Hello! This is just a little thing that I thought off after watching the Snowmen and wouldn't leave me alone. Written really quickly so excuse any shitty writing and science wrongness. It made sense at the time. Also, this isn't Oswin Oswald or Clara Oswin Oswald, this is modern day Oswin. But tried to keep her in character (as much as she has anyway, I was thinking some sort of Oswin/Clara combination). I hope I did her justice. I hope I did the Doctor Justice too, this is my first Doctor Who fic. Okay, enough with the author's note, on with the story.
But first, the obligatory disclaimer.
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who nor am I Steven Moffat. If I was, someone would have fallen off of something really tall and died but not really by now.
Everything is on fire.
Okay, maybe not everything was on fire. Just the sky (and, honestly, flaming skies were not as fun when he wasn't doing it on purpose.)
Luckily, the remaining inhabitants of the planet were evacuated just moments before and were being sent back to the Adiposian home planet and the corrupt intergalactic business moguls looking to pave over the planet for an overpass were, ahem, taken care of.
Oh, that Clara Oswin. Beautiful, brilliant, clever Clara Oswin. She hacked into the aliens' database and made it so that the order to destroy the planet was called off. Unfortunately, some overeager intern intent on getting into his bosses good graces jumped the gun.
Hence the flaming sky.
Fortunately, Clara Oswin arranged some transport, hence the evacuation.
Though, as it seemed it was the theme of today's adventure, once something went right, something went wrong.
"Let me in! Doctor, open the door!" Clara Oswin (he was never sure what to call her, sometimes it was Clara, sometimes it was Oswin. It was starting to annoy her and she told him to pick a name and stick with it so now he calls her both.) pounds her hand on the door repeatedly, never pausing even when she looked up at the flaming red, orange sky. It would have been pretty if it wasn't about to roast her alive.
Perhaps this could be considered her fault. After all, she saw how much those aliens loved their rules (so much so it was practically a fetish she would never understand). Clara Oswin does not boast when she says she's a complete genius but maybe she could have thought to have gotten ships sent from someone who wouldn't have built them to lock down as soon as maximum capacity was reached. Alas, they were the closest ones she could get and she had cute, little fat, marshmallow things to save and beggars can't be choosers.
On the other side of the door, inside the final evacuation ship, the Doctor scanned the door with his sonic screwdriver and groaned in frustration when he saw the results. "It's deadbolted. I can't open it with the sonic."
Stopping her pounding on the door that wasn't even helping anyway, Clara Oswin dug through her backpack looking for tools. With a few things she may or may not have swiped from the TARDIS and a good old fashioned screwdriver that worked just as well as a sonic, she opened the outside panel next to the door. "Maybe I can hack it."
"You can't hack a deadbolt lock!" the Doctor yelled and, despite what he said, continued to try to sonic the door open. "It's impossible!"
"Impossible, huh?" Clara Oswin smirked and got to work. "Mmm, my favorite." Clara Oswin's fingers flew across the touch screen of the panel and at the same time she heard the telltale buzzing,humming (she never did quite settle on a name for it. Buzzming maybe? Whizzing just made her want to giggle.) of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.
"Doctor, how much longer until the planet's going to blow up? Just out of curiosity." She tried to hide how nervous she was (scared? Never scared!) but her voice still shook. It was getting harder to breath and she was sweating buckets despite having already shed her jacket and all other unnecessary clothing items.
"Clara Oswin, don't be silly. The planet's not going to blow up." Clara Oswin let herself relax for a moment. "The fire is going to eat up all the oxygen until it runs out and then the fire will dissipate, leaving behind an inhospitable, barren wasteland of a former breeding planet, unable to sustain life." Half a second after those words leave his mouth, the Doctor thinks that perhaps that wasn't the best think he could have said at the moment.
Clara Oswin tenses again. Her fingers halt their movement across the screens and she lets her hands fall to her sides. "Oh." she said. She clenches her fists and takes in a deep breath, preparing herself for what was about to happen. "Well then, Doctor. I suppose this is goodbye." Thankfully, her voice was as blasé as she wanted to be. No need to worry him more than already he was.
"What!" Doctor paused his sonic-ing. "No, no, Oswin, you are going to be fine." He says, trying to be soothing. "I'm not going to lose you again. DON'T YOU DARE LEAVE!" he yells at the pilot.
"Sir, we have to go. If we wait any longer, we won't be able to. The fire's almost eaten up the entire atmosphere." she said apologetically.
"Doctor, you have to go!" Clara Oswin insisted, packing up her tools. "There are a bunch of tiny, little marshmallow things that need to meet their mums and dads and I'm not going to stop them just because I exceed the maximum capacity." Ah, Clara Oswin, bright, clever, stubborn Clara Oswin. "We had the best of times, you and I." She leans her forehead against the metal of the door and closes her eyes. "I mean, Easter Island , The Recently Found Moon of Poosh, Budapest. I even got you to like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy after you spent hours moaning about inaccuracies and some such nonsense. You still got your towel?" She smirks a little. "It was the best, the very best, Doctor and I don't regret a second of it." Don't cry, Clara Oswin, she told herself, though her voice was shaky. "I saved a whole bunch of little, baby marshmallow, fat things. I saved them." she says with a voice full of wonder. "You were right, Doctor. I could do more than hack into banks and the MI6. I finally feel like I'm doing something important, that I've made a difference, the good kind of difference. So thank you, Doctor. Thank you." She takes a deep breath. "Run, you clever boy," she turns away from the door as the ship begins to take off. "and-" the rest of her sentence is cut off when a hand closes over her mouth. She opens her eyes and her lips curl into a smile.
"Don't you dare." the Doctor whispers, half inside the TARDIS, half out. And he smiles the Doctor smile that was so happy and so sad at the same time. She hug-tackles him inside the TARDIS and closes the door. They both let out a laugh and run to the center console of the TARDIS. The Doctor pulls some levers, flips some switches, and presses some buttons while Clara Oswin puts in some coordinates on the typewriter. The TARDIS makes that wonderful noise that Clara Oswin has begun to equate with adventure and wonder and a magic she never believed existed until she met the Doctor and the TARDIS disappears from the flaming planet.
"Clara Oswin, I told you to stop doing that." The Doctor scold but she knows he doesn't mean it.
"Doing what?" she asks innocently while she presses enter on the typewriter, sending the TARDIS through the Time Vortex to somewhere new.
The Doctor smiles and maneuvers next to her to see the screen. "Where are we going this time?"
"Next stop!" she grins and pulls the lever that must never, ever, ever be pulled and the TARDIS begins to shake. The Doctor and Clara Oswin smile at each other and hold on tight to the console. "Everywhere!"
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