AN: I was re-reading my first draft of this and it's actually so old that Clara refers to Jack as the Doctor's son-in-law – which means it comes from before I even had the idea for Clarenny or decided that Jack and Jenny would break up.

DAY 3,794

Regenderation: Part One

Clara

"You – are – so – stupid!" Clara Oswald shrieked at the green-coloured, algae-stricken mass lying in the foetal position on the glass floor of the console room. She beat her fists uselessly on the cold floor between every word, kneeling there and waiting for the bloated corpse to decide it wanted to wake up. She could just about hear the rattles of its dying breaths brought back to it again, but that was all. It hardly moved. If it wasn't for the TARDIS scanners, she would be sobbing with twice as much grief as she had been for the last two weeks. She was still crying as she looked at the pitiful mess in front of her, which did not move, and she put her head in her hands and tried to suppress her emotions. "You're an idiot. Wake up. Wake up so I can tell you you're an idiot." No sign of movement from it. "Please," Clara begged through tears, "please wake up, sweetheart…"

It shouldn't surprise her. What did she expect from a rotten body that had been fished out of the Irish Sea after two weeks submerged in the icy waters? The tweed suit was tearing at the seams, lumpy and covered in seaweed and limpets. She would not know how to manage with this if she had not been given the gift, ten years ago, of seeing into the future to know that this was not the end for her Time Lord. That there were at least three more weddings for them. She had always known, though, that she would have to say goodbye one day, but she had always thought that… she would be able to have a goodbye. Instead she had seen her husband sucked underneath grey waves, and had been laughing and finding it rather amusing, if reckless, and then… he had not come back up again. He had disappeared. The Eleventh Doctor had been pulled under the water, just like that, and she had not even been given a chance to savour their last few moments together.

It made a sound. A small, tiny sound, like somebody sighing in their sleep, but it made Clara pause and look up again and fix her eyes on the waterlogged bit of refuse they had been very lucky to rescue. She did not give a second thought to the sea-sludge and the smell as she leant over to urgently shake what she thought was the shoulder of this very small thing, who was shrunken in the ruined clothes of her dead husband, and it rolled over and heaved very violently in Clara's general direction, regurgitating a gallon of unpleasant sea water and silt onto the glass floor. Clara jumped away from the mess and stared at this coughing creature who had nearly vomited scum onto her. Awkwardly she stood up and went around to the other side so that she may rub its back, which made the creature sick again.

"You need to get it all up," she advised quietly, "You'll feel better. It can't be good having all that inside you." She didn't know if she was heard or listened to, but the creature heaved up enough water to fill a lake onto the TARDIS floor, and Clara hoped she wasn't going to get it in the neck from the spaceship later. Hopefully the TARDIS cared more about the Doctor's wellbeing than the mess. Clara did not speak again until after there had been a break of a few minutes since the last bout of puke. The smell in that room was obscene. "Is that everything?"

Finally, a voice: "Where am I?" it was female, and accented, and it had been many long years since Clara had last heard this voice. She had nearly forgotten what it sounded like, and it gave her the motivation to carry on helping the person she now found herself caring for.

"On the TARDIS."

"The what? Who are you?"

"Okay. You've been through a lot right now, but you have to trust me. I'm…" she took a deep breath and proceeded, "I'm your wife. I'm Clara. We've been married for ten years. You've just been through a… near-death experience. Do you understand? You almost died, and now you can't remember anything, but you're going to get your memory back. I know you will."

"Who am I?"

"You're the Doctor."

"Doctor who?"

"Exactly. Look, I can't imagine what this is like, and I didn't know it would be… you just, you need to trust me."

"What's that smell?"

"That's you. You stink. You drowned. You've been underwater for two weeks, you're lucky to have survived. But listen to me, you need to come with me and have a shower."

"N-no water-"

"No, you need to. You'll feel better. It'll be clean, warm water, and I'll be there, I'm not going to leave you," Clara said firmly. She wanted to leave her. She did not think in a million years that when this happened she would feel so inherently averse to the transition, and it appalled her that she did, but she could not leave this vulnerable person alone. "Please trust me, sweetheart. I'm only going to do what's best."

It was a depressing affair. She may have once daydreamed about what lay beneath the clothes of Thirteen, but now having to help this new Doctor have a shower because she was so full of amnesia she could not remember how to do anything for herself was not how Clara's sordid imaginings had ended up. She supposed she had to expect something like this when she married somebody so old, though. At least it was still one step above a sponge bath, and it was probably good to remove the illusion of mystery around the Doctor's new body. It would stop her from drooling, at least.

Nearly an hour later they were seated in the living room, which had changed in the last decade to be much smaller as people moved out. It was just the four of them now, the four of them and Jonesy Two, the floating tentacle cat, but anything out of the ordinary had been removed by Adam and Oswin on order of Clara, who had slipped out of the Doctor's company for just long enough to text and tell them to get rid of anything over-stimulating. Very little had been said between them, it had just been Clara comforting her ever since they dragged her out of the sea. They sat at the table, large enough for eight but rarely used for that many, Clara having just made hot chocolate for them both.

