A long time in the future…
There are a lot of strange noises in the Citadel at night. It isn't the first time she's been woken by a scritch or a scrabble, only to find it's the pipes of the frankly antiquated heating system, footsteps in the hall above, or a on one notable occasion a flutterwing futilely attempting to mate with her desk lamp.
This noise sounds an awful lot like someone overriding the door security systems, however. She rolls soundlessly out of bed as the door swishes open.
Regrettably "use as a weapon" is something the interior designers of her chambers have overlooked as a quality in most of the fixtures and fittings. If push comes to shove she's probably going to have to defend herself with the desk chair, and that's just embarrassing.
She settles for opening the bedroom door instead, arms folded and her most commanding voice used to ask: "Who are you, and what the hell are you doing in my chambers at two in the morning?"
He clicks on the aforementioned desk lamp. "Uh, breaking the terms of my release from prison, trespassing, and committing criminal damage to your door security systems. Oh, and it's me, by the way."
The Doctor. Her knees buckle.
He catches her, grinning. "I'm glad to see you haven't forgotten me."
"How can you be here? They banished you and-and…"
"Yes, yes, yes, I know. I was there. They're hardly going to execute one of the saviours of Gallifrey now though, are they? And it's hard to see how they could come up with a punishment more extreme than never setting foot on my home planet and seeing you ever again."
She is crying she realises; hot tears spilling down her cheeks. "Oh God," she sobs, "I thought… I thought I would never see you again."
"Yes, well," he replies, "I couldn't exactly tell you in the courtroom how easy it is to break in and out of this place, could I?"
She cannot reply, the sobs boiling out of her chest now, a month of carefully repressed emotion erupting all at once. He pats her on the back, rather ineffectively, as she cries into his shirt. "Oh, I could kill you," she says, when she can finally choke out words.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"No you're not. Not sorry enough."
He gives her a kiss, unusually tender, in reply. She doesn't have to crane her neck like she used to, she realises, his hands wrapping around her in a different place and−
She breaks away. "I'm sorry," she gasps, "It's not that I don't−I still want to. It's just it…"
"Feels different," he says, a little sadly, "I know." He glances at her mirror, which she has covered with a curtain. "How're you finding it?"
She lets out a shaky laugh. "It's horrendous. I never thought… I never thought about if from your perspective when you changed. How stupid things like taking the stairs becomes difficult when your legs are suddenly a different length. And how food just tastes all wrong."
And most of all, she doesn't say, the stranger that looks back at her out of the mirror.
It's not that her new body is bad. It's just not hers.
"When does it stop?" The question she hasn't dared speak aloud to any Time Lord here.
He shrugs. "A few weeks, normally, for the food and the stairs. The face in the mirror though… that might take a little longer." He traces a finger down her cheek. "You don't look so different to me."
He kisses her again. This time she lets herself relax into his embrace, concentrating on the familiar: the smell of him, the way he holds her. The rush of heat, the sudden and sharp need for him; these are feelings she recognises.
"We don't have to−" he manages, as her hands find their way under his clothes.
"Shut up," she replies firmly.
"Yes Clara."
"So, tell me what's been going on since I left."
They are still entwined in each other and the bedsheets, his fingers ghosting across the bare skin of her back.
"No," she says, "I need to know what was happening before. They wouldn't tell me anything; I didn't even know you were alive until the day in court."
"Hmm," he sighs, "Well, I was busy bleeding to death in the War Room, as you know. Held in a stasis field to prevent me regenerating." Unbidden, her fingers find the puckered scar, healing on his abdomen. "And then some maniac woman burst in having stolen my TARDIS, looked into the Untempered Schism, absorbed the power of the Vortex and used it to blast through the Dalek defence force. Ouch!"
Clara has punched him lightly on the arm. "Well, when you put it like that," she says.
"I know," he says proudly, "It sounds like something I'd do."
"Did you see me, you know." She swallows. "Regenerate?"
He shakes his head. "No. I was passed out by then. Came to under armed guard after surgery. Something about breaching the sacred laws of my people and allowing lesser species access to higher technology."
She sighs, shaking her head. "Lesser species."
"I know. But that's part of why you're here. Teaching them to think differently. How are you finding that, by the way?"
She considers the question for a moment. "It's different, certainly. There's some that think I should have been executed. Others that treat me like I'm some sort of saviour. Most are just as attentive as my students back at Coal Hill…"
"Not very?" he suggests, but she is light years away, thinking of the planet she has lost; a life there left half-lived. He plays with her hair, waiting for her to come back to him.
"Anyway, it's different because I spend most of my time as a fellow student, not their teacher."
He makes a face. "Yeah, I'm sorry about that."
She chuckles. "I can't believe you found it boring. There's so much to learn."
"Well, talk to me in two hundred years is all I'm saying."
"I might," she breathes, still finding it difficult to wrap her head around the concept of her near immortality, "I mean, I actually could, I should still be here… Doesn't that scare you?"
He gives her a look. "That I'll come back and find you're running the place by then? A little, yes-"
"Shut up. You know what I mean."
"No," he says, "I really don't. How could you not dying be scary?"
She touches a finger to his temple, mouth quirking. Her initial attempts at telepathy have been limited to controlled scenarios in the classroom. "I could… show you?"
"Go on then."
She closes her eyes and breathes in deeply, trying to focus. She can feel him now, an itch inside her skull. In her mind's eye she is reaching out to him, trying to push the feeling across the void between them…
And suddenly he is all around her, stretching out in every direction. A vast ocean into which her raindrop has fallen. Stars wheel overhead and she feels a curious tug; the expanding front of the universe rushing away from them both, interrupted by fragments of speech and flashes of light. She gasps and opens her eyes.
He is still lying beneath her, smiling his shark's smile. She wonders how the shape of a man can possibly hold all that he is; all that he was and will be. Bigger on the inside.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes," she whispers, "And no." She gulps, trying to centre herself. "I guess I need a bit more practice at that."
"Give it time," he says, brushing hair out of her eyes. When his fingers touch her skin she can barely breathe, her heart swelling with mingled pride and awe. It takes a moment for her to realise the feeling isn't hers but his; a fierce and jealous love. The kind that can topple empires and burn up suns.
The kind that would willingly sacrifice itself doing something stupid, like looking into the Time Vortex.
For a moment she understands why the Time Lords have enacted this terrible punishment on them; condemning them to centuries apart. Why they fear the very people that saved them from an eternity of suffering in the parallel pocket universe.
They fear what they might do next.
What they do next is what they've always done.
It's Wednesday night and Clara is waiting in the dark of the repair shop. The TARDIS−for she will always by the TARDIS, no matter how many others Clara meets here in the Citadel− materialises with a familiar wheezing groan.
He has bought her flowers, horrible spikey things she has a feeling are probably carnivorous. She accepts them graciously anyway.
"Why did you want to meet here?"
"Something to show you," she replies, pulling back dust covers.
"Ooooooh," he enthuses, "It can't be…?"
"It is."
He rubs his hands together with glee at the revelation. "A tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator."
"Two tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolators. And according to the Observatory predictions, the Second Sun of the Seventeen is going to produce a solar flare tonight. So what do you say, Doctor? Fancy going solar surfing?"
"Sounds good to me. To start with, anyway."
She rolls her eyes and follows him into the TARDIS.