Remember Me

by dharmaharker

She tried so hard to save him. He was her everything. He was the anchor that held her to Earth. Every day they spent together was held as sacred in her memory, until she recalls a day that had nearly slipped from her memory: the day the Doctor died. (Clara and Eleven face The Master, slight AU. Rated T for violence, angst, feels.)

2. The Beginning

The console is burning, the Doctor thought, as beads of sweat formed on his brow. A fire blazed at the heart of the ship. Why did she take me here? Why now?

Flames licked at the Doctor's feet. "Not good," he called over the engine's whine, pleading with the TARDIS. "Darling, I think we would both benefit if you decided to COOL DOWN!"

The spaceship spun out of control. The Doctor was thrown violently back against the door, head spinning. "Ouch," he moaned, rubbing the back of his head. "Can you try to control yourself, PLEASE?"

Every gear thudded and whirred, every light flashed red. The single unit in all of space and time that had covered every inch of the universe was screaming out in a blazing warning cry.

"You've gone mad," he reprimanded as he tried what he could, flipped switches and pulled levers at random. Suddenly his voice was quiet, contemplative. "Where are you taking me? You're not in control, are you?"

The noise of the brakes, the wheezing groan and shudder of the TARDIS landing, sounded mournfully as she plunged into the deep and murky water of a swamp in a thicket overgrown with briar. The Doctor knew that to save the TARDIS he would need to leave her, let her sink to the bottom and come back with another way to help her, and so he opened the doors and closed them again, but this time he was in the water and locking himself out.

Trapped in a cage of thorns, blinded by the mud in the water, the Doctor began to drown.