Work Text:
“I think I will never forget you.”
“Clara, I think you will never have to forget me.”
...
Bill didn’t know how others would see it, but she quite liked her current life. Every day she served food in the university cafeteria, taking the opportunity to secretly put a little extra on the plate of the person she liked, hoping she would notice her. With the large amount of free time left, she could even sit in on different classes—this was the advantage of working at a university. From philosophy to physics, there was no class Bill hadn’t attended. Philosophy made her a bit drowsy, while physics attracted her interest.
But it was hard to say how much of that interest came from physics itself, how much came from the lecturer’s engaging way of speaking, and how much came from the fact that in that class, Bill could see the person she liked listening attentively. In any case, Bill never missed a single physics class.
For example, right now, she was sitting in a lecture hall, watching a gray-haired but energetic professor on the podium explaining a unique theory about time.
The professor seemed particularly excited today, even mixing in some stories that sounded like pure fantasy between explanations of theory. Bill glanced around, saw the young brown-haired figure in the back corner, and pursed her lips, turning the page of her book as usual.
The professor would occasionally have days like this. At first Bill couldn’t find a pattern, but after careful observation combined with her understanding of the lecture, she finally figured out what made those days special—the extra student sitting in the back row.
Did they have some kind of family connection?
Idle thoughts aside, it didn’t interfere with Bill’s class. As the professor finished his last sentence, Bill closed her notebook with satisfaction. Just as she was about to leave as usual, she saw that occasional student walk from the back toward the podium and start talking to the professor.
This was something she had never seen before—normally that person would just leave quietly after class.
Bill’s curiosity was piqued. She wanted to get closer to hear what their relationship was, but saw them leave the classroom side by side. After only a second of hesitation, Bill followed them.
Clara parked the TARDIS in the Doctor’s office and yanked open the blue box door, but didn’t hear that all-too-familiar stream of chatter. She looked around the office, then knowingly pushed the door open and headed toward a lecture hall.
The Doctor was indeed teaching here.
Clara had no intention of interrupting him; she simply found an empty seat in the back row and sat down casually. But today couldn’t be like before—just showing up briefly to signal she was fine and then slipping away in the TARDIS—she had something to say.
Clara wove through the crowd leaving the classroom after the lecture and approached the podium like an ordinary student coming to ask a question. “Surprise!”
“I saw you. If that counts as a surprise.” The Doctor packed his textbook into his bag, though he hadn’t opened it once during the entire lecture. “How was Poka Star?”
“It’s a long story. But that’s not important—I have some news to tell you.” Clara instinctively wanted to link arms with the Doctor, but the setting made her stop the gesture, which felt a bit inappropriate here. “Let’s talk in your office.”
Neither of them noticed the small tail following behind them.
Once they closed the door behind them, Clara excitedly leaned on the desk and said, “Madam Vastra and Jenny are getting married!”
The Doctor gave Clara a puzzled look. “Are you sure you went to the right timeline?”
“I mean a wedding—they’re going to have a proper ceremony.”
Clara moved behind the desk, gesturing for the Doctor to take his legs off it, then sat on the cleared tabletop. She leaned back comfortably, shifting her weight onto the arms supporting her behind her. “I’m sure Madam Vastra meant to invite our past selves—it’s just that she happened to run into the current me.”
I really hope my current strange state doesn’t shock them too much, Clara muttered inwardly.
“Anyway, we need to make a trip to the Victorian era this afternoon.”
“Since when do you get to decide?”
Clara didn’t understand why the Doctor would ask such an obvious question. She looked down at him. “Since the beginning?”
The Doctor very much wanted to argue—his raised eyebrows looked like they were about to fly off his face—but after glaring for a while, he still couldn’t come up with a solid argument. Through Clara’s shoulder, he spotted the TARDIS behind her, parked so perfectly it looked like it had never left.
“Since when did your piloting get so good?”
“Well, I didn’t just visit Poka Star, I also… it’s a long story. Anyway, I ended up in the Victorian era,” Clara could clearly see the Doctor’s attempt to change the subject, but she decided to generously let it slide. “It’s probably been about five years during all that—I’m starting to lose my sense of time.”
“That explains why this week has felt so long for me…”
“I miss you.”
The Doctor’s complaint was abruptly cut off; all his dissatisfaction was choked back by Clara’s final words. He responded dryly with a “Great,” then stood up, walked around the desk and sofa, and pulled open the office door, eager to end this chaotic conversation. “See you here tonight. I’ve got things to do this afternoon.”
