His eyes, perhaps, are like the galaxies he pretends to lord over.
They are dark green under the lighting she looks at them through, yet sometimes they're anything but .They glow in the dark, in bright and distinct shapes that look so much like the heart of the oncoming storm, the stars that twinkle in the centre, and the swirling pattern of a supernova. It tempts with her with a killing curiosity. She considers asking him if he will let her in. Then she does.
He answers with a subtle tilt of the head, before sighing. His eyes-for a second- flash blue/black/brown/grey, all of them at the exact same time, or perhaps even none at all. He dips his head into the nook of her neck, inhaling in her scent. He reminds her of her grandfather every so often. Of someone so old and wearied who the universe won't let die. A plaything; for the children of time and space to squeal in delight when he falls. She lets her hands roam.
Ella, he groans. Really? She likes it when he groans. It reminds her he's alive. That his two heart beats are normal and that everything is alright.
Their movements contradict each other. She is warm. He is cold. She is lost. He has just been found. Their mind move in completely opposites. Whatever she does, he can't. When they lie together, the aching poignancy permeates in the air. She realises, with a quiet acceptance, she is still alone.
This body, born of solitude, was only meant to be lonely. She comprehends it the moment he blinks. His eyes bear testament to it in the colours they chose to take. Brown in the name of those he protected and loved. For Gallifrey and for a Rose. Blue in the colour of freedom. Of stolen Tardises and missing planets.
Green in the beginning of filling a void. Of filling potholes with soil and planting entire forests in days.
She could get lost in them. She could lose her senses for the whole length of her days so maybe she could stay forever. She would- if she could.
The Doctor would find her in the end. The countless times he has found her bear testament to it. He always has and always must seek the answers to truths muttered in the dark.
But what happens when the Doctor gets lost?
She doesn't want to know the answer.
Sometimes, she wanders in the TARDIS archives. Her heart (She, as he whispers in her ear) is chocked full of the doctor's past, and she opens it for Ella to peer into.
She walks in, on her own accord, despite of the female voices around her screaming.
Don't.
It doesn't hurt when she fades into his consciousness; she blends well with the flickering images in his brain, that change colour. Most are blue, some are brown. Only her madman in a box has thoughts stained green. They tingle against her skin, prickling her to take a peek. She can't quite help but peer into them.
She learns the sky on Gallifrey isn't quite the burnt orange he describes it. Or that the grass on Gallifrey is closer to the colour of blood than deep red. She gazes in horror as Daleks kill his children. As his wife of an agreement disintegrates into a pile of ashes right before him. She stands with him at the Fall of Arcadia, in his fear and bitter glory.
These truths, the memories of the Time War seep in an empty bitterness in the pits of his mind that falls away into a pair of brown eyes locked behind a metal cage even she is unable to open. She stares into them, mesmerized, until she forces herself to look away.
She sees the stare of the untempered schism as he looks into it. She notices that his eyes don't widen in fear, that the 8-year old him runs not out of cowardice, but sadness.
The child in him does not want to remember what he saw. Now he doesn't. But she does. And now she can't forget it.
Romana crying. Rose leaving. Donna forgetting. River dying.
He never knew who they were. She didn't; up to when their screams bleed through the barriers from his brain into her hers.
Their voices won't stop pleading in her head. Rose warns her that the Doctor's heart is doomed to forever be torn in two, River cautions her sometimes the Doctor must suffer knowing the turn of time and tide. Donna cries to remind her sometimes the Doctor must make choices.
These companions were once his life. He spent years, lifetimes with them. He held them as they hugged. He loved Rose. He married River. He changed Donna.
So why doesn't he mention them now?
She knows that her time with the Doctor must one day end. That one day maybe she'll get a happy ending; like Sarah Jane or Martha or Amy or Rose; or one day she'll end up like River or Adric or Donna.
She wonders if he'll mention her then.
He brings her to watch the beginning of a supernova once.
She watches the sun condense into a tightly knit ball of red and white, before exploding in a flash of light.
For a single moment it is all she sees. Until the light recedes, and the blues and purples and oranges and greens fill in and promises energy for a few more moments
The dying light of a collapsing star seems to fit him so perfectly. Explosive, dangerous energy packed into a single moment that lasts billions of years, that spans centuries, but always dies out.
Beautiful. She laughs, and nods. Not that I mean. He adds cheekily. Her smile threatens to fade. She pulls her cardigan around her frame just slightly tighter, clenching her eyes shut. She sees it in his mind. How often he has/will say it. How often he thinks of saying it. Who he has said it to.
His too-long life has come with a great expense. The last Time Lord in all of existence. The man who keeps running.
