"Oh, just tell me! It's not like I have any room to judge!" A highly amused Clara Oswald squeaked at the Doctor, who was sweating through the knots of his burgundy bow-tie with discomfort as she grilled him about his past romantic ventures.
"Look, Doctor, we've all got some promiscuous skeletons in our closets. I'll have you know, I dated a woman once."
"Yes, well, so did I. Doesn't mean I'd like to talk to you about it. I don't need your pity soufflés. Or your normal soufflés. You know, you really should try a recipe beca-"
"Oi! Watch it, chin. I'm an excellent baker, thank you very much. In fact, when I get off this intergalactic tour you've got me on, I might open up my own little shop."
The Doctor's face fell as Clara launched into an animated tale about her late grandmother's dreams of being a pastry shop owner. Was she really so keen to leave and settle down for a life on Earth? Without him? Without the TARDIS? Would she really trade him for some nearly-bankrupt bakery in the countryside? Lost in a pool of thoughts of Clara's inevitable egress, the Doctor didn't notice when she stopped babbling.
"Something wrong? Are you offended by cakes?" Clara giggled sarcastically, drawing nearer to her companion.
When no words came from his mouth, Clara snapped out of her cheery state and squeezed his palm. They had only been traveling together for a matter of weeks, but Clara had already picked up on most of the Doctor's little quirks and distress signals. Silence was one of them. He'd only fallen dramatically silent in her presence once before, and that had been due to her inquiries about a pair of reading glasses on the TARDIS console. She'd never quite been able to get the truth out of him about that.
"You know I'm only joking. This traveling business with you wins out over soufflés, even if only by a small margin. I won't ever leave this place, I promise." She whispered, grinning softly and brushing a few errant hairs from his forehead.
The Doctor bit his lower lip and glanced over at Amelia Pond's old reading glasses nestled carefully between the scanner and the "structure eject" button. Ancient memories he'd previously locked away burst from their iron prisons and flashed before his eyes. Over 1,300 years of memories of laughter, tears, and bittersweet endings flooded the lonely soldier's mind and turned his limbs to jelly. The moment he began to collapse, Clara clutched him by the elbows and gently lowered his quivering form to the metallic floor of the TARDIS. She had never seen such a tragic sight-an ancient god of sorts with all the knowledge and power of the universe whizzing through his veins with each beat of his hearts unable to bear the force of gravity. This was a man who had seen far too much yet had been capable of doing far too little. This was a man who had his soul entrenched in despair too many times to count.
This was a man who had lost somebody. Probably more than once.
"Did they all leave you? The people who traveled with you before me, did they leave? Did she leave you, the owner of those glasses?" Clara pried quietly, removing her shawl and wrapping it carefully around the Doctor's thin yet sturdy shoulders.
"No. Worse. They all promised they wouldn't!" He snapped harshly in response, ripping the shawl off and thrusting it back into a shocked Clara's arms.
Giving in to his sudden mood swing, the Doctor stood abruptly and stormed into a corridor of the TARDIS without even taking a second glance at Clara, who he'd left sitting bewildered by the console with the shawl tangled in her grasp. Terrified to venture into the caverns of the TARDIS to find him, she remained in that position for what felt like ages, her jaw locked and her eyes watering with tears.
Growing up, she'd always had a magic touch when it came to helping others. She'd regularly worked with underprivileged children and community members suffering from great losses. During her brief stint in a university, she had even talked a classmate out of terminating his life with a handful of pills and a bottle of whiskey. People took notice of her local heroism and took to lightheartedly calling her "Clara the Healer" for several years.
So why was the Doctor such a mystery to her? She could nearly predict his every move on their little adventures and possessed the intelligence to rival him even on his most inspired days. But when it came to his heart... Well, his hearts, she felt absolutely helpless. He'd built a wall so thick and so high that even mighty Clara the Healer couldn't scale it. She supposed he'd laid a brick for each tragedy he'd witnessed, and he'd been arranging those bricks for over a thousand years.
She'd only been busting walls down for two decades.
Once her body began to complain of hunger, Clara determined that it was time to lurk into the belly of the TARDIS and brave an encounter with the Doctor, who was likely still brooding. She had been sitting for hours and hadn't heard a peep from the corridor the raging man had disappeared through. She briefly wondered if he was huddled in a study somewhere brainstorming ways to get her out of his company. It was more likely, however, that he was just tucked away in his elusive bedroom, reminiscing about the days gone by that Clara feared she would never be permitted to hear about.
Wiping a few straggling tears from her rosy cheeks, Clara covered herself with the abandoned shawl and marched into the corridor toward the only kitchen to which she had mastered the route so far. She exhaled with relief upon finding no sign of the Doctor in the pale green, flourescently-lit room and rummaged through the surprisingly average-looking refrigerator for materials for sandwich making. As she navigated her way through the contents of the kitchen, she repeatedly glanced toward the double doors to the hallway, hoping for her familiar Chin Boy to make an appearance despite her fear of his unparalleled temper, but he never showed up.
The TARDIS became such a dreary place whenever silence fell upon it.