This was written for a request on Tumblr, yet here it is dedicated to BadWolfReborn. I don't own anything.

Fanfiction seems to be cutting random words out of stories, so if a word is missing within this, let me know! (it will be there in the original, but uploading hasn't been going smoothly for me recently)

"No, no, no!" Claire half-shouts as she runs out of the TARDIS door, a gush of smoke following her. The machine behind her, her beloved time machine, has disguised itself as an electricity box much like the others down the street, and if she wasn't so concerned with the fact that her ship is destroying itself, she'd be amused by how it looks so authentic. This inner city area of Leeds isn't the most…aesthetically pleasing, and it certainly isn't where she was aiming for: the heart of Edinburgh. There's a delightful little festival she wants to visit—it just won't be now, will it?

She can't contain her irritation as she turns back around to face the now-disguised TARDIS, and she kicks out her right foot to nick the side of the metal cuboid. Immediately, she feels regret as the TARDIS's emotions come surging through their telepathic link: hurt, distrust and a desire for them to spend a few days apart.

"Fine," Claire grumbles, turning away from her ship and sticking her hands in her pockets. "I didn't want to spend a few days with you, anyway."

"Love, if you're gonna start talking to inanimate things you best come over 'ere; I've got something I want you to wake up for me." Across the street, a man's making gestures to Claire, suggesting something to do with his underachieving masculinity and herself.

"Nah, I'm fine thanks, mate," she calls back, wondering if he'd still want to sleep with her if he knew she was four hundred and three—she's kept a diligent calendar over the years—and that she'd slept with more species than there were types of dog. "But if you're wanting to get that ED problem sorted out, best go to a doctor."

She snickers as she walks away, knowing very well that her old friend, the Doctor, wouldn't be best impressed if he crossed paths with that guy. Last she'd heard, he'd set up shop as a medical practitioner in East London for some strange reason; apparently he was on sabbatical, not that Claire would make comments about that sort of thing. The death of her first wife drove her into a deep depression, after all.

As she heads down into the main part of the town looking for a hotel, Claire gets the feeling this could be a very interesting next few days; one heart tells her to run now whilst she still has the chance, the other tells her to stay and find the adventure she's spent three months seeking.

~x~

Three and a half minutes after being shown to her room, Claire's bored. She's analysed the drop from the room to the ground, decided it's too much for her to manage without dying, and she's scoured every inch of the room already. It's not too her liking—not quite TARDIS enough for her—but it'll do for sleeping in.

After pacing the room fifteen times, she decides that she can't stay cooped up in here. She hasn't been to Leeds since, well, last week in Earth's time but it's been almost a century since she visited. Back then she was a different person—literally—and there's literally no chance that the slight…issue she caused with the plumbing in the Council building can be attributed to her.

"I'm going to go and have an adventure!" she decides, though she's not entirely sure what. She could go and discover some new cure for a disease—it's not really discovery, it's just pointing out what humans tend to miss: the obvious—or she could recommend a book to a literary agent and ensure it becomes the next big best seller. JK Rowling still owes her for that…

Pocketing the key alongside her psychic paper, TARDIS key and folder of cards, Claire leaves the room, wincing as a particularly large thud occurs on the floor above her. According to the calculations in her mind, it's either a very large suitcase hitting the floor, or a body. In this country, it could be either.

As she heads down through the reception hall, a sign catches her eye: Sci-Fi conference in room 010.

Immediately, a wave of wicked glee runs through her. She hasn't engaged with humans' ideas of sci-fi in, oh, it must be decades! This is the perfect opportunity to see how close they are to enlightenment, or more likely a gauge of how many more centuries it'll be before she can tell people that she's an alien openly.

Before she fully processes the decision that she's going to the conference Claire's on the way, her feet beating the path down the corridor faster than she's moved since the Judoon misunderstood her act of faith as an act of terrorism. Trying to avoid their death penalty…it took everything she had.

Someone's speaking as she enters the room so she uses the techniques she's developed to move as quickly and unnoticeably as possible, slipping into a seat next to a rather handsome looking man.

He doesn't look like the sort of person she'd expect to see here—he has wild black hair and wears a strange assortment of clothes with a tattered lab coat on the back of the chair. As she sits down he turns to look at her, his eyes ringed with black circles, his face ranking at moderately handsome on her scale—he'd be someone she'd like to wake up next to for a good few months, maybe even years, but he wouldn't be a long term guy. Noone in this place would be suitable for her to take onboard the TARDIS.

