Clara woke feeling feverish and groggy and she stayed in bed, staring at the closet doors across from her trying to recall what had happened. It was frustrating sometimes, trying to figure out where she was in her memories while also trying to remember where she was in her real time. Like trying to maintain two timelines at once – a thought that made her smile because she imagined the Doctor had multiple timelines rushing about in that head of his, trying to keep them sorted to avoid problems with the universe around them.
The memory jog had been unlike the rest. Generally she just suddenly remembered, like watching a page in a coloring book filling itself in happily, but this had been an overload, as if the crayons themselves had leapt off the sheet to color directly onto her brain and she sighed against the faint throbbing pain pulsing between her ears. Clara could remember Christmas, the Christmas he'd almost died; the Christmas they both realized they were more than just travelling companions.
"Good morning, Clara," she heard him tell her on a hushed voice, "How are you feeling?"
"Brain-dead," she mumbled.
The Doctor laughed lightly, coming to kneel beside her, his hand automatically stroking over her hair and resting against her cheek as he smiled at her – that warm smile that made her heart flutter – and he nodded, "You've been out for quite some time, are you hungry?"
"What happened?" Clara asked, then shook her head and smiled, "No, I remember what happened. My mind, you'd told me, it had to reconcile the collection of memories that had returned with me from the time stream. Remembering again, it sort of set them loose."
His fingers lifted off her cheek and he reached for her hands, taking them to kiss her knuckles as he nodded and told her, "I had to help you sort them, just like before," then he frowned, "I don't know what effect that might have had on your other memories this time around. That's why I didn't want to use a psychic link to help your memories along after the accident." Then his head dropped slightly as he muttered, "I'm sorry."
Clara chuckled and turned her hands around his, grabbing hold of him between her hands to bring his fingers to her lips several times before telling him, "It's alright, I understand."
She could see the tears in his eyes as he started a sentence twice and stopped himself before he was able to tell her, "Maybe, if I'd done it, it would have saved you the pain of not knowing; it would save you pain to come. Maybe you would have known enough to tell me about your leg so I could have taken you somewhere to help you. Clara, I am so sorry, I should have tried."
She watched him lower his forehead to the edge of the bed and she could hear his sobs and she released his hand to run her fingers over his hair, gaining his attention. Clara could see the surprise in his eyes because she wasn't upset with him, she was simply smiling weakly as she asked, "And why didn't you?"
His eyes averted to the nightstand, where her prosthetic rested, and he admitted on a nod, "With your mind already in a delicate state – with your physical brain, your skull, everything swollen from the trauma – it would have meant risking all of your memories; I would have been risking your life."
"And you weighed it," she assured, "My life for my memories; knowing who I was, but remaining in a vegetable state for the rest of my life, or worse. I know you weighed your options, Doctor, and you knew the pain was less than the risk was worth."
"But, Clara," he began.
She shook her head and laughed, "You chose to be my husband over the Doctor and you have nothing to apologize for for that."
He stared at her a moment, understanding that she knew him well enough to know his first instinct had been to take hold of her in the hospital bed as soon as she woke and force her memories back into place, but instead he chose to simply take her hand and promise to be at her side for as long as she wanted him there. With a light laugh, he leaned up and kissed her forehead and then dropped back to sigh at her as she smiled up at him before asking her again, "Are you hungry?"
Clara pushed her lips together in amusement before nodding and telling him quietly, "Yes, and I have to use the toilet desperately – how long was I out?"
He helped her sit up and Clara moved to get her sock off the nightstand, but the Doctor's hand reached it first, taking hold of her right leg and sighing as he slipped it on and then carefully rolled the sleeve with her pin over her stump, resting his hands on either side of her knee a moment before kissing it and looking up at her to tell her, "You were out almost a full day, less than the last time," and then he eased the prosthetic onto the pin, taking a step back when it locked so she could stand and secure it, her hands coming out for his. Clara tilted forward into him, landing against his chest and wrapping her arms around him.
"Are you alright?" He asked quietly.
She licked her lips and said plainly, "I stopped my birth control."
He rubbed at her back and leaned down to whisper, "I know."
Clara tensed, shifting back to see the grin on his face as she began to ask, "How…"
"Who do you think takes out the bins around here," he teased. "You tossed a full packet in at the beginning of last month – sort of noticeable."
She winced and questioned, "Are you mad at me?"
The Doctor pushed a hand into her hair, searching her face as he shook his head to reply, "Why would I be mad at you?"
"Because I was the one who made us settle on a plan…"
"And you broke it?" He interrupted, eyes closing as he chuckled, "Clara, I knew as soon as you said you didn't want to wait that you weren't going to."
"And you're not mad that I lied?" She repeated.
He kissed her and then shifted away, "Go on, I'll be downstairs putting together something to eat because I know you're famished."
The Doctor slipped away and Clara made her way towards the bathroom to stare at herself in the mirror, hearing Martha in her head, telling her that she had to tell him she knew. She sat warily on the toilet and lifted her blouse to touch her stomach, trying desperately to remember some detail that might make it feel less like just a sad story and more like a horrible thing that had happened to her. Because she felt guilty for not feeling it. She imagined even if he'd told her, even if they'd told her the moment she'd woken, she would have cried and she would have moved on because it didn't feel real to her.
And she damned herself for that because it was a life; it was her life and she should remember. What had she felt? How had it changed their lives? What had been their plans then? How far along had she been? It couldn't have been too far, there'd been nothing radically physically different with her when she woke in the hospital – of course, she hadn't been too preoccupied with the shape of her belly until she'd started to think about having a baby now.
