The more than kissing comes a few weeks later, after they return from saving a Silurian orphanage from a tidal wave. He glances back to find her framed by the light of the double red suns streaming through the door of the TARDIS, every inch of her radiant. She throws her head back in laughter as she twirls around the console and he is overcome.

"Where to next?" she asks, delightfully breathless, a flush rising in her pale round cheeks.

For the first time he can recall he has absolutely no interest in leaving the TARDIS.

"Remember the time I said I wasn't your boyfriend?"

Her grin falters. "Like crystal. Wasn't a high point, honestly."

"Forget I said that. Forget I ever said that," he crows as he advances on her, his smile so wide his cheeks hurt. "Because I'm about to do something you should only let your boyfriend do." Her eyes widen as he scoops her into his arms, but she laughs into his neck as he carries her deep into the heart of the TARDIS.

Afterwards Clara lays nestled between his hearts, feeling safe and sated and strangely contemplative. Being loved by a Timelord is quite a bit like being loved by a Timelord – exhilarating and intense and just slightly unfamiliar.

The after is certainly lovely, his chest cool against her cheek as he lazily strokes a hand through her hair. As much as he boasts about his superior biology he seems just as drowsy as any human bloke.

But she is wide awake, her mind racing like she's had ten cups of coffee. She tries to focus on the steady rhythm of his heartbeats and the softness of his skin against hers, but a question nags at the back of her mind and she blurts it out against her better judgement.

"How many other girls from your snog box ended up here?"

"None," he answers automatically, but then he opens one eye. "Well, River," he amends. "Though we never traveled together properly."

She thinks of River Song – fierce, gorgeous, her hair and her history both larger than life, her timeline fundamentally entwined with the Doctor's. "Was she the one you loved and lost?"

"No." The Doctor's hand stills, and she thinks she'll have to press him. But then he chuckles coldly and presses a kiss to the top of her head. "That would make sense, wouldn't it? A man should be in love with his wife."

She could certainly argue that they'd visited dozens of planets where that wasn't the case, but she doesn't interrupt, just reaches out to interlock her hand with his. She isn't sure what she hoped to gain by opening this can of worms, besides an inferiority complex. But he speaks so rarely of his past, and she wants to understand everything that had made him into the man he has become.

It's bound to do him good, as well. Holding everything in for thousands of years can't be healthy. If she can help him navigate through centuries of emotions she'll tamp down any jealousy that comes with it.

"I shaped River's entire life. My ship made her into a Timelord. She was taken from her parents to be turned into an assassin to kill me. She spent years in prison for my apparent murder. Yet somehow she changed all that hate and abandonment into love – for me, the man who ruined her chance of ever having a normal life. And she was magnificent, and fearless, and so many admirable things, and I knew that she deserved for me to return that love. So I married her, and stole her away from her prison and showed her the stars, and I hoped that I would start to feel for her what she felt for me."

He sounds so guilty, and it's not jealousy she feels – it's understanding. Because his details are surely unique but the situation's not, and she's browbeat herself for this one before.

She pulls back enough to look him in the face. "You can't force yourself to love someone if the feelings aren't there. You can go through the motions, pretend even, but you can't make it real."

His eyebrows have migrated close together in concentration. "Every time I looked at her I saw her die for me in that Library, or the devastation on Amy's face after they took her away. And each time I failed her all over again, because I'm certain that she knew."

He closes his eyes in shame and she reaches up to stroke a hand through his hair. She wants to grant him absolution, but it's not her he's wronged. She doesn't know what River thought of him, if she blamed him for his coldness.

Clara had blamed him for his coldness once. Before she'd understood it had been difficult to bear.

She knows better now, how the levels of protection he builds around his hearts can be cold and cruel and alien, but he erects them with the best of intentions.

It's shared understanding that she can offer him now.

"I told Danny I'd never tell another man 'I love you.'"

She feels his body go rigid at the name of the man he'd always so clearly disdained. It's so obvious now that he had been jealous, but at the time she'd gone half out of her mind trying to discern what it was about her boyfriend that had turned the Doctor into a petulant child.

