#we should just stop saying whouffaldi

[intheconfessiondial]

12 Months of 12 - October

Learning Gallifreyan

[sheliesshattered]

This Isn’t A Ghost Story - Chapter 4

Whouffaldi non-canon AU. 8 chapters, will be about 32,000 words when complete. Rated Mature for heavier themes, including in this chapter, please contact me privately if you’re worried about triggering topics. Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor. Mystery, pining and angst with a happy ending. Available on AO3 under the same username and title. Updates every Friday.

This Isn’t A Ghost Story

Chapter 4: The Past

By the time she arrived at the house, Clara’s hands were shaking so badly, it took her three tries to unlock the front door. Her tears hadn’t stopped the entire drive over, and in the two a.m. darkness her sniffling sounded loud in her own ears.

Finally managing to fit the key into the lock, she let herself into the foyer and closed the door behind her. She dropped her keys and purse on the table, but couldn’t make her fingers uncurl from the crumpled coroner’s report still clutched in her other hand. The house was silent, dimly lit by a lamp in the parlour and another at the top of the stairs, and for a moment she was seized by a sense of déjà vu so strong it was nearly vertigo. It had only been a few hours since she’d gone home for the evening, but it felt like she’d been away for far longer than that. She needed her ghost, she needed to talk to him after all that she’d read, she needed—

“Clara?” came his voice before she could call out to him, and she felt her breath leave her in a rush. She had never been so grateful to hear his familiar voice, and she looked up at him, finding him standing at the top of the stairs. “What are you doing here?” he went on, sounding concerned, as he descended the staircase towards her. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“I— I had to see you,” she said, her voice shaking almost as badly as her hands, and she swiped roughly at the wetness on her cheeks. “I couldn’t wait ‘til the morning.”

His steps quickened, and he didn’t stop until he was barely an arm’s length from her, seeming reassuringly solid and real in the dim light. “What’s wrong?” he asked, searching her face. “What’s happened?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she told him, stumbling over her words as her tears continued to fall, “and the box was— I had to know. I read her journal, I couldn’t stop myself. You were trying to protect me, and I just—” She cut herself off, shaking her head, trying to sort through her jumbled thoughts. “The twenty-third of November,” she forced out, looking up at him.

His expression shuttered. “What about it?” he asked warily.

“I was born on the twenty-third of November, 1986.”

“Clara, I am aware of your birthdate,” he said evenly.

She held up the crumpled paper in her hand. “Twenty-third of November, 1928. That’s the day she, the day my great-grandmother—”

“Yes,” he interrupted her.

“I was born fifty-eight years to the day—”

“Yes,” he said again, even more forcefully. “And? What is it exactly that you’re asking?”

She stared at him, grasping for the words as tears slipped down her cheeks. “Why?” she finally said. “Why would she do that to herself? Why would she leave her three month old child like that?”

He studied her face for a long moment. “I think you know why, my Clara,” he said softly.

“I don’t,” she shook her head, tears thick in her voice. “I’m trying to understand. I tried the entire drive over here, but I don’t— Why?”

He looked away, chewed at his lip. “You asked me once, when you were about eight years old, when it was that I died. Do you remember that?”

Clara nodded. “1927. You wouldn’t tell me the date, but you said it was in 1927.”

“I couldn’t very well tell you,” he said slowly, “at eight years old, that I died on your birthday in 1927.”

Realisation dawned. “She killed herself on the anniversary of your death.”

“Yes,” he said quietly, barely a breath.

“But... why?”

He looked at her in confusion, eyes glinting a silvery blue in the lamplight. “Why?”

“You said— you said you talked to her, after you died. Like we talk now. And in her journal she said— She hadn’t really lost you, so why would she—”

“I had stopped talking to her, stopped appearing to her,” he cut her off, voice soft. “Shortly before Margot was born. I wanted her to move on, even if I couldn’t. To live her life in the land of the living. I thought I was... a distraction from that. I worried if anyone found out that she was talking to her dead husband, that it would cost her everything, that she would end up in some sort of institution. Instead, I—” He stopped, swallowed harshly. “I was the one who cost her everything. By deciding I knew what was best. By ignoring her. By not protecting her like I should have done.”

She stared at him, tears still tracking down her face. “This is what you didn’t want me to know.”

“Clara...” He closed his eyes briefly, expression pained.

“You thought I wouldn’t be able to forgive you for it. That it would change the way I see you.”

He hesitated. “I didn’t want you to know about this, no.”

“...But?” she prompted, feeling like there was more he wasn’t saying.

His gaze found hers again. “What am I supposed to do, Clara? Which mistake should I repeat? Not protecting you? Or deciding that I know best?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, shaking his head. “You found out this much, you won’t stop digging until you’ve found every horrible thing there is to find. And I don’t know what that will do to you. I can’t protect you from yourself. I’m not sure I ever could. All I can do is be here to try to pick up the pieces.”

She studied his ageless face, so very dear to her. “Then promise me one thing,” she found herself saying.

He huffed out a humourless laugh. “Just the one thing?”

“Promise me you won’t ever ignore me like that.” She had to swallow down the inexplicable again that tried to append itself to the end of that sentence. “Promise me that you will never stop talking to me.”

“Clara—”

“If you love me—” The words caught in her throat and she stopped. It was an unspoken line never before crossed, a word never before spoken between them, and she quickly added, “—in any way, you’ll stay.”

One corner of his mouth curled up in a sad smile. “So long as it’s my power to stay, I don’t think I will ever be able to leave you, my Clara.”

“Good,” she said, her tears making her voice crack. “I refuse to lose you. I won’t allow it.”

“Five-foot-one and crying,” he said fondly. “I never stood a chance.” He reached up and brushed away a tear as it rolled down her cheek, his long fingers steady and just slightly cool against her skin.

Clara stared at him in shock, trying to fit this newest revelation into her over-full mind. “You’re... rather solid,” she said, more eloquent words failing her.

“Always am, this time of the night,” he replied, eyebrows drawing together. “It’s the lack of sunlight. I thought you knew that.”

“I’m never here this late,” she reminded him, shaking her head. Seized with a sudden realisation and an urge she couldn’t deny, she took a step forward and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly.

Her ghost went rigid beneath her touch, only slowly relaxing. “Clara,” he breathed against her hair, seeming to remember what to do with his arms. He held her carefully, like he thought she might shatter, but the substantial realness of him was better than anything she could have hoped for. “My Clara.”

“You cannot imagine how long I’ve wanted to do this,” she said into his shoulder.

“I have some idea,” he replied, drawing her closer.

Clara clung to him, unwilling to let the moment end. She had thought about hugging her ghost so often over the years, but the reality of being held by him far outpaced even her best dreams. It was exactly the sort of comfort she needed after all the discoveries of the day, and gradually her tears stopped.

“I don’t think you should drive home tonight,” he said quietly, gently pulling away from her. “You’re upset, and it’s late. Sleep here, go home in the morning.”

She stepped back and nodded, but said, “I don’t know if I can sleep. It’s all still clattering around my mind, everything I read.”

He carefully prised the paper from her hand, smoothed it out and read it. “Coroner’s report,” he said grimly. “As though the journal wasn’t bad enough.”

She hesitated, then asked, “You’ve read the journal?”

“Only the final entry. But I was there for most of the rest of it. Come on,” he said, clearly changing the subject, as he folded the paper and tucked it away in his trouser pocket. “There’s still some chamomile tea in one of the decorative tins in the kitchen. Maybe a cup will help you sleep.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you’re just trying to distract me?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Because I am,” he said dryly, then turned and led the way down the hall. Sighing, Clara followed after him.

She sat at the table and watched him move around the kitchen, confidently pulling items from drawers and cupboards as he prepared the loose-leaf tea. It was still strange to think of this as his house, as the house he had bought with his wife, where they had hoped to build a future together. And tragic, too, given the way things had turned out. Based on the dates in her great-grandmother’s journal, they had lived here for just over two years before his death, between the summer of 1925 and the autumn of 1927.

“Were you happy?” Clara asked into the comfortable silence.

Her ghost glanced over at her from his position near the stove, eyebrows raised in question.

“When you lived here with my great-grandmother,” she clarified. “Were you happy, together in this house?”

He brought her the cup of steaming tea and sat down across from her before he answered. “We were very happy,” he said softly, staring at his hands folded on the tabletop. “And very much in love.”

Clara’s heart clenched in her chest, and she didn’t reply until she was certain of the strength of her voice. “I’m sorry it didn’t end well,” she said, feeling like the words were horribly inadequate. “That you didn’t get more time together. You deserve to be happy.”

He looked up at her across the width of the table, his familiar face ageless and ancient. “Things end,” he said gently. “That’s all. Everything ends, and it’s always sad. But everything begins again too, and that’s always happy.”

“And have you been happy?” she asked before she could stop herself. “In the years I’ve known you?”

His gaze searched her face for a long moment before he said, “Very happy, my Clara. As much as a dead man can be. Now, drink your tea. It’s a few hours yet before dawn, and you should try to sleep.”

She decided not to argue with him, starting to feel fatigue pull at her now that the adrenaline of her discovery had passed. “You told me as a child that I shouldn’t stay the night here,” she said between sips of warm chamomile tea. “Why?”

He looked away and was quiet for so long that she began to wonder if he would answer at all. “You never slept well here, when you were small,” he finally said. “You would wake up crying, even screaming sometimes. Ellie seemed to think it was just being away from home, but I always worried it was this house specifically, something about it that you knew even before you were old enough to talk.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t you.”

“What?” he asked, meeting her gaze, eyebrows drawing together.

Clara shrugged though a sip of tea. “Gran’s house is haunted. That’s the sort of thing that might scare some kids. Most, probably. But you’ve never scared me.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“I mean it,” she said, smiling at him over the rim of her cup. “If ghosts are meant to be scary, you’ve failed utterly.”

“Glad to hear it,” he said dryly, then after a moment added more seriously, “I’ll stay with you tonight, if you want. So you’ll know you’re safe. Hopefully I’m wrong, and you’ll sleep fine, but just in case.”

That longing for what could have been that she’d felt when looking at the wedding photo bubbled up again, but she shoved it away. He was her ghost, and she was his Clara, and that would have to be enough. “I would like that,” she said softly, her eyes on her tea. “Thank you.”

She led the way upstairs a few minutes later, choosing the back bedroom where he’d played her great-grandmother’s song for her earlier, and snuggled in beneath the quilts and blankets that she had laid out on the bed in a bid to make the house look inviting to potential buyers. Her ghost lingered uncertainly nearby until she patted the space beside her, but she drifted off to sleep before he’d finished making himself comfortable on top of the coverlet.

--

Clara woke suddenly, bolting upright and gasping for breath, all of her senses on high alert in the darkened bedroom. On instinct she reached for the Doctor beside her, her fingers curling desperately around his shoulder.

“Clara?” he asked, sounding confused.

“There’s someone downstairs,” she hissed, keeping her voice low, fear gripping her.

With a sigh, he put his hand over hers and squeezed it gently. “There’s not.”

“I heard a window break!” she insisted. “Someone’s in the house—”

“Clara, Clara, listen to me,” he said, sitting up beside her and taking her hands in his. “You had a nightmare,” he went on, leaning in close and trying to catch her gaze. “Just a nightmare, yeah? Everything’s alright. Trust me, there is no one in this house but you and me.”

She blinked at him, trying to make his words fit into her consciousness in between the frantic beating of her heart. “No,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m certain I heard—”

“It’s just your mind playing tricks on you. Nothing but a bad dream,” he assured her. “It’s over now, try not to think about it.”

There it was again, a noise like a rock shattering glass, coming from downstairs. “The window,” she whispered urgently, turning towards the bedroom door.

He shifted closer to her, cupping her face in both hands, commanding her attention. “It’s not real,” he said, gently but firmly. “What you’re hearing, it’s not real, it’s not happening now. Focus on now, this moment here with me.”

Clara tried to do as he asked, but it kept slipping away into the sound of breaking glass and the certainty that there was someone else in the house with them. She stared at him, forcing her frantic mind to react, to focus only on her immediate surroundings. The quiet stillness of the bedroom, the muted blue of her ghosts’s eyes in the low light, the familiarity of his voice, the feel of his fingertips, solid and cool against her skin. This moment.

“It was just a bad dream?” she said in a small voice, still not completely convinced.

“Yes,” he replied, holding her gaze. “And it’s over now.”

“It felt so real,” Clara said, unable to quite shake the lingering unsettled feeling.

“I know,” he said, his thumbs sweeping across her cheekbones soothingly. “I know it did. It’s alright.”

“Why do I have nightmares in this house?” she asked, the words bubbling out of her as soon as the thought crossed her mind. “I’ve never slept well here, since I was a baby, you said. Why?”

“Clara,” her ghost said in a warning tone, “just leave it be.”

She wrapped her hand around his wrist before he could pull away from her. “That wasn’t the normal sort of nightmare, was it?” she said, more statement than question. “You said earlier that you worried I knew something about this house, even before I was old enough to talk. What is it? What could I possibly have known when I was that young? What did I just dream?”

“I also told you that sometimes the past is better left buried,” he said, voice low.

“And sometimes not knowing the truth is a lot scarier than the facts themselves!” she shot back.

“And sometimes it’s not!” he snapped, surprising her. He sighed and shook his head in apology. “My Clara,” he said softly, his hands still gently holding her face. “Sometimes the truth is so terrible that you’re better off not knowing. Please let me protect you from this? Just this once?”

“Oh, god,” she said in realisation, nausea rippling through her. She wasn't sure how she knew, but she knew. “I wasn’t wrong about someone breaking into the house, was I? Only, it’s not happening now.”

“Clara, please.”

“Why do I know that? How? What was that dream?” The sound of footsteps downstairs drew her attention, and she looked to the door again. “Doctor,” she whimpered, her grip on his wrist tightening as terror surged through her, “there’s someone in the house.”

“Clara, Clara,” he said, leaning close to look into her eyes. “You can’t think about it. Focus on something else. Focus on me.”

She shook her head within his unrestraining hold. “You were there, too,” she said, sounding distant in her own ears. “I heard your voice from downstairs, and then a gunshot, and—”

“Not that memory,” he said quickly. “Anything else, any other memory. Please, Clara. You have to make yourself think of something else. The church in Glasgow. Think about the church in Glasgow.”

“The church in Glasgow?” she repeated, staring at him in confusion as her mind spun chaotically and her heart thundered.

He nodded. “It had stained glass windows and dark wood pews, remember? It was small, but we still only filled the first quarter of it.”

It was just a flash, there and gone, but for a moment she could see it. “It smelled of incense,” she said, utterly certain, the knowledge welling up from some deep, long-buried corner of her mind.

“Yes, good. What else?”

“I— I don’t know.”

“Your flowers,” he prompted. “That day at the church, what colour were your flowers?”

“Blue,” she replied immediately. “My bouquet was blue and white, and the flowers in my hair were blue. How do I know that?” she demanded, looking up at him. “That wasn’t me, how do I know that?”

“You know how, my Clara. Think it through.”

She heard breaking glass again, and looked towards the door. “The window,” she choked out. “Someone’s in the house.”

“There’s no one,” her ghost insisted, cool fingertips pressed to her face to pull her attention back to him. “It’s your mind trying to relive the trauma. Don’t let it. Think about— think about Cairo. The museum, yeah? The first time you saw me. Focus on that.”

“I can’t,” she said, a sob catching in her throat. Someone was in the house, and the gunshot—

“Try, Clara, please. For me. Think about Cairo, and the museum, and say the first thing that comes into your head.”

She took a deep breath and screwed her eyes shut, trying to force herself to focus on the impossible, to forget about the sound of breaking glass and think of the Doctor instead. “The first time I saw you, you were scowling,” she said, seeing it in her mind’s eye.

“Was I?” her ghost asked, sounding almost bemused through his worry.

She nodded absently. “And then someone said something to you, and you laughed, and I thought...”

“What did you think, my Clara?” he prompted when she didn’t go on. “Stay in that moment.”

“I thought you looked— interesting. Intriguing. With your angry eyebrows and your laugh-lines. I thought ‘that is a face I would like to get to know.’”

“Good, that’s good. What else do you remember? What did we drink that night? It was a party, what did they serve?”

“Champagne,” she said without hesitation. “But I didn’t like it, it was too dry.” She opened her eyes and looked at him, his face inches from hers. “How do I know that?” she demanded.

He didn’t answer her question, but pressed on instead. “You came to Thebes, almost a week later, do you remember that? Do you remember the first moment you saw me there?”

She searched within herself for the answer and somehow, miraculously, found it. “You were at the dig site,” she murmured, wrapped up in the unfamiliar memory filling her mind, crowding out everything else. “I saw you before you saw me, and you... You just looked so beautiful standing there, I wanted everything to stop. I wanted nothing to change, ever again. But then you looked up, and you grinned when you saw me. And I thought...”

Clara stumbled to a stop, feeling like the reality of what was happening was just outside her grasp, profound and unseen, some force of nature begging to be recognised. “I thought, ‘that is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.’ No,” she corrected herself, staring at him, that same heartbreaking longing coursing through her, identical to that remembered moment standing in the bright sunshine of Thebes. “I thought, ‘that is the man I want to spend the rest of the life of the universe with.’ I didn’t even know your name, but I knew—”

Swallowing past the tears forming in her eyes, she shook her head, words failing her. It was too much, her own emotions twisted up with the impossible images in her mind, her love for him tangled together with memories that couldn’t possibly be hers. “But that wasn’t me,” she insisted, her voice breaking, even as she wished desperately that she had been the woman who had met him in 1921. “That was her. My great-grandmother. How can I know that? How can I know any of that?”

“You know how, Clara,” he said again, gently wiping away a tear with the pad of his thumb. “Deep down, you know the truth. I think part of you has always known.”

She flickered her gaze over his familiar face, trying to understand, trying to fit the scattered pieces inside her together. In that moment, she wasn’t certain of anything — except that she loved him, and had always loved him. Her whole life, as long as she could remember, she had loved this man, her ghost. Loved him even though it was impossible, he was impossible. He would never feel that way about her, there could never be any chance of a future together. It was utterly hopeless, but that had never been enough to change the way she felt about him.

“Please, just see me,” he murmured.

Her eyes locked with his, pale blue in the dim light spilling in from the hallway. She knew every fleck of green in those eyes, every line on his face, every streak of silver in his hair, with as much certainty as she knew her feelings for him. And maybe, in the end, that was all she needed to know. Maybe it all added up to the same thing. The photos and the journal, her birthdate and that nightmare, her love for him and her longing for what might have been. There had only ever been one answer to any of it, and finally, Clara spoke aloud the only truth she could find.

“It was me,” she whispered, sure of it down to her bones. “It was me that met you in Cairo, and followed you to Thebes and to Glasgow. It’s me in those photos.”

“Yes,” he said, voice soft and emphatic. “It’s always been you. You found me again, like you promised you would.”

She stared at him, the enormity of that truth somehow not overwhelming her but completing her, the missing piece she had been searching for all her life. “I love you,” she said, the words bursting out of her, unwilling to let another moment pass before she told him. “I didn’t just realise that,” she clarified. “I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember. But I didn’t know it was something I could say.”

Her ghost — the Doctor, the man she loved, her husband — smiled at her softly, wiping another errant tear from her face. “I have loved you for more than ninety years, my Clara. I didn’t think I would ever hear you say those words again.”

Leaning in, Clara closed the short distance between them and kissed him, her hands finding their way to his hair as he pulled her closer. It was miraculous, and ridiculous, and incredible, the solid reality of him against her. She had dreamed of this for so long, wished for it for so many years, without realising that it had always been hers to claim. Kissing him felt like coming home. She pressed closer to him, trying to remember him and memorise him all at once.

“Not that I’m complaining,” she said breathlessly when they finally parted, her forehead resting against his, “but I’m still a little unclear on the how of all this. If I’m her, then I— I died. How is any of this even possible?”

He gently kissed her eyelids and her forehead, then shifted them around so that he was leaned against the headboard and her head was resting against his chest, his arms around her. “Reincarnation is the word you’re looking for, I think,” he replied. “Rebirth. Same soul, new life.”

She mulled that over, adding it to the truths she had found inside herself. “That’s a thing that can happen?” she asked.

“Apparently. I know as much about this as you do. But it’s hard to deny the evidence in front of us.”

“So all those times I joked about us bantering like an old married couple...?”

“Well, one of us is old, anyway,” he said ruefully.

She pressed a kiss over his silent heart. “How long have you known?”

“There wasn’t a single moment,” the Doctor said, holding her close and running the backs of his fingers up and down her arm idly. “It was countless little clues, over the years. The fact that you could see me, for one thing. The way you turn your head, the way you laugh, a phrase here and there. Your kindness, and your never giving up. And your eyes, of course. The past few years you’ve started to look more and more like yourself, your previous self, but there was always something familiar about your eyes. It was only in the last decade or so that I became convinced it was really you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She felt him shrug. “At what point, exactly, would it have been appropriate to inform you of my suspicions? By the time I was certain of it, you’d never shown any signs that you remembered, not really. Not like tonight. And I thought...”

“What?” she asked when he didn’t continue.

He hesitated, his hand stilling, and then said, barely a breath, “I thought it might be best if you never remembered. If I remained just the ghost that haunted your Gran’s house, and you went on with your life, not knowing the truth.”

“Live my life in the land of the living,” she said, repeating his earlier words. “Is that why you didn’t want me staying the night here? You thought it might trigger my memories?”