"Hi," he says, and Claire notices immediately the hint of a Welsh accent. "You don't look like the normal sort of person who comes in here."

Immediately, Claire's anger is piqued. Who does he think he is, telling her, one of Gallifrey's finest, that she doesn't fit in here? She has absolutely every right to be here—and she should tell him. Slowly, though, she calms down though it takes her almost nought point three seconds—almost long enough for the man to have noticed her irritation.

"Neither do you," she comments, looking away from his face and down at the notepad in front of him. It's full of Alchemy symbols and chemistry equations, a strange mix of extinct practise with contemporary, and it makes her frown; her mind deduces he's too analytical to be at a place like this—so why is he? "You're a scientist. Why are you here?"

He looks at her in what appears to be shock, dropping his pen in the process. "How could you tell?" he almost sounds petulant as he asks, as though it's something which was supposed to be a secret.

Claire can't stop herself raising an eyebrow; strangely, she's enjoying this brief discussion more than she thought she would, and already her mind is racing ahead to think about what could be. What they could do together, what they could be—what they can never do, because scientists never take it well, not in her experience. They don't like what should be impossible no matter what they say to the contrary.

"Hm, let's see…you've got a tattered lab coat which suggests science or weird hipster fashion. Then there's the tiredness and the way you tap your pen; it's as if you're trying to think through a complex equation—yet you still could be a mathematician. So let's go on. There're alchemy symbols on your notebook, drawn carelessly yet the fact that they're all accurate suggests that you've drawn them so many times you've memorised their patterns inside out. Then, finally, there are your attempts to solve the world's unsolved theorems: it all adds up to scientist," Claire explains, rattling through her explanation and deductions as fast as she's ever spoken. "By the way, if you multiply by three instead of two, you can subtract a nitrogen from the right side and then you'll have solved it! You can thank me in your Nobel Prize acceptance speech."

She realises, on reflection, perhaps she shouldn't have told him how to solve the equation.

"I…I…are you seriously just telling me that you've solved the world's most difficult theorem, and you've just told me the answer?" He sounds dumbstruck, and Claire decides that it's a definite, no she shouldn't have told him situation.

"It works. Test it out and I'll listen to this conference that we've paid for."

The man settles down to do as Claire suggested and she listens to the man whose voice has been droning on in the background for the last couple of minutes. She's pleased to note that their most advanced theory is that pigs are floating around the universe and that's where the meteors are coming from—it's complete nonsense, of course, the flying pigs stay within their home constellation—because it means she doesn't have to get in contact with Gallifrey and explain that they're close to being discovered.

"I…you're right!" The man beside her comments, and his surprise irritates Claire further.

"Of course I'm right, I wasn't going to tell you the wrong answer now, was I?" she responds, talking quieter now that the person delivering the talk appears to have finished. "I hope that you can use these theorems to get yourself a good dissertation mark or whatever it is you scientists do these days—I'm going back to my gold making centre to finish my research." She can't stop herself adding this last bit, because despite the fact she wants to stay, she can't. She can't let herself feel anything for a human, can't risk taking someone who's a scientist onboard—the last one almost killed themselves trying to leave mid-orbit, and she isn't willing to take that chance again.

He blushes even deeper than before and moves to cover up the alchemy symbols on his paper but there are too many for him to manage it. "I, well, actually I've already got my PhD so I don't really need the theorems, but thank you anyway," he says. "And my name's Myrnin by the way. Can I take you for a coffee or something?"

Already she's on her way to bolt because this…this, she can't do this. She can't be with a human scientist, she can't do anything to help their advances in medicine or technology or anything—she certainly can't befriend one of them because when the TARDIS is fixed she'll be gone, and she'll never come back here. Never. Not when there's someone who seems so interesting, someone she could imagine as a companion until the end of his days.

"I, uh, I'm busy now, I'm sorry," she says hurriedly, standing up despite only being there for five minutes. "It was…nice to meet you, though."

She's halfway towards the door when he calls after her, "but you'll be here tomorrow, right? We start at eleven tomorrow."

And before she can stop herself, she's agreeing, nodding in affirmation that she'll be at the sci-fi conference tomorrow despite everything. Despite everything she's ever learned, despite the problems this will undoubtedly because…she's going back.

It'll be a mistake, she knows, but she just can't stop herself—it's been too long since she lived on the edge, and that's a price Myrnin is going to pay.

