A/N: Fun fact: I always write the dialogue first in my pieces and the dialogue for this oneshot has been continuously writ since the end of "The Witch's Familiar". It follows quite a few episodes but it's definitely pre-Face the Raven (for obvious reasons).
I just wanted to make this fact known, before you delve into the text, because I want you all to know that I hadn't seen "Face the Raven" before I wrote down the dialogue (and chose the title/epigraph) for this piece. So please know why it hurts me that much more when I think about it.
When Time, or soon or late, shall bring
The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead,
Oblivion! may thy languid wing
Wave gently o'er my dying bed!
No band of friends or heirs be there,
To weep, or wish, the coming blow:
No maiden, with dishevelled hair,
To feel, or feign, decorous woe.
But silent let me sink to Earth,
With no officious mourners near
I would not mar one hour of mirth,
Nor startle Friendship with a fear.
Yet Love, if Love in such an hour
Could nobly check its useless sighs,
Might then exert its latest power
In her who lives, and him who dies.
'Twere sweet, my Psyche! to the last
Thy features still serene to see:
Forgetful of its struggles past,
E'en Pain itself should smile on thee.
But vain the wish — for Beauty still
Will shrink, as shrinks the ebbing breath;
And women's tears, produced at will,
Deceive in life, unman in death.
Then lonely be my latest hour,
Without regret, without a groan;
For thousands Death hath ceas'd to lower,
And pain been transient or unknown.
'Ay, but to die, and go,' alas!
Where all have gone, and all must go!
To be the nothing that I was
Ere born to life and living woe!
Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better not to be.
-Euthanasia by Lord Byron
She always said she was fine.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, despite all of the other falsities that she's told, despite him knowing that she was more than just an incredible liar. His fatal flaw always seemed to be that he believed her.
Well— maybe he didn't believe her, exactly.
It was just that— Clara, Clara, Clara— oh, he has always needed her more than she has him, hasn't she? Whenever she said she was fine and he knew that she wasn't, he'd always assumed that her saying she was fine meant that she didn't need him to worry about it. That she didn't want him there; that she could fix it herself; that she didn't want him interfering with her life because he'd only ever come back to her if she wanted him to.
So whenever she said she was fine, he believed her. Even though he didn't. Not really.
He never liked guns and he didn't like how this one felt too easy to hold.
Smooth and cold, he wanted to throw it out the nearest supernova. Never hold it or anything like it ever again – but he's the Doctor and even he knew that that was a Sisyphean dream to keep believing. That was not to say that apathy was something he learnt; a man with two hearts has no choice but to feel. Despite his hearts' opposition to the matter, his old hands have grown accustomed to every shape and curve of the trigger as if it were a lover he never wanted but had. Still, he set it aside in his storage just by the console as soon as he got back.
He could feel sand in between his toes – the natural, inescapable, universal consequence that comes with arenaceous terrains, such as that of old Skaro – and he sighed.
There rest an unseen weight on his shoulders. He pinched the skin between his brows and, for a moment, pondered that this was as good a time as any for a nap. A few hours of sleep, even – a rare luxury when the world, when the universe, when one person didn't need him – he felt was earned enough after this last day he's had. After all, he'd thought this to be his last day. Two-hearted as he may be, even he needs to lay down sometimes.
Nobody can be that strong even if they wanted to be.
He was alive, though. That was something he hadn't anticipated but this was one of the few moments when he quite enjoyed being wrong. He closed his eyes just for a moment and breathed in deep. A stench like death lingered in the air, almost miasmic to his ever heightened senses. The Doctor frowned.
There was something wrong here; something felt wrong around him – as if there were a space beside him that shouldn't be there. Something was missing – like a phantom limb, only more essential. He looked around, brows furrowing, making lines appear between them.
"Clara?" he called out. He turned on his heel, hands splayed. Nothing but the beat of almost silence, the symphony of loneliness that he is only all too unwillingly familiar with as it has lost its novelty after its repetition for over two thousand years. A second longer, he was greeted with even more nothing.
"Clara?" he called again.
Still, there was no reply. There was only the steady hum of the console as it stayed adrift, suspended over free space and time where they might be allowed a few moments of reprieve. Even he needed them, after all. A few moves of expert toggling and switch flipping and key pressing, he was able to scan for her.
