A/N: Whouffaldi AU in which Clara didn't die on Trap Street and grew old with the Doctor. But she has to face the raven in the end anyway.

Let Her Go

"Ready for the cocktails with Moses? Bring a pair of rubber boots because we might have to cross a sea," the Doctor laughed at his own joke, stepping outside the TARDIS and into Clara's bedroom. He would always land inside her bedroom, it was a habit he'd had for the last 62 years, never appearing when he had promised to visit her, always at the most inconvenient times. "Clara?" he called her name, not seeing her in the room.

The Doctor closed the TARDIS door behind him and got out of the bedroom. He walked through the corridor towards the living room hoping to find her there.

"Clara?" he shouted again, "have you forgot to put on your hearing aids again?"

The Doctor spotted Clara's face among the pictures glued inside the photo album left open on the sofa. It was one of the many albums where Clara had collected the memories of their past travels together, and that she forced the Doctor to look through after every new adventure. But his long-time companion wasn't in the living room, nor in the kitchen. She was no where to be found. "Clara?" the Doctor yelled louder, scratching his grey wavy hair and starting to worry. These days she definitely wouldn't go out for a spin on her own. Not without him.

"Clara?!" he kept running through her flat, trying to plan his next move.

Then he noticed it. In the corner of the bathroom by the door, Clara's walking stick was lying on the floor. He bent down to grab it, and saw one of her earrings next to it. There was something wrong about this. He straighten up and looked for other clues in the room. One of Clara's shoes behind the sink, her phone just below it. Something very bad must had happened, he feared. He rushed to take the phone and checked the last dialed number. 999. All his fears were becoming reality.

The Doctor run back to the TARDIS, opened the door with his foot, and reached the control console. Panting, he plugged Clara's phone into the console to locate the area of all the possible emergency telephone exchanges that might have taken her call, so he could narrow down the list of hospitals where Clara could have been brought to. 24 possible London hospitals. Luckily, with a time machine it wouldn't take long to call all of them. Halfway through the list, he got a positive reply. Yes, a few hours before an ambulance had brought an old lady called Clara Oswald to the emergency department of one of the hospitals he had tracked down. Yes, she had been admitted to the hospital. No, they couldn't tell him any further details about her conditions.

A moment later, the TARDIS materialized inside a messy hospital storage room. The Doctor hurried outside the room and asked every nurse he'd find what was Clara's room number.

"I'm sorry but this is a confidential information, are you a close relative?"

"Yes!"

Eventually, he found her. There she was, lying unconscious on the electric bed of room 12, rubber tubing dangling from her arms, neck, and face. He hesitated for a moment on the threshold. To the Doctor, her wrinkled face and her grey hair still looked as beautiful as the day he had first met his impossible girl, but seeing her in that state felt like a stab to his hearts.

He sat on the chair next to Clara's bed, and waited. Waited for days, sitting there, not even moving, or eating, or sleeping. He could have taken the TARDIS and jumped ahead, skipping a few days, but he didn't want to leave Clara's side for a moment. He had to be there when the moment would come. Each time some nurse or physician entered the room and tried to make him leave, he'd just flash his psychic paper in their faces, not even bothering to check what lame excuses that justified his presence in the room were showing up.

As the days passed, Clara's conditions stabilized. The nurses removed the ventilator tube coming from her mouth and Clara was able to breath on her own. The heart monitor was showing that her heartbeat was weak and slow, but steady. She didn't wake up, though. One morning, the Doctor heard the nurses say that Clara's physical conditions were so severe that she would have probably just slipped away in her sleep. It was a good death, it would save her all the pain of consciousness. But the Doctor couldn't allow it. He had to talk with Clara at least one last time.

After a week had passed and Clara still hadn't woke up, her body weakening, the Doctor decided to make his move. He was going to wake her up himself telepathically. He hadn't use this trick in such a long time, but had to try everything to bring Clara back. He bent over her face, put his shaking fingertips on her cold temples, and concentrated. He had to find the last glimmer of life inside Clara, send her a vision that could create a psychic link and light a sparkle inside her mind. He breathed in deeply, focusing all his energy in his hands.

The Doctor's eyes closed, and Clara's eyes opened.

