Chapter Ten
He sat on the edge of her powder blue sofa, freely taking a look around Clara's flat. The walls were painted a subtle sea-foam green, fairy lights strung around her painted white window frames with the curtains drawn together. And since Clara was living alone, she mainly ate at the kitchen bar, leaving the intentional dining room for a miniature personal library. Two bookcases lined the walls parallel from one another, a microfiber recliner sitting in between. He stared at the small table next to it, a home of a small lamp and a tea mug for the time being. The place just seemed so, comforting and yet it was so tiny. Over the counter, Clara gave a small smile to herself as she saw him look around. "I know, the place is kind of...small, but I like it." she nodded slightly, taking a pan out of the oven.
The Doctor only nodded, his eyes focused on the coffee table in front of him. Underneath a book there was an open musician's catalog, so The Doctor carefully pulled it out from underneath the book and took a quick glance at it. On page 38, a Schoenhut 49 Key Pro Baby Grand Piano in red was circled with a blue pen. It looked pretty, until he looked at the price, which wasn't that attractive. He stared at it for a few seconds, then taking a notice into the math problems scrawled down the right-hand side of the page. Clara had been trying to save up for it, and she was almost halfway there.
"Okay, I think I did this right." she said, a minor assurance for herself.
"What did you make?" The Doctor asked curiously, carefully placing the catalog back underneath the book.
"I just stuck a pan of macaroni in the oven and practically drenched it in cheese." she laughed lightly. "Yeah, I'm not much of a chef than I am a pianist, or a writer, I guess." she admitted, fanning the pan with her oven mitt. The Doctor only smiled in reply, a hint of amusement in his grin. After a while, when Clara could actually hold the pan without getting herself burned, she placed it on the counter and motioned for The Doctor to sit. "So...unless you have an unforgivable phobia of sharing, or have an obsession with personal space, you won't mind just...eating out of the pan would you?" Clara asked, holding up two forks. The Doctor smiled.
"I honestly wouldn't mind." he assured her, sitting down on the bar stool. Clara smirked in reply, sliding a fork down the counter. He carefully picked it up and took a bite out of the cheese drenched pasta, nodding his head slightly. "Hey, it's not bad." he offered. Clara laughed.
"Is that supposed to be a compliment?" she asked, sitting down next to him.
"Well, by what I've heard from you, it sounds like you don't cook much."
"I don't." she admitted, twirling the fork in between her fingers. "But, when I do, I try." she nodded her head.
"...and to answer your question, yes, it's supposed to be a compliment."
Clara smiled up at him, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Good to know." she replied, violently stabbing the macaroni with her fork. She bit the fork in between her teeth, as if she was rating herself and her cooking skills. After a while, she nodded her head slowly. "Decent." she said, seeming satisfied. The Doctor smiled back at her, eating a little more before he stood up from his seat, walking over to her personal library. She eyed him curiously as she ate, him scanning the books carefully. His fingers brushed over the spines of each book, reading each title.
"Have you read all of these?" he asked.
"Every one." Clara smiled. She never put a book on there if it wasn't read word for word. He gave her a rather astonished and yet admiring smile. "What?" she laughed. "I guess...I just have a lot of free time, that's all." she shook it off like it was nothing. Yet The Doctor kept looking at her for a while, until he finally drew his attention to one particular book on the shelf. He carefully took it out, looking at its cover before carefully opening it.
"I go to seek a great perhaps." he cited, reading from the book's inside page.
Clara recognized the saying from anywhere. "That's...Looking for Alaska, John Green...right?" she asked him.
"Yeah...never read it."
"You should." Clara smiled. "I go to seek a great perhaps; those were the last words of François Rabelais, and, in the story, Pudge is inspired for this...great perhaps. He's kind of big on last words."
"His name is Pudge?" The Doctor asked.
"Well, his real name is Miles...you'll get it if you read it." Clara nodded, laughing.
The Doctor laughed back. "You wouldn't mind if I borrowed it, would you?"
"No, I wouldn't mind, go right on ahead." Clara replied. A sudden respite and loss for words seemed to appear between the two, smiles and slight nods of heads as a sign that they were still in the conversation. "Um..." Clara finally said. "We should...get to work on the manuscript." she finally said, hopping from her bar stool and falling on the couch. The Doctor hastily agreed out of slight shyness, grabbing the pan to take along with him. He placed it on the coffee table as Clara laughed. "Like it that much?"
The Doctor merely shrugged. He sat down next to her, maybe a little too close, and Clara did become very much aware of that, yet she didn't mind. "You know, Oswin should have some great last words of her own, to finish off her dialogue." he thought, looking at the ceiling.
