A/N Hello everyone! i have changed my penname again. I had a bit of a crisis. But this is (hopefully) permanent.

This is set later in the Doctor and Clara's timeline than we have seen, but the Name of the Doctor didn't happen. Yeah :)

Today's oneshot is actually based on two songs, both by the amazing Muse (THE DOCTOR LIKES MUSE TOO!). The songs are Supermassive Black Hole (which he played in the TARDIS once!) and Madness.

Thank you to all my lovely anonymous reviewers, my just as lovely non-anonymous ones (sorry if I haven't replied to you I'm very disorganised) as well as all of those favouriters and followers! You're the best.

P.S FOUR WEEKS FOUR WEEKS FOUR WEEKS

•••

Supermassive Black Hole

Oh baby don't you know I suffer?
Oh baby can you hear me moan?
You caught me under false pretenses
How long before you let me go?

You set my soul alight
You set my soul alight

Glaciers melting in the dead of night
And the superstars sucked into the supermassive

I thought I was a fool for no one
Oh baby I'm a fool for you
You're the queen of the superficial
And how long before you tell the truth

Glaciers melting in the dead of night
And the superstars sucked into the supermassive

Supermassive black hole
Supermassive black hole
Supermassive black hole

Madness

I can't get these memories out of my mind,
And some kind of madness has started to evolve.
And I, I tried so hard to let you go,
But some kind of madness is swallowing me whole, yeah.

I have finally seen the light,
And I have finally realized
What you mean.

And now I need to know is this real love,
Or is it just madness keeping us afloat?
And when I look back at all the crazy fights we had,
Like some kind of madness was taking control, yeah

And now I have finally seen the light,
And I have finally realized
What you need.

But now I have finally seen the end
And I'm not expecting you to care
But I have finally seen the light
I have finally realised

I need to love
I need to love.
Come to me
Just in a dream.
Come on and rescue me.

Yes I know, I can be wrong,
Maybe I'm too headstrong.

Our love is

Madness

•••

"So..." Clara danced her fingers along the edge of the console. "how big is the universe? You must know. Is it infinite?"

"No, no. That would be silly!" he scoffed at her, spinning around to face her to emphasise his point. "Who wants an infinite expanse of everything? That's like one of your politicians. Eventually, it'll start repeating everything it's already said. No, the universe isn't infinite. It's just...endless."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"No. You see, the universe is very /big/, incomprehensibly big, but it doesn't go on forever and ever. It just doesn't..." he wrung his hands about his head. It was always hard explaining these sorts of things. Especially since he was perhaps the only person in the universe to have such a knowledge. "...have a finishing point."

Clara poked her finger into his chest, rather hard. "You would be a horrible physics teacher."

"I'll have you know I was a brilliant physics teacher! What I'm trying to say is that there is an end to the universe, but there is nothing on the other side. And you can't really see nor contemplate anything on the other side. There is no other side. So there isn't really an end, either. Because endings mean something new begins, and the end of the universe is just that. The end. So the end doesn't technically exist."

She crossed her arms, gave him that glare. "What about black holes? Aren't they pretty much the same as what you are so eloquently describing?"

"Yes. Well, sort of. Well...not at all, really. Black holes...black holes are more like great big pits of nothing, sucking and compressing everything else. Except it's not nothing. It's more like anti-everything. The opposite of stuff. Except its still matter. It's just...special timey spacey matter."

"That's basically what you said for the end of the universe," Clara shook her head, spinning away from him and walking around the console. "Nonexistent anti-stuff."

"Stop simplifying everything I say! They are two very different things."

"You'd already simplified it, chin boy. 'Timey spacey'? You don't need to dumb it down that far for me, thank you very much."

She reached the other side of the console, and he spun around to look at her. "This is very complicated stuff here, Clara! We're not talking...algebra, it's highly advanced physics of existence! Not many people even know about the end of everything!"

"Why don't we take a look then?"

She couldn't be serious. "Take a look at the end of the universe?"

"No, nimrod. At a black hole."

"The incredulity still applies."

"Come on," Clara leaned forward on her tiptoes, precariously near. He sort of liked the closeness, the way she was looking at him, and felt himself blush at the realisation.

She raised her eyebrows at him, murmuring, "Look who's going red?"

He stumbled back quickly, jumping around and resetting the TARDIS coordinates with a few buttons and levers. "Don't say I never take you anywhere nice!"

"Wouldn't dare."

The TARDIS landed with the familiar boom, and Clara followed him over to the doors, suddenly looking uncertain.

"We're not gonna get sucked in or something, are we?"

"Of course not! The TARDIS has the best black hole resistors for any transport machine this side of the 376th century."

"Well, then I apologise for doubting it. Your snog box isn't known for reliability."

"It is not- oh look, do you want to see this black hole or what?"

"Course," she gestured at the doors. "After you."

He slipped past her to open up the doors, swinging them out into empty space. There was the black hole, of course, trillions of kilometres away, hanging in empty space.

