DAY 164

The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives

Clara

Clara sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the oven, watching the slow progress of her latest attempt to make a soufflé through the glass door. The whole of Nerve Centre was empty. It was the afternoon, and Adam Mitchell and Oswin hadn't come out of their rooms all day, still recovering from the trauma of having to interact with other people for an extended length of time yesterday. She had the dregs of a cup of tea sitting on the floor next to her and was still in her pyjamas; she'd showered in the morning but hadn't felt like getting dressed.

The ship jerked a little and she watched the ceramic souffle dish slide from the middle of the oven to the side. Once the TARDIS was steady again, she moved it back to the middle with telekinesis. The doors opened and the Eleventh Doctor came bounding into the room like a coiled spring.

"Well! That's everything… Clara?" he looked around.

"I'm down here," she called.

"In the kitchen? Are you allowed in the kitchen?" he asked, wandering over. She smiled at him, and he put his hands in his pockets and leant down to squint at the oven. "What are you making?"

"A soufflé," she said.

"Really?" he frowned, "How long has it been in there for?"

"Half an hour."

"Half an hour? It should have risen by now, Coo," he told her, then he nudged her out of the way and opened the oven, using a tea towel to take it out. It was a burned husk stuck to the bottom of the ramekin. "What did you put in here, exactly?" It was smoking a little.

"The usual," she said defensively.

"Which is what?"

"You know. Eggs, sugar, chocolate."

"And flour?"

"Sorry?"

"Flour."

"…I thought I was forgetting something…" she mumbled sheepishly. He sighed but still smiled at her, setting her burned, destroyed soufflé down on the side.

"Where's your recipe? I'll make you another one. Only I'll do it properly." He helped her and her empty mug to her feet, then located the recipe: a laminated, yellowing piece of paper.

"It's my mum's. She always used to say, 'the soufflé isn't the soufflé, the soufflé is the recipe.'"

"Or, in your case, the soufflé is a big lump of charcoal," he jibed, pulling out mixing bowls and whisks and other baking paraphernalia. It struck Clara that they would soon be stripping the cupboards of their high volume of crockery; twenty people weren't going to gather around for breakfast all at once. Not anymore. She leant on the back of the counter and looked at the empty room.

"This room always seemed so much smaller when it was full," she said. Now the unoccupied chairs, tables and sofas were an unruly void. Almost unsightly. He fumbled with his ingredients. "Is that everyone gone, then?"

"I just left the Ponds. Do you know, their flat doesn't even have a bedroom? Imagine leaving the TARDIS to live in a flat without a bedroom… I told them I'd visit at every opportunity. Amy made me promise not to start isolating myself again without them… you know, like I was when we met."

"When you spent god knows how long pretending to be a monk?"

"And living on a cloud."

"I'm sure Amy will start having a go at me if you don't visit for too long, anyway," said Clara. "You never know, maybe they'll get bored and decide they want to come back."

"And have to see you every day? Not likely. Imagine the horror of putting up with you constantly."

"Ha, ha. I'm serious, though. It's… sad. Without everybody. How did you spend so many years on your own in here? It'd drive me mad."

"Who says I'm not mad already?"

"…Point taken." She crossed her arms. "I was baking a soufflé that first day. Trying to, at least."

"First day of what?"

"When the Crash happened," she elaborated, "I was in that poxy little kitchen you used to have-"

"I wasn't about to let you loose in the nice kitchen."

"-reading – god, what was it now?" She thought for a few seconds, tapping her foot. "…something by Austen. I can't remember what it was now. But I was in there, reading, waiting for my soufflé to cook, and then wham," she clapped her hands, "Everything changed. My life got flipped turned upside down." He shot her a glare and she smirked.

"You're incorrigible. If I'd known how embarrassing you were when the Crash happened, mark my words, I never would have married you." She laughed.

"It is weird to think about, though. And it was only six months ago. Six months that feel like a lifetime."

"To me, it's more like blinking. I've blinked, and suddenly I have a new wife."

"You think that's bad? I've got a sister, a twin. At least we can get divorced if we get sick of each other, I can't divorce Oswin."

