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memelovescaps · 4 years

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Even if it sends me to Heaven

Summary:

The Doctor has been taken and made to see horrors he can't unsee. When he manages to escape, battered, in the haze of exhaustion and need of comfort, he goes to the only place he feels safe: with Clara. It's up to her to bring the Doctor back from the depths of his own terror.

Twelfth Doctor Whump, hurt/comfort and fluff.

ALSO ON AO3

The Doctor doesn’t know how he manages to get into the TARDIS. A second ago he was handcuffed and when he saw a window of opportunity he ran and ran... until he saw the big blue box parked exactly on the spot he’d left it. He doesn’t know how long he’s been running, his body is in override, driven only by sheer adrenaline, the exhaustion coursing through him buried deep in a corner of his mind.

All he knows is that as soon as his body is through the threshold his beloved sentient machine closes the door and he grabs onto the railings, his body failing him and his energy draining rapidly.

“Clara...” is all he manages to croak before the machine comes to life, the lights switch on and the engine starts roaring.

He notices the TARDIS humming urgently, trying to keep him awake, and he stumbles towards the console, grabbing onto the brake lever as he pulls it down. Not a second later he hears the wonderful sound of the machine dematerializing, he’s never been so glad to hear that sound in all his life.

He doesn’t know how long it takes to travel through hyperspace, he’s only partially aware that he’s moving until he notices the machine coming to a stand-still and parking itself with a thud.

Come out, my Thief... I brought you to her... the machine seems to be telling him. He gulps and walks, almost tripping over his own feet, towards the TARDIS door. He opens it and closes his eyes as he breathes in, the smell of her, of Clara, getting into his nostrils and succeeding in calming him, if only briefly.

It doesn’t take him long to realize she isn’t home, perhaps she’s working still, he has no idea what day or time it is. He can’t care less. His legs take him to the sofa and give out when his knees brush against the nice cushions. His body falls onto the sofa rather gracelessly, all long limbs sprawled around him, and he feels his eyes closing. Exhaustion. Bone-deep exhaustion, it had been a few centuries since he’d felt it so deep.

But Clara isn’t here. Clara. His eyes open again, wide in alarm and panic, not knowing where she is making him anxious and terribly scared. He had to see her, now. Whenever his eyes close he still can see her pale face, his open, lifeless eyes looking up to him without seeing anymore. His lips let out a sob and he tries to pull himself up, but his body refuses to. He’s so tired he can’t focus, his vision blurring on the edges, and he falls flat on the sofa again. He passes out without noticing.

It’s been a long day for Clara, and all she wants to do is change into her pyjamas, have a glass of wine or maybe two, and curl up in the sofa with a ridiculously romantic movie she knew were predictable from the first minute but she loved anyways.

Being a school teacher wasn’t an easy job, and dealing with certain students with the tact and kindness required but still with severity was a constant struggle. She certainly had had practice with that, she thinks as she mentally laughs, thinking of the Doctor. She briefly wonders where he is right now, and what sort of trouble he managed to get himself into without her.

When Clara turns the keys and gets into her apartment she’s still wondering how her newest student, Sophie, could be so manipulative towards her classmates. She’s taken out of her thoughts and her hands stop mid-air, still holding the keys after opening the front door when she sees the TARDIS.

Her trained eyes travel from the blue machine parked in her living room until they land on the slightly slouched figure on the sofa. Alarm bells go off in her mind when she sees his face pale as death and his curls wilder and a bit longer than she remembered. His clothes are torn and wrinkled, his hoodie ripped in a few places, and his grey T-shirt looking older than it sure was. She knows in an instant something’s wrong.

“Hi Doctor” she greets in a light-hearted voice, hoping to bring him calm now that she’s home.

“Clara...” his low exhausted gruff with a hint of fear takes her out of her pretence almost instantly. She looks at him and sees one of his arms tentatively reaching towards her, silently asking her to go by his side. She sighs and walks up to him, leaving his school bag on the dinner table, until she kneels next to him, and when she does he’s fast in grabbing her hands and pull her towards him, his face mere inches away from hers, inspecting. His attack eyebrows are even wilder than before, his white curls untamed and dishevelled. His eyes are wide with panic, his fingers grabbing her wrist with a bit too much strength; but she manages to press her thumbs against the back of his hands, in what she hopes is a soothing gesture. He doesn’t say anything but he doesn’t have to, she knows that gaze and the terror in those eyes.