“No,” he said, taking a deep breath and sighing it out. “I didn’t want you to have nightmares like the one you just had, and the ones I suspect you had when you slept here as a baby. If that was the cost of remembering, I didn’t want you to have to pay it. Even if it meant you never remembered me.”

“That was a memory, too, wasn’t it?” she asked in a small voice, already knowing the answer. “That nightmare.”

“Clara...”

“Doctor,” she said, angling herself to look up at his face without moving away from him, “I know you’re trying to protect me, but I need to know the truth. All of it.”

“You know everything important—”

“But I don’t, do I?” she interrupted. “There are key facts I still don’t know. How you died, who my Gran’s father was, what exactly it was I just dreamed about. If you won’t tell me, you know I can find the answers on my own.”

He sighed. “I have no doubt you will.” He was quiet a moment, then said, “If I give you the basics of it, will you stop digging for the memory and let it be?”

Remembering the terror that had gripped her when she’d first woken from the nightmare, she nodded against his chest.

“Alright then,” he said quietly. “But in the morning. Some facts are too terrible for this hour of the night, and you should try to sleep again, if you can.”

“What makes you think it’ll go better this time?” Clara asked, burrowing deeper into his embrace and trying to keep her mind from straying to the memory of breaking glass. It was strange to think that when the sun rose, she would be back to not being able to touch him, but in that moment she was unspeakably grateful for the comfort of being held, secure in the arms of the man she loved.

The Doctor ran his fingers through her hair soothingly. “I could hum the song for you,” he suggested. “It seemed to help, before. Maybe it’ll help now.”

“My song,” she said, smiling against his chest.

“Yes, your song,” he agreed, and kissed the top of her head. “The song I wrote for you, my Clara.”

She drifted to sleep to the sound of that song, and didn’t wake until morning.

--

Chapter 5: The Present

[chipsandcoffee]

Whouffaldi Fanfic

“You Sound Like a Song”

Post-Hell-Bent, fix-it of sorts, memory loss, confessions, angst, romance, eternal love, s10 spoilers, canon compliant (well technically at least), cameo appearance by Bill Potts

Also on AO3 at this link.

______________

He knew her name was Clara. He knew they’d travelled together. But that was all he knew.

The list of things the Doctor didn't know about Clara was so much longer and went so much deeper, prodding away at him from a restless corner of his mind. What was she like? What had they meant to each other? Why would he have wiped the memory of her from his mind? And the one question that troubled him most: what had happened to her?

He ruminated on these questions yet again as he slumped in a leather armchair in his office at St. Luke's University, absent-mindedly strumming his guitar. He often felt a sense of melancholy on these solitary nights. Nothing was sad until it was over, he thought. Then everything was.

He had spent a long time trying to look for Clara (being stuck on Earth for a number of years hadn’t stopped him, for he was based where she was most likely to be). Of course he didn't know who he was looking for (hadn't someone told him that once?), but he believed he would know her if he met her again, and she would surely know him. But it had never happened. And he’d never heard a word from her.

He'd eventually reached the most logical and painful conclusion: she was dead. She'd likely been dead all along, even before he’d erased her from his memory (he could tell he’d used a neural block, could feel the sensation of a hole in his mind where something ought to be). Maybe that was why he'd taken the drastic step of eliminating those memories in the first place: her death had simply been too painful for him to bear.

He obviously had no idea how Clara had died, but he had the painful feeling that it had somehow been his fault. Hers was probably another life cut tragically short because of him, just like too many other people he’d been close to.

Indeed, he’d experienced more than his fair share of loss over his long life, and the last few decades had certainly been no exception. River had gone to her inevitable death shortly before he’d arrived in Bristol (at least by his timeline). He’d also very nearly presided over the execution of Missy before rescuing his oldest friend and bringing her to St. Luke’s. But for reasons he couldn’t quite grasp, the very idea of Clara being dead made his hearts ache in a way nothing else did. Perhaps more than anything else ever had.

It was strange grieving for someone he didn’t remember. His grief after losing River had made sense to him, and he’d been able to move on from it (even if Nardole, devoted to River as always, continued to assume that any sign of sorrow from the Doctor was connected to his late wife). But he had a vague, shapeless sense of loss deep in his bones that he knew, he just knew, was the grief he was still carrying for Clara. He obsessed over the unknown and unknowable details of her life, their life, and her presumed death. 

His grief frequently bubbled up to the surface when he played his guitar. In fact, as he sat there in the shadows of his office, he realized that he'd once again started playing a variation of a song from long ago that he knew was called “Clara.” Bill was always curious about that tune, but he'd never told her its true title. How would he begin to explain the story behind it when he didn’t understand it himself? 

The Doctor suddenly recalled with regret that he’d been rather curt with Bill earlier that day when she'd teased him that that particular song was the only one he knew how to play. He thought maybe he should say something to her by way of apology when he saw her again. He also knew he was rubbish at such conversations, so he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and fished out the stack of dog-eared index cards that he relied on for such occasions. He'd had them for many years, each card a neatly-written sentence that he could use in tricky social situations (which for him was most social situations). One of his companions had probably made them for him at some point, but he couldn't remember who. He liked to imagine they came from Clara, that he still had something tangible left of her that he carried with him. He wondered if she would have liked that.

The Doctor put his guitar aside, ran his hand down his face, and started pacing around his office. All this brooding wasn't doing him any good. He needed a distraction. He paused, fingers drumming on his desk, as his eyes fell on his TARDIS parked in the corner following his last outing with Bill. He'd been thinking recently that the timeship’s interface stabilizer could use an upgrade; that would keep him busy for a while. But he’d need to get his hands on a few parts first. He considered his options. 

His favourite place to get spare parts for the TARDIS was at a marketplace on the planet Haligonia. Of course Nardole would give him grief if he found out that the Doctor had travelled off world, but Nardole was currently occupied with tinkering with the locks on the vault deep under St. Luke’s and likely would be for a while. The Doctor could be gone and back before Nardole knew he’d left. He rubbed his hands together, his decision made. He pushed open the TARDIS doors.

A few minutes later, the Doctor was strolling through the bustling marketplace on 48th-century Haligonia. The planet was a human colony, but the well-known market attracted shoppers of a variety of species from all over the galaxy. It was a warm, sunny day, and the breeze carried smells of local street foods as he made his way past vendors selling everything from the latest tech gadgets to exotic jewellery to flowers of every possible colour.

Soon enough he spotted the parts dealer’s stall. As he approached it he noticed there was a rather spirited conversation going on between the tall, burly dealer and a petite young woman. The customer was dark-haired and wore a black leather jacket with a well-worn satchel slung over her shoulder. Her clear voice stood out over the din of the market, and as the Doctor walked up behind her, he could hear her haggling over the price of something.

“Come on, this would've cost less when it was new than what you’re asking for it now.”

The dealer folded his arms. “Yeah, well life’s not fair, lady. And if you can find it new somewhere else, feel free to buy it there.”

“Fine,” she said nonchalantly, “I will then.” The woman spun around and began striding off, nearly walking into the Doctor.

“Sorry,” she said, glancing up at him. She did a double take and suddenly froze, staring at him, her strikingly large eyes becoming impossibly larger. She stood stock still for a long moment. “Doctor,” she breathed.

He peered down at her, knitting his eyebrows and squinting slightly. “Have we met?”

“Yeah, yeah we've met,” she said faintly, sounding dazed. She continued to stare at him, and now her eyes were starting to look distinctly watery.

The Doctor became increasingly concerned that this stranger might inexplicably burst into tears right in front of him, a prospect that he found rather frightening. He reached into his pocket for his social cue cards in a desperate attempt to find something to say that might diffuse whatever was happening.

He found one of his frequently-used cards, and recited, “I apologize for not recognizing you. I am a time traveller and I sometimes meet people out of order.”

The woman tore her eyes away from the Doctor's face to look at what he was holding. However, much to the Doctor's horror the card had only made things worse, as she had clasped her hand over her mouth and a tear trickled down her face.

“I, um,” he spluttered, his arms flailing.

The woman suddenly seemed to snap out of her emotional state and darted her eyes around the marketplace, as though searching for an escape route. “I'm um, I'm so sorry,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to smile. “Have a good day.” And with that she turned and strode away without a backwards glance.

The Doctor felt somewhat relieved that this problematic encounter appeared to have resolved itself. But he also felt responsible for upsetting this person, and he found himself chasing after her through the crowd of shoppers.

“You there,” he said, starting to catch up to her. “Are you okay?”

He thought she must not have heard him, because she kept on walking. But then she came to a sudden halt, and the Doctor had to stop himself from running into her from behind. After a moment’s hesitation, she turned around, her face somehow conveying trepidation and relief at the same time. The Doctor was baffled how she managed to do that. 

The woman heaved a long sigh. “I am so sick of hiding from you.” The Doctor frowned as she stepped towards him, the crowd swirling around them. “The reason I recognize you but you don't recognize me isn't because of time travel. It's because you’ve forgotten me.” She paused for a second and wiped away a tear. “You, um, you chose to forget me.”

The Doctor felt as though his hearts had stopped and that all the blood had drained from his face. His mouth fell slightly open. Some distant part of his brain thought he must look like he'd seen a ghost. To him he had.

“Clara,” he whispered. It wasn't a question. He knew somehow, he was certain who she was.

“Yeah,” she whispered in return, gazing into his eyes.

“You're not dead,” he blurted out, immediately realizing how ridiculous that sounded.

“Yeah,” she frowned. “Why? Have you remembered--”

“I haven't remembered anything. I'd just… guessed. That-- that you were dead.”

Clara looked into the Doctor’s eyes and he immediately felt like she could see into his soul, into every lonely, hopeless night he’d spent grieving for her. Her face grew concerned.

“Oh, Doctor.” She reached up and laid her hand on his cheek, and the Doctor surprised himself by not flinching under her touch. “I think we should talk.”

______________

A few minutes later, the Doctor found himself incredibly, miraculously sitting with Clara at a small table in the corner of a quiet cafe on a back street near the marketplace, a steaming mug of herbal tea in front of each of them. They sat in silence at first as they stole glances at one another and tried to figure out how to navigate this strange situation.

“I like your coat,” Clara started, nodding at the blue-lined black velvet jacket he'd favoured of late.

“Oh, um, thanks.” He felt himself blushing. He wasn't used to people saying that sort of thing to him. Another moment passed and he asked, “How did you travel here?”

“In my TARDIS,” she answered easily, as though that were something that humans did all the time.

“What?” He was flabbergasted. “You have a TARDIS? How?”

Clara sighed. “Oh, this is going to be a very long story, Doctor.”

Several cups of tea later, Clara had told the Doctor the story of their final days together: the raven on Trap Street, the Doctor pulling Clara from her time stream on Gallifrey (which partly explained the vague memories he’d had of being trapped for a very long time in his confession dial), and her escape in a stolen TARDIS (oddly with the immortal woman Ashildr).

Once Clara had finished her story, the Doctor sat in stunned silence, attempting to make sense of it all, of the extreme lengths he'd gone to for Clara. He tried to wrap his mind around the idea that he’d actually plucked this woman from her time stream right before her death. And here she sat, still time-looped. Still, in essence, alive.

“You know how to fly a TARDIS?” It probably wasn’t the most important question, but it’s the one that popped out of his mouth.

“Yeah,” she laughed, her eyes twinkling, and the Doctor thought her laugh was perhaps the loveliest thing he’d ever heard. “I picked up a thing or two in the years we travelled together.”

The Doctor was impressed. “So how long has it been for you since you last saw me?”

“Oh, um, I'm not sure anymore. A while back I stopped keeping track of how long it’d been. It was--” She paused, lowering her eyes, a hint of pain crossing her face. She cleared her throat, met his eye again and continued, “I figured that was for the best. But I guess it must be close to a hundred years now.”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows slightly. "I think it's almost exactly the same for me."

The corners of Clara's mouth quirked up. "Yeah, that's just the way things seem to go with us. We've always been… connected, somehow.”

“What have you been doing all that time?”

“Oh you know, flying about a bit, watching the odd star being born, saving the odd planet.”

The Doctor couldn't help but laugh at Clara's jokingly casual tone, and he marvelled to himself at this amazing woman. But there was an important issue that Clara hadn’t yet explained.

“So why don’t I remember you, Clara? Based on the type of amnesia that I experienced, I’m guessing that I used a neural block of some sort?”

Clara’s face turned serious and she glanced down.

“Um, yeah, you did.” She gave a puzzled frown. “It's weird though, I saw you shortly after the neural block, and you seemed to remember a bit more than you do now. At least some of what had happened on Gallifrey.”

“Ah, well it's not uncommon in the early stages following a neural block to be left with some disjointed shards of memories. Over time, if the brain can't process those fragments, they're forgotten. It's sort of like forgetting a dream shortly after awakening.”

“Right, okay.”

The Doctor searched her face. “Clara, why did I use a neural block to forget you?” 

Clara looked upwards as if searching for inspiration on how to respond to the Doctor’s question, tears threatening in her eyes again. She took a deep breath.

“It wasn't meant to be you, not at first.”

“What do you mean?”

“You, um, you were going to use the neural block on me. You thought I'd be safer from the Time Lords if I didn't remember you.”

The Doctor frowned in confusion. “So what happened?”

Clara lowered her eyes. “I used your sonic sunglasses to reverse the polarity on the neural blocker when you weren't looking.”

“You what?”

“I didn't want it to go off on you, I just didn't want you to use it on me.” She began to raise her voice while a tear spilled down her face. “I didn't want you to use it at all, I told you what I'd done!”

Her voice broke and she paused, catching her breath and wiping her face. The Doctor felt a rush of sympathy and heartache for her. He realized that as difficult as it had been for him to live with his missing memories, Clara had suffered too, in a different way: she'd had to carry around the weight of everything they'd been through, while he had been blissfully ignorant.

Clara continued, speaking more quickly as she got through the rest of her story. “So. You didn't know at that point what would happen when the button on the blocker was pressed. That's when you suggested that we both press the button together, knowing that one of us would forget the other, but not knowing which one. Better than flipping a coin, you said.” Clara dropped her gaze and her voice fell to nearly a whisper. “And I guess you kind of lost the coin toss.”

The Doctor watched Clara for a moment, her head bowed. Then he found himself leaning forward and placing his hand on hers. Clara looked up at him, surprised at the contact.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“For everything, I guess. For forgetting you. For trying to make you forget me. I'm sorry that you feel bad about what happened with my memories, because it wasn't your fault, Clara. We knew the risks and we pressed that button together.” 

She squeezed his hand, a hint of relief on her face.

“You didn't say why I thought one of us needed to forget the other,” the Doctor continued. “But I think I'm starting to understand. Everything I did, the confession dial, the extraction chamber, my plan to hide you away and make you forget me.” The Doctor felt his hearts stirring as he now wrapped Clara's hand in both of his. “I think I would have torn the sky apart for you, Clara Oswald. And I think I knew that.”

A sad smile crossed Clara's face. “And I would have done the same for you.”

The Doctor and Clara gazed silently at each other, her small hand wrapped in his two, lost in the universe that was each other's eyes. 

After a while Clara swallowed, leaned forward, and spoke in a quiet voice. “Doctor, there's one more thing I still haven't told you. When you and I were on Gallifrey, we sat together in the Cloisters, and I told you something important, something I'd never told you before.” Clara took her free hand and laid it on top of his, her eyes round and sparkling. “I told you that I loved you. That I'd always loved you and I always would, and that I wished I'd told you a long time ago. That maybe if I had, things would have turned out differently.”

The Doctor had been surprised by many things Clara had told him that day, but somehow her declaration of love wasn't one of them. He’d known it, felt it, from the moment he'd met her in the market outside.

“And how did I respond?” he whispered, scarcely breathing.

Clara gave another sad smile and shook her head. “You didn't. That was the moment you got the service hatch open and, well, we had to keep running.”

“Ah,” was all he could think of to say.

“Yeah. We’ve had a lot of bad timing, you and me.”

As if to emphasize the point, the cafe owner at that moment walked by their table and turned off the “open” sign in the window, pointedly clearing his throat as he did so.The Doctor glanced around and realized that he and Clara had been alone in the cafe for quite some time.

“I think we’re being kicked out,” Clara whispered loudly, her eyes twinkling.

“Looks like it,” the Doctor replied with a crooked grin.

Outside, the Haligonian night had fallen, and the streets were nearly empty. The planet's two champagne-coloured moons shone overhead, and the air felt damp and cool after the warmth of the day. The Doctor and Clara wandered together through the town for a while, swapping tales of adventures and wild escapes, their bursts of laughter ringing through the stillness of the evening. The streets and laneways they walked eventually gave way to a green, park-like area on the edge of town where the scent of blossoming trees drifted through the night air. The Doctor wished they could keep walking forever, but as his TARDIS came into view in the moonlight, he was reminded that their magical day had to come to an end.

They walked together across the dewy grass and stopped near his blue box, standing in an uncertain silence, the only sound a nocturnal bird calling in the distance. Clara finally spoke. “So what happens now? Me and you, what do we do now?” The hint of tears glistening in her eyes told the Doctor that she probably already knew the answer.

“Oh, Clara. I don't even need my memories to know that there’s nothing in this universe I’d like more than to travel with you again. But I said today that I would have torn the sky apart for you all those years ago, and I know in my hearts I still would. And that you’d still do the same for me.” 

He took a step closer to her. “Everything you’ve told me, everything I can see and feel now tells me that we were amazing together. But also that we were dangerous. And I don't think there’s any way to stop that from happening again, because of who we are, and because of--” He paused and took a deep breath. “And because of how we feel about each other.”

Clara looked down and nodded, a tear falling to the ground. “Yeah,” she whispered.

The Doctor tenderly placed his hand on Clara’s cheek, and she looked up at him. Clara had told him so much that day. Now there was something he felt he had to tell her, something that was burning within him. He wasn't going to let the opportunity pass him by again, not this time.

“Clara, I never got the chance to respond to you in the Cloisters, and I know a lot of time has passed since then and I’ve forgotten so much. But I know, I’m certain of one thing. I loved you, Clara Oswald. I loved you-- I love you with both my hearts. And I always will.”

Clara smiled up at him, even as another tear rolled down her cheek. The Doctor wiped away the tear with his thumb, feeling dizzy with the emotions swirling inside him. He found himself slowly leaning towards her, feeling a pull as irresistible and inevitable as gravity, as Clara ran her hand up his arm. Their lips met in a soft, heartfelt kiss. To the Doctor it felt surprisingly natural, right, perfect. It felt like the long-awaited conclusion to a conversation begun 100 years ago.

The Doctor stepped back and took Clara's hand as he stood there smiling softly at her, warmth and contentment infusing his body. She smiled back at him, all dimples and shiny eyes.

“I’m really glad I got to see you, Doctor.”

“I’m really glad I got to see you too, Clara Oswald.”

But his smile faltered as the reality of his situation sunk in. Clara frowned.

“What’s wrong, Doctor?”

He released her hand and sighed. “My neural block, Clara. I don’t know what'll happen when I leave tonight. Seeing you today, talking to you, learning all about you, about us. I don’t want to forget any of it, not again. But my brain has blocked my memories of you for a very long time, and I'm afraid it'll do it again.”

Clara’s face was filled with concern. “There must be something we can do.”

He shook his head and half-shrugged his shoulders.

Clara’s eyes lit up. “Hang on, I have an idea.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and opened her satchel. After some rummaging around, she pulled out a small cardboard box and opened it. “I carry these around with me. They still come in handy for all kinds of things.”

______________

Bill started packing up her things as the day’s tutorial with the Doctor wrapped up.

The Doctor was sitting behind his massive desk, continuing to flip through the book they'd been discussing. “And don’t forget that your research paper on laser-cooled ions is due tomorrow.”

Bill rolled her eyes good naturedly. “Don’t worry, you’ll get it.”

“Good.” The Doctor tried to look stern, but he had a feeling he wasn’t quite pulling it off. Tossing aside the book, he stood and picked up his guitar from the chair where he'd left it, wandering around his office as he played the song that he now knew was named for the woman he loved.

Bill paused as she walked towards the door. “Don't think I've heard that version before. It's, I dunno, cheerier.”

The Doctor smiled to himself. “Good night, Bill.”

“‘Night, Doctor. See ya tomorrow.”

Now alone, the Doctor played for a while longer before setting his guitar down. He relaxed into his favourite armchair and reflected on how different things were for him since his trip to Haligonia a few weeks earlier. He could still remember much of his wondrous encounter with Clara, though some of the details were growing hazy, almost as though the whole thing had been a dream. Sometimes he thought maybe it had been a dream. But whenever that unsettling feeling arose, he would do as he did now. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small stack of index cards. Some were old and dog-eared, but some were new. All of them had the same neat handwriting, and now he knew whose handwriting it was.

He picked out the new cards. The one on top read, “Clara is alive and doing well. She wants you to be happy.” He gave a contented sigh. The next two were his favourites.

“Clara loves you. She always has and always will.” 

“You told Clara that you love her, and she will always cherish that.”

He smiled even as his eyes felt wet with tears (perhaps he was malfunctioning). He gazed at the cards for a long time, his fingers running lightly over the words.

He knew her name was Clara. He knew they’d travelled together. He knew she was still out there, exploring the universe. He knew they'd loved each other deeply and truly, and they always would.

He also knew that nothing was sad until it was over. And he and Clara would never be over. Not in his hearts, not ever.

______________

Thank you for reading! This is my first fic and any feedback would be very welcome and appreciated!

