I'm very proud of this chapter. Doctor POV is always hard, especially Sad Doctor.

Chapter 21: Merry Christmas, Doctor

The Doctor pulled his coat collar closer against the snow-laden wind that was blowing up across the Belgian fields near the town with a French name.

He hadn't been cold before…

Surrounded by two armies who had chosen not to fight, with his friend at his side as they talked about old times, good and bad...

The harsh winter had meant nothing in the midst of that.

But now that he was alone again there was an undeniable chill in his soul, spreading outwards to meet the icy prickles against his skin.

He didn't have much time left.

He looked down at his hand, empty now, though he could still feel the handshake his friend had left him with.

Was that what all of this had been? A goodbye?

He'd hoped his oldest friend would be by his side as he closed his eyes on the Universe one last time.

But maybe the Master couldn't face that. He'd never been very good with reality.

Come to think of it, maybe neither of them had been.

Silly after all this time but… He was afraid to die alone.

"Are you ok?" asked a familiar voice.

He knew she wasn't real. But the comfort of a familiar face was impossible to refuse.

"Shall we go for one last stroll... Miss Potts?" he returned.

"Do you know what the hardest thing about knowing you was?" the duplicate asked in Bill's voice, hooking Bill's arm around his own.

"My superior intelligence," he quipped. "My dazzling charisma. Oh!" he added, showing off his shredded, velvety jacket. "My impeccable dress sense."

"Letting you go," not-Bill said. "Letting go of the Doctor is so, so hard, isn't it?"

There were tears in her eyes and a maturity that the Doctor didn't remember.

For just a moment, he wanted to lean into the fantasy, wanted to ask what she meant…

But then he turned away, laughing at his own foolishness.

"You see," he said, backing away from this machine which had borrowed Bill's face without even asking first. "That's, that's… That's not the sort of thing the real Bill Potts would say."

"I am the real Bill!" the Testimony avatar protested emphatically for what seemed like the hundredth time. "A life is just memories. I'm all her memories, so I'm her."

He thought about Missy.

He thought about Gallifrey.

He thought about himself.

"If you say so," he said, unconvinced.

This was starting to feel like he was getting a lecture… From a databank impersonating his former student, no less.

Although… It was also starting to feel a bit like a certain friend of his trying to prove a point.

Maybe the Master hadn't gone far after all.

It didn't matter. Nothing he or pretend-Bill could say would change the Doctor's mind about regenerating.

Not with everything he'd be losing. Not after he'd already lost so much.

He'd have nothing left.

He would be nothing. Just a shell.

That wasn't even living.

What could anyone say to change that?

"Ok," duplicate-Bill said, "I'm going to prove to you how important memories are. I've got a little goodbye present for you."

Well, that sounded vaguely ominous...

"Oh, that's nice," the Doctor said, bracing himself, a thousand possibilities racing through his brain at once. "Will I have to pretend I like it?" he asked, because he always kept talking when he didn't know what might happen next. "Because honestly, that rug…"

Bill's glass doppelganger rolled her eyes and pulled him close, planting a warm kiss on his cheek.

It felt so real.

And then… Everything stopped.

And everything changed.

He wasn't sure what had happened for a moment.

But then he looked up.

And the person he saw, the person he recognized was… Impossible.

"You're my impossible girl."

"Merry Christmas, Doctor," Clara said.

"Merry Christmas, Clara Oswald."

"Clara," he said. And it wasn't just a name anymore. It held entire lifetimes of meaning.

"Run, you clever boy... And remember me."

Just as it used to.

"I'd know you anywhere."

He saw her. He knew her.

"Please just… Just see me."

She looked just as she had the last time he had seen her.

"Let me be brave…"

The voids in his mind were all filled, all those beautiful, vital, irreplaceable moments.

"If I grow to be half the man you are, Clara Oswald, I shall be happy indeed."

All that color and warmth and sadness and frantic running and laughter and kindness.

"All of Time and all of Space… Please! Don't even argue."

Clara's smile. Her hand in his. Her kiss on his cheek.

"Fear can make you kind."

All right where they should be.

"Clara Oswald, I will never send you away again."

"Hello," Clara smiled and her eyes were so happy and so sad. "Stupid old man."

"I never know why, I only know who."

"You're back," the Doctor said. And he had to check again because she really was here and he just couldn't believe it. "You're in my head."

"I met her twice before and I lost her both times, and now I don't think I'll ever find her again."

He didn't know how, didn't even care.

"Always the teacher."

But he knew, as he hadn't quite known with Testimony.

"We've got enough warriors," Clara said as the silent battle raged around them. "Any old idiot can be a hero."

This Clara wasn't a duplicate. Wasn't a memory or a dream or a hallucination.

"Then what do I do?" he asked her helplessly. The answer was there, right in front of him. But only Clara could see it right now.

It was Clara. Really, truly, impossibly standing in front of him now.

"Be a Doctor," Clara replied simply.

"All my memories…" the Doctor said, taking a quick inventory, reveling in his Christmas miracle. "Are back."

Run, you clever boy. And be a Doctor.

And there was a new memory, too... Something that had been erased not by the neural block but by a memory worm. Again, with his own consent.

A memory of a future Clara and the Master. A day he'd run into them by accident and realized they were together.

He'd handled that with his typical cool demeanor, as he recalled now.

He wasn't sure how they had met at the time. Spoilers, they had said.

But it seemed they had found some common ground in trying to recover his memories.

This wasn't a Christmas present from Bill or from Testimony...

It was a gift from two of his best friends in the Universe. Working together to try to fix the unfixable.

And it seemed they had succeeded.

Reality had met its match against that alliance.

The Doctor also found some related memories of at least one very strange double date with those two and River and himself...

He filed that nonsense away for a time when he might be ready for it… If that was possible.

Clara couldn't stop smiling. She was trying to be nonchalant about their reunion but she'd never been any good at hiding her emotions.

"And don't go forgetting me again," she said lightly, like that hadn't destroyed them both so completely, like it hadn't been one of the worst moments of both their lives. "Because, quite frankly, that was offensive."

The Doctor smiled and looked away. Clara could joke about anything.

He felt the cold again, felt the ache of his failing body pulling him away.

See you around, Clara Oswald, he thought.

And then he was back on the battlefield, looking at Bill. Or at the avatar which looked so much like Bill.

And he was himself again.

The future he couldn't envision started to come into focus as his past returned.

This whole day… It hadn't been a goodbye.

It had been a reminder.

"Memories," Make Believe Bill said. "Important, right?"

It wasn't something the Doctor ever would have argued against.

But the Master had never been able to resist the urge to gloat.

Neither could Testimony, it seemed.