Mother

6

Jenny had been to Vienna before, and admired Hofburg Palace's façade. She had never gone inside, though. She had last been in the area some decades ago to commission a handmade snow globe with a tin base as a gift for Clara Ravenwood, for their tenth wedding anniversary. But she'd been alone and didn't stop to take in any sights, beyond buying some slices of Sachertorte.

They were in the large, rear garden, hiding behind some topiary, underneath a clear, starry night sky. It was chilly.

"What's the date?" she asked the Doctor, who was on the ground with the temporal scoop in her lap, the one Clara had brought back with her from Leeds.

"Some time in December, I'm not sure," said the Doctor, "1761." She had her sonic screwdriver out and had been examining and tweaking the settings on the scoop for a while.

"And what are we waiting for, exactly?"

"The royal family to appear."

"At this time of night? In winter?"

"I have it on good authority that the young Maria Carolina likes to take a turn about the garden and look at the stars, even when it's cold," she said.

"Whose authority?" asked Jenny. The Doctor said nothing, pretending to be busy with the scoop again. Jenny knew better, though. She'd been recovering from being so close to the Untempered Schism, coming back to herself. "Oh, come on. Don't tell me you've-"

"I have merely been known to visit Naples from time to time, and-"

"Take a turn about the garden with her to look at the stars?"

"I resent your implication that anything untoward has happened between the Queen of Naples and myself. And besides, she's only nine at the moment," said the Doctor, huffy, "You're being inappropriate."

"I'm being inappropriate? What is it with you and royals? Elizabeth I, Madame de Pompadour, and now an Archduchess."

"It's completely different."

"In what way?"

"I don't want to get into that right now."

"Of course not. You know, sometimes I think we couldn't be more different. I've never treated women like you do."

"I do not mistreat women," she argued, "Need I remind you about your sordid affair with your own stepmother?"

Jenny paused for a moment. "…Alright, fine. We won't talk about this."

"Exactly."

Jenny gave up looking over the hedge and instead sat down in the dirt, next to her mother, wrapping her cardigan tightly around herself against the chill.

"Are you cold?" asked the Doctor.

"A little."

"Do you want my jacket? I don't mind." She went to take it off, but Jenny stopped her.

"No. It's fine. I'm usually good with cold."

"Well, it's been a long day, Blue. What did you think of Romana, though?"

"She kissed you," said Jenny.

"On my cheek. It doesn't mean anything. And besides, she…" The Doctor paused, then sighed.

"…Did she survive the war?"

"I don't know. I never went to look for her. How could I? And she never came to look for me."

"Probably because you told her to wait for five hundred years?" Jenny suggested.

"I hope so. I didn't see her during the war, only heard things. She was the President of Gallifrey, for a while…" She stopped to think. "I can't remember much about it. I don't know if it's just me, or if her timeline might have gotten muddled. But I hope she survived. She was always a good kid."

"Even through everything?"

"Even through everything. Just like you. You're my good kid."

"I don't think so. I didn't even try to save any of those people back there, the Temporites. Romana did."

"Well, here's the thing about the Untempered Schism," the Doctor put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer, "When I was ninety, they took me to see it, just like they took everybody. I ran from it, as far away as far as I could. And that's what you wanted to do, just being near it. I'm so grateful that you didn't have to see it, Jenny, because if you did, it would've broken both of my hearts. I couldn't be more proud of you for running away."

"And leaving them all behind."

"Some people don't want to be saved. But we rescued the ones on the planet, the ones who weren't convinced they were the ancestors of the Time Lords."

"It's sad though, isn't it? That they doomed themselves with that thing. It's not like they made it appear. They just went to investigate it."

"Very sad indeed."

"But Romana was right about you being cruel."

"I know. That's why I have Clara."

"…There's something I should probably tell you about that, actually."

"What? You didn't tell her I'm married, did you?"

