"Am I dead now?"
Clara's voice echoes in her head as she looks out at the blinding whiteness around her. She thinks maybe she feels her hands, but when she raises them to see, there's nothing. Maybe, she considers, she's a ghost – what does she know of the afterlife anyways, no one ever really talks about it. Fear of death and the inability to explain what came beyond, she supposes; you don't talk about the things you fear and in her family it was a fear ever present. Ever since her mum.
"Am I actually, properly, dead?"
The words feel like air in her mouth and she swallows as a test. Throat constricting around the lump, taking the bit of spit down through the esophagus, she nods at nothing – she has some form of body. Maybe it was just taking a minute to catch up, Clara wonders. She has no idea how it all works. The last time she'd died, she hadn't truly been dead.
Mostly dead.
The words in her mind make her laugh, bringing with them the memory of watching a movie curled up on the couch with girlfriends, all giggling about the Dread Pirate Roberts and who had the biggest crush on him. She'd shrugged; she'd never fancied herself a Buttercup, more the pirate herself. And pirates meet their end as well, Clara understood, no matter how far and wide they travelled; no matter how many adventures they had or how many treasures they plundered.
"I'm really dead, aren't I?"
She whispers now, and for a moment the thought she has stills her entirely – because she is alone. There's a world of nothing around her and she is alone. Clara inhales, feels the breath expand at something she wants to call lungs, and when she exhales, she listens to that air hiss softly past her lips and into the bright void around her. The emptiness begins to close in with the notion that this might be eternity.
I am lost, she thinks suddenly, fearfully.
"There should be more than this!" She shouts angrily.
Listening to the way the words stop harshly against the silence, she closes her eyes to the dull red beneath their lids and she blinks to take it all in again. To raise her hands and flex her fingers and watch them materialize as if through a fog that's slowly dissipating. She begins to turn, to look in every direction into the expanse of light before she tries to choose a direction in which to run – wondering whether it would make a difference.
"There should be more than this," she repeats softly before accusing loudly, "This is hell." And then she whimpers, "If there'd been a choice, I thought I might deserve heaven."
Clara laughs and drops her chin slightly and she feels her bottom lip tremble. Maybe she'd thought about an afterlife after all... thought about how she'd be greeted with open arms by friendly faces and taken to all of her childhood dreams. Maybe she expected her mother, eager to show her where they'd spend their time because she imagined she'd have more time with her one day, somehow. She takes in a ragged breath and closes her eyes and it's then that she hears the other sigh.
The familiar breath that warms her forehead just before his forefingers stop her tears and tap at her nose as he explains, "It's not hell, Clara, nor is it heaven, but you are dead and this is what comes after your life," and she looks up at the pale green eyes resting under the Doctor's heavy brow. The old Doctor, her first Doctor. The one who smiles down at her with sympathy and adoration ever present on his every feature; the one who brings an instant blush to her cheeks.
"What is it, Doctor?" She questions on a shrug, watching him clasp his hands together in front of him waistcoat, peeking out between the lapels of the purple jacket hanging open on his lanky frame. She reaches up to touch the space where his bow tie had sat, her fingers feeling the warmth of his skin for those familiar pulses calmly beating up from his hearts. "What is this place if it's neither heaven nor hell?"
"What would you like it to be, Clara?" He asks softly, one hand coming up to take hold of hers, keeping it between them as he gentle massaged at her palm.
She laughs, light, and smiles because the fear she'd been feeling is suddenly gone. Of course it would be, she knows, he's there with her. The Doctor, she thinks. The one man she'd told to stay away from her death would be the first to greet her after it. On a nod, she lifts her eyes back to him to state sadly, "I want it to be alive."
The Doctor's head cocks knowingly, and he smirks, free hand coming up to brush against her cheek before his head shakes and he tells her calmly, "Alive is something that is, unfortunately, just out of both of our reaches."
Straightening, Clara shakes her head and argues, "No, come on, the Doctor and Clara Oswald – surely we can put our cleverness together and find a way back."
He bows his head and she frowns because she understands. There's a finality to the way he's standing before her, refusing to look back up, and she tries to accept it. The Doctor, this Doctor, and Clara Oswald are dead, she thinks to herself, feeling her chest shaking slightly with fear. Of course they're dead. It's one of two moments in life, she thinks with a fleeting grin, no one can escape.
The beginning... and the end.
"Why are you here?" Clara asks delicately before adding in a trembling voice, "Are you really here?"
The Doctor laughs then, nodding and releasing her hand to pull her into an embrace and she revels in the lingering tenderness of the kiss he presses into the top of her head, not unlike the one the Doctor left on her hand before she stepped out onto that street, waiting until he breathes, "Yes, Clara, of course I'm really here."
