Author: ada511
Summary: Two standalone snippets of how 11 turns to 12. Centered around Clara and a romance that had already been confirmed between them. These stories do NOT go together. They are two versions of how 11 might turn to 12 and again, there is no plot except for regeneration and romance.
Author's Note: I find myself being very cliche and very much mourning the end of 11. In particular I have been so in love with 11/Clara it is really really hard to let go. These snippets (again they are NOT connected - just two versions of one event) are simply cathartic for me, I have no idea if anyone else will find them helpful to illicit a little cry and then move on. I'm just trying to wrap my head around this so that when the time comes I won't fall completely to pieces, because I want to like the next Doctor, I want the next chapter to be brilliant even while I mourn the last.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or this universe.
Notes: In this version of regeneration - death/regeneration has come upon The Doctor and Clara suddenly.
He felt the power coursing through him - the gold dust of regeneration already starting to puff out of his pores like clouds. He looked over at Clara. She was staring at him - paralyzed at the closed door of the Tardis. They were already gone. Already safe... well... Clara was, the Tardis was and... he hoped his future was. With effort, he pushed away from the console. He couldn't bear his last moments as himself, this self, to be so far from her - from Clara. Ignoring all notice of regeneration safety, he walked straight down the stairs and took her face - her beautiful lovely face in his hands - and kissed her.
This was where he wanted his last moments to be - with his Impossible Girl, with his Clara. He tried to savor the eternity in each second. She was grasping onto his hands as if he would float away with the dust. Finally, when he could stand the pain no longer, he broke away from her, tears running down his face, no shame, no pride, "Clara Oswald, I love you. I love you."
She tried desperately to hold onto him, but the waves of energy coursing from him made it impossible, "I love you Doctor, please... " She followed him as he stumbled around the Tardis; knowing what was happening though they rarely ever spoke of it. Regeneration. Now. She shook her head, trying to clear the reality- trying to make it a nightmare that she could wake up from. She was injured, though she couldn't feel it then. Her body was numb and her heart was burning. She stumbled forward, pushing through the pure gold energy to grab his hand. She looked into his face, contorted in pain and tried to keep her face calm and loving and reassuring, "I'm here! I'm here... I'm here."
She said it as a mantra as the energy finally became too much for either of them to bear. It was one last look, one last touch of their fingertips and the world became blinding light. Clara dropped to her knees to shield her face. She could not see him, she could not see The Doctor.
Moments turned to minutes. She heard him - the new Doctor- yelling, and it tore her heart into rags. She was sobbing though she didn't even notice, murmuring her love for him, pleading with him not to let this happen; she was nearly unconscious of what she was saying- only that she couldn't stop herself from saying it. And then... the light was gone. There was an unnatural stillness and she knew; Clara knew that it was over. She stopped talking. Her Doctor was gone... And no matter how much she didn't want it to be true, she knew that it was.
The Doctor stared down at the familiar grating of the Tardis and did the usual physical inspection much faster than normal. For the first time after regenerating the thought paramount and first in his mind was not for himself - his new self. For once, there was someone else he was much, much more worried about. He got to his knees - stayed crouched, wanting to get his bearings and looked for her.
There she was - his Impossible Girl. She would, in some sense or another, be all of his regeneration's special savior - but it was this last life in which he'd truly met her - his last life in which he'd fallen in love with her and it was this new life that he intended to spend loving her.
He didn't even know how old he looked at the moment - not what color his hair was or if he had a distinctive chin. He frowned, her teasing of that particular feature had been... ridiculously special to him. To her... what would she think of him now? Would she be able to make the transition?
The Doctor could not be sure.
All that he was sure of was that the next few minutes would be important. And that nothing he had ever done was as important to him in these next minutes than making them count. He would figure out the rest later. Like what sort of man he was and how he liked his toast prepared.
The Doctor watched her, still on her knees, covering her face. And he waited. He waited for her.
She could hear breathing. Heavy breathing. Was he okay? And it was then, and only then, that she was brave enough to take her hands away from her face. She felt nauseous, and afraid, and so so sad, but she had to stuff it away and look. She simply had to.
"Clara." He spoke as soon as their eyes met. Her face still bore the scars from their last battle - smeared with soot, a long scrape that had nearly gotten her eye, and now tears had cut paths down her cheeks. Her eyes were swollen and red and he wasn't sure if she was aware that her side was still bleeding.
She shouldn't have been surprised that she felt some recognition - one of her echoes had surely come across this Doctor. The prick of recognition was enough to remind her of who she was and what sort of person she would always be. She pushed herself shakily to her feet, grabbed onto the railing tentatively, "Doctor?" She started up the stairs, intent on helping him, "Doctor, are you all right?"
