DAY 18,200

The Girl for the Debt

Clara

"This is not how I wanted to spend Valentine's Day," Clara grumbled, on her knees, scrubbing the bathroom tiles clean. It was nearly midnight, they had been cleaning for hours; they both had work to do, as well, marking due for the following day, but no doubt that had been shot in the foot. She was exhausted.

"I wasn't under the impression you wanted to spend Valentine's Day doing anything at all, Clara, considering you didn't make any other plans until you set me up with a vindictive tentacle monster," the Doctor snapped at her, trying to scrape green goop off of their skirting boards a couple of feet away.

"This isn't my fault!" Clara protested, stopping what she was doing, straightening up and then leaning back so that she was still kneeling but sitting on her feet. Thirteen looked back at her with her mouth hanging open, but Clara remained firm in her belief that it was not, in fact, her fault.

"How is it not your fault!? This is all your fault!"

"You're the one who threw the stuff on him and made him explode," Clara said, then her eyes widened when she remembered, "We've got an old jousting rod in the loft from that tournament you won forty-something years ago. You know, the gold-coated one that was a present from the king."

"So!?"

"We could have stabbed him with it!"

"Yeah, if you remembered earlier."

"Or if you remembered," Clara countered.

"It wasn't my idea to invite him into our home in the first place," Thirteen argued, sitting up herself.

"What else were we supposed to do!? He was an alien trying to kill you!" Clara shouted.

"Lots of aliens try to kill me! You don't have to go bringing them into the house like a cat dragging in a mouse it just killed!"

"Oh, so now you're comparing me to a stupid pet? I'm up there with Captain Nemo, am I!?"

"Well at the moment you didn't think it through enough for me to notice the difference," Thirteen said coldly, "All day you've just been acting so impulsively-" And that was the last straw for Clara. She had thought it through, of course she had, she had been thinking of the safety of the other people in the school – who had known earlier on if Campbell meant to harm the kids or not? Fine, Clara thought to herself, if you want impulsive, I'll give you impulsive; because, truthfully, Clara had a lot of very carnal and particular impulses at that moment as far as her wife was concerned. And so Clara interrupted the Doctor's rant by lunging at her across the soapy, gory bathroom tiles, and kissing her.

The Doctor was so startled she fell backwards, against their bath, and Clara just followed her lead, their lips still connected, her rubber-gloved hands firmly on the floor either side of Thirteen. With equal zeal, the Doctor kissed her back, and didn't even try to bring back up their pointless, cyclical argument that wouldn't really end if it continued (just like the one about the weekend's car crash.)

And they didn't really do a lot of anything else for a while, until, to the Doctor's great disgruntlement, Clara broke away to ask, "Do you still love me?"

"Of course I do," the Doctor whispered from the bathroom floor, leaning her forehead on Clara's, "I'll never stop." Clara kissed her again, for a few seconds, until Thirteen stopped them again, "Wait, wait, wait…"

"What?" she breathed, shamelessly trying to invade Thirteen's personal space in an attempt to entice her to continue.

"We're in a gross bathroom full of dead alien goo, it's not really the best place for a romantic encounter," Thirteen said.

"You have to play the hand that life deals you," Clara said, "If this is what the universe wants us to do-"

"It definitely isn't," Thirteen said. The moment had passed. Thirteen would say the moment had never existed, in hindsight, but only because she was ashamed of what she had been debating in the throes of lust, however briefly. "C'mon, control yourself."

"Life would be boring if I controlled myself, though," she complained, pouting.

"Our lives could never be boring, Coo, just take a look around you," Thirteen said. Clara sighed but finally sat up again, then she shuffled over and slumped down against the bath on the Doctor's right, Thirteen watching her the whole time.

"I suppose. I'll never be free from the intervention of extra-terrestrials."

"You're married to an extra-terrestrial."

"Exactly. I'm sick of you." The Doctor laughed a little. Clara slouched down further and rested her head on Thirteen's shoulder, neither of them cleaning anymore, before remembering something and sitting back up with a start. Thirteen frowned, puzzled.

"What's wrong?" she asked, watching Clara pull off the rubber glove on her left hand. She didn't see the point of the gloves, in the end, they were both covered in green stains rubbed right into their skin, so that they looked like guests at a Shrek-themed fancy dress party. Clara showed the Doctor her hand, and those two scuffed, silver rings she was wearing, one on top of the other, the Doctor's still there after Clara had taken it for safekeeping, to maintain their ruse. The higher of the two she proceeded to remove, and the Doctor held out her right hand, palm up.