The Man who regrets has become the Man who forgets- but not without its own consequences.
His song is ending. His story must end.
Although it seems hers will end first.
She holds the tears back and away. Hey. He whispers. He wraps one arm around her waist, glancing straight at her. What's wrong?
She doesn't answer. She doesn't know how. She doesn't quite understand to explain that sometimes Ood Sigma appears in her dream, unblinking. Or that she listens to the universe hum at the back of her head, in a heart breaking voice that reminds her of Idris.
She suspects he can hear it too- that in the stillness of the vortex and in the free space-the universe is singing her to sleep.
She hopes he understands.
Ella notices that the Doctor likes to pretend.
The Doctor pretends he doesn't hear the Tardis screeching in his ears. Or that every alien they've met since then, Slitheen, Gelth, Groske, or the Silence stares with her with unimaginable pity. She too pretends everything is all fine and dandy, with the Doctor by her side and the world at her fingertips. But in the dark of what she thinks is the night (or just the Tardis dimming her lights) she fathoms her ending with great detail. She feels the life leave her to join the universe as she melds away into nothingness. The cold filling her soul with terror. Taking with her words she never said and words she could never say.
The ones the Doctor love can never stay.
The curse of Time Lords echoes in her ear. The bane of those who dare follow burns at her touch. She doesn't speak of it anymore.
She clings to him tighter, her lips meeting his in a time finally in sync. Play for me again, he pleads. He drags his lips over the crook of her shoulder, his breath warm against her skin, their bodies press together on the seats. To these sinful desires she listens to the devil inside her; oh the beautifully tempting moments in the little gasps and murmurs. She starts to breathe only when she's beside him, again and again and again, one gasp at a time.
It is in these stolen minutes that the way the Doctor grasp her hand just a little tighter, the way he lingers on her lips and how he tries to seal her face into his hearts go unnoticed.
Her time comes earlier than she expects.
In the middle of her 3rd year, disaster strikes.
Her Doctor's bowtie is stained with blood.
"Don't leave me."
He begs, his eyes are a clear light green. She raises a hand to trail his cheekbone.
Sorry.
"No!" He cries. He grabs her in his arms. His name comes to her in a small voice, like a flashback resonating in his mind.
She still grins. At least she dies with the answer to the secret of the universe.
Sorry Theta.
"Please." His tears drip and mix with the blood on her face. She doesn't have the energy to reply.
I love you.
In her dying breath, she knows he can feel it. The memories and feelings that pour from her into him. She hopes he won't forget it.
She wakes up in her room. It is largely the same, without silly additions or fading, and she wonders for a second if it was a dream.
"Hello Ella." A man greets warmly. He is dressed in a pinstripe blue suit and an ankle-long sandy brown trench coat. His eyes are brown of arcadia wood.
He sits beside her on the bed, hair messed up and a bit like a porcupine. He looks timeless- like he is caught in an open space. All she sees in him is fire and ice, with the mellowed feeling of warmth; best described as the night and the storm in the heart of the sun that burns in the centre of the universe, wrapped in a single layer of comfort. He offers a knowing smile.
"I'm the Doctor."
Her eyes fill with tears.
She finds out, later on, that he seals her in his memories. That he takes her last moments and steals them away; so he can be with her forever.
A selfish wish, he admits. She disagrees, but loves him either way.
The life and memory of two sentient beings stuck in the body of one. She worries about how it affects him, how he seems to visibly age every time she catches a glimpse. He teases her, that now she's the worrywart and he's the one alive.
She laughs, her eyes crinkling and her pearly whites showing. He vows to keep her in this corporate form forever.
He builds and destroys entire galaxies for this. He bears the burden of her whispering and humming as he meets his next companion. He longs for her body to be pressed against his in the dead of the night, and promises that he'll find a way to bring her back. He swears to the Menti Celesti{1} that she'll be beside him again.
She makes him promise not to. The universe wasn't meant to bring people back to life, and she is content with staying with his 10th self, looking through 900 years of his history. She doesn't mind. She just wants him back.
So she waits.
His eyes, perhaps, are like the galaxies he pretends to lord over.
They flicker a cold grey-blue now. Grey in the name of ashes and smoke. Blue to recall the freedom she tried to give him in the briefest years of her life. Her slightly Scottish-British accent rolls off his tongue. Her scent fills the Tardis control room.
She smirks at the irony- The man who forgets has become the man who wants to remember.
They stare at her so blankly, like a new canvas or the beginning of his new existence. She prays to the universe he still remembers her.
"Ella?"
[1] Menti Celesti: Gods of the Time Lords. More specifically, Time, Pain and Death. Canon.