*Hi there guys. We all knew how this story was going to end, so here's the final stretch to take us over the line. I hope you guys get a kick out of this chapter, because writing it, all I could think about was how much I was excited for the final section of this chapter. And of course, I didn't end it there. I was sorely tempted to leave it ambiguous as to what Clara's answer would be, but I'm not that cruel (or perhaps I'm crueller). Anywho, I really hope you've enjoyed this story and I will be back next week hopefully. However, we're reaching the winding down process and it won't be long before I'm on at best semi-hiatus so no promises. As ever, thanks to everyone who has read, reviewed, followed and favourited this story, I hope the ending satisfies you. TPD*

Clara really wanted to break for Christmas. School had increasingly become a nightmare as exams were on the horizon and the kids had reached that end of term feel where they never wanted to work and it slowly infected its way through the teachers, leaving Clara with tons of work to do and nowhere near enough time to do it in. She grew increasingly stressed and frustrated as December wore on, until there was only a few days left until the end of term and everyone else had almost completely shut down. Clara was sick of picking up the slack and unleashed hellfire in the English staffroom, which resulted in one of her colleagues muttering under their breath: "Merry fucking Christmas."

Clara tried to ignore the jibes about her lack of Christmas spirit as she ploughed on through her work, shunting a couple of her classes onto Danny and Tom so she could blitz her way through more in the limited time that she had available to her. The Doctor had taken to largely avoiding her in the evenings as she slumped over her desk, working as late as her body would allow her to. He would however, slip her cups of tea, make her take breaks when she clearly needed it and call her to bed when it became obvious to both of them that she was going to achieve nothing more of significance that night. He kept Clara on the right path, which she was eternally grateful for.

It was just a shame that she was unable to enjoy his company more, when all she wanted to do was curl in bed beside him and lie there in his arms, but the pile of books on her desk laughed at her, calling her back to them. He understood, of course he understood, but that didn't mean that he liked it any more than she did. She could see his frustration, it was written all over his body when she saw him, pulling him in all directions. But above all, she knew that he didn't blame her and could see how upset it made her too.

But she forced herself to carry on, to push on, and to make those last few hellish days count. As the rest of the department turned to videos and sing-alongs in lessons, she reinstated her onslaught on her paperwork and found herself ever closer to the finish line, one step nearer to her freedom. By the last day, the end was in sight and when she called the Doctor to pick her up from work, just before 8pm, she was so very nearly done, it was agonising. The Doctor implored her to take a night off, to just leave what remained until the morning, but Clara didn't trust herself, didn't trust her own focus to hold that long, so she stayed up until 4am, desperately wrestling with the remnants of her work. She had shifted to the kitchen, so that the Doctor could get some sleep. She didn't know why she had bothered, because when she eventually crashed into bed, all her work complete and Clara finally free, he was still waiting for her, barely awake but awake nonetheless.

"I told you not to wait up for me!" Clara murmured as she collapsed into his arms.

"And I told you," he replied with a whisper, all he could manage as his eyes fluttered. "That I'd stay awake for you." He had at that, but as she curled up to him, they were both unable to hold off the weariness enveloping over either of them any longer, and they slipped into unconsciousness.

Clara slept better than she had in a very long time. She woke long after midday, still being held by the Doctor, the way that she loved being held. She didn't want to wake him, but as she tried to manoeuvre her stiff limbs so that she was out of his grasp without stirring him, his eyes snapped open and his lips twitched upwards.

"Trying to escape Oswald?" he teased and she rolled her eyes, leaning up to kiss him. "I trust you slept well?" he murmured, looking at the clock and whistling in response to the time. Clara understood his reaction; they had been asleep for hours. She nodded, not wanting to kill the moment between them by speaking. She snuggled closer to him, feeling the beating of his heart and his hot breath on her earlobes. His hand was just ticking her ribcage, tracing indecipherable patterns that Clara focused all of her energy on. He did this a lot. She was sorely tempted to get a fairly obscure and frenetic scribble tattooed on her side, so that he could trace it with his hands, but she was shit scared of needles and knew she'd never have the guts to go through with it. She could just imagine his teasing reaction now.

"Is your dad coming over for Christmas dinner?"

Of all the questions he could have picked to permeate the moment, of all the possible ways to shatter the silence, that was the one he had picked? It was random, it was unromantic and it was one that Clara actually had to think about to answer. She frowned. She'd spoken to her dad the day of her birthday. The Doctor had told him where they'd be, advising him to call in the evening when they were back in the country. They'd talked about Christmas, but Clara hadn't actually finalised any plans. She really ought to.

"I don't know," she answered honestly. "I'll call him later, see what he wants to do. Are you sure that that's what you'd want, cooking for four? Because if Dad comes, Gran will come with him." She chewed on her lip; she didn't want to burden him.