"No, take the glove off," Clara ordered. Narrowing her eyes, Thirteen went to do so, "The left glove! Don't you know which hand you've been wearing your wedding ring on all this time?" In the end she took off both gloves, and Clara made a grab for her left hand, pulling it towards her and then sliding the ring herself back onto Thirteen's finger. "With this ring, I thee wed," she remarked.

"Cute." This ring had once read COO inside, but after fifty years the inscription was worn down, just like TED in Clara's. She had actually been meaning to ask the Doctor if she wanted to get them re-engraved at some point, but always forgot.

"Happy Valentine's Day," Clara said softly.

"It's not Valentine's Day anymore, it's been the Fifteenth for about twenty minutes," she said.

"You just had to go ruining my gesture, didn't you?"

"Time ruined it, Clara," the Doctor said dryly.

"You're a Time Lord, that's the same thing." Clara spared a glance for the bathroom around them, Thirteen following her gaze as she did. It was still a mess, and it was after midnight. "This is going to take hours to clean. We can't afford to be staying up all night, tomorrow's Tuesday."

"You're right. I was supposed to be sleeping tonight," the Doctor sighed, then changed tone completely, "But, you know, darling, we don't have to go without sleep or have a filthy bathroom."

"What…?"

"Jenny has the TARDIS," Thirteen reminded her, "I think we should call her. You should call her. I have no phone. And we could stay on there – just for the night."

"Doctor…"

"I need to talk to her," the Doctor said seriously, "I have to ask her about this. It's because of something she's done – be that by accident – that this has happened. Besides, I haven't seen her for a while, and I do like paying visits to my only daughter as often as possible, since I still have a hundred and fifty-eight years of bad parenting to make up for." And Clara really couldn't argue with that. She couldn't start being petty and trying to stop the Doctor from seeing Jenny – she had no desire to act that way.

"Then, alright, but we're not going on any… adventures. This was enough of one for the time being," Clara said.

"Oh, sure, because I'd really move here with you and live like this and then go spoiling everything we've worked for together by trying to drag you out to investigate some UFO sighting," Thirteen said sarcastically, but Clara raised her eyebrows in response. "Fine, I promise. We won't go out on any outings together."

"Why did you put that emphasis on 'we'?" Clara asked.

"Because… well, what if Jenny wants to go somewhere? Aren't I allowed to go somewhere with her? What if she's found some super-interesting, intriguing mystery somewhere?" Thirteen questioned, and Clara rolled her eyes.

"Oh my god, it's your life; just make sure you're safe and don't try and drag me along, and you can do what you like," Clara told her, "I can spend the time with my sister. But you'd better try and get Jenny to come help clean up this mess, she's as responsible as the two of us are."

"You mean as you are. I'm not responsible."

"You mixed the potion."

"Because you let him in the house."

"Am I going to have to kiss you again?"

"Please don't, not while we're still covered in his blood," she said, putting a necessary dampener on the mood. Clara's mood. The Doctor clearly wasn't in that sort of mood. "I wish he'd explained. It didn't have to end this way."

"Sweetheart," Clara said, taking her hands, "There was no reasoning with him. He was going to kill you, then me, then try and get Jenny. And who else after that? Ravenwood? Adam Mitchell? My sister? Either of the other Doctors, wherever they are? If he found you, he could find them."

"Even we can't find them, we only see them on Christmas, when everybody has to see each other," Thirteen said, "And sometimes we still miss them."

"Like you're that bothered about not seeing Rose Tyler for another year." Thirteen shrugged.

"I don't know. I did fall in love with her."

"Yeah, ages ago."

"But still. Maybe I should miss her?"

"Who cares about her? She's got another, inferior one of you. And you have a new wife now, anyway. Well, I suppose you never married her, she was always more of a girlfriend. And I've never been a girlfriend to you," Clara said.

"I mean… you kind of were."

"What?"

"We went out on a whole bunch of dates and then got married," Thirteen said.

"Yeah, but I wasn't your girlfriend," Clara said, aghast, "You do have to ask people to be with you for them to, you know, be with you. Even drunk and in Las Vegas."

"You totally were!" Thirteen objected.

