/ SUPER PROFESSIONAL FOREWORD: Hello, you kind, sweet people! This is my first proper piece of fanfiction, so don't be too harsh to me with the reviewing and criticising, since I am bad at taking the kindest sort of criticism, anyway. Hope you have fun. It's a story I have been playing with in my little, weird head for a while now. Chapter #1 from 'I don't know how many', enjoy! /
It had been years.
It had been three years since Clara last could admire the majestic and old, mysterious blue box whose mystery she had witnessed and experienced every Wednesday. One day, the Doctor had decided to leave her and fly off in his TARDIS, leaving the short brunette, Clara Oswald, behind, heartbroken and with nothing to hold on to in life. The ancient and big-chinned Time Lord had not even taken the time to say goodbye, 'Thank you' or simply hug Clara for all the times they had spent together. That was what the soufflé-girl, as he had always lovingly called her, had been cursing ever since the Doctor ran away without the slightest announcement or trace. The poor girl was still hurting, cursing the Doctor for just having left her behind like that, even though she, obviously... Loved him. She had had feelings for the floppy-haired Doctor since the pair met, every day that they had spent together contemplating whether to finally confess to him and tell him how she felt, or not. Clara had never been able to swallow down her fears of losing him and confess, pour her little, slightly scarred heart out to both his empty, big and partially dark two hearts.
After having survived countless emotional crises that led Clara to the use of self-injury, pill-abuse and too many sleepless nights every year for a 26 year old to handle, she found and caught herself again. The young woman, as she had always imagined it, followed a black yarn in the dark with no idea as of where it could lead her. That yarn led her back to life. She regained at least small and fragile crumbles of will to live again. Clara considered herself back on track, generally. Even though the Doctor crossed her mind every day, she felt like the emotional experiences and breakdowns had burnt out her young, broken heart, rendering it far too exhausted to shatter itself every day anew over the memories of the madman in a box. She might not have given up hope in life, but she had for sure stopped believing in her Doctor, who Clara, and she could not deny that, still had not gotten over romantically. Clara spent every of her calm and peaceful seconds to recall the cute and corny nicknames the Doctor had always called her, or the hugs and cuddles she had received from the Doctor every single time that she had been sad or down all day. Occasionally, Clara was on the brink of crying, which was a definite improvement if one considered the nights of sobbing all of her pillows wet and damp, the carving and slitting open of her arms or even the two times of the gorgeous, big-eyed brunette devastating her apartment to bits after having been pushed over the edge by the fondest memories, shouting and yelling for her Doctor to just come back to her and hold her, how lost she had felt without 'the wood-faced dickhead holding her'.
It was a mild and calm Friday morning when Clara eventually woke and let her chocolate-eyes flutter open with a groan. Another hard and exhausting day of work was waiting for her, but hey, at least it was Friday. Clara attempted to sit up, ending up just rolling off her bed with the elegance of Frankfurter sausage. The young woman really could not be bothered on the last day before the Christmas holidays. Tempted to let her slender, frail hand reach for her phone in intention to notify her employer that she was oh-so-sick and that she could not turn up to her job as the receptionist of UNIT, she lied on the soft, fluffy carpet, mumbling to herself in hope to be able to build up some courage.
'Oh c'mon, Oswald.. S'only until two in the afternoon...'
She encouraged herself and got up, stretching and extending every single one of her limbs, making sure not to stretch her rather well-formed and 'divine backside', as the Doctor had always complimented it, towards the window that was facing her neighbours' home. She hastily slipped off her jim-jams, struggled herself into her far too tight uniform, which at least did not show all too much cleavage, and traipsed downstairs, securing her uniform cap with her fingers. Clara never had breakfast or morning-TV. Not only because she skipped lots of meals due to her feeling of being too thick or 'a blob-fish', she had always enjoyed doing these things together with somebody. Somebody she liked and loved to spend time with. Her habits had changed severely since she had been left by the one-not-to-be-named-in-her-presence-but-still-is-mentioned-in-quite-every-hospital. No breakfast, no morning-TV, off to work, that meant. With a sigh, she had locked her house-door and left for work.
The bus that Clara had gotten on was full to its walls, the situation not really improving with the obnoxious infants yelling and whinging about as if the seats of the bus weren't creaking loudly enough. The gritting of her white, small teeth grew rougher as the noises in the bus became even more annoying and loud, the leaving of the bus at the stop she had desired feeling like bliss and a thousand heavens and hells of a release. The slightly tensed Clara entered the mundane and minimalistic looking building of UNIT, positioning herself behind the reception and starting to perform her task, with the most difficult thing about it constantly standing and not falling asleep on the spot, since not many ladies and gentlemen were keen on information from and about UNIT. Clara, basically, was spending her time at work being wolf-whistled by co-workers, batting away the feeling of fatigue and subtly shoving Skittles through her soft, cherry-scented lips.
