Written for whouffiction tumblr prompt: Clara lays in bed next to the Doctor during "Deep Breath" while he sleeps. Unbeta'd because I didn't want to kill my poor beta, so blame any mistakes or awkward wording on me. :-p
I don't like her, ma'am…I love her.
It wasn't the face, though. Not just the face. Clara had seen it before, of course – flashes from echoes' lives: the snow-white curls on the third face; the grooves and lines on the second and the seventh.
These grooves and lines were deeper somehow, weighted by decades upon decades of frowning, of laughing, of smiling. But where were those years, no – when were those years? Time had stolen them from him, leaving him with this rugged landscape. Her fingertip traced one of those fault lines down the center of his forehead, the one created when those overbearing eyebrows lifted or drew together, the wild, scraggly brush his dominating feature.
Maybe it was the Universe's compensation for a thousand years without them.
A corner of her mouth lifted, but gravity pulled it down almost immediately. Had it only been this afternoon that she had joked with the Doctor about losing his eyebrows, and he'd muttered something about them just being delicate?
He murmured something in his sleep, stilling her finger. Those eyebrows trembled, wiggled and waggled, settling on falling low over his closed eyes. Angry, even in slumber.
Clara sighed. No. It wasn't just the face.
The first few moments of their wide-eyed staring contest had been difficult, but then everything had gone wonky as the TARDIS careened out of control, and she hadn't had much time to do more than try to navigate them through the vortex and land them – somewhere. It could've been worse than prehistoric Earth, she surmised, but the man calling himself the Doctor kept oscillating between yelling things at her for not knowing more and collapsing into an unconscious heap on the floor – just to awaken several minutes later to question her anew.
"But you're not you!" He'd bellowed, pointing at her accusingly. "You used to be different!" Apparently she used to be a robot dog, a "sea…lake, no! – Ocean? Tidal pool with the…with the fish…" and finally, a Cyberman head.
Two thousand years of her echoes scattered about him like confetti, and he could've snatched at any of them. But somehow…he'd gotten them all wrong. Gotten her all wrong.
And then, of course…there was him.
"You used to be the Doctor," she whispered.
She laid a hand across his, feeling how the bones jutted into her palm, his knuckles prominent as he gripped the coverlet. She shifted, her weight falling onto the edge of the bed as she gazed upon him, his image blurred and out-of-focus.
But that was fitting, wasn't it?
She shook her head, despising wave after wave of helplessness as each threatened to overwhelm her. "Where are you now?"
A pause hung heavy in the air, and then – a stream of golden light escaped his lips on a sigh. Clara reached for it instinctively, but it sifted through her fingers, as ethereal and insubstantial as stardust. She watched it dissolve into the air, particles dissipating and joining with the oxygen she breathed. She was breathing him in. For some reason, it angered her.
"Stop that," she whispered fiercely, hand clinging to his again. "You stop that. You hang onto you. You hang onto you, you hang onto what's left of…" She choked down a sob. It was no longer enough to hold his hand; she needed to hold more. She needed to keep him in, to corral what was left of him. She crawled onto the bed, arms encircling him protectively. Her head fell onto his bony shoulder, momentarily jolting her before she found a soft spot over the center of his chest. The twin heartbeats thrummed in her ear. "You find you," she commanded softly, palm cupping his heart, holding it for him. "You go into yourself and you find you, and you…come back." A tear splashed onto her fingers, and she parted them, letting it trickle down onto his chest, willing her grief to soak through the skin, bone, muscle and sinew. Willing it to find its target, to penetrate that stubborn organ and jumpstart it, to reset back to Doctor mode. "Come back, Doctor."
He breathed, stirred – but did not awaken. He slept on, oblivious to the woman who had curled herself around him, palms across his chest, hot, human tears soaking his nightshirt clean through.
"Come back to me."
Down by the Thames, a dinosaur displaced from time and without a mate let out a mournful roar.
*Fin*