"I totally wasn't!" Clara mimicked, to the Doctor's annoyance. They were now just putting off the inevitable phone call to Jenny; Clara could tell that the Doctor wasn't too excited to find out what had happened to Campbell's mother that had led to the day's events, in case Jenny really had done something abhorrent. Then again, perhaps, whatever it was, she hadn't even done it yet. It was always hard to tell with time travellers.

"Then what were you?"

Clara scoffed and said, "Not your girlfriend, that's for sure."

"Fiancée."

"What?"

"Unknowing fiancée?"

"Definitely not."

"Didn't I introduce you as my assistant before?"

"Yes, and I hated it," Clara muttered.

"Because you wanted me to say 'girlfriend,'" Thirteen said, and Clara hesitated before arguing, "Ah-ha! See?"

"See what?"

"You paused! I'm right; you wanted to be my girlfriend."

"Oh my god, I fell in love with you, idiot," Clara said, and the Doctor's grin dissipated.

"Because you were my-"

"Shut up, you never asked me, so you weren't," Clara said definitively, even huffily, crossing her arms and making a point to look decisively away from her other half, them still leaning against the green-stained bath, thoroughly ignoring the cleaning they had to do. The Doctor reached up a hand to cup Clara's chin and gently pull her so that she would look at her again, which Clara only meekly fought against.

Meeting her eyes, Thirteen asked, "Will you be my girlfriend?" and she laughed.

"I'm your wife. That's better. I've been your wife for half a century."

"But we skipped a step."

"A very long time ago. I'm sure it hardly matters anymore."

"But what if I say it does matter? To me? Me who's been under this deluded impression all this time that we were an item even before we were, you know, an item. Sort of… tacitly. There was a mutual, silent, acknowledgement of girlfriend-hood."

"'Girlfriend-hood' isn't a thing, and certainly not between the two of us."

"Let's make it a thing." Clara giggled again. "C'mon." The Doctor was being very enticing, giving her those eyes, that smell like cinnamon clinging to her now pea-coloured hair. "Will you? Be my-"

"God, fine, if it shuts you up. Not that it matters," Clara said, not complaining about the kiss she promptly received in thanks for this validation of their (long-standing) status as a couple.

"I think it matters."

"Well, that's your prerogative," Clara said, indifferent to the whole thing, truthfully. It didn't matter how old she/he was, the Doctor was always a weirdo. Clara could go the longest periods without noticing, and then Thirteen would do something peculiar and she would remember the quirks in her spouse that made her so, well, alien.

"Are you upset? Or angry?"

"About what?" Clara asked, perplexed.

"About this," the Doctor motioned with her hand at the mess.

"It's in the bathroom, it'll be simple enough to clean, I suppose," Clara said, and Thirteen frowned.

"No, I mean about the whole damn affair. We left the TARDIS because you wanted to escape from all this, and it's followed us."

"I'm not under any illusions that we'd ever fully leave that life behind. And we're not even leaving it behind, anyway, this is just a brief sabbatical, until people start questioning why we look so young still and we have to cut and run," Clara said, "Anyway, you know that having the TARDIS is good for Jenny. Cole Campbell trying to kill you isn't your fault. I'm not angry at all."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure, don't worry about me; if I've got problems, I'll talk to you about them. God knows the last, and only, time I tried not to do that almost ruined our marriage," Clara remarked with a note of unpleasantness in her voice. The Doctor quietened, looked ahead at the opposite wall a little blankly, distracted, and Clara just watched for a few seconds. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"You should call Jenny now, I reckon."

"What if…" she began, then stopped, then sighed, and began again, "What if I don't like what she has to say about this? What if…"

"Hey," Clara cooed, "Jenny wouldn't kill anybody without a very good reason. Sometimes not even then. Whatever happened was either not her fault, or she had to do it. I promise." The Doctor looked at her languidly, and she tried to smile back comfortingly.

"I hope so."

AN: Yeah, I know you guys would just love for Future Jenny to show up and shed light on everything, but I much prefer to write the Clarteen stories without the intervention of other main characters and just have them in their bubble. Anyway, predictably enough, I'm going on break again. But I'm gonna write Spook Watch, the break is just so I can write more Spook Watch. Once I do another storyline of that (I'm doing a ghost train, it should be pretty cool) I'll come back, hopefully, and will be able to start writing relatively regularly again.