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The next shot would be the right one, he was sure of it. Get somewhere safe, he told himself. Get home, wherever that was. Go west young man—he threw a lever and dialed in what he hoped were the right coordinates, this time, this time he’d find himself in a safe haven.
The TARDIS shuddered around him, whining high and loud and the Doctor felt dizzy again, his throat burning and thickly wet. But there was a shake, and a thud, and when he stumbled out the door-
“Clara.”
*
There was a room deep in the TARDIS. He didn’t remember making it himself, it was something the ship had put together. Not real. A memory, or a thousand of them. Papers tacked to walls, scribbles in wax crayon or cheap graphite, strange drawings that bore some minor resemblance to things and people but much more than that bore the thoughts and feelings of the children who’d drawn them; they shifted, sometimes, when he found himself in that room, the walls moving between centuries’ worth of little sketches by children who grew into women and men before returning to dust. There was a work table in the room with toys he’d made, he still liked to work with his hands and he still liked the tactile feel of using archaic tools to create or to fix, and the brush of his finger tips over wood or clay or cloth brought him someplace and sometime he couldn’t forget but couldn’t quite ever recreate.
He brushed his fingers over one such toy now, though he was in a different room. There were other toys scattered around the floor, plastic things from shops around London, things that didn’t exist in this place except he’d brought them here for a child he called his in his hearts, but this one was of his own making. A doll, a simple thing of wood, canvas, cotton batting, and he turned it over in his hands; he turned it over again, and again, trying to memorize its shape and feel with his long fingers. The thoughts and feelings of the man who’d made it, cupped in his palms. Someone knelt down beside him, tried to tug it away, but he held tight. “Where is she?”
“With her granddad, safe,” Clara said. Or he thought she was Clara. He peered at her: yes, Clara, all the faces she’d been or ever would be, bright and shifting and glowing around the essence of her self. Someone else was holding the back of his head, pressing something thin, plasticky and hollow to his lips.
Danny. His faces, too, were bright but they were different, as though there were two hims, two lights that branched off from each other. “Drink,” Danny said. The Doctor pulled against the hollow bit of plastic, tasted sweet apple juice, reached up to hold the box on his own. “Do you know where you are?”
He dug through the haze—why was everything a struggle, he wondered, why did everything seem to ache—and came up with an answer. “Oxley Woods,” he said. “Late 20th century.” It felt slightly later than that, though, and it didn’t look like the woods, so he frowned.
“Close,” Danny hedged.
“Where’s Ellie?” he asked again.
“Safe.” A hand through his hair, then smearing something hot and wet onto his cheek, just under his right eye. He didn’t know who’s hand. The three of them, the two here and the child, felt the same to him sometimes. Parts of him he hadn’t known were missing until they were near. “She’s safe.”
*
They were in the kitchen talking about him in hushed tones as though he couldn’t hear it. Something was still playing on the television, a movie half watched, a night in, alone with each other, disrupted by him and his ship taking up half the sitting room. The juice had helped, as had the heavily sweetened hot tea, at least enough so that he could lay on the sofa, close his eyes, and not feel unbalanced by the spin of the world beneath his feet or the galaxy around him.
“The man’s a walking bruise,” Danny whispered. “Shouldn’t we get him to a doctor? Surely Kate-”
Clara cut in, and he could imagine her face clearly, stern but caring. “He heals quickly. And he hates hospitals. I’m more worried about the fact that he can’t remember what happened.”
The sound of fabric moving, the shift of body weight as Danny put his hands on his hips and leaned back against a counter. “Then we’ll stay with him. For however long.”
It seemed to take forever for Clara to respond. “Yeah, we can do that. I’ll call Dad, let him know-”
Things went a bit dark after that.
*
“Your faces, I can’t see-”
The mattress shifted, there was a click of a switch being flipped, there was light. There was a broad hand on his chest, and a smaller one on his shoulder. “Better?” Clara asked.
Their faces visible, their them-ness clear and bright. That burst of red that infused Clara when she looked at him, the same as when she looked at Danny—the same as the bit of red that was starting to show in Danny whenever he looked at the Doctor. He looked between the two of them, his hearts slowing down and skin feeling less flushed as he calmed himself, and nodded. “Better.”
“Look at me,” said Clara. Her hand was on his chin, turning him to face her. Danny moved beside him, the hand on his chest sliding across until a strong arm was around him, fingers brushing against his ribs.
“I’m looking,” he said. She kissed him instead of saying anything else, on his lips as she held him still, and he felt Danny pressing a kiss to a spot right under his ear. He heard their hearts beating out of sync from his own, felt the buzz of the ship around them. Wondered if, when he didn’t hurt all over, they could do that sweet thing of joining together, moving in and around each other, of feeling safe and warm and protected. He wondered if humans ever saw the red in him the way he did on them.
But he was tired, and they knew it, so they curled around him in their nest of blankets and pillows. Danny must have carried him to his room, since he didn’t remember actually getting up and walking. The Doctor squirmed a bit, tugging someone’s hand under his shirt, getting as much skin contact as he could.
“Try to get some rest,” Danny murmured into the crook of his neck.
“Sorry for crashing movie night,” the Doctor said.
Clara hummed against his shoulder. “It’s fine. Terrible movie anyway.”
For a few seconds, the only sounds were the ones of near-sleep. Then, Danny: “I liked that movie.”
“You always like terrible movies,” she said. “Didn’t want to say anything.”
“You just did,” the Doctor said.
“Shh.” There was movement next to him, a thin cotton t-shirt coming off, his jumper pulled away, and arms wrapping around him again. “Go to sleep.”
It was easy enough, he thought, so he did.