The morning came with a deafening silence and Clara opened her eyes slowly to look at the wall across from her in confusion, momentarily forgetting where she was. Then she heard his sigh. Slowly unraveling herself from the sheets, she slipped over the bed and looked down at herself, surprised to find he'd managed to clothe her while she slept – just a simple shirt and knickers, but enough so that she wasn't forced to step away from the bed naked.
Her mind retraced the night before, the way everything had been going so well and then in one swift shift of his body away from hers on a grunt it had crumbled. She'd listened to him pacing the hallway and, at some point, he'd come to sit on the bed and he'd apologized quietly once more as she pretended to be sleeping, and then she'd fallen asleep, lost to some dream about driving a motorbike through space while wondering if it were truly a dream.
It was the thought that plagued her, since finding out about the Tardis – how many of her dreams, the things she woke to with a light laugh, had been foggy memories trying to resurface? Suddenly the possibilities seemed endless and as she reached for her crutch, finding it in its normal spot against the nightstand, she sighed up at the man she could see standing in the hallway, looking in on the other room. The yellow room that turned her stomach enough to nauseate her for no discernible reason. Or, she thought to herself, perhaps there had been a reason and she simply couldn't remember.
Clara lifted herself to make her way to the door, seeing the small turn of his head and the shy smile on his lips before he curled his body around the doorframe to look at her. There were tears on the rims of his eyelids and she glanced beside him, into the room that sat brightly and eerily empty despite its furnishings and she nodded slowly because she didn't want to ask him about the tears, but at the same time, she wanted to kiss them from his eyes and bury him in her chest and tell him it was fine.
Entering the room, she crossed the open space in the middle and peered out the window, smiling down at the field below and she felt him step up behind her, one arm wrapping around her just underneath her breasts while the other moved to embrace her shoulders, letting her rest her chin on his forearm. "I'm so sorry, Clara," he whispered and for some reason she felt it was about more than just last night.
She offered a light peck of her lips to his skin and purred back, "It's alright."
He laughed, quiet and shortly, and then asked, "Where would you like to go today?"
Shaking her head, she turned to look up at him, eyes closing against his kiss to the scar on her temple, and she told him plainly, "I think you should go to work."
The Doctor began to say her name, but then stopped and stated, "You want things to go back to normal."
Shrugging, she offered, "How is anything supposed to be normal if my life can't be?" Gripping tightly to her crutch, she turned as he released her and she took a long breath, watching the way his arms hung limp at his sides as his shoulders slumped. "I know you don't want to leave me here by myself, but It's ok – this is my home and I need to get comfortable in it again." Clara laughed, "I am comfortable here, but I have to re-learn it and I can't do that with you over my shoulder."
"I could help you," he offered.
"I know," she breathed, "I know you can and I know you want to and I appreciate it, but right now I need to feel like everything's gone back to the way it was. Dad's at work; you're at work, and I'm here in my home sorting things for myself."
"What if you need me?" He asked, wincing slightly and she knew it was because he didn't want her to feel as though she should need him for mundane tasks.
Clara took a step towards him and she smiled up at him, shaking her head, "I need you, Doctor, I just need to start my life again and that might mean I take a trip to the market by myself, or visit a shop by myself, or make my way to the school by myself." She sighed, "I need to know that I can do the things I used to and if I need you – if I need you, Doctor – I will call you."
Body straightening, he smiled and reached out for her face, cupping it within his hands before kissing her gently and then backing away with a nod, "I'll start at half days then, if that's alright by you."
She laughed and nodded, grinning when he kissed her again, "Half days, sounds like the start of a plan."
"A brilliant plan," he agreed, sliding back from her and twirling to head towards the bathroom in their room where she heard the shower rush on and Clara sighed, turning and giving the yellow room a once over, eyes lingering on the bare wall at her right.
She couldn't help but feel something was missing from the wall and she shifted to stare at it, so lost in thought she'd missed him turning the water off and emerging with a burgundy towel wrapped at his waist and when he cleared his throat, she jerked slightly in response, laughing as she looked back at him. Clara gestured up at the wall and offered, "It's a bit bare – I was thinking I could hang something, or paint something there…"
"Paint?" He repeated quickly.
"Dunno," she shrugged, twisting her palm around the handle of her crutch before smiling, "Butterflies would be nice."
The Doctor's fingernails dug into the doorframe as he watched the satisfied look on her face and he lowered his eyes to the ground, uttering quietly, "Yes, Clara, butterflies would be nice," before he swiftly turned back to the room to dress and make sense of the mess of hair on his head. She was seated on the couch with a sketch pad in her lap when he finally stepped out, pushing his arms into the sleeves of his purple coat and he felt his chest constrict tightly when he saw the image she'd drawn.
