A/N: Depression tw. Take caution.
"He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it."
Albert Camus, "The Myth of Sisyphus"
Clara.
The name came ringing like the soft, distant tintinnabulation of wind chimes lightly kissed by sea breeze. It came with the faint scrape and scratch of chalk on board. He panted. The vein in his temple pulsed like mad. He could feel his hearts racing and something that felt like acid, like molten gold, felt like it was creeping up his throat but when he coughed, there was nothing there. Nothing came out. In his head was just the constant squawking of a name he should have forgotten by now, probably, but couldn't. Shouldn't. Wouldn't.
What was infuriating was that it was just the name of her—just her name and nothing else.
Clara.
Clara, Clara Clara.
Not her face, not her voice, not her hair, not how the blades of her fingers felt warm and petal soft against his own that were cold and wrinkled and calloused; he knew that he'd known all of these things in the time that they had together but he couldn't remember them, he couldn't picture it, and it was just about enough to drive him mad now. He has been like this for the last few days – just a few weeks since the departure of his latest companion – and he couldn't understand what had triggered this phenomenon within him.
Forgetting her had worked out for him, he knew. For his story. Initially, he'd looked but distractions kept happening and there were too many adventures to be had to waste time trying to piece something together when he didn't have all the parts. Except it wasn't a waste of time to look for Clara, no; it was just that it hurt too much, he knew, and he didn't know what to do about it—so he ran away because that was something he knew how to do very well.
The memory of her, however, refused to be forgotten forever.
He could hear it now, the echoes of chalk against board as something, someone in his subconscious wrote her name in his mind's eye over and over and over again. It was the haunting of a memory that begged and fought to be remembered – wilted stargazers on a tombstone he couldn't remember visiting but mourned all the same. The whispers of a ghost in the hallways of his mind, growing in the hole she'd left behind, lining his hearts like a cancer that refused to be anything but alive.
I'm alive, she said in a voice he could not remember. I'm still here. Please, just see me.
"Clara," he muttered to no one but himself as he dragged his palms down his face. When his palms fell to the console, they landed with pressure—the aftermath of pent up anger and frustration as the drumbeat of her name in his head refused to be silenced. Pain pulsated up his veins and each ringing vibration sounded and felt like her name.
Clara.
Clara, Clara, Clara.
Her name—the lyrics of a song you somehow knew all the words to but you didn't have the faintest clue on how you did but her name rolled off his tongue like he'd sung her song a thousand times before; his lips spoke every syllable of her name like the thunder-clack of heels on a yellow brick road and if he closed his eyes and prayed, he knew there was no place like her.
There was no place like home.
The Doctor hadn't thought about Clara in years.
How many years, he couldn't tell—time was always difficult to discern for a Time Lord, especially when the person you were trying to think of was a time traveller too.
He had no idea how long it has been for her or how long it has even been for him. It has been a long, long while was all he knew. And he hasn't thought about her actively in so long that for the echo of her name, and just her name, to ring out from the back of mind was discomforting. It was difficult to think about something, about someone you couldn't remember—and it was even more difficult to forget something you wish you could. Trying to remember her was like staring at a black hole and willing for it to return the light it had consumed. Like staring at the tip of your tongue for the word you were looking for but you knew it wouldn't come. But he looked anyway, hoping he might find her somewhere in some distant event horizon.
Why? Because it was impossible—and wasn't that exactly what she was? He could remember that, at least.
He snapped his hand up from his musing and pressed his palm to his face. He let it rest there and scratched his cheek; rough bristles of stubble made themselves known to his touch. He wiped the sweat from his brow and exhaled. The TARDIS hummed around him, a melancholy tune, like she knew exactly what was going on with him—and of course she knew; his old girl always knew.
So did she, said a voice at the back of his head. Clara always knew too.
He'd been bent over the console, pounding headache and all as her name washed over him like tidal wave after tidal wave and could weather even the most stubborn mountains. There were pieces of his barricade drifting father and farther away and he could feel it, the drizzle before the hurricane—and, see, building a dam won't teach you how to wade through the flooding of sorrow when the walls break, when forty days and nights come pouring all at once, and the only thing left to do was drown.
He should not have forgotten her, he mused, but the time for regret has long since passed.
He had not allowed himself to do that, to regret what had become of them, in the years where he'd enjoyed the bliss of his ignorance. But now that the protection was wearing off, the pain resurfacing, he hadn't a clue on how to stay afloat without the memory of her smile to guide him home to shore.
The Doctor shut his eyes, brows furrowed, as he furiously commanded the entirety of his enormous mental prowess to reclaim that one memory—just let him see her smile in his mind's eye, just let him remember at least that much.
Clara.
Clara, Clara, Clara.
