CHAPTER THREE

There was running and there was running his way. The Doctor grinned madly as he watched Clara dancing through the falling blossoms of the sanctuary he had bought her too. A habitat for the endangered Jaroulia flower, the seeds of which could be used to treat so many ails, not to mention the aphrodisiac properties of the pollen... he hadn't warned her especially about those. Some things were better experienced he admitted quietly to himself taking in a huge lungful of pollen tainted air and chasing after her with a whoop.

They ran to Barcelona, where the dogs had no noses and they'd lain together in the great meadows whilst he began re-teaching her Gallifreyan.

He took her to see the ancient Pallopatomic race that shared remarkable similarities to the Aztec's where she was promptly worshipped as a deity and he spent the better part of the trip trying to hang on to his head after they'd thought him a demon for his double heart beat.

They'd picnicked on the planet of the Ice Bears, whilst they danced wild and free around them.

He'd barely survived the radiation poisoning he suffered when he accidentally tripped a planetary defence mechanism by stepping out onto what he thought was a perfectly normal body of water.

She'd swum through the Ballarian Nebula in a skin capsule watching as stars blazed into existence and new life sprung forth. A thousand million years passing in an instant.

He'd carried her injured and unconscious form through an entire Sontaran battle ship under heavy fire, dodging and weaving until he was able to collapse inside his TARDIS and rush her to New New Earth's hospitals.

And every time they returned to the TARDIS, his machine protested the Paradox he was risking by dying in the wrong place at the wrong time, by materialising him in the one place he didn't want to go. Clara of course, his wonderful Impossible Girl would simply take his hand and help him set a new destination before leading him back to his bedroom they'd come to share.

Clara gave him two whole years.

Two years in which she followed him patiently, never commenting about going home, or leaving, or that he was being a coward for fleeing to begin with. If she thought those things at all she never gave any indication, it was perhaps just his own guilt making him expect to hear it.

Which was how they came to find themselves on a planet whose literal translation was 'Sorrow', surrounded by a sky full of black holes the remnants of long lost stars and civilisations. It was a world born in the ashes of death and doomed to die itself; eternally torn apart by the eventual counteracting gravity wells that would reach it. A world scarred by the actions of the Time War. Not a place he'd of chosen to step, but apparently his box had taken to finding new ways to remind him of his destiny, or the consequences of ignoring it...

"Ah, blast it all." The Doctor swore, "She's switched into diagnostic mode, the black holes and the scrambled temporal vortex here have damaged her matrix. She needs time to repair." He glanced at Clara who was eyeing the console as suspiciously as he'd of liked to.

"So she deliberately flew herself into what... the equivalent of temporal debris?" Clara snarked, giving the console a snide look that held no sympathy what-so-ever; she had been less and less accommodating of his Blue Boxes desire to bring an end to their temporary reprieve and deliver him to certain death for some time now and he'd noticed the animosity between the two seemed to be rising again, he was basing this on the number of times he heard Clara's frustrated shriek as she entered the bathroom. Or how she was seemingly appearing later and later in their bedroom looking cross and a little tired. In this particular instance he was thoroughly on Clara's side, but putting himself between a sentient machine and his girlfriend wasn't the wisest move and so he'd until now remained quite deliberately blissfully ignorant of it... apparently. Clara of course was too proud to actually call him on it and ask him to intervene on her behalf.

But this was different. This was dangerous. "Oh it's worse than that." He hissed, glaring and feeling the first stirrings of genuine dislike towards his ship which he was certain she would sense. "Just couldn't leave it alone could you." He bit out at his ship, hitting a button a little too hard in his fury as he stalked from the console and held out his hand to Clara, she frowned taking it and letting him pull her outside of the Box into the absolute darkness lit only by his ships lights.

"Doctor, explain? You have your properly mad face on." She pointed out and he sighed, running his hands through his hair and glancing around nervously. "This planet... people don't come here." He told her quietly, not sure where to begin.