A new room had been built by the TARDIS as he had never seen this one before – a luxurious new bathroom, by the looks of the schematics. He needed no further prodding as he simply went to where she was, without a particular reason why. Pulled to her as if by some unknown gravitational force. He had to know, he had to ask. Or, at the very least, try.
The water was perfect.
Not too lukewarm that it was cold, not too searing hot that it scalded her skin. Clara didn't know how long she had been sat by the shallowest edge of the large bath. Water trickled down from the shower above like the kindest drizzle she's ever known.
Her green dress was soaked; it clung, leech-like, to her skin so much so that every time she shifted against the porcelain wall, the material would move against her and it felt as if her skin were sliding from her muscles. Revealing the breakable, battle-worn human truth of her that lingered just beneath the parchment surface. Steam rose from all around her that the air was almost too stagnant to breathe in but breathe in, she did.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Dark eyes focused on the ripples above the water's surface. She had never been in this bath before— if she had to take a guess, she'd say it was brand new. Clara couldn't wait by the console, as she usually did, as he'd told her that he simply had to fix some unfinished business and that he would be back soon. He still hadn't let go of the Dalek gun with which he almost killed her. She tried not to think about it too much as she'd even forgotten how she got into this bathroom in the first place.
Her skin tingled at the back of her neck. Her shoulders were rigid, despite the natural relaxant that was the hot water and the aromatic oils (soothing lavender and the sweet almost vanilla-scented comfort from the loving tonka absolute for her weary bones) that the TARDIS provided. If, even for a moment, she were to let them drop, so might the weight at the centre of her, all around her, and it would pull her down to join the rest of the shipwrecks lost at some distant, unknowable sea. She could barely afford herself the luxury of moving; this stillness is the only opulence her restlessness would allow.
Breathe in.
Out.
In.
Out.
Clara tried to focus on anything else but the chaos that just erupted, like all the while her panic had been buried only skin deep and she would hold on to it to the very last minute, just to contain the damage. Let it hurt me and nobody else, she thought. Especially him. But even trees aged hundreds of years with bark that can withstand steel's mighty stinging kiss can be uprooted by the right kind of hurricane; and she was just a girl, as she often seemed to forget.
Clara Oswald was still a perfectly ordinary young woman and she almost died today.
The thought came without warning, without a trigger needing to be shot but it went through her anyway. There was the jolting pain as the mechanism that had been attached to her head finally let itself be known. It had none of the dream crab's mercy of anaesthesia as when the adrenaline that came from wanting to save him wore off, the pain was only amplified by fear. Fear, after all, can make you hyper-alert to your senses. And he had been gentle when he held her face— petal-soft while the Dalekanium attached to her can only feel in the way like a giant steel needle would if it pierced through muscle and bone, right to the brain. Like a lifetimes' worth of migraines all at once.
The tears came without her permission upon the unwanted memory and she found that she couldn't stop.
She found that she had been trying to keep them in for as long as she could; even prayed to a God she didn't know if she still believed in for the tears to never come. If she never cried, the pain wouldn't have to be real, right? If she never cried, she could wash it all away and pretend like it wasn't there— that nothing ever hurt her, that she could be that strong. Otherwise, the truth she knew was too terrible— and even dreams held little solace these days that she tried not to sleep. She'll sleep when she's dead, she would joke sometimes but little does anyone know just how much she meant it.
She hugged her knees to her chest.
Clara wept.
It was the shaking kind of weeping, the kind that compressed your entire being into a singularity of sorrow. Wrist pressed to her eyes, she tried to rub it away but the tears would not listen. She grit her teeth and shook, forcing herself to remain as quiet as she could possibly be (for sound traveled and he could hear), and took breaths that were heaving, swift and desperate. The voice in her head that she recognized as her own bid her to stop but she couldn't.
Eventually, as all tears must, the crying fit ebbed into nothingness but instead of the freedom that crying usually gave, she felt empty. The novelty of comfort in crying had long ago since been lost to her when its repetition made it lose its impact and the only thing left to do was to try and feel something else; feel anything at all but the malignant, lingering despair that tormented her bones as if she were made into a haunted house filled with the ghosts of all the things she couldn't do and failed to be and all the ones who suffered for it.
It took a few breaths for her to try and start wading towards the deeper end of the bath. The drizzle followed her like her own personal rain cloud. The cloth absorbed the water and it made her movements sluggish but she skipped slowly along the bath's floor as if she were in zero gravity. She had her arms to her side and as she descended so did the tide ascend.
