A/N: So here's the last bit. Thanks for reading and reviewing! And hey, how about that special, eh? So excited to see what happens next season, and so depressed that we have to wait till August for the next installment of The Ongoing Adventures of Twelve and Clara: Love Literally Never Dies.

For a terrible, terrifying moment, he doesn't mind not being done. He thinks it would be okay, really, to never be done, to be standing here at the edge of the darkness of space with her clutching on to his lapel— as though she doesn't want him to go— forever, hurtling on to whatever comes next. But the fact of the matter is that they are hurtling on to an alien space ship that is growing ever more enormous as they approach, and she is in all probability clutching on to him, not because of her desire for his company, but because there is a very real danger of him falling. Oh, reality. Stop raining on my parade, he thinks at it, slightly bitterly.

"Can they see us coming?"

"For miles away," she assures him.

"Why don't they just leave?"

She waggles the bit of tech in the air in front of him. "Stopped them. They aren't going anywhere till I say so."

He focuses on the tech so completely that his eyes cross. "You can do that?"

"I can do anything," she says, with confidence so absolute that he thinks she should bottle it and end the depression epidemic. He doesn't say so, though, because he suspects that she doesn't need her ego stroked. It isn't that he minds terribly stroking egos, but there are quite frankly other things he would rather be stroking, and he feels as though he can't move, and therefore, better just to leave off entirely.

"So what are you going to do now?" he says. "Since you can do anything."

The grin she turns on him is a bit manic.

"What we came for," she says. "Save the world."

"I'm sorry, I thought we did that when we blew up the zombie dinosaurs," he says, blinking rapidly.

"Temporarily." She wags a finger at him. "Are you satisfied with temporarily saving the world? 'Cuz it feels a bit unfinished, to me."

"Okay, so." He shrugs. "Details?"

"First," says the Doctor, squinting slightly into the distance, "we are going to crash onto their space ship."

His eyebrows shoot upwards, clearly alarmed. The rest of his face isn't feeling too great about things, either.

"Do we have to do that," he says, "can't we land delicately."

"S'pose we could," says the Doctor, and leans out the door with that same wolfish grin on her face. "But that's not really my style."

Which is pretty much all the warning he gets before they—

—presumably crash, he thinks, waking up in a strange place. He sits up quite suddenly, which is a bit of a mistake. His head throbs.

"I am not cut out for this," he says. But no one and nothing is listening to him, and so, therefore, he shuts up. He isn't in the habit of talking to himself; at least, not out loud, though the running monologue inside his head suggests otherwise. He is a wordy soul. He enunciates and he slurs and he is didactic, and meanwhile, while he's telling himself this, somewhat muzzedly, things are happening. Big things. Loud things. The Doctor is involved, because of course she is. Would he have ever expected anything different?

He expects nothing, where she is concerned. No doubt she's been busy saving the world. Again. It's a habit she seems to like, and one he can't help but approve of. Not saving the world would be so old hat after this, he thinks. How is he going to go back to his students and his café cart and the book on Cardinal Richelieu that for him constitutes light bedtime reading after this?

He is wearing handcuffs, which throws him for a moment.

But only a moment. He recovers. It's dark, wherever he is, and he thinks he's probably alone. The noises are outside— outside of what, he can't tell, because of the aforementioned darkness. He struggles to his feet, relieved to find a helping wall at his side, and then somewhat less relieved to find that the door in the wall was shut, and shut firmly. His hands are cuffed in front of him, so he makes fists of them and bangs against the door. The noises outside cease, and the dark grows watchful. He catches his breath, and swallows.

There's a buzzing noise in his coat pocket, and the Doctor's voice comes through, muzzily, unclear, with a slight mechanical timbre to it.

"Professor."

He fumbles at his pocket, but he can't get whatever it is out, not with his hands bound like they are. Hoping there isn't a button he needs to press or something, he says, "I'm here. Wherever here is. I mean, I haven't the faintest idea, it's all dark, but there I am anyway."

She says, "They took you away."

He says, "I'm alright. I think." He does wonder how this happened, though. Was she not paying enough attention? Did she think she had maybe left him in the wormhole? Did she straight-up forget that he existed to begin with?

She says, "I'm coming to get you."

He's feeling over the walls in the darkness, slapping the flat of his palms against them experimentally. They're thick, though he can't tell what exactly they're made of; they feel a bit like stone, a bit like concrete, and they exude a slow and seeping warmth that he doesn't like. As though something is living inside of them, or as though they are living themselves. He wouldn't be at all surprised to feel a heart beat.