After an awkward moment he clears his throat. "I'm not technically a man, if that helps."

He clearly doesn't understand, but the fact he's trying to be sympathetic warms her straight through and suggests that a relationship with him won't always have to be an uphill battle. "No. I don't want to be let off the hook for this. I told Danny that and I wanted to mean it. If he lived I would have kept that promise. But when I said the words to him they didn't mean the same as when I say them to you. So I never should have said them at all."

"Why are you telling me this?"

She stifles the urge to roll her eyes. It was too much to hope he would suddenly become astute in human emotions. "Because Danny is my River. Except I didn't have to pretend to love him. I chose to, because I was lonely and tired of pining after you, and I thought he would be the way I could move on."

There is something cathartic in the telling of one of her deepest secrets. She has never breathed a word of this to another soul, but she has spent long nights ruminating on this very topic. It was those long nights she'd tried to avoid with her insistence on constant adventures, because when they were running there was no time for regret.

"Danny and I would have had a fine life together. We might even have been happy. But it would have been so ordinary. And if I'd never met you maybe that would have been fine with me. But by the time I met Danny that wouldn't have been enough. But instead of doing the right thing and cutting his loose, I lied to him about you, and I lied to you about him, and I planned to give up what I really wanted for the path that seemed easier. I was cowardly, and I'm sorry."

She can't interpret the way he's looking at her, but she resists the urge to turn away in shame. She made him promise no more hiding what's important, and she knows she must lead by example.

"You didn't love Danny?" he finally asks, slowly, as if that's incomprehensible when actually she'd felt like she'd done a rubbish job convincing anyone that she did.

"No. I cared for him, but it wasn't love."

"But you got so – agitated – after he died. You tried to throw all the TARDIS keys into a volcano!"

That had been one of her biggest mistakes, and she'd always remember the moment he'd told her to go to hell and she was certain she'd ruined everything good left in her life.

Instead he'd told her he cared so much for her that her betrayal didn't matter, and for the first time since he'd regenerated she realized the man she loved was still in there, he'd just forgotten how to express himself.

"That was guilt," she admitted. "And rage at the universe, because it wasn't fair. He was a good man, and he loved me, and I was already wronging him by using him as a distraction instead of loving him the way he deserved. Then he was just gone, so senselessly." It brings tears to her eyes, even now. "It was worse when I found out that Missy killed him just to set me off. He shouldn't have been a part of any of this, and it's my fault that he was."

"You're leaking." The Doctor reaches out clumsily and brushes the tears away. "You're not supposed to be leaking now. Crying, sorry. Clearly I'm rubbish at this. I'm supposed to be making you happy. Tell me how to fix it, Clara."

He is wide eyed and frantic, the caretaker confused by the nuance of human emotion, and she pulls his face to hers and kisses him softly, drawing a moan from him as she strokes her thumbs across his cheekbones and buries her fingers in his hair.

"It's all right," she whispers, for a moment keeping their foreheads pressed together. "Five minutes a day to mourn him; I promised him that too."

"Five minutes is too long to be sad."

"Sometimes that can't be helped." She brushes her nose against his and then pulls back slightly. "But it's what we do with all the other minutes that matter."

He licks his lips as he examines her, and the action sends a shiver through her. "So you're not … " He drops his voice into a whisper. "Upset about the sex?"

She laughs so hard she has to roll away a bit. He looks so serious and concerned as he waits for her to gather her wits enough to respond. "Most definitely not. No complaints there."

"Thank God. I thought I did it wrong. I am quite out of practice."

"We can work on the practice bit, but you've certainly got the moves."

His grin falters, just for a second, and his eyes go far away.

"Tell me about her. The girl you loved who wasn't River."

His attention snaps back to her. "I'm no expert in human pillow talk, but even I know this seems like a dodgy subject."

She props herself up on one elbow. "We're supposed to tell each other things, remember. I want to know about the people and experiences that were important to you. All the years you've lived, of course there have been others you've loved. They'll be others long after I'm gone. I have to accept that, if this is ever going to work." Her eyes rake over him, bare to the sheet draped loosely across his waist. "Besides, I'm in a particularly good mood and you are in a fine position to make it up to me," she teases.

