The smallest truths make themselves presentable at the worst times. In the despair of others, the smallest truth of all comes out; there are the good and the evil and the in between either die or are forced to join a side. Politics, more often than not, show this to be true. Many parties exist in most all Republics and yet there are two definitive parties that are held in the balance in such a way that good and evil are. We see these things in life. Balances between the good and evil and yet we are incapable of seeing it within people themselves. This story, the tale of a man and a woman, both extraordinary, is a tale about how how each and every one of us has a bit of evil within, an evil that can be manipulated into something greater.
The Doctor is little more than a man anymore. Once he was a great Time Lord who scoured the universe who gave little thought into the emotions of others. Living for a long time wore him down, and his own emotions became him.
There's a story, a story about the time the Doctor went to Hedgewick's World of Wonders. His emotions were both his doom and his growth. On one end of the spectrum he was taken hostage by the cybermen, meant to become a basis for cyberplanners. What is not known is that that same cyberplanner that began to take over the Doctor's body couldn't have existed without the darkest emotions of the Doctor himself. The cyberplanner fed off of the turmoil of the Doctor's soul, creating his own personality. But the cybermen were not ready to take over a Time Lord. They didn't have the means to take away the emotions that he contained, and so the cyberplanner was eventually destroyed. This is the story that has been told, anyway.
The eleventh hour is over now the clock is striking twelve's.
Not so true, either. His time was never over. They've been lying. Because the truth of what happened to the Doctor scared them.
The cyberplanner, Mister Clever, was never destroyed. The Doctor lost the match of chess. Metal could never be so easily removed, after all, and evil is ingrained deep in the soul. The Doctor was written, then, to be a martyr, but the truth is that he let Clever take over because he couldn't deny the fact that he was, in fact, meant to be evil. There was no more good to done in the world, and even now there isn't any. He lurks, sadly, in the back of Clever's head, craving to take back what he's done by letting the cyberplanner take control, but being king of the cybermen isn't too bad of a title in the grand scheme of things.
We then come to our heroine, Clara Oswald. What's happened to her? She went with the lie. Time was split into two. In the world where Mister Clever exists, Clara Oswald does not. She goes on, she gives her life and gets split into pieces for her Doctor, written perfectly for her to fall in love. She doesn't know, though, that she's in love, not until after he's gone. Then she's stuck, with a Doctor who really shouldn't exist at all. Perhaps she knows there's something off the whole time, but with all of the drama that occurs to make an exciting romp around space and time and what not, no one can focus on that wrongness. She's always good and perfect and even when she turns darker she comes back to the light.
Flash forward to The Zygon Invasion. This is when things change. The balance for Clara shifts. Unwillingly, she is turned into a zygon, but that zygon could never have become the evil it was without the little bit of evil that existed inside of Clara. She comes up with the name Bonnie, perhaps to just shield away the fact that once she was Clara. Either way, names are pointless.
Our two characters, turned into the worst versions of themselves, are never meant to meet. They exist in two separate times that are not real, but time mends itself often, with mistakes in between. Their meeting is one of chance. As time mends itself, it throws out the invasion of the zygons, but it keeps what's happened to Clara. It merges the two Clara's together, one good and one evil. Clara and Bonnie. They struggle, quite like the original struggle of the Doctor and Mister Clever. Bonnie becomes the prominent occupier of the body. Time puts the two timelines together to attempt to restore the way things should be. It sends the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor into a void as Mister Clever can not exist with another Doctor, the paradox would be too great. The zygons disappear. They never made any sort of peace treaty. The tragedy is that time had to change this or else the world may have been destroyed. Mister Clever takes the place of the Doctor in the world. He has a TARDIS that bends to his will. Clara has no idea that the twelfth incarnation is gone. In fact, time allows her to have all of her memories.
When she sees the man come out of the TARDIS with the metal lining along his face, she begins to cry. She is at a cafe, reading the newspaper, having a coffee before work. She could never not be called to the hum of the TARDIS appearing. She half expected the grey-haired old man she once knew to come running toward her to say sorry for leaving, but instead it was someone completely different, a man from her past years before. Her breath hitches in her throat, he looks down the street at nothing, and he seems confused, but his gaze eventually converges on his. He is not the Doctor, Clara knows this to be true, and Bonnie, a voice in her head, is interested.
