[ @drgrumpyface - Send Me A Symbol Meme - Found Here. ]
☁ five times my muse has thought about yours, and the one time they do something about it.
[ Clara Oswald, I choose you! ]
Generally speaking, Clara liked to fill her days with things. Things that would distract her, keep her mind busy, keep her occupied until the Doctor showed up with his crooked bow tie and his would-be-magical-if-it-weren’t-for-all-the-science snogbox, ready for another adventure among the stars. Things like babysitting, shopping, coursework- anything that kept her mind from wandering a paltry bit too far.
Usually, at least in her case, he always seemed to pop up in her thoughts in ponderings- what would the Doctor do? What would he think about this or that? Would he approve? Would he sneer? Would he laugh and clap his hands in a way that said ’everything’s fine’ when in reality he was saying ’run for your life’? She’d think of the options, of his reactions, of his voice in her head rambling about some distant plant life she’d never heard of while avoiding her questions all together and eventually she’d come to her own conclusions without his help.
Once in a while she’d find her mobile in her hand, thumb hovering over the call button with his contact name hovering at the top of the screen [affectionately ‘Bow Ties’], but she didn’t call him. Instead she’d let her internal-Doctor be her guide, not wanting to bother him for trivial things like a skinned knee or a storm that seemed a bit too dodgy. Her instincts always told her to hold out, to back off, that it was just her imagination playing tricks and that she didn’t actually need to phone the Doctor and her instincts were always right.
So instead, she simply thought about him.
About when he’d return, about how long he’d been gone, about whether or not she’d ever see him again when the absence grew to be more than a week. But he’d always return, or phone her instead, just as the thoughts of him were getting so dense that she could scarcely think of anything else. In fact, she could count out five separate times where she swore she conjured him herself, with all the thinking she’d been doing.
Once when she was figuratively dying of boredom when the family she nannied for went on holiday without her, as she had to stay behind for mid-terms. Once when she was crying, sad over hearing about the death of her family dog. Once when she was angry at a sales clerk for being particularly misogynistic when she’d asked about a specific dress size. Once when she’d been in a brilliant mood, wanting to share the good news that she’d passed her mid-terms and was well on her way to becoming a proper Professor, and once when she was half asleep on the bus ride into town, having been up all night with sick children the night before.
He’d just… shown up each time, before she’d ever gotten the chance to phone him or call out to him and she wondered if that whole TARDIS translation matrix wasn’t being used for other, not-so-nefarious-but-not-so-innocent telepathic communications. Her suspicions were quashed, though, this last time as she sat utterly devastated, heartbroken, and sobbing into her perfectly-normal-to-still-have-teddy-bear. It reminded her of simpler times, before aliens and dangerous, life threatening scenarios that she often found herself slap bang in the middle of. This time, though, it wasn’t aliens but humanity and the frailty of human life itself.
Her thoughts were nowhere else but the Doctor that day, throughout the funeral and the wake, all the way up to her being curled up in her room, yet he didn’t show up. For hours she called out silently in her mind, waiting, hoping, wondering if she really could conjure him after all but nothing ever happened. No metallic whinging sound. No gust of wind, no rush of adrenaline, no flash of light. Eventually she’d pulled out her phone, halfway to an irrational flash of anger at the fact that he wasn’t reading her mind from afar, and brought up his contact information. Without hesitation, she pressed the call button and held the phone up to her ear, dark eyes squeezing shut.
"C'mon, Doctor, pick up. Please, pick up…“
