Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who. Everything belongs to the BBC. I am not making any money from this story - just trying to provide a little entertainment.
My first go at anything Who. Takes place as Clara falls through the Doctor's time stream in "The Name of the Doctor." Enjoy.
Falling
She wasn't expecting it to be so warm.
Death was supposed to be cold and lonely, wasn't it? That's how she'd always imagined it would go. Understandably, she's caught off guard by the hot, almost electric, air surrounding her and blowing through her hair. It's as though she's just opened a hot oven.
Okay, maybe Clara hadn't considered what it was going to feel like inside the Doctor's time stream when she'd taken that leaping plunge. After all, who wants to imagine being ripped into a million pieces right before they die? The moment before she jumped, there was only one thought racing through her mind: the Doctor is dying, and this is the only way to save him.
Now she's basking in the sun, engulfed in heat. If she really thinks about it - which she has plenty of time to do, since descending through over a thousand years of life and adventures takes a while - the sunny sensation is fitting, because she's surrounded by the Doctor. His soul - which is really what she's falling through - is warm and welcoming. Inside the stream there are no barriers, no walls to scale, no defenses set up for her to crash through in order to get close to him. All his many lives and incarnations are within reach, completely exposed. The feeling of him around her, the sound of his voices upon the air, offer comfort and support.
Clara is not frightened.
At least not until she begins to sprout.
It starts at her fingertips. A single green leaf with veins of pulsing silver, as tiny as a thimble, pokes through the gap between her nail and finger. At rapid speed, it unfurls and grows, feeding on the energy buzzing around her. It takes over her nail, then her entire pinky. As soon as the first appears, others spring up. Clara hardly has the chance to panic.
Her skin itches and wrinkles, browning in the intense heat until it turns to bark. Her hands split, forking into branches. It should probably hurt, but doesn't even tingle. The Doctor. . .River. . .they had warned her that the time wounds would cause her to splinter into shards, that she would die in pain, in fear, and most likely in vain.
They were wrong. But, she supposes that she's only the second person in the history of the universe to enter a Time Lord's stream, so they couldn't have known what would really happen. They'd only had theories.
Then again, Clara has her own theories about what happened to the first figure who jumped into the time stream. That man, that member of the Great Intelligence, had entered the Doctor's stream with the sole purpose of causing pain and suffering. Knowing that she couldn't let that happen, Clara had followed to set things right: willingly.
It's scary, the things she'd do for the Doctor, the sacrifices she'd make in order for him to go on living, even if it means losing her life. Seems a small price to pay to keep the stars in the sky, to keep Jenny and Strax alive, to keep the hero of countless races, species, and planets around a while longer.
Maybe the time wounds can detect this difference; Clara is here to heal instead of hurt. Maybe they realize that she's volunteering to aid in the treatment of the virus that has attacked the Doctor across all of time and space. Could be the reason she hasn't been burned by the electric forces in the stream, or been ripped into a million pieces and scattered across the universe as predicted.
At least, not yet.
Clara raises her arms in front of her face to watch the metamorphosis more closely. The bark is to her shoulders now, and she can't count the number of leaves billowing in the wind. There are hundreds. Maybe thousands. She tries to drop her arms back to her sides, but they've become stuck in their current position. Her hands stretch, her forearms elongate; they grow up and up and up. More leaves emerge and fan out, each hair on her body transforming.
Clara can't believe what she's seeing. She isn't completely sure if this is real or a figment of her imagination. Is her death so terrible that her mind has gifted her with a hallucination to ease her passing?
While she's been preoccupied watching leaves sprout from her hands and arms, the rest of her body has gone rigid. Her legs have fused together, forming a sturdy trunk. She can feel it, but she can't look down anymore, because she can't move her neck. She's stuck looking up at the giant canopy of vibrant green and silver umbrella-ing over her.
Before she knows it, Clara is a tree in full bloom: green and thriving and wondrous.
Impossible.
She feels his whisper on the wind. It twists around her like a hug. "My impossible girl."
She's crying. Not because it hurts - all she feels is incredible warmth from the forces of the Doctor's time stream, the same warmth that has taken hold of her heart and has helped her grow - but because this is what she was born to do: save the Doctor.
Never has she felt such joy swell in her heart. Clara knows that, whatever it is that is happening to her body, to her soul, is meant to be. She, or an echo of herself, has saved the Doctor more than once before. This is supposed to happen. In fact, it's already happened. She just needed to catch up. That knowledge gives her such a sense of lightness and peace that, as she continues to descend at a rapid but controlled pace, she fully embraces the change coming over her.
But, for as much happiness and elation as she feels, a terrible sadness lurks in her heart too. As she drops lower in the time stream - going down, down, down to who knows where? - she feels the inevitable chill drive off the sun's warm breath. The cold takes hold of her toes, her roots, and she cringes at the sudden drop in temperature. Her leaves rustle with a shiver.
When the first leaf falls - one, single leaf - she's acutely aware of the loss. It's as though a piece of herself has just flaked off. She watches as it flies away on the current of the stream and into the distance.
Clara casts a glance upward and sees that all of her leaves have colored. A mixed palette of reds and oranges and yellows and browns stare down at her in maddening beauty. The bright hues of autumn dance above her in the wind.
She's on fire. Her boughs have been set ablaze with color, but she's freezing to death.
So, this is the end. She will wilt and die, and somehow - by the stars, somehow - she will save the Doctor. Every last one of him.
One by one, her leaves detach and float away. With each desertion, she feels a little more lost, a little less like Clara Oswald, as though each leaf carries away a piece of her. She notices that the leaves are not falling down to whatever ground may lie below, but are going up and out in all directions. They are zooming through the time stream, disappearing before her eyes.
