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He'd found her out. Of course he had; he wasn't a damn P.E. teacher. She didn't know if she'd let the snippiness creep back into her tone after a particularly rough trip, or if the shadows under her eyes continued to betray her, or if he'd caught her gazing out the windows again, in tiny snatches of time, wondering what it'd be like if the sky were a sulfuric yellow, or if the clouds shone like oil spills against a blood-red sun. It was probably some combination of the three, and she cursed herself. Compartmentalization was usually a friend of hers. It was just when it came to this—to him and all their things—she found herself pressing against sand-drawn lines, trying desperately to hold them in place.

She'd failed, obviously. It was her personal circle of Hell, this feeling of not performing to par, of coming up short. The teacher in her—who was only the grown-up, overeager student in her—could do nothing but writhe in agony.

He delivered the grade during lunch one day, after she realized she'd been having one of her skyward-bound moments. Her stomach coiled in premonition.

"Sorry! So sorry, I really was list—"

He held up a hand to stop her. "No, you weren't. You were out there." He waved to the sky past the window. "Because that's where you want to be. Because that's where you've been."

Her mouth hung open a second too long. "Danny, it's not—"

"Save it." His eyes, normally so warm, so blessedly-different from the ones she dreamt of, had died to old coals. "I've been more than patient. You can't say I haven't. I think I've taken this space...time...Doctor thing pretty well. Then you said you wanted to be done. Said you were done. And I believed you."

She started to protest, but he continued over her. "Don't. Just don't. You owe me at least a chance to finish, before I lose you to the bloody clouds again." He inhaled slowly. "I can't do this, Clara. I can't keep waiting for you to kick this habit, you know why? I don't think you want to. You wanna stay there, with him, and—"

"It's not like that! There's nothing—"

"Yeah, and the lady doth protest too much, methinks. That's one you should know."

She was desperate. He was the first sweet, wholly good thing that'd happened to her in so long. "I know I've muddled everything. The last thing I ever wanted was to compromise you—us."

"No, you're right. The 'us' was an afterthought. That's what it's always been." He was shaking his head. "And somehow, I still want you to be happy. D'you know how much that frustrates me? How much I wish I could wish your time-ship would blow up and that'd be the end of it?" He squeezed his eyes shut, fingers massaging his forehead. "But I can't. What you're doing, it makes you happy. He makes you happy. And that's why I'm gonna bow out."

"No!" She reached across the table to grip his forearm. "Danny, please. You make me happy. I can give it up right now. Right now. It's Wednesday; he'll be coming sooner or later and I'll just tell him we're through and that's that—it's not worth losing you."

A sad smile was playing on his lips. "Say you 'give it up' then. We both know the ending. It's you and me, sitting here, and your eyes breaking through the glass and looking for him in the blue. That's not fair to either of us."

Somewhere in the distance a bell rang. He stood to leave. "See ya around, Clara."

"Danny, wait!" She couldn't stop the tears crawling over her cheeks. "I'm doing it. Ending it, today. Please, please—"

"I'll believe that when I see it," he said. And then he was gone.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

He was waiting for her when she got home.

"C'mon, c'mon! Need you for a thing!" He opened the door to the TARDIS, blue eyes crackling—not at all like Danny's, she was again reminded. Danny's eyes were light and warmth in equal measure, summer sun and cinnamon. The Doctor's were...different, she thought. They were pale illumination, crisp autumn wind, the prickling light of distant stars. She could count on a hand the times warmth had approached his gaze.

She stayed rooted in place, willing herself to meet his stare. "I can't."

"Hm? What's that?"

"I can't." She took a breath, blinking the wetness out of her eyes. "It's over."

"Over?" He studied her as if she were some exotic creature from the other side of the galaxy, and she couldn't help but wonder if a part of him sensed this was coming. He would normally be fidgeting, countering her every word.

"We're—we can't—I can't. Not anymore."

"P.E. gave you an ultimatum," he said softly.

The words surprised her. Most of the time, when it came to interpersonal relations, Clara felt as if she and the Doctor were on different pages of different books at different libraries light-years and eons apart. He'd rarely been so relevant, so attentive to the subject at hand.

"No." Her eyes stung and her throat ached. As much as she wished she could dissolve into the synthetic carpet fibers, she had to get it all out. "He broke it off. He was right to break it off." She gave a mirthless little chuckle and wiped the gathering tears away with a palm. "I actually thought I could make it work, could have my space-time cake and eat it too."

The silence rang in her ears. She wondered if he could hear it, too, if the quiet was a sound all its own for his species. Finally, he cleared his throat.

"So…if you're through, why not come along? Nothing left to lose now." He sounded almost cheery, as though he'd just offered his simple-minded companion the most obvious solution.