She took a deep breath and submerged her head beneath the surface.
The bath was larger than first appeared— bigger on the inside, if you could forgive the image. Once beneath, it felt like an ocean enveloping her. She opened her eyes whilst beneath the water and saw nothing but light. She did not even cast a shadow as she floated. Her dress weighed her down somewhat but she felt light here.
Being forced to hold her breath like this took all her concentration and she could not focus on anything else.
Good.
A few seconds later, she swam her way up to break the surface but only to take another breath. Beneath the water, she waited until her body fought for more air. Again and again did she do this, her limbs tiring after the first few times but she kept going.
She kept pushing and pushing and pushing until she was forced to stop and, truth be told, she didn't know if she wanted to. The thought of it was tempting, in the imperturbable water— to just stop fighting. One good scream and just let death creep in. It would hurt for a few moments, probably, as her lungs would feel the fire burning up all the air she had left but after that, there would be nothing. And nothing, not waking up again— it had its own merits.
Never feel pain again.
Never make another mistake that the Doctor would have to pay for in pain again.
How sweet, how merciful would it be for her to be granted rest after so long of being tired in a way that no amount of sleep could fix. The kind of tired that sleep often worsened soon enough because the subconscious can be cruel and make you remember all the things you wish you could forget but know you shouldn't. It was tempting to do, the coward's way out, but is it really so cowardly to grant yourself the kindness that peaceful death can bring? She lingered beneath the water, her lungs already starting to beg for her to take in more air, but she stayed— wanting to know just how far she could go.
She closed her eyes and slowly let out air through the nose in small increments. Her throat started to tighten after too long underwater and she started to cough— or, at least, she tried to cough but her body was starting to collapse into herself.
There was a knock at the door and she could hear it, even underwater. It was his voice and he was calling her name; she'd summoned all her strength to swim up before she could even think of what it was that she'd actually almost done, as subconsciously done as it was. She inhaled loudly and coughed as she regained her bearings. She tried to stand and she found that her feet found a floor to stand upon. Clever bath, she thought in hindsight, but then he knocked again.
"Clara?" he called out.
"Yeah?" she answered, almost croaking but if it was from her earlier crying or from her flawed, underwater coping from almost-death to almost-death again, she couldn't tell. The sound of her breaking the water's surface, however, could only aid in her fib as she tried to sound as convincing as possible. Not that that was difficult; she'd always had superb control with the cadence of her lies' delivery. She sniffed quite loudly and did the same with her purposely splashing about the bath water for the full effect.
"Are you okay?" he asked, his voice muffled by the metal door between them.
"Fine, yeah," was her standard reply and it sounded normal, thank Christ. "Just trying to get all the Dalek out."
"Well..." he started. "Do you need—?"
"Nah. No, it's okay. I'm okay!" she bellowed, not knowing if her tears' tyranny would soon resurface now that she'd lost her distraction. She just wanted him away for the moment. He didn't deserve to see her like this and he wouldn't. Not as long as she had anything to say about it. "We'll talk later!"
But they don't.
She would cut him off (again), all practised dimpled smiles and a cheer about her that came only too naturally, before he could ask.
She always said she was fine afterwards.
Clara wasn't afraid of telling him when she was scared while they were running but in the peace between them in the safe haven that was his TARDIS, she always said she was fine. Even though he knew she wasn't, not really; it just wasn't his place to press.
She would tell him if she wanted him to know, he would reason.
This was a humany thing, filled with complicated feelings that never made one lick of sense that his Time Lord brain could simply not be able to register, he would say. This, despite the incredibly complex empathy he liked to pretend he didn't have, was one of the roots of her problem.
Clara always said she was fine and one of the scariest things about it was, he had an inkling of doubt and thought that maybe, it wasn't him she was trying to convince.
They'd just got back from the underwater base which was right after they'd gone to a party that has been going on for the last two centuries. She hadn't slept in between then and he would think that was a full day or two without proper sleep for her. And she was human; he, at the very least, knew that sleep was something quite essential for them. But at least she still had the good sense to not push it this time, once the adrenaline of the day's adventure faded away, and she went straight on to bed after he got her back to her flat. What she refused, of course, was assistance in getting there — "You can hold on to me, if you want to," he'd offered while he prayed that he wasn't blushing (he was) — but she was out like a light before her head even hit her pillows.
