The first was a surprise; an unexpected plus on a test Clara stared at for twenty minutes before emerging from the bathroom it'd taken her over an hour to find to work her way back to the console. The whole walk had felt slow, listening to the Cloister bells bonging in her ears as the Tardis continually flashed its red lights at her. A warning, she knew, and it made her heart drum in her chest as she took a left and then another and then a third, understanding the machine was keeping her from her destination.
A gaggle of uncoordinated limbs with a flop of dark hair who called himself the Doctor.
Holding the railing, she watched him move around the console with a small grin on his face as he considered a hundred destinations to take her. He'd told her once how impossible it was to settle on one, there were so many things they could do – a list she watched dwindling before her eyes as she continued to hold that test within her fingers, terrified of what it might mean.
Turning, he smiled for her, genuinely thrilled to see her back after she'd rushed through upon entering. She'd spent the day teaching on autopilot, her mind focused on her growing nausea and a set of missed months, her mind working over what she knew while fighting even the possibility of it. Just sick, she'd told herself at first; just sick, she'd convinced herself for almost two months, but she bought the test on the ride to the Tardis anyways.
Brow rising, the Doctor laughed, "Ah, Clara," and then he frowned in amusement to tell her, "That was an awfully long restroom trip, is everything alright?"
"No," she breathed shakily, watching the concern that began to overtake his features as his hands became still against the console, looking to the object she held. His mouth opened slightly and she looked down at it, then took a step towards him to use it to point at him before she began on a ramble, "You remember when we went to that planet," she laughed because she knew how ridiculous her words had been, and she looked away to continue, "The one in the forest? Where we rescued their princess and they invited us to spend a few days to celebrate her wedding and the 'customary' fertility festival afterwards, except we can't really remember much of what we did on those days because their food was apparently a sort of hallucinogenic for us?"
The Doctor was nodding slowly and she could see his mind comprehending as he crossed the space between them to take the test from her to examine. He swallowed roughly, his chest expanding and contracting with several frightened breaths before he asked, "Are you alright?"
She laughed nervously, hand coming up to gesture at the test he held to say, "I'm pregnant."
"Fertility festival worked," he cheered weakly, voice hoarse as he offered a worried smile before looking her over and Clara watched his apprehension fade into something else. Something that calmed her heart and warmed her body and sent a tickle through her abdomen as she understood it was happiness.
Hands coming up to the space underneath her navel, Clara watched his lips shift up into a quick smile, one he hid immediately because he knew she wasn't sure how she felt about it but she could read it in his face – he was pleased and the moment she knew it was the moment she laughed and nodded and asked, "What are we going to do?"
He straightened awkwardly, hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck before he responded, "I suppose that depends on what you're going to do," and then he asked her quietly, "Will you keep it?"
"Could I?" She half-whispered, eyes narrowing as she took a step into him.
His brow dropped and he looked to his left, explaining, "That would be your decision."
"No," she giggled, "I mean, I'm human and you're..." she lifted her hands to wave over him, "You're not."
On a laugh of understanding, he lurched towards the console again, typing and flipping knobs and Clara watched him swing the screen around to show her a schematic of her body, two red dots thumping away – one at her chest going steadily and one at her lower abdomen working twice as fast – and she shrugged, not knowing what it meant.
His mouth formed an 'O' of surprise and then he pointed at it to tell her, "According to the Tardis, she's a little bit of me and a whole lot of you, and all seems in order," he told her, twisting to look at the screen again and she approached him, feeling her heart quicken as the dot on her chest did because she could see wonder in his face.
The wonder of impending fatherhood for a fifteen hundred year old Time Lord.
"Is that alright then?" Clara asked. Then she stopped and shook her head, asking, "She?"
The Doctor softened entirely as he looked to her and she blushed as he told her, "If you decide to keep her, we'll have a daughter, and yes, Clara, she'll be more than alright – she'll be brilliant."
Clara reached for his arm, wrapping hers around it, and she laughed with him as she nodded against him and told him quietly, "We'll have a daughter."
The second was no less a shock. Clara looked to the four tests settled along the counter in the bathroom as she pushed her hands into the hair at either side of her head and laughed. Four kinds of tests returning the same results. A small pink plus, a single blue line, a digital reader that blinked 'PREGNANT' and a tablet connected to the Tardis mainframe that showed the results of a body scan – a last resort as it immediately sent a gong through the machine she knew the Doctor had heard on the console because he'd immediately gone in search of her.