"So… we're married?" the creature asked.

"Yeah."

"I'm married… to you?" Clara nodded. "How did I manage that?"

"I'm sure the memories will come back to you if you give them time. Although, actually, we were drunk, so they probably won't… we, um, eloped. Okay, how much do you remember? About anything? Over all?"

"I remember the taste of this hot chocolate, it's familiar."

"I mean about, like, you."

"I don't know, I… I remember this planet, with glass domes and an orange sky…"

"Gallifrey. That's good, you remember Gallifrey," Clara said.

"Maybe going there would help with the memory stuff?" she suggested. Clara's heart sank. How much devastating news was she going to have to deliver now? How many tragedies had the Doctor seen that she now did not recall?

"Gallifrey's gone, sweetheart," she said softly, "It's been gone for a few hundred years. There was a war, the Time War, against the Daleks." Was the Doctor going to have to grieve for her entire species for a second time? It made Clara's heart ache to think about it.

"But the Time Lords, they…"

"They're not here anymore. Except the Master, they're still kicking about plotting," Clara said, "But there's always Jenny. Do you remember Jenny?"

"My daughter," she realised, "How do I forget these things? My whole planet, my own daughter…"

"You're lucky you're not worse off, being without oxygen for so long. It wouldn't surprise me if we had to teach you how to walk and talk again. But it's going to be alright, do you remember? Ten years ago? Where you came back, from the future, to the TARDIS for a while? But you won't have been you, you'll have been…" Clara couldn't finish the sentence. "I know you'll be alright, the TARDIS scanners showed the brain damage is healing, but it might scar."

"Scar?"

"Until the next time you regenerate," Clara said. The Doctor paused. "You remember regenerations? What they are?"

"Yeah, I… but, wait. Wait, wait, wait… there's something different this time, like I've changed more than… oh my god. Oh my god. Am I-?"

"A girl?"

"An American?"

"Oh. I-"

"Obviously I've figured out by now that I'm a girl, c'mon. I'm not blind. Kind of a hot one, too."

"I'm not going to disagree."

"But an American? Maybe if I do a fake English accent for long enough it'll stick…"

"How would you decide which English accent to use, though? There are so many." The Doctor didn't reply to that, she sighed and grew very quiet again.

"All of them gone…"

"You can rebuild them," Clara said, "There's always Mattie."

"Mattie…"

"Smith-Jones." The Doctor looked at her blankly. "You remember? She's nine now? Mickey and Martha had a daughter? Matilda?"

"Mickey Smith and Martha Jones!? Together!? Who'd have seen that coming…"

"They've been together for fifteen years. And then she got pregnant and they have Matilda who we've only met once because they're very protective of her. Do you not remember anything about her? She's very unusual." The Doctor shrugged. "Oh, it's crazy, something to do with the Manifest virus and the time vortex getting twisted in her genetics. She's ageing incredibly slowly. She's only learnt how to walk just recently. But, hey, you remembered who Mickey and Martha are. That's a good sign. And you remembered, like, what America is."

"I don't remember a lot about you. Shouldn't I remember you first? If you're my wife?"

"I am your wife, but you're over a thousand years old. You've known Mickey and Martha for three centuries and me for a decade. And it'll come back eventually. I know it'll come back." The Doctor crossed her arms and slouched down on the table top.

"Why did I drown?"

"You tried to go after these shark aliens that were killing people. Jumped into the sea, in Belfast. Do you remember?"

"No."

"I don't want to talk about that. Let's just talk about what else you remember. The Ponds, Amy and Rory, do you remember them?"

"Uh… I…"

"It's fine if you don't."

"Tell me about you."

"You know everything about me."

"Are we in love?"

Clara answered somewhat awkwardly, "Yes." She felt like she was lying, or doing something wrong. Betraying her husband. She supposed it was a residual feeling from her borderline-affair a decade ago, but now there was no jealous man in the back of her mind. There was just this woman.

"I trust you," she said, "It's strange. Because I don't remember you. But it's easy to be here. What if I never remember you? What if I was just a good liar before?"

"Well. If you never remember us falling in love, I suppose I'll just have to get you to fall in love with me all over again."

"I can't imagine that would be very hard." She took a deep breath and thought for a while before speaking again, concentrating quite hard on whatever was in her head. Clara sat by her side, feeling more empty than anything else. "Alright. I'm a Time Lord. I'm called the Doctor. I'm from Gallifrey. I'm a thousand years old-"

"Twelve-hundred years old," Clara corrected. She nodded.

"Twelve-hundred years old. I'm the only one left, but there's Jenny, my daughter, and Matilda Smith-Jones, but she's a toddler. And you're Clara, you're my wife. And I'm American."

"And a girl."

