He hardly ever hears her. But 'hardly' is a long way from 'never.' A moment with the Eighth Doctor from the Last Great Time War.

(If you're confused about his wardrobe, search for "Doctor Who Dark Eyes." Because you can't fight a war in velvet.)

This may come as a shock, but I don't own Doctor Who.

Hardly Ever

Gallifrey is burning. The Doctor is running, always running. They're behind him. They're always behind him.

If he had any thoughts to spare, he would be horrified to be running through the bombed ruins of the Outsiders village, just outside the Citadel. He would wonder what had happened to Leela, and Andred, and Cho'je. But there's no time for that now. He's being chased by Daleks, so there is no thinking. There is only running.

A consequence of not thinking is that he barely stops himself in time. Ahead of him, around the corner, a line of at least a dozen Daleks floats past. They are eerily silent; he's used to their trademark shouting, and seeing them go by with only the low whine of their repulsors to mark their presence is unsettling.

He watches them intently, waiting for the right moment to duck behind them in order to get back to the TARDIS. It's over the next rise, not far at all...

He doesn't hear the lone scout Dalek until it's right on top of him.

He turns to try and take it down, but he knows it's too late. It had seen him long before he saw it. His poor battle-modified sonic screwdriver is in his pocket, which may as well be a mile away. Even as he fumbles for it he knows he'll never reach it in time. Stupid, stupid, stu-

His self-flagellation is cut off by a distinctly non-Dalek shout.

"No!"

He hears the shot and sees her jump simultaneously. A woman, appearing to come out of nowhere leaps between him and the Dalek, taking the laser shot as a glancing blow to her side.

Later, the Doctor would be more than a little horrified that his first instinct had been to take out the Dalek before even glancing at her. He's seen too much war, carried too much hate for the creatures that have plagued him for centuries. Every time he raises the sonic and scrambles one of their casing controls, he feels a white-hot flash of anger. Not just at them, but at himself. How many times has he just run away from them? How many times has he let them live? He's not even killing them now, just disabling them.

The touch of two wires, that's all it would have taken. None of this would ever have happened...

He shakes his head, trying to clear it. That was in the past. Right now he has a fried Dalek yelling incoherently at him, and an injured fellow Time Lord to deal with. He fires at the Dalek again, cutting off its speech, and picks up the woman.

He carries her behind a mostly-intact wall, and they're safe for the moment. She's still awake, which surprises him a bit.

"You were so very brave to do that," he says. "But why?"

She smiles at him, but it's tight with pain. "Because I know what your mission is, Doctor. I know what you have in that bag," she says, looking pointedly at the messenger bag slung across his chest. "And I know that you have to get out of here to use it."

She reaches out to him, and he takes her hand gently. Surprised by the moment of battlefield intimacy, they both look at their clasped hands just in time to see the first faint glimmer of light racing under her skin. She hisses in pain.

"Don't worry, I'm here," he reassures her. He knows how frightening and painful an emergency regeneration can be; he feels that he's something of an expert at it at this point. He tries to keep his tone light, tries to tell her that there's nothing to worry about. "Which will this be for you?"

"I've never done this before," she says weakly, and his eyes widen. This is going to be tricky. He's already planning on how to keep her calm afterward while they get back to his TARDIS. Hopefully she'll be able to sleep through most of what will almost certainly be a very rough few hours. It'll be tricky, and she'll be very out-of-sorts, but he's sure he can take care of her.

But when he looks in her eyes, he doesn't see fear, or uncertainty, or anything else she should be feeling. Instead, he sees something else: something hard, and sad. "You know as well as I do that the second I start to regenerate, the Daleks will find us. They can smell it from three planets away."

It is, unfortunately, true. The Daleks had studied enough Time Lords to be able to track regeneration energy. They had long ago sussed out what a vulnerable time it was for their enemy. It was just one more cruelty in this long and messy conflict, that aiding the wounded put both parties in incredible danger. Right now, the Doctor is not inclined to care overly much. "Don't worry," he tells her, "I'm not going to leave you. You can make it through this. We're safe for now, and-"

Just as he speaks the words, as if the universe had been waiting gleefully for him to be optimistic out loud, they hear a mighty chorus of "EXTERMINATE!" coming from the distance. And it's closing fast.

