Notes: It's been a while since I saw the movie, so I have the basic gist of its plot in my head. If you're unfamiliar with Lost in Translation, please use Wikipedia to your advantage if you want a quick plot overview. Or just watch it I guess.
Consider this a kind of drabble not really based on any specific scene, but still maintaining the same premise as the film.
Footsteps in the Lonely Valley
Since the weather was nice and the itch to explore bit them both — a shared plague state, one that usually occurred after breakfast and in the yawning stretch before noon — Clara and the Doctor took it upon themselves to brave Tokyo once again. It was their last day together. The last full day, at least, before his flight left from Narita tomorrow afternoon.
They couldn't see all of Tokyo. That would be impossible, considering the limited time they had together — and in the city. But enough of time was left to grow less terrified of the Yamanote line map, and get more acquainted with the stops that popped up with tinny, sweet chimes. Enough of time was left to know which tourist traps to avoid and which to try, just in passing, as they moved on their way to another park, another lake, another temple. It was the shrines they preferred, truth be told, the ones home to wild little cats who peered at them from under patches of hydrangea, or came trotting up with bobbed tails twitching and throats purring loud, happy for the attention and a lap to sit on instead of a rock.
They were heading to a park now. Ueno to be specific. Clara had meant to head their earlier, but it seemed too sad to see alone, and Danny had promised to take her at the start of their trip. He'd stopped promising when the assignments started pouring in — longer shoots and madder schedules, ones that kept him out most of the day and half the night, though he was ever mindful to call, to check in, to apologise. Clara had stopped asking him about it. The calls were nice. They almost made up for the stopped promises.
The Doctor did too, but Clara wasn't about to tell Danny that.
On the pond in Ueno Park there sat an eight-sided structure, towering and arched, sloped, delicately crafted and lovingly attended by scores of people. The chatter around Clara and the Doctor faded into a hum like a guitar's string, plucked and vibrating through the air. It made Clara's chest thrum the way kisses once did, the way a hand over her heart or lips on the back of her neck used to do.
But Danny was too busy for that now. Busy and happy and a little too absent in the bargain. He was still saying "I love you", though. That mattered. That counted. Clara collected these words in a little scrap at the bottom of her most glum, lonely moods, clattered them one by one the way a penitent clutches a rosary. He loves me, he loves me, he loves me. You could love and be silent — Cordelia said as much to herself while she stood in front of her father, King Lear. You could love and be absent, but that didn't stop it from hurting.
"What did the brochure say about this temple?" she asked, looking over at the Doctor. Dear Doctor, strange Doctor, silly Doctor. A man whose sullen look and sharp blue eyes had caught her own in the hotel bar some nights past, and he had been kind enough to share his time and a little bowl of peanuts and even a drink or two before seeing her back to her room, the way a gentleman might do to a courted woman. His attention was gentle and warm, like the summer sun back home in England. Not like the summers here. All glaring and brutal, making an agony of her skin.
The Doctor peered at Clara curiously, stirring from his thoughts by her voice. "Sorry?"
"The brochure. The one we picked up from the pile in my room." Clara nodded with her chin towards the eight-sided temple they were approaching. "The one for that, yeah? It's for Benten, goddess of…?"
"Right, yeah. Forgot that. I, er — I wrote it down somewhere." The Doctor dug into his pocket and scowled at the scribbles on the torn off page. Clara waited a moment, then extracted the paper gently from his fingertips.
"Forgot my glasses," he said. He sounded almost sheepish and bizarrely amused at his own expense. The Doctor was always joking about himself in their conversations. He joked about his eyes, about his unease in the world and in the company of a woman so young ("No one's going to say anything," "No, they wouldn't. Not here," "Would it matter if they did?" "Not to me, no. Not really," "Then why bring it up?" "Because it was on my mind, and because you were listening,"). He joked about his gaunt scarecrow's body standing out shoulder and head above even the most dense Shibuya crowd. The Doctor was always trying to get Clara to laugh at him, and sometimes it worked. Clara found him funny in the way a sad song can make you smile through the tears. Like a warm hand against the heart, like the one long, relieving gasp after a crying jag. That's what the Doctor was. He was that gulp of air after a sob. That heartbreaking, and that vital.
"I know you did," Clara said, smiling so that her dimple showed. "That's why I've got you on my arm like this. So I can lead you around. Remember?"
The Doctor bristled, paused, then started up at once. If he could make jokes at himself, he could also rise to his own defence as needed, when required. "I can see distant things, can't I? Like that long line of occupied benches with the sun hats and umbrellas. It's only the close up bits that are… a bit, er vague. You know. Hard to see."
"Right. Of course they are." Clara peered down at the scrap in her hand, trying to read his handwriting. "'Benten. Goddess of good fortune, wealth, music, eloquence — whatever flows. Usually found near water.' Why did you write this down again?"
"You asked me to."
"I did?" she said, truly not remembering. That worried her a bit.
He nodded. "You asked me to write it down for all the temples and shrines we've seen here. I guess I fell into the habit."
Clara handed the paper back to him. Their fingers brushed for a second. Just a second, no more.
"Don't you want to keep it?"
"Hold onto it until we're back in the hotel," Clara said. "I don't have any pockets in this dress."
