* So this is a one-shot I wrote based on an idea. About what if the Doctor couldn't save everyone? What if he wanted to, but what if he was the one who ended up causing a fixed point in time? Enjoy, and please let me know your thoughts. Rated M for swearing mainly. TPD*
The Doctor should walk away. He absolutely, one hundred percent should walk away. The TARDIS didn't like it one bit and every bone in his body was telling him to get out. They'd landed somewhere. Massive temporal readings. This was a complicated space-time situation for more than one reason and there were temporal readings that the Doctor had seen somewhere before. Twice before. But he couldn't remember where. And he needed to know. If he left the TARDIS, he would be walking into a maze of paradoxes, foreknowledge and the possibility of blowing a hole in the universe. But, he really, really wanted to know what those temporal markings were. He'd dropped Clara off and was about to jump forward to the next Wednesday to pick her up again when the TARDIS had picked up the readings and he'd jumped on them. In any case, if it was a complicated event in time, then it was probably better Clara wasn't there, it was probably dangerous and she was getting cocky, somehow thinking that stopping him from murdering his own people and surviving the Time War meant she could crook her finger and he'd do whatever she said. And the worst thing was she was probably right. The Doctor was heading into a situation where every move he made would ripple out, with the entire time vortex vulnerable to mistakes he made. The last thing he needed was to have half an eye on Clara the entire time, trying to ensure nothing bad happened to her.
The Doctor stepped out his TARDIS and took in the surroundings. The smell was toxic. The air tasted of uranium and the corridor he was in was grey and dingy. A nuclear power station. He licked his finger and held it up. A 22nd Century nuclear power station on Earth. How interesting. Something flickered in the Doctor's brain but he tried to ignore it. He needed to figure out what was causing those temporal readings. He soniced and the air told him where he needed to go. The TARDIS was parked in a cooling tunnel of some sort and as he checked for temporal abnormalities, the alarms in the tunnel flared into life. The Doctor cursed and moved fast. The corridor was about to be flooded with radiation. The temporal markers led out of the corridor anyway. He legged it, haring to the door at the far side of the tunnel and sonicing it open as heat flared above him. He sealed the door behind him, breathing deeply and turning to see where he was. Another corridor, perfect. He grumbled and went to follow the trail of fluctuation. He didn't make it very far before several workers came out of a side door, laughing and joking until they saw him. Their faces froze, the smiles dropping right off. They looked confused, worried and almost scared. There were three of them, two men and a woman, all Chinese, with dark hair and eyes, the men were both taller than the woman and appeared to be identical twins.
"Who are you?" one of the twins asked. "What're you doing here in our factory?"
"Oh, so I'm in China," the Doctor grinned, shaking the hands of the three people in front of him and whipping out his psychic paper. China was bad. Why was China bad? Pieces were fitting together, but he couldn't remember the jigsaw puzzle. "Cool, love China. Not been here in a while. I'm the Doctor, I've been sent by the military ambassador to check over all your key operating systems. Did he not tell you I was coming?"
"No," snapped the woman. "He didn't. I'm Fe-Lian, these are my friends and co-workers, Feng and Hui of the Zhang family. As you might have guessed, they're twins. We have two of your kind and an American also working at this facility, the American is asleep, the others are in the control room. This is the Beijing Metro power facility."
"Ah yes," the Doctor acknowledged. "22nd Century, you only need a minimalist crew to run a power station now. When you say two of my kind you mean…"
"Brits," Fe-Lian shook her head. "You Brits are fucking ridiculous. The girl who works here, I swear she's unlike anything I've ever seen before. Come on then, I'd better take you to the control deck, so you can test out our systems. How did you get in here anyway?"
"My transport dropped me right inside," the Doctor replied. "Automated security was a doddle, after all, I have all the codes."
"Of course," Hui muttered. "Bloody ambassador keeps those codes close to his chest. I swear, we're not even allowed control over our own facility. It's a joke. The government will never change."
The Doctor bit his tongue. Foreknowledge was dangerous and sooner or later, China would become a crater. An industrial accident of the most foul and horrific nature. He'd always wondered what had started it, but hoped he would never find out. They entered the control pad, where a man was working on a console but the aforementioned British girl was nowhere to be seen. He looked up and frowned as he saw the Doctor.
"Who's this?" he asked, turning to Feng in an annoyed fashion. "Another bloody spot check is it? I'm sick of not being trusted to run my own damn power station. They can't possibly think we're that incompetent if they let us live here 24 hours a day and watch over this facility at all times. Let me guess, the ambassador wants our key operating systems looked at?" he shot a look at Feng. "Again?"
"Fraid so," the Doctor grinned, offering his hand for the man to shake but he refused. "Jake is it?" he checked the name tag. "Sorry to intrude, I'm the Doctor. Now, you said that there were two other people at this facility? Where are they?"
He pulled out the sonic, frowning as the temporal readings led him to a door down the side of the room. Whatever was causing the readings was on the other side.
"What's behind this door?" he asked eagerly.
"Our mainframe," Jake answered. "David's asleep upstairs but Soufflé's behind there."
