A/N: I know, it took me ages to update again. The issue is still the same, anxiety and exams. I think I'm getting better though. I hope you enjoy the chapter :) Just a bit of fluff before shit starts to go down… prepare for the grand finale!
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"Are you going to camp here all night? She's not going to grow up overnight, you know," Clara said fondly, stepping towards the Doctor and wrapping her arms around him from behind, letting her forehead rest against his shoulder as he remained bent over Ellie's cot in the TARDIS, gaze fixed on the little girl ever since they'd brought her home earlier that day after the two usual post-partum days at the clinic.
The Doctor glanced at Clara just with the corner of his eye for a brief moment.
"I want to see her eyes."
"Okay, that might change. My eyes were grey until I was about three weeks old."
"Not for a Gallifreyan. They won't change."
"I've seen her eyes for a bit. They're dark."
"Well, I haven't!" the Doctor said with childish indignation.
Clara moved to his side, leaving one arm around him and resting the other over his, tangling their fingers as her hand slid in his.
"She's sleeping now, you'll have to wait anyway, right? I bet she's going to start keeping them open soon enough, you'll have all the time in the world to find out, Doctor." He made a non-committal noise and didn't shift his gaze. "What's the big deal with it anyway?" Clara asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
"Your eyes."
"What about them?"
"I want to know if she has your eyes," he answered, turning to face her. "Hate not knowing."
Clara regarded their daughter (their daughter, hers and the Doctor's, she still had trouble processing that), thinking. Ellie was a very pretty baby girl. From the start, she hadn't been all wrinkly and red-faced or tending to purple like most newborns. Clara guessed she would have lighter skin, like the Doctor. Her mouth was very much his, thin, delicate lips impossibly soft to the touch. Her hair was too short still to tell if it was going to be straight or curly, though the tips had a hint of a curve. Then again, a lot of babies had curls in their first years of life, but somehow Clara could just tell. She knew how the Doctor's hair felt under her palms, and Ellie's felt just the same.
"She's your spitting image. It's only fair she gets my eyes," Clara concluded with a smile.
"That's not true. She has your nose."
Clara laughed. "How can you tell?"
"It's funny."
"What?"
"Her nose. Your nose- ah!"
The Doctor pretended to wince as Clara smacked him lightly on the back of his head, but he was still grinning.
They watched their daughter in silence for a few more minutes, watching her little chest rise and fall as she slept. Clara already felt a deep, deep love for Ellie. Clichéd as it might sound, Ellie was the living, breathing result of Clara's love for the Doctor, and his for her, and literally a new person half Doctor and half Clara. It was a different kind of love from the one she felt for the Doctor, not as vicious and all-consuming, more gentle and caring, but just as fiercely protective and intense.
"Come to bed," Clara murmured, nuzzling her temple against his and feeling him connect their minds. He was happy, ecstatic, she could tell. Yet he watched their daughter as though she could be taken from him any second now. "It's okay, Doctor. She's going to be okay. We're all gonna be okay, I promise," she reassured gently.
"Oh, Clara. Don't make promises you can't keep," he crooked, meeting her gaze.
"It'll be fine. I'm not going to let anything happen to my baby. And neither are you. Come to bed."
She pressed a kiss to the corner of his lips and caressed his curls fondly, then firmly tugged at his hand. In her mind, she felt him surrender, felt the tension leave his body just a little as he let himself be pulled towards her and into their bedroom.
"It's all okay," she whispered in his hair as she lay behind him, her arms wrapped around his torso and his hands clasped over hers.
~oOo~
Ellie grew, and everything was peaceful. It felt like the calm before the storm, however, with the Doctor always, always watchful as the weeks passed and tension seeping through their linked minds and keeping Clara herself awake. Her sleep schedule went to hell anyway as Ellie needed to be fed several times during the night too. Clara counted it as a blessing that the little girl was rapidly starting to wake less and less during the night -Clara thanked her unbendable rules about feeding times and nap times and play times for that.
