"She died a hero," the Doctor told Jenny solemnly as they stood at the edge of the cemetery, looking to the crowd that was gathered around an elegant wooden coffin being lowered into the ground. He'd gone to Buckingham Palace and asked the Queen for a favor – she owed him a good many – and she'd offered him her condolences before ringing her undertakers – Clara would be buried, the Doctor knew, in the finest coffin Britain had to offer.
Like royalty.
He could see Dave bend just as the whirring of machinery stopped and Clara had reached her final resting place in a plot just next to her mother. It had been reserved for him, and the Doctor knew the pain he was feeling well – having to give up his burial place to fill it with his child. It wasn't right and it turned his stomach as he watched the man cover his face to try and squelch a sob. A woman at his right rubbed his shoulders and the Doctor frowned. Clara never liked her, but she'd be glad her father had someone.
Clara's Gran stood at Dave's other side. The Doctor knew that old woman had cried; Clara had told him stories about her that brightened her face and managed to warm his hearts. He could see the stubbornness of her granddaughter in her stance and in her refusal to break. She reached calmly to take Dave's hand and give it a squeeze just before she moved forward to drop a red rose into the earth before looking skyward.
It was a sunny day and the Doctor looked up to the puffs of clouds standing still in the bright sky above them and raised his arms at them, grumbling, "Skies should mourn the loss of a hero."
Jenny glanced up at him nervously, asking quietly, "How should they mourn her, Doctor?"
"They should cry for her," he twisted slightly to tell her, arms slapping his sides. "White should turn grey and that grey should fall to the ground," then he laughed, "Quite suiting though, the sunshine."
Shaking her head, Jenny told him honestly, "Not sure I understand."
He gestured up, "Stubborn sky, saluting Clara not with tears, but with clarity – with the promise of hope and good things – like Clara; begging the world to say, 'No. Don't cry over me; don't wet the ground; don't sully your boots in the mud of sadness.'" The Doctor sighed. "Look to the skies, what a bright beautiful day." He tapped Jenny lightly on the chin with his knuckle and smiled because she truly didn't understand.
Because she thought him mad.
"Chin up," he told her lightly, turning to make his way back to the Tardis, the frown returning the instant he stepped through… the frown deepening because Jenny's quick footsteps across the steel console flooring sounded too much like Clara's. He turned, looking to the woman staring peculiarly at him.
The dark hair let down over her shoulders too much like Clara's.
The brown eyes watching him with concern too much like Clara's.
The borrowed black jacket over a grey blouse atop a black skirt and tights too much like Clara's.
The way she was clutching her fingers together at the edge of the console…
Too much.
The Doctor turned away, focusing his thoughts on the controls around him and giving Jenny a nod she responded to by finding a handle to hold onto, knowing they were about to head back to Victorian London. "I know why she sent you in her place."
Jenny's eyes came up to meet his and she offered a shy smile, telling him sheepishly, "Because she's a lizard? Bit too much attention, eh, Doctor?"
He laughed lightly and he listened to the small one she responded with before he shook his head, informing her plainly, "Because you're quite alike – you and Clara."
Her head bowed, bashful for the comparison, and then Jenny answered on a laugh, "Clara's definitely not like me, sir, or else I'm definitely not like Clara."
But he interjected quickly, "Head strong, courageous, quick-witted, and just a bit too taken with this life – too much for your own good, you know," he finished quietly as the Tardis landed.
They shared a look, for just a moment. One in which Jenny wondered whether he was telling her she'd gotten herself in over her head; one in which the Doctor understood Jenny had chosen, like Clara, to risk her life for a cause greater than herself. Because she was right – they weren't alike in a lot of ways, but in just a few, they were, and Jenny, like Clara, knew too well the importance of what they did alongside alien beings too complicated to understand. Beings, the Doctor knew, Clara and Jenny loved far too much.
Too much for your own good, his mind repeated sadly in Clara's voice.
His head dropped first, eyes shifting away, and he tapped at a lever as he listened to her hesitantly take the first step towards the doors, moving through them quietly and he could just hear the whispers between the woman and her wife. Though he couldn't make out what was said, he knew Jenny was detailing the day – or days, as it were – and he knew Vastra was taking in every detail, trying to discern if their friend was emotionally compromised. Trying to work out whether he would seclude himself again, the way he'd done before. Was he distraught in the same way, he wondered, knowing Vastra wondered the same.
Of course I am, he thought to himself, why wouldn't I be?
