Work Text:
“Don’t look at me like that,” Even says, softly. They won’t cross his TARDIS, won’t come closer to him. He doesn’t notice until he takes the first step, and they mirror him, keeping the console and the humming engine between them. He can only just see half of their face around it. “You don’t get to be disappointed in me.”
“How can you tell it’s a disappointed face? It’s a new face. Could mean anything.” He keeps walking, as though they’ll give up and stop and let him near. He catches them touch the console gently as they circle it, then snap their hand away like they’ve been burned, up to their chest to squeeze at- Nothing. They find empty air, and for a moment, they do freeze in place long enough for him to see the whole of them before they press their hand down and seem comforted by whatever they feel through the fabric of their shirt.
“It’s your face,” they answer. They sound uncertain.
They also aren’t wrong.
“What happened to you?” he asks, in lieu of saying something worse when they’re finally not trying to retreat from him. He dares a step closer and watches them tense like a frightened animal, shoulders drawn tight to make themselves smaller. He’s pictured finding Even, if they were alive, a thousand times over. When he was kinder to himself, he used to imagine that they’d grab his hands, overexcited and begging permission to touch more without being able to ask. (A regeneration ago, and he knows he would have pulled them in tight, buried his nose in their hair and held on until someone else interrupted him. Now, he’s not so sure, but he knows he wouldn’t let go of their hand.)
“I followed the Master,” they say. Their eyes cast away from him.
“You seem to be doing that a lot these days.” Even crosses their arms.
“Where else could I go?” they ask, standing in the middle of his TARDIS. Somewhere within her, their room is still waiting, untouched since they left.
They left.
“Home,” he intones, seriously, “where you’re supposed to be.”
Their mouth opens slightly in surprise before it curls around a sudden, “I can’t go home! You broke me!” The Doctor stops. All of him, from mind to body. Even one of his hearts misses a beat and leaves him with an aftermath of vertigo before it falls back in line. Even hadn’t raised their voice, but what tore through the air between them had been so angry- And had they ever been angry with him before? Just once in all their time together?
He watches their brief outburst crumple back inwards. Even blinks rapidly, pawing at whatever is beneath their shirt like it can steady them.
“Back with Donna,” he says, much quieter than he intends. Even blinks again, eyes clearly watering despite their attempts to stop it. “Making sure she’s safe.” He hasn’t let himself say her name in a long time. As though locking away the names of the people he cares about could keep them with him.
“Oh,” Even says, “you meant-”
Pettily, he adds, “You promised.” Whatever vulnerable thing had lighted on Even’s face when they heard Donna’s name evaporates, and that, he knows, is his fault. The brief vindication of their guilt isn’t worth it.
“What did you want me to do?” they beg. “Lie to her forever? Live my whole life with my best friend without being able to talk about any of the things that made us friends?”
“Did anyone tell you it would be easy?” he snaps. “Yes! She would have been safe!” You would have been safe, he couldn’t bring himself to say. He wants to believe, has to believe, that Even had ended up somewhere okay. Their present choice in company said otherwise, but more than that… He wonders if they know he can tell that some of their fingers are the wrong length. He’d almost thought he was misremembering, but they’re more incongruent upon further inspection — the shade of their skin slightly changed and the way they move. And that’s the part of them that he’s noticed has been modified. If there are others, he’s starting to think he just hasn’t seen them yet, not that they aren’t there.
They did a good job not answering his question earlier.
“I couldn’t live like that!” Even cries, cheeks finally stained with their first escaped tears. They flinch from the feeling of them, scrunching their eyes shut and failing to stop more. “Not with people I- I-“ Even makes a terrible noise, choked. The Doctor takes an unconscious step towards them, though he can’t make himself reach out to help. Their hesitation is too familiar to him, and his mind fills with a horrible litany of, don’t stop there, say you didn’t learn to stop there from me, that can’t be the one thing you learned from me you didn’t forget. “With people I-“ Even makes a valiant second attempt. They fail. “People I cared about,” they finish, their failure obvious to themself and weighing heavily. “Care,” they correct, “care about.”
The TARDIS gives a warning hum as she nears her destination. He and Even both look up with recognition when they hear it.
He looks back at them before they do him. They gaze up at the TARDIS, towards the followable source of the noise — though the true source is somewhere else, much deeper within her. Their cheeks are still wet and their eyes are slightly red and puffy, but for those few seconds, their expression is one he’s missed so much that his hearts ache seeing it again: all wonder and delight at the TARDIS bringing them somewhere new.
And then their smile falls into a confused frown. They look at the Doctor, and then, gaze jumping to focus just over his shoulder instead, ask, “Doctor. Where are you taking me?”
He doesn’t have to answer. It was obvious where he thought they were supposed to be.
He’s going to say something, though. Maybe about the rarity of second chances.
Even’s expression goes blank. Against the contrast of their continuing tears, it’s unnerving. Without a word, they scan the TARDIS console. He doesn’t realize they actually know what they’re looking for until they’ve found it and dragged one lever into place with a protesting squeak. The TARDIS groans as she brakes in time.
The Doctor’s vision narrows to Even’s hand on the console. He doesn’t realize what he’s doing until his own hand is outstretched, and he hears the smack like a gunshot. Even jumps back, their eyes wide before they duck their head and brought their hand up against their lips. His palm stings slightly. On the tip of his tongue is a reprimand that dies before escaping. He’s standing as close to Even as they’ve allowed him to this entire time, and they’re cradling the hand he’d slapped away from the TARDIS’s controls.
