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The Yu-Suth was a tolerably nice bar, right on the spacefront of a satellite bordering the edge of the universe, the furthest out for several lightyears. Its patrons included Jo’kians, Steppers, Lufdama, Draglegs, Tyto, and now a full human, looking around for something interesting.
The door opened and closed with a rubber-muffled thud. Clara inclined her head back at the flash of a coat, and saw an alien figure, a firm shape in the haze that tended to settle over the world here at points. She shifted in her seat, standing and circling the stranger till she reached the bar, slipping a small stick over the bartender and gesturing at the stranger. There was a pause, then a nod in return. The bartender moved down to serve the alien, and Clara walked back to her table.
The alien paced down, and Clara examined them - or her, she assumed, seeing the alien closer. She was rose-skinned with purple hair, brushing the tip of her shoulders, that she kept on adjusting absently, as if she found it suffocating. Four orange-tipped tendrils emerged from under amber-tipped fins, glowing at their ends.
The alien wore a long, dark coat, beige trousers, a waistcoat, and a green cravat; Victorian. But not Victorian was the odd make of the metal boots on her feet.
She spoke before Clara did. “I ought to recognise you.” She peered at her with orange eyes. “And not just because you tried to buy me a drink.”
“Is that not how people socialise on your world?”
“I’m not here to get drunk.”
“Oh? What’s your business, then, coming over to see me?”
“Curiosity. And to return your credit stick.” The alien passed it over. “It is Tok-Mei I’ve landed on, isn’t it?”
“Unless we both set the wrong coordinates, it is.” Clara’s eyed absently dipped down to the alien’s lips, her own parting. The alien observed the action, then shrugged.
“Sure. If that’s what you want, then; to flirt. I’ll have a ginger beer.”
Clara fetched the drink. The beer was a cloudy yellow, and the alien sipped it easily. She licked her lips, leaning forwards.
“What’s your name, then?”
“Clara. Clara Oswin Oswald. Yours?”
The alien’s mouth twitched up into a grin. “Clara. Clara.” She muttered it again under her breath, tilting up her jaw to drain the last few streaks of colour fom her glass. “My name is the Doctor.”
Clara laughed. “The Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“What, blue police box Doctor? Saviour of humanity Doctor?”
“Humans. You always have such a broad view of yourself.” The alien grinned. “It’s more the universe I’ve saved. Will save. Am in the process of saving.”
“If you’re the Doctor, why are you -”
“I’m flexible.”
Some long-dormant part of Clara lit up with recognition. She smirked reflexively, examining the alien - the Doctor’s - clothes with more intent. She could see, now, how this Doctor dressed like her own Doctors. The way she spoke, moved. The way she seemed to recognise Clara’s appearance, but somehow not her name. That was a mystery.
Clara was always good at mysteries.
“So, Doctor,” she hummed, name delicious in her mouth, “what brings you here?”
The Doctor shifted. “Oh, you know. Sight-seeing. Looking for trouble. Odd; usually it’s the other way around.” Again, she brushed her hair.
“You look like you want a haircut,” Clara noted.
“Oh? Er, well.” She fidgeted with it again. “I’ve never had it this long before. I never would’ve grown it out normally, except… Well, to remind me of a friend I once had.” The thought brought a distinct sort of loss to her expression, and the implications lingered in the air between them. Abruptly, she let out a soft laugh.
“Sorry. I’m… sentimental when it comes to my time with him. He’s not dead, really. Lives on. It’s a- long story.” She shook her head. “I’ll get used to it eventually.”
“Living on. What a thing to be.”
“What an odd thing.” The Doctor picked up her glass and put it down again. “I’ve killed the mood, haven’t I? Well, I suppose it would have to come up sometime. I wouldn’t be here - I wouldn’t be me - if it wasn’t for him.”
“I knew a man like that. It felt like I wouldn’t have a life without him.” Clara’s eyes stole over the Doctor’s face.
The Doctor pushed the glass aside and leant forwards. “You know something,” she muttered. “I know you, but not who you are to me.” She studied Clara with narrowed eyes. “You’re important. Oh, yes, I can taste that. But I don’t know why. Past? Future? Oh, if only he’d given me more…”
“I don’t know either. You’re odd, for the Doctor.”
“So you’ve met me before, though not this… version of myself. But have I met you?”
