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lizzy-bennet · 5 years

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An Eternity of Unspoken Things Fandom: Doctor Who Pairing: Whouffaldi Length: 2,500 words Rating: G Also on Ao3

Summary:

“Everything you’re about to say I already know,” Clara tells him on trap street. “Don’t say it now.”

So the Doctor doesn’t, and the words he never says get buried like a seed deep down in his chest, and they blossom there, blooming against his ribcage like roses, their thorns piercing his skin, and it hurts and it hurts and it hurts.

Which is why, in all those billions of years he’s trapped in his confession dial, sometimes, (when the stars change or when her painted portrait weathers yet again with age or he finds himself drowning with grief and rage), he’ll try to say those unsaid words to the Clara in the TARDIS in his mind.

He loves Clara.

This is a fact the Doctor knows, like how he knows that daylight lasts on Filea IV for exactly fifty-three minutes, or that the rain on New Saturn sounds like a song.

It’s just a simple thing. An obvious, everyday notion. The TARDIS travels in time and space, his two hearts beat, and he loves Clara Oswald.

But he doesn’t say it.

# “Everything you’re about to say I already know,” Clara tells him on trap street. “Don’t say it now.” Outside, the raven is waiting, but here, she pulls him into a hug and he stands there in her embrace, feeling the weight of her arms around him, like she is his anchor, holding him steady in a world that’s nothing but a stormy sea.

But then all too soon, her arms unwind from around his neck and his anchor leaves him.

His anchor dies.

And all he can think is:

He didn’t get to say it.

# He is in his confession dial, and every day he slams his fist into the wall and every day he burns himself up and leaves blood on the stairs while grief eats away at his bones because Clara’s in his mind but she’s not in the world. And then there are those words, the words he never got to say. They got buried like a seed deep down in his chest, and now they blossom there, blooming against his ribcage like roses, their thorns piercing his skin, and it hurts and it hurts and it hurts.

Which is why, when he’s at his weakest, when the stars change or when her painted portrait weathers yet again with age or he finds himself drowning with grief and rage, he thinks about saying those words to the Clara in the TARDIS in his mind.

It never quite works out.

# Once upon a time (so, so, so very long ago now) he stood in an arena, with a guitar in his hands and sunglasses slipping down his nose, and stared at the (wonderful, beautiful, impossible) girl standing in front of him and said: “When do I not see you?”

And he meant it then and he still means it now because it’s true. It’s true, it’s true, it’s true.

“I see you,” he says again, and it’s slightly different than the three little words his two hearts beat out, but it still has the same meaning.

He’s spent at least a thousand years inside his confession dial and yet Clara’s still as clear as day to him. There was once a time - when he had a different, boyish face - when he couldn’t see her. He had thought she was a trick or a trap, a ghost or a riddle. And he had been wrong, she was just a girl, an ordinary girl with an extraordinary heart and he had been blind. So when that old body died in golden flames and this new body was born, he’d made sure it was born with the promise that he would always, always, always see her.

He’s never broken that promise.

He thinks maybe he should say this to the Clara mirage in his mind. That he should tell her what he never told the real Clara on trap street, confess what he’s kept locked up tightly. The words wait there, beneath his breastbone, wanting and waiting to be said.

But he’s not that sort of man, not really. He’ll have to let her know how he feels the long way around.

So what he says out loud is:

“There is an emperor, and he asks the shepard’s boy, ‘How many seconds in eternity?’”

# “I figured out it was you, you know,” he tells his imaginary Clara in his imaginary TARDIS. (He’s not entirely sure how many centuries it’s been since he’s started this conversation with her. It’s hard to keep track.)

“You were the voice in my dreams, when I was a child in that barn on Gallifrey. You were the one whispering those words in my mind. Did you think I’d never put two and two together?” Clara raises an eyebrow. She has just as much sass as the original, this mental copy of Clara, always ready to cut him down to size.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

(Stars, he misses her.)

“Well,“ she says, “it did take you this long.”

He exhales a laugh and closes his eyes. He still remembers her soft whisper in the night; her voice curling out from the darkness like music, speaking words that’d get woven into his dreams and sewn into the idea behind the name he calls himself.

He’s always loved her, he thinks. Right from his very first face.

But he doesn’t say it.

