AN: One thousand chapters of this nightmare! And what better way to close part two than with a Whoufflé chapter? I figure, 3D9C started and ended with Clara, so 4D12C should start and end with Clara, since 5TC will not.

All the Small Things

Clara

She was hard done by to recall, upon awakening in the middle of the night, what she had been dreaming of, but was sure it had been something to do with her having to do the Total Wipeout obstacle course covered in oil to save the life of a spaniel. Perhaps that was why she wasn't entirely annoyed about being woken, because it was a welcome escape from that horror. Clara didn't even like dogs that much, and while the list of Things Clara Oswald Would Do While Covered in Oil was relatively extensive, nothing on it consisted of public humiliation and injury at the metaphorical hands of inflatable, red balls.

The bed was empty. Of course the bed was empty. She would not be being woken up by gentle piano trills if the bed were occupied. Well, not unless something incredibly sinister was going on. The sheets were a crumpled mess, and in the absence of her husband, she had managed to grab his empty pillow and pull it towards herself in her sleep. That was what she woke up with her arms around, not the Doctor. The Doctor was elsewhere. And she was cold. It took her a second longer than it should have to realise she was probably cold because she was naked (aside from the bandage wrapped around her left arm), and by the time she realised that, she also realised she needed the toilet. This gave her the perfect opportunity to drag herself out of bed and find some pyjamas somewhere, and probably proceed to question the Doctor on why he was playing Clair de Lune at three o'clock in the morning. And, more importantly, why was he playing it wrong? In fact, he was playing a lot of it wrong, and that irked her so much she decided that correcting him had to be first on her list of tasks to carry out.

So, Clara yawned, then mumbled, "You're playing it wrong," and the music stopped abruptly. When it was silent, she dragged herself upright, her hair a complete mess. The bathroom light was on, the door ajar, presumably so that the Doctor could see what he was doing. He, unlike her, was wearing pyjamas. She still thought it was amusing how the Ponds – and various others – assumed he slept in a tweed suit, bow tie and everything.

"I thought you were asleep," he said apologetically.

"I was asleep. You woke me up."

"Sorry." There was a pause where she was contemplating where she should go to the toilet first or get dressed, and he merely stared at her, which she wasn't awake enough to notice until he said, "You're beautiful," as she was midway through another yawn which promptly morphed into a very odd kind of smile.

"I've just woken up, it's the middle of the night, I'm a mess."

"Yes, and you're beautiful. Don't argue with me, I know these things," he said, and she smiled because she didn't quite have the energy to laugh. She was dying to collapse back into bed and fall asleep again.

"Do you know what else I am? Cold," she told him, looking around on the floor for anything she might be able to wear, "Whose turn is it to do the washing? Is it my turn?"

"Yes," he said. That would be why the washing hasn't been done then, she supposed, because she didn't know it was her turn. Accordingly, the floor was covered with dirty clothes. It was barely even three weeks ago that he'd done renovations and made them a new and improved bedroom, and she had already made it a pigsty.

She spied a sweatshirt of hers that was two sizes too big she only had to wear in bed and dragged it towards her, not really caring how dirty it might be. It couldn't be that bad, though, and she was too tired to care, at any rate. Yawning, again, she pulled that on and then got out of bed, legs stiff, taking a second to get her bearings.

"What are you doing?" he asked while she rubbed her eyes.

"Going to the loo," she answered. She never liked waking up in the middle of the night. Generally, she was one of those people lucky enough to sleep straight through for round about seven hours. She trudged past him to the bathroom, leaving the door open, practically blinded by the bright lights within.

By the time she returned, shaking water from her hands after not towel drying them all that well, he had started playing (or trying to play) Clair de Lune again. She was a little more awake now, though, and more aware of what he was doing wrong.

"You're still not playing it right," she said, putting her hands on his shoulders, "You're playing in D when it's in D-Flat."

"I'm playing the original."

"The original?"

"Yes, the original. It was in D at first, then I had a run in with Debussy and I told him he had to change keys. It would never have become so famous without my input," he said.

"Really? You're not just lying because you can't remember exactly how it goes?" she questioned him. She didn't believe his story about Debussy.

"Perhaps you ought to show me, put your money where your mouth is," he said, looking around at her, moving his hands off the piano completely, "I've never seen you play, after all." She wouldn't put it past him to have designed this entire occurrence in the dead of night just to try and get her to play the piano. "You are always saying how good you are." He moved on the bench to make room for her, and everything, and she deliberated what to do next. For once, she didn't outright refuse, but that came more from the fact she was a little worried about the Doctor, and had been for the last few days.

Before sitting down she meandered back over to their bed and picked up a pillow (his pillow, incidentally, because it wasn't like he was using it) and folded it over on the bench to sit on.

