A/N: Sorry about the wait, I was under exams. The next chapter might come slightly late too. Thank you so much for all the kind reviews!

.

.

.

"In conclusion, your pregnancy is proceeding as smoothly as it possibly could," Doctor Zhabehasetrul said as she turned off the monitor and let Clara sit up on the examination bed. "I have no reason to advise you to stop working or reduce efforts any more than you already did, although I do recommend you to pay attention to your body in the oncoming weeks, after you enter the last sixteen weeks, and take all the rest you deem necessary and avoid all the efforts that seem too taxing. Now, the very last thing: do you wish to know the baby's biological sex?"

"Yes, of course!" "I don't care," said Clara and the Doctor respectively, at the same time.

Much to the Doctor's confusion, Clara turned towards him, all eyes, seemingly astonished.

"Doctor, what the hell are you talking about?" she asked, somewhere between nervous and confused. "What do you mean you don't care?"

The Doctor frowned.

"Well, why would I?"

"Because it's your child!" she hissed. "How can you not care?"

The Doctor was silent for a few moments, opening and closing his mouth repeatedly between uncertain gesturing.

"Clara. Honestly. I'm not seeing your point." He blinked a couple of times, rubbed his eyes, just to be sure. "Nope. Not seeing it. Sorry. How is knowing the baby's sex going to affect… anything at all?"

He couldn't understand why the matter could be of any importance. It wasn't like it would change his growing love for their baby or the way he would treat his future child, so why would he care about it?

"Oh, God. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. But we'll need to choose baby clothes and toys and, you know, things like that."

The Doctor blinked again, more puzzled than before.

"I'm confused. Really. What does sex have to do with those?"

Clara hesitated for a long minute, as though considering something she never had before. Eventually, she sighed, shaking her head slightly.

"Alright, good point. But we have to choose the baby's name."

"All Gallifreyan names are unisex, so in case you-"

Clara sighed again in what definitely looked like utter exasperation.

"Right," she interrupted him, "Right. Got it. Just-"

"Clara, it's fine," he reassured, taking her hand in his. "You want to know, that's okay, you don't have to find justifications. You're curious, I get it. That's very human. I'm a bit curious too, now that I think about it. It's the same to me. We do what you want."

"It's not-" There was more than a hint of a glare in the look she gave him next. "Okay, yes. Yes, I want to know, okay?"

His hand left hers as she raised her voice.

"Wait. You're cross. You look cross. Are you cross?"

"Yes! Yes, I am cross, okay? Because you're right and I get it but I still want to know, what's so wrong with that?"

"Nothing wrong with knowing," he replied meekly.

Apparently he had done something really idiotic and Clara was cross with him now. He couldn't figure out what exactly he had said to make her this angry, but it seems to happen more often these days, like in the first days after his regeneration. It was as though the equilibrium they had found with each other and that had worked so well for months was slowly breaking apart.

He reached for her hand and for her mind, trying to make her understand he was sorry, even though he didn't know what he had done wrong.

'I hate it when you're- such a bloody smartarse,' came Clara's answer. 'I just- You were being patronising, that's what you were doing. You know I hate it when you do that,' she said. 'I know you don't do it on purpose,' she continued, sensing his thoughts, 'but it's irritating, okay?'

The Doctor knew there was something else. She hated when he gave for granted things that weren't so obvious for her, coming off as arrogant or as though he thought he was superior to her, but there was more to their discussions, which had been growing in number in the last weeks and that aroused for increasingly futile reasons. Both he and Clara were tense. He especially was, not sleeping and not eating and always thinking; Clara reacted to his behaviour with more nervousness, more thinking, more worrying. As her belly got rounder and bigger and their baby became more and more real a concept in their minds, the possibility that their child was going to be in danger someday became more real too. It made them both anxious and uneasy, with themselves and with each other.

'I'm sorry, Clara.'

'I know you are.'

'Are you still cross with me?'

'No, no.' She was, he felt. A bit. But she didn't want to be. 'I'm sorry I yelled at you. I'm just-'

'I know. We both are.'

A pause.

'I still want to know.'

'That's okay, Clara. Ask. I want what you want,' he said sincerely.

Clara shifted uncomfortably on the examination bed and cleared her throat.

"So- uhm- sorry about that," she said to Doctor Zhabehasetrul. "Ignoring you and all, I mean. Would you, uhm, would you mind telling us?"