[lizzy-bennet]

This Never-Ending Melody Fandom: Doctor Who. Pairing: Whouffaldi Length: 2,500 words Warnings: None Also on Ao3

The memory of what Clara told him in the cloisters lives on in the form of a song, its melody always winding its way through the back of his mind, soft and sweet and sad and ever-constant, like the cadence of his twin heartbeats.

He just wishes he could remember the words that went with it. (Or: Several instances the Doctor plays a song called Clara.)

He’s in a diner somewhere in America. There’s dust on his shoes and a guitar in his hands, and the last place he remembers being is at the end of a burning universe. He can recall falling to the floor, remember the feeling of his two hearts shattering at the sight of a girl crying over him, and him asking her to smile, for her sake as much as his.

(He thinks....he thinks she might’ve smiled for him. That she must’ve smiled for him.

But he can’t remember it.)

Now he sits on a barstool, in this kitschy American diner with records on the walls and Elvis painted on the door, and a surprisingly British waitress standing behind the counter, with kind brown eyes and a clever smile. She crosses her arms on the countertop, leans toward him as he talks, and for a reason he can’t quite put his finger on, she feels comfortingly familiar to talk to.

He must be lonely, he thinks, shaking his head.

It’s not like he’s ever seen her before.

As he stares at her, he hears a song playing somewhere in the back of his mind and he plucks it out slowly on his guitar, fingers dancing deftly across the strings. He’s not quite sure where the tune comes from; it’s both brand new and old, comforting and haunting, melodic and melancholy. But it’s something he somehow knows as well as he knows the sound of his own two hearts beating.

The waitress listens, dark brown eyes watching his hands, and then she asks, “What’s the song called?”

He looks up, the tips of his fingers ghosting over the guitar strings, and says:

“I think it’s called Clara.”

# “You said memories become stories when we forget them,” the waitress tells him later, after he’s confessed he can’t remember what Clara told him in the cloisters. “Maybe some of them become songs.” He thinks she sounds sad when she says it, and he thinks it might be because she knows what it feels like to lose someone too. He’s been around the universe long enough to know what grief looks like the instant he sees it, and it’s right there in her eyes when she looks at him, along with something else he can’t quite place. He wonders if maybe she’s saying that part about memories becoming songs for her own benefit as much as his.

He thinks that whoever she’s thinking of, whomever she’s lost, she must’ve loved them very much. And in reply, he strums his guitar and says, “That would be nice.” # The years pass and things change. He gets a job lecturing at a university, parks his TARDIS in his office, stops running so far and so fast. But the melody remains, its volume ebbing in and out like waves of the sea, sometimes quiet, sometimes loud. From time to time, he’ll hear the song playing brightly, right at the forefront of his mind. It’ll happen when he passes by an English teacher’s classroom, or when the café next door starts advertising soufflés. Sometimes it happens when he laughs, or before he falls asleep, whenever he’s happy or even when he’s sad, but it’s there.

It’s always, always, always there, this lyricless melody. Forever playing. Never leaving him.

He doesn’t think he ever wants it to. #

It’s late-afternoon sometime in the twenty-first century, and he’s in his office at Saint Luke’s University. He’s already graded several papers - three good ones he’s marked with an A, and a bad one he simply wrote pudding brain in circular Gallifreyan on - so now he takes a break, standing and slipping his guitar strap over his shoulders. His fingers fall across the strings, and lost in thought, he moves to stand beneath his office’s old ruby and sapphire stained-glass window, a mosaic of blues and reds reflecting across his silhouette as he plays.

“That song,” he hears someone behind him say, and slightly startled, he turns to see a woman with a wastebasket - one of the university’s janitors - standing in the doorway. “It’s pretty.” He blinks. He’d been playing almost unconsciously, like the music was all muscle memory as his mind wandered elsewhere, so it takes him a moment to recall exactly what song he’d been strumming, and then he remembers:

He was playing that song again. That song that never leaves him, the one he first played to a waitress in a retro American diner and hasn’t really stopped playing since.

He nods, a pattern of blue and red shadows moving across his face as he does, “I suppose it is.”

“I’m surprised you were playing it.”

He squints at her, eyebrows furrowing, “Why?”

The janitor shrugs her shoulders, “It’s just that you always play rock songs, that’s what you’re known for. But this song...this song’s so different than anything else you ever play.”

The Doctor supposes that she’s right. He likes loud songs, hard rock and guitar riffs and fast drumbeats that echo the rhythm of his two hearts after an adrenaline rush. Songs to run from Sontarans to. Songs to shoot through space to. Songs that drown out all the other lives he’s led and all the other voices in his head.

But this song he plays now is slow and soft and sweet and sad, and always winding its way through the back of his mind. He doesn’t always know exactly why he’s playing it, or sometimes that he’s even started to play it at all, just that it’s something he does.

The janitor stares at him, interrupting his thoughts once more as she asks, ”Does it have words?”

He knows that it used to, once upon a time, when he knelt in the cloisters with a girl he once knew but no longer does. She’d told him something important, but he can’t remember it, not a single sentence, not even a word. The melody remains lyricless, the words he wants always just beyond his grasp, forever dancing just out of his reach.

“No,” he answers. “No words. Not anymore.”

# “What’s it called?” A new student asks, like they all inevitably do. The semesters pass and his students change, but the song remains like a constant companion, and so that question does too. “Clara,” he answers, and her name feels at home on his lips.

# The night air is warm, but the breeze is cool. There’s a party going on in the courtyard of Saint Luke’s as the students and staff of the university celebrate the end of another semester, and the Doctor stands under a lit-up, glittering tree, it’s branches woven with white string-lights, and he plays his guitar in its glow. And then he spots her.

It’s that waitress from that diner in the desert.

She’s walking by, and he catches a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye. She’s wearing that same nearly TARDIS blue dress as before, half covered with an apron, its stark white strings flying behind her like wings as she walks.

“You, Diner Girl!” he says suddenly.

(He’s doesn’t really know why he calls out to her, nor does he quite understand why his two hearts beat gratefully when she stops.

Maybe it’s because he’s been without a companion for so long.)

Diner Girl turns toward him, and he doesn’t really expect her to recognize him - after all, he only spent about an hour with her, a few years ago, just one of a million customers who must’ve come into her diner and sat on that stool - but she smiles at him like he’s an old friend.

“Hi,” she says as she steps toward him, the sparkling lights shining down across her smile like stars.

He raises an eyebrow, not sure whether she really remembers him or is simply feigning politeness. Something about her posture suggests that she’s lying.

“You remember me?”

“‘Course I do. You’re the man who played me a melody for a glass of lemonade,” she says. Then gently, quietly, so nearly noiseless he almost doesn’t catch it, she adds, “I don’t think I could ever forget you.”

So she does remember him. He must‘ve been wrong about her lying about something, he thinks. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, with humans, the odd, emotional creatures that they are.

She brings him back out of his thoughts by flashing him a smile that boarders on flirtatious as she says, “Bit surprised you remember me, though.”

“Never forget a face,” he banters back, but even as the words leave his lips, he knows it’s a lie.

There’s one face out there that he just can’t remember, no matter how hard he tries.

The waitress looks stricken for a second, like some sort of old wound she thought had long since scarred over has reopened, all painful and raw, but the look’s gone in an instant; she wipes it away with a shake of her head, her brown ponytail bobbing with movement as she does.

“So this is what you do, is it?” She asks, smiling as she gestures around at the school, looking just a little bit proud although he has no idea why she would.

”You teach here?”

”I lecture. What are you doing here?” “Catering,” she answers easily, motioning down at her uniform. “What, you thought I dressed as a waitress for no reason?”

He shrugs. Human nuances like fashion sense were lost on him. “People have worn odder. You should see some of the outfits I’ve picked out.” She raises an eyebrow at that, presses her lips together like she’s trying not to smile, and the Doctor asks, “So you’ve come back home from America?”

She shrugs, ”Oh, you know how it is. Can’t stay in one place too long.” “I know the feeling.”

“Bet you do.” She grins at him then, and he grins back at her, and as he does, his fingers begin to pluck out four familiar notes on his old guitar.

Diner Girl blinks, her lips parting for just a moment. She remembers the tune, he realizes, he can see the recognition and surprise register in her eyes at the sound of it. He watches as her gaze floats down to the guitar in his hands, and then flickers back up to his face as she says, “Still playing that song, huh?” “Always.”

“You ever remember anything this Clara told you?” “Not a word.”

She nods, and she looks sad, like she’s a breath away from breaking down, and something inside him twists, all raw and painful. He can’t stand the sight of tears, especially not tears from this girl. It’s nonsensical, this reaction of his. It’s not like she’s his friend, it’s not like he even really knows her, but for some reason he feels that if this tiny, brunette girl standing in front of him cries, it just might break his two hearts. “I can play a song for you, if you’d like,” he offers, because he can’t deny this strange impulse that wants him to do anything to get her to smile again. “In exchange for a lemonade?”

“No,” he says, shrugging and shaking his head, the pads of his fingers brushing against the guitar strings. “Just because.”

She stares, searches his eyes, and then something in him sighs with relief as he sees a smile playing on the corner of her lips.

“Keep playing me that song, then,” she orders cheekily, her eyes sparkling as her smile widens and she nods at his guitar. “You started it, might as well finish it.”

So he obeys and keeps playing, the song drifting through the air and floating softly on the breeze, and though it’s stupid and sentimental and certainly nonsensical, for a moment he feels like it’s as if Clara’s there with him.

Finally, he reaches the final part of the song, the last note lingering in the night, and then, quick as lightning, the waitress stands on the tips of her toes and presses a kiss to his cheek. Before he has a chance to react, to exhale, to wonder why she would, she’s gone.

She had catering work to get back to, he supposes. # He questions once, when he’s playing it for what may be the thousandth time, how he can know this untaught song so well. And the answer he gives himself is:

He knows the song so well because it’s Clara, and what Clara told him in the cloisters, and she’s woven into his mind and two hearts so deeply that not even Time Lord technology can fully take her away.

He may not remember the sound of her laugh or the shade of her eyes, but he remembers how she made him feel and the lessons she taught him, and here they all are, wrapped up in the form of a wordless song that never leaves him.

He just wishes he’d never forgotten the lyrics that go with it.

#

The year is nineteen-fourteen and he is on a battlefield that is not a battlefield, standing beneath a snow-filled sky.

And he is dying.

It’s nothing new, this dying thing. He’s died oh so many times before. From one regeneration to the next, and then all those billions of times he burned himself up in the confession dial. Still, dying is not something you can get used to, and he finds himself hesitating, lingering in this life before he goes onto the next.

The glass creature made of memories that’s there with him must sense it, because she says, “I’ve got a little goodbye present for you.”

He scoffs at that, starts to make a joke, reply with the wit and wisdom that only dying men hold, but then his words fall silent and his breath catches beneath his collarbone, because Clara is standing in front of him.

And he recognizes her.

The air is cool and the sky is grey, but there’s this glow around Clara, all golden and soft, and when she looks up at him, the world feels a little less cold.

She smiles, warm and clever and bright, and there it is again: that song that’s always playing in the back of his mind.

“Clara,” he says softly, gently, a smile coming across his face at stares at her, and he hears the melody grow louder and sweeter.

“Hello, you stupid, old man,” she says, and there’s no mistaking the fondness in her voice as she says it, nor the love in her eyes she has when she looks at him, and he thinks he’s never seen or heard anything more beautiful.

He ducks his head, laughs at her loving insult, and bit by bit, his memories come back to him: the sound of her voice and then the flash of her smile. The way he felt when her arms wrapped around him and then the way he grinned at her jokes. How she was the waitress who told him that sometimes memories become songs, and then how she’d checked in on him without him ever knowing he was talking to her, to his Clara, and then and then and then...

Then comes what she told him in the cloisters.

It’s all back, every single sentence, each and every word, and those words that she said settle in his mind like stardust, sparkling and gentle, bright and beautiful. And he smiles, because finally, finally, finally, after all these years...

The melody in his mind has lyrics.

[nehswritesstuffs]

Whouffaldi- sonic sunglasses. Browsing history.

This feels like a blast from the past and I absolutely LOVE IT. \o/

4223 words; set sometime after The Girl Who Died, but before the Zygon episodes (status of The Woman Who Lived in regards to this timeline is in complete and utter question); definitely turned into another excuse to write prawns, ngl, thought at least that was the intent from the beginning this time around; contains what probably amounts to a case of period-clothing fetish as well as a potential origin story for the red velvet jacket; also contains sexual roleplay, faffing about before actually getting to the good stuff, and the TARDIS being unusually obliging; very, very, very not safe for work, so please keep that in mind

-------

Clara rolled her eyes as she watched the Doctor ramble on about the paintings before them. Honestly, she’d lost track two corridors ago. They were taking a stroll through a portraiture gallery, with the Doctor animatedly describing the pieces they walked past, their painters, and the subjects behind them. He wasn’t fooling anyone with the fact he was wearing his sonic shades as he talked (“it’s bright in here, Clara”), though she let him carry on and let him pretend. Stroke his ego… despite the fact she was more in the mood to stroke other things…

“You don’t normally see a horse this big and central,” he explained as they stopped at one rather large painting. “You can tell how important the horse was in order to get this sort of treatment, which is pretty phenomenal if you ask me. Even though horses get plenty of credit over the years as subjects in paintings like this one, it’s nowhere near what they should. If you look…”

“You’re just taking notes from a documentary,” Clara chuckled. She watched as the tips of his ears and cheeks grew pink with blush—caught him. “Come on, let me see.” She held out her hand and twitched the tips of her fingers.

“Am not.”

“Prove it.”

“Careful of the browsing history.” He took the sunglasses off and placed them on Clara’s face, watching in trepidation as she looked at them. She tapped the side of the frames and they whirred sonicly.

“Uh-huh; that’s where the documentary is, you berk,” she teased. Giving them back, she gave the Doctor a wink. “Think you could pull one over on me, hmm?”

“At least let me have a bit of fun,” he groused. He placed the sunglasses on his forehead and jammed his hands in his trouser pockets. “I thought you enjoyed fun.”

“I do enjoy fun, but I also enjoy you not lying to me,” she reminded him. “Remember what happens when we lie to one another…?”

“Bad things,” he replied. None of the rest of it needed saying—he knew that.

“That’s right.” She pecked a kiss on his cheek and held out her hand. “So, you want to try that again?”

“Y-Yeah.” He avoided eye contact as he slipped his hand into hers and they continued to walk along. His embarrassment was so intense that he didn’t even pick up on the fact that Clara was still looking at him and the sonic shades and wondering what else was possibly in there.

Ah, she would find out eventually.

-------

“Doctor, I need you to concentrate. This is serious.”

The Time Lord in question tapped the bridge of his shades before tilting them down slightly. He and Clara were currently in the middle of a monologue from the Gallifreyanoid emperor who was going on about this thing and that in his grand scheme to conquer the surrounding systems and, eventually, the galaxy. The levity of the entire situation was thrown off by the Doctor chuckling to himself, which instantly tipped Clara off to what he was doing.

“I’m sorry; was the pudding-brain saying something important? I’m trying to concentrate on only actually-important things at the moment.”

“You didn’t just hear a word I said!” the emperor snapped.

“No, I did: take over the galaxy, name go down in history, prove to the boy you had a crush on in lower secondary that you are a good catch… or was it a girl… that part I admit is a bit fuzzy…” He grinned indulgently as the emperor’s face went purple—precisely what he was aiming for. “Now, are you going to let us save the day or not? Because I really want you to get this over with before the playlist is done.”

At that, Clara snatched the sonic shades from his face, causing him a brief panic. “Don’t touch the browser history…!” he gasped, reaching helplessly for the device. She put them on and her eyebrows went up in curiosity.

“Kitten and puppy videos on YouTube…?” she marveled. “This is what you were paying attention to…?”

“That, amongst other things, and you,” he claimed, accepting the glasses back. He put them in his breast pocket before turning back towards the emperor, who seemed ready to pop a blood vessel, have a coronary, and flatline right then and there out of sheer anger. “Now… are we at the running part?”

They were definitely at the running part.

-------

It was a peaceful night as Clara laid in bed, the Doctor nestled into her side. He was supposedly pretending to sleep, which seemed an awful lot like regular sleeping to her, though she knew that if she pointed it out he would be cranky about it for three whole days and that was three days that she did not want to deal with at the moment. Instead she listened to him breathe as he used her stomach as a pillow, gently scratching his scalp and idly looking around the room. It was the one the TARDIS had conjured for her, once they had gotten over their differences, and it always seemed as though there was something new each time she spent the time to notice. Theirs was an interesting relationship, much more complex than the one she had with the Doctor, and that was saying something.

It was then that something caught her attention on the nightstand: the sonic sunglasses. She reached for them, examining the device in the wan light from the lamp on the other side of the room, the one on her desk where her lesson plan lay abandoned and mostly forgotten after the Doctor had come in with hungry kisses and wandering hands. Last she’d seen the sonic specs, they had been safely tucked away in the Doctor’s jacket the previous day…

Putting the device on, Clara allowed the sunglasses to whir to life. It was a mess of graphs and readouts normally, which made the fact the screens were rather uncluttered almost jarring. She looked at the Doctor and watched the readings on him pull up.

ALIAS: THE DOCTOR

SPECIES: GALLIFREYAN

SUBSPECIES: TIME LORD

AGE: UNDEFINED

IMMEDIATE DANGER INDEX: 2

SLEEP CYCLE: CURRENTLY IN REM

MINUTES UNTIL GENITAL RESET: 68

“Oh, so close,” she tutted. She debated taking a peek at what her readings were when she saw something blinking softly in the upper corner of the screen.

BROWSER HISTORY

Quirking an eyebrow, she briefly debated with herself if she should dive in or not. Granted it was the Doctor’s device, but the TARDIS had put it there for her, and considering she wanted to stay on decent terms with the ship after working so hard to get there… she opened it up and began idly scrolling.

Kitten videos, sheet music for Pink Floyd, yogurt recipes, ingredients for a lavender bath bomb, critical essays on the Paddington franchise, a comprehensive list of Rat Pack live shows, the history of beekeeping, novels set in…

…oh…

…now this was interesting. She tapped the side of the sonic sunglasses and watched as the Doctor’s secrets were spilled unceremoniously for her.

The Doctor snorted and muttered something in his sleep, rubbing his face against her skin as he shifted slightly and tightened his grip around her legs.

She was going to have fun with this.

-------

It was the following day and the Doctor was chewing on the non-writing end of his pen as he paced around the console room. With his jacket off and his hooded sweatshirt tied around his waist, his hands, forearms, and face were smeared with oil and grease as he mulled over his rewiring decisions.

“I could put it here,” he muttered, tracing a possible cable route with his finger over the diagram in his hand. A second and he shook his head. “That would risk disrupting this,” he tapped the paper, “and those are streams that are not meant to be crossed…”

“Doctor…?” It was Clara’s voice, patient and unassuming. “Could you come here, please?”

“What is it, Clara?” he replied, raising his voice so she could hear. She had said earlier that she was going to have a soak, which meant he had been free to tinker with the console as he had been meaning to do.

“We need to talk.”

Oh no.

“Let me clean up first!” he panicked. Those four words were never good. The last time she’d said that, he had to make flash cards in order to not further insult anyone, and the time before that, he had taken apart her alarm clock that she was apparently still using. Considering they’d been drifting throughout the time vortex for a couple days at that point, he was nervously leaning towards something as drastic as the latter. He frantically washed his face and scrubbed all the grease and oil from his hands and arms, getting as much off as he could. After drying his hands and running his fingers through his hair, he decided he was almost presentable. Put on the sweatshirt and… yes. Now he was able to face her.

The Doctor found Clara sitting in her bedroom, wearing her favorite, oversized, fluffy bathrobe and with her hair up in a tight bun. Her expression was amused, her legs were crossed, and she was leaning on the chair’s armrest, a device in her hand that made him freeze.

The sonic sunglasses.

“Don’t look at the browser history, hmm…?” she said. He froze—he was caught. “Why didn’t you want me to look in there, Doctor…?”

“How did you…?”

“The TARDIS.”

Darn it—outed by his own ship. “Clara, I didn’t mean…”

“If you really didn’t want me to see, you would’ve been using a private window, which automatically deletes all its history when closed out.” The panicked expression on her face sent a jolt through her, as she knew she had him. “They have that setting.”

“I…”

“What… don’t want to admit you were reading tawdry romance novels without me?”

“Erm… I…”

“Extremely graphic tawdry romance novels at that? Period pieces whether they be by time or by choice?”

“…Clara…”

“Embarrassed by your choice in porn?”

“I’m not embarrassed!”

“Then why keep it from me?” she asked plainly. Clara placed the sonic specs down on the table and stood, crossing the room to meet the Doctor. “I thought you wanted to be adult about this. About us.”

“I am.”

“Then…?” She placed her hands gently on his chest. “Why keep it from me? Don’t you trust me?”

“I do! It’s just…!”

“…just…?”

“…I… I don’t want you doing anything you don’t want to do… feeling as though you need to do things for my sake…”

“Doctor,” she smirked, “I think I can handle this one. You forget: I teach not just fiction literature, but period piece fiction literature. This is precisely in my wheelhouse.” She shrugged out of her robe to reveal she was wearing a plain shift and corset, the sight of which made the Doctor swallow hard. All levels of his conscious thought shorted out at once for a brief moment as he became completely entranced by the hard turn things had taken. “Now help me into my dress.”

“Y-Yes ma’am.”