"Don't be silly!" he laughed. "I love cooking and I'd love to cook Christmas dinner for your family. It's been a while since I've done Christmas dinner for four, maybe four years, when the Ponds joined River and I. I'm not going to get nostalgic on you, it was a shite Christmas, Amy and Rory fell out over socks and River got so drunk that she puked in the flowerbed."

Clara smiled slightly at his cheery way of skipping over stories like that. She still didn't know why stories about River Song didn't bother her. Maybe it was because she was a part of the Doctor's past and Clara knew that she was his future. It felt like she was an entirely different beast and Clara's relationship with the Doctor was something that she cherished beyond anything. It felt so incredible to her that she wasn't going to let River Song derail it. Of course, that wouldn't explain why she had never been affected by them, but then, Clara supposed, everyone had baggage. Hers with Danny was so much more real and prevalent. The Doctor's ex had never punched her in the face. Clara knew it was possible that he still had feelings for River, but that didn't detract from them, from their relationship. She had never cared about River; she cared about him, the Doctor. Everything else was superfluous, he was who he was, the man in front of her.

"I'll tell him you want to cook dinner for us then," Clara smiled warmly, adjusting her body so she was in a better position to kiss the corner of his mouth lovingly. "He'll love you for that. Even before he tastes your cooking. Afterwards, he'll probably propose on my behalf."

The Doctor gave something resembling a nervous chuckle, which Clara sensed was due to the idea of impressing her father. Not that he needed to worry. Her dad had loved the Doctor the first time that they'd met and they'd met a couple of times subsequently, which had gone equally swimmingly.

"I'm sure he won't love it that much," the Doctor replied with fake modesty that Clara could see through a mile away. The Doctor was going to use this Christmas dinner as an opportunity to show off immeasurably, she could tell. "But I'll do my best."

Clara tried her hardest not to snort at that and impressively failed to avoid rolling her eyes. She pushed him off slightly so she could roll out and run a bath. He crawled after her, pawing at her arm with his hand and she shooed him off playfully, giggling at his attempts to lure her back into bed. She twizzled the hot taps and returned to him, stripping off until she was completely naked and his eyes were bulging at the sight of her.

"Joining me?" she asked with a smirk as his PJs were dispatched as quickly as he could hobble out of them, which was pretty fast, but also unimpressively slow as he hopped up and down on one leg, yanking his bottoms down over his foot. He was nodding like one of those silly bobble-head things and she giggled to herself as he fell over the bed in his hurry to pull her into his arms. "Down boy."

He kissed her lightly, trailing his hand down her side again, her skin shivering to his touch. She returned the kiss and leaned back so that she could check the water level. She took his hands and pulled him after her, backing into the bathroom. She kicked the door shut behind her.

Her dad was delighted to join them on Christmas Day and as ever, the Doctor had put on a show. She had been slightly apprehensive about what sort of person the Doctor would be on Christmas morning and it turned out he was a gleeful six year old, the type who would shake awake his parents at 5am, begging them to let him open his presents before the sun was up. She turned over in bed, covering her head with her pillow and he bounced up and down at 7am, trying to shake Clara into action.

"Go away," she whined. "It's too early!"

"It's never too early!" he protested. "It's Christmas morning Clara!"

"Go back to sleep or I'm never having sex with you again!" she mumbled into her pillow, wishing she could watch him process that information. She heard him slump back beside her and smiled into the pillow, rolling over and back into his arms and waiting for the next inevitable instalment. Sure enough, he tried to get her up again just before 8, and she felt that couldn't keep him waiting any longer, if only because he'd been jittery as hell in the hour she'd made him wait.

Not that he became any less energetic once they'd got up. As Clara stood in the kitchen in her pink dressing gown, with no makeup on and her hair all over the place, sipping on tea to give her some sort of energy, he was bounding about the place, cooking breakfast and singing Christmas Carols as he did so, already bow tied up and hair perfectly quiffed. She didn't know how he managed it. In truth, it was slightly disturbing. As Clara tried to become something resembling a normal human being, the Doctor made them both an incredible breakfast which certainly helped her along the way. She strongly suspected he'd poured himself coffee instead of tea, because he looked like he was about to go bouncing off the walls, literally.

Her father arrived shortly after breakfast, with her grandma in tow, which Clara was grateful for. Not only were they able to create a more calming, relaxed atmosphere, but it meant that they could open presents. She had a decent haul of clothes and gift vouchers from her family and friends, with the Doctor doing similarly well and looking increasingly happy with his gifts as the opening went on. Then he opened his present from Clara, which was a handmade photo frame, complete with a picture of them from Berlin. That was the weekend they had truly fallen in love and his face lit up at the sight of both the frame itself and the photo contained within it. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. She sensed that more was coming later. Then she opened her present from him, which was a leather bound copy of Catcher in the Rye, Clara's favourite book, and the Doctor had handwritten his love onto the inside cover. She loved it. She reacted pretty much the same way that he did, with stuttering and hugging and the silent promise that she was going to fuck his brains out.