“I’m fine” she hurries to say in a soothing voice “I’m okay, nobody hurt me. I’m safe. And so are you”

She never stops pressing her thumb against his hand, willing her fingers to bring him back to the present, until she can notice his frown relaxing and his eyes losing the edge of panic and terror in them. His small hands bring his right hand to her lips, kissing the back and the knuckles delicately, bringing him back to reality. She feels him breathing deeply and she smiles after a few kisses, leaving his hand on his lap.

“Wait here. I’m going to prepare tea and some biscuits, I don’t want to know when was the last time you ate. I’ll be back in a sec”

She knows that always, but especially when he’s in this state, this Doctor needs clear instructions. In the beginning, he claimed he didn’t follow orders, but it didn’t take long for Clara to realize that that was just lies. She’s seen him react to her clear, straightforward orders, and he’s even taken up the habit of calling her ‘boss’ when doing what she asks him to do. Even if he’s a 2000-year-old alien, this particular incarnation is very responsive to a certain kind of authority, she’s seen many times he just needs her to take control and guide him, and this is one of those times.

So, she waits until he’s ready and gives her a simple nod, to get up and walk to the kitchen, making sure to be noisy. Noises help the Doctor, they keep him calm, they give him data of what is happening, of what Clara is doing. Opening the tab and leaving it to flow, filling in the kettle, rummaging through his cupboards... the Doctor can hear the tap running, the water boiling, the packet of biscuits being ripped open... and it calms him. Knowing means safety.

She knows better than to push him for an answer, though. Right now, when he’s hurting, the Doctor will most probably fall silent and answer in monosyllables, if he answers at all.

Clara hates seeing him that way. It doesn’t happen often, mostly because the Doctor’s very good at hiding when he’s in pain, but she always recognizes the ghosts in his big sad eyes. And she feels something warm spreading from her stomach when she realizes that what the Doctor does when he feels hurt, what he considers his safety net, is her.

Perhaps not to talk, for some reason, this incarnation still has difficulties when it comes to putting his feelings into words, but that doesn’t bother Clara. In fact, she’s touched because even in his inability to put his feelings into words he recognizes in Clara an escape. She’s his coping mechanism.

As she thinks, half her brain focuses on serving two mugs of tea, the Doctor’s with insane amounts of sugar, and a few biscuits she knows will help cheer him up, if only momentarily. She then brings the tray to the living room and leaves it on top of the coffee table.

The Doctor reaches to grab her wrist as soon as her hands are free from the tray and pull her down, making her fall to the sofa in a half-laying position next to him. She’s about to complain and move away when she freezes as he throws himself at her. Suddenly she notices his rather larger body on top of her, his long arms going around her middle as he moves his own body down a few inches so he can hunch his shoulders and hide his face against her chest, right under her chin. She’s so taken aback she doesn’t know what to say, so she lets him try to find some solace by laying on top of her, his head on her chest, his impossibly long and wild curls tickling her chin as he clutches at her.

As soon as she can react, though, her arms go around his back and bring him closer to her, one of her hands playing with her hair while the other draws soothing circles on his back. His breathing is irregular, and she starts to gently shush close to his ear when she notices his body shaking slightly and his throat emitting pitiful sounds, much like muffled sobs. She tries not to think about how those sounds are breaking her heart, how much it hurts to see, to feel him so lost and so broken.

Instead, she focuses on whispering reassurances to him, her voice just a whisper close to his ear. She tries to control her breathing and hopes her heartbeat goes back to a regular pace, knowing the Doctor is listening to it. She focuses on how soft his hair is when her fingers run through the grey curls, or how remarkably solid his back really feels even if he seems like a tall stick insect when he’s standing upright.

Clara’s taken out of her reverie when she notices him rubbing his face against her jumper as if he’s trying to impregnate himself with her scent, as his arms pull her closer to him. She shushes again, craning her neck so she can kiss his temple and forehead hoping it would help in calming him. She looks down and feels a bit hopeless as she sees the mighty proud Time Lord, always so full of pent-up energy and knowledge, silently sobbing and curling himself up in a ball as though he wanted to become smaller and smaller until he disappeared.

