A/N hi guys! So, this is a sort of sequel to my last thing. It's set in the same alternate universe, just about, say... 35/40 years later. I may do more oneshots set in the same universe later. To tell the truth, I wasn't even intending on writing something like the following. I really really wasn't. I said to myself, I said, /stop writing this stuff. Its not healthy. Its not fun. It makes you sad and antisocial. This is supposed to be a fluffy little collection to help people through the hiatus. Stop./
I don't listen to myself. Also, I listened to the song and could not stop myself.
Important note, as you may have noticed, I HAVE CHANGED MY PENNAME. I AM REDAUGUST102. DON'T WORRY. IM STILL ME. JUST A DIFFERENT NAME. OKAY? OKAY.
I'm still rather fond of redaugust, actually, but I like this one better. More doctor who-ey. :) anyway moving on no one cares...
Song is Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men. Yes. Another Monsters song. I know. Sorry. I'll stop and go onto other artists. I really will. But this is just too perfect.
WARNING: SWEARING IS PRESENT IN THIS CHAPTER. SORRY IT WAS UNAVOIDABLE.
•••
I don't like walking around this old and empty house
So hold my hand, I'll walk with you, my dear
The stairs creak as you sleep, it's keeping me awake
It's the house telling you to close your eyes.
And some days I can't even trust myself
It's killing me to see you this way.
'Cause though the truth may vary
This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore.
There's an old voice in my head that's holding me back
Well tell her that I miss our little talks
Soon it will be over and buried with our past
We used to play outside when we were young
And full of life and full of love.
Some days I don't know if I am wrong or right
Your mind is playing tricks on you, my dear.
'Cause though the truth may vary
This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore.
Don't listen to a word I say
The screams all sound the same.
You're gone, gone, gone away
I watched you disappear
All that's left is the ghost of you.
Now we're torn, torn, torn apart,
There's nothing we can do
Just let me go we'll meet again soon
Now wait, wait, wait for me
Please hang around
I'll see you when I fall asleep.
Don't listen to a word I say
The screams all sound the same
Though the truth may vary
This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore.
•••
Life is nothing now. Life was always nothing. Life has never been, nor ever will, be anything but nothing.
I know that now. In death, I know.
Yes, I died.
I died many months ago.
Not in the traditional sense of the word, of course. My heart still beats. My blood still flows. My mind still thinks.
That's the problem, I think. I'm only half-dead. The other half, the half that matters, died that sunny August day. The other half died with you.
You're dead.
You died.
You left me alone.
That word, died, is one I find myself saying a lot these days. Whenever someone asks me why I never smile, why I carry an old bow tie in my pocket, why I live in that big blue house all on my own.
I have to tell them, then. I tell them that you died.
They flinch, stiffen, wince. As if the word is taboo, something no one should ever say. Especially not me, being the one who loves you. They want me to say something else, 'passed away' or 'moved on' or, simply, 'gone'. But that implies that you've gone somewhere. That there is somewhere to go to, after death. Is there? Could you tell me? And if there is, you wouldn't go there without me.
I just tell them you died. Those other phrases mean nothing.
They look down at the floor, then, at their shoes, or they look right into my eyes, and they say sorry. But why should they be sorry? They didn't put a knife through your heart. Malaria did.
Of course it was something like that. We just had to run off to Africa, just had to go careening through an untouched stretch of forest and savannah, the first people to explore it in decades. That's who you said we were. Decades is a long time. But not long enough to warrant the result.
Why did I so eagerly accompany you there? Travel still held that same wonder for me, then. I still loved the world, all for its flaws. But I should have known. I should have sensed it. I should have told you to stay home and stay put, I should have known.
But no one can ever know things like that.
You were so desperate to go there, we hadn't travelled anywhere properly in months. We never discussed it with each other, although we should have, but our adventures were getting less frequent, less demanding, and a little less wondrous. We both tried to ignore it, but we were getting old.
I could see it in the silver growing at the roots of your hair, like a disease slowly claiming your youth. I could see it in the deepening lines around your eyes, the memories of a thousand laughs and a thousand tears. I could see it in your slowing gait, the way you became unable to walk or run too far, too long.