"No, but she was asking me a lot of questions about Oswin. I think I made a mistake by letting her in that lab. It's funny, I never noticed she keeps framed photos of her and Adam in there."

"You never seem to notice that Adam's there at all," the Doctor grumbled.

"I'm serious."

"She saw a picture, you mean? Of Oswin?"

"Yes."

"That's just great," she grumbled, "Oswin's… well. You know how Oswin is."

"A gorgeous, aloof genius?"

"Precisely. Hopefully she forgets all about that."

"Is that what happened to you, when you met Oswin? Weren't you obsessed with her until you found Clara?"

"That's not exactly what – shh, get down!" They heard voices.

"I'm already down, what are you talking about?"

"I said, shh!" she hissed. Jenny rolled her eyes. The Doctor crouched behind the hedge, temporal scoop in front of her. Accompanied by a courtier, a young girl had left the palace. "That's Charlotte alright."

"Excuse me?"

"Well, that's what her friends and family call her," said the Doctor.

"Of course it is. But I still don't understand this plan-"

"It's not that complicated. I've just supercharged this scoop with more artron energy from the TARDIS's stores and fine-tuned it a little – recalibrated it to cope with transdimensional time travel better, and… presto!" She flicked some switches on the thing and it began to glow sickly yellow, trembling.

"Because that's totally not going to draw attention to us over here," said Jenny.

Twenty feet away, in the middle of the central promenade, the air shimmered. It caught Maria Carolina's attention, and she and her guard approached. The shimmering turned into another vivid, glowing spot before they could notice the lights behind the hedge.

Altialasterlim fell out of the sky, in the middle of the Hofburg Palace garden, and collapsed. The Archduchess was by her side immediately.

"Good heavens! Fetch the doctor, and the archdukes!" she ordered the courtier behind her.

"I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to leave Your Royal and Imperial Highness with such a creature," he said, barely giving away that he'd just witnessed something extraordinary.

"A miracle has been performed, Johann! Poor Antonia on her deathbed yesterday, and now – an act of God!" she professed.

"Catholics," the Doctor tutted, "Everything's a miracle with those guys."

"How else would you have them interpret it?" said Jenny, "That she's the last member of an alien race from a completely different universe, teleported here with a time machine by someone who's apparently shagged the Queen of Naples in the future?"

"You heard what she said, though?" said the Doctor as the courtier finally left, Maria Carolina and Altia alone now. "Antonia on her deathbed. And here she is, reincarnated."

"I'm not sure Catholics believe in reincarnation."

"I think they might be more pliable when it concerns their divinely anointed monarchs," said the Doctor, "And besides, that answers a lot of our questions. Maria Antonia died in 1761, aged six. It's not so hard to believe given that half a dozen children of this particular Habsburg litter did die before adulthood. Mostly of smallpox. Maybe she had smallpox, too."

"And what? They just replaced her? With a girl who appeared in the garden?" said Jenny.

"It looks that way," said the Doctor.

"So, when you were wondering why an alien with knowledge of history would choose to come and pose as the doomed Queen of France-"

"She had no idea. It was my doing. All this time."

"…But then, she knew who you were, and who I was," said Jenny, still confused, "And about Gallifrey. She can't have gotten all that just from you shouting at her earlier."

"I was not shouting at her," said the Doctor.

"And the vortex manipulator she stashed in the Tuileries, and the Gloves-"

"Jenny, they said it themselves, they were throwing those gloves through the time vortex. Time travel isn't linear, it's simultaneous, and by me pulling her like that with this scoop, maybe it creates a stronger link between Iavai Supreme and Vienna."

"And that…?"

"Increases the likelihood of those Gloves landing down here, on Earth. Which they did, because Torchwood found them in Cardiff. She must just find a different pair they threw through the time vortex."

"How?"

"What do you mean, how? She's the Queen of France, and she was known for frivolous spending. You don't think she could've commissioned some treasure-hunting force to go find them?" said the Doctor. "As for the vortex manipulator, I assume that was a gift."

