"Doctor!" called Clara wandering through the long halls of the TARDIS, "Doctor where are, you?" she looked around examining a few of the doors she passed. She had been living in the TARDIS for two months now, but the Time Machine seemed to like making her get lost. The Doctor had told her that the TARDIS was constantly changing, rebuilding rooms and corridors, "Oh come on," Clara said to the Time Machine, "You do this just to annoy me don't you?"
Suddenly the door to her right swung open by itself. Clara stepped through, wondering if the TARDIS was playing another trick on her. To her surprise she found herself in a vast library, which she hadn't been to before. She looked around at all the books which were set on rows of wooden shelves. Then she heard a sound and the Doctor appeared from behind one of the shelves, smiling but without his usual enthusiasm.
"You should see the biggest Library in the Universe," he said, "Actually no you shouldn't since it's infested with Vashta Nerada."
"What are they?" asked Clara, noticing that the Doctor didn't seem as cheerful as he usually did. This had happened a few times; he had disappeared into the depths of the TARDIS and she hadn't been able to find him for hours and then he would come bounding back to the control room and they would fly away again.
"Living shadows that feast on flesh," the Doctor said. Clara noticed he was holding something under his arm.
"What's that?" she asked. The Doctor looked down.
"Nothing," he said, putting it onto a shelf with the kind of care that told Clara that it was important to him, "Come on; the Universe is massive. I've barely begun to show it to you." Clara stepped around him towards the object which was a photograph in a wooden frame, "Clara let's go!" the Doctor said sharply; there was an edge in his voice that the young woman had never heard before.
"Who are these people Doctor?" she asked holding up the photo. It showed the Time Lord standing between a red haired woman and a man with a large nose. The Doctor has one arm around each of them and all three of them were beaming at the camera. The Doctor looked at the photo and sighed.
"Amy and Rory;" he said, "my previous companions."
"They look lovely," said Clara.
"They were," said the Doctor, "But then that damn Weeping Angel took them from me!" Clara looked up at him.
"Weeping Angel?" she said.
"One of the worst things in the Universe;" the Doctor said, "Living statues that move whenever you're not looking at them. They can send people back in time and feed off their Time Energy. They did that to Amy and Rory."
"So?" Clara asked, "Why don't you just go back in time and fetch them?"
"Don't you think that if I could go back for them I would!?" snapped the Doctor, "They've been Time Locked; I can never see them again!"
"I'm sorry," said Clara sadly.
"Just give me that," the Doctor snatched the photo from her and stormed out of the room. Clara hurried into the corridor after him.
"Where are you going?" she called.
"I need some time alone," said the Doctor.
"Maybe I can help," Clara ran to the Time Lord. The Doctor snorted.
"Sure," he said, "If you can find a way to breach such a vast web of Time Distortions that it basically becomes a Time Lock."
"Well I don't know how to breach a Time Lock, but I do know how it feels to lose a loved one," Clara said.
"Try losing two loved ones at the same time then," the Doctor said without turning around. Clara frowned; the Doctor had never acted like this to her before.
"Doctor," Clara pulled his arm until he turned around to look at her, "Did you only take me away so that I can act as a replacement for Amy and Rory?"
"Of course not," the Doctor protested, "I need to find out how you keep coming back to life."
"Is that all?" asked Clara, "Is it just your grief for Amy and Rory and your curiosity about me that caused you to take me with you? Do I mean that little to you?"
"What do you mean?" the Doctor said, "You mean a lot to me Clara."
"You're just using me to fill the hole Amy and Rory left aren't you?" Clara said sadly, "You don't really care about me; you just need a distraction so you don't have to grieve anymore."
"That's not true!" the Doctor cried. Clara looked up at him. Even though she was nearly a foot shorter than he was her expression of disappointment and hurt made the Doctor feel very small indeed.
"Look me in the eye and say that," she said. The Doctor held her gaze...and then looked away, "That's what I thought." She pushed past him and walked away.
"Clara wait!" the Doctor hurried after her.
"I shouldn't have come with you," Clara said, "So I'm leaving. I want you to take me home."
"No, you can't leave," the Doctor pleaded, "I need you."
"Only for your own selfish needs," snapped Clara whirling around to face him. She looked close to crying. The Doctor was in a similar state of devastation. The TARDIS hummed soothingly around them but they barely noticed as they stared at each other. Then Clara said, "If I died, you'd just go looking for another version of me wouldn't you? You'd just replace me with one of my other incarnations." The Doctor hesitated; truthfully he had considered looking for another version of Clara if her current incarnation died. But he knew that his insensitivity and selfish thoughts about his own feelings were hurting her and if she thought she could just be "recycled" whenever she died it would hurt her even more. He hadn't even considered talking to her about Nina since the funeral; instead he had focussed on his own loss of Amy and Rory, which had taken place ten years earlier, and taken Clara for granted. The Doctor was disgusted with himself.
"No," he said finally, "I admit I was planning to but now I realise how insensitive and shallow that is. Besides the other incarnations of you that are spread throughout the Universe are just echoes of your true self."