He lays back against the pillows, his hands propped behind his head. "Her name was Rose. Rose Tyler." His voice softens, taking on a fondness Clara has only heard him use with her. Jealously sparks, but curiosity is stronger.

"Which of you met her?"

"My ninth self that called myself the Doctor – the one after the me I never spoke of. The Timewar had just ended, and Gallifrey was gone by my own hand, and I was so angry. I was determined to see the whole universe on my own, to prove that I could save it, even if it didn't deserve saving. And then I met a pink and yellow English girl in a shop and told her to run – and by the time we'd saved the day I realized I wanted her to come with me."

"As simple as that?"

"It was hardly simple. She turned me down."

Clara remembers well the feeling of a madman in a box dropping into her life and promising her incomprehensible wonders if only she ran away with him. "The good ones always play hard to get."

"That they do. I left her there, went on my way. But suddenly saving the day no longer felt satisfying without anyone to be impressed, and even the anger seemed a bit hollow. My hand itched for hers to hold it. Drove me a bit mad. So I went back to seconds after I left. Told her my girl was a time machine. Did the trick."

"That actually worked?"

The Doctor smiles. "Rose was younger than you. Just barely out of school. Her mum was always slapping me. Me. A Timelord more than twenty times her age!"

"Very domestic."

"Sometimes it was." He sighs, and Clara can hear the weariness entwined with the fondness. "She saved me. Made me enjoy life again. Made me care, about the places I saved and the people I'd grown to think were below me. I wanted to be better, so I'd be deserving of her affection. And sometimes she actually saved me. She broke into the heart of the TARDIS once and swallowed the time vortex to save me from Daleks. Nearly killed her. I had to regenerate to save her."

"How'd she take that?" Clara remembers that feeling too – the man she loved suddenly replaced by someone who insisted he was the same but so obviously was not.

"Not well. I told you I have a habit of failing people right after I regenerate. Though back then – I was so young. She was always picking up these pretty boy strays. So as I was changing – I wanted to be attractive to her. But at first all she wanted was her old Doctor back."

"Which Doctor did you change into?"

"You met him, that time there were three of us. Chucks and pinstripes and sideburns."

She smirks in appreciation. "Ah, yes. That was pretty fine work."

"Clara!"

She laughs at the way he seems scandalized, because after all they've been through, all the wrong turns they made, here she is, wrapped in his TARDIS blue sheets. "Oh hush. I fell for you when you insisted on wearing a bow tie everywhere. Obviously I've lost all perspective when it comes to you."

"Quite right too." He wrinkles his nose. "That was something he said."

"What happened to Rose?" she prompts.

"We got separated. She fell into a parallel world. Her family was there – she wasn't alone – but I couldn't reach her. I burned up a sun to say goodbye. And I wanted to tell her – I was going to tell her – but I couldn't. Love – it doesn't come easy to Timelords. We're taught not to feel it. Not to give in. Certainly not to voice it aloud if we fall prey to such shameful weakness."

"Love isn't weakness," she says fiercely. "The Timelords were wrong."

"The Timelords were scared." He reaches out to her, pushing the hair behind her ear, his cool hand lingering on her face before his fingers drift downwards, skimming down her arm until they link with hers, bringing them slowly to his mouth so he can press a kiss to the back of her hand, while all the while she watches him, barely daring to breathe, her whole body attuned to his proximity and his gentle movements. She wonders how it was possible to ever doubt that he loved her, to think him incapable of such. "All their talk of superior biology, working so hard to create technology to separate reproduction from the base hormones they warned against. It's fear talking, the sound of the cloister bells ringing their destruction."

"How is that?" she breathes.

He kisses her hand again, his cool lips setting her skin on fire. "All the songs and stories humans write about love. They'd give anything to sustain it, the universe be damned, but death separates everyone in the end, and there's nothing they can do. But Timelords –" He raises his eyes and she knows what he's about to say, because she's seen this look before. "—we can tear the universe apart to keep our beloved by our side. Death need not hold sway, when you have a time machine and are willing to break the rules."