"From who?"

"An obnoxious time agent trying to bed the Queen. That's the thing about royals, they get a lot of intertemporal suitors showing up and vying for their attention." Jenny stared at her. "What?"

"It's just remarkable that you said that with no trace of self-awareness or hypocrisy," said Jenny.

"That's probably how she learnt more about me, anyway. The time agents know all about me. She can just ask them when they present themselves." A doctor was dispatched from the palace, followed by a whole army of teenage, Austrian archdukes, to tend to the young girl.

"How did you know you could bring her through?" asked Jenny.

"Easy. Her DNA is still in this thing, from where Clara sent her away earlier," said the Doctor, "Like I said, time isn't linear. We used the newer DNA to pull her through space at an older point in her timeline. Just required a little zhuzhing of this machine – it's actually remarkable. We should leave, though." The archdukes picked up Altia, unconscious, and began to carry her into the palace, with supervision from the court physician and Maria Carolina, who stayed by her side.

Once the palace doors closed, they got up, the Doctor hauling the temporal scoop.

"I can carry that," Jenny offered.

"No, no, you've had a rough day."

"Give it to me." She insisted, and the Doctor gave in. "This is why I do a thousand push-ups every day. How many push-ups can you do? Can you even do one?"

"I'm here to be your dad, not your workout partner."

"You can do both. It could be a fun, bonding experience."

"Oh, like the yoga?" Jenny shook her head.

"How does this scoop work, anyway? She had it to use on Clara, and then Clara gives it to you, and then you use it on her. How does she get it?"

"I don't know. Maybe we should leave it somewhere for her?"

"Right, but where did it come from in the first place? She didn't bring it with her from Iavai Supreme, and now Iavai Supreme is gone," Jenny continued. The Doctor looked down at it, in Jenny's arms.

"You know what… I'm going to have Oswin take a look at it," she decided. "Maybe it's not from there at all."

"But we saw one in the chamber."

"I didn't get too good of a look at that one, though. And Marie Antoinette, she did have a royal mechanic, I told you earlier. Built her all sorts of curiosities and wonders."

"You think Marie Antoinette commissioned some eighteenth-century Austrian to build her a time machine?" asked Jenny.

"I think I have a lot more questions to ask the Last Queen of France the next time she shows her powdered wig in public," said the Doctor, somewhat bitterly, "But today's been long enough." It was snowing now. "I think Oswin might like to get her hands on whatever this thing is, anyway."

"Oh, I'm sure," said Jenny, "She loves clockwork."

"You know what else is interesting? Marie Antoinette had four extra, adopted kids she took into the royal household," said the Doctor. "Maybe because she was adopted into the royal household."

"Almost kind of you to throw her in with them after she grew up in a place like that."

"And condemn her to death at the hands of la Convention nationale?"

"I can't decide what to make of her," Jenny went on, "She wasn't very nice when we saw her in France, and then she tried to kill Clara – but to adopt orphans in Versailles?"

"People are complex."

"You sound like you're almost forgiving her for trying to kill Clara."

"She's not the only person who's ever tried to do that."

"Mm…" said Jenny. Snow tumbled down around them, thick and fast. That late at night in Vienna, everybody was indoors. A carriage passed every so often, but nobody paid them any notice, even with their futuristic clothes. "Speaking of Clara. Mine's in London. I should probably go back there."

"Are you sure? I'd like to keep an eye on you after everything with the Schism."

"I'm sure. She's at Sally's, anyway, and Adam and Oswin are there, too, helping Esther with something. I can fill them in."

"Get them to check the vampire archive," said the Doctor, "I found vampires in E-Space once, and they'd be interested in what those Temporites were doing, too."

"Okay."

"They'd probably have been interested in rumours that Marie Antoinette survived getting her head cut off, as well."

"Probably." They were outside the TARDIS.

