#run--remember--me

She wanted to wait.  Wanted to see.  Didn’t want him to be alone.  Lost.

“You need to leave.  Get out.  You should go now.”

He whispered, but Clara felt herself not able to move.  Over and over she had saved him.  He had saved her.  Once.  Twice.  Oh more than that.  Saved the world.  Saved planets of the universe, of multiple cosmos.  Saved individuals.  He did that and sometimes she came along for the ride, helping him.  Because her Mum once told her when she was very frightened, almost lost forever, “You will never really be lost.  I will always be here…Find you every single time.”

Never alone.

Every single time.

“We don’t walk away...We hold on tight.”

He told her that once.  She echoed it then.

Now the Doctor twisted in pain, his body giving a vicious lurch, and with the tears finding her lids, Clara knew it was starting.  She watched as he gripped the TARDIS’s console with hardened knuckles.  Her ears heard the old girl’s moan of what was to happen. 

Never…lost.  I will always be here.

We don’t walk away…We hold on tight.

Ignoring his protests, Clara stepped forward quickly, grasping his waist as he bent at his stomach, agonies starting to reach his face.  “We don’t walk away.”  She whispered to his pained eyes, leaning forward and kissing his cheek.

She watched as the Doctor, her Doctor, grimaced a bit, his thin eyebrows lifting with question, and his fingers reaching up to touch there.  They came away from his skin with the salt of her tears.  And Clara felt herself crying more, but still she wouldn’t let him go.  “How can I help?”  She asked because she couldn’t leave him.  She always wanted to be here, where he needed her.  Never let him feel lost.  Be here.  Every single time.

He shook his head, seeming to be in misery, the destruction that led to this, his new generation of life just moments away, pulling at his muscles, at his blood in his body, making his hearts feel like scratches were finding their way in.  Again and again.  Growing deeper and deeper to festering wounds.

“Just go Clara.”

She shook her head.  “No.”

“Clara!”

“NO.”  She reached up now, grasping his cheeks, her eyes fixed on his as she told him firmly, “I am not leaving you.  I am not letting you go through this alone, feeling lost.  Oh, being lost there is nothing worse.  And you told me there’s a moment of loss, of forgetting and I don’t want you to experience that.  I don’t want you to feel that.  So I’m NOT going.”

His insistence wasn’t vacating.  “Clara, you don’t understand.  It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.  Like nothing I really know about honestly because I’ve only seen others, not my own.  But I do know it can be violent, the golden spheres of light that will take hold of this body I have now.  It can cause explosions and destruction.  It—it can be ugly Clara.”

She crossed her arms over her stomach, stating flippantly, “Well you have the ugliest alien chin and I never backed away from that, did I?  Don’t see what the problem is with some hideous illumination.”

That made the Doctor smile slowly as he simultaneously let out another grimace, another twist of his body, little bits of golden light flickering around him warningly.  “Clara.”

She shook her head once more, gripping onto his arms, trying to soothe away his pain with a gentle massage of her fingers.  “You forget Doctor.  Chin Boy.  I’ve been there for all your lives so far.  Not the regenerations.  But I stepped into your time stream.  And I felt the violence of doing that.  I’m not some ordinary girl anymore.”

Smiling even more vividly, the emotion welling in his bright eyes, the Doctor shook his head.  “You never were.  You always were my impossible girl.  My Clara.  You always will be.”

Fingering his arm, she asked teasingly, “So now you think I’m pretty?”

He gave a swift negative.  “No.  Not at all.  Too many distortions.  Nose out of place, all that.”

She laughed softly, but then his hand was lifting to her face, gently painting her cheek.  “You’re beautiful.  Never pretty.”

And Clara could see it in his eyes.  Everything they shared together, all the wonderful moments, all the tragic, all the silly, all the sublime, and all the between.  Nothing ordinary.  Not even him just hanging out at the Maitland house, being tricked by the kids or playing games with them.  She wasn’t pretty to him, but of another word, because what they experienced together was pure beauty.  Saving the world.  Saving each other.  Geronimo again and again. 

Her echoes went back in time to save the Doctor over and over, but it happened so in Clara Oswald’s heart this man could live, the Doctor she knew.  The Doctor she cared for so much.  This was her Doctor and as much as she would always hold a dear place for all versions of the Doctor in her heart, at this moment Clara did not know what depth her feeling would go for the twelfth one.  She just wanted to hang onto Doctor Eleven for as many more moments as she could.

“Doctor-

Anything else she was about to say was cut off.

His lips were suddenly upon hers. 

And it made her react because never had the Doctor full on kissed her.  Oh her echo kissed him on the lips and he did show reaction, but this was the first time his hands reached out to her cheeks and his mouth touched her mouth simultaneously.  His lips parted for her lips.  And he tasted.  And he enjoyed. 

She knew because she could see it after he backed away much too soon for her liking.  His smile came out then like so many volumes of light and pleasure. 

“Always thought of that.  Doing that.  Just needed the time.”  He whispered and she started to say something, but his finger found her mouth, pressed against.  “No.  Just let me remember that.”

The more violent jarring of his body seemed to be fading.  He looked relaxed now, and okay with what was about to happen.  Clara could feel her heart beating so fast in contrast, so urgently as he backed away and moved closer to the TARDIS’s console, as the old girl gave a hurt murmur, like a sob was escaping her engine. 

“Now go, Clara.”  The Doctor told her with the gentlest most peaceful smile she’d ever seen upon his face.  For once he wasn’t dancing, or spinning away, or running.

For one moment it seemed the running had stopped.

“It will take time for you to be remembered.  You can go and live your life.  Forget about me.  And just—be happy Clara.  Be-

“Shut up.”  She told him fiercely, rushing forward and before he could protest, planting her palms on his cheeks and kissing him with all the worth, all the love, all the need she had ever desired to make him feel.  Soon the Doctor was gripping onto her too.  His hands were pressing into the material of her dress.  She could feel them warm on her back.  His mouth was wrenching underneath hers, opening hers and being opened by her.  It was like drinking from each other.  It was like-

“I love you.”  She whispered as she broke away, pain twisting at her heart.  “Your ugly chin.  Your snogbox.  Your stupid mating dance.  Everything.  I-

“Shhhh…”  He pressed his finger against her lips, smiling, crying with her, the salt now his too.  “I know.  I-

His hand grasped hers.  She felt it keeping hold, lowering to his chest.  To his twin hearts.  Clara felt their fierce beating and shuddered, pressing against those hearts, crying further than she wanted to.  She had intended to be strong, to let him go without all this mess of emotions.  But it was too hard to contain.  How would she live without his ugly beautiful face?

Her palms there, flat on his chest, a love clutch, they didn’t want to let go, but he found a way around, as he wrapped his arms around her and whispered into her hair, “My Clara.”

She knew he wasn’t going to return any love admission.  She didn’t really need it.  Touching his hearts had been enough. 

He was experiencing something.  He was glowing.  More brightly than he had before.  Ribbons of golden light were flowing all around and within his skin, causing paths of building hot energy.

“Now back away.”  He caressed her cheek with his fingers, wiping at some of the tears.  “Back away Clara.”

“I’m not leaving.”

He smiled wryly at that, nodding his head.  “I know that.  You’re impossible.  Of course you’re not.  But you need to back away.”  He brought the TARDIS to flight, giving her a steady glance as soon they were floating in space.

“I’m going to stay.  I’m going to stay until-

Gently he shushed her new sobs because finishing that sentence was just too hard for her.  “I know Clara.  But at a distance.  Go on.”

She pressed her palms to his twin hearts one more time, not wanting to let go, but his hands were finding her arms and so she nodded and did as he instructed, whispering though too, “We don’t walk away from the people we love, right Doctor?  We never leave them alone.  We never leave them lost.  And even if they are—we find them every time.  Every single time.”

Tears, wet, like tiny scars upon his cheeks, he uttered with a shaky voice, “Right Clara.  We never do.  We find them.”

“Chin Boy.”

He laughed a little at that.  “Impossible Girl.”

And then Clara was gripping the wall, because it was happening.  The golden trails of light had finished weaving their path through all his skin, all his Eleven’s body.  And so like an explosion, it burst, making him totally encompassed, nothing more than golden light, golden flame, and golden energy, burning magnificently.  It was violent.  The Doctor was right about that.  Clara had to keep holding fast to the wall and to the stair’s railing.  The TARDIS was letting out shrieks of protest.  Pieces of metal were falling, crashing. 

But it wasn’t ugly like the Doctor warned her.  Instead it was beautiful, not a death, but a regeneration of life, a new force of light, a continuance of time’s stream. 

And into the golden light she could see his face, scrunched up with the most painful, and oddly connected to it, energized expression.  It was there with the last words he uttered before the beautiful magnificent illumination took him, words she’d never whisper aloud, hold secretly in her heart instead.  Words not even her thoughts let out.

As that scrunched up face began to evolve, making her eyes widen more than they had at the start.  The TARDIS was careening out of control.  Clara screamed, her body being bounced with the violent force.  

And then suddenly there was a new face.  A new body.  A new-

Rushing around, crazily uttering.