Ellie picked up weight much like a human baby, but it was evident that she was already much stronger and more intelligent than any baby her age. At less than three months she could already sit without any help and watch the world from over the edge of the Doctor's old cot with her big brown eyes -the Doctor had been happier than Clara had seen him in months for days and days after Ellie had started keeping her eyes open. Pretty early on Ellie already had different sounds for "Mum" and "Daddy", the first sounding more like "aaah" and the second more like "ah-heee". Clara wanted her to properly say "Mum" first. It was like a vicious necessity. No way she was letting her say "Dad" first. She was going to train her when the Doctor wasn't watching. Maybe. Somehow. Someway.
The Doctor absolutely adored Ellie. He was completely in love with her, which made Clara almost kind of jealous, deep down. The Doctor and Ellie had so much in common, literally in everything. Same species. Same telepathy. Same eyes that devoured information at a frightening rate. They had epic staring contests -won by the Doctor only because Ellie fell asleep eventually- where they would look into each other's eyes, immobile, as though the other's irises held all the secrets of the universe. The Doctor held her, played with her, had her sleep in his arms as if they were two halves of the same whole. Clara thought of when she used to think she and the Doctor were one soul in two bodies and she started to feel sad and cry for no reason. He would then pull her in his arms and bathe her in his feelings for her, and Clara would know nothing had changed. He loved his girls equally, just as she loved him and Ellie.
After Ellie turned three months old, she started to sleep through the night. Clara did a happy little dance when she woke up that morning and realized she hadn't had to get up. The Doctor laughed, throwing his head back against the pillow. Clara hadn't heard him laugh like that in, oh, ages. She pulled him into a kiss and then another, kissing and laughing until the noise woke their little girl.
Sleeping the whole night gave Clara her strength back, her lucidity. No constant tiredness, no hazy eyes, no exhaustion, no sudden bursts of depression. In a week, her sleep schedule was fixing itself.
After a week, she had Ellie changed, fed, burped and put to bed. Clara flung herself to bed too… and she didn't fall asleep instantly. It was 8:37 pm and she wasn't sleepy. She suddenly asked herself how long it had been since she'd last had a moment to herself. Read a book. Cuddled and kissed with the Doctor until they fell asleep. She had been so busy with Ellie that she hadn't noticed how bad she had been missing those things.
The Doctor silently closed the door of their bedroom, just back from kissing Ellie goodnight and tucking her in again in case Clara hadn't already done it perfectly -she had. He shrugged off his t-shirt and remained shirtless and barefoot with only his pyjama trousers on. Clara remembered all of a sudden what that sight used to make her feel.
"You're still awake," he noted with a smile.
"Yep," she said, watching him as he slipped into bed, his messy hair and 12-hours stubble, his lean and dry muscles that hid his superhuman strength.
He lay under the covers, watching her in turn, his head resting on his hand as he propped himself up on one elbow.
"Your eyes are doing a thing."
"I missed you."
"I missed you too." A pause and a smug smile. "We've been apart for less than two minutes."
Clara sighed. "No, I…" She placed her hand flat against his chest and pushed so he was lying on his back, then tentatively pulled herself up and placed her knees either side of him, slowly, testing the movement. The Doctor inhaled sharply and Clara saw his pupils dilate. She gave into a gasp of her own at the sight. Oh, she had missed this. "Let's make love."
The Doctor blushed, in that absurdly hot way of his.
"Are you sure?" he whispered, hopefulness and need and respect and concern in his voice all at the same time.
Clara bent down further, taking in his scent, watching him lick his lips and breathe faster, his body shifting restlessly. He was just as affected as the first day and oh, Clara revelled in that. Yeah, she was sure, all the way sure. The pains and discomforts of post-partum times had gone away, the Doctor looked just as perfect as the day she'd known she loved him and her body wanted it all. How had she gone almost a year without this? Her body wanted payback, right this instant, it remembered every heated touch and every broken sigh and wanted it all back.
"Yeah. I want you," she said, and her voice had gone rough.
Clara leaned in to kiss him, hesitantly at first, then harder, more demanding, swallowing the sounds he was making into her mouth. She was getting some sort of influence on the connection of their minds and she used it, pulling him hard and fast in her want, her need, feeling it matched by his own passion. He moaned softly as he pulled her close, chest to chest with him, then fought to get her nightgown off and his hands on every reachable inch of her skin, making her shudder and whimper under his touch as his elegant, long fingers remembered every sensitive spot, her breasts, her hips, the small of her back. His mouth worked wonders as he kissed her as though he needed her lips like air and water and he was frantic in how he held onto her.