"Look at you, your feet don't even touch the floor now," he remarked, "That jumper is far too big for you."

"It's for sleeping in, that's the point," she said, rolling the sleeves up on it, ignoring his pained expression when his eyes glanced over her bandages.

"You're like a person in miniature. Or like somebody put you in the wash and you shrunk."

"Very witty," she said dryly, "Because nobody's ever made a comment about my height before. You are oh-so-original, sweetheart." Then she began to play the opening of Clair de Lune as best as she could remember it. Which, incidentally, wasn't very well. She played a few bum notes and got annoyed and stopped, too tired to put up with the mistakes and move on.

"I mean – if I had the music, it would be exquisite, I'm just saying," she defended herself.

"Oh, really?"

"I still have it more right than you do," she said, "And I'm out of practice."

"Because you always refuse to play for anybody. Except Oswin. Why is that?" he asked. He seemed legitimately curious. He asked her that a lot, and she always found some excuse to avoid the question and not answer him.

"I'll tell you that if you tell me why you're doing this in the first place," she offered an ultimatum, but not one he was all that pleased with, clearly. Clara resumed, "Because, when everything's fine, you stay in bed all night. And when everything isn't fine, you go to the library or the console room and leave me a note. So if you're staying in here and doing something to risk waking me up, that means everything is extra not-fine, and that I think you were almost trying to wake me up, on purpose, for company." He looked at her with his eyes narrowed in a way that told her she was absolutely right. Something was on his mind, and it didn't appear to be anything to do with her. That was good, because she didn't want there to be a problem in their marriage, but it also meant she would have very limited abilities when it came to doing something about whatever was bothering him.

"Alright then. You first."

Clara sighed and went about trying to recall the beginning of that godawful piece her sister had convinced her to learn – the same one that had caused the vampirism of her alternate self, "When I said I had lessons since I was nine, that wasn't, strictly speaking, true…" she paused as she slowly tried to remember how the fervent notes went, it also being the same piece that had caused the death of some guy called Fitzpatrick in that hellish, underwater city, "My mother used to play, see. She was actually a prodigy, she was a concert pianist until she ended up spraining her wrist and she could never really do it the same way she used to. And then, you know, she met my dad, and I was born… then when I was nine she started teaching me how to play, and she carried on teaching me. We used to do duets at Aunt Fiona's parties, which of course Fiona always hated and she thought mum was a layabout for not having a 'proper job' – but my dad was a GP before he retired, so it's not like we needed two incomes, desperately. So she taught me, until I was sixteen. Then she died. And now I don't really play the piano much at all anymore." She stopped after that, not being able to put the notes together the way they were supposed to be while she was so tired and out of practice.

"Your mother was a concert pianist?"

"Yeah. Not a famous one. Maybe one day, if she hadn't have stopped; maybe in another universe. Anyway. Your turn?" she prompted him, and now he had to return the favour and confide, since she'd finally told him why she hardly ever played.

"I was just thinking about Jenny, that's all."

"You can always talk to me about that, you know," Clara reminded him, "I'm your wife, after all. You're meant to be able to confide in me." He smiled slightly when she said she was his wife.

"I don't know what there is to confide. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, if I'm supposed to do anything. She always seems to be dying for independence, and then she runs away?" he questioned Clara, as though she knew all the answers to his problems. She just listened. "I wish someone would just tell me what I have to do. And then I have your sister making snide comments about how she 'knows someone' who 'recently found her father' and he 'can't appreciate how wonderful she is.'" When he talked, he bitterly made inverted commas with his fingers.

"Well do you appreciate how wonderful she is?" Clara asked him.

"You think she's wonderful now, do you?"

"Uh, well, I don't know. She said the other day that she would make some mayonnaise for me. Well, no, she said she was going to make it for Ravenwood, but that if there was any left I could have it," Clara said, "You know she's nice. She's… like sunshine, if sunshine were a person." He was giving her an odd look. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Then he blurted out, "Do you fancy her?"

"Do I fancy her? My stepdaughter? Of course not, I don't fancy anybody except you."

"Not even Oswin's brother? Or Sally Sparrow?" he questioned.

"No, not even them. Maybe I have a tricky time thinking properly when they're in the same room, but you know, out of sight and out of mind. Not like you, you're always on my mind," Clara assured. Was he worried about her fidelity? She would never cheat on him, or on anyone. If the amount of guilt she felt just hanging around with Thirteen was anything to go by – and that was a very grey area when it came to faithfulness – if she ever actually tried to cheat she would most likely explode. But she couldn't tell him the part about Thirteen. "Do you really think I would two-time you? You? The Doctor?"

"I don't know. You do put forward a certain impression, Coo, by flirting and ogling everybody you come across," he said. Well. That was a fair point, she supposed. Hadn't Adam Mitchell been saying a frighteningly similar thing to her earlier?