“’Fear is a superpower,’” he says instead, repeating her exact words from that night. “‘Fear can bring us together, fear can bring you home.’ And that’s exactly what I’m going to do, Clara. I’m going to bring you home. I swear it.”

(He dies with that promise on his lips, and he comes back to life with it written into his bones.)

# “Look at you, with your eyes and your never giving up and your anger and your kindness,” he’d told her one time, when she was by his side and breathing, when they were somewhere back in history. “One day, the memory of that will hurt so much that I won’t be able to breathe, and I’ll do what I always do. I’ll get in my box and I’ll run and I’ll run.”

And he’d been right back then, but he’d also been wrong. Because it’s true that the pain of his grief is gut-wrenching, true that it’s blinding and leaves him breathless. But instead of running, he’s staying. He’s staying here in this nightmare, for Clara. Because tasting death every day for billions upon billions of years all in the hope of seeing her again is nowhere near as frightening as the idea of running and dealing with the fact that she is gone and he cannot get her back. He wonders if Clara ever knew how far he’d go for her, and even more than that, he wonders if he should just say it all now, out loud, so the words can be out there in the world.

But it’s like he’s on the edge of a cliff, tips of his shoes right over the precipice, and he just can’t jump. So he doesn’t say those things. Instead, he continues to tell her the story he never finished from before.

“And the shepard’s boy says, ‘There is a mountain of pure diamond…’”

# “Have I ever told you the story of the shepard’s boy?” he asks her. Clara looks at him sadly.

“Yes,” she whispers, “you have.”

(Of course he has. He has every day for thousands and thousands years.) “I’ll tell you another story then,” he decides.

“Doctor,” she says gently, “you’re dying.”

He ignores her.

“There is a story,” he continues, “about how the sun loved the moon so much, he died every night just to let her breathe.”

He sighs, shuts his eyes, feels the pain pulsing through his mind.

“I suppose, Clara, what I’m trying to say is…” he’s only got seconds left, ticking away. “What I’m trying to say is…”

The seconds slip away, he closes his eyes, and as he dies, he thinks:

I understand the sun.

# He’s dying. Again.

He thinks it might be for the five-hundred-thousandth time. And he’s not sure he can go through everything again. All the pain, all the dying, and the way his mind screams and his skin bleeds. He is so, so tired. How easy it would be, he thinks, to just stop. To just sleep.

But he can’t sleep, not peacefully, not yet, not until he tells Clara what he never did.

Which is why he finds himself back in his mental storm room, staring at her. Her back is to him, and there is white chalk in her hand and a blackboard in front of her bearing the sentence, “How are you going to win?” and for once, he ignores it. He is too tired to strategize, too weak to spend the rest of his life here in his mental TARDIS storm room, trying to think his way out of this impossible maze. He just wants her to listen.

“Clara,” he says quietly, as he feels his breath getting shallower, the space between his two heartbeats getting longer, “I’ve got to tell you something before I die again, before it’s too late.” But Clara isn’t interested, she just taps those familiar words on the board again. How are you going to win?

“This is important, Clara.”

She shakes her head, a motion that sends her dark hair flying around her shoulders, making it look like raven feathers, and he inhales sharply at the sight, his hearts twisting painfully in his chest.

“No, Doctor,” Clara says, and she still won’t turn to face him, won’t let him say what he needs to so he can go in peace. “What’s important is this: How are you going to win?”

“You don’t understand, Clara,” he says, and he hears the frustration in his voice, hears an almost feral sort of desperation there too. “Maybe this is how I win. Maybe it’s by finally, finally telling you what I should’ve told you before. Now, before I fade away.”

He loves her, loves her like she is the sun and the moon and then stars. Loves her so much that it hurts, hurts so badly he cannot breathe. And perhaps this is what victory is, what winning feels like: getting to say these words to at least one Clara, even if it’s not the one that counts.

“Look, Clara - “

She still won’t face him, so he reaches for her then, trying to take her shoulders, spin her around to face him, to listen just for once, but the Clara in his mind slips through his fingers like smoke, and he’s left holding a handful of air as he realizes once again that she is not there, not really, not in the way she should be.

He shuts his eyes, sinks down to the floor, puts his head in his hands, and thinks:

She’s right. She’s always, always right. What’s important is that he win. And then he’ll tell her everything after.