Waking up, Clara coughed heavily, gasping. "Easy," the Doctor said, moving his hands to her shoulders, trying to calm her down and help her breathe. In a few moments, Clara started to breathe regularly. He stepped back, giving her space, standing beside the bed.

Clara turned her head slightly towards him, blinking repeatedly, still not able to see straight. "Doctor?" she asked, confused.

"Hello, Clara, welcome back," he greeted her with a soft smile, taking her gnarled hand in his.

Clara could finally focus on the man's face. "Doctor," she repeated with a hoarse voice.

She didn't expect to see him again, not at this point, and she was okay with it. Last time they met, they had tea on the Orient Express – the original, not the space one. It was a nice last adventure, although they didn't say goodbye. But Clara should have known by now; the Doctor always showed up at the last moment, right when all hope had been given up.

"Were you always so young?" Clara joked, smiling back at the Doctor.

"Nah, that was you," he replied with a smirk.

"I didn't expect to find you standing here."

"Where else could I be but here?"

"I don't know, somewhere in the universe doing whatever you want and not giving a damn about me?" Clara tried to laugh, but ended up coughing sharply again.

The Doctor drew his sonic screwdriver from the inside pocket of his velvet jacket, adjusted the settings, pointed it at Clara, and began to send a quick series of blue light beams along her body.

"Tell me, Clara, what is wrong with you?" the Doctor frowned, becoming serious and putting the screwdriver back inside his pocket, "what illness do you have? I've scanned you a lot of times with the sonic but I can't make sense of the readings. The readings show stomach ulcers, kidney failure, liver failure, narrow blood vessels, lung infection, inflammation of the bronchial tubes, and inflammation of the pancreas. But all these symptoms don't correspond to any specific disease. The doctors wouldn't tell me anything, and they don't seem to be doing any effort to take care of you." He paused for a second, scratching his forehead, then said, "I need to know what's wrong with you so I can call some proper extraterrestrial surgeon or something."

"No," Clara simply replied.

"I'll bring you to the best hospitals in the galaxy and they'll find a way to heal you, don't you worry," he continued.

"No."

"You don't get to choose, that's an order!" the Doctor suddenly shouted, scowling at Clara.

"No, this is my choice, Doctor!" Clara yelled back as loud as her sore throat allowed.

The Doctor dropped his eyebrows, taken aback. He waited a moment while deep sadness filled his eyes, then whispered, "I can fix you."

"No, you can't," Clara said, forcing her mouth into a sad smile, "I don't have an illness you can cure, Doctor. I'm old. Just old."

"There has to be something I can do."

"The symptoms that you have recognized, do you know what they mean? They mean that it's time. My time to rest," Clara said, looking down, "but that's not something you could ever understand, is it, Doctor?"

"It doesn't have to end like this," the Doctor exhaled.

"But it has to end somehow, sometime. I survived all our adventures, all the stupid risks I've taken during our years together, but nobody can survive life forever. Everything has to end."

"Not for us."

"Not for you, maybe," Clara laughed, without finding it funny, "but I'm not immortal, and you've always known that."

For once, the Doctor was speechless. He looked aside, struggling to put all the thoughts that were screaming in his mind into words. But in the end it was a very easy concept. "I don't want to lose you, Clara," he said, not able to even bare to think about it.

"But you're not losing me, you daft old man," Clara smiled, trying to reassure him as much as herself. "I'll always be right here," she pointed with a finger at the Doctor's chest for a second, but her arm was too weak to be held up for long and her veiny, twisted hand fell back onto the bed.

"That's not the same."

"It's the only way I have to keep running with you," Clara explained, "I can't go on, Doctor. I'm tired. I'm so tired."

But nothing she said could change the way the Doctor was feeling. "I can't lose you, Clara," he repeated, desolate.

"If you've loved me in any way, you'll let me go."

The Doctor brought his hand to his mouth and started biting his nails. He had to come up with the best way to convey the next thought he was finding hard to process. "What about me?" he finally said in a deep, hollow voice.

"If there was something I could do about that, I would," Clara said slowly, biting her lip to stop the emotions that were overcoming her. "I guess we're both just going to have to be strong."

"Don't know if I can do that."

"You have to," she reached for his hand with her fingers, but she was so debilitate she could barely move them. The Doctor noticed her struggles and grasped her hand with both of his.

