The Doctor walked away from Bill and headed to the basement steps. He paused once he was out of her sight, leaned against the wall and felt the cool bricks under his fingers, grateful at least that he'd held it together in front of Bill. She forgave him for putting her through that performance on the prison boat. For pushing her to breaking point until she lost hope and shot him. Why did they always forgive him his cruel excesses? Because it was necessary? Because he always made amends by pulling off the impossible? But it had been cruel to put Bill through that, and in the cold light of day, he didn't like what he'd done. Those terrible messages he'd broadcast still stuck in his throat. At first, the Monk's had him entirely under their control. Once he'd wrestled his mind free he'd sought to make amends. He worked every day to turn the guards over to his side. He told himself people in camps were safer there than they would be on the streets where they could be killed for dissent. But every night he wondered how many people died while he was planning and scheming. There were no good choices under the Monks. Six months alone on that boat had seemed an eternity. After they had defeated the Monks, he still felt open and raw, but he'd put on his coat and played the Doctor for Bill again because that's what she needed and deserved.
A wave of tiredness washed over him. He'd been shot, flooded his system with regeneration energy and then reabsorbed it, and the next day he'd had his brain frazzled and his body blasted across the room. It was no wonder he felt tired. He ran his fingers through his hair. Always something to do. He needed to see Missy, it was only fair, but he didn't want her to see him like this. He had to put himself back together somehow before he went down to the vault. He needed something. He needed help. He needed Clara. He stuck his hand in his jacket pocket, and found the fragment of Dark Star she'd given him, months ago now, radiating heat and cold in a paradoxical blast of energy. Standing on the threshold of basement steps, facing the dark, the light golden at his back, he whispered her name.
Clara Oswald lay on her bed in her room in the Diner, fingering the Dark Star fragments she'd strung on a rhodium chain and hung around her neck. She watched a tear in the fabric of the universe form above a few feet above her, twisting into existence and then fading away. The small rips in time could come and go in a moment, but the larger ones lasted longer. She'd even stepped through a crack once and found herself alone and chilled in the Doctor's study. She'd watched students through the windows who walked slowly, soulless and empty across the grass, and it sent shivers down her spine. Part of her wanted to investigate, to get to the bottom of whatever this mess was, but something else told her she shouldn't. She'd stepped back through to the Diner in need of a strong drink.
It had been six months now since she'd had any contact with the Doctor. She'd tried tracking him through the vortex. She visited places she knew he'd been in the past, but every time she'd just miss him, never able to get into sync with where he was in any particular moment. She'd tried closing her eyes and opening her mind, but that hadn't worked either. Time and again she'd peered through random cracks, to no avail.
The hundred years between the time she and the Doctor had sat together in the Cloisters and the day she saw him again had been hard. Over time, somehow, she'd accepted it was for the best and almost got used to it. But this was much worse. Things seemed to be happening that meant they could be together, at least she thought so. Those shared conversations, the Dark Star fragments and the quantum crack that allowed them to physically touch. Seeing him again, talking to him, holding him in her arms, those things had ripped open old wounds. She began to let herself dream dangerous dreams. And now it felt like she'd lost him all over again. It had been months, and she didn't know where he was, if he was safe. Was he still blind? What if the face she loved was gone and she'd never see him again? Never get the chance to tell him, show him, how she felt?
She had been right about one thing all those years ago in the Cloisters.
People should say things to one another.
Clara sat on the side of her bed, and wished something would happen, anything. She tugged the necklace out from under her shirt. It didn't like being in the open air, it would fizzle and pop anytime it was away from her skin and exposed to the light, but she took it off anyway.
"What are you playing at, eh?" she said, resentment sticking in her throat. "What's the point of all this if I can't see him?" The black pendant jittered on the end of its chain, as if the strange dark gem somehow objected to her question.
