Work Text:
you were summer recklessness
but you always had these two rules:
stay with me
and don't become a ghost again.
-Memories, Cordelia Rilo
He knows her.
He knows Clara.
She had a last name.
He’s fairly sure she had many names.
But she was always Clara.
It’s strange remembering her now.
There isn’t a loss. No open gaping wound like the ones he gathered while he spent four and a half billion years trapped in a tower.
He remembers all of that now.
As soon as he left the confession dial, four and a half billion years spent sharpening himself on that wall, breaking his fists and burning up into ash.
He remembers the sensation of dying billions of times over.
He remembers doing it for her.
But he can’t remember her.
He remembers around her. Shapes a sense of her in that absence.
But the memories are slippery and like to pull away from him at the slightest touch.
They peel away like paint.
He remembers ghosts under an ocean and zygons and daleks. He remembers finding her inside a dalek the first time.
(Now that he thinks about it, he still doesn’t quite know how she got there. It doesn’t all add up in the end)
But he can’t remember her.
---
A memory:
“Is that the Doctor?” he asks, standing outside the TARDIS on a city street in Glasgow as Clara bends herself around the cell phone pressed to her ear.
(Even now she’s just a shape in his memories. An outline, if he tries very hard there’s a shade to her face so he can just make out her expression, and sometimes, if he’s very lucky he can hear a voice)
His past self asked the same question he did.
Slowly she responds to them both, “Yes,” and he waits. She listens to what his past self said.
It was a request for help and for patience.
His last face called ahead to ask her to stay.
When she hangs up and faces him, he waits.
He doesn’t yet know how to express how much he cares, but it sits heavy in his chest.
(He can remember the caring. That he can remember)
“Will you help me?” he asks.
“You shouldn't have been listening,” she says.
“I wasn't,” he replied, “I didn't need to. That was me talking.”
And he watches her then, she’s staring at him, but he can see she doesn’t fully grasp it yet. The way she looks at him now, it hurts.
“You can't see me, can you?” he asks because he knows she’s looking for his old face, his old self. She’s waiting for him to be that and he told her that he would change. He tried to make her understand, but it wasn’t enough. She wants her doctor and there’s only him and the inadequacy of that feels like someone stopped both his hearts.
“You look at me, and you can't see me,” he tells her through gritted teeth. It doesn’t come easily for this new self to admit this out loud.
“Have you any idea what that's like?” he asks and he’s begging her now, imploring her to see him. This new him that he still hasn’t fully learned yet.
“I'm not on the phone, I'm right here, standing in front of you. Please, just see me.”
And she stares at him for a long moment and he waits.
This new self hates the waiting, the uncertainty of it.
This new self likes knowing what’s going to happen next, but he will never be able to predict her.
She walks up to him, cocks her head to one side and then the other like she’s examining him from every angle.
Finally, she says, “Thank you.”
“For what?” he asks.
“For phoning.”
And she throws her arms around him and this, this right here, might be the cruelest part.
He can’t remember what it felt like. He remembers feeling awkward, and a little uncomfortable, and a little warmth in his chest, but he can’t remember what she felt like.
---
When he woke up, somewhere in the Nevada desert, he met a woman in a diner. He told her about Clara, what he could remember of her.
It had just happened, but it was already so faded in his mind.
And the woman had smiled, eyes bright, as she listened to him play the guitar and tell her a story.
He had been to that diner before and the woman had looked almost sad when he said so.
She said that forgotten memories could become more than stories.
That maybe they would become songs.
He liked that, as he strummed on his guitar strings.
Then the restaurant vanished around him with a familiar sound.
His TARDIS was there and somebody had covered her in painted flowers.
There was a face, painted on one of her many panels. A face rendered in black and white and almost familiar, but not quite.
He couldn’t quite see the face, even as he reached out and gently brushed his fingers against the paint.
“I mean, she could be me, for all you know,” the woman had said. Already she was fading from his memory, just like the paint which was cracked and worn. It didn’t survive wherever the TARDIS took him next.
The paint peeled off, leaving not a trace.
---
A memory:
“Twenty feet of pure diamond,” he tells her as they are crouched in the cloisters on Gallifrey. “Harder than diamond,” he says, bending over the hatch, running his hands over the etchings that have filled with dirt and grime. There’s a key to opening this hatch and he’s puzzling it out as he speaks, “But you break through anything, given time.”
