A/N: I just watched the Doctor Who finale last night...(SPOILERS!) and I'm going to try to write this through my tears as best I can this morning. I'm going to try to get this image I have down and out of my head & heart before it leaves...but consider this a Flood Warning. 12/Clara friendship/canon-compliant relationship. (More author notes at the end.)

Disclaimer: Don't own any of it. Just attempting to ease the pain a little.

~*~If Time Will Set You Free~*~

Cool breeze and autumn leaves

Slow motion daylight

A lone pair of watchful eyes oversee the living

Feel the presence all around

A tortured soul,

A wound, un-healing.

No regrets or promises

The past is gone

But you can still be free...

If time will set you free...

Time now to spread your wings

To take to flight,

The life endeavor

Aim for the burning sun

You're trapped inside

But you can still be free...

If time will set you free...

But it's a long, long way to go!

Keep moving way up high

You see the light

It shines forever

Sail through the crimson skies

The purest light

The light that set you free

If time will set you free...

Sail through the wind & rain tonight

You're free to fly tonight

And you can still be free..

If time will set you free...

– "You Can Still Be Free", Savage Garden

"One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, and no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine."

-William Hartnell, The First Doctor

He had gone too far, pushed too hard. He knew and admitted as much to her. And now, he would have to flee that much further to get away from his sins, to get away from Gallifrey's strict rules & their consequences, their lust for his head served on a shiny platter. His home planet that he had not seen for far too long...filled with faces he had almost, but never quite forgotten, not even in billions of years, & 13 regenerations...he had done the impossible...and he had fulfilled his promise: He had come back. But damn, if it didn't hurt him to leave it and them behind so soon after arriving.

But he felt no regrets. Not yet anyway. They would come to torture him later, he mused darkly. He did what he felt he had to do to bring her back to him. And he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that he would have done it again, and again, and again, if necessary, in any regeneration; that this most desperate & selfish part of him would always remain the same: That he would do practically -anything- to save his companions. (The selfish part of it being that in doing so, it saved him from mountains of guilt, sorrow, & pain.) And in a sense, he had succeeded in his endeavor, his hellish crusade. He had managed to extract her from her own death, from her established time-line...had brought her back in order to assuage this gaping chasm inside his hearts that he didn't know how to cross anymore...

But it had cost them both, to do so, in different, but equally painful ways. He had broken every single one of his own rules. His code of ethics that he always tried to live by, to live up to. And while that alone disturbed him, it didn't hurt nearly as much as what the cost to her was...and that was her trust in him. Her anger with him for shooting that man, pointe-blank. She was furious, yes, but she understood why. Understanding his motives was never the problem for her. Far from it. He didn't need to say the words to her, his actions alone in the past hour or so spoke at volumes that shattered every eardrum within a few hundred galaxies of here. But the pin had dropped. She had been scared of him, and for him, because he had gone too far this time. It was written on her face, her beautiful young, incredibly wide face, with those big sad eyes of hers, staring him down in disappointment.

This man standing before her in this, the newly stolen TARDIS, was the Doctor, but only in spirit...

And the truth was that she didn't know which one of them was more dead in that heated moment: the human girl with no pulse or the ghost of an incredibly old, haunted soul in front of her?

And then, there had been his conversation with ME, Ashildr, whatever-her-name-was, it hardly mattered in the scheme of things...and then came the final standoff with Clara. Their agreement. (So much for no tears or anxieties.) This was the culmination of who and what they were, what they meant to each other, and still it seemed as though their timing was off, that the right words didn't come to light...still settling for half-truths, even though they knew their time was limited. Each one pushing the other to beyond their limit of sanity and bravery, emotions getting the better of them. His logic, though, was sound. One of them had to go. A proposed game of Russian roulette. Or something closer to a lover's pact, of sorts? You go or I go? No? One right after the other, then? No? Together. Yes, together. But still, a 50/50 chance. Only one would get the poison...but which one?

In the end, the Doctor lost. Lost his precious memories of her, his Clara. And she lost her Time Lord friend...or did she? And did he really lose her? Some would argue they did...that happy endings don't exist for people who go looking for trouble on a daily basis...I, for one, believe the stories, and the songs, that they didn't lose each other, not really...I think they went as far as they could, but realized the truth: that night and day could never truly co-exist in the same space, at the same time, except for a few rare occurrences every few hundred years, but instead, follow the other one around endlessly...for Clara had been granted wings...and in a sense, so had the Doctor.

They were both free of each other...to fly around the universe as they saw fit... with the Doctor, in his big blue box, time & space at his finger-tips once more, looking forever forward...onto the next adventure...and with Clara looking after the Doctor, watching over him from a safe distance, making sure he still functioned the way she felt he should, making sure he he held himself to the mark from now on, and vowed to wait for him to show up on Heaven's doorstep when he was good & ready...but not yet. Not yet. And waiting for a Time Lord to die...well...one could wait an eternity.

"For death cannot stop true love, all it can do is delay it a while." -Westley, The Princess Bride

A/N: Yes, I slipped in a few other movie references there. One from "Gladiator", and a bit of a nod toward a quote in "The King's Speech". And of course, I couldn't resist putting in a quote from one of my favorite movies of all time. So...yeah...FEELS. FEELS EVRYWHERE. SO MANY FEELS about that damn finale and the episodes leading up to it. So many things, I felt, still left unsaid. And yet, I wanted to—no, felt compelled to—end this on a high note somehow. Cuz dammit, I need it. And because the Doctor would ultimately want it that way and so would Clara, I think. To know that he kept going, kept exploring...despite the losses he's suffered, over & over again. Because that is what he does. Who he really is. Like Queen's proverbial show, "The Doctor must go on."

Even if you don't know or like the song I chose, (well, hopefully some of you do) I think it conjured up plenty of imagery about the last few episodes, or the Doctor's story in general. Just think about it a moment. Thanks. (Also, as a side note, I think this song could lend itself very well to a "Doctor's Life Story" video if anyone feels up to the task.)