"I'm ready for this, Doctor, I accept it. Being a control freak, I've already planned my funeral, I've written my last will and testament – by the way, I'd like you to keep our photo albums if you don't mind, you've got plenty of space in the TARDIS. So you can look at them every now and then and not forget me."

"I could never forget you, Clara Oswald," the Doctor said back, holding her hand tighter.

"You say this now, but you won't even remember my name in 4 and a half billion years," she smiled, while a tear escaped down her cheek.

"Don't you worry. I'll remember," he assured her, bringing his hand to her face to gently wipe the tear away with the back of his fingers. "I remember everyone."

"It's such a shame we must part, though," Clara whispered, a glimmer of inconsolable sadness appearing in her eyes behind all the courage she was displaying. And the Doctor finally understood what his role was now and what he had to do. He had to pretend to be strong, brave and encouraging, all things that Clara had been doing on his behalf for so many years. He had to ease the process, even though his own hearts were breaking.

"Just because our time is over doesn't mean it didn't matter," the Doctor gave her his best smile.

Clara cheered up a little. "I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

"You were brilliant, Clara," the Doctor continued, "I'm really proud of you."

"We had the best of times, didn't we?" Clara laughed.

A sudden fit of coughing shook her whole body violently. The Doctor gripper her shoulders, unable to do anything else than just watch her fade. She tried to inhale deeply and slowly, but breathing was becoming harder and harder by the minute.

"Wouldn't it be great if we could just fly away somewhere this time too?" the Doctor said in a broken voice, "Start a new adventure."

"God, yeah," Clara replied weakly, wheezing badly, "that'd be... great..."

Another violent fit of coughing took hold of her. Confusion and dizziness were taking over her heavy head. Tiredness was winning.

"But this time..." Clara mumbled, "this adventure... I have to go... on my own... Doctor..."

All of a sudden, her body was racked by tremors.

"Clara!" the Doctor howled, grasping her arm.

The heart monitor beside the bed began emitting an alarming series of fast, loud beeps. Clara's big eyes were cover by her wrinkly eyelids while convulsions were taking away her last drops of life. The heart monitor stopped beeping and started screaming a single continuous tone. In a second, the twitches along Clara's body ended. The monitor showed a flat line. Everything was still.

"My Clara..." the Doctor whimpered, bending over her, kissing her wrinkly forehead and stroking her white hair gently.

Nurses and doctors rushed inside the room, summoned by the heart monitor's alarm. They pushed the Doctor away abruptly, removing him from Clara, not even giving him the time to grieve her, only to try to restart her heart in vain. A nurse was pressing down with both hands on her breastbone while the doctors charged the defibrillator, then they delivered the shock. There was no change. More CPR, another shock. Again, no change.

The Doctor started walking towards the door, still keeping his eyes fixed on Clara. Not because he had any desire to see the person he cared about the most lying dead on a hospital bed, but because he had to fix that image in his brain, not to make the same mistake again. Humans are fallible, faulty, fleeting. You mustn't fall in love with them.

He stumbled over the chair beside the bed, grabbing it with both hands not to fall down on the floor, his legs hardly able to support his weight. But why bother? Wouldn't it have been better to just lie down right there, on the floor next to Clara's bed, letting the nurses walk over him? The floor was as good as any other place in a universe without Clara. He reached the door, placed a hand on the frame, scratching it with his nails with all the strength left in his body. Moments like this, he wished he could just abandon himself to emotionalism, rushing to hold Clara's body, shaking it to try to wake her up and bring her back from the dead, pretending that it wasn't useless. He wished he had been able to express his emotions better, showing clearer signs of affection to Clara while he had the chance. He hoped she knew what she meant to him.

He threw a last look at Clara as the doctors declared her time of death, then he step out of the door. He pulled out the sonic glasses from his jacket and put them on his face to cover the tears that he could no longer hold back. He started running through the corridor. He didn't remember where he had left the TARDIS, nor had he a single clue of where he was going to go now; he just knew he had to leave that place, he had to run and run, faster and faster, before all the pain could get to him. He had to run away. Just away.

Author's notes: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. If you want to tell me how much you hate me for writing this, or just want to let me know your opinions on this story, please leave a review below, I'd really appreciate it.