# It’s been four billion years, he thinks as he stares at the sky. Maybe, maybe almost four-and-a-half billion. So the stars have changed, the constellations been broken and reformed, and every star is unrecognizable. Every star except for her.

You’re my North Star, Clara Oswald, he thinks silently as he looks at her. You’re always going to be guiding me home.

And out loud he says, “Not much longer now.” # This is it. He knows it. He can feel it in his bones and in the beat of his hearts and in the steady way he breathes. All the wall needs is one more punch. Just one more. He can see the daylight coming through it already, all golden and bright and promising that tomorrow will come and tomorrow will be better.

The Clara in the TARDIS in his mind takes his hand in hers for the very last time. “‘And when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed,’” she says, finishing the story he started oh so very long ago. “Today’s the day. First second of eternity. Got anything to say to that, Doctor?”

He glances over at her. There are so many things he aches to tell her, so many things he wants her to understand. But they’re close to the finish line now. So, so close.

So he simply says:

“See you on the other side, Clara Oswald.” And for the first time in what feels like an eternity, he smiles.

# Clara, Clara, Clara. For all those years, her name was like a never-ending melody, always winding its way through the back of his mind, and now she is here, with him. They are kneeling together, side by side, in the cloisters on Gallifrey, darkness wrapped around them like the night.

And the universe, well, the universe is burning. Time is fractured and stars are dying and the universe is burning, and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care at all, because he’s got her back. Clara - his Clara - is there beside him, and that is all that matters.

He’d do anything for her.

(No, the back of his mind corrects him, he’d do everything.)

”What is it?” Clara asks (and oh, how good it feels to hear her voice out loud and outside his mind). “What were you bargaining for in that confession dial?” He nearly laughs at that. He’s died every day for a sliver of eternity; broken each of his precious, pithy rules; killed a man (and perhaps, he thinks idly, time itself); and the notion that he’d do all that for anything less than her is incomprehensible.

He looks up, and he expects Clara to be teasing him or testing him, but he’s surprised to see that she is not. She is serious, her eyes studying him, waiting for an answer. He falters for a second, feeling lost as his light blue eyes search her questioning dark brown ones.

“What do you think?” he asks.

She shakes her head, and he frowns, because Clara is clever. So, so very clever. But she can’t see it. Why can’t she see it? “You,” he tells her, like the answer is as simple to him as breathing, as obvious as the moon in the sky. He can’t imagine a universe where he wouldn’t die every day for her. “I had to find a way to save you.”

He can’t fathom his words being a total surprise to anyone. (It’s obvious, isn’t it? he thinks. Obvious he’d go this far - farther, even - for her.) But Clara sits there, speechless and stunned by his words. Then she blinks, inhales sharply (she needn’t, her lungs no longer need air, but muscle memory is there), and says, “l have something I need to say.”

So does he. He’s filled with sentences he never said, with words he’s held inside for longer than stars have been alive.

But he can’t say them, not now, not when they’re so close to escaping, “We don’t have time.” “No, my time is up, Doctor, between one heartbeat and the last is all the time I have,” Clara says. Her fingers curl around his wrist, and he is struck once again with the sensation that she is his anchor, holding him steady in the eye of the storm. And slowly, under her touch, he stills, letting his anchor stabilize him.

“People like me and you, we should say things to one other,” she tells him. “And I’m going to say them now.”

And, finally, after four-and-a-half billion years…

So does he.

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whouffaldi-fanfic · 4 years

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Whouffaldi Fanfic Pick 👍

You Sound Like a Song by @chipsandcoffee

Author’s Summary: The Doctor is settled at St. Luke's University and trying to move on with his life. But he still can't stop thinking about the mysterious woman named Clara and what might have become of her.

Tags: Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, Fix-It of Sorts, Memory loss, Confessions, Angst, Romance, Eternal love, Season/Series 10 Spoilers, Cameo Appearance by Bill Potts, Whouffaldi, Canon Compliant, Technically at least

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Words: 4316

#shameless self-promotion #i wrote a fanfic #i hope you enjoy #whouffaldi #fanfic #fan fiction

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loversandantiheroes · 7 years

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Jigsaw - a Whouffaldi fic - Epilogue

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

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

Rating: PG-13ish

Warnings: Brief and vague shower funtimes

Word Count: 1844

AO3 Link: here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh you are terrible,” Clara gripes.

