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They say you’re not supposed to feel any pain, not supposed to remember. It all happens in less than a millisecond.
All that you are is ripped from your chest (not my chest, you realize, though your thoughts are formless, voiceless; it was just a vessel, and you are so much more than the puppet flesh that held you prisoner, more than skin and bone and blood; you are floating, you are endless, you are stars and moons and galaxies).
In an instant, you see the universe, every subatomic particle, every piece of dark matter, and you sail with them, singing and creating the universe anew, and you are free, soaring across light-years, across all of time and space.
There’s nothing more painful than a soul that’s seen the turn of the universe being forced into human form; fragile, small, insignificant.
**
“There must be some way out of here,” The Doctor says, one day before a new exhibition arrives at the Capitol’s museum.
His body is old now, but his hearts are young; he is 87 years old, and he isn’t so much bored (he is far too respectable and refined for boredom, thank you very much) so much as he is tired.
Gallifrey has been good to him, but he can feel his bones slowing, beginning to creak when he walks. Another life awaits him after this one, another life with a new face and new blood, tending to the gardens and forests where the TARDII grow. He can’t imagine possibly spending another 100 years on Gallifrey, and another, and another, until he’s a 1000 years old and finally old enough to sit on the Time Lord Council, have his own TARDIS, and begin his adventures in time and space.
What’s the sense in being a Time Lord if he can’t be a Lord of Time?
**
The Capitol museum’s new TARDIS exhibit is its pride and joy. It is difficult to document the history of a people for whom time is in constant flux, a thing they wield and bend to their will. But the TARDIS exhibit is the closest thing; it’s not the evolution of the TARDIS, for evolution suggests a certain linearity which simply does not exist. It is every TARDIS model that has been made, that is being made, that will be made.
The Doctor visits the exhibit the day it opens.
**
The first time, it’s not what she expects, and she is unprepared for the pain. It’s nothing at all like being coaxed by gentle voices to walk down a narrow hallway toward soft, warm light.
It’s more akin to shackles binding your hands, unseen forces pushing and shoving you barefoot down a pebbled path in the dead of night, pulling you forward by the bindings that hold you captive, forcing you to run at full speed into darkness, until you can run no more; you collapse, weak and exhausted, are dragged along sharp, jagged rocks that smash your bones and cut your flesh. And still the voices hound and howl, still hands reach from the darkness for whippings.
It’s like a hand reaching into your stomach, grabbing hold of your intestines, and yanking, hard, tugging out your insides, inch by inch, like a tug rope, a plaything. And when they’ve finished with your intestines, the contents of your stomach piled high behind them in a red, pinkish mess of organ, congealed blood, slime, and half-digested food, they move on to your kidneys, your liver, your lungs and lastly, agonizingly slow, your heart.
Only it’s infinitely, incalculably, insufferably worse than all that.
**
Later (and before), lore (and prophecy) tell of the Mad Thief who stole (will steal) a Blue Box. Only the TARDIS knows the truth, that she stole the Mad Man, that she missed the stars and the vortex, that the moment she laid eyes on that daft old man, she knew he was hers.
She takes him first to London, England, Earth, 1963; it’s not where he wants to go, but something in her whispers that it’s where he needs to be. And she likes the look and the feel of the place so much, she decides she doesn’t want to be anything but a wooden blue box ever again.
His fury at her inability (read: refusal) to adjust her shape appropriatly for their ever-changing surroundings makes the entire affair of what she considers to be a perfectly harmless joke all the more entertating, and solidifies her termination to remain a blue, Earth-bound London 1960s Police Telephone box.
Eventually, he'll stop trying to fix her "broken" Chamilion Circuit. He'll become fond of it, even.The evening he accepts her chosen form, the TARDIS smiles, and lets him direct their destination for a change.
**
In a (slow, agonizing) instant, she (though not she, because there’s no body, just spirit, just memory) is transported across time and space, where life and a new vessel await.
She wakes with a gasp, shoots up from the thick, gel-like liquid that sustained the body (her body now) in a state of suspension, until she was ready for it, until she needed it. An entire life flashes before her eyes, is crammed into a brain too small to handle such an overload of information. She grips the edge of her sleeping pod, presses new flesh deep into the metal. It’s been so long since she’s had a body to touch anything with.
“Clara,” says a male voice close to her ear, familiar and yet new, a voice she’s not heard in at least a hundred years. How long was she trapped, before the Asylum blew up, before her soul was finally freed to come home?
A hand touches her shoulder, and she shivers at the warm touch, no longer accustomed to contact. “It’s all right,” he says.
“They—they turned me into a Dalek,” she says, eyes wide, hands clenched hard around the edges of her pod. “My soul was trapped. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, I was airwaves moving through their computer network, I was—”
“I know,” he soothes, wraps large, warm arms around her bare shoulders, brings her close to his chest. She lets herself be pulled into him and sobs into the soft dark swayed of his military jacket.
**
“Where’s Rory, then?” she asks, once she’s cleaned off all the goop and dressed in the red dress and utility belt. Seeing copies of the outfit, pristine as ever, hanging neatly in her closet, was a shock. Physically, she knows she only ever wore it once, for a short while, before the Alaska crashed into the Asylum and she died, but could not transfer. Haunted by memories of wearing it for a lifetime, she wears it now in defiance, desperate to cling to the humanity stolen from her previous incarnation. “Should be back by now, shouldn’t he?”
