Work Text:
The Doctor has never been able to stop running.
She was born with restless feet and sensitive hearts and a past worth forgetting. Even in her youth, she was a failure, insofar as Time Lords are concerned. She simply did not fit into the rigid expectations that govern and define life on Gallifrey. She slept on the floor of a barn and failed each and every exam that she was forced to take, and when she was old enough and bold enough and too tired to carry on, she stole a TARDIS and ran away. Since then, more and more things have been added to the list of things worth fleeing from.
Despite this -- or, indeed, perhaps because of it -- the Doctor desperately tries to be a good person, but she is painfully aware of all the days on which she was the worst version of herself, all of the lives she failed to save, all of the mistakes she has made, all of the societies that she doomed. For lack of a better word, she is haunted, and she has developed a habit of travelling with other haunted people. She picks up strays who have nowhere else to go, people who are not yet sure who they are, people who need a friend as badly as she does.
A disproportionate number of those companions have been doctors -- sometimes they are doctors of archaeology, sometimes they are doctors of education, but mostly they are doctors of medicine. There is a touch of irony in there somewhere, but the Doctor does not dare introspect deeply enough to put her finger on the joke and pin it down with any degree of specificity.
It is, however, occasionally useful.
Especially when she decides to run away from her path by running straight into danger.
In this particular moment, every muscle and bone in the Doctor body is screaming. She took a blow from a sonic bomb that only a Time Lord or an Eternal or a god could survive, and even then, only be the skin of their teeth. Not that that stopped her. The Doctor has always had a nasty habit of throwing herself into danger without casting so much as a single eye towards the potential consequences.
That is because adventure is a distraction.
Action is a distraction.
Adrenaline is a distraction.
And almost dying sometimes feels like atonement.
But that doesn't really matter. What matters is that it worked. She contained and absorbed the entire explosion. No one else in the blast zone was torn apart. She did not have to suffer another loss. She did not have to look into the newly lifeless eyes of a friend and see only her own sorrow and her countless inadequacies reflected back at her. She did not have to add another skeleton to the mountain of bones upon which she stands.
To have a legacy of saving lives means that there is always a hidden cost lurking just below the surface -- the Adrics, the Bills, the Rivers, the names that she never had a chance to learn and the many, many faces that she only half remembers.
Of course, it would probably be more impressive and more impactful and more meaningful if the Doctor saved people without hurting herself in the process, but she doesn't always consider her own safety, or even think before she acts. The mind is slow and the body is quicker, and what does another couple of cracks in her surface matter when she is already so severely damaged? At best, she deserves a bite of pain to the chest and the bitter taste of her own blood on the back of her tongue.
At worst... well, at least she's travelling with a doctor.
The injured Time Lord staggers into the safe and familiar embrace of the TARDIS interior, pressing an open plan and splayed fingers to the spot on her torso that hurts the most. She probably has a few cracked ribs. Some bruising too -- both inside and outside. Plus, she's bleeding a fair bit.
Her blood gleams slightly orange as it oozes between her fingers and drips onto the honeycombed floor of the console room. When it lands, it splatters tiny, inky shadows against the warm lights that glow beneath the Doctor's stumbling feet.
Her free hand shoots out to cushion her fall as a bout of dizziness overtakes her, making harsh contact with the rough-hewn, organic surface of one of the many crystalline pillars that line the room.
A voice echoes in her ears -- familiar, comforting, concerned.
The Doctor likes both the voice and its owner -- a friend and a lover who is as haunted by the future as the Doctor is by the past.
"What happened?"
The Doctor is aware of Thirteen's hands on her body -- checking for twin pulses and changes in temperature and clammy skin.
"Nasty bit of explosive planted by a rogue pair of intergalactic assassins. Don't worry. I dealt with it."
The Doctor tries to punctuate her words with a smile, but instead, her vision swims and her legs turn to quaking, quivering jelly and she collapses to the floor. It is only Thirteen's quick intervention that keeps her from striking her head on the pillar that up until a moment ago, was the only thing standing between the Doctor and the floor.
"You threw yourself on a bomb?" Thirteen's tone is caught halfway between statement and question.
Gently, Thirteen eases the Doctor's back to the floor, and the Time Lord final gets a good look at her companion's face. Those beautiful eyes are ringed with sleeplessness, her brow is furrowed with concern, and her lips are pursed in a tight frown of concentration. A pang of guilt tugs at one of the Doctor's hearts, cutting through the chemical haze of pain, dizziness, and exhaustion.
"Had to. There was no other way."
Thirteen's deft hands undo the tab at the waistband of the Doctor's trousers and untuck her layered shirts, tugging and rolling them steadily upwards until the expanse of bruised and broken skin is exposed to the slightly chilly air of the TARDIS.
