The Time of Change

A Narrow Escape and a Revelation

And now we are no longer in the snow. We stand in the TARDIS, shivering in the unexpected warmth. "Engines activating," I hear Handles say, and I smile. "The old key-in-the-quiff routine," I quip, chortling to myself as I wander around the console. "Classic." I slap the wig down on Handles' head, still grinning, though my head feels oddly cold now. Clara hasn't moved once. "Okay, homing in on the mysterious message. Ooh," I say appreciatively, tapping my finger on my lips. "Yes, I like that very much. The Mysterious Message."

Clara looks at me curiously. "You've shaved your head." It isn't a question. She doesn't ask it, which, in all honesty, it would be a bit redundant to do so. "Yep," I reciprocate anyway, "a clever plan to get us past the shield."

"You got bored one night, didn't you?"

I squint, hiding wry smile. I lift up my thumb and forefinger, pinching the air between them. "Yeah, tiny bit bored."

"Is that what happened to your eyebrows?" she inquires now, folding her arms over her chest. She looks rather amused. I roll my eyes and touch my eyebrows protectively. There truly is very little hair there; it's like they sort of disappeared, or fell off in the night. I think I used to have eyebrows, at some point. When I first got this body. Didn't I? Oh, who can remember that far back, anyhow? "No," I say. I sound a bit like a defensive toddler. "They're just... delicate."

There's a momentary pause where Clara simply looks at me and smiles, chuckling so quietly that I almost don't hear it, and Handles whirs a little, and that disk in the middle of the cylindrical power core starts rotating, and some light somewhere deep inside the TARDIS makes a faint buzzing sound, and something hits me, and it hits me hard and fast and right square in the face. For the first time in a long time, I don't hear the voices. I can't hear them telling me that this friendship is wrong, that I'm not allowed to get close to anyone else, that I haven't the right to enjoy living, that she doesn't deserve the pain I'm going to bring her. Because it also hits me that maybe, just maybe, the voices are wrong. Maybe I'm not tabooed, or evil. Maybe I'm not a weapon of mass destruction like I've always believed. Maybe I don't have to keep torturing myself because I let her slip away, slip out of my grasp and out of my life and out of existence, because that doesn't necessarily mean that I'll let everyone slip away. Maybe I've been wrong this whole time, and needing somebody to hold my hand isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign that I've found somebody who wants to help me and keep me safe and happy just as much as I want to do the same for them. Maybe -- and I truly believe this -- finding another hand to hold while she isn't around is exactly what she would want me to do.

I shake my head, clearing it, and clear my throat. She's still smiling when I start talking again. "Right, setting us down near the signal source. I'm going to turn the engines on silent," I add, not really to anyone. "Don't want to make a fuss." Clara moves forward and out of my vision for a moment. When I see her again, she's holding something brown and shiny. My hair? She makes a face at it. "Put it back on," she tells me.

"Why?"

"Your ears look like rocket fins."

"... I know," I sigh.