We don't walk away…we hold on tight.

I will always find you every single time…I’m always here.

“Who-

She stopped the mad utterings, wiping away her tears and stating a bit frantically because the TARDIS was not flying normally at all.  “I’m Clara.  I’m the Doctor’s companion.  Yours.  I’m the impossible girl.  And we’re going to crash if you don’t do something QUICK!”

“But-

“DOCTOR!”

A maniacal grin.  Everything new.  Height.  Face.  Body.  All.  But still that madness that she loved so much.

“Right!” 

And it was enough to make her smile just a little, take away a few of those tears, before she jumped too to action.

He was so new.  And yet he was so old too.  Unfamiliar and entirely familiar.

She gave her heart to the other.  It was still clutching onto him, her beautiful Eleventh Doctor with the ugly alien chin.  She’d always remember.  Never forget.  But time never stood still either, not with the Doctor.

Would have to just see where the venture with this one would leave.

Wait and see.

*

Thanks for reading.   The quotes come from Clara’s mother and the Doctor, both sets from The Rings of Akhaten...possibly a bit modified.

I can still feel it!

Oh Clara.  What are you doing?  Get a hold of yourself.  Yes, there have been so many painful memories, so many hard things to take that happened after I jumped into his time stream so of course now a lovely memory is more than welcome.  But that doesn't mean I go as spacey as him.  I mean the man talks to his ship after all. 

Well actually, I know a lot more about that ship now.  I know about Timeladies.  I kind of was one.  I'm even the one who told him to take the exact TARDIS we are flying in now.  That was me, well my sort of echo part of me, which oh it's so confusing trying to make sense of that.

Never mind.  I need to find the Doctor.  Oh yes, that's what I need to do. 

To the console!

I make my way.  I'm kind of in a hurry.  I'm remembering all those times he's held my hand and that I've pulled him to another direction also.  I've done that.  I've saved him a thousand times over.  That's me.  Brave Clara.  The Doctor's Impossible Girl.  Oh yes he calls me that.  I'm impossible.  I'm his Clara.

So why are my hands getting all sweaty just thinking of doing what I'm pondering acting out.  And why isn't he here?

"Doctor!"

It's his ship, you know the one he sometimes actually calls 'Sexy.'

Oh-oh, TARDIS grumble.  I look up, hearing it.  I try to give her an appeasing smile, but really it's more a roll of the eyes.  She's a ship.  But I picked her.

Another grumble.  "Okay fine, you picked him!  Now where is he?"

No reply.  His Old Girl.  I think I'll call her Stubborn Girl.

Wait a second.  I hear something from beneath.  Could that be?

I run down the steps and further below and oh yes, there he is.  He's looking a bit like a grease monkey now.  "Doctor?"

"Oh Clara, hand me my screwdriver, would you?"

He has a tangle of wires that he's working with and other mechanical doo-dads.  Who knows what to call them?

"What are you doing?"

He lets out a grunt, snatching the screwdriver from me after I hand it to him.  He's in one of those sore TARDIS-Isn't-Working Right moods.  "Fixing her so we stop getting lost every time.  There's a malfunction in the time-order..."

Blah blah blah.  Sorry.  Sometimes I kind of just block out the Doctor's voice when he's talking time-travel technical speak.

He comes to the end of his sentence finally and I tell him what happened, well most of it.  "I had another memory spark up."

"Oh."  There's alarm in his voice as he moves away from his work and looks at me with those inquisitive eyes.  "Bad one?"  His hand comes out without warning, greasy.  I flinch at it a bit and he shakes his head, cursing his actions.

"Blimey!  Got it all over you.  Hang on."  He reaches back and finds a rag.  Gently he moves it over my cheek and I tell him it daringly.  "Not a bad one.  A good one."

"Oh great!"  He grins and goes back to his work.  Hmmm.  He doesn't seem all that interested.  My nose wrinkles and my forehead scrunches.  He's going to listen to me.

"I kissed you."

"AH-OH-OW!"  

He hits his head on the tail end of the TARDIS's console and with the injury comes a holler of pain.  

"Doctor?"

I scramble onto my knees to see if he is alright and soon we're face to face.  His is blushing if I'm not mistaken.  A huge glowing red blush.  I grin at it.  

"Clara?"

He questions, almost like I'm some wild animal.  I grin more.  "Do you remember?"

He stares at me for a long time, with his Docterly inquisitive eyes, shocked now, frightened I dare say, and shakes his head, furious.  "No, no.  Not at all."

"You blushed then too!"

"I did not and you started the whole thing!"

He tells me angrily, biting his tongue at the last part because his lie has been found.

"Ah-ha! I knew you remembered."

He starts to explain in the DOCTOR voice, a thousand years old, so much more knowledgeable than me, that 'Clara I'm going to tell you something and you're going to listen because I'm the wise one here' voice.  

"That was your echo that kissed me.  Just a part, a piece, a fragment that was traveling through time.  Nothing more.  And it must have felt compelled to act to be able to begin the sa-

He doesn't finish.  I don't let him.  He would go on and on for years if I allowed it.  But those blushing lips running off, they're just too tempting.  And so I do it, damn my clammy hands and nervous shaking arms.  I kiss him.  Mmmm...and even with a bit of grease on his chin that I swear finds its way somehow to my skin, it feels just as good as it did the first time.

"Clara-

He starts to get a word in and so I really go for it now, pushing my palms into his shoulders, curling my fingers around, and kissing him so deeply I get an entrance and our tongues collide.

"Oh."  He moans and pushes his own hands against my waist and shoulder too, and starts to kiss me back.

For a moment that is.  Before-

"No Clara, we can't!  I'm greasy and you're just remembering echoes, just nothing more than-

"You're blushing!"

"I am not!"  He hotly denies, but peers at himself in a reflecting underside of the TARDIS's console, grimacing at what he sees.

"And you entirely, without question, kissed me back this time.  "I think I even felt your screwdriver getting happy."

Okay now that's kind of daring.  But I like the reaction.

"No no!"  He looks down, frowns that geeky grimace, and looks back up again, his forehead scrunching with protest.  "No, no that was not my----oooooh--oh you're bad!  Shut up!"

Pulling on his bow tie, and giving him a daring smile, I whisper against his cheek, "Make me."

We stare at each other.  You know like one of those never ending staring contests.  But this one ends.  And this one has a lot of fun innuendo.  

He's fixing his bow tie back into proper place, moving away from me, and stroking back his hair with a greasy hand before he realizes it's dirty and lets out an exasperated sigh.

"Doctor."

I find the rag and wipe at his hand, then his hair, then his forehead.  

"What?"  His voice grunts out.  He's still bothered by my teasing.  Doctor likes to be the one who rattles, not the other way around.  I swear I do think I drive him mad.  And I do think I like it a bit.  But then he's mad already so what's the problem.  And he has a way of making me feel batty too.  

"The day you kiss me first, I promise."

He begrudgingly turns my way, those inquisitive eyes pondering.  "Promise, what?"

I smile, giving him a gentle peck on the cheek.  I can't rush him.  The day he comes around, oh it's hard to wait for.  But will definitely be worth the wait.

"I'll blush too."

I leave him then, but before I get all the way up the steps, I take a look back.  He's smiling, smiling and touching his lips.  

Those blushing red lips.

That I kissed before.

And now.

She screams out what is happening, but no one can give her a good answer.  No one knows what to do.

She looks to his time tunnel, the stream reddened now to a deeper burning scar, like blood being leaked out of a festering wound.

The Doctor’s.

The thrashing ceases, but the stillness that takes its place is no comfort. 

Clara’s mind focuses urgently on a possible past.

The Dalek Asylum.  Victorian England.  The Doctor said she had been in both places.

“You’re the impossible girl.”  Mr. Clever’s words come back to her and how later the Doctor didn’t try to counter them.

How can that be though?  Unless…

Speaking to River, she gets confirmation.  If she enters his time stream she can save him, again and again.  Live, again and again.

Die, again and again. 

The Doctor’s weakened voice begs her not to, but Clara is firm in her resolve. 

The Doctor should be lively and animated.  Grouchy and grimacing.  Calculating and clever.  Tender and oddly caring.  Passionate and geekishly driven. 

That is her Doctor, with big hands that find her cheeks with touches of waywardness until they hold firm and poke fun at her nose in between.  That is him, not this man lying brokenly upon the ground, bleeding away inside all he is. 

Oh come on.  Can’t wait. 

She’ll do something miraculous, bring back the stars and the planets.  Bring back that big chin and those crazy spins of his legs.

“What do you want to see?”

Oh she wants to see him alive. 

She wants her Doctor back, standing, laughing, and being so silly, so clever.

 As he calls out her name in anguished protest, she utters, “Run you clever boy.  And remember me.”

And jumps.

*

“CLARA!”

He screams, his twin hearts thundering… 

Little by little he can feel his body getting stronger, and yet it happens for each time she is born, saves him, and dies.

He stands, first needing the wall for support, and then after a while of that, on his own.

