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“Clara? Clara?”
The Doctor looked around Clara’s flat, but there was no sign of the petite, dark-haired woman with the gorgeous, yet occasionally disturbing eyes that had started to infiltrate his standing-up catnaps more frequently. Not that he'd ever tell her that. He had a reputation to uphold, after all.
A floor fan squeaked slightly as it oscillated back and forth in a corner of the living room; it was mid-summer and London was experiencing a heat wave, but the fan wasn’t helping with the humidity any. Even the Doctor could feel a bead of sweat on his brow.
The Doctor knew the heat had been getting to Clara (a late-night — for her, anyway — phone call to complain when she couldn’t sleep a couple nights earlier had been evidence enough of that). So he’d come up with the perfect solution for their weekly outing; a skiing holiday to the Olympus Mons Resort on Mars, 5430 A.T. (After Terraforming). To sweeten the pot, he even nipped back to the 1940s and made a visit to his old friend Edith Head, Clara’s measurements in hand (kindly provided by the TARDIS after the Doctor had admonished the Old Girl to be honest), for a designer ski outfit. All it had cost him was a vague outline, from memory, of one of Madame Vastra’s outfits that Edith thought might come in handy for an upcoming Ginger Rogers movie.
The Doctor checked every room of the flat and came to the conclusion that no five-foot-two, slightly roundish human with a good personality was hiding anywhere. Which struck him as odd; after all, it was Wednesday and she never missed Wednesdays.
Where the hell was Clara?
The Doctor scanned her bookshelf for clues — she'd often leave a note for him if he timed it for when she’d nipped off to the store or had been called away because her grandmother wasn’t feeling well. Nothing this time.
The Doctor’s eyes fell upon a golden piece of stiff paper lying across the spine of a book. The Hyperscape Body Swap Ticket he’d once used to get the two of them into the BBC Proms back in the bow-tie days. He smiled at the memory.
Another item on the bookshelf caught his eye: a crumpled Post-It note that seemed to have small stains on it, like water. “JUST TELL HIM” in felt marker. And then, in pencil, lighter, “Danny” and “The Doctor,” written in pencil. If there was significance to that, however, it went over his head.
None of this perusing of his companion's personal effects was helping the Doctor figure out where Clara had gone. And, truth be told, he never liked snooping around her place anyway. It made him feel uncomfortable. She had her own life outside the TARDIS. So it was none of his business she had a notebook filled with scribbled love poetry that read like a mashup of Jane Austen and Anais Nin, addressed to someone with the initials “T.D.” Not that he’d looked or anything or used his sonic glasses to scan a few of the pages for later examination and research. Whoever this T.D. was, though, he’d thought, he or she had captured Clara’s attention in a big way.
He’d told her to find a new relationship after Danny Pink, who he liked to call P.E., had been lost. So why should he be upset that she actually followed his instructions for once? Why should he be sad about that? Why should he care?
Maybe that’s it, the Doctor thought. Maybe she’s out with T.D. They’d gone for dinner and she’s forgotten the time because she’s spent too long gazing into T.D.’s pools of simmering desire because she’d rather be with him-slash-her than with a 2,000-year-old Time Lord in pretty good shape for his age who’s willing to show her the universe while possessing eyebrows that have been known to make Sontarans quake with fear. Or maybe laughter. No, definitely fear.
In fact, he thought, maybe right now they were at T.D.’s place, engaging in one of the many and varied examples of human mating exercises like the one he’d labelled “Twenty Questions.”
His research on Twenty Questions had been accidental. He’d arrived at Clara’s flat on a day that wasn’t Wednesday, because he was either missing her or bored — he was often both — and the door to her bedroom had been closed and he’d thought she was in distress at first and was about to barge through, sonic at the ready and prepared to take on any alien parasite harassing her … until he listened further and it sounded more as if P.E. was simply asking her questions.
