Disclaimer: I don't own anything!
Author's Note: I have caught up on Doctor Who as much as Netflix will allow, and I could not have predicted how much I love Twelve. Not quite as much as Nine, but it's close. I don't think I'll ever be writing very much for this series, but who knows.
Hearts will never be made practical until they are made unbreakable.
-The Wizard of Oz
He stands before her, shoulders back, chin tilted more in defiance than in pride. This new body is proud, yes, but it is a guarded kind, very different from the exuberance of his old one. "What do you think?"
She looks him up and down with those big eyes of hers, cataloging every change, every difference. (Everything had changed. He wasn't the bow tie, wasn't anything like him. He was stiffer, wasn't all gangly limbs and excitement)
She doesn't say it, but there is a little smile, a little smirk and his hearts thud. Perhaps she can do it, this impossible girl. Perhaps she can look past the changes.
"Who put the advert in the paper?"
"Who gave you my number? A long time ago, remember, you were given the number of a computer help line, and you ended up phoning the TARDIS. Who gave you that number?"
"The woman, the woman in the shop."
"Then there is a woman out there who is very keen that we stay together." At this moment, the Doctor is incredibly grateful to that mystery woman. He doesn't want to be alone again. "…How do you feel on the subject?"
Clara looks around like she can see past the TARDIS walls to the outside world. "Am I home?"
"If you want to be."
(He said it with a little bit of a grin and he looks so damn hopeful, so longing for her to stay, but…it was wrong. She couldn't recognize anything about the man in front of her) "I'm sorry. I'm—so, so sorry, but…I don't think I know who you are anymore."
The phone rings, as he'd known it would. The Doctor can't quite meet her eyes when he tells her to answer it. "It might be your boyfriend."
The one she wants, the one she loves. The one with the chin, and the fluffy hair, and the bow tie. The Doctor watches her leave, gives her a few minutes, remembers hearing her voice, choking with tears over the phone.
He goes to stand in the doorway of his TARDIS, fingers brushing along the outside wood, feeling her hum beneath his fingertips. "So who is it?" he asks, loud enough for Clara to hear. "Is that the Doctor?"
She won't look at him, right now, hiding behind her hair, leaning on the wall like she can't stand on her own. He's done this to her. He's brought this impossible girl to this and the knowledge hurts. The knowledge that she'd rather have his old body, even though the person inside is still the same…it hurts.
"He asked you a question," the Doctor says. He needs to know her answer, needs to know if he has to go and face all of time and space alone again. He doesn't think he has the strength, not this time around. He thinks that, if Clara leaves—and he can't bring himself to blame her if she does—that he'll just hide away, in a TARDIS that doesn't look right to him, even if she sounds and feels as familiar as the day he first stole her. "Will you help me?"
Indignation sparks in her eyes. "You shouldn't have been listening."
(His hearts dropped into an icy pit in his stomach. She was looking right at him, talking to him, but…) "I wasn't—I didn't need to. That was me talking." He scoffs a bit at himself. This new body is an old fool. A match for the mind and hearts that inhabited it. Too full of hope for someone who should know better by now. "You—you can't see me, can you? You look at me, and you can't see me. Have you any idea what that's like? I'm not on the phone. I'm right here. Standing in front of you. Please, just…just see me."
The last person he loved that couldn't see him had been Donna. Standing in the doorway of her living room and her eyes passing right over him. No recognition whatsoever and even though he'd been the one to do it, even though it needed to be done to save her, it had still hurt. He doesn't want Clara, the impossible girl who'd been spread across his timestream to save him again and again, to be unable to see him, this new him.
Clara is tilting her head up at him curiously, stepping just close enough to be too close. This new body has a thing about personal space that the last few haven't. "…Thank you."
"For what?" the Doctor asks warily.
"Phoning."
She throws her arms around him and he is, at once, relieved and tense. The latter is purely a physical response. "I—I don't think that I'm a hugging person now."
And Clara doesn't back away just yet, holding him all the tighter. "I'm not sure you get a vote."
"Whatever you say."
He keeps waiting for her back away, to not see him again, but when she does, she just says, "This isn't my home by the way."
He looks around. "I'm—I'm sorry about that. I missed." And he offers her chips and coffee, and she smiles at him, and it's not right, not entirely. The recognition isn't there, she isn't completely seeing him, but she's trying, and she wants to, and for now, that has to be enough.