Her short hair stayed in her ponytail. She hadn't changed clothes. When the Doctor was absolutely certain that she was asleep, he manoeuvred her with deliberately delicate movements despite the strength that he had in his hands. He tucked her in. She moved her head just so and her hair found its escape. It splayed around her head like a dark halo made of soft tresses. Clara smelled like the sea; there was metal imbued in the scent of her skin but so, too, was there the presence of the lavender from the oils she knew she'd taken a liking to using in her new private bath in the TARDIS. He gave her hair a gentle pat, ever so careful not to wake her, and rose to go tinker with something in her kitchen.
He'd almost died again— and he did, for a little while, consider that this was going to be it. That he could be granted this final peace. After all, he's had over two thousand years of life and almost just as many threats on it that it would be foolish to say that he had never thought about it. He could just go gently into that good night. He's had a good run of it, after all, and he knew better than anyone that nobody could live forever and that a long life wasn't always a blessing.
But she'd asked him to stay, to come back— so he did.
It was after all of that, then, that she said she was fine and he believed her. Even though he didn't, not really. He was starting to wonder if he should say anything about it.
He tried to busy himself with scanning her appliances for their efficiency and found that her dryer could do with a bit of an upgrade. All he needed was maybe the parts of an electric toothbrush and a drop of Apagatian oil from the 57th Perelandrian century (and he did so happen to have a small bottle of it tucked away somewhere in the pockets) and Clara Oswald's dryer's speed would increase by 9472.51%. Some of her socks might also acquire semi-sentience but he could always get her more socks, couldn't he? Everyone liked getting socks.
The Doctor was just about to get to work when he heard her groan from her bedroom.
He darted towards her double quick, his clumsy waddle never a hindrance to bringing him to her. She was still on her bed, safe and sound and asleep, but his senses knew there was something different. She was not sleeping soundly— her breaths were too shallow and quick. Her small hands were shaking. She was whimpering. Her eyes were shut too tightly and even in the dark, he could see the tear tracks. It took him a moment to realise that he was just standing there, watching it happen to her, before he came in and tried to wake her up.
He was insistent with his shaking of her arm and it didn't take much for her to jolt her awake. Clara sat upright, her eyes wide as she stared at him and he returned the stare with an intensity twelvefold. She was heaving her breaths and, for a while, she didn't quite blink. She simply stared at him before her brows asked her question a second before her lips did.
"What is it?" she asked him, reaching for his hand that was still on his arm. He didn't let go.
"Are you okay?" he asked her in return. He was crouched by her bed and she scooted over to the side to let him sit next to her, which he so pliantly did.
"Fine, yeah," she shrugged her shoulders but the rapid rise and fall of her chest said otherwise. He could hear her heartbeat in her chest and knew it was racing from whatever it was that she was dreaming about. "What is it, what's wrong? Why're you looking at me like that?"
"You were having a bad dream," he told her. The Doctor reached for her face before he even knew he was doing it but he could not bring himself to let his hold fall. Clara didn't flinch nor did her gaze break away from his. She simply raised a questioning brow.
"Was I?" She coughed. Blinked too quickly, like she was trying to hide the way that her eyes tended to twitch when she was nervous. She licked her lips and she shook her head as nonchalantly as she could. "Don't remember."
The Doctor looked at her with all the incredulity he could muster because, for once, he did not believe her for one second. No, nightmares like that? Those are ones you remember even when you don't want to— he should know. He was about to say something to that effect when she cut him off.
"That's weird, right?" She didn't let him answer either. "Guess I shouldn't go to sleep hungry. Tell me you didn't break my refrigerator again."
"Clara—"
"Food'll do me good," she told him. "Maybe some soup or an omelette or something. Something warm."
There was a command in between the lines and he was more than adept at deciphering these codes of hers. He knew the lilt well enough and, though he would have talked her through the nightmare he knew she still remembered, he knew better than to refute her when it came to what was best for her. Clara didn't like it when he made decisions that were for her own good, no matter his intentions, and this wasn't the time to challenge her, he guessed. Those were pleading eyes, those were, and he knew that she knew he didn't believe her when she said she was fine. This was a look that asked him to forgive her this lie; she didn't want to talk about it. So they won't.
The Doctor nodded, his thumb caressing her cheek for just a moment, before he rose to do as she asked.
"Okay."
It happened again.
