sometimes the way art imitates life is more painful than i would like.

in the season opener of doctor who the eleventh doctor has​ regenerated and​ the new doctor​ is such a strange, cold and harsh​​ personality ​she is struggling to accept this is still in some way the same man. (the previous doctor was boyish and charming and they had a flirtation going; the new one is old, abrasive and cynical and very definitely does not love her.) after one episode she feels she doesn’t know this man anymore and contemplates leaving him. her phone rings and it is the​ previous ​doctor, the one she loved, calling h​er​​ ​from the past, ​moments before he dies,​ t​o reassure her that the man she is ​now ​with ​/ he will become, is​ really still him and asks her to stay with the future him. knowing she might be afraid of the new him he says to her: “however scared you are, clara, the man you are with right now​ –​ the man i hope you are with​ –​ believe me, is more scared than anything you can imagine right now and he needs you. ​so for me, hey, go ​to him and don’t be afraid.” ​

then there’s a very tense moment there, where she’s talking on the phone and the new doctor is watching her and remembers making that call and knows it’s his earlier self on the other end and knows when she hangs up she’ll make the decision to leave him or not. she looks at him and it is clear she has not quite accepted that he is him. but finally she embraces him and she chooses to stay with him: not as a couple, as friends.

(he doesn’t need to call; we both know i’d long chosen to stay. still, some friendships are fraught with the past.)