But he can't hear anything so faint and subtle, because the explosions have resumed. And they seem to be getting closer, which he realizes should worry him— he really does, he is quite aware that somewhere in some alternate universe he is very, very worried indeed— but right now all he can think is, She is coming to get me, and alongside that is a very logical, very rational little sentence that says, If she keeps exploding things, I am probably going to die. It is a very small room.

So he says, "Wait, wait wait," and his voice only sounds a little frantic. Hardly frantic at all, really, for which he congratulates himself. The explosions halt, they cease, they settle on an uneasy pause.

"What is it?" comes her voice, concerned.

"Small room," he says. "Please don't blow me to bits. Keys would be best."

"They don't have keys," she says.

"Did you ask?"

"I didn't hear any pinging noises."

He thinks he knows what she means by that, and searches the ceiling that he can't see while he thinks about it. "How about this," he says. "How about, I'm fine here, moderately comfortable, you get it all sorted out without blowing everything up and then come and get me. If I haven't figured out how to escape on my own. Okay?"

"Moderately comfortable," she repeats.

He shrugs, helplessly.

"That's all I can offer you, really," he says. "If I was in a position to negotiate, I'd ask for a pillow and a cuppa, but in the meantime—"

"In the meantime," she says, and her voice crackles out, fizzing and sparking, and the little communicator she must have slipped into his pocket makes an odd little jumping motion. He looks down at it— pointlessly— and listens. The explosions have stopped, still in that uneasy holding pattern. He thinks he should probably figure out a way to escape on his own. Just in case. Though, the end result can only be that he will be loose on a space ship high above the earth. That seems not much better than trapped in a space ship high above the earth— trapped either way, really— but on the faint hope that he might be of some use—

He goes to his knees in front of what seems to be, what he hopes is, what must be the door, and puts his head against the ground. Down here, with the explosions in the distance finally having echoed themselves into silence, he can hear what he has thought he would be able to: a steady thrum, a one-two beat, a giant hollow heart making itself heard. He wonders if it affects the tides. He doesn't know why, but he thinks it might. He reaches forward.

There is a gap under the door, a decent-sized one, and he laughs, a breathless sound, because he has always been told he should fatten himself up a little, could stand to put on a little weight, looks like a stiff wind would blow him over— but would he be able to do this?

There's a distinctly uncomfortable moment when he thinks he's stuck, and thinks what an ignominious way this would be to die, but he exhales every bit of oxygen he's ever even thought of inhaling, and slides himself through centimeter by centimeter, and the worst bit is his boots, oddly enough, he can't seem to get them through; so he catches his ankles at just the right angle to twist his feet together and toe them off, and then he's free, he's free, and he hasn't even been exploded. A definite plus. He pads his way almost silently through the dimly-lit corridor, feeling the heart-thrum now on the soles of his feet.

The Doctor is holding court in a room at the center of the ship; she is bloodied and glorious, and her hair falls over her shoulders in a way that makes him think there is a reason for fingers, and her eyes are full of spit and fire and venom and other worrisome things. She looks relieved when she sees him, though, and this is a little worrisome, too.

"Ah," she says, "good. I was beginning to wonder."

There are bodies all around her. He wonders if they're dead. He doesn't think they are; he doesn't think she would do that. But he is aware, at the same time, that their relationship has been limited in the extreme. Limited by the time, limited by experience, limited by what she has chosen to show him. And he can't be sure. Short of going to each and every one and feeling for a pulse, he can never, ever be sure.

He swallows.

"What can I do?" he says. He doesn't feel in the mood for banter, suddenly.

There is one of the aliens upright still, standing in front of her, and its hands— its hand-like appendages, at any rate— are lifted in what looks, to him, like a gesture of surrender. They are squat and wide and thick, which may explain why the gap at the bottom of the door wasn't such a big deal— or maybe it wasn't designed to hold anyone, to begin with— and the features of the face appear to be sliding off the front of the skull, and making a break for it to start a new life on the left shoulder.

"Nothing, now," says the Doctor. "You've been very useful in letting yourself out of whatever you were stuck in. So now we can go."

The alien is still very watchful, as though it doesn't quite trust her. He knows how it feels, and sympathizes heartily.

"Er," he says. "Really?"

"Oh, sure," says the Doctor. "I think they've learnt their lesson, don't you?" She turns to him with a ready smile. "No more trying to take over innocent planets for their own gain. No more threatening the lives of billions of beings just coz they want something. No more." But she goes very still, all of a sudden, and her enormous eyes are no longer soft, they are hard and fixed as though she's sculpted, as though she has been sculpted thousands of years ago by an unknown hand. She turns back. "Unless they haven't. In which case."