"Ever?" she asked looking around seeing nothing of the once great civilisation that he knew had existed here and now lay utterly in ruin. Lost to the inky blackness of the black holes and time itself.

"Ever." He conceded and she took his hand.

"Ok you've succeeded I'm scared." Clara admitted, the shadow of the TARDIS lights playing across her face as she squinted into the darkness nervously not releasing her grip on his hand.

"You should be." He snapped, unwittingly letting his own fear bleed through, "The Old Girl has brought me here to teach me a lesson."

"What lesson is that?" Clara asked, hardly needing to, she knew as well as he did where the TARDIS wanted them to go, but he didn't think she'd quite grasped the roundabout message his Box was willing to deliver.

"That I can die. And if I don't do it where I'm supposed to it will probably destroy things as effectively as this star system was." He muttered, feeling queasy as he inhaled the air and honed his superior senses other than site to tell him what was around them.

"What happened here?" Clara absorbed that quietly, looking up into the inky black night sky that was blacker than black, nothing but the void up there pulling this planet apart, slowly. Death by a thousand cuts.

"Time Lords." He replied, "The war spilled out into the Universe, everywhere was engulfed, but this place... this was where they unleashed the Nightmare Child. This was where another kind of horror was born." He felt eyes tracking him and he spun, keeping his wide open.

Her hands went to his face, capturing it firmly. "What is here with us?" Clara forced him to focus to stop speaking in riddles because he wanted to avoid that very question.

He swallowed thickly. "This is where the Weeping Angels were born." He felt his head hang in shame. "My people turned this into a temporal battleground, the species on this planet should have died... but they didn't against all odds they evolved, they became stronger, they become something else entirely. They learnt to sustain themselves on the only power source available to them, time energy itself. But time itself was broken here; it made them feral, dangerous."

"The Time Lords made the Weeping Angels?" Clara managed looking as appalled as he felt at the memory; the very memory that had called him to take action against his own people.

"Who else but my race would name them that?" he paused seeing her flinch at the unpleasant tone of his voice. "Just one more victim of the time-war and yet another of our greatest shames. But that is what we were good at Time Lords," he all but spat the word, "making monsters out of the innocent. Turning peaceful worlds into blood soaked fields of death. Or in this case voids of time and space."

Clara smacked him, hard enough that his teeth actually rattled as he turned wide, stunned and somewhat angry eyes on her. But he didn't raise his hand to rub the cheek, letting the mark bloom instead, gritting his teeth to stare down at the furious young woman whose opinion meant far more than it should to an ancient blood soaked thing like him. "Stop wallowing in self pity. You are not your people!" She tugged him forward by his lapels, not in the least bit afraid of him as he glared balefully back at her. "Did you unleash the Nightmare Child?" she hissed and he didn't dignify her with an answer. "Of course you didn't. Did you do everything in your power to stop the war, to stop your people?" he pursed his lips.

"I was too late; I should have..." she pressed a finger to his lips silencing him.

"Shut up." She snapped, as furious as he was now it seemed. "You should have what; committed genocide sooner?" her dark eyes flashed with indignation for the both of them, it didn't matter that apparently he hadn't in fact killed his entire people anymore, the fact that he thought he had at the time was what mattered, that he'd been willing to do it. "You did stop the war. You saved what was left and you held off doing the unspeakable until you had no choice. You are not responsible for what happened here anymore than I am responsible for the holocaust on Earth. Your people are not you. Their actions, their decisions the good and the bad are not yours. And it was not your job to stand up and stop them, but you did it anyway." She would never stop seeing the best in him he realised, in trying to make him see it to. He kissed her, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close, wanting to drown in the feel of her against him, the taste of her as he tugged at her lips listening to the sound of her breathing change and smiling at his effect. But now was not the time, not for him to have an attack of guilt or to succumb to her more than alluring charms. He pulled away kissing her cheek and tugging on her hand.

"We need to move." He hissed, not looking behind him. "She wants to prove to me that I am being reckless, risking the Universe just like they did by dying here, which means this place is not safe."