He couldn’t hear P.E. clearly but every time he asked a question he’d heard Clara call out “YES!” with mighty enthusiasm. Must be one hell of a quiz, the Doctor had thought. Not wanting to interrupt their game of Twenty Questions, he’d quickly pocketed his sonic and exeunted stage left. It wasn’t until he was back in his TARDIS that the penny finally dropped and he made a mental note to never drop by her flat on a day that wasn’t Wednesday without phoning ahead. He had also been depressed for a time and had trouble looking Clara in the eye when Wednesday finally did roll around. This puzzled him.
It had been at least two years now since P.E. been lost, and the Doctor by now had come to finally recognize his own feelings for Clara had not changed since back when he thought bow-ties and fezzes were a cutting-edge fashion statement, and he’d come to regret the time he hadn’t followed through when Clara made an unambiguous overture after the Doctor had reset the timeline following the hijacking of the TARDIS (an event he remembered, but Clara didn’t). Later, she’d actually asked him directly on Trenzalore when she came to visit him during his tenure-slash-imprisonment there if he wanted to ... you know ... but he’d been too upset at the loss of Handles to recognize that she was offering him a type of companionship he hadn’t had in a long while. So they just hugged instead. And by the time he next saw her on Trenzalore, he’d become too old to think about those types of comforts.
But then he’d changed his face, and he had realized it was unfair to expect Clara to feel the same attraction she’d had for Bow-tie. He treasured their friendship, but he no longer pursued her the same way he’d had before. No, he wasn’t supposed to think that way now. So he pushed her away and naturally, she’d found P.E. In his years of experience, the Doctor had come to understand that short, roundish females with good personality rarely stayed alone for long.
But then came the Orient Express. And then he … well then he was just left confused. He had been meaning to ask her for several years now why she decided to speak loudly when she told Danny over the phone that she loved him. If it was meant as some sort of stab at the Doctor, he never let it show but it had hurt, even though she immediately forgave him for the moon and — he learned later — actually began lying to P.E just to be with him.
More and more often since that confusing day, he’d found himself wondering about what a game of Twenty Questions with Clara might be like. And whether he could still remember what questions to ask.
The Doctor shrugged away the ruminations. None of this answered the question as to where Clara’d gotten to, who she was with and whether this ski trip thing was actually going to happen.
Nothing more to it but to raid her cupboard and steal a Pop-Tart (a delicacy he’d recently acquired a taste for and which was fast rivalling jelly babies in his affections), leave her a note asking her to call him, and head off. Mars wasn’t going anywhere, though he’d been looking forward to seeing Clara in Edith’s designer ski suit that was designed to hug every inch of her … stop that! You’re the Doctor, not some horny schoolboy with a crush!
The Doctor glanced at the silver packet containing the chocolate-with-strawberry-filling pastry within. A thought entered his mind. Did I do something again?
He’d driven her away before. On the moon in the mid-21st century. A callous decision that he thought was logical but had upset her so much she threatened to make him regenerate with a slap — and he knew she could have done it, too. They’d parted badly, only for her to return and then the Orient Express. Was history repeating itself, he wondered, and, if so, would there be forgiveness? Or had he lost her for good? What did he say that made her not want to see him again? Did he insult her one too many times? He thought he’d stopped — he even played “Pretty Woman” for her back at Bors’ castle. And, in a moment of emotional weakness in the Viking village, after Ashildr had died, he’d even told Clara how beautiful he thought her eyes were. Or he tried to, at least; instead, what came out was blather about how losing her would destroy him. She didn’t seem to get it.
Sigh. This Pop-Tart isn’t going to eat itself, he thought.
The Doctor jumped as Clara’s phone rang, breaking the silence of the kitchen. He glanced at the call display and didn’t recognize the number. Not Clara, then — but she’d phone him directly, wouldn’t she? So he ignored the phone and set about unwrapping the Pop-Tart.
After a few rings, he heard the voicemail kick in as he took a bite.
“You’ve reached Clara. I can’t come to the phone right now, so please leave your name and number after the beep and I’ll call you back as soon as I’ve saved the planet again. Bye!”
The Doctor chuckled. Another bite. He liked his Pop-Tarts cold.
Beep.
