The Doctor drove Clara back to the Maitland's house. Neither of them said a word upon the entire car ride back.
On the doorstep the Doctor tried again. "Clara, please..." he began, but she just shook her head.
"Don't. Just...don't."
"Doctor!" Artie's voice called. "You have a car?"
Flustered, the Doctor turned to look at Artie. "How long have we been gone?" he asked him quietly.
Artie frowned for a moment. "I dunno- we got back from the cinema an hour or so ago."
The Doctor frowned. He'd judged the time a little too closely- had they come directly here rather than the hospital they would have crossed their own timelines.
"Doctor?"
"What? Oh, yes, Artie, I've owned many cars. None as pretty as Bessie, though," he said distractedly. "I borrowed this one from a friend."
"Oh." Artie lost interest.
By now Clara had disappeared inside the house. The Doctor stared at the closed door for long minutes before sadly walking back to Luke's car.
Strax was facing a tactical dilemma. Madame Vastra had escaped his custody at least two hours earlier, clearly with the collusion of the wiley blue box. The human doctor who wasn't The Doctor had distracted him with medical dispatches from the front regarding the boy Clara.
His duty had been clear. Protect the lizard, guard the box. Or was it guard the lizard, protect the box. Either way his mission just became far more complicated.
Clara barely made it inside the house before the tears started. All she wanted to do was run after the Doctor, but she couldn't do that to him. After all, she was born to save the Doctor, and she would save him one more time. Only this time she would save him from herself.
She would let him go.
The Doctor was too important to the universe to be tied to playing nursemaid to one fragile human.
No matter how much that fragile human needed him.
The Doctor made the long, lonely journey back to the TARDIS alone. Jenny had already returned before he'd taken Clara home.
River always said he should never be alone.
He really didn't know what to think. He'd been taken aback when Clara demanded to not only return home, but insisted she didn't want to travel with him anymore. He knew he'd damaged her, it was all his fault she'd ever jumped into his timestream. No matter how hard he tried, he always, always lost her. His "protection" was clearly useless. But somehow he never thought that spark of hers, that innate curiosity that drove her dream to travel could possibly ever go out.
Of course, the other option was not that she no longer wished to travel, but that she no longer wished to travel with him.
But then, wasn't some of this her fault, too? His thoughts turned angry. I never asked her to jump into my timestream, I begged her not to!
This was his original solution to the problem, wasn't it? Donna, she was happier now, wasn't she? To take her home, wipe away the damaging memories, leave her to her life... clearly she would have a longer, safer life without him.
But not like this. She was so...frail. Her body had healed- and how had her body healed?- but how could he leave her like this? Even if this was her choice, was she in any condition to make that sort of decision?
The road stretched on while his thoughts continued to churn.
Clara was the first person who had spoken Gallifreyan to him in 300 years.
A/N: Yes, I'm over the plague, thanks for asking, dreamingofimpossiblethings! Please don't hate me for this one (hides under bed). Many thanks to Kosovaheartland, my lovely beta and to everyone who reviewed!