"Hey," the Doctor stopped, "How're you doing?"

"Not good. A whole race was destroyed. And we did almost nothing. And now we're here, in Vienna, talking as if nothing happened. And that's what you always do."

The Doctor stood there, in front of her daughter, enveloped in the snow in wintry, picturesque Austria, the Danube a stone's throw away, and the TARDIS glowing warmly behind them.

She dropped her arms, listless, and simply said, "I know."

At three o'clock in the morning, Clara was fast asleep in an armchair in the living room. Mattie was asleep, too, curled up on the sofa. They had both waited up for the Doctor to come home, but the long, slogging summer's day had taken its toll. After showering and scrubbing away the blood and dirt she hadn't been able to stay awake.

She didn't wake up when the TARDIS returned, thrumming its way into the back garden, or when the Doctor put her key into the lock, opened the door, kicked off her shoes, took off her coat, and set her little tea plant on the table, among empty pizza boxes. The broken Orbiter 1 machine was still there, taking up space.

Without Jenny and without the temporal scoop, she came into the living room, struck by how peaceful it was. A very old rerun of some property show or other was on the TV. Other than that, it was quiet, and still. There were no signs that a world had ended that day.

The Doctor crouched down in front of Clara's chair and ever-so-gently shook her shoulder.

"Hey. Hey, Coo-Bear."

"Hm?" Clara mumbled. The Doctor touched her face, hands ice cold from being in the snow with no gloves, and Clara flinched, opening her eyes.

"It's only me. I'm back," said the Doctor.

Clara frowned, "Did I fall asleep?"

"You did."

"I'm sorry. I was trying to wait for you."

"It's okay."

"Where's Jenny?"

"She went back to London." Clara started to come around properly, realising one of her arms had been contorted and was now aching.

"Did you find out who she is? The Queen?"

"I did."

"What happened?"

"Nothing good. Nothing good at all. I shouldn't have left you, I shouldn't-" Her words got caught in her throat and she looked at the floor.

"Hey, hey, come here," Clara leant forwards to hug her. "It's alright. You're back now, aren't you? And I forgive you for running off like that."

"But I'm always running," she mumbled.

"That isn't true, though."

"It's not?"

"No." Clara let her go, though the Doctor could have stayed like that forever. "Why don't you go upstairs and wait for me? I'll wake Mattie and send her to bed. She'll be glad to know you're here. Then I'll make us hot chocolates, how's that?"

"I can wake her while you do that."

"Are you sure? You seem…"

"I'll be fine."

Mattie was so tired she didn't much acknowledge that the Doctor was home.

"Clara's exes are all really mean," was all she said, half-asleep, before trudging upstairs with her duvet, which she'd brought down earlier. The Doctor listened out for her going all the way up to the attic. The kettle rumbled in the kitchen.

"She met your exes?" asked the Doctor, leaning on the kitchen doorframe.

"Only about six of them," said Clara.

"Six? One day in Leeds in the noughties and you meet six exes?"

"Yes. And one of them slapped me. Twice. Then threw coffee in my face. Not to mention that Marie Antoinette was trying to assassinate me."

"Well, she…" the Doctor began. "She was just a child."

"She said you destroyed her planet. Her species."

"It wasn't a planet. They were living on a Dyson sphere around a dying star, to get closer to an opening in the time vortex. The Untempered Schism."

"What?"

"They… through the Schism. They could see Gallifrey. They thought it was their future. They ignored that the star was going to explode."

"And?"

"And it did. They wouldn't listen. She was the only one I could save because you sent her away with that scoop. It still had her DNA."

"Then, where is she?"

"Hofburg Palace. It looks like the real Maria Antonia died in secret. This new one appeared out of thin air, and they took her in."

"So… you saved her? But it seemed like she hated you. She tried to kill me to erase you from history."