Great. Now I'm talking to a chunk of space-rock. She should probably go find Ashildr and suggest a day at a spa, or better yet go back to the antigrav Olympics and watch the free fall motorcycle team. She was just about to tuck the necklace back under her shirt and do just that, when another glimmering crack opened in the corner of her room. One of the big ones, running from the floor to the ceiling. The sort that could stay open for hours. Hardly daring to hope, she stepped towards the crack. She held the Dark Star in front of her, letting it dangle on its silver chair.
"Woah!" The necklace pulled itself taut, jerking towards the glittering tear in space-time.
Through the silvery light of the tear, she saw steps, a dark basement, and a door with flashing red and blue lights.
Then she heard his voice.
"Clara?" His voice sounded hoarse, pained, as if he was hurting.
Blinded by tears and the silver-white light she stumbled towards the sound of his voice. Please. Please let me go to him.
The world became a disjointed blur.
He was standing at the top of a set of steps, framed in sunlight.
She wrapped her arms around his body, which felt thinner, more fragile somehow than she'd ever known him. His breaths were coming in short rasps, like a wounded small animal, and his skin felt chilled to the touch.
She gasped and fought back tears. "Doctor, what happened to you?"
He held onto to her without speaking, his head hung low, his arms around her waist, holding her as if she were a lifeline. His whole body trembled. He was hiding his face, she knew it. Gently she pulled back a fraction so he had to look at her. His eyes were hollow.
"Doctor. Can you see?"
"Yes, I can see." There was no joy there, no relief to have had his sight restored.
Coldness swept through Clara. "What happened to you?"
"What happened to me? I think it's what happened to everyone else we need to worry about," he said. The daylight faded, and they were under artificial light.
He met her eyes for a moment, and then he wriggled free and powered away. "Clara, you should go. I can't stand it. I can't stand what I've done. I don't want you to see me like this." His voice was desperate, broken, and he paced away across the room. Clara realised they were in her room, but he seemed disorientated, unaware of his surroundings. He moved a chair by her dresser aside, as if he needed to do something, anything with his hands. He picked up a hand mirror, then with barely a glance he tossed it down again. "I can't, Clara."
Clara strode over to him and took his hand firmly. "Doctor. Stop. Please, just talk to me."
He shook his head. "You'll hate me. I hate myself."
"Whatever it is, Doctor, nothing could make me hate you. Nothing."
"I don't think I'm always a good man. Sometimes I get carried away with my own schemes. I can be cruel. Without meaning to be. I didn't mean to push Bill so far. I didn't even stop to think. But that's how it goes, isn't it? Eventually you have to stop and think, and you look into yourself and see darkness."
He tried to untangle their hands and move away, but instead of letting him go, she held his hand tighter and grasped his lapel with her other hand.
"You looked into my darkness, Doctor, and you didn't turn away."
The fight went out of him a little, his shoulders slumped, his face slackened. "Your darkness threw a shadow over you and I. Mine cast your whole world into darkness for months and then pushed a young woman to the edge of reason. I turned her into someone who could shoot her friend. How is that for dark? Still like what you see?" His tone was angry now, bitter, pushing her away.
Clara Oswald would not be pushed. "Do you think I care for you so little, that it makes a difference?"
He slumped then, seemed to deflate into her arms, weariness taking him in waves.
"Tell me what you need, Doctor."
"I'm tired, so tired," he said, as if those words were an admission of defeat.
Clara nodded, and tugged him gently towards her bed. "Rest your head, old man," she said. He let her guide him, and sunk onto the bed as if he hadn't rested in a lifetime. Clara didn't ask him any more questions, she knelt by the bed, her fingers entwined with his.
"I don't deserve you," he said.
"My Doctor," she said. "You and I both know, I'm exactly what you deserve."
He looked so conflicted in that moment, as if he needed to breathe out a vast black cloud, but was afraid it would smother his soul if he set it free. Part of her wanted to lay with him, part of her told her that might not be wise; he was too raw, too vulnerable.
Perhaps what he needed was space to put himself back together in his own way.