Red filled her vision; she could've had two hearts for how loudly hers was beating now, pulsing in her very bones.

"What?"

"I thought—you just said he broke it off—"

"And that means it's all right and I should drop everything and go on intergalactic safari?"

"It would take your mind off all this unpleasantness…"

She approached him in three great steps, part of her pleased to see him retreat against the TARDIS's door.

"Can you really be that thick? Or is it you don't want to understand?" The words were tumbling from her now, all the leftover bits she'd been saving since the Moon fiasco, waiting for him to lance with just the right callous remark. "You want to pretend you're so far above and beyond the piddling troubles of a piddling, pudding-brained race? Is that it? You treat us like castoff primitives so you don't have to care. You don't touch us because what's the use in touching something that'll be dust in a blink of your eyes?"

Her tears were hot against her skin. "Well, I'm so sorry you had the misfortune of having such an inconsequential thing as your companion. I hope the next one works out better."

She couldn't read his expression and decided she didn't care enough to try, pointing to the door with a shaking hand.

"Leave. Now."

For only the third time in all their shared history, he wordlessly complied, slamming the door behind him. She waited for the TARDIS to dematerialize before her knees buckled beneath her, and she wept.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The morning came, and she applied concealer to her puffy eyes as best she could, comforting herself with the knowledge that it was done; she'd made her choice and now she could focus on her and Danny. She arrived at the school half an hour early, nearly running to his classroom.

"Danny?" She opened the door. "Dan—"

He was sitting with someone, a red-haired woman with long legs folded gracefully as she could manage, seated as they both were in students' desks. The smile on his lips fell and his laugh went unfinished as he saw her face.

"Oh, hello, Miss Oswald."

She couldn't hide her stammer, flailing for a moment until she managed a small, "Hello, Mr. Pink."

"Mrs. Carson and I were in the middle of a conference, so…"

"Oh," she started, a blush bleeding through her tan skin. "Oh. I'm sorry. How do you do." Mrs. Carson inclined her head, obviously confused but polite enough to offer a smile.

"I just…" She racked her brain for words. "I just wanted to let you know it's finished. I completed my—project."

She saw him pause, considering her a moment. The stare reminded her uncomfortably of his.

"Glad to hear it. But I've finished mine as well." There'd been no uncertainty in his voice. She was left to stand in the doorway, trying to process what'd happened. Too late, too late; it hadn't been enough.

"Oh…all right."

"Goodbye, Miss. Oswald." He nodded curtly.

She turned and closed the door behind her, the sound becoming a physical thing that pushed her down the hallway.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Danny had been right. She lived through windows now, wondering at the worlds he was seeing, the people he was saving. It didn't matter where she was—her apartment, the classroom, the park—her eyes would find the sky and she'd put all her effort into imagining the dust of dead galaxies and the incomprehensible brightness of quasars. She lived for nighttime; only then could she spy a satellite blinking its way across the horizon, mentally repainting it the right shade of blue.

It wasn't too long after she held a small bag in her hands. Her old school friend had promised magic and starlight and endlessness, taking the package out of his pocket and offering it to her after she procured the necessary funds. He'd smiled knowingly and wished her a safe and pleasant journey.

Sitting on her couch, Clara removed a slip of paper from the bag. As she tore off a perforated square, she took a moment to appreciate the blue swirls printed on it—a sharp, clear blue; his blue—before opening her mouth and placing it gently under her tongue. She didn't have to wait long before the stars came to her.

It became a nightly ritual, and she ignored the increasing cost and growing paper pieces. Sometimes the TARDIS would appear in her bedroom and he'd emerge and his eyes would burn through her, twin storms. Sometimes she'd float off into the shimmering darkness, revisiting everyone they'd helped. She saw the rise and fall of Earth a dozen different ways, watched her fellow man build ships to carry them to new lands, laughing at them—she didn't need their machines, not anymore. Now she was the one who could stand loftily above them; now she had eternity.

At first the complaints had been small, parents noting she didn't seem to be attending to her pupils. Clara scoffed; of course she was attending. Didn't they understand? Her purpose was so much greater than the small school. She had planets to name, wonders to see.

It ended the day she stood at the open window, her students stunned to silence as she smiled, the warmth of the sun devouring her from the inside out.

"I'll only be a moment," she assured them. "See, with the way time travel works, you won't even notice I'm gone."

Then she'd climbed onto the window sill, stretching her arms in front of her, waiting for the solar wind to carry her away. It was Courtney who stopped her, with a firm yet gentle hand on her wrist.