“Clara? This is your Gran. We’re worried about you. Nina called us and said she’d heard a rumour you were in hospital, but she didn’t know which one. I hope it’s nothing major. Your dad is trying to find out but he suggested I leave you a message in case Nina got it wrong like she did the last time when she thought you were three months pregnant. Please, call us and check in, OK?”
The Doctor was through the doors of his TARDIS before the Pop-Tart packet had time to hit the floor.
***
Hospital? Hospital? What the hell?
The Doctor raced to the console, his mental Rolodex spinning through potential scenarios. Clara was not one to just go to hospital without good reason. Even that one time she got food poisoning after their trip to Godwin’s World where she overindulged in the local berries. “Just let me suffer,” she’d told the Doctor between trips to the bathroom. Even so, she’d come close to asking the Doctor to take her to the hospital until he’d come up with a concoction that settled her stomach and allowed her system to return to normal.
The Doctor stuck his head back out of the TARDIS and scanned the flat. No sign of struggle or accident … accident … His eyes widened.
Oh no, don’t let it be that.
Back at the console, the Doctor called up local road accident reports, fearful that history might have repeated itself. Dammit, he said to himself, I knew that motorcycle was dangerous. Especially the way she drove it. Like full speed at the TARDIS’ closed doors, trusting that the Old Girl won’t just let her go splat against the police box shell.
No accident reports he found matched her description.
The Doctor cursed the TARDIS’ failsafe that prevented him from nipping ahead a few hours or days to see if Clara had come home, or if there were any updated reports. It was one of those technicalities that made being a Time Lord so frustrating; once he heard the phone call, the Doctor became part of events and the TARDIS would now not allow him to “cheat” by looking ahead. It’s why he couldn’t just duck into the time machine to find out how he saved the day whenever faced with a diabolical mastermind. The one time he’d actually said “screw it” and tried to break the rules — when he tried to return to The Drum up in Scotland to rescue Clara from the Fisher King’s “ghosts” — the TARDIS had refused to budge, instead ringing her cloister bell as if to tell him, “Find another way.” And he had, of course, found another way. And he knew now that if he tried to do the same thing as back in Scotland, he’d get the same result.
And anyway, the last thing he wanted to see was her obituary or to rematerialize in the midst of a police investigation …
Get out of those thoughts. Today is not going to be the day. It can’t be. We’re going skiing.
The Doctor picked up the phone tied into the console and began dialling numbers.
Coal Hill School: “Ian, this is the Doctor. Have you seen Clara recently?”
“Why yes, she was here just this morning at the staff meeting. She told me about your adventure on Skaro, by the way — sounded like old times,” said Ian Chesterton, the school’s chairman and an old friend from years gone by, not to mention the main reason Clara still had her teaching job after so many unexplained absences and sudden departures. The Doctor barely registered when Ian quickly mentioned that plans for the new Coal Hill Academy called for a building to be named in memory of Barbara Wright, Ian's wife and another former companion of the Doctor's from way back. The Doctor just went, “Very good, congratulations,” and was on to the next call.
UNIT HQ: “Kate, it’s the Doctor. Is Clara with you?”
“Sorry, Doctor, we haven’t heard from Clara since she checked in with us after the business with Missy in Spain,” said Kate Stewart.
The Doctor called up a list of hospitals in the vicinity of Clara’s flat and fed their names into the TARDIS console, which in turn automatically hacked their databases. It only took a few seconds to confirm, and it made his hearts sink.
Royal London Hospital. Surgery.
***
“My name is Dr. Basil Disco, I understand you have a patient of mine here, a Ms. Clara Oswald?”
The Doctor put his psychic paper back into his pocket as the ward nurse impassively checked his monitor.
“We don’t have you listed as her family physician, Dr. Disco,” the young man said. “She’s still in the I.C.U. Family physicians and immediate family only.”
The Doctor felt a sudden stab of guilt at not having contacted Clara’s Gran as soon as he’d located her. Truth be told, it hadn’t even crossed his mind.
“Why is she in I.C.U.?”
