A/N: Massive spoilers for The Snowmen. This chapter is part 1 of 2 (3 if I decide to do more of the episode.)
Also, couldn't resist the Sherlock reference.
Free Fall
Part 1
"You missed this, didn't you?"
"Shut up."
It's been years since he felt so alive. So many years, so so long ...
(Thirty-seven years, ninety-eight days, four hours, thirty-two minutes since the last time he got such a rush from besting the universe's downward spiral of horror. Thirty-seven years, ninety-eight days, four hours, twenty-eight minutes since the the universe proved once and for all that all such victories are only temporary. Thirty-five years, two hundred and eighty-two days, twenty-three hours, forty-one minutes since he swore Never again. He should have known better by now. Never say never.)
He's holding someone's hand again, pulling and being pulled.
(He once told someone whose name he does not want to remember that the one thing you need the most to get across the universe is a hand to hold. Centuries have passed since she told him that she would stay with him forever.)
He's being stupid and it's been so long since he had someone tell him so without being chiding about it. Since someone called him out on his stupidity and then joined him in it.
(Doctor life, someone once called it.)
She speaks as fast as he does, tells him he's clever, and shows him that she's just as clever when she figures out his plan.
(How long has it been since someone anticipated him like this? Too long, he's forgotten what it felt like.)
And she's flirting with him! She kissed him earlier too, claimed he likes her - which he does, of course, he always likes humans, that's why he takes them along with -
(No. He's not thinking about any of them. Not now, not ever. Remembering is pain, but remembering is all he has, so he won't forget, will never forget, but he is allowed to not think about them, surely?)
She claimed he likes her, and he does, and she's clever enough to figure it out. And she's flirting with him, and he doesn't know why it surprises him, because it always happens, they always -
(No. Not thinking. Remembering, but not thinking.)
Anyway, she's flirting with him and he's not surprised, because he's handsome, even hot -
(It's been centuries since Mels called him hot for the first time and he had so little time with Mels, he couldn't save Mels, but there is still River, and there is still more to come, but who knows how much more is left?)
No, not hot, it's because he's clever, and didn't someone say that brainy is the new sexy?
(And he doesn't hear the fading echo of a shouted Oi! in the back of his mind or the sharp a great big outer space dunce that would have cut his ego down to size. It's been centuries since she told him he needed someone to stop him, then volunteered for the job.)
And now he's telling her that thinking that people can control clouds is silly, but there's nothing wrong with silly, is there? So he smiles and keeps climbing, pulling her along.
(Nothing wrong with silly, because a smile is always better than the glazed looks he gets when he actually explains. And he doesn't think about the smiles he earned with the words jiggery-pokery, timey-wimey, wibbly-wobbly. He most definitely does not think about the double-grin that followed spacey-wacey.)
He tries to get her talking about herself, asking questions in the middle of danger - always the best time to ask, more likely to get answers and true ones at that, because they're too distracted to invent a lie - but then she turns it back on him, accuses him of sulking.
(Someone once called him Mister Grumpy Face, a long time ago, outside a long-abandoned temple that won't be built for centuries yet.)
She calls the TARDIS a box, and he almost laughs at her outraged reaction when he tells her the TARDIS is no more a box than she is a governess. She doesn't quite understand yet just what the TARDIS is.
(For four precious hours, he could speak to the TARDIS, and the TARDIS could speak to him, and he remembers every word they said to each other. Alive and Hello, Doctor and motorbike in his bedroom and You are not my mother. And then there was one small thing she said, one important thing that he only thought about later. Are all people like this? So much bigger on the inside.)
He watches her eyes widen as he turns on all the lights, and silently ask the TARDIS to show off a little. And for the first time in a very long time (thirty-seven years, ninety-eight days, four hours, thirty-four minutes now, they spent six minutes twenty-four seconds climbing to the clouds), the smile he wears is not forced, has no trace of regret or pain about it. He loves the TARDIS, he loves showing her off, and oh it has been far too long since he's felt this kind of delight.
(Eighty-two years and change since the last time he invited someone new into the TARDIS. Five hundred sixteen people have walked through those police box doors. He swore there would not be a five hundred seventeenth, but here he was, inviting one more person along.)
She darts out the doors, cutting to the left, and the TARDIS whispers that she's racing around the outside, and then she's darting back in, and her eyes are still wide with shock, but the awe and wonder in them overpowers everything. Looking into those wondering eyes, he remembers every single one of those five hundred sixteen others who walked through those police box doors and into his life - and this is the only time remembering never hurts, because there is someone new to focus on, someone new whose life he hasn't ruined yet. In this moment, he can allow himself to remember that each of those five hundred sixteen others also had the same moment of innocent wonder.
