Thank you for the nice reviews! I hope what follows will be to everybody's satisfaction. It's hard to interpret Clara's and Twelve's relationship over the last season. Not even sure there's one proper answer or label for it. It's definitely not the same kind of relationship he had with River though, or even with Rose (the pink and yellow human who made him want to be the Doctor again after the grim Time War) but at the same time much deeper and more desperately depending than Ten and Donna/Martha or Eleven and Amy, I'd say. What do you think? :)

2. Leap Of Faith

The TARDIS didn't seem to want him to land on Gallifrey near the end of time. He chose not to take that as a warning sign of that whatever lay before him in his timestream was a bad choice. Eventually though, she seemed to cave in, because she landed him in the middle of an extraction chamber. Possibly – no, even likely – it was the very same chamber where he had pulled Clara out of her timestream, a mere moment before… Before the raven.

The Time Lords had definitely registered that he was there, because not a whole minute passed before guards were storming in around him and the poor lonely labworker he had encountered upon first exiting the TARDIS. By then though, the labworker had already given him what he asked for and answered his question, so all the Doctor did was waving goodbye to the guards with a smile, before shutting the blue door behind him and letting them see it fade away as he took off.

The question had been: "Has she come back?"

The answer had, after some initial confusion but eventual realization, been: "Yes."

From the Gallifreyan timeline he had aligned himself with, she was already gone. He leaned against the TARDIS console and pondered that thought, flipping a small device over in his hand. The thought of her dying didn't make him feel much. He knew it had happened, but many humans faced death every day. There was no strong emotion or heartbreaking pain that made him particularly regret hers. He stared intently at the item in his hand. Maybe there had been good reasons for him wanting her to forget him, or accepting that he would forget her.

He just couldn't for the lives of him understand what they'd been.

The only feeling that buzzed in him when he considered her, was that of curiosity. He had seen a face now, a voice to connect with events he knew had happened. And she had piloted a TARDIS and fearlessly resolved a planetary crisis where he had fallen short. Oh, he was so curious. How could he ever purposefully have let her go?

Curiosity killed the silver fox. He pressed the button on the neurunblock.

At first, nothing happened. He waited for a few seconds, before he sighed, thinking that it hadn't worked. The memories might not just be concealed, he might have repressed them so strongly himself that they were unretrievable-

Her smile.

Her laughter.

Her gaze.

Her bravery, until the very end.

He was struck by the flood of memories like a bullet train to his brain. Nothing like when they had slowly faded away upon using the neuroblock. The neurunblock was swift and merciless. If you so badly wanted to force your concealed memories back into existence, you'd have to take the full brunt of them.

The device clanked as it hit the floor, and the Doctor soon followed, sliding down against the railing, his knees failing him. For several minutes, he simply sat. Neither the universe nor the TARDIS around him dared disturbing him.

Then he finally drew a long, old breath.

"So that's why," he mumbled.

Slowly standing up, he had trouble keeping his eyes open. Not because they were drooping, but because wherever in the TARDIS he looked, he could only see Clara. Studying the bookshelves, drawing on the chalkboard, sitting in the jumpseat, or leaning on the console with adventure in her eyes.

If he would be honest with himself, he really hadn't expect to feel this much. She was a human girl – he had known plenty of human girls in his all too long life. Brilliant girls, even. Sarah Jane, his old, so old companion, the precious Jo Grant, the feisty Tegan, the fantastic Ace – he suddenly chuckled at the memories. The neurunblock had not only revealed the recently hidden tales. It seemed as if it had also refreshened his memory patterns altogether. The timelines into the past were clearer to him if he concentrated now, than they had been in a very long time.

He studied inwards how his path had strayed during the Time War, saw from three different angles how he proceeded to save Gallifrey from his own hand… And she was there. Clara had been by his side even then. No, wait. Earlier, even? The realization of all the details he was remembering now, shocked him.

He saw her running past his fourth version, saw himself drive past her in his third body, heard her desperately call out to his seventh form, felt her studying his fifth self helplessly. How had he never noticed the same girl touching his life before? He now distinctly remembered a soothing voice and a reassuring hand stroking his head when he was terrified in the empty Gallifreyan night, two millennia ago, speaking of fear and strength. He recalled the girl he had met in the TARDIS repair shop, the Time Lady who had realized what he was about to do, and decided to give him a good piece of advice instead of sounding the alarm.

Oh, Rassilon. She had told him which TARDIS to steal. Her echoes had been with him through his whole life. Clara Oswald had, as it turned out, shaped him in so many more ways than he had ever understood before.

