When it comes, like she knows it will, she isn't ready.
She's seen him go through so much, she's almost convinced herself he's invincible. Almost.
So when it's the thick of the fight, and they're surrounded by fire and blood and screams, she looks over at him. He takes her hand, and suddenly it's just the two of them. Just like it's always been - just like it should always be. Together? He whispers, and all she can do is nod.
They enter the fight, and Clara watches as soldier after soldier falls. Blood and dirt is crusted underneath her fingernails and streaked across her cheeks. She holds her pistol up with shaking hands as she takes in the platoons around her - humans, aliens, time lords. All fighting for the galaxy that they'd so long called home. One final stand against the Daleks, against the wave of hatred that they'd so long fought back. Their one, final enemy.
She doesn't know how long it lasts - it feels like an eternity. She just knows that when it ends, when the last force of the Daleks is obliterated against all odds, she's surrounded by the bodies - some of friends, some of strangers. All brave, all fighting.
It's then that she sees him.
She doesn't believe it, not at first. And when her mind comes to grip with it - when she's kneeling in the mud next to him, clutching his fingers until her own are white, she waits.
And waits.
And waits.
She doesn't know how many hours she's kneeling there before a rescue team comes to get her. She hears voices, calling her, asking her questions. She can't answer any of them. It wasn't supposed to end like this, she thinks. She thinks she may have forgotten just how to speak. It doesn't bother her. Nothing bothers her, now.
They pry her fingers from his cold grasp, and she thinks she should maybe be screaming or crying or something. But she isn't. She doesn't feel anything. Because didn't he promise her that he would come back? That, by some way that defied the very laws of nature, he would find a way around the 12-regenerations-only rule?
She is brought before a little wooden fire and feels a sharp pain as the warmth begins to return to her limbs. She shuts it down. She's not ready to feel anything, yet.
After the war, the different planets begin to rebuild themselves. Everyone is busy, everything is moving. She doesn't belong here anymore.
So she goes walking through the woods, to the decimated battleground that took away the only world she's ever known. And when she comes to the tattered old blue box, she isn't surprised. It's only fitting that they would both be drawn to this place. A new beginning for one universe; an ending of theirs.
She strokes the faded blue paint, now chipping away from the wood. I miss him, too. She whispers. The door opens with a soft click, and slowly, so slowly, she takes one step. Then another. Until she's inside, and taking it all in, and remembering so many things -
It's so empty without him in it.
She closes the door behind her, and goes to rest her hands on the controls. Take me somewhere beautiful, she thinks. And the age-old sound creaks back to life, and she's gone.
She walks the universe alone.
I am not a time lord.
I am the first, and the last, of my species.
Once they called me human.
Once I was a wanderer, a dreamer,
A wish-er on stars.
I have lost the last two,
But still I wander.