He chanted her name like a prayer in his head, begging his consciousness for even the smallest hint of her to come back to light, forgetting why he even chose to forget her in the first place—something, anything of her to hold on to other than her name, other than the empty stories and songs of travel that were all that was left of her in him. He grunted when nothing came to mind. Just a louder shout of her name in the recesses of his mind, like Hope buried deep in the darkness of Pandora's Box—there was nothing left but chalk writing on the walls.
"Stupid Doctor," he muttered to himself. "Stupid, stupid Doctor."
He slumped back to his seat and buried his face in his hands. He took to muttering her name over and over again, like that might spark his mind to remember something about her. He could feel it, though—the feeling of missing her slowly seeped into him like morphine on a drip and he was helpless to do anything but miss her after so long of forgetting her. The Doctor looked up, staring at the glowing light that pulsed in the middle of the console. He stared at her light long and hard for a moment and exhaled.
A beat later, his head snapped up. He looked around.
There was something different about the main console room, there was something new. His senses were on high alert, quick to be on his feet, and his hands steady and still as if he were calming a wild animal. It was overwhelming to concentrate on this one thing – distractions were necessary for a mind as active as his – and when his eyes darted all over the room, that was when he saw it. But a sliver of paper on the floor, near the main door.
The Doctor's brows furrowed for the TARDIS was not one to be so easily breeched and he could distinctly remember there not being an envelope on the floor… some time ago. It might have been a few minutes, an hour, maybe a week—the thing about him was that he was often slow to action for his mind kept leaping from one thing to the next in breakneck speed that processing often took its time to follow. He has always been slow, he'd always said he was, but this was just different.
With caution, he approached the envelope as if he were approaching an explosive that was just about to go off. When he'd gotten near enough, he realised that it was addressed to him; The Doctor, written in circular Gallifreyan. It couldn't be River, he knew; this was not her style and it simply could not be her. Not anymore. So who else could have written to him in this manner, then? Who else knew?
He picked up the envelope and inside was a card, also written in the same way, that he'd found it a plea for help. There was no name signed to it and the sentences were brief and short. Fate of the universe at stake, it said. Need help. Disguise required. Come alone. Affixed were coordinates for a time traveller—bespoke instructions for him. He stared at the card and he frowned at it.
This was almost certainly a trap. He could feel it in his gut. Yet, with his curiosity piqued and his system grateful for the distraction, he set himself to work immediately.
Trying to remember Clara, it seemed, would have to wait.
"You're still thinking of going back soon, aren't you?"
Clara hadn't heard the door open.
Then again, Me was always light on her feet. It was a skill she didn't remember learning, she'd say, it was just that her feet knew the way how still. It was both a preference and a precaution, she knew, but it didn't stop her from the jolt of straightening up her spine immediately and snapping her leather-bound journal closed shut.
Hers was a different cloaking skill — a habit, really, acquired long before her current state of impossibility – and it was for her lips to quirk up to a smile at nearly every greeting, no matter her then-state. British-brand politeness in this Lancashire-born girl, embedded into her muscles; as was the way her hand quickly lifted to wipe away the tears she hadn't noticed she'd shed as she wrote. Clara gave her a look that played on innocent, all wide eyes and an almost pout, almost hoping against hope that Me would not press the subject, to which she was replied to with a look that questioned her—one with a raised brow that said 'You heard me.'
"Maybe."
Instead of one brow, Me raised both and pursed her lips. She crossed her arms against her chest. Clara kept her composure though she broke the stare first as she slid the journal atop the table before her. Veins on her neck were prominent, though there was no sign of the rise and fall of a pulse in them, as she kept posture rigid and firm, not breaking the façade.
"Clara—" Me started but Clara shrugged, keeping her eyes distinctly away from her companion.
"I've been putting it off for a while now, haven't I? And I— I don't know. Probably, yeah, but I mean—" she broke off as she made the mistake of looking at Me. Those were old eyes that stared back at her. Old eyes that were denied the privilege of aging—ones that looked at her with a kind of knowing that she could not as easily lie to. Me, of course, was leagues better with deception than she was. She had the advantage of billions of years of experience and there, too, rest a brand of kindred compassion only they could understand—they, in a perennial state of grieving. Clara sighed. Her shoulders relaxed as she did and she took to looking out the library's window. "Don't you wish it too? Sometimes? To just… be done with it all, if you really wanted to?"
Me approached without invitation—then again, she didn't need it. She took the seat opposite her friend and placed the small silver tray she'd been holding next to the hefty journal. Clara didn't look. In her nightdress, she'd simply lifted her legs so that she could hold her knees against her chest.
"Sometimes, yes. I do. Of course I do," said Me, lounging into the chair, elbow resting on the arm rest, hand lazily gesturing up in the air.
Where Clara took a penchant to fidgeting and fumbling with her fingers as she spoke, Me was the immovable kind, perfectly comfortable in the slow stillness. Though both women held wreckages beneath their own brands of serene surfaces—they'd both survived too many storms for their bones not to be etched with epitaphs and obituaries that weren't theirs.
