For Every Life

[perxephne]

Title: For Every Life

Characters: Twelfth Doctor. Clara Oswald.

Word Count: 495.
Summary: The Twelfth Doctor crosses paths with Clara Oswald one last time...

I am wandering now
Through this world
I am wandering, wandering
These are the days I live now...

The Doctor ran his hand through his hair. It felt strange under these new fingertips, but he was odd all round, odd as eggs, but being all fresh flesh and brand new beating hearts, was just making him feel even odder. He sort of shoogled his shoulders, shiny new shoulders, and did a little twirl on the pavement.

As he straightened up, happy to have learned he had legs as limber as ever, a flash of ruby in the sky caught his attention. He squinted, tilting his head to one side, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun with one hand as he looked up.
Without thinking, he chased after the flash, darting through the pedestrians doing the pedestrian, the mundane, the Monday mundane, dragging their feet through the days...

The sun illuminated the flash, turning it amber for a brief second. The flash soared high above him, the blue sky flinging it into relief. It was a leaf, a beautiful crisp crimson leaf, dying in the depths of autumn, whilst singing through the long summer -

There was a blur of bright red.

The screeching of tyres.

Something hit him from behind.

And then he was falling, the pavement rushing up to claim him.

The Doctor just lay there, shocked. 

"Are you alright?" a voice asked, a heartbreakingly familiar voice that broke his hearts all over again. 

He would always lose her, and he would always find her. He would keep finding her as she found him. It was a riddle he never wanted to unravel, even though he already had.  Her hand closed on his shoulder, forcing him to raise his head, to confront his impossible.  

"I think this is yours," Clara said, holding something out to him. He blinked, almost blind. But then his vision cleared and he realised she was holding a leaf out to him, the leaf he had been trying to save...

His hand reached out to the leaf, to Clara, bridging the gap between them, reuniting the past with the present, laying the foundations for the future. All that ever was and would be was hanging in the balance, suspended in space, and then his hand closed around Clara's, consecrating Clara and her clarity, drawing her closer to him than ever before.

It was a gesture that would echo through the eras, and even twelfth time round, nothing had changed. It still felt like he had come home, home to his Clara.
Then the Doctor released Clara's hand, his own clutching the leaf, almost crumpling it. Clara nodded at him, before turning and walking away. He watched her go, until the crowds had closed around her, snatching her away from his sight.

A bus rumbled past. The world was still ordinary, but somehow, in some way, one leaf, one ordinary unassuming leaf, had rendered the world impossible.

~*~