A/N: So here's the result of the feels from "Deep Breath". I thoroughly blame Moffat because he always makes me cry and/or flail, which is just not okay. I adore the dynamic between Clara and Twelve. (I don't ship them romantically, you can't, guys) But Capaldi is so cute and so is Clara. So, I decided to do a series of ficlets or one-shots of Clara's adventures with Twelve or how they get used to each other? Let me know if I should continue?

"Am I home?" She asks softly, turning about halfway to look towards the doors. She's aware of the faint smile on the curve of her lips-knows it's the thought of home that put it there. Home. Oh, how she's missed the place. Her heart twinges within its bony confines when she remembers the last she'd seen of it.

Her Doctor (the Doctor lies, she whispers to herself and repeats it like a mantra) had left her there with a promise he'd never planned to keep. She turns away now from this grey, aged man who has replaced her Chin Boy; she turns so he cannot see her losing the fight.

She closes her eyes to keep that secret, her secret, from his ancient eyes so cold and dark. The secret falls traitorously from the corner of her closed eye and rolls down her cheek. She wipes at it with a fisted hand and slowly opens her eyes to gaze at the grey skies through the glass upon the door. She misses home, now more than ever, and she is inclined to believe it's to do with this man in the Tardis.

"If you want it to be," he remarks with a suspiciously (she doesn't believe it because he is not the Doctor; he is not her Doctor) hopeful smile. The light of it reaches his eyes, and to herself, she notes this is the first time she's actually seen him smile that way. The smile on her own face has dissappeared now.

"No, no. No...You don't get to..I smile first, and then you know it's safe to smile," she'd practically hissed as the Doctor started to laugh. He doesn't answer her, save for the fact that he certainly isn't smiling anymore.

"I'm sorry," she forms the words slowly and carefully when she speaks to him. "I'm sorry, I am terribly sorry. But I don't think I know who you are anymore." She watches the light fade from his eyes then, and the part of her that isn't terrified-the smallest corner of her heart shrivels because of the sadness in his gaze. Sadness she's caused him. Her phone buzzes at her side, and she's felt it seconds before he tells her about it.

"You should prob'ly get that," he says softly, offering a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "Might be your boyfriend."

"Shut up, I don't have a boyfriend," she mutters even as she leaves to answer it.


She wants to be angry at him.

She wants to rage and cry and curl in on herself because her world has come crashing down above her. The frail rasp of his voice in her ears is still too fresh, and the desperate plea she'd heard in it weighs on her heart. "The man you are with, Clara, the man I hope you are with-he is scared more than anything you could possibly imagine," he'd whispered, "And he - he needs you. Please, hey, for me. Help him."

But she can't. I mustn't, she tells herself. She is Clara Oswald and she is the Impossible Girl. If she is anything, she's strong. What else could you call a girl that's survived everything from age-old parasites to the Great Intelligence to Cybermen and Daleks. She was afraid in that moment when the Doctor (her Doctor) lay dying at her feet as evil undid every shred of good in his life. She was afraid, and she still jumped, and in one instant, she saved him. Every echo of her saved him at every dark day throughout his existence. It would be a betrayal of her true purpose if she denied him now.

All these thoughts run through her mind in the moment that she studies his lined face through her teary eyes. She studies the frowns and creases lining his face and distant cold of his eyes. She's even a bit (ashamedly) surprised that when she peers closer beneath she can see the sadness, the lost look within them.

It's the moment when the first smile she's given him-the first smile this face saw-that his brows arch just a little. (Surprised? She decides on 'wary'). She rushes him, then. Throws her arms around him and buries her face in his shoulder. She can't see just now, but his arms stretch out in front of him, bent at the elbow. He's struggling for words, stammering that he isn't quite sure he's the hugging type. She laughs at that.

"I'm not sure you have a vote."

A/N: Thoughts? Whatever's on your mind, tell me in a review!