They’d drawn the TARDIS to a halt properly, too. Not a guess or a reckless grab at any random button to throw them off-course.
They let their hand fall. There was a little red mark on it where he’d made contact.
“No,” they say.
“Even-“
“No,” they repeat. It scrapes out like a sob from the back of their throat.
“Then come with me.” He reaches out to touch their shoulder, and they move it inches from the tips of his fingers. “There’s room for you. You’ll meet Clara. You’d like Clara.” He has to say something to fill the air, or he’s going to keep staring at that fading red mark on their hand, feeling the skin on his palm slowly stop tingling. “You do the same thing with your eyes when you’re upset. You’ll have me outnumbered.” He wants Even’s eyes to go wide again and their lip to tremble, if only so he can point it out, just how similar they look and how well Even would get along with Clara if they were ever in the same room.
But Even doesn’t. They look exhausted instead.
“I already have a TARDIS to live in,” they say.
“Yes. Mine,” he insists, like he can make them stop before they say what he knows is coming. He’s still trying, though. He has to try.
“Mine.” He chooses to believe they’re just echoing what he said. (He misses when they did that, their voice catching the last words of his sentences and chirping them back again. He misses being caught in the loop himself, tossing a phrase back and forth until they couldn’t keep from laughing too hard to continue.) He chooses to believe that up until they say, voice strangely light compared to the rest of this conversation, “Missy will kill me if I’m late.”
He does not let his face fall. He does not let anything cross it, not anger or bitterness or grief.
Nonetheless, Even tilts their head slightly, brows knit, and adds, “I really can’t stay here. Your TARDIS bites,” almost like an apology.
“And hers doesn’t?” He grips the TARDIS console, the contact with her controls calming him from the cool metal beneath his palms to the brushes of her consciousness against his own. He watches the stalled engine vibrate.
Even eyes him for a moment and cautiously steps closer into the space beside him. When he doesn’t move, they lay their hands on the console as well, mirroring his own. They twitch, once, a preemptive flinch and then, rest. He can feel every inch between their shoulders. Ghosts of laughter muffled against his coat or surprised grabs at his arm for reassurance haunt him. Even’s fingers curl, and they bring their hands together rather than keeping them outstretched and flat.
“No, actually,” they answer. “I think she’s too grateful for when we found and fixed her.” The Doctor chances turning his head to peer down at them.
His eyes catch on a shock of color amid their more subdued attire. They shift, and the color is swallowed up, melting into metallic grey, and revealing itself again the next time they adjust their stance. It’s a necklace, he realizes, chain interlaced with… something else. He finds the other spots of color easily, neon greens and yellows and blues. They look familiar.
“She does sometimes land us too close to walls, though,” Even continues. He can hear them smiling. “Most of the time, Missy stops before she runs into them. Most of the time.” He smiles despite himself, only half-listening as he studies their necklace or what he can see of it before it disappears beneath their shirt.
They’re beads. The pieces soldered into the chain are cheap, plastic beads.
The Doctor’s wrist feels suddenly bare, despite this wrist never having worn what it misses.
Even meets his eyes. They worry their lip between their teeth as they do, their effort to maintain it clear, and for that reason, he doesn’t look away for their sake like he might have otherwise.
“Would you really let me come back?” they say, slowly and carefully.
The Doctor doesn’t answer.
And he doesn’t answer.
And he doesn’t answer.
And finally, he says, “Yes.”
Even exhales and looks away. They squeeze their eyes shut.
When they extend their hand, it’s the Doctor’s turn to try not to flinch. He thinks he does an okay job of it, and if not, they aren’t looking anyway. The feel of their fingers wrapping loosely around his wrist is both new and familiar. Their adjust their grip as they bring his hand towards them, getting used to the changes they should have been expecting but that he knows they still weren’t, despite hearing his new voice and looking at his new face and knowing it wasn’t even the first he’d had since they’d last touched him.
Even draws his hand close to their chest and hesitates. They squeeze it once and continue. They hold it to their chest. He finds the outline of something beneath their shirt. They press his hand closer, eyes shut. The Doctor feels out the edges of the hidden object, round and hard, with no give but its own heat, its own energy pulsing with a steady rhythm that Even must feel in their chest constantly with it so near their skin. He runs his thumb over it again.
“I can’t stay with you.” Another apology. Their other hand comes up to cover what’s left of his that the first didn’t.
The Doctor finally knows how he could convince them. He can read it in the way they hold on. He knows exactly what he has to say to make it impossible for them to leave.
“Keep me close,” he says instead. Even huffs a little laugh.
“I try.” They release his hand, and with his invitation gone, he doesn’t try to take more than they’ve allowed. They aren’t running from him anymore. He knows how hard that is.
When he puts the TARDIS in motion again, he does everything he can not to think of Even’s intended destination, where or what or who it is, and to exist in the few moments they have together.
(He finds the box tucked into a corner of his own room, though he knows he didn’t leave it there. The TARDIS wants him to have it back. He takes out cheap, stretchy plastic bands and multicolored beads and lays them in a dozen rows of different shades before he makes anything from them. It goes much slower when he’s the only one sorting them out.
He strings them together, one by one. He tries to remember the colors he saw. He remembers their original order, but some were lost along the way and what’s the point in a friendship bracelet that doesn’t match?
Clara comments on it when she sees it. She says it’s cute, with a quirk to her mouth and eyebrows that says she’s confused but humoring him.
The Doctor tries not to take it off again, for however long that might last. He hopes it’s at least until Even sees it.)