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

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

“Later.”

“Ok.”

“So is this you, then?” Me asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I suppose I’ll find out,” he says.

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

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

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

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

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

“So am I, old man.”

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

***

Not everything ends.

***

First stop.

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

What has happened Mother, why does Father cry?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m sorry,” Rigsy says, at last.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

Not love.

***

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

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

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

Has the fool left the handbrake on?

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

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

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

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

“We won’t be,” he says simply.

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

The Doctor raises his eyebrows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes sir.” No hesitation.

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

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

Gastron blinks. “Sir?”

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

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

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

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

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

He has his orders.

***

Not always.

#whouffaldi #twelve x clara #doctor who fanfiction #twelfth doctor #clara oswald #I don't know whether to be relieved that I'm done or sad that it's over #either way #I got to give them a happy exit #before christmas and all #I'll take it #I hope you guys have enjoyed this trainwreck

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dreameater1988 · 7 years

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The Doctor’s & Clara’s romance

I’ve made a little compilation of all the notable Whouffle and Whouffaldi moments over the seasons, along with my thoughts and theories:

Their relationship was set up as romance right from the very beginning with these words, because it becomes obvious right away that Clara might be romantically interested in the Doctor by hinting at future snogging. I don’t believe that she immediately jumped him, but she let him know from the beginning that she wasn’t uninterested.

Let’s jump to “The Crimson Horror” where Eleven and Clara pose as husband and wife and they both convinced Mrs Gilliflower, a woman who is anything but stupid. In fact, they both seem to enjoy it, too.

I always like to believe that the end of “Nightmare in Silver” is the moment Eleven realizes that he fancies Clara because he notices her on a physical level. Besides, the conversation Mr Clever had with Clara in which “the Doctor” confesses his love to Clara is probably based on the Doctor’s own thoughts to which Mr Clever had access at that moment, but Clara saw through it and knew that the Doctor would never admit it.

When Clara suggests that she needs a boyfriend for Christmas dinner Eleven was excited. He actually believed that she was serious for a moment and he was more than happy to be her boyfriend, yet at the same time he was a bit worried that he might disappoint Clara. It was Eleven who was disappointed when he realized that Clara wasn’t actually serious.

Unfortunately they never really got to explore that part of their relationship because he got stranded on Trenzalore and later regenerated.

Matt Smith has confirmed that Clara was sort of his girlfriend while Jenna said in an interview or during a panel that Clara realized she was in love with him during the regeneration.

The rest is under a cut because it’s long:

After his regeneration the Doctor picks up where they left of, with the boyfriend argument. He assumes Clara never actually wanted him to be her boyfriend and admits that it was his mistake for assuming so for a brief moment.

I never actually paid a lot of attention to this dialogue before watching the German dub for the first time and afterwards I realized that it could be read in various ways. In the German dub “Am I home?” was translated to “Do you want me to live here?” and the Doctor reply is “If that is what you want” and I now realize that the English original can be read as exactly that. The Doctor was more than happy to let Clara live with him.

The Doctor is heartbroken when he realizes that Clara doesn’t understand that he and Eleven are the same person and that his feelings for her haven’t changed and he begs her to give him a chance, which she does.

We all know that Clara started dating Danny in S8 because for her a romance with the Doctor was off the table now that he had made it clear he wasn’t her boyfriend, yet the Doctor is anything but fine with the competition. One of my favourite scenes and clear indication that the Doctor was jealous and actively trying to sabotage Clara’s relationship was the moment he hid in her bedroom during her date. He didn’t want her to be with anyone else.

Nevertheless, he is curious and wants to know just how serious Clara is about the other man and when he realizes that she is in fact serious, he can’t just let it happen.

He is jealous, but he can’t openly show it, so he decides to just do better than the competition.

The brief moment during “The Caretaker” when Twelve assumes she is dating Adrian breaks my heart every time I watch it. He thinks that Clara has chosen the young, dorky looking man with a bowtie who reminds him so much of his former self and he feels reassured that Clara is only using Adrian as substitute because Eleven is gone and that she still loves him. In his head the Doctor thinks that if she still loves Eleven, she can love the current him as well.

The Doctor is devastated when he realizes that Clara isn’t dating Adrian, but Danny, a soldier who couldn’t be more unlike the Doctor.