Clara's cheeks were flushed with embarrassment and partly with her burst of anger. She wiped the hint of tears in her eyes with her sleeve.

Doctor Zhabehasetrul smiled kindly, seemingly unaffected by the fact neither the Doctor nor Clara had paid the slightest attention to her in the last ten minutes.

"You do not need to feel sorry, you are not the first couple who has ever disagreed on this, and you will not be the last either. Are you certain you want to know now? You can always discuss this further with your partner and contact me later on-"

Clara shook her head.

"No, yes, I'm sure. Please, tell us."

Doctor Zhabehasetrul's smile widened under her rosy trunk.

"You're going to have a beautiful little girl."

Finally, Clara turned to look at him and she was smiling too, suddenly grinning brightly with sparks in her eyes. He smiled automatically in return, happy to make her happy, finally, happy to be doing something right that made Clara smile and not cry.

There was another feeling, however, another kind of happiness, something he hadn't expected at all. A daughter. He liked the idea of having a little girl. A smaller Clara, running around his TARDIS. He couldn't think of anything more perfect. The thought filled him up with joy. He felt it bubble up inside him, making him shiver, causing him goose bumps and a series of idiotic little smiles, which he saw through Clara's eyes as she squeezed his hand and his mind reached for hers instinctively.

'Didn't you say you didn't care?' she teased.

'Shut up,' he answered, but he did so fondly, teasing her in turn.

Happiness radiated from Clara, interacting with his own in a chain reaction that plastered ear-to-ear grins on their faces. She was as happy as he was. A piece of him and a piece of her put together in one small, impossible package. Clara had never thought that that might be what she was missing in life. She cupped his face with one hand and pressed a chaste kiss on his lips.

"I want her to be exactly like you," she murmured, only for him to hear.

"But-" he started to protest.

He was hardly a perfect model. He had just demonstrated that he made Clara angry plenty of times. He had many defects and it was scientifically impossible for their daughter to inherit everything from him and nothing from Clara. Besides, he wanted quite opposite…

"Shhh."

She kissed him again, for a longer moment this time but still so very softly. He closed his eyes and forgot what he was thinking about, Clara's lips hot and gentle against his.

~oOo~

Clara and the Doctor said their goodbyes, exiting Doctor Zhabehasetrul's office in the same perception filter disguise they had used the last time and quickly heading back to the TARDIS.

"Can we skip forward to bedtime?" Clara asked, finding her place on his side as he started the engines.

He looked down at her.

"Of course we can, Clara. But- no dinner?"

"Feeling a bit sick now," she explained, leaning against his side as heavily as her light weight made possible. Her sickness had been getting better in the last weeks, striking less often and not as violently, but never quite going away. The Doctor wrapped an arm around her waist, his hand distractedly caressing the side of her bump. "I want a nap."

Most of the things Clara hated most about being pregnant had been fading away after the first sixteen weeks, but some of it still remained, even if it wasn't bothering her as much. She had more energy, more days when she was in a good mood and she would demand a planet or an adventure, which he tried to make as safe as possible for her. She often came back refreshed from their trips, while he was exhausted after constantly looking out for possible danger. If he tolerated a certain -quite high- level of danger for Clara, knowing that she was clever and resourceful and strong, now she had a little defenceless baby inside her and that changed everything for him.

The TARDIS started to dematerialize, returning to Clara's home.

"Naptime it is, then. Will you eat something after that? You shouldn't go without eating."

Clara sighed and caressed his hand over her bump with hers.

"Yes, yes, I know. I will. Let's just go home now, okay?"

The TARDIS landed and the doors opened.

Not ten minutes later the Doctor had changed into pyjama trousers and an old T-shirt and Clara had changed into wearing nothing at all. She slept more comfortably that way lately. He didn't quite approve, still convinced that she shouldn't expose their baby to too much cold, but Clara kept arguing that it was summer and it was more than warm enough. He had soon given up on discussing that, since her body was never less than hot against his skin and he never heard her do so much as sniffle.

Clara lay down on their bed, on her side because now that her bump had grown she woke up with back pains if she slept on her back. He settled on his side behind her, spooning her, wrapping his arms around her, legs entangled with hers, which had become their standard sleeping position when her bump had started to really get big. She often used to spoon him, before that.

