Clara

Heart to Hearts

"Are you sure you're alright?" asked Eleven for the umpteenth time from the outside of the bathroom while Clara brushed her teeth. He'd already changed into his pyjamas in her room and set up his airbed and sleeping bag (because no matter what Martha Jones was telling people they were not sleeping together).

"Yes, Doctor," she answered incoherently with a toothpaste-filled mouth.

"Psychic excursions like that can be very draining on the human body and can also damage the mind," he said.

"Go talk to the Ponds then, they went through more trauma than me," she said, turning the tap on and rinsing the brush.

"The Ponds are fine, they have each other, you don't have anyone," he said.

"I have you, Chin," she stated, opening the door.

"Yes, exactly! You have me, but you're not talking to me!" he said.

"You didn't ask me to talk, you just kept asking me if I'm alright," she countered, a little smug to herself for a brief moment.

"Alright then, what happened?" he asked, putting his hands on her shoulders and getting to her eye level. She didn't know where to start, the memories she'd been trying to keep at bay suddenly flooding her mind. Mickey and Martha dying. Then Amy and Rory dying after refusing to fight the Master. Then River jumping into the water, and finally her own damaged, broken suicide into the pool. She couldn't keep anything in any longer as tears started at the corners of her eyes. Honestly though, she was being ridiculous. It hadn't even been real, and there were far worse realities for her to waste her time poring over than imaginary heartache.

"Sorry..." she sniffed.

"Hey, you don't ever have to apologise to anyone for feeling things, Impossible Girl," he said, putting his arms on her shoulders and carefully guiding her up the second flight of stairs into her own room and walking her over to her bed, "Now, tell me everything that happened."

"You know what happened," she said, looking away from his warm, friendly, encapsulating, gorgeous eyes. Oh my god did I actually just think that!? she demanded of herself (probably a side-effect of being stuck mediating conflict between three other versions of herself just a few hours prior), being distracted for a few moments. And not by the Doctor's eyes. He was the Doctor - what was she doing looking at his eyes anyway!? If he'd only get his face out of hers for ten seconds she'd probably be able to think straight and drop such daft notions as, eurgh, romance.

"Not everything," he said, interrupting her internal argument with herself, "I don't know how you ended up with an awful concussion and a badly sprained ankle in your... challenge..." he said the word with a snarl in his tone.

"I fell over," she completely lied.

"Then what happened?" he asked.

"I don't know. I was knocked out, I think... I saw... some people."

"Who?"

"I'll sound crazy," she said.

"Crazier than I did saying I have 27 brains the first time you met me?" he asked. She nodded. "Crazier than me keeping a barbie doll on me at all times in case of emergencies?" she nodded again, but smiled a little. He took his hands and cupped her face and looked into her eyes when he next spoke, getting to her level and leaning right in, whispering, "Crazier than me saying right now I'm a 1200 year old alien with a time machine who's falling for a human girl he accidentally married in Las Vegas when he was drunk?"

"Crazier than - what?" she fumbled, her eyes widening, but just as she looked back from a spot on the door Eleven kissed her and she melted into him, closing her eyes completely and forgetting about the Master and the Ponds and Oswin and the rest of her stupid past lives who all thought they knew best, because why did Oswin Oswald remotely matter when she was kissing the Doctor, the Doctor, the Time Lord who was 1200 years old and was actually kissing her. Oswin's appearance was nothing at that moment, than perhaps some kind of to-be-manipulated deal-sealer between Clara and Eleven right then, whose face was underneath her hands as she tried to pull him closer.

"Now," said Eleven after he pulled away (against her better wishes and efforts), grinning smugly because of how flustered she was (she was never flustered, especially not by men, it was disgraceful to the collected front she was constantly perpetuating), "Tell me exactly what happened, wifey." But Clara didn't want to talk right then, not about the day's events (for want of a better turn of phrase, her brain was mushy, and she couldn't remember an awful lot of the day anyway) so she hit his arm. "Ow!" he protested, sitting down next to her on the bed.

"Why couldn't you have done that in the Snogbox?!" she hissed, trying not to smirk, not wanting Ten and Rose in the room below to hear her.