However, Clara did not leave as he had expected. Instead, she greeted the person outside the door with interest: “Hi! Are you one of the Doctor’s students?”
The Doctor turned his head and saw only a figure with a black afro stiffly waving. Though he had no idea why she looked so awkward, he pulled her inside in one swift motion.
“Bill Potts, one of my students,” the Doctor shut the door again, then, looking at the scene before him, suddenly found the perfect excuse. “If you hadn’t interrupted, I was just about to look for her after class.”
“I’m Clara, Clara Oswald.” After greeting Bill, Clara turned to the Doctor and asked, “What were you looking for her for?”
“Extra lessons. I can tell she’s got talent.”
“No!” Bill shouted, startling both the Doctor and Clara into turning toward her at the same time. For a moment, the office was filled with nothing but silence—and three faces staring at each other.
God knew how badly Bill wanted to escape right now.
She had only followed them to the office out of curiosity, but ended up hearing things she definitely wasn’t supposed to know. It hadn’t been very clear through the door, but phrases like “skills,” “I miss you,” and “see you tonight” had definitely reached her ears. Bill now had a completely new—and deeply unsettling—understanding of this professor who called himself “the Doctor.” She admitted he was a great lecturer, but that didn’t excuse what seemed like a serious lack of personal integrity—getting involved with a student like this.
Bill absolutely refused to become part of any kind of “unspoken arrangement.”
“Forget the extra lessons. I’m not that kind of—” Bill’s gaze darted back and forth between the Doctor and Clara, while the two of them looked at her as if she were speaking some incomprehensible alien language—“that kind of student who trades her body for grades.”
Clara instantly understood what Bill had misunderstood. She tried hard to suppress her laughter as she explained to the girl, who was clearly inching toward the door, “The Doctor and I are not in that kind of relationship.”
But Clara had overestimated her ability to hold it in. She covered her mouth and elbowed the Doctor beside her.
“Clara isn’t my student,” the Doctor said obediently, though he still hadn’t grasped the situation at all.
Clara turned her head toward him in disbelief. “Really? That’s the main issue right now—you think she believes I’m your student?”
All her amusement was crushed back down by sheer exasperation. She really couldn’t count on the Doctor to be useful in a situation like this. Sighing inwardly, Clara stepped forward to take over the explanation. “We’re not talking about what you think. We’re just… friends, making plans to go out together.”
Bill still didn’t quite believe the clarification from one of the parties involved. Her body language practically screamed “stay away.” If it weren’t for the sheer rudeness of turning around and leaving outright, she would already be gone from the office. Clara knew words alone wouldn’t convince her, so she decided to let Bill experience it for herself.
“You’d regret missing the Doctor’s extra lessons. It won’t hurt to give it a try,” Clara pushed Bill toward the desk, then slowly backed away, leaving the door open. “Maybe having the door open will make you feel safer.”
Clara didn’t really know what the Doctor and Bill did that afternoon. In any case, that evening she and the Doctor attended that dreamlike wedding, and in the days that followed, the Doctor would occasionally give Bill some extra lessons. As for Clara, she had long since taken the TARDIS and once again traveled across different planets, no longer knowing what time even meant.
In fact, this way of living was the best solution they could come up with. Even though the Doctor had quite a few complaints about it and had emphasized countless times that it was his TARDIS, he still had someone he needed to watch over, while Clara had to constantly avoid harassment from the Time Lords.
Even after decades had passed, Clara still remembered the subtle awkwardness when the two of them looked at each other back then.
“Clara, I suppose you’ll never have to forget me after all,” the Doctor said helplessly, slapping the neural block onto the console. “It’s obvious you broke it. Are you sure you said ‘reverse the polarity’ and not something like ‘go away, I don’t want to lose my memory’?”
“I know exactly what I said—it’s just too fragile!” Clara replied. “So what do we do now?”
For Clara, the best outcome was for both of them to keep their memories. She couldn’t bear the idea of either of them forgetting the other: she refused to give up the past few years of adventures and return to the ordinary life of a regular teacher; and her possessiveness couldn’t accept the Doctor forgetting who she was, meeting someone else as if none of it had ever happened.
But time was ticking, and the urgent situation in front of them couldn’t simply be ignored.
“Brilliant! A few minutes ago you asked me this exact question, and now I have to come up with a completely different answer.” The Doctor spread his hands to express his frustration. Yet he had to admit that, in some corner of his heart, he had secretly hoped the neural block would be destroyed. Accepting fate had only been a reluctant concession to circumstances; now that those circumstances were gone, he was pulled out of that moral dilemma that had been tormenting him.
