It's just time that runs between us
She fell like Alice down the rabbit-hole, falling, falling, falling...
Like a leaf blowing in the wind, and I will never stop, I will never know peace, for when I die, I will live...
Her body hit the ground, dust rising around her like a phoenix from the ashes. Her hair fell across her face, obscuring her surroundings, but she was glad for the ignorance, glad that she didn't know where she was. She knew too much already, having seen and sinned, lived and loved, so many times in so many lives, in the past and the future, in this world and the next -
Then there was a leaf. It fell and flew, dancing on the very edge of time itself. But she reached out, halting its journey. The days that never came held in one hand. The echo no longer an echo, fate coming full circle, finally finding a voice -
My Clara...
She was not alone. As his arms closed around her, she finally knew where she was.
She was home.
Love's a hole
You say you don't want to fall in
But you keep falling...
His touch was delicate on her face, like a butterfly landing on a flower. He stroked her cheek, stretching out the caress so it wandered from hairline to chin. She could feel his ancient gaze scorching her soul as he studied her, his mystery, the only one worth solving. But the spell had been broken, the riddle unravelled. He knows the secret of his impossible girl, his Clara.
As he then got up from his chair, leaving her bedside in exchange for the solitude of the console room, she whispered 'Doctor', the word barely existing.
His back stiffened.
Then he turned around, his face terrible and old, the face of a man who survived the flames of the Time War, and she remembered as he remembers, but their memories were different and the same all at once.
He watched Gallifrey burn. She burned with Gallifrey.
He still hears their screams; she still hears her own. But the echo is no longer an echo, it has come full circle, it has a voice and it will speak -
I will speak.
With the heat of the flames on my flesh, with the suns dying in the sky, I acknowledge that I started this, that I wrote the first words of his journey, from beginning to end, once upon a time...
I taught him how to run. I taught him how to run from Gallifrey as it burned with me.
His burden is of my making.
He will be like a leaf blowing in the wind, never stopping, never resting, never finding any peace. He will die as he lives and he will live as he dies. He will be all this and more because of one impossible girl, his Clara, his curse.
He will run.
He will remember.
He will fall.