AN: my first ever fanfic that I have had the guts to upload yay! so be nice. This is a short little one shot that is very bittersweet. I wanted to use beautiful poetic words to capture the essence of the fairytale that i think Clara's story is. It made my heart ache while I wrote it and I hope you like it.
It's set directly after TNOFTD because wow what an episode. I wrote it on the day we found out the 12th Doctor because I felt so nostalgic about Matt and 11 that I just wanted to curl into a ball and cry. So this is the result of heartbreak and mourning.
~happy reading~
Doctor
They say that grief changes you, but they're wrong. Grief strips you down until you are completely naked; vulnerable to everything the universe throws at you. We are told that grief is an unbearable pain, but that's not true. Truth is the pain. It forces you to see the world so much clearer, to notice everything ugly and cruel in it and compels you to see it for what it is.
I chose to bury truth. Cover it in beautiful lies, all wrapped inside each other. From time to time, it bursts its seams and through the layers it glows bright, absorbing everything around it until it is the only thing you see. And it engulfs me, burning itself right into the back of my mind and like a hurricane it destroys me from the inside.
But you, you my Clara are hope. A light at the end of the darkness of truth, a lantern in the inky night. You were sent into the universe to save me, sacrificing yourself a thousand different times over, for me alone. You sprinkled yourself along my past like flower petals and you were a lion heart. I'm a mad man who stole a box and ran away. I'm a coward. But you, my impossible girl, you are a beacon of all that is wise and kind and good.
You are the girl of a thousand names, but unlike me you have only one face, you need only that one face. Selfless, fragile, beautiful Clara Oswald. You are truly the impossible girl.
I see you now in every memory, watching in the shadows, guarding me, ever-present, calling my name. A name that I hardly recognise anymore. You have seen all my faces, all my victories and downfalls; your mind is swimming with 900 year old stories from all over time and space. You should be drowning, losing all grips with what you truly know and yet here you are, cradled in my arms, the same Clara I've known right from the day I started running.
Clara
I don't know where I am. I don't know who I am. All I know is that I was running. Running on the treadmill of time towards the doctor. I don't know if I ever reached him. I feel like I've been in a thousand places, lived a thousand lives. I feel so old and so tired. I feel like my very bones have been worn down and my throat is filled with sand.
I am not even sure whether I am conscious or not. The only thing I truly know is there's a man called the doctor, he lives in a box in the sky and all he does, and all day every day is stop the creatures of the universe from ever having bad dreams. He is the only thing that I truly know is real. He is like a bright blue light at the end of this tunnel of black and I can see him. He's had so any faces, so many personalities and I know them all. He's old, almost as old as the universe itself and he's lonely. He calls himself a monster, a trickster, sometimes even a ghost. But to me, to me he is simply what he appears to be; the Doctor.
He's a good man, despite what he thinks. He harbours secrets that could burn the minds of men and carries such a guilt that could break their backs. Two hearts hurt twice as much. I can't remember a time when I didn't know him. He's in every memory, lurking in the shadows of the corner of my eye. He never speaks, only watches. That's the difference between him and me. I called to him, a thousand times over and he never heard me, almost-never. He only watched and I always saw him, almost-always.
I've known him since before I began. I blew into this world on a leaf, the most important leaf in human history. I was born to save the Doctor.
Doctor
She's not my guardian angel. I don't need one of those. I am too messy, too tangled in the depths of the universe for something as simple as that. Clara is feisty. She argues and shouts and disagrees. She's perfect. She questions the things I do, the reasons why I do them. She's delved deeper into my history than anyone. In fact, she is my history. She is strong, stronger than she looks and scared. She's like me. We don't run when we're scared. We save worlds because that's what we do. What I need to do. And Clara's done more than that. She's saved universes, climbed inside paradoxes and never does she stop running. Running towards me to save me from myself.
I always thought I was the loneliest creature in the universe, trapped in a web of ghosts and memories, forcing myself never to look back, never to stop running. Because that's what I do. I run. I run to people, I run with people, I never stop pushing onward, trying to save everything before it crumbles before my eyes.
They've seen a lot these eyes; hurt and pain and loss and laughter and peace and hope. I have observed the universe for over 1000 years, every battle, every triumph, every fall. But now Clara has seen it as well. She knows me as nobody has before. She's looked into my mind, absorbed it and lived it, parallel with me and now I'm losing her.
I don't know if she can hear me or if she knows what she has done. I'm not sure if she even knows who she is anymore or who I am.
Who am I? I don't think I'm sure anymore, stuck in my own time stream. I'm locked in my past and I can't even look back now because I will have to stop if I do.
But perhaps it's time I stopped running. Time I stopped losing everything I have before I have time to blink. Blink at life and you miss it, they say. Ha! I've had enough lives for an army of men and every second feels like a week and every year feels like a decade. Life stretches on over the horizon for as long as I can see. I'm so tired, so weary and broken. I am finished, I want to stop, but after all this time I'm not certain I know how.
Clara
I've been running my whole life - all my lives - everywhere to find the doctor in every corner of time and space. I thought he was safe and that my story was done, but he followed me into the dark and now we're stuck here together in this pocket of existence. I don't know if I can save him this time or if time even exists here. Everything feels so slow, like it's underwater.
I can hear calling to me, the doctor, and I think he has stopped running. Perhaps just for now or perhaps for good, but for the meantime no roads of the universe are being paved by his footsteps.
And now suddenly the darkness stirs, as though light is simply wrapped up inside it. If I look up overhead, one by one stars are pinpricking the sky with silver and blue, transforming the black into a deep purple glow.
I then can see him, the doctor, lying here with me. A silhouette at first and then the light washes over him, filling in his features like a child with a colouring pencil.
His hands grip mine so tightly I feel as though he is the only thing holding me together.
We are on a cloud. I don't know how we got here. It goes on for as long as I can see; as long as I can imagine.
I hear his head turn to face mine and I can feel my eyes welling up with the sadness of the days that will never come.
I hold onto him and together we watch the universe unfold above us. It is so vast and mesmerising, filling my mind with gold and burnt orange. And now if I close my eyes I can still see the sky so far above, impossibly distant and close enough to touch.
I hear myself sigh and a golden glow seeps through my eyelids burning the back of my mind, I can see everything at once and it shines brightly before the darkness covers everything, making it thick and distant. It creeps in on the shadows of my mind and spreads all over. I am too exhausted to fight it so I let it come, enveloping me in blackness.
Far away in the dark I hear something move, a small pressure on the place where my hand used to be and I hear that voice for the very last time "goodnight my Clara" and then there is nothing.