The Doctor didn't know what to say, so she shrugged. "I guess she blames me. I may not have come across particularly well to those… Temporites, they were calling themselves. The things they were doing-"

"You don't have to tell me," Clara interrupted her as she tended to the kettle once it clicked off its boil, "You just got back."

"Not everyone died. There were some holdouts on a frozen planet, we helped them to escape. Jenny and Romana fixed their ship."

"So that's who you ran off to see."

"Yes. Romana, before the war."

Clara poured hot water into each mug in turn.

"A day of exes for both of us, then?"

"She's not my ex," said the Doctor firmly. Clara set the kettle down. "Shouldn't you heat up milk on its own for those?"

"We don't have enough milk left," said Clara, picking up the milk bottle and shaking it so the Doctor could hear it was nearly done. There was just enough to top off the hot chocolates so they weren't all water. "I'll nip to the shop tomorrow. And how different is an 'ex-companion' to an ex-girlfriend, really?"

"It's not like that," she said, fidgeting.

"I know you're lying, but it's fine. I'm not the one you're lying to."

"Hmph."

"It must have been hard to see her, before everything happened," she stirred.

"I shouldn't have gone. Crossing into my own timeline like that – I should have listened to you, and Jenny. Neither of you thought it was a good idea, and you were right! And now my own daughter, she's…" she paced up and down on the other side of the kitchen table, "She was so close to it, the Untempered Schism. What if she'd seen it?"

"Then, you would have handled it, wouldn't you?" said Clara, "You've seen it, you know what it's like. And maybe she wouldn't have looked at it anyway."

"Maybe this, maybe that-"

"Hey. You're dealing in maybes, too. 'Maybe she would have seen it'." Clara walked around the table with the mugs, handing one to the Doctor. "You can't live your whole life as a parent worrying that maybe something bad will happen. Bad things will happen. All you can do is be there for her."

She held the mug in her hands to warm up some more, only now aware of just how cold she'd been for most of the day; ice planet, air-conditioned tomb, Vienna in December.

"I think you just need some rest," said Clara softly, "We both do. And you can tell me more about Romana."

"It really isn't like that, aside from everybody always assuming that it's like that."

"Then what is it like?"

"It's like – you know! We just hung out a lot. Don't you hang out with people?"

"In my rakish youth? Sure. Shagged nearly all of the people I hung out with." The Doctor gave her a look. "What did you do with the thingamajig, anyway?"

"Jenny took it to London with her to show Oswin. I need to work out if it's a paradox or if she actually had somebody build it for her in the eighteenth century," said the Doctor.

"So, then, where did she get the vortex manipulator?"

"That I don't know. My working theory is that dozens of rogue time travellers have shown up and tried to seduce her, and any one of them could be responsible. It's on my list of questions, though. I'm sure she'll show up again sooner or later."

"Great. Can't wait." The Doctor sipped her hot chocolate and realised some of it had spilt out onto her hands. "You're shivering, are you alright?" asked Clara.

"I've been freezing all day."

"What about on that star?"

"Air conditioned to hell and back. Literally."

"Well," Clara touched her arm, "Why don't we go to bed? I think you need it. Oh, that reminds me – I have something for you." She left the Doctor to open the fridge, then drew out a mammoth pizza box, soggy with grease. "We ordered pizza, and I got one for you. Meat feast, obviously."

"Really? You ordered me a pizza even when I ran off like that?"

"I didn't want you to go hungry when you got back, or for you to have to cook. So, yeah, I got you a pizza. Here you are. Actually, we should swap." Clara took her hot chocolate back so the Doctor could carry the pizza in both hands. She switched the heating on and the pair of them headed upstairs. How the Doctor had missed their bedroom in all its modest glory; small, dim, and overflowing with knickknacks and dirty clothes. Above all: cosy.

"It scares me how much I miss you when you're not around," said the Doctor quietly, putting her pizza down on the bed and finally beginning the long process of undressing. She thought her clothes might be frozen to her.

