By the time Clara emerged back into the console room — Niima always two steps ahead —, she was wearing a fresh set of clothes, her hair falling flat and dryly against her shoulder pads. They smiled as their eyes crossed path.
The Doctor waited for her to stand right next to him, "Where do you want to go?"
"Somewhere we can run," she requested, wrapping her own arms around his, in a half attempt of a hug.
"Run to?" he asked, willingly giving in his limb to her use. He just didn't expect Niima to join them by standing in the curve between their shoulders; but he remained silent, knowing no argument in the world would get it off.
"Anywhere," she said simply, placing her wet lips against the piece of fabric above his upper arm.
He nodded. "Run away from?"
"Everything," she confessed, her lashes nervously brushing against the skin around her eyes. She just needed an escape place.
"How would you like a piece of land in a planet where its three suns set in the horizon like a falling cascade, where the skies are purple and it rains droplets of diamonds?"
Her smiled broadened, "I'd like that very much."
The Doctor typed the coordinates with his free hand, gesturing with his head for her to pull down the lever. She did, happily, and the time machine shifted underneath them until they landed.
Clara pulled him by the hand, too impatient to wait any longer. She opened the door to be met by a warm breath of wind, welcoming her first steps into the foreign world. Whatever bothered her on her earthly life suddenly vanished from her mind as she let herself be taken through new places.
At last, she was free.
The Doctor wandered next to her, never once daring to break the link that held them together. The coldness of her hands matching the ice in his soul. He closed the doors to the TARDIS with a click of fingers.
She squeezed her eyes, trying to find the burning stars in the sky, but they were obfuscated by the landscape that surrounded. "Is there a place we can watch the sunset?"
"There must be," he shuddered, "If we look for it, if we walk the paths of leaves underneath the trees and travel through the fallen diamonds by the waters just as bright, we might find a spot in the greenish grass and witness the suns fading from existence to give place to the sparkly moons and stars."
The enlightenment took over her face as she imagined the landsights just behind her eyes. "Let's do it, Doctor."
And they allowed their legs to guide them with no destination at all. The Niima kept running back and forth, enjoying the freedom it had just discovered, still, refusing to go any further than their vision field.
The Doctor stumbled around picking random things on their track, getting side eyes from Clara, although she daren't question his intentions. Instead, she focused her steps in some sort of pattern only she could tell, grinning to herself when red leaves would fall on her hair and she would untangle them. The deeper they traveled, the louder the sound of the shore became.
Until they reached the watersides and Niima dug itself onto the flowing water, having it been too long ever since it was last underwater. Clara observed it while she removed her own shoes to stand barefoot on the sand. To her surprise, the Doctor paced towards the river, not caring enough to get rid of any of his clothings as he walked above the stones that formed a path between the riversides.
"Doctor? What are you doing?" she asked, standing on her tiptoes so she could have a better view of him.
"Collecting," he mumbled, carefully kneeling down in the middle of the flow and sinking his hand in the hope of reaching the bottoms and what lay on it, but it was too deep. Luckily, Niima dismissed his effort and swam down, bringing back up exactly what he had intended to achieve.
Clara squeezed her eyes, still on solid land. "You're collecting rocks, now?"
"Not rocks, Clara," he argued, looking down at the few perfectly shaped rocks on the palm of his hand, "Diamonds."
She almost gasped at the sight, "You're stealing diamonds, now?"
"It rains diamonds here, Clara," he repeated her name, "The ground of this river is made entirely of them. Come and take a look for yourself."
Holding her sneakers tightly, she straightened her face and stepped fiercely onto the first stone. She was cautious, unlike him, dreading to wetten herself. The water was so cold it took all her strength not to back out. Her second step was just as careful.
He saw her approaching with the corner of his eyes. "Careful, these rocks are slippery."
The Doctor assumed his still fresh words had jinxed her when her next step unsteadied her balance and, weren't it for his very quick reflex, she would have fallen into the water — just like the shoes in her hand had. Her tone became three tones higher and she clung herself to him, "You were saying?"
