She corners him one day when he is frantically scribbling some equation on the chalkboards. It is a fine view from his pilot seat, and the cup of tea in her hands is meant to sooth her. But the scratching of the chalk stirs her thoughts, giving them added gravity. She is already certain that she is right.
"I've been thinking, Doctor."
"Should I be worried?" He doesn't turn or stop writing, but it's a good sign that he's listening at least, and that his tone is light with teasing.
"About Orson Pink." The scratching stops. He freezes.
"Whatever for?" he eventually asks, voice cold like it so often used to be.
"He won't exist now, will he? Because Danny never had any children."
"We never knew for certain that Danny was Orson's ancestor."
"Come now, Doctor. Maybe you didn't notice they looked exactly alike, but I certainly did. Same last name too."
"He may have descended from one of Danny's relatives."
"Danny didn't have any. He was an only child. His dad was an only child."
The Doctor still hasn't turned, and Clara takes another bracing gulp of tea. "The universe compensates, as long as an event isn't a fixed point. Could be that Orson Pink was meant to exist, but he never will due to our meddling. That sort of thing probably happens a lot, we just don't know it."
"But everything we did together, with Orson. That base at the end of the universe. We remember it happening. If Orson doesn't exist, how could we?"
"Perhaps there was someone else."
"But the TARDIS fixed on Orson because I was looking for Danny. If someone else was there we never would have met them."
"Then perhaps once the universe realizes that we'll forget."
She cannot stop the sharp intake of breath at the confirmation of her fear. With his superior Timelord hearing the Doctor notices, and finally turns to face her. "Why does that matter?" he demands.
"I think Orson Pink needs to exist," she replies, not an answer at all. Her heart pounds as she thinks what she is committing to, but she is decided.
"That ship has sailed," he says coldly.
"We have a time machine."
"Absolutely not!" His hands spasm at his sides as he drops the chalk and it shatters across the TARDIS floor. "I would do nearly anything for you, Clara, but I have limits. I will not stand by and facilitate you sleeping with that PE teacher to right a wrong that frankly does not even matter!"
"Oi!" She snaps back, slamming her mug on the console and stalking towards him. "That is not what I meant!" She presses her palms over his hearts, which are racing, and he flinches, either at her tone or the unexpected contact. She takes a deep breath to calm herself. "I was thinking we could take a page from your people's book."
"That phrase is unilluminating."
She rolls her eyes at him. "Taking all the feelings out of biology." His eyebrows twitch but he still looks lost. She breathes deeply, already feeling a headache coming on. "Danny had trouble finding a job when he came back from the war."
"Employers may be rightly skeptical of hiring a murderer—"
"Stop it!" she hisses. He'd been more tolerant of mentions of Danny since her resurrection, even calling him by name most of the time, but jealousy seemed to have reverted him to his childishly spiteful self. "He needed money, so he," she pauses, feeling the blush in her cheeks. Sleeping with the Doctor somehow doesn't make this any weirder to talk about, "sold some of his sperm."
"He actually told you that romantic little tidbit?"
"There was a game. We might have been a bit drunk." At the Doctor's scoff she snapped, "He was actually honest."
"Then perhaps this conversation is unnecessary. There could be countless descendants of PE's out there already."
"They wouldn't have his last name. And they wouldn't know that their grandmother was a time traveler."
"This is a cold reason to have a child."
This time she is the one who flinches away, and she takes a few steps backwards and wraps her arms around herself. It's been a long time since he's hurt her so deeply, but he's not entirely wrong.
"Why does this matter, Clara?" he asks again, his voice kinder now. He steps towards her and wipes his thumb under her cheek. She hadn't realized that she'd been crying.
"There's something I never told you. That day, with Rupert and Orson. The TARDIS landed somewhere when you were unconscious and I went outside to investigate. We were in a Barn and someone was coming so I hid under a bed. And I realized from what they were saying, that the child in the bed–" She reaches up, stroking her hand down his neck. "It was you."
He narrows his eyes but she doesn't let him interrupt. "I told you something. Something that I hope you remembered. 'Fear is a superpower.'"
"Fear can make you faster, and cleverer, and stronger," he finishes, his brogue drawn out with wonder. "That was you?"
"Yes. I guessed right then, didn't I? That moment was important to you. And I'm afraid, once the universe realizes it will never happen, I'll wake up beside a very different man. Or perhaps I won't wake up beside you at all."
"Clara. My Clara. You've been saving me far longer than I ever realized." He draws her towards him, kissing her with so much tenderness she actually trembles, but his arm comes around her waist to hold her steady.
After they break apart she keeps her forehead pressed against his. "I won't have that undone. Not if I can prevent it."
"But to bear a child to ensure a conversation. That's quite extreme. And timey wimey even for me."
"He'd have Danny's genes, but he'd be your son." She watches as that hits home, the spark of yearning that comes across his face before he buries it.
"Son?"
"Would have to be. Only boys would carry on his last name."
"He'd be a Pink then." It's the pain beneath the bitterness that she fears. She's not doing this to hurt him, but to heal him, but there's a chance that this may backfire. Their son may be a constant reminder of his inadequacy. Yet she hopes he's grown enough to see beyond it.
"We would love him so much it wouldn't matter." She watches him carefully as she says it, judging his reaction. "We both know why we can't have children of our own." Since they were already courting disaster just by staying together, they'd agreed it best not to put the universe in further jeopardy by deliberately combining their warrior races, no matter how she dreamed of whispering in his ear that he wouldn't be alone when she was gone, of watching him converse with their little one, spoiling her with the most ridiculous sonic toys, of staring at her newborn and trying to discern if she could see anything of his former self in his features. He had seemed to mourn the possibility just as she did. Now she needed him to latch onto this alternative. "But we could still be parents."
She watches him study her, and she wishes she could understand all the thoughts in his fathomless mind. It is easy enough to project her own desires and insecurities, but there are moments that remind her how truly alien he is, with millennia of formulating experiences and a cultural history that is counter to nearly everything important in hers.
When he draws her to him, his chin on the top of her head, his arms shake but his voice is steady. "That is an adventure I haven't had in a long while. And never quite like this."
They go back a few years to when Clara was alive and hack into the clinic's database. She uses the computer skills she picked up from the Great Intelligence to find the number for Danny's sample. The following day they walk into the clinic, hand in hand.
Everything about the experience is supremely uncomfortable, right from the moment they walk in the door and the receptionist assumes she's brought her father for support. Next come the probing questions about why she needs a donor when she has a boyfriend, and she regrets allowing him to come with her. His hand holding hers under the table doesn't keep her from worrying about the way he's probably beating himself up for everyone's simpleton ageist attitudes. She has to break up too rows when he thinks Clara's honor has been questioned, and then there's the awkward politically correct way the case worker dances around the fact that Clara has selected a black donor.