The silence stretches, his whimpers becoming more like sighs until Clara realizes that he seems calmer. His breathing has become regular again but, much to Clara’s relief, he makes no indication that he’s uncomfortable or overwhelmed by being so close to her.

That’s one of the things Clara has noticed have changed since Christmas. Before their second chance at travelling together, the Doctor would be very adamant to keep displays of affection to a minimum. She never knew what it was exactly that made him as tense as a ramrod whenever she hugged him, rested her head on his shoulder, or even just held his hand.

After the affair with the dream crabs though, he seemed like a kid who’d been given the present he’d been asking for years, and he changed. The Doctor that emerged from the months apart and their reunion was kinder and warmer, and what previously scared him or made him tense, now seemed to make him happy and relieved.

He seems to revel in the new-found physicality of their relationship, and it still takes Clara by surprise when he unexpectedly holds her hand, moves to hug her or squeezes her arm. She can’t help but appreciate every single one of his gestures, though, and can’t do anything else but smile. And he smiles back, his eyes warmer, his smile softer, even his attack eyebrows don’t seem as stern as they were before. She’s grateful of the long way they’ve both come and most especially tonight, since right now, with the weight of the Doctor’s body on top of her, she’s relieved to be able to be affectionate to him without being afraid to overwhelm him.

Clara comes back to the present when finally, after a long while of hiding his face against her chest, the Doctor moves away a few inches and looks up at her.

“Hey,” she whispers, smiling softly.

Her smile falters momentarily when she realizes his eyes are sad, red-rimmed and wet, as well as his cheeks, the tears had left a mark where they rolled down. She doesn’t let her smile disappear, though, and with gentle movements she cups his cheeks with her small warm hands, wiping away the tears with her thumbs as she looks at the man who’s stolen her heart with a soft, loving expression. He doesn’t move, simply lets her have her way and clean his face as he closes his eyes, breathing deeply.

She realizes he hasn’t said anything except for her name when she arrived. It’s not unheard of, this incarnation more prone to falling silent than the previous one, but it still makes Clara anxious. When the Doctor is silent it means there’s something wrong and she doesn’t like it. She’d rather have him ramble away in his Scottish gruff she’s come to appreciate, than his silence.

However, she knows he won’t talk. At least not now. She’s been with the Doctor long enough to know that whenever he was in deep pain he tended to run away, putting the pain away in a corner of his mind until he could be functional again, and never talk about it again. It was a recurrent theme with him, and something extremely hard or painful had happened for him to come to look for her, something she wants to help with but doesn’t know how.

“I know something happened, Doctor” she whispers, looking at him in the eyes. His own widen in panic but she’s quick to shush and caress his cheek before he can even think of pulling away “I know, I know it hurts” she continues, her voice soft, full of understanding and so low it’s a mere whisper “it’s okay. Just know that whatever it was, it’s over. You’re with me and nothing can hurt you here. Or me. We’re safe”

The sad but hopeful expression in his eyes breaks her heart, and she doesn’t hesitate in leaning in and kissing the tip of his nose, smiling and nudging him to return to his previous position. He does, his arms surrounding her body as he takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out, his chest expanding against Clara’s stomach.

Suddenly, she thinks she hears something. It’s subtle at first, like a mumbling of words you only hear the noise of but can’t distinguish a single word, but after a while, it becomes more insistent. For a split second, she’s about to ask if he said something but decides against it. She keeps silent instead, her ears straining to hear the noise again when she realizes it’s not a noise. It’s a voice. His voice. But it doesn’t come from his throat, it’s not the usual gruff that erupts from his chest, but the voice inside his mind, the same voice that kept rambling on probably even when he was taking one of his cat naps.

And it’s whispering some words, over and over again. Clara focuses more, closing her eyes and opening her mind, wanting, yearning to know what he’s saying. And then she hears, as clear as day, his voice inside her head.

Clara... my Clara...

It takes her a while to realize why she’s hearing that until it dawns on her that Time Lords are telepathic beings. This Doctor hardly ever uses his telepathy so it’s easy for her to forget, but now she can hear his thoughts loud and clear in her mind.

Clara... scared, so scared... Clara, safe...

