As Clara stepped onto the street she was less afraid of death than what she was leaving behind. She'd seen the Doctor out of control before, but he'd never been so agonized – and she'd always been there to stop him. Now she was afraid her speeches hadn't been enough. Left alone, facing an unknown enemy, he might do terrible things in her name, and it was all because she'd thought herself clever and gotten reckless.
Maybe death did serve her right. She'd been courting this, ever since Danny, when she stopped having anything outside the TARDIS to live for. But she'd never stopped to think how the Doctor would be affected if something happened to her, not even after all the close shaves she'd had.
She was fine with dying. She wasn't fine with ruining him.
As she watched the raven bearing down on her, the worst part was the fact she'd never know.
Run you clever boy, and remember, she pleaded in her head. Remember to be the Doctor.
The bird seemed to fly right through her. She braced herself for pain that did not come, though her body stiffened. An agonized scream filled the air. Though it sounded like her voice she felt disconnected from the sound. She tried to move her mouth but couldn't. Her thoughts were still clear, but her body wouldn't respond.
It wasn't until she collapsed backwards – numbly – that she began to panic.
Those chilling words don't cremate me ran on repeat through her mind. She'd thought that had all been part of Missy's insane plot; that after the Timelady had been thwarted death had gone back to normal. Clara had never believed she'd actually be bound to her body – that whatever happened to it would happen to her. What would they do with her remains here on the trap street, with the Doctor being taken off to God knows where? Would Rigsby see she was taken back to London proper – to a crematorium?
She desperately wanted to hyperventilate, but she couldn't breathe.
But then there was a voice by her ear, and a figure in a dark cloak. "Relax, Clara. You're just in stasis. Can't risk the natives realizing you're not dead. I'll put you to rights as soon as we get to the TARDIS."
Relief flooded through her frozen body as the Doctor lifted her. He'd found a way to save her, somehow. He'd said there wasn't a way, but he hadn't meant it.
She wondered how he thought her unconsciousness would go unnoticed once they were back in the normal part of London but instead he slipped into a side alley that was still part of the refugee camp.
This wasn't where he'd been parked.
Wasn't Me going to send him someplace, she wondered. Clara needed answers before he left, so she could follow. What happened to her here had just been collateral damage – someone was after the Doctor and that couldn't be good.
The TARDIS hummed a particularly warm welcome as the Doctor stepped inside, as if Clara was a prodigal son welcomed home, which was odd because the machine had never liked her much and she'd been here less than an hour ago.
The Doctor lowered her gently to the console room floor and pulled a sonic screwdriver from the pocket of his cloak.
He hadn't had a sonic screwdriver for months. This one didn't even look familiar as it whirred in front of her body, but her muscles began to loosen and she could finally take a breath.
It caught in her throat, and suddenly she was choking, the delayed hyperventilation hitting her in full force.
"Breathe, Clara," the Doctor commanded, his hands suddenly on her cheeks as he directed her gaze to meet his. "You're okay now. Your lungs are just restarting. Look at me and just breathe."
If she focused on his voice she could do just that. The pounding of her heart stopped hurting and her lungs began to cooperate. But when she looked into his eyes they blazed with eons of pain and loss.
She reached up and pushed back his hood. "Your eyes. They're so old," she said, realizations coming quicker now.
He let go of her head but one hand drifted downward to clamp around her wrist. His wizened face erupted into a massive grin, and it was beautiful and terrible all at once. "You have a pulse again! I've done it. I've really done it." Then he threw his arms around her and she knew that something was very wrong. This version of him never initiated hugs.
She pulled away and this time she was searching his wrists for a teleport bracelet that she couldn't find. "Doctor, what have you done?"
"He may have perpetrated the creation of his people's greatest enemy. Or perhaps he just saved a friend. It's all a bit murky." Clara started at the voice deep within the TARDIS. Ashildr was there, but she wasn't wearing her Mayor Me outfit and there were no black swirls around her throat. Her hair was long and loose, her clothes more fitted and fashionable, and a jewel sparkled at her nose.
"You've changed," Clara said.
"So have you." There was something odd about Ashildr's voice as well. It was almost teasing, as if she was a friend and not the woman who'd nearly just condemned her to death.
"Why are you in the TARDIS? Why has the Doctor let you in here? He was so angry." A look passed between the two immortals, and Clara saw it and knew.
"You're not him," she accused, pushing herself back and scrambling to her feet. The world swayed a bit but she righted herself. "This is later. You've done something. Something that you shouldn't have."
He flinched but didn't retreat. "I may have done. But it was necessary."
Clara wheeled on Ashildr. "You sent him someplace. There was someone after him. We need to stop it."
The girl's face wrinkled with confusion. "That was a long, long time ago."
"That is now! Minutes maybe, but no more. You can send me after him."
The Doctor grasped her arm and there was something about his intensity that made her pause. "He's beyond your help, Clara. In that original timestream at least. He must face his demons, and it will be terrible. But it's all right. Because you're here now, with me. That makes it all worth it in the end."
"I'd say the universe has yet to rule on that," the Mayor said breezily.
"No one's asking you, Ashildr," the Doctor snarled. "You can get out of here. You've done your part. Our quarrel is done. But it's still best that you stay out of my way."