By the time they get out of there with an appointment with a fertility specialist, Clara is mortified and nursing a massive headache.
"I cannot believe that everyone who works there was so horrible!" Clara vents as soon as they step inside the TARDIS, which hums reassuringly in solidarity. "All the things the case worker said! And what she didn't say, but was clearly thinking!"
The Doctor goes immediately to the console and sends them back into the vortex. "That woman was right," he says, not looking at her.
She wants to sob with frustration. This is what she'd been most afraid of the entire time. "She most certainly was not! We've been over this. I don't care how old you look. For two thousand years, give or take four billion, I'd say you look pretty damn fantastic."
Finally he looks up at her, and he doesn't appear angry at all. Or even devastated. "I'm far too old to be anyone's boyfriend. Husband sounds much better, don't you think?"
His eyes are sparkling, his face split with a mad grin and her mind blanks. "What?"
He steps away from the console. "I'm sorry, did I do that wrong? I don't have a card for this situation."
She is suddenly struck by the strong, irrational fear that he will take it back. "No, keep going!"
He takes a few more steps towards her, although he is still too far away. "You are my everything, Clara. Marry me. If you want."
The way he's looking at her makes her want to swoon right into a pile of mush on the floor. She is not that kind of girl, but damn. "Do Timelords even do that?" she asks weakly. She's been so certain that they didn't that she hadn't been expecting this.
His hands flap about as he responds. "Sure. Typically for political or economic gain. Generally with fewer tears and a smaller floral bill. But seeing as I've come into a rather large UNIT salary, you can have as many flowers as you want."
"You're actually serious?" Presuming that marrying a Timelord was an impossibility, she had convinced herself that such symbolic gestures didn't matter as long as she was by his side. Suddenly faced with the possibility she sees through her lies, and an unexpected thrill ripples through her, starting with her skin and ending with her soul.
"Utterly. From what I gather humans use marriage as a public profession of their love, and also as a way to stake their claim. This impregnation process has reminded me just how much the thought of you with another man displeases me. You are mine, Clara Oswald, for as long as there is life in your body. In turn I am yours, for as long as there is life in mine."
He is fierce, almost feral, and the part of her that is a sensible feminist thinks that she should be upset that he dares claim to own her. Except that it is true, and it's fine because it's reciprocal. The thought of owning him, this demi-god in the shape of a man, is incomprehensible and yet she believes him.
There's also the fact that there is something about his dominance that turns her on, arousal curling in her stomach at the growl in his voice. She had waited so long for him to be clear about his intentions and here they are, right out in the open.
Except they're only reciprocal on the surface. "I'd never hold you to that. I don't want you to be alone after I'm gone."
"There may come a future version of me who has never seen you with his own eyes who can forget enough to move on and love another. But this body is yours."
She tackles him then, pushing him back against the TARDIS console. He pulls her into his lap as their lips collide again and again, fierce and breathless with joyous promise. The TARDIS hums beneath them, offering her blessing, and Clara reaches down to pat the console fondly before burying her hand back in the Doctor's hair.
"That a yes, Boss?" he asks when they finally break apart, his lips swollen, his cheeks rosy, and his eyes so indescribably fond.
"That's a God yes," she quips, and then she kisses him again.
He offers her anywhere in time or space to get married. She chooses Space Glasgow.
"Space Glasgow, really?" he scoffs. "We could get married on top of the Eiffel Tower. In a gondola on the moon of Phoon. Or beside the singing towers of Darillium. Every romantic place there ever was and you want to get married in Space Glasgow."
"Yes," she insists. "It was important to us. Now we get to create a new memory there."
She knows why he hates and fears that city, but she won't let him run from it. And she wants to see the place with her own eyes. Of all the memories she's recovered, their last days together hasn't been among them.
She finds a white dress in the TARDIS wardrobe, with long lace sleeves and cut to her knees. It has a thick belt of TARDIS blue. "Thanks, old girl," she whispers. The machine has been kind to her lately, and she likes to think it has realized that they are allies now in caring for the Doctor.
She spins in the mirror. The dress fits perfectly, and while it may not be a traditional choice this is hardly a traditional wedding.
There are no guests. They don't even enlist an officiant. She is legally dead, and he's hardly about to send his marital records back to Gallifrey, a planet that probably but not definitely does not remember that he broke all their rules and used their technology to liberate her from death once.
They are the only ones who matter, anyway. This is not a legal binding. It is a symbolic one.
She emerges from the TARDIS to find him standing by the water, the sunrise vivid at his back. There are colors there that Earth's atmosphere never contains, vivid purples and crystalline greens that remind her of his former self, as if the parts of him that died are watching over them in approval. But after a second all she can see is him, blatantly staring at where she appeared from the TARDIS. His is wearing a simple black suit, with a bowtie of all things. She giggles and he grins back, looking so incredibly happy that she practically runs to his side.
"I was going to play a waltz," he pouts, nodding towards his guitar, which is indeed lying on the grass by his feet, his sonic sunglasses folded on top.
"You're wearing a bowtie," she comments, reaching out to touch the item in question.
He captures her hand, raises it to his mouth for a chaste kiss, and then lowers it between them. Her other hand soon follows.
"Seemed fitting. He would have been very glad to be here. And perhaps today we could both do with some of his childish mania."
She laughs at the aptness of his description.
They swear secret vows to one another, the truest whisperings of their hearts, of mutual respect and need and adoration, and love so strong the mightiest of beings quaked at its power.
The ring he slips on her finger has alternating diamonds and sapphires set in a platinum band, and perfectly matches the engagement ring he'd realized hours after his proposal that he'd meant to give her before they got caught up in each other. Clara had found his ring in the wardrobe, another gift from the TARDIS, and the ship had made an exception and translated in her mind the coiling Gallifreyan embossed in gold on the platinum band – Love and Faith and Fortitude.
They kiss for a long time, and afterwards they stand with their foreheads pressed together. "So," she whispers. "Is there anything special newlywed couples do on Gallifrey?"
"There is one thing." He blushes slightly, and that hadn't been what she'd been thinking at all but she doesn't mind. "Not Timelords, mind, but those low born Gallifreyans that live in the wastelands and still marry for love instead of convenience."
He is teasing but she loves him for it. "And what do these unevolved individuals do on their wedding day?"
"They open their minds to one another."
He sounds so vulnerable, and the possibility of that steals her breath. How many times has she wished to understand what he was thinking?
"Gallifreyans are telepathic—" he begins to explain.
"Would that work for us? Because I'm not."
"Would you want it to work?"
"Yes," she answers immediately.
He smiles, his relief evident. "Probably only when we have a physical connection. I've always been a fairly rubbish telepath but with the proper motivation I should be able to support the link both ways."
"Can we do it here? Now? Or do we need to be somewhere alone?"