~x~

Claire spends the rest of the day wandering around Leeds, buying a few new practical dresses, and calling out a few men on their animalistic catcalling. She makes a mental note that if she happens to take on the appearance of one of these men in her next regeneration, she'll never catcall. Ever.

It's a strangely relaxing day, no alien invasions or even lost Judoon children crawling around underneath major underground car parks. She's surprised to admit that she misses the action, to be honest—or rather, she misses having someone to share the action with. Despite all the promises she's made herself, this incarnation is no different to any of the others: it's lonely, craving company continually. There's a need within her to share with someone the little facts about her life. Not the secrets and the eons of information she has—information both good and bad—but just the day to day life she leads. And whilst she hates to drag him from his life, Claire gets the feeling Myrnin's the one she wants.

When she returns to the hotel, she orders room service directly up to her room because, on reflection, she's realised she never actually found out anything about this man. All she knows is that he's a Doctor of Physics, he has an interest in sci-fi and he's at least originally Welsh (and that last one's merely an inference of her own accord). Claire decides that if she takes him up on his offer of coffee, she'll spend the time finding out about him. She's never liked the fact that males seem to try and find everything out about the female and leave themselves shrouded in mystery; she's determined to turn the tables on their heads, regardless of the social consequences.

Hell, she might even help the United Kingdom have a revolution, its purpose being to ensure actual equality between genders.

As she falls asleep to the thud-thud of her heartbeats, Claire imagines Myrnin's face beneath her eyelids. That he's appeared so quickly indicates to her that he's going to be her friend, someone whose company she enjoys.

She really needs a friend.

~X~

Despite her 'superior inner alarm clock' that she's boasted about for three hundred years, Claire oversleeps the following morning and misses breakfast. She barely has time to shower and dress before 10am, the start of the conference.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" she half-shouts as she struggles to find her right Converse. It isn't beside the left one, where she left it last night, and as the seconds go by, she gets more and more stressed. "How the fuck can I lose a goddamn shoe—oh." She's about to go on a tirade about how even Time Ladies are stupid until she looks down at her feet to see that the missing right shoe is already on her foot.

Claire does something between a run and a fast walk down the four flights of stairs to the ground floor, ignoring the looks of disbelief on the faces of those she passes (well, she does shout a belated sorry to the woman she knocked into the banister on the stairs between the second and third floor, but that's only due to the muttering about the insolence of young people that the old woman started). By the time she makes it downstairs, it's two minutes past ten, so she makes a conscious effort to be relatively quiet and unobtrusive as she enters room 010, sitting down in the first free seat that she comes across. Somewhere around here is Myrnin, and she knows that she should find him, but having walked in late, it would be rude to not at least pretend to listen dedicatedly for about five minutes.

Someone's already talking and they're discussing something Claire has never considered before-whether it's possible for flying monkeys to enter the atmosphere and survive-and the point is so unique that she has to pay full attention to the speaker. Whilst there are some points she'd tweak slightly—superior knowledge and all—his general argument is one that she agrees with, and all thoughts of meeting Myrnin disappear from her mind. She's focusing intently on this theory, running various theories and pieces of experimental date through her mind to try and conclude an answer to it, and long after the person concludes their argument and sits back down she continues to do so.

"Earth to Claire? Or does Claire have a twin sister who looks exactly like her and has exactly the same interests and you have absolutely no idea who I am?" Distantly, Claire can hear the impatient voice of what sounds like Myrnin, and she looks up from her number-covered sheet of paper to see him standing there.

"Oh! I'm sorry, I was a little…engrossed," she says, setting her pen down on top of the paper. Only a small part of her wishes he wasn't standing there so she could finish the calculations; the rest of her recalls the happiness she dreamed of having with Myrnin, and is more than a little excited to see him. "Um, how long were you standing there for?"

His lips twist into a smile and he shrugs ever so slightly. "Couple of minutes, I didn't really count. I know that the person sitting next to you was getting about as sick of my voice as I was, though," he comments, and Claire twists slightly to see the person sitting next to her studiously ignoring the pair of them.

"Ah, sorry about that," she replies, reaching down for the bag she placed on the floor maybe half an hour ago. "Shall we go for that coffee then?"