"Like yours when you regenerate?" Clara asked.
"Sort of," the Doctor agreed, "Look Clara I'm sorry; I didn't realise how upsetting it was for you to watch me grieving," he sighed, "I did this with one of my other companions Martha Jones and eventually she left me. I don't want you to leave me too." Clara hesitated then her expression softened and she stepped back towards him.
"Don't push me away," she said, "If you really do need me, I'll try and help you recover from what happened to Amy and Rory. But I want you to remember that I am my own person; I'm not their replacement. You need to grieve for them and move on Doctor," the Doctor looked at her, like a sad, guilty child. Clara smiled weakly and took his hand, "Come on," she said, "Let's go to the kitchen and I'll make you a soufflé. You can tell me about them. Remember the good times you had together. I'll listen for as long as you need me to."
"Thank you Clara," said the Doctor gratefully.
"And then Amy and Rory got married," the Doctor said half an hour later while Clara checked on her soufflé, "and Amy remembered me back into existence," he glanced at Clara, remembering that her other two incarnations had said "Run you clever boy, and remember," just before their deaths. He quickly pushed that thought away not wanting to dwell on the fact that Clara had suffered two tragic deaths. This version of her was still alive and he would move heaven and hell to keep her that way for as long as possible.
"Just like that?" Clara asked with a hint of scepticism, "She just had to remember you after you'd been wiped from history?"
"Yeah," the Doctor said smiling, "Amy could remember alternate timelines thanks to the Time Crack she had in her wall."
"That's got to be a useful ability," Clara noted.
"Yeah it was," the Doctor agreed, "Anyway after the wedding I met River."
"This was before you knew you and she were married in your timeline," Clara said and the Doctor nodded, "So how long have you been married in your own timeline?"
"Just over a hundred years," the Doctor said, "Since River's more Human, than Time Lady, her life span's much shorter than mine. She might be able to live for two or three centuries but certainly nowhere near as long as a full Time Lord. In a way I think she's lucky; when you've lived as long as I have, you carry loads of bad memories. I've had to do some bad things over the centuries."
"Think about the nice memories Doctor," Clara chided him, "Not the nasty ones," the Doctor smiled at her. She was being so patient and understanding, despite the way he had been treating her, and she was probably still hurting from losing Nina. At the thought of the dark skinned woman, the Doctor decided to ask Clara about her.
"What about you and Nina?" he asked, "How did you meet?" Clara was caught off guard and for a moment the Doctor thought he had upset her, but she quickly recovered and smiled.
"We were in university," she said, "And she was my roommate. We just...worked well together, I suppose. We liked the same things we could talk to each other easily. Nina was lonely because she was a lesbian so I tried to pull her out of her shell. Of course we got teased and bullied a lot about our relationship and unlike Nina I'm bisexual, not a lesbian so she sometimes worried that I might go off with a boy. I had a lot of boys flirting with me in university, but I ignored all of them. One of them actually tried to feel me up and kiss me after lessons one day. He was in a lot of pain between the legs once I was finished with him." The Doctor winced.
"Ouch," he said, "And then after university you ended up living together."
"Yes but we had a break first," Clara said, "Nina thought that I was only with her out of pity and she thought I'd be better off with a boy. So after university she left and went to America for a couple of years. I had some great boyfriends but then one of them cheated on me so I went to America to look for Nina. When I found her I convinced her to come home with me. That's how we ended up living together."
"I'm over twelve hundred years old," the Doctor said, "And throughout all of my regenerations I've never had a boyfriend."
"So every single one of your incarnations have been straight?" said Clara.
"Yes," the Doctor said, "I've had men flirting with me before; one of my good friends Captain Jack Harkness flirts with almost anyone, male or female, human or alien; he's even flirted with robots before. But I don't like him in that way. Also the fact that he's a fixed point in time and space makes me uncomfortable when I'm around him."
"Well it is easier being straight," admitted Clara, "But being gay, or in my case, bisexual, can be wonderful if you meet the right person." The oven made a noise and Clara hurried over to it. She looked at the soufflé as she took it out. Then she turned to the Doctor, "I never was very good at making soufflés," she admitted as she held it out. The soufflé hadn't risen properly and seemed slightly burned. The Doctor took it from her, examined it and took a bite. He grinned and ate the rest of it all in one go, getting chocolate all around his mouth in the process.
"This is great!" the Doctor said enthusiastically. Clara looked surprised.
"Really?" she said.
"Yeah," the Doctor said beaming at her and his smile was genuine, "I think I've got a new favourite food." Clara stared at him and then smiled.
"You really are an alien," she said, "My own mother didn't like eating my soufflés."
"Well she doesn't know what she's missing," the Doctor said and kissed Clara on the forehead, "Thank you Clara."
"Great, now you got chocolate in my hair," Clara said in irritation, "Twelve hundred years old and you can't eat a soufflé properly!"
"Twelve hundred and fifteen years old actually," the Doctor corrected her proudly. Clara rolled her eyes.
