"No," Clara asserts, arms crossing over the blue flowers at her chest as she stares hard at the lanky man looking back at her in frustration. "Absolutely, no," she repeats, a hint of a smirk playing at her lips as the Doctor presses his palms into his sides.
They've been standing at the back entrance to the console for what feels like forever with him repeating the question and her repeating the answer and it's beginning to feel like a game to her – one she's played before. The child requests something they cannot have; the nanny dutifully denies them the thing. And the child stomps his foot.
He lifts an open hand towards her and demands, "Clara, marry me."
Request number eleven. She shakes her head. Stubbornly, and amused.
"It's not a real marriage," he reminds in a sputter.
"Still nope," she snaps at him.
"Clara!"
His voice is exasperated and she's growing wary. He's never this persistent unless there's a motive he's not letting on about and she knows she can't just ask him – he'd tell her she was being ridiculous. Impossible! She moves around him and then rounds the Tardis console, leaning against the metal railing closest to the doors as she informs him firmly, "Last time I fake-married you I ended up dunked in red goop and preserved in a glass bubble."
"And I saved you," he points, shifting on his heels to face her. "Nothing will happen, you're just not allowed on this planet without an intergalactic wedding license and I don't have one lying about."
She swoops towards him and surprises him by shoving one hand quickly into his inside coat pocket, tantalizingly close enough to make him stare skyward, body frozen as she seizes what she's looking for and then she brandishes an open wallet and declares, "Oh look, I found your psychic paper that can magically be an intergalactic wedding license! Like last time."
His face is sour. "Doesn't work that way on this planet – psychic paper proof."
"Find your real wife then," she spits. "You said you had a granddaughter, which would lead one to believe you had a daughter, which would lead one to believe you had a wife – unless you're the sort to spread yourself without commitment and I don't take you to be that sort." She pauses. "Unless you are that sort."
They stare, curiously, at one another for a moment before he tells her honestly, "First wife, long gone." Then he adds quietly, "And no, I'm not."
Clara ignores the fact that he said 'first wife' and watches him look away before nodding and saying, "Then I can't actually marry you because it wouldn't be fair to you. Or me – I don't take that sort of thing lightly either."
Closing his eyes, the Doctor straightens. "Clara, it wouldn't be real."
"You said yourself, it sort of has to be real – documentation from what church establishment on what planet did you say? Odd name I can't pronounce? Pelux… Pluckta… Pluxapplortia…" she stammers as he corrects to no avail, then shakes her head. "I would be married to an alien. My stars, think of the paperwork when I got back home!" She smiles at the sullen expression on his face and hands him back the wallet. "Why do you want to see the planet so badly you'd be willing to pop through a space wedding drive-thru with me?"
He shrugs, "Never been? Curiosity?" Why did he not consider she'd ask? Why did he not consider she'd refuse his request? Why was she constantly so stumpish!
"Something you're not telling me?" She adds ceremoniously. And his face squints like she's gained a prize he's sought to withhold and he's disappointed at his transparency. "Come on, Doctor – you never just go to a planet, do you?"
There isn't a real answer though, not one he could admit to her anyways. He couldn't just tell her that the planet was teeming with psychic energy that allows couples free entrance into one another's minds for the sake of further bonding and that he might be able to get away with not telling her so that he might discretely take advantage of this and he might enter her mind and he might discern who she was, or what she was. And he did love bathing with fish and he'd heard the food was unbelievable.
He sulks instead, turning away from her a moment before snarling, "Nevermind."
Sliding to the console, he re-enters now-familiar coordinates for a specific spot on Earth – the Maitland's front yard – and he slaps a golden handle upward to start the engines.
"And anyone not willing to pop through a space wedding drive-thru with you would be barking mad," he grumbles, smirking because he knows the shade of pink she's turned just behind him.
Because he knows the effect he has on his companions.
She moves to stand at his side, clearing her throat and pretending she hadn't heard. Her large eyes peer up at him sideways and she glances up at the screen, telling him sadly, "Home?" All of the build-up in the previous moments gone; replaced with a loneliness that shocks him.
They don't know the effect they have on him.
"We can't go, so we don't go," he replies with a shrug.
"So we don't go anywhere?" She pleads.
He looks back at her, gripping the edge of the console beside him looking like a child who'd just had their ice cream taken away. He's seen the look before and it both invigorates him and saddens him – she's become attached and he's become quite attached in return, and it can become dangerous. One more spin, one more adventure, pushing the bounds of their abilities and one day… he looks away, trying not to think about it. About any of the others. He looks to Clara and that empty spot fills again; fills over in a way that always surprises him when the small smile breaks into a wide and intoxicatingly hopeful grin.
"Oh fine," he gives a toggle of his head as he rolls his eyes playfully. "We'll see the setting suns of Spod."
"Spod?" She repeats with a look of amusement.
"Well I didn't name it!" He responds to the eyes she's giving him.
She does a small, almost indiscernible hop, and a giggle that tickles him, always unexpectedly, as she points to the center tubes that start to move and commands, "Onward, captain!"
He laughs heartily as the ship lunges forward and she grips him with one hand, and the Tardis with the other, as they move through space rapidly. But then something is wrong. He feels it instantly. There's a shift in the turbines and a pull on the compressors, and the Tardis whines her discontent. The Doctor works feverishly at the controls and Clara can sense the panic radiating out from him. She releases him so he can make his way around the Tardis to flip a few switches and grab hold of a lever, shaking it roughly before it gives and slams down.
"What's wrong?" She shouts through the angry howl of the time vortex around them.
He glances, wide-eyed, at the front doors, feeling the swoop of the ship as it lowers rapidly, towards whatever has hold of them, greedily yanking them towards a destination he's certain he doesn't want to see. He can feel the gravitational field in the Tardis shifting and he works to correct it. Grasping a handle near his waist, he glances up to the woman struggling to hold on, thrusting a hand in her direction for her to take, but it's too late. Clara gives a yelp as she loses her grip. Colliding with the ground in a grunt, Clara reaches out to grasp a surface, but it's slick under her fingertips and she's sliding down the ramp, feet slamming into the Tardis doors painfully.
"Doctor!"
"CLARA!"
Clara tries to move to reach out for something to hold onto, but the force of gravity is too great, and the trembling door underneath her unlatches. Clara screams as she slips through, hands managing to hold onto the door still shaking, but shut. She looks down over the forest below, lifting her legs to avoid the top of a tree branch and then she glances back up at the Doctor.
With one foot pressed against a chair on the deck for balance, he's working the controls, sweat beginning to build at his brow as he tries to right the Tardis. If he could just get her upright, he could pull Clara back in, and they could land. At least if they land proper; he could get his wits about him. But the ship is screaming alongside the woman hanging below as they dip even closer to the ground beneath them and suddenly there's a crack. The sound of something breaking a thick branch and he turns quickly because the howling is now simply the wind through the open door that swings.
Clara is gone.
And he is crashing.