Christmas dinner was beyond delicious, as Clara had expected. The Doctor had pulled out all the stops and she had to admit, that even she was impressed. His lavish plate was cooked to perfection, as Clara salivated over the roast turkey, with the Yorkshire puddings light and fluffy, the pigs in blankets were a personal highlight (she knew how much the Doctor loved them as he wolfed down about ten) and all the vegetables were spot on. Clara found herself in yet another situation where the size of her ailing stomach was competing with her desire to carry on tasting the delightful treats that he had provided for her. He saved a lot of the leftover turkey for boxing day, which apparently was a tradition that Clara herself had never heard before but the Doctor seemed to be vehement upon, so she let him.

The rest of the day was just filled up with crappy games and cheap wine. Around the point of charades where Clara was trying to act out Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the Doctor yawned terribly and she realised that that was her cue. She managed to get her father and grandmother to head home, on the promise that she'd see them again very soon, sometime in the New Year. The Doctor was smirking as she shut the front door and climbed back up the set of stairs to the living room.

"You're a bad person!" she growled, crossing the room in a heartbeat to press her lips against his. He smiled underneath the kiss and returned it gently, snaking a hand around her waist to pull her closer. Clara let him, wrapping her hands over his shoulders and deepening to kiss, moaning softly as his pelvis lightly rubbed against hers through their layers of clothing. His hands were in her hair, on her back, seemingly everywhere as the kiss grew quicker, more fiery and then she was forcing him backwards, against a wall and the grinding had become more ferocious. She wasn't holding back at all, clothes started flying in all directions as they got more and more heated.

Somewhere along the line, he managed to flip the situation around so that it was her up against the wall and she grappled with him as he entered her. They thrusted in tandem, the two working side by side, body on body, vicious but at the same time playful, finding that perfect rhythm until they both crumpled inwards, descending into exhaustion and relaxation. They collapsed against the wall, panting frantically, exchanging a cheeky grin as Clara winked at him.

"Best two out of three?" he muttered and she had absolutely no idea what he was saying but fell onto him anyway, her head resting on his bare chest. She couldn't possibly imagine how he was comfortable, as she wasn't. Walls and floors weren't exactly great places for cuddling. Sex yes, but the after stuff, most definitely not.

"Shall we take this to the bedroom?" Clara asked in a muffled tone and he raised his eyebrow with a chuckle. She wanted to swat him but she was enjoying herself too much, she was too comfortable.

"If you insist," he purred. And then he scooped her up into his arms with a squeal from Clara. She giggled relentlessly as he carried her through to the bedroom and climbed into bed, Clara still in his arms. She lay back against him, smiling to herself as his hands meshed into her hair, playing with it delicately as she closed her eyes and embraced the moment.

They lay like that for an eternity, Clara eventually falling asleep in his arms, cuddling up to him and waking in the same position hours later. It had been an amazing Christmas Day and she found Boxing Day to be equally enjoyable. She had expected nothing less. Just being there, with the Doctor, everything felt perfect, like she never wanted it to end.

He asked her if she wanted to go to the annual New Year's Party with him. She had been the previous year with Nina of course; it was how she had met the Doctor in the first place. He again had that touch of nerves about him when he mentioned it, but Clara wasn't sure why, maybe it was more to do with the fact that he'd be forced to drink. Somehow she doubted that that was the whole truth, but she let it slide. Of course she wanted to go to the party with him, she wanted nothing more.

She found it somewhat fortuitous that New Year fell on a Wednesday, but Clara wasn't a big believer in fate, so she just dismissed it. Nevertheless, Wednesday was their day and it was a Wednesday, which had to mean something. So they got ready for the party, the Doctor bringing up his favourite bow tie, that still made her blush to her core when he wore it, knowing that she had bought it for him, all those months ago. In return, she wore her birthday jewellery, along with a red, velvet dress and matching makeup and heels. She had to admit, that she thought she looked great. He looked nervous as hell.

"Ready?" he asked with a deep breath.

"Ready," Clara nodded.

The last time Clara had been to this New Year's Party, she had been single, dragged along by her flat mate. Now…now she was going with a date. The word 'date' seemed so trivial after everything that had happened but she supposed that was what it was. They arrived at the party together, linking arms as they stepped out the back of the taxi, Clara blushing slightly as he leaned in to kiss her cheek. She moved in to straighten his bow tie. And then they were moving inside. The location was different to the previous year, but it all had the same feel to it, a bit stuffy, a bit lethargic and Clara still felt like an outsider. She clung a little closer to her date, who kissed the top of her head as she did so. He went to grab them drinks and suddenly she was alone in the insanity of the party, people locked in conversation, nobody so much as giving her a second glance. She wasn't surprised. She wasn't special or well-known. She only felt special when she was with him.

