From Trenzalore---To Gallifrey
Rating: Teen
Summary/Note: This is a follow-up to the DW season finale: The Name of the Doctor. It’s a Whouffle fic that goes a little past that episode. Note that there are some references to Classic Who in this story.
***
It was known that coming to Trenzalore would be like entering Purgatory, and yet how capricious Purgatory’s horrors can be.
The G.I. entered his time stream and now the Doctor is thrashing in her arms and there is nothing she can do. Reaching out, pressing her hand to his twin hearts, she tries to stop it. Howbeit, nothing alters the explosion of the doctor’s lives, all eleven of them being rewritten, abused and destroyed.
She screams out what is happening, but no one can give her a good answer. No one knows what to do.
She looks to his time tunnel, the stream reddened now to a deeper burning scar, like blood being leaked out of a festering wound.
The Doctor’s.
The thrashing ceases, but the stillness that takes its place is no comfort.
Clara’s mind focuses urgently on a possible past.
The Dalek Asylum. Victorian England. The Doctor said she had been in both places.
“You’re the impossible girl.” Mr. Clever’s words come back to her and how later the Doctor didn’t try to counter them.
How can that be though? Unless…
Speaking to River, she gets confirmation. If she enters his time stream she can save him, again and again. Live, again and again.
Die, again and again.
The Doctor’s weakened voice begs her not to, but Clara is firm in her resolve.
The Doctor should be lively and animated. Grouchy and grimacing. Calculating and clever. Tender and oddly caring. Passionate and geekishly driven.
That is her Doctor, with big hands that find her cheeks with touches of waywardness until they hold firm and poke fun at her nose in between. That is him, not this man lying brokenly upon the ground, bleeding away inside all he is.
Oh come on. Can’t wait.
She’ll do something miraculous, bring back the stars and the planets. Bring back that big chin and those crazy spins of his legs.
“What do you want to see?”
Oh she wants to see him alive.
She wants her Doctor back, standing, laughing, and being so silly, so clever.
As he calls out her name in anguished protest, she utters, “Run you clever boy. And remember me.”
And jumps.
*
“CLARA!”
He screams, his twin hearts thundering…
Little by little he can feel his body getting stronger, and yet it happens for each time she is born, saves him, and dies.
He stands, first needing the wall for support, and then after a while of that, on his own.
River pleads with him to not enter the time stream. River. Oh sweet maniacal passionate River. He, the madman who can’t take goodbyes, has tried to hold on, keeping her in the library.
But the time is past. Let River sleep. Kiss. Hold. And let go. Offer goodbye like we’ll see each other again. End it with those tantalizing spoilers. Rest, River.
And when she does, the Doctor only has one thing to do.
River said she was meant to be linked to Clara, but even after Clara was in the stream, River remained. She didn’t leave until she got her proper goodbye from him.
That means there’s a chance, a crack in what should be implausible.
No one attempts to stop him from entering the stream. Any bits of fear he has fade away with the purpose. After all she entered it, without any alien DNA, without any kind of protection, a stream that has no link to her own life.
Or does it?
The light is no longer blood red. It shines now in its white illumination signifying that Clara has done it. She has righted the wrong or at least most of it.
He goes back into his time, back to the place where it is, finds the fragile plant of life before it can be taken by that vampiric creature, and holds it tight.
*
She falls. She lands. She is born. She saves. She dies. And she falls again. The pattern continues. It is wicked. It is rapid. It only allows tiny fragments of life to happen. They are all with one purpose: Save the Doctor.
So much of what has happened before and after is lost. She is what River said. Echoes. Pieces. Tears. And now he is safe and so it’s done. Her story is over. The book shuts. And the falling ends.
She lands on her back, with her leg bent awkwardly. What she sees and hears is a hellish environment, a nightmare. She doesn’t know where she is. She doesn’t know who she is. Clara, but what beyond?
“Doctor?” She asks, fear trickling down her spine, dripping into her heart. “DOCTOR!”
She pushes her head against the ground.
Help me.
*
He can feel her icy shivers through his hearts and knows it is time. He has found her and the place she has fallen to. But he can’t reach out. Not without the line to her life. To get that line to reach her, he must calm her a bit. He tells her to look and see him, all the different ghosts of him.
Familiar, they lessen her fears. The icy shivers fade for tiny fractions. Good. She must be brave.
Time is limited, the stream starting to break apart.
“AAAA!”
*
The ground convulses with seismically thunderous rumbles. He tells her it’s because the time screen is collapsing, which makes her scream for him to get out. But the Doctor is such a pertinacious man. He won’t leave until he has her too.
Clara feels broken. Thousands of lives fragmented, families and friends that whipped by because she died again and again.
“I don’t even know who I am.” She wails with the underlying veracity of it all. How could she be there for all eleven of the Doctors, living a puzzle of missing pieces? How is this real?
*
Her words of abandonment cut through his hearts. This is what has happened to his Clara. She jumped into his time stream and now she is lost.
But not for long.
Catch the leaf Clara. Catch it and find your link to life. Catch it.
*
Look. He tells her strongly.
It drifts through the smoky air, ebbing to be in her grasp. A leaf. A fragile beautiful leaf, torn and folded from life lived. She catches it and holds on tight. He tells her it is a link to her past and where her future will go. And she can feel it.
Someone gave her this leaf.
A book. Places. Being held and loved. Getting lost. Fearing. Being found. Making soufflés. Always about the recipe.
The pictures are all ripped and in pieces. Puzzles of her life, but they’re there, they’re beating in her heart.
And they’re all in this leaf. This leaf that the Doctor has given her. This leaf that-
“Clara! Clara! Clara!”
Doctor?
*
He can see her. After getting out of the time stream’s vortex, and touching the murky ground he can see her. She is confused and crying. Her walk holds stumbles and falters, but she is persistently moving forward, the leaf the link. If he can just get her to turn around to help her see that he’s not one of his regenerations that will fade from her view. He’s not a ghost.
“Clara, come on…”
*
He’s talking to her. It’s not real. Her Doctor is not there.
But what if he is real?
He insists it’s true, his hands reaching out desperately for her to come forward.
She limps, creeping pain in her leg that she tries to ignore because he’s just a few steps away.
The Doctor tells her she is his impossible girl, getting her to think that maybe it’s not just a dream. She stumbles forward, desperate to see if he is existent, hoping fervently that he is.
Amid his babbling and reassurances, she gets there, and when she does her arms swing upward, hugging him as tightly as she can for he is no chimera. The vehement emotion is mirrored in how fiercely he holds her in kind.
Her fingers clench his neck and shoulders, feeling the polished tweed of his coat, its bits of scratchiness not bothering her, for it contains his warmth and scent of familiarity that reminds her she is safe.
His relief comes from feeling her small body against his, her sweet and illuminating redolence. His knuckles harden into firmness as he clutches her to his twin hearts.
Finally he has saved her, not the other way around for once. It’s incredible to him, how she dangerously entered time’s scar tissue, producing echoes of her real self.
The miracle is that this is no echo he’s holding now. This is the real Clara in his arms. She has forgotten some things. She is confused and she is hurt, but she is real, his impossible girl.
The Doctor’s eyes close with undulating emotion for long moments. As they reopen though, he sees something that make his eyes widen with shock and urgency of mind to get away.
No. Not something.
Someone.
Clara doesn’t understand it as they lessen their hold on each other. She asks questions that he has to redirect. It is not about the actual name of birth, but the one that is chosen, the promise to keep. And this version did not keep to that. It is his secret. He starts to explain, but then-
It arises and encompasses her, the exhaustion and the physical pain of what has happened. She starts to sway and the alarmed Doctor rapidly sweeps her up protectively into his arms.
Before departing, he listens a bit to the other, and gives protest.
After the volatile exchange, the Doctor walks away, carrying the faint Clara in his arms. This is not the time. He shouldn’t even be here. Neither should she. He looks down, noticing the fractional twisting of her leg and how in her face there is pale stillness.
…
It is many moments later that outside of the cavernous containment, the Doctor has no choice but to wake her.
“Clara…”
Nothing.
He grits his lips. “Clara.”
“Mmm…”
Her murmur.
The Doctor sighs, raising his voice again. “Clara, I am sorry. But I need you to wake now.”
She looks up finally, a tiny pinch of a smile upon her face, her fingers rising to his cheek. “Doctor?”
It can’t help but make him smile too before she loses hers, noticing in frightened awe what they’re standing in front of. “Doctor?”
“It’s like a vortex.” He tells her busily. “Well, not entirely. Not even something in honesty I can fully explain. It’s the only passage though back to the Tardis, back to Vastra, Jenny and Strax.”
Shaking her head, Clara quietly murmurs. “They were dead, Jenny and Strax.”
Fingering her cheek softly he whispers. “Not anymore. You brought them back.”