The intensity in his gaze makes her shiver. She will stop him, she will always stop him, and yet … she is only here with him now because of the rules he broke for her, and she does not regret it. Cannot even bring herself to try.

She swallows, and closes her eyes to break the connection. "So you make the rule before anyone wants to break it. But isn't that just another Destiny Trap?"

"Perhaps." As his assent rumbles through her she resigns herself to the fact that the path of the hybrid might be unavoidable. There's no going back, now.

"So Rose is stuck in another world somewhere, missing you?" It's time to change the subject. The Timelords are pretentious monsters, and she's done letting them control her or the Doctor.

"Not exactly. She found her way back to me. Invented a dimension canon and blasted her way through until she found the right universe. And for the span of one adventure I let myself consider the life we could have had together."

She knows, suddenly, what happened to Rose Tyler, with the same certainty of loss she felt as the TARDIS left her standing in her lot with a perfectly cooked turkey. "You sent her away again."

"How did you know that?"

"Because otherwise you would have buried her, long ago." She thinks of his Eleventh self as she says it, that same weary resignation. He may have ignored the Timelords' ban on love, but he's still brainwashed enough not to think anything good can come of it.

"Yes. That was nearly fifteen hundred years ago, not counting all the time in the confession dial. But that wasn't why I did it. It's a long story, but there was an extra hand, and some spare regeneration energy. It became a second version of me, half human, one heart and a mortal lifespan. I knew he could have the life I never could. Rose could have that life. The one she surely wanted, even if she wouldn't say so. He could tell her that he loved her, and he did. So I sent them both back to Pete's World. I was so sure at the time it was the right choice. But now I think perhaps I did her a great injustice, not letting her choose."

It's so selfless, in his well-meaning, oblivious, steam-rolling sort of way, and she aches for him and the loss he voluntarily suffered. She also aches for the girl he left behind, feels an echo of the frustration, the despair. "I'm sure she's forgiven you." She tightens her fingers against his.

"How can you know that?" he whispers.

"Because I did. It's what you do, when you love somebody. Forgive them for being an idiot."

"Thank you." It's barely a breath, but it's filled with so much meaning. She can almost see the burden expelled with his exhale.

Her adrenaline is fading, his pillows growing increasingly comfortable. She is grateful to this Rose Tyler, for helping him when he needed it, and reminding him the joy of having a hand to hold. She hopes Rose would have approved of her taking up the task. What she wants right now is to fall asleep beside him, and for him to experience what it's like for them to wake up like this together. She rolls back against his chest, and his arms encircle her, holding her there.

"Now someone's tired," he says, amused.

"Hmmm," she answers, and he chuckles and presses a kiss to her forehead.

"Sweet dreams, Clara."

The way he says her name is sweeter than any dream could possibly be. "I worked it out," she says sleepily right before rest can claim her. "The connection between me and Rose. You've got a white knight complex. Except you're the damsel in distress."

She expects him to argue. At the very least claim not to know what she's on about. But he laughs, his breath stirring her hair.

"You are very good at saving me."

She insists on telling Rigsy she's alive.

"It's too dangerous. You could fracture time," he argues, and it's rare for him to be the practical one.

She's not having it today, though. "Are you honestly saying you never told any of your friends you weren't dead?"

"That's different," he sputters.

"How?" she counters, hands on her hips.

"River told them," he eventually concedes.

She wins the argument.

They park outside Rigsy's flat at dawn and wait for him to emerge. She leans against the side of the TARDIS, taking in the sleepy London street. They haven't been back here since her death. They've stayed far from Earth altogether.

She hadn't expected the morning to be quite this chilly. When the Doctor notices her shiver he shrugs out of his coat and hands it to her. The velvet is soft against her skin, the sleeves are entirely too long and she's sure she looks ridiculous.

It warms her from the inside even before she notices how it cuts off the chill.

"Aren't you going to say anything about how those with weak constitutions should dress appropriately for Earth's volatile weather?"