He followed a pace behind her as she went behind a changing screen, where a deep, wine-red dress made of velvet rested on a shaped hanger, waiting for them. She glanced at him over her shoulder and he inhaled deeply—this was no fair, being assaulted in such a manner. He gently placed his hands on her waist, fingers ghosting along the fabric there.

“Ah, ah, ah…” she warned. “Not until later.”

“…but Clara…” He pressed his hips against her, letting her know how ready he was.

“It’s no fair for you to see me and I not see you,” she reasoned. “Now the dress.”

Without a word, the Doctor complied, taking the dress from the hanger and lifting the fabric over her head. He helped her maneuver it into place and lace up the back. The entire time he kept his breathing slow and steady, his respiratory bypass having decided to fail on him. His fingers moved slowly, his hands lingered, and with every second that ticked by, his erection hurt more and more.

“Thank you,” Clara said, turning around once the dress was secured. “Yours is in your room, wherever that is.”

“Mmm… Cla…”

“The TARDIS will show you,” she continued. She carefully turned him so that his back was towards her, giving a gentle shove towards the door. “See you then.”

Before he realized it, the Doctor was standing in the corridor, staring at the door to Clara’s room. He rested his forehead and hand against the door, absolutely craving the woman who was on the other side. Exhaling heavily, he hit the door with his forehead a couple times before sulking off down the corridor… doomed.

-------

Forty-five minutes later and the Doctor was near-frantically searching for where the TARDIS had put Clara. She wasn’t in her room, nor the console room, nor the library, nor the study… and the fact he was still searching was beginning to grate on his nerves. It wasn’t as though he had gone and changed into a shirt with lace and frills for laughs. His boots now went all the way up to below his knees and his jacket was the same red material as Clara’s dress. With a top hat to pull the entire outfit together, he knew that there was no way that the TARDIS alone was the one who concocted this—he was now on the hunt for the co-conspirator.

A couple more turns and he found a room that he’d not seen before; the tall oaken door stood out amongst the chrome and brushed steel. The Doctor cautiously pushed the door open to find that there was a luxurious, fully-furnished Regency-era flat that looked completely as though it was not merely a room in a space-and-time ship. A four-poster bed sat along the wall, with the remainder set up as though it were merely a noblewoman’s salon. The simulated sunset was pinks and oranges against clouds of purple, blue and green, bathing the room in a soft, golden light that caressed all it touched. For a faux environment, the TARDIS had really outdone herself.

“Visiting my apartments, Doctor? How naughty we’ve become.” He turned and saw Clara reclined on a chaise lounge, a book lazily held in one hand.

“Does any of this even match?” he asked, taking off his hat. He placed it on a bust perched upon a nearby table—one of himself some regenerations ago. “You know… other than my coat and your dress.”

“Does it even matter?”

“I guess not.”

Silence, all electric and tense.

“You look good, Doctor.”

“I look ridiculous.” He tugged at the layered ruffs down the front of his shirt and the lace cuffs poking out his sleeves. “Haven’t worn anything like this in a long time.”

“Pity; it suits you. Especially the color.”

“Are we sure?” He approached her, bending down on one knee, resolutely never breaking eye contact. Taking the book from her hand, he placed it on the floor beneath the couch before holding her hand in his, kissing her knuckles tenderly. “Does this please milady?”

“It could please me more,” she said. He kissed inside of her fingers, her palm, her wrist, all while his free left hand wandered unabated. First her ankle, then slowly tracing up the back of her calf, coming around to hesitantly trace the top of her stocking and garter where they sat just below her knee; his fingers moved at an agonizing pace, eliciting a low moan from them both.

“Are we alone, Lady Clara?” he asked, deliberately drawing out the sounds in her name. “I wouldn’t want His Lordship to catch us. His bow-tie might twist so tight his head pops off.”

“If His Lordship arrives, he knows that although I adore him, my love lies with only one man now,” she said. She tried not to waver as he placed his cheek against her knee, feeling him through the fabrics that separated them. “Should His Lordship vanish and I were to wed again, there is now but one choice in all of time and in all the lands that is worthy of my hand.”

“Are these instructions, milady?”

“No—let His Lordship be. All I want is you, my dearest Doctor.”

“As milady wishes,” he murmured. He gently took off her shoes before lifting up the hem of her skirts and resting them on her knees, taking his time as he unbuckled the garters and slid them and the stockings off, one and then the other. When he was done he began to massage her feet and calves, drawing out their game. As his hands went up her legs, he pressed his lips against her skin, moving along her thighs until she delivered a light tap to the back of his head.

“Bring me to bed,” she commanded sweetly. “I have no wish to soil the couch with our activities.”

Wordlessly, the Doctor lifted Clara into his arms and stood, sweeping her up into a kiss. She held onto his shoulders as he moved across the room, her fingers finding their way into his hair by the time he placed her down on the mattress. With one hand pinned underneath her, the other trailed over the fabric of her dress, feeling the indulgent velvet where it covered her corset, then hips, then legs. He was about to reach under her skirts again when she grunted in his mouth, clearly displeased.

“Shit—get me out of this dress,” she cursed.

“You’re breaking character.”

“…and you need to get those scratchy sleeves off before you go back down there,” she ordered. “How did you ever get any wearing a shirt like that before?”

“Very carefully,” he admitted.

“Well, be careful next time you wardrobe-dive, alright? We can keep the jacket, but that shirt—or at least those cuffs—will have to go.”

“Yes, milady.” He let her take his jacket off him and he stood, hopping on one foot, then the other, in order to get rid of his boots. Only then did he take off his shirt, revealing his sparse frame underneath.

Straddling her lap, he shakily began to work on the lacing going down her back while she loosened his belt. She pushed him away long enough to stand and work the dress off, allowing it to pool at her feet before stepping out of it. The Doctor saw his opportunity and dove in for another kiss, this time picking Clara up underneath her rear. She held on tightly with her legs, arms draped loosely about his neck, as he laid down in the bed.

“Might I be allowed some time with milady’s other lips?” he requested.

“Normally I would allow it, but that is not what I require at the moment,” she said. Clara sat up, feeling the bulk of the Doctor’s erection through her shift and his pants.

“What do you require, milady?”

“You, in me.” She shifted so that she could loosen his trousers, his own hands occupied with running his fingers over the ribbing of her corset. He inhaled sharply as she grabbed his erection; her touch was firm and like fire, freeing him from the fabric around him.

“Must we? At the moment? I do not know how much the poker can prod the flames before growing soft itself.”

“The sun has only just begun to set—we have all night,” she claimed.

“At milady’s command.” He snaked a hand underneath her shift and smirked. “Now look who has grown naughty—no fabric to hide your modesty.”

“It would only get in the way of our liaisons; and here I thought you were clever.”

“It is difficult to be clever when the myrtle-crowned Cytherea gazes down upon you, as both Ourania and Pandemos, and with all her devotion claims you as her own when she could have any mortal she sets her eyes upon.”

“Well said.”

Once both his hands were again on her waist, Clara eased herself around the Doctor’s erection, his stiffened sword filling her slick sheath. They both moaned indulgently, backs arching and genitals throbbing as they ached in pleasure. She shifted slightly, eliciting a soft whine from his lips. The sound filled her with an innate sense of power, knowing that she had him entirely where they both wanted him to be, and that it was only possible because at the very core of it all, he trusted her.

He entrusted himself to her; why else would he bare himself, put himself in her arms, and let himself be placed into her care?

Continuing on, Clara began to rock back and forth, working both their bodies to her own satisfaction. She slowly built up the pace until she found he was thrusting in time with her, attempting to drive himself deeper into her very being. They climaxed together, reaching orgasm with her clenching around him and his fingers digging into the sides of her corset. Slowing dramatically, they seemed to meld into one another as they lost sense of time and place—were they really, truly still on the TARDIS, or was their roleplay simply making use of their fortuitous surroundings?

Clara, now completely spent, hefted herself off the Doctor and laid down next to him. Her breathing still jagged, she allowed her lungs a couple deep gasps to catch up before turning her head and looking at the Time Lord next to her.

“You know… I think that if His Lordship knew of us, he’d be most pleased,” she laughed weakly. “To know we are together, and together as we are, would set his mind at-ease.”

“It might,” the Doctor agreed. He reached over and touched the tips of his fingers in her palm, smiling at the bed canopy when she grabbed on firmly to his hand. “You might even say that His Lordship and I are more alike than we realize.”

A fake gasp. “Impossible.”

“You could even say we are the same man, cut from the same cloth, with only our outer trappings where we differ.” His eyes were drawn to the simulated sunset, seeing the fierce colors of the sky desaturating in the twilight. “A request, Lady Clara?”

“What is it?”

“Now may I kiss your other lips?”

“Why yes; I believe you may.”

-------

The TARDIS, being a rather sensible ship, was a bit concerned as time wore on. Every time she’d pop in on her thief and his latest Human distraction, she’d find they were still going at the odd little game they were playing. She knew the environment she’d created for them was a different one, but somehow it kept them going for much longer than they normally spent sexually pleasuring one another. It was all rather confusing and figured it was merely something that she was just going to have to deal with now that they had their new ritual.

An hour… that’s how long she thought they’d stay busy. If they kept it up and she put their environment on a preset course, she could finally get some peace and quiet for an entire, true night.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t too concerning after all.

-------

When they first arrived on the wee space-rock in the middle of nowhere (“dwarf planet on the edge of a system, Clara”), it was not high on their expectation list to land in the middle of a war over the fate of a single crystal. Granted it was a rather large and pretty crystal, but it was still a very silly thing to get into planet-wide war over, and as soon as the Doctor mentioned that, his and Clara’s imprisonment seemed to be the only thing both sides agreed on in years.

“This is one I think you might like,” he mentioned. They were sitting side-by-side, chained up to a wall in a dark, uncomfortably moist dungeon, wearing shackles that—although allowed them an incredible amount of movement—was also a tough one for the sonic specs to crack.

“Oh really?” She kept her gaze forward, watching for if the guard would come back so that they could convert them to their cause. “Does it take place on Earth? I think I’m starting to get a bit bored of those for the time being.”

“No—I mean—it is but it isn’t,” he admitted. “A Human colony done up for the aesthetic, essentially. Fairly believable, as the conditioning was done over a period of a few generations by the time the book was written.”

“Give it here.” He took the sonic shades from his face and brought them far as his hand could reach. Clara was able to grab them with her own limited range and put the device on her face. She paused, then nodded. “Huh. Worth a shot. Maybe once we get back to the TARDIS and wash up?”

“Possibly. It would involve some creative décolletage.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You think I can’t get creative involving my décolletage?”

“I said nothing.”

An explosion shook the cell and shouting could be heard from down the corridor.

“Well,” Clara shrugged, “knew that was too good to last.”

[novantinuum]

The Hybrid in the Hourglass

Fandom: Doctor Who, 12th Doctor era

Rating: K

Words: 1700~

Pairings: Twelfth Doctor/Clara (Whouffaldi)

Summary: “Between one heartbeat and the last is all the time I have. People like me and you, we should say things to one another. And I'm going to say them now. In... in the only way I can.”

The Doctor always knew those big sad eyes would one day be his undoing.

What happened in those cloisters, in the moments the Doctor forgot?

Three years on. Three years, and I haven't stopped thinking about what might have happened in this missing scene of Hell Bent. I have no idea how many people have tackled this concept before, but wanted to offer my personal take on how I envision it. A big thank you to @inktheblot, who offered me much needed screaming and peer pressure to get this out of my head and into words.

The Doctor always knew those big sad eyes would one day be his undoing.

He knew it centuries back in Victorian London, at their star-crossed beginning, and he only knows those eyes all the better now. His words hang in the air around them like the scent of musk in the damp of the cloisters. And truly, the sheer impassioned intensity of her gaze— the glistening emotion encapsulated like whole galaxies within her irises— is all he needs to understand implicitly that his sentiment is fully reciprocated.

I have a duty of care...!

He tries in futility to avert his attention to other matters, rambles on about how the hatch opens up to corridors that will lead them to the workshops, where they’ll have TARDISes. Still, his best friend’s eyes press into him, so tangible as if on its own a form of physical contact. It’s yet another source of dizzying stimuli, alongside the faint vibrations of the Matrix around him and the unsettling sense of time under decay, yet another reason he’s woefully lost without her hand safe in his. In his anger and grief he lies to everyone, but he can never play pretend with her for long, never. Not truly. No matter how hard he tries.

The dread of words left unspoken eventually grows too palpable for the pair of them. Clara shifts closer, her expression still malfunctioning, caught in the quantum space between one emotion and the next.

“Okay, listen. I have something I need to say.”

“We do not have time,” he says, waving her off, the feeling of the clock ticking down to zero intrinsically imminent in his bones.

“No, my time-!" she cries, commanding his attention. “My time is up. Doctor...”

And the yearning in her tone tugs at him, chipping away at the diamond mountains he’s erected around his soul, stripping it bare in mere seconds to place it face to face with hers.

“Between one heartbeat and the last is all the time I have. People like me and you, we should say things to one another. And I'm going to say them now. In-“

Her breath audibly hitches. The Doctor’s unsure when her hand first brushes along his cheek, tracing over rough hewn trenches and memorizing every last contour. Every last hard won wrinkle, a testament to the remnants of personal history dancing ever so further beyond his reach.

“-In the only way I can,” she finishes, and he’s hurt— like a physical kick to his side— that it almost sounds like an apology.

But an apology for what she’s going to say, or that she didn’t say it earlier?

And before his mind can turn to utter anything in response, Clara finally crosses that long unspoken boundary between them— smashes it, a bloodied fist right to that last remaining crystal facet— and presses her lips flush against his.

It’s not a hesitant kiss she offers, that much he’s certain of, but it’s slow. Deliberate— a kiss fully aware of how the sand’s rapidly running empty in their hourglass, but refusing to let this fickle measure act as a limit. His hearts constrict, every sense ablaze. As sure as the spin of his home planet underfoot, he feels it all: The faint scent of perfume, a day old but still evident on her skin. The sensation of her warm, unweathered lips moving against his mildly chapped ones. The full cyclical harmony of her path through the universe, her time stream, which flares out around them like the petals of a flower in bloom. Like the rarest of the rare among the wide universe, part of a genus that only spreads its seed once in a millennium. And so, as if second nature, (and it really should’ve been), the Doctor reciprocates in kind. He parts his mouth, breathing her air— walking her Earth, their Earth, together— and willfully losing himself within the intoxicating depth of her embrace.

It’s sacred, and it’s forever, and then it’s over.

She parts from him, sights deftly flicking up from his lips to his soul’s window.

“You are my universe,” she promises. “Always have been. Always will.”

He gazes at her, eyes glistening, going all wide and puffy like how hers always did, malfunctioning in her wake.

“Oh-!” he breathes, the sheer weight of memory of their little eternity finally breaching the surface, physically forced into being through wordless utterance. His fingers gloss across her cheek with the care of a proffered brush against alabaster canvas. “My Clara...”

And the taste of her name is cream and spice and whispers of everything that ever could be on his tongue, a prayer to a faceless god. He’s not religious, or at least doesn’t consider himself to be, but if he were to level his devotion on anyone— if he believes in anything, he believes in her. Deftly, his hand lifts her chin. Adoration shines through her every feature, and it leaves him weak, rather like an exposed nerve. He imparts a second kiss— quick and chaste, a wax seal upon parchment- and then presses his forehead to hers.

“Listen.” Clara‘s eyelids flutter shut as she leans against him. “I know what you’re thinking, what you feel. And I know-!” she interjects his move to protest, likely feeling the muscles of his arms tense under her hands. “How much this must hurt you. I’m not saying I don’t understand why you chose what you did, because in your place I would-“

Her voice fades out. He’s let her soul rest in his head intimately enough by this point that he knows without conferring or tapping into her thoughts what she’s reflecting on: Trenzalore, his since aborted grave, and all the days long centuries past. Her bravery there, a reckless sacrifice in love’s name. His Impossible Girl, scattering herself into fragments, living millions of lives moment to moment, and all this to die saving him at every bend.

Placed in his shoes, in a bespoke torture chamber with 4.5 billion years’ separation from the one thing left in this universe worth fighting for?

Would isn’t even a question.

Her lips curve into a tight smile as she leans back on her haunches, leaves his embrace. Their hands find each other’s, lithe digits intertwining like a silent waltz. Taking a deep breath, she rephrases her previous words.

“In your place, I chose exactly the same. But you. If you care for me, then you’ll let me care for you. If I’m really dead, if you can’t do anything. If this is... my end. You need to move on.”

The Doctor feels the precise second his gut flips, shifts from emergent flutters of hope back to the churning maelstrom of loss and grief he thought he left behind in the extraction chamber, and it’s whiplash. His fingers grasp her palm with invigorated intensity— rebuking the universe’s design, begging time, begging her— but the pained look etched within her brow and reflected in her glossy eyes only reaffirms his fears.

Her grip loosens.

“You need to let me go.”

“I can’t just-“

“Dead!" she exclaims in a whisper, tears spilling from their perch. “Doctor, all you’re talking to is a ghost of who I was. And I- I don’t want to keep trudging through some half realized existence if my heart’s never going to beat again.”

“And what if- what if, just maybe, I told you I could fix that?" And he almost hates how vulnerable he sounds in the moment, his voice hitching against his better wishes. "Take you away with me, restart your pulse?”

Gently, he cups her cheek, swabbing his thumb across to wipe away the tears that linger there, running in rivulets across too-pale skin.

“Oh, you know me,” Clara scoffs with a feeble laugh, words flowing thick in the weight of all she's endured. She leans into his hand, finally breaks a smile. Oh, that radiant smile... “What’d you think?”

“All of time and space?”

He flashes his own grin back, noting the way it stretches so unnaturally across his lips after so many billions of years of memory gone by. Inwardly he wonders if she also notices how strained and half-hearted it was, just how feeble his facade really can be. And so when she throws her arms around him and burrows her face in his neck, hides away from him as she desperately suppresses her sobs of relief, he doesn't grouse. Not this time. After all his years, he understands.

Eventually, she leans up and presses a kiss against his cheek, at the corner of his mouth. Her eyes are still puffy, still red and stained with throes of anguish. But still Clara. Still beautiful. She sits back, sniffles a little, and rubs the last evidence of her sorrow away.

“You have a plan, then?”

The Doctor, pointedly ignoring the incompleteness of his Plan A and the terrifying reality of his Plan B currently nestled just inside his jacket pocket, traces a wide arc of the circular Gallifreyan inscribed into the stone hatch. “Oh, obviously. When don’t I?”

“Just about every other day," she says, deadpan.

At first he scowls with offense at the jab, but knowing deep down she's right softens his expression into one of fondness.

Clara watches in momentary silence as he works. The hatch beneath them hums with an ancient lifeblood, emitting a myriad series of trills and dull chimes as he unlocks each layer one by one, aided by his telepathic ability. Each fingertip moves methodically in turn, forging physical contact with specific points in the complex sigils just like the ridges on a key— just like the Matrix itself showed him over two thousand years ago, when he was but a fresh-eyed boy ignorant of the days to come. His concentration is interrupted by a familiar warmth settling over his busy hands, coercing them to slow their frenzied endeavor.

“So this brilliant plan of yours... Does it require any immediate assistance?”

“Ah, yes actually," he admits, glancing up from her hand atop his to her fragile visage of courageousness. Memorizes this moment, burns it into his memory so that he'll never forget it, the sum of her bravery and her never-giving-up. "I could use your help on one thing. I need you to stage a distraction.”

“For?”

“Our pals watching from the edge, there. If we’re going to escape this hell, they can’t see me open this hatch.”

“Don’t worry,” she whispers, brushing her thumb across the hair on his knuckles. “They’ll all be looking at me.”

[leaiorganas]

writing meme

RULES: List the openings of the last ten stories you published. Look to see if there are any patterns that you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any! Then tag some friends.

tagged by my favourite @theputterer! Sorry this took so long and thank you! I love writing tags!!

last ten of my fourty stories (omg) on AO3

1. say you love me - rebelcaptain

Five Five minutes is all it takes for the course of her life to change. She’s sure of it.

Five minutes in which a man, once a stranger, had gathered together the first of her hope and had welcomed her home. She remembers that she had stood there, unsure and insecure. No one had ever breathed those words to her, no one had ever extended so much of themselves to her. She had been used to being alone, fighting to stay one step ahead of anyone who could hurt her.

And in the span of five minutes, she had a family. People she could call friends. A sense of purpose. For the first time in her life, she knows she can forge ahead with something more than just herself. The burden is heavy, the weight of it is crushing her and somewhere, she hears a clock ticking.

2. act like you love me - rebelcaptain

It’s been two months since Scarif and Jyn has been trying to figure out what her relationship with Cassian is, if anything at all. Oh, Cassian is always thoughtful, asking how she is and joining them at meals when he can. Sometimes, she believes that he feels the same about her that she does about him. She’ll catch averted glances, small smiles, and a gentle hand to the shoulder when he leaves for a meeting and it sends a spark coiling to her stomach.

But then there are the days that his manner is brusque and his face as impassive as the day she met him. She hates those days, when Cassian the spy emerges and he has even less to say than his usual quiet self. It’s not like they have deep and meaningful conversations, there isn’t much time, but Jyn knows she is getting closer to being brave enough to try.

The problem is, she is just not quite sure if Cassian feels anything at all for her beyond a camaraderie, a friendship and wonders how much she is risking by wanting more.