She can't fault the confused expression which appears on Myrnin's face. In the space of three seconds she's already ran through all of the conversation topics they'd have during this break between speakers and has decided that it'd be easier for the both of them if they skip this stage of chatter and move straight to the coffee. That'll give them enough to talk about so they don't get bored, and also reduce the risk of Myrnin analysing her every word in such detail that he begins to realise her timelines of visiting places aren't quite possible. Unfortunately, Myrnin's brain doesn't work quite as fast—or probably even consider the same course of action as hers.

"We can always come back after the coffee?" she suggests, realising belatedly that he may have paid for this conference and that she's making him spend less than half the amount of lecture time in here. "That's if you even want to go for coffee." She considers the thought that maybe, just maybe, he doesn't want to get a drink with her today; for the one moment she considers this, both her hearts stop. Then she gathers herself together and ignores that confidence blip. He wouldn't be here at her side if he didn't want to spend some time with her.

He smiles slightly, and Claire wishes that she'd learnt to read people's eyes over the last few hundred years because his must say something interesting. All the human books seem to read greatly into people's eyes, yet she's never understood how to do this; eyes are just blocks of colour.

Yet she's able to tell what people feel from the shape of their face, whether their eyes are in a squint or extra-wide, whether the bags under them are natural or from night after night without enough sleep—and Claire thinks that that's more important and more helpful than being able to tell whether someone's ecstatic or feeling some inner darkness just from their eyes.

"Coffee'd be great," Myrnin says, and now, Claire joins him in smiling. "Shall I, er, lead the way?" he suggests as they spend almost a minute merely looking at one another.

Claire flushes ever so slightly as she stands up, remembering just how tall Myrnin is as they stand side by side; she's never normally distracted enough to remember to talk to the person she's wish, rather than just stare. Then again, he was doing the same thing…

(She's not going to forget the look on his face, at least not for the next hundred years.)

~x~

"I'm not entirely sure how you've managed to do this, but it's an hour after I normally eat lunch and I'm not more than slightly peckish!" Myrnin comments as he sets his third empty mug down on the table.

"Must be witchcraft," Claire replies, setting her own equally empty mug down. She's reeling from the amount of information she's gathered about Myrnin—and just how much she's given away—and it's a struggle to process it. He's interested in sci-fi because he's always wanted to stretch his imagination in ways ordinary science hasn't allowed him to; he's interested in science because he wants a chance to help prove reason and logic, but also to try and have a definitive answer about at least some of life's mysteries.

And if any part of her was still on the fence about him, when she asked whether he believes in aliens and time travel, he told her "I think there's got to be at least some other life forms out there; they're just clever enough to stay away from us. How can we be the only things in the universe? As for time travel…well I think it's theoretically possible, though I'd have to see definitive proof to make it a reality to me."

He's everything she's ever wanted in a companion—and that worries her. He's almost too good to be true, and in Claire's experience, things which seem to be too good to be true usually are.

She's caught off guard when he asks her, "what do you think about aliens—or other life forms?" because she never expected he'd turn the question back around to her.

"I…I agree with you. It's implausible to think that it's just Earth which is inhabited; there has to be millions of other places," Claire replies, her mind far away and engrossed with the memories of these other planets. She's been on Earth so long, she's desperate to return to the far away constellations, perhaps even to Gallifrey.

That's the dream anyway.

.

They chat for a further period of immeasurable time before Myrnin realises that he actually is hungry, and so they make the decision to go pick up a sandwich on the way back to the hotel.

There's not a minute of silence between Myrnin informing Claire of his latest project in the laboratory and Claire telling Myrnin about the outcome of her latest experiment (she leaves out some of the out-of-this-world details; she can explain them later). He's so different to her last companion; she hates comparing them, because they're all worth so much in their own unique ways, but she can't help feel extreme delight that Myrnin's scientific abilities mean he's so close to her own way of thinking. She's learnt more from companions with a literary focus, granted, but she can already tell this man makes her think about certain aspects of her work with a different, more human perspective.

It's only an hour before the end of the day's conference that they make it back to the hotel, and after the open discussion about whether or not it's logical for satellites to be in outer space, Claire and Myrnin say goodbye to one another.

Unlike most of her goodbyes, it's only a temporary one—and that makes Claire happier than it probably ought to.

~X~

Two more days pass in the same fashion, but whilst she's continuing to enjoy the time immensely, Claire's getting bored. She's spent too long in the same place doing almost nothing, and she's desperate to move on. It's only as they're discussing spaceships that she realises she hasn't checked on the TARDIS for the entire time she's been in the hotel—her ship has to be fixed by now.