River pleads with him to not enter the time stream.  River.  Oh sweet maniacal passionate River.  He, the madman who can’t take goodbyes, has tried to hold on, keeping her in the library.

But the time is past.  Let River sleep.  Kiss.  Hold.  And let go.  Offer goodbye like we’ll see each other again.  End it with those tantalizing spoilers.  Rest, River. 

And when she does, the Doctor only has one thing to do. 

River said she was meant to be linked to Clara, but even after Clara was in the stream, River remained.  She didn’t leave until she got her proper goodbye from him.

That means there’s a chance, a crack in what should be implausible.   

No one attempts to stop him from entering the stream.  Any bits of fear he has fade away with the purpose.  After all she entered it, without any alien DNA, without any kind of protection, a stream that has no link to her own life.

Or does it?

The light is no longer blood red.  It shines now in its white illumination signifying that Clara has done it.  She has righted the wrong or at least most of it.

He goes back into his time, back to the place where it is, finds the fragile plant of life before it can be taken by that vampiric creature, and holds it tight.

*

She falls.  She lands.  She is born.  She saves.  She dies.  And she falls again.  The pattern continues.  It is wicked.  It is rapid.  It only allows tiny fragments of life to happen.  They are all with one purpose: Save the Doctor. 

So much of what has happened before and after is lost.  She is what River said.  Echoes.  Pieces.  Tears.  And now he is safe and so it’s done.  Her story is over.  The book shuts.  And the falling ends.

She lands on her back, with her leg bent awkwardly.  What she sees and hears is a hellish environment, a nightmare.  She doesn’t know where she is.  She doesn’t know who she is.  Clara, but what beyond? 

“Doctor?”  She asks, fear trickling down her spine, dripping into her heart.  “DOCTOR!”

She pushes her head against the ground. 

Help me.

*

He can feel her icy shivers through his hearts and knows it is time.  He has found her and the place she has fallen to.  But he can’t reach out.  Not without the line to her life.  To get that line to reach her, he must calm her a bit.  He tells her to look and see him, all the different ghosts of him. 

Familiar, they lessen her fears.  The icy shivers fade for tiny fractions.  Good.  She must be brave. 

Time is limited, the stream starting to break apart.

“AAAA!”

*

The ground convulses with seismically thunderous rumbles.  He tells her it’s because the time screen is collapsing, which makes her scream for him to get out.  But the Doctor is such a pertinacious man.  He won’t leave until he has her too. 

Clara feels broken.  Thousands of lives fragmented, families and friends that whipped by because she died again and again. 

“I don’t even know who I am.”  She wails with the underlying veracity of it all.  How could she be there for all eleven of the Doctors, living a puzzle of missing pieces?  How is this real?

*

Her words of abandonment cut through his hearts.  This is what has happened to his Clara.  She jumped into his time stream and now she is lost. 

But not for long.  

Catch the leaf Clara.  Catch it and find your link to life.  Catch it.

*

Look.  He tells her strongly. 

It drifts through the smoky air, ebbing to be in her grasp.  A leaf.  A fragile beautiful leaf, torn and folded from life lived.  She catches it and holds on tight.  He tells her it is a link to her past and where her future will go.  And she can feel it. 

Someone gave her this leaf.

 A book.  Places.  Being held and loved.  Getting lost.  Fearing.  Being found.  Making soufflés.  Always about the recipe. 

The pictures are all ripped and in pieces.  Puzzles of her life, but they’re there, they’re beating in her heart. 

And they’re all in this leaf.  This leaf that the Doctor has given her.  This leaf that-

“Clara!  Clara!  Clara!”

Doctor?

*

He can see her.  After getting out of the time stream’s vortex, and touching the murky ground he can see her.  She is confused and crying.  Her walk holds stumbles and falters, but she is persistently moving forward, the leaf the link.  If he can just get her to turn around to help her see that he’s not one of his regenerations that will fade from her view.  He’s not a ghost.  

“Clara, come on…”

*

He’s talking to her.  It’s not real.  Her Doctor is not there. 

But what if he is real? 

He insists it’s true, his hands reaching out desperately for her to come forward.

She limps, creeping pain in her leg that she tries to ignore because he’s just a few steps away. 

The Doctor tells her she is his impossible girl, getting her to think that maybe it’s not just a dream.  She stumbles forward, desperate to see if he is existent, hoping fervently that he is. 

Amid his babbling and reassurances, she gets there, and when she does her arms swing upward, hugging him as tightly as she can for he is no chimera.  The vehement emotion is mirrored in how fiercely he holds her in kind. 

Her fingers clench his neck and shoulders, feeling the polished tweed of his coat, its bits of scratchiness not bothering her, for it contains his warmth and scent of familiarity that reminds her she is safe. 

His relief comes from feeling her small body against his, her sweet and illuminating redolence.  His knuckles harden into firmness as he clutches her to his twin hearts.   

Finally he has saved her, not the other way around for once.  It’s incredible to him, how she dangerously entered time’s scar tissue, producing echoes of her real self.

The miracle is that this is no echo he’s holding now.  This is the real Clara in his arms.  She has forgotten some things.  She is confused and she is hurt, but she is real, his impossible girl.

The Doctor’s eyes close with undulating emotion for long moments.  As they reopen though, he sees something that make his eyes widen with shock and urgency of mind to get away.

No.  Not something.

Someone.

Clara doesn’t understand it as they lessen their hold on each other.  She asks questions that he has to redirect.  It is not about the actual name of birth, but the one that is chosen, the promise to keep.  And this version did not keep to that.  It is his secret.  He starts to explain, but then-

It arises and encompasses her, the exhaustion and the physical pain of what has happened.  She starts to sway and the alarmed Doctor rapidly sweeps her up protectively into his arms.

Before departing, he listens a bit to the other, and gives protest.

After the volatile exchange, the Doctor walks away, carrying the faint Clara in his arms.  This is not the time.  He shouldn’t even be here.  Neither should she.  He looks down, noticing the fractional twisting of her leg and how in her face there is pale stillness.

…

It is many moments later that outside of the cavernous containment, the Doctor has no choice but to wake her.

“Clara…”

Nothing.

He grits his lips.  “Clara.”

“Mmm…”

Her murmur.

The Doctor sighs, raising his voice again.  “Clara, I am sorry.  But I need you to wake now.”

She looks up finally, a tiny pinch of a smile upon her face, her fingers rising to his cheek.  “Doctor?”

It can’t help but make him smile too before she loses hers, noticing in frightened awe what they’re standing in front of.  “Doctor?”

“It’s like a vortex.”  He tells her busily.  “Well, not entirely.  Not even something in honesty I can fully explain.  It’s the only passage though back to the Tardis, back to Vastra, Jenny and Strax.”

Shaking her head, Clara quietly murmurs.  “They were dead, Jenny and Strax.”

Fingering her cheek softly he whispers.  “Not anymore.  You brought them back.”

“And River?”

For a handful of seconds he remembers the kiss, yet no longer.  The Doctor does not do love well.  Loss hurts every time.  “River is resting like she should be.  Finally.”

“Oh.”  Clara focuses on the lanky, but oddly strong arm that grips her shoulders and keeps her close to his chest.  “She was your wife?”

“Yes, Clara.  I told you.  Ex.”

“But-

He shakes his head, a finger pushing against Clara’s lips gently.  “No.  Now is not the time.  Clara, can you try to walk?  I know you are injured.  I know you are tired.  You have every right to be, but I don’t trust carrying you through there.”

He gestures forward, and Clara stares at it, the black-gray ominous cloud that seems to lead to nowhere.  “That man.  You said he was you?”

“Clara.”  The Doctor speaks insistently.  “Now is not the time.”

“But he is you?”  She does not give up.

“Yes.”  After all they’ve gone through together the Doctor doesn’t feel much like holding back secrets anymore.  “Me, but not the Doctor.”

“What?”  Her eyebrows hitch with confusion.

The Doctor gently brushes back her falling hair.  “No answer I give now will make sense Clara.  Please just trust me.”

“I always do…well almost.”  She whispers, feeling a kiss graze the top of her hair.  “Will it hurt?”  She gestures to the dark cloud blocking their way.

“No.  Not at all.”  He smiles reassuringly.

“You’re lying.”  She states flatly.

The Doctor gives an answering wink.  “Clever Clogs.”

“Okay.”  She lets out with a sigh, pushing at his arm. 

The Doctor carefully brings her down to the ground, releasing her from his arms, but keeping a firm hold of her shoulder and back until Clara is able to stand on her own. 

“Can we hold hands?”

He smiles, before gripping her hand firmly in his and whispering against it, “That, Clara, is why I said I can’t hold you in my arms.  You could be ripped from them.  But if we’re holding on tight to each other, making the way together, then-

“If we run together-

“Right my Impossible Girl.”

Determination hits her eyes as she whispers, “Then run you Clever Boy.  Run with me this time.”

His hand squeezes hers.  “Ready?”

“Dare me.”

He grins.  “I dare you Clara.”

“Let’s go.”  She tells him with new determination and they enter the dark cloud.

