"Look at this! It's magnificent!" the Doctor exclaimed, opening the TARDIS doors.

It was night on the planet. A beautiful, starry night. The atmosphere was hot and humid, drops of dew visible everywhere in the dark green grass. The forest where they had landed was silent except for the sound of wind flowing through the large, golden-brown leaves and the singing of some night birds. A million little lights floated lazily in the air, pulsing rhythmically, and the Doctor recognised them as the native equivalent for fireflies. They made the whole place glow slightly and made it possible to see in the dark, drawing entrancing ever-changing games of light on a lake nearby, its calm surface only moved by the soft, warm breeze.

"It's beautiful, Doctor," Clara said, amazed.

He closed the distance between them and gently lifted her chin with his thumb.

"Care for a walk by the lake, Miss Oswald?"

The Doctor could smell the oncoming rain in the air, but he would say they still had time. For once the Old Girl had randomly took him to a safe, peaceful place. He was totally going to take advantage of it. Clara nodded enthusiastically and smiled, causing him to grin in return. He took her hand his, enjoying the way they fit perfectly, revelling in the feeling of warm human skin against his cool one.

After a while walking, the Doctor laid his jacket on the grass and let Clara sit down on the fabric. She gasped as he sat behind her instead of beside her, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her back, inviting her to rest against his chest. Clara turned her head to meet his gaze: he was calm and silent, and that wasn't unusual, but he had been distracted and unfocused since the business with the Family. And now… she was sure she had seen a shadow in his eyes when he had pulled off his jacket. Clearly, he was lost in some deep concern and didn't want her to figure out and ask, but Clara was having none of it.

"What are we doing, Doctor?"

"Wasting time. You should always waste time when you don't have any."

Her eyes widened in shock. "Why would you say we don't have any?"

He shrugged. "You never asked me why I never started to look for Gallifrey."

"You're changing topic!" she exclaimed.

"No, I'm not."

"Oh, fine! Why then?"

"It would be madness. Do you have a vague idea of what the immensity of the universe is? Whenever you point at the night sky with your fingertip, you point at one hundred thousand stars. And… I didn't search for it because I knew the Old Girl would know when the time would come for me to face what might come with it." He had been told once that the TARDIS would always take him where he needed to go.

"And you think the time has come now?"

"There is a stone right behind my back, in which words are carved that tell me so. No," he ordered as she moved to see it herself, "don't. It's written in Gallifreyan anyway."

Clara sighed heavily, realizing he wasn't willing to share the message. "And you believe that the TARDIS brought us here…because of that?"

"I don't believe anything. I know she did."

"Okay, then what do we do?"

"Nothing."

"Why?"

"Because I don't know!" he snapped. "I don't know what to do, but it's too late to make up my mind now, it's too late and I will be rushed in the middle of the events without a choice. Again. And I-"

"And you're scared."

"No. I'm not scared." But he was. He would never admit it but his hearts were pounding wildly in his chest. He was terrified of the only thing that could scare him in this life and of the only thing that had ever really scared him ever since he was young: losing Clara and being stranded in one place. How foolish he had been to think that landing on this planet was a coincidence.

"It's okay to be scared," Clara stated gently.

"I said, I am not scared," the Doctor retorted. Clara sighed and waited for him to go on, hoping he would open up and reveal why he had been so pensive in the last days. After a minute, he murmured:

"There are things I missed," he began. It cost him to admit that he had made a mistake, that he hadn't paid enough attention. "That time-travelling alien in Victorian London. The Cybermen suddenly being interested in time travel. The Family finding me, not just this time but also all those years ago. As if someone told them how to retrace me. The TARDIS isn't so easy to track down… it's science way beyond their knowledge."

"Okay, I'm not following you."

"The universe is changing, things of a long-forgotten past are coming back, and you still do not realize it."

"Sorry, what?"