“How much time?” she asks and that’s a loaded question he’d rather not answer.
Now with the full memory of four billion years weighing him down, laying down a few more fractures against his already injured spirit…
He won’t answer that question.
The General is trying to talk to Clara but she refuses with a ferocity that makes the Time Lords actually listen.
It’s impressive, but she always was and now she’s bending down beside him, voice low and whispered, “The Hybrid, what is it?” she asks him, “What's so important you would fight so long?”
He won’t look at her, she’s just a shape at the corner of his eye.
“It doesn't matter what the Hybrid is. It only matters that I convinced them that I knew. Otherwise, they'd have kicked me out, I'd have had nothing left to bargain with,” he says in a rush. It sounds smart, like one of his clever plans. Not like four billion years of agony and grit.
“What were you bargaining for?” she asks and of course that’s the question she asks. She always knew the right question to ask and it’s the one that puts him in a corner with no other answer except the truth.
“What do you think?” he asks and he finally looks at her, but she just shakes her head because she doesn’t know. Just this once Clara has no answers.
“You. I had to find a way to save you,” he says the truth quickly because it burns him a little to say it aloud. All this time and he’s still bad at this part so he rushes onwards, “I knew it had to be the Time Lords. They cost you your life on Trap Street, Clara, and I was going to make them bring you back,” he’s focusing on the hatch again, but out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he can see sad eyes.
“I just had to hang on in there for a bit,” he says lightly or tries to. Four billion years adds a lot of weight.
“How long?” she asks him again and he just shakes his head.
“It was fine,” he tells her quickly because how can he tell her the rest?
Clara gets to her feet and faces the Time Lords.
“One question. And you will answer,” she says in that tone which brooks no argument, “How long was the Doctor trapped inside the confession dial?”
“We think four and a half billion years,” they say and the General adds, “He could have left any time he wanted. He just had to say what he knew. The dial would have released him.”
And he can see Clara standing over him, so still. She eventually turns back to face him and her hands are balled into fists. Every inch of her knotted tight and he can’t quite look at her, but he can’t look away.
“Four and a half billion years?” she breathes.
“If she says so,” he says like a joke and she drops to her knees beside him. He’s still trying to figure out this damn hatch, it takes him a moment to realize the tears in her eyes.
(This he can remember, he remembers the tears)
“Why would you even do that?” she asks and it comes out, half a sob, “I was dead and gone. Why?” she lifts herself up to push at his shoulders, to shove him back but without any real force. “Why would you even do that to yourself?” she asks and she’s trembling and she doesn’t understand. Or maybe she understands better than he does, he’s not sure. He’s not sure how to explain, but for her he tries...
“I had a duty of care,” he whispers and she reacts like the words wound her, but he can’t fix that right now.
“Listen, I'm nearly through here,” his fingers finally press down on the right piece of stone and he’s fairly certain it will open for him now, “If I'm right, there should be a service duct under here. We'll be able to get to the old workshops. They'll have Tardises there.”
Instead of reacting like that’s good news she just takes a deep breath and says, “Okay, listen. I have something I need to say.”
“We do not have time,” he tells her, rushed and urgent. He can’t ignore the eyes of the Time Lords burning into him. Not after they watched his torture for four billion years. But Clara isn’t listening to him.
“No, my time is up. Doctor, between one heartbeat and the last is all the time I have.”
Or maybe he hasn’t been listening to her.
“People like me and you, we should say things to one another,” she tells him, “And I'm going to say them now.”
---
A forgotten memory:
“ Doctor,” she looks at him, her brown eyes huge and filled with tears, “I love you, more than anything in the universe.”
He looks at her then, without looking away. He plans to get her out of this, but he will hear this in case it all ends now on Gallifrey.
In case this is indeed their last moments together and she’s speaking to him like it is.
“Not in a romantic way, no it’s more than that.” she continues and she leans forward, pressing a hand to his chest, over his right heart.
“I care for you like I would my father, or mother, or my best friend,” she pauses here, a hint of a smile touching her lips, “I think you are my best friend actually and you mean everything to me.”
And she hesitates, her smile fading, her fingers curling to grip the fabric of his jacket.
