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The panic crawls beneath his skin, like a white hot fire. It spreads low and heavy across his belly, encroaching as if a cancer. It was impossible, all so impossible to comprehend. She had been under his protection.
But he knows he is a disease, and that he leaves only death in his wake. And although he has tried to remedy this by taking the name of healer, he still feels the ripple of his sins spread out across time and space. He is the wolf that lurks beneath the surface of all things, leaving mothers without sons and fathers without daughters.
It leaves him without Clara.
It feels like there are hands around his neck, he thinks. Like the life is slowly being choked out of him, and instead of feeling an element of self-preservation, he waits for the silence. But the hard reality is that he is alone. The hands are invisible, merely figments of his precarious mind. Instead he steadies his breath, hands pressed tight against his throbbing temples.
His knees are the only thing that feel solid, pressed hard against the console floor. There are stars exploding behind his closed lids, millions and billions of cosmos breaking apart and coming together. They form and re-form, spark and flare. He feels the jarring shudder of the past, the present, the future all colliding on this moment.
He opens his eyes. It is still silent. He is still alone.
---
Clara, Clara, precious Clara. The splintered, fractured girl. His saviour in more ways than one. The first face that this particular face saw. He tries to see himself in her mind's eye: a grumpy, whippet-thin, skeleton of a man. He cannot see the wonder that she saw in him - or used to see, once upon a time.
There is no place for him anywhere, the man who confronts danger and burns it to the ground. He's been careless, even reckless, with this new body. It is eager to offend, jagged and rough around its silvery edges. His hands are more particular, except when it counted most. They had let go when he should have held on tight.
He never thought it would happen with Clara. She was too clever, too controlled, with a brain like quicksilver and a tongue to match. There had been a sense of forever about her to him, like the vortex had curled itself around her to form a protective shield. A lonely part of him had thought she would be with him always. From the beginning until the end had such a beautiful poetry to to it. He always thought it would be his end, not hers.
Of course, that was naive. Hopeful. Ridiculous. A man as smart as him should know better, certainly should have read the signs. Clara was still human, no matter how many times she had echoed throughout the galaxy, throughout time. Her skin was still vulnerable and easily wounded. She would age, she would become a gradual victim to the one thing that he never would be: time.
In the end, it was nothing. Barely a whimper, barely a goodbye. One second there, the next minute gone, like she had flown from his grasp, on a slight summer breeze.
But the unclean, diseased feeling does not go away. His fingernails are torn and broken, the quicks rough and bleeding. Without her, he wants to bury himself away from the world, rot away at the end of the universe where only the desolate can survive.
In his mind, the chanting reprimand never ceases: she was under his protection and he failed her. He failed her and he would never forgive himself.
---
Sometimes he thinks he catches a glimpse, a fleeting shadow in the corner of his eye. It always has a touch of Clara about it, hiding in the corner where he can't quite reach. He misses the curve of her smile, and the way she tucked her hair behind her ears when she got nervous. Her flat smells like her perfume, although the air is getting stale now. He still visits it sometimes.
He has lost so many before, but he doesn't know why this feels different somehow. Perhaps Clara was the last loss that his soul could take and he has nothing left to give. Her absence is a hollow cavern in his maudlin hearts that he cannot imagine ever filling. His ache for her is total, encompassing. He is a black hole, his regret so vast that it will never stop filling the endless void she has left behind.
---
He thinks he sees her one day, on a half-moon planet, backlit by a bright green sky. The air is awash with a dewy haze, the colour of gold dust. The silhouette is so familiar that he almost falls to his knees with relief. But it is not her, and will never be.
Except that one day it is.
---
She glides in tapered shoes, feet dainty, slim ankles on show. She knows people are looking, but then his Clara had always known, just like he had always known too. He was never so old nor so blind to not notice, despite his elaborate performance to the contrary.
Her stockings are fine, shimmering to emphasise smooth calves. He hears a swell in the room at her entrance, a subtle buzz in the air. His heart constricts violently, his breath stops. He knows it is both her and not her. He is not sure it matters.
She doesn't know him of course, not in this reality and not in this face. He tries not to feel offended when she presses past him in the crowd, as if he was nothing to her. But in truth that is all he is: just another onlooker, another man - a man not even young enough to be worthy of a sliver of her attention. Still, the momentary press of her bare arm against his sleeve begs another story, even though he is probably just kidding himself. He is good at that.