There was something that managed to burst her out of her tired and dreamy state, which was the alarm of the building that suddenly began to run wild and make every red-light and bell in the building throwing their tantrum consisting of 'RRRRRRRRRRING' and 'BOOOOO-BOOOOOP'. Leaves and folders could be seen fluttering through the room, the employees and their bosses panicking. Clara, and who would have expected that, was the first one to have left the building as the girl was obviously and understandably scared and fazed. An alarm like that one had never occurred in the building. It must have been serious. The whole building's interior was dominated by a red lighting for almost an hour, the sound of the many bells to be heard even far away from the building itself. People, inside and outside the building, were abruptly ripped out of their calmness.
Clara was on her bus home, wanting nothing more at the moment than a decent and hot cuppa, soothing and calm seconds, minutes, hours under her cosiest of blankets on her even cosier bed. Her little fingers could be seen trembling on her thigh and knee as the bus took her home. Having arrived there, she wearily, with a pale and tired face, sipped at her tea, staring forward expressionlessly.
Clara wondered, wondered and wondered. Her mind took many turns in the worry-lane, a place where it had been spending most of its time in the past three years. She would have probably gone insane if it wasn't for her tea, the blankets and the music-channel in the background hosting a Beatles-special. The soufflé-girls chocolate-eyes were forced to leak a tear times twelve when the channel eventually decided to play 'Yesterday' by the Beatles. It was the song that she used to play to the Doctor on her guitar, making him amazed and baffled by her 'divine guitar skills', as he had often complimented it. The melancholy and the desire for that solitude, which felt like spoons of salt within Clara's now closed wounds, to end rose every second. She closed her eyes, causing the salty and thick tears to roll along her cuddly cheeks, as the lyrics felt like her very own story being told to her by a stranger. She might have been 26 on the outside, but she was, or had become, so helpless and little on the inside. Clara did not feel the need to slit her wrists open or throw slurs against herself, all she needed was a hug. Not the cuddle of her life-time, a snuggle or a shag. Just a hug. Arms keeping her safe, preferably his, the floppy-haired, bow-tie sporting and Tweed-wearing Time Lord's. Clara put her cup aside as it became too much for her to handle, quietly yet desperately weeping into her duvet as she felt lost, about to reach a dead-end. She just could not do without the edgy-faced idiot. As much as she was sure that he had never felt the same, that the feelings were not mutual, she knew that she needed him. The Doctor.
Much to Clara's surprise and shock, she was very easy to startle that time around, the channel stopped playing the Beatles' iconic bliss of music. 'Blasphemy!', Clara thought, but 'Breaking news!', as stated on the TV-screen, were about to be revealed to the United Kingdom. Clara watched attentively. It could have had something to do with the abrupt alarm and noise at the UNIT building. The thought of that caused Clara to stare at the TV screen, gluing her big eyes of hazel to the screen.
'Today, shortly before one o' clock in the afternoon, an emergency situation was triggered at the UNIT building in East London. According to the latest information, the cause of the building now being highly monitored and held under siege by various military forces is a one-eyed robot, moving like a tank and behaving highly hostile towards every life-form in sight. We ask every citizen to stay at home and lock the doors, also not go outside until the danger has been taken care of. Stay safe'
The short brunette was shocked. Speechless. Her jaw having dropped and her eyes wide open with astonishment. Clara, as she had been advised, stayed at home, rocking and hugging her knees in fear, making up the worst of scenarios and thinking of the most terrible losses and things that could happen to her. She lost her appetite entirely, along with her nerves or enthusiasm to move. She was in a bitter state of paranoia. 'Somebody hold me...', she thought, the voice in her head not shutting up at all, which was driving her nuts. Hours later, hours of her holding her breath and trembling with fear, another newsflash came in. The night had already fallen upon the city of London and the streets were empty, lifeless. The place where Clara lived had been unusually quiet and silent for hours.
'We can now assure and announce that the one-eyed robot had been taken care of. The mutant, shielded by its casing, could be identified as 'Dalek', spelt D-A-L-E-K. The information was provided by a man that arrived in a blu-...'
The telly had lost the signal. The broadcast froze and eventually, the satellite dish seemed to fail. The Dalek 'had been taken care off'. But what was the reason for this sudden failure of the signal? It did not really improve Clara's state of paranoia and fear. What was most strange and scary was what could be heard from outside. An extraterrestrial kind of screeching and wheezing. Clara's eyes shot up at the familiar sound. Her curiosity and the sparks of hope floating around her heart overwhelmed her state of shock and made the brunette shuffle herself onto her feet to take a look out of the window. What her eyes caught on top of the grey, mundane skyscraper near her home made her question reality.
/ TO BE CONTINUED. /