"No one's leaving until someone tells me what the hell is going on here!" Clara shouted, the Doctor's agitation pealing through her like a fire alarm. "Five minutes ago I was going to die and now you're both acting like ages have passed and I don't know why I'm still breathing."
"You're still breathing because he doesn't know when to leave well enough alone. So old, and yet he doesn't learn. Not everyone wants to live forever." With dawning horror Clara began to comprehend the changes time had wrought in the Viking girl. "I only went along with it because I happen to know that you wouldn't mind."
"You can leave now. I'll tell her everything." The Doctor turned to her again, his fingers once more going to her wrist. "This is my fault."
She hated when he blamed himself, even if sometimes it was warranted. "She's the one who lured you here. And I'm the one who got reckless."
Me cleared her throat. "I suppose you'll still need me to plant a body."
"Yes," the Doctor said with a heavy sigh, looking past Clara's shoulder.
"I'll take care of it. Then I'll be out of town for a while. Try not to burn down the universe when I'm not around to clean it up." Me sashayed to the door of the TARDIS and then turned back, her head tilted toward Clara in invitation. "If you ever get tired of him give me a call. I can give you a lift."
Clara's head pounded. Nothing for the past ten minutes had made any sense. "I haven't got your number."
"I suppose you haven't. But I have yours." She stepped out into the street. "Ta."
Clara rubbed at her temples. "Why is she acting like we're best mates?"
"Because for the past five months she was your …" The Doctor trailed off, searching for a word, before settling on, "Companion."
"Okay." Clara tried to process that and couldn't. "You need to start at the beginning. Start anywhere. But start telling me what's going on because I'm feeling very, very unsettled and I don't understand why my heartbeat sounds so loud."
"The raven!" He spun back from her, his arms flailing a bit. "That's the clever bit. You see, you invalidated the contract Ashildr had made with the Shade, and there was nothing she could do about it at that point. Shades are nasty buggers. Worse than lawyers. Always dotting their i's and crossing their t's. They don't like loopholes. Makes them angry. Very serious about their contracts. So if you can't change the terms of a contract after it's signed, what do you do?"
Somehow everything was a bit clearer when he was flapping about. He was easier to understand than Ashildr. "You make sure it's a better contract before you sign it."
"Exactly!" He grinned at her, and the world righted itself a little bit. "Who needs lawyers when you have a time machine? Ashildr went back with me to the day she signed the contract and she negotiated better terms. Then, we went back to the street and this version of Ashildr called it off. Old one didn't even know it. The bit on the street was just theatrics to appease the natives. My sonic projected the raven from my memory of how it happened the first time, and then it emitted a stasis pulse to make you appear dead. Voila. Saved just in the nick of time!"
"But you're not supposed to cross your own timeline. That's dangerous!"
"It worked out all right. We were careful. A bit tricky making sure the original Ashildr thought she was the one signing the contract, when it was actually her future self, but we managed."
"Why did Ashildr help you?"
"She felt guilty."
"No she didn't," Clara argued. "She said it wasn't her fault. Did you threaten her?"
"I may have a bit, but it was necessary."
"Doctor!"
"It doesn't matter now. No hard feelings. You're fine, and Me gets to travel and everyone wins. Let's go someplace! Where haven't you been? There's a café on Pluto. Did I ever take you?"
"The teleport bracelet. That's what I'm missing." She looked at the Doctor, energy bristling from every pore. He was too flighty. Sometime was still very wrong. "Where did she send you, five minutes and so many ages ago?"
"It doesn't matter. You're safe now."
"It matters to me." She reached out to catch his hand and grasped his fingers one by one. "Everything that happens to you matters to me."
He looked down at their joined hands. "I was stuck in a place. Like a prison, but clever. It wanted me to tell it something. And I realized it was the Timelords, coming for my oldest secret. And that was good, because Timelord technology was what I needed to bring you back."
Dread clawed up her throat, and she wasn't even sure how she knew what came next was bad, but she would have sworn to it. "I thought you needed Ashildr, and being cleverer than lawyers?"
"I didn't think of that yet. Because sometimes I'm so thick and the simple answer escapes me for so long. But I always come around to it in the end."
"But before you came around to it?"
He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them they were filled with something she rarely saw – pleading. "You're going to be mad at me, Clara Oswald. Please don't be mad."
"You're scaring me, Doctor."
"You've spent too much time with Me then."
"I haven't spent any time with Me."
"Yes you did. About five months, I think."
"How is that possible?"
"The Timelords, they have this chamber that can retrieve someone from the very last moment of their timestream. I convinced them that you had information about the secret they wanted from me so they brought you back, and then I stole you and we ran off to the end of the universe."
"Brought me back?" she whispered.
"Yes. The projection." He shook his head. "I watched you die on that street. The Timelords good as killed you, and then they tried to break me, and I could not let that stand."
Now she was the one feeling at her pulse. "I died? I well and truly died?"
"Yes."
"But I'm not dead."
"Not anymore. We fixed it."
"But you stole me away."
"I thought if I took you to the end of the universe I could make your pulse restart. But it didn't work. Your death was a fixed point and the universe wouldn't heal. So, we parted ways, and you and Ashildr took the second TARDIS that I stole from Gallifrey on a farewell tour. One hundred and one places, like that book of yours."
Her head swam. It was like hearing a story of someone else's life – his, because no one else's was so ridiculous – except he kept using her name like she was the main character. "But I don't remember any of that happening."