It shocks her that his thoughts are not complete sentences or even ideas, just a string of unconnected thoughts all jumbled with each other. She hears and can almost feel his fear reverberating through his words, though, and realizes that when his thoughts are clouded by his terror his arms cling to her a bit tighter. She’s shocked and touched by just how much the Doctor truly considers her safety, by how his only thought when he’s frightened is her.

Clara, my Clara... safe... not hurt... alive...

She considers his thoughts for a moment. He isn’t only scared for himself, he seems to be fearful for her safety. She notices his arms impossibly tight around her, his body craving to feel the closeness of her, to feel her against him. She frowns, her brain going at a thousand miles an hour to guess what had happened to the Doctor to bring him to this state.

“Yes, your Clara... I’m here, I’m safe... and so are you. I’m not going anywhere” she whispers, dropping a kiss on top of his head while trying to allay his fears. He moves his face away from her chest, one of his eyebrows raised impossibly high, and her throat emits a half-laugh “I can hear you, Doctor”

“You can... hear my thoughts?” he manages to ask, his voice raspy and croaked.

“I can” she answers, nodding slightly “I never could until now”

“I’m sorry,” he says almost immediately, trying to pull away from her, but her hands stop him “I don’t normally do this, this stupid, stupid body is so useless sometimes...”

“Hey, it’s okay” she interrupts soothingly. She grabs the lapels of his wrinkled coat and stops him from pulling further away “it’s okay, nothing’s wrong” then she pauses for a moment “why do you say useless?”

“Time Lords are telepathic, you know that. But some are better than others, and some incarnations are better than others. I used to be good at this; I used to be good at reading people’s faces and emotions and at keeping my thoughts from leaking when people touched me...”

“Is this... why you’re so averse to hugging?” Clara asked, suddenly the pieces falling into place in her mind.

“Partly, yes. Your brains are fragile, Clara. Having a connection with mine, having your mind attacked by the force of a Time Lord brain could kill you... I... I can’t...”

“Shhhh it’s okay... it’s okay, you didn’t hurt me” she soothes when she hears the Doctor’s voice breaking, his eyes averting her gaze. She can feel his hands on her hips, his fingers grabbing her clothes desperately, silently pleading for her to not leave “you can never hurt me, you daft old man...”

One of her hands travels to his face, caressing his chin with her index finger before she gently tilted his head up to make him look at her. He squeezes his eyes shut at first, refusing to do so, but Clara uses the same finger to trace his bushy eyebrows and eyelids, very gently and slowly, until he finally opens up his eyes. When he does, she isn’t surprised to see them glassy with tears, his face contorted in a pained expression of pure guilt and fear she hates seeing. And her eyes well up too when his leaked thoughts travel to her mind, pulling at her heart a bit more.

Clara… don’t leave me, please… please… I’m sorry, please…

The fear and need she hears leaking from his mind and the utter desperation in his words and his eyes do it for Clara. She closes her eyes and feels a couple of tears flow freely down her cheeks as she grabs the lapels of his torn suit jacket and pulls him in, just at the same time that he lunges forward at her, his arms encircling her immediately. Tears flood his eyes as he rests his face against her shoulder, hiding his face in her hair as he clings to her in desperation, his arms squeezing her upper body with so much strength he seems to want to disappear altogether. His previous muffled whimpers become audible and she does what she can to hold him tight and whisper reassurances close to his ear.

“Shhh, it’s okay Doctor… I’m not leaving you…” she whispered, again and again, hoping that some of the meaning behind those words get into his broken hearts.

She desperately wants to know what happened to bring the Doctor to this state. This isn’t like him. They’ve lived hundreds of adventures together, she’s seen him angry, frustrated, hurt and sad; but he’s never had an emotional breakdown in front of her. Not like this, not like he’s so terrified of losing her that he’s trying to be engulfed by her small body, much smaller than his. And it’s starting to truly scare Clara, not knowing what it had caused the Doctor to flee to her apartment and wait for her, and hide against her in pain and terror.

She feels something pull inside her chest, her mind remembering that old boy inside the barn, crying himself to sleep. She felt his terror that day as she feels it now, and she does what she wishes she had done back then: hold back her tears and hold him tighter, protectively passing one arm around his back while the other hand strokes his hair in calming motions that she hopes help in soothing him.