She smokes delicately, a jade cigarette holder poised between her fingertips. But he recognises the unpractised nature of the display, the attempts at artful sophistication. It is a flaw, he had always thought, but now he can only see the naive beauty of her brave attempts to fit in. His hearts ache, stutter, almost stop when she suddenly approaches him.
"You're watching me," she says . It isn't accusatory, merely curious. Her eyes are wide, kind but apprehensive. He remembers those eyes from before, from long ago, from seconds ago.
"Yes," he answers frankly, and does not back away. He is not sure where this is going.
She tilts her head, one eyebrow arching upwards as if on an invisible string. It is oh so familiar that he almost wants to grab her hand and just run, but instead he crosses his arms tight across his chest. But it is too late. He can't protect himself from this.
"Do I know you?" There are lines settling between her eyebrows that his fingers itch to smooth away. The duplication is uncanny, perfect even. The hair is slightly different, shorter, more square around the jaw. But everything else from her nose to the golden ring around her pupils is the same and he lets out a breath that he didn't know he was holding.
"You do now," he answers, holding out his hand for her to take. He doesn't give his name.
They dance. He learns that she is still called Clara in this form, although the clip of her vowels is unfamiliar and disconcerting to him at first.
He tries to persuade himself that this is okay, him being here like this: that it isn't fixing and unfixing timelines with each minute she stays in his arms. But he can feel the flux around him, the way this past and future turn to haze behind his eyes. He is in danger of jeopardising everything. The truth is that her destiny is another version of himself, and in that realisation, he knows that he is bitter. He is jealous of the man that she exists for, that she will save. He is angry that that man will not see her, appreciate her, will not know what she does for him until it is too late. Those men, those faces, are fools, he knows only too well. Clara deserves to be seen and appreciated. But instead she is a sacrificial lamb upon an ungrateful altar. He so wishes it could be different.
---
He has to walk away in the end, even though it is one of the hardest things he has ever had to do. If he doesn't, he will ruin everything, and it is a risk he can't take. The timelines are still crashing, erupting under his fingertips for every second he is with her. He won't have everything she has done for him be for nothing.
---
The same face, the same smile, half a galaxy away. It happens again, and this time he is bolder, more reckless. He knows the time is limited, and again that she is destined for another. But he needs this, just for a little while. It helps him lie to himself just that little bit more, helps plug happier memories in place of all the bad that he has collected in his lives.
This Clara goes simply by the name Oswald, sewn hastily on the front of her dirtied overalls. There is grease on her cheek, a spanner poking out of her pocket, causing one side of her ill-fitting uniform to sag endearingly.
"Did you come in last week?" Deja vu laces her question, like she senses something suspicious about him that only she can see. "About the weird light fires in the factories?"
He shakes his head, curls his fingers around the edge of the counter that separates them.
She frowns again, then laughs. "No, sorry - different face. But very similar eyes."
"Oh, don't worry," he replies, wanting to take her hand, just once. "That one will be back."
In the back of his mind, a distant memory flares.
---
"New around here, are ya?"
He spins on his heels, and there she is again. Her nose looks funny from this perspective, but only because this version of her is wearing higher shoes than normal. It make the angles all wrong so he stoops down to try and correct it. She leans back, bemused at his sudden proximity.
He blusters and bumbles, unaccustomed to surprises, let alone from her. The others he had had a chance to observe first, but this is the first time she has approached him unawares. He nods in response to her question.
"It might seem strange of me to ask, and you probably won't know if you are new around here. But I'm looking for a man. No, no, not just any man. A particular one. Young, blonde, wearing a white and red hat? No? Well, thank you anyway."
He tries to not feel disappointed about the inevitable.
---
It goes on like this, on and on. The TARDIS refuses all his co-ordinates, and sets her own destinations. She is in mourning too, it seems, for the impossible girl.
He comes to expect it, relish it after a while. It is only rarely that the TARDIS is wrong and he does not find her. Once, they overshoot by a few months and instead he is faced with her fresh gravestone, cold and grey in a village outside of Manchester in 1788. It is like a punch to the gut all over again. For all the pretending that he had been doing, the loss of her is still acute. The TARDIS leaves him be for a while after that.