"Because it didn't happen to you. Not exactly. It was Clara, but it wasn't this version of you. She went to face the raven in the end. She died. And it was only afterwards that I realized I could save her. You. Who never became her. Because this time there was no one to extract."
She felt nauseous and faint, but the worst feeling was the guilt. She had caused all this, just because she'd thought herself too clever.
She'd been afraid that the refugee camp might suffer for her death. She'd never thought he could crash the whole universe. "But if my death was a fixed point, won't the universe still fracture?"
"It shouldn't. It was actually your ridiculous American diner TARDIS that reminded me. My death was a fixed point once, and it was all very depressing until I realized I didn't actually need to die – I just needed to make sure everyone thought I was dead. Worked like a charm, then. So it should work again. The universe will be fine. And you're fine. Everyone's fine, really. I'm not even mad at Ashildr anymore, although she is rather annoying, acting all superior like she has to protect the world from me."
"Except for the version of me that died, Ashildr's mate. She's not fine."
"Well, no."
The panic was thicker now, somehow, than it had been in the Mayor's office. The enormity of everything that had happened was suffocating, and somehow she'd missed it all. When he looked at her now he saw a woman who'd died – a woman who'd never even lived. Someone she'd never been.
"I need some time to think. To process all this. It's been a really, really long day and I'm a bit overwhelmed." She was mortified to realize that she was near tears, and she couldn't articulate why.
"I'll take you home," he said softly, but then he frowned. "Scratch that. I can't. Ashildr's there now, planting a body. Soon they'll all think you're dead. And they have to keep thinking that, or the universe will be in danger."
"So I can never see my family again?" The tears did start now, and she didn't bother to stop them. Her clueless but well intentioned father and stupid, nosy Linda and dear old Gram, who sometimes seemed to understand things she couldn't possibly comprehend.
"I'm sorry Clara. I'm so, so sorry. But there wasn't another way."
She hugged herself, clenching the sides of her shirt so tightly she could feel the strain in her knuckles. "Okay. Well. I'm just going to go to my room and cry a bit and try to make sense of these adventures I didn't have. But thanks for the rescue, and I will be fine."
"I can't give you your memories back. I would if I could, but they're gone. But I do have record of them." He pulled three strange books from the shelf besides the console, and beneath them was her tattered copy of 101 Places to See. He handed them to her like a peace offering. He looked so guilty, but she couldn't figure out how to fix that right then. "You gave these to me, before the end. I think you and Ashildr wrote in your journals together as some sort of female bonding ritual. Must have worked. She seems quite fond of you now. I think that's why she helped bring you back. She certainly isn't fond of me."
"Thank you." Perhaps this Clara that never was could make sense of the story she'd just been told, because the Doctor's words were nonsense.
He rested his hand on her shoulder for a moment, just long enough to make her look at him. "You wanted me to be proud of you. And I was. You were very, very brave. But I'd rather have you alive than brave."
That wasn't future/not future Clara – that was something she'd said not so long ago, trying to add some meaning to her death. And the fact that he remembered, even after all this time …
It meant something. But she didn't know what.
Turning away from him, she fled.
She flung herself on her bed and cried, but the tears dried fast. She didn't even know what she was mourning. She was alive, and that was more than she'd expected half an hour ago. She pulled her hair back and twisted herself up in the mirror. The chronolock was gone. She was no longer marked.
It was probably the loss of control that had shaken her. She hated not understanding what was going on, and right now she hadn't a clue.
But she had the tools to remedy that. She picked up the first of the books the Doctor had given her and ran her finger over the grey, alien leather. She flipped open the cover and read the inscription on the title page.
One Hundred and One Places to See Before I Die, by Clara Oswald.
It was unsettling to see words she'd never written inscribed in her tidy script. The words themselves were unsettling as well. She'd lived thinking she was going to die for about eight minutes. To know that for five months, the Doctor had said, seemed incomprehensible.
She supposed terminal patients did it all the time. But they might have hope of a cure, even if it was false.
Had she dared to hope that time might heal itself and spare her? Or had she trusted that the Doctor would save her? Perhaps that was why he had looked at her with such intensity. It had taken so long to get acclimated to this Doctor. Now his behavior seemed so shifted it was like he had gone and changed again, except his face was the same. She hated to think he was waiting for her to blame him. But something must have happened between them for her to spend her last months with Ashildr, of all people.
When she'd been about to die all she had wished for was more time with her Doctor.
As she began reading the first thing that struck her was the pain bleeding from every word, not at her impending demise but at its repercussions.
The second was how much the Doctor had left out.
Her former self has documented the entire fiasco in meticulous, linear detail, from the confession dial to the Cloister to the neural block. Clara actually dropped the book with a gasp when the Doctor revealed how long he had endured in a torture chamber for her, and she wanted to go out and shake him and then smoother him with hugs until he promised never to do something so selfless again, but she didn't think she could face him when there was so much she didn't know. They had probably hashed all this out before, and he hated repeats.
And then she read that she had told him she loved him in the Cloisters, and didn't dare face him. It seemed likely that was why they had stopped traveling together. She'd resolved a long time ago that she would keep her feelings for him under wraps, even before he'd snapped that he wasn't her boyfriend. It was easier that way. While any normal bloke would surely have noticed years ago, the Doctor was oblivious to silly human things like falling in love or changing your shirt. Most days she was certain he never suspected a thing.