“Doctor I’m alright. I’m okay, you didn’t hurt me. Nobody did” she reassures him, her lips kissing the top of his head repeatedly “you don’t have to be scared. It’s all over now, whatever that was. It’s over”

“But it isn’t” she hears him say, his voice raspy, broken and terribly sad “it’s still in my mind, when I close my eyes... I...”

“Shhhh” she soothes him. She manages to grab one of his hands, gently disentangling the fingers from its death grip on her clothes and brings it to her chest, placing it just above her left breast, where she knows her heart is beating “it’s still over, Doctor. Listen to my heart, I’m okay. I’m alive...”

She’s about to tell him that it didn’t happen but the words die in her mouth before she can spill them, and she feels momentarily grateful for it. She feels a bit out of her depth, without knowing what had happened to the Doctor she can’t reassure him except to tell him that she’s alive and well, but what if she wasn’t? What if the Doctor had seen a future where she isn’t okay, where she’s dead? She feels terrified for a second before she puts those thoughts away, they don’t matter now. Compartmentalise, come on Clara she tells herself shaking her head slightly.

She can feel the Doctor’s large hand on her chest, his fingers grabbing the fabric of her jumper as the palm is pressed against it, and slowly the Doctor’s whimpers start to diminish. She allows herself a small breath of relief.

When his sobs are nothing more than quiet sniffles she squirms a bit under him, but his arms tighten their hold again. She awkwardly turns her head and presses a kiss to his cheek.

“Doctor, I’m not going anywhere” she whispers, her voice incredibly soft and in a tone she usually reserves for when the Doctor is feeling low or hurt, even if he never admits it to her in words “I won’t disappear on you. I promise”

But he shakes his head.

“You can’t promise that”

“I can’t promise tomorrow. But tonight, I’m all yours” she keeps her voice low as she manages to disentangle a reluctant Doctor from her and shifts on the sofa to sit on her heels. The Doctor slowly moves away and sits on the sofa facing her with his legs crossed, she doesn’t fail to notice just how close he sits, so close that her knees brush against his shins.

Her face leans forward until it’s mere inches away from his as he watches, using the back of one of her hands to caress his cheek and dry the tears. She didn’t know how much she hated seeing his tears until now, and she can’t be quick enough to get rid of them. If there’s one thing in the whole wide universe she simply cannot bear is seeing him hurting.

She leans even closer until her lips find his other cheek, brushing against his pale skin as they kiss the tears away.

“Tea is cold” she whispers, their faces so close that her lips almost brush against his nose. He doesn’t answer, just shrugs, but when she locks eyes with him she’s momentarily breathless.

They’re still glassy and look impossibly old and sad, but they gaze at her with so much affection and, she can’t describe it any other way, devotion in them, that she feels her chest tighten and a shiver spreading throughout her body.

“What would I do without you, my Clara...” he whispers as he closes his eyes and rests his forehead against hers.

His voice is open and vulnerable, his walls completely crumpled at his feet, but he doesn’t seem to care anymore. She tries to rationalize it, she tells herself that must be the hurt, fear and exhaustion talking, she’s noticed how slow his movements are and wonders just how he copes to even be awake in his state, but all those thoughts are nothing compared to the impact his words have on her. She feels her eyes welling up again and she gulps at his confession, feeling her heart explode with how much love and care he’d put in those words. She smiles.

“You won’t have to worry about that for a long time, old man” she whispers, her trembling fingers caressing his cheek, putting a few of his unruly curls behind his ear and her smile softening when they move out of their own accord to go back to their previous position.

“I will... soon... it will happen in an instant, and then I don’t know what...” he stops talking and breathes a few times, trying to calm himself.

She frowns.

“What did you see, Doctor?” she asks.

He feels his entire body tensing and she knows this isn’t what she set out to do in the first place. But she takes in his state: not only is he terrified and had come looking for her, scared for her safety as well as his own, but he’s also looking pretty dishevelled. His clothes are torn at a few spots, all wrinkled and dusty, and his face looks like he hadn’t washed it in a couple of days. His eyes have dark shadows under them, and he looks even thinner than last time they saw each other. He’s clingy and needy, something that truly concerns Clara as he never, ever showed her his pain to this extent. This isn’t the Doctor she’s used to, he’s close to a tipping point, and it is her job to care for him, especially when he’s at his lowest.

