"So, Clara!" exclaims the Doctor giddily as he waltzes into his TARDIS, snapping the doors shut behind him. "Where do you want to go? What do you want to see? I'll take you anywhere you like!" He takes her hand, cherishing her little hoot of surprise, and twirls her around once.
"Are you okay?" she laughs, looking up somewhat dizzily to observe his beaming face. Of all the faces the Doctor has ever had or ever will, this one is the clearest in her memory, and she thinks (refusing to blush as he spins her once more before gently letting her go) that this is his best yet. Chin notwithstanding, there's a jubilant, childish triumph in his ancient eyes and grin that makes him seem much, much younger than a millennium. Almost young enough for her to feel okay about falling in—
"Better than ever!" he insists, cutting off her train of thought, and Clara laughs as she takes his other hand, gazing contentedly into those exuberant eyes. "Oh, Clara Oswald, we just saved the lives of everyone on Gallifrey. Billions of them!" he adds. "Everybody lives." He shakes his head slightly, pausing though lost in memories.
"Doctor?" giggles Clara, resenting for a moment just how girlish she sounds before it occurs to her that she really doesn't care. She's nothing more than a girl around the Doctor, anyway—she may as well be honest about it. "What's up?"
"It's been a very long time since everybody's lived," sighs the Doctor, smiling at his perhaps most beloved of companions. The only one he allows himself to think of that way, anyway. "Since the Second World War, I think. Two whole lifetimes ago, and no one's done it since—except for you!" He laughs triumphantly, and Clara can't suppress a smile. "Ask me for anything you want, Clara. Anything at all!"
She's about to say she wants those cocktails on the moon, but stops herself as she watches his face fall a little. There's something weighing in the Doctor's mind—something he hasn't said yet. The words are on the tip of his tongue, but he knows it will never be enough. Thanks are not enough to repay his—the universe's—debt to her, his impossible girl.
"Tell me," says Clara, more seriously, giving the Doctor's hands an encouraging squeeze. His grin gently lessens into a calm expression of genuine, proud tenderness, and Clara melts a little under the warmth in his gaze, blush surfacing at last for a reason she knows deep down.
"Thank you," he murmurs, bringing her head forward and kissing her forehead lightly, in a half-platonic gesture of affection. "On behalf of the entire universe, thank you. You reminded me who I am. All three of me," he adds as an afterthought, smiling at Clara's expression—humble as always. "You ended the Time War, not me. You changed history for the better, and there's no way anyone can repay you for that."
Clara is speechless as she glances up at her Doctor's face. Gentle honesty shines through his every feature, and the TARDIS bathes Clara in soft golden light from its rotor, agreeing with him. She smiles to herself as it occurs to her how much things have changed between herself and the sentient machine. She may have been rejected in the beginning, but ever since the reasons for her multiple selves were discovered, it cares for her almost like a mother.
A more accurate comparison would be like a mother-in-law, reflects Clara, coloring slightly as she briefly imagines herself and the Doctor as husband and wife. Goodness knows that's almost the case already, what with the way he calls for her to come away with him an average of three times a week—causing widespread concern for her health among her colleagues.
(But she wouldn't change that for the world.)
"So," continues the Doctor quietly, bringing Clara gradually back to the present from her disarrayed thoughts, "I'm going to do everything I can to make it up to you. It's my duty, as the only one that knows what you've done for the Time Lords." He pauses for a moment, frowningly, and corrects, "And then, that's not necessarily true, either." Clara knows he's talking about his other two incarnations, the ones that linger hazily in the back of her mind like mist, residue from her lives scattered throughout the past.
"It's all right," says Clara, closing her eyes contentedly and leaning into the Doctor's chest, listening to the somehow familiar song of four beats beneath her ear. "I'm just glad you're okay. And, do you know what?" she adds, tightening her grip around his chest momentarily and relishing the tentative touch of his hand on the small of her back. "The only thing I want from you is…"
A thousand things dance in her mind as the end of the sentence floats just out of her reach—the most prominent of which is a kiss. Something tickles at the edge of her mind as the two simple words cross her mind, some vague memory from one of her former lives. Fighting to pursue it, Clara quickly finds her efforts to be in vain—it's as though she is trying to call back a dream in which she knows what happened, but can't remember how it all transpired.