"Not today." His hand is resting at the small of her back, in some strange new gesture that seems protective in nature. She likes it, even if she isn't sure that either of them could enunciate exactly what he's protecting her from.

Rigsy emerges twenty minutes later, breaking them from their companionable silence.

The Doctor steps out of the shadows first. "Local Knowledge," he booms, and their friend jumps. But his face changes quickly from startled to sad, and Clara is glad that she demanded they come.

"Doctor."

The word hangs, mournful, and Clara thinks of her family and can't take it. She steps out from behind him, her hands up in a placating manner. "It's all right," she says as Rigsy begins to freak out. "We just came to tell you it's all right."

He shakes his head. "You're dead. I saw it. I caused it."

"It's a long story. Basically I'm tougher than I look and he's very, very stubborn." She takes a step towards him, but they're not close enough for hugs and a handshake hardly encompasses everything that has passed between them. "I told you not to blame yourself," she scolds.

"Hasn't blamed himself too much. There's a second new human now, isn't there?"

Rigsy twists the circle on his ring finger. "Yeah. Jen and I got married too. Seemed best not to put anything off."

"Good." Deciding the hell with propriety she flings her arms around him, and he returns the shaky embrace. For a moment she lets herself pretend it's her father, Gran, another teacher at the school.

When she pulls away she brushes a tear from her eye. "The world has to think that I'm dead, but I wanted you to know otherwise."

"We named the baby Clara."

It guts her, but it's a heady kind of pain that steals her breath yet soothes the hurt it causes. The Clara that never was, the one that died for this man – she had just wanted to be remembered. A new life born from her sacrifice was the best memorial of all.

"You could meet her," Rigsy offers.

She thinks of the way the Doctor looked at Lucy, and the conversation she knows they need to have that she's been putting off. It wouldn't be fair. Knowing that this Clara exists is enough.

She shakes her head. "We best be going. Places to see. People to save."

He watches her closely with his artist's eye. "This is goodbye for real, isn't it?"

She pulls the Doctor's coat a little more tightly around herself. "Probably. Although, life we lead, you never know."

"I can never thank you properly."

But this meeting, this moment, it makes everything that comes after a little less hard to swallow. "Knowing that you have a life and a family – that's more than enough."

She hugs him once more for good measure, and he pulls out his phone and shows her the bundle of dark skin and bright curls that will carry her legacy. The Doctor stands at her back, his hand on her once more.

"The graffiti you drew on my TARDIS," he says. Clara expects his voice to be stern but it isn't. Rigsy stiffens anyway, bracing himself for the onslaught.

"The memorial for Clara." The Doctor clears his throat. "It was very beautiful. It peeled away to dust the moment we entered the time vortex, of course. But I shall always remember it up here." He taps his forehead twice and Rigsy smiles.

"Take care of her," Rigsy calls as they walk off hand in hand.

Clara turns back once they reach the TARDIS door. "We'll take care of each other."

Sometimes she dreams of things she never lived – of saving a Doctor with faces she never saw or crossing places off her bucket list with Ashildr by her side.

"Why am I seeing all these memories that aren't mine?" she asks one night.

"Your timestreams may be converging. Possibly because of your increased close physical proximity to a Timelord." He spreads his hand across her bare stomach as if to prove his point, his breath warm against her ear.

She calls his bluff. "You have absolutely no idea, do you?"

"No. Sounds impressive though, doesn't it?" She can hear the drowsiness in his voice, and she sinks into his embrace.

In her arms her Doctor sleeps, strange and astonishing like the eighth wonder of the world. The first time he curled up behind her after their lovemaking she expected him to be gone when she woke, off tinkering with his machine and muttering about humans' silly need to waste eight hours each and every day. Instead he was there, watching her with besotted eyes that quickly led to another go. Even more shocking was the first time their goodnight kiss was chaste and he still climbed into bed beside her. At first she thought it was for her benefit, him pretending to be a little more human so she wouldn't have to sleep alone. She comes to realize he's the one who needs it more. All the lines disappear from his face when he's asleep by her side, and in his younger seeming self she can see shades of the Doctor he used to be, less haunted and more hopeful. She is pleased that she can grant him that momentary peace, even if the shadows return when he wakes.