We didn't consciously lessen our travelling, we didn't one day sit down and decide to stay in one spot for a while. It just sort of crept in, took root, sprouted and snared us though we struggled. It was a monster, and it was taking us both even before you died. A monster called time.
You grew restless, depressed, angry, mad. One day you would be content to live and love with me in that big old house, the other you would be cursing your failing joints and shouting at the sky. I missed it too, I really did. Travelling was all I wanted, all I wanted and you. And I couldn't live as well without it, as if ordinary life was too dull, too boring, too simple. But it wasn't, really. Not for the other six billion people on earth.
Just for us, who had seen and lived the magnificent and the impossible.
If I missed our adventures, then you needed them. They kept you alive, they kept your heart pounding, they kept you from remembering. And so you grew old, and resentful, and regretful, and all much too quickly. Even then, the ghost was beginning to take hold of you. You couldn't help remembering when there was nothing to help you forget. Except me. There was always me.
But I wasn't enough.
You loved me, I know you did. And I loved you just as much. But as time took its toll, we lost our life. We lost our joy. We lost our awe at the world. We started to see the universe in a very different light.
And then you'd had enough. You booked a plane to Africa, and we were off without question. Those few weeks there were happy again. Our last adventure. We saw hope, together, again.
And Malaria it was. Your death sentence. Although we would never have thought it back then. Why would we? It's treatable, especially in our modern hospitals. And rarely takes a strong- however old and greying- man so easily and so simply.
Apparently there is something else that makes you rare.
Why wasn't I the one, why did it have to be you?
When the fever started, I booked the plane home straight away. You protested, I was adamant, you gave in. But the few days of difference my stubbornness made didn't stop you from dying.
The night after we got back, you were almost back to your old self. Your temperature had normalised, no more dizziness or vomiting or shivering. I thought you were better, that it was just a bad three-day flu.
But then it attacked a second time. We didn't know what it was then, but we soon would. Plasmodium falciparum, the doctors told us. A type of malaria.
The fatal kind.
I don't remember going to the hospital, I don't remember those days I spent sleeping in the chair beside your bed, sneaking you store-bought chocolate pudding when the nurses weren't looking. I don't remember the doctor diagnosing you, nor the talks about treatment, or cure, or cost. I don't remember anything in that blur of floor-cleaner smell and sterilised white tiles but your pale, clammy hands and your sunken face.
Some days I would walk into your room, see you lying with your eyes closed, and think you were already dead.
Some days I would sneakily insult everyone within sight; nurses, doctors, patients, even you. Some days I would stare at your limp form under all those sheets and cry without noise. Some days I would yell and scream, lashing out at anyone who looked even remotely official, shouting in their ears about how you weren't getting better, and this was the 21st century England not the bloody dark ages so why hadn't they cured you?
At least that is what everyone tells me. I don't remember it. I wish I did. I wish I could remember the last days of your life.
•••
I still don't get it, you know. I still don't understand. Malaria? No, that's a myth. Almost never fatal, and only then when not treated. Right?
Wrong.
It's probably just the fact that you, amazing you, incredible you, beautiful, impossible you, the man who rebuilds flooded Zimbabwean villages with his crazy inventions, who decides to sail off to Easter Island in the dead of night, who spins me round his creaky old house and has the nerve to tell me that I'm more beautiful than any of the places he's visited. The fact that eccentric, childlike, sad, old you were killed by a mosquito.
A.
Fucking.
Bug.
You would have thought it was funny, if you could have managed any emotion other than that constant deranged fatigue. For my sake, you would have laughed.
•••
Although I cannot call to mind many details of those few days of torment while you lay in the hospital, the last grasp for the dying, I remember those last hours so perfectly it shames me. Sometimes when I think of you, I think of that day first, before all the other ones. Before all the good ones.
I can't help it.
I remember blearily rubbing my eyes from sleep, stretching out of the hard chair I had been curled up in for the night. The nurse had told me to go home, she had insisted quite firmly. I think she saw in my eyes that I would rather knock her unconscious and sleep in the storage cupboard than go home, though, and she eventually caved.
