Work Text:
“YOU GOT THREE, I WAS TWO, MISTER DELAWARE WAS FOUR,” CLARA HEARS AND RECOGNIZES THE VOICE OF PROFESSOR RIVER SONG WITHOUT NEEDING TO LOOK UP. It had been 402 years for Clara since the war-torn, snow-covered graves of her and the Doctor’s trip to Trenzalore, but she isn’t sure she’d ever be able to forget the woman who had both killed and married the Doctor.
The diner is mostly quiet as River Song and her two parents enter. It’s all still in the future for Amy and Rory, the reveal that River Song is their dear sweet Melody, not quite born yet, but alive all the same, and Clara can see that River knows the truth. It’s obvious in her eyes, her gait, the trust she has in what could otherwise be two strangers. Travels with the Doctor can bind just about anyone, no matter what differences there may be, but there’s something different in the trio, clear to the eye as Amy— dear God, this woman was made of legs, wasn’t she?— leans against a booth as River and Rory chatter away about who could’ve received the TARDIS blue envelope labeled ‘1’.
“Will you two shut up? It doesn’t matter.” Amy’s voice is despondent, raw with the grief of a dear friend, but so very Scottish. Clara presses her mouth into a thin line to keep from arguing, to tell Amy that the Doctor mattered more than anyone, human or alien. To tell Amy that it always mattered if the Doctor was alive or dead, and that he was fine. But she can’t say anything, because she knows too much about what needs to happen and what can never be spoken, so instead Clara's hand begins to shake as she watches the pot of coffee fill.
Perhaps Me had been correct in telling her this spot, this time, this moment was a terrible idea to visit, but Clara doesn’t know any other time to be. Gallifrey was calling, her death looming larger and ever closer, and she’s seen all she had wanted. She’s seen worlds explode into creation and burn bright as they dissolved in the waves of supernovas. She’s seen empires rise and fall like the tides, and she’s more than had her fun with a few of history's most notable names, as well as many in the future, just twinkles in the eyes of the human, and on many occasions, alien races. Being functionally immortal was getting to be more of a chore than exciting, and Clara isn’t sure how Me could ever have stood being on her own as long as she had been.
Seeing the Doctor, her Doctor, was the last thing she’d wanted before her death, and with an argument like that, how could Me have ever refused?
Clara takes a few breaths to calm herself and still her hand as River ignores her mother, her attention still focused solely on Rory. “He’s up to something.”
“He’s dead.” Amy’s voice isn’t any louder, just barely audible over the patron who whistles at Clara, likely wanting a refill of the coffee he was nursing.
“‘Space 1969’. What does he mean?”
Clara turns to the patron, coffee pot full, and begins to pour it into his cup as Amy’s head snaps to her unknown daughter and husband, evidently sick of being ignored. “You’re still talking.” Her voice is harder now, but the congestion of mucus in her nose makes her accent sound more nasally than it had been upon entry. “But it doesn’t matter.”
“Hey,” Rory’s attention turns to his wife, voice matching her hardness, hand out and taking a few steps back to her. “It mattered to him.”
The patron's cup was nearing full as Clara stepped away from the patron, mumbling, “Here you are, enjoy,” under her breath as she did so, not wanting to miss a moment of what was unfolding in front of her.
River doesn’t notice her (why would she have?), instead following her father, though her voice is kinder when she speaks to Amy. “So it matters to us.”
“He’s dead,” Amy’s voice is hardly more than a whisper, and Clara feels unshed tears sting in her eyes. He wasn’t, not yet, but Amy wouldn’t be around for when this Doctor died, replaced by an angry Scotsman with attack eyebrows, a better man than he could ever know. No, instead, Amy believes in the narrative the Doctor had created, perfectly tailored to begin to silence his impact on the universe.
“But he still needs us!” River insists, taking a few steps to her mother, hand reaching for her before seeming to think better of it. “I know, Amy, I know.”
She didn’t, Clara decided. River didn’t know at all, because River didn’t witness it either. She blinks back the tears as she tries not think of the Doctor’s regeneration, but especially not about how Clara had been the only one there to say goodbye, other than the hallucination of young Amelia Pond.
River’s still talking. “But right now, we have to focus.”
Amy all but rolls her eyes, her face stoic, but Rory pulls their attention his way after his eyes catch on an envelope, further down the diner on one of the two-seater tables, next to a half-drunk glass bottle of Coca-Cola. The envelope is TARDIS blue, opened, and not too terribly unlike their own. “Look,” his voice is urgent, staring at it and tapping River on the back until her head turns to the envelope.