The realization that her confession had come between them sat in her stomach like a stone. This was worse than mortifying. Sometimes, in a desperate moment, when they found themselves in an impossible scrape or just rescued from one, the adrenaline drowned out her common sense and she'd forget that the Doctor wasn't human. She'd wish that he'd close whatever space there was between them and kiss her, just like in the movies, and that kiss would be a declaration of love that would sustain them through a fairytale life together. But in all her sane moments she knew that was a destructive fantasy. She wasn't even sure if the Doctor could fall in love, but even if so he wouldn't pick her when he had every individual of every species from all of time and space to choose from. What the Doctor needed was someone competent by his side – a carer – to keep him in line as he ran. And now she'd ruined her chance to see more than any other human could dream of by revealing her silly pudding brain feelings. Which, in typical Doctor form, he hadn't even responded to one way or the other. But once he'd had time to process, he must have decided her emotions were a liability.
Unless he'd forgotten. The issue of the neural block loomed over her first entry. How had he remembered to rescue her at all?
She couldn't face him until she knew that, at least.
The adventures were dull compared to how they'd come about but she dared not skip one page in case it revealed something that would explain the conclusion that was her current reality. She and Ashildr toured the universe, visiting places Clara had never been and historic events that had interested her and random planets that the TARDIS took them to. And the woman Clara had become ran and mused and never slept, becoming wilder and wiser and stranger with every page.
And then she found the Doctor in Jane Austen's garden. Clara's heart skipped a beat at the sight of the Doctor's name on the page. The reveal that he had never forgotten, and his response to her appearance, made her drop the book and storm into the console room, where he was sitting in his pilot seat.
"You kissed me!" she shouted.
He looked up at her, his eyes ringed in red, impossibly old and impossibly sad. "Yes."
She narrowed her eyes in an attempt to be immune to his pouting. "Do you have any idea how many times I wanted either of your daft faces to kiss me—"
He tilted his head as he interrupted. "Kind of. We've sort of had this conversation before."
"Shut up! I am talking now." He raised his hands in surrender. "There were so many times you could have kissed me – in celebration of not dying or saving a place or just because we were having a lovely time – and you never once did. And then you go and kiss me after we're separated forever, and I can't even remember it because it didn't happen to me."
He just stared at her for nearly a moment, and she thought maybe this would be like the Cloisters, where he had no response. But then he narrowed his eyes and said slowly, "Are you jealous of yourself?"
It just figured that now of all times he would understand her, when it took him nearly a year to understand tears. "Shut up. Maybe a bit."
"We can do a reenactment. If you like."
"What?" She was still trying to process how such a thing could possibly have come out of his mouth when suddenly he was there, pressing his lips against hers.
It was like holding a livewire, electricity sizzling from her forehead to her toes. She didn't know if it was love or something alien but snogging had never felt like this. His hand came around the back of her neck and her whole world contracted to every place his body touched hers.
When she finally had to break away to breathe he followed her down, his forehead hovering above hers, so close to touching but not quite, like all their years together. But his eyes flicked noticeably to her lips, and she knew, for once, exactly how he felt.
"I think I should do that again." His gravelly voice rumbled through her, setting her whole body on edge. He was so close she could see the universe in his eyes, and she had never thought these butterflies in her chest would know what came next. That there could ever be anything after the constant wanting.
"You better," she quipped.
He grinned before he dipped his head. "Yes, Boss."
And this time he lifted her up against the console so the angle between them wasn't so sharp. It was like she was hanging from the edge of the TARDIS without a net again, except better, because he was right there with her as she soared, growling a bit as she worked a hand under his collar to spread across his shoulder.
And then the whole TARDIS shook with an angry whir, breaking them apart. Clara was in a bit of a daze as he lowered her down and then spun to place both his hands flat on the control panel. "Feeling a bit jealous, old girl?" he asked before spinning back to Clara. "It was like that. Except only once. And there was shrubbery that we were hiding behind. Because I didn't want Jane to see us." He patted the console again. "Now we have a different audience. I don't think Sexy wants to be part of this," he said conspiratorially. "We should probably go elsewhere if we're going to continue."
"Continue?" God, what was she doing? A few hours ago she'd been dead and now she and the Doctor were snogging like there was no tomorrow but she'd dropped the book before she got to the punchline. How could she go any further before she understood what was going on?
If he kissed her like that again she'd let him get away with anything.
Only then did he falter. "If you want to."
She wanted to ask if she'd wanted to before. But it was be easier to find out herself than force him to explain. "Um, raincheck? That was – very illuminating – but I still have quite a few adventures to get through." She sounded breathless in her own ears, but she hoped the Doctor didn't notice. All she really wanted to do was kiss him again, consequences be damned, but she had to know what she was getting into. She didn't know who he thought she was, or why this had changed between them. If she didn't find out before she got much deeper, she might not give a damn.
"Oh. Of course." He seemed to deflate and she looked away to lessen her guilt.
"I just need to finish the book before I can move on." Then she practically fled, unable to look at him, but she heard the words he whispered to her back.
"You don't have to find me in there. I'm right here."