"I only have eyes for you, promise. And I'm much too tired to lie about that right now," she said, "You have to make an effort to actually get to know your daughter, sweetheart."

"How do I do that?"

"By talking to her? Like a person?" Clara suggested, "I don't know why you're having such a hard time with this – it's not like you're a twat, no matter what my sister thinks. Just be nice?"

"…She did scream at me, darling."

"Because she was upset."

"But why did she pick then to be upset? After more than four months?"

"Because Thirteen left," Clara told him. She didn't want to talk to him about Thirteen at all, lest he question what she had to do with it all, but someone had to tell him. "And Thirteen… treated her like an equal. As far as I know. And you don't, really. You should start."

"Yes. You're right," he said, then he paused for a few seconds, "I should go talk to her right now." He tried to stand up and she grabbed his arm and pulled him back down.

"No, you should probably, you know, wait until the morning," she advised, taking his hand to keep him sitting down, "I mean, it's three in the morning. If you go now, her girlfriend will be awake. And she'll kill you if she sees you."

"Why would Ravenwood kill me?"

"Because you upset Jenny," Clara explained, "If someone upset you like that, I'd probably get pretty riled up at them if I saw them. I just doubt that anyone would be able to upset you like that. And I don't think you would really run away. Just go in the morning."

"So that I can make you breakfast, you mean?"

"No, I could always see if Adam will make it."

"Oh, yes, you mean, you'll go drop by and see Oswin's brother whom you are forbade from going near?"

"I wasn't thinking about that," she said, and he looked at her incredulously, "I wasn't! Honest! I decided while we were out earlier that he's actually alright, you know? He's really nice. And he might be related to both of us one day. I hope he will be. He's good for my sister. And he can cook breakfast, more importantly, but I suppose if I'm not allowed across to hall, I'll just have to eat some of Rose's new slime from the dispensary in the kitchen. Do you know he has a yacht?"

"Who?"

"Adam."

"Why?"

"I don't know. For… yachting. And stuff. We can use it for holidays."

"You live on a spaceship, your entire life is a holiday, Coo."

"Not exactly a yacht, though," she muttered, "Might want a break from the TARDIS one day."

"I doubt it, I haven't taken a break from the TARDIS for centuries. Well, I suppose for except after I… after the Ponds, you know, when they… anyway," he cleared his throat, "Won't want to spend time on a yacht. It's gaudy."

"Where do you want to spend time? Do you, by any chance, want to come back to bed and spend some time with me? By which I mean I'm going to immediately go to sleep," Clara said, "But I don't sleep well without you there. You can think all about what you're going to say to Jenny."

"If she'll let me get a word in, that is…" he mumbled as she stood up, tugging on his arm to try and pull him along.

"Come on," she pleaded.

"Alright, alright," he gave in, "Let me go turn off the bathroom light." She dropped his hand and wandered back over to the bed, which she promptly collapsed onto, still completely exhausted. She collapsed a little too hard onto her bad arm, though, and flinched. Curling up, she tried to ignore him as he complained she had left the pillow behind on the piano stool, listening to him drop it down next to her.

Within five minutes, the room pleasantly dark again, she was warm and curled up in his arms, listening to his hearts beat.

"I was having this really odd dream when you woke me up," Clara recalled.

"Really? About what?" he whispered.

"I had to do this obstacle course covered in oil," she explained, "Something to do with a dog."

"Covered in oil?"

"Mmhmm."

"Drenched in it, would you say?"

"Completely."

"That shall give me plenty of things to occupy myself imagining while you sleep, I suppose," he joked. But she wondered if he really would picture that; she had never asked him if he ever really fantasised about her. Unfortunately, though, it wasn't the time to make that query, as she felt sleep creeping back up on her. "You think I should talk to her, then?"

"Yes."

"Tomorrow?"

"Probably for the best."

"You're the only one who's spoken sense to me about this mess."

She smiled, "That's my job. Speak sense to you."

"I love you, Clara Oswald, more than anything in the universe."

"I love Clara Oswald more than anything in the universe too, sweetheart," she said groggily, and just before she slipped into her queer dreams again she was aware of him kissing the top of her head and pulling her even closer.

AN: So that's it, FOREVER. No, obviously not. I waited ages to upload this so that I could jointly upload the first chapter of 5 Time Lords, 13 Companions, Can Anything Else Go Wrong? (5TC for short) at the same time, which I have been dying to do for a very long time. So go read that, and I know a lot of you probably follow me as an author and get updates for everything regardless of following them individually, it would be really great of you to actually follow it so that I have a general idea of how many people are still, you know, interested. Makes me feel appreciated. And it's space pirates and Jenny/Eleven next, just FYI.