Chapter 3: Haunted

Three weeks. It had been nearly three weeks since she had heard from or seen the Doctor. He had left her in Glasgow in the midst of a coffee run—quite literally: she had turned around, and he had been gone, and he had not turned up since.

This was, in some sense, not uncommon for the Doctor. It had happened loads of times before: he had missed their Wednesday dates on more than one occasion.

No one could lose track of time like the Doctor, evidently. The irony of such a fact was not lost on her: the man with the will of time in the palm of his hands couldn't manage to keep a date. But, alas, that was simply him: her Doctor.

But this was the first time it had happened—with him.

These three weeks were spent focused; she buried herself in her work. She settled in; she got to know her students, and she worked on building her lessons.

These three weeks were spent frustrated; she revisited and reconsidered everything Madame Vastra had said to her, revisiting and reconsidering everything she wished she had said in return—the stands she wished she had made. She was proud of herself; she had stood her ground, but she wasn't certain she had stood it enough.

This, then, led her to the ultimate truth: these three weeks were spent grieving.

For all that Madame Vastra had to offer on the matter—that this man was unchanged, that this man was her man, that this Doctor was her Doctor—and for all that Clara knew that her own evaluations could not be trusted on the matter, especially given the terse confrontations she and Vastra had exchanged mere weeks prior, Clara could not help thinking that Vastra was, fundamentally, wrong.

This man, the Twelfth Doctor, was the Doctor; Clara did not dispute that fact. But she, more than anyone else, knew, intimately, how regeneration impacted the Doctor. Not only had she seen it first-hand in his timestream, their conversation from after said trip through his timestream left little to doubt: one man was not the same as the next, even in the eyes, and from the mouth, of the Doctor himself.

That conversation had taken place over a year ago, but it was still as fresh in her memory today as it had been then. She hated to admit it, but she had been wrong in that conversation: she had misread his feelings, her feelings—everything.

These three weeks, then, were also spent haunted. She was haunted by the ghost of missed opportunities. Why, oh why, had she been so stubborn—so resistant to the idea of allowing him to call her his girlfriend? This Doctor's—the Twelfth Doctor's—first real conversation with her—in private, in the console room of the TARDIS—was enough to nearly drive her mad with regret.

Clara, I'm not your boyfriend.

I never thought you were.

I never said it was your mistake.

She arrested her thoughts, as a sob escaped her, uncontrollably. He hadwanted a label put on them, and she had prevented it from happening. That was on her now; she would have to live with that for the remainder of her days.

I'm sorry. I'm—I'm so, so sorry. But I don't think I know who you are anymore.

Admittedly, her initial reaction left something to be desired. But that was precisely her point: the point Vastra seemed unable to understand; she had been grieving—still, she was grieving. This was not going to be an instantaneous changing of the hands.

But she would also have to live with this man—this new Doctor. Vastra was, to some extent, right; at his core, he shared the same memories as the man she had lost. She could refer to that infamous foyer in Victorian London, and he would know what she was talking about.

But, at his core, Vastra was also inescapably and utterly wrong; he was not the same man. He had a different temperament and different preferences, something the Doctor had told her himself.

The Doctor's Ninth regeneration had not been able to be with Rose, evidently because he had appeared too old. He had literally skewed his Tenth regeneration to allow them to be together; the Doctor had told her as much. She had been with her Doctor: with his Eleventh regeneration—if not in title, then certainly in position. And now, he had regenerated to look far older. She was living Rose's life—Rose's nightmare—in reverse.

But it was not a matter of age; Clara was not so superficial. It was a matter of disposition—of temperament.

Clara, I'm not your boyfriend.

Her thoughts halted, for just a moment more; with a visible cringe, she pushed the horrific memory aside.

This was, Clara knew, logically—once logic returned to her, that is—a result of one simple issue: The Type Theory, as her Doctor had called it. She had been the Eleventh Doctor's type. She was not, it appeared, the Twelfth's type.

That sat fine with her, on a preliminary level; he was not her type either, and it had nothing to do with his age. He was so very different from her Doctor; there was no way she could ever share the same relationship with this man that she had shared with the previous regeneration. To do so would feel like nothing short of a betrayal—both to her Doctor, and to herself.

All of this led her back to one fundamental fact: Vastra was wrong, and Clara was in her full rights to grieve the loss of the man she had loved.

I'm sorry. I'm—I'm so, so sorry. But I don't think I know who you are anymore.

The words echoed in her mind yet again. She had considered leaving him. She really had. But then her phone had rung, and the newest face of the Doctor had been right: it had been her boyfriend.

Hey, for me. Help him.

Those words—they had sealed her fate. She still didn't know where she stood with this Doctor. She didn't reckon she would know—not for a long time, and certainly not until he figured out he had run late from picking up coffee. But she did know this: she would not leave him alone, not when the Doctor—her Doctor, the man she still loved—had asked her to stay.

It had been his dying wish. She would not let him down; that, it seemed, was to be her dying wish.