“I know you don’t want to tell me” she continues, her voice just a mere whisper “but you’re not yourself. You’re hurt and scared. Let me help you”

“No, you can’t” he starts and tries to pull away, but Clara’s hand goes towards the nape of his neck, holding him in place.

“Shhh... don’t go. Don’t hide from me, Doctor. Don’t go to a place I can’t reach you” she pleads.

She looks at him as she tries to hide her tears, blinking repeatedly to dispel them, but seeing him like that is one of the hardest things she’s ever done. The Doctor is pulling away from her, or at least it seems he’s trying to, but she knows he isn’t really trying.

“Let me help” she insists “you’ve held the weight of the universe on your own for so long it seems that only you can do it, but you don’t have to do it alone…”

“I can’t... if... if I let you in, I’ll lose you and... the memory will be too hurtful, the pain too great...”

“And yet, whether you want me in or not... I’m already in” she whispers. He looks at her quizzically and she smiles warmly and softly before placing a kiss on his forehead, one of her hands still at the nape of his neck and her fingers playing with the curls there “you’re with me and I’m with you. I won’t stand here and let you torture yourself”

“Clara…” he’s tired, she can sense it. His accent gets thicker, his r’s rolling even more when he calls her name “you don’t know what I’ve seen, or the things I’ve done...”

“Maybe not everything, no. But I know you” she answers, insistently “and you’re here, with me. That tells me everything I need to know”

The Doctor doesn’t answer, his lips are pressed into a thin line, but his right hand hesitantly travels towards her. It rests on top of her chest and she hears him breathe deeply and close his eyes as he feels the drumming of her beating heart under his fingers.

Clara’s rather small hand cups his face, so small it can barely cover the cheek and uses her thumb to stroke the skin, dry and dusty but still beautiful to her eyes. The Doctor’s eyes flicker open again and focus on her, solely on her, and she feels her breath taken away as the man who’s seen burning stars and the birth of entire galaxies looks at her as if she’s the most beautiful thing in the entire universe.

She opens her arms as she realizes the exact moment the Doctor gives in, his body sagging against her as it falls forward, trusting she’ll catch him. And she does. Her arms receive his battered, lanky body as if they had been doing this all their lives. He breathes her in, her scent intoxicating his nostrils as his arms tighten around her.

“I was taken. And they made me see... I saw you. I lost you, Clara. You were... Gods, there was so much blood…”

His voice is raspy and his words slurring even deeper in his Scottish accent, it seems to Clara that every word said was agony.

“I felt your life leaving your body as I held you in my arms, and then all I could see was darkness tearing me apart... there was nothing for me, I couldn’t breathe...”

His voice breaks as he sniffles and catches his breath, finding it impossible to continue. She gently cradles his head and strokes his hair, letting him try to calm himself down and not making an effort to stop his choked sobs.

“And then I saw myself... drifting in and out of consciousness, and wanting to be dead when realizing that... that you won’t be here anymore...”

His breath hitches and a sob interrupts him, but she doesn’t need him to continue. She understands now. She grasps why the Doctor feared for her safety, and why he was so scared of being alone. But above all, her eyes are open to her own mortality.

They’d been open before, or at least she thought they were, with Danny Pink’s passing. She thought she’d realized just how fragile her human life was, and decided to make the most of her years and youth with the Doctor. She wanted to see all those wonders he’d promised week after week so that when she was old and frail she could have those memories to look back at.

Now, she realizes that the Doctor stands to lose much more than a friend and companion. She becomes aware with painful clarity that losing her will break the Doctor, in all the ways a Time Lord can be broken, and she fears he’ll be so far gone nobody will be able to bring him back.

“I’m so sick of losing...” his broken, gravel voice utters, muffled by her clothes. Clara tightens her hold on him, wishing nothing more than to open up his hearts and get rid of his immense pain with her own hands. She gulps.

“I’m sorry Doctor... I’m so, so sorry...” she whispers, sniffling against his hair. She hasn’t realized when she started crying, but she cares not “I’m sorry you’ve had to see that and it got you so scared...” she pauses, craning her neck and kissing his cheek “but I won’t feel sorry for being with you”

His breath hitches and she knows, even though she can’t see his face, that he wants an explanation.

