Companions

"Wait Doctor, so you've been wandering for 900 years all alone?" asked Clara as she watched the central pillar on the Tardis console move slowly and rhythmically as they flew gently in to deeper and more desolate space.

"Not exactly...," he replied, fully aware of where this was going. "I've had...," he paused "companions."

She stopped and turned to face him, he eyebrows raised in surprise.

"Companions eh..," she smirked, "What kind of companions?" She giggled at the overly flustered look on his face.

"Not like that!" "Oh you know what I mean." He sighed, defeated. "You're not going to stop asking me this until I give you an answer are you.."

"Nope!" "Tell me about them Doctor," Clara replied eagerly.

He joined her at the console and flicked a few switches to keep himself occupied, he was gonna need all his courage for this one!

"Well," he began cautiously. "There was Amy, well Amelia Pond, Williams to be precise and Rory her husband." He paused, guilt began to well up inside him, he felt the long endured and horribly familiar ache of pain and loss returning to him.

"They were great, she waited for me you know, for years, since she was just a girl and she first saw a madman with a box, she saw me, everyone told her she was mad but she never gave up on me, she knew I was real, she believed in me." "But they died...together."

He finished there. Clara moved around the console to stand beside him.

"I had Martha, Martha Jones, work for UNIT now, she was the woman who walked the Earth and saved it countless times." "Martha...," he said fondly, remembering saying her name.

"And Donna." "Oh yes there was Donna, Donna Noble, the most important woman in the universe." A smile returned to his face.

"She turned up out of the blue, appeared right there in the Tardis on her wedding day!" "Well she wasn't happy about that!" He laughed and turned to face Clara.

"She used to call me Spaceman." "I kept telling her I wasn't from Mars but she wouldn't listen!"

He swallowed loudly, there was another. He looked pained, Clara could feel the hurt radiating out of him, for a moment she thought he looked suddenly very vulnerable and very, very alone.

"There was...," he began.

He couldn't say it, her name was on the tip of his tongue but wouldn't come out. He gathered all his courage, he looked upwards defiantly, as she would have done.

"Rose." "Her name was Rose." "She was...special to me." "I met her first when she was only nineteen and I was in my ninth regeneration, all leather and angry." "She changed me, I think she..."

"She definitely made me more human."