Again he is competitive and starts showing off while Danny is in the room, trying to prove that he is better for Clara, that he can take her to places Danny couldn’t even imagine, trying to show him that Clara is his by proving she wouldn’t hesitate to run away with him even in the middle of her date with Danny.

MOTOE is meant as their break-up, their “last hurrah”, because Clara thinks she has chosen Danny and can no longer travel with the Doctor because he has changed. However, she is shocked to learn that their goodbye might be a bit more final than she had in mind and tries to cling to him despite her decision of not wanting to continue wit their travels. She is nervous and frightened. She doesn’t actually want to stop seeing him.

I think the “last hurrah” ist more like a “first hurrah” to them because I genuinely believe that they slept together on the Orient Express, probably for the very first time. That is based on a theory by @anotheruserwithnoname (if you would be so kind to reblog this with a link to your theory added, I couldn’t find it on your blog). The entire corridor scene is sizzling with sexual tension, as several articles have pointed out. Also the fact that both the Doctor and Clara were utterly nervous suggests that they knew what they were about to do (for the first time).

Clara specifically uses the word “dump” and unlike Danny she knows that the Doctor is sort of like a boyfriend or at least has the potential to be because S8 is basically a love triangle story.

After their adventure on the Orient Express Clara understands the Doctor a little better and she knows that she can’t leave him, so she decides to lie to Danny, her boyfriend, about running away with another man. If the Doctor had been just a friend Clara could have told him, she could have told Danny that she had decided to keep travelling with him and their previous phone call tells me that Danny would have understood and Clara knows this. Yet she still decided to keep the Doctor a secret - because he is more than a friend.

This is one of the strongest lines the Doctor has ever said to Clara and Steven Moffat himself confirms that it was meant as an “I love you”, but in this case “I love you” wasn’t enough. The Doctor’s feelings for her are so strong that they cannot be expressed simply by those three words.

This is a very interesting bit of dialogue because it raises the question why the Doctor is angry. Because he is travelling to the afterlife to get Clara’s boyfriend back, the boyfriend of the woman he loves. He doesn’t actually want to do it, but he has to because he loves her so much and he would tear the world apart to make her happy, even if it means that she is going to be with another man.

Towards the end of the episode Clara says something to Danny that makes him realize he never stood a chance against the Doctor. She tells him “He is the closest person to me in this whole world. He’s the man I will always forgive, always trust, the one man I would never, ever lie to.” It hits Danny that he can never compete with that, that even though Clara may have loved him, she will never love Danny as much as she loves the Doctor.

Yet Clara does lie to the Doctor at the end of “Death in Heaven”, just like the Doctor lies to Clara because they want the best for the other (and because they’re idiots). It is only later that they realize just how miserable the other has been and decide to elope together at the end of “Last Christmas”.

Playing “Pretty Woman” is an undeniably romantic gesture, one even Missy recognizes because she gives Clara a look. After telling her all about how Time Lords are above love and romance the Doctor goes and proves her wrong and you can read from Missy’s face that she thinks “oh what an idiot”.

When the Doctor tells Clara that she needs another relationship, what he actually tells her is that she needs a relationship with a human, someone mortal, someone to keep her grounded. He wasn’t okay sharing Clara with Danny, but I think Clara’s relationship with Jane Austen is proof enough that he isn’t generally against sharing her with a person who would be good for her. He repeats that later in TGWD. However, Clara reassures him that he is enough for her both times.

Funnily enough the bit of dialogue in between where he tells her that humans are always writing songs about relationships or go to war is exactly what the Doctor will do for Clara at a later point.

I’m still in shock over the fact that this line was actually on the show. Obviously, they never say “I love you” to each other. Clara doesn’t because she promised Danny that she wouldn’t say it to someone else. The Doctor doesn’t because his feelings for her are a lot deeper than a simple “I love you”. Yet here is the confirmation that they loved each other. Clara assumes it and the Doctor proves it by coming back for her.

This is the scene where Clara understands for the first time just how their relationship is going to end, I believe. He said it to her before during that episode, he said that one day the memory of her will hurt so much that he won’t be able to breathe, but I don’t think Clara understood it at that point because they were still in the middle of trying to save Ashildr. Here she realizes that she is the person the Doctor truly can’t bear to lose.

