"I think the Doctor is crazy about Clara, he loves her in a very deep way that is not just about romance. It goes to a deeper territory of affection."
-Peter Capaldi
Hence, the title of this fic.
Welcome and thank you for your time, this will be a collection of assorted material dealing with the human schoolteacher Clara Oswald, and the Time Lord scholar known as the Doctor, and the complex, fascinating, deep, multilayered dynamic between the two, so far mostly little character oneshots, but might include longer multichapter things with plot later if I find the time. Will probably feature all Doctors at some point, but mostly 12 because he's just delightful.
But first, a little disclaimer: Don't bother with the lawyers, I freely admit that I do not own 'Doctor Who', and I'm not earning a single Euro with this.
Given the various recent revelations, there is probably no easy way to measure how long she's known him, or how long he's known her, but it probably sufficed to say that it probably wasn't the same number for each of them – What really mattered, in any case, were three years since he first appeared on her doorstep, unbidden, unexplained and yet unable to constrain a vastness of obvious affection, admiration and gratitude that she didn't remember earning.
The sudden situation certainly was as one could easily imagine, somewhat flattering, in a way she was embarrassed of, because really? Wasn't she supposed to be a mature person here? God knows she tried to be.
-But also somewhat frightening, the unknown beckoning her to take a step that she didn't know the consequences of.
Since then, she has seen quite a lot of him, perhaps more than he would ever have revealed by choice, were it not for that fine, insidious web of circumstance that was woven through this universe – in his business, he'd see the ripples of an advent something longbefore he'd encounter the cause of the effect, and he'd continue to carry the darkness he found there for ever after. Maybe this once, it could be a lucky stroke for them, something true and solid to emerge out of the confusion, or at least, some part of her must have thought so, she fears – given the stakes and risks, the very idea should have been to ridiculous to even occur to her more than any such cheesy ridiculous thing, she wanted him safe, yet maybe some part of her had come to think that she knew all of him, that she had him well under control, because it was simply the natural tendency with which to approach the world when your greatest fear is being lost; Maybe she had indulgently neglected to keep her ego under wrap and become a little too proud the last time she'd noticed that subtle, subversive little twitching of his hands that indicated that he wanted his anxieties remedied with a hug, thought herself way too sure to have read him like a book.
On an intellectual level, she knew to be reasonable with her expectations, she had long valued the idea of a person who stood for morals, for showing the right way, of a deep, independent person who walked this world with firm confidence, so she tried to cultivate a sense of these qualities in herself, but it was a process that she had to put work into, not something that she could just rely on finding every time when her emotions weren't quite catching up with her mind and deserved better than to be ignored.
She knew well that, on a certain level, another person could never be fully understood, controlled or assessed by another, no matter how much information she managed to amass about them, people were dynamic, unpredictable balls of randomness, chemicals and defining decisions not even they themselves could fully fathom; Try as she might, there was simply a limit to how far she as a separate person who couldn't even see into their heads would be able to predict and plan for the reactions of any given person, not her family, not her students, not Danny or even herself – She didn't need to be told that she should be able to accept it, but it still grated her, the thought of things, little things in her life that she didn't mind having around indefinitely turning into full blown situations that required talking about, addressing and reacting that might be taken out of her hands.
So why, oh why, had she then insisted on associating herself with one of the less predictable individuals roaming out in this universe? The little, frightening moments had always been there, the idea of being a mere ghost and the things he didn't tell her, but maybe she had been distracted by the rest of the whole, enough to be swept up in the stream of events until she found herself in a crashing time machine, staring a the lines and creaks of a face she had never seen before. It would occur to her later that perhaps that one image was the closest to encapsulating their entire relationship that a single moment could ever come: The two of them, staring at each other with nigh identical expressions of utmost bewilderment, each eying the other like they were the strangest, most inexplicable creature they had ever seen, not just with wonder, but just as much fear, fascinated by the kind of mystery that required equal measures of vice as well as virtue to pursue, and all this, all this none tool ong after they had been to hell and back.
As a teacher, answering questions was part of her job, and one of the things she always repeated to her students was that there was no such thing as a stupid question for they were each an opportunity to learn something new, but there were certain types of questions that she would hail as very good, those who provided the best and most convenient of opportunities, a bridge to lead to broader, less clear-cut subjects, still pendant holes in our knowledge and patches of genuine, fundamental ambiguity in our reality, the sort of question that could not definitely be answered by finding one word or telling one story. The best questions out there were those who, upon closer inspection, blossomed into an entire tide of never ending enigmas.
His name was just a word in a book, his world just a rock full of ...basically people, but his mystery went far beyond that... And it was that very person she never consciously, but somehow implicitly assumed to have figured out, the person who had previously gone out of his way to keep her safe and comfortable, who ended up driving her up the wall like never before in her life.
It was like the discovery of the neutron; Just when she thought she knew everything, she found herself back at square one, with nothing but questions and hints of cracks and inconsistencies she had been missing all along. She was made to ask herself whether she even knew who he was, whether she hadn't misunderstood from the very beginning, what to do with the things that kept coming out of his mouth and how she could never tell wether he was being genuinely oblivious, offhandedly grumpy or deliberately passive-agressive. Why would she even put up with this abrasive, astonishingly insulting piece of Teflon and why would she bother to come up with ways to excuse him to the world, what was it was that made her go back to a world of fear and harsh decisions, and then wonder whether she even should, and why she had gone and stabbed him right into all these doubts and fears and uncertainties just as he had laid them bare, that man with the wildest, most terrifying eyes , eyes that could, in a manner of moments, switch to observing her with that lost, insecure expression, like he was trusting his everything to her guidance, his quiet voice requesting the same frankness back from her.