"You could try?" He was whisking. She sighed and did not respond, sinking back into the ocean of feelings she was having. "Are you going to be alright?"

"I'm fine, just… it's strange. There's so much space now."

"I'll redecorate, if you like? Make it smaller, cosier, for the five of us."

"Five of us…" she echoed. Herself, the Doctor, Adam, Oswin, and Nios. "We're like a real family. Nearly."

"We're all family, Clara," he said firmly, "And we'll be seeing them for Christmas in two weeks. We'll have to go shopping again. Do you remember when we had Christmas in summer? That was a catastrophe."

"Mm… but I know people better now, they might be expecting real presents, not just chocolate."

"No, no; everyone likes chocolate. This soufflé is going to be full of chocolate when I'm finished with it, you mark my words. Besides, we're in charge of the pigs in blankets and the gravy, the most important things of all."

"Not the turkey?"

"Jenny's doing the turkey. After what she pulled off at the wedding yesterday, cooking two turkeys to feed twenty people should be easy enough. Oh, and – I've been up all night cobbling together a bedroom, for Nios. Showed her around before everybody else woke up."

"Are you going to delete everybody else's rooms?"

"I never delete anything; it all gets archived. But, yes, I suppose so. Do you think we'll start having meals together?"

"We do."

"No, all of us, not just you and me. We started eating in our room, and so did Adam and Oswin. But we could change that, have a truly communal space now."

"Maybe. Maybe we could do something today? Have dinner?" she suggested, "Even Nios, if she wants. Or does she have another date? Oswin told me she's finally made things official with Dr Cohen."

"Yes, so I heard. I'm very happy for her, even if we've never really had a conversation. That will change, I'm sure. She might ask me for book recommendations."

"Why would she ask you and not me?"

"Because. I'm the Doctor." He poured out his mixture into a fresh ramekin, still talking mostly with his back to her. He did flash her a small grin over his shoulder when he boasted though, which made Clara roll her eyes.

"Okay…"

"But won't it be nice, to be able to go wherever we like, whenever we like? Without feeling any obligation to invite a dozen other people on the off-chance they fancy tagging along?"

"Nobody ever tagged along with us, sweetheart. We're famously difficult to be in the same room as. It might be, though. I still haven't gotten close to crossing off everywhere in 101 Places to See. We could go to Niagara Falls."

"Niagara Falls?"

"I could get a fridge magnet."

"A fridge magnet?"

Defensively, she said, "I like fridge magnets. We could start collecting them."

"Fridge magnets…" he repeated again, tutting, "I will not bend my life to the whims of your hypothetical fridge magnet collection, you mark my words." She shook her head as he opened the oven and slid his new soufflé in carefully. "You should take more photos. You remember I got you that camera?"

"I do, I just worry about it getting broken," she admitted, "I'll take it when we go to Niagara Falls."

"I never agreed to that," he turned to face her now his baking was done.

"But it's in my book," she pouted at him. He couldn't resist.

"…Fine. But I refuse to do anything romantic. I shan't even look at you."

"Alright, but if you do look at me, you have to let me get a fridge magnet. I could stick our Niagara Falls polaroid to the fridge with a Niagara Falls fridge magnet."

"I can't believe you would mock me like this after I've just painstakingly made you a new soufflé."

"You still love me."

"For unfathomable reasons."

"Come over here," she said. He walked across the kitchen, only a few feet, and stood next to her. She had her eyes fixed on the soufflé. He copied her but didn't know what was so interesting. "What if it's the soufflés?" she asked. He didn't say anything, listening. "What if there's another Dimension Crash just because I'm making another soufflé?"

"I would never criticise your mother's cooking, but I'm not sure that recipe is strong enough to crack the universe open."

"Seriously, though. I mean, isn't it weird that it only pulled in, like, three Doctors?"

"Four."