Clara covered his hand with hers, moving it to caress her belly in slow circles. Their minds caressed each other in a similar fashion, but there was always that sharp edge of tension between them, that conflict that felt like a constant low-voltage electric shock. He thought about how Clara was over half-way through, only about twenty weeks or possibly less separating them from the moment they would get to know their daughter. And from the moment when danger was likely to start. If someone had wanted this baby to exist, it was because they had plans for her, schemes. His time to uncover them was running out all too rapidly.

"Stay with me?" Clara asked.

The Doctor hesitated. Not because he wasn't tired -he always was these days since he hardly ever slept and even when he did he didn't feel well-rested afterwards- but because he didn't want to lie to her: he had no intention of staying in bed with her for long. He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep and he much preferred spending that time doing something useful, doing what occupied most of his days now: trying to understand who was responsible for Clara's pregnancy.

"Just until I fall asleep," Clara added, interrupting his silence. She paused. "I wish you'd worry less."

He shifted restlessly on top of the mattress behind her.

"Can't."

"I worry enough for the both of us."

He sighed.

"I know."

At first he had been mostly alone in his anxieties, had vowed he wouldn't let Clara see the measure of his concerns in his mind, let her feel his disquiet, but he had been terrible at hiding his emotions. The temptation of the comfort of sharing them with Clara had been too great, and he had let his worries slip bit by bit in her mind. It had perhaps helped him, but it had passed down every negative thought on Clara, who had started worrying just as much, if not more than he did.

She still had a much more positive attitude, inviting her friends and gran and dad over and talking about baby clothes and cots and baby duvets, receiving colourful cards from her students with good wishes and drawings of families with too much white in his hair for his liking. She did some pre-partum exercises alone or forcing him to join her; she read silly books like 'How to become a perfect Mum in 10 easy steps' and '100 things you totally need to know before giving birth'. She shared with him the funniest or most interesting bits. She tried to lift his spirits and hers and stubbornly pursued her intent of enjoying the fact that they were having a baby, which he could bring himself to only half-heartedly do. And he regretted it in part, yes, but a more rational side of him argued that finding out who wanted to harm them was much more important and was going to possibly save their child's life or more.

"Promise?" Clara asked, interrupting his train of thought.

"What?"

"That you'll stay."

He suppressed a new sigh.

"Yes. I'll stay."

He didn't make promises. He was probably going to slip out of bed as soon as Clara fell asleep. Perhaps return into bed with her just before she could wake up.

His hands kept caressing her belly and her hand alternatively, trying to soothe himself and Clara both, silence extending like an oppressive, heavy cloak of tension and awkwardness around them. Clara's breath was slightly irregular and quickened, her body rigid against his. She was nowhere near falling asleep.

"So," he started, trying to break the silence, "do you want to talk about the baby's name? You said you wanted to talk about it."

Clara turned slowly and carefully in his arms, her huge brown eyes meeting his tired blue ones with uncertain hopefulness in them.

"Yes, I do want to talk about it. Do you? Now?"

"Yes. No. I don't know." He started to torment his thumb with his teeth, nervous. "Now's a time as good as any."

Clara grinned suddenly at him as though she had just discovered something absolutely thrilling.

"Do you have a name in mind already?"

More a plain statement than a question. His mind again conjured the image of a small child, four or five years old, looking exactly like a tinier version of Clara. Not like Clara had looked as a child, because she hadn't looked like herself then: she used to be of average height for her age and with normal-sized eyes and a not-so-funny nose. His daughter was, in his head, the spitting image of Clara, less than half her height, with eyes that threatened to swallow her body whole and a smile that was even more breath-taking than the original.

"I think we should call her Clara," he breathed out, smiling blissfully, his heart aching with the beauty he was able to see. Clara. Clara Jr. Wouldn't that be the perfect name?

He wondered if he was really just imagining or if he was seeing through the layers of time what would truly happen one day. He was rarely able to tell.

"What? That's my name!" Clara exclaimed.

"Exactly." Clara had started giggling uncontrollably. "Why are you laughing?" he asked, baffled. His question was met with more giggling. "What?"

She returned serious now.

"It's my name, she can't have it!"

"Why not? Lots of humans have the name of one of their parents!"

"That's- that's not how it works," she said shaking her head, smiling.

"No?"

"Okay, yes, but I just- That would be just weird," she decided.

She wasn't smiling anymore. She seemed settled on the decision that her name just wouldn't do. He couldn't help but feel disappointed at that.