"I'm sorry who?" the Doctor swivelled as the door opened and Clara Oswald stepped out of the room. The Doctor's jaw dropped as his sonic blared as Clara stared at him with confusion. "Clara?!" he cried, hugging her. "Clara Oswald?"
"Clara Oswin," Clara informed him, eyeing him up suspiciously. "Who the hell are you? How do you know me? What is that weird thing you're waving in my face?"
"Ohh of course, that explains the temporal readings, knew I'd seen them somewhere before. The Asylum and Victorian London, all makes sense now and of course you don't remember me, because you never do, how annoying. I'm the Doctor and I know you because I read your personnel file. Badly," he added with a grin. "This old thing, it's a sonic screwdriver, picks up strange readings. But luckily, there's nothing wrong with your facility, everything seems in order. So I'll be on my way. My ship is in one of your cooling tunnels, should be easy enough for you to vent it out. Take a couple of minutes, I'll give your mainframe the old once over but nothing should be wrong I imagine."
"I'm sorry," Clara glared at him. "None of that made any sort of sense. Doctor Who? Let me see your ID!"
He grinned at her masterfully, but something was still nagging at him. Something terrible. Clara had thrown herself into the time stream to protect him, so what was she doing here? And why did he have an uneasy feeling about this whole thing? He produced his psychic paper and Clara raised an eyebrow at him.
"Is this some sort of joke?" she snapped. "There's nothing written on here!"
The Doctor laughed out loud. Trust Clara to not fall for his paper, she always way too clever for her own good and she could read him like a book. The others shot Clara odd looks as they took it in turns to examine the paper and tell her that his credentials were sound. Clara shot the Doctor acidic looks as she showed him the mainframe and he whirred the sonic at it, when a question occurred to him.
"What's the date today Clara?" he asked with a smile and she rolled her eyes.
"Okay weirdo, it's the 3rd of April, same as it was when you got up this morning."
"What year?" Dread was starting to fill him now.
"Are you kidding me Chin-Boy?" he winced at the nickname. "It's 2158. Listen, you might have fooled the others but you're not fooling me. You're not from the Chinese government and you're no safety inspector. So whatever you're doing here, believe me I am not going to let you drop me in shit with my boss for letting you in here…And for God's sake, what is wrong with you now?"
The Doctor had been stupid. Oh so stupid. Of course there were odd temporal readings here but that wasn't just Clara. This was a complicated space-time event because it was a fixed point in time. The day that China burned. He was Beijing Metro on the day that it exploded, turning China to ashes and slaughtering 1.5 billion people. He needed to get out of there and he needed to take Clara with him. He wasn't about to let another echo burn.
"Listen to me very carefully," he whispered to Clara fiercely and she raised an eyebrow. "You're right, this paper is blank, it's psychic paper, allows people to see whatever I want them to see unless they're very clever and you Clara Oswin are very clever, of course you are. I've met you before in different versions of reality. Here," he pulled out a photo of himself with Clara at the Eiffel Tower. "This is you. I'm a time-traveller, I travel through time and I see things certain ways. If you don't believe me I can prove it. And today is a fixed point in time, which means that what happens today must always happen. In approximately," he checked his watch. "One hour, your core systems will overload, your entire factory will explode and China will be atomised. And nothing anyone can do will change that! And I know you don't believe a word I'm saying, but here, take some memories!"
Desperate, he crashed his head against hers and she yelled as visions of Clara Oswin Oswald and Oswin Oswald rattled her skull. She saw the Doctor, travelling in time and she saw the way the universe held together.
"Why are you showing me this?" she gasped. "What's the point of it all? My head, it hurts so much, all this knowledge it's…it burns."
"I need you to understand," he begged. "I need to get you out of here because I can't let another echo die for me. I can't let another Clara die for me."
"But don't you see?" she gasped, stumbling over under the pain. "You have to. It's why I'm alive. I live to serve the Doctor, I live to die for you. My whole life, my entire existence," she was sobbing. "It's been to lead me here, to this facility. To save you. So get into your TARDIS and fly away."
"I can't," he bit his lip. "I need you to come with me. I need to protect you."
"I'm staying," Clara snapped. "Whatever causes this plant to explode, it obviously is alien and alien is what you're good at. So you're going to stick around, which means I'm going to need to save you. Besides, whatever my life is, these people are still my friends, I won't let them burn. Not alone anyway."
The Doctor wanted to scream. Whatever caused that explosion, he wasn't going to let it claim Clara, whatever the cost. He would not let another echo die because of him. He owed it to Clara and her sacrifice to save whatever hers he could. If he still had the chance. He stalked after Clara, scanning the room once more to make sure everything was intact. Clara informed the others that the Doctor was leaving but it turned out he couldn't if he wanted to. There was a problem with the vent system in Cooling Tunnel C, which was where the TARDIS was housed. Clara swore and told them to fix it. According to Feng, automated repairs were already underway, but the Doctor was stuck with them for the foreseeable future.