A shiver passes through the Doctor's entire being. She doesn't like being bare and vulnerable and fussed over, even by someone who has seen and touched and tasted every plane and curve and tightly kept secret of this body, but she also knows better than to argue. Thirteen can be just as stubborn as she is, if not even more so.
Thirteen leans back out of the Doctor's field of vision, no doubt reaching for one of the many medical kits that have been stashed in forgotten corners and beneath sliding panels and amid perpetual shadows.
When she sways back into view, Thirteen has a packet of bandages grasped between her teeth and a capped syringe in her lap and her hands are busy gathering her dark hair into a ponytail at the back of her head.
"Had to or wanted to?" she asks once her hair is up and her hands are free and the bandages have been deposited on the floor beside them.
The Doctor does not answer right away. It is only when Thirteen's palm is braced against her exposed breastbone and the syringe nips at her skin that she finally says, "It doesn't matter. Not really."
Thirteen scoffs.
The Doctor wrinkles her nose. She does not like telling the truth. Lying is easier and quicker and often kinder, but she fights against the instinct. "Needed to," she admits after a brief pause, her voice quiet and uncertain.
Thirteen rips open the package of bandages, her expression stoic, contemplative, intimate, and distant all at the same time. "You can't save people if you're dead."
"Can't kill anyone if I'm dead either," the Doctor snaps back.
Perhaps it is simply a fancy of her imagination, but the Doctor thinks that she can feel Thirteen's hand trembling ever so slightly as she begins to clean the place where her skin is shredded and shattered and still screaming.
"It is unreasonable to expect only one person to save the universe."
"Last time I checked," the Doctor observes, wincing as disinfectant strikes her open wound, "That's why there are two of us.
"I'm not trying to save the whole universe. I just want to make it a little bit better before my time comes." Thirteen does not need to mention the illness that will no doubt claim her life and her autonomy far earlier than anyone would like. She doesn't need to; they are both painfully aware of that looming spectre lurking just below the horizon.
"I have a lot of ground to make up." The Doctor's gaze lifts as her eyes lock with Thirteen's own -- clearer and more steady than they've been since the moment the bomb exploded and tried to take her with it. "A lot of debts to pay. Don't want to be in the red whenever fate finally comes to collect. Or the Judoon. Whoever gets there first."
Thirteen begins to spread gauze over the wound -- soft and smooth and all too quickly stained with the Doctor's blood.
"It is not kind to yourself to assume that your debts are bigger than they actually are."
"I know my history," the Doctor's voice cracks beneath the weight of the thought.
"And I know your hearts, and I think those are more important." Done with the initial medical care, Thirteen rolls the Doctor's shirts back down. As she does so, the pads of her fingers skirt the more sensitive parts of the Doctor's body. It is difficult to tell whether or not it is a purposeful gesture or an accidental one. "Forget the history. You can't rewrite it, not even with a time machine, but you can choose to count you victories and not your failures."
The Doctor's eyes drift away. She stares past Thirteen for a long moment, focusing on the place where all of the TARDIS pillars come together. She almost finds herself pining for Gallifrey's sky, but then she remembers the sharp scent of smoke in her nose and the acrid taste of ashes in her mouth and the eerie silence of a Citadel occupied only by the corpses of the dead and buried.
"Maybe," the syllables feel like a lie as they roll off her tongue.
Thirteen moves in reply. She is on top of the Doctor in only a couple of nervous heartbeats, knees biting into the sides of the Doctor's hips as she straddles her body. Her hands are careful to avoid the more damaged parts of the Doctor's body as she trails a hand up the sensitive skin of her throat and along the line of her jaw and tucks a stray bit of blonde hair behind the Time Lord's ear.
"Live the kind of future that I want but can't have."
Any answer that the Doctor might have spoken vanishes beneath the soft press of Thirteen's mouth on hers, breathing that wish into her lungs and writing her desire on her lips and her tongue and the roof of her mouth.
For a moment, the pain is almost forgotten -- swept away by a current of love and sadness and hope.
And despite herself, the Doctor finds herself murmuring a previously unthinkable reply when they finally part.
"I'll try."
It's all that she can reasonably promise. Self-forgiveness is distant and foreign and seemingly impossible, but she'll try. Just for the human doctor with a kind heart and a sharp mind and too much grief to carry, she will make a sincere and earnest effort.
Thirteen's approval paints her face with warmth as the couple lingers almost close enough to touch and feel and taste.
"Good. All we can do sometimes is try."
The Doctor nods -- wordless, awestruck, exhausted -- and Thirteen plants another kiss on the Time Lords mouth that chases the past and the future and the present pain away.