"But still. There are loads more, and loads more companions. What if it happens again, only this time, with everybody who's ever been in the TARDIS? All because of a soufflé." She stared at the oven, bracing herself for the second Dimension Crash she was suddenly sure was arriving at any moment, the was going to throw them across the room and bring upon them even more chaos – a dozen Doctors all fighting with each other for attention and glory, companions bickering about who was really the most important, the TARDIS itself pitching and reeling under the temporal strain. Thinking about it, she wasn't sure that she would be able to cope with it if it did happen, that she might want to cut and run just like everybody else, until-

Clara was jerked to the side and nearly jumped out of her skin. The Doctor laughed; he'd grabbed her shoulders.

"You're a real bastard, you know," she said, annoyed.

"It couldn't happen again. It resolved. Besides, even if it did, I'd have half a mind to just drop them back off wherever they came from. Or we could leave for six months. We could go to… to… somewhere I could stay for six months without getting bored. A cruise."

"A cruise? Cruises are supremely boring."

"That's true…"

"Although, if my sister's finished fixing Adam's yacht, we could always take it for a joyride. We could go to the Galapagos."

"Well, considering there won't be another Dimension Crash, what do you say we take a trip to the Galapagos tomorrow? We could visit the Beagle; I haven't seen Charlie for hundreds of years."

"Or we could just… I don't know. Stew?"

"Stew?"

"You know. Ferment." He stared at her. "Just the two of us, on our own, with this little unit. Because this is, like, the first day of the rest of our lives. We weren't together before the Crash happened, but we are now. Still here. Almost like things were before."

"Did you ever tender your official resignation with the Maitlands?"

"With the-? Oh my god," she exclaimed, "Shit! You're right! I completely forgot the Maitlands even existed! I don't even think Angie has a way to contact me, I've gone through so many phones…"

"Now you see why I don't have one. They just get broken."

"I thought you like being elusive and unreachable?"

He nudged her with his elbow, "What are you going to do about the Maitlands?" he implored. She realised he had a strange expression on his face – was he worried?

"…I'm not going to move back in with them, Chin," she said quietly.

"Really?"

"No, I… I should have been looking to leave anyway, they didn't need me anymore."

"You never wanted to live on the TARDIS, though. It was Wednesdays only."

"That's because I thought you wouldn't shag me," she said, and he scoffed, "Now that you will, how could I ever bring myself to leave?"

"I hate you."

She smirked. "I'll drop by and sort it all out. I'm not sure I ever finished moving all my stuff out of the attic – did we even start moving my stuff out of the attic? Is it still there?"

"You'd have to check."

"I guess that's your hopes dashed, then."

"My hopes of what?"

"Getting rid of me. We're connected now."

"We've always been connected," he said seriously, "We just didn't know it. All joking aside, I'm never going to let you go."

"…What if I just want to go?"

"Well, no, of course if you want to go – you're free to do as you like. I only mean it in the romantic sense."

"Sounded more like the kidnapping sense. How long will it take that to cook, by the way?"

"A few more minutes."

"Enough time for a quickie."

"No. I'm not letting you ruin another soufflé. Besides, this is a kitchen – it wouldn't be hygienic."

"Wasn't us kissing in the kitchen the whole reason Rose concocted that ridiculous PDA ban? Was that Rose?" She strained to remember, but the details were no longer within her reach.

"I don't recall who it was, but yes, I think it was an incident along those lines. I won't have history repeat itself, though. We have a bedroom now, and I'll be more than happy to join you in it after the soufflé is done."

"Soufflé, sex, and a takeaway? You really are the man of my dreams."

"And it never ceases to upset me how low your standards are."

"Don't sell yourself short; you've just baked for me on a whim, that's one lot of afternoon delight, followed by a second. And then egg foo yung. Is every day going to be like this now?"

"Like what? You've been eating takeaways at least three times a week for months now, along with that lot."

"Well – you won't let me use the kitchen!"

"Yes, because you go and do things like that," he indicated the burned ramekin again and she rolled her eyes.

"I still would've eaten it. I'll eat it right now."

"No," he told her firmly. "Maybe you should eat some fruit – when did you last have fruit?" She did not answer him, because she did not know when she had last eaten fruit and was a little ashamed of this realisation. "Your teeth will fall out at this rate."

