Author's Note: I just picked a random language for the name of the planet. Also, Hope no one is getting too bored of the one-shots that I seem to be excessively writing here lately. I appreciate it all who read. Reviews and constructive criticism are definitely motivation. All errors and mistakes are my own.
Disclaimer: No, I don't own anything associated to Doctor Who. Dreamed about it, though.
White. Completely white, pure and untouched. It was a beautiful sight and Clara breathed in, then out, deeply and took it all in without setting one a foot out of the TARDIS. The Doctor had asked Clara what she had wanted to go see. Something untouched, untainted, she had told him. He had frowned at her answer, because there was pain behind it that he couldn't understand, but he knew just the place to take her. Saf Beyaz Gezegen, the Pure White Planet.
"It's gorgeous," she murmured, to no one particular, though the Doctor was right behind her.
"Would you like to go and see?" he asked.
Clara shook her head, "Here's good."
Clara had been having such doubts lately, about everything. Her travels with the Doctor, especially. Like, what she had gotten herself into coming along with him. She had never thought about it before in such depth even though there certainly had been nights where she would go without sleep but those nights were rare. After they returned from Trenzalore, she would only get a few hours of sleep a week. Her mind too busy, thinking, wondering. She was truly exhausted. The Doctor knew, tried to suggest that she rest or that he drop her back home for a week, but she insisted that she was fine. She wanted to stay with him, anyway. He was never the problem. What they did wasn't so much of the problem either.
What they did was good. They saved worlds, she and him. It was why they had to do the saving. So much damage was always brought upon the places they traveled and more damage would happen while saving because sometimes you had to fight, never with violence, and it was for a good cause and they rarely ever failed. But what was it that brought all the trouble on? Why did anything need saving in the first place? She would lie awake for hours thinking of untampered times and lives. If such things can even exist.
When a child is born, they have no sense of right or wrong, do they? They just sort of exist and over time, a personality is formed and actions become a part of their life and sometimes it's a sense of nature vs nurture but nothing ever remains clean.
She thinks she's seen too much. She only questioned it once before Trenzalore, when they had been on the Soviet submarine and she's seen the dead bodies, literally torn apart. That image haunted her on her worst nights. But the more you ran with the Doctor, the more you forgot and things stopped mattering but she didn't want to forget anymore. Remembering wasn't necessarily something she wanted either, but her mind wasn't something that could just be wiped clean of everything bad it had ever witnessed throughout her twenty-four years of life.
"Clara," The Doctor started, softly, "what's wrong?"
He was close behind her and she could feel the warmth of the breath from his mouth at the top of her head, possibly moving some of her hair out of place. She closed her eyes at the feel of him near her, at the sound of his voice, at how everything about The Doctor made her feel so safe in such an ironic way because they weren't exactly living a safe life.
"You know when it snows and everything is just sheeted in white, and it shines, and there's no marks or damages in the layers of snow? How it's so perfect at first? Then, eventually, a leaf falls or a bird lands and creates just the tiniest indent in the snow. It always starts slowly. But then there's foot print after foot print, sometimes muddy, and I don't know. Everything leaves a mark, Doctor. Some bigger and darker than others. Some leaving more of an impact. Like scars on the smoothest skin, they can get there any kind of way. There's never a cure of escaping any sort of damage, is there? Do you ever think about that?"
The Doctor rest a hand upon Clara's shoulder with a bit of force so she would turn and face him, and then he shut the TARDIS door behind her. He brushed some of her hair from her face and looked straight in her eyes. They didn't always do the serious talk thing but he wanted her to know she had his attention, that he wouldn't go jumping off, quite literally, finding something exciting to do or somewhere to go.
"All the time. Remember when I said, once, that time travel is damage?" she nodded, "I suppose, I'm like one those big muddy foot prints throughout all of time of space."
"But you fix things. You're the Doctor, it's what you're meant to do."
He shrugged, "I suppose, but we do it together Clara."
She looked away from him, "I was thinking about myself, you know, mainly. Jumping through your time stream. Being ripped into a thousand pieces, versions of myself, throughout all of time and space. It's like a thousand scars on my own skin. And one thousand versions of me dying. That was a choice just one of me made. How is that not damage?"
The Doctor placed a finger underneath her chin and guided her eyes back to his and he smiled softly at her, "It was the best kind of damage. You just told me that I was the Doctor, that I fix things. I wouldn't have been able to do any of that if it weren't for you. That damage you say you inflicted throughout time, it was to save me. In turn, I was able to save others. You, Clara Oswald, are the bravest person I've ever met. You did something you didn't have to do. Those scars you think you've left throughout all of time of space and on yourself, they're beautiful."
He presses a kiss to her forehead and then wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace, which returned.
"The hugging thing always makes me feel better," she mumbles against his chest, a tainted world forgotten for now.