A/N: Special thanks to thecrimevortex for the quote. :) More of a character study written creatively, as opposed to my regular line-by-line rhyming poetry. Clara reminisces on her time as Miss Montague/the barmaid Clara Oswin Oswald. Because feisty Clara is best Clara.
Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Clara
When he first walked away from the old me in Victorian London, I thought he had a heart of ice, so cold that it could make the snow on the streets melt in comparison. But something made me follow the dashing man who, from his apparel, I deduced to be fairly well off. I had a fair amount of expertise in the whims and representations of the rich in that period; I posed as one of them. Such a pretty masquerade, and what a thrilling adventure which only proved to further my ambition.
So I ran after the man with many a weight on his brow – or in his case, a lack thereof. I wondered how anyone so young and so very mysterious could make so little spectacle of himself in parts such as those, when it occurred to me he did seem a little outlandish in manner. An alien in those parts, in more ways than one. Ma would've given me the lecture of my life, but she didn't know where I was, so I jumped on the carriage, popped my head through the sunroof and asked, "Doctor? Doctor who?"
That question was the death of me, thought at the time, served to make me lively. When he smiled at me on my deathbed and asked me to come away with him, I understood; he had not a heart of ice, but two hearts of stone. Stones by choice. Two very old stones, with fissures and gaping holes and moments of vulnerability running through every millimetre of them. Moments where he's been taken advantage of, or taken advantage. Times of love and times of being loved, places he'll always remember, and ones he has tried so hard to forget. Yet of all the marvellous elements of all of space and time, he chose me to help keep the dark at bay. This never fails to perplex me, but to be honest, he probably experienced no less when I jumped into his timeline. On hindsight, I was probably not at the pinnacle of my wisdom, but nevertheless, I regret nothing. There's something about him, which forgets to question risk. It's the reason he's able to do what he does, I guess. He gets himself into such a pickle that no one thinks he can get himself out of it. Then he gets his cake, eats it too, and takes their cake as a souvenir. It's that beautiful habit which I broke myself for, so I could fix him.
And he's still trying to fix me.