“I’m sorry, I can only divulge this information to her family doctor or family.”
“I am her damned physician. I am the Doctor, the definite article when it comes to Cla- Ms. Oswald. Look, do you need to see my identification again?”
“All I saw was your drivers’ licence,” the nurse said as the Doctor inwardly moaned about choosing this of all times to find one of the rare individuals too rooted in procedure to be affected by the psychic paper. “Are you a specialist?”
“Yes, you could say so. I specialize in Ms. Oswald. No one knows her better than I do.” The Doctor barrelled into his next sentence as he realized how odd — albeit accurate — that had sounded. “Now are you going to let me see her or at least let me speak to the surgeon?”
“Please wait here a moment.” The nurse went away and the Doctor considered just barging after him like he owned the place; Doctor 103. But he didn’t know what condition Clara is in — annoyance with bureaucracy aside, he might make things worse. So he waited, drumming his left fingers on the desk and his right ring finger against his teeth.
The Doctor hated hospitals, trying to avoid them whenever possible, especially after that time he nearly died in one after his regeneration in San Francisco. He’d woken up in a morgue.
The surgeon arrived. She was a tall, handsome blonde woman in her early fifties who reminded the Doctor vaguely of Romana’s second incarnation. Her name tag read Dr. Seagrove.
“Could you come with me, please, Dr. Disco?” she asked. The Doctor nodded and followed, trying to look as official as possible. What the hell am I doing, he asked himself. I’ve stared down dictators and I’ve sent friends to die, yet Clara’s probably got an infected hangnail and I’m falling apart. Get yourself together man. This is happening too often. What would Four say if he saw you like this? Or, heaven forbid, Nine.
Seagrove led the Doctor into the I.C.U. area and into a small side room with a curtain in lieu of a doorway. Lying on a bed that looked like it had more buttons and switches than the TARDIS console, Clara lay unconscious, looking pale and tiny in a green hospital slip. A clear plastic tube entered her left hand, connecting to a heavy-looking bag of clear fluid hanging off a metal pole.
“What happened to her?” the Doctor asked.
“Ruptured appendix, complicated by peritonitis,” Seagrove said. “Surgery was required to repair the appendix and we nearly lost her a couple of times.”
“Lost her?” The Doctor’s eyes locked with Seagrove’s with such intensity, the woman was compelled to look away.
“Apparently, the appendix burst several days ago, and was left undiagnosed and untreated. Not every burst appendix is accompanied by severe pain. Ms. Oswald was in the process of checking herself into Emergency when she collapsed and we took her straight into surgery. There were complications, however, as for some reason she didn’t immediately respond to the intervention. Plus, it had almost been left too late.”
The Doctor tried not to show his shock. He was supposed to be pretending to be Clara’s personal doctor — who is he kidding, he was her personal Doctor — and he had to show professional detachment. Inside, however, he was beating himself up for not noticing the signs. But how could he have known? He recalled Clara complaining about a stitch in her side after they’d arrived back the previous week, but he had assumed that was from all the running or a bad souffle she'd eaten, though he did see her take a rather nasty bang to the abdomen at one point. He’d had no reason to expect she had such a dangerous condition. Evidently, neither did she.
“May I … examine her?” he asked Seagrove.
She nodded. “She should be coming out of the anesthesia shortly, anyway, and it’s always good to see a familiar face. Have you contacted her family?”
“They were out,” the Doctor lied. “I left them a message.”
Seagrove nodded and gestured the Doctor forward before heading out and down the hall to check on another patient. Alone now, the Doctor pulled up a chair and winced as a squeaky wheel echoed through the tiny room. He took a glance out the single, small window that offered a view of a brick wall, a ledge, and a pile of pigeon droppings.
Charming, he thought.
He sat there in silence, looking at Clara and taking her right hand in his (her left had the IV and the Doctor left it alone). He stroked it gently. Her eyes darted back and forth under the lids, her brow furrowing slightly. She’s dreaming, the Doctor thought. Not a bad sign. Means her brain is waking up.