He felt Clara tense, her grip tightened in his and he knew her eyes were scanning into the darkness pointlessly looking for the threat they'd never see coming. It had perhaps become his greatest fear, losing Clara; but to lose her to a Weeping Angel as he had Amelia and Rory, it was unthinkable and in that moment he loathed his ship for putting him in this position.

Of course it was too much to ask that they go unnoticed, he felt the shadows move, the ripples of time currents around him. Darting forward he pushed open the TARDIS doors, keeping Clara close behind him as he pulled her inside and shut the doors firmly, placing his hands on Clara's shoulders and angling her to face the door. "Keep watching." He instructed her sharply; of course she knew about the Weeping Angels he'd found himself one particularly low day explaining to her about how he had lost his Ponds and exactly how he'd come to find himself sulking in Victorian London; but hearing about them and seeing them were two very different things. "Do not look them in the eyes." He reminded her needlessly and she lowered her gaze to the floor, her lips trembling.

"How long will she be fixing her self-inflicted damage?" Clara called after him, her gaze steady on the sealed doors.

The Doctor ducked to the console and pulled off a panel, scanning it and grimacing at the data he received, his none answer seemed to be answer enough for her.

"How sturdy are these wooden doors at the moment?" Clara asked her eyes on them, the tension in her voice obvious as a shadow darted across the small window panels catching his eye. "Because if you say they are just wood right now, I want something more than my eyes trained on them." The Doctor glanced her way and jumped to his feet, hurrying to her side and pressing his sonic into her hands. He'd been instructing her in its use recently, her mind was surprisingly adaptable to telepathy as it turns out, which had come in handy for their extra curriculas' but also rather more helpfully in this moment, leant itself to her assisting with occasional repairs... when the Old Girl was being more cooperative that was.

"Oh for heaven's sake." She muttered not looking at him as she grasped the sonic firmly and pointed it solidly at the doors, trying to reinforce the rather weakened shielding in that particularly vulnerable area. He left her to it, returning to the console and ducking under it. His mind latching onto his Old Girl's thought patterns and pushing the rather explicit instruction that if any harm came to Clara because of this he would never forgive it; so she'd better hurry the hell up.

Several minutes later the pounding had become distracting and the Doctor found himself cussing silently as he tried to reconnect wiring that had no business being connected in the first place, as Clara backed steadily away from the bowing doors, cycling the sonic through just about every function which was making his ears ring. Then the rocking started.

"Oh God... this ship is infinite and they are rocking it." Clara shouted at him and he hissed zapping himself on the wires in distraction.

"Technically right now it's just a small Blue Box with some very weird wibbly wobbly dimensions that is giving them a bit of bother." He bit back, sucking his thumb into his mouth to lessen the stinging as he dived back in, he was close; he could feel the old girl working with him finally to repair herself, apparently not quite as willing to sacrifice herself as she had been him, at least not just to make a point.

A hand smashed through the top window of the door and Clara let out a shriek, backing further away from the door as the hand froze in mid motion with her attention. "You know I can only keep my eyes on one at a time right... or at least one field of vision, these double doors are kind of taking up more than that right now." Clara warned him, backing up to the console in what he hoped was an attempt to increase her field of vision on the door.

He managed to reroute the power supply through the shielding, which had the effect of weakening the spatial dampners which kept all the bigger on the inside... well on the inside. The whole ship shook with the Angel's fury as they struggled through the treacle the outer hull had likely become as it shifted beneath them. Then it lurched and he heard Clara cry out there was a thump and then everything was silent.

"Clara?" he called, and there was no answer. His heart rate picked up and instantly dampened down in response to her suddenly muted one and he hastily began shoving things back inside the console. He glanced back, seeing her lying prone against the metal railing; his sensitive nose detected the scent of blood. "Now is the time Old Girl!" He snarled swinging out from under her and grasping onto the console as he began to throw levers with abandon. He would force her into the air and away from this planet if it was the last thing he did.