I remember wincing at the aches in my joints, smoothing my hair down a little but not really caring for my appearance. I avoided looking at your bed for a long time, and I'm still not exactly sure why. Maybe it was the long, science-y talk the doctor had given me the night before, full of apologies and five syllable words. They stopped trying to dumb it down when your condition grew worse, as though if I didn't understand what they were talking about then I wouldn't be worried. But I've lived with you for thirty years, I worked out enough to know how precarious a state you were in.
I looked at the ceiling first, studying the little patches of god-knows-what as I took two little steps towards you. Then I stood, listening to the rising murmur as everyone started coming into work, the sound of other patients waking up floating through the walls.
I swallowed the pressing lump of fear in my throat.
I looked down.
You looked dead. You looked so dreadfully dead. But I knew you weren't. I knew you couldn't be.
Your once young, bright face was wrinkled and ever so white. Your once rich brown coif of hair was speckled with silver, lying flat against your skin. Your once silly purple coat and bow tie was replaced by a crisp white hospital gown. You weren't you any longer.
Something like a ghost.
Most times you could barely talk to me, your thoughts in that haze of drugs and your mind in the vice of the sickness. You said some things, jumbled words and phrases that usually made no sense. I talked back to you anyway. I hope you understood what I was saying.
That day, you said some things to me. An hour or so after I woke, when the hospital staff began to rush and flutter about, checking your vitals and noting your progress. Their faces were grim. They didn't talk to me much, or they didn't say anything that I heard, anyway.
You started to stir, then. You moved your head an inch or two, your fingers twitched, your eyelids fluttered, and my heart leapt.
But then I saw your eyes, and I knew that it still wasn't you lying there under those sheets. They were yellow and bloodshot, the skin around them was stained with purple. And they just stared. Stared at me. Stared through me.
It wasn't you.
It was a ghost of you.
But I pretended that it wasn't.
I said your name. I think you recognised it. You squinted at me.
I said it again. Doctor.
You mumbled something. It could have been my name. It could have been nothing.
"Are you feeling better?" I asked. I don't know why I asked that. I knew you weren't. I knew. I knew.
A nurse came in. He put a hand on my shoulder. I didn't look at him.
"We're trying," he said. "We're doing all we can."
I didn't speak. Go away.
"It's one of the worst cases we've ever seen here. Remember that his mental state is deteriorating. He's becoming delusional. But we're trying. I promise, we're trying."
"Fuck off," I said. The first time I'd said anything like that since I was an ignorant teenager. You know that I never swear. You knew. Know. Knew.
I don't know anymore. I didn't know then, I don't know now. I don't know what I don't know, I don't know why I don't know it. I don't know I don't know.
He fucked off.
I kept standing there, you sort of looked at me. I took your hand, you sort of wrapped your fingers around mine. I talked to you, you sort of listened.
In the end, I lay down next to you. On top of those scratchy hospital sheets. I was glad we were alone. They'd moved you into isolation just the night before.
I cried. Of course I cried. But I didn't cry from sadness. I was angry. At least I think I was.
Isn't it strange how humanity sees fit to put such defining labels on emotion? I don't know what I felt, but I knew that whatever it was was howling for you.
One in a million.
And then I felt your hand on my cheek.
I didn't dare to breathe.
You were looking at me through half-lidded eyes. Not your eyes. But close enough. I don't think you knew exactly what you were saying.
"Clara," you murmured, the syllables slurring together. "My...my impossible girl. C...Clara."
I clutched your hand.
"We...we had so many adventures, Clara. We saw so many things. Clara... we helped so many people."
You sounded like a drugged up madman. Which you sort of were.
And then you smiled. And I saw the real you again. For a moment. For a moment I had hope.
"I'm going on another adventure, Clara," you said.
That was the moment the void took root in my chest. That was the moment it started to eat me up. Into nothing.
I brought your fingers to my lips. You were stroking my cheek. Your eyes were still hazy, yellowed, dull.