After a few minutes, her eyes calmed down. A sigh escaped her lips, almost an exhale, and then her eyes popped open, a panicked look in them as she took in unfamiliar surroundings.
“Oh, no,” she croaked. “Where…?” Her eyes locked on the Doctor and she tried to sit up, but gentle pressure from the Doctor on her arm kept her still. “What happened, Doctor?” Her voice cut through the stillness of the room.
“Shh, take it easy, Clara. It’s OK. You’re in hospital.”
Clara rolled her eyes as she remembered.
“My stomach suddenly started hurting like hell — I mean tear-your-hair-out bad — and I had a neighbour drive me around. Last thing I recall, I was checking in. What happened?”
The Doctor gave her the abridged version of events, omitting the bit about her nearly dying twice. He also clued her in that he was pretending to be her physician.
“What pretending?” Clara smiled. “I’m sorry I gave you a fright and didn’t leave you a note or anything. How did you find out, by the way? You didn’t make good on your threat to microchip me when my back was turned, did you?”
After momentarily considering this as a possible good idea going forward (which resulted in Clara thumping his arm), the Doctor told Clara about her gran’s message.
“Oh god,” she said. “They’ll be worried sick. Give me my phone!”
“It’s not here; I think they have your stuff in a secure locker,” the Doctor said as he took another out of his pocket. “Use mine.”
“Why didn’t you bloody tell them?” Clara said as she scrambled to mash numbers one-handed.
“I’m sorry, I was too concerned about you. I forgot.”
Clara glared at the Doctor as her dad answered the phone. “Dad! Hi, it’s me … yes, I know. I’m sorry. No, I’m ... fine?” — she looked quizzically at the Doctor, who nodded — “Yeah, everything’s fine. I’m at Royal London ... No, don’t come. I know you hate hospitals ever since, well, you know … I’m fine. Honest. Don’t worry about me …. Yeah, we do need to work out a system in case this happens again. OK, a doctor is here so I need to go. I’ll let you know how things are, OK? No … seriously ... no, Dad, don’t come. I’ll be fine. Okay, talk to you later. Give my love to Gran. Love you. Bye.”
“Why don’t you want your family to come?” the Doctor asked, puzzled.
“Mum died in this hospital. And the last time my dad saw her, she looked so tiny and weak … I don’t want him to ever set foot in one to see anyone else he loves get sick. Or Gran either, for that matter. I don’t rightly want you to see me this way, either.”
“Should I go?”
“No, you daft old man. Just because I don’t want you to see me this way doesn’t mean I don’t want you here.”
“OK, I’m confused now. Should I be writing that one down for future reference?”
Clara squeezed his hand and the Doctor realized he hadn’t actually let go the whole time. Which explained why she’d had so much trouble dialling the phone.
“So, Dr. Disco, what’s the prognosis?”
The Doctor slipped on his sonic glasses for the first time since entering the hospital. After seeing Clara nod her permission, he ran a quick scan of her body — something he normally never did as he felt it was too much of an invasion of privacy. He paused at her abdomen and frowned, examining what he saw in the readout.
“What is it, Doctor? You can tell me.”
The Doctor took off his glasses and slowly placed them back into his pocket. He ran his free hand through his hair.
“It’s twins,” he deadpanned.
Clara’s eyes widened with her smile. “Is one short and round and the other lanky like a stick insect?”
“Clara, you know we never …” The Doctor stopped himself short when he realized the tease and saw her laugh. He gave his trademark half smile, half scoff. “You’re fine, though I think skiing is off for tonight.”
“Skiing? Oh, no — it’s Wednesday, isn’t it? I’m sorry, Doctor. I know it’s our day.”
“You were in surgery to repair a burst appendix, Clara. You had an excuse.” He leaned over and unhooked the clipboard from the foot of her bed. “See, you even have a doctor’s note.”
“Where were you going to take me?”
“Mars, millennia after it was terraformed, and you won’t believe who I got to make a ski suit for you.”
“Who?”