The Doctor placed Clara's unconscious form on the bed, swinging the scanners over her body. She had a concussion and there was some swelling on her brain. He set the automated medbay he'd been prioritising ever since the Sontaran incident to repair the damage; injecting her with the nanogenes that would circulate and respond to the medbay's commands. In hindsight, given the nature of his adventures, the medbay should have been his priority a long time ago. As it was, he was grateful it was up and running now as he smoothed his hand over her hair, his fingers coming away tacky with her blood; he stared at it with a growing pit in his gut. The scanner informed him that there had been neurological damage due to the sudden severance of the telepathic connection she had with the sonic which she'd been actively sending instructions to right until the end. He realised that she'd probably bought him those last few minutes he'd needed with the modulating shield algorithm she'd set in motion, which she'd based on the attack patterns she'd been avidly watching. Impossible Girl.

He pressed a kiss to her chin and crossed to the supplies, even in a high tech medbay it seemed you couldn't get away from the low tech water and cloth; he soaked the latter and began gently cleaning the blood away from her face. The TARDIS gave a hum and began reconfiguring something, but he wasn't interested, he supposed he was giving her the silent treatment; he had blocked her telepathic circuitry for the time being and had set her down somewhere nice and safe with the parking break on and her primary power supply rerouted to diagnostics. She wasn't going anywhere until he wanted it... for once.

The scanner beeped informing him that Clara's injuries had been repaired, he checked the readouts, the neurological damage had been fairly extensive, if she hadn't been flexing those underdeveloped human telepathic muscles of hers frequently it might have been permanent, as it was it was just a little scarred. She wouldn't be using it again for a while, but it would heal. He sighed placing his hands atop hers and dropping his head to where they rested on her stomach. This was his Clara and he'd almost lost her... again.

Perhaps these past two years with her had been a gift, one he shouldn't have had and for that he should have been more than grateful. But he wasn't. He was greedy, always had been, one adventure was never enough, one world, one star, he'd wanted them all. And he wanted it all with her; but there he went again, being selfish, changing the parameters of their relationship without letting her know first.

She stirred and the TARDIS dimmed the lights in response, no doubt trying to get back into his good graces. He pressed a hand to her forehead as she blinked her eyes open. "Hey there." He smiled down at her and she startled, shooting up and groaning her hand flying to her head in response to the sudden movement. He grasped her shoulders, "Easy, easy, I've just got done fixing you, take it easy for a minute."

"Angels?" she asked in panic, clearly the memory of her last few moments was gone.

"We're fine." He promised, stroking her forehead as she lay back, looking relieved. "I've got you."

It took days before he stopped treating her like glass, he wouldn't even touch her unless absolutely necessary and usually to perform another needless scan. He'd taken to waving a portable one after she'd refused to return to the medbay for a checkup. Clara sighed catching his wrist in exasperation as she caught him hovering over their bed, scanner in hand. He had the sense at least to look mildly guilty before that look vanished to be replaced with his stony one as he tugged his wrist back, tapping at the scanner.

"For heaven's sake Doctor... I'm fine. And FYI you're not even a real Doctor. Stop scanning me!" She leant up and ripped the device out of his hands tossing it with a satisfying thunk across the room. He stared open mouthed and a little bit outraged his eyes darting between her and the scanner.

"That wasn't necessary." He snapped, making as if to retrieve the damn thing until she lunged for his hand, stopping him in his tracks at the gentle insistence of her touch.

"Doctor please. Stop. Just, sit." She patted the bed beside her; the same bed he hadn't ventured near in days either, preferring it seemed to spend his nights ignoring the TARDIS and tinkering with the medbay.

He hesitated looking torn. It pained her to do this, but the man was beyond gullible sometimes and she needed his attention. "I've been having nightmares," she lied, mostly; her dreams hadn't been great of late but she expected that after a run in like the last one. "Please just hold me?" her plea sounded a tad much to her but his entire expression seemed to fall and she regretted hurting him again, because clearly he was taking this whole injury to her personally. But as he eased himself down onto the bed and pulled her into his arms, wrapping her securely in them she pushed away her conscience; it was only a white lie after all.

