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Once he’s worn himself out, once the fire in his chest burned itself to nothing and his hands were tired, and his chest ached from more than just the constant, endless desperation, he let himself fold inward. Sharp edges and explosive demonstration of millennia of frustration centered in a short burst, a brief moment where that severe composure slipped, all of it crumbled into something vaguely shaped like the Doctor.
Curled in on himself, one hand bruised and bloody pressed to the floor to make a half-hearted attempt at balancing himself on the way to the floor. With his other hand still gripping the edge of the console, his arm taut with the remainder of all of that anger and pain, he rests his head on his forearm and shuts his eyes tightly. He imagines if it were possible to collapse inward as he’s seen stars and planets, galaxies and entire solar systems do so often, he’d have done it just then.
The T.A.R.D.I.S itself wasted no time mending whatever his outburst had done to the controls, so simply it’s as if it never happened. If it weren’t for the blood tracing his wrist, or the bruises along his knuckles and the outer shell of his hands. If he were more breakable, less exhaustingly resilient to the universe’s worst pains he might’ve broken a bone or two.
It’s only when the tears slip out of tightly closed eyes, pressed into the fabric of his sleeve, that he gives up. All of that anger and frustration and fire only ever existed to be a placeholder for pain he knows he can’t let out. It serves no other purpose. He’s not angry. He’s not the oncoming storm by any means, he’s deeply, deeply hurting and beyond afraid. Anger is just easier to deal with. Quicker to burn out.
Half crouched down, face pressed into his forearm, hand still gripping the edge of the console tight enough his knuckles are white with the effort, he waits for all of his irreparably damaged pieces to come back together. To make something close enough to composure that he can stand himself up and sort himself out.
That’s how Lana finds him.
After three days lying unconscious in a recovery that only added to the Doctor’s hollow ache harboured in his chest, she found the infinite, winding halls of the T.A.R.D.I.S suddenly very direct. One corner and a few paces had her stepping into the console room.
More simple problem solving hastened by the ship. To bring her thief the one thing capable of calming him, convincing him that he’s alright. That everything will be alright. Especially since she’s here, and alive and awake. No one else would do a better job reassuring him in this moment than the woman he loves miraculously awake after spending so long frighteningly close to death. One of the many things that built up in him enough to allow this outburst.
A soft touch at his shoulder that gently progresses to envelop him in warmth startled him out of his thoughts and that hollow ache in his chest. He nearly had a reaction, if he were close enough to himself to be present, he might’ve flinched at the sudden touch, might’ve sat up to take in the relief of knowing Lana is alive. But all that left him was a miserable sound half muffled against his arm.
Lana knelt down next to him, wrapping him in her arms as slowly as possible, carefully guiding him away from the console and closer to her where he can bury his face against her shoulder, and she can lose her fingers in his hair.
A shuddering, erratic breath leaves him against her, and he holds onto her wherever is closest to his hands. One catching the wrist of her hand next to his head, the other balling the side of her sweater into a fist against her ribs.
It’s there, wrapped in her arms, buried against her, he starts to do the work of packing all of it up, putting emotions and grief back in boxes in his mind where they’re kept. Out of reach, out of the way, never forgotten but tucked away where they can’t keep hurting him every waking moment. Held together by the reassurance of Lana’s recovery and the love she never fails to communicate to him, he puts himself back together.
Softly, noting the shift in posture, Lana presses a kiss to the top of his head, that wild tangle of grey curls, leaving her forehead resting against him here before speaking. “You’re allowed to… be sad,” she breathes out, astonished at how quickly he’d started to piece himself back together. After such an intense and unstoppable outburst. “You’re allowed to feel it… whatever brought you here.” She cards her fingers through his hair, her wrist still caught in his hand, his pulses racing against hers.
“No,” he swallows hard and straightens himself up, eyes still bright with the threat of continued tears, face flushed and carrying echoes of dried tear tracks. It nearly breaks Lana’s heart just to see him like this. He shakes his head, slowly releasing his grip on her wrist and her sweater, dropping his hands to his lap, settled properly on the floor now.
“Doctor…” she reaches out to place one hand against his cheek, voice barely louder than a whisper, “It’s alright…”
He stops her, more of his usual self behind his tone this time, “Lana,” his eyes meet hers and the depth and severity there could swallow worlds. “That pain, that… grief, is something so beyond what I could ever begin to explain. If I… let it out, even for a moment, a second, it will never, ever stop. Every day I hold that,” he balls one hand into a fist and rests it against his chest, “Right here. Never moving. Not getting any more bearable, or any worse. But always there. Centuries of it.” He holds her gaze, “Giving into any of it would shatter every piece of me. And never stop.”
Lana doesn’t realize she’s crying until he thumbs away her tears and moves to press a kiss to her forehead. He releases a long, weary sigh and they stay like this a long time, the silence settling in around them, foreheads together, eyes closed. Lana finds one of his hands in his lap with hers and threads their fingers together, holding tight to him as if he needed convincing to stay.
