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Clara couldn't quite wrap her mind around the fact that the Doctor - her wonderful, floppy-haired, bow tie-wearing, confusing spaceman - had simply...changed.
She leaned against the doorway that bridged one of the corridors to the console room. The Doctor didn't know she was there. She watched him; he was constantly looking at his hands and touching his face when he wasn't fiddling with things in the TARDIS. It must be so strange to get used to your body, to live in it, feel in it, think in it, and then have your soul sucked out of it and stuffed into a new body. She couldn't imagine what it must be like.
And his face...she almost couldn't bear to look at it. She wasn't used to it yet. She loved his old face - or, rather, his young face. His green-brown eyes that sometimes even seemed blue in the right light; his hilariously nearly nonexistent eyebrows, and even that distracting chin. But that was all gone now. He simply had blue eyes now; no tinges or twinkles or anything she could see. And...wrinkles. Crow's feet and laughter lines patterned his face. It bewildered her. She kept watching him, occasionally stumbling as if his left and right feet had been switched.
And his hair...his hair was gray. How could that be? Questions swirled around in her mind. She wanted to ask him, but it felt like she was looking at a stranger.
She stood there for a few more minutes, gathering the nerve to go speak to him. Before she could herself, though, he noticed her and spoke.
"Clara?"
The voice was wrong. His voice was wrong. She unexpectedly felt her face crumple. Her throat tightened and forced out a whimpering sound; her eyes squeezed shut and freed tears.
"Clara," the Doctor said, his voice like that of a grandfather soothing his grandchild. He came to her and pulled her close to him. She was slightly uncomfortable with the embrace, but she accepted his familiar warmth and wrapped her arms around him, tucking her head in, under his chin. She could feel that he was slightly taller than before.
"It's okay. It's all strange for me, too," he said. Clara sniffed and released her grip on him. "What does it feel like?" she asked, wiping away a stray tear.
The Doctor hesitated. She knew his reaction to that question would have been no different before than in this new form. He sighed and gestured to the chair by the TARDIS console. "Come."
Clara sat down in the chair, sniffing again as her running nose blatantly protested.
The Doctor crouched in front of her and took her hand in both of his. His blue eyes crackled with lightning-like emotion, activated by her question. They had seemed dull and strange before, but now, they sliced Clara's heart in two.
"It's terrible," he said firmly, his firm tone sounding like a leather shoe, protecting soft, pink-skinned feet. "It's like...being a character in a book. With an indecisive author," he went on, "Being rewritten again and again...but still following the story's plot."
Every word he spoke crushed Clara. "How can you bear it? Thirteen times?" She choked on her words, trying not to cry again. She looked back up at the Doctor's eyes. She could see now that they were rimmed with tears, but he was fighting not to let them fall.
"I've often wondered that, too. But it doesn't have to be sad," he said, placing a hand on Clara's cheek, the other one still holding her hand. "It can be wonderful." He gave her a weak smile, as if he only half-believed what he was saying but wanted to fully believe.
"How?" she whimpered. The Doctor hesitated again and looked away from her. The hand he'd placed on her cheek slid off. He released her hand and stood up, now looking down at her with big, sad, blue eyes.
Then he smiled. He spun around to the TARDIS console and put his hand on a lever, reminding Clara of his past self. She smiled.
"Why don't we go and find out?" He slammed on the lever and the TARDIS whirled off to a new beginning.