Her couch feels uncomfortable every time they return to the small apartment and he lifts her feet onto his shoulders as he sits cross-legged in front of her, smiling like a fool while tinkering with some object in his lap. He's fixing something, something to do with a transistor coupling, or a radiator cooper sink. She has no idea what he'd told her it was and she, honestly, didn't care. She wiggles her toes and tries to turn her aching ankles and she feels entirely small and incredibly large at the same time and she wonders how she'd gotten there so fast.
Eight months.
"I am a Tardis," she laments.
He lets out an unexpected laugh and then shakes his head and grows serious as he looks up at her, obviously having thought his reaction rude, but she smiles at him. "You're beautiful," he allows calmly.
She pokes him with a toe. "You have to say that."
"Would I lie?" Then he shakes his head. "I'm not lying," then he smiles and turns away bashfully, "I'm wouldn't lie about this, Clara."
And when he looks back at her, she knows it's the truth, but she still feels terribly oversized. Like a bloated Star Whale drifting in the night sky. And her whole body is suffering. "Even my nose is all funny now," she whines, poking at it with both fingers.
"Well, your nose has always been a little funny," he tells her honestly, raising his Sonic to point as he adds, "And I won't take that one back, it's the truth."
She wrinkles it at him and then laughs, throwing her head back into the couch cushions. "Why does it feel like it's been a hundred years and one second at once?"
"That's how life is, I suppose." And he sighs. It's a long sigh that gains her attention.
"Is that how it is for you?" She asks.
He shakes his head, "Sometimes, like there's never enough time to do everything I want."
"You have a time machine. You have all of time," she laughs.
He pressed his lips together and contemplates her words before correcting her, "I have a time machine, but my time is limited."
"How is that?" Clara drops her feet down and sits up with a struggle.
He sets his device and Sonic down and he helps her with a gentle tug before clasping her hands in her lap just underneath the tight curve of her stomach. "There's the notion that a Time Lord is infallible, but it's that very notion that makes him not." He smiles up at her. "One day I'll jump too far, I'll expect too much, I'll take one last chance… and it'll end. No regenerations, no second chances – just that grave at Trenzelor."
"Is that why you avoided going there?" She questions. "Seeing it makes it real?"
"Clever girl," he says to her knees. Clara edges up slightly and he shakes his head and tells her, "No."
"You don't even know what I was going to say," she spits.
"You wanted to go into the future and see him."
She slumps, "Fine. It was obvious, anyways." Clara slides her hands up underneath her shirt, pulling away the fabric to look down at the olive skin that's stretched into a perfectly rounded ball just underneath her breasts. He kisses her belly and then lays his ear against it, smirking occasionally.
Clara enjoys watching his interactions. She wishes she could partake in them the same way, but she can feel a warmth spreading up into her heart that she knows is him trying to comfort that sadness. She feels the kicks at her side and smiles, giving his foot a small press with two fingers and she can feel he's turning and then the Doctor lifts his head and he looks up at her with a quick laugh.
"He kicked me in the face," he chuckles.
"Let's hope that's not an indicator of your future relationship!" She teases, and then jerks slightly because he's kicked her square in the ribs. "Not nice," she scolds softly.
"Let's hope that's not an indicator of your future relationship," the Doctor quips before lifting one of her feet into his hands to rub. "We need to start making some kind of plan, you know."
"Plan?" Clara moans, eyes closing against his thumbs pressing into just the right spots.
"His birth," he tells her, nodding to her stomach.
Her eyes pop open and she laughs, "You actually want to have a plan for this?"
"This is actually important," he replies, hands stopping.
She considers it a moment, since he's genuinely concerned and she realizes, suddenly, that maybe she should be. They couldn't just go to an Earth hospital; his two hearts would set off serious alarm bells. "Oh," she manages. "Oh no," she tells him. "Tell me you know where the best hospitals are."
"It might be best to avoid hospitals," he admits, eyes turning down.
"Why?" She presses, pulling her foot away.
The Doctor hangs his head and then looks up and tells her honestly, "Birth of a Time Lord… not something that happens anymore."
"Yes, I know," she smiles, "But is it dangerous? Should I be worried, Doctor?"
He smiles and shakes his head slightly. "For you it would be no different from a human birth, it's just the knowledge of his birth – I wouldn't want that information falling into the wrong hands."
Clara shifts up and asks him bluntly, "Am I in danger for having this baby, Doctor?"
For a moment he's silent.
"Will he be in danger?" She kicks him in the shoulder roughly and he doesn't expect it, falling over and looking up at her. "Because I had an inkling. I thought maybe since everyone wanted to kill you – but I thought it was because you stirred the pot and since your child hadn't, he would be left alone, but he won't be left alone, will he! Because he's your son he'll be in danger all of his life!"
"Clara," he starts, but she's standing. Her shirt falls back over her stomach and floats off in waves as she paces the house, considering the fact that she'd been so foolish not to ask him before. Not to truly consider it before.
What would she have done though, she wonders. She would never have ended his life, she couldn't have – what she felt for children, for the Doctor, for her child, was so much from the start that it would never have been an option. But she could have sent him away. The Doctor could have left and returned for her years later and none would be the wiser.
"We've been travelling sporadically," the Doctor assures. "Every Wednesday, just like before," he points out. "You kept a job, a home here – never boarded the Tardis permanently. There's no reason to believe anyone out there even knows it's my child."