That’s when Lana’s fingers brush the halfway dried blood snaking around his wrist and the abrasions etched into the finer parts of his hands. Pulling back, she gently cradles his hands in hers, careful fingertips brushing over darkening bruises and angry red track patterns, up to the place where metal or glass, or something related, cut into him at some point during his breakdown. Somewhere amid the sparks and the numbing pain.
His right hand got the worst of it.
He studies her despondently while she gathers this hand into both of hers as if he were made of glass, as if he were something delicate, something priceless to cherish and handle with the utmost care. Bringing their hands up, she presses kisses to his knuckles, along his thumb, then to his pulse point at his wrist.
The love and affection behind the way she holds him nearly shatters him to pieces all over again.
“Whatever it is, whatever… brought this on…” she starts softly, speaking against his skin, “Tell me.” Her voice reaches the edge and breaks, soft reverence crumbling into something close to pleading. Something desperate and deeply tragic. “Tell me what did this.”
He doesn’t. He stares at her in startled and disbelieving wonder, watching her as she traces her hand up to the bend of his arm, her free hand still laced into his. She holds him as if she were afraid he’d collapse if she let go of him for even a moment. Dissolve into dust without reassurance.
To her credit, he’s spent the last hour feeling exactly like that.
“Doctor,” she tightens her grip on him briefly, shaking his attention back to her. When his gaze meets hers, he releases a defeated sigh, shutting his eyes and leaning his forehead once more against hers. This time it isn’t just for stability and comfort. He tells her as much as he can let out without it starting this all over again, shows her what she thinks she wants to know. All of the hurt and the ache, the anger and grief and hopelessness. The guilt. Endless, infinite quantities of guilt. So heavy it would collapse solar systems, smother burning suns. Loneliness, so much of it Lana is winded by it.
Brief periods of time where that empty ache of loneliness is filled by love and admiration of friends and partners. Adoration of humans and others with lives so fleeting compared to his. They hold off that grief for as long as they’re with him, but with every end brings a wave of pain heavy enough to drown it out.
“One day…” he breathes out, slowly withdrawing his mind from hers, “Everything I love about you…” he shuts his eyes tightly and draws in a shaky breath, her heart clenches, “The memory of it will hurt so much I won’t be able to breathe.” He squeezes her hand in his, breathing erratic, voice deteriorating once more. “And I just have to keep going? Over and over again.”
He drops his head to her shoulder and cries. Properly, wholly cries. Shoulders shaking, soft miserable sounds catching in his throat and muffled against her shoulder.
Lana’s heart just breaks.
She holds him tightly, curling into him, losing her fingers in his hair, wrapping an arm around him under his coat. Nothing feels adequate enough. Every piece of her is screaming at her to love him better. To wrap him up close enough that nothing can touch him. She feels deeply unqualified for the job. Unqualified to love him properly, and hold his love in return. He’s trusted his sense of comfort and love in someone not acceptable enough to know what to do with it.
“When is it my turn?” he manages, exhausted and broken, turning his head so he’s no longer speaking directly into the fabric of her sweater. His breath leaves him uneven and sharp, sending warmth across her neck and collarbone and setting every nerve ending in her body on fire. “When am I done? When am I allowed to stop? How much more of this do I have to take?”
“Don’t say that,” Lana chokes out, shutting her eyes and resting her head against his, “Don’t ever say that to me.” She tightens her arms around him, “You are worth… so much more than the pain you are so insistent on carrying all on your own. No help, no shared blame. You take credit for tragedy that you’re the victim of!” she speaks softly against him, momentarily pressing her face into his hair between breaths. Breathing in the familiar smell of him, taking a moment in that warmth he gives off, that undeniable sense of home he has always had.
“Every day you pull people back from the worst moments of their lives, talk them back to their feet, help them out of that dark place you can’t seem to stop keeping pieces of to tuck away in your own mind. You save… everyone,” she leans back to look at him, cradling his face in her hands, breathless and stunned, “Who saves you?”
“No one, I don’t need…” he starts slowly, clearing some of the rough qualities out of his voice left over from breaking for so long, so thoroughly.
“You do,” Lana stops him, definitive, suddenly incredibly resolute. “You do need someone to tell you it’s not okay, what happened to you wasn’t okay, and you can be angry about it. You’re allowed to cry and scream and break down because of it. And at the end of it all, when you tire yourself out, you’re not alone. Not now, not ever if I have anything to say on the matter. I’m not going anywhere, nowhere that you can’t reach.” She finds one of his hands and weaves their fingers together firmly, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You don’t have to endure anything on your own. And you don’t ever have to pretend it’s okay. Not with me. Not when nothing at all feels okay.”
He studies her a long moment, expression complicated with opposing emotions. Defeat and hope, love and heartbreak, loss and comfort. He squeezes her hand in his, drawing in a breath.
