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The TARDIS console glinted off of the tears streaming down Clara’s face, making them appear to be made of blood.
“You can clear off. Get back in your lonely”--She paused to choke down a sob—“your lonely bloody TARDIS and you don’t come back.”
The Doctor felt as if his soul would rip in two. Pain he had felt, pain beyond all comparison, but this guilty agony was something new. It was as if his cracked heart had sustained one blow too many, and it had simply…shattered.
When he pleaded with her, his voice cracked, and he tried to cover it with distraught anger. “Clara. Clara!”
He stretched a hand towards his companion, his Impossible Girl, and she drew back.
“You go away. Okay? You go a long way away.” The finality of her words spoke of a thousand stories that never were, all coming to a close.
Flinching as if struck, the time lord searched for words, but they escaped him like water in his hands. He could do naught but stand there, frozen, as his best friend closed the door behind her.
It took him but a moment to change his mind. He sprinted after his companion, leaving the doors to the TARDIS wide open behind him, and leapt across the tiny storage room.
“Clara!” He frantically twisted the door handle, throwing his entire weight against it.
It was locked. He jiggled it a bit, then sighed and took out his sonic, ignoring his inner voice that said Clara might have locked it because she didn’t want him following her.
When a silky voice spoke from behind him, the Doctor jumped and whirled. A man stood between him and his TARDIS, illuminated from behind in light of the deepest orange.
“So. This is what my future holds.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Great. Now I’m being haunted by my own ghost.”
The ghost in the trenchcoat moved forward and his features rearranged themselves into a familiar face. He surveyed the Doctor with barely restrained anger but said nothing, and the latter huffed before returning his attention to the obstinate doorknob.
“That’s not going to work, you know.”
The Doctor turned back. “How would you know, you don’t even know what she—.”
“Because she didn’t. I did.”
The Doctor glared across the room at the man he had once been with the most aggressive eyebrow formation he could manage. As comprehension slowly dawned, dread stole into his heart to keep the sadness company.
“You,” he said softly.
“Me,” agreed the Valeyard, flashing the Doctor a dark smile.
The two most dangerous predators in the universe regarded each other with eyes full of fire.
“Well what do you want?” the Doctor asked finally. “Because, if you can’t see, I’m a bit busy.”
The Doctor could remember with distinction the Valeyard’s voice, but being on the receiving end of his wrath was something at the same time surreal and absolutely terrifying.
“Busy. Yes. I can see that.” The Valeyard’s trenchcoat swirled around him as he gestured grandly to the dingy room in which they stood. “This is what you’ve come to, then. Hiding in cupboards, meddling from afar, getting the humans to do your dirty work. A cold and bitter old man, too afraid to act.”
The Doctor briefly wished that his previous incarnation had been forced to deal with this teenage tantrum; he’d had so much more patience.
“Oh, and I suppose you’d know all about it. The king of melodrama and passion, you are. Well, the universe has changed, my friend. There’s no room in it for impossible heroes.”
The Valeyard’s eyes darkened even further, if that was possible. “And I supposed that’s what you told Clara.”
The Doctor was taken aback. “What?”
“Is that who you are now? The Cynic, the Destroyer of Dreams, the Nonbeliever? Are you the one who, like a leech, drifts into the lives of the young and restless and clings to the edges of their world, feeding off of them until nothing’s left?”
“What are you talking about? I make their lives better, give them the stars—”
“You take their will to explore and exploit it, draining their passion dry, making them spend it all on you. And when they’ve grown up, you drop them off at home and you run, never looking back because you don’t like endings. Because you dare not look back, and see the empty hole you’ve left in the universe where once burned a precious spark of humanity.” The Valeyard advanced, smothering the Doctor’s retort with all the arrogance of an avenging angel.
“And when you’ve gone, abandoned them to live their puny little lives, what do they have left? Tell me, Doctor—although you’re no more Doctor than I am—what is left?”
The Doctor placed a hand on the Valeyard’s chest, holding him back. “Their lives! I leave them with their lives! You call me the Destroyer of Dreams, but how did you end your companions’ stories? They ended up broken and angry, or dead, because you were too selfish to let them go. Though I guess it’s how you wanted them; perfect little soldiers in your army, fighting the good fight for the rest of time.”
The Valeyard’s face went dangerously blank as he responded. “You left their lives empty and hopeless, left them heartbroken and feeling insignificant, as if after all they’d been through you’d traded them for someone more worthy. Such a life, drenched in guilt and spent forever waiting, is not worth living.”
“Oh, says you. Did you ask them?” The Doctor waved a hand dismissively and took a step forward. The tears he’d shed for Clara had washed him clean of all logic and left him with only the instinct to cut, as quickly and deeply as possible. To draw blood.
“And your precious Rose, the one you left on a beach, is that what she would’ve thought? You didn’t seem to care about these noble values when you abandoned her, leaving the love of your life with tears in her eyes and a clone by her side. I’m sure you’re proud of that ingenuity; getting rid of the two of them oh-so-neatly--” his words were cut off as the Valeyard slammed him into the door, arm across his windpipe.
“Don’t you dare,” the Valeyard hissed, “Even speak her name. You’ve forfeited that right.”
“Grow…up,” the Doctor hissed through clenched teeth. He yanked instinctively at the arm pinning him by the throat, but refused to give the other time lord the satisfaction of seeing him panic even as his lungs screamed. In the eyes of darkness, he saw no mercy.
And then the arm holding him relaxed and the Valeyard stepped back. The Doctor sagged against the doorframe and gasped for precious air, too dazed to question his counterpart’s change of mind.
When the Valeyard spoke, it was in a voice so cold it appeared to frost the air. “The man who forgets…and the man who’s forgotten.” He tossed a crumpled piece of paper at the Doctor’s feet. “By the way, I did ask. Amy sends her regards.”
The Doctor felt as if he’d taken a brick to the stomach. What little air he’d been able to draw into his lungs fled in a choked gasp.
“But—wha—how?” he spluttered.
“That’s the problem with forgetting the pain. It makes you think there’s something left to lose if you fail, so you never bother to try.”
The Valeyard turned from the Doctor, dismissing him as if he were no more important than a fly, which, once swatted, had no more impact on his life.
The Doctor could hear the strain in his voice when he addressed his past, a voice so old and tired. “Where are you going?”
The Valeyard did not turn. “In order to get her back, I must destroy everything that’s left of who she once was. You’ve made my decision astonishingly easy.”
“But that’s everything. You can’t destroy an entire universe to save one human!”
Pausing at the doorway to the TARDIS, the Valeyard smiled again that chilling wolf’s grin. “You couldn’t. I can. Goodbye, Doctor.”
When he left, the TARDIS made no noise. In the deeper silence that followed, the Doctor sank to the floor and snatched the note, clenching it in a shaking fist. He pressed it to his lips, wondering if he had the courage left to face whatever it contained—
The world exploded around him and the precious scrap of paper was torn from his grasp as he landed on his back. Too shocked to even scream, he looked down to see a large splinter of wood piercing his leg. The ceiling, lanced with cracks, began to split apart in great chunks. As the room disintegrated around him, the only pain he felt was in his shattered heart.
“Clara. I’m sorry,” the Doctor whispered as he was dragged from existence.
Floating above a nonexistent Earth, the Timelord Victorious looked on dispassionately as the stars started going out.