“Well, it’s…” the Doctor began, but he was interrupted as Dr. Seagrove returned. She introduced herself to Clara and gave her the unabridged version of her condition. This time, she directly told Clara about the close calls, and the treatment she would need to undertake to recover. A medical leave of at least a couple of weeks. Lots of pills. And no strenuous activities, either. Strangely, Seagrove eyed the Doctor as she said this. Maybe the fact the Doctor was still grasping Clara’s hand had something to do with it, though Clara couldn't help but notice the physician’s eyes subtly scanning the Doctor from mane to toe.
“When do I get to go home?” Clara asked.
“We’d like to keep you overnight to make sure the stitches are healing and there’s no further internal bleeding. You're also dehydrated so I want to run a few bags of saline through you, too.” Seagrove motioned to the bag connected through the IV into Clara’s arm.
Seagrove left and the Doctor now held Clara’s non-IV hand with both of his. But Clara glared at him.
“I thought we were going to be honest with each other from now on. You don’t need to sugarcoat things with me. We’ve literally been to hell and back.”
“I'm sorry.”
Clara smiled. “I forgive you. Let me guess ... your duty of care, right?”
“How did you know?”
She winked at him.
“Psychic. So am I going to have to go on an antibiotic diet or is there something you can do about this?”
“That's up to you, Clara. It sounds like Dr. Seagrove has you well in hand. But once you’re out of here, I’m sure I can whip up a few things to help you recover faster.”
“She likes you, by the way,” Clara chuckled.
“Who?”
“Dr. Seagrove. I saw the way she was looking at you. I don’t think she buys the whole Dr. Disco routine, either. But I saw her giving you the eye; she knows a silver fox when she sees one.”
“A silver what-now?”
“Uh, er, ah ... never mind. Forget I said that.” Clara’s face suddenly took on a reddish hue, almost as if something from her internal monologue had accidentally leaked out. The Doctor, however, took her literally and was already on to the next topic.
“Are you sure you don’t want your family to come down, Clara?”
“I’m not at death’s door. I’ll be fine. And you don’t have to stay either. I’m sure you can find planets to save for a couple days. Though it sounds like skiing might be out for a bit. Maybe next Wednesday we can just go to a famous play, or a concert, or a cool space-restaurant. Like we used to.”
The Doctor frowned. Yes, it has gotten rather dangerous of late, for both of them. Ironic that a relatively common human health problem might have been what finally did his impossible girl in.
“No, Clara. I’m staying with you. I hate hospitals as much as you do. But I want to be here.”
“It’s probably going to be pretty boring around here though.” Clara looked towards the window. “What’s the view like?”
“Pigeon shit.”
The unexpected expletive made her laugh, though she immediately tried to rein it in for fear of popping her stitches. “Language, Doctor!”
The Doctor smiled. “Made you laugh, though.”
“Yeah.”
“I have an idea how to kill the time. I want to try something, but we can only do it later, while everyone else is asleep.”
Clara smirked. “I don’t think this bed is big enough, Doctor.”
“No, what I mean is … now hang on a second!” The Doctor changed gears as what Clara said registered. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I did.”
“I think that’s the anesthesia speaking. No, if you trust me I could give you a very entertaining evening.”
Clara raised an eyebrow.
“I just can’t say anything, can I?” the Doctor said.
“You could say, ‘Yes, Boss.’”
“‘Yes, Boss’ to what?”
“Could you ask the nurse for some ice cream?”
***
Dr. Seagrove agreed to the Doctor’s request that he be allowed to stay beyond visitation hours. After all, he was Clara’s physician, though Seagrove still eyed the two with a bit of suspicion as she pulled the curtain to and left them alone. The Doctor also took note this time of her drifting gaze. That’s all I need, he thought.
Almost on cue, the hallway lights dimmed as the overnight shift began.
Clara turned to the Doctor and spoke softly. “So, how are you going to entertain me?”
“I’d like your permission to join with your mind.”
“Didn’t you once say that would be like dropping a piano on someone’s head?”
“I’ll be gentle.”