Within are the ghostly images of past regenerations, making the path cluttered and more difficult to navigate.  Neither lets go.  They ignore the brutally cold winds fiercely blowing at their clothing and icily scratching their bared skin.  Clara soon understands why he wanted her down upon the ground too.  They both need to be in a state of action to find the exit.  Both-

“Clara, there!”  He tells her as he spots the way, and even with her persistent limp she runs in the direction he points to.  Soon though, the distance greater than she first measured, the strain causes her to falter.  “Oh.”

“Clara, come on!”  The Doctor yells, keeping that one hand linked with hers.  She’s weak though, her injured leg and cold skin being brutally affected.

The Doctor grasps Clara’s shoulder, not entirely letting go of her hand with his other.  “Clara--almost there.”

She’s shivering, as the cloud’s surroundings are like a grave of freezing effect.  The pictures keep waving around them, slapping their skin furiously.  “Doctor--I—

“Clara.”  He keeps pulling her forward and she does her best to hold on, pretending that the invading shivers are not affecting her as they get closer and closer.  It’s a maze of black grayness around them all the way.  They push their way through. 

Until finally…

They are out.

…

“You’re freezing.”  He mutters, as they stand on the other side now.  So is he, but at least he has a coat on.  Clara has nothing more than short sleeves.  Finding one of the taller tombstones, he helps her lean again it. 

“Doctor?”

“We’ll be to the Tardis soon, Clara.  That is if they waited for us.  Let’s hope.” 

Shivers blow out of her lips and soon the coat is her blanket and the Doctor’s arms are holding her up again.  She doesn’t resist, exhausted and pained.  “Doctor…”

“Almost there Clara.”

“Mmm…”  She murmurs and he knows as soon as the pressure of her head hits his chest that Clara has dropped to unconsciousness.  Seeing the Tardis, he breathes relief.  “Oh you Old Girl!  They waited!”

*

When he enters the Tardis there is a rush of excitement around him, but then they see the state of Clara, and the Doctor is barking out orders.  Her leg, check it and splint or wrap it as necessary.  Check her vitals.  Make sure she is breathing alright in her state of unconsciousness.  Get the blankets pulled down from the bed of the room he enters so he can tuck her in.  Keep her warm.  There should be a spare pair of pajamas from a…late companion of female persuasion.  They will assure her comfort.

The Doctor stays for a long time, making sure all his commands are followed, and then finally when Strax reassures that she’ll have a bit of a limp, but there is no danger to life, the Doctor breathes a sigh of relief. 

As the others turn away for a second he goes to his impossible girl, clasping her hand, and pressing a kiss against her warming brow, now that her temperature is returning to ordinary state.  “My Clara…”  He whispers with a tear falling down his cheek that he pushes away with a grimace when he leaves the room.

*

It is hours later, while he works on his damaged Tardis, that he hears the voice of Madame Vastra.  “Doctor?”

“How is she?”  He grunts out, holding onto his sonic screwdriver and a piece of the Tardis’s mechanism. 

“She’s awake now.”

“Good.”  He whispers, but does not move forward to see her.

“Doctor?”  Madame Vastra asks sharply and he turns around with a furious glare. 

“I never should have brought Clara here.”

“What?”

He yanks and pulls at the mechanism before dropping it in a huff.  “All the danger I caused her…I had to come to rescue you and the others, but Clara, she didn’t have to come too.”

Letting out a sigh, Madame Vastra walks forward.  The recriminations are nothing novel to hear.  For years now the Doctor has blamed himself for every mishap, every accident.  “Didn’t she want to come?”

He nods his head furiously.  “Yes, but it wasn’t right.”

“Doctor.”

“She could have DIED!”  He screams, before lowering his head, pressing it against the wall, his shoulders heaving.  “Again and again.”  He whispers brokenly.  “A thousand times more.  She died for me.  She lived and died.  Why?  Why would she do that for me?  I’ve already lost River.  And Amy.  And Rory.  And Rose and---oh—so so many.  Now Clara.  I could have-

“You didn’t.”  Madame Vastra whispers gently, touching his huddled shoulder.  “Doctor.”

He doesn’t face her, doesn’t sob anymore, and doesn’t let out another tear.  And she knows why.  The Doctor hates for his emotions to be known.  Only a very select few have seen the entirety of that side of him, and it’s only been for mere moments.  Nothing more.  He is a man of secrets and urgently contained passion. 

“Why?  Why would she do it, jump into my time stream?”  He asks again and Vastra clears her throat, telling him firmly,

“Maybe because she does not see you the way you see yourself.  She knows that you are not the monster you like to think you are. 

Maybe because like River and the others--Clara loves you.”

It still hurts him.  After seeing that other part of himself.  After knowing just a few steps away was the outcome.  The blood-ugly outcome.  It still aches to know that Clara died a thousand deaths just to save him, maybe more.  That she is now devoid of some of her memories because she decided to become the impossible girl.  Soufflé girl.  Dalek Asylum girl.  Constantly saving girl. 

He snickers at Madame Vastra’s last words.  Laughs them away.  Until she leaves him alone.  

And then he just sits there, pressing his screwdriver against the mechanism again. He has to get it working.

The sooner they get out of Trenzalore, the better.

*

It is one week later when Clara wakes again.  The first time she had awful nightmares and so the Doctor made a request of Strax.  Give her something strong enough to let her sleep for days so hopefully the dreams will have time to fade or grow weaker.

Now, the medicine worn off, Clara wakes to find herself in a room of gold and orange.  She swears she has never been here before, but then she also has never spent a whole night in the Tardis before. 

It takes time to get her feet to walking order, after rolling up the too long pant legs.  She pushes up against the stark furniture before feeling her equilibrium resettling.  She is in pale sleepwear, pants and top that are larger sized than is normal for her.  A dull robe is draped over a chair of shining silver and orange material.  Clara walks forward, no longer feeling the hurt in her leg, but her memories are scattered, and the most recent ones are slow to come. 

She asks to the silent air,

“Doctor?”

Nothing and nobody answers.  Clara shivers a bit, but then tells herself to calm down.  It’s the Tardis she’s on.  She knows it well.  And she’s safe then.  The Doctor must be somewhere nearby. 

She makes her way slowly down the hall to the console, but he is not there.  She hears the low murmur of the ship flying and looks up.  “Hate me a little less now?”

The Tardis just gives a low murmur.  Clara smiles.  “Progress.  But I think I finally get it.  Your first reaction.”

The Tardis makes another engine murmuring sound and then nothing. 

Clara treads down hall after hall, thinking she might get lost when suddenly she is outside.  And he is there.  The Doctor.  Her Doctor that she knows the most.  Who always sees her.

There are plants everywhere, golden, green and silver, and grasses of fiery red.  The sky blazes orange.  The trees, their leaves are magnificent metallic silver.  In the background are mountains capped with snow.  At the forefront is a voluminous dome holding within what seems a capitol of activity. 

He is sitting upon some of the red grasses in pensive quiet thought, one leg folded underneath and the other extended as he leans against a tree.  Breezes are few, but the air is sweet and cool enough to endure.  Not sure what has happened, how she can be outside now, Clara stumbles forward, gaining the Doctor’s notice.

“Clara.”

“How can we be outside?  I was just inside.  Where are we?”  She asks with shock.

The Doctor brings out his hand, gesturing.  “Come here Clara.”

She walks to him and sits down upon the grass, letting out a holler of shock as a huge insect goes flying by.  The Doctor’s hand steadies against her arm.  “Easy there.  It’s not real.  None of this is.”

“What?”

He reflects quietly, wearing his bowtie and all, but not his purple coat now.  “It’s a picture, an image.  Preserved.  Sort of like River was.  It’s not real.  It can’t be.”  He murmurs the last words darkly.

“Why?”  She asks, looking to his face, but his eyes are focused elsewhere. 

“Because it’s Gallifrey.  The place where I grew up.  And that no longer exists.”

Clara takes a look around, whispering with wonder, “It’s beautiful.”  And oddly familiar. 

“Yes.”  He murmurs with a smile, before his face darkens.  “Looks can be very deceiving.”

“What?”  She asks with a furrow to her brow.

The Doctor laughs sardonically.  “No, it is.”

Feeling tense, his mood unpredictable now, Clara asks, “Strax and-

“Took them back to Victorian times.”  He tells her quickly.  “Where they are quite at home.”

“Oh.”  She states, rubbing her head.  “Doctor.  I have these pieces of memories, but they’re not whole.”  She takes it out from her borrowed robe pocket.  “I have this leaf you gave me that ties me to family, but it’s not all there.  And…I want to bake a soufflé.”

He smiles widely at the last part as finally his eyes turn in her direction.  The smile is tied to more than just the comment as he now takes in just how big the pajamas are on her.  Still it can’t hide those prominent little mysterious curves that make her look quite fetching in all those tight little skirts she likes to wear.

Okay.  Stop.  This isn’t the time for naughty thinking.  He’s a thousand years old for spacey wacey’s sake.  Not some hormonal earth boy.  And they just departed earlier this week from his grave, not a school of adolescent learning.  “You’ve been whipped through time Clara.  It would have killed most humans.  But maybe you’re like Rory.”

