#maydecember

Nature doesn’t care about your numbers,

the seasons do not change upon a dime

as Winter marches on, the Spring does slumber

and scorns this human construct known as Time;

a person’s age does not reflect awareness,

nor does it tell how much they’ve seen and done,

to judge a person thus is pure unfairness,

for when has math alone determined fun?

and so I say to all you younger ladies,

no May-December romance is a crime,

for some things, like my Rolex and Mercedes,

maintain their precious value over time;

but do not love me for my money, please:

WHY WHOUFFALDI: a reminder of how special they are both to each other and to me, the viewer

because age has no bearing on their value to each other or how they treat each other. i'll say that again: their age has no bearing on who they are as people, how they interact, or what makes their relationship work. they're a may/december relationship with very little weight given to that dynamic at all.

the doctor doesn't think he has a right to dictate anything to clara because he's a time lord, and the times he's tried it's just backfired right back into his face. as it should have.

clara's a quick learner and eager for experience, and she leans on him for support so they can learn TOGETHER. that's the common theme of their relationship: it's about the pair of them, together. she tethers him to humanity, which is what he needs.

on that note: he learns humanity through clara, but it's all through the filter of how SHE feels, how SHE expresses herself. she is the pinnacle of humanity to him. he can't see the big picture of the world or humanity at large because he loves her just that deeply. it becomes clara first, every living being in the universe second.

and no other doctor has loved like that before. ten 'burnt up a sun' just to say goodbye to rose, but twelve LET THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE DIE until it was just an ember because he MISSED clara. think about that. THINK about that. he loved her so deeply, and so intensely, that he let everything die because the idea of her dying was unbearable.

clara was stubborn and strong-willed and the doctor didn't only accept this, he encouraged it. they clashed and butted heads, but that dynamic only made them stronger. their arguing wasn't from a place of hatred or a need to be in control. more times than not it was because they were afraid and didn't know how to address it. they probably SHOULD have addressed it, as i think they would’ve been happier overall, but the story didn’t give them time to do so.

for as clever as the both of them are, they're also horribly terrified of speaking from the heart. clara was so afraid of saying she was in love that she did it in the most convoluted ways possible, or fought against it--and when she finally confessed her “love” to danny, he was struck by a car. we don't even know for sure if he heard her. we do know that he heard her declare proudly, without hesitation, that the doctor was the only man she would always trust.

we know that in 'deep breath,' even when the doctor was at his most alien and detached and strange, he was still willing and able to reach out to clara. clara tearfully declaring that she knew he was the doctor because he would always have her back, followed by her holding her hand out to the dark and him taking it with a quick, almost ferocious grab, is just the pair of them summed up perfectly. he was strange and unknowable, something dark and powerful, but he was still always there for her.

even though human emotions and expressing himself wasn't his forte, the doctor showed again and again that things like sacrifice and risking his life were not only easy decisions to make, they were things he'd do gladly if it meant he was doing it for HER. he risked death in ‘last christmas’ just for the chance to break clara out of her dream, without knowing if it would even work; he faced off against the daleks in the start of s9, all ferocity and fury and broken hearts, and was so HORRIFIED at the IDEA that he could have killed her by accident that he was shaky, struck silent, and almost in tears. this man, who had to look at flash cards to remember how to express sympathy, was moved to silent tears, shaking and horrified at the possibility of causing her harm.

we know that clara's inability to say 'i love you' latched on to her obvious anxiety and trauma, and resulted in an utter, raw terror at the very IDEA of saying goodbye. twice in the series we see her tear into the doctor just as he starts up the final farewell. she refuses to be the one to lose him. she refuses to have to stand there and let him go. i'm paraphrasing here, but she basically says "you die with whoever comes next, but not with me."

and he accepts this. he hears her fear and knows there's love mixed up in there, and he doesn't fight against it. clara tells him he can't say goodbye, he can't die on her, and he has to find a way to live--so he does. because she said so.

the doctor, in his own alien but endearing way, tells her over and over again that he loves her in the phrase, "i have a duty of care." it's the most indirect way possible to tell someone you love them, but in a way it's a love confession that goes deeper than we'd expect. "i have a duty of care." he's admitting that he's not only pledged himself to her, but that he takes it to heart and clings to it as his credo. that is his one code, his one motto, his one rule: “i have a duty of care.”

and lest we forget, he looks her right in the eye and says that she could betray him and all he stands for, and it wouldn't matter. "do you think i care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?" the doctor tells clara flat out that she can hurt him and let him down, and it wouldn't change a single thing. he would still have his duty, and he would still love her no matter how she treated him. every atom in her flesh was dear to him, and it would remain that way no matter what.

and what about clara's love for him? like i said before, her love was based on unfailing trust. for a woman like clara, who was a control freak with unresolved trauma which manifested as suicidal risk-taking, that kind of trust is HUGE. she had unshakable faith in him. she knew that no matter how bad things got, no matter how scary the world could be, or how dark or bleak or potentially harmful a situation could get, the doctor would be there to find a way to pull through. she loved him because he could remind her of how scary and wonderful life could be: she loved him because she knew that he didn't let a thing like fear ever stop him from fighting to stay alive. she loved him because he was the glory and the struggle and the joys of life all condensed into one mostly frowny form. she loved him because he proved again and again that he would be there for her, that he would help her, that she didn’t have to go through anything alone.

the doctor showed clara how wonderful it could be to simply be alive, and it's so fitting, and so horrifying, that he would let every single living thing in every galaxy in every corner of the universe die because he loved her, because he missed her. she would always mean more than all of them combined ever could.

tl;dr THEIR LOVE WAS LITERALLY A THREAT TO THE ENTIRE FUCKING UNIVERSE, BECAUSE THEY LOVED EACH OTHER SO DEEPLY AND SO INTENSELY THAT EVERYONE ELSE’S LIVES WERE AT RISK SIMPLY BY BEING INSIGNIFICANT IN COMPARISON. and that’s some compelling shit.

ETA: and lest we forget, when eleven regenerated into twelve, it was a blink-and-you-miss-it regeneration, and twelve immediately zeroed in on clara the second he appeared. he was hyperfocused on her from the very first second of his existence.