His lip twitches into a smirk. "We do not have to take off our clothes, if that's what you mean." He leans down and brushes his lips against her ear. "There will plenty of time for that later." He pulls back enough to watch the look on her face. "This will be intimate enough even fully dressed."
"Well, now that I'm completely distracted, what do I need to do?"
He laughs, and the sound makes her giddy in turn. "Just close your eyes and focus on me."
She obeys, and after a second she feels his cool fingers at her temples. She thinks of those fingers, the strength in them as they grab her hand and pull her away from danger, their gentleness when they brush away her tears. How a well-placed touch can drive her wild, show her every star in the universe all at once.
"Clara."
His voice is so close and so rich that she feels the shiver go right through her – and his answering chuckle bowls her over again. "There you are. Now, don't open your eyes, but look at me."
"That doesn't make any sense," she contends, except suddenly there he is before her, standing in the middle of the TARDIS control room. "How did we get here?" she asks, taking in the familiar space.
"We're not here, really. We're in my mind." It makes a strange kind of sense. The writing on the chalkboards doesn't match the equations he's been working on at all. She sees: "Run you clever boy, and remember" written in his script, crossed out with: "Nah. It means see you later." in her handwriting beneath it. Another board has "Orson Pink" scrawled across it, a third the first few stanzas of Ode to Joy.
Of course his mind would look like his TARDIS, she thinks, but he reacts like she'd said it out loud.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Means there's nothing you love more than your ship," she teases.
"There's you." She feels how sincerely he means that, but within a few heavy seconds it recedes into slight panic. "Please don't tell her I said that!"
"I wouldn't dare." She twirls around the console. When she brushes her hand against its surface she is flooded with such a wave of love and awe and adoration that she pitches forward. With both hands braced against the controls the emotions intensify.
And then he is at her elbow, pulling her gently away and into his chest. "Maybe you best not absorb that all at once." He pushes a few strands of hair away from her face, his finger lingering with the same tenderness she had just felt emanating from the TARDIS, a tenderness as soft as a newborn's skin and fathomless as the ocean and powerful as a hurricane. "It's how I feel about you, you know."
"Why me?" It's the question she has never understood and never dared to ask. It's not self-pity or self-deprecation – she's quite the catch for any human bloke, except for the lying bit and the slight fear of commitment. But his is a marvel and she's just another pudding brain. "I'm just an ordinary girl in an extraordinary world."
"Let me show you."
One of the TV screens alights, and she sees herself standing on a doorstep, repeating "Doctor Who?" again and again at his prompting. The scenes change with no sense of order, countless moments of bravery and joy and flirting. The time she told him the TARDIS was smaller on the outside and their hug when she and Missy had tracked him to the Middle Ages and the time she swung a mace at a Cyberman. Jumping into his timestream, telling him to ask her again tomorrow, begging him to stay alive if he loved her in any way at all. Every time she returned to Trenzalore, and when she didn't leave him after the Orient Express.
"Clara Oswald, you are anything but ordinary. You were a mystery when I needed a reason to keep going and my conscience in some of my darkest moments. You flirted with me yet you made me come back for you. You trusted me when it was imperative but not without cause. And you've never been intimidated by what I am. I need that. If too many people treat me like a Timelord I start to act like one. But you demand that I be better than them. And I want to be, if only to see you smile at me and keep running by my side a little bit longer."
All the words she can usually command so well elude her, but she doesn't need them here. She just thinks of everything he means to her, her mad man in his magical box, saving children and righting wrongs, protecting all the wonders of the universe with just his wits, his gab and a few sonic tricks.
By the way his smile widens and his eyes twinkle as they look at her, like his former self used to do when he was overcome by wonder at her very existence, she knows he hears.
"I have a gift for you."
"Another one? A girl could get spoiled. I'll start expecting you to top this at anniversaries, you know."
"Well, it's really a gift I've already given. You just haven't noticed yet."
"It's like you're being romantic and insulting me all at once. Is this my life now?"
"This is why I'm not a fan of banter. Makes people ridiculous."
"And the Doctor never does ridiculous," she teases, thinking of monk's robes and bowties and playing dodgems in his archenemy's chair.
"Low blow. You love it," he says drolly.
"Yeah. Never change."
She says it without thinking, the unintended slight only sinking in when she feels him take notice. "I might," he answers. "But this won't." Her imagine on the screen is replaced by a band of silver, and inside that band is a series of gold coils, the same language that adorns the outside of his ring, but there is something about this particular pattern that is so beautiful it brings tears to her eyes, though she cannot explain why.
"What is that?" she asks.
"It's the engraving inside your wedding ring."
"It's your name," she breathes, because that's the only possible explanation.
She can sense how glad he is that she's worked it out. Seeking his approval has made her cleverer, but the potential was always there, waiting for something to inspire her to rise to the occasion.
"Aye. I may not have a proper surname to give you, but my true name is yours to carry now."
It is a great honor, and she feels the weight of the absolute trust he has bestowed.
"Your ring says something as well. Though it's hardly one of the greatest secrets of the universe."
"Show me," he commands.
"How?"
He pulls the sonic sunglasses from his front pocket. "You can use these."
But he hadn't needed them, and this feels like a test. So she just thinks of the moment she'd found the ring, and how she'd wished for a way to leave her mark and the TARDIS had provided the engraving tool. How she'd taken such care to make sure the message fit properly. How she'd wished she'd had something more inspired to say.
And then the inside of his ring is displayed on the screen and the words appear letter by letter, as if written by an invisible hand. Your Impossible Girl.
"You are certainly that," he chuckles. "I still can't believe you're here. Even after all that time imagining you were with me, I never thought it could be possible."
She takes his hand and is overwhelmed by an all-encompassing sense of peace, so opposite of the energy he always projects.
"It's because of you, Clara," he whispers. "You make me calm, when for so long all I've known is noise and nerves and an itch to run and never look back."
She wants to show him all the ways he's saved her too. How he woke so many things that were dormant inside her – courage and wonder and love.
"If this is your mind, can we visit mine?"
"Sure. It should be right outside that door." He looks to the exit of the TARDIS, and she knows whatever is outside is significant, but its contents are a mystery.
"Will it be a place like this? I've never thought of my mind like that."
He shrugs, and she feels his jibe about humans' lack of imagination starting to percolate but it never takes form. "Let's find out."
They join hands and push open the door of the TARDIS together, stepping out into a lush green countryside.
"I don't even know where we are," Clara pouts. There's something familiar about the flowers and the hedges but this is not a special place from her childhood or some inner sanctum that she retreats to.
"Oh but I do," the Doctors crows, and his joy buzzes through her arm and straight to her chest. "We're in Jane Austen's garden!"
She'd had a lovely time with Jane, discussing Sense and Sensibility before it had even been written, yet that hardly explained why her mind would choose this place to project. "Why here?"
