The Doctor pulled Clara away from the festivities in the dining car on the Orient Express. "I need to talk to you," he said. He took her by the hand and lead her to a private carriage. Sitting across from her, he clapped his hands together and worried his bottom lip, looking anywhere but at her, the way this regeneration did whenever he was preparing to say something he wasn't comfortable with.

"Doctor, what is it?"

"I'm trying to apologize," he said sounding a tad frustrated.

"For what?"

"Well it hasn't happened yet," he said as if that should have been obvious to her, which of course it shouldn't. "In the future I am going to do something that hurts you. I never meant to hurt you but I did and you told me to leave. I wasn't sure if you meant forever or not."

"Is that why you've been being so nice to me all night?" Clara asked suspiciously.

"I'm always nice to you," said the Doctor defensively.

Clara laughed, "No you're not. You know, apologies generally come after you've hurt someone."

"I wasn't sure if you ever wanted to see me again," he said sheepishly. "But I needed you to know how sorry I am so I popped back a couple of weeks and well, here we are."

"What could you have done that I'd never want to see you again?"

"Something awful, but I still think, necessary. I left you to make a decision. A difficult one. One that I still don't feel I would have had any right to make. Sometimes, it's humanity's planet and it has to be humanity's own decision about it's future. But I left you there. I did it because I trusted your heart and your judgement better than any other human on that planet. I hurt you in doing that though and I'm sorry. And I'm here now because I hope that after you leave that TARDIS, fuming at me, after you've calmed down, you'll remember this conversation and realize what I was talking about."

"Doctor I-"

"Please, let me finish," he held up his hand. "I need you, Clara Oswald. Far more than you need me, I know. You make me smile, make me laugh, tell me off when I'm wrong. You hold my hearts like no one has done in centuries. I don't know what I'd do without you. I don't do that for you the way I used to though. This regeneration is bad at communicating. Really bad. And that's the real reason I'm mad at Danny. It has nothing to do with him being a soldier, hell Iwas a soldier. It's because he's not me. I don't think he's not good enough for you. I think, I know, I'm not. Not anymore."

Clara sat in stunned silence as the Doctor stared resolutely at his feet. She'd never seen him look so defeated in this regeneration. Slowly she knelt in front of him and lay one hand over his clasped ones and one on his cheek. He looked at her, cautiously hopeful, and she leaned up a and kissed him gently on the mouth. "I don't know how angry I'll be and I think I'll probably have a good reason to be. But come back two days after I left you. Maybe I'll forgive you and maybe I won't, but I think I'll be able to move past it."

The Doctor smiled and kissed her forehead. "Thank you," he said. "I will."

Two days after the incident on the moon Clara stared out the window at the now waning gibbous moon. She could understand the Doctor's reasoning. An alien deciding if it was right or wrong to let the creature be born from Earth's moon would've been like a man deciding if it was right or wrong for a woman to have an abortion. It still hurt that he left her alone for that though. She may not forgive it completely but she understood and she was willing to move past it as she thought back to that conversation on the Orient Express. Then she heard the unmistakable, beloved sound of the TARDIS materializing in her bedroom. She didn't run to it. She was too proud. But when she saw the Doctor step out of her bedroom, still wearing the outfit he wore on the Orient Express, she smiled, tears stinging her eyes as she realized how much she had missed him. She ran forward and jumped on him with the biggest hug and for once he hugged her back. "I'll never leave you," she whispered in his ear.

He'd had enough companions to know she was unknowingly lying, but he didn't care. "And I'll never leave you alone again," he said. And that could never be a lie.