Contrary to what James thought after that sliver of contact, the Doctor hadn't actually intruded upon her mind. He hadn't even had the chance to do so before a, a—mind bond was established. No, no, re-established. They had history, they had had something, but it was all gone now. The loss of it physically hurt. His chest felt like it was caving in.
That meant his theory was both correct, and false.
He had to break free from her mind. The sooner he did it, the better. The wave of emptiness was—he didn't want to admit it—too...distracting for him to function. (It was also causing the tears to flow from his eyes, but he didn't want to pay that any attention.) Severing the mind bond would have been impossible if the girl had been a Time Lord, but as she evidently wasn't, he cut off their connection in the split of a second after it had been re-made.
He steps back, turning away to hide his face.
"I'm sorry," he murmurs, a hand wiping at his cheeks. "I—" He had to say it. Even though saying it out loud made things so much realer. "I erased your memories."
"What?" James says dumbly, shaking her head. "I don't—I don't get it."
"Some time, in the future." He drops his hand and walks off the elevator, refusing to look back at her. "I'm sorry."
They walk to the Face of Boe in silence, him noting the miraculous recoveries of various illnesses only with subdued interest. There was something wrong with this hospital, but not as wrong as whatever had happened between James and himself. They weren't supposed to meet, he thinks. Time was bending backwards in ways he had never thought was possible, just to complicate everything.
James glances around wildly at the aliens, obviously overwhelmed by the unfamiliar species that surrounded her. She seemed so...small and young and utterly human, whatever that meant to him anymore. But she had still gotten tangled with him, the most dangerous being in the universe to know in any way.
He ignores the Sister chatting away about the faith in the Sisterhood and instead peers at the large face in the container, whose eyes were closed in serenity.
"The Face of Boe is dying," The care-taker murmurs. "I'm sorry."
"He is millions of years old." James looks at her hand, twisting an index finger back as she talks. It's distracting, the way the finger turns disturbingly white with the lack of blood. "He probably has a lot of secrets that he says he will only tell one person."
"How did you know that?" The cat blinks its wide eyes, voice still soft but on edge. "It's just a story, but..."
"What is it?" The Doctor interrupts, tearing his gaze away from James's still-white finger. "Tell me the story."
The nurse hesitates, "It's said he'll impart his secret to a wanderer. To the man without a home. The—"
"Lonely God," James finishes, and the Cat gasps. The girl is looking off to the window, a faint rueful smile on her lips. "It all seems sort of...cringey now, doesn't it?"
The Doctor holds himself back for two blithe seconds, waiting for a calamity, a catastrophe. When there isn't any, the silence contracts into rage.
"Stop," he snaps, and James flinches, mouth still parted. "Just stop talking. Do you realize how dangerous it is to—"
"You said it yourself, man," she flings back angrily, bounding back from her surprise. "I'm not causing any paradoxes. So I'm supposed to be here, talking this shit, and you're the one who's not telling me whatever it is you know about me."
"It doesn't matter right now," he says, low and hard, but she barks a harsh laugh.
"Oh really? So why'd you cry?"
"I haven't—"
"You haven't what? You haven't erased my memories, or not? Why do you have to be so fucking convoluted?" Her finger's still white and something in him snaps and he reaches out to to grip her hand away, and slams all the gaps in his mind at her.
A soul-bond wasn't something that could be summed up with any human language.
Well, at least that's the impression she got from the microsecond of sharing the Doctor's jerk of a mind. Everything happened so fast, to the point where she felt she could sense the neurons snapping in her brain. But science didn't explain the wrench in her mind when she saw the myriad of himself in the myriad of herself. It was all skewed and tilted, every gap in her mind where a memory was supposed to be burning with a painful ferocity, all her breathes without the Doctor wrongful and hurtful and—
"Fuck," she says, and then everything falls back apart and a voice murmurs There is a history, between you two.
She doesn't need to open her eyes, knows it instinctively. His voice is recognizable.
"You're not dead," She retorts, as the Face of Boe opens his eyes serenely.
Dying can wait. I've been waiting for the two of you.
"Do you know us?" The Doctor says, face guarded. She glances at him, body still trembling from all the...feels, she supposes she should say. She never knew she could feel so much. It was all fading away now, a little by little, but she doesn't think the feeling of the memory will quite ever be gone from her.
I had grown tired with the universe, Doctor, but you taught me to look at it anew. I simply wanted to return the favour to you both.
She doesn't know what the hell he's talking about, but she knows that it's all off-script. This is something entirely new.
Doctor, you are looking from the wrong direction. You, of all people, must know that.
James hopes someone can decode what he's saying. Because she obviously can't. She looks anxiously at the Doctor, whose expression is still unreadable. James, the voice in her head says, and she spins around then feels stupid about it.
"Yeah?"
You underestimate yourself.
"Uh, thanks?"
The Face of Boe laughs, a booming sound that rattles her thoughts. We shall meet again, Doctor, for the third time, for the last time, and the truth shall be told. Until that day. A beam surrounds his jar, and she squints and when the blinding light is gone, the jar is gone as well.
The silence seems to be jagged.
"Well, you got a lot of explaining to do." James decides on, and what could've been another moment of terse silent stares breaks, when the Doctor's phone rings.
She doesn't know whether to be glad or annoyed.