"I think because it was the first place I did this." Then he is kissing her, his hands framing her face, the memory of his desperation and dead Clara's shock combining with has adoration in this moment, and all of it reverberating back as he felt the way it affected her. She is drowning and soaring all the once, like an overloaded circuit board melting into something more beautiful.
When she opens her eyes she is back by the river in Space Glasgow, the Doctor's hands in her hair and his lips millimeters from hers, though the force of his emotions has retreated. "Might have gotten a bit carried away," he whispers, but then he kisses her again, soft and tender and over far too quickly, but it helps her come down off the high.
"You can get carried away whenever you like."
He's in such a good mood that he doesn't even protest when she makes him pose for photos snapped on her phone as if they were just best mates showing off their vacation. They're perfect anyway, the way the glasses slide down his nose as he laughs and how he blushes when she kisses him on the cheek and the way he looks at her instead of the camera. It doesn't even matter that her makeup is smudged and his fingers have ruined her perfect hairstyle because their happiness is impossible to mask.
If she happens to print off her favorite and mail it to Rigsy, well, she's allowed one act of bridal frivolity. She hadn't made him pay for any flowers.
They spend a month honeymooning, playing tourist at all the most romantic destinations in the universe, and they only stop one coop and run for their life twice. Afterwards they go back to the clinic. They stay in England only long enough to confirm that Clara is pregnant, and then they move to America.
They'd contemplated Earth's version of Glasgow, but decide that as part of the United Kingdom it's too close to UNIT's reach. This child needs to be born on Earth and settle there so his descendants think time traveling is an accomplishment, but in a few years Clara is supposed to be dead and it'll be no good for Kate Lethbridge-Stewart to sniff her out the next time she thinks Earth needs saving.
The Doctor withdraws a sizable amount of money from his untouched UNIT salary and buys a house in Nevada, on the edge of a tiny little town that the Doctor declares unremarkable throughout history. "Teensy bit remarkable now," Clara teases. "Since this is the places the Doctor settles down."
"I'm not settling down," he argues. "We're just taking a brief sabbatical."
Clara had wanted to keep running for a few more months. But the Doctor had fretted too much as the baby grew, and after they got separated during a zombie uprising the Doctor parked the TARDIS in the attic and declared them both grounded until the baby was born.
"Besides, if you want the baby to be properly human it's best for him not to spend too much time in the time vortex," the Doctor declares, and Clara can't decide whether he's being serious.
The Doctor spends the first three days in a frenzy, modifying the house. It is simple yet spacious, more than enough room for three.
The very first thing he does is paint the door blue. "Did this for Amy and Rory once," he tells her as she watches him, the harsh sun making his faded Beatles t-shirt stick to him with sweat. "Gave them a flat and painted the door blue so they wouldn't forget me."
He's begun to speak freely of his past, offering her memories the way he once offered her facts about the universe. She knows in particular how much those two meant to him; how they'd shaped the man he'd been when he and Clara first met.
Next he builds a porch. All because he insists she deserves a porch swing.
He paints that blue too.
As well as the window frames.
"What are the neighbors going to think?" He's somehow gotten paint on his cheek. She corners him as soon as he comes down the ladder, licking her thumb and then rubbing it against the dried spot.
He leans into her touch, his eyes drifting closed for a few seconds. "They're hardly going to think that the paint matches the time machine in our attic. In all my thousands of years of experience with humans I've never know them to be so logically astute."
"Watch it!"
He kisses her on the nose before spinning away. Paint flies from the brush still in his hand and spatters her dress, but he doesn't notice. "They're think we're eccentric, Clara. But we are! Might as well set realistic expectations for the start!"
On the third night they end up on the porch swing as the sun sets, her head in his lap as he weaves his fingers through her hair. She misses England and her family and her body aches and she is so tired of spontaneous nausea, and yet every day is filled with amazing promise. She has never been so happy.
"Why Nevada, Doctor?"
He stares off into the dessert instead of looking down at her, but his fingers move slightly to stroke along her neck. "Because this view reminds me of Gallifrey."
"The drylands where you grew up," she realizes.
"Yes."
"Were you happy there?" she asks. Of all the stories he's told her few are from the place where he was born, even though she knows he lived their several hundred years before he started to travel.
"I suppose I was, once. In the way that children don't know any better. But the fear of the hybrid dogged me ever since I wandered into the Cloisters. By the time I left I'd begun to see the Timelords for what they are, though it would be a long time until I fully understood."
"You were married."
"Yes. A marriage of convenience, like a well behaved little Timelord." He looks down at her then, his smile wry. "That was nothing like this, I assure you."
"You mean you didn't run about painting every available surface blue?"
His eyes twinkle, though he maintains a serious expression. "Seeing as a very special woman had not yet advised me which TARDIS to steal, I didn't even know that was my favorite color. So no." He tilts his head and his eyebrows rise. "There may have been an explosion of fuchsia before my first daughter was born."
She laughs at that, glad to know that his ridiculousness is universal. Glad that the accents of their house are blue and not pink.
It becomes a habit to watch the sunset together. They've been settled for a week when she asks him the question that's been bothering her so persistently that she's sure he's started to sense it on the edge of her consciousness.
He seems calm as he sits here with her; his fingers don't even twitch. He seems calm when they lie together at night, and he whispers to the baby when he thinks she's sleeping. He seems anything but calm during the day, when he's like a tornado tearing through their home, rebuilding it into something just as alien as him. "It's still five months until the baby comes. It will be years after that until he's old enough to function on his own. Can you really stand sitting still for that long?"
"So that's what's had you so worried." She can read the way he's impressed with himself for noticing in his tone, but not anything about how he feels about her concern.
"Not an answer."
"Fretting's no good for the baby. Or for you." He brings their joined hands to his mouth, kissing his way across her knuckles.
"Still not an answer."
"A few regenerations ago I was terrified of the slow path. Rose and I almost got stuck without our TARDIS once, and as much as I wanted to spend the rest of her life with her, the thought of jobs and mortgages and living each day in a linear fashion seemed overwhelmingly dull. A few hundred years later I stayed with Amy and Rory on Earth. I could feel our time together was ending, and I didn't want to lose them. So I tried. Could only make it a few days. It was boring."
Panic churns in her stomach, worse than the morning sickness, because she's always known this about him. For some reason she's just made herself forget. "Not the answer I was hoping for, honestly."
"I'm not finished, Clara. I'm not that man anymore. Literally. Or philosophically, I suppose."
"What's changed?"
"Trenzalore. For hundreds of years I stayed, and that was longer than I've been any place, even Gallifrey. And I discovered the slow path wasn't so bad."
"I'm not sure I'd call fighting an endless war against all your worst enemies slow."
"There was also the toy mending. Don't forget about that!"
"Never."
"They needed me there. And Amy and Rory didn't, you see. They wanted me there, because they cared for me, but I wasn't essential. They had their own lives. They had each other. But you, Clara, you need me. So I'll stay."