They're going into his time line, she realizes. So that's how it happens. That's how I get to where I'm needed.
And then her leaves are gone and she is bare, and so very, very cold. There is no light. Only darkness. Loneliness. She doesn't hear the Doctor's voices anymore; not a single sound except the heaviness of her own breathing.
Everything rushes her at once: the memories of being born; the lives she's lived; the trials she's endured; the deaths; the faces of the Doctor; all of time and space; the ground.
The moment of impact is an intense, excruciatingly painful experience. It's as though that single moment contains all of the suffering she's ever felt, through all of her echoes, through all of her lives. (Of course it's not all bad, because there are good moments too: the ones where she sees the Doctor vanquish his foes, where he smiles his goofy smile, where he shines. But those bright moments are overpowered by the cost of sacrificing herself again and again.)
The worst part is learning that she didn't win every battle. For all her effort, there are still times when she failed to help the Doctor before he experienced pain of his own, before he lost someone he cared for to the darkness.
Every death, every disappointment, every sense of loss vanishes as soon as she slams into the ground. The agonizing pain lasts a fraction of a second, not even the duration of a blink. Then. . .nothing.
When she sits up, there are residual tears in her eyes, but she can't understand their presence. Why am I so sad?
Oh, right. She doesn't know where she is, or even who she is.
That's something to be cry about, she supposes.
Suddenly frightened, cold, and alone, she turns over in panic. What is she going to do? How is she going to escape from wherever it is she's landed? Why can't she remember anything: how she came to be here; her name; why her limbs - her very body - feels alien to her?
She needs help, but who is there to turn to?
Somehow - even though she doesn't remember anything - she finds his name upon her lips when she calls out to the darkness. "Doctor!"
She's not sure who he is, or how she knows he will help her, but it is the only word knocking around in her mind, her only remaining defense.
From somewhere in the atmosphere, a phantom voice names her: "Clara."
Yes, that's right. She's Clara: the impossible girl.
He talks to her in a soothing, rational, comfortingly familiar voice. The Doctor - her Doctor - speaks, telling her that he is all around, running through the fog. He reminds her of how she jumped into his time stream to save him.
She still doesn't understand what is going on, or why the faces trotting by seem so familiar. They are the Doctor, but they are not the one she knows best, the one she knows most intimately.
None of this is real, Clara thinks. It can't be.
Yet, she can't ignore the voice. Even if it isn't real, she doesn't want to be alone. She doesn't want to die in an unfamiliar place with no one beside her except ghosts of a person she may have known in one of her different lives.
"What's happening?" she asks as the ground beneath her rumbles and pitches, knocking her off balance and back to her knees.
"I'm inside my own time stream."
He can't be, she reasons. It would collapse in on itself.
His next sentence confirms her hypothesis almost before she completes the thought.
"Get out then!" she shouts. Of all the ridiculous things he could do. . .
"Not until I've got you."
She'd forgotten how stubborn he can be, how he never gives up when others are in danger, how he always finds a way. He tells her he's sending something that will help. All she has to do is reach out and take it.
"This is you, Clara," he explains gently. "Everything you were or will be. Take it."
Above her, she sees the link to herself drift down, swirling and swooping gracefully toward her outstretched hand.
The Doctor continues, "You blew into the world on this leaf. Hold tight. It will take you home."
She grasps the brown, withered leaf in her hand, and things start to become more clear: the way her mother smiled while baking a souffle; her first kiss; Artie and Angie at their mother's funeral; the adventures she's had with the Doctor; her transformation into a glorious tree.
Breaking through her mental upload, the Doctor calls out to her in earnest. She swears it sounds like he's right behind her.
She spins on her heel, and - by the stars - there he is: the madman with the pointy chin and lopsided bow tie, opening his arms to her like a promise. After all she's done for him, he only wants to save her, to take her home.
"Just this once," he pleads. "Just for the hell of it."
Her legs feel as stiff as her smile, but she staggers toward him still grasping the leaf that is pouring memories back into her mind. If she could only get a little closer, she'd fall into his arms. She wishes he'd move just a little in her direction.
"Just one more step," he encourages, beckoning her forward.
With said step taken, she's enveloped in a searing embrace, so hot and so tight that it steals her breath away. Even though she's scared, overwhelmed, and confused, Clara has to admit that the hug is nice.
Suddenly - much too soon - his hold goes slack. She watches as fear comes into his eyes, and turns around to see what put it there. Together they see a figure in the darkness. It's not someone she recognizes, so she asks.
The Doctor says that he is the only one in his time stream. "That's the point."
But she's never seen this side of him, never gazed upon this silhoutte. She tries to get more of an explanation, but he sputters on about choosing names and promises not being kept, and it all goes slightly over her head. Then again, being confused by the Doctor's answers is not exactly uncommon.
Clara doesn't want to let it go, but she's incredibly tired - drop dead tired.
Turning from a human into a tree was exhausting enough. To break off into thousands of lives, and experience each of those lives in the span of a few minutes before re-forming as a human again has left her utterly depleted. A little nauseous too. On top of everything else, memories from her entire life - plus some bits and pieces from her echoes - have just been crammed inside her mind; it's having trouble expanding to hold all that data.
Unable to fight the fatigue any longer, she closes her eyes. She needs to hibernate for a while, to lie dormant until she recovers her strength and senses.
Luckily, the Doctor's arms are there to catch her before she collapses to the ground. That's good, because she can't be planted here, in this toxic, dark environment. She won't thrive and grow where there is no sun.
With time and under the Doctor's dutiful care - far from the fields of Trenzalore - Clara knows she will continue to do the impossible. Someday, she will bloom again.
Inspired by wanting to know the significance of the leaf. This was my interpretation.
Reviews and concrit are loved and appreciated. :)