"Does it matter?!" he was shocked.

"Yes! I could have made a pun!" she said. He smiled and shook his head.

"You are just-"

"Perfect?" she finished for him, raising an eyebrow and awaiting any opportunity that she could kiss him again, since it seemed she was apparently, finally allowed something she didn't even know until ten seconds ago was remotely attainable.

"Impossible," he corrected. She slumped slightly but cheered up when he took her hands in his, "Tell me what you saw, Clara. Please?"

"Okay," she said, considerably happier. "I saw three of my echoes."

"That's not crazy," said Eleven, "Now, if you'd have said they were now living with you and trying to hog all of your limelight and make fun of you all the time and they were all sleeping in other rooms of your wife's house, then I would've said you were crazy." Clara laughed, but he soon returned to seriousness. "But what were they saying? And which echoes?"

"Victorian me, Time Lady me, and Oswin," said Clara, "And they weren't saying anything useful. They were a bit annoying, actually. How can you stand me?"

"What do you mean, 'how can I stand you'? Everyone annoys themselves. Do you think it's easy for me to stand those two downstairs?" he said, "To be honest, I'm always wondering why you lot keep running away with me. Past lives are rubbish."

"They were trying to convince me I'm in love with you, Doctor," she said, ignoring what he'd been saying before.

"They were what?" he spluttered. Clara began to tell him the conversation between the four versions of herself as word-for-word as she could, though thankfully she remembered it quite well. By the time she had finished the Doctor had gone to sit on top of his airbed, leaving her (annoyingly enough) on her own on her bed (seriously what was with that?)

"Wow," he said, "past lives, eh?"

"Yeah," she said uneasily, something else cropping up in her mind as she rolled over, "Doctor?" she asked him a while later, facing the wall. He had already crawled into his sleeping bag however. It was nearly half past midnight.

"Yes, Clara?" he asked her.

"How do you do it?"

"How do I do what?"

"How do you watch us die? People you care about, you just forget and move on and go off with somebody else. For over 1000 years that's how you've been, human to human forever," she said.

"I never forget anyone," he replied.

"Then how do you live with the memories?" she turned back around to look at him. Into his ancient eyes (sexy eyes). He was looking at her, but he was distant. He was remembering.

"I... I don't know. I try to live in the present, I don't like to look at my past," he said. "I only do it when I have to."

"You did it for me when you jumped into your time stream," said Clara.

"I had to to. I live with them because I heal things as well, there is good as well as bad," he said, "I could heal your eye for you."

"My eye?" asked Clara. She had forgotten about the black eye she had obtained from Martha. "No, I know how you work. How many years?"

"Sorry?"

"If you healed my eye how many years would you use up of your life?"

"Well it's a pretty nasty bruise, so about three. But you'd rather walk around with a swollen eye?" he asked, stunned anyone would choose to have an injury.

"Of course, Chin. I have makeup and painkillers. It'll be gone in a few weeks, it isn't work you wasting some of your life," she said.

"No. River didn't think so either when I healed her wrist," he said, vacant, "If that's all I rather think you should get some sleep, I imagine it'll be an early start tomorrow."

"Early start? Why?" she asked, interested now as a spark of joy lit up his eyes as he leant closer to her, and she spied a golden opportunity approaching...

"Because something happens on July 6th 2013, something Rose and the Tenth Doctor downstairs will find very interesting," he told her.

"Something funny?"

"Yes."

"Something embarrassing?"

"Yep."

She paused for a moment, "...What is it?" she asked.

"Oh, well, you'll have to wait and see, won't you?" he teased, but they were too close at that second for him to slip away, so she managed to kiss him again, which was just as amazing as the first time.

"Tell me," she asked him, which was, to say the least, awkward, when she didn't have full possession of either her tongue or her lips at that moment, and she was moderately surprised that he knew what she was saying through this obstacle.

"No," he answered in the same mumbled way.

"Tell me," she moved away for just long enough to add another thing, keeping her forehead pressed to his, "Or I will never stop kissing you."

"Why would I ever want you to?" he asked, and she giggled, before being cut off again.