"That's even worse," she said.
"Run!" the Doctor yelled grabbing Clara's hand and they sprinted away from the oncoming Raxacoricofallapatorian. Unlike all the other members of her species the Doctor had faced, this one was not a member of the Slitheen family.
"I've only been with you for four months Doctor and I don't think I've ever done this much running before," Clara said.
"How do you stay in such good shape then?" the Doctor asked and Clara grinned.
"Running's not the only way people exercise you know," she said, "Or maybe you don't know. What kind of exercises do Time Lord's have anyway?"
"Well when you're me, running is the main one," the Doctor said as they skidded around a corner.
"No, this way," Clara said taking the lead. Over the last four months, she and the Doctor had been having a bit of a game about who was the leader in their relationship.
"Where are we going?" the Doctor said, "We've gotta get back to the TARDIS!"
"The Raxacoricofallapatorian wants to blow up the planet!" Clara said.
"Yes and we can stop them from the TARDIS!" the Doctor said, "I can materialise her around the bomb and get it off the planet."
"Oh yeah, well I can hack into their computers and disable the bomb without needing to get it off the planet," Clara said, "Also the TARDIS can transport it somewhere else but it might get detonated while we're transporting it."
"Fair point," admitted the Doctor, "But I can disable it in the TARDIS."
"All snuggled up and cosy at home," Clara grinned at him, "Where's the fun in that?"
"Oi, that's my TARDIS you're talking about!" the Doctor said and Clara just laughed as they burst into the main computer room.
"This way the Raxacoricofallapatorian won't detonate it because if she does, she'll blow herself up too," Clara said as she sat at a computer and started hacking into it.
"My Sonic Screwdriver would disable it first," the Doctor retorted.
"You rely too much on that thing Chin Boy," Clara said, "Watch and learn; I'll show you how to disable a bomb without a Sonic Screwdriver."
"You!" screeched the female Raxacoricofallapatorian as she stepped into the room, "Get away from the controls!" She lunged at Clara. The Doctor waved his Sonic Screwdriver at her and she drew back, unsure of what he was trying to do. Erasing himself from the Universe had caused the Raxacoricofallapatorians to forget all his tricks.
"This is a lightsaber," he announced, "A laser sword that could slice your head off easier than your claws can slice through us." The Raxacoricofallapatorian hesitated looking at the Sonic Screwdriver warily.
"You haven't ignited any laser," she said.
"That's because it's on low power," the Doctor said, "Only a flash of light at the moment but if I turn it up to full power, then you'll be a dead Slitheen."
"I told you I'm not a Slitheen," the alien said angrily.
"Well the name of your species is just too much of a mouthful," the Doctor said, "What is your surname anyway?"
"Done," Clara said happily, "Bomb's disabled." She looked at the Doctor and pretended to pout, "You weren't watching or learning where you Doctor?" The Raxacoricofallapatorian looked furious but was still hesitant to attack with the Sonic Screwdriver pointed at her face.
"You will step aside," the Doctor said in a hypnotic tone, waving his hand for added effect. Clara rolled her eyes.
"Jedi Mind Tricks don't exist, love, not in this Universe; you told me so yourself," she said. The alien hesitated then her expression hardened.
"You foiled my plan," she said and lashed out with her massive claws. The Doctor ducked and darted around the large creature.
"Clara we're out of here!" he yelled. The small girl ducked beneath another slash of the creature's huge claws and dived between the Raxacoricofallapatorian's legs, her petit frame slipping through easily. The Doctor yanked her to her feet and they ran for their lives.
"You were trying to be a Jedi!" Clara cried.
"How do you know I wasn't being a Sith?" the Doctor replied.
"Because a Sith wouldn't want to disable a bomb, they'd just detonate it," Clara replied. They skidded around a corner and saw the TARDIS. Hurtling towards it, the Doctor snapped his fingers whilst still running and the doors burst open. The Time Lord and his companion darted inside and the Doctor activated the TARDIS. "What about the Raxacoricofallapatorian?" Clara asked, having mastered pronouncing the complicated word very quickly.
"Leave her to the Shadow Proclamation," the Doctor replied as they took off. Clara held onto the consol as the TARDIS jerked. When it was comfortably in the Time Vortex, the Doctor grabbed a phone and rang for the Shadow Proclamation, telling them to arrest the Raxacoricofallapatorian. He grimaced as he put the phone down, "Last time I went to the Shadow Proclamation they weren't too happy with me," he said, "Haven't needed to talk to them much in the last few centuries, thank god."
"What did you do?" asked Clara.
"Refused to give them access to the TARDIS," the Doctor said casually, "They're not the only ones who want to get their hands on it. Actually one of my good friends Winston Churchill has had his men point guns at me to try and get the TARDIS."
"That doesn't sound very friendly," Clara said. The Doctor grinned.
"It's his way of saying hello," he said, "I could take you to see him."
"Sure why not?" Clara shrugged, "I've read about him but it would be nice to meet him in the flesh."