"Such as...?" Clara asked.
He didn't answer. She then flipped through the pages of the manuscript and finally came to the last page, reading the final paragraphs.
It was one of those things that just came by a whim, something that I wasn't intending on doing, something that I didn't even mean to do, yet it just felt so right. 'I'm taking down the force field. They've already begun they're attack, run.' I half-reprimanded, half-screamed at him. I suddenly knew what I was doing. Reality had hit me, and yet, I didn't find a need to cry. They weren't real tears, after all. 'Oswin,' he said softly, his voice barely a whisper. 'Are you-'
'I'm Oswin, Doctor. I fought the Daleks and I am human.' I reassured him, gritting my apparently nonexistent teeth. 'Remember me...' I said quietly, him giving me another look in the eye. I started back at him. I knew that he couldn't see me. I knew that everything, my hands, my red sneakers, hell, even the milk was just a cover that hid the metal parts of what I had become, what they had turned me into. 'Thank you.' he told me. And I knew that The Doctor was real, he was a monster and yet he cared about me, something that nobody ever had the time to do. And I knew that we could never really have a life together, I knew that he couldn't save me, and yet...he loved me. 'Run.' I repeated myself, desperately wanting him to leave, and not for my sake, but for his. He was the last face I would ever see, and giving me another look, he turned around and did as I said. He ran.
It was at the point in which I smiled at myself, sitting back in my chair in satisfaction. I knew what I was doing, I knew that I was going to be blown up into a million pieces by the time this was over, and somehow, I was okay with that. Clara finished, sighing to herself. "Yeah..." she finally said. "I need some sort of...ending line..." she trailed off, tapping the stack of papers with her fingers, thinking to herself. "...hey, how about this..." Clara said quietly, taking a pen from the coffee table and removing its plastic cap with her teeth, quickly scribbling down a rather morbid ending line. So as I let the light of my death envelop the metal parts that had protected me for the past three hundred sixty-three days of my life, I said quietly to him, knowing that he would never hear me,
Clara bit her lip, for last words were important. But then again, things best came to her when she just winged it. "...run...you clever boy...and remember." Clara finally came up with, scribbling the words down on the page, as if she were to lose them if she weren't to write any faster. She hastily gave her papers to The Doctor, apparently who had a mouth full of macaroni to deal with. Clara laughed at him. "How much are you eating?" she swatted him in the arm, grabbing her fork and eating some for herself. His mouth still full, he read what Clara had written down.
"It's really good." he mumbled.
"The pasta...or the book?" she asked.
He swallowed. "Both."
Clara nodded in approval. "Maybe I should cook more often." she suggested to herself, looking at her watch to see what time it was. It was nearly seven. "Oh gosh...Doctor...I kind of have to go to work...like...right now...I'm sorry." she admitted, standing up from the couch and smoothing out her skirt.
"It's alright. I can give you a ride if you want." he offered. "Would you mind if I stayed with you? I have nothing to do tonight anyways."
"Well, considering that I work at a restaurant and you ate like seventy-two percent of the pasta, I suppose that you won't be that occupied there." Clara laughed.
"Oh don't worry. I can read." he smiled at her.
"Really?" Clara smiled softly. "Thanks..." she said, grabbing her coat from the front closet. "Oh, yeah, would you mind getting my piano binder from my room? It's on the desk." she asked earnestly, The Doctor giving her a thumbs up in reply. He headed towards her room, opening the door to the sight of a millennial of vintage traveling posters. He stared at them all in surprise, cites like New York and Paris the ones that stood mainly self-explanatory, then paintings of New Orleans and Amsterdam that hung above her desk. The Doctor took a certain interest into a particular book on her bed, the title reading 101 Places to See, what looked as though a pretty old book, the front image faded and the corners slightly bend and rippd. He carefully picked it up and opened the front cover, the first page holding in a leaf, the words Property of Clara Oswald written in a child-like handwriting, numbers of her age sprawled down the side of the page. He smiled to himself, closing the book and placing it back on her bed. He located her piano binder and grinned at all of the pictures on her wall, quietly walking out and turning off the light.
"I never knew that you wanted to travel," he said, handing Clara her binder.
"Oh, you saw all of the...?" Clara asked. The Doctor nodded. "Yeah." she grinned. "I've always wanted to go places, just...I never really put much thought into it I guess." she nodded, hugging the binder to her chest, sighing. "Someday...maybe." she said quietly. "Ready to go?" she asked.
He nodded. "Let's go." he said, walking with her out the door and silently closing it behind him.
A/N: ...foreshadowing. It's a beautiful thing. ;)