“And River?”
For a handful of seconds he remembers the kiss, yet no longer. The Doctor does not do love well. Loss hurts every time. “River is resting like she should be. Finally.”
“Oh.” Clara focuses on the lanky, but oddly strong arm that grips her shoulders and keeps her close to his chest. “She was your wife?”
“Yes, Clara. I told you. Ex.”
“But-
He shakes his head, a finger pushing against Clara’s lips gently. “No. Now is not the time. Clara, can you try to walk? I know you are injured. I know you are tired. You have every right to be, but I don’t trust carrying you through there.”
He gestures forward, and Clara stares at it, the black-gray ominous cloud that seems to lead to nowhere. “That man. You said he was you?”
“Clara.” The Doctor speaks insistently. “Now is not the time.”
“But he is you?” She does not give up.
“Yes.” After all they’ve gone through together the Doctor doesn’t feel much like holding back secrets anymore. “Me, but not the Doctor.”
“What?” Her eyebrows hitch with confusion.
The Doctor gently brushes back her falling hair. “No answer I give now will make sense Clara. Please just trust me.”
“I always do…well almost.” She whispers, feeling a kiss graze the top of her hair. “Will it hurt?” She gestures to the dark cloud blocking their way.
“No. Not at all.” He smiles reassuringly.
“You’re lying.” She states flatly.
The Doctor gives an answering wink. “Clever Clogs.”
“Okay.” She lets out with a sigh, pushing at his arm.
The Doctor carefully brings her down to the ground, releasing her from his arms, but keeping a firm hold of her shoulder and back until Clara is able to stand on her own.
“Can we hold hands?”
He smiles, before gripping her hand firmly in his and whispering against it, “That, Clara, is why I said I can’t hold you in my arms. You could be ripped from them. But if we’re holding on tight to each other, making the way together, then-
“If we run together-
“Right my Impossible Girl.”
Determination hits her eyes as she whispers, “Then run you Clever Boy. Run with me this time.”
His hand squeezes hers. “Ready?”
“Dare me.”
He grins. “I dare you Clara.”
“Let’s go.” She tells him with new determination and they enter the dark cloud.
Within are the ghostly images of past regenerations, making the path cluttered and more difficult to navigate. Neither lets go. They ignore the brutally cold winds fiercely blowing at their clothing and icily scratching their bared skin. Clara soon understands why he wanted her down upon the ground too. They both need to be in a state of action to find the exit. Both-
“Clara, there!” He tells her as he spots the way, and even with her persistent limp she runs in the direction he points to. Soon though, the distance greater than she first measured, the strain causes her to falter. “Oh.”
“Clara, come on!” The Doctor yells, keeping that one hand linked with hers. She’s weak though, her injured leg and cold skin being brutally affected.
The Doctor grasps Clara’s shoulder, not entirely letting go of her hand with his other. “Clara--almost there.”
She’s shivering, as the cloud’s surroundings are like a grave of freezing effect. The pictures keep waving around them, slapping their skin furiously. “Doctor--I-
“Clara.” He keeps pulling her forward and she does her best to hold on, pretending that the invading shivers are not affecting her as they get closer and closer. It’s a maze of black grayness around them all the way. They push their way through.
Until finally…
They are out.
…
“You’re freezing.” He mutters, as they stand on the other side now. So is he, but at least he has a coat on. Clara has nothing more than short sleeves. Finding one of the taller tombstones, he helps her lean again it.
“Doctor?”
“We’ll be to the Tardis soon, Clara. That is if they waited for us. Let’s hope.”
Shivers blow out of her lips and soon the coat is her blanket and the Doctor’s arms are holding her up again. She doesn’t resist, exhausted and pained. “Doctor…”
“Almost there Clara.”
“Mmm…” She murmurs and he knows as soon as the pressure of her head hits his chest that Clara has dropped to unconsciousness. Seeing the Tardis, he breathes relief. “Oh you Old Girl! They waited!”
*
When he enters the Tardis there is a rush of excitement around him, but then they see the state of Clara, and the Doctor is barking out orders. Her leg, check it and splint or wrap it as necessary. Check her vitals. Make sure she is breathing alright in her state of unconsciousness. Get the blankets pulled down from the bed of the room he enters so he can tuck her in. Keep her warm. There should be a spare pair of pajamas from a…late companion of female persuasion. They will assure her comfort.
The Doctor stays for a long time, making sure all his commands are followed, and then finally when Strax reassures that she’ll have a bit of a limp, but there is no danger to life, the Doctor breathes a sigh of relief.
As the others turn away for a second he goes to his impossible girl, clasping her hand, and pressing a kiss against her warming brow, now that her temperature is returning to ordinary state. “My Clara…” He whispers with a tear falling down his cheek that he pushes away with a grimace when he leaves the room.
*
It is hours later, while he works on his damaged Tardis, that he hears the voice of Madame Vastra. “Doctor?”
“How is she?” He grunts out, holding onto his sonic screwdriver and a piece of the Tardis’s mechanism.
“She’s awake now.”
“Good.” He whispers, but does not move forward to see her.
“Doctor?” Madame Vastra asks sharply and he turns around with a furious glare.
“I never should have brought Clara here.”
“What?”
He yanks and pulls at the mechanism before dropping it in a huff. “All the danger I caused her…I had to come to rescue you and the others, but Clara, she didn’t have to come too.”
Letting out a sigh, Madame Vastra walks forward. The recriminations are nothing novel to hear. For years now the Doctor has blamed himself for every mishap, every accident. “Didn’t she want to come?”
He nods his head furiously. “Yes, but it wasn’t right.”
“Doctor.”
“She could have DIED!” He screams, before lowering his head, pressing it against the wall, his shoulders heaving. “Again and again.” He whispers brokenly. “A thousand times more. She died for me. She lived and died. Why? Why would she do that for me? I’ve already lost River. And Amy. And Rory. And Rose and---oh-so so many. Now Clara. I could have-
“You didn’t.” Madame Vastra whispers gently, touching his huddled shoulder. “Doctor.”
He doesn’t face her, doesn’t sob anymore, and doesn’t let out another tear. And she knows why. The Doctor hates for his emotions to be known. Only a very select few have seen the entirety of that side of him, and it’s only been for mere moments. Nothing more. He is a man of secrets and urgently contained passion.
“Why? Why would she do it, jump into my time stream?” He asks again and Vastra clears her throat, telling him firmly,
“Maybe because she does not see you the way you see yourself. She knows that you are not the monster you like to think you are.
Maybe because like River and the others--Clara loves you.”
It still hurts him. After seeing that other part of himself. After knowing just a few steps away was the outcome. The blood-ugly outcome. It still aches to know that Clara died a thousand deaths just to save him, maybe more. That she is now devoid of some of her memories because she decided to become the impossible girl. Soufflé girl. Dalek Asylum girl. Constantly saving girl.
He snickers at Madame Vastra’s last words. Laughs them away. Until she leaves him alone.
And then he just sits there, pressing his screwdriver against the mechanism again. He has to get it working.
The sooner they get out of Trenzalore, the better.
*
It is one week later when Clara wakes again. The first time she had awful nightmares and so the Doctor made a request of Strax. Give her something strong enough to let her sleep for days so hopefully the dreams will have time to fade or grow weaker.
Now, the medicine worn off, Clara wakes to find herself in a room of gold and orange. She swears she has never been here before, but then she also has never spent a whole night in the Tardis before.
It takes time to get her feet to walking order, after rolling up the too long pant legs. She pushes up against the stark furniture before feeling her equilibrium resettling. She is in pale sleepwear, pants and top that are larger sized than is normal for her. A dull robe is draped over a chair of shining silver and orange material. Clara walks forward, no longer feeling the hurt in her leg, but her memories are scattered, and the most recent ones are slow to come.
She asks to the silent air,
“Doctor?”
Nothing and nobody answers. Clara shivers a bit, but then tells herself to calm down. It’s the Tardis she’s on. She knows it well. And she’s safe then. The Doctor must be somewhere nearby.
She makes her way slowly down the hall to the console, but he is not there. She hears the low murmur of the ship flying and looks up. “Hate me a little less now?”
The Tardis just gives a low murmur. Clara smiles. “Progress. But I think I finally get it. Your first reaction.”
The Tardis makes another engine murmuring sound and then nothing.
Clara treads down hall after hall, thinking she might get lost when suddenly she is outside. And he is there. The Doctor. Her Doctor that she knows the most. Who always sees her.
There are plants everywhere, golden, green and silver, and grasses of fiery red. The sky blazes orange. The trees, their leaves are magnificent metallic silver. In the background are mountains capped with snow. At the forefront is a voluminous dome holding within what seems a capitol of activity.