She hisses as a spasm courses through her, and grabs the lapel of his blue leather jacket until it subsides. "Doctor," she says urgently, "you have to make it out alive. You have to use The Moment, you have to stop the war, and it has to be now. It's the only way to end this for good. My regeneration will be enough of a distraction for you to get away."

He doesn't quite know what she means at first, and then the terrible realization kicks in. She's offering herself as a sacrifice. For me. No. Never. Absolutely not...

He says those words out loud to her. He puts the feeling behind them. But the part of him that is new, the warrior in leather (the part that he desperately hopes he can shed if he survives this, but secretly suspects that he won't), is agreeing with her. He has the weapon, and he is going to have to use it. He is the last hope to end this war.

And after he does what he will have to do, it won't matter when she died. She will never be born. She, and the rest of the Time Lords, won't exist anywhere but in his memory. She's practically a ghost already.

His own words float back to him from long ago, but he doesn't know if they're encouraging or shaming him. Planets come and go. Stars perish. Matter disperses, coalesces, forms into other patterns, other worlds. Nothing can be eternal. He hates himself, and the war, and his part in it with a deeper loathing than he has ever known before, which is not an assertion made lightly. It's logical, he tries to tell himself. She's willing. And I need what she's offering. I need time to get out of here, alive.

He's frozen with indecision. She notices, and reaches up to touch his cheek. "Doctor?"

At her touch, his mind violently derails the horrible train of thought, in order to cling desperately to the smaller mystery at hand: the woman. Who is she? She already knows him, obviously, probably just by reputation. He's become somewhat infamous on Gallifrey, after all.

Suddenly he's aware that he hasn't asked her name. He does so, gently, and cringes at her answer. It's one of those mile-long names that was popular for well-bred girls several hundred years ago. She seems amused by his reaction rather than insulted, however.

"You can shorten it if you like. I don't mind." She smiles at him, even through the growing pain he knows she's in by now.

So like he had done with his dear Romanadvoratrelundar all those years ago, he just picks a few syllables off the front of her ludicrous name. He smiles at her challengingly. "How's 'Clara' sound then, hmm?"

She closes her eyes for a moment as she returns his smile, like she's laughing at a joke he doesn't understand. "It'll do for the next little bit. And now you need to get out of here."

Even though he's really already decided on his course of action, his hearts are screaming out from under the tyranny of cold logic. His conscience still has to protest. "I'm not just going to just leave you-"

"Oi, I'm not going to argue with you!" she shouts, and the loudness of it shocks him for a moment. "Now run!"

The Doctor hesitates for one more moment, I can't warring horribly with I have to. He swallows; his throat is suddenly tight, and his eyes are itching with unshed tears. "I'm sorry." he tells her, trying to make her feel his sincerity. "I'll never forget this."

"Just make sure that you live long enough to remember!" she barks. And then, in her last moments, her eyes softens. "Run," she implores again. And then she says something else, so softly that he isn't sure he hears her right. "Run, you clever boy."

He forces himself to look away as her regeneration starts in earnest, bright light swarming and twisting around her. And then he has to force himself to hide, like a coward, behind a wall as a veritable swarm of Daleks sweeps towards her, screaming in their rough, metallic voices. He hears them fire, again and again, and when he can bear to look again, her light is gone for good. She had never gotten the chance to finish the process.

Tears blur his vision, and he wipes them away with a grimy hand. He needs to be able to see to get through this hell and back to the TARDIS. He can't fail now, he simply will not allow it to happen. If he doesn't honor the chance she'd given him, he'll be something much worse than a coward this day. Something that has his own dark and terrible name. And whatever else he will become today - murderer, savior, both at once - he doesn't think he can bear that.

So the Doctor runs.

And he remembers.