Sorrow Without Explanation

In Which the Doctor is a Mess

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This is really short and really bad and I haven't proofread it at alllll alksdjgaksdjghlaksjdhg ok sorry yeah but I'm going to just post it anyway and... hope u like it i guess XD

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The Doctor wasn't sure if it was the light or the sound that woke him first. Probably the sound, though it was the light that gave him the headache later on. Or was it the other way around? Rassilon, he was too tired for this.

The TARDIS creaked at him. The Doctor rolled his eyes but immediately regretted it, as a flash of pain erupted in his head. He groaned. The TARDIS whirred. He groaned again. She shuddered judgingly. The Doctor decided not to get up today.

Except, wait, wait. He was in the TARDIS. That didn't make sense.

Except, it did. He lived here.

But he wasn't here last night, was he?

Last night. Rassilon, he had no idea what happened. Or, he did. He could fill in the blanks. But those were hours he couldn't recall, time he would never get back. He knew he had to stop doing this - the TARDIS knew he had to stop doing this - but he did it anyway, time after time after time.

Ha. Time.

Tiiiiime...

The Doctor sank back into a dark and dreamless sleep, ignoring the throbbing of his head and the nasty taste in his throat.

Our Time Lord woke feeling almost normal. From the angle of the light pouring in through the TARDIS windows, it must have been almost noon. He sighed, pushing himself dizzily into a sitting position and shoving his sweaty hair away from his face.

The TARDIS was in a state of disarray. It smelled like booze and sulfur and electricity, and the Doctor's clothes were scattered on the floor of the console room, surrounded by grime and tangible misery. He must not have gotten to his room yesterday, for whatever reason, so he had slept on the metal grating under the console; his muscles ached, and it seemed to him that all of the bones in his body creaked as he stood. The Doctor made his way to the steps, carefully avoiding the splinters of broken blackboard where they lay scattered on the floor. They weren't new, but he hadn't found it within himself to clean them up yet -- too much to do, he'd always think to himself, too little time. It was the same with his coat, where it lay gathering dust on the railing, and the pile of Christmas crackers that had toppled off of the bookcase one day, filling the Doctor with a feeling like homesickness for a place that had never existed. It wasn't that he was sad. No, definitely not sad. And even if he was, it wasn't affecting him in any negative way; everyone was sad once in a while. No, the Doctor was just busy. Busy, busy. Busy.

They'd always been so busy. Well, he had, mostly, but only with her there. He started out skipping between Wednesdays, leaving her at her house and then meeting her again a moment later. So much to explore, so much of the universe to see, and as much as he hated admitting it -- and wow, he really hated admitting it -- the Doctor loved watching Clara discover it all.

What was that? The Doctor shook his head, wincing as another bout of pain jolted through it. Probably just this crazy hangover. Sometimes this happened; he'd think he'd seen a familiar woman standing in the TARDIS with her back to him, or he'd get a sudden, brief and vivid flash of a memory that would leave him breathless but without any later recollection of what exactly he'd seen. He didn't know why it went on, or even why he wasn't bothered by it. But sometimes it felt like he lived for the vanishing moments of freedom when the veil was lifted and the illusion of safety was restored.

Freedom? Ha. He was a Time Lord -- The last, quite possibly -- with a TARDIS and the entire universe at his fingertips. Of course he was free. If it weren't for the thought of what was supposed to be there with him. Who was supposed to be there with him.

Clara Oswald. The mystery, the enigma, the Impossible Girl; the black hole in his memory that threatened to pull him under the surface every time he dared to close his eyes. So the Doctor didn't sleep, didn't blink unless he was out of it enough to stop caring. He couldn't risk remembering, but he couldn't bear forgetting, so he was held in the middle, and at times it was agonizing.

The Doctor wrung his hands together awkwardly (leave it to him to make things awkward with nobody else around) but stopped to stare at his palms, bemused. They were burnt. Not badly, but they were, and more than that, they were empty -- the annoying mechanical trinket that had followed him for days was gone. He wasn't complaining, but it was strange, and he decided he needed to find out what had happened before he'd conked out on the TARDIS floor.

The Doctor smiled and sighed, the ghost of a long-lost sparkle in his eyes. Finally. An adventure.