Clara remembers having a pulse, a heartbeat, and she figures it takes less than a heartbeat’s time for River to have snatched up the envelope, and for Rory to be standing in front of Clara.
Oswin, her echo trapped in the Dalek Asylum, who’d actually conversed with Rory in only a few years for him, had called Rory ‘Nina’, and while Clara generally preferred to keep her echoes as far from herself as possible, she elects to call him that in her head, supposing she might be able to get through whatever was to happen next easier if she did. “Excuse me, who was sitting over there?”
“Some guy,” Clara finds herself able to say, picking up a rag to wipe down the counter with, though her voice sounds strange to her ears, which she figures can only be a good thing. She doesn’t know if it was the Doctor, not really, because Me had served him the soda before the two had swapped places in preparation for this very moment, but the envelope made it obvious. By Clara’s count, he’d only been gone about 10 minutes.
“The Doctor knew he was going to his death, so he sent out messages.” River’s words are rushed as she speaks, turning to her parents just as Nina turns to face her, and Amy finally seems to pry her eyes away from the booth seat. “When you know it’s the end, who do you call?”
Nina’s able to process the question faster than his wife. “Uh, your friends, people you trust,”
River holds up the envelope to her parents; TARDIS blue with a white ‘1’ across the top. “Number one,” she announces, her voice straining to keep calm, though Clara can hear the wobble. “Who did the Doctor trust the most?”
It’s inevitable as it happens; Clara’s eyes turn to the creaking of the back door as it swings open, a figure stepping out with an all too familiar head of brown hair, swooped to one side, wearing a lighter color tweed blazer than Clara had ever known him to.
This is him in the before, she knows. This is the Doctor in the days before the tragedy of Amy and Rory Pond.
She doesn’t know it, not really, but Oswin does, and by virtue of being the same, she does too. She knows the lightness he carries, the eternity and sorrow that have yet to fully settle in his eyes. She knows the darkness that exists in this young form, bubbling just below the surface, waiting for the moment it can be released, but it seems less easy to spot than it had been in the after.
The Doctor strides in a few steps, TARDIS visible through the open door, and Clara is elated to discover no patron, other than the Ponds, but not yet their daughter, is looking at the disturbance. At the sight of the grumpy old cow she’d once known and bickered with, Clara almost has to laugh at the absurdity of it all. A TARDIS parked inside another TARDIS. Just how had the pair of them managed that?
As his eyes, still so young and full of life, leave the ground and land on his companions, a straw held in place between his teeth, the Doctor smiles.
If Clara had a pulse, it might’ve leaped at that moment. If Clara could feel a heartbeat, it would’ve doubled. But Clara is in between breaths, stuck in the limbo between life and death, and her Doctor, the one she fell in love with, the one who died just as she’d begun to sort out her feelings for him, isn’t looking at her. He doesn’t know her, not yet. Clara had thought she was out of the woods of such strong emotions upon simply seeing her Doctor, of missing him far more than she should over 400 years later, but in a moment like this, despite knowing all that lies ahead of him, Clara fears for a moment that he will never know her.
To him, she is not yet his ‘Impossible Girl’, who he’d damn near break the universe in half to save from death a third time. To him, she isn’t yet the girl who stepped into his timestream, a leaf blowing in the time winds of his life, to save him a thousand million times over. To him, at this moment, she is a nameless waitress in a dark blue retro dress and a Wild West-themed diner in the Utah desert, and thus not deserving of a glance.
Instead, his eyes are fully focused on his friends, the ones he knows and recognizes, a finger pointed at all of them as he all but laughs, evidently delighted to see the three of them together, at the same date and time and place as he was.
River recovers first, having spun toward him. “This is cold,” her voice flat. “Even by your standards, this is cold.”
The Doctor removes the straw from his mouth, though he looks unperturbed by River’s words. “Or ‘hello’, as people used to say.”
“Doctor?” Amy questions, her voice catching at the end as she breathes in a trembling gasp.
“I just popped out to get my special straw,” the Doctor says by way of explanation, not reading the room as Clara feels the sting of tears in her eyes once more, batting her eyes a few times to clear them, a smile threatening to spread across her lips. At least this was better than the Barbie he’d kissed in 1983 aboard a Soviet submarine, though he displayed the same level of social awareness now as he would then. “It adds more fizz.”