His eyes were heavy and red-lidded. They fluttered open and then shut, and then he forced them open again. "Stay with me," he said.
"Every moment I can," she whispered. If that was what he wanted, what he needed, what else could she do then, but lay down carefully by his side, her fingers entwined with his?
She moved close alongside him and put her hand gently to his face. "Hush now. Close your eyes."
His eyes did close, and his breathing became more regular, his chest rising and falling in time with a pulsing in her own soul. His face softened as he slept, the thin line of his lips slackening, the dark shadows under his eyes seeming to fade.
She let her own body relax, and tried not to think of his pain, but of his resilience.
Although Clara hated to see him hurting, something warm settled in her own heart. He'd come to her. He wanted her; in all the madness he called her name. The quantum crack had opened when he needed her most. Perhaps they were fated to be together. She glanced at the crack, pulsing gently in the corner of the room. By the size of it, it could a few hours. Clara shifted herself closer to the Doctor, until she could feel every breath he took, and see every expression that flitted across his sleeping face. He was calm now, his face smooth and as beautiful as ever. Whatever had happened, he was still the Doctor.
#
The Doctor woke feeling lighter. In the split second it took orient himself, he realised he was on a TARDIS, but not his own, there was a stable multiphasic trans-dimensional quantum tear in the fabric of space-time four meters to his left, and beside him lay the other half of his shattered hearts. Clara Oswald, right next to him, her eyes closed, her smile still perfect. Chrono-locked, trapped in the cross-hairs of a Quantum Shade, but possibly, just possibly, with the key to it all hanging on a chain around her neck; those fragments of Dark Star. She'd added to the necklace since he'd seen her last, he could sense the raw power pulsing in time with the vibrations from the quantum tear.
She moved fractionally, and his breath caught in his chest. Could he lay here for the rest of time, just watching her? He knew that was an idle fantasy; he could no more force himself to lay still than he could wrestle the clocks of the universe to a stop. But it was the sort of question an old man could divert himself with for a few seconds before he had to face what came next.
Her chest was still, her heart still locked between one heartbeat and her last. He'd done this to her. Trapped her in stasis. Made her into an immortal thing with the Sword of Damocles hanging over her every moment, living in the shadow of a Quantum Shade.
All because he couldn't let her go. What madness had driven him to such lengths? If love was slavery, then he was happily her slave. It was no use denying it to himself anymore, wrapping his words in a mystery and thinking himself clever for it.
Do you think I care for you so little was a fine phrase to hide behind.
Now she'd played him at his own game he saw the flaw in those opaque words.
She'd told him something very important in the Cloisters. He'd remembered so many things about her over the years, how she looked, her smile, and the times they had spend together. Why couldn't he unlock that memory? How did she really feel about this old face?
She had been right; people really should say things instead of hiding behind clever words.
The quantum tear flickered at the edge of his vision, silvery and always pulsing, a bridge between their two lives. How much time would it give them?
She stirred. Her eyes flicked open and met his. "Hello," she whispered. Her soft smile lit her face and his hearts.
He propped himself up on his elbow, but he didn't get up from the bed. If he moved one fraction closer to her, or one fraction further away, he was afraid he'd shatter this perfect moment. Fear had held him captive for too long, made a coward of him.
He heard a voice echoing down the ages.
Fear is a superpower, it makes you faster and cleverer and stronger. Fear doesn't have to make you cruel or cowardly, fear can make you kind.
The Doctor gasped aloud, something hot and raw spearing his hearts.
So very long ago now, twelve lifetimes past, he'd listened to a voice whispering in the dark. It suddenly became crystal clear to him that the voice had been hers.
"It was you, wasn't it? That night in the barn," he whispered.
Everything was coming full circle. She had been there at the very start, giving him more to be than a lonely boy crying in the dark, giving him the compass to guide his whole life: the soldier so brave he didn't need a gun. The man who frightened the monsters. Never cowardly or cruel. She gave him that: Clara Oswald created the Doctor.