"Shut up, don't neg me," she said.

"They've got plenty of fruit in the Galapagos. And the Maitlands aren't going anywhere," he tried to entice her.

"I'm not going on a romantic getaway until I tie up all my loose ends," she said, "If you want me, all of me, all the time, then I have to put my affairs in order."

"You're not dying, Coo."

"Maybe not, but I am leaving everything behind to come and live in a snogbox with a space hobo."

"I thought you stopped calling her that?"

"Old habits die hard," she smiled.

"She won't warm to you at this rate."

"Well, I'm not going anywhere. And it can't hide my bedroom anymore, because it's yours too."

"She won't be nice to you until you stop calling her 'it'," he warned. She shrugged. If the TARDIS didn't like her by now, she didn't think it ever would, and she'd just have to get used to that.

"…I keep thinking someone's going to walk in. It's so quiet."

"Your sister might come in and say something horrid?" he suggested.

Clara sighed, "We can only hope."

"I like it. It reminds me of before, when I had free reign to impress you in whatever way I thought best."

"While being incapable of confessing how devastatingly in love with me you were."

"I thought it was obvious," he lied.

"Uh-huh." She jumped up onto the countertop behind them, the one that formed the partition between the kitchen and the sofas. "You're sure you don't want to run off together for a few minutes?"

"Of course I want to, but I also want this soufflé. And you're not going anywhere."

"What'd you put in Nios's room, then?" she changed the subject, finally giving up her attempts to get lucky. "She doesn't sleep, right? Is there a bed in there?"

"Yes, for good measure. Beds are still comfortable, regardless of whether or not you're sleeping in them. And I've given her a curated selection of books, hand-picked from the TARDIS library – I hear she likes them. When I was showing her around, she told me she was going to get some sort of… artefact, from Dr Cohen."

"'Artifact'?" asked Clara sceptically; she dreaded to think what an 'artefact' from 'Dr Death' was.

"I hear she keeps alien specimens in jars."

"Better not let her on the TARDIS then, she'll put you in a jar."

"She sounds like a character – I can't wait to meet her. If Nios lets us, that is. Jenny met her, yesterday."

"I think we should try making friends with Nios first, before badgering her so that she introduces us to her new girlfriend. You know how new relationships are."

"How are they?" he asked, intrigued as to what she would say.

"Y'know, like – they want it to just be theirs. Want to be alone together all the time. Feels a lot more private when it's new. Plus, she's a robot."

"Synth," he corrected, "They don't like 'robot.' But what's that got to do with anything?"

"She's never dated anyone before, has she?" asked Clara. He shrugged. "Well, I don't think she has. And they're not the same species."

"We're not the same species."

"I don't mean there's anything wrong with it," she said quickly, "I just mean she – both of them, even – deserve some time to themselves to find their feet. I mean, we did, didn't we? I don't think having all those maniacs spying on us all the time helped anything. They had CCTV cameras in our hotel room the first time we shagged, remember?"

"I don't think they could see the bed."

"They could hear stuff. God knows what they heard," she muttered, "Harkness & Tyler… I'll tell you, I'm glad that shit-show died months ago. Thank god."

"I don't know – aren't they going to be the new baby's godparents?"

"Eurgh," Clara shook her head, "That's just what she needs…"

"Rose can manipulate the time vortex and Jack can't die; I think they're relatively promising choices for godparents. At least they'll be able to protect her."

"I think Mickey and Martha will be capable of protecting their own kid."

"I should go find that cot..."

"What cot?"

"The one I gave Amy and Rory for River, before all that kidnapping and assassinating business," he said, "Used to be mine. I think it would be nice to give it to them – the baby will be a Time Lord, after all."

"And a Manifest."

"What a frightening combination. I, for one, can't wait to meet her." He smiled at Clara, but she looked off towards the oven, lost in thought again. She was still caught up in how, well, alien it felt to be on there without all the others around her. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm the Queen of Okay." For making that joke, he deigned to kiss her – but the timer on the oven dinged and stopped him. "Don't burn my soufflé," she whispered.

