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His planet? [She had no idea. She can't even begin to imagine the loss of that, every single person and place one has known... gone. Millions and millions of lives ended. Before coming here, Caitlyn's entire world had been a few square miles of city streets, but there's the whole of Runeterra beyond Piltover, cities and mountains and forests and civilizations... How could something as vast as a planet be gone?

She shakes her head, trying to get her thoughts in order.]

What about funeral rites? Will you need to worry about anything like that? [She's gleaned some information about regeneration, but she's not sure whether it leaves any remains behind.]

His body...there isn't one because he's alive. The whole body changes. One minute he was a big chin and floppy hair, and then I was looking at a man with angry eyebrows and a thick accent. And the first thing he did was run away from me.

[ Well, not the first thing, but she's still hurt about it the things he did (or didn't) do. She backtracks though, letting out a quiet breath. ]

The Doctor's species is called Time Lord. Time Lords get twelve regenerations either at the end of their natural span of life which is thousands of years, or until they get hurt so badly they need a new body. The Doctor you knew was on his last cycle. Because of that he never told me how it worked, how regeneration happened.

[ She feels her throat tighten but she keeps going to get through it. ]

So when I found out he was dying I started begging the Time Lords that were left to give him another cycle and they did. I don't think he wanted them, but they did it.

Edited 2023-10-15 00:26 (UTC)

[Caitlyn's hand finds Clara's, squeezing gently as she hears the other woman's voice thicken. She listens carefully, cataloguing all this new information, slotting into the information she already had, reassessing assumptions she had made, as even in her grief her mind doesn't want to stop trying to understand, to figure out.]

I would have done the same thing. [She speaks softly, but sincerely. She can't imagine letting someone she loves die if there were any way to save them, whatever they wanted.]

[ Clara holds onto Caitlyn like a lifeline while she closes her eyes and tries to forget the way the Doctor sounded when he regenerated, and the way he acted directly after. ]

He called me. [ Opening her eyes, she huffs out a small laugh that sounds more resigned than humours. ] Time, it's...well, he's in control of it, isn't he? When I was with the new him, the regenerated him who ran from me, avoided me, wouldn't let me close, our Doctor called me from his TARDIS, fully aware that he'd already... he asked me not to leave him. To stay, take care of him. Best, rudest phone call I've ever gotten.

[ There, she laughs a little and it's lighter, but that phone call, it hurt as much as it helped. ]

[Caitlyn just sits, lets Clara say everything that she needs to say, holding onto her, and resisting the urge to ask what a phone call is. She has an enough of an idea from context.]

Did you? [She asks the question despite already having an idea of the answer.] Stay?

[ She hadn't wanted to, not at first. She wanted to get far, far away from the man she couldn't recognize. But then she'd been asked to see him, and she had. She really had, even if he wasn't the same.

Taking a deep breath, she lets it out as she nods. ]

Yeah. Yeah, I stayed, how could I not? And it's...a little better. Not a lot. Everything he was is the opposite, and I don't know—I just want him to smile at me again.

[ Her voice cracks and her vision blurs again ]

[The hand in Clara's tightens again. It's starting to properly sink in that she's never going to see the Doctor again. Even if this new person smiles at Clara, it won't be the same smile, and Caitlyn will never get to see it. He's never going to grab her hands and talk very intently at her, or spin in a little circle, or fix his bowtie ever again.

And Caitlyn doesn't really know how to process that. So she has to do something about it instead.

She stands, tugging on Clara's hand a little.]

Come with me.

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