AN: So this is a bit of a different layout and concept to me. I really hope that it works and that it makes sense. And yes, some of it is painfully ambiguous, it's intentional.
Life is interesting. It throws all kinds of things at you, the good, the bad, and definitely the ugly. Life is hard. It is full of disappointment and betrayal. Life is harsh, it can make you be sad and upset, but also happy. Life tries to make everything hard, the winds never blow in your favour. Life is hard, it will do anything to get in your way. That's what Clara Oswald learnt the day her mother died.
Life is a challenge, every day is a struggle, and you have to take each day as it comes just to survive. Not everyone will understand, in fact, most people won't. Sometimes, you have to go with the flow and even though it's hard you have to try anyway. Sometimes it's the only thing you can do.
In life, there are things that will get in your way, things you can never change and that they are of your control. You can feel so alone, so lost, that you wonder if it's even worth it anymore.
Clara would be lying if she said that these thoughts never crossed her mind. The thought of everything going black, and for once, everything being okay again. She clung onto these thoughts, and even though she knew she could never do it, they gave her the control she needed. They gave her the control that her mum never had. The control over her death.
Lots of people go around in life happy as you can be, never experiencing the inevitable pain that comes with death. The pain that comes with knowing about how someone's life was cut short, how their beautiful life was never lived. The final chapter never completed.
Clara never let herself mourn, at least not in the normal way. She was there for her dad, threw herself into her work, distracted herself until she couldn't avoid her thoughts anymore. She thought about the nights when she couldn't sleep because her parents had gone out. She didn't get her goodnight kiss and she would cling to her teddy bear. As she grew up, she thought that was silly, but now, every night was like that. She never got her goodnight kiss anymore. It was taken away from her. No, not taken, stolen.
The trouble is just when you think life is good, it throws you another obstacle, another thing to overcome. She had decided to travel, to do all the things in life her mum wanted to do but never got to. She was staying with the Maitlands when a hurdle was thrown in her path. Their mother died. She wanted to run, she wanted to run away and never come back. She never wanted to witness the sadness and death that came with having a life. But she knew she couldn't. She couldn't abandon Angie and Artie, not the way everyone had done to her. She couldn't do it. She still had her book, 101 Places to See, and she still wanted to travel. So, when a mysterious man shows up at your doorstep wearing a tweed coat and a bow tie, promising to show her the universe, who could resist. She travelled with the Doctor, and she would be lying if she said she wasn't scared, but she finally felt like she had a life again, something that was just hers. The Doctor made her happy again, he made her feel things she hadn't felt in a long time. The happiness and excitement that radiated off him was impossible and infectious, and every time she saw him she couldn't help grinning ear to ear. So when the great intelligence was killing the Doctor, she had no doubts that she had to go into his time stream and save him. He had given her a purpose in life again, he had saved her, it was only fair that she repay the favour. She knew her mum would be proud of her, sacrificing yourself so the rest of the universe would survive. She hadn't expected him to jump in after her, but knowing she had someone who would risk his own life just to save hers, gave her a reason to keep going.
After that, she started a proper life, a life on Earth. She became a teacher, to help those kids who were going through tough times just like she did. To give kids hope when she had none. To help give them a reason to keep fighting. And she still has her book, except now it was all of time and space, it was those places in any time zone. It was New York in 10,000 years time, it was Ancient Egypt.
But then he did something stupid. Something noble and selfless. But so incredibly stupid. He left her, or she left him. She was hazy on the details, everything happened so quickly. She lost him. She lost the Doctor. Her Doctor. Replaced by a bumbling Scottish madman. She let the tears roll down her face. She had lost another person. The madman in a box who wore tweed and a bowtie. The man who loved hats, the man who ate fish fingers and custard. Looking at the Doctor, his eyes wide in shock, his angry grey eyebrows, he was a stranger to her, and she was a stranger to him. She had lost her Doctor, she had lost her reason to continue. "Do you happen to know how to fly this thing?" It was such a simple question, but it meant so much. It marked the end of a chapter, a chapter that she never wanted to end. She kept his discarded bowtie in her pocket, serving as a reminder to her. To make her Doctor proud, to carry on. It was the last piece she had of him.