"Oh, Clara. Clara, Clara, Clara. I missed you too," he murmured as she gasped for breath.
The Doctor pushed her with her back on the mattress again, ending up in an odd position across the bed, but Clara didn't care. He buried his nose into her neck, hoping to get drunk in her scent, lavishing her neck with his mouth and tongue until she was moaning his name and smiling, smiling out of pure joy because she had forgotten how there was nothing better than their bodies pressed together so closely. She threw her head back in satisfaction as she felt him hard in his trousers, thrusting pliantly against her stomach. She moved one of her hands between them to give in to the irresistible urge to touch him, feel him warm and solid and hear him groan and plead her name, and moved her other hand to catch his own and guide it between her legs where her body was screaming for his touch. She bit her lip when his fingers brushed against her clit and she would have issued words of more and please and yes if her phone hadn't started to ring.
"Don't answer," the Doctor outright pleaded as he mouthed her breasts gently, careful as she was still feeding Ellie after all.
"Wasn't planning to."
Clara dipped her hand into the Doctor's trousers, had a greedy feel of him before freezing, closely followed by the Doctor.
The phone was still ringing. Ellie was crying, because the noise had woken her.
"Oh, God," Clara groaned.
The Doctor shuddered, eyes closed. He reopened them slowly, drawing a calming breath through the sole force of will and grabbing her hand delicately, pulling it out of his trousers, his whole body shivering. Clara could feel how reluctantly, almost painfully he was doing so. She couldn't help a smile at the knowledge that she could still reduce him to this, to feeling and needing and wanting and no thinking. He met her eyes, and his were of the clearest blue. He kissed her hand and patted it lovingly.
"My turn to get her," he sighed.
The Doctor got up.
Clara stifled a groan of frustration into her pillow.
Later, much later, the Doctor came back with Ellie in his arms, still awake and unwilling to go back to sleep. He settled the baby on the mattress between them and lay on his side, facing Clara, foreheads touching and their legs entangled so their daughter was safely tucked in the small fort built by their bodies. Ellie made a happy noise at the arrangement and shifted to touch both of their hands, pouring the purest, unconditional form of love on them, and Clara wondered if they weren't just perfectly safe, each with the two people they loved most, all wrapped in a gentle embrace and a chain of mentally shared affection. Clara thought no one would try to pull them apart. Surely, Ellie's birth had been nothing but a gift, a little mistake on the part of nature and Clara and the Doctor could raise her free of fears for many years to come. She fell asleep on that thought.
~oOo~
The Doctor sat on the floor of his study in the TARDIS, worrying his fingers between his teeth. It had pained him to do so, but he had had to start taking trips alone again. Clara was unhappy about it, but she didn't know what he knew.
Ellie was almost six months old, and Clara didn't know how important a mark that was for a Gallifreyan. Ellie would learn to walk and to control her telepathy, she would develop long-term memory. All in a matter of weeks. It was the ideal moment for those who were plotting against them to snatch her from her parents' arms and shape her to their own will.
The thought terrified him, and he was running out of time. Funny how it always came back to that, to Time. He knew it held the answer to the final problem, the problem, the identity of those who wanted them harm… that was the only thing he knew, together with the unshakable sensation that the Mistress was somehow involved. And she couldn't, she couldn't, he told himself. She was dead, he'd seen her die, the fact he associated her with Time because she was a Time Lady meant noth-
"She's a Time Lady!" he exclaimed, getting up abruptly from the floor. "Time Lords time travel! Even if she's dead, it means nothing! A past version of her is the one who made it so Clara could have Ellie! Oh, God, she's unbelievable, she's terrifying, she's… a genius-" He froze and his throat went dry when he realized Missy's plan. "Clara," he whispered. "Ellie."
He bolted out of the room and through the corridors, as fast as his legs could take him. Clara and Ellie were in danger, and he had left them alone. Deep down, he knew how big his mistake had been. He slammed open the doors of the console room with one knowledge in mind:
'I'm already too late.'