*Clicks fingers* Sorry.

Hey guys, I am back and raring to go.

Before my little break, I was updating this once a week but now as I have finished it, I will be updating this three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday). It is just something that I do.

So I hope you are still all with me and let's get on with this story.

Chapter 10

It was weird how easily they had fallen into a routine. The Doctor had finally let go enough that she went to work and he would walk her home. They always talked about little things. Clara would come home and find that everything was how she left it and left wondering what he had done all day. She would cook dinner for herself and make a sandwich for him. They would then curl up on the sofa, she would do her marking and then they would go to bed. It was a weird routine but it was a nice one.

"So what have you been doing all week while I have been at work? Just my kettle, microwave and oven are all still together and working."

She turned to see him scratching the back of his neck.

"I kinda asked Kate to put a chalk board in your spare room. I hope you don't mind."

Clara laughed before turning back to her dinner. "So what have you been doing with your black board? Working out an equation? Or whatever you do with the ones on the TARDIS?"

"I … I have been trying to put together..." He said, apprehensively.

"I get it." She interrupt him. "Trying to put together what happened. I suppose it was a long time."

She didn't expect him to answer. She was grateful that he had told her what he had but there always seemed like there was more to the story. It was a pretty touchy subject and Clara didn't ask any more because she didn't want him to go backwards.

But then she knew it was better to get these things off your chest. So she had started to ask him small questions and saying that he doesn't have to answer. Sometimes he did and sometimes he didn't. It didn't matter. She would get it out of him in the end.

She dished up her dinner before finishing off his sandwich.

"Why don't you like using cutlery any more?" She asked. It was her question of the day. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

She turned around with his plate in hand. He shook his head at her as he got up out of one of the chairs in her small kitchen. She looked at him and he took hold of the plate.

"You look tired. Are you not sleeping again?"

He chuckled. "You get use to being tired after a while."

She gave him a sad smile as she let go of his plate and picked up hers. "Not if you don't have to be tired. You don't have a schedule that you have to comply to. You could sleep all day if you needed to."

"I still don't understand it. You are malfunctioning, I swear."

She turned away slightly and laughed. She turned back to him with a genuine smile and she shook her head. "I am not, as I have told you many times before." She let her smile drop slightly. "I don't ever want you to change."

He moved out of the kitchen and into the living room. "That might be a little hard. What don't you want me to change?" He threw over his shoulder.

"Your oblivious nature towards human emotions. Chinny was so much better." She said as she followed him.

The Doctor sat down on the sofa and looked up at her. "Is that what we are going to call my last regeneration? Chinny?"

She laughed as she joined him on the sofa. "What else could we call him?"

"Bowtie?"

"I prefer Chinny. Anyway you knew who I was talking about, like if I said Sandshoes, you will know who I am talking about."

"Next you will saying Granddad."

"Is that what you called the Warrior then?"

She watched as his eyes glazed over. From that moment, she knew that the Time War was still a touchy subject. He had not only beaten himself up for it, but been imprisoned for it. She meant what she said that day. She would never have the same strength as him to put the universe first instead of his home planet. But then maybe he had always been the odd one out.

"I am not oblivious to human emotions."

She moved to push him slightly. "To more than one you are."

"A smile is meant to be happy. I don't understand the point of a sad smile. It goes against what a smile means."

She actually loved his logic with it. It did make some sort of sense. She turned to him and studied him for the moment. He looked better than when she picked him up from UNIT but there was still more to be done before he would be the man that she knew and loved.

She gentle traced her fingertips along a scar running across his jawline. She felt him tense as she did it.

"How did you get that? I haven't noticed it before."

"I don't know. I … can't remember." He stuttered out.

She dropped her hand and the conversation.

There were a few things that Clara was going to make sure happened before her and the Doctor went off travelling in time and space again.

The first one was that he had to gain some weight. He was skinny to begin with and she knew that he regularly forgot meals, to which she would have to remind him to eat when she was on board the TARDIS. But his time on Ankou had lead to him, well being even skinnier. It was actually horrible to see and Clara just had flashbacks to a video that she watched at school all about anorexia. It was one of the things that she could do for him. She would purposefully leave packets of biscuits lying around, knowing that they would be gone by the end of the day.

Secondly, they needed to become less dependent on each other. There was always the chance that something could go wrong. It could end in disaster rather than victory. The less that they depended on each other, the less that could go wrong. Not that Clara could see the logic in it once she had thought about it more.

The third thing was that the Doctor needed to become the Doctor again but that was going to take its time.

She pulled the covers back and joined him in bed. She laid one her side and faced him.

"Talk planets."

He copied the way she was laying, "Sorry?"

"Tell me about the planets we should visit when we get back travelling again."

He smiled and then fell into his element. He talked for easily an hour about all the places they should go. It was beautiful to see him talk that way again, the sparkle in his eye about the prospect about travelling. He wasn't born to sit still.