Her hand is frozen, lifted, and she holds the bit of tech loosely in her grip, as though it is of no consequence to her whether she is forced to use it or not; but her thumb hovers over the button.

"Point and think," she says. "That's how it works. That's all it takes."

He says, "Wait." She lifts an eyebrow, just barely, and her chin wavers, but she doesn't even look at him.

"I don't want to wait."

"But you should," he says.

"Why."

He swallows, hard, and reaches for her. He rests his hand on her upper arm, very lightly, and tells her, while he touches her, "The ship is alive." Her mouth moves at that, but she says nothing. "I can feel it," he says. "When I was locked up. I could feel the heart beat."

"You," she says to the alien creature with the slippery face. "What is this ship?"

The alien creature with the slippery face dithers for a moment, and he thinks, Fear. That is fear in its eyes. Fear of losing? Fear of loss. Which is not the same thing.

"Mother," it says.

"Your mother," says the Doctor.

"Master," says the creature.

The Doctor pulls in a deep breath and huffs it out again, and drops her arm to her side. "Mother and master."

"What does that mean?" he asks her, eyes keen and narrow, watching her face.

"It isn't them," she says. "At least, I don't think it is. If the ship is their mother and their master, it's the ship who's deciding where to go, what to do. The ship wants to be powered— the Earth can provide that power. Abracadabra, zombie dinosaurs."

"How do you know he's not just fooling you?"

The Doctor flings an arm out to gesture to the creature, and snorts a little. "Look at him. Does he look capable of fooling me?"

He has to admit, when it came to the two of them, his money is on the Doctor.

"Okay, well. What are you going to do?"

"What am I going to do?" she echoes, turning to him now. "Well, you tell me, Professor. What would you do, in my situation? Say you're faced with this decision. What do you do?"

He swallows nervously, and looks at the creatures.

"What are we capable of?"

She smiles faintly, though he isn't sure what at. Him, probably.

"Any number of things," she says. "Keeping in mind that they tried to kill us—"

"They didn't try to kill us, though, did they? If anything, the ship did."

"So," she coaches him, tilting her head to one side and tapping the bit of tech against her chin, "should they be punished for something the ship did?"

"Why should they be?" he says, brow furrowed, and she relaxes into a smile. A positively beaming smile.

"There you have it," she says, turning to the creature. "Simple as that. Why should we punish you? So what do we do instead, Professor?"

"Can we override the ship's command?"

"We can do that, sure," she says, nodding deeply. "We can do them one better, too. We can take them away and put them on a ship that doesn't try to make them kill people and take one perfectly good companion away from another and lock them up with handcuffs on. We can give them another chance to start over."

But the creature is shaking its head, short little jerks of negation, and he hesitates, then puts a hand on the Doctor's elbow and tugs her with him, gently, out of ear shot.

"I don't think they want to leave her," he says.

"Who? The ship?"

"You heard him. He called it Mother. No one wants to leave their mum, not really."

"But it isn't," she says. "It's a ship."

He narrows his eyes at her. "You seem quite attached to your blue box," he says. "How would you feel if someone tried to put you in an American phone booth instead? All glass walls and graffiti."

"The TARDIS isn't attempting to explode random planets for her own gain."

"But what if she did?"

"Then I would fix whatever had gone drastically wrong with her programming."

"So," he prompts, gently. "You're a genius, aren't you? Can't you do that for them? Do the same thing?"

She looks up into his face, searching his eyes, for a long moment, before she smiles at him again. But her mouth is harder this time, as though she doesn't quite mean it, or as though she means it in a different way. He doesn't quite comprehend what the meaning is.

"Alright," she says. "I'll tell you what. I know a shipyard that specializes in confrontational therapy. They've got a droid there who knows his way around belligerent computers like you would not believe, and they're quite reasonably priced, for therapists. Shall we tow them there, and let them do their worst? I warn you, none of them will ever be quite the same, more than likely, but they'll be together. That's what you want, isn't it?"

"That's what they want," he says. "And that's a bit more important."

"Ah, don't sell yourself short, Professor," she says, and tugs on his coat sleeve.

"Er," he says, hopefully, and holds up his bound wrists. Her mouth twists in a dangerous smile and for a moment he's afraid she's going to refuse, but then she whirrs the bit of tech at him and he is released.

"Good job they weren't wooden," she said. "Or you'd have been stuck for good."

"I— probably could have got them off myself, if they had been."