"You are essential to me," she vows. "And you'll be essential to this baby. But I won't fault you if you need to travel without me for a bit. Just as long as you always come back."
He kisses her forehead and pulls her tighter into his side, one hand resting gently on her stomach. "I think I've given up traveling alone. If I managed a few hundred years on Trenzalore I think I can survive a few here on Earth – especially with my family to distract me."
"Besides," he whispers into her ear, "think of the toys I'm going to invent!"
The Doctor may be capable of the slow path, but Clara isn't, so when she discovers there's an opening at the local school she takes it. The term ends three weeks before the baby's due, so the timing's perfect.
Her timing when she goes into labor is less perfect.
It hasn't rained in nearly two months, but when her water breaks they're in the middle of a deluge, the water coming down in sheets that limit all visibility. The nearest hospital is almost an hour away.
"Can't we just take the TARDIS?" Clara whines as he helps her into the passenger seat of her car. They'd been outside two minutes, and she's already drenched. Pain tears through her, and she wants a warm bed, some strong drugs and someone who knows what they're doing.
"I really don't think that's a good idea. You are set on this baby being fully human, right?"
"Right now all I'm set on is this baby getting out of me!"
"Just a few more hours, love." He kisses her on the forehead. They way his hair is plastered to his face makes him look like a drowning owl. Then the door slams shut and a minute later he appears in the driver's seat.
The ride is terrifying as he speeds around corners in the blinding rain, his knuckles white against the steering wheel, occasionally offering unhelpful sophisms like "Breath, Clara" and "We're almost there" (which they aren't). He drives a car even more erratically than he drives his TARDIS, and it's thankful that few others are driving through the desert tonight because sometimes he forgets which side of the road he's supposed to be following. Through the agonizing haze of the contractions she imagines a horrible crash where the Doctor wakes up regenerated to find his wife dead by his side.
"I would never let anything happen to you!" the Doctor says sharply, though Clara notices he seems to slow down after that.
When they finally reach the hospital there are wheelchairs and orderlies and a great deal of rushing about. Her soaked clothes are replaced by a scratchy hospital gown and the Doctor paces about the room, muttering to himself and snapping at the nurses.
"Why ever did I insist we settle in Nevada of all places? It's barely civilized! Human hospitals are always barbaric, but this is barely adequate. And the route to the hospital – I should have taken that into account. That's on me alone. Stupid, stupid Doctor! But she's obviously in distress and you're supposed to be making her calm. Why aren't you doing your jobs?!"
The actual doctor threatens to have him removed, and she cannot face this without him. "Just stop your bleating and come here and hold my hand!" she commands.
He obeys with a sheepish, "Yes, Boss." The moment her hand closes over his she feels his mind reach out to hers. He is far from calm, yet his faith in her wraps around her like a warm blanket, instantly soothing. You can do this, Clara. Your body was built for this. Human women have been giving birth since the dawn of your species, and none of them were as brave and strong and marvelous as you. Though blimey, that hurts.
She laughs, much to the obstetrician's confusion, and the pain becomes just a bit more manageable as he whispers a litany of encouragement straight into her mind and she endeavors to break every bone in his hand.
Hours later it is finally over and the nurse places a perfect, squirming baby in her arms. "It's a boy," she says, but Clara had already known that.
She'd half expected the child to look exactly like Danny, the way that Orson had, but his skin is lighter, a warm brown somewhere between his shade and hers. She imagines she can see a bit of herself in his nose. Mostly the child will be his own person.
The Doctor had been shooed away during the final moments, and he lingers by the wall. She looks up and sees the way he is staring. "We're not even touching and I can hear your thoughts from over there. Of course you can hold him."
The Doctor crosses the room in three long steps, kissing her gently on the forehead before gingerly taking the baby from her arms. "Hello young man." It's not the voice most adults use with babies. His tone hasn't softened at all, nor has the volume decreased, but there is a warmth there, and Clara's heart swells. She has always loved watching the Doctor with children.
"You can't speak baby," she realizes as she listens to his side of the conversation. "You're just in his head."
"Of course. Why would babies have a whole separate language? That's absurd. They speak human as soon as they are able to vocalize. It just takes them a while to manage it, so they compensate by projecting their thoughts quite loudly."
"So you're on duty when he wakes up screaming in the middle of the night. Good to know."
"Whatever you need." He's hardly paying her any mind at all, his attention consumed by the baby, and all the pain from the past few hours drains away and she is filled with such love for the both of them that she can hardly breathe around it.
"May I suggest a name?"
Her fears that he might not accept this baby seem so silly, in retrospect. "As long as it's something all the kids at school will be able to spell and pronounce."
"Rory," he offers.
"Why?"
"Because Rory Williams was the most loyal man I ever met. And this child is fiercely protective of you already. He's also a bit suspicious of me, as Rory was at first. But he'll come around."
"Rory Oswald Pink." The name feels right on her tongue, but she looks to the boy in question for his approval. "What does he think of that?"
"Thinks his Mum is always right."
She smirks at that, then lets her eyes drift closed. "Teaching him to butter me up already, hmm? Guess I'm outnumbered now."
The Doctor's lips brush against her forehead and then her cheek as she feels him settle beside her. "Yes ma'am. But never outranked."
The child is a marvel, and the Doctor has always loved marvelous things. Even at minutes old Rory emanates a strength of character that the Doctor knows will only grow with his body. Within him the Doctor sees everything he had asked of Clara in what he had once thought was his final speech to her – never cruel, never cowardly, a fine sense of humor and a strong aversion to pears. He clutches onto the life the universe almost didn't grant him with a stubbornness born of his mother, unaware of the lengths she'd been willing to go to bring him into this world - an impossible child for his impossible girl.
He finds that the bits that are Danny don't bother him now that they're combined with the mounds that are Clara, and all the pieces that are distinctly Rory, a new being just waiting for a chance to leave his mark on the world around him. He's already left his mark on one Timelord, from the moment he arrived.
The only problem is that humans are obsessed with appearances, and his family is not a matched set. He and Clara get enough odd looks due to the apparent difference in their ages, but Rory's brown skin adds to the confusion. The story they tell is not far from the truth – that Rory's father died, and Clara fell in love with the Doctor afterwards. They leave out the bit about the artificial insemination and ignore just how long after Danny's death Rory came along, and the people who know them accept that well enough, even if they don't understand how a stunner like her fell for someone so old. But the people who don't know them, who just walk past when they go into town, don't even know the lies. The differences unsettle them, and they whisper, and though the Doctor almost believes Clara when she tells him she doesn't mind he knows one day Rory will be old enough to listen, and he will.