They looked up at Shinobazu Pond. It was coated in lotus, to the point where the blooms completely hid the water beneath. Green swatches as far as the eye could see, rich and bright, with the occasional sprout of pink shooting up from beneath. Most were still closed tight like fists but some were daring to open in a slow, graceful collapse of petals.
One lotus stood higher than all the others, taller, defiant, bending in the gentle breeze that ran across the pond like fingers through hair in long, comforting strokes. It took Clara a moment to realize she was doing the same thing to the back of the Doctor's hand. She stopped at once.
"Sorry."
"It's fine."
"What kind of fine: Awkward but acceptable fine, or don't stop that fine?"
The Doctor didn't answer. Something about his wordlessness, and the gentle warmth of his presence at her side let Clara know her answer. But she still wasn't about to run her fingers over his and again.
They lapsed into a silence that lasted as they crossed the little stone bridge and approached the temple. The chatter was less prominent here. Silence ruled and reigned, falling like a gentle rain until it enclosed them completely, the way the lotus closes before it sinks down under the water again.
There were a few empty benches in the trellis to the left of the temple, allowing them a clear look at the pond, the stretch of trees directly across, and the buildings darting up like thick, white monoliths in the near distance. They took a seat, side by side. A pinkie nail's distance was between them. Even an inchworm would have difficulty fitting in the space.
Clara waited until her hand on the Doctor's arm felt too much like a dead weight to bear anymore. She pulled back, folded her hands in her lap, and stared at the pond. "It's pretty here. I like it."
"Very pretty," he said at once, an automatic and mechanic response. He could do that, she noticed. Make agreeing little snatches of small talk, simple little sounds to fill up silence. She wondered if that's what marriage did to you in the later years. Chatting rather than talking, the way birds call back one to another. Disconsolate, vague, with no real attachment. She didn't want that with Danny. She didn't want that with the Doctor, either. But this was different. They were different. They were…
"I hear it's prettier in the spring time," she continued. "Something about the cherry blossoms?" She paused. "I wish I could see it."
"You can always come back here. On a holiday or another honeymoon."
"This is my honeymoon. Or it's supposed to be," she pointed out in a tone too sharp to be conversational. "Remember? I told you."
"I know you told me. I heard you. And there's no rule saying you can only have just the one. Make as many as you want."
"Even if the first is awful?"
"Especially if the first is awful."
Clara looked at her hands. The Doctor was looking at her. "Is that a bit more wisdom from the old salt?"
He snorted out a laugh. "Hardly. More like friendly advice."
Clara looked at him. From the corner of her eyes she could see more pink lotus bending in the breeze, nodding their heads. Yes, yes, yes. She moved her gaze back and forth from the Doctor's eyes. So blue, so bright. She liked the lines around them, the webbed dents of crow's feet. That's what happens when you get old, he'd said. Aged, Clara had corrected with a smile and a blush brought on by the not-so watered down gin. People age, furniture gets old. You're like a nice bottle of vintage. The Doctor said he supposed he should be grateful for the compliment, and Clara told him he damn well ought to be. It had been the strangest post-karaoke conversation she had ever had.
He loves me, she thought to herself, a strange series of words to come floating back in. Who did she mean? Danny, surely. Danny, of course. Danny, always — yes? He loves me, she thought again. But it was the Doctor she was thinking of.
"Is it okay?"
"Is what okay?"
"Coming back to something you like — even if the moment's gone?"
The Doctor waited, taking this in. He knew she didn't quite mean the lotus or the pond or the cherry blossoms in the spring. Their conversations always had hidden roots to them, more meanings and whispers lurking in the mire of their loneliness.
Clara let go of her hands on her lap and let one stray to the end of her knee. It was a bit obvious, if she were being obvious with herself. But she didn't care. She didn't breathe until he touched her hand, so gently, so carefully, like the breeze on the pond, like lips on the back of her neck, like whispers in her ear, like the beats of her heart thrumming in her throat.
Yes, yes, yes. He loves me, he loves me, he loves me — and Danny does too. Still.
"There's no harm in forgetting about the bad things if, in the end, you're giving it up in favor of something good," the Doctor said.
"Really?"
"Really," he said. He smiled. It brightened his eyes and tightened Clara's heart like a string, like a garrotte, fierce and lethal. She smiled all the same, smashing her heart against the pain. "And that is a bit of old salt wisdom, from one married person to another."
They sat there, hand in hand, staring out across the surface of the lotus-choked water. To anyone else they might have been a couple. To each other, alone, they weren't. And yet…
The sun was hidden behind the trees by the time they moved again. The Doctor kissed her cheek. Clara closed her eyes. His lips were as soft as she hoped they would be, and sweeter than she could currently bear. I love him too, she thought. Thought but didn't say. She tucked the phrase into her heart and pushed herself to her feet.
"We should get back to the hotel," she said. "Danny and I have plans for dinner. And you've still got to call River, don't you?"
"I do," he said, standing up after she did. The Doctor squeezed her hand as he said the phrase, as if there were something else to the words.
Clara tucked this away too, adding it to her comforting rosary. He loves me. I love him. I do. He does. He loves me. I love him. I do. He does.