Then again, he always knew that it happened. Ever since the night in her bedroom, he'd been checking on her every so often when she allowed herself to sleep. He hadn't known that she had nightmares before then but he told himself that, really, he should have known that she did. She was more like him than he would have liked so why wouldn't she have nightmares like him?
It was just that she never told him about them. Neither did he tell her about his but that was different, right?
He would look for signs that she would want him to simply be quiet — and he would have for her, of course he would — so she could talk to him about them, about the pain he knew that she held on to for dear life but could not fathom why she would with as much stubborn tenacity as she did. But it never came; he'd see her and she would be back to her regular smiling self whenever she faced him and ask where they were going that time. Though he asked a fair few times how she was doing, her "I'm fine" answers had been starting to get more and more instinctual that he was almost convinced enough to believe it.
Almost.
But it happened again after Neptune and it was worse this time because she finally did more than just groan and wheeze and whimper.
She said his name, she called out for him and pleaded for him and regurgitated No after No after No. Not again, she said as she thrashed beneath her covers, and he could not bring himself to simply stand there and watch them go away the way he tended to do these days.
"Clara!" he called out to her, shaking her by the arm, and she jolted upright and thrashed in his grip; this must have been a bad one because she couldn't even put up her carefully constructed veil of forced equanimity that he'd always suspected was for his benefit.
She was upset, that much he could tell, and she was furiously trying to wipe her eyes as he tried to hold her by the arms to keep her steady. She was shaking and coughing. She wouldn't look him in the eye, no matter how many times he tried to call her name. He tried to cup her face as gently as he could but she had none of it.
Adamant and fierce and furious.
"No!" she yelled as she shoved him away, pushing at his chest. "No, no! I'm fine! I'm fine! Just— just go! Go! Go away!"
Clara didn't think he would do as he was told but he did.
The remorse settled in as soon as she'd cried herself out but it was short lived as she soon saw him at the corner of her eye. He stood there, holding a tray in his hands, just waiting for her to let him in. She afforded a small, though teary-eyed, smile and she knew how much he didn't like it when she did that. A smile but her eyes were sad. He took that as permission for him to enter and he settled himself opposite her, the tea laid between them. He poured them both a cup; hers first before his own. Lancashire Tea, she knew; she could smell it. Breakfast blend. It was her favourite, after all, and she knew he wouldn't settle for less.
"How long have you been standing there?" she asked in a whisper, her voice raspy as if she had a cough (as if she'd been crying for hours). She took the cup in her hands. It felt cool at first touch but gradually did it reveal itself to be quite comfortably warm.
"A while," he answered, putting sugar cube after sugar cube in his cup. She watched him do it as she blew atop the surface of her tea to cool it down some and when he finally took a sip, so did she.
"The tea's still warm," she said, following a pause too awkward than she would have liked. There were too many words between them that were so loudly unsaid that it was driving them both mad.
"It's a clever pot," came he retort as he shrugged his shoulders. The tea would be warm and fresh in this clever little pot for years and years, if he let it. So would the teacups.
"Ah," she quipped and nodded. Her shoulders tensed and something in her clicked into place; and there she went again. Talking far too swiftly for him to notice that she was building the facade back up. Pretend like what had happened not more than half an hour ago had never happened, that this could be swept under the rug just like everything else. "Don't know if I should be flattered or a tiny bit concerned because, let me tell you, watching me slee—"
But not this time.
"What have I done to you?" he spoke over her.
The Doctor didn't look at her then. He simply watched the sugar particles dissolve in his tea but he didn't need to see her to know that her shoulders dropped just as quickly as her act did. This was a rare moment for them. Talking about things deeper than the surface was something that they didn't do, not really. Theirs was a relationship founded on a language unspoken, in the poetry of their every meaningful gaze and the silences in between. But this time, he used his words despite him really not wanting to talk about these things but he would now; she needed it, he decided, and that was enough.
"Nothing," was her quiet reply but at least it wasn't the same old I'm fine line, and that was something. She continued, "nothing I didn't want. I did this to me. I make me and I'm the one who chooses what I learn from you."
"You said my name," he started — though he still couldn't quite look at her; those big sad eyes of hers would weaken his resolve and he knew it. "In your sleep."
"Yeah."
"Why? What did I do?"
"Nothing," she said again and he could hear the small smile in her voice. "You're not a villain in my dreams, Doctor, don't you worry."
"That's not what I worry about."
"Then what do you worry about?"
"That you're having bad dreams at all." He looked up at her. "You haven't been sleeping. It's almost like you're trying to get yourself killed."