"Why does it scare you?" asked Clara, taking the Doctor's jacket and throwing it over the back of a small armchair, which she then sat down on herself.

"Because it's as if I'm not me, not all me. Like I'm only half a person without you."

"You're a whole person whether I'm there or not."

"But I don't feel like that. I feel like if you're not there, right next to me, all the time, that I'm – that I'm drowning again. You're my dry land."

"You should save those thoughts for the next time we renew our vows," said Clara, "Far too intense."

"I could have died today," she insisted, "There's no coming back from an exploding star, no chance of regeneration. What if I'd died without you knowing how much I love you?"

"Right… well, first of all, you didn't die," said Clara, "And second of all, I definitely do know how much you love me; you've told me every single day for over fifty years."

"If Jenny hadn't had her teleporter-"

"Jenny did have it. And if this is really worrying you, you do have one of your own you can take."

"I've lost it."

"You haven't, I know exactly where it is," Clara assured her.

"I think you should just lock me up, in future," she peeled off her jeans, stiff with frost from the tundra, "Don't let me leave if I try to run off."

"I definitely won't be doing that."

"I'm giving you my permission to-"

"Oh my god!" Clara made her jump, "What happened to your feet?"

"What?" she looked down and saw them, having just taken off her socks. Red, raw, the beginnings of blisters forming along her toes. "I guess Jenny had a point about my not having any sensible footwear for walking through all that snow."

"This is frostbite? Bloody hell," said Clara, "Just – be careful. I'm going to get some warm water, you need to soak them."

"Coo, it's fine, you're making a fuss over nothing," she said, but Clara had already left the room, the door ajar. The Doctor sighed and went back to what she'd been doing, pulling on her pyjamas and sitting on the edge of the bed next to her pizza box. Hearing the bathroom tap run, she flipped it open and pulled out a slice. If only she'd had time to warm it up, or had married someone capable of using a microwave.

Clara returned shortly carrying a washing-up bowl they kept in the bathroom cabinet to serve as an ad hoc foot spa from time to time. She set it on the floor and the Doctor obediently lowered her feet into it.

"You're supposed to have a doctor present to do this, you know."

"And you've spent years reminding everybody that you do, technically, have a medical degree, from someplace or other," said Clara.

"Glasgow, in the 1880s."

"Then you can supervise yourself, can't you?" The Doctor grimaced. "I can't believe you'd been walking around like that for hours."

"There was a lot of adrenaline. And it's mostly numb. But look, it's not that bad. None of it's turned black."

"Maybe I should lock you up."

"You see! Now we're on the same page about that. I think it's a great idea. They gave me a tea plant for my trouble, though."

"Who?"

"The people on the ice planet. It's down on the kitchen table, didn't you see it?"

"I think your pinball machine might have blocked the view," said Clara, "Didn't you say you'd have it moved by the time I got home?"

"I couldn't focus on fixing that thing while I was worried about you! I'll go down there and move it right now if you want me to."

"No, it's fine, I'll get Rose to carry it into the study. You're not walking anywhere for the time being."

"I can walk, Clara, I've been walking all day," she grumbled.

"Walking around with Romana, no less."

"Jealousy doesn't look good on you."

"I'm not jealous," said Clara, "I just want you to tell me about her, anything about her."

"It… fine, she obviously has a slight crush on me that I didn't notice the last time I was around her."

"Didn't notice, or ignored on purpose because that was easier?"

"I plead the fifth."

"I don't know what that means, I'm British."

"Typical. But it's nothing untoward."

"I'm really not jealous," said Clara softly. "Two of my big exes I saw today, anyway. Nora and Dolores."

"What is it with you and girls who sound like they were born in the 1940s?"

"I just like the names," she said, defensive.

"Nora I know, she broke your heart. Dolores, I don't recall."