"Alright. What's your alternative, then?" he asked, not without some annoyance in his voice.

Clara bit her lower lip anxiously just for a second, looking away from him only for her eyes to meet his again, slightly bright.

"Eleanor. Ellie," she murmured.

The Doctor needed a moment to realize.

"Like you mother."

Clara nodded, but avoided his gaze again. He caressed her jawline with his index and middle, for her ear down, lifting her chin so he could look into her eyes.

"Clara. That's perfectly okay."

Clara nodded weakly, pensive. She hesitated for a couple of seconds before asking:

"What about what you said about your people? Could she really change into a man one day?"

"Of course, Clara. You've seen it happen with Missy."

"Yeah, but- not with you."

He scoffed bitterly.

"Me? That's just bad luck."

"What do you mean 'bad luck'?"

"Well, thirteen version of me and all were pale white, never ginger and never blonde either! I mean, I've been blonde, but not Goldilocks-golden-blonde. That's outrageous. I'd love to be blonde. Or ginger. And I wouldn't mind a bit of a tan, you know? Or a female body for once. It's really very annoying."

Clara laughed at his complaints.

"So you think she needs a Gallifreyan name?" she asked, sounding quite unconvinced. "I'd rather have her have a normal name if we want to raise her on Earth."

Her grimaced, kind of offended by that sentence. "What's not normal with Gallifreyan names?"

"I mean, a human name. So she doesn't… you know, get picked on. And I don't want to have to explain the whys and hows of why we named her- Asdrubalion or something."

The Doctor snorted, then giving her wide eyes and raised eyebrows.

"Asdrubalion?" He tried to suffocate a chuckle, with little success. "Seriously?"

"Oh, sod off," she said, reaching behind his neck and smacking the back of his head.

"Ow," he whined, massaging the spot with a grimace. "The Gallifreyan one could be her second name, just in case she needs it."

Clara looked at him sceptically, cocking an eyebrow at him.

"Are there some decent ones?"

"There are some brilliant ones," he said, grinning, a very clever idea making its way in his brain.

"Maybe just the translation of her name?" Clara pondered, "Or one that sounds similar?"

"Cleavin?" he proposed, hopeful.

Clara smiled a slightly terrifying smile.

"That's my name in Gallifreyan, isn't it?" she guessed easily.

Not her name in Gallifreyan. The one that most sounded like hers.

"Caught," he murmured, biting at the tip of his thumb. He wondered if he was about to be slapped again.

"Don't you ever try to fool me again, Doctor," she warned in her best pissed off teacher voice, raising a short but menacing forefinger at him. "I don't want her to have my name," she explained more calmly. "I want her to be her own person." He swallowed hard and nodded, thankful that he hadn't gained a burning, purplish cheek from his tiny little deception. "So," Clara continued, "out with it. Any names for Eleanor?"

"Elevian?"

He didn't know what the origins of the name 'Eleanor' were, or what it meant, so he had gone for a name had an analogous sound, and a name he liked.

Clara smiled slowly, one of those genuine, sweet smiles, those that he cherished the most.

"It's a beautiful name. What is it? Translation or…?"

"No, just sounds similar." 'Sounds beautiful.'

Like Clara was. Like their daughter was going to be.

'Thank you. See? You're sweet.'

He chose not to comment on that. Clara yawned and watched him with sleepy eyes before closing them.

'Sleep, my Clara,' he said, pushing a strand of her hair behind her ear, caressing the top of her head for a moment.

He was going to take care of everything. Of their daughter, of her. He wasn't going to let anything destroy the happiness that they fought every day to maintain.

'Good night, Doctor.'

She curled up just a bit tighter against him and he listened to her breath and heart stead, slow down. Her breaths became heavier, her body relaxed. She was of an ethereal, angelic beauty when she slept, so different from the fierce, defiant one she showed during the day. A part of him wanted to keep looking at her like this and never move, sheltered in his little blue box, until the end of the universe.

Reluctant but determined at the same time, he slipped out of bed in complete silence.

~oOo~

The Doctor moved to his study, the door locking itself behind him. He reached for the holographic projector and a four-dimensional map surrounded him, showing the movements in space and time of his most dangerous enemies, from about the time he and Clara had conceived their daughter up until the present moment. Daleks, Cybermen, the Silence, everyone was being secretly spied. The complex tracking system he had constructed added more details and followed their moves in real time, showing it all on the hologram. The Doctor had spent infinite hours studying the map, trying to figure out who out of all those who wanted to harm him in the universe was trying to hurt Clara and their daughter too.