Amy moves forward, her first real movement since leaning against the booth, where she’d scolded her husband and future child for focusing on anything other than the Doctor being dead. Her movements are hollow, like she’s moving without thinking of it, up to the Doctor before walking in a circle around him. It probably wouldn’t have been Clara’s first move after discovering her lifelong friend was still alive, but Clara watches the Doctor spin on the spot as Amy stares at him. “You’re okay,” the words are quiet, Amy’s breath catching again, hand on his shoulder to feel how real, how solid, how alive he was as her voice turns hard as rock in moments. “How can you be okay?”
The Doctor looks like her words are a personal affront, pulling Amy into a hug as his tone matches her initial one. “Hey,” he soothes, holding her close. “Of course I’m okay, I’m always okay, I’m the king of okay.”
Clara watches as the words don’t settle right in his mouth, and his face falls, and she figures they had sounded better in his head, a smile she can’t catch in time grazing her lips at the thought. For as awful as she had pictured it would be to see him again, she’s smiling far more than she’d bargained for. “Oh, that’s a rubbish title. Forget that title.” The Doctor pats Amy on the back twice before pulling away and dashing for Nina, arms up and a mess of limbs as he reaches for a hug. “Rory the Roman! That’s a good title!” He announces with a dramatic flourish as Nina accepts the proffered hug with a dazed look and a half-hearted embrace before holding his hands up in a physical expression of his confusion.
The Doctor releases Nina a moment later, before spinning on his heel to face his future wife. It had always been unclear to Clara what the Doctor had thought about River before truly knowing her, learning who she was, as Clara had existed in the aftermath of all of their adventures, outside of Trenzalore. But as Clara watches the Doctor, several hundred years younger than the one she’d come to know, saunter up to Professor River Song, it’s clear that he fancied her much more than he’d initially let Clara believe, and suddenly the armor she’d built around herself to protect herself from whatever this moment could offer had a sizable chip in it.
In the early days of their relationship, River Song existed as nothing more than a figure to be cursed at when the Doctor and Clara were chased off planets the Doctor had sworn he’d never been to, or when something exploded in the TARDIS that he’d promised he hadn’t touched in donkey’s ears. She existed as this illustrious woman the Doctor crossed paths with, not frequently, but who had left a larger impact on his life than most.
And, of course, Clara had known of their marriage. It had happened in the doomed timeline, where all of history began to happen all at once, and Winston Churchill was Holy Roman Emperor, all to be saved with a kiss. It was how this, this moment right now, with an alive Doctor after his friends had buried him with a Viking funeral at Lake Silencio, was to all finish. The ambiguity of the marriage was hotly contested in this timeline, but it was all still ahead of him, even if it wasn’t for her.
“And Dr. River Song,” the Doctor’s voice is practically purring, evidently doing his best to flirt, getting up into her personal space as he saunters to her, and Clara cringes at the sight of it all, taming down the near instant jealousy she’d felt. It was his wife, after all, and he wouldn’t know she’d seen it all. Not now, not ever likely. “Oh, you bad, bad girl. What trouble have you got for me this time?”
It’s the second inevitable thing of the moment, and it happens in the blink of an eye. The slap that reverberates through the small space, though it barely causes the patron who’d requested more coffee to look up at the sound. Clara has to bite back the laugh that wants to escape as the Doctor visibly resets, though River’s eyes are cold.
“Okay,” he breathes out, righting his gaze back to River, and Clara can tell by the way his hand shakes and sputters near his neck that he wants to adjust the deep purple bow tie around his neck, but is likely holding off out of fear of being slapped again. “I’m assuming that’s for something I haven’t done yet.”
River head nods jerkily, eyes wide and taking a deep breath as she does so. “Yes, it is.”
The Doctor straightens at the words, having probably been expecting them and yet not having wished to hear them. “Good, looking forward to it.”
“I don’t understand,” Nina announces, louder than Clara thinks he intended to, turning the Doctor’s attention back to him. Clara busies herself kneeling to make sure the coffee filters are stocked. It was reaching the time of night where long-haul drivers stopped in for something to drink, usually a fresh mug of extremely bitter coffee to keep their wits about them, and Clara needed to keep out of the Doctor’s eyeline. She doesn’t suppose it would change anything, because he’s not focused on her at this point, or any point until the Ponds are gone and he’s met her Victorian echo, but it was the principle of the matter, to Clara at least. Keep the timeline intact, die with a recent memory of the Doctor, her Doctor, alive and well, and with his friends. “How can you be here?”