He is sitting upon some of the red grasses in pensive quiet thought, one leg folded underneath and the other extended as he leans against a tree. Breezes are few, but the air is sweet and cool enough to endure. Not sure what has happened, how she can be outside now, Clara stumbles forward, gaining the Doctor’s notice.
“Clara.”
“How can we be outside? I was just inside. Where are we?” She asks with shock.
The Doctor brings out his hand, gesturing. “Come here Clara.”
She walks to him and sits down upon the grass, letting out a holler of shock as a huge insect goes flying by. The Doctor’s hand steadies against her arm. “Easy there. It’s not real. None of this is.”
“What?”
He reflects quietly, wearing his bowtie and all, but not his purple coat now. “It’s a picture, an image. Preserved. Sort of like River was. It’s not real. It can’t be.” He murmurs the last words darkly.
“Why?” She asks, looking to his face, but his eyes are focused elsewhere.
“Because it’s Gallifrey. The place where I grew up. And that no longer exists.”
Clara takes a look around, whispering with wonder, “It’s beautiful.” And oddly familiar.
“Yes.” He murmurs with a smile, before his face darkens. “Looks can be very deceiving.”
“What?” She asks with a furrow to her brow.
The Doctor laughs sardonically. “No, it is.”
Feeling tense, his mood unpredictable now, Clara asks, “Strax and-
“Took them back to Victorian times.” He tells her quickly. “Where they are quite at home.”
“Oh.” She states, rubbing her head. “Doctor. I have these pieces of memories, but they’re not whole.” She takes it out from her borrowed robe pocket. “I have this leaf you gave me that ties me to family, but it’s not all there. And…I want to bake a soufflé.”
He smiles widely at the last part as finally his eyes turn in her direction. The smile is tied to more than just the comment as he now takes in just how big the pajamas are on her. Still it can’t hide those prominent little mysterious curves that make her look quite fetching in all those tight little skirts she likes to wear.
Okay. Stop. This isn’t the time for naughty thinking. He’s a thousand years old for spacey wacey’s sake. Not some hormonal earth boy. And they just departed earlier this week from his grave, not a school of adolescent learning. “You’ve been whipped through time Clara. It would have killed most humans. But maybe you’re like Rory.”
“Who’s Rory? Wait---I think I’ve heard that name before.”
He shakes his head, not wanting to go there in his thoughts, back to one of the most painful days of this regeneration’s cycle, the day he lost the Ponds. “Never mind. The important thing is you survived it. Just your memories-I’m sorry.”
His fingers drop down and she reaches out, holding onto them. “It’s not your fault.” The bond she feels with him is stronger than ever before. He truly is her lifeline now. “Maybe I’ll get them back.”
“Maybe.” He whispers softly, reaching down and clasping her hand, kissing it. Clara looks up to him afterward and letting out a relenting sigh the Doctor pulls her against his side, his arm wrapped warmly around her shoulder in a gesture of necessity. “I shouldn’t have followed you after meeting you those first times, with the Daleks and in Victorian London. I should have let you go.”
Clara’s brow furrows, her head shaking negative. “No.”
He lets out a breath, feeling her head resting against his shoulder and chest. “But you’re my impossible girl and I couldn’t. I’m just a selfish Time Lord. Actually Clara I wanted to protect you. I had no idea you were going to enter my time stream to save me again and again. If I had I never-
“Stop.” Her finger touches his lip, pushes hard against it for a moment before she brings it down. “You had Strax put me to sleep.” His eyes show surprise, getting her to comment further. “Thought you were so clever, but I knew, and I allowed it, because you’re right that the dreams were awful.”
“Clara.”
“They’re mostly gone now. I’m sleeping okay also so you can stop worrying. And stop blaming yourself. I entered your time stream knowing what I was doing. I did it because it was my choice.” Her hand touches his chest. “I knew it Doctor. Like I now know why your name is so important. The one you chose. I know your darkest secret, sort of anyway. And I know you went through the time stream to save me. We’re even.” She whispers with a smarting look.
“Are we?” He can’t help but get a glimmer of fun into his voice.
“Yes.” She states firmly.
Their eyes find each other for a long time as silently it is confirmed. The saving went full circle. They are starting now in a whole new way, with a bond unbreakable. Affection comes with that.
“My Clara.” He plants a fast kiss above her brow, pulling her in some more.
“Hmmm…” She murmurs, before taking a look cursory around and getting a twinkle to her eye.
“What?” He asks apprehensively.
“This is keener than a box, even.”
“What?” He still looks confused.
“Oh come on Doctor.” She casts focus to the simulated exterior environment. “You probably knew I was going to wake soon and so you set it all up. Red grassy fields, colorful plants, snow topped mountains. Where’s the wine?”
“Clara!” He’s already ranting, getting her to grin inwardly.
“Actually I don’t care much for wine.” She comments randomly. “Did you bring a blanket too? Pillows?” She bumps his hip with hers. “Your sonic screwdriver?”
His face scrunches up in that tight way and she laughs. “In all its stimulating emerald light.”
“Clara!
He starts, but she pushes her finger against his mouth, pressing a warm kiss upon his cheek. “Had you. Down boy.”
He shakes his head and wonders if she gets it. Never has he been for the meek or demure. Oh if someone is vulnerable he will happily protect them, but the type has never attracted him really.
On Gallifrey the women were often as smart as the men, if not smarter, and they also knew how to use their wits with ounces of cleverness. The gender gap was just a little less prevalent than it is on earth, which made him always seek someone of the opposite sex who could go at him with finesse.
Clara is that, almost perfectly that. And so even despite that inner voice that tells him to joke it away, to not feel something, he jumps now as soon as she starts to float away. Her bit of teasing over she is ready to dance far from him. But he has always been the dancer, the spry one.
She doesn’t get far before his hand is in a fixed grip upon her waist.
“Maybe I did bring a blanket.” He lies and yet she doesn’t seem at all offended by it.
His whispers bring a whiff of warm air across her face that causes a little shiver to run through Clara’s body.
He feels that shiver and likes it. Her bit of lusting murmur is nice too, until finally his mind gets through. Don’t get attached. They always fade away.
And so now he draws away, retreating far back into his corner of time’s space. Clara sees right through it though even as he turns it to joking about her sleepwear.
“Ah, those are just a little too big for you.”
She pulls at the loose material. “Yeah, I noticed it too. Fitted for someone else?”
“Amy.” He whispers quietly, a shadow of grief falling over his brow before he dances away yet again, getting a look in his eye.
The image of Gallifrey alters, from day to night, the sky glowing with hues of orange and fantastically blue. Clara gasps at the gigantic moon that nearly eclipses the land. Another lurks behind, and within the illuminated sky are star tracks, lines of light.
Clara smiles at them with wonder, whispering, “Oh my Stars…”
The Doctor smiles too, telling her something.
A tear falls down her cheek. “My Mum, really?”
“Yes Clara.” He echoes softly.
But this girl next to him is no echo. She is alive and the real Clara Oswald. His impossible girl, breathing and living.
“This is Gallifrey. Where you grew up as a boy?”
The Doctor simply nods and looks away, his eyes lifting to the huge moon that was his night light as a child.
The picture is illusion and the grasses, even though they can be felt, are not real, and yet he still remembers running back and forth in them, nights and days. For Time Lords never required as much sleep as humans.
Gallifreyans lived life to the fullest, filling their grand minds with the compass of time, how to bend it. Twist the fabric of what is supposed to be. Create things of scientific majesty.
And yet it all started as just a regular child, of Gallifrey that is. Being silly. Getting into trouble. Spending time with old friends, well not so old then.
“Doctor.” Her voice cuts through his reverie. He prepares to end the picture, for it’s nothing more than that. An echo of the life he once lived. An image before everything became destroyed.
She stops him though, keen to that his sonic screwdriver helps him produce it. Her hand grips his wrist and he stares, but she shakes her head. “No. Don’t get rid of it. Not yet. Doctor, I know this place. I know it just like this. The image you’ve created here. It’s different than the first one. Doctor, that building in the distance…just feet away from where we are…”
He lets out a sigh that encompasses years of life, and years of loss. “My home Clara. When I was a boy.”
“I know.”
His brow creases. “What do you mean?”
“I was there Doctor. I stood right outside that house. You didn’t see me. Not at first anyway.”
He shakes his head busily, once more lifting his screwdriver, but her hand is firm on his. “No.”
He tells her with a wry smile, “Clara, you only saw me before I left Gallifrey…borrowing…the Tardis. I remember that. You did it to change what the Great Intelligence did. I know that Clara. I was no boy then, but an old man, earth-wise that is, by Gallifrey standards, a spry fellow.”