3. a little too much - rebelcaptain

The weeks and months after Scarif were a blur of injections, bacta treatments, and countless droids poking and prodding at her. The days were endless meetings, negotiations, and just the daily struggle to heal. She knows her injuries are minor, mainly battered and bruised from her fight on the catwalk, nothing that she could not recover from so her main priority, once she is released from med-bay is trying to discover what happened to the rest of the crew that had left for Scarif. She was heartbroken to discover that there were only eight survivors out of their original crew and weeps quietly the first night in her newly assigned quarters, mourning for those that were lost and yet deeply relieved that her small crew had made it out alive.

Barely.

4. all the rest of my life - rebelcaptain

It’s been two weeks. Two weeks of complete silence. Two weeks of no calls, texts, messages, nothing.

It’s the strangest thing.

It’s like he has fallen off the face of the earth and no one knows where he is. She’s called everyone; Kes and Leia included. She finally broke down and reached out to Kay whose only response had simply been to let her know that Cassian was fine and would be in touch when he could.

So, Cassian is fine and doesn’t want to talk to her?

It’s strange.

5. here are your upturned hands - rebelcaptain

Cassian realizes just how much he wants Jyn on an ordinary Centaxday.

Maybe it is the long, dullness of the meeting, maybe it is the knowledge of Jyn next to him but he does remember that it started on a Centaxday.

He hadn’t woken up that morning intending to realize he was in love. He hadn’t woken up intent on anything other than trying to make it through another long day. He had some small hope that he was going to be able to finish his last mission brief that he had (uncharacteristically) push off to the side, maybe some time with Kay-Too on a droid they were both working on. Those were his only intentions.

And that worked until Draven’s late afternoon meeting.

Once he starts watching her, he can’t stop watching her.

6. it’s a thin, thin line - rebelcaptain

She learns early on that he is quiet and efficient, a product of his life spent drifting along with the shadows. He never says more than he should, never volunteers anything about himself. She finds that for him; every moment, every word is calculated to give as little as possible. There is an intensity about him that draws her in despite how little he says out loud. She sees that he spends most days listening and watching others and so, she watches him. She watches the way he furrows his brow when he is trying to puzzle something out. She watches the way he appears devoted to a conversation but can see the way his eyes never seem to stop moving or assessing.

7. someone good to come - rebelcaptain

There’s music playing in the background; something festive and merry and she still can’t get over how many candles Kay and Bodhi were able to hang from tree limbs. They are everywhere, casting a soft light as they turn and twinkle against the settling sun. There’s so much food and drink, there is no way she is going to ask Leia where it all came from.

Leia coordinated the whole thing, was maniacal down to the last detail. We deserve this, you both deserve this, after everything we have done and everything we have been through. It’s time, don’t you think?

She couldn’t agree with her more but there is a knot of tension settling in her stomach and she is not completely sure why.

8. you’ve got a hold of me - rebelcaptain

“What do think about the new guy?”

Cassian had been watching the makeshift cantina fill up from his corner of the room and shifts over when Jyn prods his knee. He turns slightly so he can slide out the other side quickly if he needs to. He hums thoughtfully but does not answer Jyn’s question. She sighs and turns towards Baze who has joined them at the table.

“Where’s Chirrut?”

Base simply shrugs, “He is talking with young Skywalker, they are on their way here.”

“What do you think about him?” Jyn turns the full force of her gaze on Baze. Cassian sighs quietly beside her, he thinks he knows where this conversation is going.

Again, Baze shrugs, “I don’t.”

9. i guess i’m going down, like this - rebelcaptain

Jyn once asked her father how he knew that Lyra was his soulmate and he laughed quietly.

“It was in her touch.”

It would be years before she understood that he meant it literally.

10.  Someone Like That - whouffaldi

Clara stood in front of her bedroom mirror, waffling between two dresses. She held up a black dress with a sweetheart neckline up to her chin and cocked her head. This?

“The black one for sure.” Amy, her flat mate, was sprawled on Clara’s bed reading a magazine. She hadn’t glanced up before announcing her decision.

“You don’t think it’s too revealing?” Clara pursed her lips before bringing a red sleeveless sheath up over the black dress.

“Nah, the lace on the sleeves makes it a bit more demure even with that bodice. I don’t get why you are so nervous. How many of these holiday parties have you been to anyway?”

Too many. But this year was different; this year the Doctor was going to be there and after trying to get to know him the last few months, Clara felt that this could very well be her last chance.

Any patterns? Hmm, do you guys see any? 

I rarely start with conversation

Looks like I try and set a mood with the first paragraph

I need to keep on writing

I tag these lovelies though any of you are welcome to do this (especially if you read through this whole post): @atthelamppost, @riderunlove, @timelordthirteen, @goingtothetardis, @sequencefairy, @longjackets, @gwendolynnby, @thestarbirdfromtheashes, @gloriouswhisperstyphoon, @ladytharen

[clarasghosts]

RULES: List the openings of the last ten stories you published. Look to see if there are any patterns that you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any! Then tag some friends.

tagged by @leaiorganas sorry it took so long, i’m so bad at responding to tags!

10 is going to be like nearly half my work on ao3, haha

1. i’ll wander home - whouffaldi

The burn begins to ebb, or maybe that’s what Clara wants to believe.  Her vision dims so that water around her appears more like blue static, all the shapes losing their edge.  She doesn’t try to free her arm anymore, having long given up on trying to understand how it got stuck in the first place.  Her lungs weigh her down, like they’re reaching to the seaweed below.  Maybe I should just let them.

2. Rosemary by Your Garden Gate - whouffaldi, platonic clara x amy

Eleana Ravenwood Pond

Beloved Wife and Mother

Born

11th September 1960

Died

5th March 1992

That was all that was left of their mother.  Clara and Amelia held hands staring down at the words engraved on cold stone.  They could hear the chilly breeze blow through the grass and rustle the leaves above them, but they could not make themselves budge even for the wind.  In Clara's left hand she clutched to her chest her mother's childhood book of 101 Places to See; Amelia's right hand was wrapped around the rings hanging from a chain at her neck - their parents' wedding rings.  They had lost both parents in less than two months.

3. this year i devour - garashir

The first time Garak saw Julian was a mess of discomfort and endorphins leveling out that discomfort, excitement at seeing such a beautiful, intriguing, Human face among the crowd, and the thrill of thinking that he may be able to use the young doctor in his efforts to return home.  There is something important and valuable about that first moment, he knows, but it isn’t really the one that he counts, because the first time Garak saw Julian without the effects of the implant altering his perception was well over a year later.  He still remembers what that moment felt like, standing just outside the Replimat, looking for the first time upon a young man who was already a part of his life.  Julian had dug his way in, trusted him, accepted him without even knowing the whole truth, and planted himself firmly within Garak’s existence, so that when he woke up with a clear head, Julian was already there.  And as Garak watched him in the Replimat, he came to a decision.  When he entered and sat across from his friend, it would be a first in its own way, but he would treat it like a continuation nonetheless, like something without a beginning.  Something that always just was.

4. eat it whole - vicbourne

There are monsters in this world.  She learned this when she was a child.  She learned this in the hardest way.  And as she stares out at the gathering of important men before her, she knows that monsters don’t always look like monsters.  Any one of them could have their secrets, any one of them could be plotting her downfall.  Some of them are smiling in that awkward way that betrays how displeased they are with their new monarch, most of them aren’t smiling at all.  It makes her falter at first, this knowledge that none of the men in the room have any faith in her, not even her own blood.

But there is one face among them, as she glances at it, that shows only warmth, a small nod of encouragement.  So she steels herself, speaks up, and tells them how capable she knows she is.  The Prime Minister may not know all that much about her, she is aware, but if he can already believe in her ability, then others may do so as well.

She has no need to fear monsters anymore.

5. i’m not afraid of running away with you - clavioli

The lab in the backroom had been pieced together with whatever resources he had managed to bring with him and pieces scavenged from a high school classroom in the nearest town, which was over thirty miles and an hour’s drive along barely-traveled-roads away.  It had to be good enough because there weren’t any other options short of breaking back into the zombie capital which now considered them traitors.

The backroom also doubled as both a laundry room and a pantry.  The top shelf on the wall, above their food, were vials and bottles that he had managed to smuggle out with him.  The cabin they’d found was small, but it was livable.  The main room was split into a living space, a kitchen, and a bedroom.  They had a front porch that locked shut, which really only protected them from people who respected locks.  Glass windows and screens were easy to break, and the porch door was light enough that it rattled in the wind.  Still, the added sense of security did a little to ease his mind; felt safe enough to step out onto the porch at night and look out at the stars.

6. She Sought Death - whouffaldi

The letter is unexpected, to say the least.

Clara and Me don’t typically get any post.  Even if their home wasn’t a nomadic American diner, most of the universe has considered them dead for a while now.  Me doesn’t notice the letter, lying flat on the ground near the door, until they’re already in flight, and she considers the possibility that it was dropped their by a customer from their last stop – the 23rd century, several lightyears from Earth – though she can’t guess why someone would, or why they would find an impossible room in an otherwise simple diner, and just leave a letter.  It’s possible that it’s a plea for help, so she opens it.  Inside the envelope she finds only a folded advertisement and nothing else.

The Glover House

A Safe and Quiet Retreat in the Countryside

Space for twelve guests.  Rooms available beginning October 1st, 1940.

Please call and make a reservation.

7. Time to Turn it Over - whouffaldi

It was a natural disaster. On Arawn it was natural for the earth to shake and split, not along one fault line, but along nearly all of them.

The Doctor internally berated himself as he flipped switches and turned dials as fast as he could. This was supposed to be a relaxing, sight-seeing kind of trip, nothing too exciting, but somehow he ended up landing them fifty years off and just in time for one of the biggest tragedies in the planet's history. In fact, there wasn't much known about this planet afterward, they just kind of dropped off the map for a few centuries before quietly reconnecting with the rest of the universe. Whatever the exact extent of the damage, the number of casualties that far outweigh the survivors, he and Clara weren't going to stick around to find out

8. Changeling - garashir

He looks up at the sky often, the large never-ending expanse of blue, and traces the nonsensical shapes of the clouds with his finger, his other hand dragging Kukalaka behind him.  Turning to look at his mother beside him, he bends his head back so he can see her properly and asks, “How far away is the sky?”

She sighs loudly.  “That depends, Jules.”

The answer means nothing to him, so he looks away and back up at the sky.  Only a moment passes before he feels the small pressure of a hand on his back, rotating him slightly and leading him up a ramp.  The world around him darkens as they enter the ship.  “Where are we going?”

“It’s a planet called Adigeon Prime,” his father answers.

9. Life Implies Death - wellenore

The first time it happens, Lenore is 8 years old.  A large, black beetle takes up residence just outside her bedroom window.  For two days she watches it walk back and forth, but making no move to leave.  On the second night she opens her window to greet it, only to find it lying on its back, legs curled in toward its belly.

She leaves the body where it is, sparing it a glance every so often until, finally, it disappears.

10. darling one, just live - vicbourne

“You were happy too?”  It is both a question and a statement, a truth that belongs only to them.

So he answers.  “You know I was,” and he hates the way past tense tastes in his mouth, the loss of possibility as it passes through his lips.  He is sitting so close to her, but the distance he has put between them stretches, expands.  He could close it with a word, he knows, but it isn’t the right choice to make, so he doesn’t.  And every second that passes where he doesn’t is another inch, another piece of the path between them torn away, and soon he will be an island.

Patterns?

1. I seem to always be either setting the physical scene or setting a mystery. the only exception is “darling one, just live” in which i was jumping off of the show’s dialogue.

2. i’m honestly really wordy in my intros, whoops.

3. at least two of these begin with someone reading something - once a tombstone, and the other time it’s a letter

if you guys see any others, let me know! and i’m inviting anyone to do this!!! i want to see what you’ve written and what you have to say about it!

[loversandantiheroes]

Jigsaw - a Whouffaldi fic - Epilogue

Author’s Note: Here we are at last.  It’s taken two years to get to the end of this story, but we’re here.  Thank you guys so much for sticking with this story, and with me, for this long.  This is my early Christmas present to you all.  One last hurrah.

Summary: Because some pieces can’t be kept apart forever.  Post- Hell Bent reunion fic.  Epilogue.

Rating: PG-13ish

Warnings: Brief and vague shower funtimes

Word Count: 1844

AO3 Link: here

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

The shower takes awhile, to the surprise of neither of them.  It’s been a long time and Time Lord biology is deeply resilient.  The Doctor almost manages a concussion in the course of trying to do something rather ill-advised in conjunction with wet tiles.  In the end the only thing bruised is his ego, which she does her best to soothe while she tries to stop laughing.  This just makes him try the thing even more doggedly, this time with more success, and her laughter turns to breathless gasps.

Time wanders, but only slightly.  They extract themselves piece by piece, trailing fingertips and kisses, rearranging to fit.  He helps her into clean, fresh clothes; she does up the buttons on his conveniently TARDIS-laundered shirt.  By the time they make it out of the console room and into the diner they’re a pace apart, a distance not so much respectful as gravitational, a slow orbit.

Me leans over the counter, nursing an espresso and chatting with a young and rather extraordinarily punkish black woman.

“Good to see you, old man,” Me says with a dry sort of fondness.

The Doctor pauses, mouth pursed.  “And you, Ashildr.”

For once, she doesn’t correct him.  “Was starting to think the two of you got lost in there.”  She smirks at Clara, utterly insufferable and completely right as always, damn her.

“We had a lot of catching up to do,” Clara says.

The punkish woman at the counter snorts laughter behind half of a sandwich.

The Doctor’s eyebrows are scowling magnificently, but his eyes are crinkled.  “Hattie, this is Clara.  Clara, Hattie.”

“Y’know you could’ve just said you’d gotten a booty call,” Hattie says, still chuckling.  “Hung a sock on the door or something.  I was starting to think you’d gotten eaten by a rabid grease monster until this one filled me in.”  Hattie gestures at Me, who is trying valiantly to control her smirk before it takes over the entirety of her face and half of the greater London area besides.

“Oh you are terrible,” Clara gripes.

“And quite frequently right, though that’s never much helped your judgement of me before, has it?”

The Doctor turns to Clara, still scowling.  “‘Booty call?’” he mouths.

“Later.”

“Ok.”

“So is this you, then?” Me asks.

Clara’s heart does a small backflip.  “Yeah.  For awhile I think.”  She glances around, running a hand over the formica countertop.  “But you never know, might need a weekend away from time to time.  Someone should hold down the fort, I think.  Look after her while I’m away?”

Me’s smile is so broad it almost breaks Clara’s heart.  “Absolutely.”

Hattie looks slowly between the three immortals.  “I think maybe this is where I get off, then.  No offense, Doctor, but I’d hate third-wheeling it.  That’s no fun for anybody.  Probably about time I went home.”

“I can drop you off, if you’d like,” Ashildr offers.

The other woman pauses, considers, then grins.  “Yeah, alright.”

“You’re sure?” the Doctor asks, trying and failing to not sound disappointed.

Hattie nods.  “Keep him outta trouble, yeah?” she says to Clara.

“Really not likely, but I’ll do my best.”

Hattie laughs at that one.  “You really do know him.”

There are hugs.  Promises to take care.  To keep in touch.  A few tears, most of them Clara’s.

Me puts a kind hand on the Doctor’s shoulder.  “It’s not all bad, travelling with immortals.  At least if you get the right ones.”

“I suppose I’ll find out,” he says.

“She needs you.  That’s never really changed, but it’s different now.”

“There’s a difference between life-everlasting and life after death,” he muses, eyes downcast.

“You know that better than most.  Who better to teach her how to be a Time Lord?”

At a loss for a response, the Doctor holds out his arms stiffly.  “C’mon.  Quick before I change my mind.”

The embrace is fierce and quick, the Doctor’s voice rumbling out haltingly.  “I’m glad I saved you.”

“So am I, old man.”

Clara waits in the doorway, hand outstretched; the Doctor clasps it with reverent familiarity.  The Universe trembles the slightest bit, then settles back into its endless orbits.

***

Not everything ends.

***

First stop.  

Clara insists, but the Doctor hardly needs persuading.  Outside the TARDIS doors, a baby cries.  For a wonder, Clara realizes she can understand it.  Frequencies resolve into thought-forms that rearrange into words.

What has happened Mother, why does Father cry?

The Doctor makes for the door, but Clara lays a hand on his chest.  Me first.

They’ve landed back in the nursery.  The baby is all scrunched face and flailing fists in her crib.  The Doctor scoops her up immediately, cradling her against his ribs, and begins whispering reassurances.

The baby quiets.  More stifled sobs beyond the door to the hallway.  Then, a beat later: “Doctor?”

Rigsy bursts through the door and stops so abruptly his wife almost bowls him over as she runs up behind.  His eyes are tear-stained and wide as milk saucers, his jaw agape.  There are paint stains on his fingers and his jeans, and the fumes of the aerosol cans still clings to him.

Clara beams.  “Hey Rigsy.  Long time no see.”

And then he’s whooping, laughing and crying, scooping her up and twirling her around.  “I thought you were dead!”

“Nah,” she says, giggling madly.  “Takes more than a bird to put me down for good.”

They stay awhile.  Not long.  Long enough for hugs and tears and tea that goes cold and forgotten while Clara talks and the Doctor shifts about with the baby like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“I’m sorry,” Rigsy says, at last.

Clara shakes her head vehemently.  “You’ve got nothing to apologize for.  Wasn’t your fault to begin with, and it all worked out in the end.”

“Your TARDIS,” he starts, staring up at the Doctor.  “I-.”

“I know.”  The Doctor smiles sadly.  “Clara’s memorial.  It was…” he fumbles for the word, then sighs, “it was beautiful.  Thank you.”

Rigsy shifts uncomfortably.  “I think I wanted you to be cross.”

The Doctor tuts.  “Well I can still get there if you like, but I might startle the baby.”

“D’you want to maybe stay for dinner?” Rigsy asks, eyes darting between his wife and Clara.  “I mean it’s the least we can do.”

Clara smiles.  “That would be lovely.  But we’ve got a stop to make first.  Important...time business…thing.”

Rigsy’s face falls a little, sensing the brush-off.  “Right, no, I understand.”

“So, back in half an hour?” Clara offers, standing up.

Rigsy brightens.  “Yes!  Yeah!  That’s, we’ll be here.”

Smirking, the Doctor passes the baby off to her father.  “She needs changing.  Also she told me to tell you she really hates the strained peas, so if those could be stopped it would cut down on incidents at the dining table.”

As the TARDIS departs, Rigsy again falls to tears, but this time, at least, they are of relief.

***

Not love.

***

He shouldn’t be here.  He knows.  If he’s caught, by his superiors, this could mean court martial.  If he’s caught by the Cloister Wraiths, he’ll be filed.  Curiosity got the better of him.  He remembers Skull Moon too clearly to not be curious.  That a human could elicit that sort of response from the Doctor of War was astonishing; that any of them had seen that feral glittering in his eyes and lived was nearly unbelievable.  The Matrix was his best chance to understand why.

The recent data influx is massive.  Reams of information.  The Doctor and Clara Oswald…

The sound of a landing TARDIS makes him wheel, hand falling instinctively to his weapon...only…

Has the fool left the handbrake on?

A brown-haired head pops out of the doors of the blue police box as soon as it solidifies.  She catches his eye and smiles as if she’d expected him.  “Thought it might be you,” she says.  “Gastron, right?  The Doctor told me about you.”

He opens his mouth, but for a moment he can’t talk; his hearts are in his throat.  Then, in a hoarse whisper: “Ma’am it’s not safe for you to be here.”

“We’re not staying long.”  The Doctor eases out of the TARDIS behind her, tight-lipped and grim.  He gives Gastron a nod.

“Sir, you need to leave, quickly.  If you’re caught -”

“We won’t be,” he says simply.

The soldier looks helplessly between the two of them.  “Can I...can I ask you something, sir?”

The Doctor raises his eyebrows.

“Why’d you do it?   And why’d you come back?”

Clara points at the console behind him.  “Part of your answer’s in there.  But you knew that, that’s why you’re down here, isn’t it?”

“The rest is in here.”  The Doctor pulls a bronze disc from his pocket.  There is a deep groove in the center of the console, and he slots the confession dial into it.  “I think between the two you’ll find the answer you’re after.”

4.5 billion years worth of information; the data transfer is immense.  “No bells, no whistles, no alarms,” the Doctor points out after several minutes as Gastron scrolls through endless pages, face growing ever more fascinated and ever more troubled.

“I’ve disabled them,” Gastron says.  “You’re still President, sir.”

The Doctor scoffs.  “Oh that’s no excuse.”  His eyes narrow, dusty grey in the shadows, and a chill wanders up Gastron’s spine.  “You trust my orders?”

“Yes sir.”  No hesitation.

“Then in that case, allow me to give one last order.”

The console beeps.  There’s a whirr and a click and the confession dial ejects itself.  The Doctor catches it deftly and tips it at Gastron.  “Read it.  All of it.  And then take it with you.”

Gastron blinks.  “Sir?”

“The story that’s in there is one that needs telling,” Clara says gently.  “It shouldn’t stay down here in the dark.”

“Tell it,” the Doctor says.  “That’s your order; tell the story.”

There’s no short of confusion on the soldier’s face, but he nods, stiffly saluting.  The Doctor takes it with a grimace, and salutes back.

And then...the universe shifts.  The Doctor turns to Clara Oswald and Gastron can see everything in the periphery fall away.  Orbits and rotations stutter and slow, and for a moment that is the barest thousandth of the beat of a hummingbird’s wings, everything stops.  Their eyes are locked; their hands clasped.  They are as much a fixed point as Trap Street.  Maybe even more so.  They are The Fixed Point.  The origin; lynch-pin that locks them all together.  All others spin endlessly off of them like a spider’s web.

