WHO: Doctor (10), Clara Oswald WHEN: Sunday, after they're back WHERE: One of the storage rooms in the TARDIS WHAT: The pair reunite. WARNINGS: N/A. Very! Just some talk of emotional adultery.
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Coming back to himself in such a jarring way left the Doctor staggering around until his hand found purchase on a wall. Rubbing his features, flinching all the while, he tried to sort out what had happened and what had actually been something of a--dream? No, an alternate life. It felt not unlike being John Smith all over again, only this time there had been no safeguard with his fob watch.
And he hadn’t been able to design any part of his history to include the people he--Clara. For a split second, he grimaced at the rest of the memories. Donna, he and Donna...
“Oh no,” he murmured, feelings dragging him down into a crouch, head in his hands. Discounting it as a fabrication wasn’t fair, not when there was so much at stake. Clara had been right there in his harbor and he sailed on by, only stopped to have a lingering look because he could do nothing else. The things they said, that John Smith couldn’t work up the courage to say back to her, it was gutting.
As soon as he could gather his wits, he realized he was wasting precious time he could be using finding her. He had no idea where she might have gone. By the time he was close, or so he hoped, he was back at Mount Weather fumbling for his bearings all over again.
“For pity’s sake,” he gritted through his teeth, frustration mounting.
Above all else, he needed to find Clara. Trusting his instincts, he found his way back to the TARDIS. Just a step shy of the console room, he reasoned he’d make shorter work of finding her if he used the time ship. Doubling back for that purpose, the ship eventually relented under his desperate slew of, “Come on, come on…” And issued a tiny groan over his lack of gratitude given when Clara was located.
Nearly skidding past the storage room she’d found, the Doctor grasped the sill of the door and opened it with the adjacent button. His expression fell entirely at the sight of her, recalling easily their last moments together in Storybrooke. Caught up in the memory, he nearly called her Oswin to get her attention from the doorway.
“Os--” Right, that would be daft. He had far too many memories to parse through, his head was pounding, but none of that mattered. “Clara. Could I… come in?”
Either name would suffice really. At some point, one of her splinters had been Oswin, which was really a dumb name when you really thought about it, but she'd taken it as a username on the internet. Oswald for the win. So somehow that had echoed down the line. Things for the Doctor to remember at some point, she supposed.
She huffed a bitter laugh to herself. The Doctor — her Doctors — they all forgot about her. Run you clever boy, and remember no more. And it stung even more in that world. Something there, they could feel it, they could ache for it and yet… The chasm between them was so large, but she hoped that a leap of faith could fix this. Just like it fixed the time loop when the Doctor reset everything. She'd gained those memories back when she was near the dying TARDIS, but they were faded the way all those splinter lives were faded.
What was Storybrooke? Was it the life you were really meant to have? Was she meant to have no chance at happiness? Of course not, she was meant to die alone on Trap Street as a raven flew into her body and tore her apart. Was it meant to be your worst misery?
She finally glanced up from the book she wasn't really reading to mumble, "It's your TARDIS."
Whatever Storybrooke had been, the Doctor wanted nothing to do with it. All too often things occurred in his life that woke him up to something he had been doing wrong. The Doctor had grown comfortable, happily blind to the possibility that everything he’d gained here in Mount Weather could be ripped right from his fingers.
Storybrooke had put her before his eyes and instructed him not to touch her under any circumstances. He didn’t want to abide by that as John Smith anymore than he could bear it standing there watching her pretend to read a story that meant something to their fictitious counterparts. Trouble was, he couldn’t do anything for her. Bizarre circumstances removed all common rules and notions of how to handle it.
He didn’t even want to begin to comprehend how to talk to Donna, though he would elect to pretend nothing happened. He might even deign to act as though he had no recollection of it whatsoever. No room in this Time Lord brain for lives in a confined alternate reality, he’d say. She wouldn’t believe him on the inside, but he didn’t doubt that she would outwardly accept it and move on. That was his hope.
Despite his every impulse to run, he loved Clara; she deserved much more than he could give her, and he couldn’t even give her the stars anymore. He could, however, try to mend this. So, the Doctor crossed the negative space between them and sat down beside her, eyes on the poster that had bonded them in the first place.
“It’s your home, too,” he pointed out gently, though didn’t dare to look at her. “Not so grounded anymore either, I could take you somewhere. If you wanted.”
There were some things that should never be relived. Harsh, important moments of your life. Even the incredibly blissful ones. Feeling alone in this world was not something that Clara ever thought she'd feel again, even after the Doctor had forgotten her because she knew there was some part of him that remembered their adventures and her, even if he didn't recognize her.
It seemed she was constantly destined to say goodbye to the Doctor. She said goodbye to Chinboy when he was regenerating. She'd asked him not to go, knowing that he had no choice. Then she'd said goodbye to Eyebrows when she was at her lowest — when Danny had died and she thought the Doctor had found his people. There'd be no room for the Impossible Girl there. She'd said goodbye to Hair after a brief meeting, and convinced even the War Doctor not to destroy the TimeLords. And then she'd had to say goodbye all over again to Eyebrows just before he forgot her completely. He told her how to be a TimeLord, how to be him.
And then on that pier…
It had been the right thing to do in those circumstances, though running away back "home" was such a cowardly thing that the real Clara would never, ever do. She lifted her chin up and learned from her mistakes. She faced the raven, accepted everything that had happened to get there. It was one of her better qualities. She wished to whatever deity was out there today that she'd never have to say that any kind of goodbye to the Doctor ever again.
"I love travelling in the TARDIS. I love seeing things all over time and space." She glanced forward. I Want to Believe, but she knew. Even in that world, she didn't just believe, she knew. A moment's pause before she turned to look at his profile. "But I didn't fall in love with you for what you could do for me. Please tell me that Storybrooke at least taught you that about me."