He gasped for air, her arms strongly wrapped around his neck. "Careful, dear, or you'll choke your old man to death."
Clara ignored him, "I really liked those sneakers."
He helped her find her balance, in the vain hope of freeing himself from her hold. "Give it a few seconds and your pet will bring them back."
She nodded, still unsure she had found her equilibrium. "Should we just stare at the diamonds in the meantime, then?"
The Doctor shuddered, opening his closed fists to reveal the little bright rocklets. "The sins of every man to ever walk the universe."
Clara laid her head sideways across his shoulder pad, "And you're holding them all in the very palm of your hand."
He waved his hand in the air, trying to weigh what he carried. "Would you like some? I'm sure nature won't mind."
"Nah," she shrugged, "Not everything is worth wealthness," she said and he agreed, yet shoving the gemstones into his pockets only to get a repressive glare from her, "What the hell do you need them for?"
"A thing," he was as vague as he knew how to be, getting up and pulling her up as well.
"A thing?!" she spat, holding him by the arm as they made their way to the opposite bank.
"It's a thing in progress," he blurted, twitching his sleeves in attempts of unwettening them. "Stop doing that with your eyes. They're too big, they're expanding black holes and one day soon they might swallow the entire universe."
Clara fetched her shoes from Niima, thanking it with a silent petting. "I can't help what my eyes look like."
"Then close your eyes," he demanded, wandering away without glaring back to check if she were following. He knew she was.
"But I'd miss the sunsets," she cried, watching him fade away into a large open field. She rushed after him.
They stopped right in the middle of the green grass, between flowers yards. Before their eyes, the horizon was open; there were hills in the far distance, to where the red balls of fire descended like a cascade — just like the Doctor had described. He grinned, "How do you like it?"
Clara leaned her back against him, smiling tenderly. "It's times like this, when staring at the beauty of the universe, that you start wondering how can there be so much ugliness. If people stopped to look at this for just a millisecond, I doubt anyone would ever feel the need to destroy it."
The Doctor buried his chin on her hair, shielding her torso inside his arms, swaying their bodies in a melody only he could hear. "The difference between you and them, Clara, is that you're capable of seeing beyond what's standing there. They see no more than the sun setting out to give place to the moon, a pattern that's ought to happen everyday. You, on the other hand, you see the magic of a burning star disappearing into the sky to be replaced by the fright and the terror of the night, the moment our fears are brought to life and we have to fight our own demons, awaiting crucially until the first rays of light appear again, bringing along all the hope and poetry we thought we had lost."
Clara gave in all her weight onto him. "There's poetry in the night, too. There's beauty in getting lost."
He leaned his head against the crook of her neck, the scent of her penetrating his nose. "You're right. That's exactly why you are able to see beauty, unlike them."
They fell down to the floor, where Clara rested perfectly between his legs, anchored against his abdomen. She was almost startled by the sudden fall of his sonic glasses onto her face. "The sun light can leave you blind," he said, "We don't want you to be in need of a cornea transplant, too."
She fixed it above her eyes, before her hands calmly landed on her belly. "What about you? Aren't you in danger of blinding yourself as well?"
"I'm not watching the sunsets," he explained, "I have something else in mind."
"Your thing in progress that you refuse to tell me?" she hissed, feeling the slight shift of his head behind her, "Careful, Doctor, or my new heart might not handle the surprise."
"Who said it's a surprise?" he teased, pulling some items out of his pockets without her seeing them.
"Well, isn't it obvious?!" Clara chuckled, so well fitted between his thighs she doubted he would have enough room to work on whatever he was planning.
"I won't give you a heart attack, I promise."
They fell silent for a moment, the remainings of the first sun disappearing into the horizon. Niima was just as hypnotized as Clara, petrified in a sitting position with its back to them. Clara drowsily ran her fingers through its soft fur.
Their quietude prevailed until there was only one ball of fire left in the sky, the Doctor so focused on what he was doing that Clara ended up getting so lost inside the maze of her thoughts, to the point she had to ask, "Doctor, why are you so good to us?"
