Always

Eleven

"Who was that detective, then?" the Doctor asked his wife when they had succeeded in securing themselves a place to sleep. They had traipsed around for half an hour at least before he finally decided to take 'executive action' and go sonic a cashpoint to get money out of it. He didn't steal the money, it was taken right out of Clara's bank account. They just couldn't access it normally because she didn't have her debit card on her person. After that, they got a room in a hotel that was nearly full up, which he took as a measure of quality. They didn't want to be staying in an empty hotel, after all. They were always quite ghastly. Haunted, perhaps. But no, they got a room in some well-furnished, warm, modern place. Just the right balance of homely and impersonal. Not that the pair of them, a couple of penniless transients, could afford to be picky about the décor.

"Oh, him… that was Detective Inspector Geoffrey Sawyer. I dated his son when I was fifteen, nine years ago," she said. Ten years ago, he corrected himself internally. But she was much too tired to remember what day it was. "His son, Wade, was my first boyfriend. Real boyfriend, if you catch my drift." She wandered around the dark room and took off her dressing gown, then eyed the dirty, wet hem of it disapprovingly. The bottoms of her pyjama trousers were soaked, too. "Apparently he's also friends with my dad."

"Well, how… coincidental. Everything's been awfully coincidental today, hasn't it?" he said awkwardly, then cleared his throat, "Hopefully we shan't run into his son." Clara laughed while taking her sullied trousers off as well.

"You're cute sometimes," she said.

"Are you tired?"

"Very," she confessed, "But I can't sleep until we finish talking."

"That's a dangerous game you're playing, Coo; I can talk for weeks non-stop, day and night and night and day."

"I won't be able to sleep if we don't talk, anyway. I might have a bad dream," she sighed. She wasn't really looking at him. She wasn't looking at much of anything, was off in her own world, perhaps. The lights were off, the only source of illumination the soft moonlight trickling through the thin curtains. He went to lean on the dressing table and wondered if he might use the cheap, provided kettle to brew her something to drink that might settle her more than the ice cream had done.

"Do you want a drink?" he asked. She told him no thank you, and went to perch herself on the edge of the bed. In all honesty, he did not know what to do. He did not know what to say, what she really wanted, and she just sat. Was she thinking about what to say herself, or was she waiting for him to speak? Or did she not really know? He stayed standing in the corner, watching her, eyes on her back, unable to see her face. Eventually, he spoke, "You're sitting on the left.

"Huh?" she asked.

"I… you sleep on the right, usually… not that it matters, of course it doesn't matter, you can have anything you want. What is it, exactly, that you want…?" he asked her hopefully, but he was also scared she might start shouting about something. She still didn't talk. He finally decided to walk around the bed and sit down next to her.

"If this about you wanting to know if you're a separate part of my life to the TARDIS... well, you are. You always have been. Ever since you told me to 'come back tomorrow,' and insisted on only travelling on Wednesdays. You mean so much more to me than you realise, Clara," he whispered to her, "You're not just you... your Echoes were people who were created to save me. You've always been in my life, always, even if I didn't know it. You gave your life thousands of times over all for me - that sort of thing can turn a man's head, don't you know. You are the thread that holds my life together, the only thread. Without you nothing involving the TARDIS or any of those other people on it would have even happened, wouldn't have been more than a daydream in the time vortex. You are the most perfect thing in all of the universe and I have been in love with you for a thousand years or more. And now you're here, living in my home, sleeping in my bed, next to me, every night, because after so long, and after me remembering all of the times I have seen your face out of the corner of my eye, or in the back of my mind, I can't even bear to be away from you for more than a second. All of the time I spend not with you I spend thinking about you – thinking of things you've said, things you might like, things I simply must remember to tell you the next time I see you. Of course you are your own disease, you are infinite diseases if you want to be, you are not merely a symptom. You are the cause of all of the symptoms and the side-effects in my life, and I would never in my most frightful nightmares wish for the cure. I would sooner die. What is it you humans say? Soulmates? Something like that. My impossible girl. Fascinating, we aren't even the same species yet here you are, your perfect self, the most divine individual in all of the realities which I have had the pleasure to traverse. I would leave the TARDIS if you asked, you gave me the TARDIS in the first place. All this time I thought I was running away, running away from my own species, and then my own species died and I was still running. Running towards you, I assume, and now... the running would hardly be missed."

