A/N – So! Since a friend and I both had some qualms with Matt Smith's final episode, I decided to take my best crack at living up to its potential. This is meant as a sort of alternate ending to the 11th Doctor. Some aspects will be the same as in the Time of the Doctor, others will be very different. Enjoy!
"The point is, I really need you to come to Christmas dinner! As my- date!"
The Doctor half leaped, half fell over the edge of his quaking console as a blast tried its hardest to singe the matte exterior of the TARDIS. He scrambled to his feet, grasping wildly for the phone. "I'm a bit busy, I'm-" he paused to dodge a crackling shower of sparks "I'm being shot at by Daleks!"
"...Why can't we do both?"
"Oh. Yes alright!"
After a nervous few minutes spent anxiously holed up in the kitchen second-guessing the wisdom of telling her possible future stepmother that she had a boyfriend (or a turkey recipe), Clara finally released her tension in a huff of breath at the sound of the TARDIS engines outside her apartment complex. "Be right back!" she called in a blur as she streaked around the corner just fast enough to avoid Linda's judgmental gaze.
"Well?" The Doctor twirled in his long, herringbone patterned coat and suitably muted bow-tie as Clara burst in. "What do you think, am I 'boyfriend material?'"
"Absolutely!" Clara said a little more flirtatiously than she meant to. "Um- hang on though!" She wagged an accusing finger at him. "You messed with Daleks? After all the trouble I went to to wipe you out of their memory banks?"
He squinted at her oddly for a moment, but shrugged it off. "They messed with me!" he said innocently. "Well, technically they messed with a small mining village on Pentios VI, but I happened to be there at the time so it's functionally the same thing." He spun around, whipped a spotted flower out of the mouth of a mounted Cyberman head, and presented it to her triumphantly.
"What's that?" she asked, a little paralyzed.
"It's a decapitated Cyberman, got it at the Maldovarium Market, no biological components left, gutted the software, bam, new navigator. Perfectly harmless, I call him Handles."
"Um- no- this." She nodded to the flower and crossed her eyes slightly to look at it.
"For your gran."
"Oh." Clara relaxed and let her hovering fingers close around the stem.
"Careful: it's slightly venomous."
"You mean poisonous?"
"No, I mean venomous."
"Ow!" She tried to shake off the flower now clinging to her thumb from a Venus-flytrap-like mouth. The Doctor batted it away, then quickly brought her knuckle to his mouth and sucked the pinpricks left by the bite. He spat daintily over his shoulder, stuck out his flat, square tongue, and swiped his broad palms over it. Still grimacing from the taste, he shivered slightly as he straightened up.
"Maybe not for your gran, then."
Clara stared at him with nothing less than awe at how long he had taken to reach this conclusion.
"Think she likes Cybermen?"
"No!" Clara shrieked incredulously, and shoved him through the door.
What Clara's grandmother did get was a gentlemanly kiss on the hand, an air-kiss beside each cheek, and a clearly appreciated wink. "Good to meet you, young man!" She said coyly, to everyone but the Doctor's embarrassment.
"Good to meet you, I'm the Doctor."
"A doctor! My, well done!" Linda quipped at Clara, annoying her in a way only a quip from Linda could. "Where did you go to school?"
"Gallifreyan Academy of the Natural and Theoretical Sciences."
"Oh, I've never heard of it. Is it in Ireland?"
"Why not?" the Doctor replied grinning.
"Ooh, I love an Irishman," said Clara's grandmother with a mock shiver. "So... rugged."
"He's not Irish Gran-" Clara mumbled, red-faced, and unceremoniously dragged the Doctor by the wrist into the kitchen.
"Ooh, custard!" he exclaimed gleefully, spying a bowl on the counter, and hopped over to pick off the plastic wrap covering it. "I love custard. One of the first things I ever ate in this body. The other was fish fingers."
"Fish fingers and custard?" Clara asked with a disgusted look.
The Doctor swallowed a finger's portion. "Surprisingly good combination. I always get odd cravings when I regenerate, need specific nutrients to compensate for the new cells. Last one couldn't really get going 'till I'd had a 'nice cuppa tea.'" He grinned. "It's like I'm pregnant!" he concluded entirely too loudly for anyone's good, and there came the sound of glass breaking in the dining room. He stood stock still like a deer in headlights for a moment, then flew to the doorway. "Sorry, yes, don't panic, I was just making a terrible comparison and regretting it immediately. Clara: forget I ever said 'it's like I'm pregnant.' That's what I was saying, alright, goodbye now-" he squeezed through the door as he closed it on himself. "Domesticity. Tricky." he muttered in Clara's direction.