One night she wakes in a cold sweat, and she is glad when his arms find her shoulders, shaking her back into awareness. "Breathe for me Clara, and tell me what's wrong."

What's wrong is she's been hurting him without even meaning to for years. Guilt churns through the panic, and she is trapped and she is dangerous and She. Is. Human. "That time, on Skaro. The wasn't the first time I was a Dalek."

He flinches, and his grip on her shoulders tightens. "No," he says darkly.

"I remember being Oswin. Most of the time you never saw my echoes. But that time we talked. Flirted even. I saved you. But I was a Dalek the whole time, and didn't know it." She remembers the horror of the realization, the sinking sickness in a stomach she no longer had, and the blind terror she'd also felt as Missy taunted her, and her best friend stared her down with a loaded gun and everything she said came out exactly wrong.

"I couldn't save you. You were beyond saving." He presses a kiss to her shoulder and she feels the spatter of tears on her skin. "When I saw you in that casing on Skaro – my hearts dropped. It was like my worst nightmare brought to life. And this time you nearly died at my own hands."

She cards her fingers through his curls. "I'm sorry, Doctor."

He looks up at her, fierce. "That was Missy's fault, not yours. Never yours."

"You could have said something."

"No I could not. You were exhausted and terrified enough, and only in that state because of me. You didn't need to mollycoddle a foolish old man. It was better that you didn't remember Oswin."

She's glad she does now, though, even if she also remembers the terror. So many times she's saved the Doctor, but this time she'd fought against an evil from within to do it. "She was brave."

"Oh, Clara, you're always brave. I just wish you were a little more careful."

She worries about him, now more than ever. He's far too dependent on her presence – or perhaps he's only now letting show a weakness that was always there. As much as she enjoys being the focus of his adoration she fears its power. They may have fifty or sixty blissful years together but she will hurt him in the end. And he will have most of eternity to mourn and rage, until the reckless living kills him, possibly taking out innocents in the process.

She would have killed them both once, if he hadn't tricked her with the sleep patch.

And somehow she's already put him through that pain, again and again, as if the universe has him in a confession dial of its own, determined to wear him down to protect itself.

She knows he's too stubborn to give in. And she's gone too far to walk away now. "You've watched me die so many times. I'm sorry."

"I wish you would stop doing that. It's most unpleasant." The gravity of his tone belies the lightness of his words. It's not unpleasant. It is the shattering of his world – and any other worlds that get in the way.

"Just one time more, now," she whispers.

"One more is too many," he swears.

"But it cannot be helped." She must keep reminding him of this, as much as it hurts, because he must accept it before the end. That is her role now, as the carer of his heart. She must cherish it and prepare it to be broken.

A life with Danny would have been easier indeed.

He pulls her to him, two magnets slotting together, and she's still not quite used to how quickly he's now prone to embrace her. It is a form of hiding, but at least now they're hiding from the world and not each other.

"Run, you clever boy, and remember. It's what you always say at the end. Means goodbye."

But she thinks of the deaths she can remember, and that doesn't seem quite right. She knows she shouldn't encourage false hope, but a cheeky remark slips out regardless. "Nah. Means see you later."

It's Gran she wants to visit next. It should be her father, she knows, but nothing's been the same since her mother died and when Linda came round it got even worse. She misses him, and he misses her surely, but he'd be harder to fool and there's no way he'd keep her being alive quiet.

But Gran is eighty six and takes meds to sleep through the night, and she's always seemed to understand whenever Clara is sad.

"You're supposed to be dead," the Doctor bleats when she makes her request. "The universe! Might as well use the TARDIS to write 'Clara Oswald is alive' across the skies of London."

"I just want to see her one more time."

She flashes her big brown eyes at him. His tone softens, and she knows he was never really cross to begin with. Just nervous about repercussions, and resigned to the fact that she's already gotten her way. "That we could manage. She'd never have to know."