“No.” She reaches forward now, touching and containing his hearts under her palm. “Doctor, I had to go back before. He tried to make havoc with your childhood and I was put into your world, that very first day you started running. Down your mountain home that is. You were no more than twelve or thirteen.” She looks up, seeing how it sits so queerly on the mountainside, just to half point, his house. Below are…
“Rocks.” He answers, almost as if reading her mind. “Rocks of every color. I marveled at them when I was a boy. I remember finding them and there was this girl there too and she was laughing with me and we-
She reaches up now, fingers at his chin with affection.
“You?” The Doctors asks with wonder and she smiles, recalling how she and that boy argued about the snow and so they climbed up higher, reaching it, and together discovered it wasn’t all sludge like he thought, but crystal white under Gallifrey’s sensational sun. And so she was the victor, for she bet him one of those Gallifreyan rocks it would shine. And it did.
“Me.” She explains, not able to stop touching his skin now, reaching forward more and grazing her fingers against his cheek, delighting at the experience because for once the Doctor is not flinching or dancing away.
“He, the Great Intelligence tried to prevent you from seeing the wonder of their colors. He wanted you to believe it was all gray. I couldn’t let that happen. If you didn’t see all the purples, the golds and the reds and browns, you would never have that clever curiosity you have now. You wouldn’t be the Doctor. I wanted to stay, but it wouldn’t let me. The time stream whipped me up and carried me to another place.”
His hands come out. They grasp her face with amazement and ache. “You fell off the mountain the next day. I saw it.”
“Yeah.”
“You died Clara.”
“The echo of me did.” She whispers and he presses his forehead against hers, shaking his head. “Clara, why?” It wrenches out of his mouth. “Why did you do it? You had to be terrified. You had to know there was a chance you would never come back. I didn’t know if you would.”
She can feel a few of his tears and so she lifts her face away from his, pulls back just a bit to contain his narrow jaw. “You’re so clever. Such a clever boy and yet you don’t know the most obvious things Doctor. How blind you can be sometimes.”
He stares at her, recalling something, the mountainside, the words spoken before the fall.
“Run you clever boy. And remember me.”
But it wasn’t just that. The day before,
“I want to see them. Come on. Run down with me and we’ll see just what color they are. You swear they’re not gray?”
“I swear.”
“Alright. Let’s find out.”
“Oh.”
“Give me your hand. It’s steep. Give me your hand and that way you won’t fall.”
“Oh that’s clever. You like me, don’t you? Wanting to hold my hand and all.”
“Oi, shut up.”
“No, you.”
“Get down by yourself then.”
Clara can see it in his eyes as she fingers the defined contours of his face more now with the pursuit of bringing him in closest proximity. As her fingers have one task, her eyes partake in another, a trade-off of peering into his eyes and pondering his speaking lips.
“I let go of your hand and you nearly tumbled down the hill. So did I.”
“Yeah. But you were faster to get back your balance and you turned around and ran to me, and held my hand. And we ran all the way down the mountain together. You and I Doctor. You just weren’t the Doctor then.”
“I never told you my name.”
She shakes her head, personal space’s invasion in full attack mode. Hope he doesn’t rebut and launch a counter offense, bringing in that skittish little dance to get away, for now she is like the cat who seeks the mouse. She doesn’t want to stop. Can’t.
“I never told you mine.”
The only problem is, sitting as they are now, he still is so much taller, and his lips are just a bit too far away. Stories of the past, the haunting beauty of Gallifrey all around, the wonder in his eyes that makes them shine like a star path’s line of light, and just him, her precious Doctor, Clara doesn’t want to stop.
Her hands reach around the sides of his face, tangle into his hair and for a minute he reacts. The Doctor starts to pull away, but then there is that gentle tug of her fingers and he knows he’s conquered.
There is the whisper of those lips…a sweet utterance of “clever boy…don’t run from me…please don’t run…” and he forfeits for the truth is he’s nothing more than a sentimental fool who sometimes yearns for touch like this.
And she is like a chemical invasion of everything he tries to resist. Impossible girl, mystifying him again. Getting his emotions to do a crazy caper of excitement.
He lets go. Suddenly he lets go and Clara knows she can find victory. Slowly her mouth meets with his. And it is like the lightning energy of traveling through his time stream.
For once there are no flails. His lips careen upon hers with reaction, and his hands hold tight to her waist and backside. She twists her body to get it to even better position, and he rotates with her, greedily not letting go. It’s only when her breath starts to heave that she breaks from it, gazing into his eyes with wonder.
“Doctor.”
And that’s enough to make the well-lived alien man’s mind turn to the annoying practical again. “Clara, we can’t.”
“Why?”
“I’m a thousand years old Clara. You have your whole life ahead of you.”
She grunts angrily at that, pressing into his shoulder. “Listen Chin Boy, I jumped into your time stream. In some ways I’m just as old as you now, having lived life after life just to save you. And you’re forgetting something else Doctor.”
He can’t help but smile with desire’s fiery urge to give in. Her daring always does something to him and oh how he craves and relishes those cheeky comebacks. “What’s that?”
She’s not retreating and so now he doesn’t want to either. It’s easy to forget with Clara why he can’t do things. It’s easy enough that now his fingers daringly edge the bottom of her lip, tracing a terribly intimate line.
“I’m the impossible girl.”
He nods his head slowly, eyes filled with clandestine flaming wants as they jump between her eyes and lips, a back and forth tango. “My Clara.”
“And you’re my Doctor.”
He gives in fully, her face and body so near, illuminated in the twin moons of Gallifrey, getting him to surrender to feeling, instead of practicality. He bends down enough to kiss along her chin, slowly, slowly making the delicious climb to her lips.
The hesitation is just about extinguished now as Clara is finally given the gift of the Doctor’s physical expertise. There’s no inexperience in how he kisses. His hands know where to grasp, face, shoulders, back, and his mouth knows how to part and close in, his tongue sliding past hers, teasing. And then oh how that fantastic mouth starts it all over again.
His alien lips pull in and push out, they soften and firm up. Wet warmth floods the inside of hers, trickling intimacy over her tongue and making the most sensitive parts of her body flush with shivery reaction.
For a moment his hand rolls down from her shoulder, and comes near her breast, giving her a shock of delight that he tempers with a gentle caress and yet still she is in the lap of pleasure. She doesn’t want to let go of this moment, ever, the Doctor full-on kissing her, making her yearn.
Neither does he really, but it happens again. Even as she moans, even as he lets out a frustrated grunt at the actions he is making, he pulls away.
“Cla--ra.”
In his voice is the roughest ache. It’s practically uncivilized and full of madness.
She watches him wrench his hands through his hair, and she catches them gently, pulling them away. He’s scared. In fact sometimes he’s absolutely terrified.
When her echo of Victorian period got him to step down from his cloud it took time for him to relent for he had been dealt the most awful blow sometime earlier.
She looks down upon her too big sleepwear. Borrowed. Amy Pond. That loss nearly drew out his light of energy. When she fell into that world and met him she soon knew her purpose.
To bring the Doctor back from the dead. To bring his spirit of adventure and purpose back to life.
The Doctor lowers his head miserably. There was no displeasure in that kiss, in fact the sweetest pain of joy. And that’s why right now he can’t continue it. Something Clara seems to know because her hands reach out for his shoulders and she hugs him fiercely to her heart. Letting out a sigh, the Doctor slumps into her sweet and protective embrace.
“Clara.”
“I know.” She whispers sadly, because she’s seen it now. She gets it now. Every life he affected, every one he changed, every loss that came. Every time…
He cried.
“Caring for someone is dangerous.” He states suddenly, warningly, moving out of her embrace, an arm’s length away now.
“Why don’t you let others worry about the danger?” She asks strongly.
He shakes his head with a wry smile. “No. I mean it’s dangerous for me. Because every time I care and I lose someone--it just makes me madder.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” She tells him plaintively, that brave smile upon her lips and in her eyes, and Gallifrey’s nightly illumination seems to approve. “We’re traveling companions. Seeing the world, seeing the universe. Saving it. Together. You and I. I was born again and again to save you Doctor. How do you know that means I won’t be with you at Trenzalore in the final days?”
He shakes his head furiously. “I don’t want you there.”
“I’m Soufflé girl. Just have to wait to see what happens.” She smiles confidently, her smile contagious enough to make him feel his own.
“My brave Clara.” He brings his arms out in surrender to his feelings and tightly wraps her into them, closing his eyes at the overwhelming pleasure of being together.
The kiss was kind of cosmic. Both kisses actually. Cosmically fantastic. It was like page one of learning, discovering and traveling each other’s deepest intimacies. Desire’s most tantalizing road.
She wants more.
But to make haste with him now would be faulty and selfish. She can wait. Time hasn’t run out yet. No need to rush the lovely ride to passion’s twists and love’s depths.
The silence fills with music. He murmurs that it’s a tune from Gallifrey, so majestic, so room encompassing.
And she whispers back,
“I know.
I remember.”