Yet she doesn't feel that it's yet time to discuss with Myrnin the reality of aliens and time travel; she needs more opportunity to get to know him, to confirm to herself more than anyone that the man is someone she could quite happily spend the rest of his life with. She's never normally this fussy with companions—normally it's a case of meeting them on the run from an enemy and asking them to join her, and she knows it's a similar sort of situation for the Doctor, or at least it was until recently—but this one is…different.

They've spent next to no time in the conference, and this is the last official day it's running. It doesn't make a difference to Claire—she never paid to go in the first place—but the only way she feels a little less guilty about Myrnin having done so is the fact, if she gets her way, he'll be coming to visit the entirety of time and space with her.

No matter how much she's enjoying these dates or coffees or whatever the hell they're calling these 'let's spend as many hours as possible in each other's company', she knows they can't continue forever. Not only is Claire desperate to move on, to find an adventure to investigate, but she can feel the TARDIS is waiting for her to come back. They haven't been apart this long in almost a century, not since Claire almost lost her license for a major mistake she made, and part of her second heart pines for her ship even as she's laughing at Myrnin's jokes.

(Actually, most of both of her hearts pine for the TARDIS, because whilst Myrnin is truly an amazing fellow…he isn't her TARDIS.)

"I need to tell you something," Claire just blurts out, interrupting Myrnin making his case about proton density being important in diffusion. "It's important and probably will make me sound absolutely insane, but it's the truth. If you want to leave after I've told you it and you never want to see me again, that's fine; it's pretty ridiculous."

Myrnin folds his fingers together and, setting his elbows on the table, rests his chin on top of them. "I've got it," he comments confidently, his eyes focused on Claire.

She's almost amused. "Go on?"

"You're a vampire," he says, sounding relatively serious—or as serious as someone with a grin as wicked as his upon his lips. "You've been seducing me and now you want to take me back to your hidey hole and have your wicked way with me before draining me dry. You'll regret it, though; I'm far more fun alive than dead."

Claire can't stop herself from bursting into laughter, tossing her head back as she laughs and laughs. She's never had this deduction before, not even with the superstitious 12th century companions or even with those from the 37th century who know of vampires' existence. Myrnin really, truly is something completely different, something she's never experienced before.

"I'm being serious," she protests, breathless from laughter. Somehow, she manages to force herself to stop laughing completely, and levels Myrnin with a hard gaze. "I'm not a vampire, but this is equally serious. Can we do it outside?"

"Scared the ordinary folk are going to hear?"

"Something like that."

Really it's because she's concerned one of them will hear the word alien, focus in on their conversation and then have UNIT called out. The last time she spoke with the commander, she threw coffee all over his newly cleaned suit just prior to him meeting with the queen. Claire has a feeling he won't be willing to forgive her just yet.

When they're safely away from Starbucks and Dorothy Perkins and all the main shopping streets of Leeds, Claire begins her explanation. It should be easy, considering how many companions she's had and how much training they got in Time Lady/Lord School about 'how to tell a human what you are'.

"I'm not human," she blurts out. Not as subtle or as gradual as she had aimed for.

She turns to look at Myrnin's face, which just appears confused. "Let me guess. You're from Mars? I thought it was usually that women are from Venus, men are from Mars, but you want to shake it up a bit, I presume anyway?"

Once again, she can't stop herself snorting as she steps sideways to shove him slightly. "Stop being silly, Myrnin! But no, I'm not from Mars—but I am…I am an alien. I understand if you want to walk away now and get away from this madness—"

"I'm not going anywhere." Myrnin stops but as Claire continues walking he continues a couple of paces, jogging to get in front of her. He then places his hands on her shoulders, their eyes locking. "Claire, whatever it is you want me to know but don't incase it means I leave…I won't. It hasn't been long that I've known you, but I already feel that I want to learn what you smell like in a morning, what you eat on your toast, what makes you grumpy and what makes you blush. I want to observe everything you do—if that doesn't sound creepy of course."

Claire smiles once again. "It does sound a little creepy, but then again I guess what I'm going to tell you does too." She takes a deep breath before reaching up with one hand to remove Myrnin's left one from her shoulder; she then places her hand inside his.

