Neutron Star Collison
Thirteen
"I gotta say, Coo, this is a real stroke of genius," Thirteen said. Clara smiled and sipped some of her wine. They were having dinner together, a real dinner, a dinner cooked by Strax as part of his gratitude to the Doctor for letting him actually blow something up for once. And then Clara had convinced Jenny Flint and Madame Vastra to actually go out to dinner somewhere, to whatever sort of place people like them could go out for dinner. With the case now solved, the throes of Silurian mating season were making a slow but sure return, and it hadn't taken much to convince them that they most definitely needed some alone time in the VIP lounge of whatever up-market London club Vastra had contacts in. And then the Doctor had told Strax to go and find someone selling tartan paint. Finding someone who sold any paint would be tricky enough at that time of night, let alone tartan paint, which did not exist.
"It just struck me earlier that we have some stuff to celebrate," Clara said. It wasn't a very complicated dinner, it was just roast beef, but Thirteen was always grateful for not having to cook. Considering she always had to cook everything because Clara was useless. "Like, Moore making me the head of English! Because we kept saying we'd go out somewhere but I kept putting it off because I was busy with all this extra marking. And, also, the celebration of us not having any work to do at the moment. And of me finishing my poem." She had been obsessing over that poem non-stop in any shred of downtime she got, either writing or smoking or doing both at the same time. "And you saving the world, again."
"Sure," said the Doctor softly, "I'll do a toast then? To us: for being so damn amazing." She lifted her own glass of wine, which she only had to be symbolic because she really did think wine was disgusting and came from the rear-end of Satan himself (and she had met Satan himself). She was more interested in her cup of tea she had on the other side of her plate than the white wine. Still, though, the glasses chinked, and Clara laughed and had another sip. "Don't get too drunk now."
"No promises," said Clara. "I still can't believe you defeated an alien invasion with Cyndi Lauper."
"I'm in my element doing all that stuff. I kind of miss it."
"I know you do," Clara sighed, acknowledging this difference between them, something which always had to be validated now in their marriage. The happiness of the other was the ultimate priority, and even if she did miss the TARDIS and the adventure, she still had it sometimes. Like now, for instance. But if she didn't have Clara she wouldn't ever have Clara, and she would miss her wife a whole lot more than her spaceship. And besides, having possession of the TARDIS was good for her daughter; Jenny was enjoying herself, coming into her own. "Oh, we still haven't talked about the tampon thing."
"I feel a world away from that freaking tampon thing," Thirteen grumbled, "And didn't you renege your offer of helping me?"
"That was a metaphorical reneging," Clara said, "I didn't mean it. Anyway, I reckon you ought to make them clean the canteen after lunch every day for a week, during tutor time. If they were throwing tampons about and making a mess it's only right they should see what it's like from the other side, cleaning it up. I'd say make them do the toilets, but that would require trusting Rita with bottles of bleach and a dirty toilet brush."
"Y'know, Coo," the Doctor said, taking her hand and smiling sweetly, sitting next to her at Vastra's circular dining table, "This is why they all say you're too strict."
"Yeah, and then we get home and it switches, and you're all – 'Can you please not stick knives in the toaster, Clara?' and, 'Stop dropping toast in the bath, Clara,' and, 'Why do the bedsheets smell like mayonnaise, Clara?'"
"Okay, well clearly you've had too much wine already."
"Have not," Clara said, drinking more of it and flinching when she did because she had a bit too much in the one mouthful.
"They're cleaning the canteen, then?"
"Yeah."
"And you'll supervise?"
"Oh, no way. You'll do it. Do you want any of them to ever respect your authority? Because you can't always be the good guy in that case," Clara said, "I'll back you up but it's your incident, okay? Plus, you already said I'd be the one to call their parents. I'm not having you talk to anyone's parents; you just start going on about how proud you are of Jenny for whatever it is she's done that week."
"I'm just very proud of my daughter!" the Doctor protested. Clara laughed, but didn't say anything else. Clara was just teasing her, she knew that, there was no need to go getting so defensive. "If we had a kid what do you think they'd be like? I never thought about it much, but hanging around a high school all day makes you wonder, you know? Like, the pair of us, if we had offspring together somehow."
"We don't have the time or the money for any offspring, not since you're being so insistent about the garden furniture," Clara said, because the Doctor was constantly going on that they needed a hammock and one of those large swings you could lounge around in. Even though Clara pointed out that it would have to be covered or moved every time it rained, and since they lived in England, that was all the time. "Plus, we need to think about the car. We're going to have to buy a new one."
"Buy a new one? Do we have the money?"
"I don't think us having the money is important, we need one, and I'm not having you steal one and I'll feel guilty trying to get a new one off Adam. You know how he gets about his cars."
"Oh, Coo, pretty please can't we get the Batmobile? Or that DeLorean – you know I love that DeLorean. How about we take the TARDIS and go get a real DeLorean back when they were still being made?"
