Health and Safety: Chapter 1 – Out on a Leaf
I am Clara Oswin Oswald, and my story is not done, not yet. I'm not lost anymore, I'm safe, I'm with the Doctor, my Doctor. He found me, and I am safe. Or at least as safe as I can be while we're still inside of his collapsing time stream.
There are voices echoing in my head, it feels like they are actually bouncing off the inside of my skull. They are his voices, my voices and the voices of a thousand thousand people I knew in countless other lives, lives that are mine but aren't my own. It's hard to tell what is my own right now, what is me, what is real and what isn't… Are these voices actually inside my head, or are they coming from somewhere else? Amid all of the cries for help, the ringing of laughter, the broken sobbing, I keep hearing the same words.
What I did, I did without choice.
I know.
In the name of peace and sanity.
But not in the name of the Doctor.
I had never seen that one, not once, and I'd seen all of him so many times. I don't understand, how could I be scattered along his entire time stream and yet miss that one? Am I imagining it? Have I lost my mind? Am I starting to forget things? Where am I?
There is only one thing I know for certain is real, the pair of arms wrapped around me and the person that they're attached to. He is real. He came in here after me…
The Doctor's determined steps begin to falter, his march becoming more of a stagger, slowing as his breathing gets more laboured. My eyes feel like they are weighted, but I try to look up at him. It's almost heartbreaking how distraught his face is. A tiny part of me wants to tell him to just put me down and run, leave me and get out of here for goodness sake. But he would never listen, no more than I would if he told me to leave him behind.
That isn't what we do. We don't walk away, especially from each other. We run, together.
I can't tell him to leave, but I still want to say something to him, some words of encouragement or just of thanks, but my lips can't seem to form words right now, I can't seem to make my mind concentrate. Speaking isn't an option, but maybe I can reach out to him…
My arm quivers when I try to move it though, and instead of managing even just a simple touch I end up dropping the leaf, the most important leaf in human history.
The Doctor plods a few more steps before realizing what I've done, and then he turns around slowly. I want to tell him not to, to leave it, as much as that leaf means, it isn't worth it, it isn't worth him risking his safety any more than he already has by coming in here. But I still can't make my mouth cooperate, so the Doctor retraces his steps back a few feet and drops to his knees, trying to pick up the leaf without letting go of me.
"Doctor…" I finally managed to croak out. It almost feels like someone else's voice coming from my mouth.
His face turns to focus on me immediately, eyes brimming with concern.
Several ragged breaths later I manage to continue. It's a mad idea really, but it's all I can come up with right now.
"That leaf… it brought me to you, it took me home, and maybe it can take you too? It's the only thing that isn't you in here, other than me. Maybe it can find the way out?"
The Doctor looks hesitantly at the leaf, before a chorus of voices, his voices chant out.
Listen to her!
A gentle breeze begins to blow, it's nothing like the time winds, they were sharp, cold gusts that tore me into a million pieces. This breeze is warm and calm, like its rolling off the sea on a beautiful summer day.
The Doctor studies me for a moment, and then turns his eyes to the leaf clenched in his hand. He closes his eyes and tosses the leaf into the wind. It flutters here and there, drifting away from us at an unnaturally slow pace, like its waiting for us to follow. The Doctor hauls himself back onto his feet, trailing after the leaf as it blows on the wind.
We might have been trudging for minutes, it might have been hours or possibly days, I don't know, I don't know if time even moves properly in here, is there time or is there just him? A Time Lord? What is time made of..? The more steps he takes, the more the voices and images in my head come on rapidly, the lives that are mine but not my own, and the faces that are his but are not his own…
An abrupt falling sensation jolts my eyes open in fear as I feel the Doctor tip forward. We are no longer surrounded by the swirling mists and orange rock; instead we're sprawled out on the hard metal floor of the Doctor's tomb.
He pants for breath, lying flat out on his back with me awkwardly draped across him. Lifting my head I can see those beautiful lights, dancing in the center of the room where the console should be, shimmering and casting shadows on the dark room. Something is different about it now though, there is one odd streak of light tangled into it, not white like the rest of the threads, but crimson. It isn't like when the Great Intelligence threw itself into the time stream. That had lit the whole thing red like an infected wound; this wasn't like that at all. Just one bit of crimson tucked in with all the white, glowing brightly.
"That's you Clara." The Doctor tells me in a hushed tone, watching it with me.
The gravity of the statement is overwhelming. My seemingly small life quite literally tied into his.