He often wondered if Clara realized that what had been twenty-seven weeks for her had been years for him. Years spent researching, with occasional planet exploring to find new things to show her, to show Clara, who brightened his time alone every fifteen days. He was always back to her in fifteen days exactly, with flawless precision. He couldn't bear to stay away from her a moment longer, not now that they spent most of their time together with their minds entangled with each other, borders non-existent, both of them feeling they were leaving a part of themselves inside the other, a piece of their souls if such thing existed.

On the map, the Daleks slowly conquered a small moon.

The Doctor sighed. All of his enemies seemed to be minding their own business, causing mayhem in the universe as they normally would. Not a Zygon out of place. Not a Sontaran out of line. Nothing indicating that someone was planning something grand for him. Not a stillness in their movements, not a quiet before the storm. Nothing. The Doctor's mind drifted back to where it always did, to the only one who wasn't on the map, because she couldn't be. The Mistress.

Missy couldn't be there, out there in the universe, because she was dead. Killed thankfully not by Clara's hands, and not by his either, which he was secretly oh so relieved of. Sometimes he still wondered if he ever could have found the courage to press the button. He had never wanted her or any of her previous incarnations to die. Just like she did, he wanted to go back. Go back to the time when they used to run together in fields of red grass between trees with silver leaves and they thought they were the same. Now the Doctor often questioned if they had ever been the same at all, and yet he still wished for those times to return. They had been times when neither of them had known sorrow, or regret, or loss. Perhaps he was lost in the illusion that that blessed innocence would have come back if only he had been able to save his friend, to bring his friend back on the right path. But he hadn't. He had failed her, just like he had failed every version of her throughout the centuries.

His mind kept wandering in that painful direction, because he was stubborn: how many times had he left her for dead, only to find himself caught in one of her schemes? Too many, perhaps. Which was why a deep, strong, defiant part of him didn't believe she was dead. Maybe there was another factor too, which was that this seemed to the Doctor exactly her type of crazy, impulse-driven plan with subsequent further and more rational elaboration and scheming. It had to be her.

And yet, she should be dead. He had never been able to track her down, and now was no different. She was nowhere to be found. She was dead. Had to be. He had seen it happen… but he still felt like his instinct wasn't wrong and he was just missing the obvious.

His eyes stopped over the digital clock on the hologram, tickling slowly, one day passing in fifteen days of his time, following Clara's timeline. Time. Time time time. What could he be missing about time?

'Time Lord, me. Not missing a thing,' he told himself.

However, the feeling remained, tight in his chest. Never went away. He spent hours just focusing on that tightness before he finally went back to bed.

~oOo~

The Doctor slipped inside their bedroom and under the sheets as silently as possible, although the mattress dipped under his weight.

He lay down behind Clara, who was lying curled up on her side, not facing the centre of the bed anymore, and wrapped his right arm around her, shuffling closer to her, seeking contact. Her body was oddly tense next to his, as though she were awake, but her breath was calm and controlled and she had seemed asleep when he had entered the room. His mind reached for hers to see if she was sleeping, and he realized she wasn't.

Clara was only pretending to sleep. She had felt him come back to bed, which meant he had been up, and she didn't need to dig deeper in his mind to know what he had been doing out of bed. She could guess just fine. She was pretending to be asleep, and crying inside because she hated to see him torment himself this way.

He retreated respectfully from her thoughts, feeling that she wanted to be left alone. The idea of being the cause of Clara's sadness made him feel sad beyond words. He loosened his grip on her, ready to roll on his side if she didn't want to allow the contact, but Clara grabbed his arm tightly, keeping it in place, and curled up in a smaller ball.

Under his hand, inside Clara, for the first time he felt his baby kick. Not too hard, so he wondered if Clara had felt it at all. She gave no sound or sign that she had. The Doctor couldn't help but wonder if the little one was just making her presence felt or if she too, like Clara, became physical when it came to anger and this was her way to scold him for neglecting her mother.

The Doctor didn't want to think about the answer. He slipped again in Clara's mind only to force both Clara and himself to sleep, allowing both of them a few hours of tranquillity.