And before, he had been willing to spend 4,5 billion years in his own personally tailored hell. What was he prepared to do now? A sad smile found its way to his lips. Of course, the answer was: anything necessary.

He piloted the TARDIS to a new location in spacetime, to which she obliged with unusual smoothness. She was on his side. Feeling his resolve strengthen, he pushed away the dread that came creeping, and exited the police box.

Everything was just the same as it had been. The sky just as dark, the air just as thick of horror. Screams could be heard, from people fleeing the streets ahead. He looked straight ahead, and saw his goal. Her silhouette from the side looked even thinner here than in his mind. Even more fragile than he remembered from this fateful night on Trap Street.

Resolve pushing away the dread. He needed to keep it up for a while longer. He could not give up now; never cowardly!

He strode through the narrow street with swift steps. Clara Oswald had just stopped in her solemn pace, mere meters ahead. His own pace quickened. Her terrified, yet brave eyes were staring at doom itself, somewhere in front of her where the Doctor couldn't see around the corner. A caw came from a distance, telling them that the raven was near. Time was nearly up. He fell into a sprint.

Only one chance, one chance to save her soul – and his own. She closed her eyes.

"Let me be brave..."

Her hands stretched out, as the final caw sounded, and he leapt.

oOo

The white room on Gallifrey was all too bright for the dark fate it would deliver her. The Time Lords had been very happy with her return, and been very accommodating during her last hour in this world. When she had finally stepped into the timerift again and retaken the exact spot they had plucked her from, she had time for one more false breath, one last sigh, before she closed her eyes once more. Bravely.

But she was so afraid, so very afraid. And for the last, split second before the Time Lords let go, she came to a horrible realization. She didn't want to go.

Time started running, the world kept spinning around her, the raven kept flying. And then, something big tumbled into her, making her stumble backwards and open her eyes wide.

Crouching, but still standing up, was him in his dark black coat, the hood hanging out on his back. For a second, it was as if everything had frozen again, then she let out a sob as her mind caught up to what her eyes told her.

"Doctor?!" she exclaimed and ran around to face him.

But his stare was blank, stuck in the absolute worst kind of fright. The kind of look somebody has on their face once they realize they are dying.

"Doctor, no!"

Suddenly, he screamed. A high pitched, heart wrenching wail that startled her enough to take several steps back, despite all of her soul yelling at her to stick by his side. When it finally ended, the Doctor fell backwards, his limp body colliding with the stone ground without a single reaction from him.

Clara didn't even wait a second before she was onto him like a magnet. The old skin was warmer than normal, warmer than his Time Lord physiology usually let him be. His eyes stared hollowly up into the air, unseeing. The street was completely empty, save for the two of them. A thousand thoughts were running amok in Clara's head, but she knew that she had to focus on being here in the present, and she channeled all of her consciousness into one main thought: the Doctor was not dead. He had saved her, against all odds, after all their tearful goodbyes. She refused to believe that this would kill him now.

Doing her best to focus, despite her worst nightmare lying beneath her and the heart hammering in her chest, she scouted the surroundings. Trap Street residents might come flooding back to see the result of what they believed had just unfolded now. Mayor Me might exit the building. She absolutely couldn't see them like this! Nothing she had told Clara ever hinted at her knowing that the Doctor would save her from the raven.

Ah, there it was. At the end of a narrow street between two buildings, the blue police box waited patiently. She mustered all her strength and dragged the Doctor's still body all the way to the TARDIS. Leaving him just inside the door, Clara stormed up to the console and made the time machine leave London. She didn't mind where or when she ended up, it really didn't matter the least. For a moment, she allowed herself to lean onto the control board with both hands steadying her, breathing as calmly as she could. The TARDIS made a squeaking noise, and Clara forced herself to look up.

"It's nice to see you too, old cow," she whispered.

Then, she finally turned around. He still hadn't gotten up. She had closed his eyelids, but he had not moved, had not shifted a millimeter on his own. His face was completely relaxed, his head against the metal floor where she had put him. So serene, like the sleeping form she had hardly ever seen of him.

She sat down a meter away.

"Doctor," she said softly. "You came back. I thought you didn't remember me."

No response.

"You jumped into the end of my timeline to save me…" She couldn't help letting out a sad chuckle, and stroke his head gingerly. "Remember when I did the same for you? Literally."

Not even a breath taken. Please, let him be asleep. In between breaths, strange Time Lord biology, anything. Anything but this.

"Doctor… You can regenerate. I've seen you die before. And look at us – we still did well. Please..."

