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i said something wrong, now i long for yesterday
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Thank God for her, he decides in a fit of what could only be insanity—madness. The absurdity of it all is not lost on him. He’s never much been the sort of man who prays, in any of his bodies, really. But Nessie, with her wild curls and touch telepathy. The Doctor is starting to think that maybe someone up there is listening, if only a little. Nessie’s different then his other companions—she’s untouched by the passage of time, and the Doctor is willing to get past it—how—if it means she can keep traveling with him.
It happens like this. He think’s she’s Amy. If only for just a moment. He’s grabbing her arm and spinning her to face him before he can stop himself—enraptured by the hue of her hair and the confidence in her step. “Sorry,” he’s already begun to rehearsed lines. “I thought you were someone else.” The last part escapes him as his eyes fall on her face, her bare skin under his arm, the image that crosses his mind is not one of Amy, but of a giggling brunette who’s cheeks flame pink as she admits the color might have been a bit more ginger then intended originally.
It’s an unconscious sort of thing, one he knows she doesn’t even fully realize she’s done until he gives her a squeeze and returns the thought with one of his own.
The exchange takes seconds, and the way her eyes meet his—he thinks that maybe it will be alright.
She’s a pretty girl—one of the prettiest he’s seen. Her eyes are large and round—he later learns she inherited them from her mother, and wasn’t that a meeting?—“I’m the Doctor,” he says.
“Nessie,” she greets back, looking just as bewildered as he feels.
He takes her to the TARDIS, and he tells her about aliens and space and invites her along, because you get a lot from touch telepathy. Sharing a memory, a piece of yourself is intimate and special in a way that the Doctor thinks the rest of the world (universe) is desperately missing out on. And he might not know Nessie yet, but he knows her. It’s… complicated. But he can tell she knows the sentiment, because she agrees just as easily as he invites her.
She’s Nessie, and she’s a half-vampire. A dhamphir, a half-breed—whatever you want to call her. She explains it all in a stilted sort of way, like he’s going to throw her on a pyre and call her a demon. Her father is a telepath too, but he can’t share his thoughts the way she does—he plucks them from minds. Surface thoughts, Nessie says.
And for a while, it goes like that. The Doctor and Nessie, in the TARDIS.
Until it doesn’t.
Their worlds are very different, his is out there, deep in space and lost in time. Nessie muses that surely they are complementary, or parallel. So different, yet so similar. Unending, forever things with beating hearts and the promise that all life knows on some level. Everything has a beginning. And everything has an ending.
When it’s him and her, just him and her—no River, no Clara, just Nessie and the Doctor in the TARDIS—he likes that about her. He likes that it’s not forever, that she’s never promised it the way humans always try. Nessie is inhuman enough to know it all ends, but human enough to love the road it takes to get there.
“Do you want to go there?” He asks, pointing at the picture on the screen. Nessie grins at him, all shiny teeth.
“I’d like to go everywhere,” she admits.
He grabs her hand, his mind reaching for hers, he swears, “I’ll take you.”
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They go to a planet where the sky is a pink-purple color, the clouds hang low in the atmosphere and taste like maple syrup when you walk through them. There’s none of the stickiness of it, and the ground is squishy, not firm, The people there have four eyes and blue skin, Nessie accidentally gets engaged once, and in the process of getting that situation resolved, the Doctor finds himself their version of Prime Minister, with Nessie quickly being elected to serve as his secretary. They run away with half formed excuses and laugh themselves to tears when they get back to the TARDIS.
After that, it’s a meeting with a very cross Cyclops who is in a row with his girlfriend (who is a tree), a quick trip to Earth where goldfish (the snack, not the fish) have quadrupled in size and are trying to eat all the leaves, and again, and again. They pick up Clara on Wednesday, and get sentenced to death on a planet where all the people have a twin.
They never stop running.
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River comes and goes. She watches Nessie in a sad sort of way, like when you skip to the ending of a book and know something you shouldn’t about a character. He’s afraid of that look, the way she lied about her broken wrist.
He wants to ask her. If Nessie leaves, or leaves. He bites his tongue, and plans their next adventure instead. Time can be rewritten, he reminds himself. Whatever future River knows doesn’t need to happen.
Nessie sees it too, and he overhears her ask quietly, “Is he okay? After?”
River looks at her with a start. Her expression shifts. “Oh,” murmurs River. “Of course.”
Nessie frowns, reaching her hand out—she’s looking for something in River’s face, for something words don’t capture all the way. They wind their hands together, locked in a silent, private conversation.
The red’s grown out now, leaving Nessie with just a tinge of copper. She says it’s from her father, all natural. She blinks now, eyes brown and soulful.
He never knows what they spoke about then, but when River leaves—she gives Nessie a hug.