"Clara," the Scottish voice beckoned from just behind the door. "Clara, is everything alright?"
She listened to the second light voice ask sadly, "Mummy, are you ok in there?"
Nodding to herself as she looked from one test to the next, Clara responded, "Yeah, great, Doctor, Maddie, just go on back to whatever you were up to and I'll be out in a moment."
There were a few seconds of quiet discussion just outside the door – Clara could hear their whispering back and forth – and then they stepped away, their daughter no doubt hanging off his back, or settled atop his shoulders. She took a long breath and scooped up the tests into her hands, stepping out with them and making her way to the console where she paused just before entering, watching the Doctor set the little girl down on the ground so she could begin running circles around the time rotor, giggling each time she gave her father's left hip a gentle tap.
"What d'you suppose is wrong with mummy?" She asked out of breath, but not slowing down, dark hair flowing behind her as she ran.
Madison Oswald was four, was taller than all of the children in her class, and had her father's ridiculous smile. Well, Clara thought with a grin, his last face's ridiculous smile. She was that face's legacy and Clara cherished her entirely, kissing her thin eyebrows every night before bed and hoping they never changed. Because she knew one day they could; she knew one day they probably would.
It wasn't something her and the Doctor wanted to think about just yet.
"Ah," the Doctor breathed, turning to catch the girl and scoop her up quickly into his arms, "Mummy's just tired." She giggled when he poked at her tiny upturned nose and he joined her in her amusement as Clara sighed, watching them, knowing how very difficult it had been for this incarnation to loosen up – knowing he'd only done so for his daughter.
The thin child straddled his waist, her legs swinging at his sides as she held his shoulders and sighed, "Mummy's always tired."
He laughed and nodded and then looked to Clara with a tiny bit of understanding, looking to the items she held in her hands. The Doctor's rigidity upon his regeneration had driven a wedge between them, one that slowly came undone as he'd had to re-established his relationship with the toddler that had initially been frightened of him. And one that had deepened enough to allow for the positive results on the four tests she showed him with a shrug.
"Round two," she told him timidly before asking, "Are you ready?"
The Doctor stared, bright eyes widening enough to remind him of the day he'd regenerated, when he'd stared at her and Maddie across the console space as the child had cried.
"Why is she crying, stop her crying!" He'd shouted.
"She's afraid!" Clara had shouted back. "Her father's just..." died.
She hated to think about those first weeks, how difficult it had been. How she'd struggled to not think about it as a death, remembering his youthful face and their time together. Holding her daughter and remembering how many nights she'd woken to find him caressing her pregnant stomach, whispering to the girl in her womb; remembering how he'd cried when he'd first held her; remembering their squeals of laughter.
Now she looked at the man holding her daughter and she huffed a breath as he settled the girl to the ground to approach her. To take the tests as he'd done the first time and look them over curiously before turning to look at her. And his eyes held that same wonder he had before. He smiled and nodded and showed her the tablet as she wiped at tears.
"Can you read it this time, Clara?"
He knew she could.
His former self had taught her. He wanted their daughter to know Gallifreyan and he wanted her to be able to teach her if he wasn't around and they both knew it was a possibility. Clara took the tablet back to look at the familiar outline of her body and the two red heartbeats, or three, she thought with a small smile. Madison had two perfect hearts beating inside of her chest and Clara was certain this child would as well.
"A little bit of me and a whole lot of you," she sighed, feeling her daughter's movements around them slow so she could hug at her right leg to look up at the screen, mouth moving inaudibly as she tried to read the words, but was still too young to.
The Doctor smiled, moving forward to take the tablet as he laid a palm to her cheek and sighed, "And we'll have a son."
Thinking about how this Doctor read to Madison every night; how he managed to quiet her with curious thoughts; how he tenderly kissed those same eyebrows with Clara's same hopes. How he still brought her into their room to nestle with them in their bed every night because he wanted nothing more than to be curled up with his family. She sighed as she watched him smile.
And Clara brushed a hand over Madison's hair and she repeated happily, "And we'll have a son."