“ I don’t know. I don’t know what on earth I’m supposed to make of you -”
“I’m the Doctor,” the alien replied, a little sullen. “What do you make of whatever version of me you’ve seen?”
“Alright,” retorted Clara, “if you’re the Doctor, then kiss me.”
“Oh, that makes more sense.” The Doctor relaxed. She gave a small smile to herself, then when Clara leant forwards, gladly tilted her head to kiss her. There was a muffled panting against lips, Clara twirling her hand through purple hair to cup the Doctor’s head. She withdrew only when the table pressed too hard into her stomach to let her open her mouth, to taste further the faint tang of salt on the Doctor’s lips.
“You’re - or you were - in love with me,” muttered the Doctor to herself as she sat back down, and then, nonplussed, she shrugged. “That isn’t an issue. I think you’re interesting. If you’re up for it - and you know that you might well end up with a broken heart, that’s always the risk with me - then I’ll let you along.”
“No heart to break.” Clara offered a bittersweet smile.
The Doctor copied the expression, leaning back in her seat. “How’d you lose a heart?”
She shrugged. “Gave it away last Christmas.”
The smile grew more genuine, and an actual laugh slipped out from the Doctor’s mouth. Her face softened with affection.
“You remind me of… hm.” The Doctor shook her head, but her smile remained. “Come on. Take a walk with me.” She stood up, offering her arm to Clara. “The air’s nice at this time, and I won’t sleep if I don’t get in a good walk.”
Clara took the Doctor’s arm, twining her hand securely around it. “I thought you never slept.”
“That’s for you to find out.” The Doctor took up a brisk pace at first, but when Clara dragged on her arm, she did slow, and after a minute they found a comfortable middle ground and relaxed into their strides as they left the bar to walk along the spacefront, glancing through the massive transparent dome that kept them safe from the pressure of outer space.
“Have you ever come here before?”
The Doctor grinned, hair tossed lightly around by the arti-breeze. “Oh, I don’t think so. But we’re close to the edge; things get blurry here.”
“That would explain why my ship threw up a fuss about landing.”
“An adventurer! Oh, but it makes sense; I like those types. Overshadow me, sometimes; but it gives me a kick to have someone who’ll take the initiative.”
“You’re self-aware.”
“Aren’t I allowed to be?”
“No. It’s odd. You’re odd.” Clara tightened her hold on the Doctor’s arm, was given a pleased cock of the brows in return. “But I like those fins.”
The Doctor spluttered with laughter, catching Clara’s shoulder to kiss her again. She gazed out happily over the spacefront, which Clara saw was spotted with a bit of dust, but no more planets past the viewing dome.
The edge of the universe was beautiful.
“Are you travelling with anyone?” asked the Doctor, pressing close against her.
“A friend. But she’s fine with me doing my own thing from time to time.”
The Doctor sighed. “Of course. You left me. Always happens, you know.” She paused a moment, absently brushing her fingers against Clara’s. “But I have a feeling that my recollection of events may not have as much clarity as yours.”
“I think I have to be in your future. I’ve gone through your whole past, everything after my meeting you, and I would remember seeing you.”
“But that doesn’t make sense, either,” the Doctor hummed, looking back on Clara with pinched brows. “You can’t be from my future.”
“Well, I’m not from your past, or from your future, and I’m certainly not from your present.”
The Doctor turned back. “But see, I can recognise you. I just can’t place you in my timeline, at any point. It’s like - like you’re not from my past, or my future, but you would have to be, for me to recognise you.”
“It’s the edge of the universe. Things get blurry, you said.”
The Doctor set her jaw. “But I’d still recall… This meeting between us - it isn’t enough for me. I don’t know what is going on with me in your timeline, but I’m certain you in my timeline… Well, there’s something very wrong with it.” She abruptly looked at Clara. “When I said that I didn’t think my recollection of you leaving me was as clear as yours… You brushed over it.”
“Doctor…”
“I’m certain now, Clara. There’s something very wrong here. You love me, or whatever version of me you have met. Tell me the truth.”
“Then tell me the truth as well! Why are you so certain I’m not from your future?”
“Well, you say you’ve gone through my entire past. Explain that to me.”
