Disclaimer : I don't own Doctor Who or any of its characters. Only the storyline is mine.
Prologue
Summary : What happens when the Doctor must alter his own timeline to save a companion from his future? Nine/Rose, Eleven/Clara, some Twelve/Clara in an obsessive kind of way. Takes place after The Time of the Doctor.
It began with a row, as all things with this new Doctor tended to do.
"I'm going home! Maybe some time away from me will improve your disposition you cynical, overbearing git!"
"You aren't leaving me, Clara Oswald. I won't let you!" The new, silver haired Doctor roared and lunged at her, grabbing her up by the arms and squeezing firmly until his companion cried out in pain. "You are mine, you understand me girl? Mine!" His words were punctuated by a shake and a crowding of Clara's person against the console.
"Doctor, you're hurting me!"
These words may have had no effect on the Doctor, but his TARDIS certainly did something about them. The sentient time ship shrieked and bucked until the pair were forced apart then landed and popped the door so that Clara could escape. And so she ran with a shout over her shoulder first to the ship and then to the man she thought she loved and was now a brutal stranger, "Thanks Old Girl! Sod off Doctor! I never want to see you again!"
Once she was out the TARDIS slammed and locked the door and threw she and her Time Lord into the Vortex where he couldn't get to his companion again. Things between this companion and the Doctor had always been different from the others. She was his obsession, the one who knew him best of all the ones who had come before. Better than she should, and saw things about him she should not. So now he feared her loss, for she was the last and best part of himself, his sole salvation. But these rows of theirs had been coming more and more often since he regenerated into this form. At first she tried her best to keep going with him, to adapt to this new face and this new personality. Unfortunately, there was nothing of the man she knew before in this version of the Doctor.
Clara, you know me best. What sort of man am I?
I don't know, I honestly don't know.
He was resentful and cynical, and she was no longer his clever Impossible Girl. His Clara. He never held her hand or kissed her head, never hugged her even when she desperately needed him to. Nothing she did was ever good enough for this face, this Doctor, and six months of it had finally culminated into this last, terrible fight.
"Go back! Take me back you blithering old sow!" The TARDIS sparked and pitched violently at his rude words, wailing psychically to show her annoyance the best way she knew how. This man was no longer her Doctor, who has always said lovely things to her and kept her in the best shape he knew how to. No; he was treading the line that all who knew him prayed he would never cross. The Valeyard, the bringer of all darkness and destruction in the universe. He wasn't there yet, but he was so close that she knew he'd hurt their Impossible Girl if she took him back to her now. Perhaps, in her way, she could still help both of them.
And so, even as her Doctor overrode her helm controls and started them back, the TARDIS put a plan into motion that would alter the outcome of this entire situation.