Clara was rubbing her face. "This whole day was a mistake," she moaned. "Can we just skip it? Hop in the TARDIS and come back tomorrow?"
The Doctor shrugged. "If you like. But it's Christmas! As days go, that's usually a fun one, eh?" He clapped her on the shoulders. "Come on, I never do Christmas dinners, haven't done a Christmas dinner-" since the Ponds. "...in a while. As long as you've got me here, may as well finish the job."
"I don't know if I can," she replied, turning to the oven and opening it to reveal a turkey that was already beginning to look dry. "I hate cooking turkey. Can't just put it in and leave it, there's all that basting and... what is brining? Ooh, give me a souffle any day." She closed the oven.
"What, souffles are easier than turkeys? I always thought they popped if you looked at them funny."
"Well... yeah, there is that, but otherwise. Get everything together, milk, eggs, stir, 30 min in the oven, ready to eat." She made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a cough. "Oh, you know, that's kind of funny..." Her eyes were somewhere else. "That was almost like that time I said-"
"Eg-"
"It wasn't real. It was never real."
"Eggs... Stir... Min... Ate."
"Oswin."
"Eggs. Stir. Min ate. ...Exterminate."
"Oswin. No, no, no, Oswin. Oswin."
"Exterminate!"
"Listen. Oswin, you don't have to do this."
"Exterminate!"
—Clara Oswald found herself in the TARDIS, in tears, in the Doctor's arms. He had pulled her in to his chest and swaddled her in the nest of his long limbs, and she came back to herself in the thin light that filtered through his protective cocoon. For a moment she clung to him and breathed, letting the warm, solid strength of him pull her back to the here and now, not caring how paradoxical that might be. "...What was that?" she asked weakly, as he lowered her into the folding chair by the railing.
He crossed back to the console and retrieved a glass of water in a cup she recognized from her own kitchen. "I thought this might be happening," he said quietly, moving back to her and handing her the glass. "You've lived thousands of lives, and now they're catching up to you. They're just memories, they can't hurt you, as long as you always remember to come back." She silently sipped her water as he tried to find something to fiddle with along the smooth surface of the railing. "You know, one of my favorite impossible things about you, impossible girl-" he brought his eyes up to hers, and she saw in them the guilt she'd seen when he had first told her what had become of his home planet, of the Ponds, and the companion before them, and the one before her, and the one before her... "-was that I hadn't managed to screw you up." He took her face in his hands. "Clara, you've done so much for me, now do me one more favor. It's all I ever wanted, I swear. Please. Be okay."
And though she blinked at him slowly, and when she spoke her voice was thin, what she said was "...Yeah, alright."
"...What?" He was so genuinely shocked that he forgot to stop caressing her head.
"Well, like you said. I just have to remember to come back. So, I dunno, if you see me zonking out or something give me a shake, and I'll be fine." Actually, she was fairly sure that she'd be good and freaked out, and that she'd go on to have problems she could never tell a therapist about, but he looked like he could use a win.
"...Oh." He patted the back of her head awkwardly. "Well. Good," he said, straightening up "Because I took the liberty of saving your turkey."
"You mean from being cooked terribly, or from being slaughtered?"
"Cooked terribly, though I suppose that's a fair question. Actually I sort of wish I did the other one now-"
"Well, have we got enough time to finish being shot at by Daleks?" Clara asked cheerily, popping out of her seat energetically to show the Doctor exactly how fine she was.
"Oh no, no no no," he said, eying her warily, poised as though to catch her if she stumbled. "I think we've had enough excitement for today, hm? Let's just stay home and have a nice Christmas dinner and make sure nothing terrible happens to you. Doctor's orders," he added, letting a glimmer of pride that he'd finally thought of that shine through.
"Nah, that's boring! We don't do boring!"
"We do today-"
"Urgent: Information available," interjected Handles.
"What is it, Handles?" Clara asked excitedly.
"Nothing, not relevant, hello-" the Doctor tried to block her view of Handles with his body "-we were just about to go back-"
"Distress call incoming," Handles replied.
"Ooh, that sounds important, we should answer that," she cocked an eyebrow at the Doctor in challenge.
"Good idea, put it on the itinerary for tomorrow, let's go have dinner-" a gray bubble of equipment plugged into the TARDIS console beeped sharply.
"What is that?"
"Oh, that's the thing that automatically answers distre-"
And with a bang and a lurch, the TARDIS was hurtling through space.