He'd kissed her because he loved her. It seemed impossible, even after she finished the entry. A part of her had always hoped, and that part had been crushed half a dozen times.
Of course she'd sought confirmation on Trenzalore.
By the time she finished reading of their Christmas visit Clara realized what a fool she'd been. All that the Doctor had endured on her behalf, and she was hiding away because she was afraid of the magnitude of his feelings, when being the recipient of those feelings had been her deepest desire for so long. It didn't matter what happened in those days that never were. What mattered was what happened today, and tomorrow, and all the countless days after that.
She had been cowardly, and now it was time to make amends.
She heard the music drift down the corridor before she even reached the console room. The Doctor was playing his guitar. She found him slumped against the wall, his sonic sunglasses serving as an amp. He didn't acknowledge her as she entered the room, but she heard the single second that the melody faltered and knew he noticed.
Treading softly, she sat beside him, and after a moment of hesitation she settled against him so her arm pressed against his side with the barest of pressure. It was strange to worry about personal space when that definitely hadn't been an issue the last time they'd been in this room together, but she knew he was tentative about touch and she hadn't earned the right to press him, the way she'd acted.
There was something familiar about the melody he was playing, but she couldn't name the composer. "It's beautiful," she said, hoping he would respond; that she hadn't broken whatever was between them before it even started.
"It's the song I hear in my head when we run, or you save someone by being very clever, or sometimes just when you smile at me."
She stared at him, speechless for one of the first times in her life. No one had ever said anything like that to her before. And she'd thought the Doctor incapable of romance. She pressed herself against him a little harder, wishing for a moment that he wasn't playing so she could take his hand. She wished he'd just look at her.
"It's the song I played for you in the diner." He did look at her then, and for a rare moment it was like she was the only being in an infinite universe – he could look out over all of time and space and see only her. "What you said then, about the song. Memories become stories become songs. You were exactly right. And for a moment I hoped you had worked out the truth."
She felt like she'd failed him, even though she hadn't been there at all. She'd been unable to see much of anything through her own pain. "I had no idea. You were very convincing, apparently, with the fainting and the unconsciousness. For a while I was worried you wouldn't wake up."
"I had to be. Because if you realized – well, it's likely I'd be here with a different version of you, and the universe might be a very broken place."
That was a level of awareness he hadn't shown before. She only regretted how hard it had been earned.
He turned away from her with a sigh, strumming a few more chords. "I'm sorry that you can't go home."
That snapped her out of her paralysis and she reached out to touch his hand. "I am home," she insisted fiercely.
He looked back at her so shyly, and she would have hugged him if the guitar wasn't in the way. "Yeah?"
"God yes. This has been my home for a long time. I never told you, but I took a sabbatical a few months back. I haven't even been teaching. Course I want to stay here. I just – freaked out a bit. I'm sorry."
"It's all right."
"No! Don't let me off the hook that easily. You've been through unspeakable things on my behalf, and I got scared and hid in my room like a little girl, and you asked me not to do that. You deserve better, and I will do my best to give you that."
"I have seen you face Daleks and Cybermen without even blinking, Clara Oswald. What scared you?"
Lies came so easily now. And the person she'd become was far more like the Doctor than she was even now. But she needed to stop lying to him, in the hope that he could do the same.
"That I'm not the person that you see when you look at me now. That I can never be. Because that Clara, who confessed her deepest secrets in the Cloisters, and lived with the knowledge you'd forgotten her, and gentled Ashildr into more of a human knowing full well she was soon going to die – she was so brave and strong and clever, and what she wanted most was to watch out for you, and I'm just a stupid girl who threw my life away because I thought I knew what I was doing and left you to suffer the consequences."
He set down the guitar and grasped both her hands in one fluid motion. "Clara. Oh my Clara. You want to talk to me about an identity crisis?" She smiled, though only for an instant, but he noticed and smiled back. "Those memories might be gone, and that's my fault, but you are the same woman now as you were then, and I love the both of you, just as I loved every fractured piece of you that saved every daft face of mine."
Her stomach was in knots again. "It's weird to hear you say that," she admitted. "Not bad weird, mind. It's just … when I told you in the Cloisters, you didn't say it back. You didn't say anything. According to my diary."
"I wanted to. But … Ashildr was wrong, though only barely. It's not that I never learn. I just take a very, very long time." He raised one of her hands to his mouth. The kiss lingered, and this was weird too, their sudden physicality. Weird but lovely.
But something was still wrong. She could read it in the slump of his shoulders, the hesitancy of his touch.
"Doctor, what happened to you in your confession dial?"
"I don't want to talk about it." He pulled his hands away. "You don't want to hear about it."
But she wasn't going to let that stand. She followed him as he retreated, grabbing one of his hands and holding on tight. She pushed herself up on her knees so it was easier to press her other hand to his cheek and force him to look at her. "I didn't want to talk about Danny. And no one pressed me. So I didn't. I just buried all the hurt inside until it festered, and soon enough I was taking unnecessary risks and getting myself killed just because I was desperate to feel anything else besides pain. Let's not make the same mistake twice, Doctor. It took you so very long to fix the last one."
