DAY 3,795

Regenderation: Part Two

Clara

She was woken up by a feeling of extreme cold on her face. It was probably one of the worst ways she had ever been woken up in her life so far, subtracting all the times she had found herself passed out in a stranger's bed with a hangover from hell. No feeling really matched to that of getting frostbite one your lips, nose and eyelids, though, like she had fallen head-first into the arctic sea. This is how Captain Oates must have felt, Clara thought. It didn't last forever, though, just until she woke, and she flailed around trying to stop it from happening. When she finally managed to open her eyes, she saw Adam Mitchell was standing over her with his arms crossed. Of course it was him; nobody else would try and freeze her head off.

"Why are you sleeping on the sofa out here?" he asked her sharply. She did not answer. Half because she couldn't, because she had to wait for the frostbite to heal on her face (seriously, it was worse than when Martha had set her tongue on fire), and half because she did not have a real answer for him. And there he was, so inherently good, all the time, and he was judging her as though he knew what this felt like. The only person who even slightly understood was Rose Tyler, but Rose was very hard to get a hold of those days. They only saw one another at pre-arranged events, like birthdays and christenings, and rarely spoke otherwise. "Clara, come on."

"I'm not in the mood," she muttered.

"You're lucky Oswin's still asleep," he said, pushing her legs off the sofa so that he could sit down next to her. They only had the one sofa now, for the four of them. "She'd really chew you out if she saw this, you know." Clara did know, and she had still left the Doctor in the middle of the night, once she was sure they were fast asleep. "Look, I know it must be hard that she doesn't remember-"

"It's not about her memory," Clara said quietly.

"Then what is it about?"

"He's dead."

"He's still there," Adam told her, "She'll remember eventually, we know she will because we met her in the future, and weren't you so obsessed with her then?"

"It was different. I still had him. And then at the wedding, when she told me not to take him for granted because one day… but I did. Because I just thought, one day, it would be Thirteen, but I never thought that the first time I met her would mean it had been the last time I meet him."

"They're the same-"

"They're not the same, though!" she shouted at him without meaning to. In her mood, she got off the sofa, throwing the blanket she had brought onto the floor, "You don't understand. What am I? Some sort of superhero? I watched the love of my life drown and you think that that's going to mean I'm alright now? Because they're back? If they were a human and we were normal and they'd been in a coma, would you just expect me to be fine? Probably bloody not. So don't come out here and talk down to me like I'm a criminal for still being in mourning." He just sat there and didn't look at her for a while.

"Do you want a cup of tea?"

"…Yes, thanks. Tea would be nice."

"I think you're too used to seeing them as separate people," he started saying again as he got up to go over to the kettle, "Because they were both there at the same time, and then living with multiple Doctors for so long and having them all still be individuals…"

"Please, psychoanalyse me further, unqualified boy-genius."

"Well you can't abandon her."

"I'm not abandoning her!"

"So sneaking out here in the middle of the night to avoid her isn't abandoning her? She's going to wake up without you there, what's she going to think?"

"She doesn't even remember who I am right now," Clara said coldly, picking up her dressing gown from the sofa, which she had been using as a blanket after she had crept out in the night to cry herself to sleep elsewhere.

"You can't start off this next stage of life resenting her for not having a penis."

"I am not resenting her for not having a penis!" Clara exclaimed, "I'm queer, thank you very much."

"I always got the impression that you liked her more than you liked him. Back when it was taking every fibre of your being to not have an affair."

"I wasn't that bad."

"You were so bad! Couldn't even trust you to be alone together. And now you could finally have her all to yourself and you're terrified."

"Oh my god – just because you've been shagging my sister for a decade doesn't mean you know what's going on in my head."

"Erm, you and your sister are the same person, and I've literally been living with you the whole time as well," Adam pointed out. In that moment, Clara hated him. She hated him because he was being calm and logical and showing her the flaws in her behaviour, but she didn't want to see the flaws in her behaviour, she wanted to crawl into a very small and very dark room and hide there with a carton of cigarettes and a case of pre-mixed cocktail cans and be completely alone. She did not want Adam Mitchell to be right, with his obnoxious philanthropism and do-gooding personality.

