Summary: The Doctor learns that humans are not single-lived, they just have their new lives at intervals. He should have understood, really, knowing what he did about Clara. But Clara's biggest secret still managed to shock him. ONESHOT
Memory Boxes
She had never whispered to the TARDIS like this before, he knew. She had never in his experience caressed her walls like she was now. She had never nearly died on him and survived, either. Not like this. Never like this. She'd always been born to new parents and gone through childhood the long way, before finding him again. This time seemed both strange and familiar, like she was two different women and yet someone he knew even with the strangeness of it.
The Void is no barrier to souls, my Thief. Came the whisper in his mind, and he felt several memories and information boxes in his mind unlock and open. Almost immediately, there were a great many things that made a lot more sense. Three times she came back to you and three times you sent her away, the last time to look after the metacrisis. He had too little Time Lord to regenerate, too little human to do what she does, which is live short human life after life and always, always find you again.
He gaped at his ship's console, jaw sagging.
Not that the incident with The Moment wasn't a bit dangerous since there were two of her just as there were three of you, but her lives were different and she was not identical...and she was careful not to get within touching distance of herself. When you went to the belltower, she spoke with the part of herself that Bad Wolf chose to introduce to your War Doctor, golden and powerful and so protective of you, and of course my Wolf sent you the power you needed. But she, no matter what parents she's born to, how she's raised or how she dies, will always return to you, my Doctor. She did promise you forever, after all. It's only that you brought her to me instead of remaining on the planet, even souls are kept out by my shields and she might have been lost in here. That would not do.
"Bad Wolf?"
Yes. Now she is both as she was and as she is. And she remembers all her lives, just as you do: She only has hundreds more of them. You need to have her settle into one or the other though. Clara or Rose, not both. It doesn't really matter, though...even when she's Clara, she's still Rose Tyler.
"It's true, yeah. Told you, I'll never leave you, my Doctor." Came a voice that held Rose and Clara's tones together and managed to be both even though he could still hear each. I think, I'll be the one, for now. When we have a daughter, Clara's part of me will take that life and then we'll both look after you."
"I'm in so much trouble..." He muttered, but even so, swept his Rose into his arms and twirled her around.
"True. Determined, me...I am still my mother's daughter, after all." And she laughed at his groan. "Best part, is that John's soul hitched a ride with me, so when our sons are born, he'll slip right into one of the bodies: Time Lord brain and body, human soul. It's a powerful combination."
He spluttered but could not bring himself to argue with her as she slipped her hand into her his and led him down the corridor and what he knew was going to happen when they got to his bedroom. He didn't want to argue, didn't want to protest and when she closed the door and began to strip, he knew he never would.
"Mine." He whispered.
"My Doctor." She answered back and both of them smiled.
~Finis~