John Smith had no doubts of his feelings for Oswin Oswald. He’d done very little to hide them from her, and had been lucky enough to have a happy home with which to return and dull the longing. In some ways, he’d thrived off of the feelings she brought him, looked forward to their interactions at Granny’s, and had been just enough of a ponce not to consider what it was doing to Oswin.
Bowing his head, the Doctor side-eyed her nearby hand. When was the last time he’d gotten to hold it? Almost didn’t feel right to try, if only because some force larger than both of them had crossed their stars and condemned them to this moment of wondering where to go from unwanted circumstances. Unwanted and, perhaps for her, quietly yearned for--she had a life, a heartbeat. He knew what it was like to give up a single heartbeat, though not in the reverse.
“It taught me... that no matter where we go, who or what we are to one another, it's inescapable, this. Us. The proverbial pull. Intrinsically, I don’t need you, I want you, because I…” The Doctor faltered a moment, those three words somehow still a hurdle for him to regularly voice. This qualified as a special circumstance, didn’t it? Moreover, it needed saying. He had to succeed where his counterpart failed.
“Clara, it’s you. Just you. I love you,” finished the Doctor, fingers flexing nervously at his sides. “Apart from everything else that’s happened, that’s the one thing I understand, that transcends here and there.”
Clara wasn't nearly as upset about the Storybrooke universe as she'd initially thought. Alternative versions of herself were a dime a dozen back home. She'd met a few of them, even helped to make sure they went on after their meetings with the Doctor. She'd been possessed by Kali and come back from that as well. She'd get over this newest trauma because Clara Oswald was a survivor. That's just what she did, especially when the Doctor was by her side.
She reached over and took his hand. Funny how you could feel a heartbeat in someone else's hand when you couldn't feel your own. "Storybrooke was a curse. I realize that now. Dangling what we wanted most, but could never have because that's how curses work. No matter what way we chose there, there was heartache for everyone around because that's how they work. I chose the path of least heartache all around, but I really just wanted to grab your hand and run like we always do."
People always talked about what a control freak Clara was, and she supposed in some ways she was. At least she had been. In the early days of traveling with the Doctor, she made him pick her up and drop her off at specific times. Bring coffee. Whatever else she'd wanted. It wasn't really that she was a control freak so much as she had a schedule. She had duties. She had things that were hers and hers alone. Teaching, nanny duties, errands, family commitments. Those things didn't just stop because you met a funny man in a blue box that could travel in time.
Clara leaned over and kissed the Doctor's cheek, her free hand unfurling at his jaw as she lingered there. "We're back to sharing your hearts, though. Mine doesn't work anymore."
That was all John had wanted, too, deep down. He’d inwardly wished she’d been the weaker of them both, that she would have grabbed him by the lapels and smashed their lips together. To hell with right and wrong, to hell with denying what they had. There was nothing ideal about it, everyone dear to him would have ended up hurt, but he couldn’t help it. John had fallen so hard for her.
“I know,” he nodded faintly. “So did I.” Having already spoken of his feelings at great length, the Doctor was trying to run further from expressing more. Perhaps it was lingering remnants of John Smith compelling him to honest, but he liked to believe he’d simply grown in self-reflection.
The Doctor turned his head, body shifting ever so slightly in the process, so that his forehead could press against Clara’s own. A tiny semblance of relief had washed over him when she’d reached for his hand, but the gap didn’t feel like it had closed, not fully. Expecting it to have in one day would be ridiculous, he reasoned, yet he wanted nothing more than beyond what he had ever deserved.
“Quite alright,” he assured. “I’ve enough for the both of us to manage.” He’d missed her. Even sitting right there beside her, the Doctor didn’t feel like he’d completely realigned with Clara again. “Can’t make this better, can I?”
"I think it says something about the both of us that neither of us did that, the running away with each other. We're better people than we give ourselves credit for." It was a comfort that neither of them had acted on anything in the specific circumstances that they'd found themselves in. Clara couldn't always say that had been true of her in the past. She used to be a bit of a flirt. Still could be sometimes. Especially when Jane Austen was concerned.
Clara squeezed his hand. "You already are, but it's going to take some time, I think."
“You are,” he agreed, averting his gaze to stare at the dim lights decorating the ceiling. The gentle thrum of his ship wasn’t so comforting then, perhaps because he still felt like he was reconnecting with himself. “If you’d stayed a moment longer, I’d have said to hell with it all.” Even then, he’d nearly breathed the words John had told her that couldn’t be said on his part.
“Anyway, I won’t force it,” added the Doctor, the return of his grip slack in the building of anxiety. It wasn’t at all that he didn’t trust her or what they were, but that he felt so poor at being the Doctor in having accepted there was absolutely nothing he could do to protect her or anyone else at Mount Weather from the things he’d had such a finesse for solving, with or without help.
“Do you want to be alone now, Clara?” He didn’t, but what he wanted paled in comparison to her needs as far as the Doctor was concerned.
"No, Doctor. I don't think I do." How could they heal the distance by being apart? It seemed a fairly easy question to be answered to her. Her fingers tightened around his so that he couldn't decide he knew what was best for her. The Doctor(s) always had a way of doing that, and then not letting the companion decide for him or herself. "I don't want to be left alone at all."
As much as the Doctor didn’t want to be on his own, the temptation to flee was becoming difficult to ignore. Beside him sat the woman he’d been forced to ignore because he’d been paired up by a greater power to his best mate. The things he’d seen, exchanges shared, they’d been so human. Her grip on his hand drew him back to the present, though his gaze remained far away.
“I’d say I’m not going anywhere, but that might jinx it,” he joked meekly, his frown pronounced. “I can say I don’t want to go, perhaps that will be enough. Somehow.”