Again, they never said those three words to each other for reasons I’ve already mentions and right before her death Clara is afraid that he is going to say them at last because it would rob her of her courage to go through with it. She knows that he loves her, but if she hears those words she knows she will want to stay. For his and for her own sake.

The parallel with the old couple was wonderful and subtle, but that is exactly what the Doctor and Clara are at this point. They are in a romantic relationship, if not married. And there is a wonderful theory out there that I’ve seen her here, but I don’t remember who posted it that said the sudden shift in their S9 relationship makes much more sense if you assume they got married after “Last Christmas”.

In his quiet moments during his 4.5 billion years in the confession dial that is what the Doctor does. He imagines that Clara is by his side. Steven Moffat also said in an interview that the Doctor painted the portrait of Clara from memory.

Again I’d like to point out that the Doctor spent 4.5 billion years trapped in his own person torture chamber and there are moments he thinks about giving up, he thinks about confessing everything, but he doesn’t because that is his last chance of saving Clara. It’s a small chance, but he clings to it because he is determined to get her back.

Even Clara is surprised when she learns just how far he would go for her, what he would go through just to have a tiny chance of saving her and she is shocked that he would do that.

Finally, in the cloisters, Clara decides to come clean and I believe she told him a lot of things during the scene we never saw, including that she loves him, even though she might not have used those exact words.

Ashildr is older than the Doctor in this scene and she has seen everything there is to see. She knows the Doctor and Clara are more than just friends, she tells him her theory that together they are the hybrid. That is how strong their love is - it can destroy the universe.

In the end they both realize that they have to part ways because if they don’t do it now, they will never have the courage to, but even this last scene shows how bonded they truly are. “Let’s do it like we’ve done everything else. Together.” And by everything I believe they truly mean everything.

#whouffaldi #whouffle #twelve x clara #doctor who #feel free to add stuff

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bardqueenofgallifrey · 7 years

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i think the problem w/ intense whouffaldi & johnlock shippers is that they underrate how much moffat believes in/values strong friendships. see his comment about bill & the doctor's relationship from the pre series publicity: It has all the spark and joy of a non-romantic romance. Do you know what I mean by that? When you meet somebody who really does become incredibly close to you and it has an awful lot of what a romance has, except it doesn’t have any sex or romance in it" ...

continued: "When you meet the people in your life who do become your great teachers, you do have a different sort of crush on them. As I say, it’s not an erotic one. It’s a fascination. It’s a joy in their company. It’s meeting someone who opens new doors to you. That’s a good relationship to model the Doctor and his best pal on." which is an approach that is very present w/ eleven/ amy as well tho very differently.

You’re absolutely right, of course.

The funny thing about all this is that I AM a Whouffaldi shipper - sometimes whether thats queerplatonic or romantic will vary depending on my mood, but that’s a mere detail. It’s a great ship, with a lot of canon support even if I wouldn’t necessarily call it canon (it’s very close, it’s very up in the air).

It’s just that you see some people with the mentality that “he spent all that time in the confession dial for her, how can you say they’re JUST FRIENDS”.

Mainly, I take issue with the phrase “just friends”, especially in the content of Doctor Who when friendships are given so much value. Anyone saying that kind of thing implies that the Doctor would not do that for a platonic friend, which we know is absolutely untrue.

Moffat definitely places a huge amount of value on intense, intimate friendships, which we can guess is due to his own relationship with Mark Gatiss, which is very much the same. Johnlock especially seems to be their way of expressing their own relationship, expressing how two men can love each other so intensely in a way that isn’t romantic in nature.

What Moffat is describing there in your quote is a ‘squish’, a platonic crush. And I think it’s plain as day just how much value he places on platonic relationships, as we’ve seen with Eleven with both Amy and Rory, and with Twelve and Bill. And it’s definitely plausible for some people to read Twelve’s relationship with Clara to be very much on a similar angle (though it’s still a lot more intense/codependent/unhealthy), just as it is for a lot of people to read it as more romantic.

But the idea that it being romantic makes it somehow more powerful is just... yeah. No. I absolutely would go to hell and back for my friends, they are the people I love the most in this world alongside my family. I am literally planning to marry my best friend because she is the one I can’t imagine living my life without.

Platonic relationships are so, so important. The words “I don’t think it was explicitly romantic” should never feel like it’s trying to belittle something, because it really isn’t, not in this context, not on this show, not with these characters.