"Miss Oswald," she whispered, her voice raw and sad. "Miss Oswald, he's not here. Come down."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

There'd been discussions after that, and an agreement of sick leave. Now she lied curled on her bed, holding the last sheet of paper to her chest. She'd done her research—she was a clever girl, after all—and knew her need had never been chemical. There was nothing in the substance to hate or blame for her current state. It was the only way she knew to see them again, all the worlds and lights and colors. It was the only way she could see—

She shook, silent and dry-eyed, considering how many squares it'd take this time, how she was going to be able to afford what she needed with the pittance in her bank account. Her fingers ran along the perforated lines, calculating, when a voice sounded from her doorway.

"Clara?"

So soft, she thought. It was the softest thing she'd ever heard. Only Danny could approach such tenderness...but something in the voice, the way it rolled her name, made it sound like a perfect green hillock—it couldn't be. She glanced at the paper in her hand, counting the squares, making sure she hadn't taken any without knowing. In her vibrant, living visions he'd appeared often, but always remained silent. His hands would gesture animatedly and his eyes sparkled under their fierce brows, but there was never sound.

"Clara?" The voice repeated, closer now. There was a dip in the mattress next to her. She didn't dare turn over, wanting nothing more than to savor this dream—it had to be a dream—as long as she could.

His hand was cool on her shoulder.

"Clara, look at me. What's that you're holding?" Another hand snatched the paper from her grip. Now she did turn, sitting up on the bed. This dream wasn't supposed to take her paper, and she meant to tell it so.

Then she saw his eyes; the storms were gone. They'd become relics of some distant ice age, long-since melted to glacier lakes, now trained on her in a way she could barely, faintly remember. He hummed and flicked his tongue over one of the squares.

"Lysergic acid diethylamide? What could you—" He stopped, realizing how she'd been coping these past months.

"Pah. Low-quality stuff, too." He balled the paper and threw it at the wastebasket across the room, giving a triumphant chortle when it made it in. Then he cleared his throat, returning to study her.

"Clara, Clara…" He seemed stuck at her name, all other words bottlenecking in his long, thin throat.

"It was always you, in my trips. I thought it'd be Danny, or even him. The other You—the one before. But it wasn't. It was you."

His gaze was plaintive as he took in her words, wringing his hands reflexively. "Clara, you're—"

"I know what I am to you, Doctor. I'm a breath. I'm not even a speck of stardust on your shoe. And now you can see I'm a piffling puff of air at that."

The moment hung suspended between them, dragging on until she felt him make some internal decision. She could almost hear it click into place in his infinitely-confounding mind, as his hands came to rest below her shoulders.

"No." His voice was very low, its edges frayed. "No."

He leaned forward, lightly brushing his forehead against hers, and she felt something like the abrupt unease of a static shock before being submerged in his consciousness. His lips were moving, she thought; yes, it was his breath tickling her cheek. But the words were a strange, lilting music, the cadence its own sweet ebb and flow. Her inner English teacher imagined a poem by Blake—if Blake had written in Attic Greek.

The meaning of the words unfolded as his mind touched hers, in images and sounds and other perceptions she had no name nor sense for. It was brighter than anything her paper could've rendered. She felt the searing hearts of galaxies, saw through the eyes of strange and beautiful beings on strange and beautiful worlds. Something in them, she understood then. Like a pulse, a silvery thread. Was it a word? A familiar sound, almost an essence: Clara.

She made to pull away, but his grip on her shoulders tightened. Now he told her—showed her—his running away, his liveslong tendency toward escape. She saw the galaxies again, this time as a backdrop against his flight. The images jumped to more recent memories—stiff, one-sided hugs, intentionally-placed distance. His voice rang in her head: Not what you think. The scene shifted again, the stars and exotic forms reclaiming center stage, but the sound beating within them had changed. It was still her name, but something in it, the way it crumbled at the end—they were mourning. She had become an elegy. One day the galaxies will spin on and the creatures will thrive and evolve—but you, more precious than all of them, my impossible girl—you will be gone.

"You are a breath to me," he spoke again in English, the words coloring his features in hurt. "But, Clara, you're the sweetest—"

He pulled her to him then. Her arms rose slowly, disbelievingly, to grip the back of his coat. There was a strangled sound, and it took her a second to realize it'd come from her.

"You are the sweetest air I ever tasted." He spoke into her hair now, lips against her temple. "I'm only thankful I can hold my breath a long while."

Still the stars shone in her mind; still the creatures called her name in exultation and sorrow. Their dissonance ached in her chest.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Hours later found them still entwined on her bed. Making up for lost time, she thought with a rueful smile. Her head rested in the crook of his neck and the rightness of the fit consumed her—she couldn't help thinking back to her school days, biology textbooks full of highlights and loopy notes. Little you and your little brain. There'd been a picture, small and relegated to the bottom of a page, but the young Clara had still marveled at its seeming-impossibility: a clownfish weaving through the neon tendrils of a sea anemone.

She fell asleep wondering which of them was which.