But she sees an odd break in his face. She sees the lie and she stops pacing and marches to him, ridiculous as it seems for her stature and progress in her pregnancy. She stabs at his chest with her fingers and shouts, "They all know, don't they!" She steps away, hands on her mouth, "Oh God, they all know."
He takes a step towards her, but stops short when she glares up at him angrily. "There are whispers, I've heard them, and many don't believe it to be true – the Doctor having a child. It would be impossible because he would never let it happen."
Tilting her head slightly, she prompts, "Why would they think that?"
His features are pained now, an expression she hasn't seen in a long time and he growls, "Because I would be putting an innocent child in the line of fire and I don't do that. I wouldn't do that to any child, much less my own."
"Apparently you have!" She shouts back.
Looking like he might be sick to his stomach, he turns away from Clara and she can see the way the idea is affecting him and she looks to the ground. To a corner that needs to be cleaned and she hasn't noticed and she listens to him breathing, trying to control his breath and she knows it's a struggle for him to still be there. Not running to hide in the Tardis, not running from her, from his responsibilities, from his mistakes.
"Let's leave," she tells him suddenly, moving forward and taking hold of his hand to a surprised look. She smiles wildly, "Let's pack my things and leave," she speaks in a hushed tone, as though what she were saying was absurd and her eyes go wide, "Let's go and never come back." Then she finishes, "You told me once we don't, we don't walk away except when we're carrying precious cargo and I am – we are – and we should run. Run as far and as long as we need to run and we'll find a way to give him what he needs and we'll be alright. We'll be alright because we've got one another and that's all it ever needed to be. Just us."
There's a small twinkle forming in his eye, but it fades as he looks out the window and tells her sadly, "Your father."
Clara steels herself and declares, "Sometimes you make sacrifices for the people you love."
"I can't make you choose between us."
"I haven't," she declares. "I've chose my son." She lays a hand on her belly and repeats boldly, "I choose my son and my son is safest on the Tardis. You'll protect him; she'll protect him. It's how it's meant to be."
The Doctor doesn't seem entirely convinced and he moves away, walking towards a shelf on which sits a photo of Clara and her father from her birthday a few months before, both wearing ridiculous birthday hats, holding a third to what existed of her belly then. He lifts it up to study it and then places it back down while she stands at the center of the room waiting. She feels like they should be packing; they should be moving, not her watching him trying to come up with some reason for her to change her mind.
So she moves to the room and she pulls a suitcase from underneath her bed and starts to fill it with clothes. Clara feels the tears staining her cheeks as she fills the suitcase and goes into her closet for a second. She tries to think of everything she's going to need – now and after – and she goes through her jewelry, picking out what's important and knowing what's not will stay with her father.
Maybe she could come back for it someday; maybe if she had a daughter one day.
There's a small smile, instant on her lips, at the thought of the Doctor with a little girl, swinging her just under the Tardis console as a sullen boy argues for his turn. She shakes the thought away – it would be dangerous enough with one child, she understands. She glances up when he leans against the doorframe and she sees the look on his face. It's the face of a man who's had his heart broken a thousand times over and she stops, dropping the brush in her hand atop a pile of underwear.
"You don't want me," she says the words quietly and accompanied by a pang in her chest.
And his face breaks as he crosses the room in a quick stride, head shaking, "No, Clara, that's not it at all."
"You wanted me on board the Tardis full time, you said so yourself, but as soon as you knew I was pregnant, you stopped asking," she thinks to herself, eyes glazing over slightly as she turns away. "It's all just been a game."
"No!" He leans on the packed case in front of him, "No, Clara, I was doing what I had to do to keep you safe! The more time you spend travelling with me, the more time your life is in danger – it's always been that way, but it's unfair of me to ask you to risk your unborn child."
"Our unborn child," she reminds, eyes snapping back into focus to look at him. "You never intended to keep us. You think that keeping us safe is giving us up."
She can see the rage in his face – not at her, but at this predicament. He brings them aboard and he plays the dutiful husband, the wonderful father, but he knows it's dangerous for that to become a full-time life for all of them. Clara rounds the bed and stands next to him as he plants his hands at his hips and bows his head.
"They'll use you against me," he finally tells her softly. "Eventually someone will take you and use you against me and it'll be my downfall, Clara. If anything ever happened to you... I've had to lose you too many times already," he gives a small shake of his head as his eyes find the ceiling.
Clara takes hold of his hand and she points out, "They can show up on my front step, or at my job, or at Christmas dinner with my father… where am I safer?" She laughs. "Where am I better off?" She presses his hand to her stomach and the boy there kicks roughly. "Where is he better off?"
With a quick smile, the Doctor nods and he turns to her, free hand coming up to her neck, thumb brushing her cheek just beside her ear. "You're insane," he admits with a bit of a laugh.
"I am Clara Oswald," she reminds.
"My impossible girl," he chuckles. "Carrying my impossible child." He gestures to her suitcases and asks quietly, "Is this really what you want?"
She nods, feeling the movements inside of her, the enthusiasm of a boy who seems to know the excitement in her heart as she smiles and watches the Doctor lift a case off the bed. He walks out from the room with it and Clara continues packing the second. She passes a glance at a photograph at her bedside. Going to it, she lifts it and holds tight to it, staring at the image of herself with her mother from not long before her death.
"I've found my leaf, mum. My exact leaf," she whispers, hugging the photo for a moment before going to drop it into her suitcase.