He wishes he could shield the boy from that. Wishes it so hard that sometimes he dreams of another regeneration, one with fewer lines and darker skin who no stranger would doubt was Rory's father. Clara would kill him again if he tried anything like that, he knows, and he wouldn't be able to control it anyway. But he wants to lay claim to his son, and since he cannot give him his name or his lifespan he wishes at least he could give him familiar features, so he would never listen to offhanded cruelty and wonder if he was truly wanted.
Instead he gives him promises –to wake in the night and feed him and always be there when he has a nightmare and take him to see the Beatles when he's old enough. He counters his instinctual itch to run with his family's need for him to stay and finds he doesn't even resent it, because they make his life richer sitting around their kitchen eating pizza than it would be if he was feasting alone with Cleopatra. There are wonders in each moment of domesticity that he's never experienced before.
He plays stay at home dad when Clara goes back to teaching, though he teases her mercilessly for being the one who can't stand still. Truthfully he doesn't mind, because he and Rory get on swimmingly and it gives him the perfect cover to continue his research.
She's getting older. He doesn't notice on his own, but he does catch her studying her appearance too long in the mirror, and he feels the residual sadness that lingers in her consciousness each time she spots a wrinkle or finds a gray hair. She's been very practical about the matter, trying to prepare him for the eventuality, but he cannot accept it.
For his world will crumble without Clara Oswald. That has been true longer than he dare admit – perhaps it has always been true, the way she is interwoven through his timestream – but there is no way to deny that it is true now. He has given her his name and his mind and his body and every relevant detail of his past and he no longer knows how to function without her guidance. She fills a weakness deep inside him that needs something better than himself to cling to, so he can model that instead of the baser instincts of his nature. He does not know what he will be without her, only that it's best for all if he does not find out.
He cannot lose her, so he won't. The universe is vast and wondrous and occasionally there are miracles, and he is determined to find one. With all of space and time at his fingertips there are plenty of examples of humans seeking immortality, but most of them backfire like the Morpheus machine and he has learned from what he did to Ashildr – he will not make Clara into a monster. It is her humanity that has tamed him and he must not take that from her, but he must find a way to give her more years. So he searches, and experiments, and though he makes little progress he never stops trying.
Until, as usual, the TARDIS sends him where he needs to be.
When Rory is six they start traveling again, though only on weekends, and only to places that Clara deems safe – and she has a far narrower definition of the word than the Doctor.
By seven she allows the TARDIS to make that distinction but not the Doctor, which is frankly a little insulting but perhaps not entirely unjustified.
Shortly after Rory turns eight the TARDIS ignores their coordinates and brings them to a mystery planet. Clara stares at the reading with her lip between her teeth, obviously torn between protecting her young and indulging the sense of adventure she's spent years suppressing.
"It's perfectly safe," the Doctor assures her, because the TARDIS has been very clear on this point. He and his machine had quite a heart to heart the first time they took Rory aboard, and he knows the old girl will protect their precious cargo.
"Can we please, Mum? I asked her to take us someplace awesome for my birthday."
He'd found Rory up in the attic a few years ago, before he'd ever been out traveling, talking to the ship like they were old friends, and while it shouldn't be strictly possible he finds the idea adorable enough that whenever Rory mentions their conversations the Doctor lets him get away with anything. Which he expects the boy knows.
Clara has never been able to say no to someplace awesome. "All right. But you hold on to your father's hand the entire time, you hear me! No wandering off."
"Ah. Do you know how many times I've said that to companions over the years? They never listen."
"He better."
"Yes, Boss," they both say in unison.
They step out into a crowded street, and he notices at least nine distinct species almost immediately. "Oh good, a marketplace. Almost always a good time, an alien marketplace."
It's a perfect educational experience for Rory, because there are so many races to identify and explain. Clara takes his other hand as they wander, and he's missed her wide eyed delight at anything new.
"Is this a commerce planet, Doctor?" she asks as he works his way through a booth of musical instruments and contemplates taking up the flute instead of the guitar.
"Not one that I'm aware of it. Unless it's a secret commerce planet. Which would seem a bit counterproductive. Unless it's a black market!"
"That sounds dodgy." She glances sideways at Rory, scowling a bit.
"That can't be it then. The TARDIS brought us here, after all. Perfectly safe. Perfectly above board."
"But the people here. Haven't you noticed? All sorts, except it's never pairs of the same species together."
He hadn't noticed, but it's blatantly obvious now. A Judoon walks besides a Silurian, a human beside a Slitheen. A few even hold hands, and no one acts as if this isn't typical behavior.
"What is this place?" he wonders aloud, and he pulls out his sonic screwdriver to take a reading. Clara retrieves the pair of sonic glasses he made for her from her pocket, ready to make her own observations.
"You are guests here." The woman who appears before them moves with a cat-like grace, although her face is humanoid, albeit a pale blue.
"Glasses give it away, don't they? Make us look like tourists."
"You ignorance gives you away," the woman answers smoothly. "Though this planet can only be found by those that need it. Is it refuge that you seek?"
"Nope," Clara says, grabbing on to Rory's arm even though the Doctor still has him by the hand. "We've already got a home. Two, actually."
"So you've come for the bonding ritual."
"We're already married," the Doctor corrects. He's skeptical of rituals in general, and all too aware that running is going to be a bit more difficult with Rory in tow.
The woman pulls what looks like a twenty-seventh generation iPad from her robes and sends a flash of light in both their directions. She scans the results with vague interest as the Doctor inches close enough that he'll be able to grab Clara's arm so he can tell her the plan telepathically if need be.
"The words you've sworn don't change the fact that you have lived thousands of years, and might live thousands more, but she has only a brief, mortal lifespan. You may be a Lord of Time, but you cannot stop her years from slipping away like sand through an hourglass. How will you go on after her death?"
"I won't," he admits, the pain of contemplating that day making him honest. He has lost her too many times already. He knows how it feels.
"Stop it!" Clara scolds. "You're hurting him!"
"No. I am offering him a gift." The woman turns back to him, and her eyes sparkle with purple fire. "What would you do to keep her with you?"
"Anything," he admits. Though he knows Clara will judge him for it it's the only answer he can give.
"That's why you have found your way here, where so many lovers have come before. You are hardly the first mismatched souls to fall in love, though I have not met many of your kind. Timelords are normally too proud."
"Stop playing games," Clara demands. She's puffed up like a chicken guarding her nest, hands on her hips to make her appear bigger than she is. So much spirit in such a small package. He'd always loved that. Now it turns him on, spins him about. His mind is already on overdrive, trying to work out where they are and what it could mean. "Tell us what you can do for us."
"We can bind your life forces together. As long as he lives, so will you."
"And if he dies?" Clara doesn't even falter, but one of his hearts skips in his chest.
"If you are still within your mortal lifespan there is a chance your body would survive. It is unlikely your soul would."
"And what if something happens to me?"
"His body might go on, but his soul would be irrevocably damaged."
"Will I keep aging?" She fires off questions like a polished attorney, seemingly unfazed, while he imagines every possible way this could end badly.