Did she know what she was having?
Clara smiled sadly as she dropped the blouse back and finished up in the bathroom so she could slowly make her way down the stairs. Her eyes drifted over the living space as she reached the bottom step. There were still boxes settled in corners, some flattened up against walls, and she could see an assortment of notebooks piled on the coffee table that sat in front of the couch. Her writing, her doodles, her thoughts since the accident – something her therapist had suggested.
In the kitchen, she could hear him working on something. Pots were clanking against the counter and he was muttering to himself in a way that made her chuckle because she could imagine him scratching at the back of his head, brow tightly knotted, and his lips pressed together in frustration. And when she finally entered the kitchen, finding him exactly as she thought she would with an empty can in his hand as he stared down at the contents he'd just dumped into the pot, she crossed her arms at her chest and laughed as he jumped and his entire demeanor shifted.
She wanted to be angry at him for keeping her pregnancy from her; she knew she should and maybe, maybe she considered with a dropping of her lips as she turned her eyes to the ground, maybe she would one day. It was the day he was dreading, she understood – the day she remembered. Because now it was just a sad thought in her head: she'd been carrying a baby and she'd lost it. The notion stung her oddly as she watched him give her an anxious look as he set the can aside.
Studying him as he turned back to gesture at the stove, Clara stopped his oncoming words with a simple question, uttered almost in a whisper, "Doctor, what frightens you?"
He froze, his eyes trained on the pot in front of him as it began to bubble, and then he reached to lower the temperature before twisting slowly to face her, curious look in his eyes as he responded quietly, "How do you mean?"
With a nod, she repeated, "Whole universe; grand adventurer. You leap off at a single thought and you wander about with little regard for what's coming around the corner, so I was wondering… what frightens you most?"
Exhaling, he answered without hesitation, "Losing you."
She tried to feign a smile, but her stomach dropped at the look of worry he carried – the one he always had because he worried telling her this secret would destroy her, and now he worried her finding out he'd hid it would destroy them – and she tilted her head to ask pensively, "Is that something you feel you should fear?"
The soup beside him made a repetitive plopping sound and he shifted, grabbing at a wooden spoon to turn the red substance she could smell was tomato with just a bit too much garlic as he gripped at the handle of the pot with his other hand. The Doctor turned twice to look at her with a frightened expression he tried to squelch with an awkward smile and Clara understood that the answer was yes. She entered the kitchen, arms hanging limp at her sides and she covered his hand on the handle with her own, guiding the pot away from the hot stovetop and then she shifted him away from the food.
He swallowed hard, staring down at the intensity with which she watched him and he offered a muttered, "How we travel; where we go – there's always that chance. That unknown danger, like you said, lurking in the shadows that has, in the past, threatened our lives…" his voice faded and she watched his eyes redden, knowing that now, when he spoke of travelling, when he said we, somewhere in the back of his mind he was thinking about the child they'd lost and how they would have figured into it all.
Clara glanced back at the living room and she bit her lip before asking, "There's a photo album, it abruptly ends a few months before the crash – had we stopped travelling, Doctor?"
She stared at his feet before looking to her legs, to the faint difference in the texture of her left and the hyper-realistic material her new prosthetic had been made from and she took a long breath, feeling his fingers come up to round her upper arms. He told her quietly, "No, we hadn't stopped travelling."
"Why are there no photos?" Clara tried to say, but her words were barely a whisper. Barely choked out beyond the sudden wave of nausea plaguing her over the fact that she wanted him to say it, but she didn't want to have to say the words aloud – to ask the question of him.
His throat closed over an answer as he watched her continue to stare at their feet before she lifted her eyes slowly to his chest, glazed over with unshed tears as her hands came up to her stomach and he gasped a sob as she raised her gaze to see him staring down at her, an apology on his lips. His jaw clenched and he questioned sadly, "What have you remembered, Clara?"
Clara shrugged out of his grasp and twisted her hands together, admitting, "It's not what I've remembered, it's what I've figured out and I don't understand," she trailed, looked away before asking, "Why hadn't you told me?"
He smiled, the same sad smile he always seemed to wear, and then he admitted, "I wanted to tell you, when the time was right – I tried to tell you." He looked to her, shaking his head, "That doesn't make it right. Nothing makes it right." The Doctor lowered his head and raised the fingers of his right hand to it, rubbing at his forehead and Clara nodded slowly. "We could discuss it," he offered, hand falling away as he looked up to catch her wiping at her tears.
Lips crushing into each other, Clara shook her head and then nodded to the stove, "I just want to eat, maybe take a walk."
"We could walk," he offered, "We could travel. We could…"
"Sort of want to be alone," Clara shot sternly, looking to the Doctor to see his chest cave in slightly as he turned to the soup and held tight to the wooden spoon he settled against the rim. "Sorry," she sighed, "I'm sorry, I'm upset. I want to talk, Doctor, but I don't know what to say – I don't even know how to feel," she ended abruptly, shifting to land her elbows on the island at his side.
He nodded wordlessly and Clara stared at her hands as she picked at them. Moving at her side, he found bowls and he filled them, settling one next to her and he hovered there a moment, fingers lying curled against the light marble surface as he waited for her to acknowledge him, but she didn't. Clara waited until he left to reach for the food and she ate slowly, ignoring the growing knot in her stomach – the growing anger. Because she knew he was only trying to protect her, but Martha was right: secrets in marriage were never good.