Off to the side, Me had already conjured up a chair with the TARDIS as if she were watching a show. The Doctor caught sight of what she was doing and, unwilling to be outdone, conjured a sofa so he and Clara could sit down together as well.
“You’ll have to keep moving nonstop, wandering everywhere, to shake off the Time Lords,” the Doctor said to Clara.
“Isn’t that just our daily routine? No problem at all.”
“No,” the Doctor shook his head with a headache, “I mean you. I have things to do—find Missy and keep an eye on her. If you hadn’t messed around with the sonic sunglasses, we wouldn’t have to make things so complicated!”
Clara lifted a slight smile, but the anger flickering in her eyes was unmistakable.
“You mean ditching a version of me who remembers nothing and continuing your perfect travels? Don’t even think about it.” Clara was trying her best to suppress the urge to slap the Doctor into amnesia. “I can take this TARDIS and travel around on my own, and drop by to visit you from time to time, old man.”
“Hello,” Me waved lazily from the side, “I need a TARDIS too.”
This calm discussion ultimately turned into a battle over a new TARDIS. Clara and the Doctor narrowly lost to Me, although the Doctor claimed it was because his future office probably couldn’t fit two TARDISes—yes, he had already planned out his teaching career for quite some time ahead. But Clara knew that was just an excuse—Me had honed unparalleled eloquence over the years, and they could only admit defeat.
The aftermath of losing that “war” was the current situation—Clara was in the middle of enjoying a breathtaking concert when she suddenly received a call from the Doctor.
Clara had to admit she was rather enjoying this—after all, it used to always be her calling him.
“Clara! Emergency!” The Doctor was clearly speaking while running; Clara could hear his ragged breathing, along with another person shouting indistinctly.
“Give me the coordinates,” Clara said as she stood up and headed toward the exit, softly apologizing to the people around her. “I’ll be there in five seconds.”
She had barely brought the TARDIS to a stop when two breathless figures rushed inside. The Doctor walked over to the console and stood beside Clara, quietly waiting for Bill’s reaction. Meanwhile, the person they were focused on was just leaning against the window, completely unaware of the space behind her.
“We absolutely need to steal another TARDIS,” the Doctor whispered to Clara.
“At least wait until you have a bigger office,” Clara replied just as quietly. “I don’t want to crawl out of something that looks like a cabinet.”
The way they spoke sounded like a financially strained couple trying not to mention, in front of their child, that their garage couldn’t fit two cars—and that they couldn’t afford a bigger house.
When Bill finally confirmed that she had escaped the danger and relaxed, she turned around—only to see the Doctor and Clara suddenly standing upright, offering her matching mysterious smiles.
“Time And Relative Dimension In Space,” the Doctor adjusted his cuffs. “TARDIS, for short.”
Bill walked down the steps in a daze, looking up in awe at the impossible sight before her, murmuring, “No wonder you said this wood could keep her out.”
Only then did Clara realize what she had overlooked. “Ahem—Doctor, what exactly are we running from?”
“Simply put, aliens.”
“Wow, that explains everything.”
The brief aside didn’t affect Bill’s exploration of this illogical new space at all—she was already completely immersed in her own world. When she finally finished talking to herself, she raised a pressing question: “Can I use the bathroom?”
“I like her.” Clara patted the Doctor. “Bathroom’s downstairs—first right, then left, past the blender.”
“Thanks.”
The Doctor cut in, “I thought that used to be a macaron dispenser?”
“I moved it—I need a blender to make soufflé.”
Before they could react further to such trivial matters, the TARDIS suddenly lurched violently. The three of them grabbed onto nearby supports to keep from falling. The Doctor maneuvered the TARDIS away from its position, and Clara instinctively shouted, “We need to go check on Missy!”
“Great minds think alike,” the Doctor pulled down the lever, bringing the TARDIS down at high speed, and beckoned to Clara. “Come on.”
Clara and the Doctor ran out of the blue box. As soon as she felt the wall of the basement, she relaxed halfway and confirmed to the Doctor, “The vault is secure.”
“Clara,” hearing her voice, Missy’s usual languid tone drifted from inside the vault, “so glad they didn’t catch you.”
What she said was one thing, but Clara knew what she really meant: how have those idiots on Gallifrey still not caught you?
“Thanks,” Clara replied politely, patting the stone separating them. “Maybe next time.”