"The Cyber Leader, back when you were kidnapped. He told me so. He said I had been blind. And I didn't listen. Why didn't I listen?" he wondered, raising his voice and getting up, Clara almost falling backwards due to the sudden lack of him behind her. "Why didn't I listen?" he repeated, starting to realize something, starting to put things together. "They were all signs…" he whispered.

"Doctor?" Clara called, getting up to find him staring at a stone behind them, exactly as he had said. She recognised the smooth circles of his native language and somehow, slowly, almost without her realizing, she was reading them aloud:

Time is running short

What is lost, is lost

But is it really?

He's been looking for the Doctor

No more holding his ol' rhythm

Help will be asked

But will it be given?

Friendship over justice

Duty over love

What will you choose

When time is running short?

When she met the Doctor's gaze, he was looking at her in a mixture of stunned and annoyed. He didn't want her to know what was written there…

"I should have known that you could read Gallifreyan, thanks to your echoes' memories."

"I-I didn't know." She paused. "What does that mean?"

"Gallifrey is returning…soon."

"But…how?"

"I don't know. Prophecies, not my area." He had had a certain hate for them since the one about his song ending, back when he had brown unruly hair and a brown coat.

"Who wrote this?"

"It's carved, so I can't really tell, but it looks like my handwriting."

"Why would do that, write to yourself?"

"As a warning. To be prepared."

He turned to face Clara, hearts pounding again. Duty over love. What will you choose? Those lines terrified him. If they meant he had to choose between Clara's life and the common good… he was afraid that he knew the answer and he didn't want to think about it. He felt his ribcage tighten, almost stopping his hearts and suffocating him. He didn't want to make that choice.

A drop falling from the sky on his left shoulder shook him from those thoughts. Another drop followed, then two more and other five, ten, twenty. In the space of thirty seconds they were under pouring, insisting, ice-cold rain. Clara let out a small scream of surprise and quickly grabbed his jacket, trying to cover herself. Soon they were running towards the TARDIS, laughing like young students, forgetting their problems in the rush of the moment, rain falling abundant, a proper sea of it falling from the sky.

He opened the door with a snap of his fingers, while they were still running, and they both stumbled straight through it at absurd speed, his hand still holding hers tightly. Neither of them did know how, but they had been running so fast that they hadn't been able to stop: Clara found herself hitting the console and the Doctor's body hit hers seconds after. His jacket fell on the floor. Clara cried out as his weight crushed her. He was heavy for someone so skinny.

"Clara, are you okay? I didn't mean to-" he started. But the following words got caught in his throat, which went suddenly dry as he looked at her and got a glimpse of her figure. Just a glimpse, then he hurriedly turned his back. He felt shocks of pure electricity run down his spine. He swallowed with difficulty, twice. He had seen her for less than a second, but it had been enough for him to memorize every detail of her perfect body. Her hair damp and plastered on her skin, framing her face. A drop of water running down her cheek to her red, full lips. Her thin white shirt, completely soaked, that left nothing to imagination. Gods, he thought he could just regenerate on the spot. He had goose bumps, he was breathing far faster than usual and his hearts were pounding wildly in his chest. The effect she had on him, she had no idea.

He tried to clear his throat. "I- Clara." He didn't know what he had wanted to say. He could hardly think straight. Perhaps he had wanted to voice his desires, but his brain was a blur of raw emotions and sensations at the moment, which he was trying to keep at bay, failing miserably. Added to the physical need -that had always been there in the last months- was the emotional, psychological necessity of feeling her close in this moment, this night when he was so afraid of losing her. He took a deep breath trying to calm down.

Clara was noticing just now that she had never seen the Doctor with so few layers on -not in this body, anyway. His shirt was just slightly thicker than hers and it had become completely see-though all the same. He was as wet as she was, Clara could count the drops that ran slowly down his hair and along the back of his neck, she could see him shiver as each drop disappeared under the collar of his shirt. He had well-drawn muscles under the skinny frame and his shoulders were tensed as his hands closed in tight fists. He was trembling, and Clara realized it wasn't just for the icy rain. Did she have that effect on him?