Their eyes locked, and she didn't back down until he looked away with a heavy breath. "It was like Sisyphus with his rock. I was stuck in this fortress, running from a bogeyman, and at first it was just a puzzle. Reveal a secret and the bogeyman would stop, for a while. I'd have 82 minutes to rest or eat or go somewhere else before he returned. I found this wall, twenty foot thick, and harder than diamond, and on the other side was the TARDIS. I realized I needed to break through. One can do anything, given time."
"Four and a half billion years!" she couldn't help but interject. The number had seemed impossible when she'd read it. It was no more fathomable now. "You beat through a wall for four and a half billion years? With what?"
"My bare hands." His tone sent a shiver down her spine and she gaped at him in horror. His voice had been flat when he started, but pain was leaching through, and when he suddenly laughed it was a terrible sound. "If only it was that simple. I beat through the wall for less than 82 minutes. Then the bogeyman came and I had no more secrets I was willing to tell. His touch burned. Ruined my body. But by then I'd worked it out. I'd been there before. And I'd be there again. I had to crawl back up to the teleporter. It had a copy of me as I'd been when I arrived. All the skulls I had seen – they were mine. I had to burn up my current body to make the energy to create a new one."
Clara gasped, the hand on his cheek raising instinctively to fist in his hair and pull him towards her. He was too lost in the story to even fight her as she clutched on, stroking her fingers across his scalp in a way she hoped was soothing. "I never remembered, when the cycle restarted, that I'd done this before. But by the end I always knew. I knew how long I had been there. And I could guess how much longer it would take. I had to make a conscious choice to beat that wall and start again."
She hoped he was too distracted to feel her tears on his neck. She felt shaky and ill, but she couldn't let him see. She would not add guilt onto all he had already suffered. "All that time, alone and fightin'."
He twisted slightly so he could meet her eyes. "I wasn't alone. You were there."
The thought of another timeline she couldn't remember was dizzying. "Any time I was in trouble and needed more time to think I'd retreat in my mind to the TARDIS. You'd write on the chalkboard like you did so many times. Once you even spoke to me. You told me to keep fighting and win."
"If it was really me I would have told you to take care of yourself!"
"No you wouldn't. You always put the world in front of my feelings. But that's good. I need that, sometimes."
She closed her eyes but held on tighter, dropping her chin to rest on the top of his head. "No one should suffer that long."
"That wasn't the worst part. I broke through that wall to save you. After I tricked the Timelords into extracting you and we escaped from the Cloisters I was so certain I could make your pulse restart. But I couldn't. It had all been for nothing. No matter what I did you weren't really alive. Even if you had been I was going to take your memories of me. If you weren't so clever I would have done it. I've done it before. Ashildr told me I had no right to change who you were but I was about to because I thought I knew best. How can you forgive me for that?"
She imagined waking up in her bed, ordinary, without any recollection of the Doctor or the adventures he'd taken her on, not even certain why she'd quit nannying or gotten so clever with computers. It would be awful to lose who she'd become, not just the memories but the progress. Back before the Doctor she'd put everything off, wasting her life. Now she knew the value of each moment.
It had also been awful to think she'd been the one to cause the Doctor to lose his memories. It had been necessary, and it had been a lie, and she'd felt guilty and angry and heartbroken.
But the neural block hadn't worked. It was a waste to dwell on what might have been.
She looked down and found one of the hands he had broken so many times for her, and she linked their fingers together. Never before had he needed her care quite this desperately, and though the pressure was enormous she would withstand anything for him. "Because we're a team. That's what teammates do. One stands up when the other falls down. I was clever, so we both remember, and it's okay."
He flexed his fingers against hers, as if he meant to pull away and hadn't the strength. "Can forgiveness really be earned so easily?"
"When it's really important, yeah. Do you forgive me for taking Rigsby's mark without telling you and causing all this?"
"I was never angry at you for that."
She squeezed his hand, the relief permeating through her. "Then we're square."
He straightened from his position practically slumped in her lap, leaning back against the TARDIS. She mourned the lack of contact, although he did not let go of her hand.
"I've been thinking a lot about the hybrid. Whether it was me, or us, or the other Me. Or something else entirely."
She leaned towards him. "Have you worked it out yet?"
"Those of us who think we know better – so often we bring about the thing we fear most by trying to prevent it. It's called the Destiny Trap. Trying to avoid creating the hybrid might do just that. So it's best not to dwell. There's a chance Gallifrey is doomed no matter what anyone does. This might not even be about me at all. I suppose not everything is."
"Imagine that," she teased gently.
But his intensity didn't soften. "I think Ashildr might have been wrong about the two of us. Because I'm not a danger to Gallifrey when you're there to stop me. It's losing you I can't abide. So you have to be more careful! Humans are so breakable." He reached out to stroke her cheek as if it were porcelain, and she'd never known him to be so gentle.
"I will. I got careless, and that's my fault and I'm sorry. No more unnecessary risks. But you will lose me some day."
She watched his eyebrows peak. "Don't say that! Never say that!"
"But it's true. Even if I'm careful and live eighty more years, my life will be far shorter than yours. You'll have to accept that, if we're going to keep traveling together. I can't live my life fearing what you'll do if something happens to me. People like us, we should say things to one another. That's my condition. We've both hurt each other so much by telling lies and keeping secrets. I'll stay. But we need to be honest with each other, even if we lie to the rest of the world. Can you do that?"
"We should say things to one another," he muttered. "You didn't write that in your diary."
"No," she answered. "I just said it now."