Clara reluctantly peels her head away from the Doctor's chest to look him in the eye again, and finds such peculiar concern there that she laughs. He smiles at her amusement, at the sparkle in her chocolate-brown eyes, and wonders why he's so worried about what she'll say, as his heartbeats increase.
(He realizes, somewhere in the back of his mind, that it is not worry that makes his hearts flutter ever faster as she looks at him.)
"…to keep traveling with you," she sighs, by way of completing her sentence, and the Doctor smiles at her with such radiant joy that Clara falters for a moment before explaining, "Don't you dare stop coming to see me! And if y—"
She cuts herself off, about to say something horribly selfish, but the Doctor smiles at her encouragingly as she glances away, embarrassed—though she makes no effort to extricate herself from his comfortable arms as she reluctantly elaborates. "And if you get some other companion in the meantime—I mean, please don't pick up anyone else while—" She pauses, flushed at this point, trying to figure out what exactly she's attempting to say.
The Doctor lets her think. He could jump in and guess what she's trying to say, fill in the blanks with his own words—but a very large part of him is too afraid he's wrong to move or speak as she gets her verbal feet back under her.
"Please don't travel with anyone else between the times you see me," says Clara eventually, looking up into the Doctor's eyes once more. She doesn't know what happens in the Doctor's life between the times he visits her and takes her on trips through time and space, and it's not that she doesn't trust him… but it would be so easy for him to find someone else in the meantime, and it feels to Clara (as a twinge of worry resonates within her) almost akin to cheating in a relationship.
The Doctor finds himself unable to suppress a chuckle at the seriousness of Clara's expression as she gazes up at him: does she honestly think he would ever leave her for anyone else? His impossible girl, his Clara, the woman responsible for getting him off his cloud and for saving his homeland—he has sworn to himself, half-consciously, that no one else will ever do in this life.
(Perhaps, when he senses the end is near for this incarnation, he will visit her at different points in her history, so she has something to look forward to—and so he can say a proper goodbye.)
"Doctor?" prompts Clara, reluctantly disentangling herself from his embrace as she looks up at him, concerned. "Did you hear me?" she adds, half-seriously. "I said—"
"Clara," says the Doctor softly. "You saved me three times now, each time in a bigger way. Do you really think I could ever leave you for anyone else, in the whole of time and space? You, Clara Oswald—you are the most important woman in the universe, and I'll travel with you for the rest of… well, whichever of our lives is shorter, I suppose."
(He remembers, dimly, the number of other times that his other companions have been the most important women in the universe—but all their achievements pale in light of Clara's brilliance.)
"Th-the rest of…" Clara whispers, eyes widening and filling with tears—happy, the Doctor assumes. She blinks spasmodically before closing the minuscule gap between them with another hug, this time brief and tight, and the Doctor lifts her up and swings her around once, an echo of their now-familiar greeting: Clara laughs, wiping away the couple tears that had fallen, and looks up into her Doctor's face with ecstasy shimmering all around her in an almost tangible aura.
"You're welcome," she breathes, and he becomes sharply and suddenly aware that her arms are settled snugly around his neck, and that her glossy brown hair hasn't been brushed since their adventure with his other selves ended… and that most of her body is pressed against his.
Obeying an impulse he has encountered more and more frequently of late, the Doctor leans his head down slowly, tentatively, as his hand slips automatically to Clara's waist. He expects her to recoil, to move his hand away and his head back, to say she doesn't feel that way about him.
He does not expect her to lean up and meet his lips.
The Doctor has never been one to talk about feelings. He prefers to simply let them exist, rather than discuss them constantly—especially as often, there is no one word to describe a particular mixture of emotions. But, between deep and hungry kisses, he and Clara exchange a breathless realization, three unspoken words kept inside since what he remembers as the most painful day in all his lives:
I love you.
(She knows—but never again will he let the chance pass him by, for fear he will never get another, as happened last time.)
And as he whispers the words for the first time in centuries, having withheld them even to River Song—lest he make an implied promise that he could not keep to his opportunistic wife—a sense of unspeakable peace drapes over him; they break apart, catching their breath, though still embracing. As he supports her head against his chest, he rediscovers what those three simple words really mean. They mean kindness and ferocity, gentleness and passion intertwined.
They mean Clara and her Doctor, together.
((Well, here y'are. It's been awhile since I've written anything for Doctor Who, so… yeah! I hope this was worthwhile.
And, we damn well better get a kiss out of them this Christmas, because I am not going to settle for my mediocre descriptions to keep this ship afloat.))