*
Thanks for reading. <3
Summary/Note: This is a follow-up to the DW season finale: The Name of the Doctor. It’s a Whouffle fic that goes a little past that episode. Note that there are some references to Classic Who in this story.
***
It was known that coming to Trenzalore would be like entering Purgatory, and yet how capricious Purgatory’s horrors can be.
The G.I. entered his time stream and now the Doctor is thrashing in her arms and there is nothing she can do. Reaching out, pressing her hand to his twin hearts, she tries to stop it. Howbeit, nothing alters the explosion of the doctor’s lives, all eleven of them being rewritten, abused and destroyed.
She screams out what is happening, but no one can give her a good answer. No one knows what to do.
She looks to his time tunnel, the stream reddened now to a deeper burning scar, like blood being leaked out of a festering wound.
The Doctor’s.
The thrashing ceases, but the stillness that takes its place is no comfort.
Clara’s mind focuses urgently on a possible past.
The Dalek Asylum. Victorian England. The Doctor said she had been in both places.
“You’re the impossible girl.” Mr. Clever’s words come back to her and how later the Doctor didn’t try to counter them.
How can that be though? Unless…
Speaking to River, she gets confirmation. If she enters his time stream she can save him, again and again. Live, again and again.
Die, again and again.
The Doctor’s weakened voice begs her not to, but Clara is firm in her resolve.
The Doctor should be lively and animated. Grouchy and grimacing. Calculating and clever. Tender and oddly caring. Passionate and geekishly driven.
That is her Doctor, with big hands that find her cheeks with touches of waywardness until they hold firm and poke fun at her nose in between. That is him, not this man lying brokenly upon the ground, bleeding away inside all he is.
Oh come on. Can’t wait.
She’ll do something miraculous, bring back the stars and the planets. Bring back that big chin and those crazy spins of his legs.
“What do you want to see?”
Oh she wants to see him alive.
She wants her Doctor back, standing, laughing, and being so silly, so clever.
As he calls out her name in anguished protest, she utters, “Run you clever boy. And remember me.”
And jumps.
*
“CLARA!”
He screams, his twin hearts thundering…
Little by little he can feel his body getting stronger, and yet it happens for each time she is born, saves him, and dies.
He stands, first needing the wall for support, and then after a while of that, on his own.
River pleads with him to not enter the time stream. River. Oh sweet maniacal passionate River. He, the madman who can’t take goodbyes, has tried to hold on, keeping her in the library.
But the time is past. Let River sleep. Kiss. Hold. And let go. Offer goodbye like we’ll see each other again. End it with those tantalizing spoilers. Rest, River.
And when she does, the Doctor only has one thing to do.
River said she was meant to be linked to Clara, but even after Clara was in the stream, River remained. She didn’t leave until she got her proper goodbye from him.
That means there’s a chance, a crack in what should be implausible.
No one attempts to stop him from entering the stream. Any bits of fear he has fade away with the purpose. After all she entered it, without any alien DNA, without any kind of protection, a stream that has no link to her own life.
Or does it?
The light is no longer blood red. It shines now in its white illumination signifying that Clara has done it. She has righted the wrong or at least most of it.
He goes back into his time, back to the place where it is, finds the fragile plant of life before it can be taken by that vampiric creature, and holds it tight.
*
She falls. She lands. She is born. She saves. She dies. And she falls again. The pattern continues. It is wicked. It is rapid. It only allows tiny fragments of life to happen. They are all with one purpose: Save the Doctor.
So much of what has happened before and after is lost. She is what River said. Echoes. Pieces. Tears. And now he is safe and so it’s done. Her story is over. The book shuts. And the falling ends.
She lands on her back, with her leg bent awkwardly. What she sees and hears is a hellish environment, a nightmare. She doesn’t know where she is. She doesn’t know who she is. Clara, but what beyond?
“Doctor?” She asks, fear trickling down her spine, dripping into her heart. “DOCTOR!”
She pushes her head against the ground.
Help me.
*
He can feel her icy shivers through his hearts and knows it is time. He has found her and the place she has fallen to. But he can’t reach out. Not without the line to her life. To get that line to reach her, he must calm her a bit. He tells her to look and see him, all the different ghosts of him.
Familiar, they lessen her fears. The icy shivers fade for tiny fractions. Good. She must be brave.
Time is limited, the stream starting to break apart.
“AAAA!”
*
The ground convulses with seismically thunderous rumbles. He tells her it’s because the time screen is collapsing, which makes her scream for him to get out. But the Doctor is such a pertinacious man. He won’t leave until he has her too.
Clara feels broken. Thousands of lives fragmented, families and friends that whipped by because she died again and again.
“I don’t even know who I am.” She wails with the underlying veracity of it all. How could she be there for all eleven of the Doctors, living a puzzle of missing pieces? How is this real?
*
Her words of abandonment cut through his hearts. This is what has happened to his Clara. She jumped into his time stream and now she is lost.
But not for long.
Catch the leaf Clara. Catch it and find your link to life. Catch it.
*
Look. He tells her strongly.
It drifts through the smoky air, ebbing to be in her grasp. A leaf. A fragile beautiful leaf, torn and folded from life lived. She catches it and holds on tight. He tells her it is a link to her past and where her future will go. And she can feel it.
Someone gave her this leaf.
A book. Places. Being held and loved. Getting lost. Fearing. Being found. Making soufflés. Always about the recipe.
The pictures are all ripped and in pieces. Puzzles of her life, but they’re there, they’re beating in her heart.
And they’re all in this leaf. This leaf that the Doctor has given her. This leaf that-
“Clara! Clara! Clara!”
Doctor?
*
He can see her. After getting out of the time stream’s vortex, and touching the murky ground he can see her. She is confused and crying. Her walk holds stumbles and falters, but she is persistently moving forward, the leaf the link. If he can just get her to turn around to help her see that he’s not one of his regenerations that will fade from her view. He’s not a ghost.
“Clara, come on…”
*
He’s talking to her. It’s not real. Her Doctor is not there.
But what if he is real?
He insists it’s true, his hands reaching out desperately for her to come forward.
She limps, creeping pain in her leg that she tries to ignore because he’s just a few steps away.
The Doctor tells her she is his impossible girl, getting her to think that maybe it’s not just a dream. She stumbles forward, desperate to see if he is existent, hoping fervently that he is.
Amid his babbling and reassurances, she gets there, and when she does her arms swing upward, hugging him as tightly as she can for he is no chimera. The vehement emotion is mirrored in how fiercely he holds her in kind.
Her fingers clench his neck and shoulders, feeling the polished tweed of his coat, its bits of scratchiness not bothering her, for it contains his warmth and scent of familiarity that reminds her she is safe.
His relief comes from feeling her small body against his, her sweet and illuminating redolence. His knuckles harden into firmness as he clutches her to his twin hearts.
Finally he has saved her, not the other way around for once. It’s incredible to him, how she dangerously entered time’s scar tissue, producing echoes of her real self.
The miracle is that this is no echo he’s holding now. This is the real Clara in his arms. She has forgotten some things. She is confused and she is hurt, but she is real, his impossible girl.
The Doctor’s eyes close with undulating emotion for long moments. As they reopen though, he sees something that make his eyes widen with shock and urgency of mind to get away.
No. Not something.
Someone.
Clara doesn’t understand it as they lessen their hold on each other. She asks questions that he has to redirect. It is not about the actual name of birth, but the one that is chosen, the promise to keep. And this version did not keep to that. It is his secret. He starts to explain, but then-
It arises and encompasses her, the exhaustion and the physical pain of what has happened. She starts to sway and the alarmed Doctor rapidly sweeps her up protectively into his arms.
Before departing, he listens a bit to the other, and gives protest.
After the volatile exchange, the Doctor walks away, carrying the faint Clara in his arms. This is not the time. He shouldn’t even be here. Neither should she. He looks down, noticing the fractional twisting of her leg and how in her face there is pale stillness.
…
It is many moments later that outside of the cavernous containment, the Doctor has no choice but to wake her.
“Clara…”
Nothing.
He grits his lips. “Clara.”
“Mmm…”
Her murmur.
The Doctor sighs, raising his voice again. “Clara, I am sorry. But I need you to wake now.”
She looks up finally, a tiny pinch of a smile upon her face, her fingers rising to his cheek. “Doctor?”
It can’t help but make him smile too before she loses hers, noticing in frightened awe what they’re standing in front of. “Doctor?”
“It’s like a vortex.” He tells her busily. “Well, not entirely. Not even something in honesty I can fully explain. It’s the only passage though back to the Tardis, back to Vastra, Jenny and Strax.”
Shaking her head, Clara quietly murmurs. “They were dead, Jenny and Strax.”
Fingering her cheek softly he whispers. “Not anymore. You brought them back.”
“And River?”