Clara didn't say anything. She even looked away. He watched her, and then he heard her sniff.

"Clara, are you crying? Don't cry, there isn't any need to cry..." he said, but she was, and he couldn't bear it, "Would you come here? Honestly, you are utterly mad, I adore it, come on." He coaxed her, very easily, into a hug, and pulled her as close as he possibly could and rested his chin on the top of her head. For whatever reason, the poor woman was crying into his chest. "You're very tired, Coo, this will all be the tiredness making a mess of your mind. You'd better sleep."

She didn't speak just yet, though. It took her a while to work up to it, work up to mumbling one tiny, slurred syllable: "Why?"

"Why what?" he asked softly, and she didn't answer, "Shall we lie down? I think we ought to." Lie down they did, and he was left to sort out the covers and produce a small pack of tissues from a bedside cabinet. These he bestowed upon her like great riches, and she thanked him in a tiny voice. He still did not quite understand what was the matter. She curled up with her head on his chest, drinking in his warmth and heat, and he stroked her hair.

"People usually get bored, is what I mean," she said impossibly quietly.

"Bored of what? Bored of you?" he asked disbelief.

"Yeah. I'm never 'the interesting one' or anything like that. Not to anyone I've ever been out with – which is a lot of people. No, I'm just pretty. Pretty and too sarcastic. And easy. A 'good shag,' that's what I am. A memory of a lost orgasm," she sighed. There was a pause, and he made a very strange noise, which he turned into a cough. "What was that?"

He cleared his throat, "Hmm? What was what?"

"That cough."

"Oh, nothing, just got a bit of, uh, phlegm. Got rid of it now, though, I'm completely..." he did it again.

"Are you laughing?"

"Laughing!? Of course not! Why would I be laughing when you're so..." he was going to say upset, but he failed to turn his next chuckle into a hacking cough, and she sat up, leaning on one of her elbows, him lying flat on his back and trying not to look at her, "I have a... a cold coming on..."

"Stop laughing at me! What's so funny!?"

"I'm so sorry, darling, honestly, it was the 'memory of a lost orgasm' part."

"I thought it was poetic."

"Poems can be comedic - and you are so very funny. And sarcastic, not to mention sarcastic, like you said. Not too sarcastic though, not at all. You have the driest witticisms, they're my favourite things," he said. Her hair hung down around her shoulders onto him, her still propping herself up. He lifted one of his hands to brush her hair away and stroke her cheek, "Your skin is very soft, as well."

"That's something serial killers say."

"Serial killers?"

"Yeah, there was that serial killer in, like, the 1960s who used to be obsessed with skin. I saw it on TV," she said, and he laughed again, "What?"

"Nothing, nothing… Anyway, Clara, I find everything about you interesting. You have the privilege of being an entirely different species to me with a completely different culture, even the most mundane things sparkle when you talk about them," he assured her.

"Oh, please. You've been on Earth for longer than you've been on Gallifrey." Probably true, to be honest…

"The ways in which we differ can also be the ways which make us strong," he said.

"Who said that?" she asked, leaning closer to him.

"What do you mean?"

"It sounded like a quote."

"I said it, just then, made it up on the spot. Just like your one about the orgasms."

"Drop that now."

"No, I'm going to write it on our wedding invitations," he said mock-seriously.

"I'll kill you if you do."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah, and I'll wear your skin afterwards, just like that serial killer," she told him.

"It would smell."

"I'll have it tanned. A full leather suit of husband-skin. I'd wear it down the aisle if it wasn't for the fact you would be dead."

"Well, I might regenerate depending on how you kill me, and then you really could, you lunatic." She giggled. A strange thing to do in a conversation about serial killers and skin, but if it was cheering her up he wasn't one to object. He was even less someone to object when she decided it was in her best interests to kiss him, pushing her lips on his in the dead of night. For a second they paused, unmoving, and then he laughed very quietly and sat up a little to kiss her back, until she broke them apart.

"I'm not gonna have sex with you in this weird hotel," she told him, sighing and lying back down. He could taste the mint of the Cornetto she had been eating earlier. He raised his eyebrows at her. Why did him merely kissing her mean he had his desires fixed on… that? Of all the things… she was incorrigible.