They begin to walk, and Claire once again begins to talk. "I am an alien; I come from a planet called Gallifrey, and I'm a Time Lady. I'm hundreds of years old, and I fly a machine called a TARDIS, which allows me to travel in both space and time. I can change my entire body too; when I'm dying, I can regenerate—sometimes I'm a man, sometimes I'm a woman. Sometimes I'm coloured, sometimes I'm like I am now. I try and travel with people because it gets lonely on my own, and dangerous too; I make rash decisions and regret them later because there's noone there to talk me out of them. I'm a mess at the same time as being the most organised and put together person there is."

There's a period of silence, and Claire turns her head to look at Myrnin to try and gauge what he's thinking. Whatever it is, it isn't on his face; his lips are slightly parted, but other than that, his expression looks pretty neutral.

Claire doesn't say anything else and doesn't try and press him into saying something; she knows that it's a big deal and a lot to process. That's why she's so surprised it only takes him seventy nine seconds to give her a response.

"I don't know whether I should laugh or not," is what he says, his hand tightening around hers. "I…you're human, Claire."

His evident desire not to believe that the woman next to him is anything other than human is growing ever clearer to Claire. "I have two hearts, Myrnin," she says quietly, wondering just how long it's going to take for him to believe her. She had hoped she would have managed to make him believe her before they reached the TARDIS, but that seems less likely now. "I know so much science—like those unsolvable equations—because I've gone to the future and I've seen the developments; I've learnt from those at the cutting edge of science. I'm the one who prompted Alexander Fleming to think about the mould on his petri-dishes; I'm the one who helped Bede understand why the equinoxes occur as they do. I learn and I teach and I do all this through time travel—and space travel. I'm not lying to you and I'm not crazy, I promise."

Myrnin stops still and turns to face her; now she can tell that he's stressed—the skin between his eyebrows is furrowed, and he's squinting slightly. "You look human," he repeats, and in that moment Claire understands his confusion. At this stage, even those with sci-fi interests believe that aliens are completely different to them: they have to have different colour skin and different shapes and unrecognisable languages for them to be proper aliens. She sounds human and looks human and, to Myrnin, is human.

"To me, you look Gallifreyan," she retorts, a comment stolen from her Doctor—yet what he doesn't know won't hurt him. "If you still don't believe me, let's carry on walking and I can prove it to you."

"How?"

"My ship—the TARDIS—is parked around here somewhere. We had a…disagreement when she damaged herself, and so I've stayed in the hotel for a few days to give her some time to cool off and to repair herself. She should be sorted now though."

He doesn't say anything in response and so they walk on in silence, their hands still entwined, which feels a little awkward to Claire. She hopes that when she's proven she's right it'll feel normal again—if he agrees to come with her, that is.

Now all she has to do is find the TARDIS, and everything'll be ready to go.

~X~

"I, er, I'm sure it was on this street!"

They've just turned the corner onto Parliament Road, but where Claire's certain there was an electricity box—the camouflage of her TARDIS—there's nothing but a mossy brick wall. Down the entire street, she can only see one electricity box, and that's far bigger than the one she kicked five days ago.

Claire begins to walk faster, pulling on Myrnin rather than walking side by side with him, because her ship is missing! She doesn't know where it is and that's the most terrifying thing she's ever experienced because her TARDIS is everything, the thing that means she doesn't have to live a boring, ordinary life in the same place with the same people with no interesting species from other planets to meet.

"Wait, Claire. Claire, hang on!" She's left Myrnin behind now and she's sprinting round corners onto other streets leading off from Parliament Road, searching for the electricity box which she knows is her TARDIS. She should be able to recognise it on sight, recognise the aura and slight buzz around it that makes it unique to all those around her.

As Myrnin grabs her wrist and stops her, Claire turns to face him and realises that tears are dripping down her cheeks in steady streams; she can't stop them, even if she wanted to. "It's gone," she whispers, her voice almost cracking. "I've lost my ship, Myrnin, the thing that means the most to me."

"Hey," he whispers equally as quietly, placing one hand on Claire's shoulder and the other against her cheek. "It'll be okay—we'll find what you're looking for. Just relax and everything'll work—"

He's cut off by the sudden presence of her lips upon his. Salty wetness continues to drop from her eyes and now it falls onto their lips, his hands, his neck because he's doing anything and everything to close the gaps between their bodies. He kisses her just as hard as she's kissing him—until he realises something.

She has two heartbeats.

Almost dramatically, Myrnin takes a step backwards from Claire, severing all contact between them, causing her to stumble forwards. "You…you…your chest!"

Claire wipes away the tears flowing down her cheeks and half rolls her eyes. "Yes, Myrnin: two heartbeats. I did tell you that. Now are you leaving or are you helping me find my ship?"

