Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, as they belong to the BBC and Steven Moffat. The quoted text comes from "Requiem" by Joan Baez.

*See end for Author's Note.

Mary, fill the glass to overflowing

Illuminate the path where we are going

Have mercy on us all

In funeral fires burning,

Each flame to your mystery returning.

Clara – if you can hear me…I wish I could tell you that you didn't have a choice in this. That you survived scattering yourself into a million pieces like bits of confetti, so you can't…but that would be fitting, wouldn't it? Yes, if there's one thing I've learned in all those lives you saw inside my time stream, it's that the Universe has a sense of irony. A sense of humour. I made a bargain with the Universe once. The second time I met you, in Victorian London - after you'd been pulled to your death by the Ice Woman. I made a bargain with the Universe that I would save the world if it let you live. So I saved the world, though you died anyway. Then standing at your gravestone, I realised I could find you again: the word "Remember," your last word; and your name, a name I'd heard before. A girl twice dead. Impossible. I thought that for once, the Universe was finally repaying me.

So I ran. Like you told me to; I ran to find you. I swam the depths of the Triktillfan sea and scaled the peaks of the Libertine mountains on Frettalaiku. I rode the comet trails of the constellation of Kasterborous; I listened to the hidden messages of the Luminescence of Urdcutul to see if they offered any clue to your whereabouts and braved the ice and fire of the Exploding Ming of Light and Pallour for answers. I searched Byzantine temples and Churches of the Second Coming of Christ. I was at every world war, every Olympic game, every meeting of the Nations of Earth, to every meeting for the Intergalactic Alliance, scanning the crowds for your face or looking for you amongst the dead in the ruins.

But you've always been impossible, haven't you? I should have known. Because I didn't find you. It was you who found me.

Ha…you'd think the story would end there. You'd think that I would have simply accepted it. That you'd found me, that it was enough. More than enough – it was impossible. It was perfect.

But it wasn't. Because it was too perfect. You were too perfect. I think I might've accepted it, if you'd been just a little less brave. A little less kind. A little more willing to walk away. If you hadn't made me come back a second time – for me, a third time – and ask you to come away with me again. I think I might've accepted it if the TARDIS had liked you, or if she had ignored you, like she did most of the others. If you hadn't been so quick to understand her dislike of you; if you hadn't been so quick to understand that it was even possible for her not to like you.

Maybe…if you hadn't always been exactly what I needed.

I told you the Universe has a sense of humour. Because after all that – after I'd found you again and discovered that you were everything I could possibly want – well, that's when I decided I couldn't trust you. I was convinced you were a trap for me. Even after I'd spied on you as a child, making sure you were human. Even after I'd taken you to Calliburn House so I could enlist the help of an empathic psychic, who only confirmed that you were a pretty and clever normal human girl, braver than even I suspected. Even after we'd faced down certain death inside the TARDIS, when you told me how much I scared you. When you proved you had no memory of our past encounters.

It didn't matter how many times I tested you – like with Skaldak, clever girl, or with ghost hunting, or tending to a helpless blind woman or being entrusted not to blow up a planet that we blew up anyway – it didn't matter that I told you about Susan and about River, that I cried in front of you – I was never convinced. Clara Oswald, my impossible girl. Too perfect to be anything but a trap.

I told you the Universe has a sense of irony.

Because I never realised that all that time, I'd been the trap. I was the trick. I was what would eventually ensnare you. I was cutting a path through time and space, leading you right to it. And not only that, I prepared you for this. All those tests, all those times I stretched you to the bounds of your bravery, to discover if you had a breaking point. So when faced with the chance to let me die, to let the Universe keep turning without me, to erase everything I'd ever done, you didn't even try to look for another way. Because I'd prepared you. To sacrifice your life so willingly would have been enough. But I'd taught you well, hadn't I?

I had a friend, once, who told me that what made me dangerous is that I make people want to impress me. But that wasn't the case with you, was it? Maybe in the beginning, yes. You knew, with Skaldak. And you overcame your fear in Calliburn House. But I was the one who taught you that your fear was less important than anything I needed of you. I taught you that you shouldn't trust your fear or your sense of self-preservation. I taught you that your life was worth less than the lives of those we were trying to help. I taught you to be a martyr, to sacrifice yourself first and ask questions later. I never taught you that there was any other way.

So – here we are, then. At the end of it. Because humour and irony are useless without timing.

Because it's only now – now that the jaws of the trap have snapped shut, taking your life, pouring a million memories inside your head, confusing you, disorientating you, possibly robbing you of your mind and your sanity completely – now, now I understand for the first time since I met you…that the only reason you were so perfect for me…the only reason you were always exactly what I needed…is because that's just who you are.

And that's why, Clara Oswald, I'm not going to tell you to fight. I'm not going to tell you to hang on. I'm not going to lie to you and tell you there's hope. I hear your breath slowing down. I feel your pulse weakening. I see you're about to let go of that leaf – the one thing that's absolutely, completely and uniquely you with no me mixed in. I'd tell you to hold tight, to let it take you home – but maybe that's where it's taking you. Home. A place far from here. A place far from me. Where you don't have to be brave. Where the people who love you will welcome you, accept you, and take care of you. Where the people who love you will do it openly instead of keeping it in like a closely guarded secret.

It isn't because I don't want you to. It's because…now that I know who you are and what you will always mean to me – how can I still be selfish? How can I beg you to live for me when you've already lived and died for me a thousand times over? And how can I beg you to live for you? Memories are many things, but they are not kind. I've had lifetimes of practice, sorting through the ones I wish to retain; forgetting the rest. Ha – you saw. I'm so good at burying memories that I kept my greatest secret from entering into my own time stream. I kept him hidden from even you. But you – you took the shortcut, hoovering up a thousand years of memories in one day, dumping them into a fragile, human brain with not nearly enough pathways to contain them. If you wake up, you may never recover. Your brain will have so many stories, you won't remember who you are. Every second you're awake could be an excruciating struggle to hold onto your sanity, your sense of self.

So, Clara…my Clara…the most difficult path right now is to choose life. And so I'm telling you: you don't have to. You can let go. You can stop being brave. There: the most fitting end to our story. With the right amount of irony, black humour and timing.

You were a soufflé that was too beautiful to live. Your soul is made of more stories than any other in the Universe. And, like the brain, maybe the Universe can't contain such a soul – your perfection was too vast for it to hold.

See? Joke's on me.

Maybe the Universe has a better sense of timing than you think.

Clara…

It was my choice, Doctor. All of them were. Don't take that from me.

I won't. I'm sorry.

Just remember that, for the future. You'll be okay. And I will, too.

You'll be more than okay.

I will, won't I? According to you, I'll be perfect.

Ha. You will. I know you will.

So…is it okay to stop being brave now?

Yes. Sleep now, Clara. Sleep.

In the dark night of the soul your shattered dreamers,

Make them whole

O Mother Mary, find us where we've fallen out of grace,

Lead us to a higher place.

In the dark night of the soul our broken hearts you can make whole

O Mother Mary, come and carry us in your embrace

Let us see your gentle face, Mary.

*Author's Note: The title and bits of quoted text come from Joan Baez's "Requiem," originally written for the victims of the tsunami, then re-used for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Though I'm not a religious person myself, I used it here because of its messages about finding your way in the midst of the "dark night of the soul." This resonated with me for where the Doctor and Clara ended up both physically and emotionally/spiritually at the end of "The Name of the Doctor."