"You cells will adjust to decay at the same rate his do."
"And what if he regenerates?"
"I cannot say. Few Timelords have ever undergone the bonding ritual. It is possible you would die before your body realized his would revive."
"What's the catch?" the Doctor demands, infuriated that this blue monster would dare to lift their hopes. "There's always a catch."
"There is no catch."
"A cost then! Nothing's free in the world. No good deed goes unpunished. What do miracle procedures go for nowadays?"
He wants the woman to flinch away at his anger. But she just stares back serenely, with the damned unflappability of a nun. Her robes suggest a religious order, and he's had plenty of trouble with those.
"The cost is the gift itself. To ensure a life together, you must both sacrifice your autonomy. The procedure is irreversible."
"I'll do it."
"Clara, no!" Her eyes are wide in her face as she turns towards him, and she approaches him slowly, as if he might startle. She raises one hand and presses it to his cheek and he cannot help the way he leans into her.
"Isn't this what you want?" she whispers. Her head is tilted and she is frowning at him.
"More than anything." He allows himself just one second to imagine all the rest of his years with this woman by his side. Then he shatters the mirage with a heavy sigh. "That's the problem."
"How is that a problem?"
"Because I never get what I want."
"I don't think that's true," she says in the tone she uses when she's certain she's won an argument. "You have me, and Rory, and the best time machine in the universe."
"Temporarily. But everything ends, Clara. I used to think that the universe owed me a gift, but it doesn't."
"But maybe it's going to give you one now that you've stopped asking."
"I can't ask you to do this! There are too many risks."
"I never asked you to keep me safe, Doctor. I've told you that. I swore that I would love you for the rest of my life, and you swore the same. I didn't want to hold you to that, but I will now. I'm not afraid of whatever this ritual will do to me. I know that you are, but – fear is a superpower, remember? Don't let it take this chance away from us."
"Oh, Clara. Doesn't this all seem a bit – hybrid-y?"
She takes a deep breath, and he can see her working that though. "Maybe," she relents. "But I thought we weren't going to dwell on that."
"We weren't going to court it either." It would be so easy to give in, but it's her voice that suggests caution. "This feels reckless."
Her eyes light up, and he remembers watching her hang from her ankles out of the TARDIS and thinking that there was something a little destructive in her glee.
A little familiar.
"It's been so long since we've been reckless. I miss reckless," she says wistfully.
"You were supposed to swear off reckless!" he hisses.
"And we have. Instead we have carpools and PTA meetings and crosschecking catastrophic events for every waypoint we visit. I love the life that we've built but there are going to be risks no matter how careful we are, and sometimes they'll be worth it. We shouldn't be afraid to take them."
She could always convince him of almost anything. There was something tricky about her voice, like hypnosis. Everything inside his hearts wants to give in, to hold on tight and never let go, consequences be damned. But he's trained his mind to argue with her, and he's had billions of years to let his head rule. "What if I regenerate?"
"You'll just have to be careful. Most of the universe only gets to die once. Join the club."
"You're hardly one to talk." All her deaths are no laughing matter, but it's automatic to push back when she presses him.
She smirks, and then pushes herself up on her toes so she can comb one hand through his hair and brace the other against his shoulder as she leans towards his ear. She is so close that everything else falls away, and she knows full well how she is affecting him.
"You're better when I'm there to stop you. You've said so before. So let me always be there to stop you."
Her breath makes him shiver but it's her words that contract his soul in ecstasy. He yearns for that so fiercely that it steals his words and his breath. To never again know the crushing loss and the emptiness that follows. To have this magnificent woman by his side, always.
He wants to toss all his bothersome rules out the window.
That has always been the problem. Why Missy pushed them together. They leave chaos in their wake, and he does not care.
And sometimes she does, but sometimes she doesn't, and he doesn't know if that stems from capricious human ignorance or the same selfishness that afflicts him.
She is better than him, stronger, but she is not infallible.
"The ripples Clara! The ripples and the rules and the tidal waves! I'm not supposed to take what I want if the universe might suffer. But I've never been able to say no to you."
Her touch is soothing and inflaming all at once. Her lips brush against his skin, as tantalizing as the serpent in the garden. "Then don't. Be selfish, just this once, and I'll spend the rest of our lives making sure no one suffers for it. We can be Doctors together."
The idea of that shatters his resolve. He has already entrusted her with his life. It is time to rely on that promise.
His lips drop to press, fleetingly, against her forehead and then he sinks further to kiss her properly.
"Damnation has never been so sweet," he whispers against her lips.
When she pulls away she is as bright at the sun rising over Akhaten. "Not damned today, Doctor. Blessed."
He must choose to believe that. He spins away from her and fixes the priestess with a grin. "So, Blue, this bonding ritual. How do we begin?"
They are escorted to a cathedral by seven chanting acolytes of various species. Once they are situated on the plush chairs where the altar should be two of the women stick them with needles and begin to remove a sizable amount of blood.
Clara has never minded the sight of blood – as long as it is coming out of someone else. Seeing her own has always made her a bit queasy, so instead she focuses on where her hand is clenched in the Doctor's. For nine years the fear of how the Doctor would cope with her death has lingered constantly at the back of her mind, just as the raven had followed her on one hundred and one journeys. The sudden absence of that fear is sharper than any adrenaline and more effusive than the effects of any alien liquor. She feels free in a way that she can never recall.
"You can say I told you so now."
"What?" His jaw is clenched, his eyebrows on the attack, and she desperately wants him to be as excited as she is. But she knows that sometimes he needs time to adjust.
"Every time I told you you'd have to lose me someday you insisted that wasn't true. And you were right. So go ahead, brag a little. I shouldn't have doubted you."
He turns towards her and she can see in his face the war he's waging against himself. "I can't. Not yet. Not until it's finished and we're sure."
She squeezes his hand and pushes easily into his mind. Every screen in the TARDIS flashes a different tragic image: glimpses of farewells and fallen civilizations and every time he watched her die. All the chalkboards are covered with Gallifreyan calculations, the elegant swirls crushed together, their lines unsteady. The Doctor stands in the middle of the room, his hands in his pockets, forlorn.
Clara glares at the console and the screens shut off one by one, their static giving way to silence. She moves to the nearest board and erases its contents, writing "We're Going to Win" in its place.
She snaps and the rest of the boards clear, and she wishes she could use that trick at school. She smiles at the Doctor as she approaches, and she hugs him tightly, pressing her ear against one of his pounding hearts. She doesn't slip out of his mind until he hugs her back.
"Fair enough," she tells him, back in the chair with the blood pumping out of her arm. "But one day you'll look back and say I told you so, and I'll give you this one. Just this once."
The corner of his lip turns up just a little, the beginning of a sheepish grin, and it's enough.