“And after all of that is said and done and our time runs out like it always does, you’ll be dead and I’ll just keep living. A life too long. Just keep going. Trapped in a loop. Never the same, never changing.” He sighs, looking as exhausted by the thought as he sounds. “You can spend your life with me. I can’t spend mine with you.” He lifts one shoulder, “I won’t die. I’ll just keep changing, running away from myself, never getting far enough. In the end, it’s always that. Always me. Doesn’t matter where I run to, I’m always there.” A long breath, he forces a wry smile into his tone, a bad forgery of bravado and levity, “Last of the Time Lords. Always that.”
“Do something stupid then,” she takes his face in her hands once more, leaning in to kiss him softly, slowly. Pouring every single ounce of love and hope into it, twisting her fingers into his hair at the base of his head, tugging him closer to her with one hand tucked under his jawline. “Do something reckless and selfish and stupid.” She continues between kissing him. Both of them slowly becoming breathless with the growing intensity behind how they hold each other.
“Like what?” he mumbles against her, fingertips digging into her at her hip with the strength he uses to pull her close. “Whatever you want. I’ll do it.”
“Is that a promise?” she traces her thumb along his jawline, slips her hand down his neck to rest at his collarbone, smoothing her hand out against him just below his collar he’d left unbuttoned and careless in his chaos earlier. The rhythm of his hearts thrums heavy into her palm against his throat, and he kisses her back as if there is something within her he needs to survive.
“Yes,” he kisses her deeply, leaning back some to allow her closer, one leg on either side of his waist, heavy against him like they’re trying to become a single entity. One living being rather than two. Together on a molecular level, inseparable.
“How many regenerations do you have left?” she asks, breathing heavy into his shoulder.
Tilting his head back to rest against the pillar of the console behind him, he catches his breath, absently tracing soft patterns into her hip with one hand.
He says, “Twelve.” His voice so quiet it’s barely louder than a whisper, the number carried out on a breath. He’s quiet a long time, breathing evening out, hands tracing up her sides and pulling her back into him. They both get lost in each other again for a long time, and he kisses her recklessly, more and more as time goes on.
Lana draws in a breath to speak but all that leaves her is a short, breathless sound that caught somewhere in her throat and left her in an octave far higher than intended. Like she’d had the wind knocked out of her, like she’d been given good news at the same time that she’d stepped backward off a particularly high ledge.
The sound is his the moment it leaves her.
Her question and her request finally snap together in his head. The idea and the subject matter coming together to bring sense to what she asked of him. The admittance of it being irresponsible and reckless and selfish. It all comes into focus in his mind and brings that sharp tug starting in his chest and the pit of his stomach to a rapid stop.
“You have no idea what you’re asking for,” he rests his forehead against hers, one hand at her shoulder to hold them both away from each other long enough for him to speak. “You have no idea what it’s like to outlive everyone you know. Family and friends. Your own world… You have no idea what it’s like to watch the people you love grow old, wither and die while you stay the same…”
“No,” she admits quietly, playing with the open collar of his shirt mindlessly, “I don’t. But I’ll tell you what,” she draws in a slow, steadying breath, opening her eyes to look at him properly, neither one of them blinded by the pain of earlier or the desperate want from a moment ago. They look at each other as they are. And she says, “I won’t ever have to lose you. Everyone else I’ve known will live their lives, long lives to them, and then one day they’ll be gone. But you won’t.”
A sharp breath falls out of him, something between a breakdown and disbelief.
She continues, “Because you’re right. Your life is long. Incredibly long. And you do so much good, and mean everything to so many. But to no one more than me. And nothing matters more to me than knowing you’re alright. Knowing that at the end of every day we’ll end up here,” she tightens one hand around his, “Always.”
“Lana…”
“If you don’t want to lose me, then don’t. If you don’t want to be alone, then don’t. If you’re worried about it being my call, I’m telling you. I’m looking at you right now, and I’m telling you,” she holds his gaze, “Spend your life with me.” She lifts one hand to his cheek, adding softly, “Let someone save you, just this once.”
The tears on his face are different this time. They’re not borne of suffering and grief and unbearable guilt. They are quick and thin tracks so soft they’re nearly invisible, and with them comes the softest, most careful of smiles pulling at one corner of his mouth. There is a helpless hope welling behind those tears, and his eyes are bright with it.
“What you’re asking me to do isn’t reversible,” he tells her softly. “There is no going back from this. Not really. You can give them back to me, but you can’t undo the changes it’ll make to your body. You won’t be human ever again.” All of these are warnings, but the warmth behind his eyes and the love in his tone all speak to a foregone conclusion.
Lana smiles at him with an overwhelming amount of adoration.
This time when he leans in to kiss her again, they’re both swallowed up in blinding, echoing gold light. It rings loud in her ears and burns inside every piece of her. And behind it all, his lips on hers, his arms around her, his fingers between hers.
The overwhelming, relentless waves of regeneration energy continue to pass through them both long after he breaks away to gather her in his arms so she can lay her head to rest on his shoulder.
He is more terrified now than he has been in a very long time. Underneath the love and admiration and disbelief, he is beyond scared. When they both collapse on the floor, unconscious, he spares one last moment to hope desperately, with every part of him, that she does not regret this. Because he knows, above all the fear and uncertainty, that he doesn’t.