“Who’s Rory?  Wait---I think I’ve heard that name before.”

He shakes his head, not wanting to go there in his thoughts, back to one of the most painful days of this regeneration’s cycle, the day he lost the Ponds.  “Never mind.  The important thing is you survived it.  Just your memories—I’m sorry.”

His fingers drop down and she reaches out, holding onto them.  “It’s not your fault.”  The bond she feels with him is stronger than ever before.  He truly is her lifeline now.  “Maybe I’ll get them back.”

“Maybe.”  He whispers softly, reaching down and clasping her hand, kissing it.  Clara looks up to him afterward and letting out a relenting sigh the Doctor pulls her against his side, his arm wrapped warmly around her shoulder in a gesture of necessity.  “I shouldn’t have followed you after meeting you those first times, with the Daleks and in Victorian London.  I should have let you go.”

Clara’s brow furrows, her head shaking negative.  “No.”

He lets out a breath, feeling her head resting against his shoulder and chest.  “But you’re my impossible girl and I couldn’t.  I’m just a selfish Time Lord.  Actually Clara I wanted to protect you.  I had no idea you were going to enter my time stream to save me again and again.  If I had I never-

“Stop.”  Her finger touches his lip, pushes hard against it for a moment before she brings it down.  “You had Strax put me to sleep.”  His eyes show surprise, getting her to comment further.  “Thought you were so clever, but I knew, and I allowed it, because you’re right that the dreams were awful.”

“Clara.”

“They’re mostly gone now.  I’m sleeping okay also so you can stop worrying.  And stop blaming yourself.  I entered your time stream knowing what I was doing.  I did it because it was my choice.”  Her hand touches his chest.  “I knew it Doctor.  Like I now know why your name is so important.  The one you chose.  I know your darkest secret, sort of anyway.  And I know you went through the time stream to save me.  We’re even.”  She whispers with a smarting look.

“Are we?”  He can’t help but get a glimmer of fun into his voice. 

“Yes.”  She states firmly.

Their eyes find each other for a long time as silently it is confirmed.  The saving went full circle.  They are starting now in a whole new way, with a bond unbreakable.  Affection comes with that.

“My Clara.” He plants a fast kiss above her brow, pulling her in some more.

“Hmmm…”  She murmurs, before taking a look cursory around and getting a twinkle to her eye.

“What?” He asks apprehensively.

“This is keener than a box, even.”

“What?” He still looks confused.

“Oh come on Doctor.”  She casts focus to the simulated exterior environment.  “You probably knew I was going to wake soon and so you set it all up.  Red grassy fields, colorful plants, snow topped mountains.  Where’s the wine?”

“Clara!”  He’s already ranting, getting her to grin inwardly.

“Actually I don’t care much for wine.”  She comments randomly.  “Did you bring a blanket too?  Pillows?”  She bumps his hip with hers.  “Your sonic screwdriver?”

His face scrunches up in that tight way and she laughs.  “In all its stimulating emerald light.”

“Clara!

He starts, but she pushes her finger against his mouth, pressing a warm kiss upon his cheek.  “Had you.  Down boy.”

He shakes his head and wonders if she gets it.  Never has he been for the meek or demure.  Oh if someone is vulnerable he will happily protect them, but the type has never attracted him really. 

On Gallifrey the women were often as smart as the men, if not smarter, and they also knew how to use their wits with ounces of cleverness.  The gender gap was just a little less prevalent than it is on earth, which made him always seek someone of the opposite sex who could go at him with finesse. 

Clara is that, almost perfectly that.  And so even despite that inner voice that tells him to joke it away, to not feel something, he jumps now as soon as she starts to float away.  Her bit of teasing over she is ready to dance far from him.  But he has always been the dancer, the spry one. 

She doesn’t get far before his hand is in a fixed grip upon her waist. 

“Maybe I did bring a blanket.”  He lies and yet she doesn’t seem at all offended by it.

His whispers bring a whiff of warm air across her face that causes a little shiver to run through Clara’s body.

He feels that shiver and likes it.  Her bit of lusting murmur is nice too, until finally his mind gets through.  Don’t get attached.  They always fade away. 

And so now he draws away, retreating far back into his corner of time’s space.  Clara sees right through it though even as he turns it to joking about her sleepwear.

“Ah, those are just a little too big for you.”

She pulls at the loose material.  “Yeah, I noticed it too.  Fitted for someone else?”

“Amy.”  He whispers quietly, a shadow of grief falling over his brow before he dances away yet again, getting a look in his eye.

The image of Gallifrey alters, from day to night, the sky glowing with hues of orange and fantastically blue.  Clara gasps at the gigantic moon that nearly eclipses the land.  Another lurks behind, and within the illuminated sky are star tracks, lines of light. 

Clara smiles at them with wonder, whispering, “Oh my Stars…”

The Doctor smiles too, telling her something.

A tear falls down her cheek.  “My Mum, really?”

“Yes Clara.”  He echoes softly.

But this girl next to him is no echo.  She is alive and the real Clara Oswald.  His impossible girl, breathing and living.

“This is Gallifrey.  Where you grew up as a boy?”

The Doctor simply nods and looks away, his eyes lifting to the huge moon that was his night light as a child. 

The picture is illusion and the grasses, even though they can be felt, are not real, and yet he still remembers running back and forth in them, nights and days.  For Time Lords never required as much sleep as humans. 

Gallifreyans lived life to the fullest, filling their grand minds with the compass of time, how to bend it.  Twist the fabric of what is supposed to be.  Create things of scientific majesty. 

And yet it all started as just a regular child, of Gallifrey that is.  Being silly.  Getting into trouble.  Spending time with old friends, well not so old then.

“Doctor.”  Her voice cuts through his reverie.  He prepares to end the picture, for it’s nothing more than that.  An echo of the life he once lived.  An image before everything became destroyed. 

She stops him though, keen to that his sonic screwdriver helps him produce it.  Her hand grips his wrist and he stares, but she shakes her head.  “No.  Don’t get rid of it.  Not yet.  Doctor, I know this place.  I know it just like this.  The image you’ve created here.  It’s different than the first one.  Doctor, that building in the distance…just feet away from where we are…”

He lets out a sigh that encompasses years of life, and years of loss.  “My home Clara.  When I was a boy.”

“I know.”

His brow creases.  “What do you mean?”

“I was there Doctor.  I stood right outside that house.  You didn’t see me.  Not at first anyway.”

He shakes his head busily, once more lifting his screwdriver, but her hand is firm on his.  “No.”

He tells her with a wry smile, “Clara, you only saw me before I left Gallifrey…borrowing…the Tardis.  I remember that.  You did it to change what the Great Intelligence did.  I know that Clara.  I was no boy then, but an old man, earth-wise that is, by Gallifrey standards, a spry fellow.”

“No.”  She reaches forward now, touching and containing his hearts under her palm.  “Doctor, I had to go back before.  He tried to make havoc with your childhood and I was put into your world, that very first day you started running.  Down your mountain home that is.  You were no more than twelve or thirteen.”  She looks up, seeing how it sits so queerly on the mountainside, just to half point, his house.  Below are…

“Rocks.”  He answers, almost as if reading her mind.  “Rocks of every color.  I marveled at them when I was a boy.  I remember finding them and there was this girl there too and she was laughing with me and we-

She reaches up now, fingers at his chin with affection.

“You?”  The Doctors asks with wonder and she smiles, recalling how she and that boy argued about the snow and so they climbed up higher, reaching it, and together discovered it wasn’t all sludge like he thought, but crystal white under Gallifrey’s sensational sun.  And so she was the victor, for she bet him one of those Gallifreyan rocks it would shine.  And it did.

“Me.”  She explains, not able to stop touching his skin now, reaching forward more and grazing her fingers against his cheek, delighting at the experience because for once the Doctor is not flinching or dancing away. 

“He, the Great Intelligence tried to prevent you from seeing the wonder of their colors.  He wanted you to believe it was all gray.  I couldn’t let that happen.  If you didn’t see all the purples, the golds and the reds and browns, you would never have that clever curiosity you have now.  You wouldn’t be the Doctor.  I wanted to stay, but it wouldn’t let me.  The time stream whipped me up and carried me to another place.”

His hands come out.  They grasp her face with amazement and ache.  “You fell off the mountain the next day.  I saw it.”

“Yeah.”

“You died Clara.”

“The echo of me did.”  She whispers and he presses his forehead against hers, shaking his head.  “Clara, why?”  It wrenches out of his mouth.  “Why did you do it?  You had to be terrified.  You had to know there was a chance you would never come back.  I didn’t know if you would.”

She can feel a few of his tears and so she lifts her face away from his, pulls back just a bit to contain his narrow jaw.  “You’re so clever.  Such a clever boy and yet you don’t know the most obvious things Doctor.  How blind you can be sometimes.”

He stares at her, recalling something, the mountainside, the words spoken before the fall.

“Run you clever boy.  And remember me.”

