The woman at the counter looked up and plastered a bright, professional smile on her face at the sight of the petite brunette approaching to purchase her new laptop. Her heart twisted in her chest at the thought of what she was doing, enabling him to move on, move past her, to be with someone else, but it had to happen, because if the Doctor never met Clara Oswald, then she wouldn't be there to save him all those times, and their time together could never be.
It was one of those moments when she almost envied those beings who lived their lives in one place, in a single, linear timeline. Almost, but not quite. She could never begrudge her mother and father their adventures in time and space, and she wouldn't trade her own for anything. And this was the price.
She brushed an errant curl out of her eyes and carefully wrote out a phone number on a post it as the girl approached, peppering her salesman with a myriad of questions about the computer and the internet. "You'll want this, I think," she said, sliding over the paper. "It's a helpline. Best one out there. Best one in the universe, actually."