He wasn't destined to continue giving her his opinions, though, because his prediction that the Doctor was going to wake up without Clara by her side came true. When she saw the girl-Doctor walk through the doors into the living room looking lost and slightly hurt, she did regret what she had done. And Adam had been right, of course. Clara looked guiltily at the floor in silence.

"What's going on?" the Doctor asked.

"Nothing," said Clara. Adam did not dispute this. The Doctor looked at Adam for a while, and squinted.

"Adam, right? Adam Mitchell?"

"Welcome back," he said warmly. She kept staring at him, straining to remember.

"You're colour blind," she said, then she turned to Clara, "And you…. really like mayonnaise." It made Clara sad that she had left the Doctor when the Doctor was putting so much effort into trying to remember her life, when her life was really a series of intermittent tragedies she was constantly trying to put behind her. Now they were all going to be brought to the surface again. Still, Clara managed the tiniest smile when the Doctor told her about the mayonnaise. "I've… been thinking…"

"You should really just be resting and taking it easy," Clara said, and the Doctor shook her head and carried on.

"I think I should go and see Jenny."

"I-"

"That's a great idea," Adam interrupted Clara, "Seeing Jenny is bound to help jog some memories."

"Staying on the TARDIS where we can monitor her condition is a 'great idea,'" Clara snapped at him, "She shouldn't leave."

"She'll be fine, you can go with her. What's going to happen at the Cosmonaut?"

"Anything could happen there, it's full of lowlifes."

"It's full of refugees, Clara."

"I'm right here," the Doctor said loudly, "And I said I want to go and see my daughter who I barely remember anything about. I don't even know what she looks like, I don't remember why she doesn't live here, I don't-" she grew very frustrated very quickly, and Clara was resigned to go towards her and regretfully compromise and agree to her request.

"It's okay," Clara said softly, though she did not touch the Doctor, "We can go see Jenny. We can get breakfast there. You'll just have to get dressed first, alright?"

"I think you should wait until Jenny can advise her about what she should wear," Adam said, "I'd hate to see you pick clothes for her."

"I'm sure she can pick her own clothes," Clara said coldly. Then the Doctor laughed all of a sudden. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just… your bad dress sense. I see it now." Clara rolled her eyes and went to get her cup of tea from Adam Mitchell when he put it down on the table to indicate it was ready.

"I wish you would remember something good about me, like what an amazing lover I am," Clara said.

"Uh – what?" the Doctor asked. When Clara turned around, she saw the Doctor had gone bright pink.

"Or that I have cool superpowers. Come on, let's leave Adam, he's annoying me."

"Hey!" Adam argued. Clara stuck her tongue out at him when the Doctor wasn't looking, and steered her out of the room so that they could head towards the TARDIS wardrobe, which was somewhere Clara was very rarely allowed to go, and so she didn't really know where it was. She hoped the TARDIS would help them out, though.

"Why did you leave?" the Doctor asked her straight out. Clara stopped walking and struggled to think of what to say. But in the end, it was very easy to talk about this Doctor as some kind of interloper when she was not there. To her face, though? Her very attractive face with very sad eyes? It became a lot harder.

"I'm sorry," Clara muttered. "It just felt weird. It feels like I'm doing something wrong."

"What's doing something wrong?"

"I don't know. Just being in the same room as you, like… I'm betraying you, somehow. But not you, like… him. It feels like I'm betraying him. And you don't remember, so that makes it even more like you're a stranger, when I know logically you aren't at all and you know me very intimately, but I can't shake the feeling that I shouldn't even be talking to you. Adam was right, he said he reckons living with multiple Doctors and then girl-you coming back from the distant future makes you seem more separate than you actually are. It was hard to sleep in the same bed."

"It would've been nice if you'd been there… or, I don't know, left a note? I barely recognise the room as it is, or anything here, you're the only thing that I know now, and-" Clara hugged her. She had very obviously not been expecting that. "I remember you being shorter."

"You remember you being taller," Clara said softly. She got a strong aroma of cinnamon from the Doctor's new, blonde hair which made her feel safer than she had done for a while.

"How tall was I?"

"A little under six foot."

"Did I stoop to talk to you?"

"Sometimes."

