It had been two months. Two months since The Doctor left Clara with Danny. Two months since he'd flown off in his TARDIS with a smile and a lie, in a desperate attempt that maybe one of them could be happy.
He'd tried to get on with things, but the TARDIS had never felt bigger or emptier. He needed her to show him the wonder in everything they saw together, ever the English teacher she had forced him to look beneath the surface and strive to find a deeper meaning in it all. And now she wasn't there, and he missed it.
The Doctor told himself he could never go back, that he would only ruin the happy life she had now, that he would regret it. In fact he was still telling himself those same things as he landed the TARDIS in the hallway of her flat. He quickly checked the monitors and found that Clara and Danny weren't home, maybe that was for the best. He could go in, just briefly, he would have time to check in quickly and he need not interfere with her life again.
He stepped gingerly out of the TARDIS and made his way along the hallway, coming first to the bedroom. He looked around him, it looked exactly as it always had. Her many pairs of high heeled boots were clustered in a corner of the room, a pile of marking lay next to the bottles of liquid eyeliner on the dressing table and her Coal Hill School ID badge was hung over the reading lamp on her bedside table, an open book lying next to it.
He glanced from the bedside table to the double bed in the centre of the room, and was surprised to see a split down the middle, one side was unmade and the covers folded back, as if they had been thrown off suddenly in an attempt to wake up that morning. The pillow on this side was creased and dented, the sign of a fair few nights of tossing and turning. The other side though was pristine, its pillow case was undisturbed and its half of the duvet was perfectly made. It hardly looked like it had been slept in for weeks.
Growing curious now, the Doctor headed towards the living room, and again found it no different than he remembered, no new books had been added to the shelves, no pile of maths exercise books sat next to her essays to be marked on the desk. No coat hung next to hers' on the back of the door.
It was at this point the Doctor began to worry, he knew he shouldn't, he knew that he should stick to his word and leave her to her own life. But that had been a life with Danny, and as of this moment he couldn't even find any sign that this life existed. He had feared this, but he hadn't dared to believe it might happen. Danny wasn't back at all.
He continued his investigation of the room and his attention was drawn to the post it notes littering her bookshelves. He recognised the contents of most of them; brief, two or three word synopses of their travels. And then in the centre other notes: "Just say it" and "Truth". These post it notes seemed undisturbed, as if they had sat there for many weeks, a very fine layer of dust gathered on a few of them. But one had been altered, again and again. The original marker-pen message had been scribbled over in blue biro, black biro, her red essay-marking biro, then in pencil, then felt tip, then ink. The note's previous messages were still legible underneath the corrections and the Doctor read "three months","14 weeks", "15 weeks" then "4 months", "4 months 2 weeks", "20 weeks" and "twenty two weeks" scrawled over the fluorescent yellow note paper.
At this point the Doctor's brain went into overdrive, he dashed around the room mumbling to himself furiously "weeks, months? Weeks?" he repeated to himself, and then "MONTHS!" he exclaimed as he caught sight of Clara's calendar hanging on the wall next to the kitchen door.
He tore his way through the pages of Clara's calendar desperately searching for any hints as to the meaning of the note. In her Calendar he found the same scribbles, marking the same dates. He flicked pages out of the way, working his way from the three month mark forwards, it was at 20 weeks when he stopped turning pages and just stared. Because along with the week marking was another note. Clara's neat printing read "scan this week".
The Doctor dropped the calendar pages with a now-shaking hand, he took a step backwards as dozens of thoughts seemed to enter his mind in the same moment. He saw the past few months from the perspective of an outsider.
He saw Clara's face as he told her "you'd have stopped having wars … and stopped having babies."
He saw her declare that "you can't blame a baby for kicking".
He remembered Courtney teasing her on their way back from the moon "so Miss, what was that you said back there about wanting to have babies" and he remembered Clara's quick response of "quiet Courtney!" said through gritted teeth with a far off look in her eye.
He saw the panic on her face when he told her he knew she had news for him, or declared that she was quite a mess of chemicals.
He saw the look on her face as she cared for the children in her charge, he saw her pulling Maebh towards her and shielding her from the wolves, he saw her kneeling at the foot of Rupert's bed, spinning him a tale to keep him safe.
Then he heard the sound of a key in the lock on the front door, and the Clara he was seeing wasn't just in his mind's eye. She stood in front of him, bag falling from her shoulder and shaking hand flying to cover her gaping mouth as she stared at him.
"Doctor, I …" she started, but soon stopped when she saw the post it note in his hand and the look on his face.
He stared at her, but he didn't seem to see her face as his gaze was fixed upon the bump that protruded from her coat, no longer small enough to be hidden under jumpers and jackets. His shaking hands reached towards her, one very briefly resting on her bump before pulling her into a tight hug.
"Clara, I lied, I lied and I'm so sorry" he whispered.
"sorry, for exactly the same" Clara replied, her face burying into his shoulder.