"But you said it before. In the Cloisters."
"Okay." There was a spark in his eye and she wasn't sure why. "That's important because … "
"Means time is healing," he said excitedly.
"That's good. But don't think I've forgotten that you haven't answered my question."
"If honesty is what it takes to keep you at my side, then of course I shall do my best. But in the spirit of honesty, it's likely that you will have to forgive me quite a few times. Old habits are hard to break, and some of mine are very old indeed."
There was life in his voice again, a bit of the manic whimsy she secretly adored, and it felt like the storm had passed. He would not send her away again, and she had no intention of going.
"If we're being honest now then I suppose I already have a confession. Especially if we're going to be so… " He looked deliberately at his hand that was still on her face, and then he slowly drug his fingertips across her cheek and pushed her hair behind her ear. She tried not to bite her lip and hoped he didn't notice the way his actions made her heart pound. "… touchy."
"Is there a problem with the … touching?" Gods she hoped not, but she supposed she'd have to live with it, at least until she could acclimate him properly. He'd seemed to take to the kissing quickly enough.
"No! But there might have been less of one. Except I, being somewhat of an idiot –"
"You're rambling and I'm not following. What have you done?"
He sighed. "Actually it might also have been a bit your fault. You came to see me, on Trenzalore, and we were all truthful but you were so sad and I had done that. So when I realized that I could change again, and it was that future me that was going to hurt you, I." He ran a hand through his hair and started again. "Regeneration's a lottery, really. Never know what you're going to get. But sometimes if you want something deeply enough you can influence it slightly."
"Still not following. What did you want?"
His eyebrows were really putting on a show. "It's more what I didn't want."
"Okay…"
"I thought it would be easier for you if you weren't attracted to my next form," he blurted. "So that may be why I became this." He waved his arm from his head to his torso. "Instead of someone a bit more like my former self, who I do maintain had too much hair and very questionable choice in accessories."
"Are you saying you made yourself look older to repel me?" she asked.
He seemed to have trouble meeting her eyes. "I may have done."
She laughed, more out of shock then anything, and when he looked affronted she quieted, being sure to smile as she studied every inch of him, from the silvery hair which she now knew was surprisingly soft, to the impressive eyebrows that helped tell her what he was thinking, and every wrinkle that conveyed all the losses he had endured, and all the straight clean lines hid by a wardrobe that might have been more understated than his former self, but was occasionally given to the same fancy. His glasses and guitar were not so different than his bowties and fezzes – he just chose not to wear them all the time. They were for when he let his guard down. She liked to think they were for her, but maybe that was just vanity.
Although, if he had been thinking about her while he was changing …
"First off, I'm strangely flattered although that's very twisted logic, and once again you were trying to change my life without my consent which is not going to fly anymore. And secondly. You better listen up because I may not say this again, although I'm almost certainly going to be thinkin' it." She wanted to look away, but as his carer she just couldn't. She'd never imagined her Doctor would need his ego stroked. Now she could feel her cheeks flaming. It was easier when they didn't talk about these things. "I don't really mind the age thing. Think you're a bit of a silver fox, actually."
She didn't think the Doctor even noticed the way his chest puffed up. "You don't mind?"
"I really don't. But we're going to stop talking about this now."
"You seemed to mind at first, at Vastra's place."
"It was a shock, yeah. I was worried. I thought everything at Trenzalore had made you feel old, not just look old. But it was mostly your attitude I minded. You were quite rude to me!"
"Regenerations are a bit dodgy at the beginning. I'm always disappointing people until I get a handle on it. But that might also have been the second part of my plan."
"To distance yourself with your face and your behavior."
At least the daft man had the grace to look sheepish. "Have I mentioned before that I can be an idiot?"
"Fortunately you have." She shook her head at him. "That almost worked too well, you know."
"I do. And I'm sorry. I was very relieved every time you chose to stay with me, even if I didn't show it."
She hated to think that she might have abandoned him when he was trying to protect her – but she'd come close, more than once. They'd obviously needed an honesty pact a long time ago. "Anything else I need to know?"
"Just one thing more. When I said I wasn't a hugging person—"
"That was a lie too, then, to keep me at a distance?"
He shook his head. "That was a rule I made for myself. Because I was afraid, if I started holding on, I might never be able to let go."
She grinned at him. Perhaps this honesty thing wasn't so bad after all. "So you really don't mind if I touch you?"
"Clara Oswald, I the opposite of mind." Something about his tone set the butterflies off in her stomach again, and her skin tingled with anticipation.
"That's good then. Because as you know I am very fond of hugs. And other things." She smirked at him, and while his ears did go a bit pink he smirked right back. His sudden boldness made her want to tackle him, but she restrained herself, instead curling back into his side, her head resting on his shoulder.
She hummed in contentment when his arm came around her, holding her there.
"I need to finish the last journal," she told him, sensing how easily his presence might lure her to sleep.
"You really don't."
"You can't just put down a good book before you reach the end."
"You really can. I do it all the time." To strengthen his argument he pressed a kiss to her forehead.
That did get her off track, but only for a few blissful moments. "She wanted to be remembered. I owe her that."
"All right," he conceded, his disappointment evident.
She reached to her side and grabbed the gray book. "But since I brought it with me, I thought maybe you wouldn't mind the company?"
