He stared at the darkness that sat behind his eyelids, listening to the gentle ever-present hum of air molecules working their way through the space around him. Somehow it always surprised him when it was silent, just how loud those microscopic particles could be, rushing past one another in their endless race. The engine of life: churning through his system, breathing life into everything around him that sat equally in awe of the process. And that was wrong.
It was all very wrong.
The ticks and bangs and pops and whistles his ears had gotten accustomed to hearing were gone. The hiss of smoke and the crackle of fire were gone. The steady pumping of thrusters and pistons and the clanking of bits and bobs, they were all gone. All the sounds of home – of his beloved Tardis – had snapped away in an instant, replaced by an unpredictable expanse of alien air sitting steadily around his standing body. And the Doctor chanced to open his eyes to look upon the sudden explosion of light and dull color. Of breeze and scent. Of familiarity and peculiarity all at once.
"No," he uttered softly.
He held his hands out in front of him, looked to the tattered edges of the shirt that hanged from his wrists and he examined the stains of dirt and sweat that lined the creases in his skin. The Doctor smelled at them, inhaling the fumes of battle he stood drenched in and yet he knew it was all impossible. He had been in his Tardis; he had regenerated. He'd felt the flow of change rushing through him, converting every cell of his body into something different.
Into someone different.
"What have you done?" He bellowed into the field, watching the tall yellowing grass as it seemed to bend in agony against his rage, swirling around his legs to whip at him through his trousers. He watched it all a moment, transfixed by the simplicity of this place. There were no houses, no trees, no animals or people; not even electricity sending vibrations through the atmosphere from a nearby town.
He hadn't a clue of where he was. He shifted on his feet, back and forth, testing the firmness of the soil he stood on, and he looked to the grey skies above him, watching the outlines of dark clouds against light ones as they melted together and came apart, revealing only more clouds. The air lacked the smell of oncoming rain, and the wind was void of identifiable pollen or even the taste of a time.
What planet? He pondered.
What little speck of space?
"Where am I?" He whispered to no one, discretely lifting his right hand to touch at his pockets, feeling for instruments no longer available to him.
No Tardis, no screwdriver, no sunglasses, no hints, no details, no signs, no help.
As if he'd been dropped in the middle of nowhere and forgotten.
"I am afraid," he stated, looking out at the horizon.
The ocean churned the froth against rock and sky alike and he amused himself with the notion that it might be frightened as well, not knowing where it begin or where it ended. Much like himself. Clouds in the distance lit up and the low rumble of thunder reached him a moment later, muted and kind, a thought he smiled at as he took step after careful step, closer to that edge.
The drop was steep, straight down to a patchwork of dark rocks jutting out from the ground, reaching up from earth and ocean alike. A warning, he considered, against the treacherous little thought of jumping tickling the back of his mind to test whether this place was real or imagined; a plea, he pondered, to help this place against some unseen enemy. Or it was merely the simple architecture of a land foreign to him, with no true meaning other than nature being nature. The Doctor brushed a knuckle against his brow and he exhaled warmly just to feel the soothing breath that flowed over his cheek before escaping him.
I breathe, he explained to himself solidly. I take a breath and I take a step and I feel and I see and I taste and I hear and think and yet I do not know what any of these achieve here. I do not know where I am. I do not know how I came to be. How do I exist in this place that sits so unknown to me? Is this what has become of me? Or has what should have come been transcended in some way? Have I died? Have I died to this place, too late in my obstinacy to regenerate?
"How have I not regenerated?" He asked the molecules that swirled by the billions about his face. "How am I not seeing these sights through new eyes; feeling the cold of this place upon new skin; hearing with new ears? How am I not aboard my Tardis, extinguishing the flames of my death by my new life? I stood on my Tardis and I welcomed my end with open arms – quite literally – and I should be she who goes forth in my place, travelling forward throughout the universe." He furrowed his brow and demanded of the ocean, "Why have I not regenerated?"
"Perhaps you have regenerated," came a soft voice, one that turned him swiftly to stare into eyes that now set his hearts beating double. Eyes that warmed him entirely in a way he hadn't felt in far too long. Eyes he hadn't realized he'd been missing for years. "Perhaps," Clara explained, moving closer to him, "We've both regenerated into a new life – one that comes with endless possibilities."
"The Testimony," he stated.
She shrugged.
"Are you real?"
"I am as real as you are, Doctor."
He nodded, "But are you real, Clara?" He gestured to her, daring to take a step closer, feeling the energy of her reaching out to him like it always had. "Clara, are you really real?"
"As opposed to what?" She countered, "A mind full of memories collected up into a database and projected onto a piece of glass that merely looks real?"
"Yes," he countered, "Precisely that."
Her head tilted, and she giggled before sighing, "Oh, Doctor."
He laughed softly at the tone, the one that said he was being ridiculous. The one, he knew, that could have been swept up in all of those memories, projected into the space in front of him to welcome him to this place just as it has ushered him out of his life.
At peace.
"Am I real?" He asked quietly, grin lingering on his face.
Clara merely smiled, that same old smile he could replay from a thousand moments cluttered up between his hearts and his mind – moments that seemed brighter now, fluttering through his memories like loving breezes caressing him gently. He took the hand she held out for him, skin brushing delicately against skin, and he moved with her through the tall grass. It was so much like home, he realized; so much like the fields on Gallifrey where he used to play as a child.
Except the colors were from Earth, from her home.
Memories extracted and combined to form a perfect hybrid of a haven for them both.
"Clara," he breathed, his mouth tingling with the excitement of saying her name after so long. "Clara, am I real? Are we real? This place? This place, is it real?" He stopped his feet and felt the tug of her resistance just before she stopped and turned, giving him a peculiar look.
It was worry and sadness and adoration all in the bending of her brow. And it was followed by the smallest of smiles just before she inhaled deeply and turned to step into him, body colliding with his roughly. He might have been satisfied had that been their end; shattering together into a million shards of glass, falling to the ground together, but what greeted him was something far grander. Something that settled every fear, alleviated every ache in his body, and offered him a reprieve from all the questions plaguing him. The solid assurance of Clara.
His Clara.
Her arms wrapped around him, her torso pressed into his, her toes of her shoes teasing at his, her knees brushing the top of his shins… her fingertips holding desperately to the fabric that kept her from his flesh. She exhaled into his chest, burning at his skin and breaking his heart with the sorrowful sound that came out of her.
"Doctor, I have missed you," she whimpered.
He held her, grip tightening slightly as hers did, out of fear, he knew. The sudden fear that had always plagued him when they'd travelled together – that she could be taken from him, taken right from his side, and he'd be powerless to stop it. He'd forgotten the trembling that overtook his hearts and the sheer panic that struck at his mind at the thought of a world without Clara Oswald.
Pulling her back, he held her face in his hands, reveling in the softness of her cheeks in his palms and then the warmth of her lips against his. He took a long breath and watched her eyes and how they travelled over his face. This, he knew, could be nothing but a memory. She could be nothing but a memory projected onto glass and he could be nothing but the same. This whole place could be the product of a simulation built by images from their minds and he knew, it could all be gone in a moment.
Or this could be a gift.
One final moment, lived in a bubble of peace, for as long as they needed.
He chose not to ponder which, looking to her as she laughed and blinked away tears, telling her gently, "I suppose we're as real as we want to be."