For a handful of seconds he remembers the kiss, yet no longer. The Doctor does not do love well. Loss hurts every time. “River is resting like she should be. Finally.”
“Oh.” Clara focuses on the lanky, but oddly strong arm that grips her shoulders and keeps her close to his chest. “She was your wife?”
“Yes, Clara. I told you. Ex.”
“But-
He shakes his head, a finger pushing against Clara’s lips gently. “No. Now is not the time. Clara, can you try to walk? I know you are injured. I know you are tired. You have every right to be, but I don’t trust carrying you through there.”
He gestures forward, and Clara stares at it, the black-gray ominous cloud that seems to lead to nowhere. “That man. You said he was you?”
“Clara.” The Doctor speaks insistently. “Now is not the time.”
“But he is you?” She does not give up.
“Yes.” After all they’ve gone through together the Doctor doesn’t feel much like holding back secrets anymore. “Me, but not the Doctor.”
“What?” Her eyebrows hitch with confusion.
The Doctor gently brushes back her falling hair. “No answer I give now will make sense Clara. Please just trust me.”
“I always do…well almost.” She whispers, feeling a kiss graze the top of her hair. “Will it hurt?” She gestures to the dark cloud blocking their way.
“No. Not at all.” He smiles reassuringly.
“You’re lying.” She states flatly.
The Doctor gives an answering wink. “Clever Clogs.”
“Okay.” She lets out with a sigh, pushing at his arm.
The Doctor carefully brings her down to the ground, releasing her from his arms, but keeping a firm hold of her shoulder and back until Clara is able to stand on her own.
“Can we hold hands?”
He smiles, before gripping her hand firmly in his and whispering against it, “That, Clara, is why I said I can’t hold you in my arms. You could be ripped from them. But if we’re holding on tight to each other, making the way together, then-
“If we run together-
“Right my Impossible Girl.”
Determination hits her eyes as she whispers, “Then run you Clever Boy. Run with me this time.”
His hand squeezes hers. “Ready?”
“Dare me.”
He grins. “I dare you Clara.”
“Let’s go.” She tells him with new determination and they enter the dark cloud.
Within are the ghostly images of past regenerations, making the path cluttered and more difficult to navigate. Neither lets go. They ignore the brutally cold winds fiercely blowing at their clothing and icily scratching their bared skin. Clara soon understands why he wanted her down upon the ground too. They both need to be in a state of action to find the exit. Both-
“Clara, there!” He tells her as he spots the way, and even with her persistent limp she runs in the direction he points to. Soon though, the distance greater than she first measured, the strain causes her to falter. “Oh.”
“Clara, come on!” The Doctor yells, keeping that one hand linked with hers. She’s weak though, her injured leg and cold skin being brutally affected.
The Doctor grasps Clara’s shoulder, not entirely letting go of her hand with his other. “Clara--almost there.”
She’s shivering, as the cloud’s surroundings are like a grave of freezing effect. The pictures keep waving around them, slapping their skin furiously. “Doctor--I-
“Clara.” He keeps pulling her forward and she does her best to hold on, pretending that the invading shivers are not affecting her as they get closer and closer. It’s a maze of black grayness around them all the way. They push their way through.
Until finally…
They are out.
…
“You’re freezing.” He mutters, as they stand on the other side now. So is he, but at least he has a coat on. Clara has nothing more than short sleeves. Finding one of the taller tombstones, he helps her lean again it.
“Doctor?”
“We’ll be to the Tardis soon, Clara. That is if they waited for us. Let’s hope.”
Shivers blow out of her lips and soon the coat is her blanket and the Doctor’s arms are holding her up again. She doesn’t resist, exhausted and pained. “Doctor…”
“Almost there Clara.”
“Mmm…” She murmurs and he knows as soon as the pressure of her head hits his chest that Clara has dropped to unconsciousness. Seeing the Tardis, he breathes relief. “Oh you Old Girl! They waited!”
*
When he enters the Tardis there is a rush of excitement around him, but then they see the state of Clara, and the Doctor is barking out orders. Her leg, check it and splint or wrap it as necessary. Check her vitals. Make sure she is breathing alright in her state of unconsciousness. Get the blankets pulled down from the bed of the room he enters so he can tuck her in. Keep her warm. There should be a spare pair of pajamas from a…late companion of female persuasion. They will assure her comfort.
The Doctor stays for a long time, making sure all his commands are followed, and then finally when Strax reassures that she’ll have a bit of a limp, but there is no danger to life, the Doctor breathes a sigh of relief.
As the others turn away for a second he goes to his impossible girl, clasping her hand, and pressing a kiss against her warming brow, now that her temperature is returning to ordinary state. “My Clara…” He whispers with a tear falling down his cheek that he pushes away with a grimace when he leaves the room.
*
It is hours later, while he works on his damaged Tardis, that he hears the voice of Madame Vastra. “Doctor?”
“How is she?” He grunts out, holding onto his sonic screwdriver and a piece of the Tardis’s mechanism.
“She’s awake now.”
“Good.” He whispers, but does not move forward to see her.
“Doctor?” Madame Vastra asks sharply and he turns around with a furious glare.
“I never should have brought Clara here.”
“What?”
He yanks and pulls at the mechanism before dropping it in a huff. “All the danger I caused her…I had to come to rescue you and the others, but Clara, she didn’t have to come too.”
Letting out a sigh, Madame Vastra walks forward. The recriminations are nothing novel to hear. For years now the Doctor has blamed himself for every mishap, every accident. “Didn’t she want to come?”
He nods his head furiously. “Yes, but it wasn’t right.”
“Doctor.”
“She could have DIED!” He screams, before lowering his head, pressing it against the wall, his shoulders heaving. “Again and again.” He whispers brokenly. “A thousand times more. She died for me. She lived and died. Why? Why would she do that for me? I’ve already lost River. And Amy. And Rory. And Rose and---oh-so so many. Now Clara. I could have-
“You didn’t.” Madame Vastra whispers gently, touching his huddled shoulder. “Doctor.”
He doesn’t face her, doesn’t sob anymore, and doesn’t let out another tear. And she knows why. The Doctor hates for his emotions to be known. Only a very select few have seen the entirety of that side of him, and it’s only been for mere moments. Nothing more. He is a man of secrets and urgently contained passion.
“Why? Why would she do it, jump into my time stream?” He asks again and Vastra clears her throat, telling him firmly,
“Maybe because she does not see you the way you see yourself. She knows that you are not the monster you like to think you are.
Maybe because like River and the others--Clara loves you.”
It still hurts him. After seeing that other part of himself. After knowing just a few steps away was the outcome. The blood-ugly outcome. It still aches to know that Clara died a thousand deaths just to save him, maybe more. That she is now devoid of some of her memories because she decided to become the impossible girl. Soufflé girl. Dalek Asylum girl. Constantly saving girl.
He snickers at Madame Vastra’s last words. Laughs them away. Until she leaves him alone.
And then he just sits there, pressing his screwdriver against the mechanism again. He has to get it working.
The sooner they get out of Trenzalore, the better.
*
It is one week later when Clara wakes again. The first time she had awful nightmares and so the Doctor made a request of Strax. Give her something strong enough to let her sleep for days so hopefully the dreams will have time to fade or grow weaker.
Now, the medicine worn off, Clara wakes to find herself in a room of gold and orange. She swears she has never been here before, but then she also has never spent a whole night in the Tardis before.
It takes time to get her feet to walking order, after rolling up the too long pant legs. She pushes up against the stark furniture before feeling her equilibrium resettling. She is in pale sleepwear, pants and top that are larger sized than is normal for her. A dull robe is draped over a chair of shining silver and orange material. Clara walks forward, no longer feeling the hurt in her leg, but her memories are scattered, and the most recent ones are slow to come.
She asks to the silent air,
“Doctor?”
Nothing and nobody answers. Clara shivers a bit, but then tells herself to calm down. It’s the Tardis she’s on. She knows it well. And she’s safe then. The Doctor must be somewhere nearby.
She makes her way slowly down the hall to the console, but he is not there. She hears the low murmur of the ship flying and looks up. “Hate me a little less now?”
The Tardis just gives a low murmur. Clara smiles. “Progress. But I think I finally get it. Your first reaction.”
The Tardis makes another engine murmuring sound and then nothing.
Clara treads down hall after hall, thinking she might get lost when suddenly she is outside. And he is there. The Doctor. Her Doctor that she knows the most. Who always sees her.
There are plants everywhere, golden, green and silver, and grasses of fiery red. The sky blazes orange. The trees, their leaves are magnificent metallic silver. In the background are mountains capped with snow. At the forefront is a voluminous dome holding within what seems a capitol of activity.
