marvella15:

selinrkyle:

I want Clara Oswald, safe, alive, and returned to me immediately. You bring her back. You do that. You do that now. Unharmed. Unhurt. Alive.

Do you ever think about just how MUCH Twelve listened to Clara? How much he really heard what she was saying and did so to an extent that she didn’t even realize?

In Deep Breath, Clara tells him, “I will smile first and then you know it’s safe to smile.” And so she sets herself up as the one in the relationship who sets the tone for everything. For hugs, for confessions, for emotional transparency. Just look at Last Christmas, where he only confesses about Gallifrey after she tells him about Danny. Clara becomes the emotional leader of their relationship right away.

Here, in MOTOE, she tells him getting her home and keeping her safe are her only requirements for traveling with him. And he remembers this long after Clara seems to have forgotten or stopped caring. See the “don’t go native” conversation in Under the Lake. 

Or perhaps she just changes the terms. In Before the Flood, she tells him, “If you love me in any way, you’ll come back.” It’s no longer home and safety that matter to her but the Doctor, this Doctor. And into the stasis chamber he goes to sleep for 140 years to get back to her. 

And I’ve talked about this before but in Dark Water, he sees the extreme lengths she was willing to go to save the person she loves, even though that person is dead. And then Twelve knows that that’s what you do, what they do, when the one they love dies. They go as far as needed to bring them back. Enter Heaven Sent and Hell Bent where he dies millions and millions of times and puts the laws and lives of his own species as secondary to saving Clara Oswald.

But then lastly, of course, is, “Everything you’re about to say, I already know. Don’t do it now. We’ve already had enough bad timing.” Clara doesn’t even understand the magnitude of preventing the Doctor (and herself) from saying what absolutely does need saying. She doesn’t get it until they are kneeling in the cloisters and she’s staring at a Doctor who has been through billions of years of torment and pain and loss. And maybe only then does she see how much this Doctor learned from her, the good and the bad. How much he took her words to heart. And so she tells him.

“People like me and you, we should say things to one another. And I’m going to say them now.”

Not long after this, Ashildr says, “…a passionate and powerful Time Lord and a young woman so very similar to him.” And while she’s right, she also misses the point. 

Clara isn’t just like the Doctor. 

The Doctor is like Clara.