And then it’s over, and the universe resolves itself into motion again.  Clara offers a small wave in parting and Gastron is left trying to remember how to breathe in the face of something so profound.  Words glow and shift on the console, a story waiting to be read.  Gastron feeds a blank data cartridge into the console and begins the download as the TARDIS de-materializes behind him.

He has his orders.

***

Not always.

[bardqueenofgallifrey]

Every Breath Becomes A Prayer

commission for @whouffaldi-that-is-all, art done by @luluxa (who Tumblr won’t let me tag for some reason, sorry!), fic by me

AO3 Fic Link

The water is warm. Given how many planets the Doctor has been to in his lifetimes, there shouldn't be anything on a level as basic as this that surprises him anymore, but it does, this time.

It's probably the thunderstorm. The howling wind and the chopping waves that had raged so fiercely underneath Clara as the pirate held her over the side of the ship by her throat, and threatened to drop her if the Doctor came any closer.

The Doctor had been sure he could talk the Sarkanian down. He'd been wrong.

In his mind he can still see Clara falling, still hear the sound of her scream, feel the blood pounding in his ears as he had watched with horror as her tiny form had hit the waves with a clap and instantly disappeared.

Of course, within a second he had forgotten about the Sarkanian's existence and dove overboard after her with no preparation but a shout of her name.

And now, the warm water envelops him as he tries to see her, tries to make out her form in the darkness. It's hopeless. He digs in his pockets for a light, anything that might help, and finds a little flashlight he is able to shine through the dark, churning depths around him.

Panic seizes his hearts when he still can't see anything, but then they leap in his chest when he sees the familiar shape in the water some distance away. It's an effort to swim over to her, the churning current working against him with every push of his arms and legs, but he eventually gets to her.

She isn't conscious.

He can't let himself focus on that now, he can only hold her to his chest with one arm and use the other and his legs to push him towards the surface.

His respiratory bypass stops him from getting too oxygen-starved, but it still takes much longer than he would like, if only because he's worried about Clara.

Finally, he breaks the surface and gulps in the humid air, looking around. The TARDIS had landed on a tiny island, one he can just make out now, not too far off. The island, when they had landed, had been occupied by a band of pirates - well, mercenaries, they called themselves - who had stopped to restock on water and food.

It hadn't taken long for the Doctor and Clara to be taken as hostages, but then things had gone sour quickly, and now they were both overboard.

But he can get to the island. He can do it. Humans might have pitiful lung capacity, and pretty much laughable physiology in general, but they are also surprisingly resilient, especially when it comes to clinging to life, and there is none stronger than Clara Oswald.

All the same, worry has a tight grasp on both of his hearts. It almost chokes him as he swims for shore, but he ignores it, letting the mantra of she cannot die she cannot die she cannot die drive him on. She is still against his chest, and he shifts her to get a better grip, kissing her hair almost absently.

"Almost there, Clara, just hold on," he murmurs. There is, of course, no reply.

The waves carry them in for the final leg and the Doctor and his aching arms are relieved.

The Time Lord and human are washed up on the dark sand, the warm water lapping at their legs, and the Doctor coughs out seawater, before pulling Clara just a bit higher up the sand.

"Clara," he says, leaning over her, hands ghosting over her face. "Oh, Clara, Clara, why did you have to be so… obtuse?" He feels his lips twitch. "Yeah, I know, this coming from me."

She isn't breathing, and when he checks her pulse, it's barely there.

He opens up her airway, braces his hands against her chest, and starts compressions. Not too hard, not enough to break her, but hard enough. He counts and lets his mind focus on the numbers, because the alternative is thinking about how her pulse had felt like it was fading.

Pause in compressions.

He lowers his head and covers her mouth with his, breathing as much oxygen into her as he can.

come on come on come on come on come on

He starts the compressions again, a bit harder, fuelled by even more desperation. "What was that you said to me, Clara? You die with the next person. You do not die with me."

Another dip down, breathing into her with everything that he has. He stares, waits, and checks her pulse. He's not even sure if he can make it out, or if it's his hopeful imagination.

"No!" He shouts, slapping the sand with his palms before taking a deep breath, planting his hands back on her chest, and starting the compressions again. He will not allow this to happen. To keep Clara Oswald alive, he thinks he might just tear down the very sky above him, and that thought is terrifying, but somehow still not as terrifying as the prospect of Clara being dead.

He's shaking violently by the time he again leans over her mouth. He will not give up, not ever, but the fear is coming in fast and cold and it's threatening to break down his resolve.

And then she starts coughing up water, coughing violently and trembling in his arms as she clutches at him blindly.

"Doctor," she says weakly, water dribbling from her mouth.

He's so relieved that he can't speak, not even just to say her name. All he can do is hold her close to him, so close it probably hurts. She's okay. She's alive.

"You're shaking," Clara realises.

"So are you," he retorts, with about half of his usual energy.

"Also… you're hugging me."

"I'm not hugging you."

"Kind of are, a bit."

"This is holding. It's completely different."

"If you say so."

"I do," he says gruffly, tucking her head under his chin, closing his eyes and letting his fingers trail down her neck to feel her pulse, getting ever more steady. The thrum against his fingers helps calm his still racing hearts.

When Clara speaks again, some thirty seven seconds later, her voice has changed slightly. It's stronger, but also less certain. "Well. This is different."

He figures she probably means that he hasn't let go of her yet. He knows he should, that he's not meant to like the touching. (It does tend to make him uncomfortable, but it's different with Clara. Clara is his friend, his everything; touches from Clara are good, touches from Clara are safe, mostly.)

"I'm sorry," he mumbles. "It was just a lot closer than I would have liked."

"Don't have to be sorry," Clara says. "It's… nice."

"It is?"

"Yeah."

"Oh."

"… I'm sorry for getting thrown overboard."

He finds himself chuckling. "Well, trust you to offend the captain within four minutes of hoisting anchor."

"It was an accident!" Clara says defensively. "And you're one to talk! Eight and a half times out of ten, when we go somewhere and offend a local, that's on you. You and your Scottishness."

"Eight and a half times out of ten?"

"Yep."

"Is that an official, technical statistic, that one?" he asks, lips twitching. He glances down to see that her cheeks have started flushing, and he's relieved to finally see some colour in them.

"Shut up," she mumbles. He just grins at her. "Put me back in the ocean, if you're going to be a dick."

"I can if you like, the water's nice and warm, lovely this time of year around the equator-"

"I take it back, don't even joke about that," Clara says. "It's bad enough that you, what, probably had to dive in after me like a dramatic hero after his damsel in distress? That's embarrassing for both of us."

"Don't worry, Clara, I'm fairly sure half the time I'm the damsel," he jokes, before frowning and adding, "though don't ever tell anyone I said that. I've only admitted that to one person before, and I'm still waiting for her to give me crap for it, somewhere down the line."

Clara laughs a little. "Okay, well I can deal with the taking turns thing, I think. I quite like being the dramatic hero."

"And what a fine job of it you do," he tells her.

She smiles. "You're not too bad yourself."

The Doctor hadn't realised until now just how close their faces were, as they sit on the beach with her torso cradled against his. He's not sure he's been this close to Clara for so long at any point in either of the lives he has known her.

She seems to have noticed too, and a strange quiet falls between them. Her eyes – so big and brown and beautiful, so endless – stare at him. Her fingers trace the line of his lips.

"Thank you for saving me," she whispers.

"Thank you for not dying. It really improved my day."

A funny little laugh escapes her. "If the universe wants to take me away from you, it's going to need to try a lot harder than that."

He rolls his eyes. "There's still no need to give it an invitation."

"Shhh," she says softly, and sits up a bit in his arms.

Their faces are even closer together now. The Doctor thinks his brain might be short-circuiting, because surely he should have something clever to say right about now, but there's nothing. There's just Clara's face, wide and round and so expressive and so intent on him.

Her hand brushes his cheek and he leans into the touch a little, surprising the both of them.

Clara leans in closer, eyes darting up from his lips to his eyes, giving him time to pull away, seemingly checking if he isn't okay with what he's fairly sure she's about to do.

Frankly, he doesn't really know how he feels about it, or about her - except that he needs her, needs her in some innate way, and that he wants the closeness in any way it will come.

Clara's lips meet his, soft and sweet and tasting of the warm seawater. It's been a while since he kissed anyone – had it been her, or Tasha, in his last body? – but luckily he's found over the centuries that it's not the sort of thing one tends to forget. Admittedly a few of his past selves, the last one included, are simply too awkward to react well to this sort of thing, but it seems this body is not among that number.

It takes him a moment, but then he's pulling Clara against him and kissing her back deeply. She lets out a little sigh against his mouth, and it's soothing and wonderful and everything is just Clara.

When they stop for breath, Clara offers him a little smile.

"Not bad, old man," she says.

He chuckles. "Still got a few tricks left, me."

"Yeah?"

"If you keep up this not dying thing, you might even get to see them."

Clara's eyes sparkle as they regard him. "Is that a promise?"

"Might be," he replies, smirking. "Now, come on, TARDIS. I'd like to check you over in the infirmary, make sure you're definitely okay."

He gets up, lifting her in his arms easily - she's so small, and that's normally funny, but today it's a relief more than anything else - and carrying her up the beach and towards the blue box he can just about make out in the distance.

"I can probably walk, you know, you don't have to carry me," Clara says, but she doesn't sound annoyed, more amused than anything else.

"It's fine, you barely weigh anything to me. It's like carrying a doll or a particularly round cabbage."

"I'm going to pretend you didn't just call me a cabbage."

"Don't take it personally. I like cabbage. It's an underappreciated vegetable."

Clara is silent. He glances down at her, and she's chewing on the inside of her mouth, her lips trying to curl upwards into a smile anyway.

"What?"

"You're ridiculous," she says, but it's definitely fond, and he feels his chest warm a little in a ridiculous, besotted sort of way he would absolutely deny if anyone knew to ask about it.

"Proudly."

They make it to the TARDIS, and inside. A quick check from the infirmary lets him know that Clara should be absolutely fine after a bit of rest, and they automatically head back to the console room.

"Right, well, I'm probably going to do some tinkering, or… something," the Doctor says, his hands sliding into his pockets as he looks back at her. She's sitting on the jumpseat with a blanket draped around her shoulders to make up for the fact that they'd taken her soaked jumper off in the infirmary and her thin shirt is clinging to her and a bit translucent. "You should sleep. Sleep is the greatest healer of them all. You know, except for some of the really clever stuff from this one hospital that-"

"I get the point, Doctor, don't worry, I'm going," Clara says, smiling. "I'm exhausted."

"Good, good," he says, nodding as she gets up and moves to kiss his cheek in farewell. She doesn't get far, however, before she turns back and looks at him.

"Maybe you could… stay with me tonight," she suggests, biting her lip, eyes warm if a little shy. "And, you know. Check there aren't going to be any side effects from the whole almost drowning thing."

The Doctor blinks at her, taking a moment to catch her meaning. "Yeah. Yeah, possibly a good idea. I could do that."

Clara smiles at him, brightly, and holds out her hand to him. He reaches for it, takes it, and even allows her to slide her fingers between his, as she gently leads him out of the console room.

[morninginsp]

ours was always a story of ghosts

following skaro, clara has some questions about where she fits in his long life. though the doctor may have found some charm, words still seem to escape his grasp when it comes to her; 1271 words; twelve/clara; set post “the witch’s familiar”

happy birthday, @veradune! i hope you enjoy one more bit of whouffaldi before the finale!

“Tell me.”

It’s evening, she suspects; time is always a bit different in the Vortex. Even her dulled human senses know that it’s more like a quiet bay with tides than the open ocean that might roar up at any moment – funny how specific points are much more like the vastness of the ocean than the endless Vortex.

“Must we do this now?” His voice is tired; they’ve only just left Skaro, and the events weigh heavily on his slim frame. He’s a 2000 year old Time Lord, and it’s only in moments that she ever feels the burden of those years.

“Yes.”

“Won’t change what happened.”

“Might change what happens next.” She tries to not rise to his impatience and grief, but it rolls over her in waves, and she’s drowning.

“Clara.”

God help her, she loathes and loves the way he says her name. Like it holds all the answers to every question she might ever ask. They never talk about that either. The way he holds her name close to him like a talisman in his fight.

“No. You don’t get to shirk this this time. That woman, who was supposed to be dead, nearly killed me today, and you seemed to know she’d just be there. You promised you’d make it up to me, while this is it, make it up to me.”

He stands from the workbench he’s been tinkering at, all metallic clicks and quiet curses, and approaches her. She’s perched on the arm of his wingback chair, and though he’s so much taller than she is it’s never quite occurred to her how intimidating this face of his is. He stops just inside a comfortable distance and stares down at her – eyebrows high and confused.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

Her confession stands between them for a long moment. It sounds pathetic and human to even her ears, but she won’t take it back. They would tear across the universe for each other, and at the very least she deserves to know why; what has his past given him that makes her emotions override her senses?

“That’s a lot to know. Too much.”

“I will not be your pet, Doctor. I can handle it all.”

His face contorts at that notion. “This is not my – I’m not implying you can’t. It’s just the time to know it all, it doesn’t exist for you.”

His eyes go sad and lost – worse than she’s ever seen before. And she knows it’s not the intention, but this won’t be the moon all over again where he dictates her life without her consent.

“No, she said I was the puppy, and if you don’t try, I am. And I am no one’s puppy.”

He struggles for a moment, clearly confused by her analogy, but plows on as is his wont. “Puppy? I don’t understand? You’re not a pet.”

“Exactly! I’m a person! A person who knows you, a person who should know more than she does, but someone refuses to tell me –”

He stops her by pulling her against his chest, and it’s not until she feels the wetness of his t-shirt that she realizes she’s been crying. “Oh Clara.” His voice rumbles through her, and she wraps her arms tight around his neck.

She clings to him, feet dangling inches from the ground as he supports her slight weight as he attempts to soothe whatever heartache he unwittingly gave. “I heard you. In the sewers with Missy. I heard what you said to them about me.”

He stiffens. She knows she's said too much. That this is too much for him.

She moves one hand to his face, forcing him to look down at her. “Doctor.”

Something shifts in his gaze and his hands tighten at her waist; and all of sudden their positions are reversed, and he’s sinking down, back into the chair proper with his long legs bent at the knee over the arm of the chair, and she’s settling across his lap with her skirt flaring out to cover his narrow hips.

Grey curls tickle her cheek as he buries his face in the curve of her neck, and all rational thought flees her mind. They’re definitely doing hugging now. His lips move against her neck and sensations roar across her skin for several long moments before she realizes he’s chanting against her skin and not just leaving soft butterfly kisses at her pulse. “Can’t lose you, Clara.”

She freezes. All the moments of her day crash into her conscious, and she has to reign in a hysterical giggle. Oh god. Somewhere along the way before Skaro, they became so much more, and it’s too much.

Carefully, she sinks a hand into his curls, which are so much softer than they look. “Doctor.” She slowly pets his hair. “Doctor, please. Look at me.”

He drags his nose against her pulse point as he tilts his head up to face her. His eyes shine with unshed tears as he meets her gaze. “You weren’t supposed to hear that. You weren’t supposed to know –”

He stops, and a frown forms on his face that suggests the words keep escaping his mouth without permission.

“Know what?” she prompts. “That you care? That I’m imp-”

He stands abruptly, apparently forgetting his has a lapful of Clara, and she’s forced to cling to his neck like an erstwhile bull rider lest she fall to the ground. Momentum carries him to his feet, and gravity pulls his neck down as Clara struggles to maintain her footing.

When she’s found her footing and glances up, his eyes are closed and mouth drawn into a painful grimace. She almost opens her mouth to berate him for his foolishness, but she hesitates. The Doctor, her Doctor, could barely stomach a hug, but now, his hands have settled on her hips to steady her, and he hasn’t pulled back from her hands on his neck.

She pushes down the irritation she feels, and instead, gently slides her hand to cup his cheek. “Doctor?”

His eyes open, and there’s something startling about how blue they are when they meet her gaze. The intensity in his gaze overwhelms her, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what he’s, they’ve, been avoiding. “I can’t… I can’t lose you.” Though the confession is same as before, his unyielding gaze brings tears to her eyes as the words wash across her.

He turns her palm to his lips, and for a long moment she cannot breathe. The lump in her throat means it’s impossible to speak, but her heart aches knowing this is as close as he can get to saying what she means to him. She’s known better than to expect eloquent speeches out of this version of him, and so for him to confess even a fraction of his feelings with her so close, it’s almost more than she can bear.

He gives her palm the chaste-est of kisses before he folds it between his hands at his hearts. She blinks away her tears, before she rises on her toes to return his favor with one of her own.

Their lips meet like a whisper, and she nuzzles his nose before she says, “I won’t leave you. Not ever.”

“Is that a promise?” His voice colored with a touch of amusement and more than a little heart-wrenching grief.

“Promise.” She assures, relaxing down to rest her head against his hands still flat on his chest.

After all, love is a promise, and she does not intended to break her word again.

[geraldon]

another f*****g whouffaldi theory

Okay, mummy on the orient express. After the convention with Clara in the holl way, when the Doctor and Clara went to their rooms, the first thing they show is Capaldi's handporn, but in this moment the Doctor is thinking: it's nothing. Nothing. Definitely sure. 99% sure. Really? 99%? That's quite high. Ok, ok, 75. Well, that's jumped quite a bit. You've just lost 24%.

And then they show us Clara, who's talking to Danny about should she dump the Doctor or shouldn't.

BUT. My question is: why has the Doctor to make assumptions about mummy, if he already knows that the monster exists? Because sooner he will tell Clara he has invited here a lot of times for investigation.

So there's my conjecture: the Doctor wasn't thinking about mummy, he was thinking about his feelings for Clara, because, as you can remember, they had had a very difficult conversation.

I know, then they show us the Doctor again, and he is already talking about mummy: because you know what this sounds like, don't you? No, do tell me. A mummy that only the victim can see. And it sounds like he is saying another part of the fraise, which we don't know.

But there is another BUT for you: what if there were his another reflections which they didn't show us? because we all know guys, when the Doctor needs stop thinking about Clara, he starts working.

[foxcantswim]

Twelve x Clara Whouffaldi - Two Worlds Apart Chapter 1

AU - TIME LORDS VS HUMANS

A New War Has Arrived. The Time Lords Vs The Humans. One rebel Time Lord, known as the Doctor, is the only one who doesn't want the war. He meets a group of humans who also don't agree with the war... but the Doctor doesn't know that. He fears that if he tells the humans that he is a Time Lord they will kick him out. He ends up meeting a human, but she looks oddly familiar. Who is she? 

“HUMANS AND TIME-LORDS ARE FORBIDDEN FROM CO-OPERATING WITH ONE ANOTHER. IF YOU SUSPECT THAT THERE MAY BE ANY FORBIDDEN ACTIVITY - PLEASE CALL THE NUMBER BELOW. YOU WILL BE CONSIDERED AN ASSOCIATE IF YOU DO NOT ALERT THE NEAREST STATION. TIME LORDS ALERT OTHER TIME LORDS. HUMANS ALERT OTHER HUMANS. THIS IS WAR. NO PEACE WILL COME FROM IT.” - (These signs were everywhere... Clara had noticed that the number of them grew larger by the day. The Doctor had noticed that the number of them grew larger by the day.)

A War. A War that could be considered the same level of devastation as the Time War. Except the only species that are in this war... Are the Humans and the Time Lords. The two factions have never agreed with one another- the General of Gallifrey had declared war upon Earth and it has been going on for almost two hundred years. Yes, the Time Lords were indeed a lot more powerful than the Humans... But a resource was spreading across the Earth... A resource that can end a Time Lord's life within seconds. No more regenerations. And that resource is: Azbantium. It's used to keep Time Lords locked away in a prison as he takes billions of years to destroy.

A traitorous Time Lord had 'accidentally' left a small piece of Azbantium in a UNIT base. This Azbantium was found by a woman called Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. UNIT managed to duplicate the Azbantium and ship it off to all the other countries. The traitorous Time Lord was known as the mad man with a box- the Doctor, his true name forgotten along with his past. The Doctor refused to fight against the Humans considering the amount of time he spent on Earth- he had walked among them and even though he thought that he was bigger than them... he never wanted to rid them from the universe.

Despite the war, Humans continued to repopulate the Earth to try and fight back against the Time Lords. And one day... a Human was born. One of the only Humans who didn't want to fight. She saw the Time Lords as equals and all she wanted was peace. Her parents- Ellie and Dave. They go by the last name Oswald. Their daughter, Clara, would peer out the window and look at the constant explosions... she wished that it would be different.

For the first 15 years of her life she remained in the house and only got to go outside for one hour per day. Once she hit 16... a well-known Time Lady had made a hole in Clara's life. The Time Lady was known as Missy... had put an end to Ellie Oswald's life. She was about to end Dave's and Clara's too but... she vanished without a trace.

Clara ended up leaving home. Always on the run. Never staying in the same place for more than 6 hours. The only place that she could really stay in was the underground base- this base only allowed people in if they didn't want to fight the Time Lords... Which is not a lot of people. A few members of UNIT didn't believe in fighting with the Time Lords, but unfortunately it is their job to fight back. She had joined the 'underground base' at the age of 21- she was surprised when she reached her 27th birthday... She believed she would have died many years earlier.

