Fragments

Two: Memories As Soft As Echoes

When the ship became still, it was hard not to notice. The change from raucous commotion to silence was bone-shaking. Few things were left in motion. Two immediately sprang to mind: the time rotor, which still silently pumped up and down, and the circular lights positioned around the perimeter of the room. They all had a pulsing, rotating red light- a tiny pinprick, really- that spun around and around and around, making it a dizzy duty to track it.

The TARDIS seemed to have landed right side up. It was one of the few pieces of good news. That meant she could stand up safely if she wanted to. Clara Oswald wanted to stand up more than anything, but right now she couldn't will her muscles to obey.

She coughed, a deep wheezing cough that hurt her lungs just listening to herself. Glancing around, it was still very smoky in the console room. There was no fire. Another bit of good news. But where was he? This new Doctor...?

"Oh, my stars," she cried, finally locating him sprawled on the hard metal floor behind her. Finally taking control of her muscles, she tumbled over to him. He seemed to be unconscious. There was a gash on his forehead, and a small line of blood trailing down the left side of his face. His mouth was pressed into a hard line, but his jaw remained relaxed. His grey hair had been slicked back by sweat.

He was very different. However, the more she looked at him, the more she saw whispers of her Doctor. The wrinkles at the corners of his closed eyes disappeared. Suddenly he appeared youthful... daring... maybe even kind. In her mind, he opened his steel blue eyes. They were deep and wise, echoes of all the lives now past. If she poured hard enough, she just knew she'd see the bright green irises of her first Doctor, hidden behind... He extended her hand out to her.

"Clara," he called. His voice had a bit of a Scottish lilt. "Clara, I am the Doctor. And if we're going to get out of here, you need to trust me."

"But you changed," she sobbed.

"We all change," he pressed desperately. "Some do more than others. You became braver, and I became foolish for it. My face may have changed, but we're still the same people! Clara, please."

She gazed up at him, eyes wet with tears. Finally, with a grunt, she managed to reach her hand up to his. His fingers locked securely around hers, and pulled her gently to her feet.

Clara gasped, opening her eyes. The Doctor still lay on the ground. He was still unconscious. She had been daydreaming.

About a meter to the side was her old Doctor's bow tie. Dazedly, she reached over to retrieve it. She held it to his neck, trying to remember the days of her floppy-haired Doctor, one last time. When she couldn't bear to see the length of burgundy cloth anymore, she stuffed it in the pocket of her sweater. He looked better without it now, anyways.

"Wake up," she whispered, tears on the verge of falling again. "Please wake up. Doctor... Please hear me..."

Her head fell onto his chest, where she could feel the steady beating of his two hearts. There was the final proof. This was the Doctor, whether she liked it or not.

"Do get your head off my chest, would you," she heard a familiar Scottish voice muffle. Her head snapped up immediately. He seemed alert, although dazed, and he was currently looking at- dear lord, her eyes weren't bloodshot, were they?

"Sorry, I was just..."

"Crying on my shoulder, yes," he replied airily, and used the console to pull himself to his feet.

It didn't take long for him to notice the blood dripping from the gash on his head, just below the hairline. With a heavy sigh, he pressed both hands to the wound and steadily breathed in. Somehow, when he removed them, the injury was completely gone. He must have healed it. It took a few seconds for her to realize she was staring.

"Fifteen hours," was all the explanation he gave on the matter, as if expecting her to immediately understand what this meant. Unsurprisingly, she didn't.

Clara watched as the Doctor yanked the monitor towards him- it was sticking to the rail a bit this time- and attempted to comprehend the circular text on it. A few of the buttons on the side were missing. His finger accidentally slipped into one of their plug holes.

"Dammit!" he growled, yanking his finger out. It must have zapped him. He stuck it in his mouth, and sucked on it for a few seconds while reading. "I'm assuming the surface of the planet is safe. For now."

"We should probably check outside, yeah?"

"Hmm," he said, and nodded stiffly.

She sighed, and watched somberly as the Time Lord shed his predecessor's purple frock coat onto the jump seat and began marching to the ship's exit. He grabbed the cool handles, and with a familiar lack of grace, tried pulling the doors in. When he failed to open the wooden doors, he started to rattle them, muttering all the while.

Clara ambled over to the main console, and simply flipped a single switch that she had observed her Doctor using a few times before. "I believe you forgot the door lock," she told him.

(When her Doctor forgot things, she had always teased him for it, but there was no humor in this for her today.)

His shoulders fell, perhaps with just the slight inclination of embarrassment. "Ah. Thank you... Oh, what was it? Claire? Clara?"

"Clara," she supplied, her hopes falling once again.

"I see," he muttered, and started to open the doors that protected them from the chill of Trenzalore. She stopped him, slamming them closed before they could see the planet outside. There was something, a question lurking in her mind, that had been haunting her this entire time.

"I have a question for you this time," she said, and peered at him, almost fearfully. "How much can you actually remember?"

The Doctor looked up towards the ceiling for just a moment. He took a deep breath. "I can remember almost all of my youth, from early adolescence to around my late 220s," he explained, halfway telling the story with his hands. "I know I'm a lot older than that, however. I also am aware that I call myself 'the Doctor.'"

Well, things were probably worse than she had expected. Just hours ago, the Doctor had told her he was over two thousand years old. Assuming he had no reason to lie about that, it was immediately clear that something had gone seriously wrong with this Doctor's memory.

"The latest memory I have is that I've just regenerated into this body," he continued, "and its kidneys don't properly match!"

Clara crossed her arms. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. How can you even tell if your kidneys match or not?"

"Oh, don't think too much on it. We've already got trouble, and I don't need the distraction," he blew her comment off. Inside, she found her spirits dampening more and more. This man was so... different from the Doctor she had grown to love. And she feared it was due mainly to his missing memories.

I thought you said you wouldn't forget your past, Clara blearily thought. Not one line of it, not one day.

Though it was a bleak way of thinking about it, he technically hadn't lied. He didn't forget one day, he forgot all of them. It was a tradgedy like this that she couldn't allow happen. So right then and there, she made a silent pact to help him regain his memories, any way she could. She'd saved him before, she'd save him again.

"Trenzalore?" he prompted; his hand was once again gripped securely around the door handle.

"Trenzalore," she whispered, although a voice in the back of her head informed her that the Doctor also didn't know the severity of what this quiet backwater planet had taken from them.

And Clara didn't know how to get her Doctor back.