"Doctor…" she started, speaking softly, the need to at the same time touch him and comfort him suddenly crashing over her. She had never seen him so vulnerable, and a part of her just wanted to hold him and tell him everything would be alright. Another part of her was very aware of their damp clothes, of his sharp breaths and of the muscles of his back slowly pulsing with tension. She had wanted to wait because she knew it was a point without going back, but she was now realizing that there had never been a possible going back. Not for them, not like this, not when she had ripped herself apart for him and he had risked his life for her over and over.

Clara took a small, shy step towards the Doctor. She ran her hands down his shoulders and arms, planting a soft kiss on his neck. "Doctor" she repeated, with a tone that didn't leave space for misunderstandings.

Clara felt the Doctor tremble again under her touch and, in the space of a blink, he attacked her lips fiercely, catching her wrists, pressing his body against hers. He didn't need further encouragement. He simply drank all the air she had in her lungs before moving his attention to her neck, leaving her gasping and moaning and calling his name breathlessly.

"Doctor…"

He bit down not so gently on her neck, sucking the same spot shortly after, hard enough to leave a possessive red mark. She grabbed his short hair, guiding his head. He resumed kissing her passionately as his hands slipped under her shirt, feeling her skin hot beneath the coldness of the rain. He shuddered violently as she hurriedly tugged his shirt out of his trousers.

"I need you," he growled huskily against her skin.

"I know," she replied in the few moments he left her between one kiss and another.

Clara instinctively wrapped her arms tight around his neck and her legs around his waist, pulling him close as he lifted her.

"My Clara," he said as he pressed quick, wet kisses on her mouth.

She stopped him to look into his eyes. She liked the idea of being his, but…

"My Doctor?" she asked. She didn't doubt about the love he felt for her, but he just seemed so rebellious and independent sometimes.

He nodded instantly. "Yours."

The Doctor had had plenty of time to plan this moment in detail. He had drawn every second of it in his mind over and over. He had wished to make it slow, to make it perfect. It soon appeared obvious that it would be rushed and desperate instead, considering the way he needed her in every sense possible.

His kisses were heated and urgent, her touches needy and demanding. Neither of them knew how they made it to his bedroom with most of their clothes still on. Said clothes disappeared rapidly and after that, the Doctor could only remember her scent as he breathed against her neck, the taste of her skin as rain mixed with sweat, the sound of her voice calling his name and the grasp of her hand in his hair. Afterwards, Clara would say it was over too soon, that he had needed it fast, rough and now and that it had left them both exhausted, panting against each other's skin. But she would also say it was what they both craved for, brain in overload, a crash of sensations, mind utterly lost in the feeling of the other, every trouble forgotten at least for that moment, and the moment after, when they were both too tired to care about anything but each other. They both cherished the smiles, the gazes, the joy of being together.

"That… was…" Clara tried to catch her breath, staring at the ceiling as the Doctor laid next to her doing the exact same thing.

"I know," he whispered.

"Cheeky," was the best comment that came to her, brain completely dissolved in a puddle of contentment.

He didn't answer, and Clara snuggled close to him, resting her head on his chest. His hearts were still beating faster than usual, as was hers.

"I love you." She said, caressing his arms as he wrapped them around her.

"I love you too" the Doctor replied, happy with just holding her now that he was revelling in the blissful feeling of completion that only Clara could ever be able to gift him with.

After a while, her eyelids were heavy and her mind was drifting, but she felt that the Doctor was still awake.

"Are you waiting for me to fall asleep?" she asked.

"I could ask you the same thing."

She looked at him, a spark of amusement in her eyes. She pulled him a bit closer and kissed his lips.

"Goodnight Doctor."

"Goodnight Clara."

Much to his surprise, she was sleeping an instant later, and he followed within seconds.