He is sitting upon some of the red grasses in pensive quiet thought, one leg folded underneath and the other extended as he leans against a tree. Breezes are few, but the air is sweet and cool enough to endure. Not sure what has happened, how she can be outside now, Clara stumbles forward, gaining the Doctor’s notice.
“Clara.”
“How can we be outside? I was just inside. Where are we?” She asks with shock.
The Doctor brings out his hand, gesturing. “Come here Clara.”
She walks to him and sits down upon the grass, letting out a holler of shock as a huge insect goes flying by. The Doctor’s hand steadies against her arm. “Easy there. It’s not real. None of this is.”
“What?”
He reflects quietly, wearing his bowtie and all, but not his purple coat now. “It’s a picture, an image. Preserved. Sort of like River was. It’s not real. It can’t be.” He murmurs the last words darkly.
“Why?” She asks, looking to his face, but his eyes are focused elsewhere.
“Because it’s Gallifrey. The place where I grew up. And that no longer exists.”
Clara takes a look around, whispering with wonder, “It’s beautiful.” And oddly familiar.
“Yes.” He murmurs with a smile, before his face darkens. “Looks can be very deceiving.”
“What?” She asks with a furrow to her brow.
The Doctor laughs sardonically. “No, it is.”
Feeling tense, his mood unpredictable now, Clara asks, “Strax and-
“Took them back to Victorian times.” He tells her quickly. “Where they are quite at home.”
“Oh.” She states, rubbing her head. “Doctor. I have these pieces of memories, but they’re not whole.” She takes it out from her borrowed robe pocket. “I have this leaf you gave me that ties me to family, but it’s not all there. And…I want to bake a soufflé.”
He smiles widely at the last part as finally his eyes turn in her direction. The smile is tied to more than just the comment as he now takes in just how big the pajamas are on her. Still it can’t hide those prominent little mysterious curves that make her look quite fetching in all those tight little skirts she likes to wear.
Okay. Stop. This isn’t the time for naughty thinking. He’s a thousand years old for spacey wacey’s sake. Not some hormonal earth boy. And they just departed earlier this week from his grave, not a school of adolescent learning. “You’ve been whipped through time Clara. It would have killed most humans. But maybe you’re like Rory.”
“Who’s Rory? Wait---I think I’ve heard that name before.”
He shakes his head, not wanting to go there in his thoughts, back to one of the most painful days of this regeneration’s cycle, the day he lost the Ponds. “Never mind. The important thing is you survived it. Just your memories-I’m sorry.”
His fingers drop down and she reaches out, holding onto them. “It’s not your fault.” The bond she feels with him is stronger than ever before. He truly is her lifeline now. “Maybe I’ll get them back.”
“Maybe.” He whispers softly, reaching down and clasping her hand, kissing it. Clara looks up to him afterward and letting out a relenting sigh the Doctor pulls her against his side, his arm wrapped warmly around her shoulder in a gesture of necessity. “I shouldn’t have followed you after meeting you those first times, with the Daleks and in Victorian London. I should have let you go.”
Clara’s brow furrows, her head shaking negative. “No.”
He lets out a breath, feeling her head resting against his shoulder and chest. “But you’re my impossible girl and I couldn’t. I’m just a selfish Time Lord. Actually Clara I wanted to protect you. I had no idea you were going to enter my time stream to save me again and again. If I had I never-
“Stop.” Her finger touches his lip, pushes hard against it for a moment before she brings it down. “You had Strax put me to sleep.” His eyes show surprise, getting her to comment further. “Thought you were so clever, but I knew, and I allowed it, because you’re right that the dreams were awful.”
“Clara.”
“They’re mostly gone now. I’m sleeping okay also so you can stop worrying. And stop blaming yourself. I entered your time stream knowing what I was doing. I did it because it was my choice.” Her hand touches his chest. “I knew it Doctor. Like I now know why your name is so important. The one you chose. I know your darkest secret, sort of anyway. And I know you went through the time stream to save me. We’re even.” She whispers with a smarting look.
“Are we?” He can’t help but get a glimmer of fun into his voice.
“Yes.” She states firmly.
Their eyes find each other for a long time as silently it is confirmed. The saving went full circle. They are starting now in a whole new way, with a bond unbreakable. Affection comes with that.
“My Clara.” He plants a fast kiss above her brow, pulling her in some more.
“Hmmm…” She murmurs, before taking a look cursory around and getting a twinkle to her eye.
“What?” He asks apprehensively.
“This is keener than a box, even.”
“What?” He still looks confused.
“Oh come on Doctor.” She casts focus to the simulated exterior environment. “You probably knew I was going to wake soon and so you set it all up. Red grassy fields, colorful plants, snow topped mountains. Where’s the wine?”
“Clara!” He’s already ranting, getting her to grin inwardly.
“Actually I don’t care much for wine.” She comments randomly. “Did you bring a blanket too? Pillows?” She bumps his hip with hers. “Your sonic screwdriver?”
His face scrunches up in that tight way and she laughs. “In all its stimulating emerald light.”
“Clara!
He starts, but she pushes her finger against his mouth, pressing a warm kiss upon his cheek. “Had you. Down boy.”
He shakes his head and wonders if she gets it. Never has he been for the meek or demure. Oh if someone is vulnerable he will happily protect them, but the type has never attracted him really.
On Gallifrey the women were often as smart as the men, if not smarter, and they also knew how to use their wits with ounces of cleverness. The gender gap was just a little less prevalent than it is on earth, which made him always seek someone of the opposite sex who could go at him with finesse.
Clara is that, almost perfectly that. And so even despite that inner voice that tells him to joke it away, to not feel something, he jumps now as soon as she starts to float away. Her bit of teasing over she is ready to dance far from him. But he has always been the dancer, the spry one.
She doesn’t get far before his hand is in a fixed grip upon her waist.
“Maybe I did bring a blanket.” He lies and yet she doesn’t seem at all offended by it.
His whispers bring a whiff of warm air across her face that causes a little shiver to run through Clara’s body.
He feels that shiver and likes it. Her bit of lusting murmur is nice too, until finally his mind gets through. Don’t get attached. They always fade away.
And so now he draws away, retreating far back into his corner of time’s space. Clara sees right through it though even as he turns it to joking about her sleepwear.
“Ah, those are just a little too big for you.”
She pulls at the loose material. “Yeah, I noticed it too. Fitted for someone else?”
“Amy.” He whispers quietly, a shadow of grief falling over his brow before he dances away yet again, getting a look in his eye.
The image of Gallifrey alters, from day to night, the sky glowing with hues of orange and fantastically blue. Clara gasps at the gigantic moon that nearly eclipses the land. Another lurks behind, and within the illuminated sky are star tracks, lines of light.
Clara smiles at them with wonder, whispering, “Oh my Stars…”
The Doctor smiles too, telling her something.
A tear falls down her cheek. “My Mum, really?”
“Yes Clara.” He echoes softly.
But this girl next to him is no echo. She is alive and the real Clara Oswald. His impossible girl, breathing and living.
“This is Gallifrey. Where you grew up as a boy?”
The Doctor simply nods and looks away, his eyes lifting to the huge moon that was his night light as a child.
The picture is illusion and the grasses, even though they can be felt, are not real, and yet he still remembers running back and forth in them, nights and days. For Time Lords never required as much sleep as humans.
Gallifreyans lived life to the fullest, filling their grand minds with the compass of time, how to bend it. Twist the fabric of what is supposed to be. Create things of scientific majesty.
And yet it all started as just a regular child, of Gallifrey that is. Being silly. Getting into trouble. Spending time with old friends, well not so old then.
“Doctor.” Her voice cuts through his reverie. He prepares to end the picture, for it’s nothing more than that. An echo of the life he once lived. An image before everything became destroyed.
She stops him though, keen to that his sonic screwdriver helps him produce it. Her hand grips his wrist and he stares, but she shakes her head. “No. Don’t get rid of it. Not yet. Doctor, I know this place. I know it just like this. The image you’ve created here. It’s different than the first one. Doctor, that building in the distance…just feet away from where we are…”
He lets out a sigh that encompasses years of life, and years of loss. “My home Clara. When I was a boy.”
“I know.”
His brow creases. “What do you mean?”
“I was there Doctor. I stood right outside that house. You didn’t see me. Not at first anyway.”
He shakes his head busily, once more lifting his screwdriver, but her hand is firm on his. “No.”
He tells her with a wry smile, “Clara, you only saw me before I left Gallifrey…borrowing…the Tardis. I remember that. You did it to change what the Great Intelligence did. I know that Clara. I was no boy then, but an old man, earth-wise that is, by Gallifrey standards, a spry fellow.”
