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The Tardis was once enslaved to her timeline. What was once, couldn’t be undone. The computer had saved every moment of her, beginning with her birth and ending with her death.
After he had let her go, after he had let her behind once more - this time for good, and on her own free will, he had forbidden the Tardis to ever tell him, when her time was over, he didn’t wanted to know.
“Never!” angrily he had doted at the core, with his fierce eyebrows, still in rage and pain, about her loss.
“I can’t run forever with you! You know that, Doctor,” she had said, and he had given in.
After years of travel, she had came to the conclusion herself, that she was only human. Gallifrey was still missing and he had no big hope of finding it in time, to save her from her human body. Even with a time machine at hand.
“It’s okay, Doctor,” she had taken his hand. “I’m not made to be with you forever. We had our times. Fun one, sad ones, the running ones,” she had laughed over it, but the sadness was there. The two emotions.
She had became older - he hadn’t noticed, but she was still young, still able to go back to earth, find a partner, grow a family. Something he couldn’t give her.
He had promised her to come back, once more, before… but it was a lie. He not wanted to come back, it would break his hearts. So he had told the Tardis never to tell him. If he wouldn’t face the truth she might would live on - at least in his mind.
Years passed, and Companions came and go, he loved them dearly and as usual they broke his hearts in the end, but there was none like Clara. The face, his new face saw first. Seared into his hearts. There was no one else he loved more.
And the Tardis knew, always and she was stubborn as her owner and so one day, she decided to flout his order and whirled herself into the time vortex.
“What are you doing?” he had asked concerned, laying under the Tardis to fix some lightning.
As answer the monitor had beamed up and had brought up Clara’s vita. He immediately knew what the ship was up to, and had turned away, “No! I told you!”
Impatient, almost threatening the ship had hummed and buzzed, and had projected the information as a hologram into the room. There was no way out, he would have to face it and so he did.
“What?” he burst out. “That can’t be!”
The date the Tardis showed him was not one for dying old and grey. “There must be a mistake.”
The Tardis objected with a picture of a graveyard.
“No, no, don’t show me this!” he had whirled around, toward the steps, covering his eyes, but it was too late and he knew it made no difference.
Could time be rewritten? Could her time be rewritten? He begged the ship, for once in his life to take him there, to prevent things that had already have went wrong long time ago. He begged on his knees. Then he yelled at the ship, threatened her to dismantle it bit by bit till nothing was left of it. And in the end he cried.
He knew of course that it was not possible, the last time he had hoped he could, was when Lucie had died, five regenerations ago. He would have given much, to save her, because she had died for him and he wasn’t even there. The recording of her last message was still dear to him, and occasionally he let the Tardis play the track. The Companions he lost to death, to early, were always the most close to him.
The ship didn’t obey, she knew better as he did, and safety rules on or off, this she would never do for him, instead she did something else and parked herself into the living room of Clara with the distinctive bang.
“Why would you do this?” he asked, exhausted, bewildered and with a painful feeling in his chest.
A projection of Amy appeared, “I think you know, Doctor.”
Seeing his old companion, made him smile a little, knowing the Ponds were lost long ago too, but at least they had died old age and happy as far as he knew.
The projection changed, “Sweety,” River, and he laughed without hope. He didn’t saw her anymore, it had stopped after he had regenerated from “floppy hair” to this body, but he still remembered her.
“All good things come to an end, Doctor” Charlie, oh, the Girl who never was. What would he have been without her?
“Stop it!” he ordered the Tardis. “I get it!” The pain in his chest was awfully heavy and he knew what was happening. He knew the signs, and for once in his long life he was about to accept it. He had chosen the way long time ago, when she had parted ways with him. There he had made a promise to himself, and this promise now came to the test.
He took a deep breath, bringing himself up on his shaky feet and then he put a smile onto his face, walking toward the exit. One last time.
And so he swaggered out of the Tardis just like in old times, when he had been with her, and there she was, arms crossed, with a stern expression. “Doctor!” Then her face lit up.
Casually he leaned against the door frame, “Clara!” he hadn’t seen her for years and now he became aware what he had missed so much.
“Two weeks!” she stated.
“Two weeks?” it stung and he couldn’t hide it properly.
Two weeks since he had parted way with her, - well, that was the time for her.
They looked long at each other, and Clara saw and read in him. With a sharp inhalation she grasped the realization why he was here, and why so soon.
When your life is suddenly about to come to an end, what would you do?
“That’s soon,” she swallowed.
“Yes,” he smiled sadly.
“How?”
“Does it matter?” he smirked and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead.
“No,” she smiled gently, knowing he was here for one last time, for her and for a last run before all good things came to an end. “It’s funny though...”
“What is?”
“I had this dream last night, that I was dying,” she looked behind him, into the inside of the Tardis. “But nobody was there.”
The Doctor slipped his hands into hers, “I am there. I am always there. And if one last night is all that we've been given,” he squeezed her hand tight. God, how had he missed this. Her, and everything! “Let’s live it like we care!”
And so he took her, to a Galaxy far away, in Time and Space, were a millions sun produced a million mornings. With billions of colours and pictures out of stardust, you only found in dreams usually. He danced with her in the console room, around the core, and they laughed and cheered over old times, and when the night almost came to an end, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her the way he always wanted to kiss her.
“You know you are seared into my heart,” he touched her chest, and placed one of her hands, onto his so she could feel his heartbeats. “In two thousand years, there was no one who deserved my love more than you, and this regeneration, is bound to you. That was the promise I made, when I left you, and I am not going to break the promise.”
“Doctor? But-”
“It’s too late, Clara,” he showed her his hands, the golden shimmer that danced around his fingertips. Ready to burst in less hours. “I choose you, long time ago. There is no reason to go on without you. Let this another face do. I have done my part.”
“What is with Gallifrey? You was so keen to find it.”
“And I will, Clara my Clara, I will” he walked with her to her old room, and opened the doors for her.
“Will we see us again?” tears had fought their ways out of her eyes down her cheeks.
“Wherever you will go, I will follow,” and the Doctor kissed Clara good night, into a sleep she never would wake up again. A fever, painless, undetected from him, from the last planet they had been. They both were infected. For him it had taken years, decades till it had an effect, for her only two weeks.
He watched her die in his arms, under tears and sobs, “My dear Doctor…”, and when she was still warm, he pressed her to his face, took in her scent one last time and kissed her goodbye before he sealed the room, forever, ordering the Tardis to materialize her into the stardust galaxy they had admired a few hours ago.
Regeneration was like dying on of his old self's had once stated, and that it was, but he couldn’t be without her and so death was a welcome one. And when the golden light shot out of his hands he sent it toward the soon newborn galaxy where Clara was already waiting for him.
One last night in life and the rest of time and space in death.