"Ah," she says, with a brief flash of disappointment. But she's proud of him, for escaping, for keeping himself together, for taking initiative. For not dying, probably. For taking in her dangerousness, and not running the opposite direction. For a simple solution to a complicated problem.

Or maybe she's not proud of him at all; he can feel something like self-doubt riding on his Adam's apple, bobbing its head up and down in a series of affirmative nods. Though what it is affirming, he has no idea. What is there to say yes to, in this situation?

Yes to climbing back aboard her blue box, it seems.

Yes to scooping up the alien ship in a tractor beam, like a stone in the palm, and hauling it off to where she wants to take it. She doesn't ask permission, he notices. He thinks permission is probably not something she deals with much, on a regular basis.

Behind them, the unconscious aliens are stirring back to life. He's glad he doesn't have to play doctor to them. He thinks he'd be rubbish at it.

They watch on the scanner as they approach the shipyard that specializes in confrontational therapy.

"And that's it," he says.

She shrugs lightly. "Easy. Mystery solved. No muss, no fuss. Well, not for us to have to clean up, at any rate."

"But," he says, "I thought—"

"Hmm?" She is barely, if at all, paying him any attention.

"What about my face?"

"What about your face?"

He gestures to it. "It doesn't work properly."

She leans back and puts a hand on her hip. "Well, it stays attached to the front of your skull instead of sliding around like some people I could mention, so that's a plus to start with."

"But— shouldn't there be more?"

"Oh, yes," murmurs the Doctor. "There should always be more."

She's poking at levers and buttons, and he isn't. He's just— standing. There's a certain amount of comfort in just standing, he finds. Just having his feet solid and flat, even if the ground beneath them is the inside of a blue box space ship, in which he is unexpectedly having adventures. His feet are still bare; he never recovered his shoes. He wiggles his toes on the grating. She looks up at him sharply.

"Why are you doing that?"

He isn't aware that he's doing much of anything. But that turns out to be what she means.

"Just looking," she says, waving a hand up and down at him. "You don't need to be just looking. You can— you know how you can be friends with someone and feel like you're on the edge of something else all the time? Maybe the edge of enemies, with someone you don't really actually like very much, and with friends you do— you look at them and wonder, what if I went up to them and did what I'm thinking of doing? How would we change? What if I went up to them and— killed them?"

This startles him, obviously, and she stifles a laugh.

"Well, I imagine that would be an end to the friendship, for starters."

"Something less drastic, then. What if I told them what I really think of their haircut? Or their ridiculous trousers? What if I told them how they're the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long time? Oh, a million things, Professor. We're all on the edge. But you don't have to stare and wonder with me. Do what you like."

"Really?"

"Of course," she says, matter of factly. She shrugs. "I always do, so I'd be a hypocrite if I asked anything else."

"Can you do that? Can you get away with that?"

"Get slapped every now and then," she says cheerfully, "but haven't lost any limbs yet."

He shakes his head a bit, in what has passed disbelief and is moving rapidly towards an undignified acceptance.

"Are you like this with everyone?"

"Like what?"

"Flirty," he says, and the word feels wrong, tastes wrong, is wrong, for what she is, but he doesn't know how else to say it. "Invading people's personal space." He doesn't want to keep talking but he doesn't seem to be able to stop, either.

"I'm sorry," she purrs, in a manner that suggests the exact opposite. "I thought you liked it."

And— he does, but that isn't the issue. He tries to move on from that. He can't remember exactly what the issue is. Something about staring and wondering. Or wondering and staring. Something like that.

"And you always travel with a companion?"

"Most of the time," she says, and nods. "Easier to get out of trouble, with two. Well. Easier to get into it, too, but hey, who's keeping track of that."

"You need someone," he says, realizing. She quirks an eyebrow at him. It isn't as impressive as his eyebrows, he has to admit, but it's probably the thought that counts.

"Need?" she says. "Me?"

"To stop you, when you need stopping. To start you, when you need starting. To ground you."

The Doctor lifts her face to the skies. "I like to fly."

"To fly with you, then," he says, softly. Then, "But not me."

He's turned away from her. It's easier, he thinks.

"Are you rejecting me?" says the Doctor. She sounds a bit bewildered, as though this doesn't happen very often. And he suspects it doesn't. Hell, he knows it doesn't, as surely as though he's been there, watching her through the hundreds of years, hundreds of years of tiny humans, one after another, she asks, they say, Yes. Of course they say yes. She is wonderful and terrifying and beautiful and and and. He doesn't know the words for what she is. He doesn't speak the language for what she is.