But it wasn’t just that.  The day before,

“I want to see them.  Come on.  Run down with me and we’ll see just what color they are.  You swear they’re not gray?”

“I swear.”

“Alright.  Let’s find out.”

“Oh.”

“Give me your hand.  It’s steep.  Give me your hand and that way you won’t fall.”

“Oh that’s clever.  You like me, don’t you?  Wanting to hold my hand and all.”

“Oy, shut up.”

“No, you.”

“Get down by yourself then.”

Clara can see it in his eyes as she fingers the defined contours of his face more now with the pursuit of bringing him in closest proximity.  As her fingers have one task, her eyes partake in another, a trade-off of peering into his eyes and pondering his speaking lips. 

“I let go of your hand and you nearly tumbled down the hill.  So did I.”

“Yeah.  But you were faster to get back your balance and you turned around and ran to me, and held my hand.  And we ran all the way down the mountain together.  You and I Doctor.  You just weren’t the Doctor then.”

“I never told you my name.”

She shakes her head, personal space’s invasion in full attack mode.  Hope he doesn’t rebut and launch a counter offense, bringing in that skittish little dance to get away, for now she is like the cat who seeks the mouse.  She doesn’t want to stop.  Can’t.

“I never told you mine.”

The only problem is, sitting as they are now, he still is so much taller, and his lips are just a bit too far away.  Stories of the past, the haunting beauty of Gallifrey all around, the wonder in his eyes that makes them shine like a star path’s line of light, and just him, her precious Doctor, Clara doesn’t want to stop.

Her hands reach around the sides of his face, tangle into his hair and for a minute he reacts.  The Doctor starts to pull away, but then there is that gentle tug of her fingers and he knows he’s conquered. 

There is the whisper of those lips…a sweet utterance of “clever boy…don’t run from me…please don’t run…” and he forfeits for the truth is he’s nothing more than a sentimental fool who sometimes yearns for touch like this. 

And she is like a chemical invasion of everything he tries to resist.  Impossible girl, mystifying him again.  Getting his emotions to do a crazy caper of excitement.

He lets go.  Suddenly he lets go and Clara knows she can find victory.  Slowly her mouth meets with his.  And it is like the lightning energy of traveling through his time stream. 

For once there are no flails.  His lips careen upon hers with reaction, and his hands hold tight to her waist and backside.  She twists her body to get it to even better position, and he rotates with her, greedily not letting go.  It’s only when her breath starts to heave that she breaks from it, gazing into his eyes with wonder.

“Doctor.”

And that’s enough to make the well-lived alien man’s mind turn to the annoying practical again.  “Clara, we can’t.”

“Why?”

“I’m a thousand years old Clara.  You have your whole life ahead of you.”

She grunts angrily at that, pressing into his shoulder.  “Listen Chin Boy, I jumped into your time stream.  In some ways I’m just as old as you now, having lived life after life just to save you.  And you’re forgetting something else Doctor.”

He can’t help but smile with desire’s fiery urge to give in.  Her daring always does something to him and oh how he craves and relishes those cheeky comebacks.  “What’s that?” 

She’s not retreating and so now he doesn’t want to either.  It’s easy to forget with Clara why he can’t do things.  It’s easy enough that now his fingers daringly edge the bottom of her lip, tracing a terribly intimate line.

“I’m the impossible girl.”

He nods his head slowly, eyes filled with clandestine flaming wants as they jump between her eyes and lips, a back and forth tango.  “My Clara.”

“And you’re my Doctor.”

He gives in fully, her face and body so near, illuminated in the twin moons of Gallifrey, getting him to surrender to feeling, instead of practicality.  He bends down enough to kiss along her chin, slowly, slowly making the delicious climb to her lips. 

The hesitation is just about extinguished now as Clara is finally given the gift of the Doctor’s physical expertise.  There’s no inexperience in how he kisses.  His hands know where to grasp, face, shoulders, back, and his mouth knows how to part and close in, his tongue sliding past hers, teasing.  And then oh how that fantastic mouth starts it all over again. 

His alien lips pull in and push out, they soften and firm up.  Wet warmth floods the inside of hers, trickling intimacy over her tongue and making the most sensitive parts of her body flush with shivery reaction. 

For a moment his hand rolls down from her shoulder, and comes near her breast, giving her a shock of delight that he tempers with a gentle caress and yet still she is in the lap of pleasure.  She doesn’t want to let go of this moment, ever, the Doctor full-on kissing her, making her yearn.

Neither does he really, but it happens again.  Even as she moans, even as he lets out a frustrated grunt at the actions he is making, he pulls away. 

“Cla--ra.”

In his voice is the roughest ache.  It’s practically uncivilized and full of madness. 

She watches him wrench his hands through his hair, and she catches them gently, pulling them away.  He’s scared.  In fact sometimes he’s absolutely terrified.  

When her echo of Victorian period got him to step down from his cloud it took time for him to relent for he had been dealt the most awful blow sometime earlier.  

She looks down upon her too big sleepwear.  Borrowed.  Amy Pond.  That loss nearly drew out his light of energy.  When she fell into that world and met him she soon knew her purpose.

To bring the Doctor back from the dead.  To bring his spirit of adventure and purpose back to life. 

The Doctor lowers his head miserably.  There was no displeasure in that kiss, in fact the sweetest pain of joy.  And that’s why right now he can’t continue it.  Something Clara seems to know because her hands reach out for his shoulders and she hugs him fiercely to her heart.  Letting out a sigh, the Doctor slumps into her sweet and protective embrace.

“Clara.”

“I know.”  She whispers sadly, because she’s seen it now.  She gets it now.  Every life he affected, every one he changed, every loss that came.  Every time…

He cried. 

“Caring for someone is dangerous.” He states suddenly, warningly, moving out of her embrace, an arm’s length away now.

“Why don’t you let others worry about the danger?”  She asks strongly.

He shakes his head with a wry smile.  “No.  I mean it’s dangerous for me.  Because every time I care and I lose someone--it just makes me madder.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”  She tells him plaintively, that brave smile upon her lips and in her eyes, and Gallifrey’s nightly illumination seems to approve.  “We’re traveling companions.  Seeing the world, seeing the universe.  Saving it.  Together.  You and I.  I was born again and again to save you Doctor.  How do you know that means I won’t be with you at Trenzalore in the final days?”

He shakes his head furiously.  “I don’t want you there.”

“I’m Soufflé girl.  Just have to wait to see what happens.”  She smiles confidently, her smile contagious enough to make him feel his own.

“My brave Clara.”  He brings his arms out in surrender to his feelings and tightly wraps her into them, closing his eyes at the overwhelming pleasure of being together.

The kiss was kind of cosmic.  Both kisses actually.  Cosmically fantastic. It was like page one of learning, discovering and traveling each other’s deepest intimacies.  Desire’s most tantalizing road.

 She wants more. 

But to make haste with him now would be faulty and selfish.  She can wait.  Time hasn’t run out yet.  No need to rush the lovely ride to passion’s twists and love’s depths.

The silence fills with music.  He murmurs that it’s a tune from Gallifrey, so majestic, so room encompassing.

And she whispers back,

“I know.

I remember.”

*

She was the boss.  So sneakily stated.  She was the boss?  Well if she was the boss, who had the key, eh?  Him, so yeah, HE was the boss. 

Who could fly the Tardis?  Only him.  Um, hmmm, Clara did fly it those couple of times, but how could anyone call that flying?  Her feet hadn’t been on the floor and it took him practically a half hour to get things settled.  Okay, a lie.  Only five minutes at most.  However, when the two of them were sailing through the air chaotically on the outside of the Tardis, as she flew it, he swore even the ghost was shaking with fear.

“So you found her again?”

The Doctor broke out of his musings, answering rapidly.  “No.  That’s not the same Clara of course.  Because there’s no way it could be.  That’s impossible.  She’s just Clara—Oswald.”

Madame Vastra’s green scaly lizard eyebrows went up with that kind of knowing puzzlement she liked to show.  This argument was going to get weird no doubt, the Doctor thought, as he still hadn’t taken the cube apart enough to figure out how to get it back together in a way that time made sense.  Er, the cube of Clara Oswald.

“She’s not the same person.”

“She’s not?  And yet the name, Clara, again?”

“Coincidence.  Simple coincidence.  I think.”

Madame Vastra asked with a touch of shock, “You don’t know for certain Doctor?” 

After all, he was the Doctor.  It was quite alarming that he still had no idea who the girl was and yet was traveling with her.  Perhaps…Madame Vastra’s subsequent thought made a knowing smile surface upon her lips.

“What?”  The Doctor asked apprehensively.  That smile could be troublesome.

“You’re practically jumping to get away from here.”

“Eh?”

“You’re smitten with her.”

The Doctor immediately feigned innocence.  “Smitten.  With who?”

Madame Vastra was not one to be fooled though so easily.  “Clara of course.”

Talk about the most preposterous thing to say.  The Doctor laughed hard, his eyes wrinkling with the action and his big chin bouncing.  “Oh right..ha ha ha…tidyo I don’t think so!  Too short, too bossy and that nose!  Wooo!  No.”