He visibly brightened, and she was struck by his evident need for her, which for so long he'd hidden away.
"Please stay," he said, simple and sincere.
"Always." And then she shook her head, internally rolling her eyes at herself at how sappy she sounded. "Though please don't just sit here and watch me read. You can go back to playing."
She moved enough for him to pick his guitar back up and get situated, but then she aligned their legs, her right against his left. He began by playing her song, and that left her distracted until he transitioned into Beethoven, and she read as fast as she could, as she and Me saved people and played tourist throughout time and space. But as Clara turned the last page it was like the Doctor was the author, because there was no ending.
"It isn't finished!" she exclaimed. "She wrote down the coordinates you gave her and then she just stopped."
The Doctor stopped mid-chorus in his latest Queen song. "You told Ashildr to pick you up if you were gone three days without calling, which she did. You must have gone straight to Gallifrey."
"All this reading, just to get to our final adventure, and now I'll never even know!"
He smiled at her fondly, with just a touch of condescension. "You could ask the man who took you. Just a thought."
"All right, I'll bite," she answered, not admitting she'd gotten so wrapped up in the story that she'd forgotten that was a possibility. "Where did the coordinates lead?"
"Space Glasgow."
She bumped his shoulder with hers. "You're having me on."
"I am not."
"And what did we do in Space Glasgow? Save the princess from an arranged marriage to the three headed king of Space Cardiff?"
"No. We went to the theater. And the botanical gardens. And the museum. Had a few nice meals. It was lovely."
Truth be told it was nice to hear the story in his brogue, even if he was sparse on the details. He could make anything sound a bit like a fairytale. "You mean you took me on three days worth of actual, proper dates and I don't even remember them?"
"You didn't seem to find the robot zombies in Sense and Sensibility proper, according to contemporary Earth standards."
She rolled her eyes. "Did you actually pay for our food?"
"Of course not. Though you didn't have to either. They were very fond of me there. I was kind of a local celebrity before the end of the trip."
"Let me guess. You'd saved that princess a few years earlier."
"Actually it was the accent."
"The accent?"
"Yeah. They thought I belonged there. You found that very amusing."
She still did. She pressed him for more details, and he told her of songs in the park, and walks around the water, and the way he had watched her instead of the sunrise and wished for a miracle.
They'd been holding hands, and he pulled hers up to his lips. "It was beautiful, and it was sad. For the first time I realized that things could be both."
He had grown, and matured, and aged, and yet he was still the same dear man who had chosen to try to save Rigsby, and spent hundreds of years defending a town called Christmas even knowing he was destined to die there, and showed up on her doorstep in a monk's habit repeating her name.
"You were at peace, at the end. And I promised that I would let you go, and no one would suffer for your death. One out of two's not bad, right?"
She shook her head. "I'm sure I meant that, at the time. But I'm glad you didn't give up on me."
"Never," he swore.
"One day you must."
"We'll see." She let him have that, because she didn't want to argue, or think about that day. She'd run with him for a good long while, and sometime in there she'd figure out a way to prepare him for the day that she couldn't.
"Was there kissing?" she asked, because she was only human after all, and his proximity was wearing on her self-restraint.
"A bit." Their lips met halfway, before she could even think about asking permission, and this kiss was a slow burn that flooded her mind so completely that when they finally broke apart she had no idea how she had ended up in his lap.
"You know the last time we did this you didn't have to breathe, and that was quite helpful."
"Hush!" She kept her forehead pressed against his, loving the way he seemed as dazed as she felt. "Was there more than kissing?" she asked tentatively.
He licked his lips. "No. It wasn't that beautiful. Or that sad."
It was slightly awkward talking to him about this. For so long she'd tried to think of him as a best mate, certain her feelings would never be reciprocated, not even sure that they could be. Now their whole dynamic had shifted. Fantastic as it was, it would take some getting used to.
"And what about now?" she whispered. "Will there be more than kissing?"
The way he gazed down at her with such adoration was answer enough. But still he told her, "Whatever you wish, Boss."
She most certainly wished. But the wounds were still too fresh, and her body was stiff from all the hours spent on the TARDIS floor. It would be better when they were both not so raw. There was no need to rush any longer.
She smiled back at him. "We're so gonna get there. But what I want right now is something to eat, and then a good night's rest. And then we should go somewhere. Anywhere. Your choice."
"Another date?" he asked, pulling her to her feet with a grace that belied his age – apparent or actual.
"If you insist," she said cheekily. "But for it to be a proper date you really have to pay. Didn't Kate say you're on UNIT's payroll? That means your salary has to go somewhere. Get a bank card. Seeing as I am no longer employed, I can't keep paying for all our meals."
"I'll get to work on that while you're sleeping. In the meantime –" He approached the console and made some adjustments. "Coffee or chips?"
"Chips, definitely. Last thing I need right now is caffeine."
He grinned at her as he set the coordinates. And as the TARDIS landed on a familiar street in Glasgow, Clara stepped out into the land of the living.
Whew! Sorry for the delay. That got much longer and angstier than I anticipated, but I hope it was worth the wait.
Fair warning – the last part, "Elysian Fields," is likely to be even longer and almost entirely fluff. But it will deal with a particularly pesky plot hole in Listen that has bothered me for quite a while.
Please let me know what you thought. Detailed reviews make my day!