A sob shook her, and she wrapped her arms around his form, putting her head against his chest. The TARDIS hummed carefully. Clara assumed the machine would have been blaring with alarms if the Doctor had actually been dead. At least that's what she told herself, a hope she was clinging to.

But minutes passed, and absolutely nothing happened. Hope faded and started to be replaced by panic. Anger, even.

"You can't leave me!" she decided to sit up and yell into his expressionless face. "Why did you even come back? Do you realize how selfish this was? Leaving me alone in this world, after I've made my peace with exactly everything, and you swanning off into the afterlife without a care in the world, in my place?"

But the lack of a reply, of any kind of reaction, immediately made her overcome with despair and grief instead.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed into his chest. "You really would break time itself if it could keep me alive and safe. You'd kill a man, you'd break your own rules… You were right. We are dangerous. I'm so sorry."

Losing Danny had been nothing like this. She had gotten news about his death and felt empty. Disappointed. When they had finally had a chance for a proper farewell, it had been a true heart ache, but most of all it had been bothersome. Tiresome, that they would even have to deal with it. They had deserved a happy life together, two happy humans in their happy home on Earth. When Danny died, Clara had felt a piece of her own humanity die with him.

It had been similar when her mother passed away. Her grandpa. Parts of what grounded her on Earth, of what made life here real and magical at the same time. Every time she lost somebody, she seemed to drift further away from who she had thought she had been. After Danny, she hadn't recognized herself for a long time… Not until the Doctor returned, and she re-discovered whom she truly wished she could be.

Clara Oswald, the impossible girl.

But to go on now, was what seemed impossible. The TARDIS groaned, as if it let out a long breath. Clara felt stiff. She must have been lying against the Doctor's chest for half an hour now. He was stiff too. She didn't dare to look up at his face again, out of fear that seeing his body be a shell, an organic mass without consciousness and life, would drive her mad. She would rather just stay here. Just stay like this, pretending that he was smiling down at her. Forever. It was easier.

"If you go, take me with you," she breathed, and longed for darkness.

Instead, she saw a light disturb her through closed eyelids, painting her field of view a bright red color until she blinked them open. The Doctor's hand in front of her, was glowing golden.

She gasped, jumping up. His face was glowing too. A shimmering, brimmering light that seemed to want to burst through the skin itself. The laughter she suddenly heard, was her own, a surprised sound that told her that she definitely had gone mad already. But the glowing grew intense, threatening to envelop her as tendrils of Gallifreyan energy started to reach out and lick the floor around the Time Lord. She backed away, and felt the TARDIS cringe, throwing her against the railing.

"No, not again!" Clara called out, steadying herself against the console as the time machine tilted to the side.

The Doctor's body started sliding down towards her from the entrance. He still wasn't awake, but the energy emanating from his body grew stronger, making a nearby side console spark as a golden burst hit it. She couldn't be close when this happened, no matter how overjoyed and bewildered she felt at the moment and matter how much she just wanted to keep holding onto him until he had finished changing.

His hand suddenly shot out, and grabbed a metal pole in the railing, keeping himself from sliding further. She watched his eyes fly open, as well as his mouth. As if screaming without a sound, his glowing face strained itself, until there was an ominous dark smoke blowing out instead. The smoke whirled above him, but it was as if golden cracks, bolts of lightning, shot through it. It exploded, and the TARDIS jerked hard again.

Pondering at the back of her head what that could be about, since it didn't happen last time she saw him regenerate, Clara felt the thud that usually indicated that the ship had landed somewhere tangible in time and space. The Doctor remained half seated, seemingly struggling against the strong power threatening to change his whole being, but he couldn't stop it.

Bursts started making more parts of the TARDIS spark, and the bookshelves behind Clara caught fire. Finally, the cloister bell started ringing, making Clara worried that regenerating after being hit by something as nefarious as the quantum shade might not work out after all.

Either way, she couldn't stay in here. The ship was starting to fall apart around her. She had to get out.

"See you soon, Doctor!" she called out.

Taking a deep breath, she then charged towards the doors, leaping over the Doctor on the floor, and exited. The doors slammed shut behind her.

She was standing on dirty ground, in what looked like a green forest in afternoon sunlight. Slowly, she backed away. Through the TARDIS windows, she could see an orange glow, pulsating rapidly. She hoped they would be alright, the Doctor as well as his ship. He would come back, in a new form of course, but they would get to know each other again, just like they had before. Maybe he didn't have all his memories of their time together, but she could tell him the stories. She wasn't losing him now, and she would not let him lose her again. The Doctor and Clara Oswald would be back the TARDIS.

That's when something hard poked her in the back, followed by angry shouts.

"Witch! Burn the witch!"