A/N: So, a little bit of context - I'm straying a little from canon (only the very end of Hell Bent; so the plot makes sense). Basically, pretend the whole diner scene didn't happen. He doesn't think he's ever seen her face before.
Titled after a Billie Eilish song (also called Six Feet Under, who'd have guessed). If you're unfamiliar, I recommend you go take a listen and a peek at the lyrics, then feel free to cry about it with me. I've got a lot of feelings about that song :P
How fitting that the end comes down to a single button, a risk, a gamble.
Clara Oswald wants to take that small contraption and fling it into the depths of a volcano; but this is right. Ending them is right. Even though she can feel her heart being wrenched from her chest at the mere thought of losing him. Because she will - in one way or another.
It's him, her Doctor. She sees the anguish in his eyes and hears the defeat in his voice… and she can't even begin to imagine how that must feel, losing the memory of the person you love most, and worse, knowing that those memories are slipping away and being so utterly helpless to stop it.
She finds herself facing eternity in the space between heartbeats - the gap where her pulse should have been used to sound like static, a lost connection, but now the silence is deafening, crippling. She wonders if maybe her heart has gone, withered and decayed away into nothing, because the emptiness she feels is incomparable to any pain. She fears her heart will never mend; or perhaps if it does, that'll be the day she lets go, lets her heart release and beat again.
Despite how broken she feels, she's not ready to let go yet.
—
He wakes in confusion; it's almost as if he's regenerated, and yet his face is the same, he's the same version of himself but wrong. There's an unsettling feeling that he can't shake, like something's missing.
But despite how much he prides his memory and brainpower (he, after all, used to boast that he had twenty seven brains), there's not even the tiniest hint of what he's lost. Just an empty, gaping void.
He doesn't remember being okay. But he doesn't think he's always felt so empty.
He travels, endlessly running like he always does, trying to cling onto who he is with every scrap of his being. Be a doctor. Some days it feels like a mantra, pounding through his head and his hearts. He doesn't know where he's picked it up from, but it stirs a fire within him, a drive to do good and to keep going.
One day he writes those words, scrawled over a chalk board - there's something cathartic about the sound, but there's still something wrong, like the writing on the board isn't his own. Or maybe, he wonders, maybe some forgotten part of his mind wishes it were someone else's words.
—
It takes Clara two centuries to cross paths with him again - she can't pinpoint exactly how many years have passed, the days have all begun to meld together; oh how she wishes she had a Time Lord's brain, to keep track of time when travelling through different eras and places. She doesn't sleep these days and that doesn't help the matter - every single process in her body has stopped. The closest she gets to sleep is by settling into a deep, meditative state… but she's never been much for patience and there's only so much sitting and doing nothing that she can take.
She doesn't think of him often anymore, and when she does, it's fond and bittersweet, instead of feeling like a knife twisting in her gut. Not that she's ever moved on - she's tried, multiple times, but nothing's been the same. Nobody comes anywhere near close to making her feel how he did. And god, human lives feel so fleeting. She understands why he always struggled with getting close. She understands living with the burden of losing everyone.
Nothing prepares her for seeing him again, though. Ashildr's gone - it's one of those periods where her only companion has settled down briefly, accepted inevitable loss for a few decades of happiness. Clara's tried that several times… she's learned she's not good at losing people. Not that it was ever much of a surprise to her.
He's the same as she remembers, though she can see how his eyes have aged, how they're deeper and wiser, and so lonely. She hasn't seen that loneliness in his eyes for such a long time, and she can't help the crushing guilt she feels at that. She did that to him. Albeit with his permission… but she can see now that he's missing part of himself, just as she's lost part of herself.
She watches him as he moves to her, heart clenching as if it yearns to pound in her chest, legs dangling from her chair, swinging a little as she fidgets anxiously.
"I don't remember this planet having a 1950s Earth diner," he remarks, and she's taking in every detail she can, like the way his brows pull together and how his hands move when he talks. And she's fighting the urge to get to her feet, to close the gap between them and cling to him, seeing if her head nestles against his chest like she remembers, or to crane her head up and grasp his hair and just kiss him, until she's made up for all the time they've been apart.
"It's a new installment," Clara answers, smiling fondly, and it's taking every inch of her being to keep her emotions from spilling over, all that joy and sorrow and heartache, and oh, how she's missed him. She'd thought there could be nothing worse than letting him go… but perhaps this is, having him there in front of her and being unable to tell him how she feels. Her, remembering everything, and him unaware of the depths of her love.
"Is it yours?"
"Yeah. Want to come inside, have something to drink?"
"How'd it get here?" he asks, nodding amiably and following her, and she grins.
"Magic."
She entertains his seemingly endless questions, though her answers are somewhat vague; she's trying not to get too close (though perhaps subconsciously, she knows he'll be drawn closer from curiosity). He's puzzled, exclaiming about how she's English, how her sense of dress is a few decades more modern than her diner but yet far too early for her to be out of her own universe - hell, even her own solar system.
Really, there's no one else to blame except her for the conclusion he comes to. She is travelling in a TARDIS, after all.
"You're a Time Lord!"
He's gleeful. Her nose scrunches up - but she doesn't have it in her to let him down. And it's an easier explanation than her current situation.
"I'm a lady," she corrects him, laughing softly.
And to be fair, that isn't technically a lie.