor walked out of the cemetery, alone.
The End
[In memoriam:
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde
15th October 1856-30th November 1900
The authors wish to acknowledge their deep appreciation
of Oscar Wilde, without whom there would have been no story
and without whose words this story would have been
decidedly less witty and interesting.]
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