#doctor who #steven moffat #mark gatiss #anti johnlock #twelfth doctor #anon asks #dw discourse #idk how to tag this i need a consistent tag for this kind of thing

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ao3feed-doctorwho · 4 years

Text

You Sound Like a Song

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2WT4DR8

by chipsandcoffee

The Doctor is settled at St. Luke's University and trying to move on with his life. But he still can't stop thinking about the mysterious woman named Clara and what might have become of her.

Words: 4316, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M

Characters: Twelfth Doctor, Clara Oswin Oswald

Relationships: Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald

Additional Tags: Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, Fix-It of Sorts, Memory Loss, Confessions, Angst, Romance, eternal love, Season/Series 10 Spoilers, Cameo Appearance by Bill Potts, whouffaldi, Canon Compliant, Technically at least

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2WT4DR8

#IFTTT #ao3feed #fanfic #doctor who #dw

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chipsandcoffee · 4 years

Text

Why? Why would you even do that to yourself?

Gah, this moment! This is one of those moments that grab my heart so much that I had to make a gif for my own benefit, just so I could watch it over and over and take in every millisecond of it.

Just the sheer raw emotion emanating from Clara here. She's just learned that Twelve spent four and a half billion years in his confession dial, and she's bursting with a mixture of outrage, anguish, anger, and heartbreak, and she directs it all straight at Twelve.

She reaches towards him, and the contact she makes feels to me like sort of a clutch, push, smack, and embrace all at once. Interestingly, according to the Hell Bent script published online, there wasn't originally meant to be any physical contact between them here at all - I'm glad they added it, I think it highlights how explosive Clara's emotions are in response to learning the extent of Twelve's ordeal.

As for Twelve, he sees her coming at him, and you might expect him to shrink back slightly. But he doesn't. If anything, he actually leans towards her. And when she rises up slightly, so does he. He's been through a hell of a lot to be with the woman he loves, and he is going to be with her now, whatever she's going through and whatever she wants to throw at him.

Of course it's a terribly fraught situation, but I'll be honest - this moment also feels kinda hot to me, with all that close physical contact going on in the midst of all that emotion. I mean look at how close together their faces get! And okay, I kinda can't help imagining Twelve answering Clara's question by laying a kiss on her right at the end there. (Have I been reading too much Whouffaldi fanfic? Pfft, no such thing!)

I'll leave the last word to Mr. Steven Moffat, who interestingly enough mentioned this Hell Bent moment during the Heaven Sent watchalong event.

#wow writing 330 words about 3.7 seconds of screen time might be a record even for me #i suspect eventually i will wind up giffing and analyzing #every second of the cloisters scene #and why not #whouffaldi #twelfth doctor #clara oswald #steven moffat #whouffaldi meta #whouffaldi scene analysis #hell bent #my stuff

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chipsandcoffee · 4 years

Text

Whouffaldi Fanfic

“You Sound Like a Song”

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

Also on AO3 at this link.

______________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

______________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What have you been doing all that time?”

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

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

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

Clara’s face turned serious and she glanced down.

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

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

“Right, okay.”

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

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

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

“What do you mean?”

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

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

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

“You what?”

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

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

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

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

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s wrong, Doctor?”

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

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

He shook his head and half-shrugged his shoulders.

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

______________

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

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

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

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

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

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

“‘Night, Doctor. See ya tomorrow.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

______________

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

#i'm so nervous/excited to finally publish this #my first fic #whouffaldi #fanfic #fan fiction #my fanfic

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lizzy-bennet · 5 years

Text

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

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

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

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

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

But he can’t remember it.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I think it’s called Clara.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m surprised you were playing it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You, Diner Girl!” he says suddenly.

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

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

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

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

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

“You remember me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

”You teach here?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he is dying.

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

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

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

And he recognizes her.

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

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

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

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

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

Then comes what she told him in the cloisters.

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

The melody in his mind has lyrics.

#whouffle #whouffaldi #doctor who #twelfth doctor #clara oswald #twelfth doctor x clara #twelveclara #clara x twelfth doctor #twelve x clara #clara x twelve #whouffle fic #whouffaldi fic #whouffaldi fanfic #whouffaldi fanfiction #whouffle fanfic #clara x the doctor #the doctor x clara #hell bent #my fic

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