The door opened and Vastra's heavier footsteps moved in just two steps, telling him boldly, "Strax has just set the table for dinner, I told him you were to join us." There was a pause before she added, "I expect you will be joining us, Doctor."
He smiled because there was no hint of a question in her voice, only a certainty, and he accepted it by swinging the lever down and gently pushing a button, making his way silently towards Vastra and then past her, through the Tardis doors and into the upstairs bedroom in which he'd landed. The Doctor could smell the cooking beef in the air and he smiled even though it turned his stomach. How could he eat knowing Dave was sitting somewhere in a room contemplating a trip to Clara's flat.
The other man would be left to clean it out.
To erase his daughter from time.
"How was your trip?" Vastra asked, interrupting his thoughts as they took the stairs down together, the Doctor looking to the steps, Vastra to the Doctor.
Nodding, he replied blankly, "Jenny was helpful."
"I'm quite certain she was, Doctor," Vastra began with a quick jerk of her head, "But you know very well that's not what I meant."
He turned at the foot of the stairs, grunting in frustration, "We didn't burn her, if that's what you're wondering." Because her death wasn't common, nor was it easy to explain and the option had come up. But how could he? How could he?
Nodding, Vastra considered the steely look in his eyes, the one betrayed only by the hands held tightly against his lower abdomen, palpating each other nervously. "What did you tell her father?"
The Doctor nodded curtly and then stepped sideways and turned, making his way into the dining room to pull back one of the chairs, settling himself down comfortably before taking a small sip of wine. Voice calmer, he told her coolly, "What of the truth we could, a few white lies where we couldn't – she's been working for UNIT for quite some time and she was killed stopping an alien invasion. A few bits of forged documentation, coupled with Mr. Oswald's obvious grief, there really was no need for convincing, or elaborating."
Vastra remained standing beside her chair and she could see Jenny's small nod as the woman poured tea and then settled herself in the space across from the Doctor. Inhaling deeply, Vastra asked, "What was his response?"
A hand dropping heavily to the table, rattling the silverware, the Doctor looked up at Vastra and he spat sardonically, "He cried."
She merely nodded, and then took her seat, exchanging a look with Jenny, who looked to the table.
"He wasn't like that the whole time, mostly stayed quiet."
Jenny's voice was meek in her mind and Vastra gave her a simple nod, flapping her napkin to unfold it before setting it in her lap as Strax entered with a tray of food, handing them each a plate before moving to the end of the table to enjoy his own dinner, seemingly oblivious to the tension in the room.
The Doctor threw down his napkin beside the steaming steak and bowl of soup and he stood, hands curled tightly into fists at his side. He looked to Vastra and told her quietly, "Thank you for the hospitality, but I'm not quite…" the words disappeared and he nodded and she could see the red in his eyes when he finally raised them to look at her. Turning, he strode from the room calmly, though a moment later, something clattered loudly to the ground and Vastra raised a hand to stop Jenny from standing.
"He's distraught," Vastra hissed.
Jenny leaned towards Vastra and spat, "He's mad – almost worse than before. What little he did say? Not much sense to be made of it."
Gesturing to their plates, she sighed and offered, "I'll speak to him once he's cooled off."
They ate slowly, Jenny occasionally glancing up at the door as though she expected the Doctor to re-enter with some animated display of psychosis. Vastra gave the Doctor three hours, waiting until the midnight chime of Big Ben went off in the distance to seek him out. She expected to have to climb out onto a ledge, but instead she was surprised to find him in the garden, seated calmly on the grass, quietly staring up at the sky.
"She always told me it never seemed as big as when we were back on Earth," the Doctor offered, letting Vastra know three things: firstly, that she wasn't as stealthy as she thought; secondly, that he'd calmed considerably; thirdly, he might just be ready to talk.
Approaching him, she remained standing just a few feet away, looking to the way he plucked at the grass, stopping when he turned to give her a sad smile and a small nod to the space beside him, her invitation. Vastra sat carefully, tucking her legs underneath her long dark dress, and she watched him cough a laugh that sounded enough like a withheld sob to make her turn away. She would have expected this from his last incarnation, but from this one it curled her lips into a painful frown because this face – as honest as it was in its weathered appearance – was skilled at keeping emotions held in check.
But now that façade was cracked, spilling over uncomfortably.