“But Doctor, you shouldn’t have done that. Not to yourself and not for me,” her voice cracks then and tears slip down her cheeks.
“But I understand and I think I might have done the same for you if I could,” she tells him and then she pulls him into the tightest embrace and he returns it with force.
They hang onto each other far too tight, afraid to let go. Her hair is soft where it tickles his cheek and she smells like that minty shampoo she always liked. The fabric of her jumper is fuzzy beneath his fingers and she’s warm. Even if she’s not technically alive, her body hasn’t gone cold yet and her breath gusts against his ear.
“I understand,” she whispers in his ear, “But don’t you dare ever do that again, especially not for me.”
And his reply is somewhere between a laugh and broken glass, “I won’t,” he says, “I don’t think I could withstand that a second time.”
Her laugh sounds just as broken in his ear.
“What’s another four billion years to a Time Lord?”
“Hardly any time at all,” he replies and it’s a lie, they both know it.
So he lets her go enough that he can look her in the eye, still in his arms and he tells her a truth. Just one.
“I thought of you every day. That’s what got me through it. I talked to you and imagined you there, cheering me on.”
She’s still crying, but a smile breaks on her face like the sunlight bursting through clouds.
“And I would have done, I’m sure,” she whispers and then she lets him go and gets to her feet.
Turning to face the Time Lords, she stands tall over him. She might be built small but right now she’s the tallest in the room and she stands strong.
“You're monsters,” she tells them “Here you are, hiding away at the end of Time. Do you even know why?”
And she’s beautiful.
She’s his best friend.
He would miss her far too much.
He’s not ready to say goodbye to her just yet.
---
He sees River Song again and says his goodbyes.
He meets Bill Potts and she is wonderful.
Still, humans are far too breakable and he loses her too.
In all that time, she’s still there. At the edges.
A blip in the background, while in the foreground, he’s still running, still fighting.
Sometimes with new people alongside him, sometimes alone.
Bill deserved better, but they so often do.
He’ll treasure the memories of her all the more remembering someone else’s absence.
---
He’s so tired and just this once, he doesn’t want to let it happen.
He’s been alive so long and he’s tired.
He wants to rest.
Standing in a World War I battlefield with Bill, but she’s not really there and that stings.
But she tells him that she is Bill even if she isn’t. Being made up of memories makes her real enough or so she says.
And to prove it, she says she has a goodbye present for him.
And she presses a kiss to his cheek and wishes him a Merry Christmas and suddenly she’s back.
Clara Oswin Oswald is there in that same gray jumper with those big brown eyes.
How could he have ever forgotten those eyes? Or that smile? As bright as the sunrise behind her.
“Hello, you stupid old man,” she says.
And she might not really be here. She might be another glass filled with memories but for a moment he doesn’t care. He can only smile and say, “You’re back.”
Because she is.
Every memory, back in his head. No longer just a shape, a vague shadow of a person lingering at the back of his thoughts, but all of her.
“You’re in my head,” he says aloud, “All of my memories are back.”
And she nods as if to say quite right.
“And don’t go forgetting me again because quite frankly, that was offensive,” she tells him and he smiles again.
The smile stays even after she’s gone and he’s okay with that because they said their goodbyes. On the trap street and in the cloisters and in that second TARDIS.
So now, he can be happy just to have the memories of her.
Then it’s just him and Bill.
And then Nardole too.
It’s time for some final goodbyes.
Bill’s eyes are full of tears and it’s only her memories, but they still cry for him.
There’s an embrace and once upon a time he said he wasn’t a hugger.
But Clara changed his mind on that and so many things and so he welcomes it now.
He holds them close because it’s good to hold onto someone and feel warm.
He hangs onto the both of them until they’re gone and he’s left holding air.
And that’s okay too, he thinks.
He’s ready now, to let go one last time.
His next self will remember all of this and learn from it.
His next self will still carry that love for his friends.
It was truly as Clara described it.
They meant everything to him and he had to let them all go too soon.
It’s always too soon and that’s always the hardest part.
But he’s ready now.
Time to move on.
Time to change.
But of course, he’ll have a few final words on the matter.
He’s always been one to have the last word, even on his future self.
“Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.”
“Doctor, I let you go.”