Sorrow Without Explanation

In Which The Doctor Is Tricked

 The Doctor sat alone at a bar on Lun 87, his right hand clenched tight around a glass and his left fiddling with some mechanical trinket or other. He'd been trying to figure it out for days, this strange object that had appeared in the TARDIS one night and then reappeared every time he tried to get rid of it. He had no idea what it was, or why it kept coming back to him; yet, even so, it seemed so irritatingly familiar. He sighed in frustration and threw it down, a brief flash of irony striking him ("the oncoming storm", they called him once, but look at him now, a lonely and aggravated old man) before the object popped back into its original position. Great. The Doctor groaned.

"You alright, mate?" His head snapped up, focusing fuzzily on a middle-aged woman with a smudge of dirt across her forehead and short, bright red hair who was staring at him from her stool behind the bar. She had the same simultaneously cross and concerned look on her face that the doctor had always thought of as Donna's. The Doctor smiled sadly (two emotions at once, he must be malfunctioning) and avoided the question. "Have you ever been to a little town called Christmas, on Trenzalore? It's a hell of a place. Really gives you time to think. Went there with..." His smile fractured a bit, and he downed a shot, feeling the warmth settle comfortingly in his veins. "Amy, I think. Amy and Rory. There was a war going on at the time, you know. It's over now."

She was looking at him in an amused, sad sort of way, and he frowned. "What's your name?" she asked, pouring him another drink. He almost closed himself off with a distinctly Scottish-sounding "what does it matter," but something in her face stopped him. "I'm the Doctor."

The woman across from him laughed, a brief and weathered sound. "The doctor? That's a hell of a name, mate. Doctor what?"

"Well, that's the question, isn't it."

The stranger was evidently confused, but the Doctor did not elaborate, staring deliberately down at the contraption clenched in his fist. "I'm Sasha, since you didn't ask." She smiled, he smiled. It was quiet.

Quiet was dangerous. Too much thinking. He cleared his throat and tossed back another shot, wincing. The room was starting to spin. Reminded him of that one time he went drinking in New New New ugggghhh New York with Jack.

One should never go drinking with Jack Harkness.

Sasha had a kind of sly smile on her face, and the Doctor was just about to ask her why when she turned and started rubbing a dusty beer glass with an even dustier cloth. "So, what's your story? Must be bad, you seem like you're running." The Doctor's eyebrows shot up, and Sasha shrugged. "Just a guess."

The Doctor relaxed, slumping over and running a shaking hand through his silver hair. "I'm just an old traveler, and I've lost my way. Sometimes I think I'm more than that, more... important, but no -- that's all it is. I'm just an old man looking for a home that stopped existing a long, long time ago." The Doctor dramatically put on his sunglasses and resumed studying the foreign mechanism in his hand. Couldn't lose that dramatic flare - even while heavily intoxicated and practically spilling his entire life story in front of a total stranger. Sasha poured him another drink, and he swallowed it without thinking.

"Ever since I left Gallifrey I've had people travel with me, one after another, people who I lo- who I care about very much - but they all leave." The Doctor could feel his hearts unpleasantly jump into his throat, and took a breath to swallow them down. "They wither away and die, or they're killed in battle, or they choose to live with their families, or I have to send them away - and no matter what, I'm left alone, to stand above their graves when they're gone and promise myself that I'll never make the same mistake again." The Doctor was shaking now, and when he dragged his palms down his face they came away damp with tears. "But I always do. There's always someone to burrow their little pudding brain into my hearts and make me care for them and break me when they leave, and it's so unfair." The Doctor slammed his fist down onto the table, standing up, the true picture of all things righteous and angry and terribly, terribly sad. "I am also owed something good, Sasha, I am also owed something good in this godforsaken universe -" he stopped, locking eyes with Sasha. She looked terrified, frozen in place, eyes wide. All of the fight drained out of the doctor all at once, and he collapsed back onto his chair, his head in his hands. "Still, I wouldn't miss it for the world."