Amy Pond and Rory Williams were the first two people Clara had met in the base. She was then introduced to Donna Noble, Rose Tyler, Jack Harkness- Who would not. Stop. Flirting. There was also another man called Mickey Smith who was currently in a relationship with Martha Jones. Sometimes Clara found it difficult to keep track of everyone's lives. Martha and Jack were the 'leaders' of this little group- they would tell everyone what to do and where to go. Supply runs etc.

"Clara!" Jack called as she entered the base, "You okay? No bruises or cuts?"

She shook her head as she dropped the bag of food onto a nearby table, "No no, I'm fine. The Time Lords sent down a modified Dalek though and it's causing havoc on the streets above. It almost killed me." she was breathing heavily. The Time Lords had managed to engineer themselves an army of Daleks.

"Perhaps you should sit down." Martha suggested. Clara nodded before sat back on the rusty old sofa.

Clara then asked, "Where's everyone else?"

"Amy, Mickey and Rose went out on a supply run. Everybody else is asleep." Jack replied. He then when into another part of the base and seconds later he returned to Clara's side with a small glass of water.

She shook her and yawned, "No no no... We need to preserve water."

"You've been saying that for three days, Clara." Martha spoke, "Drink." Clara took the small glass out of Jack's hand before taking a sip.

"Thanks, Jack."

"We gotta move!" Mickey exclaimed as he entered the base.

"Wh-What?" Jack questioned, "What's going on?"

Rose then added, "The Time Lords. They believe that we are a group set out to destroy the them."

"We tried to communicate-" Amy began.

"You tried to communicate?!" Clara questioned as she stood up.

Mickey nodded, "Yeah. They held us at gun point and we tried to explain that we wanted to be equals with them but... they didn't listen.""

"We met someone along the way. He had brown floppy hair and the most atrocious chin I have ever seen." Amy stated.

Martha then asked, "Did you bring him with you? Is he like us?"

Rose let out a sigh, "We saw him get shot by the Time Lords. We ran away. For all we know his body could still be lying there!"

"I think they're tracking us so we gotta go!" Mickey reminded.

"Okay okay." Jack said, "I'll wake the others up then we'll get going. Just bring enough food for the walk to the other base." Jack disappeared into the sleeping quarters whilst Mickey and Rose went into the kitchen to grab some of the food- Just enough to make it through the two day walk.

A few minutes later Jack emerged with everybody else, "Ready?" Martha asked. They nodded in response. We all quickly made our way up the stairs and opened the hatch to exit the base. Mickey always remained at the front of the group so it was his job to alert us if anybody or anything was coming our way. Everybody also had a weapon in hand just in case.

"Okay, we're good." Mickey assured as we all started to walk to dark streets. Pretty much all of the houses were destroyed, broken cars were scattered across the roads. The planet known as 'Gallifrey' was also visible in the sky, it was about as far away as the sun... So not too close. You could hear the occasional scream now and then- Probably due to yet another Time Lord attack.

As the group walked, they passed families who were either hiding in corners or hiding in alleyways. Clara wished that she could help them... But it was every man for themselves in this world. And hopefully one day, that would change. Clara and Rory were the ones in charge of keeping track of the food. Making sure that they had enough and making sure that everyone got their share.

"We have to split up if we want to make it out alive." Donna whispered. They were so close to the base now. About a thirty minute walk. But Daleks were patrolling the corn field for any sign of life and they couldn't exactly all go bombarding through them. Everybody nodded before going through the tall corn. They used to go in pairs but that proved to be difficult, now they go alone.

Clara hated doing this- Walking through a corn field filled with Daleks. Who knows when they would appear? "I detect life-forms!" a Dalek echoed.

"Find them! Exterminate them!" another Dalek ordered.

"AFFIRMATIVE!" Many Daleks spoke. There were definitely more than ten Daleks. Clara practically held her breath as she walked and she felt like her heart would escape her chest at any moment.

Surprisingly, she managed to get to the other side. Nobody else was there though... The rule was: if you got separated- you keep on going. You go to the base without them and you wait until they come back. If they aren't back within five hours- then they are presumed dead. Clara looked at her watch: 22:36. She started to run towards the city, once she arrived her running slowed down. It wouldn't be smart to alert the Daleks now.

In the distance, Clara could see two Daleks approaching. She quickly turned into an alleyway but she soon tripped on something causing her to fall to the ground. She groaned before looking to see what she had tripped on. Her eyes widened when she noticed that it was person... A man... Another human just like her.

The man let out a sigh of pain, "Ohh... Did you just kick me?"

"Shhh!" she shushed him, "Daleks are out there. And why are you lying on the floor?"

He managed to sit up and put his back up against the wall, "I erm- I think I passed out. I don't really know what happened." he ran a hand through his grey/silver hair.

She really wanted to help him. She had never helped anyone before. The groups rule kept running through her head: Every man for themselves. They only let people into the group if absolutely necessary. She didn't realise that she had been staring into his eyes so she awkwardly coughed, "Well erm- It was nice meeting you, sir. But I've gotta get going." she tried to stand.

"Wait wait." he said as he grabbed her arm, "You seem like you have a home. A place to live. Maybe I could stay with you until I find my Tar- I mean- home."

"I er-" she paused, biting her lip. What would the group even think? She started running through the pros and cons. Afterall it wasn't like he was going to stay with them permanently, "Okay. Yes. We have three homes technically. We travel between them whenever things get too hairy." The pair stood up, "Just follow me and stay hidden."

He rolled his eyes, "I'm not new to this thing. I don't think I want to encounter a Dalek." As they started to discreetly walk towards the base he asked, "I didn't catch your name."

"Clara. Clara Oswald." she told him, "And yours."

"Well, I'm the-" he paused, "J-John Smith." he really didn't want her to find out that he was a Time Lord. Who knows what would happen. All he wanted was peace between the Humans and Time Lords.

"Okay, John Smith. Get ready to meet the rest of my group, I guess." she gave him a small smile as they inched closer and closer towards the base.

Chapter 2

"And this is it." Clara announced as they made it to the hatch. She moved the leaves off of the top of it before unlocking it with a key. The two quickly entered and 'John' shut the door behind him, "Now we just have to wait for everyone else to get here. We were separated by some Daleks." she only just realised what John was actually wearing. A brown jacket and a bowtie... She raised her eyebrow at his attire, he soon understood.

"Right... do you have any new clothes?" he wondered.

She nodded, "Through there." she pointed towards a door, "Pick whatever you want." he nodded as he made his way into the room. A few moments later he emerged. His clothes were quite the opposite to his previous get up. He wore a hoodie and a coat over it... strange.

"It'll do." he stated, "And do me a favour. Next time when I'm lying down- don't kick me." he started to feel his personality kick in. He had only just recently regenerated afterall.

"It's not like I did it on purpose." she said as she started to sort the food out on the table.

I sat down on a tattered sofa, "Maybe you should look where you're going." Before she could answer, the base entrance opened.

Clara let out a sigh of relief, "Rory! Martha! Are you okay?"

Rory nodded, "Yeah. A few close calls but we're good." They both then eyed John.

"And who might this be?" Martha questioned.

"I'm John Smith. Also know as the man that Clara decided to kick." he then mumbled, "Useless pudding brain."

Clara groaned, "Like I said. It wasn't on purpose so stop being to grumpy about it." she looked at Martha, "He's staying here until he finds his home."

John tried to come up with a lie, "I er- I got separated from my friends and sister. I'm just trying to find them and then you will never see me again."

Everyone managed to make it back with some cuts and bruises. They all agreed that John could stay for a few days too. Clara felt glad that she had 'helped' somebody by taking them into the safety. Another part of her felt annoyed at John's sudden behaviour though.

"You need anything doing, Jack?" Clara asked.

He shook his head, "No. You've done plenty for this group, Clara. And besides... It's way too late for you to go outside."

She just groaned in annoyance, "I can go out at night, Jack! The Daleks and the Time Lords don't scare me."

"Sure they don't..." John mumbled to himself.

Clara and Jack looked over at him, Clara then questioned, "What was that?"

"Er-" John paused, "I said: she should go. The Daleks and Time Lords aren't too bad..." he stood up from his chair, "You can easily dodge the Daleks and all you have to do is stay out of the way of the Time Lords."

"I guess. You can go with her!" Jack suggested.

"Yeah. W-Wait, what?"

"Are you serious?" Clara questioned, "I can handle myself."

"Clara." Jack paused, "Take him with you. Get to know him a bit more."

She rolled her eyes, "If I'm not back in two hours- then John has probably killed me."

"I don't want to waste my strength on a useless pudding brain, Clara." he stated.

"Okay. If I'm back in an hour- I've killed John." she said before heading to the hatch, "We'll try to get some more food and water."

Jack nodded, "Be safe."

John followed Clara out of the base and she lead them to the nearby town.

Clara was getting rather angry by the fact that all the building doors were locked. She hadn't come into the part of the town before and she just assumed that everything would open- she wanted it to be an easy job to just walk in and take something and then walk straight back out.

'John'absolutely hated saying that his name was: John... But he had to hide is real identity away from these humans. He subtly took his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket whilst Clara was too busy with the door on the house across the street. He unlocked the door, "Clara!" he whisper-yelled so that he didn't alert anybody nearby. She quickly made her way over to him as he deposited the sonic back into his pocket, "The lock was faulty." he said. She smiled as she opened the door.

"Good. Maybe we'll find something useful in here." she said as the pair entered the dark house, "You want to take the upstairs or should I?"

"Wouldn't it be a lot safer if we stuck together?" the Doctor/John may have come across as an angry old man who despised the human race- but he still didn't want to see Clara perish so soon.

She shook her head, "I'd rather do things faster. So I guess I'll take the upstairs. Just go in the kitchen and look around for some canned food and bottled water. I'll go upstairs and see if there's anything interesting up there."

He muttered, "If you're sure." he made his way into the kitchen and Clara made her way up the stairs. She soon decided to take out a torch from her backpack. The floorboards creaked beneath her feet and the cold wind made her shiver. Clara couldn't hear anything. Pure silence. She couldn't remember the last time she had been isolated in such a quiet place. As she turned the corner into one of the bedrooms her eyes widened. She froze.

She didn't care if anything or anyone else heard her, "John?!" she called. A few seconds later, John appeared by her side.

"Clara." he whispered, "Don't blink."

"Wh-What is that?" she wondered. Her hand that was aiming the torch at the creature was shaking. The light then started to flicker.

"It's a Weeping Angel. If you blink it will move closer towards you and send you through time."

"And how do you know so much about them?!"

He paused, "I-I overheard the Time Lords talking about them a few days ago."

"Well..." she paused, "I don't really want to stay here much longer." she quickly grabbed John's hand and pulled him back towards the stairs.

"Stop holding my hand! People don't do that to me!"

She groaned, "Oh, shut up!" she pulled him down the stairs. Just as she was about to drag him out of the house, she noticed a bag next to the door, "What's that?"

"You said you wanted food and water. So I put them in that bag."

"You were fast!" she exclaimed before making him carry the bag.

He then mumbled, "Yeah, don't say that in bed." She gave him a disgusted look before he was the one who had to pull her out of the house.

Chapter 3

One Week Later

"He is so- He's just so- He's annoying!" Clara was pacing around the small room whilst listing the things that she hated about John.

Amy let out a sigh as she leaned back in her chair, "Clara, you need to calm down."

"Calm down?! He's driving me insane! I'm going to need medication if I ever want to calm down again!" John had gone out with Rose and Rory to on a supply run. Jack and Donna were in the planning room trying to find a new place to set up base. And Mickey and Martha were currently making food for when the rest of the group got back.

"You've been talking about John a lot lately." Amy smiled, "Why is that?"

"Why?!" Clara questioned, "He's infuriating!"

"Are you sure you don't like him." her friend said suggestively.

Clara just gave her a shocked look, "Are you being serious right now? Why on Earth would I like him with the stupid way he talks with that stupid mouth on that stupid face of his?!" Amy just folded her arms and gave her a questioning look whilst raising her eyebrow. She just looked at Clara... waiting.

"Tell the truth, Oswald. I won't judge."

"N-No! He-"

Amy cut her off, "Clara... Yes or no question: Do you find him attractive?" Clara opened her mouth to protest but it quickly slammed shut, "And that answers my question."

"Wh-What?! I didn't say anything!"

"You didn't have to." Amy smirked.

Clara then flopped onto her stomach on the sofa, "You're making me confused..." she mumbled as she dug her face into a pillow.

The Doctor had strayed away from Rose and Rory.

He rarely sleeps but he managed to get an hour or two of kip last night. He couldn't stop thinking about his dream. He's had this same dream for years now. About a woman, jumping into his time stream just to save him. He vaguely remembered travelling with this woman but he couldn't pinpoint her face. He remembered the name: Clara... The woman he met a few days ago was also called Clara... But that was just a coincidence. Right? She also reminded him of a certain woman he met in a diner many years ago... But it couldn't be the same exact person. He shook his head and rid any thought of this mysterious 'Clara'.

"It seems that Clara hates you." Rose stated as she slowed down to allow him to catch up. They stopped walking as Rory went into a house to look for supplies.

The Doctor shrugged, "Can't impress everyone." Clara... she seemed so different to everyone else. But he couldn't see why. He was the Doctor! He should know everything! He would catch himself many times each day just staring at her. He was interested in what she was doing and he had no idea why!

Rose then clicked her fingers in front of his face, "Earth to John."

"Wh-What?" he asked.

"When I say hate... It's more like denial."

He looked at her in confusion, "Denial?"

She nodded, "I can see it. Everyone in the group can see it. Except for you and Clara."

"See what exactly? Honestly, why doesn't anybody explain things properly these days?"

"That Clara likes you." she stated.

He raised his eyebrow, "You're giving me mixed messages here. Previously you said that she hated me"

Rose just sighed, "Put it like this. She hates the fact that she likes you."

"Erm... okay? So she likes me. That's good I guess. I... accept her presence." he 'accepted her presence' a lot more than Rose actually thought.

"You are so blind, John." Rose then added. No he wasn't. He understood completely. He's walked amongst Humans for years and he has grown accustomed to what the term 'likes' means... He wasn't a total idiot.

Once John, Rory and Rose came back- Everyone was ready to eat, "Run into any trouble?" Martha asked.

Rory shook his head as he started to eat the noodles, "Just one Dalek." Clara and John were picking at their food. Clara was too busy thinking about what she actually felt towards John: hate, like? What was it? John was too busy thinking about who the mysterious woman in his dreams was... it couldn't be the woman who was sitting opposite him. Right?

"You not hungry?" Amy asked Clara.

Clara quickly shut out her thoughts, "No. I just feel a bit sick." she lied.

Amy then whispered to her, "Lovesick?" Clara then groaned before standing up.

"I'm gonna go to bed. Hopefully, I'll feel better by morning." she said. Everyone nodded before she made her way to the spare room. This room was the only room that had one bed. The other room was huge and it had over ten beds. The 'spare room' was used for people if they wanted to be alone... and Clara wanted to be alone right now. Just so she could gather her thoughts. As she lay on the bed she looked up at the stone ceiling... and then at the stone walls... and then at the stone floor. This was no way to live. Underground with no sunlight. Candles were the only things that lit up the rooms in this 'home'.

There was then a knock at the door... God knows how Jack managed to install doors into this place, "Clara?" John walked in.

Clara then sat up, "Er- Y-Yeah?"

"I bought you some water if you want. It tends to help when you're feeling ill."

She gave him a smile, "Thanks." he handed her the bottle of water. To be honest... her stomach was feeling a bit off. She felt sick. It wasn't butterflies. She. Felt. Sick. She kept on telling herself that it was just an illness that would go away.

God knows how it happened, but John had been in the room with Clara for well over an hour now. They were just talking. An occasional story here and there. John didn't like sitting down and talking... He HAD to be doing something practical. Like fixing a machine or fighting a monster. Not listening to a Human. But Clara... he felt like he's heard her voice for years. Countless years. But why couldn't he remember her face?

John hadn't noticed the silence until now. They were currently sitting on the edge of the bed together. Why hadn't the sickness left Clara's stomach yet? She was starting to get concerned about it. What illness could she have been possessed with?! Having an illness in times like these was not a good situation.

She decided that she didn't care that she's only known John for a week. She wanted to try something. Just a test. She wanted to show that she didn't like John... She was going to kiss him and prove that she didn't need anything more. She leaned forward and surprisingly, he didn't move away... And that was when Amy decided to burst into the room. John then stuttered, "Er- N-Night, Clara." Once John left the room he shut the door behind him.

"No no no!" Amy exclaimed, "I didn't mean to burst in on such a moment! Get out there girl!" she pulled Clara up from the bed.

"Wh-What?!" Clara started, "What are you talking about?"

Amy rolled her eyes, "You really are hopeless sometimes."

To be continued...

[nehswritesstuffs]

The Scottish Werewolf of Hackney - Part VIII

It’s October! \o/ My Northern Hemisphere blood is relishing in the cooler temperatures, which is all much better for tea, sleeping, dressing in layers, and of course, a new stage in my sports intake. XD *smacked*

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V

Part VI - Part VII - FFN - AO3

Clara and Basil settle into their temporary mountain residence, but a worry surfaces in a terrifying way. [2671 words; Whouffaldi werewolf AU]

When planning on doing outdoor things during the autumn months, there is a very important thing that people should remember while in Scotland, just as they would in many other places. As the air cools off it loses its ability to hold moisture, which creates weather that is not only brisk and chilly, but wet as well. It’s the sort of chill that gets deep into one’s bones, down into their very soul. Snow and ice may attack and numb the senses, as an over-utilized air conditioning unit might, but the wet-cold of the autumn season transforms an individual into something else entirely, seeping down into a person’s very being until there is nothing that isn’t chilled and damp and dreary, feeling as though there shall never be anything warm and dry again, nor were things ever like that to begin with.

That was the sort of season that Basil and Clara came across when they found themselves dropped off at a bus stop in what felt like the middle of nowhere, the day after leaving London. Armed with bags of personal belongings and food, they hiked through the surrounding Cairngorm Mountains until just before sundown, when they come across a small hut partway built into a hillside. A worn wooden sign emblazoned with “GO AWAY HUMANS” in large lettering was attached to the front door (with smaller print saying “if it’s not on a map or a list, it’s not for you to use”) and old padlocks on the door and wooden shutters kept the place closed. The lock on the door gave way wonderfully despite the rust, Basil was surprised that he could still find the keys to the shutters, and soon they had the windows open and a fire going.

“This place is in amazing shape,” Clara marveled. The inside walls were all made of stone, with flooring to match, and a sturdy-looking wooden roof above them. There was a table, a couple chairs, some well-beaten pans, a few cupboards, and an elevated wooden bunk that their sleeping bags were already laid out on. Most everything felt still a bit damp from the humidity, yet nothing appeared to have been touched in a long time, even by a rouge mouse.

“I have a ward around the place, put there by an old friend who used to dabble in basic magic, and that taps into most animals’ fear and cautionary instincts,” he claimed. “The sign changes languages depending on who reads it, the ground around the walls is solid enough to have them not need much patching, and there is a drainage system that keeps everything from flooding from rainwater or snowmelt. We did some work on the place about fifteen years ago, so all the wood here is relatively new, as well as pressure-treated and moisture-sealed so that nothing warps too horribly, too quickly, while we’re not around.”

“How did River’s family get this place? I thought these sorts of places were all owned publically or something like that.”

“Most in the area are, but not ours.” Basil pulled on a couple of cords that were hanging from the ceiling, afterwards going to the pump at the sink and working it until water flowed. “Her mother’s family has roots nearby, leading to property claims that are probably older than the union of the crown, and this place was grandfathered in when the park was created, or close to it; I don’t remember the precise details anymore.”

“Did you come here often?”

“Not as often as we would have liked, no.”

“I think we should make an effort, given how secluded it is,” Clara suggested. “It could be useful for when we want some time alone.”

“It could,” he chuckled. “Can you imagine Nardole following us out here?”

“Don’t say that; he might feel he’s being summoned,” she laughed. “I can see him using the opportunity to do nothing but complain. He seems to be rather good at complaining.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Basil closed the shutters and locked them up, keeping the dark night out and the warmth in. “I need the moon to be full soon—I cannot wait around with only a partial moon to keep things from going sideways.”

“It doesn’t work to just stay out in a partial moon for longer?” Clara wondered.

“No; I need the full strength of the moon. Instead of like charging a battery, it’s more like supplying power to a house. If you only allow seventy-five percent of a current into the wiring, nothing will be able to run normally like it would at a hundred percent, no matter how many other things you shut off.” His arms were acting wildly as he spoke, adding silent emphasis to his words. “I can only transform partway right now, which is only going to cause issues.”

“…and what if it’s cloudy that night? It’s not like we’re in the least snowiest place in Britain right now—I’m surprised it was just raining earlier…”

“All I need is half an hour of combined time under the full moon over the course of the night,” he replied. “That gives the clouds most of the night to be pesky and in-the-way.”

“…and if you don’t get that…?”

“You can leave if Coal Hill’s back in session in the meantime, but I would have to stay here until I get what I need from a full moon.”

“Winter’s on the way! A new term at your job! You can’t just run away from those things!” Clara felt exasperated about the fact that she even had to mention it. “Do you always run like this?”

“No, I do not!” Basil insisted. Clara gave him a flat look, which she did not let up until he finally relented. “Okay, yes, I do this a lot, but if it was really that much an issue, then I would’ve been fired for it by now, don’t you think?”