Clara eyed the Doctor dubiously. “Is this some sort of Gallifreyan love ritual? I’m not exactly dressed the part.”
The Doctor scoffed good-naturedly (perhaps overly good-naturedly, given Clara was well off the anesthesia by now, yet that was the third overture she’d made to him in so many hours. But then, he’d heard stories about hospitals, which might have also served to explain Dr. Seagrove’s less-than-professional interest in him). “Head out of the gutter, Clara. If this works, you might find it interesting.”
“Alright, do your worst.”
“Lay back and close your eyes. I need you to empty your mind of any stray thoughts. Like the time I had you mind-control the TARDIS.” The Doctor placed his lanky fingertips on Clara’s forehead. Her skin goosepimpled slightly from the cool touch, but she quickly relaxed.
“One deep breath. Now hold it. Focus on the sound of my voice.”
***
And then…
…Like the world’s strangest 3-D movie, Clara is lying on her back on a soft green hillside, looking up at the stars. But these are like no stars she has ever seen before. Instead of the usual twinkling amber and ivory, she can clearly make out red, green, purple, even — bizarrely — black. How can she see black stars?
She tries to laugh but finds she cannot. Instead her head moves to the side of its own volition, and suddenly she is looking into her own face, a few inches away.
Clara tries to speak but her voice comes out in the hospital room, not on the hillside.
“Doctor, what’s happening?”
“Shh! Just let it happen,” comes the hoarse reply.
Clara watches as her face breaks out into a broad grin, and her dark eyes look directly into … her’s? That makes no sense, though there was that one time the TARDIS had pranked her and she’d been forced to spend an ... interesting evening sharing a bed with a version of herself from a slightly future, or past time. Yup, that had been interesting, alright. Was this another case of that? Then Clara suddenly realizes she’s been here before. It was six months ago. The Doctor wanted a quiet outing, no surprises, no Daleks. She’d suggested a quiet hillside, just looking up at the stars. And he’d found her one.
But if she remembers this, but from her perspective, that can only mean one thing.
She is seeing the same event from the Doctor’s point of view. A quick flash of a purply velvet dinner jacket confirms this. She feels the Doctor smile as the other Clara smiles back at him.
“It’s beautiful,” she hears herself say.
“I only wish you could see the stars the way I do,” she feels the Doctor say. “There are times where I could honestly spend eternity, just looking up, trying, to identify the colours.” On queue, the Doctor rolls onto his back and gazes up again and Clara realizes he’s focusing on one star that he can somehow sense moving. He focuses his attention on the distant orb and, and Clara sees its colour change, at one point becoming a veritable rainbow, as it moves only minutely against the night sky. But the Doctor can see it, he can see it all. And, for just a moment, Clara simultaneously feels envy and pity for him.
But then a flash of something else runs across her mind. A memory of herself, seen through the Doctor’s eyes, dressed to the nines on the Orient Express, looking up at him as they clinked glasses in the carriageway. My god, she thinks, are my eyes really that big? And was I really being that obvious? Poor Danny…
And then another flash of memory. All she sees is the console as the Doctor pushes buttons. A brief glance upwards reveals that this was soon after escaping the train. Clara — the earlier Clara, that is — is speaking on her mobile. In present time, Clara remembers what is going to happen and is both curious and regretful. Her earlier self is speaking softly, telling Danny that everything is alright. The Doctor trying not to overhear, but his damned sensitive hearing picks up both ends of the conversation. And then, loudly and clearly, she hears herself say, “I love you.”
The memory fades almost instantly, but Clara can actually feel the Doctor’s hearts sink with it. He never knew. He never realized. I don’t know why I said it, but he never realized I said it to both of them.
Clara is taken aback by what happens next. Another brief flash of memory. This time of a sound, from her flat. A throaty, primal sound that she quickly recognizes as her own voice. Oh no … he’d been standing right outside the door? She feels confusion, puzzlement, the bizarre words “Twenty Questions,” and disappointment ... in herself? No, not herself. Himself. No, Doctor, you don’t understand … I only … it was because you pushed me away. I loved Danny, but I am with you now. Don’t you understand, you daft old man?