"Without you, Clara," you frowned, like a sad little child. "Why am I going without you?"
It felt like drowning.
I couldn't answer you.
I wish I had.
"Why can't you come with me, Clara?"
My tears were falling onto your hand.
"Clara? Can't you come?"
I wished you would stop saying my name.
"I don't... don't want to go on an adventure without... my Clara."
It wasn't you who said those words.
If it was really you, you would only have thought them. If it was really you, you would have kissed my forehead and told me it was okay. If it was really you, you would have cried with me. If it was really you, you wouldn't have said those things where I could hear them.
But it wasn't you. So I heard them.
The nurses and doctors streamed in and out of the room, all grim and full of apologies.
They tried to make me leave. Get some air. Think.
I couldn't.
I stood when they forced me, though. I spent hours standing there, still, looking at the you who was not you.
You rarely looked back. And when you did, it was the eyes of a ghost who'd outgrown his years.
It happened in the afternoon.
The sun shone through the window.
•••
I'm still living in your house.
You called it our house, of course. But we both knew it had always been yours. Your big, old, blue TARDIS.
It is so old now. Much too big. And even more blue.
I hear your footsteps on the stairs, sometimes. Late at night. I wait up for you, as I used to when you busied yourself with tools and machines and maps and books to fend off your insomnia. I lie there and wait for you.
You never come.
I know you're not there, I know you're dead. Dead, dead, dead. You're dead. The Doctor is dead. John Smith is dead. Dead, dead, dead.
Dead.
Your house is dead too.
There's no life inside it.
Nothing is as it was.
Not a well loved leather armchair waiting to be nestled upon. Just an old, decaying bit of furniture waiting for the tip.
Not a hand drawn map of the dusty plains of the Sahara, settlements labelled in messy pen, an oasis marked with an urgent arrow and a smiley face. Just a piece of doodled paper with a coffee stain.
Not a priceless jade dragon from imperial China, standing tall and proud and imposing on the top shelf of the bookcase, growling down at all those below. Just a dull knickknack someone probably picked up from the goodwill, taking up space that could be used for something practical.
Not a green-glowing penlike device of your own invention, able to unlock any door, hack any system, that always accompanied you on our travels. Just a silly stick of metal lying on the kitchen counter.
Not a splat of blue paint on the hallway floor, from the time you repaired the door and had the nerve to fling it at me, the one you drew a little smiley face on because you said it looked like a person. Just a stain on cracked floorboards from a passed, sunnier day.
Not a house of hundreds of years, thousands of memories. Not a house of kisses and laughs and shouts and tears. Not a house of the smell of soufflé wafting from the oven, the sound of clinking and clanking of metal and wires as you tinkered, the warmth of your chest at night, the feeling of home. Not a house.
A cracked and teetering coffin, one wind gust away from desolation, cold and old and dusty and sad.
Whenever the door slams shut, it sounds like another nail in the wood.
Whenever the rain patters on the roof, it sounds like shovelfuls of dirt being cast down on top of me.
When there is silence, it sounds like the voices of death.
This is my life now. Death. The opposite of things, the contrast of being that somehow is my everything.
Time has claimed you.
As it must.
I can feel it stalking me.
It waits behind every corner, lives under these floorboards, in the peeling blue paint of your house.
Breathes in the soft fabric of the tattered bowtie I clutch in my pocket wherever I go.
Skips in the sounds of laughter of others who do not yet know what I do, what they must soon enough know.
Groans in the creak of the swinging bench, waiting for us under the stars.
Whispers in the scent of the flowers and the trees that clamber, so wild and free, up to your house.
Beats in the chill and the cold of this house, and everything that's missing.
Time.
I feel it every second.
I took every clock we own and hung it in our room. All sixty six of them. They didn't all fit on the walls. Some are under the bed. In the drawers. On the ceiling. One is under my pillow. Its sound ticks on into my dreams.
I hear them ticking now.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
My time.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Of time.
As it did for you, it will do for me.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
I can only hope it will not delay.
Tick.
Tick.
A/N this was an ACCIDENT
Thank you for all the reviews everyone by the way.
ACCIDENT