The Doctor doesn’t seem to understand the confusion in Nina’s question, as his voice is full of mockery as he replies, “I was invited.” He grabs the TARDIS blue envelope from River’s hands, pulling the card inside out to show proof. “Date, map reference. Same as you lot, I assume. Otherwise, it’s a hell of a coincidence.”
“River, what’s going on?” Amy’s question sounds less dazed than Nina’s had, more angry.
River didn’t seem fazed. “Amy, ask him what age he is.”
“That’s a bit personal,” the Doctor argued, tossing the envelope back on the table, and Clara smirked to herself as she replaced the paper coffee filter in the pot. Nina’s hands were over his face by this point, and Clara might’ve wanted to laugh at the sight of it all, but one look at the Doctor didn’t make her want to do anything but cry and hug him so tight he regenerated.
“Tell her,” River’s tone leaves no room for argument, though her words are frantic. “Tell her what age you are!”
“909,” the number is lower than Clara had expected, though it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise. This incarnation was destined to spend nearly that amount of time defending Trenzalore before his death, and his successor was to spend billions inside a confession dial alone.
“Yeah, but you said you were-,” Amy starts.
River cuts her off, and Clara can hear the sing-songy tone of her voice saying ‘Spoilers!’ without needing to hear it. “So where does that leave us?” River’s breaths are panting, snatching the envelope off the table to grip it tight in her hands. Clara thought she might have slapped him again if she hadn’t been holding the envelope so tight. “Jim the Fish? Have we done Jim the Fish yet?”
The Doctor, who hadn’t reacted to the name, smiled sardonically at River as he asked with a laugh, “Who’s Jim the Fish?” And while she hadn’t thought it possible, Clara’s heart broke just a bit further, knowing how much he’d loved Jim the Fish.
“I don’t understand,” Amy now echoed Nina’s sentiments.
“Yeah, you do.” Nina’s sentiments had changed, hands removed from his face, and now walking closer to his wife, a sort of ‘it’s obvious’ tone to his voice. Oswin would’ve laughed, Clara realized as she listened, watching the quartet. Oswin had liked Nina quite a lot, even as the Dalek she was.
“I don’t!” The Doctor interjected, sounding quite put off at the idea of not understanding something that had gone on too long. It was a tone of voice he’d used quite often when traveling with Clara, and she briefly wondered how often he’d used it with his beloved Pond’s. It seemed to fit more with the after of the Ponds than it did in the before. “What are we all doing here?”
It’s a moment of the Doctor looking between Amy, Nina, and River before any of them dare reply, and to Clara’s complete unsurprise, River’s the one to do so. “We’ve been recruited,” the words sound odd, wobbly, like she’s not used to lying to his version of him when Clara’s almost certain she’d done so quite easily before. Perhaps seeing his death and sudden aliveness had a more profound impact on her than Clara had initially realized. “Something to do with space, 1969, and a man named Canton Everett Delaware III.”
The Doctor had spun on his heel away from the trio and walked towards the door, facing the front windows of the diner, straw that added extra fizz back between his teeth as he glowered out the windows into the night. “Recruited by who?”
“Someone who trusts you more than anybody else in the universe,”
The Doctor spun back to face them, evidently perturbed by her words, face darker than it had been the whole time. It was a face Clara had seen too many times in their short time together, and it wasn’t to be taken lightly, or lied to. Armies fled, armadas dashed for cover, entire world’s threatened to crumble and break at that face, and the words that will come with it are as much of a threat as anything else in his being was.
His stance would look casual to the outside observer, with one hand holding the straw, freshly plucked again from his mouth, and one at his side, but Clara saw the rigidity in it. She saw the perfected slouch, the darkness that threatened to consume him, under a perfectly curated image of calm, like he frequented dangerous questions and uncharted scenarios of his own timeline.
Of course, to Clara, he had, but this Doctor, the Doctor in the before, didn’t know that. Wasn’t to know that, not until the time was right, which was three years further down for him still, aged 1,103 on the banks of Lake Silencio.
“And who’s that?” The words had been plucked from the dictionary inside his head, chosen specifically and with care, and with a deadly calm, he dared the trio to challenge him, to defy him.
River took another shaky breath, shaking her head, and breathed, “Spoilers.”