"No, it'll be expensive. You either get it before Back to the Future when it's new, or after Back to the Future when it's popular, or way after Back to the Future when it's rare and a collectible," Clara said, "Look, don't worry about that, I'll… I don't know. We must have savings, right? Do we? We don't buy much."
"You buy a lot of books, Clara."
"My books don't add up to the cost of a car," Clara said, "We'll just get some used three-door Fiat or something. Although I've always wanted a Mini Cooper, Esther's was always so cute when she still had that before it crapped out."
"Live your dreams, darling," the Doctor said a little absently. She prodded her broccoli, vacant, while Clara cut up her piece of completely gravy-drowned beef and chewed it.
She frowned at the Doctor, chewed, then asked with a full mouth, "What's up?"
"No, I'm just… still kind of thinking about our imaginary kid. Is that a sensitive topic or something, though?" she asked. Clara laughed slightly and shook her head, still eating. She was a very big fan of anything if it had been roasted and covered in gravy. The Doctor thought her wife might eat a poo if it had been roasted and covered in gravy and she wouldn't even know the difference, apart from it being a bit whiffy. "Humour me. What d'you think they'd be like?"
"I dunno – bookish? A nerd? Or they'd rebel against that and be like me when I was a teenager and they'd smoke and drink and sleep around," Clara shrugged, "Really, it could go either way – but I turned out alright. I think. I hope… I did, didn't I?"
"Of course, you're the head of the English department at a moderately-levelled kind-of-middle-class secondary school," the Doctor said, and Clara frowned, "Okay, first of all, that's still a good thing, but I was joking if you're that worried. You definitely 'turned out alright' – why would I disagree? I married you, I'm not going to tell you I think you're a mess."
"You tell me you think I'm a mess all the time!"
"I do think you're a mess, but that's not what I'm saying-"
"That's literally what you just said-"
"Shh! Talking. Anyway. You're also a renowned poet and you have three degrees and you keep talking about how you want to do a PhD-"
"I can't do a PhD though, can I? Because then we'd both be 'Dr Oswald.' Even if I would love to be able to say I'm a doctor, because I'd be a real doctor, not like you. Doctor."
"Alright, I don't think having a PhD in niche literature counts as being a 'real doctor.'"
"I would be a doctor! You haven't got any PhDs."
"I have an honorary PhD!"
"Since when?"
"Pfft, since before I threw my whole life away marrying a human. My career prospects, and stuff." Clara snort-laughed.
"Since when did you have career prospects!?"
"I did! You ruined all of them. I could have had a glowing career, in… the radio, or something."
"And you need a PhD for that, do you?"
"Yeah, a doctorate in… idle chitchat. Like we're doing now. You can't prove that I don't have an honorary degree in chitchat and small-talk," the Doctor said.
"Degrees in small-talk don't exist."
"Not in your backwards century, maybe…"
"Oi," Clara said, though she was laughing. The Doctor was trying not to laugh and pretend she was actually offended by the route the conversation had taken, but she was not. Not remotely. Besides, Clara was right, she didn't have a degree in small-talk. Though she was sure she had an honorary PhD in something… "I think we would have a nice kid. I think we do, you've got Jenny, she's wonderful. And Oswin's… Oswin." The Doctor looked at her. "You know what I mean. She's my whole world, but she's a bit… shouldn't let her talk to children or pensioners. Or people with nervous dispositions. Or bowel problems, after that incident with the…"
"Well we don't talk about that, Clara."
"No…"
"I still see the mess sometimes in my nightmares." Clara ate another piece of broccoli, but pulled a face when she did, remembering the same spine-chilling thing that the Doctor was. When she finally swallowed it along with some more wine, the pair of them still utterly alone in 13, Paternoster Row in the dark dining room with its dim candles and gas lamps, she changed the subject.
"Anyway. Don't you want to know what I've been toiling over for the last few days?"
"Hmm? Oh, your poem?"
"It's not just 'my poem' – it's that one poem. I finally wrote it. You know?"
"You mean 'Super-Nova'? You wrote it?" Thirteen asked it. They knew this poem by name alone, because it was one of the most famous 'C.O. Smith' poems, and it had really been a chore sometimes getting Clara to avoid it so that she could someday write it unaided.
"Well this is the best time to write it, it's not going to be published anywhere until the 1960s, and I've got no phone so I can't give in and google it," Clara shrugged, "But it's not very long, I thought it would end up being some sort of epic – like 'The Waste Land.'"
"Oh, god, that's the last thing we need. Two versions of 'The Waste Land.' What's this poem about then, anyway?"