Me looked to where Clara averted her gaze.
"There are ways that I could go, sure. It would be rather morbid to discuss but nothing's absolutely unkillable. Not really. Not even me," she said, a small smile on her lips that her friend did not quite catch. She'd been lost in looking into the horizon to notice. Me dropped the smile almost as soon as it had appeared and her then-nonchalant tone softened as she continued. "But there's still just so much to see, Clara. And you've got the chance to see so much more than what you would have gotten."
"I know," she replied. Her voice was quiet and small. She looked to the table, staring at absolutely nothing at all, and her exhale relieved none of the burden that thinking too much cursed upon you. Clara knew that Me was right, of course she was right. She'd said the same words and had proclaimed the same sentiments over and over again but the thing was that they were easier said than believed. She took a breath slowly and sighed.
In Grecian times, there was the myth of a King—King Sisyphus of Ephyra.
Depending on the version one read, it was often unclear if he was either the hero of his tale or the fool of a story much bigger than his own. Most philosophers would say that he was both. He was widely regarded as one of the cleverest of men to the point that he believed it. He'd been one who then became so drunk on his own cleverness, on his own avarice and arrogance, blinded to his mortality and limitations that he'd dared to deceive the gods themselves in both life and in death.
In retribution, the gods cursed him eternally to be chained upon a rock where he was condemned to roll a boulder up a steep hill only for it to roll back down so that he might roll it back up again. Again and again and again, this was the punishment the gods deemed worthy of him—the ultimate humbling for one to have thought oneself so invincible, to be reduced to an endless, cyclical chore that was both effortful but futile.
All of the reasons Me was about to say, Clara Oswald had already heard before and had even told herself time and again and yet, still, the Sisyphean question plagued her.
What's the point seeing it all at all now, anyway? What would be the point in rolling this boulder?
The two women remained quiet in the poignant pause that occurred between them, thoughts racing in the silence and multiple conversations happening in the air to which none of their assumptions or questions were answered. Clara continued to look out the window. Me looked at Clara.
The library of Me's temporary abode here on this planet during her extended stay and study of the universe and of life was one that had a truly spectacular view—dry mountains upon an ammophilous terrain, asteroids floating at thousands of miles per hour yet looked to move so much slower than a fallen leaf to her human eyes with the gleaming Pyramid metropolis among them, and a darkened used-to-be sun somewhere mixed among the backdrop of the dark void that was spattered with constellations.
"Have you tried to look for him since—"
"No," she snapped, her head turning to face her. No, this was not something they talked about. That was decided long ago. Momentarily, her shoulders went rigid but they just as soon dropped. Her voice softened. "You know that."
Another pause.
"Are you really thinking about it?" Me asked.
For someone so old, her voice still had the melody of a teenager's lilt. Clara had grown accustomed to it over the years and yet, when Me asked that question, she could not help but feel like she was looking at a frightened young Viking girl again—a girl called Ashildr who was brave, a girl who loved fiercely and recklessly, a girl who'd thought she'd brought bad luck to all those who had the misfortune of knowing her, a girl who saved the people she loved with a story. She looked at the girl then, a melancholy smile on her lips as she remembered.
"All the time," she answered. "More so these days. It's silly, I know—"
"I don't think it's silly."
"I know you don't," she said, almost laughing—but there was no heart in it. How could there be? She felt warmth well up in her eyes and she wiped it away with her hand before it had a chance to fall. She was still smiling for a reason that she could not explain; maybe it was just to allow some semblance of levity with the subject matter at hand.
"I don't know. I'm just…" Clara continued. She sighed again. "I'm just tired now. I'm so tired, Me."
"I know you are," Me replied and let her eyes fall for the first time. Downcast gaze as she pondered, her expression betrayed nothing. She shrugged then and said, "Well, think it through. I certainly won't stop you."
Clara scoffed and rolled her eyes.
"I bet you wouldn't," she joked.
"Do you need me to go with you now?"
"No, no. Not yet, I know that much. You stay right here. Get your fill. I just wanted to pop by and visit. See how you were doing. You hadn't called in a while; I just wanted to make sure you hadn't been executed again."
"It was one time," Me groaned. It was her turn, then, to roll her eyes but she smirked as well.
"I'm counting the firing squad in World War II."
"I didn't even die that time!"
"Still sentenced to death."
"They missed."
"And the ropes I had to pull just to get that off the records!" Clara exclaimed, chuckling as they both recalled the memory. "You're the worst."
Me smiled. She raised a hand, fingers lightly held under her chin. "It's been fun, hasn't it?"
"Yeah, it has."
"What happened to your last one, by the way?"