"Dolly," said Clara, "The day I was back in time, it was the day we met. And the same day Nora dumped me. She was so nice, though – which I forgot about. I wasn't very nice to her. But Nora was awful, and she's the one I'm hung up on. What does that say about me?"

"It says that when you were a nineteen-year-old kid, you didn't know which people were good and which were bad," said the Doctor simply, "Nobody knows that stuff at that age. Hell, I didn't even fall in love with anybody until I was around eight hundred. Grace Holloway. Now that's a girl you get hung up on – a cardiologist, in San Francisco, performed surgery on me. Killed me, actually."

"Excuse me?"

"Because of the two hearts. Very confusing to an Earth doctor."

"Jesus."

"Not her fault, though. But you see, you and I aren't so different. You had your heart metaphorically broken by Nora, I had my hearts literally broken by Grace and a surprisingly sharp endoscope." Clara didn't know what to say to that.

"…Give me a slice of that pizza."

"Sure. It's cold, though," said the Doctor, passing her a slice.

"When has that ever stopped me?" she bit into it. "How're your feet?"

"Sore."

"Better than being numb."

"If you say so. How was Mattie, anyway? After your escapade?"

"Stressed, I think. Not a fan of time travel. But she thought it was interesting seeing 2006."

"You know something?" said the Doctor.

"What?"

"I don't remember her dad being all that keen on time travel, either," said the Doctor, "It could run in the family."

"Maybe. But she knows Mickey and Martha never wanted all that for her. You have to remember, not everybody is you and Jenny; they don't all want to defy their parents at every opportunity. It was nice, though, to spend the day with her, despite the circumstances."

"Look at you."

"What?"

"You find the silver lining in everything. Real boundless optimism."

"One needs to be optimistic when married to you. There's no way our relationship would work without it."

"You don't think we'd be together if you were more cynical?"

"Of course we wouldn't. I would've talked myself out of the whole thing, on the basis that you're a thousand-year-old, time travelling, alien weirdo."

"Well. I can't argue with you there."

"What time is it, anyway?" asked Clara, looking around at the clock. "Bollocks. Four. We should go to sleep. Getting stabbed really takes it out of you."

"I hate to think of you getting stabbed."

"You stabbed me with that corkscrew fifteen years ago."

"Clara! That was an accident! You know that." Clara was laughing. The Doctor scowled and crossed her arms.

"You put it right through my hand."

"I resent you bringing this up again."

"Your feet look a bit better, I think."

The Doctor took her feet out of the warm bath and, climbing into the bed properly, wiped some of the water off on the duvet. There was nowhere to put the pizza, halfway gone, other than at the end of the bed.

"If you kick that off during the night, there'll be hell to pay," the Doctor warned her.

"I can go put it back in the fridge, if you like?" Clara offered, though she was already under the covers herself, getting ready to go to sleep properly. The room had thoroughly warmed up.

"No. I'm going to eat it once you go to sleep."

"And what if I do kick it onto the floor?"

"Then I'll still eat it. I'll just complain. And maybe I'll go find the corkscrew, teach you a lesson."

"You can corkscrew me whenever you like," said Clara, through a yawn. She wrapped her arms tightly around the Doctor in the dark.

"Why do you get to be the big spoon?"

"Trying to stop you from running away again."

"…Hey," said the Doctor after a minute of quiet.

"Hm?"

"Earlier. You said you threatened her."

"Oh."

"How, exactly?"

"It's her head, see," said Clara, "It's not healed. It's still sewn on there, wobbling. So, I told her if she didn't clear out, I'd pull off her head and then bury it in a landfill."

"Nasty. It's no wonder she doesn't like us, Coo-Bear."

"Sometimes people don't like other people. That's life."

"…Sure," she said, sensing Clara's aching tiredness. "Get some sleep."

"That's what I'm trying to do."

The Doctor smiled, "Okay. Goodnight, Coo."

Clara gently kissed the Doctor's shoulder, the easiest part of her to reach.

"Goodnight," she whispered right back.