Running and Remembering

Chapter Five

The blackness that floats around me is so familiar, and the eerie silence that accompanies it feels like an old friend.  I let myself float in this world of darkness, and soak it all in. It feels strange not knowing anything, just being a conscience. Feeling, not seeing or knowing. Just. Feeling.

I see a light in a far off corner of my mind, and I swim to it. It gets brighter as I near and then, like a tsunami of pain and memory, the light washes over me.

I open my eyes to see a man with a chin. A large chin. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a chin. The chin man holds up a pocket watch for me to see. The watch glows and shimmers with gold and energy. The man says something that sounds like an echo, “Clara, are you ready for the second part of your procedure?” There’s worry in his eyes when he says it. I think nod, because he nods back and clicks the pocket watch open.

There is another flood of memories and light, but there’s no pain with this tsunami. Once again, I feel. It seems like I haven’t felt anything since the beginning of this, I’ve only seen pain and light. Feelings of love and loss, achievement and utter failure, finding and losing. My head and my heart hurt with feeling and memory, and I only feel a tingling warmth spreading through my veins. I know now that I have experienced so much pain in my short human life, and I will experience more on this new timeline of mine.

My eyes shoot open, and I feel an unfamiliar beat in my chest, a second heart to accompany the first. I see The Doctor, whose green eyes watch me with fear and excitement. I know he wants some kind of confirmation that I am me, that I am okay, and that his dear Clara Oswald is his.

“Doctor, I can see so much. “  

He looks at me with a smile and questioning eyes.

“Doctor,” I reach out and touch his hand. He’s so warm, “I remember. I am Clara Oswald. You’ve saved my life countless times, and I have saved yours in other lives. You’re a total madman, and I love that. “

He smiles a ginormous, goofy, Doctor smile and pulls me into a hug. He holds my head in one of his hands, with the other on my back, like he’s afraid of letting me go. “My Clara. Oh, my Clara Oswald, you are so beautiful.”

We embrace for a long time, our four hearts beating against each other, our ribcages expanding and breathing and living.  After a while he decides that he needs to get me back to the kids, Artie and Nina. “They’re still at home, probably thinking that their favorite nanny is dead, thanks to her mysterious, alien boyfriend.” He says, and I agree. They’re probably worried sick about me.

When we get to the sidewalk leading to the Maitland’s house I see a curtain flutter back to the window of the large, white house. Suddenly, two children burst through the door screaming, “Clara! You’re alive! We thought you were dead!”

They hold me in a tight and emotional hug full of tears, and I hug them back, so grateful to have my own head back with my proper memories and to have these kids back, a source of wonderful love, even though at times it may be hidden or full of sass at times. I cry with them. I sob and I breathe and I feel their breathing and solitary hearts against mine. This body and this mind are new and so full of a range of feeling and emotion I never experienced as a human. As the red-eyed children let go of my waist, I take a deep breath and look at them. They’re smiling, and crying tears of happiness that they soon wipe away with a swipe of a sleeve pulled up onto a palm.

“Clara oh my god please never do that again.” Angie says, stifling sobs. Artie nods, while looking at his older sister.

“Yeah. We missed you, the real you, the one that remembers all of our cool adventures and stuff.”

I bite my lip to keep from crying more, and I bend down to look Artie in the eyes.

“Artie, I will never leave you ever again,” I look up at Nina, with my hand on Artie’s shoulder, “Nina, same goes for you. I will never, ever abandon you guys, even when you’re all grown up and old and just wish for a nice plate of common sense with a side of prune juice.”

Artie and Nina laugh, and I feel so complete again. I feel like everything I lost when I attempted suicide is back, but there is more there, and it’s so more than an extra heart.