Somehow I Return Again To You
By: Legacy At Heart
Summary: "I don't know where I am. I don't know where I'm going, or where I've been. I was born to save the Doctor, but the Doctor is safe now. I'm the Impossible Girl, and my story is done." Clara Oswald.
Or is it?
Clara is ready to die. She's ready to go to the end. So when she instructs the TARDIS to take her to the end of her life, she is surprised where that request leads her.
Title taken from Moody Blues I Know You're Out There Somewhere which is a great song for the Doctor and Clara.
AN1: My whole explanation is at the end. So please read before the pitchforks are sharpened. Thank you!
Just note, the him in bold is 11 and the one without the bold is 12. This is after Clara's final episode and the year mentioned is clearly picked because I don't really know if the show follows our calendars (meaning I don't know what "present day" is).
The quote in the summary from The Day of the Doctor is what truly inspired the ending and the quote in bold is from She Said, He Said, said by the doctor about Clara.
The TARDIS…funny, she still couldn't really think of anything other than that blue Police Box that she spent so much time (and too little) in as the TARDIS—anyway, the diner flew through time and space. For how long she never knew but if it was anything like his, she trusted it and where it was taking her.
She heard it said that the TARDIS never took him where he wasn't needed or didn't need to be. So she was trusted her TARDIS and knew that one day, she would have to return to Gallifrey and face her death. She had lived enough of adventures and Ashildr had left a while after she made it clear that she saw everything she wanted to see.
101 places and more.
Her TARDIS was taking her to where she felt she needed to go now. It had done so for so long; taking her to far- off places that for so long existed in her dreams. Much like when she was with him. She wished that she could share her adventures with him. He would have loved to go with her, to be with her. She knew that because he tried to save her and run with her. But she couldn't hold him back. She couldn't let him stop living. She had to stay away and make him forget her. And she needed to face her end alone. That's why she let Ashildr leave. It was hard once, but do die in front of people she loved again, she couldn't deal with it.
So she instructed her TARDIS to take her to the end. And she wasn't afraid of it.
So when the machine stopped and she exited it, she was shocked that she didn't see Gallifrey but her house in London.
"What is this," she asked the diner. She froze after a moment passed with no response. That never happened.
His would beep and boop and groan and twinkle. Hers did that sometimes, mostly when she needed to cheer up. It reminded her of him. So when it was silent, she was perturbed. It was rarely silent. That's why she loved it like she loved him.
(Him with his bow tie and his floppy hair and his sad eyes...God she didn't think about him for so long…of that face.)
She walked away from the machine and looked around. She gasped as it disappeared. No, that wasn't supposed to happen. It was supposed to wait for her. And it was supposed to take her to her end. (She flat out refused to say death.) Not to her home. Hadn't she said goodbye enough of times to her family? (She already came back ten times…each time her heart breaking a little more.)
She looked up at the window she remembered once leaning out of and looking down at him and his machines. She remembered them jumping off the cliff and the way he cared for her. She remembered flying the TARDIS with him. She remembered all the times he held her and put his arms around her and the time he saved her. She smiled remembering that one time they made plans to go to ancient Mesopotamia and have a picnic on future Mars with cocktails on the Moon. She remembered the pure joy on his face and the feel of his arms around her. She remembered how he called her and told her to stay with his new face, how he needed her. She wasn't loved like that before.
She remembered the look of devastation on his face when she died. She was just thankful that she didn't have to look at his face because she was never gone through it.
She loved him.
Not that she didn't love the next face she got to know, but he was her doctor. He was her heart. He took it with him when he disappeared. Her beautiful, lanky, funny, bow-tie wearing, couldn't-pass-a-fez, standing-right-there-in-front of-her doctor.
Wait a minute…
"Hello Clara," he said.
Clara gawked and he leaned against the door, smiling at her the prat.
"What…how…where…when am I?" she asked.
"London, 2017," he replied.
"You shouldn't be here. Looking like that," she exclaimed.
"And you should be dead," he pointed out, "You impossible girl."
"Well I'm not, no thanks to you. You impossible man," Clara shot back. But she did thrill at that nickname only he called her.
"Not that impossible really. Met one of my past selves in the Gallery that one time with my other selves," he told her.
Clara laughed and crossed her arms. "What am I doing here? I wanted to go to the end of the timeline, of my timeline," she asked.
He smiled at her. "You did," he said.
Clara blinked, confused. "I wanted to go to Gallifrey and finally die. Not back to London," she replied.