Who's that, Clara?
No one.
Let's go through your memories and see...
I said it's no one, Bonnie!
The aggressive side of Clara's nature often comes out at the worst times and she's yelling into a newspaper, her hands shaking.
Tsk, tsk, Clara, you should go say hello to your boyfriend, you know.
Why did you look?
Because I'm you, I deserve to know. One day I'll know it all.
The switch between them used to be painful but now it is seamless, Bonnie takes over control of the body, shutting Clara out. The man has disappeared, or rather the robot, and Bonnie is quickly going after him. She strides down the street to the blue box that stands unoccupied for the moment, her hands moving across the front of it with glee. If only she knew she had once been a zygon and could have had control of this ship, but since she did not she only had the premonition of the power it could serve. Clara also seemed worried about her finding it. She pushes the door open, and for some reason the machine lets her in. She looks around it in wonder, the vast space. it makes creaking noises and hums at her as if it wants to have a conversation. She takes steps forward and she runs her fingers over the console, her breathing shallow with anticipation.
It seems that she left the door open, if she hadn't she may have heard him approach her. For a moment she is alone, the next a man is behind her, hand sliding over the one that she's got on the console. "Miss Oswald, it's been an awful long time," he breathes, his voice deep with a lust like she's never heard before. She lifts her head up and tilts it a bit so her chin juts out before she turns her head so she can look up at him.
"If only I were Miss Oswald and you were the Doctor," she murmurs, watching as he looks utterly discontent with what he's hearing. "Who are you, she won't let me know, but she doesn't like you."
"Of course she doesn't, I'm Mister Clever and I took the Doctor away from this world. Who the hell are you?" He hasn't moved away from her yet. It's a tactic, she supposes, one that will never work.
"My name is Bonnie," she tells him, leaning up to kiss his jaw, though her lips come in contact with metal that sends a soft shock through her body. It doesn't effect her, not like it should, because she diverts the pain to Clara instead. "Mister Clever is a stupid name."
"So is Bonnie in comparison to Clara, but you don't hear me complaining, now do you?" She laughs at that, pulls away from him, moving so that she can easily get to the exit if it's needed. "Where is Clara? I know she's here."
"How can you possibly know that? Maybe I'm her twin sister."
"I just know. Where is she?"
Bonnie taps at her own skull, then puts her finger to her lips. "But shhh, we don't want to wake her, do we Mister Clever? Things can get a bit crazy whenever she and I are both attempting to have control."
He's fascinated with what's happened to her. With the Doctor's brain he's been able to determine what's happened to time, despite his own confusion. But he wonders how it's possible that in the short amount of time that Clara and her Doctor have been separated between universes that she's already developed a dual personality. He smiles at her. "Of course not, after all, Bonnie, I know nothing about you and everything about her, so how about a nice cup of tea?"
"Maybe not, I personally don't like being drugged, no idea how Clara feels about it," he wonders how she could possibly know that was his plan, but it was. He makes a change to his plan, his fingers moving across the console.
"What are you, Bonnie? An alien?"
"No. I'm just part of Clara. I like to think of myself as her protector," she smiles to herself at that, he can see it. "But she hates me and wants me gone, unfortunately we can't all have what we want."
"I suppose we can't," he murmurs, beginning to mess with switches on the console. She begins moving forward to peer at what he's doing, but she's too late because he's pressing a button and suddenly the room is still except for himself. The TARDIS doesn't even make a sound as time pauses for a moment, he moves forward to cup her cheek gently. He passes through the space as if it is jelly and his body gives a bit of resistance whenever he wants to slide his fingers down over her skin. He moves his fingertips over her jaw and neck and hair. It's been ages since either he or the Doctor has laid eyes on this girl, and deep inside the old Time Lord is beginning to stir as well, taking notice to the events presently occurring. "Oh, Clara, I don't know what's happened to you, but trust me when I say it's going to get much worse." He presses his fingers to her temples and then time begins again and she's getting knocked out, crumpling down onto the floor. He moves down to lift her into his arms. The Doctor cries out for the first time in ages, and Clever grins.
"This will be fun."
Time thinks it was saving the world, but really it may have been just readjusting who would bring it to its end.
A/N: Thank you for reading. Please leave reviews and favourites, either on here or Tumblr and keep following for more.