She doesn't have any doubts about which one he'll choose, so she smiles as he takes her hand and allows her to lead the way down yet another side street.

~X~

It only takes them another ten minutes to track down the right Parliament street—it turns out they actually wanted Parliament Place, not Parliament Road. Before they've even fully turned the corner, Claire's certain that the box just across the road is her TARDIS and this time, rather than leaving Myrnin behind, she drags him with her as she sprints across the road.

Thankfully no cars come barrelling along to knock them down and they make it across the road unscathed as Claire's removing a key from around her neck and slotting it into an air vent in the box.

Then she stops and turns to look at Myrnin. "You might want to take a minute, compose yourself. I've heard it's pretty shocking, the first time you see it."

Within three seconds, she's yanked open the electricity box's door and has stepped inside, once again surrounded by her beautiful TARDIS control room. "I'm so sorry for the bad mood," Claire calls out, resting her hand on the console. "It was my fault as much as yours—I hadn't refuelled you properly; I shouldn't have been surprised that you needed to reboot."

She continues to natter to her TARDIS for a further five minutes, and only the clatter of a foot against a loose grating reminds her that she brought someone with her: Myrnin.

Slowly, Claire turns around, unsure whether she wants to see his expression or not—but all he appears to be is dumbstruck. A smile slides onto her lips as she waits for the comment she always gets…

"It's…it's…the relative dimensions just aren't possible," he states, and the smile slides from Claire's lips. He didn't say that it's bigger on the inside. Too late, she supposes she shouldn't have expected someone with a PhD to say something as simplistic as that. "I…the box was tiny—how is this here, how is there a roof higher than us when I had to stoop to half my height to enter the—"

"I told you, Myrnin, it's a TARDIS—it's a time and space ship, and she can do things like camouflage herself to make herself blend in to places like this." Claire laughs ever so slightly as she takes a step closer to Myrnin. "So, what do you think? Are you…are you willing to travel with me, to visit far away planets and learn science you humans won't discover for centuries—unless I accidentally bring it back again. That was a bad situation with the vaccination and Edward Jenner, it changed the entire course of the 19th century." Claire feels herself begin to ramble and has to force herself to close her lips and wait for Myrnin to say something—anything.

A smile slides onto his lips, and despite having only been asked to give up everything and travel with Claire only three minutes ago, Claire can see he's nodding in affirmation. They've known each other five days but Claire's already convinced he'll be her companion for the rest of his days.

(She'll just avoid Gallifrey for a century or two to make sure that noone remembers her close relationship with the human man; he doesn't need to see her homeland after all.)

"Yes, I will travel with you and learn all the science I can for as long as you want me," Myrnin replies, closing the gap between them. "And when we're not learning or doing whatever it is you normally do as you travel the universe, I'll be by your side and hold you as close as you want me to."

She kisses him again, and before either of them know what's going on, they're in the time vortex—and maybe she should have told him about the spinning. Maybe she should have told him about a lot of things.

Oh well. They have the rest of his forever to discuss the boring bits.

~X~

Fifteen years later

"Smile!" Myrnin shouts, and Claire turns her head to see that her favourite man has a camera in his hand, ready and poised to take a picture of her with the American flag. She knows that she's probably going to cause some sort of international conflict by moving the flag just a few inches to the right, but she doesn't care because if everything goes to pot, she can always just come and move it right back again.

"Stop fooling around with the camera, Myr, and grab yourself a few rocks as memorabilia—the Russians might be coming to land in a few minutes," Claire calls, looking at her air pressure monitor and realising she may have miscalculated their arrival and departure times. "Actually, scratch the rocks, we'll come back another time."

They have three minutes to get back into the TARDIS and disappear, removing all traces of them from the moon's surface at the same time.

"That's only the fourth trip this year that's gone wrong!" Claire comments cheerfully as they disappear from the moon's surface. "Now, where are you taking me?" she asks, realising that Myrnin's got the control of her precious TARDIS. It took her three years to even let him near the console but now he's as apt with it as she ever was.

"I'm taking you to our forever," he tells her, as cheesy as ever but, as usual, Claire just smiles. She likes cheesy.

"So how long are you gonna stay with me for again?" Claire inquires as she sets herself down on the sofa just three metres from where Myrnin is.

"Forever, my dear. You have my forever."

She's never been happier to hear that from anyone.

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