Yowzah Oneshot Collection (3)

167(G)

          The Love Of The Doctor

          PrePsychPineappleLover

It’s still a mystery to Clara Oswald how she survived her jump into the Doctor’s distorted, jangled timeline. She supposed he saved her… again, but she can’t be sure.

All she knew is that she opened her eyes and it was morning and she was lying in her bed, sleeping like everything had just been a dream.

Everything?

Clara tried to pinpoint the moment when the strange, impossible memories in her head started happening.

The last thing that seemed to make sense to her was the letter she received from Madame Vastra. She summoned a conference call to form an alliance against the Great Intelligence, because it was after the Doctor.

Yes, she thought, that must be it.

So, obviously, she passed out and woke up, sitting on this table with the Lizard Woman, Jenny and the Potatohead. That must have been where her dream began.

But if she passed out on the floor then how did she end up in bed? And was the threat a figment of her imagination, too? If she didn’t really follow the Great Intelligence into the time stream, where was it now? Is the Doctor still in danger? Was he ever? Is there really a planet out there that looks like a giant battlefield on which the Doctor eventually will find his last place of rest?

His TARDIS as his tomb and his real name as the key, so that no one that he doesn’t trust completely – ergo, no one but him – could ever enter it...

That thought made Clara pause.

Because they did enter it… assuming that all of this in fact really happened.

Someone knew his name. Someone other than the Doctor himself. Not Clara, for sure, although there was a strange nagging in the furthest corners of her mind, telling her that she did know it once.

There was someone else.

Not a moment later, a name appeared in Clara’s mind.

“River.”

It was the Doctor’s voice who spoke in her head. And she flashed back and saw him running his finger over that exact name engraved in an ancient, cold tombstone. His face twisted in sorrow and the name whispered with so much pain and yearning that it shook Clara to the core. Even now, as she was sitting at the edge of her bed, still wondering what was real.

River… the woman with the space-hair. Those golden curls, seemingly going on forever yet stopping at her shoulders and surrounding her head like an untamable mess. The woman with sass and cocky resoluteness in her striking blue eyes.

She was at Madame Vastra’s table, too. And she was with them later, though Clara seemed to be the only one who could still see her.

She knew his name.

“Ahh, there you are. Awake from the dead.”

A voice suddenly interrupted Clara’s thoughts and she turned her head towards the door. The Doctor came in with a huge grin on his face and a tray with tea balancing in his jittery, nervous hands. The tea pot wobbled dangerously as the Doctor made his way over to her way too quickly and with too much flourish. Only when he set the tray down beside her, Clara realized that she had been holding her breath.

“So, how are we?” The Doctor asked and clapped his now-free hands together.

“Dead?” Clara only managed to repeat and the Doctor furrowed his brows. “You said I awoke from the dead.” she added. “Is that true? Did I die?”