"I wouldn't dream of it, Soufflé Girl." He kissed her anyway for a few seconds.

A delicious, warm smell flooded the room when the Doctor opened the oven door and lifted out the chocolate soufflé, perfectly cooked to the exact specifications of Ellie Oswald's recipe. He set it down on the countertop and took a fork out of the drawer, which he held towards Clara.

"Better have it before it cools." She didn't say anything, only stared at the soufflé, not jumping down from her perch. "Coo?" She said nothing. "Clara?"

"Marry me."

"Excuse me?"

She met his eyes, "Marry me."

He laughed, "We're already married, and engaged, for the third time."

"I know. But humour me." Once more for luck, she repeated firmly, "Will you marry me?"

"Yes. Absolutely. If you come over here and eat this thing while it's still warm." She dropped down onto the floor and took the fork from him. But rather than let her eat the soufflé he had so laboriously made he grabbed her waist, pulling her close so he could kiss her properly. She linked her arms behind his neck and kissed him back until he broke away. "Were you really checking to make sure I wouldn't renege on our marriage now the Crash is over?"

"Maybe a little," she admitted.

"I promise you, Clara, that's never going to happen. I love you, with both of my hearts and every breath I've ever taken and all the ones I haven't yet. It's you and I now, flying through the stars, always and forever."

"Always and forever, through the stars…"

Clara kissed the Doctor again, and it felt like the first time and the last time all at once.

-THE END-

One Last Author's Note, For the Road:

(I know, I said in a previous AN I wasn't going to end with Whoufflé, but I did, because I started with Whoufflé and nobody can dispute that they haven't always been the OTP of this fic.)

So, I was going to put a final Author's Note as a separate chapter but have decided to put it here where it's just easier to access. I was also going to try and write something about "saying goodbye" to this fic but, quite honestly, I'm not really saying goodbye to anything or going anywhere. I can't remember if I put this in an AN somewhere else, but for posterity, the reason I've been focusing on ending this fic for the last 3 (!) and a half years isn't because I was tired of the characters or the world, it's really just because the "daily update" (even though updates have been far from daily since I went to university) format is especially exhausting. I'm hoping that I'll now have room to do other projects, which include "Retrograde", getting back to "Jenny Who?" and adding some more bits and pieces to "Scattered Thoughts." I'm also trying to write/start up a sci-fi, narrative podcast that anyone who likes my writing in this fic will definitely love, its current working title is "The Gloom" and if you follow me on social media (mainly twitter, my name on there is also CaitlinJ1021 and if you follow me you can see my tattoos, if you haven't already) I'm sure you'll hear about it whenever that happens.

I would like to thank everyone who has read this entire thing and has stuck with it for all these years alongside me, and hope everybody knows that I'm a million miles away from leaving the world of Doctor Who fanfiction behind. I am hard at work on the next storyline of "Retrograde" where they're going to an ocean planet, it's got some of the most in-depth worldbuilding I've ever done and is kind of ambitious, which is why it's taking a hot minute – but it is still progressing and I hope you hang around to read it! This fic, or network of fics, has been with me through thick and thin just like you guys, and that means the world to me.

Finally, though, I want to take note of the dark times we're currently living in and the pandemic, though I'm sure many people read this fic to try and forget about all that. While I was originally going to be a bit more selective about what I put in "Scattered Thoughts", I am going to try and put out some more light-hearted, shorter stories and one-shots, and I will take requests for anything anybody wants to see in PMs or reviews (only conditions are no weddings and definitely no NinexRiver, I would kindly like to forget that ship ever existed here). I'm going to try and write shorter, more frequent pieces to put out that won't take themselves too seriously, because I'd hate for this fic world to disappear right when people need upbeat, regular content most of all. Everybody stay safe out there, wash your hands, practice social distancing, don't panic buy, and make sure to self-isolate if you need to! We're all in this together, and I'm not going anywhere.

Goodbye-But-Not-Really,
Caitlin.

[22/06/2013 - 25/03/2020]