It’s another beat as the Doctor stared at them, almost debating with himself whether to demand answers or not, before he turned, suddenly and without warning, to Clara.
The world seemed to freeze as Clara and the Doctor, two should-be strangers but far more complicated than that could ever allow for, locked eyes. For Clara, all of time was frozen, up until the Time Lords restored her to Trapp Street at the moment of her death. That moment, oblivion coming for her, was a fixed point. It was inevitable.
This, her and the Doctor locking eyes, wasn’t inevitable. This was a picture-perfect example of completely avoidable, had Clara thought to remain out of sight, or had Clara thought to keep her shifts with Me the same and simply overhear this moment between her Doctor and his friends from the countertop barstools. But no, Clara had wanted one moment, before the inevitable, to see her Doctor and reminisce and smile. One moment to be able to go to her grave with her Doctor alive.
There’s nothing in the Doctor’s being as he looks at her. No hint of recognition, no catch of breath, no moment of epiphany as he gazes at her, unflinching, and suddenly Clara is back 399 years previous, standing in front of his successor, leaning across the countertop as he played a lovely tune on his electric guitar, not a hint of recognition in his eyes and Clara desperately hoped he’d remember her despite the memory wipe. It had broken her heart then, the lack of anything in his eyes, but this hurt more than Clara had been expecting it to, despite knowing exactly how this was to play out.
“Waitress?” The Doctor asked, and Clara’s heart shattered. She was wearing a name tag, but she was so inconsequential to the Doctor at this moment that he hadn’t even bothered to glance at it. Perhaps he would think back to this as another of her echoes in his very long life, even if everything about this was nothing like the echoes he’d previously seen. “There’s a half-drunk Coke down that way. Mind putting it in a to-go cup and ringing me up? My compatriots and I have to head out.”
Clara nodded, though her movements felt as stiff as River’s head nod mere moments before had looked, and her eyes began to sting again. “Of course,” she manages, hiding her face and making her way blindly down the small space behind the counter, reaching for a to-go cup and lid. “I’ll have that ready in just a mo’.”
“Good,” the Doctor didn’t sound like anything was good about this at all. “Ponds, Song, TARDIS with you. I’ll be there in a tick.”
Amy, Nina, and River make their way to the TARDIS, chatting quietly but fervently as Clara pours the soda into the cup, places the lid on top, and makes her way back to the register, where the Doctor is already standing, a handful of bills in his hand. Clara nearly falters at the sight, cup almost dropping from her hand as a result, as she had never known her Doctor, or his successor, to carry money, but she secures her grip on the cup as the Doctor waits for her to punch in the correct order.
“That’ll be all for you, yeah?” The Doctor makes a hum that she knows to be a ‘yes’. “$2.50.”
The Doctor all but throws the five-dollar bill at her, muttering something along the lines of, “Keep the change,” and making a move for his soda.
Clara’s grip is a vice on the cup, unwilling to let go for a reason she couldn’t quite decipher, and soon his eyes, which had strayed to the countertop, were back on hers. There was a strange fire in them, though she couldn’t and wouldn’t determine if it was the remnant of his conversations with the Ponds and River or her reluctance to hand him his drink, but, more importantly to Clara, there was now a glimmer of confusion. “I paid for that,” he says by way of trying to get her to let go.
“Are you happy?” The words slip out unbidden just as Clara lets go of the cup, and her eyes widen. She definitely wasn’t supposed to do any more interaction with the Doctor than strictly necessary, and asking unprompted questions of his happiness, of all things to inquire about, didn’t even land in the vicinity of ‘strictly necessary communication’.
“Excuse me?” The question has a laugh to it, like something in it was funny to the Doctor.
“Forgive my asking,” Clara stumbled, unable to meet his gaze. “I don’t— oh my stars— I don’t mean to pry, and I didn’t mean to ask, not really.”
“Then why did you?”
It’s a genuine question, and somehow, maybe because it’s her Doctor, or maybe something in how he asks it, or how he’s looking at her, like he really wants to know, but Clara finds herself able to meet his eye. “I’m dying,” she tells him, shocking both him and herself with the honesty, and suddenly it’s like a flood gate opens and words are pouring out. “Any day now, really. It’s been a long time coming, longer than you or anyone could ever be able to guess. But it’s here now, and I’m standing here, back behind this countertop, and watching people and wondering what it would mean to be… happy. To meet death, to march towards oblivion, and feel happy about it and the life you’ve lived.”