He regrets what he has said, with an intensity that he has not felt for a long, long while. Not since Diana was lowered into the ground, and he put the first handful of dirt on the box. He's always had a strange feeling about boxes; the things you put in them. Some things you want remember, and some things you want so badly to forget.

He thinks about putting himself in a box.

"Yes," he says. "No. I don't know."

"Professor," she says, "I don't say this very often, but. You're confusing me."

"Don't you miss us?" It isn't what he wants to ask, but it's what comes out of his mouth while he isn't looking at her. If he had been looking at her, it probably would have transmogrified into a confession of undying devotion, but without her there, it's a little easier to say things he doesn't really mean.

"Miss you," she says. "Miss you."

"When you lose us," he says. "When we get too— too old, or too— close." Because of course she can't stay with everyone. Of course everyone can't stay with her. It hurts him just to think of it. How much pain can one being stand, even one as complicated and impressive as the Doctor?

"You mean love," she says. "You think I can't fall in love with my companion, because it will hurt when they leave me."

"Doesn't it?" he asks her quietly. She smiles, and it's a sad smile, and he can feel it, he can identify it, he thinks it might be something that belonged to him, once.

"Love," she says. "Whether it goes silent and speechless or you cry it aloud, it means the same: pain. It hurts the same, whether you name it or not. And tell me. Is that any reason why I shouldn't? I'm not afraid of hurting. I am afraid of living without love."

He's quiet for a moment. "You're a braver soul than me," he says. But she has no time, no patience for his confessions.

"And of course I lose people, and of course it hurts. But what do you want me to do, when you have to go home because of some geriatric emergency," emphatic gesturing, "or dying or whatever? Do you expect me to just stop?"

"No," he says, softly, hands still on hers. "No, you should never, ever stop."

Her hands move up to cover her eyes, and her shoulders heave a little bit.

"But," he says, still searching this out, still unsure what he means by all of this— "Perhaps you want to find someone who's a bit more worth your investment."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Someone young. Someone who will be— worth your caring for them."

"In comparison, you are young."

"I'm fifty six."

"And I'm over two thousand years old," she says, "but who's counting. And yes, you're right, Professor. If you're a person who is more concerned about what people might think, looking at the two of us, then you're right. I don't want you." She comes closer to him, eyes like gimlets. "So the question is. What sort of a man are you, Professor?"

"I— don't know."

"You'd better find out, right quick. Or you will lose me forever, I will go away with my box and we will not come back. My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever."

He blinks at that.

"Did you— just quote Jane Austen at me?"

"I did," she says steadily, "and that makes you Lizzie Bennet, Professor, so what do you make of that?"

He chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment, then holds a hand out to her.

"Will you dance with me, Mr. Darcy?"

They don't dance, not just then— that comes later. But they do stand for a moment, while she looks at him till she can make out the fear and the pain and the fear of the pain in his eyes, and then she smiles. She smiles, and she takes his hand.

"Teach me a thing or two, Professor," she says.

So he does what he wants. He does what he's been thinking of, while he's been staring and wondering at her. He leans down and kisses her, and she lets him. More than lets him, to be exact. To be exact, she kisses him back, she's open and warm and a little sloppy, a little messy, so he feels like she's taken the breath from him, each breath individually until it amounts to the oxygen he'd counted on for the next six months, he's going to have to do something about that, get a tank or something, and she cups his face in her hands and strokes his jawline with her thumb and coaxes more out of him, far more than he ever thought he could give, far more than he ever thought he'd had to begin with.

He gets the story— later, much later— on what had happened while he was passed out, in the initial crash on the ship. He had done a wonderful slow crashing trick himself, she tells him, sideways into the wall, and gravity had taken its toll.

"Well, why didn't you help me?" he grumps at her.

"Oh," she assures him, "a fall is too beautiful of a thing to break."

It's a wonderful story. The words of it lick at his skin with truth, make him smile like firelight, and he thinks fondly to himself. If he had known this morning what he knew now—

He might not have left the house, honestly. Things are dangerous, outside. Things move and breathe and attack and create emotions. Things are alive, and things hurt. He can't help but be glad.

The Doctor guides her blue box upwards, outwards, flying, with both hands on the controls and her eyes on him. Not looking forward, and never looking back; but he's there, at her side, and she smiles.

"Where to next?" she says.

He wonders briefly if there is some sort of map to consult. He doesn't know what the answer is. He has no idea what words are going to escape him next.

He takes in a deep breath. He closes his eyes, and concentrates. He opens his mouth.

"Umm," he says, so she laughs, and she takes him, unasked, on the adventure of a lifetime.