“I think that you need to make sure you stop this if you want to actually advance this relationship any farther than this bothy,” she replied. She stared at him, sizing up the situation, and nodded gently. “Don’t run, and if you have to, then you run with me.”

“Promise,” he said. Holding his hand out, he waited until Clara took it in her own before allowing a grin to stretch across his face. “When I say run, we run.”

“I lay claim to Fiancée Vetoes, which will later mature into Wife Vetoes, so that you’re aware,” she reminded him. She pulled him towards the bunk and they both wedged themselves in between the sleeping bags, glad that they were able to use each other for warmth as they were careful about how to cushion themselves from the wooden surface. Using his own arm and a bunched up coat as a pillow, Basil had Clara rest her head on his chest, keeping her close.

“Veto all you like—chances are that you’ll agree with me when the times come.”

“Mmmhmm, sure,” she teased sleepily. With weather outside good for napping and cuddling, combined with a long day of hiking after a train ride behind them, Clara quickly succumbed to the sleep she didn’t even know was waiting for her. Being snug up against Basil kept her warm and comfortable, and she didn’t fight the urge to slip into a gentle dream.

Lulled by the thoughts of future visits to the bothy, of a future with Basil, she dreamt on.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

High grasses, low shrubs, and rolling hills; the sky was grey and a gentle breeze teased her hair and jacket as she stood, looking out over the vista. A hand took hers and she leaned on the arm it was attached to—she didn’t have to look to know who it was. Thunder rumbled low in the distance, signaling a storm was coming

“It’s gorgeous,” she said.

“It is ugly,” Basil replied. “All the beauty I need is holding my hand.”

“Flatterer.”

“It gets me good things, I’ll give flattery that.” He turned and faced her, holding her face as they kissed. The wind began to pick up slightly, just enough to notice, though the two gave them no heed.

Just as Clara thought she would collapse from weakened knees and a lack of breathing, a peal of thunder made Basil step back from her. He clutched his head and shouted, clearly in pain, and looked as though he was ready to fall over.

“Basil…?!”

Lighting nearby caught her attention, striking one of the few trees within her view of the vista below. It only took a moment to look away, yet when she turned her attention back to Basil, Clara felt her heart go into her throat—fur had sprouted all over his body and his features were beginning to change. His face grew a snout, his fingers transformed into claws, and his clothes tore as he struggled to stay in them. She took a step towards him and—

One swipe and she recoiled, her jacket cut clean through and blood began to spurt from the openings. She stared at him, eyes wide and terrified, and the horror set in—there was no sense of recognition in his eyes in return, only a primal and animalistic urge…

…and that urge was hungry.

Clara quickly turned on her heel and ran, injured arm be damned. With Basil tied up with the concept of leaving his clothes as he thrashed about, she was able to get a decent head start, nearly making it to the tucked-away bothy before she heard the wolf’s howl behind her. She made it into the bothy and used the wooden cross-bolt to secure the door; at least now she had time to collect herself and think for a moment. There was little there that she could utilize as weaponry and the main of what she had was fire-related, the proper fresh materials for which were all outside. She was just going to have to wait it out until easier prey came along and distracted the werewolf—he could only stalk outside for so long…

With her jacket off and the bandage she was wrapping around her arm cooperating, Clara sat on the floor and braced herself against the bunk as she shook in terror. It was probably only an accident, she told herself. He was likely to be himself again after things had a chance to settle down. It wasn’t even like the moon was out or anything.

Just then, there was a large THUD against the door, accompanied by a canine snarl. Clara scrambled over towards the fireplace and found the poker as the noise continued. She held it with the pointy part out, hoping that it would be enough of a deterrent to stop the werewolf from approaching her. The wood near the hinges began to splinter and the rusted fasteners holding together the bolting system started to give way. Before long, the door came down all together and the wolf-man snarled as he stepped inside.

All Clara had time to do was catch his soulless, unfeeling eyes before her defense was brushed aside and a strong set of sharp teeth wrapped themselves around her neck…

Screaming and sobbing, Clara woke up in hysterics. Basil attempted to hold her close and prevent her from thrashing off the bunk, yet that got him smacked in the face and kneed in the crotch. They both fell from the bunk to the floor, still tangled in their sleeping bag cocoon, and scrambled to get away from one another. Basil made it out first, with Clara then taking the sleeping bags and reflexively pulling them tighter around her.

After a moment to catch his breath, Basil stared at his fiancée in complete shock and confusion. He carefully approached the bundle of sleeping bag and gingerly put his arm where he figured her shoulder was—she recoiled at his touch.

“Clara…?” There was no reply. “Clara…? What’s wrong? Answer me, Clara.” She peeked out at looked at him, allowing her arm to poke out so that she could touch his stubbly face.

“It’s you,” she nearly marveled. “…but you were…”

“I was what, Clara?” A nasty feeling roiled in the pit of his belly—he did not like her expression, as fear did not become her. “It’s clear you had a nightmare, so what happened in it?”

“You transformed,” she replied quietly. She took her hand back to wipe the tears stubbornly forming in her eyes. “You transformed and there wasn’t any of you left. There was no trace of my Basil, of Bill’s Doctor, of Coal Hill’s interim caretaker… and then…” Instead of saying it, she put her hand to her throat and he instantly knew.

“Oh… Clara… I’d never do something like that to you,” he swore. “Don’t be afraid of me and what I will become once I have the full moon hit my skin again; any injury I’ve ever given anyone has been because they were too close as I was thrashing about during a difficult transformation. I’m aware the entire time—I would never knowingly cause you harm.”

“A-Are you sure…?” she asked. He nodded.

“Certainly.”

She gazed into his eyes, the very ones that she saw moments ago in her dream, and took note of the differences. The Basil in her dream had lost all the sparkle, all the life, all the kindness, and yet this one still had those things and more. He picked her up—sleeping bags and all—and placed her back on the bunk, sitting down next to her.

“If you’re not feeling up to being here while I transform again, you’re more than welcome to leave,” he said. Clara shook her head in response.

“I guess it was always at the back of my mind, but it took until now for it to surface,” she admitted. He rested an arm across her shoulders and she leaned into the touch. “I’m sorry—for all the talking we’ve done, that’s a pretty big thing to miss.”

“Something tells me we’re not the talking type,” he shrugged. “Yeah we talk, but big things can be hit-or-miss. I’m sure had we met under different circumstances, we’d part before we ever got the chance to admit our feelings towards one another.”

“Now that would definitely suck.” She couldn’t help but laugh at that. “You sitting alone in your academic tower, pining over what you couldn’t even place you missed, is a silly image.”

“Silly, yes, but terrifyingly possible,” he replied grimly. He gently flattened her hair—now wild from sleep and terror—and tucked a stray strand behind her ear. “I know what I miss from before, but the thought of parting from you without even the hint of what I passed on is enough to make me want to get the TARDIS and whisk you back to Bristol before the school year ends.”

“…the what…?”

“That’s what I call my car, remember?”

She puzzled over that for a moment before it hit her smack in the face. “You mean, you still have that Soviet-era heap of junk that you drove just to piss people off? There hasn’t been a Tardyska made since I was five.”

“It is a highly reliable piece of machinery.”

“If my German uni neighbor was correct, you were safer in a Trabant, and those had to be refueled by pouring petrol directly under the bonnet. You’re a liar.”

“I accept this as true.”

“Which part? About the Trabant or that you’re a liar?”

“I guess you’re going to have to find out.” He leaned in and kissed her playfully, bringing out a giggle that encouraged him further. Squeezing a breast, he relished the sound she made inside his mouth as she straddled his lap, taking charge in the eventual breaking of their sex moratorium.

Soon there would be nothing to worry about, he thought, for once he was revived, nothing was going to come between them.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

A/N: I’ve mentioned the Cairngorms in a different fic as a backdrop, but it is really worth mentioning again. It is one of the coldest, highest, and snowiest places in the British Isles. There are other subranges in the Grampian Mountains that cross Scotland, but the fact that the Cairngorms are often cold and snowy makes them a good setting for things in general (even though the desolateness might be compromised by backpackers and hillwalkers in real life).

[incendiaglacies]

Whouffaldi- ‘you’re important to me.’

Lol, thank you for all the prompts!! Taking a break from my huge fic to drabble some of these. Whouffaldi! My original OTP!! Thank you!! I see this set somewhere during season 9.

“Aww, did you miss me, Doctor?” Clara teased as she entered the TARDIS.

“Of course not, you’re far too bossy. And even shorter than before,” the Doctor waved away.

“Oi, no need to be rude. I’ve only been gone for a few days,” Clara huffed, “Where are we going?”

“Are you sure you want to go? I mean, I know this is an important day for you and you don’t have to go anywhere,” the Doctor stuttered. He was never quite good at these feelings thing, even with Clara’s help.

“Anywhere is better than here right now,” Clara said quietly, “Let’s just go. How about a planet? Or the future? Oh how about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Always wanted to meet the man that wrote Sherlock. See if he knows Vastra and Jenny? Or if he’s as good as Jane Austen,” Clara bounced around the console, her hand trailing over the buttons.

“Clara,” the Doctor started.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Doctor.”

“Alright, but I do. I mean, you’re important to me. And I have a duty of care, to the people that are important. All my companions I mean. And I just feel that perhaps you’re not handling this properly and-”

Clara laughed, “Oh Doctor, if something is wrong I’ll tell you. But I can handle myself. I’m a big girl, I can make my own choices. I don’t need you protecting me from my own emotions.”

“Right, I just felt I should say something. Because, sometimes, I do worry you know?”

“I know, Doctor,” Clara smiled as she shook her head.

“Right, can I stop now?” the Doctor asked meekly.

“Yes. You can stop now. Now Sherlock! Let’s go!”

The Doctor turned to the console and started pressing buttons and pulling levers, Clara came up behind him and wrapped her arms around him for a sneaky hug.

“You’re important to me too, Doctor.”

[leaiorganas]

Someone Like That 2/3

Clara and the Doctor, co-workers, holiday party, secret crushes. What could possibly go wrong?

LOL, does anyone even remember this fic? It’s been ages! If you remember, yay, if not, have a whouffaldi secret crush holiday party au!

On AO3 here

The Doctor stood with his hand braced against the car door, watching Clara as she ran towards the building. He called her name but she ignored him as she shut the door with a resounding snap. He stood there for a few minutes, debating whether or not to go after her but decided it would only make matters worse. Sighing, he got back in the car and decided to drive home. The night was over for him, he had held high hopes for this evening but nothing seemed to go right.

Clara Oswald.

Rubbing his hand through his hair, the Doctor tried to figure out why this evening had turned out so wrong.

She had been kind to him on his first day, volunteering to show him around the office. He admired her friendly personality but could see that many of her peers had not taken her seriously. He noted her sharp wit and keen intelligence and made it a point to include her in discussions during staff meetings.

That she was also very young and beautiful never occurred to him.

At least, it shouldn’t have.

She would often try to include him in team lunches or group outings but he always declined. He had no interest getting to know his colleagues, save one.  Clara was well liked by everyone, she seemed to know everyone’s name and never failed to ask after their children or spouses. It seemed that there may be one or two colleagues that liked her a bit more than others and he usually eyed them disdainfully as not worth her time.

He caught her once, attending a lecture of his at the University he taught at from time to time. She had ducked her head but he knew she was there and he could not explain the feeling in his chest. It had pleased him, that Clara took the time to attend his lecture. She had left before he could greet her, his disappointment hitting him harder than he had expected it to. He didn’t understand how she had managed to become so important to him but he found himself seeking her out in the office, carefully watching her when he was sure she wouldn’t notice. Her laugh was readily given and he loved to hear it, oftentimes finding that he wanted to smile simply as a result of her laughter. He was envious of the men that floated around her, the ease with which they could converse with her, flirt with her. It annoyed him that he couldn’t muster up the courage to talk to her so he retreated into himself, throwing on the persona of the standoffish Doctor. He would love to ask Clara about her children’s books, what she was working on, did she love a particular story. But someone like that was hard for a quiet, old man like him to know.

So all he had left was the company holiday party and that ended up being an abject disaster.

+

He watched her walk in, dress hidden by her coat but he thinks she is beautiful. His tie seems tighter and he wants to tear the blasted thing off and throw it in a bin. It’s when she hands her coat to the check and he sees her black dress that he knows he is outclassed and there is no way she will want to spend any time with him this evening.

He has to try.

He moves closer to her and is waiting when she turns away from the coat check. Her smile could light up a room. “Hello. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“I usually don’t like these things but I thought it would do to make a quick showing, new guy and all. I won’t stay very long, make the rounds and say hello.” The lies roll off his tongue as he plays at a detachment he doesn’t feel.

He thinks she looks relieved when she comments that he will miss the dancing and he swears there is a lightheartedness about her. He is sure the disappointment on her face is a trick of the light. Before he can respond, Craig and Danny, two of Clara’s work paramours slide up next to her and he watches quietly as Craig places an arm around her waist. “Clara, save a dance for me, yeah?”

His eyes drift over to where Craig’s hand lies casually against Clara’s waist and he feels as if he could reach over and tear the younger man’s arm right off. He sighs inwardly and reminds himself that this is why he shouldn’t be here; this is the reason that she is out of his reach. It wouldn’t occur to him to invade her space so casually and perhaps she welcomed the younger man’s attention. He closes his eyes for a brief second, calling himself two thousand fools and realizes that, perhaps, the night is over him.

He should not have come tonight.

He watches Clara as she smiles at Danny who has taken it upon himself to drag Craig to the bar and when she looks back at him, he has made his mind up. So he is taken aback when she asks him to dine with him. He was not expecting the invitation and though it was the point of the whole evening, the point of why he was even here, he chose to decline her invitation.

Why ruin her evening as well?

He decides its best to leave it as is and go so he nods and chooses this moment to leave her, why drag out this awkwardness any longer?

++

He finds it more difficult to leave then he had originally planned. His boss has cornered him, forcing him into introductions with people he has no interest in nor have any inclination to talk to. After being roped into escorting his boss’s sister into dinner, his heart sinks as he realizes the impression this would give Clara, that he simply didn’t want her company.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

He does his best to watch Clara through the evening, watches as she converses with various co-workers and entertains their spouses. She has a knack for including everyone and it hits him harder that he had purposely chose to exclude himself from her circle. He watches as she dances and drinks her way through several hours and wishes he could bring himself to join her.

During dinner, he quietly listens to his dinner partner Susan, as she encourages him into conversation. She is a publisher who had befriended his boss’s wife, her conversation quiet and calming, a stark contrast to the lively conversations that Clara held. But his eyes continued to betray his distraction, sliding over to catch a glimpse of Clara whenever possible.

“She’s beautiful.”

Startled, he turns to face Susan and flushes. She’s watching him watch Clara and suddenly he wishes he had never come. He starts to make his apologies but she waves it away with a smile.

“Doctor, I get the feeling this is the last place you want to be tonight,” she nods her head in Clara’s general direction, “but maybe there is someone you wouldn’t mind talking to.”

“We’re co-workers, not even really in the same division.” His response is abrupt, he knows, but wants this line of conversation to end.

“Mmmmmhmmm.” Susan presses her lips together. “Tell you what, I am going to introduce myself to that gentleman over there and see if he is interested in buying me a drink.”

She stands, leaning close to the Doctor, “Maybe you could catch her while she is in-between dancing partners.  Better hurry.”

She pats him on the back and moves across the room leaving the Doctor at the table. He sighs and rubs his hand across his eyes and decides it’s time to go. Making his way slowly towards the exit, he chances one last look at Clara and sees that Craig has claimed her for one more dance. His lips curl in annoyance but before he has a chance to slip out, he is pulled aside to meet one more person. It’s a few minutes before he can extract himself and a last glance tells him that Clara is nowhere to be found.

Sighing, he redeems his coat ticket and decides to slip out the side entrance. He can hear conversation as he makes his way around the side of the building and he is sure he can hear Clara’s voice. He can feel the annoyance creep back over him, this whole evening had been a waste. He could have spent it reading, he is completely sure that would have been entirely more enjoyable.

But then he would have missed Clara in that black dress.

He shook his head ruefully and was almost around the corner when he heard Clara yell. He walked in on Clara lying on the pavement, dress torn with Craig hunched over her.

“What the hell…?” He watches as Craig loosens his grip on Clara, rage settling over him at the sight of Clara on the ground. He puts his hands under her arms to lift her up, offering a steading arm for her to hold. She turns to face her rescuer and he watches as her face flushes.

This was just perfect.

“Are you all right?” He watches her as she looks at her bleeding elbow and feels the contempt for Craig wash through him.

“Yes. No. Damn!” She hasn’t looked up at him yet.

Craig was getting to his feet, “Clara’s fine with this so just mind your own business, Doc.”

“That’s enough! Get out of here.” His concern for Clara outweighed his desire to kill Craig.

Craig doesn’t take the hint, his voice growing petulant, “Clara, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I thought we were cool.”

“The why didn’t you stop,” she said, furiously, “when I asked you to?”

“One little kiss,” Craig whined. “Why can’t you be a sport, Clara? Didn’t think you would mind, you’re always smiling and flirting.”

Clara gasped in outrage but before she could say anything, the Doctor decides to break in, his voice betraying how angry he was, “Apparently, she does. Get out of here,” he added, “you pudding brain fool.”

Craig seemed about to argue but he turned and left them in courtyard, mumbling under his breath.

The Doctor couldn’t decide what part of this scenario he was angrier about. The way Craig had treated Clara or that Clara had put herself in a situation where someone like Craig could treat her so. He avoids her eyes while he wraps a handkerchief around her elbow and he if he tightens the knot a tad too tightly on her arm, no one mentions it in the silence that falls between them.

But he can’t help himself, his jealousy creeps into his voice and he is slightly ashamed.

“And he’s not the only fool. If you didn’t want his attentions, why bring him out here?” He regrets the words the minute they are out of his mouth but her response that she has known him for years takes him by surprise.

“You can’t be that naïve.” He feels the anger push the shame aside and keeps going, “Especially in view of the signals you were giving him.” And he really, really does not understand why he is still having this conversation.

She stills next to him and he finally turns to look at her properly. Her beautiful dress is torn and he can see that she has scrapped her knee where her tights tore. She looks a bit lost and suddenly he’s tired. So tired.

“I suppose it’s a party and all, and that’s what people do at a party.” It’s time to go home and call this disaster of an evening over. He sighs and runs his hands through his hair, he knew he should have stayed home. He just knew it.

“You should just be more careful…in the future. You’re friendly and beaut-” he hesitated. Not saying that. “You’re very friendly and kind and people may get the wrong message.”

She’s angry and trying to calm herself, “Do you go around dispensing free advice to everyone or am I just special?”

Whoa. Who said anything about special? Does she think that he thinks that she’s special? No, no, no, no. No. She can’t think that. Does she? Is she okay with that? Maybe?

“No one thinks you’re special. I don’t think you’re special. Who says you’re special? It’s just sound advice.” That’s it, this was over. He was going to offer her a ride home and then crawl into a hole somewhere and lay down for a decade.

Before he could get the words out, she was turning and walking away. He called out to her asking her to wait but she insisted that she was fine, there were plenty of cabs. He closed his eyes for one second, why was she so stubborn, can’t she see that he just wants to help. He runs his hand over his face, the sooner they can leave the better.

“Why don’t you just accept my offer?”

“How do I know I’m not getting myself into something else?” she demanded. “Going home with a strange man?”

And it hurt.

That someone like her, someone he liked very much, could insinuate that he can do to her what Craig had earlier in the evening. He felt a wave of nausea and stared at her in dismay, “Do you really think you’re in any danger?”

He was done. “Come on, my car is parked on the other side of the building. We can go this way.”

He really had nothing more to say, disappointment curling through him mixed with hurt. He really was an old fool and this evening just proved it. Someone like Clara was too bright, too young, too smart to even be attracted to him, why try? He stayed silent on the drive home, listening to her directions but not engaging her in conversation.

What was there left to say?

Finally, finally, she indicated her flat and he pulled up. “Sure you’ll be okay?”

She nodded and was surprised when she told him that she would wash the handkerchief and return it. He had forgotten about it and it didn’t matter really, he just wanted her to be well. “You needn’t bother, just take care of yourself.”

Right. So…. he should let her out, it’s what gentleman do, yeah? He turns to open his door and starts at the gentle touch of her hand on his arm. He stares at the hand for a moment before staring at her. What now?

“Look, things didn’t quite turn out the way I thought it would tonight. I thought…I guess…I wanted to talk to you. I don’t know what I thought, to be honest. I like you and I just wanted to get to know you but you made it clear that you are not interested so I am just sorry. Sorry that you had to drive me home, sorry about taking up so much of your time.”

Wait.

Did she just say she wanted to get to know him? That she liked him?

Wait.

That he wasn’t interested in her?

He finds that he is at a loss for words and is struggling to process what she says. He watches as she pulls back, hand over her mouth to stop the runaway of words. He wants to grab her hand, keep her anchored right where she is so he can talk to her but his brain won’t co-operate. Won’t send the signals to grab her before it’s too late.

It's too late.

By the time he reaches for her, he is holding onto air as she has spun around and let herself out.

He scrambles to follow her, “Clara. Clara, wait. Please. Just wait.”

The Doctor stood with his hand braced against the car door, watching Clara as she ran towards the building. He called her name but she ignored him as she shut the door with a resounding snap. He stood there for a few minutes, debating whether or not to go after her but decided it would only make matters worse. Sighing, he got back in the car and decided to drive home. The night was over for him, he had held high hopes for this evening but nothing seemed to go right.

Clara Oswald. What to do now?