Her Impossible Wolf

2

Clara smiled. "You knew him? Were you an old companion? Were you someone he helped?"
"I was a companion. How did you meet him?"
Clara sighed, reminiscing. "Well, when I first met him, he had gone into hiding with a load of monks in like the 1600s or something, and he greeted me while wearing this monk outfit." She giggled at the memory. "I can still remember his stupid floppy fringe and lopsided grin. There were these aliens collecting people and uploading them into a kind of hive mind thing. He saved me twice just from them..."
"He must've regenerated again then. Neither of mine had a stupid fringe."
"You know about the regeneration too? He went from stupid floppy fringe to grumpy old Scotsman right in front of me."
"He went from sad northerner to... I don't know how to describe him... Fire, but also a bubbly and fun person in front of me." Rose paused, trying to stay in the memory for as long as possible. "Oh Clara, you should've seen him that Christmas Day. Christmas 2005. There was this giant rock ship above half of London and a third of the world's population stood ready to jump. The Sycorax, they were called.
"They wanted Earth to use it as a colony or something. To put humanity into slavery. He'd literally just woken up and come out of the TARDIS, which they'd kidnapped with me, him and my ex boyfriend inside. He freed the people from what he called blood control, saying they were never in danger.
"The only way to get the Sycorax to leave was to duel. If the Doctor won, they left and never came back. You can imagine what their prize would've been if they'd won. The Doctor lost his right hand while they fought, but he was still in his regeneration-cycle. He grew his hand back and won.
"He was going to spare the leader of the Sycorax, but they started to charge from behind. He threw a satsuma at a button on the wall of the ship and the Sycorax leader fell to his death."
Clara sat in the bed watching Rose as she retold this. "I think I remember that Christmas. I think one of my friends was on the roof of her apartment block." She picked up the plate with the souffle on it, as well as the fork provided. "Y'know," she said, getting some souffle onto her fork, "my mum used to make souffle a lot. I used to try to make one using her recipe all the time. She had a saying. 'The souffle isn't the souffle. The souffle is the recipe.' I never could get the recipe right."
Rose smiled and laughed a little. "She sounds like a great woman."
"Yeah, she was big on desserts."
Rose faltered. "Did... Did you say 'was'? Past tense?" Clara nodded. She knew what was coming. "What happened, if you don't mind me asking?"
"She was ill. Nothing the doctors could do."
"I'm sorry, Clara. How old were you?"
"Quite young. Mid teens. And you don't need to be sorry, Rose. If you lose someone, they never really leave you. There's a bit of mum in me, really. I suppose that's why I was always trying to make souffle." Clara paused and grinned to Rose. "Now I just love eating them!" Rose laughed and Clara ate the bit of souffle on her fork triumphantly.
Clara loved to make people laugh. She couldn't believe how much she'd missed it since Me had left. Since she wasn't at full (or even half) strength, she figured she'd be staying with Rose and her family for a while, so she was looking forward to making Rose laugh near continuously over the next however long it took for her to heal.
At Rose's laughter, Clara couldn't help but smile. She had a rather nice laugh. Eventually, with Clara continuing to eat her souffle, Rose's laughter died down. When she stopped however, she had queries.
"Hey, uh, Clara?" Clara looked up at Rose from her half-eaten souffle. "I don't think I checked your chest when I came back in from getting your souffle and stuff. Do you mind...?"
Clara smirked. "Well, if the interest is purely for my healing..." She laughed as Rose's cheeks turned the same colour as the petals of her namesake. "I'm kidding! I don't care! Sure, check my chest out."
Rose, still keeping to the colour of her namesake's petals, stood from the chair beside the bed and grabbed a stethoscope that was hanging in the wardrobe. "My mum just has the most random stuff lying around. Like, this was something that our old neighbour, back on the Powell Estate, had brought round for no reason at one point - her lodger was a doctor or something and she had one lying around. I checked the Doctor's heartbeats with this when he passed out after regenerating... Say Clara, you didn't just regenerate, did you?"
"No, I'm human. Or, at least, I was last I checked. But then, I did die and get brought back by the Doctor since then, so I don't know... I'm pretty sure even death can't change your species."
Rose paused, the stethoscope halfway to Clara's chest, her blush long forgotten. "You... died?" Clara nodded in response.
"But don't worry," she added, smiling, "I got better. Ish." She noticed that her quip hadn't relieved any of Rose's worry. She sighed. "I suppose I should tell you the story, shouldn't I?"
It was Rose's turn to nod in response to a question asked in this conversation. "That would be ideal, yes." Neither of the two women noticed the older version of Rose that was Jackie Tyler stood in the doorway, silently listening as the two became friends.