"You, obviously. I'll do it, hold on… haven't memorised it…" Clara said, getting out of her chair to go into the living room and get her notebook from wherever she had stashed it. While she was gone the Doctor stole two of her roast potatoes and shoved them into her mouth; they practically dissolved on her tongue they were that soaked with gravy. Clara came back into the room with her notebook and opened her mouth to speak, but then looked at her plate. "Didn't I have more potatoes?" Thirteen coughed.
Garbled, she managed a meek, "No."
"You little… you know I value roast potatoes more than my marriage," Clara told her sharply.
"I'll make it up to you," she said sweetly, a little sultrily, and Clara paused and knew exactly what that meant, so she did not press it. "Poem?"
"Oh, right," Clara cleared her throat, then added, "Don't laugh."
"I never laugh at your poems."
"Well… okay:
"The twinkle in your eyes burns with the ghostly starlight of dead worlds,
Reanimated in a smile etched from the flotsam of cataclysms and miracles
Blasted through space by blinding
Rapturous chaos;
Into our old cotton sheets sprinkled with coffee stains and crumbs.
"The void underneath your skin flows with celestial oceans and depths,
Whispers on the misty rime evaporating into the phosphorescent aether,
Transient, dispersed and floating
Cloud-like;
Into the steam of the shower cubicle while you shampoo your hair.
"A pulsation of brightness in the way you speak is a ripple of beautiful catastrophe,
Tearing through lightyears and eons to embellish the darkness with your touch,
Iridescent handprints dancing
In moonlight;
While you tap your fingers idly on the soft leather of our armchair.
"Light is coupled with explosions, the heat of a million suns on the fringe of reality,
Deafening orchestral screeching in the noiseless empty of colourful space,
Debris chased by sonic booms in
Cacophonous vacuums;
And you hum to yourself while looking for your pair of broken glasses.
"Fluorescent streams of glowing, spectral viscera bleed from its fractures,
Broken planetoids boiling in the wake of this spectacular monstrosity,
Orbital obliteration heralds a new age
Of nebulas;
And again you trip over the same patch of torn carpet on the stairs.
"Daydreaming will make photographs from blank constellations,
Paintings in the births and deaths of galactic paradises unseen,
Still unchronicled and invisible,
Polar opposites;
Today you are wearing odd socks because you know it bothers me.
"The zenith in the stratosphere high above is aflame and beating,
Great gaseous cosmonaut lumps burst apart at their hazy intangible seams,
Their dissolution swims into focus,
Planetary imprints;
You keep a yellowing, old polaroid of us smiling together under your pillow.
"New life is formed by implosions and old life rots inside bright cores,
A bubble of invention, a crucible, nuclear physics for catalysts,
Runaway destructions and
Stardust, spilling
Like waterfalls out of time and rising from the lachrymose ashes are
Children of the stars, grown from the shreds of this atomic residue,
The essence of these distant cosmic exits catapulting creation
And you-
"You are in my thoughts and my arms and you smell like the night sky,
Laughing and searching and fumbling and forgetting do laundry
And sleeping and singing
We spiral;
Flung out of space together and your eyes are each a supernova of their own."
During the course of this reading Clara, because she always got nervous and blushed a lot when she showcased these fresh, new-born poems, still covered in blood and guts and unwashed and ready to be cleaned up and dressed, had sat back down in her chair. Thirteen had taken her hand maybe halfway through because she stammered more than once (adorable) and as soon as the Doctor was sure it was finished she leant in to kiss her, with her hand on Clara's cheek.
"How could anyone ever ask for a better wife than you?" she said.
"You're too nice. Honestly, you're meant to tell me which bits are bad."
"Aw, I don't think any of it's bad, wifey." Clara was bright red, and she closed her little notebook now and left it on the table. "You're too hard on yourself, C.O. Smith – I loved every word, just like I love everything about you and I wish I could write a poem for you that would actually be impressive."
"Too kind."
"No such thing! Now. I'm thinking there's still a while before Jenny and Vastra get back, and now that we've got some time to kill before my Jenny comes to pick us up, we might maybe…?" she began her suggestive sentence, not really needing to finish it.
"Doctor, you read my mind."
And it was just at the moment that their lips were going to touch again that they both froze at the dinner table, because they heard the whirring, thrumming sound of the TARDIS outside and were drawn out of their hazy, love-induced stupor by cold, hard reality. The reality that they were about to return to their domestic life of marking exams and going to staff meetings and taking the bins out and making sure the milk was in date and telling off teenage girls for throwing tampons around the dining hall, a life where there was no room for subliminally encoded Cyndi Lauper vinyls or Stepford Wives suffragettes or female reptilian private detectives or the thieving feminist scoundrel Emmeline Pankhurst.
Thirteen sighed, "I guess all good things must come to an end."
"Oh, don't think that," Clara whispered, "We've still got a good five seconds before anyone knocks on the door." And Clara Oswald kissed her Doctor.
AN: And yes I did have to write that whole bloody poem and it was not that great because I am not a poet to be completely honest.