His fingers brushed through her hair and she sighed letting her head drop against his chest and just listened to the steady beat of his hearts. "I'm sorry." He mumbled pressing a kiss to her hair. "I just worry." He added quietly and she could tell his eyes had drifted back to his damn scanner.

"I know Doctor, but I'm fine, you just have to accept that at some point." She sighed a little exasperated.

"You're having nightmares; that's not fine." He pointed out and she winced as he started to ramble on, "it could be a sign that the neurological damage is..."

"I lied about the nightmares." She blurted, cutting him off. There really was no point beating around the bush; this wasn't a hole she wanted to dig any deeper than it already was.

"You...?" he started to ask and she laughed at his near incredulity.

"Yes shocking I know Doctor, you're not the only one that can lie." Her tone softened as she tried to hide her blush, or the way her voice wobbled over the next. "I just wanted to hold you."

"Oh." Was his soft reply, as he held her a little closer. "Please don't lie to me." He added as if in afterthought and she tried not to let her temper spike too high.

"Like you never lie to me?" she huffed thinking it was a bit rich coming from the guy who had called that 'rule one'.

"I haven't. Not since we've been, well..." he hesitated, never seemingly comfortable with what to label them, "since holding you like this became alright." He settled for and her anger bled away, he was impossible to stay mad at.

"Oh." It was her turn to feel contrite.

"Besides," he sighed, "I am a real Doctor now." She glanced up at him to find his proud smile, "I read just about every human medical text there is these last few days. Popped out to watch a few surgeries, got a few gadgets and doohickeys." His hand brushed her cheek holding her chin so there gazes remained locked. "I can take care of you now, I promise."

Clara felt something stick in her throat and she blinked away tears, having to drop his gaze, there was always so much in his eyes, too much for a human to bare sometimes she thought. His every action was layered with depth and meaning, nothing was simple with him.

She placed a hand over his chest. "I've been hurt before Doctor, with you. There was that time I got doused in red prehistoric leech goo and turned into a Stepford wife... or you know that time I leapt into your time stream, got ripped apart and reformed in the time winds." He tensed clearly not his fondest memories. "Why is this time any different, I mean I banged my head a little, hardly anything to run to the Cat Nurses on New New Earth with is it?"

Perhaps she'd struck a nerve, she didn't know, but she suddenly found herself pressed into the bed beneath him, her face in his hands sharing the same breath. "Because now your mine." He told her utterly unapologetic for his sudden possessive turn as his eyes flashed a deeper green, drawing her in. "I love you." He added, perhaps taking some of the edge off it as he lowered his mouth to hers; kissing her like the last few days apart had been a torment to him. His hands caught hers and he laced his fingers through them, pinning them to the bed beside her head. She had no words as he shifted his hips against her and she responded in kind; what on earth was she supposed to say when your mostly mad alien boyfriend declared you his? 'No thank you? Oh that sounds lovely dear?' Neither seemed appropriate so she chose to say nothing as he traced his lips across her throat, not relenting in his grip on her. The Doctor, as she'd so recently acknowledged, was many things at any one moment apparently possessive and a little domineering was one of them too.

"Are you mine?" he asked her pulling back to watch her expression, clearly her silence at his declaration had bothered him.

Clara hesitated. "I don't know, are you mine?" she turned it around not sure in the least what he really wanted, if he really wanted anything other than her response at all?

"Yes." He didn't hesitate. "Always." He murmured kissing her feather light, as if it wasn't the earth shattering secret it was.