"Why are you so hung up about me being a girl?"

"I just… like girls. It's not a crime. Not in this decade, anyway. Do you remember anything else about me? Do you remember my sister?"

"You have a sister?"

"It's complicated."

"My head hurts."

"Yeah, that'll happen…" Clara sighed.

"Tell me about you, though," the Doctor persisted. Clara couldn't blame her for asking; if she had woken up with amnesia and had a strange woman she had never met telling her she was her wife, she would want to know things about the woman, too.

"I'm Clara. Clara Oswald. I was born on November 23rd, 1988, in Blackpool, England. On planet Earth. Right now I'm about thirty-five, but I haven't aged for a decade because I have a cloud of nanogenes to keep me young."

"That's just facts," said the Doctor.

"Well, what do you want to know?"

"I don't know… just something real, about you. About us."

"Okay…" Clara had to stop and think. "My dad's always hated you but every time we visit him you make sure to bring the fanciest bottle of wine or whiskey to try and win him over." The Doctor just looked at her and waited for her to continue. "Erm… I can't cook. I'm rubbish at cooking. Can't even do toast, I set the toaster on fire, you always complain about having to cook for me but you do it anyway. But I make really good drinks. Uh… I smoke, and you hate it, and you make me smoke e-cigarettes on the ship but while you've been… away… I've been smoking real ones."

"Something more than that, though."

"You call me 'Coo.'"

"Why do I do that?"

"Because it's engraved inside your wedding ring because you thought that's what my initials were, because you thought I had a middle name when I don't," Clara said. The Doctor looked down at her hands then, but there was no wedding ring to be found on either of them. "…Maybe it slipped off when you were in the sea…"

"No. No, I… I remember that, I remember coo… hold on… there's this old party trick I used to be able to-" she stopped dead in the middle of her sentence and paused, Clara watching her very carefully, and then she jerked and made a noise like she was trying to suppress a violent burp. Clara only realised what was going on in the nick of time, and moved her hands and her hot chocolate off the table as the Doctor retched again and sicked up a last little dribble of sea water onto the table, and coughed until something else came out, too. Something mucky and circular.

"What is that? No, don't touch-" the Doctor didn't listen, because she did touch it, she picked it up and then took it out of the pool of semi-translucent fluid over to the sink and turned on the faucet to rinse it. Clara didn't think she had ever seen so much vomit in one night, and that was saying something, because she'd been out clubbing in Manchester on New Year's Eve before. The Doctor washed the object and then dried it with the nearest tea towel before bringing it back over to hold it under the light properly.

"It does say 'coo'…"

"That's your wedding ring?" Clara asked. The Doctor held it out to her. "I'd rather not touch it, thanks."

"I washed it. And I swallowed it, I remember, because I knew… I knew that I was going to die, and I remembered… I didn't want to lose it, so I swallowed it when I had to open my mouth to let the water in anyway."

"You spent your last breath of air making sure your wedding ring would be safe?"

"I guess so. We must be really in love, then. If I did that." Clara watched her slide the ring onto her finger, where it hung, comedically large. So that was the last meaningful thing the Eleventh Doctor had done for her, he had remembered he was going to change into a girl with much smaller fingers, had realised he was at risk of losing his wedding ring, and had clung onto it most dearly. Clara felt tears in her eyes, but the new Doctor was still looking at the ring. She cleared her throat and fought them off.

"We'll get it adjusted," Clara told her, "Don't worry." The Doctor closed her palm tightly around the ring, like it was the only tether she had to who she had been before. "Sweetheart, you're going to be okay. Like I said, you're already lucky, and at least you're remembering some stuff, yeah? Like me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right, at least I am…" she sat back down, the vomit on the table between them. It was going to start trickling over the edge in a moment; Clara kept a very close eye on it. "Your sister is called Oswin."

"She is."

"And I thought that was your middle name."

"Yeah."

"And she's… got a husband?"

"A boyfriend," Clara said, "They're not married. Every time he proposes she says no."

"What about Jenny? Where's Jenny?"

"Jenny moved away a long time ago," Clara said, "Because she's got that job with the police now, you remember? And they have their hotel?"

"They have their what?"

"Just – never mind. We'll go and visit Jenny, okay? As soon as we can. She'll want to remind you of all this stuff herself, don't you think? You don't want to hear it second hand from me. I don't even really know the details. Maybe you should go to bed, though, for the time being. You should go to bed, try and sleep, you'll feel better to get some rest. Then in the morning Adam will make us breakfast."

"Oswin's… boyfriend. Not husband."

"Yeah, him. And we'll wait until you're okay and then we'll go do visits and get the ring adjusted and… all sorts of stuff."

But when Clara said they would wait until the Doctor was okay, she actually meant they would wait until she was okay, because Clara was most certainly not okay. Not with any of this. Because her husband had still died. So she lied to the new Doctor and tried to shuttle her towards their bedroom as quickly as she could.