Summary: One-shot, prequel to "The Name of the Doctor", in which the Doctor has something important to tell his impossible girl.

A/N: Thanks so much for the kind reviews! I'm really tickled that people enjoyed this drabble that's been rattling around my head! :-)

He was happy.

It was an odd feeling, somehow, because it had been such a long while since he'd felt this kind of… hope.

But then, he'd never been faced with a mystery, wrapped in a enigma, stuffed into a skirt that was a little too tight.

He grinned stupidly again as the Tardis shuddered to a halt in front of her house.

Clara, he thought, and found he was smiling again, just at being in her front garden. He knew he was acting like a school-boy, but he also didn't care. No matter how old he really was, his heart felt young, so he might as well act like it. She'd done that for him, made him feel when he had been determined not to feel anything, let alone this. She'd brought him back to life. He was happy, and she'd done that, so why shouldn't she see it?

Today she was going to do more than just see how he felt, she would hear it, too, because he was going to tell her. He'd been dancing around her long enough, until it was impossible to deny that she was more than just a companion to him. She was his Clara, his hope and faith and future, and he no longer cared that she was a mystery. There was no other word for what he felt. Love. He loved her, no matter what she was, and he was done being afraid.

The Tardis finally stopped shaking and the Doctor bounded out of the doors, heading inside.

"Clara?" he shouted, clasping his hands together and rubbing them eagerly.

"Is that Clara's boyfriend?" Angie called from the kitchen.

He beamed. "Yes, it is!"

"She's upstairs having a nap," Artie said, peeping from the doorway. "Dad went next door," he added helpfully.

The Doctor's eyes widened in slight befuddlement. "Right. Well, shouldn't you be with him?" He had rather hoped to find Clara alone.

Angie, who had joined her brother in the hall, piped up eagerly, "No, but we could go to the cinema."

The Doctor nodded uncertainly. "The cinema, yes." He glanced upstairs. "Er, I don't think you should go anywhere until Clara wakes up."

"But she'd say okay," Angie cajoled, tilting her head to one side.

The Doctor shook his finger at them. "No, no, Clara's in charge," he said, and smiled again because it was truer than they realized. She was so very in charge of him, and he didn't even mind. "So no one is popping off anywhere until she gives the word."

The children deflated a bit, and he felt pleased at having taken control of the situation. He'd been a father before. Handling children was like riding a quadri-cycle, it all came back to you.

"Fine," they said together, sulking back to the kitchen.

The Doctor's chest grew, and he nodded firmly. There. One crisis in the universe put out, and it wasn't even noon yet. He glanced upstairs again, and smiled.

He wouldn't wake her. He'd let her rest and when she woke up everything would be different.

Tenderly, he touched the railing of the stairs, just for the simple fact that it led to the place where she was, and his heart felt light and happy. She had always made him feel that way, even at the beginning.

And now, he was like any other being in the universe who had, somehow, fallen in love.

He smiled, looking up at the ceiling once more. He had fought so terribly hard to never let himself feel this again, back when he'd gone into his self-imposed exile in Victorian London, where he'd locked himself and his heart away, believing, this time, it was for good.

Until along came Clara Oswald. The girl, who, impossibly, had made him see hope when he looked at her.

How could he not see it? She radiated all that was good about humanity, all that he loved about them. She wasn't unsure, or too hesitant, or too forward. She was kind when he needed kindness, pushy when he needed the push, and clever when he felt all his cleverness was gone. She was always just what he needed, and her tiny, fragile frame had pulled him so easily out of the abyss because he'd been pulled to her like a helpless moth to a flame.

It wasn't like he hadn't tried to stop himself. Even with his new-found faith in life, he'd tried to be careful. Every time he looked in her eyes, he would force himself to think of all the times that loving someone had only turned to agony later when he lost them. Even when he felt himself slipping, he clung to the memories as though each was a jutting rock in a cliff-face that kept him from falling. And yet, each day with Clara, he found it harder to hold on, not to the memories, but to the pain that came with them.

Just when he had been sure he could resist, Clara, the impossible girl, would smile at him, or say something so totally unexpected, making him think in a way no one had before, and he'd realize his arm was draped around her shoulders, or his hands were caressing her face, as if his body was determined to love her no matter what his mind said. Despite all his intentions and all his promises to himself that he would never suffer like that again, she had made him wonder, for the first time in a very long time, what it would be like to just let go and let himself fall.

It was probably why he found himself whistling alone in the Tardis these days, spinning around even when she wasn't there to see it, hoping she'd ask him to come with her to her staff Christmas party so he could hear them all calling him her boyfriend. He imagined things like retiring, sitting in her garden and dabbing at watercolors (or maybe bee-keeping) while she baked yet another soufflé. He imagined all the things that used to scare the living daylights out of him, far more than any Dalek even could. He thought of what it would be like to not let go of this feeling he had for her, and to make this last life of his count for something, not just saving worlds, but saving himself. With Clara.

That was why he was happy.

He was on his last life, and the universe owed him this. He was mortal, and she was the impossible girl, and he was going to tell her today that he loved her.

"We have an idea," Angie said, poking her head into the hallway again.

"What's that?" the Doctor asked.

She and Artie looked at one another, then back at him. "We want to play Blind Man's Bluff," Angie said innocently, holding up a blue tie.

The Doctor smiled broadly. "Games!" he said with enthusiasm. "I love games." He took the blue tie and held it up. "Did I ever tell you about the time I started out playing a game of mah jong and accidentally invented pasta?"

They shook their heads, looking at him skeptically, and the Doctor shrugged. "No? Well," he beamed again, "at least it had a happy ending."

He glanced at the ceiling again. A happy ending with Clara. And it was going to start today. He sat down, grinning again, and let the children slip the blindfold over this head.

He could afford to let Clara sleep a few moments more. Before today was over, he just might be the luckiest being in the whole, wide universe.

- The End-