"Am I really dead?"
She knows she doesn't have to ask, but she wants to hear him say it. Clara needs him to affirm it because she imagines there's a small flicker of hope she's simply lying unconscious on the rough bricks, a forgiving bird cawing beside her. The question sits between them as they stand in each other's arms, and Clara blinks away tears as he states the answer she knows quietly; and then he adds gingerly, "I'm sorry, Clara."
She merely nods, her arms giving his body a tight squeeze as she closes her eyes and enjoys the simple clean smell of him and the way his fingertips were rubbing soothingly at her back and shoulder. Clara missed him this way, so tactile and comforting. It hadn't truly been that long, those few years since his regeneration, but in that moment it felt like it'd been an eternity, and she smiled as they swayed lightly, remembering nights on the Tardis after a long adventure when they'd end just this way, just before she departed, arguing with herself it was for her own good.
Neither wanting to release the other. Neither wanting to look up and see the feelings they refused to acknowledge, knowing they would remain unsaid. Every adventure ended with an excited re-telling, rushing about the console, hands finding knobs and buttons and levers and keys as they swam through the vortex. Every adventure ended with them meeting at some point, hands clasped together in exhilaration, bodies almost vibrating from adrenaline. Every adventure ended with that excited embrace that slowed to that simmering dance until she broke away with some excuse.
She sighed, oh how she wished she'd been braver.
Of course, that's why she was dead.
"You know," the Doctor begins confidently, "I've been here quite a while and I have to say – it's not so bad once you get used to it. Never needing nor wanting for anything. The memories can be cumbersome at times with no one to share those moments, but it's not so bad." He leans his chin onto her head, "Not so bad at all."
"What is this place?" She questions again.
"What would you like it to be, Clara?"
Stepping back, she holds to his arms as she offers a nervous chuckle and shakes her head, demanding, "Why do you keep asking me in that way? As though I had some choice in the matter?" She meets his eyes, "I'm dead, this is what comes after death – so what is this place?"
The Doctor smirks and he nods. Releasing her, he steps away and then he waves his left hand up and around and tells her, "This is me – all of this is me," and he gestures back at her, "We were here once before, do you remember?"
Clara crosses her arms over herself and she steps towards him as he steps back, nodding slowly while her brow furrows and she replies, "Your time stream," then her nose wrinkles, "But it was different then."
"I was different then," he states. The Doctor takes a breath and explains, "It's like the console – the desktop – the Tardis; ever changing and growing and shifting and it's what we make it, you and I, because this place is ours now."
She eyes him curiously before uncrossing her arms to point, "But this is your time stream – this is your grave."
"And you ended up here before," he nods.
Clara's arms came up and slapped down in confusion as she laughs, "Because I jumped in; this time I died in a street. Shouldn't I go where humans go?" Head tilting, she wants to ask him just where humans went, if he even knew, but she saw a glimmer in his eyes as he stared at her.
With a knowing smile, he says, "Clara Oswald, wanting to be lumped in with the humans."
"No," she immediately laughs in refusal, "No, not normally, but this..." she looks around, "I don't understand this."
"To be perfectly honest, I don't understand it either," he argues, "But it is what it is, and what it is... is you stuck in my grave, so I'd say we make the best of it, Doctor Oswald."
Arms coming up, head tilted slightly, then turning, Clara points slowly around and her eyes narrow as she takes a long breath, and then the world around them shifts, filling in, and she smiles as she looks up at the time rotor, glowing in front of them as the lights dim and they're shrouded in darkness and the glow of that orange set of tubes. She smiles at him across the console and then she laughs as he rounds it slowly to stand at her side, hands landing atop her shoulders before sliding down to grip her fingers within his as he takes a long breath.
"This is eternity, Clara Oswald," the Doctor states softly. "Ghosts trapped in the memories of their making; ghosts floating about the other side reliving adventures or knitting sweaters or keeping bees – whatever we want, wherever we want; whenever we'd like, for as long as we'd like."
Clara nods slowly, looking down at their hands before lifting her eyes mischievously back at him to smile. She thinks maybe he's not truly there and maybe this is her heaven. Maybe this is a holding place until she's ready to move on because maybe she's not truly dead yet. Maybe these are the last synapses of a dying mind on a dampened street. She decides she doesn't want to explain it to herself, she simply wants to enjoy however long this eternity lasts and she inches up to kiss him lightly, watching the way his cheeks blush as his eyes widen just before the calm settles over him.
"Clara Oswald, where would you like to go?"
With a nostalgic grin, she replies, "Someplace... awesome."