“All of us lose at some point. All of us lose people who are precious to us, people we can’t bear to lose, without whom we think life has no meaning. And yet, we live. We go on, day after day, putting one foot in front of the other, knowing that the world is a little bit more grey because of their absence”

She feels the Doctor nodding. Both of them have had to deal with losses that have shaped and made them who they are now.

“But if there’s one thing I know is this: what we do, what we have, is worth more than every ounce of pain it can bring later” her voice is soft but clear, determined “I’m better because I’m with you, Doctor, and I’ll never regret a single day I spend travelling with you”

“But I will. Clara, this... it’s become too dangerous, I can’t keep you safe if...”

“You don’t have to keep me safe, I never asked you for that. I’m with you by my own choice, and I won’t leave” she knows this is something he doesn’t want to hear but needs to hear anyway “isn’t this life worth living and remembering, precisely because there will be pain later?”

She feels the Doctor is about to speak, but she cuts him before he can even open his mouth. It’s important to her that he understands.

“And one last thing: isn’t this why you keep us? Isn’t this why you befriend us, why you make us your companions, why even after losing so much you keep coming back?” she asks.

The Doctor removes his face from her shoulder at her words, and she feels his eyes focused on her, but she can’t say what she needs to say and look at him at the same time. She casts her eyes down and fixates upon a hole in his hoodie, one of many it has, as she gathers her thoughts.

Their relationship had been marked by silences and lies they told each other to protect themselves. The lies and the deception had been the constant in their friendship, but no more. Clara had had enough of feeling a rift between her and the Doctor, she had had enough of wanting to get close to him but struggling to find the way. She realizes now that the only way to do that with the Doctor is to strip down of anything that covered her, to get rid of all the lies and layers and layers of coolness detachment. She cleared her throat, this was the moment.

“I don’t think you travel with us just to show us stars and planets, or to live adventures in some far-off universes no human has heard of. It goes beyond that. It’s to do with pain and grief, and sadness and loneliness” she infuses her words with a gentle caress of his cheek with the back of her index finger, still not looking directly at him “what you do, Doctor, is never about travelling and stars and planets. It’s about compassion, friendship, and loyalty. It’s about love. Love for every sentient being in the universe, for every person that is brave enough to stand next to you when all you have in front of you are hard choices”

Her eyes stop avoiding his gaze and lock onto his. They’re glistening, his eyebrows raised in an expression of warmth surprise.

“Why do you come with me, Clara?” he asks, emphasising with his index finger towards her “why do you do it still, after everything that’s happened?”

And Clara takes a deep breath, looks at him in the eye with warmth, and smiles.

“Because I see wonders” she repeats the words she said long ago, now a seemingly distant memory “I see wonders beyond my imagination, I discover new things every single day...”

She pauses and smiles warmly, one of her hands travelling to his forehead, brushing a few strands of hair off his face.

“And because I see a beautiful universe hidden inside a blue time machine”

He raises his eyebrows, his eyes posing a question so innocent she’s tempted to giggle, but she just smiles, feeling her cheeks burning.

“The universe is vast, wonderful, scary and mysterious. But there's no bigger mystery that I’d love to spend my life exploring than this one” she places her hand on his chest, right between his two hearts, and she feels him shiver with the contact “and if one day I die next to you, in one of our adventures - ”

She feels his breath hitch but she presses on.

“I want you to remember my words. I want you to remember that there’s no other place in the universe, no one else I’d rather spend my life with than you. I’ll never regret that decision.”

Her eyes travel to his cheeks and she smiles when she sees him blushing slightly, her pale cheeks gaining a bit of colour and even the tip of his ears are of a slight pink. And she knows he finally understands. It’s not easy, they both know it won’t be, and when the time comes he’ll need reminding of the words exchanged right now at this moment. But for now, Clara is satisfied.

However, all breath is taken out of her lungs when she finally locks eyes with him. There is no fear or panic anymore, there is no sadness. Instead, she sees them warm and dangerous, glistening with a burning fire that threatens to consume everything. And for a mad second, she thinks that burning surrounded by that fire wouldn’t be such a bad death after all.

