"You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast. Whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews." Deathless, Catherynne M. Valente

He watches snowflakes melting in her hair.

There are other things they could be doing right now. Somewhere out in the universe there are wars being fought and new stars being born. People are living and dying and inventing one hundred different kinds of puddings, and he's here, just staring at Clara.

Her fingers are cold when they find his. She's watching him watch her with a fond smile. "Back together again," she murmurs, like the two of them are a foregone conclusion, like the universe will always struggle and tear itself apart just to bring them back to each other.

It takes a moment for him to realize that he's grinning at her - a wide, dopey, incandescent grin that he can feel all the way down to his toes. "Same old, same old."

"We could visit the Coral Mountains of Valencia II."

They're sitting on a virtually reconstructed balcony from New York City circa 1953. The bright blue, cloudless sky over their heads is a digital recording that the TARDIS had on file of - as the Doctor keeps pointing out - the best day in the whole of that year.

"Or we could go to that Italian restaurant you keep promising to take me to - you know, the one without the psychotic robots who want our body parts?" Clara pulls her sunglasses down low on her nose so that she can peer at him over the rims. "I think that would be a nice change of pace for us."

He waves a hand vaguely, as though he's swatting away flies. Somewhere down below them there is the low buzz of traffic, the sound of shoes against pavement. "Ivan the Terrible?"

"Alexander the Great?"

"The lunar festival of the Duendish Pucks?"

"Saturn."

The Doctor pauses, stares. "The whole planet of Saturn?"

"You heard me."

He picks up his guitar from where it rests against his knees and strums out a few chords thoughtfully. It sounds, distantly, like a song she has had in her bones since the day she was born. "We could do Saturn," he says, after a moment. "I love a good romp around Saturn."

"Excellent." She uncrosses her legs, moves to stand up.

But he's not done. "Or we could go to ancient Rome for the Saturnalia. Or to a lovely teashop in thirty-ninth century Beijing that's named for one of Saturn's moons. Or - "

Clara sighs, sinking back into her chair. She props her chin up with one hand and runs the other through her newly shortened hair. "You have a time machine," she points out. "There are never ending possibilities."

He smiles and half-shrugs at her. Sometimes there's nothing he can do but concede her points. "That's true - we could go anywhere." His hands spread out between them like an invitation, and she imagines planets held in his palms, stars hanging from his fingertips. There is the whole universe, wide-eyed and waiting for them. "Anywhere you'd like."

She thinks it over, and then: "Could we stay here?"

"'Course we could." He's playing that song on his guitar again, slow and careful this time, almost reverent. He doesn't look at her, but she can tell that he's keeping track of exactly where she is in relation to him - especially when she stands up and comes over to slide in next to him. The chair he's sitting in isn't very large, and he might be a stick insect, but she still ends up half sitting on him, one knee bumping gently into the neck of his guitar.

He keeps playing. Mostly, she suspects, so that he has something to keep his hands occupied. She rests her head against his shoulder, closes her eyes against the virtual, New York sun.

"Clara, did you know - "

"That this was the best day on record in all of nineteen fifty-three?" She smiles into the fabric of his coat, endeared in a way she can't quite put into words. "I might have heard something to that effect, yeah."

He told her once about endless universes. About worlds where they almost meet or they almost fall in love. Worlds where they are together and they have a family. A dog. A white picket fence. He tries to look detached while painting her a picture of their over the top domestic bliss, but it doesn't quite work.

Loss, then. There are inevitably universes where they have each other and then they lose each other too, he reasons, with a slightly more believable air of detachment.

But.

There's something in his eyes, in the careful way he holds his body - like he's afraid if he moves too quickly everything inside of him will fly apart. The thought of losing her kills him.

He holds out both of his fists. "Pick one."

She's bewildered by the sudden, whiplash-fast change in topic, but does as he asks. Her fingers tap lightly against the knuckles of his right hand.

The Doctor smiles slowly, nods. He opens his right hand to show her a marble that's painted to look like Earth. In his other hand is a light purple marble, an alien planet she's never seen before. He explains, "Somewhere out there is a universe where you picked the other fist. Somewhere out there is probably a universe where you didn't pick one at all. But," he pauses here to press the Earth marble into her hand. "It's always you and me, Clara. The two of us. Together."

It isn't until later that she realizes that he hasn't completely explained himself. Sure, there are hundreds of different universes out there - ones where he's human, ones where she's not, ones where he's actually a doctor and she's not a teacher - Clara understands that. It makes some kind of timey-wimey, mind-boggling sense. But are there universes where she's inexplicably tethered to someone else? Are there universes out there where she and Danny always find each other? And if not, why is it always him then?

He's in the middle of tinkering away beneath the TARDIS console when she finds him again, but that doesn't stop her from asking anyway. "Why?"

The Doctor slides out on his back, just far enough that he's able to squint up at her, confused. There's something that looks like motor oil streaked across his forehead and along his jaw. "Why what?"

"Why us? Why is it always us?" It's a rubbish way to put it, but she can't - There isn't another way for her to ask the question without saying things like soul mates or fate.

Of course he knows exactly what she means. He shrugs. "The universe wants to keep us together, I guess."

"Sounds very star-crossed."

"I suppose so."

It catches her off-guard, the ease with which he admits that. Most of the things about them have been difficult, a struggle, a constant push and pull; she didn't expect him to be so acquiescent all of a sudden. "All right then," she replies, for lack of anything better to say.

He nods back at her. "All right then."

She kneels next to him in the Cloisters, in the dark and the cold, and she tells him what she once swore she would never tell anyone else.

If he's surprised by her words he doesn't show it. His smile is sad and wistful; he looks at her now like he can see all of the things they could have been laid out in front of him. "Clara," he murmurs, voice rough. "Clara, no matter what happens next…"

"No, don't. Please don't. We can still - "

The Doctor shakes his head. "We'll meet again," he assures her. "We will."

She thinks of all those universes he once told her about, imagines a world where they meet on a train or in a coffee shop; she remembers the warm weight of the marble in her hand. She says, simply, "I know."