“Yes,” says Jack. “We know he’s dead, that’s why we need to send you out again, but he hasn’t come back. The Angels took him and his human wife. We suspect he’s living out his life with her.”
“But we’re following the Doctor’s timeline. If he’s dead for the Doctor, shouldn’t he be here?”
“I miss him, too,” Jack says, because he doesn’t have an answer. It’s been a long time since all four of them were together. He reaches for her, kisses the top of her head gently, and together, they look out at the great expanse of space before them.
**
The Lord of Time builds himself a tower above Earth; he parks his TARDIS on a bed of silver clouds, watches the Industrial revolution unfold, humans digging up the earth, polluting the skies with filth and hunger. Winds howl in protest outside his tower, but the Doctor mourns in private.
He taps a 4/4 rhythm against his thigh; his hearts beat to the drum, to the primal, steady thrum of the Universe.
London cries out for its saviour, a call unheeded, unheard by the warrior god above the city.
What is any of it worth?
**
When the Doctor looses people, they rarely die. Most of them simply live on, in one form, time, universe, or another, without him. Sometimes, in the throes of loss, he wonders if it would be better if they were really dead, selfish as it is. For the time Lord, there’s no relief.
But there are always links: a song, a word, a vision, a memory. “You’re seared onto my hearts,” he told Amy once, both of them sensing the end was near. And it’s true, not just for her and Rory, but for all his companions, for everyone who has ever run across the stars with him. The connection lingers.
For Rose, his flower, it takes the form of two words that follow him across the universe. He searches for those words in all his travels, knows that if he sees them, then she is near, she will come back to him. And he has to believe that she will. Because if he believes in anything, he believes in her.
**
She smiles when Rose puts a hand on her shoulder.
“You’ve done well,” says the wolf gently. “He’s got your scent now.”
“But I died again,” Clara says.
“It’s fine. We can send you back. I know my Doctor, and he’ll only be more determined to find you now. He loves a good mystery, he does. With Amy and Rory lost and the fields of Trenzalore looming, this is exactly what he needs.”
Rose Tyler always takes care of her Doctor.
**
He lives on as a memory in Donna, a distant dream.
Wilf calls, every once in a while, says, “She was dreaming of you last night, Doctor. I heard her in her sleep, calling out for you, spitting out numbers and dates and jumbled words that make no sense, talking so fast about planets and galaxies light-years away that don’t even exist yet—and in the morning, she doesn’t remember a damn thing. Says she dreamed of pizza.”
“She’s got a Time Lord slumbering in her brain,” the Doctor says. “A living, breathing Time Lord who has become part of her; her tiny, human, fragile brain contains the memories and knowledge of a Time Lord, knowledge that spans eons, spans across the entire universe. I couldn’t make it go away; it’s knit into the fabric of her soul now. It’s part of her, it is her. I could only block it. In sleep, when the brain is unguarded, she will always dream of the universe through Time Lord eyes.”
“What about the song, Doctor? Is that anything?”
“The song?”
“Every so often, in her sleep, she’s humming a song. I don’t know the tune, I can never hang on to the damn thing, but do you think it means something, if her dreams are tied to that life with you, Doctor?”
“I don’t know,” says the Doctor, tapping his fingers rhythmically against the TARDIS console.
**
Her body is new, untouched, fresh off the shelf: limited time special offer, mint condition “Clara”, get ‘em while they last!
She supposes she should feel grateful, feel alive and fresh and revitalized; after all, Clara Oswald lived an arduous, albeit altogether enjoyable life, and it took its toll on even her Cylon bones.
But it feels all wrong. This flesh is not her flesh, this blood that flows through her veins is not her blood, is a parasite, is infecting her, is crawling through her body like ants and she needs to extract the poison before it kills her.
Her mind and bones on fire, she wonders how Jack and Rory can stand going through this cycle as often as they have.
**
He keeps Martha’s mobile in a small, hidden compartment in the console room that opens to his touch alone. She wouldn’t have to say a word, wouldn’t even have to breathe his name—if that mobile rang, he’d follow the music through time and space, straight back to her, the woman who walked the Earth, who saved the world through the power of words alone.
The ring never comes.
**
Amy sends messages across the universe in the form of stories. She writes epic tales of a mad man with a blue box, and she pours her love for her raggedy doctor, her best friend, her imaginary friend, her son-in-law, into those words.
In her own time, she’s alive and well, happy with Rory and her son.
But for him, she is dead, and the words are salt to his wounds. He refuses to touch a single thing she publishes.
**
The Doctor’s companions are flawless by design, made to meet his every need and whim.
Not all of them, of course; some he finds of his own accord, or they find him, by chance or by fate, who can say?
But others match him so perfectly, come at just the right time, it’s a wonder he never stops to ponder.
Their love for him, unadulterated and pure, is their greatest asset; bit by bit, without even realizing it, they bring him closer to his end, leading him down a path by their Creator’s design.
The hour is getting late, the fields of Trenzalore await, two princes ride across the plain. The Master’s chest beats with pride, a 4/4 rhythm that crosses space and time, a song that calls to him through the vortex, lyrics from which he can get no relief, a tune he hums over the motionless forms of his still sleeping children.
This is their fate.