Clara hadn't quite gotten used to it – his new regeneration – but she was beginning to fully appreciate the differences. She missed the superfluous speeches and the playful twirls and the boyish teasing, but she was learning to revel in the stern stares and the careful distance and the curious silence… the way he always seemed lost in a deep thought he was preparing to share.
She anticipated that moment he broke away from his inner thoughts. When his lips parted and he beckoned her into his space and he leveled his eyes on her and revealed that world he'd been occupying while she waited. She longed for the day when the period of consideration was gone and he spoke aloud, turning the console space of the Tardis into his stage, allowing her to return to what she felt was her rightful place in an audience allowed to experience the organic growth of his wonders.
It was coming soon, she knew, offering the scratching of his chalk across the board a smirk as she settled the Tardis in the vortex to give him his time. For a while she'd entered the Tardis to find the writing would already be there, whittled away by his ponderings. Erased and written over and left perfect for presentation.
Now he tapped against the board, a quiet, "No, no, not that," escaping before he brushed the words in Gallifreyan he'd written aside and replaced them with new ones. Ones she looked over as she leaned into the console, arms crossing against her chest, back shifting slightly to push a lever up just a notch to keep the machine from swaying gently in the time winds. It almost seemed familiar, as his writing often did, but she merely sighed.
Clara knew better than to ask. She knew they weren't there yet. So she watched, smiling when he moved to a table and made a quick sandwich, cutting it in half as his eyes darted to the words. Still considering the thought alongside the flavor of jam he mulled between his teeth and she chanced to make her way up the steps to get a closer look, jerking slightly when he pressed a plate into her chest with a nod, continuing to the board when she took it.
Strawberry on wheat.
She chewed, eyes roaming the calculations. Was he trying to find Gallifrey with maths? She knew most things astronomy had to do with maths. She'd asked Danny, just a few days before, if he thought he could work the numbers on time travel and she'd laughed with him before he turned a heavy shade of red to admit, "A bit above my pay grade, Clara..."
Why do you ask?
"Just curious, is all," she'd told him with a shrug. Maybe if she could figure out time travel, she could unravel all of the Doctor. She smiled as she swallowed, watching the Doctor's arms swing as though gesturing at something incorrect on the board in front of him and then he reached up, grabbing hold of the edging before roughly swinging it down, stepping back to watch it turn.
"Always wrong," he lamented.
"Know this might be a stupid suggestion but, anything I could help you with?"
She asked the question lightly and she went pink as he crushed his hands together awkwardly before half turning to give her a crooked smile. His brow rose and his head tilted and then he looked to her and said simply, "No."
Clara bowed her head, picking up the half of the sandwich she'd bitten into and she sighed, "Ah, I see then, simple human couldn't possible…"
But his hands were on her shoulders and she heard him laugh. It was a strange noise, wrinkling his face in an odd way as she peered up into it. Shaking his head, he laughed and informed her, "Clara, I was trying to remember a recipe – one you haven't tried."
"Oh," she stated, looking to the board as she felt his fingers ease and then whip away to rewrap themselves around each other at his waist. She gestured to the board, "All that's a recipe?"
"No," he sang lowly, then he told her absently, "All that's you."
Clara laughed and she watched his eyes timidly meet hers as she repeated, "All that's me?" Then asked, "How's that me? That's maths and Gallifreyan."
"Everything's maths and Gallifreyan to me," the Doctor teased. "Even you."
Setting the plate down, Clara moved closer to the writing and she narrowed her eyes, trying to study the circles and the numbers. Trying to decipher just what the numbers meant before admitting, "I'm an English teacher."
"Probably why it makes no sense to you," the Doctor mocked as she turned and gave him a hard stare he simply smirked at. He shifted to the board and straightened it, jabbing lightly, "That's the arch of your hair, the way it curls up at the shoulders – didn't used to be so noticeable. Have you cut it?"
"Yes," she shot.
His finger drifted, "The size of your eyes, speculation on how they occasionally inflate. All theory of course, as there's no justification for…" his words fell into a clearing of his throat as he turned and rushed to another board, Clara just behind him, "Mathematical formula for the curve of your old skirts versus the straight lines of your pants, increasingly used."
She nodded awkwardly.
The Doctor pointed again, "Your nose. I feel it's gotten smaller."
"It hasn't," she closed her eyes to tell him.
"Feels like it has," he muttered before exclaiming, "Oh, oh, and this is your heart."
Clara looked to the Gallifreyan writing and the feverishly added equations around it and she asked lightly, "What, how can you do maths on my heart?"
He frowned, "It's gotten quieter."
"You can hear my heart?" Clara questioned.
Lips shifting upwards, the Doctor answered succinctly, "Yes."
"But…" she turned slightly to look over the boards, "This is all me, all of this time, you've been doing maths on me and…" she fell silent.
All the while she'd been quietly studying the differences in him, this different self had been doing the same to her. Clara's shoulders slumped slightly, watching him reach for an eraser, avoiding her gaze to stare at the boards before he shrugged and offered, "Just trying to understand."
Me too.
"I thought you were calculating important things," Clara sighed. She added, "I thought you were finding Gallifrey – finding home."
He remained silent, erasing little bits of writing and she heard him huff a breath of amusement and she waited, as he turned. As he leveled those sad old eyes on her and she understood. There was nothing trivial about his calculations, or the subject they explored. Clara swallowed roughly as he nodded and turned away again.
He was finding home, it just wasn't a planet a few million light years away, because those maths he could handle just fine in his head; those maths he could set the Tardis to calculate for him. He was finding her. Figuring out what had changed in her because she was the closest thing he had to a home and she'd shifted off her foundation just as much as he had.
Taking a step forward, Clara plucked up the chalk and she wrote her name neatly across the board and turned to him, "There I am. Two words, eleven letters, and completely unchanged."
"Clara," he breathed and she felt the shiver that ran over her spine at those two syllables, uttered in a sort of muted pain. He took the chalk from her and he wrote 'The Doctor' beside hers. "We both know the truth of it, no point in dilly dallying about it – we've both changed."
"Not a bad thing," she whispered.
He shook his head, uttering, "No," then he smiled up at her, "But I guess with all the uncertainty, I was a little afraid the cogs wouldn't work together the way they used to."
She giggled, "You saying you and I? Doctor, our cogs will never not work together."
There was a genuine smile and she could see the gears in his mind slowing as he asked, "Why's that?"
Gesturing to the board, Clara sighed, "Because you changed. Because of that I had to change. And because of that you'll change. We'll always be recalculating around each other."
"That so?" He stated quietly.
Clara smiled at his insecurity, something she might never have imagined this regeneration could have, and she nodded confidently, telling him firmly, "That is so."