---
A lieutenant on a research vehicle in Seven Omega Nine.
A market trader in Lower Quadrant Neptune.
A nurse in France during World War II.
They are all her, but not her, and it is that difference which pains him most of all. They are all her, but merely duplicates. They are copies of the original masterpiece, and yet they are all as real to him as she was. He longs to learn each and every one of them, but he can't and he won't. His Clara Oswald is irreplaceable, even with splintered versions of herself.
It is a purgatory to him, but one he enters willingly, and without grace. Piece by piece he thinks this may heal him just enough to forgive himself. But each smile, each touch just reminds him of all that he has lost, and all he can never regain. Salvation is a long way off.
---
He is tired of wandering. He scribbles wearily in the margins of books, pages and pages of nonsense and calculations and regrets. Clara. Clara Oswald. Clara Oswin Oswald. Oswin. There are never ending permutations by the time he is done with everything he has learnt about the echoes of her. And yet the only thing he wants to know is how she would fit in his arms again, and whether she would forgive him for his carelessness.
---
There are screams everywhere in this white walled prison. Hands reaching out to him between bars, begging for help, begging him. He can hear the guards approaching in the distance, heavy rhythmic footfalls beyond the door. The sonic makes short work of the switchboard. Sparks fly, and the locks click open to muted sounds of surprise and relief. He knows there will be one of her here somewhere. He has come to sense it these days, her splintered presence, another fraction in the equation of all that he has lost. The crowd surges against him, pushing its way towards safety, but he waits, watching.
And then he sees her.
This Clara feels so familiar to him, more so than any of the others so far. He doesn't know why this is, and why he must feel it in this moment in time. Perhaps it is the way she stands, determined and unflustered against the spinning hoard of people. She is thinner, a bit gaunt under her eyes, like this lifetime has haunted her. But he can tell that this one is strong. Perhaps stronger than the rest and that is why his nails press deeply into the palms of his hands, his breath catching in his throat.
But he has done what he needed to do and so turns to go. And then he hears it:
"Doctor!"
It is her voice, that distinctive call that he has heard so many times over in his head. It has taunted him, mocked him, and tortured him all the time, keeping him from sleep and peace and acceptance.
No, it is impossible. This version of her does not know him. Cannot know him.
"Doctor!" she calls again, desperate this time. He turns back, unfocused and unsteady, eyes searching. She is pushing against the tide of people, small enough to thread through the gaps in places. Her outstretched hands scramble for him, and he moves towards the small figure instinctively. It can't be. It just can't, he knows, but there is a howl of hope inside him even so. He recognises the rings on her fingers, the way she bites her lip in fierce concentration.
And yet he knows the second that she is in his embrace that it can only be her. She fits in a way that none of the others quite could. Her arms swoop tightly around his chest, crushing him hard enough so that his ribs might crack. He reciprocates blindly, fearing she might be a image he has conjured up in his madness.
His hands feel numb, like his nerve endings have shorted out entirely. But her skin is still so soft as he presses a kiss into her hairline. Her small familiar hands press hard into his back, and he feels the rigid shell of her ear tucked tightly against his hearts.
It is her, really truly her. Alive and well, and not gone, not even close. There are bursts of stars in his chest, and something like hot tears threatening sharply behind his eyes.
A thud on the distant doors pulls them apart, jarring them back into the present reality of their actual imminent danger. But it is enough time for her to pull free from his staggered grasp and punch him hard in the arm.
He scowls instinctively, a well formed habit rather than one of any true emotion. His heart revels in the rediscovery of the shape of her mouth.
"What was that for?!"
She huffs, but her anger is half-hearted at best and laced with her own relief to see him. "What took you so long?!"
"Detour," he replies smartly. "I'll explain later. But for now, we'd better run!"
He takes her hand, and she smiles, cheeks damp with tears. He thinks that she is the most beautiful thing that this face has ever seen, and he presses a kiss quickly to the back of her hand, still entangled with his.
"Oh, I've missed this," she laughs, tugging him away. "Things aren't the same without you."
"Likewise," he answers, hand fast in hers, tighter than ever before.
---