"Oh, she was proper good, that one. Total fairytale. We found out she was actually the Duke's daughter so she ended up inheriting all his lands and titles. And his responsibilities. So she stayed behind."
"She left for that?"
"She stayed for that. For them, for her new people," Clara said. She let go of her knees and allowed for her legs to stretch back down. Me knew that there was more to the story and so she waited—despite the years that they both now had under their belt, Me had always been better at being patient. Clara played with her hands, palms rubbing against each other. "There's something honourable in not walking away from the people you care about… don't you think? If you can stay, at least."
"I suppose," Me replied, knowing exactly what Clara implied. Their conversation had wandered, again, to something that they did not talk about. "So what will you do now?"
"Wander about, I reckon. The way I always do."
"You're itching for a planet to save, aren't you?"
"Tiny bit, yeah."
"How many does that make that now?" Me asked. Clara made a face – furrowed brows, bunched up retroussé nose, pursed lips.
"Nine hundred, seventy two mil. Give or take."
"Almost to your first, then," she said. "You will tell me if you decide to go, won't you?"
"Of course," Clara replied, smiling now. "You worry too much."
"Someone has to." Clara's smile grew to a grin. Me smiled back, eyes landing upon the silver tray again and she asked, "Did you sleep well?"
It was a joke between them that only they would understand. The look Me gave said it all. Clara pressed her tongue to the walls of her hollowed cheeks and raised her brows. It turned to a grimace and wiggled her nose.
"As well as I could, given the circumstances. Thanks for asking."
"Good. Because a letter came for you this morning. After your arrival made news yesterday."
She put the silver tray, atop which the letter rest as well as a thin letter opening, on top of the journal. Clara reached for it immediately.
"My arrival is news for the Sun Singers of Akhet?"
"It is when you arrive by magical appearing diner to this estate I'd acquired and when you're a dear friend of the Queen of Years."
"The Queen? You mean Merry? Merry Gelejh? Merry's still the Queen of Years after all these… years?"
"Evidently so. The letter was sent straight from her Majesty's palace. Look at the sigil," she said, finger gesturing for Clara to turn the envelope around. She didn't use the opener as she simply broke the wax seal to open it. Me continued, "To the Sun Singers, it's only been fifteen years since the last Festival of Offerings when you saved them all."
"Merry must be so grown up by now. Does she want to see me?"
"Read it. Find out."
"It's an invitation," she said as her eyes skimmed over the parchment and read her name, neatly and clearly written in the script of a familiar hand. Whose hand, however, she could not place. "Some sort of party, maybe? A ball? Festival?" She kept reading. "Oooh, hang on. No it's not—it's..."
"Trouble?"
"I think so," she replied. "'Come alone, be in disguise, fate of the seven systems and the universe at large in the balance, this matter should be taken with the utmost discretion, time-space coordinates'—oh, I know a trap when I see one," she said, tongue slipping between her teeth as she grinned.
"Love a good trap, don't you?" she added. Me cringed. Clara smirked. "Bad joke? Come on, it's been a few billion years for you—don't tell me it's still too soon."
"Are you going?" Me asked, quickly changing the subject. "Now?"
"Suppose I will. I've been invited, haven't I? Be rude not to." Clara rose from her chair while her companion remained where she was sat. "Got to drop by Nino's for a disguise, probably, but yeah. Sounds like fun."
"You'll be careful, though."
"Of course." Clara folded the letter back into itself, tucked it into the journal she gathered in her arms, and shrugged.
"What could happen, right?" Me nodded. She nodded back. "I'll be seeing you, then. Don't get into too much trouble."
That was their way—this was how they traveled.
Sometimes together but usually apart, simply because it was far too dangerous for two quasi-immortal women to go gallivanting around throughout all of space and time without causing too much damage. They learned that early on and it worked this way. Clara would go into her TARDIS and fly away, run as far as she could go and have adventures of her own while she picked up companions every now and then. Me, on the other hand, picked a planet or a star system to linger in for a prolonged period of time—sometimes a year, sometimes the entire place's lifetime. It rather depended on how she felt about it.
And yet, with the way Clara walked away then, Me could not help but look at her, to the friend who had become so dear to her, with deep regret in her heart.
Clara had always harboured a profound, lachrymose, but unspoken sorrow in her eyes since the day she'd last seen him, Me knew, and it was something they did not talk about. Not really. Not even when Me tried. Like she'd purposely drowned herself in the waters of her sadness, perfectly capable of breaking the surface for air but choosing to keep herself in the depths beneath, where it was darker than dark. It often hurt to look upon and though Clara did not often linger on it when with company – present or otherwise, Me knew – anyone who saw her and really looked at her could see those young, immortal eyes with the oldest, perennial heartbreak she'd ever seen in her long, long life.
But all Clara saw was a distraction—a welcome one, at that.
Anything would be preferable than to linger in memories only she, now, could still remember.