"My Clara…" He says, bringing his forehead up to rest against mine. It's almost absurd how comforting that gesture is to me right now. I just close my eyes and enjoy it for a moment.
"We, we still need to get out of here." I remind him some minutes later.
The Doctor pushes himself into a sitting position, taking in our surroundings.
"Where did the others go?" I ask him.
"I told Vastra to get back to the TARDIS. The old girl won't leave as long as she knows I'm still here though, she's stubborn that way, emergency protocols or not."
I try to move off of him so he can get up, but my arms give out almost as soon as I put weight on them, sending me right back to being sprawled against his chest.
"Sorry, I'm fine…"
The Doctor makes an irritated noise.
"Clara, don't you dare try to shrug this off. I don't even know how you are conscious right now. Moving is out of the question."
He slips himself from under me somehow, standing and cracking his neck before reaching down to pick me up again. I don't like this, being helpless, I really don't.
"You went in there too… How come you can move?"
He shushes me instead of answering before starting the descent down the steps of the console room. As we traverse the dead TARDIS, the same dizziness starts to come over me as when we came in, except this time its way worse… I feel my head loll back against the Doctor's shoulder, and suddenly I am not seeing the dark corridors anymore…
The whole room was on fire, her hand stung from where she had burned it prying open the laboratory doors. She was Clarald Aswin, Chief Biologist for the South American Tropical Rainforest Protection Agency. She knew that the whole building was doomed to be consumed by the blaze, which was almost certainly the work of arson. There was no telling how badly this inferno would damage the forest around her; the fire had destroyed their communication equipment so there was no help coming. The forest was already disappearing at a dangerous rate, this could destroy it… She slammed the door behind her, ignoring the pain as she ran towards a small parcel she'd helped an intern box up earlier that morning. Inside was a collection of seeds from some of the most endangered plants in the rainforest. They were going to be shipped to a planet called Cheem. The environment there had been deemed perfect for them, and it was the hope that an off world colony would help preserve them and give them a chance to grow, maybe even evolve. Smoke was filling the room and the walls were charring as the flames lapped at them. She grabbed the box and dropped it onto the transmat, typing in coordinates for the main office in Sao Paulo. The box slowly dematerialized; spending what little was left of the generator's power. Despite the situation, she laughed, the machine had always been incredibly unreliable, so it was nice that it decided to work in a pinch. Her task completed, she tried to take a steadying breath, but the room was so smoky now that it made her choke. Her eyes were watering and there was no escape. She sat down against the wall farthest from the flames, closed her eyes and began to turn her mother's ring. She had no way out, but at least she had saved something... Some small thing would survive this, and who knew what it would end up doing…
"Clara!" A voice echoes, as if very far away, then suddenly I feel strong hands clasping the sides of my face, it's as if someone had reached out and actually pulled me back into consciousness.
My eyes shoot open, and a loud noise resonates through the air, like someone has snapped a leather belt, or cracked a whip. I'm not in a burning building, but rather on the ground in the middle of a graveyard. The dead TARDIS looms just behind us and the Doctor is leaning over me, with both his hands on either side of my face.
Panicking, I start to flail and roll out of the Doctor's grasp. I know, or at least I think I know I'm not in that building anymore, but I still feel like I am burning on the inside.
"Clara?" He calls to me again, this time it doesn't echo but his hands fly back to my face.
"Oh Gods Clara, you're burning up… Your head is trying to sort out what just happened, the TARDIS telepathic circuits and the dimensioning forces, they're making it harder, they're waking the ideas up in your head. Your body is just brimming with time energy right now... I can't put you through the vortex that would just be cruel…"
"We've got to get out of here though."
"Yes, but, the TARDIS, the real TARDIS is the only way. And her telepathic circuits are still very much alive, much more powerful than what was in there."
"I don't see how we have much of a choice here. I don't think this place is safe."
He starts to shake his head, but picks me up again.
The graveyard feels eerie, the sort of serene stillness from before gone. When the TARDIS, the proper one, still smaller on the outside, comes into view, I'm not sure whether to be relived or not.
"Sir!" Strax's voice calls out, suddenly appearing from behind a large grave stone.
"Doctor!" Jenny darts out from across the way.
Vastra follows behind Jenny, giving the Doctor a stern look. She holds her arms out, offering to take me from him, but he shakes his head and continues towards the TARDIS, pulling me tighter to him. He turns and uses his back to push the doors open, crossing the threshold with me clinging to him.