It didn’t work, Madame Vastra seeing through the wandering protest instantly.  And so she should probably disapprove, right? 

Actually it brought out an element to the doctor she hadn’t witnessed in a very long time.  A refreshing element.  His eyes were bouncing with rainbow excitement, the desire to travel with his new companion so evident.  The funk was gone.

Oh companionship.  She had that with her beloved, oh so tantalizing…she looked amazing in her catsuit…Jenny.  Now it seemed the Doctor might be finding that kind of relationship too with Clara.  It was quite a sight to see, but as a keen lizard woman who had been in many interplanetary battles and such, Madame Vastra had to err caution too of course.

“It is quite a relief to see you this way after all your sulking for so many years.”

The Doctor took offense to that right away, giving a 1000 year old grimace.  “Eh, I don’t sulk.  I was just having an off period…for err…some years or so.  I—well I’m the Doctor!  I’ve saved billions of lives and the planet Earth, and so many other planets time and time again.  I can take some time off if I want to!  Now I’m back on.”

“Back on what precisely?”  Madame Vastra asked smoothly.  “Clara?”

Ooooh…that sounded a bit naughty.  “Yes!”  The Doctor answered excitedly with a lift of his finger and then catching Madame Vastra’s lizard eyebrow lift, shook his head furiously, finger way down.  “No.  No.  Not on Clara.  Not---oh just leave it at that.”

Madame Vastra laughed some.  The Doctor could be quite amusing at times.  However there was some seriousness to this matter too.  She straightened up, standing closer to him.  “Doctor.  As I said, it is quite refreshing to see you no longer sulking.  Just be careful.  Clara still is an enigma, a possible threat.  You and I both know there are many in the universe who would love to trap you in some way or another.  Err on the side of caution.”

The Doctor sighed.  Madame Vastra was simply looking out for him, something he was grateful for.  But Clara was not a threat.  She was not even the other Oswalds he met before.  It was impossible for her to be so.  His big chin was unyielding on that, and his eyes too, mouth fixed.

“Well, I’ll take no more of your time as your focus is obviously elsewhere.”  Madame Vastra gestured to the Tardis with meaning, getting the Doctor to huff, before he smiled a little too widely. 

“Right, well until the next mystery or whatever it may be.  See you!”

He raced a little too gleefully to the Tardis, getting Madame Vastra to shake her head with a small smile.  Let’s hope none of this was any sort of ensnarement for the Doctor seemed quite happy.  And that pleased her for if anyone deserved some peace away from the world’s troubles, it was the Doctor indeed.

*

When the Doctor entered the Tardis he could hear quite a bit of grunting and complaint. 

“Did you do this too?  First you turn my hair into a mess of curls atop my head like a whacky bird’s nest and now you won’t even let me undress.  What’s next you old-

“Oy!”  The Doctor ran over, interrupting fast.  “I told you not to insult her Clara!  She doesn’t like it.  And don’t blame her for what happened with your hair.”

Clara turned on the Doctor.  “One minute I was curling it.  The next I had ringlets so tight because she turned up the heat in the room to highest humidity, I looked like I had just escaped a rainforest!  And that crazy Mrs. Gillyflower kept it that way when she tried to turn me into  one of her apocalyptic brainless dolls of perfection.”

To the first part of that last sentence the Doctor gave a fast shake of his head as he pulled the levers to get them out of Victorian Yorkshire.  “No.  No.  It wasn’t that.  Probably the curling iron I gave you.  Told you it was so many years old.  Left over from another companion.”

“Who?”  Clara asked curiously.

The Doctor just waved his hand now that they were flying in space.  “Oh I don’t know.  Been so many.”

“With curling irons?”  Clara asked inquisitively, fisting her hands at her waist, showing perhaps a smidgen of jealousy.

“And more.”  The Doctor airily answered, moving his long legs in some kind of clumsy awkward and yet queerly enough elegant spin.  It would be a baffling sight, how he got all those to mix so well, if Clara wasn’t so accustomed to it by now.  She moved her tongue over her lip, seeming a bit nervous, before giving a bright smile. 

The Doctor took a step back.  Typical Clara.  Shy one minute.  Calculating idea-seeking the next.  Clever Clogs she was indeed.  “Doctor?”

“Yes?”  He fumbled with his hands as his feet did little half spins.

“Would you help me?”  Clara turned around rapidly before her more cautious side could make her change her mind.  “My bustle is in the way.  Can’t reach the hooks.  Could you?”

She turned with a sweet smile so that her back was to him.  It caused his hands to fumble even more as he stepped up to reach her, trying to not look overly excited, giving what was meant to be a smooth reply.  “Oh.  Sure.  I can do that.”

It didn’t quite come out all that calmly, a bit of squeak in his voice at the end.

“So what took you so long?”  Clara asked, wanting to fill the silent air as the Tardis’s flight pattern at this particular was smooth sailing.  Sometimes she wheezed like a panting animal.  Doctor told her that was because the Tardis was so old.  Hmmm, Clara had to wonder if maybe the Doctor was just doing something wrong.  It wouldn’t be the first time.  After all he kept getting them lost.

Hooks.  The Doctor thought as he took in the back of Clara’s gown, shoulders bent because she was so much smaller than him.  Of course hooks.  It was a Victorian dress after all.  They don’t put a zipper on a Victorian dress.  Just hooks, many many hooks.  Perhaps a hundred.  No, that was ridiculously stupid, but there were definitely a lot. 

The Doctor decided to pretend he was working on the Tardis.  These were Tardis hooks.  Just that.  And he wasn’t fidgeting.  Not at all.  He was dealing with complicated machinery.  “Oh Vastra just wanted to have a word with me.”  Okay a quarter ways down, skin started to reveal itself in itty bitty proportions.  Not very Tardis-like.

Each time he undid a hook his fingers brushed against her skin in just the slightest touch.  They were like whispers being blown.  Clara stood still through it without outward reaction, thinking of what she noticed in Sweetville and telling the Doctor about it.  “She did that thing like you do.  Actually so did Jenny.  And even Strax some, although he was sort of hard to figure out.”

Hmmm, about maybe half more of the Tardis hooks.  In that moment the Tardis gave a small murmur.  The Doctor swore it sounded like disapproval.  Oh the old girl, she didn’t like so much having a new girl.  But Clara and she were getting along better now, somewhat that is.  She didn’t lock her out anymore.  That was progress. 

The more he revealed the more the Doctor couldn’t help pondering on Clara’s skin, forgetting the Tardis.  It was nice.  Soft.  Human.  Unblemished except for-

“Doctor?”  Clara asked with a rush of breath, feeling his hand make more contact with her upper back, before it skittered away. 

“Oh.”  Tempting skin.  The Doctor nodded his head busily, getting back to his task without touching so much.  “He’s a potato head.  Of course he’s hard to figure out.”

Clara needed to talk.  If she kept talking she wouldn’t pay attention so much to what he was doing, and she liked talking anyway.  But oh, everything with the Doctor sometimes was so complicated, even just talking.  “Yes.  Okay.  So he is.  But Madame Vastra and Jenny, they looked at me sometimes the same as you do.  Like they’d seen me before.  Do I remind them too of that person who is dead that you once mentioned?”

The Doctor’s hands stopped moving as slowly Clara turned back to him, her face questioning, uneasiness hitting her lips and eyes.  Well of course.  He told her she reminded him of someone dead.  That wasn’t exactly the most comforting thing to hear, but sometimes he wasn’t that great at being sensitive speaking.  So now he showed it instead.  His hands reached out, touching her cheeks, both strongly cupping them.

Oh, the Doctor’s hands.  Clara thought about it.  One minute he could be awkward and the next, like now, he was in control, reaching out to her specifically.

“Clara, I’m almost sorry I told you that.”  His fingers rolled around her cheeks, rubbing here and there.  Gently.  The Doctor was overwhelmed sometimes by how much his fingers itched to reach out to Clara, hold her face steady so he could gaze into her eyes without disturbance.

Those hands were still tendering against her skin, but Clara’s adamant determination of who she was and why that was important surfaced thoroughly now.  “I told you before that if you want me to travel with you just because-

His finger found her lip, stilled on it firmly, getting Clara’s eyes to widen some.  “It’s not because of any ghost Clara.  It’s just you.  I want to travel with you.”

She nodded her head and turned away, feeling his hands fall with the motion. 

The Doctor’s eyes fixed with thought as soon as she wasn’t looking.  The Tardis made another one of those weird sounds like it was reacting to his thoughts.  The Doctor gave a grimace at it.  Often he lied.  The Tardis knew that well.   It wasn’t a total lie though.  Mysteries had to be solved.  Clara’s mystery.  But it wasn’t like he didn’t enjoy traveling with her at all.  To the contrary.  He enjoyed it very much.

The hooks unclipped faster now under the Doctor’s working hands.  As he got down to the lowest part, Clara reached up and undid her wildly curling hair so it was no longer bound and up.  It fell to brush over her shoulders, a bit shorter now with the curl. 