Clara blinked, staring up at his utterly serious eyes, wondering if he was playing 'rule one' with her now despite his insistence that he wouldn't anymore. Her heart hammered in her chest, she'd spent two years running with this man, three if you counted the first year before they were together like this; she wasn't sure he'd ever stop surprising her with what she could feel at any one moment for him. She loved him, of course; but staring back at him now it was clear to her that wasn't enough, whether it was the man in him, or the Time Lord she wasn't sure, maybe it was the wounded survivor, the man without a planet, but he seemed to need more than just her love; he needed her surrender.

"Yes." She whispered.

His grip on her wrists tightened a fraction and he leant in until their lips brushed, "Yes what?" he pressed, unrelenting, his expression somewhere between pained and aroused.

"Yes, I'm yours." She replied not sure what emotion it was that sent something rather like shock chasing through her blood stream, but his smile was wide even if his eyes sparked with something unspoken that she chose not to see. His lips claimed hers and she closed her eyes, giving into the sensations she'd wanted to feel the moment she awoke in the medbay safe and sound... and still breathing.

He didn't use telepathy on her, he murmured something about it not being safe for a little while for her and she tried to remember what sex without it was like and came up blank, much like when she tried to remember her life before the Doctor waltzed into it. Fortunately the Doctor wasn't suffering the same problem and he seemed more than happy to rise to the challenge of making her scream for him without the aid of his little bag of tricks as he raised her hands, pinning both of them at the wrist with one of his larger ones above her head. "Keep your eyes shut." He insisted, his breath ghosting across her ear and sending a shiver down her spine.

Slowly but surely his lips brushed her skin feather light across her face and down her neck to trace up her arms, until he was sucking her pulse point at her wrist into his mouth and making her toes curl with just that. "Funny what you can learn in those medical text books." He murmured tracing the shell of her ear and sucking the lobe into his mouth, before moving to a point on her neck that did something funny to her insides that made her back arch beneath him. "Apparently the human body has so many interesting little erogenous zones, it's all just a matter of pressure." He rasped as his fingers skimmed across her collarbone heading down to her sides.

"Keep your hands there." He instructed and she fought the urge to ignore him, wanting to reach out and touch him, but his tone was the one he usually reserved for telling her to run when monsters were attacking, so she chose to heed it. Slowly his hands skimmed over her, the simple nightdress she wore doing nothing to block the feel of him as he grasped her leg, lifting it up and placing it on his shoulder. Her eyes opened and he stared hard at her, stilling his movements until she recalled his earlier words. Hesitantly she closed her eyes again, trying to decide if this side of him coming out to play was something she'd want to see again. Then his mouth closed around the back of her knee and she all but yelped, her whole body bucking as his tongue did something delicious to the nerves there and she didn't care at all what he wanted her to do with her hands or not.

She was fickle and most definitely his, she decided as she lay panting beside him sometime later, a lazy smile plastered on her face as his hand ghosted down her spine. She hadn't so much as touched him she realised as she turned slowly to stare up at him, his satisfied expression making her realise he didn't much care. Her hand raised and she hesitated holding it over his face until he leant into it.

"What about you?" she asked gently, not certain she could sit upright currently let alone follow through on whatever promises she wanted to make to him. He smirked, taking her hand and pressing a kiss to the palm.

His words weren't in English, but she just about grasped them all the same as he slipped into his native tongue which he'd been doing more and more frequently recently, usually to whisper sweet but mostly dirty things against her skin. "Oh trust me my Love, I'm more than content." Clara sighed, her grasp of spoken and certainly written Gallifreyan was improving with his gentle and somewhat frustrating teaching style, but her tongue simply didn't seem built for the syllables to allow her to voice it with much success, at least not when she compared it to what it was supposed to sound like in her memory.

Never the less, she gave it her best shot. "Thank you." She offered, after all what else were you supposed to say when the man you loved decided to give your body his undivided attention for an hour or two. She leant up and kissed him firmly, wanting to reassure him and wipe away the slight frown line from his features as he started to over analyse the situation.

He smiled, wrapping his arms around her and spooning behind her. "My Clara." He murmured in English this time as they lay there until his gentle breathing and warm embrace soothed her into an exhausted and dreamless sleep.