"But I want her to know." Her chin quivers, and the matter is settled.

The plan they concoct involves a fog machine and a gauzy nightdress. The TARDIS lands in her Gran's kitchen, and from the hallway the Doctor emits a pulse from his sonic that rouses the woman.

She blinks as she pushes herself into a more upright position, her rheumy eyes immediately focusing on Clara, who stands in an artificial mist.

"I knew you weren't really gone," she says, and Clara chokes back a sob. Unless they've overshot it's only been a year but it looks like Gran's aged at least five, and as Clara watches her extract her wrinkled and trembling hands from the sheets she realizes her secret is safe with Gram because the woman doesn't have much time left to tell anyone else.

"But I am," Clara whispers, and this lie hurts because on the surface it's true.

"Then what are you doing here?"

"This is a dream." Clara flaps her long sleeves to swirl the smoke around herself, but Gran only chuckles.

"I'm old dear, not an idiot." The Doctor barks out a laugh from the doorway and Clara turns and glares. He raises his hands in surrender, a smile tugging at his lips, and the weight on her heart lifts.

"So you brought your friend, I see. I thought it was very suspicious that he wasn't at the funeral."

"I was a bit tied up," the Doctor offers.

Gran's attention returns to her. "You didn't feel gone. When Johnny died the world was suddenly different. Colder. But the world stayed just as bright this time. You just weren't there."

"I missed you."

"Then come over here and give me a hug. I'd get up but I might trip in all that ridiculous smoke."

Clara sits gingerly on the bed and then twists to wrap her arms around her grandmother, careful not to squeeze too hard. She seems so frail, yet there is a strength in her grasp that suggests that maybe all these years didn't matter.

"My sweet girl," she says as she pulls away, and then presses a kiss to her forehead. Clara feels ten years old again, on one of her cherished weekends with Gran, where they ate ice cream for dinner and no boys were allowed. "Linda tried to bury you in that revolting pink dress she bought you for Easter. But I insisted on that bow tie sweater you loved so much."

"How's Dad?" she asks as she leans into her Gran's shoulder. The thought of him at her funeral chokes her up, but she reminders herself of that necessity by thinking of the universe imploding at her selfishness.

"He's getting along. He's been good at that, ever since Ellie. Linda has been helpful, I suppose."

"You can't tell him I was here."

"Who'd believe me anyway?" Gran fingers the fabric of her ridiculous sleeve, but Clara notices the way her thumb slips down to rest against her beating pulse. "I wanted to bury you with your mother's book. But I couldn't find it."

"That's because I have it. I've visited every place inside it now. And more than a hundred other places besides."

"That's good. You were always meant to see the world. I could tell that from a little girl. And when you find someone to travel with that's the best gift life can offer. Don't worry about those you've left behind. Run, Clara, live and never look back."

She has not realized until this instant how much she needed this absolution. She covers Gran's hand with her own, commits the feeling to memory. "I will."

"But perhaps lay off the theatrics. They're not very convincing."

The Doctor draws attention to himself again by chuckling. Gran points to him with her free hand. "And you, young man. You still owe me a game of Twister."

And once more like that little girl, Clara giggles into her grandmother's neck.

They stay until Gran falls asleep. The Doctor takes Clara's hand as she walks away. They fog machine is left behind.

Back in the TARDIS Clara collapses against the wall. There will be five minutes a day for Gran now. But at least she has no regrets.

When she opens her eyes the Doctor is sitting in his pilot chair, and he turns from his machine to Clara. "Your grandmother was flirting with me," he says conspiratorially, testing her mood.

She smiles. "I think she was, yeah."

"Humans," he scoffs as he throws the TARDIS into gear.

Sorry for the delay, but this has gotten so long, guys! I was originally going to wrap everything up in a final chapter, which I then realized I'd have to split into two. Today I came to the conclusion it best be three parts. The positive is I do already have about half of part two written already, so it hopefully won't take too long to finish.

Please let me know what you think. Which scene was your favorite? What would you like to see? Even a few words will make my day.