The Doctor gapes at her for a moment, evidently not having expected radical honesty. “I’m sorry,” he settles for eventually, sticking the straw he’d been carrying for several minutes through the lid of the to-go cup. “I would say yes, I suppose. I am happy. I’ve got my fizz straw, my three best mates in the universe, and they want to go on another adventure. That’s… happiness, to me.” His eyes are now wistful, all trace of fire and question gone as he stares at the door, through which the TARDIS and his friends lie in wait. “Or, at least, as close as I can ever seem to get.”
Clara ducks her head, nodding once, and presses her lips together to keep her lip from wobbling. “Good,” she manages when she can, which is only after she is sure her voice won’t waver. “That’s good. That’s really good.”
“Are you? Happy, I mean?”
The Doctor makes people feel brave. He inspired bravery in such numbers that armies will meet him at Demon’s Run in the coming months. In those armies, one soldier, who had only met the Doctor once, back when they’d run through a long-forgotten forest together. She would die that day, at Demon’s Run, with the battle lost and the child gone, but she was as brave as she had ever been, and filled with hope that he would figure out a way to win the day.
More importantly, to Clara, she had the bravery to face the end when he didn’t.
And it’s that same bravery Clara feels stirring inside her as she meets the Doctor’s gaze once more, a smile across her face so wide she fears it’s too bright, as the Doctor seems to falter and soften before it, like she’d seen him do hundreds, if not thousands, of times before. “Yeah,” she tells him, voice light and full of wonder at how true it felt to say. The Doctor may lie, Clara was well aware of that fact, but for once, she wasn’t. “I’m happy. I’m better than happy, actually. I’m… fantastic.”
At the word she knows he’ll recognize, even if he won’t get how she knew to use it and maybe never would, The Doctor’s eyes glance down at her name tag before meeting her gaze once more, a smile settling across his face. “Clara,” he greets, holding out his hand for a shake, which she does, before pulling his hand back and making his way for the back door. “Nice name. Should definitely keep it,” he calls over his shoulder, reaching for the handle on the door and spinning, smiling at her, before disappearing into the room to meet his friends as the door creaks closed behind him.
Clara grins to herself as she hears the TARDIS taking flight, and it isn’t too long before the remaining patrons shuffle out for the evening, knowing the routine of the diner to close to allow for breaks. In thirty minutes, the parking lot would be filled to bursting with long-haul trucks and their tired drivers, eager for a cup of joe to pick their spirits back up and encourage them back onto the nearby highway. Clara wouldn’t see the regulars, but she thought of them, and wondered if they would think of her once she was gone.
Once the front door is locked, Clara makes her way to the other rear door, stepping into the console room where Me is waiting, staring at a monitor of the diner. “That looked like it went well, though you made a fool of yourself when you asked him if he was happy. Typical Clara, really,” she greeted without turning, though Clara could hear the teasing tone in her voice.
“Yeah,” Clara grinned despite how much she wished to cringe instead. “Look at me now, flailing like an idiot in front of the guy who doesn’t even know of my existence, much less how much I might mean to him someday.”
Me takes a moment before responding, as something in Clara’s response raised concern, but it’s only a moment before she turned to Clara, a wide smile on her face. “I cackled like a maniac when River slapped him, though. Did he deserve it?”
“I suppose he did.” This time, Clara’s voice is audibly light and full of hope, something Me hadn’t heard in a while, so she’s grateful when Me doesn’t ask where they’re going. Her decision about Gallifrey hadn’t changed, and she liked to think Me knew that would’ve always been the case, regardless of what happened with her Doctor.
Clara presses the necessary buttons, setting their destination, but doesn’t flip the lever to begin flight, letting her hand rest there for a moment. “Are you going to be okay? Without me?”
Me gave her a ‘duh’ sort of expression, one that Clara grins at because it’s the same look Angie Maitland would give her to express the same sentiment. “I’m immortal, Clara Oswald. I’ll always be okay. You’ve lived your life, and though I will miss you, your death is a fixed point. If you’re ready for it now, then I am not going to wax poetic and beg you to stay.”
The words ‘thank you’ seem to get caught in her throat, so Clara can only nod, and Me seems to understand.
The lever is thrown, the diner jolts, and one word manages to leave Clara’s lips. Possibly her last word, at least to those closest to her.
“Geronimo.”