The portal flickered at the edge of the room. The basement winked on the other side. He turned his eyes back to Clara.
She brushed the tips of her fingers hesitantly across his jaw, so lightly her touch was like silk. "That must be so long ago for you now. How can you even remember?"
"You're in my DNA, Clara," he said. "All my lives, you're there, always running. Saving me." Every fiber of his being was entwined with hers.
"Born to save him, bound to love him," Clara murmured. "Someone told me that. The Portant of Drellmar. She asked me to tell you her debt to you is discharged."
He closed his eyes. That name. It was important somehow, backwards, forwards, future, past, twisted time lines tied up with the woman laying at his side, and, had he heard her right? Did she say she was bound to love him? His head pounded. He forced his eyes open, because now he had to know. Now, in this moment, when the tear was pulsing in time with the hammering of his hearts.
He saw her completely as she lay beside him, her brown eyes large, her pupils dilated. Her smile curving up, crinkling her eyes in the way he remembered. Her lips were blush red and slightly parted, as if was about to say something but couldn't find her voice.
She was so close, he could smell her perfume, breathe in her very essence. It would be the work of a moment to lean across and kiss her. She didn't move away. Her eyes roved around his face, to his eyes, then falling back to his lips, as if she too were thinking as he was, wanting to break down the walls that they had built around themselves. If she wanted to move away, she would. He had to do something.
Yet he was still afraid.
"I want to kiss you," he finally forced out, his throat tight, his whole world collapsing into her. She could destroy him now. He'd given her the most powerful weapon in the universe; the key to his hearts.
"I want that too," she said, turning her face to him, moving closer into his arms. "I don't care anymore about why we shouldn't. This is the only thing that makes any sense."
Her lips were on his, her mouth warm and open, her body pressed close, sending small shock waves rolling through him. Her hands were in his hair, her tongue sliding sweetly against his own. She tugged him closer, pressing his lips with hers, and he felt her smile under his own lips.
"This is an idea I could really get behind," he said. "I think we should do a lot more of this."
"Kissing?" she said, laughing a little.
"Definitely. I'm a kissing person now," he said, and to prove it he kissed her again.
The world brightened, and for a moment he thought he was caught in some kind of hormone-fuelled ecstasy. But his rational mind knew what was happening. The quantum crack was pulling him back. Taking him away from her. The room blurred, reality fragmented.
He heard her sigh his name.
Doctor.
He found himself once more on the basement steps, every sense heightened, his body more awake than it had been in years, trembling with frustration. "Put me back!" he growled, running down a few steps. Then he stopped. He certainly felt back on track. But what a cruel joke. He decided in that moment, that the universe was quite simply a bastard. Still, it wouldn't beat him. Not while he had breath in his lungs and a fragment of Dark Star in his pocket. He'd find a way back to Clara.
Location unknown
In the depths of time, darkness of the interstitial void, the First's rage was legion. "I provided you with the means to model every moment in human history to find their weakness, and in the process destroy the Time Lord. How is it that you failed?"
The red-robed Monk's ruin of a face held no answers.
"His existence offends order. He bends time out of shape. The hybrid prophecy was a dust mote in my eye, a Time Lord fairy tale about which I cared nothing. And yet the hybrid's power grows. Not just to ruin Gallifrey, but to fracture time itself!"
The First swept the Monk away. It had no further use for the failed Monks.
The Quantum Shade fluttered to the First's side. "The seeds of destruction are sewn. She wears fragments even now."
"How many?"
"She has three. He has one."
"Then it is no wonder the forces are out of alignment," the First's voice was low now, smooth, like the last of the sunlight over dark water. "Must I oversee everything personally?"
The Shade flapped its wings in nervous irritation. "Things are in motion. Soon equilibrium will be reached. But it is delicate. We must bait the trap."
The First's voice echoed in the void, across space and time, past and future. "The hybrid moves ever closer." The First wrapped time around itself in a silver sheet, and then it vanished into darkness.