Their exchange gave Bill enough time to process everything. Only now did she recover from yet another shock, shifting her gaze from the TARDIS to the eerie basement. “It’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside!”
“Now I see why you like hearing that,” Clara leaned against the wall, teasing.
The Doctor shifted his attention from the security locks to Clara’s approving remark and shrugged. “Never gets old.”
However, the vault’s safety didn’t mean they had escaped the pursuit of that water-ghost-like alien. Whether in Australia, 23 million years in the future, or on the most dangerous front lines in the universe, Heather—Clara had gradually learned the full story during their escape, including that poor girl, Heather—followed them relentlessly.
After going in a huge circle, they finally understood that it had all been because of a promise.
Clara saw a familiar scene unfold before her, overlapping with that figure who had endured time sustained by the words “duty of care.” A “promise” had never belonged to just two people; it was a belief passed down, creating countless bonds of love, family, and friendship in the world. The so-called “duty of care” was not merely responsibility or obligation—it was a gentle persistence, a reflection of the essence of love.
The Doctor slowly moved closer to Clara and softly interrupted her deep thoughts. “They’ll find a way in the future, just like we did.”
“I know.”
Clara suddenly wrapped her arms around the Doctor’s neck, crossing them as she buried her face in the hollow of his neck and took a deep breath. The Doctor had to bend his knees slightly and lean down to accommodate her movement. He held himself rigidly, eventually having to brace one hand against the wall to take the strain off his legs.
“Ahem.” Bill coughed lightly. She had already walked halfway down the corridor, only to turn back and realize no one was behind her. Tear marks still lingered on her face, yet what she said made the two on the other side of the corridor separate instantly: “You two—there’s still a war going on right next to us.”
That evening, Clara let the increasingly familiar teacher and student whisper and scheme in the office, while she sat on the TARDIS’s comfortable sofa planning her next trip—the Alpha Centauri region was a good choice, but she had trouble deciding which planet to land on first.
This indecisive state was quickly interrupted by a highly penetrating “NO!” that carried through the TARDIS’s blue door to Clara’s ears. Without even reacting, Clara knew it was Bill—after all, that terrified “No!” from when they first met was still fresh in her memory. Clara closed her notebook, quickly crossed the console room, pulled open the door, and leaned against the frame with her arms crossed, just in time to catch the Doctor and Bill in a standoff.
“Do what you have to do,” Bill, out of options, could only accept that she was about to lose this memory. “But just imagine—how would you feel if someone wiped your memory?”
The Doctor remained unmoved. With both hands raised, he continued approaching Bill’s temples, but his movement was interrupted by a piece of clothing flying toward him.
Hearing Bill’s words, Clara instantly recalled the unpleasant memory of nearly having her own mind wiped. In her urgency, she threw the most convenient object at hand—the coat hanging on the corridor railing. It struck the Doctor’s shoulder perfectly, making him turn back toward Clara in confusion.
“What did you promise me before?” Clara stepped closer, bent down to pick up the coat that had slipped to the floor, and casually dusted it off. “I will never forget how that felt.”
“Alright, alright,” the Doctor changed his mind immediately. He waved at Bill. “Go on—leave, before I change it back.”
Bill hurried to the office door. Just as she was about to open it, the Doctor’s voice came again from behind her: “Wait.”
She slowly turned around, thinking he had changed his decision again, but was met only with a long silence.
The Doctor looked at Bill. After a moment, he finally spoke again: “Time and relative dimension in space… what do you think?”
Bill’s eyes widened. Of course she understood what he meant—this was an invitation.
Without waiting for her answer, the Doctor entered the TARDIS first. Outside, Clara smiled as she watched Bill eagerly follow him in, before stepping into the familiar space herself and closing the blue door behind her.
“You two don’t look like you’re just friends,” Bill slowed her steps slightly, leaning closer to Clara and whispering.
Clara took Bill’s hand. The two of them stood on opposite sides of the console, watching the Doctor bustle about on the other side. “I know. What we have can’t be explained by that word alone.”
“Does the Doctor know?”
Clara pursed her lips. “Of course he does.”
“Then why did you only introduce yourselves as friends back then?”
“I don’t want to be the first one to say it out loud.”
Bill’s face twisted in confusion. She couldn’t understand this kind of smokeless “power struggle” between the Doctor and Clara, but in the end she only muttered quietly, “Never seen such an awkward relationship.”
That comment didn’t escape Clara’s ears. She gave Bill’s shoulder an enthusiastic pat.
“Welcome to the family.”