There he was. The stranger with the soul of The Doctor. Looking, just then, just a little dangerous with the intensity of his gaze, the sweat from pain on his face. She swallowed the revulsion at the thought that she would never see her Doctor again and redoubled her efforts to be helpful. She dropped down again to her knees to look him over, to look for the wound that had caused his regeneration in the first place. Though the long gash in his coat and shirt still existed, the wound, of course, did not.
The Doctor's relief that she could come to him still was incalculable, it made him loose with his words, "Clara; so brave...my-" He stopped... was she still his? Hands shaking, she withdrew them and cautiously looked in his eyes. He touched the blood on her cheek, "Clara - are you certain you're okay?"
She nodded, this new voice alien to her. In fact, The Doctor had never been as alien to her than he was right now. In unison they started to stand - The Doctor using the railing instead of her as support- still feeling that every step he made would determine the direction of their relationship.
He rose to his full height, found that he still had a good advantage over her in that respect, and stared at her from his new eyes as she stared at him with her swollen ones. Without meaning to, he broke into a smile; he was about to say she was just as beautiful with these new eyes as with the last set but he wasn't sure of her... not yet.
Clara touched the railing, unsure of where her hands should go; unsure of what her role was with him. Ten minutes ago he had kissed her - as his last act in his life he had kissed her and she had told him she loved him. But that wasn't this man... not completely.
Still... the way he was looking at her did not lack love, did not lack concern.
Clara pushed the hopeless mourning even further from her conscious mind and tried to concentrate on the new man - the new Doctor in front of her. She reached out her hand slowly (carefully) and touched his face experimentally. She smiled at him gently, "Hello."
He smiled back at her, "Hello Clara."
"What do we do now?"
He reached up with his hand to cover hers on his face, pressed it against him then took hold of it and brought it down between them, "Honestly? We eat. I'm Starving. Famished. Completely in need of nourishment."
She smiled wider at that, letting the feel of him holding her hand settle with her, "Well... I should think I could handle that." The pain in her heart seemed to be settling somewhere in her gut, she squeezed his hand, signalling him that she was about to break contact but he didn't let her go, not right away. She looked up at him again.
"I still love you Clara. That hasn't changed. Not one bit."
Clara's eyes filled with tears. How did you mourn the passing of someone that was still, in essence, before you- Still declaring their love for you? She couldn't help the crying, but before he would have pulled her into his arms and she knew that this Doctor wasn't sure if he was allowed that luxury yet.
Clara wiped her eyes and she stepped forward; one step was enough. He pulled her the rest of the way into a hug. It was the first time in her brief aqaintance with him that she understood that he had been holding back. His embrace - his first contact with anyone ever - she didn't want to reject him. Because she would never have rejected him before he'd changed.
She closed her eyes, tried to imagine, tried to understand. Snatches of stolen memories - memories from the lives of some of her echoes fluttered through her mind. Had her feelings been any different then? With Doctors who were long past - had she cared less for them because she hadn't traveled with them? And her Doctor - had he cared any less for her echoes?
The answer did not even need thinking on. The answer was no.
She held onto him a bit longer, desperately trying to keep herself from comparing the bodies of the men she loved. She pushed away, but held onto his shoulders, prepared herself from the shock of seeing this different face, "Thank you."
"For what? Not for loving you?"
"No," Clara had to laugh softly at that, "No. For saving my life."
"Anytime."
"Are you really okay?"
"Good as new. Except... Clara... please..."
Clara readied for the blow of a request too intimate to handle, "Yes Doctor?" The name didn't stick in her throat like she worried it would.
He reached forward to cure her face, "The regeneration is still on my skin, let me... help you." Slowly, carefully, without getting too intimate, he ran his hands along her body at the points that she had just started to feel the burn from the wounds sustained on their last adventure... truly their last. Clara swallowed and looked down at her feet. Still looking concerned he took his hands away, "Better?"
"Much." When would she stop crying at the drop of a hat? She smiled encouragingly, trying to ignore her own tears.
The Doctor nodded in acknowledgement of the unspoken sadness in her eyes. Grabbing her hand, he led her back to the console where he switched a few levers and turned a few dials, "Breakfast?"
And just then, finally, she could see him - the core - the man she'd saved a thousand times over in a thousand lives. She nodded her head in confirmation and agreed, "Breakfast."
Something in him sighed in relief. It wasn't much, not even a promise really - but it was a start. And the only good thing about ending one thing was the possibility - the hope of starting something new.