Where was the common denominator in that? What was she possibly supposed to make of him? Weren't there lines she had to draw, principles she was supposed to stick to, disrespect no one should be willing to accept no matter what?
There came that moment when they were together on that Space Train, racing past the ruins of entire star systems, when she found herself voicing the distinction that while she wasn't sure whether she could carry on with the space traveling and their "things", throwing him out of her life completely was a different affair she found herself far more reluctant with; They were, of course, practically inseparable, him and that moody time machine of his, but it made her think. About him, about how she came to see his point of view and to which degree that was a place from which she wanted to be looking at this world from, and whom those words about choices were really meant for, or spoken about. Was there something about her that Could actually want this, the horrible weight, the possibility of getting it all wrong, the knowledge that she could be tempted, that inner "philosopher" or "teacher" she used to think was the best part of her, wanting to see how her ideas and theories held up, to implement them in practice, playing the smartass even in the middle of the potential destruction, getting off on the power, even, or merely the thrill, and what did that make her?
Indeed, what was she, in the great scheme of things?
That man was a bossy, showy, insensitive liar, he was childish prick who hated to lose, secretive to the point of paranoia and at times downright insufferable, but what exasperated her the most about him was that he led her to question herself, that he pushed her to examine her ideas and beliefs, to confront those very same traits in herself forced her to grow beyond what she had been before in the confines of her perfectly organized, relatively controllable comfort zone.
And, be it a virtue or a vice, in the end, she wanted to be challenged; She wanted to understand more about this world, its wonders and its truths, and is was this what bound them together, for better or for worse, this is what they shared with each other, what imbued their connection with more depth than any tangling of their time lines could ever have accomplished.
He really valued that side of her, too, no matter how difficult he might be from time to time, the part of her that pushed him forward and made him aware of his flaws, even joking that he ought to pay her, which, in a way, he already did in ways that no money on this world could compare to; She didn't know much about the many others who had come before her, apart from the occasional fond or hilarious or extraordinary anecdote, hints of a history, memories that carried too much weight to be mentioned any way but lightly; As far as she could tell, many of them had little ties to their place of origin to begin with, or had not been particularly satisfied with their lives; The usual pattern seemed to have been that they moved into his blue box full time, at most popping back now and then to pay a visit to any living family they might have, many of them eventually staying behind somewhere among the stars, having found a potential spouse or a place to apply their newly-found skills to their fullest potential, and she wasn't the type to think less of them just for that alone; If there was nothing worthwhile waiting for you wherever you lived, maybe leaving was exactly what you should do.
But Clara herself had not packed up immediately, quit her job and jumped into his spaceship, she had no reasons to do so – The things she had been doing in her life so far, her hobbies, her line of work, her love for working with children, her pursuits of her interests in art and philosophy, the time spent with her family, her students her colleagues and her all-time-favorite co-worker, Mr. Pink, whose very own, very different brand of quiet wisdom she had come to value, they were all exactly what she wanted to be doing, it was not always perfect, not always completely under control, but very much viable avenues to pursue different things that were important to her. Perhaps the regular Space Travel Days had simply become another component of that, a place to live and satisfied another part of her and share it with the one person who understood it like no one else could, the designated space for her to do awesome things with futuristic computers, do half of her communicating in the sort of silly lines she always wanted to say, but were guaranteed to lead to a major foot-in-mouth moment with, say, Danny, get to know new parts of herself and have her deep conversations about good, evil and the outer darkness... and among whatever shifts might have occurred between them after their visits to Trenzalore, those might be the one thing she wouldn't want to reverse for anything in the world; Before, he would probably have downplayed his doubts and worries, perhaps even tried to keep up a front for her like Vashtra had suggested, and, at most, requested a vague sort of comfort in a wordless, more physical way, but now, he might actually give her a straight answer as to what the actual matter is.
Even the times where she had felt like he'd left her behind, as much as they had scared her and thrown her into confusion, even when confronted with the possibility of things going out of control and the prospect of failing, she couldn't deny that he had always been there to collect her; It was easy to forget that he was not nearly as confident as his track record would suggest, or as omniscient as his boasting would have you think; Maybe that was another thing they had in common. Perhaps that was while it took her a while to conceive of the thought that perhaps, he thought that there were some situations (aside from "talking to people") that she might handle better than him, that she and those before her had always consistently shown him the way out even when he couldn't find it.
He has properly come to rely on her. Because he trusts her, because he knows she is capable, and frequently finds himself in situation where everything will be lost either way if he doesn't make full use of all the resources at his disposal.
And once she understood that, it was just got so much harder to think badly of him.
Maybe there was no such thing as an all-changing epiphany and the only way to answers, to doing good was to endlessly doubt your own justice, to check again and again whether your current course was consistent with your ideals and correct it every time, to remind yourself of what it was you believed in. Maybe to love someone, in whatever way, was to love them with all their flaws, not even in spite of them, but with the imperfections becoming just another part of the picture, that was still something troublesome to be kept in check, but, in moderate quantities, added a measure of uniqueness. Maybe to feel accepted, one must first accept oneself, a necessary step that the two of them just hadn't taken yet. Maybe one day, he would teach her what she already seemed to have taught him, without ever knowing it, how to let her guard down and show her true self to the world, warts and all, messy rough angles included. Imperfect as they may both be, the probability that they would both decide to jump out of an airlock at the same time was negligible enough; Maybe they could make that journey together.
She had no way of knowing what tests and revelations might still be lurking in the dark of their personal future, or where their voyages would lead them, but whoever knew...
Both of them might just learn something new.