He was coming back towards her now, his black suit undone and two champagne glasses, one in each hand. He was grinning like a twelve year old child, the grin that she had fallen in love with. He handed her a glass and she sipped from it tentatively, blushing slightly as his hand lingered on hers for just a moment longer than it needed to, extenuating the contact between them. As she sipped, he took a deep breath and hopped up and down slightly. She raised an eyebrow at his odd behaviour.

"You alright?" she asked, putting her free hand on his shoulder. He didn't quite flinch away from the contact, but she had no doubt in her mind it still had the same electrifying effect on him that it did on her, even after so long.

"Fine," he replied with a shaky smile. "I'm just nervous."

"Nervous about what?" Clara laughed. "Don't tell me you believe this nonsense about 2015 being the end of the world?" she snorted and he chuckled nervously.

"Don't be stupid!" he sounded genuine, so clearly it was something else bothering him. Clara looked him up and down, trying to assess exactly what was wrong with her boyfriend. She could normally tell, so it was slightly frustrating that her radar was so off. "It's just…tonight is a big night is all."

"Okay then," Clara rolled her eyes. He could be very cryptic when he wanted to be. But that was alright, he could be as cryptic as he wanted. She didn't care, she loved him. She was hungry, so she shot over to the food stand to grab some nibbles, collating Pringles like they were fairy dust. She could see him watching her and blushed, grabbing a handful of pigs in blankets and passing them to him. He shovelled them into his mouth and muttered something completely unintelligible. Clara patted his arm playfully. She glanced up at the clock. It was 9:25. Just over two and a half hours until midnight.

Clara set about mingling, looking for Nina. Her friend was always fashionably late; it was one of the many things that infuriated Clara about her. Still, she would have hoped that Nina would be here by now. She spent the next hour or so looking for Nina, whilst her better half chatted with some of his colleagues. It still weirded her out when he talked technical, it was like he was an entirely different person. And, as ever, she only understood about half of what he was saying. She had felt out of place last year and she didn't feel less out of place this year. Then, Nina came crashing in, a glass of champagne in hand and she squealed when she saw Clara, the two colliding in a fierce hug.

"I've not seen you since…" Nina trailed off with a grin. "How the fuck are things with that handsome man of yours?"

"Amazing," Clara replied, a smile lighting up her face. "Truly amazing. I can never thank you enough for…"

"For dragging you to this same shitty party this time last year?" Nina snorted. "Don't mention it. It was my pleasure. I've never seen you happier Clara."

"I've never been happier," she admitted. "It's good to see you Nina, it's been too long."

The two girls chatted away for what seemed like forever and before Clara knew it, midnight was approaching. It was 11:50 and she crashed into his arms, having had maybe one too many glasses of champagne. He chuckled as he caught her, smoothing out her dress and moving a stray strand of her fringe out of her eye. She smiled sweetly up at him and moved closer to him, so that they were barely a hair's breadth apart, completely oblivious to anyone else in the room. In the world. 11:52.

"Ready for 2015?" he asked with a cheeky look on his face.

"It can't be better than 2014," she answered, the smile creeping wider so that it almost consumed her face. He blushed at that, as she had expected him to. One whole year of knowing him, it hardly seemed possible. As the seconds ticked down, she felt him gradually moving away from her, giving himself a bit of breathing room. At first, she felt a touch disappointed. Then, as the clock hit 11:59, he stepped back properly and got down on one knee. Clara stopped breathing. Her heart stopped working. Everything stopped and there was only him, pulling something out of his pocket and saying words that barely registered in her brain.

"Clara Oswald. I may have only known you for a year, but it has been the best year of my life and I would not trade a second of it for anything in the world. I know you feel the same way that I do. So, Clara Oswald, I think you know what's coming next. Will you marry me?"

The clock struck midnight. Happy New Year.

And Clara knew what to say, knew what she wanted. But she couldn't get it out. Not right away. So she didn't. She just nodded frantically, throwing her arms around him and sobbing like a little girl. The bastard was going to ruin her makeup. "Yes," she whispered eventually. "Yes of course I'll marry you."

It had been simple in the end. They had had a year together, a really amazing year that had topped any of Clara's expectations, both for the year and the relationship. And she knew what she wanted. Who she wanted. She had never felt more secure, complete or happy than when she was with the Doctor and in that instant, she realised that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Her Doctor. Forever.

Happy New Year indeed.