Dare me to?  The Doctor thought suddenly of asking, but did not as now with the dress entirely unhooked, Clara’s back was a full picture to him, a divine portrait.  His hand traveled upward, slowly, without any dare,  like she was a mountain cascade to venture, enjoy the sight of.  But then it stopped.

Clara’s breath hitched, holding there.  This mad man.  Sometimes she wanted to get far away from him, all his oddities.  Other times she wanted to push backward and feel them flood her senses.  Like now. 

“What is this?”  The spot found, a blemish upon the otherwise untouched skin, the Doctor asked, his chin almost resting upon Clara’s shoulder as his lips moved near her cheek to whisper.

Clara’s expression was one of perplexity at first along with tingles of excitement.  His fingers were a bit cold, especially up higher.  The ends were warmer.  And she was half inclined to back up further to them.  “What-

Then she remembered, understanding what he was touching, that particular spot.  “Oh.  I loved the swings as a little girl.  Fell off one time.  Hit my back.  Not knowing there was some sharp plastic there on the ground.  Had to get a few stitches.  Cried all the way to hospital.  But my mum, she just kept brushing my hair away from my forehead, telling me it’d be alright.  And it was.”  Clara mused with a smile that tingled with warning wet tears.  They threatened to come, but her smile mostly pushed them away.  “She held my hand all the time as the physician did the work, let me squeeze as hard as I needed to.  I know.  Her hand was almost red when it was done.”

Her mum.  The Doctor knew Clara lost her mum.  He also knew what it was to lose.  Too many times.  His hand traveled up a little more, not comparing the hooks to any Tardis now, delving into the parchment imperfections of human skin.  Its beauty in Clara.  He was half inclined to kiss the mark, but just gave a little blow with his lips instead, inches away.

Clara’s eyes closed, the sensation of him so close, and that sudden warm air across her naked skin making her fill with sensations that were not unpleasant.  “Doctor-

“Done.  Finished.”  He stated now with certainty, jumping away and doing one of those little wild spins.  “All done Clara!  You can do whatever you wanted—to do now.”

“Bath.  I need a bath.”  Clara stated, her eyes watching him curiously as the Doctor now seemed more fidgety.  She kind of liked that.  Usually when he grew awkward she could be more audacious.  Now she could be the boss or at least feel more the boss.  “After that whole Sweetville debacle, uggghh…”  She gave a shake of her body in disgust, inadvertently dislodging the sleeve from her shoulder. 

The Doctor watched with goggle eyes as more skin was revealed.  “Er, yeah.”  He ran forward, pulling the sleeve back up before the dress totally gave way.

As he stepped away Clara could practically smell his nervousness.  It was all around them.  That had been a bit risky there, nearly having her dress fall off.  He protected her though, saved her like he kept wanting to and so now she was keen to turn it on.  That vibe.  “What about you?  Needing of a bath?”

The Doctor fiddled with the console, hearing the Tardis give out a grating sound that was almost like a snicker.  “Shut up.”

“What was that?”  Clara asked.

He turned around for just a quick moment, seeing her standing so near behind.  “Oh no, wasn’t talking to you.”

He went back to fiddling with the console even though it really didn’t need any fiddling at the moment.

“Then who were you—

Clara started to ask, and then stopped, looking up, eyes venturing there before she let them roll.  “Oh, you’re talking to your ship again.  Creepy.”

“You’ve talked to her before.”

Clara defended righteously.  “Well I had to when I wanted to save you from that ghost!  And you never answered my question.”

Question.  What question?  “Eh?” 

Her eyes gave a twinkle of clever interest.  Oh that voice.  Sometimes it held his 1000 years of age, contrasted with his quite intriguing looks.  “Aren’t you needing of a bath too Doctor?  Or is that something that aliens don’t require so much?  After all you are one.  Alien.  Man.”

He smiled at that with a flash of fun in his eyes.  Oh Clara.  How she liked to play.  Maybe it wasn’t even intention.  She just knew how to get him a little more invigorated for certain.  “We can go without it for some time, but eh—well it’s not bad to have one.  Just not together.  That is, you and I.”

He was smirking, seeming so sure of himself that Clara responded smoothly.  “Did I say together?”

“No.”  He started to say, but ‘the boss’ was not done.

Clara took a step forward, stroking his ship’s console with two fingers, stroking it right next to his hand.  “Didn’t you tell me once Doctor that there are possibly thousands of hidden rooms upon this ship?  Must be more than one bathroom.”

Flustered, the Doctor brought his head up and down rapidly.  “Yes, well-

Sometimes she didn’t know where it came from, but the boldness was back in spades with all his faltering and awkwardness.  Clara took a step further forward, clearly invading the Doctor’s sense of personal space.  Whatever that was at the moment.  She tapped his nose playfully.  “Getting a little much to the forward setting there weren’t you Doctor.  But heel Boy.  I like to bathe alone.”

“Shut up.”  He snapped as Clara laughed, but then before she could saunter out the Doctor was advancing too.

It was this magnetic little dance between them really.  Pull away and the other would come back.  Can’t deny the chemical attraction.  So why even try?  She shivered at the touch of his hand, feeling him holding onto the gathering material of her dress to turn her around.  His hand so firm and big, it was easy for him to do so.  Clara looked up, seeing the most inquiring eyes, flashing with the blue lights of the Tardis.  “What?”

“Why do you sometimes call me Boy?”  The Doctor asked, his eyebrows scaling hard above his eyes.  He was scrutinizing and collecting, assessing, and determining, like his Sonic Screwdriver.  After all she was the mystery.  Boy was that word she uttered to him before dying.  The other Clara that is.  So…why?

“Habit.”  Clara stated without any real thought.  Other guys she dated, she never used it.  The word—boy.

“I’m not a boy.  I’m a thousand years old Clara.”

Her eyes blinked.  She knew that.  Sometimes it was a little hard to remember since he didn’t look anything like a thousand, unless aging that far made you age back…back to your best.  Because, taking away for a moment that big old chin, he was most definitely attractive.

“I know.”

He reached out, gathering her cheeks with both his hands.  “There has to be a reason.  It’s like you-

“Like I what?”  She asked uncertainly, taking a step back.  Sometimes he was just very intense.  A man who was an alien.  Days, months ago he had been a virtual stranger.  Yet now she traveled with him from place to place regularly.  In his big little blue box.  Just the two of them.  Alone.  Together alone.

It was definitely a bit ludicrous, but every time she heard those whining engines she found herself rushing out of the house to meet him, eager to find out where she was going to go next with the Doctor.

The Doctor gave a shake at her question, bringing his hands away and down.  “No.  Nothing.  Take your bath.”

She fisted her hands at hip.  “I’m the boss.”

“Eh.”  He didn’t like that.

“I’ll decide when.”

Short pause.

“Now.”  Clara walked determinedly away from him, down the hall-

“Ah! Clara!”

“Oh.”  She turned.  “Enough talk.  We’ll be landed soon.”

“I know that, but Clara-

“WHAT?”

He lifted his hand, pointing his finger.  “You’re going to the garage.  The room for bathing is that way.”  He pointed in the other direction.

Her eyes lifted to the ceiling. 

Calling for patience?  Cursing the Old Girl? 

“I knew that.  I did.  You needn’t tell me.”  She attempted to smoothly turn the other way, and walked down that hall with a bit of a quicker step.  No doubt she wanted to simply get out of his viewing distance.

The Doctor let out a little amused snicker after she was gone and turned back to the console of the Tardis, spotting a tiny flickering mirror image of himself in the glass. 

He was smiling.  Widely smiling.  Intrigued.  Interested.  Confused.  And happy.

He looked back to the hall, shaking his head.  Timey wimey, was Madame Vastra right?  Was he-

*

Oh the water felt so good, so massaging and invigorating all the same, flowing down her naked body, getting rid of the Sweetville experience, but still she could feel the touch of his fingers on her back.  Grazing across the scar with interest and with the sweetest care.  So divine that touch.  So full of enigma.  So-

What was she thinking?  Why did he keep doing this to her?  Clara brought her head back under the cascades of water, done with the soap, letting it flutter away.  As her heart beat a little faster and the thought of him did something so crazy.  She stared at that image of herself in the metal’s shine.  Smiling.  Blushing smiling.

Oh Doctor…what are you doing to me?  Making me say I’m the boss.  Making me demand it.  Making me—

“So smitten with you.”

The words whispered from her lips, she closed her eyes, dreaming, desiring, and magnetically holding on.  To whatever it was.  Whatever he brought her.

*

Smitten.  That’s what Vastra said.  That he was smitten.  But that was preposterous.  That was—

He was the Doctor.  He didn’t get smitten feelings.  He didn’t-

His fingers still tingled with it.  He raised them now to his eyes.  To look.  To ponder.  Where he touched the imperfection of her back.  The beautiful parchment of a scar.  Smitten?  Smitten!

His eyes closed, delving.  The attraction to not be fought.  The mystery to be solved.  The companion he had to keep holding hand of.

Smitten?

Oh so complicated.  So tangled with no clear answer.

Smitten.

Maybe.

____________