Neither of them knows who makes the first move. Suddenly, all her doubts, the lies she’d told herself, the walls they’d built... they all come crashing down at their feet as their lips find each other. It’s tentative at first, a mere brush of lips against lips, but the touch is electrifying and soon their mouths are demanding and giving at equal parts.

My Clara...

She hears inside her head as her arms surround the Doctor’s body and pull him towards her, deepening the kiss. The Doctor responds by passing his long arms around her back and pulling her against him, his legs moving out of the way so their bodies can be even closer. She won’t lie to herself, she’d imagined before what it would be like to be kissed by the Doctor, but she’s glad to prove that none of her fantasies came even closer to the sensations coursing through her body now. Her mind is fuzzy and she can’t think, only enjoy the wonderful feeling spreading to every single cell in her body.

She only comes back and feels she can think coherently again when she hears a muffled moan coming from the Doctor, stifled by her own lips. She doesn’t want to rush things and she knows this will take time, so her kiss begins to transform into something kinder, softer, less urgent. The Doctor responds, he seems confused at first but relents until she ends the kiss with a slow, warm kiss on his upper lip.

“Is this... okay?” he asks, his voice sounding tentative, concerned and just a tiny bit scared. She thinks it’s adorable.

“More than okay” she answers, smiling widely as she leans again and places a warm, loving peck on his lips.

After a quick dinner, Clara sees the Doctor begin to slip, and she knows he needs to sleep, she’s surprised at the Time Lord’s stamina to even be awake in his state. He’s physically and emotionally exhausted, and she offers him her bed to spend the night.

He gets flustered when she offers and tries to tell her that there’s no need to, he can sleep in the TARDIS, but she can read him so well he knows he was just trying to be polite. His eyes have lost that panic and terror edge they had when she came in through the door, but she knows the horrors that await in his dreams and she won’t let him be away from her tonight.

So, she uses her ‘carer’ card and tells him she would worry less if he’s sleeping next to her, just in case he wakes up, she’d rather be by his side. His eyes soften, his lips drawing a wonderful warm smile and he nods his head slowly, his hands pulling his suit jacket off and discarding it on top of one of Clara’s chairs.

She watches as he gets undressed, making sure to pretend averting her gaze to give him a modicum of privacy. But she doesn’t have to be telepathic to know that his methodic, shy and studied movements are a result of shame, he doesn’t like the body he’s in right now, and she’s seen many instances in which he referred to bow-tie him as a “dashing young time traveller”. She knows he’s convinced this incarnation is not something nice to see, and that Clara would much rather be with his previous, much younger-looking version of him. He confused her coworker Adrian Davies with her boyfriend only because of his nice hair and bowtie, it reminded him of his previous incarnation and the one he thought Clara was attracted to.

What he doesn’t know, what Clara is dying to tell him, is that no other Doctor has awakened in her the feelings he does, and that’s all because of him, and only him. She will tell him, of course, but not today. For now, all she does is change into her nightwear and climb into bed, waiting for the Doctor to strip to his wrinkled T-shirt and boxers. When he does she stretches her arms into a silent but clear invitation, smiling when she sees he’s still blushing slightly, his eyes darting to a hole in the blanket and bouncing slightly on his toes. When he looks at her, though, his eyes still hold that blazing fire and she gulps as he finally climbs into bed.

Once the mattress sinks under his weight he moves closer to her, at first tentatively but when Clara manages to pass an arm around him he presses himself to her until half his body is on top of her. She notices one of his long legs bending and coming to rest in between hers, his cold toes caressing her shins as one of his arms rests over her stomach, his hand grabbing her pyjamas between his fingers.

She sighs against him and brings him closer to her, letting him rest his face near her breastbone, his nose inhaling her wonderful scent as she pets his hair in slow, soothing motions. She closes her eyes and lets the silence fill the room until she can hear drumming close to her. She focuses on the sound and realizes that it’s the beating of his hearts, strong, pumping; a set of four beats that make her relax instantly, the cadence of it calming and soothing.

“Good night, my Doctor” she whispers as her lips kiss the top of his head, her eyes still closed.

Good night, my Clara she hears in her mind before his eyes close and she feels his body relax against her.