“You say you’re flexible- you’re a woman, sure, you have purple hair, sure, you have fins of the side of your face - you know what, good for you! But when I take your wrist -” she caught it “- why can’t I feel two hearts?”
The Doctor jerked away from Clara. She pulled down her sleeves firmly.
“See, you’ve done this before,” Clara snapped. “Keeping things from me. And you know what, after- after everything you’ve put me through, I deserve the truth. And maybe it wasn’t you that did that to me, but I refuse to be treated like I’m not a person, like I don’t need to know what’s going on with my own life, my own timeline.”
The Doctor turned to look at her. “Alright,” she said bitterly, “you’re not from my future because I’m quite certain I don’t have a future beyond this version of myself.” She gestured. “And what happened when you left me?”
“You tried to wipe my memories. It backfired on you.”
“And how have you been through my past?”
“Why do you only have one heart?”
“Because…” The Doctor’s face twisted. “This- body, it is not the body of a Time Lord. But it is the body of the Doctor.”
“Echoes of me were spread throughout the Doctor’s timeline.” Against all her better judgement, Clara stepped closer. “But I’m not sure it was your timeline.”
The Doctor gave a deep, guttural sigh. “Things get blurry at the edge of the universe.”
“I don't…” Clara frowned. “Oh. Oh. Do you- you can’t mean… But it’s the only way…” She caught the Doctor’s hand. “We come from separate universes, don’t we?”
“And things blurred. They overlapped.”
“In my universe the Doctor is alive.”
“In mine, I stole his TARDIS and his name.”
“But it’s more than that.”
“He gave me part of his soul. To save my life. Part of him is in me. And every day it feels less and less necessary to separate us, to call him ‘he’ and not ‘I’.”
“He was your friend, wasn’t he? The one you grew out your hair to remember?”
“The closest friend I ever had. I loved him.”
“I loved him too. He was… After yours, if yours was -”
“Curly brown hair. Waistcoat. Always fond of clocks.”
“Yes.” Clara smiled softly. “Gorgeous.”
“Was he?”
Clara laughed, at first at the response, then for joy with the genuineness of the Doctor’s expression, the sense of life inside of her. It felt, for a moment, like she had a heart.
“Will you travel with me?” the alien blurted out.
“What, as your companion?”
“Yes. He was in love with you. That… influences me. And if you could love him, that bit of him inside of me, you might learn to love me the same.”
Clara sighed fondly. “I don’t think we have the time before our universes seperate, and my friend’ll be picking me up anyway. Besides…” She tucked a hair behind the ear. “I’m a bit done with being someone else’s companion.”
She frowned. Her eyes widened. “No.”
“It doesn’t look like a police box, mind -”
“Oh, I can see why he loved you! You are unbelievable, Clara Oswald!” She caught Clara, pulled her in close enough for Clara to kiss her. They fell apart, leaning hard over the railings and fighting to breathe through their laughter. Clara battled to calm her breathing, then simply stopped it till her shoulders stopped shaking.
“I don’t suppose you’ll ever tell me your name from before?” she asked at last, wondering if she ought to keep on calling this alien the Doctor. “Or did you get the air of mystery along with the soul?”
“It’s not relevant, is it?” She swiped at her purple hair, pushing it out of her face. “My name - that was… well, it was a different person. Same body, but me now - I’m not at all like how she was.”
“Alright, Doctor.” Clara stepped closer to stand next to her, and the Doctor leant in against her side. It was comfortingly warm, and made the air around her smell like salt. “How much time do you think we have left?”
“Not much.”
“I wonder, if, because we know -”
“Who knows?”
“Who knows.” She hesitated. “Would you -”
She did, like it was the easiest thing in the world. Clara sighed softly against the Doctor’s lips, only being broken from her when the Doctor pulled back to breathe. She licked her lips, face painfully earnest as she looked back at Clara, a glimmer passing over her eyes when she tilted her head.
“Good luck, Clara, wherever you go.” She pressed their faces back together, breath a soft whisper against Clara’s lips. She felt the pressure lessen, leaned back with a smile, opening her eyes to see emptiness in front of her. She breathed deeply in - an old habit, unnecessary, but familiar - and tasted the lingering scent of salt.
She brushed her eyes, and leant back on the railings, the arti-breeze stirring her hair, wallowing in that odd, comforting feeling of some form of the Doctor knowing her, and the love that had been.