Nothing fancy, just her simple doodles. He had the exact same simple doodle stored away in a room on the Tardis; a room that held all of their baby's belongings; a room with strict parameters not to allow Clara entrance. A room created to be her nursery while they travelled that he had a hard time erasing from the Tardis databanks because it was his daughter's room. Approaching Clara, he forced a smile as she beamed up at him, twisting the image up for him to see and she nodded quickly, glancing back down.
"I found some paint in the closet; perfect colors for this!" Clara chirped and he winced because he'd forgotten the paint and when she looked up, she asked, "Had I intended to do this before? You're acting weird about it."
Releasing a small laugh, he admitted, "Yes, you had – you were going to make a mural in that room and we'd gone to pick out paints for you to work with, but the project was put on hold."
"I knew I would never just paint a wall yellow," she muttered to herself, adding small flourishes to a butterfly's wing and shifting back to admire it. Clara glanced up at the Doctor, "So, half day, you'll be back around lunchtime then?"
Hesitating, the Doctor gestured back at the hall and asked, "Clara, is there really a point in painting if we're just going to move soon?"
She shrugged and told him quietly, "Thought it'd be therapeutic; should I not?"
The Doctor exhaled and smiled, then replied, "If it will make you feel better, then paint."
With an appreciative smile, she repeated, "So, see you at lunch."
He moved towards her and bent to peck a kiss to her temple, telling her softly, "Yes, Clara, lunch."
Grinning up at him, Clara offered a small sigh and he turned to do a quick twirl as she giggled before he rushed out the front door and she remained seated with the pad in her lap, lips dropping slowly as she set the drawing aside and grabbed her crutch. Clara moved back to the second bedroom to have another look around it because it was nagging at something in the back of her mind she couldn't explain. Something that set her nerves on edge and made her eyes water.
The paints had been pushed to the back of a closet that sat bare. Completely empty of anything and she imagined that maybe she'd decided guests should have their space, but she couldn't understand why the closet in their bedroom was crammed with belongings while this one sat empty – as though deliberately cleared. Had they been expecting company before the accident; company that had to be turned away when she'd crashed? Finger lightly tracing the scar above her eyebrow, Clara slowly looked over the room one last time before she let out a long sigh and went to shower.
And it bothered her there too. Small spots in the cabinetry, enough to fit a box or a trinket, or larger gaps that felt too much to her like something was missing. When she moved back into the bedroom, body still moist and wrapped tightly in a towel, she noticed it there as well. There'd been far too few things to fill the drawers and she'd left spaces she hadn't considered the night before, but now it struck her as odd. She'd never had space in her dresser at home; how did she have space here.
Or rather, why?
Clara pulled on a light dress quickly, and carefully set the prosthetic to her stump, mindful to lock it before she began to explore the house and, as she moved about, everywhere she went, it was the same. Tiny bits of their home that felt removed, even though she knew she had no basis for feeling that way, and she couldn't help but think something was definitely missing. She wanted to dismiss it because it seemed absolutely ridiculous to be bothered over what she could easily brush of as cleanliness and order, except… all of those spaces meant something to her she couldn't quite understand and the more she considered it, the more she thought that maybe it wasn't just something she didn't understand, it was something she couldn't remember.
It was something passed between her father and her husband behind her back; some murmur of a memory she'd yet to receive and it pained her because she wanted to ask, but knowing they hadn't told her meant there was a reason.
She glanced around at the bookshelves and plucked a photo album out, flipping through it carefully to smile down at photos of herself and the Doctor. There were shots of them on Earth, doing Earthly things like taking in the seven wonders in varying states of decay, and there were shots of them on other planets doing things that might be harder to explain… riding oversized bees and posing with creatures that definitely wouldn't be found in a zoo anywhere nearby. Clara smiled at the pictures of Angie and Artie and she was glad to see they'd joined them on some of their trips through the years. And when she reached the final few pages, she frowned because the album abruptly ended, several pages sitting blank. With a small groan, she plucked the last of the photos out, expecting the date to read some time just before her accident, except it read several months before.
"Hmph," she spat, pushing the photo back in and sliding another out of its space. It was only days before the one she'd just looked at.
Clara slowly tugged photos out, flipping them over to check the dates and her scribbled notes and she set them back inside, creating a timeline in her head. One that seemed to begin three months before the accident and she frowned as she closed the book and pushed it back onto the shelf. Part of her told her to ignore it – maybe they'd just gone through a period of not taking photos; maybe they'd gotten suddenly busy. There were loads of times she could remember being hidden away in her room, nose in books, trying to pass courses to graduate. But there was a part of her screaming at her that it was something important missing from those pages.
Her stomach grumbled loudly and she touched a hand to it, fingers absently turning circles just underneath her belly button before they fell away and she sighed into the silence. Clara gave the house one final sweep of her eyes and then decided to drop it for the moment. She moved to the yellow room to begin pulling the bed away from the wall, forgoing a thorough examination of her bookshelf where, if she searched long enough, she would find – holding a place in a book; tucked into a thick brown appointment binder – a single scan of her baby girl, her name written confidently on the back.