"Well I won't have sex with you, either - you're so tired it would be like taking advantage of a drunk girl, and I'm far too much of a gentleman to do that," he said. The moonlight shone on her hair. As always, she smelt of strawberry laces, a ghostly scent that hovered around them.

"You already did take advantage of me when I was drunk, back in Las Vegas. Oh, and that time we slept together. The first time. I was drunk then," she said.

"Yes, but you didn't tell me you'd been drunk until two months later," he reminded her. Apparently this detail was too minor for them to continue discussing it, and she relaxed into his arms.

"...What did you mean earlier when you said I had a fear of the unknown?" she asked eventually, five minutes later, when he thought she might have fallen asleep. She startled him a little.

"Well, it's natural, isn't it? You're only twenty-five and you've never been married, and what with us eloping you didn't have time to mentally prepare yourself. We weren't even together," he said, "The institution of marriage is the unknown to you."

"Sorry, twenty-five?"

"Oh - yes - of course! I entirely forgot to remind you - I was going to do it on the TARDIS in the morning, it's your birthday. Has been for almost three hours. It's a shame we aren't on the ship because I baked a cake," he told her, and she didn't say anything, and he stammered, "Happy birthday, as well. Almost forgot that part. Yes, happy birthday, Clara."

"You baked me a cake?"

"Yes."

"You actually baked it? You didn't just buy one?"

"Of course I baked it, why would I buy one? It's carrot, as well, your favourite," he told her.

"Nobody's ever baked me a birthday cake before."

"I had twenty-five candles, all of them red - your favourite colour. And I wanted it to look like a leaf, originally, but I'm not the best sculptor so I settled for it being round, in the end," he continued, "I've always loved round things, anyway."

"You're the love of my life."

"And you mine, Mrs Oswald. Now, for the love of god, go to sleep." And for a few minutes, he thought she might. Until she swore quite loudly and then sat up. He thought to himself, what is it NOW?

"Here you are, telling me about how amazing you've been baking me a birthday cake – and I'm awful! I've got to be the worst wife in the universe!" she protested, "And I completely forgot about all that until now…"

"All 'what'? What have you been doing?" he sat up next to her. It was nearly three in the morning – wouldn't she just sleep already? She looked at him in the darkness with big, guilt-ridden eyes. She had done something then, most definitely.

"It was the day before last, when Rose was trying to kill me! Threw me into some girl's bedroom!" Clara said, "And it wasn't my fault because she kissed me, I swear, and only for a second, and I was so star-struck I couldn't even do anything about it until Rose punched the wall down and tried to strangle me."

"Sorry, what? Who have you been kissing?"

"Oh – Jane Austen."

"Jane Austen!?" he exclaimed.

"She was acting like she knew me! Like we were a thing! She saw my wedding ring and asked if I'd married her, for god's sake, and called herself my Jane. I haven't a clue what it's all about, promise! I'd never've done it, but she took me by surprise, and I was distracted and very out of it from being teleported everywhere. Then my nose bled on her bedsheets," Clara explained, "And Rose took us to the ISS. I'm so sorry, sweetheart! Really, though, it wasn't my fault!"

"Why is Jane Austen under the illusion you and her are a couple?" he asked, confused, "And since when was she gay?"

"Well she never did get married," Clara pointed out. He was more surprised than anything else. "She knew I was a time traveller. Said I told her, at some point, that girls could marry girls in the future, thought I was meeting her out of order. What if I am?"

"No, no, darling. My daughter was complaining to me about all this nonsense yesterday," he remembered. He was always on the phone to her now, since Martha was still keeping her under orders to remain in Hollowmire until her broken thumb was more sufficiently healed.

"Jenny was what?"

"Ravenwood has an ornate candelabra she stole from Jane Austen," he said, "Jenny was complaining about how she keeps it on the kitchen table and has it lit when they eat dinner. Jane Austen doesn't know you, she knows Ravenwood."

"Oh. Thank god. I was getting worried you and I were going to separate, or something," Clara said. She seemed legitimately relieved. "She was a good kisser, though."

"Well. You are never to read Pride and Prejudice again."