Sorry for the wait! Here's an update for you :)
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The only response she gets is the distinct impression of smugness. She's going to keep them safe, yes, but she isn't going to make things easy. Not when River is making choices she doesn't like.
"As in, the Norse mythology heaven Asgard? With the rainbow bridge?" Clara is asking, looking curiously toward the doors.
"I'd hardly call it heaven," the Doctor answers, "Nice place though, now that the ice age has ended. Well, the first ice age, anyway, and the next one's not do for another 1200 years so we should be alright." He bounces to the doors, swinging them open and grinning back at them, "But, come along and see for yourselves if you'd like."
Clara starts after him immediately. River hangs back. The Doctor notices her not moving and taps Clara on the shoulder, nodding his head toward where she's standing, unmoving behind the console.
"Mo? You coming?" she asks.
She doesn't want to. Not Asgard. She'd loved Asgard, they'd loved Asgard, together, from the very first time to the very last. He'd even made her smile there when he didn't know her, and that was saying something. She doesn't want that ruined now.
"Is it, you know, dangerous?" she asks, "Because I'm really alright with staying right here."
"What?!" gasps the Doctor, "It's an alien planet! Don't you want to see it?"
"So far, I haven't been terribly impressed with anything alien I've seen on this trip."
"Oi!"
Clara rolls her eyes at them, "Seriously you two!" Clara walks back to River, puts her hands on her shoulders and looks her in the eyes, "Mo, what's really going on?" she asks, softly. And it's surprising, because up until this point Clara had never noticed anything amiss. Ever. Ever when her creepy date wound up in a car accident with a public library. She's gotten wiser though, older, really, with all those echo-lives caught up in her pretty head. "I know you don't really want to go home, do you?" she continues, gently, her voice dropping lower so the Doctor can't hear.
"What makes you say that?"
Clara raises an eyebrow at her.
"Ok, fine, I'm not really all that upset that we can't get home right now," she turns, throws an arm around Clara's neck and kisses her on the forehead, "but only because I get to spend extra time with you, sweethe—Clara."
Clara giggles and pokes her in the side, "Did you just call me 'sweetheart'?"
"What? No! Absolutely not."
"If you two are just about done with the cuddling time over there!" The Doctor is still standing in the doorway, looking cross and left-out.
She's out of excuses. And anyway, Clara had looped her own arm back around River's shoulders and is already practically frog-marching her toward the door. Throwing her off would require a rather advanced martial arts move and she has a feeling she would have a hard time explaining that.
As they exit, the door slams closed with pointed finality behind Clara, which is a good thing, because as soon as she gets a good look at where they are, she wishes she'd thrown Clara off and made a run for it after all. They're not just on any old spot on Asgard, oh no, that would be much too simple. They're on a gently sloping hill, under a lovely branching tree with blue-green leaves, and right at her feet the grass is all pressed down in the shape of a crumpled picnic blanket. A cool breeze filters through the leaves and she shivers. They'd left just as it started getting cold. It couldn't have been more than 5 minutes ago.
"It's cold, Doctor. Are you sure you've got the dates right on that ice age?" Clara asks.
He answers her, very softly, and River doesn't dare look at him but she has this funny feeling he's looking right at the spot where her former rear-end had made a pleasantly shaped indent in the grass right at his feet, "It gets cold at night, on Asgard."
"How cold?" Clara asks him, sounding just a little worried.
"Very, very cold."
River clears her throat and tears her eyes away from the blanket-spot in the grass, making a show of examining the leaves, slowly curling in on themselves as the temperature drops, "So, we should probably leave then, yeah?"
"Yes," agrees the Doctor, "we should go."
But they can't.
The Doctor snaps his fingers until they turn red, and twists his key around and around in the lock, but the doors stay firmly closed. River stands around the corner and presses her hand against the wall, trying to convince the Tardis to let them in, but in return she gets only a stubborn determination, numerous impressions of hiding from the Doctor and feelings of distinct disapproval, and the Tardis encouraging her to go find some shelter before the temperature drops too much.
She gives up, and around the corner she hears the Doctor mutter helplessly against the doors, "Why are you being like this?"
Clara is sitting at the foot of the tree, her knees tucked up under her chin, shivering. Humans have a lower tolerance to cold than Time Lords, and they're already running out of time. River sits on her heels to wrap an arm around Clara, who leans into her with a little sigh, her breath freezing in the air.
"Doctor! Maybe we should find somewhere warm for now, we can come back in the morning and try again."