"Clara loved everything about being alive," he told her, his eyes brightening again at her memory. "She could look at a blade of grass and tell you how wonderful it was that it could clean our air and feed our livestock and feel so soothing on the bottom of bare feet in the summer. She loved to do that, you know, those few and fleeting innocent moments of exploration where she could kick off those ridiculous shoes of hers and spread her toes on alien soil." He smiled, glancing up at Vastra as he let a single tear fall from each eye. "Ah, Clara. Clara could look to the sky and never remember the name of a single star, no matter how many times I told her, but she could marvel on how far they were and how close they seemed and how humanity sang songs about the stars and then travelled to the stars and how one day they would live amongst them, exploring the next horizon."
"She was quite a human," Vastra agreed.
They listened to the wind play through the bushes and trees, and they ignored the hooting of an owl and eventually another bong from the clock that told them a half hour had passed in silence. Vastra watched the Doctor's steady breathing as he continually plucked at the grass around him. Slow tugs of his careful hands that hypnotized her until he turned slightly towards her.
"Her father cried," he told her softly. "And I wanted to explain that death was a part of life. I wanted to tell him that the universe creates and the universe destroys and the universe creates again with those remnants. That Clara would go into the ground and one day she would nourish the soil and she would become the grass that children ran across, and yet all I could do was stand beside Kate, my mouth like cotton because he cried and none of the truth of life and death made any sense in that moment."
"Doctor?" Vastra questioned.
He turned fully and gave her a tortured smiled that faded as his hand came up and opened as he told her honestly, "I just wanted her to get up. One last impossible thing."
Vastra watched him wince and twist away, embarrassed by his thoughts, she knew, and she sighed lightly as he steeled himself again. "You know the risks in doing what you do, your companions know it just as well," she told him sternly, afraid for how distant he sounded – how very not like himself he sounded. Though it was the same after the Ponds. That cheerful boyish face had never frowned so much, and then he went up in his box, occasionally coming down because, Vastra knew, he couldn't lock himself away forever.
And he'd found Clara.
Nodding, the Doctor pushed his lips together, dropping his brow, and he allowed, "I know, I know."
"Clara is gone, you do understand that," she stated as softly as she could. The woman that had breathed new life into him; the woman that had reminded him that the universe could be beautiful and magical again. Vastra feared he might not recover the same this time.
One of his hands came up, a fistful of grass fluttering through the air as he sighed, "Like a leaf blown away by a breeze, I know, Vastra, I kn…" his face froze and Vastra felt something inside of her drop because a slight manic look burst to life in those old eyes and when he turned, he grabbed her shoulders and breathed, "Like a million leaves scattered to the wind."
"Doctor," she warned as he stood, brushing the grass off his pants, because she understood perfectly well what he was thinking, and she shot simply, "No."
He turned, walking backwards towards the house with his hands coming out at either side of him, a crazed smile working his gaunt face. "She's not gone, don't you see. Not all of her."
"You can't simply seek out one of her echoes, carry on with them as though she'd never gone," Vastra shot as she stood, rushing towards him.
"Don't be ridiculous, I'd obviously have to befriend them first," he spat.
"Doctor, you can't do this to them," she shouted.
"Just one," he bellowed, hand coming up.
"And after her? And after the next?" She pointed out with a nod, moving swiftly after him until he stopped and stared at her, a smile shifting awkwardly on his lips.
His hand balled and he lifted a single finger, head shaking as he argued, "Just one. Just one Clara in a sea of Clara's floating out in the universe."
"Doctor, this is insane! You know what happens when you and one of her echoes cross paths," Vastra began slowly before reminding, "They exist to save you – more than likely, they die for you."
Head bobbing, lips working between his teeth, he considered it and then he laughed, "Just one, Vastra, just one. I could find her and I could help her." He pushed his fingers into his chest and then poked them out into the air in front of him, "Me, I could save her, just the one."
Twisting, he took several long steps towards the house when Vastra called, "And then you'll move on, Doctor, you can promise me that you'll move on?" The question was thick with uncertainty, and she waited, eyes wide with shock because maybe this was what he needed – and maybe this would be disastrous.
The Doctor's feet faltered underneath him just as the air was sucked from him, and he shifted around slowly to look at her and offer a small sad grin, "I have to see her again, just once."
Looking to the desperation in his eyes, sensing the way his hearts pumped erratically in his chest, Vastra was unsure and she asked firmly, "Are you sure just once will be enough? Are you sure this echo will be enough? What happens if she doesn't? Tell me, will you seek another? And then another, Doctor?"
The Doctor swallowed roughly and he shrugged, telling her honestly, "I have to try," and he turned back towards the house, ignoring Vastra's calls behind him. He had to get to the Tardis and he had to locate Clara Oswald.