“No.” She reaches forward now, touching and containing his hearts under her palm. “Doctor, I had to go back before. He tried to make havoc with your childhood and I was put into your world, that very first day you started running. Down your mountain home that is. You were no more than twelve or thirteen.” She looks up, seeing how it sits so queerly on the mountainside, just to half point, his house. Below are…
“Rocks.” He answers, almost as if reading her mind. “Rocks of every color. I marveled at them when I was a boy. I remember finding them and there was this girl there too and she was laughing with me and we-
She reaches up now, fingers at his chin with affection.
“You?” The Doctors asks with wonder and she smiles, recalling how she and that boy argued about the snow and so they climbed up higher, reaching it, and together discovered it wasn’t all sludge like he thought, but crystal white under Gallifrey’s sensational sun. And so she was the victor, for she bet him one of those Gallifreyan rocks it would shine. And it did.
“Me.” She explains, not able to stop touching his skin now, reaching forward more and grazing her fingers against his cheek, delighting at the experience because for once the Doctor is not flinching or dancing away.
“He, the Great Intelligence tried to prevent you from seeing the wonder of their colors. He wanted you to believe it was all gray. I couldn’t let that happen. If you didn’t see all the purples, the golds and the reds and browns, you would never have that clever curiosity you have now. You wouldn’t be the Doctor. I wanted to stay, but it wouldn’t let me. The time stream whipped me up and carried me to another place.”
His hands come out. They grasp her face with amazement and ache. “You fell off the mountain the next day. I saw it.”
“Yeah.”
“You died Clara.”
“The echo of me did.” She whispers and he presses his forehead against hers, shaking his head. “Clara, why?” It wrenches out of his mouth. “Why did you do it? You had to be terrified. You had to know there was a chance you would never come back. I didn’t know if you would.”
She can feel a few of his tears and so she lifts her face away from his, pulls back just a bit to contain his narrow jaw. “You’re so clever. Such a clever boy and yet you don’t know the most obvious things Doctor. How blind you can be sometimes.”
He stares at her, recalling something, the mountainside, the words spoken before the fall.
“Run you clever boy. And remember me.”
But it wasn’t just that. The day before,
“I want to see them. Come on. Run down with me and we’ll see just what color they are. You swear they’re not gray?”
“I swear.”
“Alright. Let’s find out.”
“Oh.”
“Give me your hand. It’s steep. Give me your hand and that way you won’t fall.”
“Oh that’s clever. You like me, don’t you? Wanting to hold my hand and all.”
“Oi, shut up.”
“No, you.”
“Get down by yourself then.”
Clara can see it in his eyes as she fingers the defined contours of his face more now with the pursuit of bringing him in closest proximity. As her fingers have one task, her eyes partake in another, a trade-off of peering into his eyes and pondering his speaking lips.
“I let go of your hand and you nearly tumbled down the hill. So did I.”
“Yeah. But you were faster to get back your balance and you turned around and ran to me, and held my hand. And we ran all the way down the mountain together. You and I Doctor. You just weren’t the Doctor then.”
“I never told you my name.”
She shakes her head, personal space’s invasion in full attack mode. Hope he doesn’t rebut and launch a counter offense, bringing in that skittish little dance to get away, for now she is like the cat who seeks the mouse. She doesn’t want to stop. Can’t.
“I never told you mine.”
The only problem is, sitting as they are now, he still is so much taller, and his lips are just a bit too far away. Stories of the past, the haunting beauty of Gallifrey all around, the wonder in his eyes that makes them shine like a star path’s line of light, and just him, her precious Doctor, Clara doesn’t want to stop.
Her hands reach around the sides of his face, tangle into his hair and for a minute he reacts. The Doctor starts to pull away, but then there is that gentle tug of her fingers and he knows he’s conquered.
There is the whisper of those lips…a sweet utterance of “clever boy…don’t run from me…please don’t run…” and he forfeits for the truth is he’s nothing more than a sentimental fool who sometimes yearns for touch like this.
And she is like a chemical invasion of everything he tries to resist. Impossible girl, mystifying him again. Getting his emotions to do a crazy caper of excitement.
He lets go. Suddenly he lets go and Clara knows she can find victory. Slowly her mouth meets with his. And it is like the lightning energy of traveling through his time stream.
For once there are no flails. His lips careen upon hers with reaction, and his hands hold tight to her waist and backside. She twists her body to get it to even better position, and he rotates with her, greedily not letting go. It’s only when her breath starts to heave that she breaks from it, gazing into his eyes with wonder.
“Doctor.”
And that’s enough to make the well-lived alien man’s mind turn to the annoying practical again. “Clara, we can’t.”
“Why?”
“I’m a thousand years old Clara. You have your whole life ahead of you.”
She grunts angrily at that, pressing into his shoulder. “Listen Chin Boy, I jumped into your time stream. In some ways I’m just as old as you now, having lived life after life just to save you. And you’re forgetting something else Doctor.”
He can’t help but smile with desire’s fiery urge to give in. Her daring always does something to him and oh how he craves and relishes those cheeky comebacks. “What’s that?”
She’s not retreating and so now he doesn’t want to either. It’s easy to forget with Clara why he can’t do things. It’s easy enough that now his fingers daringly edge the bottom of her lip, tracing a terribly intimate line.
“I’m the impossible girl.”
He nods his head slowly, eyes filled with clandestine flaming wants as they jump between her eyes and lips, a back and forth tango. “My Clara.”
“And you’re my Doctor.”
He gives in fully, her face and body so near, illuminated in the twin moons of Gallifrey, getting him to surrender to feeling, instead of practicality. He bends down enough to kiss along her chin, slowly, slowly making the delicious climb to her lips.
The hesitation is just about extinguished now as Clara is finally given the gift of the Doctor’s physical expertise. There’s no inexperience in how he kisses. His hands know where to grasp, face, shoulders, back, and his mouth knows how to part and close in, his tongue sliding past hers, teasing. And then oh how that fantastic mouth starts it all over again.
His alien lips pull in and push out, they soften and firm up. Wet warmth floods the inside of hers, trickling intimacy over her tongue and making the most sensitive parts of her body flush with shivery reaction.
For a moment his hand rolls down from her shoulder, and comes near her breast, giving her a shock of delight that he tempers with a gentle caress and yet still she is in the lap of pleasure. She doesn’t want to let go of this moment, ever, the Doctor full-on kissing her, making her yearn.
Neither does he really, but it happens again. Even as she moans, even as he lets out a frustrated grunt at the actions he is making, he pulls away.
“Cla--ra.”
In his voice is the roughest ache. It’s practically uncivilized and full of madness.
She watches him wrench his hands through his hair, and she catches them gently, pulling them away. He’s scared. In fact sometimes he’s absolutely terrified.
When her echo of Victorian period got him to step down from his cloud it took time for him to relent for he had been dealt the most awful blow sometime earlier.
She looks down upon her too big sleepwear. Borrowed. Amy Pond. That loss nearly drew out his light of energy. When she fell into that world and met him she soon knew her purpose.
To bring the Doctor back from the dead. To bring his spirit of adventure and purpose back to life.
The Doctor lowers his head miserably. There was no displeasure in that kiss, in fact the sweetest pain of joy. And that’s why right now he can’t continue it. Something Clara seems to know because her hands reach out for his shoulders and she hugs him fiercely to her heart. Letting out a sigh, the Doctor slumps into her sweet and protective embrace.
“Clara.”
“I know.” She whispers sadly, because she’s seen it now. She gets it now. Every life he affected, every one he changed, every loss that came. Every time…
He cried.
“Caring for someone is dangerous.” He states suddenly, warningly, moving out of her embrace, an arm’s length away now.
“Why don’t you let others worry about the danger?” She asks strongly.
He shakes his head with a wry smile. “No. I mean it’s dangerous for me. Because every time I care and I lose someone--it just makes me madder.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” She tells him plaintively, that brave smile upon her lips and in her eyes, and Gallifrey’s nightly illumination seems to approve. “We’re traveling companions. Seeing the world, seeing the universe. Saving it. Together. You and I. I was born again and again to save you Doctor. How do you know that means I won’t be with you at Trenzalore in the final days?”
He shakes his head furiously. “I don’t want you there.”
“I’m Soufflé girl. Just have to wait to see what happens.” She smiles confidently, her smile contagious enough to make him feel his own.
“My brave Clara.” He brings his arms out in surrender to his feelings and tightly wraps her into them, closing his eyes at the overwhelming pleasure of being together.
The kiss was kind of cosmic. Both kisses actually. Cosmically fantastic. It was like page one of learning, discovering and traveling each other’s deepest intimacies. Desire’s most tantalizing road.
She wants more.
But to make haste with him now would be faulty and selfish. She can wait. Time hasn’t run out yet. No need to rush the lovely ride to passion’s twists and love’s depths.
The silence fills with music. He murmurs that it’s a tune from Gallifrey, so majestic, so room encompassing.
And she whispers back,
“I know.
I remember.”
*
Thanks for reading. <3