"I already think it's nice not to stoop to talk to you. You smell like strawberry laces."

"Just my shampoo." Clara let her go, though the Doctor seemed reluctant. "Come on, then," Clara stepped back, "Wardrobe. I guess you're going to have to decide what your new look is. If you're quick about it you can do it before you remember what you in the future looked like."

"Oh, I can't do that," she said, beginning to walk. Clara suspected that if the Doctor did not think too much about it, she would be able to automatically find her way to different parts of the TARDIS, through muscle memory. "Boy clothes are one thing, but girl clothes? I don't know anything about girl clothes."

"Well, gender isn't actually real, you know, so I'm sure you can get away with wearing whatever takes your fancy."

"And what if typically-stereotyped 'girl' clothes do take my fancy, then?"

"Somehow, I really don't think they will…" Clara sighed, recalling the future Thirteen's 'ironically hipster' and 'postmodernist' look, which she had once described to Clara on one of the rare occasions they had actually interacted ten years ago as a 'combination of 1960s MOD, 1980s punk, and mid-2000s anti-establishment.' Which was a fancy way to say she was a no-good hipster who bought gimmicky 'sneakers', wore a lot of hoodies and sweat-shop manufactured skinny jeans which were ripped at the knees and bleached to look faded just moments before they hit the shop floor. Clara had called her a hypocrite, and the Doctor had said she was being 'ironic.' And it seemed like this Doctor's decision to look like a comically mass-produced manic pixie dream girl archetype was a base factor of her entire personality, because lo and behold, it was that fateful day that she decided Converse with the Stars & Stripes on them would look really trendy.

"Oh my god, you actually wear these? Like people wear them? Regularly?"

"Everyone wears them, they're skinny jeans," Clara said, "Although someone told me a rumour that flares are coming back into fashion."

"Don't they cut off your circulation?"

"That's how you know they fit," Clara told her. She felt like she was prying by watching the Doctor try on clothes in a bunch of very large mirrors, and so tried to avert her eyes as much as she could.

"What about bras? How do you put them on? Why are there so many names for things? It's confusing."

"There are sociological studies that if consumers get bamboozled they're likely to spend more money," Clara told her, "That's why supermarkets are laid out in such a weird way. It's like, a conspiracy."

"Did Sally Sparrow tell you that?"

"Who's Sally Sparrow?" Clara asked quickly.

"She's…" the Doctor paused and turned to look at Clara with her jeans only pulled up to her knees and a very unusual hat on her head, which Clara was sure was an antique she had probably stolen from a Cavalier during the English Civil War.

"Nice of you to make fun of Sally out of habit."

"I don't know why I said that."

"Sally's a nutcase, end of story," Clara said, "She's drunk on conspiracy theories and she keeps a doomsday supply of toilet roll in her cellar."

"Huh… I'm not sure about this hat."

"I don't think anyone is sure about that hat."

"What about a top hat?"

"Do you need a hat?"

"What if it rains? How will I stop my hair from getting wet? That's a thing girls worry about, right, they don't want their hair to get wet?"

"I think a lot of people don't want their hair to get wet. What's with the gender stereotypes?"

"I'm very confused. The stereotypes are helping me make sense of all this stuff and how the world perceives me now. Like, do I have to hide my ankles in public?"

"No! Show your sexy ankles off to the world."

"Maybe I should forget the whole thing and wear a dress, I've always wanted to wear dresses."

"A dress might be a bit intense for your first trip out."

"Because of my ankles?"

"No, not because of… why do you think this about ankles?"

"What about a hood. Maybe I should get something with a hood. That seems sensible."

"I – sure. Whatever you like." Clara felt like a useless boyfriend in a department store who sat playing games on his phone for hours while sitting on the chairs outside the changing rooms and pretending to pay attention to the outfit changes of his significant other. She was quite bored, to put it simply.

"What about a scarf?"

"Can't have a scarf, scarf's Jenny's thing."

"You're gonna have to show me how makeup works, too."

"God, really?"

"Well… I mean…"

"Yep. Sure. Fine. Whatever you want. You can be whatever you want to be. I just hope you work out what you want to be quite quickly, because I really want some breakfast…"