She pretends to shiver alongside Clara, and she sees a flash of guilt across his face. "Right, right, of course. Humans, you lot get cold so easily. I always forget." He hurries over to them, reaching deep into his left hand pocket and rummaging around. He pulls out a poncho, of all things, and drops it over Clara's head. Before she can say anything, he's shrugged out of his jacket and is wrapping it around River's shoulders. It's still warm from his body heat. His warmth and his smell settle around her, and his face is right there too, frowning and staring down as he pulls the lapels close around her neck. There are so many things she suddenly wants to do. She wants to bury her head in his jacket and breathe him in. She wants to wrap her arms around his neck and keep him right there with her. She wants to cry. She wants to slap his stupid face for making this so difficult. She does none of those things, just sits still and bites her lip so hard she can taste blood in her mouth. By the time he pulls away her faked shivering has become a real tremor with the effort to keep still.
"Come along, come along," he says, his hand suddenly under her arm as he pulls her to her feet and reaches for Clara, "There's a hotel not far from here."
The temperature drops quickly. After ten minutes of brisk walking, the sun has completely disappeared behind a range of distant mountains, the sky dark enough for the stars to make themselves known. The leaves on the trees they pass have almost finished curling in on themselves, and Clara is shivering so hard River can hear her teeth chattering. She's feeling the cold too, her shivering isn't feigned anymore, and she's mentally trying to recall anything she's read about low temperatures and Time Lord pregnancies.
Clara's walk gets slower and slower. River hangs back, and for a little while the Doctor is out in front of them, screwdriver extended as he keeps track of the temperature and how far they still have to go. Finally he looks back, noticing how far behind they've fallen. He jogs back to join them, looking them over quickly and shaking his head, "This won't do. Listen now, alright, you're both going to have to run."
Clara shakes her head, her teeth chattering too hard to speak.
"You can do it, I know you can do it," he says. He steps in between them, and slides his ice-cold fingers through hers. Her breath catches, and as she peers around him she can see he's grabbed Clara's hand too, but it's different. Their fingers aren't knit. She should be concerned about that. Maybe when she isn't so cold she will be, but all she can do in that moment is appreciate the warmth his fingers wrapped around hers sparks in her chest. "Run!" he says, and he's pulling them along.
River knows she should lag behind. She should measure her steps to Clara's stumbling gate on his other side and drag at his hand. She doesn't though. She feels suddenly a reckless sort of lightness brought on by their fingers knit together and their feet pounding against the rapidly freezing ground, danger lingering in the air as the temperature drops. It's exhilarating and familiar, and her feet keep pace with his like they always have.
They finally reach a road, paved in smooth blue pebbles of all things, and the Doctor veers to follow it. A moment later the hotel comes into view. It isn't the one they had been to, so very long ago, that hadn't been built yet, but the architecture is similar, with the characteristic oblong doorways and windows and molded frames. There's a faint shimmer around the building, and as they pass through it into the warm air trapped inside the nearly invisible shell Clara makes a relieved groaning sort of noise from the Doctor's other side. As soon as he stops running she promptly sits on the ground, curled around herself and still shivering.
"Clara!" The Doctor drops her hand, kneeling down as he holds the tops of Clara's arms. He looks up at her, and she remembers almost too late that she needs to look a bit colder than she really is, wrapping her arms around herself and making her teeth chatter as he asks, "Are you alright?"
River nods, trying to look shaky rather than exhilarated, "I think so, better than Clara anyway."
"Right, good, that's good," he picks Clara up, and the blue tinge to her lips when he turns around sucks the excitement out of her system quickly. "The door, please!" he says, urgently.
Before they get to it, the door swings out on it's hinges, the large shape of a native shadowed in the doorway.
"Don't worry Mo! The Doctor says from behind her, "Asgadians are usually a very friendly bunch."
She shakes her head and lets him go ahead anyway, pretending to be frightened by the large, furry alien motioning urgently for them to get inside.
By the time she follows him inside, the Doctor and two of the Asgardians are kneeling over Clara, looking incredibly small on an Asgardian-sized settee in the lobby.
"Humans! One of the Asgaridans is saying, "What were you thinking? You shouldn't be so overconfident about that bit of fur you've got on your head."
"It was an accident," the Doctor quips back, "and I am not human. No blue on my lips, see?" he asks, pouting them at the offending Asgardian as River approaches.
"Is she alright?" River asks, worriedly, glancing fearfully up at the towering Asgardians for effect. She can imagine they would be a bit terrifying to your average 21st century human, although they're still as lovely as she remembers; tall and lanky and humanoid, but covered in long, silky white-blond fur with startling, blue eyes rimmed in long, thick dark blonde lashes. It's two males with them now, both dressed in the hotel staff uniform.
"Hello," says the slightly shorter one, he glances at her mouth, "Are you a not-human too?"
"No," says the Doctor, distractedly from where he's scanning Clara with his sonic, "she's human too."
The Asgardian blinks his striking eyes at her, "but her lips aren't blue,"