He was still shouting at the console, his Scottish accent echoing through the Tardis corridors to the spot where she'd stopped running. Clara leaned her forehead into the cold steel beside her and took several long shaky breaths, hearing the clanking and banging and the gruff grunts that suddenly fell into an eerie silence. They were floating somewhere in space; they were drifting somewhere in time. They were lost in the universe, or at least it felt that way to her.
Listening to the hum of engines and the rhythmic muted drumming of some bit hitting some bob deep in the Tardis bowels, Clara wrapped her hands around her abdomen and shook her head. Of course he would regenerate now. Weeks from the birth of his daughter, the Doctor would obviously risk his life for them and lose this round, paving the way for a new man with severed ties to her. Because that's what each regeneration as, wasn't it – a death of the Doctor, and the birth of a new one.
Clara released a sob and then covered her mouth, turning to make sure he hadn't heard. She managed a laugh, quick and pained, because the Doctor, her Doctor, he should have been coming to check on her by now. Hunched and hurried, a concerned grimace twisting his features, he should be there already, one hand at her neck, the other at her stomach, asking her if she were alright. He would be giving her that smile of his, the smile that came with the sad eyes that didn't know which of them to focus on – Clara, or their unborn child – and would settle on her with a satisfied sigh.
"What my girls need is a good trip back to Earth."
She could hear his voice readily, and she turned to look down that corridor, swallowing roughly as she waited for this new Doctor to find her. He would certainly find her, wouldn't he? Her footsteps began to take her towards him on instinct, following the tapping against the inside of her stomach, a little person asking for her father, not quite understanding he wasn't the same man anymore.
There would be no more gentle tales whispered at the end of the day.
No more delicate rubs of her flesh
No more kisses to stretch marks to wish them away.
No more her Doctor.
Only an angry Scotsman with a harsh furrowed brow who had looked into her eyes as if searching for some recognition he couldn't find. A Doctor all screams and madness, trying to fly the Tardis with her while scrambling away from 'the short round one'. Clara frowned, feeling her baby roll gently, and she hesitated, just before her vision brought her the sight of the console space in which he would be. In which he should be, she assumed, since he hadn't gone after her.
He was leaned into the controls, head bowed between shoulders that lifted high and then dropped low on long steady breaths. "I wondered when you'd return," he called weakly. "Not in the running mood. Bit out of sorts."
Making her way across the ramp, she looked him over. Tall and lanky all the same, but grey and tense in a way she never imagined her Doctor could be. "You yourself yet?"
He laughed. "Myself." He shook his head and dropped it further. "Who am I now, eh? Still a man; still not ginger," his right hand lifted and fell against his thigh, then lifted again to hold the console.
"Still the Doctor," she offered tentatively, taking a step closer.
He was weak, mind in a fog. His lips were moving without words and then they'd go silent so he could stare into the space in front of him. It was inches, but his eyes were so far away she imagined he couldn't see the buttons or the controls anymore, simply the time before him and the time after. Trying to acclimate himself to his present location, she thought with a small smirk. Getting his footing after his fall. And then his head came up sharply, eyes brightening with focus.
"Clara," he breathed, "Clara is you." He looked to her with tired eyes and a weary smile, "You are Clara." He huffed. "Clara, Clara, Clara, Clara." He toggled a finger at her, then tapped his head, "Going to commit that one to memory."
She took another small step, stating, "Thought you might have had already."
"Important," he uttered, "There was something important."
Looking to her pregnant belly, she exhaled and offered, "Had to get me home, so you can go off, explore the universe."
"Yes, explore the universe," he repeated lightly, tapping at buttons without pressing them, eyes glossing over as he turned to look at the screen that sat calmly in front of him, Gallifreyan writing popping up in lines she knew he wasn't reading. He was contemplating something and she swallowed hard, moving to the chair closest to the door to sit slowly and nod her head, lifting her knuckles to wipe at her tears before shaking her hair back over her shoulders.
Single mum.
Wasn't it all the rage now?
The Doctor could skip back into the stars and Clara could finish out the nursery she'd been putting together in her flat, beg for a raise when she returned from leave, and start a new life with her daughter. And they'd be fine, she knew. The Doctor might drop in from time to time to check up on them; she imagined he did that with old companions. He'd see his old self in his daughter's face somehow, and he'd smile, give her a little gift, or impart some wisdom, and then be off again to that life of adventure he craved.
She felt his presence looming over her and she raised her eyes to meet his, seeing them reddened and creased as he asked, "You'd send me off so simply, Clara?"
Shrugging, she told him honestly, "I put a bit of a dent in your life, said so yourself once."
He nodded, then knelt, brow knotting together as he shook his head, "There's something important..."
"It's nothing, nothing that important at all," she told him dryly, but he raised a finger to silence her and then his eyes drifted down to her stomach, considering it for a moment before reaching out to her. His slender hands wrapped around either side of her and his eyes closed. He bowed, forehead touching the highest point of her bump and he took a ragged breath.
"Our Elizabeth Jane, our beautiful little Lizzie – she is everything important to me," he managed.
Clara hiccuped a cry and offered, "And she comes from the you who died, Doctor – you are not obligated to her or to me." She shrugged weakly, "You don't even know who you are, how could I ask you to know us?"
His head twisted slightly against her stomach, and then he laughed. "You are my Clara and she is my Lizzie," he looked to her, "I know you; I know all of you. To send you away would be madness."
She smiled as his knees collided roughly with the ground, asking, "So you mean to keep us?"
"Oh, Clara," he breathed, "I am the one lucky enough to be kept." He exhaled and then explained, "Though as I've just regenerated I might possibly be in need of a n…" dropping onto his side as she called his name, the Doctor passed out and Clara watched his chest rise and fall, and then closed her eyes to stand, one hand giving her belly a light pat.
"Suppose the old man's still ours then, and what he needs is a good trip back to Earth," she sighed. Clara smiled, moving to the console, feeling the delicate taps their daughter offered as she worked to take them home.