Chapter Text
At the beginning was darkness.
The weight of a thousand universes on their shoulders, the feeling of being dragged through thick water down, down the rabbit hole. Time was flowing and they could almost sense the chronons trying to keep their body in the timestream, to drag them alongside the flow. They didn't hear their own howling – time ate it, swallowed it whole so fast that it could very well have never existed.
Clara, they called in vain, over and over again. Clara. She was lost, she had let go of their hand. She was somewhere in that flow, slowly disappearing, scattered across time and space. They tried to reach for her but their desperate attempts resulted in nothing.
They tried. They tried again and again, for an eternity – or maybe a second. But even they couldn't struggle with time for so long and exhaustion finally got them. They closed their eyes and, in a sigh, let go of everything.
They knew that coming to Trenzalore was a dreadful idea and still they had dragged Clara into this. Clara, poor Clara, Clara who had not deserved any of it. They had known each other for so little time and, now they realized – they had been awful to her. Shown her very little trust, treated her like an object of curiosity rather than like a person, made her sacrifice so much – only for their sake. It had been so true, all along. They made them all sacrifice themselves, turned them into weapons, and on this Davros was completely right.
Rose, Martha, Donna, Jack, Amy, Rory... they all gave away something, their life, their innocence, their memories, their world. All for the sake of them. Even the Master, now that they thought of it. Even the Master, on that day that should have been the End of Time, saved them and the world at the cost of his life – or at least his freedom. And now they had lost Clara to the exact same fate.
All this for what ? They all suffered, they lost so much. Because of the Doctor's greed, because of their pride, because they couldn't keep them safe when they swore they would. Because it was never enough. Never enough love, never enough devotion. They never asked them for anything, or so they thought, but they all... they all offered them everything, down to the last bit of themselves. And it was their fault.
Never again. Never again.
The ground was cold under their cheek, so cold it almost pierced through their clothes right through their hearts. It took a few seconds to reach them that they had survived. Somehow, by some kind of unreasonable miracle, they survived. They had gotten out. Every inch of their body ached as they rolled on their back and managed to sit. Their sight was blurry, nothing seemed to be willing to stay in one place – and there was so much light ... But the timestream was gone. Reality had changed, they could feel it. It was an uncomfortable, nauseating feel in their stomach, something that was just pushing through their organs and bones, as to make them vomit.
The timestream was gone ? Then where was Clara ?
They called, and the sound of their voice was desperate and pathetic. The only answer they got was silence. Of course. It would have been too easy.
There was some irony in all this. They could feel it now – they didn't survive. The pain in their limbs, the blur in their eyes, the nauseating feeling inside them... It was dying. But it was so different from the previous times, so terribly different, and so, so cruel.
For the first time, they were alone. Completely alone. As far as they could extend their senses, there was no soul around. Not a single lifeform, not even a bug. Ha. The irony. So many people died for them, so many people lost their lives and souls for them, and there was nobody to say goodbye to.
The light... the golden light all around them. They recognized it. Why did it seem so weird, everytime ? Why did it feel so odd, so unnatural ? They remembered the last time, and the time before, and the time even before, and they remembered how awful it felt everytime. But they always got someone to say goodbye to, before. Even that one time – there were at least the Master's remnants. Not the most comforting thing. But they had the chance to forget everything afterwards. For a while, for a moment of bliss, everything disappeared.
They smiled bitterly as their body started to change. Alone. Alone in the end. As they had deserved from the very beginning. From the moment when they betrayed their best friend in the universe and promised them to a terrible fate.
Alone.
Alone to die, to feel their whole body decompose and change its internal structure. Alone, to feel their essence fade, shrink back to their hearts, then grow again. They knew they had no right to be sad, no right to grieve, no right to feel so terribly, incredibly sad – it was their own doing.
But as the structure of their bones changed, as they got slimmer and smaller, shrinking slowly in their clothes, they couldn't help but let out a soft gasp.
The suit was much too big for them now. They looked at their hands for a long time, fascinated by their new shape, so thin, so long. They barely showed under the long sleeves and looked like pale spiders. They didn't like that image.
There was no sound around. Just their breath, reverberating everywhere, a thousand echos of themself. A joke. A massive, miserable joke. Even the ship's console, that was supposed to be always humming softly, was dead silent. This giant TARDIS was a farce, just like the rest.
They painfully got up, clenching their teeth as every move felt like they was dying again. Their trousers almost immediately fell on their ankles and they threw them away with their shoes. These clothes would never fit again anyway. They took away the jacket and the bowtie. These were useless – and a bit ridiculous.
They stood there, silent, in the middle of the deserted console room, wearing this shirt that reached their mid-thighs. That was quite the consecration of their life – ending up alone and pathetic, in their own grave, driven mad by this pain that wouldn't let go. They let out a slight chuckle and ran a hand through their hair. They had one last life to live. And this time, they wouldn't make the same mistakes.
And maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't die the last one time alone.