The Doctor frowned, emphasizing the lines across his temples. "I don't know what you mean, Clara."
She let out a restless breath, sinking further down onto him. "I mean… You're an alien from a fancy civilization thousands of years into the future, with a machine that's capable of traveling to anywhere in time and space, and yet from all the billion billion planets in the sky, you spend most of your time on Earth, in a century that's not even a properly developed one, being so kind and so good to humans who don't deserve your kindness and your goodness. Why?"
His pouting only increased, "Don't you find yourself worthy of traveling with me, Clara?"
"Is anybody, really?"
"If you're not, then why am I?" he answered her question with another question.
"Because you're the person who holds the universe at the palm of their hands, you're the one who makes it all possible."
"Only as a matter of privilege. I was lucky enough to be born a Time Lord; that isn't my merit, that's my privilege. And yes, you're a human from the twenty first century, but there's nothing unspecial or unworthy in that. You're an unique human being who deserves to see the wonders of the universe — if you weren't, I wouldn't have invited you to join me."
"I just…" she cleared her throat, "Why us? Why humans? Why not any other species? What have we done to get your attraction?"
His face flattened, his fingertips harvesting the lines between her neck and her collar bones. "You taught me to be good. You showed me how to spread kindness even when all the odds are against us."
Her hand intertwined around his own; he was ambiguous, talking simultaneously about the human kind and about her. "Even when there's so much evilness and saddness amongst ourselves?"
"Especially amidst those," he concluded, allowing her to play with his hand in a dance he wasn't invited to join. "I've finished my thing. Do you want to see it?"
At last, she broke all their bonds only to turn around and regain the eye contact, even if it meant she would miss the last of the suns setting. "So? What is it that you've been so secretive about?"
He stared at her for a while, before the shiest of beams shaped his lips. He raised his fists in the air, leaning forward until he reached her and closed with a click just underneath her hair the necklace he had just built, the diamond charm hanging perfectly in between the bones of her neck. "There you go."
Clara let the sonic glasses fall almost immediately, pulling the charm until it reached her vision range. She was speechless, unsure how it was suddenly harder to breathe. "I… I can't believe you. How did you even make this?"
"Let's just say I'm a very resourceful man," he sounded too proud of himself, "Here, I made Niima one too with the remaining pearls, so you two could match," he moved to put it on, expecting her to help him, but she never did.
The Doctor just couldn't understand why her eyes had enlarged even more than usual, or why she thought impossible to look at him in the eyes again. "Clara? What's wrong? Didn't you like it? Because, it's okay, you don't have to keep it. Actually, you know what, nature probably doesn't want us stealing her diamonds, so we better throw them back to the river—"
Her quiet chuckle was enough to shut him up. Clara closed her hand around the pin and held it close to her heart. "It's beautiful, Doctor, I love it. Thank you."
"S-sure," he did his best to sustain his brows at a steady level. He absolutely couldn't understand why or how her face managed to show so many emotions all at once.
"Come here," Clara pulled him into a hug before he had the opportunity to protest, her grip around so tight there was a fine chance she would crush the life out of him. She rested her cheek against his own. "Nobody ever built me anything from scratch. It means a lot that you would."
The Doctor digged through her hair with his fingertips, "I can't make diamonds from scratch, Clara. I just shaped them nicely together and put them on a necklace."
"Shut up," she snapped in an amusing tone. "It is still something. How did you sculpt the charms? Or built the chains?"
He shuddered, pulling her away, "I still have my secrets."
"Of course you do," she rolled her eyes, smirking. "It's getting dark quickly."
"Indeed," he agreed to the obvious, the purple sky gradually turning into dark shades of fuchsia, "It's time to face our fears."
Clara glared at him funnily. "Meaning?"
"Meaning," he took a pause for dramatic effect, "That you can't run away forever. That no matter how much we try to escape our problems, we can't outrun them. We all must come home eventually."
"You're right," she tried to say, although her words were held back by her throat. She smiled condescendingly with her lips closed, taking his hand to her apple cheeks and cupping her jawline with it, just out of need to feel him near. "Let's go home, Doctor."