That was it. A black hole.

Clara wasn't speaking. Why would she? Wasn't anything he was too impressed by. Just one of millions.

But he looked over at her, and the expression she wore was as mesmerising to him as the sight was to her.

Wait.

Mesmerising?

Was that the sort of word he used to describe her now?

She flicked her eyes up at him, the sudden movement meaning the Doctor cleared his throat and turned his head sharply away.

But then, he found, he didn't find much in the sight before them, couldn't see much in the relatively small and unimpressive void. And some little wish made him look back at Clara.

He couldn't, wouldn't, admit it to her, but the wonder and peaceful joy of her smile made something rise in his throat. Perhaps it was the same emotion that she was experiencing, just at something else.

It was only then that he registered that his arm was around her shoulders. He retracted it hurriedly, glancing at her sidelong, but discovered he felt just a little more old and lonely with both arms by his side and awkwardly set it back.

He hoped she wouldn't notice.

Her soft warmth pressed closer against his side. Apparently, she had.

He pretended to be intent on a small planet entering the black hole's event horizon.

How did his hand come to be clasping hers?

"Look," the Doctor pointed to the planet, which was now being devoured by the void, using the movement to drop his arm from around her and shuffle a centimetre or two away. "It's being spaghettified."

She looked up at him curiously. "It's being what?"

"Spaghettified. It's the technical term for when matter is stretched and distorted by the infinite gravity of a black hole."

She laughed. "I swear you're making this up."

"No, actually. Well, sort of. I came up with the word myself. But your space people adopted it."

She laughed again, longer, lighter, the laugh she did when she was amused by him, or when he failed to maintain his usual suave charm.

And then, curse it, he was holding her hand again.

What was he doing?

Wasn't he done with the whole...relationship thing? Hadn't he had enough of all that came from...whatever this was?

What was happening in his head?

He'd always admired humanity. Even wanted to be one of them. But he'd never imagined he'd feel something like this, all those conflicting thoughts and memories and emotions. He'd never imagined he'd ever feel so...human.

He loved it.

And simultaneously loathed it.

Alright.

Okay.

He wanted to kiss her.

That was very, very human.

And also very, very mad.

Imagine.

To be human.

Oh.

To be human.

To live a life of eighty years, to learn and love and grow and burn out, to feel and forget and flicker and die. To not be plagued in every second by the aggressively permeating paths of time.

To be human.

To live, to love, to die.

He blinked. She was looking back at him. Her eyes were still alight with a reflection of awe.

"Hi!" he said quickly, but it probably sounded more like a squeak.

She did a little smirk-smile. "Hi."

Idiot.

He flicked his gaze reluctantly back to the black hole, and the once-planet now being spaghettified and swirling around into nothing.

He knew its name. He knew its story. Diiigel, or a sound similar, it was called by the inhabitants of a planet in the same solar system. It had a whole religion behind it, the giant glowing blue sphere in the sky of those people. It was a god, a deity, a king to them.

And now it was turning to nothing but particles, a mass of electrons and protons and neutrons to expand and eat up more and more and more. So deeply futile to think of denying the force of the black hole, which only very few people had ever truly learned the physics behind. This planet, once a god, sucked in so impossibly and yet so irrevocably by this infinite and undeniable force of the universe.

He imagined himself, as Diiigel, pulled and stretched and torn apart. From a deity to atoms. From a god to...what? A human?

If you are the last of the Time Lords, how can you know that you are still one of them, without anyone to compare yourself to? Without anyone to feel at home with?

Are you human, Time Lord?

He wished he was, but wasn't sure of the reason behind this wishing.

He blinked again. He was staring at her. She was wearing a puzzled expression, smiling just a little.

Alright.

Okay.

He dropped his hands to her shoulders, she turned to him as he did, raising her eyebrows, oblivious.

So many uncertainties...

...but even more potential regrets.

Did Clara know? She wasn't smiling anymore. She was biting her lip, looking everywhere, but glowing.

He wanted this. He shouldn't, but he did. He wanted this feeling. He wanted this sense of humanity he had never experienced ever before.

Should he? He wasn't the type to kiss people. Usually other people kissed him. Was that how it worked? He didn't pretend to be familiar with the societal rules and labels associated with this kind of thing.

When he had been standing still for just a second too long, he leaned forward. It was just like kissing her forehead or hand, which he had done before. Just...on her mouth. And a bit longer.

Okay, a lot longer.

But she wasn't pulling away, so, why not?

He still wasn't exactly sure where his hands were supposed to go, he placed one tentatively on her neck and left the other to swing awkwardly by his side.

How long had it been? What had happened to his acute sense of time? What had happened to the billions of thoughts running through his mind all at once? What had happened to the ever present awareness of the vortex crawling through each moment?

He felt like Diiigel, age-old, immense, godlike, reduced to his elemental parts, in a moment completely inconsequential in the infinity of being.

He felt human.

With Clara, he felt human.

Which, he knew, was absolutely mad.