He shook his head, sniffling. "Rassilon, no. I'm sorry. This isn't me, I don't know what I'm doing. I should go." But before he could stand, Sasha reached out tentatively and caught hold of his sleeve. The Doctor winced. "No, mate, it's okay.You're in no state to go alone, and I need to lock up anyway. Don't worry about the bill." She turned, placing the solitary beer glass and rag in the sink and pulling a sweatshirt over her uniform.

Sasha grabbed the unwilling Doctor's arm and hoisted it around her shoulders, helping him up and towards the door. He grumbled something indistinct, but complied. It was dark as they trudged through the rotting leaves of Lun 87, making their way through dark alleyways and between the glow of streetlights. They went on that way in silence, the Doctor's mind looping through a dark fog, unable to surface. Distantly, he could feel Sasha's hand on his back, and a faint feeling of dread; but he couldn't pull himself up from the haze, so he ignored it. Sasha glanced at him, her face blank and unreadable. Suddenly the Doctor froze.

"Where are we going?" he asked, his voice low and his craggy face drawn. "How do you know where to go?"

About fifteen different emotions flashed across Sasha's face at the same time. For a moment, she looked guilty; guilty and frightened and sad. She untangled herself from him, placing one hand on his shoulder and one on his cheek. He winced away from the contact, and she grimaced. "Sorry, Doc. It's nothing personal, really... Need the money." And with that she withdrew, glancing nervously over her shoulder as she fled.

The Doctor slumped down against a dumpster, weaving in and out of consciousness. This wasn't just intoxication, he'd been drugged, but why? Why? She needed the... Needed the money. The Doctor closed his eyes, then opened them again. No. Couldn't do that, why not who was there didn't he deserve to just sleep? Something was coming through the dark, something slithering over the leaves, something -

Suddenly, the object in his hand grew painfully hot. He dropped it with a yelp, jolting back into reality. The tiny mechanical sphere was glowing white, illuminating large tentacled creatures that inched their way towards him along the ground. They seemed familiar - of course they did, he was over two thousand years old, everything seemed familiar - but he was too out of it to remember their names or why he should be frightened. Um, telepathy? No. Not telepathy. Something else. Uh.

The light emerging from the mechanism was forming a shape now. Holographic tendrils, reaching up and twisting around each other, formed feet. No, shoes. Up, further, a leg, two legs. A torso. A very short humanoid hologram, the Doctor thought. He squinted up at it, the light hurting his eyes. Shoulders, hair, neck, head... Face.

Familiar face.

Very round, eyes the size of planets, with a queer little smile and a funny nose. Clara. The doctor felt immeasurably, inexplicably sad for a moment. Clara.

He didn't know her, but he knew that she was important. The hologram (holo-Clara?) turned toward him, looking so tragic and so beautiful. He couldn't look away, even as her light covered the approaching creatures like a blanket of death and melted them to ash and dust, even as she reached for his cheek, even as her touch filled him with with warmth and clarity and life, even as she pointed with one glowing finger to his TARDIS key, which was burning gold against his chest. Right, the TARDIS; he had to get back to the TARDIS.

The Doctor tried to stand, but felt darkness linger threateningly at the edges of his vision. Yet another unattainable dream, he supposed. Holo-Clara looked at him without pity or remorse, and the doctor mentally reprimanded himself. There was no use wallowing in self-pity when he was surrounded by the ashes of an unknown alien species and a likeness of his forgotten best-friend-slash-not-quite-girlfriend-slash-personal-savior was staring him down with ice in her eyes.

The TARDIS. Right. Allonsy, then.

The world faded into darkness, and the Doctor thought no more. 

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HI FRENS!!! It's me, London. I've been in a State of Endless Suffering recently, and haven't been updating, like, anything, for a year. Long story involving relationships, mourning, anxiety, dysphoria, high school, and Teen Angst. Sooo.... Anywayyyyyyyyy. I'm starting a new fic and Possibly abandoning the old ones? But I don't know yet. Oooo and also I recently became Obsessed with Torchwood and I watched CoE day 4 yesterday so I'm probably going to write a lot of Janto fluff in the near future to make myself feel better whooooooops

Anyway, hope you're ready for All Of The Whouffaldi Angst, because it's coming...