It's a big bag of blood that is taken from both of them, and Clara feels lightheaded when the needle is removed. But the Doctor watches the acolytes closely and squeezes her hand when they all start to file out of the room with the bags.
I can't let that out of my sight, he thinks at her. That much Timelord blood in the wrong hands could be extremely dangerous.
Go, she urges. I can handle myself here.
No one is pleased when the Doctor insists on observing their secret mysteries, but he is persistent and they cave quickly enough. Clara waits until they're gone to close her eyes, not wanting the Doctor to know how much the ritual has taken out of her.
"Cranberry juice and jammy dodgers?" she calls out to no one in particular. "What, you don't do that here? Just Earth then."
"Are you okay, Mum?" Clara opens her eyes to find Rory by her side, his eyes wide with concern as he clutches his toy helicopter with the sonic blades.
"I'm fine, love," she assures, pushing back the exhaustion so she can smile at him and pat her lap. "Come sit with me."
He obliges, though soon he will be too big for such behavior. Danny was tall, and it seems like Rory will follow suit. He's already lost the roundness of his childhood. His gangliness reminds her a bit of her first Doctor, though he lacks Eleven's bravado.
"I'm sorry your birthday trip got boring. We'll go someplace else next weekend. You can choose."
"The marketplace was cool." He reaches out and touches her arm. They'd bandaged it quickly, but red has already seeped through the gauze. "What are they doing to you and Dad?"
She looks away from the blood and focuses instead on Rory's eyes. She sees Danny there sometimes, his quiet compassion and uncertainty. It's stopped making her feel guilty long ago; Rory is as fine a legacy as Danny could have wished for. "It'll help me live longer."
"So he won't be alone."
"Exactly." She runs her hand through his hair. He shouldn't be able to make that leap, not at his age, but the boy has always been clever. Sometimes she wonders if that's because the Doctor's been in his head, guiding him, years before he should have been capable of speech.
"Then I got my birthday wish."
"Pardon?" she asks, her eyes narrowing into her patented Mom glare.
"He's been looking for a way to do that for ages." He's too young to have such gravity, and she wants to giggle at his tone, but she's too surprised by his revelation. "But he wasn't getting anywhere. So I asked the TARDIS if maybe she could help."
My impossible boy, she thinks, her wonder at this child catching in her throat, causing tears to burn behind her eyes. She wraps her arms around him so he won't see, and drops a kiss to the top of his head.
"That was very clever. Sometimes your Dad misses what's right in front of him."
"Are they going to take my blood too?"
Suddenly she realizes that this is the cost. This precious boy will age and die, and she will witness it now, sharing in the Doctor's rage and grief. Afterwards they will drift apart from his family, overwhelmed by the pain, because when Orson finds them he will know their story but not their faces.
Yet she must bear it without complaint, for the Doctor has already suffered four billion years on her behalf. The least she can do is share in this burden, because it means the Doctor will not face it alone.
"No." She understands what the Doctor meant about hugs hiding your face. Seconds pass before she can stand to look him in the eye.
"It's okay, Mum," he says, and he reaches out to brush her tears away. "I don't want to get that old anyway."
Her chuckle is only one step above a sob but she tries to smile. That day is a long way off. So many times she has advised the Doctor that he must not dwell on the future. She must take her own advice.
"Tea?"
She flinches at the unexpected voice from the doorway. The blue woman has returned, offering a clear glass of something green and steaming.
"This part of the ritual?"
"No. But you were looking a bit pale."
Clara cannot help but look at the woman's blue skin. From her answering smile she suspects the priestess comprehends the humor.
"I'm Clara," she says, taking the drink. "And this is Rory."
"Amaldia."
The tea has a strange taste and a strong kick, but it sooths her queasy stomach. "Thanks for this. And I apologize for my husband. I'm sure he's making things quite difficult."
Amaldia smirks, her purple eyes sparkling. "He does not trust in what he cannot understand. Many here have felt the same, though Timelords are particularly guilty."
"What is this place?" she asks. "I don't even know its name."
"You lips could not pronounce it. Translated it means Sanctuary of the Wolf."
"Like a werewolf? Because if this is all some real life Twilight thing that would be amazing. Also a little bit depressing."
"I know not of this werewolf that you speak. And the twilights here are unexceptional. The Wolf was a powerful being – some say the most powerful. She loved a mortal, not of her kind, one who was both older and younger than herself. Many years ago she came here—"
"Nanobots!" the Doctor declares as he bounds into the room, his arms flapping about. "They use nanobots to correct the blood type and remove anything our bodies would reject," he explains as he drops back into his chair. He waits until the acolytes who followed him insert IVs into their arms and retreat before he continues. "They wouldn't explain most of the compounds they added, and I have no idea how they could possibly work as promised. There was a lot of," he lowers his voice and leans towards her, "chanting."
Rory giggles at his tone and the Doctor swipes his free hand over his head. "We're boring you, aren't we son? We'll go somewhere exciting next. Exciting and—" He catches Clara's glare "—very, very safe."
The liquid in the bags sparkles gold like the Doctor's regeneration energy. She doesn't care how it works, frankly, only that it does. She watches his blood pump into her arm, no longer repulsed because the color is so unfamiliar. Her lingering lightheadedness clears almost immediately, and everything around her sharpens. Colors seems richer, sounds more resonant. A phantom heart seems to beat in the other side of her chest, but she presses her hand there and cannot feel it.
"I could find no scientific explanation," the Doctor tells her, and she hears the catch in his voice and the way his breathing pattern has shifted ever so slightly. "But according to the sonic three of the acolytes were beyond the typical lifespan of their species."
She runs her thumb along his wrist, marveling at the way he feels just slightly warmer than usual. "Maybe the Timelords aren't the only ones who are very clever."
The last bit of blood is used to ink golden infinity signs on their wrists. The seven acolytes circle around them, their chanting starting quietly and rising into a soaring chorus which strangely the TARDIS doesn't translate. Clara expects to be asked to join in, and she thinks of everything she could say to explain why this risk isn't a risk at all, how she would defend their worthiness to receive such a gift and how best to explain this love that's consumed her, day and night, for more than a decade. The words of their vows run through her mind, the shape of his name a seal upon her heart.
But when the world falls suddenly silent, neither Clara nor the Doctor are asked to say anything at all.
"May your love be your sustenance," Amaldia declares, and they are practically pushed out the door to find the whole city reveling in their honor.
Many hours and alien cocktails later, after Rory is put to bed, the Doctor traces Clara's infinity sign with his tongue as he hovers above her. Are you really going to stay with me? he asks in her mind, heartrendingly vulnerable, as if the idea is too heretical to be voiced aloud.
"Forever," she promises with her mouth, her mind, her body.
Because Orson Pink is a major unresolved plot hole that has bothered me ever since Danny died. So I fixed it.
I'd love to hear what you think! Reviews = 3