“Have you been to all those solar systems?” she hears herself ask back on the hillside. Her words serving to bring both the Doctor and Clara out of their shared reverie.
“Only about half of them. Forty-six per cent. Maybe thirty-eight? Lots.”
“Which one is your favourite?”
“This one.”
“Why?” Clara hears herself ask.
“Because it’s the one where you are.”
“Boy, you really are piling on the charm these days. I really can’t keep up.”
Clara feels the Doctor’s hearts quicken as he locks eyes with Clara — the other Clara. They hold each other’s gaze for what was probably only a couple of seconds in reality, but felt then and feels now like minutes.
And then, a voice cuts through the Doctor’s mind. It’s a deep, round voice, the type of voice you might hear coming from someone who felt wearing a scarf on a hot summer’s day was a good idea.
“Just tell her how you feel,” the voice says. “You never told Rose. You never told Romana. You never told River. Dammit, Doctor, you never even told the President's wife. Tell Clara.”
Clara remembers that this is not how the evening turned out. After their shared gaze, the Doctor had suddenly gotten flustered, and started blathering on about comets. Clara had been disappointed, but it had occurred to her that, seeing as only a few months earlier the Doctor wouldn’t even hug her and now was doing so regularly, and she’d even scored a kiss on the cheek after one harrowing adventure … he was coming along.
And so Clara feels the Doctor go against his own advice and bail out of the moment. No time for romance. Time for comets.
“I’m sorry,” she hears his internal voice say.
“Fool,” comes the reply from the deep, round voice. “At least try to make it more obvious that that duty of care nonsense just means you love her, eh?”
Wait ... what?
And then…
***
Like a pleasant dream, the image faded away and Clara’s eyes refocused on the Doctor’s face as he slowly opened his eyes.
“That was beautiful, Doctor,” she breathed. “And … I never knew.”
“I’m sorry, knew what?”
“I was in your head. Just now.”
“Yes, I know. I set you amongst a pleasant memory from the recent past. I’ve been training myself to do this, perhaps as a way of giving comfort or helping me remember where I’d mislaid a spanner. It should have been like watching a movie. Sights and sounds only. How did you enjoy viewing the TARDIS from my POV?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“The TARDIS. I wanted you to see yourself after I finally took the training wheels off the bike and let you pilot her on your own. You looked so happy, I thought it would cheer you up.”
“I wasn’t in the TARDIS, Doctor.”
The Doctor's face fell. “Aw, no! I couldn’t see or hear anything because I had to shut down that part of my brain in order to let you in.” He suddenly looked slightly panicked. “I didn’t send you to an unpleasant memory, did I? Like Skaro or that encounter with Derren Brown?”
“No … no, it was nice. It was that time we just went to lay down and look at the stars,” Clara said.
The Doctor frowned for a moment and then it seemed like nearly his turn to blush. “OK, not too bad then … though if I recall, a little awkward at the end.”
“A little.” Clara squeezed his hand. “But thank you. It was a wonderful gift.”
“I have to work on it a bit. At least you just had the sound and visual. I wouldn’t want someone knowing how I actually felt about anything or any stray memories leaking through. Could be bad for business.”
Clara smiled, with a new appreciation for the old/young man who was still the person that meant more to her than anyone else in the universe right now, and meant even more so now, and whose mind clearly was influenced by the TARDIS more than he knew. His mind didn’t take him where he wanted to go; it took him where he needed to go. She realized that now. Subconsciously, she was certain of it, the Doctor had taken her to a moment in time where his thoughts for her were unobscured and unambiguous, yet also confused as hell. And she made a mental note to never again be annoyed the next time he told her he had a duty of care.
But he still couldn’t bring himself to say ... it. And knowing him he probably wouldn’t even think of saying “it” until one of them was at death’s door or something; typical bad timing. But she knew what he felt. And for her, that was more important than anything he had to say.
“Don’t worry, Doctor,” she said. “I didn’t feel a thing.”