And after, Nessie asks, “Can you take me home?”
He’s opening his mouth to say something, anything to change her mind (he doesn’t want her to leave in a way he’s felt only a few times), but she grabs his hand. The feeling she shares is confusing, even to her, and the memory with it is unsettling. “I need to introduce you to someone.”
He swallows, bobbing his head. He adjusts his bow tie. “Right then.”
She smiles, but it’s not as bright as usual.
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He’s reminded, when they arrive, of the Tylers. Specifically, he’s reminded of the Pete and Jackie who didn’t have a Rose other then a dog—and he’s faced with the ugly truth of forever. Permanency. Domesticity.
Bella Swan is beautiful, and her eyes are gold. So are all the others. They drink from animals, they explain. He smells nice, but not like food. More like a flower. Something pleasant but inedible. He’s a fascinating thing to them, proof of life outside their small world.
Carlisle debates to him into the late hours, and for the first time in centuries—he’s the one that turns in to sleep. He enjoys his time with these people, their oddities and their unchanging, permanent nature. Carlisle asks him about God. The Doctor tells him he’s heard of many gods, been called one himself. When asked what he thinks, truly, he tells him quietly that he’d long since given up on any prayers of his being heard—but he thanks whoever is listening everyday that Nessie dyed her hair that day.
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And it’s wonderful and strange being with these people. He wants to take them all with him, in a way. But it catches up, and by the end of the second week, he’s grown anxious and antsy. He’s needed elsewhere, out there. Nessie is too, if she wants to be. Before they go, before he even brings it up, Nessie snatches his hand and reminds him of why they came.
“C’mon,” she murmurs. He groups her hand tightly.
She takes him to a cabin in the woods. The door is chipping yellow, and the screen door rattles when she opens it, the door squeaking as she calls out, “I’m back!”
“Living room!”
As if she’d only stepped out to grab some milk. He inexplicably feels empty handed. Nessie whispers, “It’s okay, Doctor. He’d want to meet you.”
She takes him to a living room, and sitting there is a man with long hair. There are lines on his face, graying at his temple. He sits in a wheelchair, remote in hand, he mutes the telly.
“Hey Billy,” greets Nessie. “Jake around?”
Billy smiles back. “Garage, you know how he is.”
Nessie tugs him forward, and says, “This is the Doctor.”
“I’ve heard,” he says, something odd in his voice. “He the one?”
“I think so,” she tells him plainly. The Doctor feels lost, as if he’s missed half the conversation or is only hearing one side of it.
“Treat her well,” Billy tells him. His expression is grave, and the Doctor wonders who he is to her.
He agrees anyway, the same way he had with her mother, father—family. Somehow, this promise feels heavier.
Nessie is tugging him again. “Let’s go see Jake.”
The garage is… a garage. He’s not sure what he expected, but the dark skinned man who looks an awful lot like the one sitting inside wasn’t it.
Nessie shifting awkward on her feet and offering her free hand in a little wave wasn’t it either. “Hey Jake,” she says. And it’s awkward.
Jake looks between them, something like a half formed smile on his face. “Nessie,” he says. It’s like a prayer. The Doctor knows, he’s said it the same way.
“This is the Doctor.”
Jake exhales slowly, his eyes roaming over the Doctor, sizing him up—as if deciding if he’s worthy. The Doctor’s been judged plenty before, found worthy and unworthy just as often as the other. There’s no telling what Jake is looking for in him, but whatever it is, he seems to find it.
He smiles, offering his hand, “Jacob Black, werewolf.”
The Doctor takes it, grinning, “The Doctor, Time Lord. I met a werewolf once.”
“In London?” Jacob quips.
“No, Scotland.”
Nessie laughs, and the last remnant of whatever edge Jacob carried disappeared and his smile becomes a lot easier.
It goes rather quickly after that.
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Nessie has a soulmate, apparently.
They explain it kind of awkwardly, and the Doctor is endlessly curious about it all. Nessie and Jacob tell him they decided it was better if they went their separate ways. Soulmates, friends. Never lovers. Jake saw her as a baby—loved her mother, Nessie couldn’t think of anyone that would get passed it.
The Doctor thinks that Jacob wishes she would (he does, but they are kind enough to not comment on it—to let Nessie believe the kind lie that he will move on and love freely as she does).
When they leave, the Doctor swears, “With my life,” to the unspoken question, plea. Nessie beams at him, and Jacob nods.
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They meet Cesar, and leave just before the assassination. They build an arc for a planet where the intelligent life look a lot like really big hummingbirds.
“Big universe,” Nessie breathes. They’ve brought Clara again—it’s Wednesday.
And it’s nice. The Doctor, and Nessie in the TARDIS. It’s not forever, but then, he supposes, nothing ever is. Just really, really long. And he’s fine with that too.