"Clara," he says, and I can hear his accent. I don't mind it anymore.
I asked him for one last trip before my child was born and I would have to leave forever. For us, I said to him. He understood. We're sitting beside the primordial sea long before the dinosaurs came to life. The sun is setting, and a couple stars peek through. It's new to me, but a different experience than some new year when humans are commonplace beings. This is not London in any sense of the word; the continents are not yet in their current shape. Here, without a single person around. we literally have the planet to ourselves. It is like we have travelled back in time to us. Everything we do, we are the first people to do it- one great step for man, not onto some foreign world but on our own.
The young sun is sinking beneath the horizon, and he speaks again.
"Clara. Do you like it here? We can always go somewhere else if you don't." he says. Always looking for my approval, that's my doctor. It's flattering.
"Of course I like it. Just us, literally. It's beautiful." I say, not caring how wet the ground is because I'm the only human being who will ever watch this sunset.
He exhales, and tension floats off of him like radiation. "Clara, there's something I need to tell you." he says. I love how he says my name; the slight inflection in his voice is unlike anything. I love when he says my name, when he starts a sentence with it, because who else could he be talking to? Those words are mine, a gift.
I nod, letting him know he can tell me.
"Clara, I told you once that I was not your boyfriend." I nod. He did, as if his new face and voice and demeanor hadn't been enough to tell me he had changed. He didn't like me anymore, and I didn't like him. I loved him, eventually. It's different.
"I do not wish that I had never said that. I wish that I had been wrong, and that I would still be wrong today. Clara, I-" His voice catches, and it is not without reason. But it does need saying, this time. I look at him, and his eyes are so much older than mine; they have seen so much, and I am so little of it.
"I love you." he says, and it feels so right, not surprising but fulfilling.
I said once that nobody would hear me say those words again. I was wrong; I was lying to myself. "I love you too," I say, repeating his words.
The sun falls below the horizon and our little portion of Earth blackens into night. We do not speak, but we are so present, so with each other. It is our Earth now, mine and his.
When it is too dark to see he helps me back to the TARDIS, and he drops me off wordlessly at my apartment. He breathes his confession of love again, and I return it as quietly. As I step onto the wet November pavement, there is a sense of closure in the air.
I never see him again.