(They overlap in his mind, the first moments when they stand and stare around in disbelief, amazement, fascination. In those moments, he sees himself, and he relives by proxy that first time he sees the TARDIS and calls her the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.)
Smaller on the outside, she says, and the first thing she asks about is the kitchen, and he's both absolutely tickled and completely thrown off by the unusual responses. He's seen every planet and star that ever existed, been to the birth of the universe and its death, seen reality unravel over and over, rebooted the universe and rewoven the fabric of space-time again and again. He thought there was nothing left in the universe that would surprise him. And yet, every time he thinks that, humans - beautiful, wonderful, amazing humans - always prove him wrong.
(The open TARDIS doors, golden light, and words scattered through time and space. Deaths beyond number, over a century of abandonment, and yet holding such loyalty that kept his severed hand safe. A mobile phone left behind with the demand that he pick up and come running if - no, when - it rang. A delighted silent conversation of gestures through two panes of glass and hands that help shoulder the guilt of Vesuvius. An absolute faith in aliens who were very old and very kind and the very last of their kind, with the stubborn strength of will to drag a centuries-old queen by the hand and force an abdication. A plastic copy with memories confused beyond understanding, but with a love that was willing to stand guard for one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four years. A diary and a screwdriver - his screwdriver - and he never knew how she could face down her worst nightmare - himself before he knew her - with no more than a tearful smile.)
She says she likes making souffles.
(And he allows himself to remember the last time a Dalek spoke to him with a human voice. He remembers Carmen and a lively voice teasing him about his chin. He remembers dreading the truth about the milk for the souffles. He remembers terror as Daleks advance towards him, and disbelief as they turn away. He remembers shock and horror and sorrow and a hate he tries but does not know how to suppress. He remembers and he realizes, she has the same voice.)
And then, clever girl, she figures it out. She figures out that as much as he had been pushing her away, he had wanted her to follow along.
(He knows what he's like when he travels alone for too long. He becomes so much more willing to kill. He knows and he's so afraid of it. And he knows already that he won't be able to hold himself to this time, to Vastra and Jenny and Strax, who can keep him sane and in check, for all that much longer.)
He reaches into a pocket and, for the first time since his most recent regeneration, he pulls out a spare TARDIS key.
(Well over three hundred years since he'd last given a TARDIS key away. Before the War, he'd only ever given a key to ... to the one who left Gallifrey with him, millennia ago, when he was an old old man. After the War, he'd given keys away like candy, and looking back, he knows he had been trying too hard to find - or even create - a people he could belong to, a people to replace the Gallifrey that he'd locked away. After regenerating, he'd condemned his past leather-jacket and pinstripe-suited selves as idiotic fools, to bind himself so tightly to humans who could only ever leave him. He'd decided to never fall into that trap again.)
She's crying as her fingers close around the key.
(He's never given a key to someone this soon after meeting them. But someone once said to start as you mean to go on, and he's making a new decision, right here, right now, that holding himself aloof, withdrawing from his companions and telling them nothing, is worse by far than telling them everything. Had he really thought himself a fool for giving away keys and telling everyone and their mother about all the terrible burdens of being the last Time Lord? Well, he was certainly a bigger fool now, hiding away and refusing to help those who needed him. His old pinstriped self had it right - even when he'd isolated himself and traveled alone, he'd still traveled, still reached out to those who cried for help. Maybe, it was time to go back.)
And he's smiling, dancing around the console, running at the mouth, because he was going to be running again, and he would be running with Clara who was clever and liked souffles and whose voice echoed with aching familiarity.
(Clara, who might eventually rename herself as Oswin Oswald, who might eventually leave him and the TARDIS to join the crew of Starship Alaska. But he isn't going to allow himself to follow that thought much further, because he hates endings and from where he's standing now, this looks like the beginning, the ending is still quite far away. He has time. He doesn't have to think about the ending yet.)
He's forgotten, for one careless priceless precious delighted dangerous moment, something of utmost importance: if something can go wrong, it will go wrong, and always in the worst possible way. He looks up to find the monster has succeeded in tearing his newest friend away.
(And all he can think about is Amelia stolen by a Weeping Angel, Rory erased by a crack in the universe, River vanished in a flash of light, Astrid falling til she flew, Donna screaming til she forgot, Lynda-with-a-Y trusting him til extermination, the Master dying dying always dying, Jenny dying in his arms, Jack so bound to time he couldn't help or interfere, Rose falling falling falling falling ...)
The sonic screwdriver is useless, his words go unheeded, her struggles are in vain.
(Someone once asked him what happened to the people he traveled with. Some leave. Some are left behind. Some ... some die. The result is always the same - he is left alone in the end. Always and forever alone.)
She falls.