They are running: their hands entwined, their breath coming out in sharp gasps, their hearts pounding against their chests. He catches her eye and the look in her eyes stops him. He looks away, grips her hand tighter, and keeps running.
The first time they are on the planet Esesea it is empty of people. It is sometime before the planet has become a colony and they are completely alone. There is nothing but a sea of frozen water and the tardis, a splotch of blue against the white landscape, as if a painter had accidentally smeared paint on an empty canvas. Clara is wrapped in an old coat that she found hidden in the back of the closet. It comes down past her knees and is far too big for her, but she likes the security it offers her, like she's snuggled in her blanket at home. He informs her she looks like a puffball and she laughs and sticks her tongue out of him.
"An adorable puffball," he amends and she scrunches her nose and retorts that he looks like the goofy professor from a children's show she used to watch when she was little.
He pretends to be offended but really he is just watching her: the snow melting in her hair, the light reflecting around her face giving her a halo of gold, the cold adding color to her cheeks and a brightness to her eyes. She seems to almost shine on this world. He pushes the hood from her head, his hand fingering the fur around her face and thinks about the last woman who wore the coat and how she was all fire and Clara is like light. Multi-faceted, pure and shining.
They walk long enough that the tardis is only a cerulean blur in the distance and she looks around at the vast emptiness of it all, endless fields of white, so untainted, so unimaginable, so impossible.
"It's beautiful," she breathes.
"Yes," he answers, though it hadn't been a question.
He judges his sins by the number of times their bodies touch. His hands on her waist, hair, jawline. Her breath against his ear. The feel of her body in his arms. He loses count of the number of times he damns his soul.
The second time they are on the planet Esesea they have entered a war zone. There is smoke in the air and gunfire falls like rain. Bodies are dropping like flies around them, the thud as they hit the ice thundering in his ears. He hears Clara's shocked gasp and when he turns to her, her face is stricken and drained of color.
The white landscape, so beautiful in his mind's eye, is marred by the crimson blood of the fallen. He feels the blood slick and slippery under his boots.
He takes her hand and pulls her into a run. She protests, but he can't let them stop, not until they are safe. His arms go around her and he is carrying her. She wants to go back, is crying and struggling in his arms. Each muffled sob into his shoulder adds another weight to his heart, but he keeps going.
He never wanted her to see this side of traveling, never wanted to see the look in her eyes as tears stream down her face and she asks him why.
"Because I couldn't lose you too," he says.
His hands cup her face, but she is not looking at him. Her eyes look dead and he knows she is seeing the faces of those that are dying just outside the door.
"You can't save them Clara," he whispers.
In response, she beats her fists against his chest hard enough to hurt. He lets her and just wraps his arms around her tiny body and holds her until she collapses limp bodied against him. Her tears stain his shirt and he's trying to think of what he could say to make it better, to turn this broken girl back into the one who smiled at him with bright eyes and a halo of light around her head. But he can't fix this. And he thinks that this is the worst part. But it's not. Not yet.
She is flying the tardis. Her hands flipping over the controls, hesitating each time before she hits a button and giving a whoop of joy when it achieves the desired effect. He stands behind her, so close that if he leaned forward a fraction they would be touching. His hearts beat a fast tempo and he wonders if she can hear it, feel it against her back. Wonders if it's his fear of anyone else handling Sexy or if it's just her. Just Clara.
He is aware that he is standing too close, his hand ghosting down her arm to correct her when she moves to hit the wrong switch. She looks up at him and it's too quiet and her face is right next to his and he should put some distance between them and start babbling about the intricacies of the button that she almost pushed and how there was this one Time Lord that he'd known that had pushed that exact button and had gotten stuck in the time vortex for fifty-seven years with only a slitheen, a silurian and a drag queen named Lacey for company. But he doesn't.
He is running faster than he thinks he has ever run and cursing himself under his breath because he taught her to fly but he never thought that she would fly away from him. He is running but he is too late and he feels it in his hearts. And he wants to blame her for wanting to be the hero, but he can only blame himself. Because he told her that's what they did and she believed him and now she's gone and he can't find her and his breath is coming too fast. And all he can think is: not again, not her, please not her. He is praying in every language he can imagine to every god he has ever heard of to help him find her.
One Wednesday they don't go out. She answers the door in her pajamas and announces that there is no way she is leaving the house. Not tonight. No siree.
"Oh," he says, trying to keep the hurt from his voice, "I'll just see you next Wednesday then."
She laughs and drags him into the house.
"Come in, you big doofus. I didn't mean you had to leave."
She leads him to the kitchen, where he sees the scattered remains of baking ingredients. Music plays softly from a radio by the window and the late afternoon light adds a softness to the room. Her creation, a slightly mangled and deflated souffle, bakes in the oven and the room fills with the smell of cooking pastry. He thinks that maybe this is what home feels like and he feels fondness well up in his hearts for this girl.
The song changes on the radio. The melody is slow and simple and the words are sweet. Clara starts to sing along softly under her breath and then move to the music, her feet twirling her around the kitchen and he wants to keep this picture in his brain always: her dancing around the kitchen in sweatpants laughing with flour dusted in her hair and chocolate smeared on the bridge of her nose and a smile on her lips as she catches his eye.
She grabs his arm and pulls him to her. They execute a stumbling waltz and he curses his gangly body as his feet refuse to perform steps that had been like breathing in his other bodies. He steps on her feet and she hits him with a towel from the counter and tells him she'd rather dance alone. So he apologizes profusely and stutters, but she just shushes him and pulls him closer. He buries his face in her hair. She smells like flour and chocolate and something unidentifiable Clara. He thinks he could fall in love with the way she fits into his arms.
He tries to identify each place where they intersect, map out the constellations her fingerprints leave on his skin. He can feel a galaxy forming in the spaces between them and he tightens his hand on the small of her bank and can feel the stars spin under his fingertips.
He finds her and he almost wishes he hadn't. It is so cold that he thinks even if there wasn't a bullet buried in her abdomen she would still be dead. All the color has drained from her skin, there is only white and red. A study in contrasts. And all the light has gone from her. She isn't there anymore. It is just a body. Just a shell.
He can't think.
Can't move.
Can't.
He can't.
They are walking along a beach as the sun rises. She is laughing as she tries to pronounce the name of the planet they are on and he corrects her and gets it wrong and of course she notices it, the little vixen, and holds it over his head.
"You were wrong," she crows, "admit it."
And he comes up with a long winding explanation about the variation of dialects on the planet and how in different regions they pronounced the name different ways and how they way he pronounced it was a version specific to people in the tropical section of the-
"So basically. You got it wrong."
He huffs and disagrees, but she just smiles and somehow her hand finds its way into his and they watch the sun's light reflect over the water and they could be any couple anywhere. Happy. Laughing. Alive.
He is screaming. He can't stop. There is blood on his hands and on his clothes and in his hair. His hand comes crashing down on the console and he feels the pain in his hand, his blood mixing with hers, but it is nothing nothing compared to the pain in his hearts.
It is like when you lose a tooth and you are aware that it is missing but your tongue can't help returning to that place in your mouth again and again and poking it just to check. It's hurts but you can't stop and there's that little jolt of surprise every time your tongue finds that empty spot and a tiny voice in your head whispers, "there should be something there" and you know that there isn't but you keep checking just in case it has returned. It's like that. Only worse.