"The universe is practically hell bent on having me die anyway and I just keep coming back, don't I? Maybe it's time and this is just surplus." He couldn't quite tell if she was joking or not but the words troubled him more than he liked. His eyes bulged as he gawked at her, unable to hide the terror which he usually so carefully hid. Clara went on to say, shrugging her shoulders, "I'm using what I can until I have to go."
"It may not be you who goes." I don't want it to be you who goes. I don't want you to go.
"And there's your answer."
"Answer to what?"
"You asked me why." He didn't know why but her pulse elevated when she told him that. He assumed it was because she was telling the bold, brazen truth— and that's enough to make any liar fearful. "Why I have bad dreams? That's why."
She would say that she might as well have spoken pig Latin, the way he was looking at her then, but she knew better than to say that out loud. He would say that he spoke everything from baby to Parseltongue. And this was no time for their usual brand of levity. This, in the words of Marty McFly, was heavy.
"I've woken up into enough lifetimes when I don't have this—" when I don't have you, was what she really said between the lines "—to know what it's like. And I dream that this is the dream and I'd wake up and you're not there again."
"That's what happens to me, you know. When I lose you. All of you. I wake up and nobody's there—"
"But you're you, Doctor." Clara reached for his arm. He could feel her caress through the fabric of his hoodie and he ducked his head to look at where she touched him but her hand too quickly moved. She made him look at her, a curled forefinger just beneath his chin and he was only too receptive to her touch. She continued.
"You move on even when it hurts. You love again, you can't help it. That's what you do."
"That doesn't make losing any of you hurt any less, Clara." He stared at her with bright, shining blue eyes that very nearly hurt to look upon. He didn't blink. "You, especially."
"Me?" Her lips quirked, just for a moment, to a smile before they sobered into a more neutral expression but her eyes remained amused.
"You've been with me all my lives. I wouldn't know how to be without you."
"You will, though. You'll figure it out eventually, move on to the next one and love them just as much. And the next, and the next, and the next—"
"You could," he dropped his stare and licked his thin lips. "You could move on from me."
"Nah." Her reply came too quickly. Her dimpled cheeks bulged as she smiled. Her eyes shone and he knew she was near crying again but she was smiling so he didn't quite know how to react. She looked at him like he was being an idiot again and a short but companionable pause was born between them. "That's just dying without you, Doctor, and I've been there, done that. Don't you make me go through that again."
"Clara—"
"Shhhh," she hushed, gentle as a lullaby. She rested a hand against his cheek and he leaned into her touch. "Let's not think about that now."
"That's all I think about," he confessed. "How I might lose you."
"Me too," she relented. "So let's not think about that now."
"Then what do we think about?"
"The fact that you're here now. And I'm here now. And how right now, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else." She caressed his cheek with her thumb as she smiled up at him. "We think about death too much. Ever consider that this is the life I want? That this is how I want to spend my numbered days?"
"It's not enough."
He looked as if all the pain of his over two thousand years of life were concentrated into the blue of his eyes. And he was beautiful and terrible to look upon for they were both coloured in fear and loss and regret; but they loved. Oh, how they loved. To look at him was to make her feel and, in the end, was that not the very point of being alive?
"Might not be, yeah," she agreed; her voice, quiet. "But it's more than we deserve."
They slept.
The tea tray was set upon her bedside table and, by an unspoken agreement, he joined her in her sleep. She gave him enough room to settle in beside her, underneath the covers, and he wrapped his arms around her as she rested against his chest. The pair of them, lulled to sweet dreamless sleep by the soporific symphony that was their joined hearts beating together. And they slept.
In a perfect universe, a selfless universe – neither of them would ever wake up.
They would float in limbo for all the rest of days to come while the universe simply transpired around them. They would become simple specks of dust in the grand scheme of things – and, in every reality, they really were – and time would simply continue to happen without them. Never would they ever open their eyes to a tomorrow without the other. There is a universe that exists where that happens – a beautiful one, a peaceful one, a kind one.
But this was not that reality and sooner or later, they will have to wake up and do it all over again and live in that certain uncertainty.
So for this frozen, stolen moment – they simply slept.
Together.
Temporary euthanasia.
Ephemeral kindness.
It wasn't enough, no, and it never will be.
But this one?
This one, they earned.
A/N: Rest well, Clara Oswald. You've earned your peace. Thank you.