He walked closer to her, his tall frame towering over her. She took a deep breath and took his familiar scent in.
"It seemed that the timeline fixed itself and so your death…isn't needed yet. This is the end of your adventures…but not your life," he explained.
Clara let out a breath that she didn't think she was holding. She wasn't going to die.
"What about you? Why are you here," she asked.
In that face went unasked but he knew what she was really trying to ask.
"Because like I said, sometimes we don't really die, or disappear. One of me is working at the Gallery. The one before me? Yeah, he's my brother now, the prat, working with me at UNIT. We remember our tenures as the Doctor but to the rest of the world, we are brothers with multiple doctorates and long suffering colleagues who listen to our crazy theories. I think he rather would be back in 1562 being king but it is fun to watch him flounder about," he said.
A laugh bubbled out of her throat and she was breathless seeing him smile at her. She loved this face the most.
"Don't change."
He never did. His face may have changed but he didn't change. And neither did she.
"I would like to see that," Clara murmured.
Her doctor smiled at her and she grinned at him, tears springing to her eyes as he moved even closer to her.
"Good because I don't want to live another lifetime where you are not with me," he told her. "I love you, Clara...my Clara… Always brave, always funny. Always exactly what I need. Perfect. Too perfect," he whispered, tracing her face with his hands, brushing away the tears. He kissed her forehead. "My impossible girl," he added pulling her close and wrapping his arms around her.
She closed her eyes and enjoyed his touch. "I love you too," she replied. She grinned against his chest. "Chin man," she muttered.
He laughed and twirled her about. She shirked and wrapped her arms around his neck. She memorized his face. She took in his floppy hair, his bow tie, his smiled and his eyes. She wanted to cry seeing those eyes.
They were no longer sad.
They were bright and happy.
"What do I call you, Doctor," she asked.
"Well you could call me that but John would do," he told her.
"Good," Clara smiled and captured his lips in a kiss. They kissed for a good while until she heard the door open and the bell ringing incessantly.
"Oi, come on now, quit snogging in the middle of the street," a voice called out from the door.
"Prat," her doctor—John—muttered against her lips.
Clara laughed and pulled him towards the house to where the tenth doctor was waiting, an amused smirk on his lips. He kissed her hand and winked at her. Oh, how wrong John was. This wasn't the ending of her adventures.
Though, she supposed he was right in a way. This was her ending; to a life of adventure alone, living towards her death. To her life being one long day with no one to share it with. She wasn't alone anymore. She was with her heart. She was brave and strong with him. That's all she wanted.
This wasn't her ending.
This was her beginning.
Feeling John's kiss on her temple, she smiled.
This was their beginning.
THE END…?
AN2: Okay so yesterday I was up before my whole family and started to flip pass all the Christmas movies and the marathons to land on BBC America to see Doctor Who was on. And thanks to a couple of videos on YouTube and the enjoyable Day of the Doctor, I am slowly getting into this show. And apparently BBC wants me to fall in love with the show because that's all that's on this weekend. And not just the newer episodes but the series with 11 and I can't wait to get to the ones with Clara because I think they are the cutest thing from the show.(I don't think my tear ducts will be the same because I'm crying over the VIDEOS I found). I want to watch the ones with 10 as well because he is fun and his dynamic with Eleven won me over. Their sass is awesome on all levels.
I also am very interested in the TARDIS. I like the fact that it is a character and not just a prop like I thought. I think that Clara's would act like the Doctor's given time and take her to where she needed to be like his. I don't know enough to know how time passes inside the TARDIS so I could take all the help I could get, but I'm going in blind here.
Then there's Clara and Eleven. I think they're adorable together. The videos I found with them on YouTube quipped my interest in this show actually. I think they were made for each other. I feel like each Doctor has a soulmate (Rose and Ten possibly could be my other favorite). And this fic started off with Clara ready to face the end of her life and he appears to say goodbye. And that's it! I swear the whole Ten and Eleven being alive and being brothers thing was not in my plans! But then I watched the Day of the Doctor ending again and researched who the curator at the end was and the way he was talking to Eleven made me think that maybe once the Doctor regenerates, his past selves don't vanish, but just lose the powers and the TARDIS and keep the memories but to the rest of the world (though a select few do remember) they're different people.
So I can see this continued on with a new adventure. So if you like the idea of them all working together and give me time to learn what the hell is going on, I would love to try my hand at writing a full story. (I kinda like to type in a "British voice" because their insults are very polite and funny.) So please let me know if I should go on.
Thank you!