She lost her trust in the Doctor, this new Doctor was different. He was harsh, and rude, and very Scottish. So Scottish he left her in the middle of Glasgow. He didn't come back for her, he forgot about her. She thought that travelling with the Doctor was over. It had been three weeks without any contact. So, she immersed herself in her life, and she enjoyed being a teacher again. Then she met Danny Pink. At first, it was just a look from across the playground. And boy was he cute. So she put herself out there. And then the Doctor came back, handing her a coffee like nothing was wrong. She was mad, but she couldn't help the little smile tugging at the corner of her lips when she saw him. Life was crazy, trying to keep up with the Doctor but still have a normal life. Having a boyfriend but still travelling with the Doctor. She was exhausted, but she loved it. The Doctor was different now, but he wasn't so bad. He was a different kind of crazy to her Doctor, but she still loved it. He gave her a reason again, but this time a completely different reason. Danny gave her a reason as well, she loved him, and she loved being with him. Knowing that he had lost so much as she had.
She loved him, she loved him so much, and she lost him. She lost her reason again. She retreated back to her old self, before she met the Doctor. She tried calling him, but he never picked up. What did she expect though? Did she truly believe that the Doctor could bring him back? All she knew is that it wasn't fair. She didn't deserve everything that had happened to her. Why had she lost three of the most important people to her before she was 30?
But as soon as she lost him, she found him again, only to lose him once more. He could've come back to her, but he didn't, he saved someone else, which made her love him even more. She stopped travelling with the Doctor. It was too painful to see him after everything that had happened. It was the end of another chapter. "Travelling with you made me feel really special". It was simple, but it meant so much, much more than the Doctor knew. More than she even knew.
Life kept throwing obstacles in her way, and although it was hard, she always found a reason again. She went back to normal life, trying to get her life back on track. In those months, she found another reason. She realised she needed her dad. After her mother died, they drifted apart, but they still talked, kept up to date. After Danny died her father came to visit her, and she realised how much she had lost. She regularly visited her dad, knowing that even though it would kill her to lose him, just like she had lost everyone else, she needed him. He helped her, he got her through those months where she had nobody. He was the only person who treated her like Clara, not the girl who just lost her boyfriend. Even the students who would usually talk back to her had stopped, and she missed it. She lost part of herself, and her dad helped her to build it back up, turn her back into Clara.
And then the Doctor waltzed back into her life, again. And she would be lying if she said she didn't miss him. He asked her to travel with him again, and she couldn't help it. She missed that life, she missed the life she had with the Doctor. She missed going to different planets where no one knew her. But she mostly missed the Doctor. He helped her escape real life, and he always turned up when she needed it. She travelled with him so much more, she had no one pulling her back home. She was more reckless. And she knew the Doctor hated it, he kept telling her to be careful. But she had no reason to be careful anymore. No one to come home to. No one for her to miss.
She knew she couldn't avoid the dangers of travelling with the Doctor forever. And quite frankly, she wasn't sure she wanted to anymore. She couldn't stand back and see people get hurt, especially people who had a family, people who had someone to go home to at the end of the day. She couldn't let those people lose the way that she lost.
She died. Plain and simple. Well, it should've been that way. She was ready. She had lived her life. She had lost everybody she cared about, and in death, all she lost was the Doctor. In those final moments, she looked back on her life. People say that in the moments before you die you see your life flash before your eyes. All Clara saw was death. Her mother's death, her grandparent's deaths, her Doctor's death, Danny's death, everyone else who had died because of her.
She didn't die. After everything that happened, she was ready for death. She deserved it. She deserved so much more than anybody else, so much more than those innocent people that had died because of her. Life wasn't fair, that was what she had told herself from an early age. That she had been dealt a bad hand in life. But looking back, she deserved it all. Losing her mother was the toughest thing she had ever had to go through, but the number of children who lost their mothers because of her, made her loss seem small and unimportant. The number of people who she couldn't save. But maybe she could try and fix that. She was given another chance, and this time she wasn't going to mess it up, because people needed her. The universe needs a Doctor, and the universe needs someone to save the people the Doctor couldn't. And maybe, just maybe, that was her destiny.
Life is interesting. It throws all kinds of things at you, the good, the bad, and definitely the ugly. Looking back on that statement, she realised she was right. Life is interesting. As soon as you think things are okay, things are turned upside down again. He life was never meant to be normal. She may have lost so many people, but at least she had people to lose. At least she could remember her mother, unlike so many people in the universe. She always found a way to keep going. She honoured the last words her bowtie, tweed wearing Doctor told her. "You gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be". He always told her not to be afraid, that he would always protect her. She honoured that, she wasn't afraid of death. It was just the final chapter, the final act of a play. And she was ready for it to be over.
AN: Any follows, favourites or reviews are greatly appreciated