The Doctor and Clara didn't speak, eyeing each other only occasionally. She only had his experiences of her, not her own. She couldn't remember being Clara or Oswin; all she knew was that it had happened. She was struggling with that knowledge, he could tell. He hadn't wanted to burden her, but it was worth it if it meant that she got out with him. He didn't even know what he would do with this Clara. Probably drop her in 22nd Century England and wipe her memory. That was the best policy, leave her to live her life, unburdened by her true purpose or any thought of him. She would only think how lucky she was that she had taken a holiday back home when the blast hit.
There was only half an hour left and what was confusing the Doctor most was that there were no signs of alien interference. There was no goo, no dead bodies, nothing unusual had happened there for months. None of the team members showed any odd behaviour apart from Clara and he knew the source of her odd behaviour. Him. The sonic continued to pick up the temporal ripples but nothing else vaguely out of the ordinary. There was nothing for the Doctor to do but sit and wait until the vents were cleared and he could take Clara out of there. He'd ask why they called her Soufflé but the answer was obvious from the mess in the kitchen. Yet another echo with a soufflé habit. He wondered about the girl's mother but didn't dare pry. She was avoiding him and he could understand why. He'd changed her entire world and here she was, preparing to die for him. Again. It wasn't fair. He wished his Clara was here. The real Clara. She'd know what to do. Or even River. She'd resolve this situation, lickety-split.
"Surely," Clara muttered under her breath to him as they watched the turbines in action. "In order to trigger a chain reaction in time, whatever is going to end China is going to have to do so in the next ten minutes. They'd have to deactivate every cooling system, flood the main room with gamma radiation and then fold back the signals am I right?"
"It's your power station," the Doctor replied, equally quietly. "And yes, within the next ten minutes. Something will. It has to. The universe dictates that something blows up China in the next ten minutes. But what?"
Another five minutes passed. The Doctor paced, irritated, angry even. There was nothing he could do to save China, but he could save Clara, if she let him. The younger girl was increasingly anxious and the Doctor could see her rubbing her forehead. They had about two minutes. Then, it clicked. Horror filled him. He turned to Clara and Clara turned to him.
"No," he said. "No, we can't. I won't."
"We don't have a choice," she replied quietly. "I don't have a choice. Nothing's coming Doctor. Nothing is going to blow up China and we have about a minute until the chain reaction starts."
"I can't. I won't. 1.5 billion people. I refuse. You refuse."
"I can't," Clara said, tears streaming down her cheeks. "But you can still get out of here. Run. Run you clever boy. And remember me."
"I won't!" the Doctor yelled, throwing himself into her arms and hugging her. He kissed the top of her head and she bit her lip before lashing out, kicking him, he stumbled back and she punched him now. He fell back, beyond the blast doors and she sealed them behind her.
"Get to the TARDIS!" she screamed. "Or I swear to God, I will blow a hole in the universe for you."
"Clara, we still have a couple of minutes, please!" he roared. "Don't do this!"
"Once that chain reaction starts," she said coldly. "The TARDIS might get caught in it. So you have to get back to her and into her or I will rip the cosmos apart."
The Doctor shook his head once and she stared at him. Time couldn't be rewritten. Not this time.
"You can't die," he said quietly. "Not because me. Not again."
"Don't you see, if you die here, it makes my entire sacrifice irrelevant," she snapped. "So you get back to that TARDIS this second."
"But don't you see?" the Doctor wailed. "I have to live with the fact that across time and space, thousands of you are dying, because of me. For me. I saved the real Clara, but every other Clara I let die is a waste. I'm not worth it."
"Go to the TARDIS. Now. Because she needs you. The real Clara," Clara still had a cold voice. "She needs her Doctor and she's out there waiting for you. She did what she did to protect you, are you really going to throw her away like this? Now this is a fixed point, I have to do it. I have to set the controls to explode. I have to kill 1.5 billion people. But I won't kill you, because if I do, then she loses you. So go to her."
"I'm sorry!" the Doctor said quietly. And then he ran.
Clara was just settling down for tea. Another microwave meal for one. She hadn't had time to go proper shopping because the Doctor had pitched up an hour earlier than expected the previous day. Still, it was Thursday now, so she had six days to prepare her life for the following week. She would miss him of course, but she'd got used to the dull feeling in her stomach when he wasn't around. The knocking on her door made her jump, if only because it was so loud and frantic it was almost deafening. She smiled as she stood up. There was only one person it could be. She opened the door with a grin but her smile vanished the second she saw him. He was in tears, stunned and broken and he stumbled into her arms, shaking and crying. She'd never seen him this way before.
"Clara," he gasped. "My Clara. You're here. You're alive. You're safe."
"Of course I am," she smiled. "What's wrong? What happened?"
"An echo," he whispered. "I ran into an echo. And I made her do something. Something…bad."
"What was it Doctor? What did you make her do?"
"I made her die. I made her sacrifice herself. Again." He couldn't do it. He couldn't tell her about China.
"Doctor," Clara said softly. "I'm here. I'm alive. You saved me. You dragged me out of that hell and because of you, I'm alive. She wasn't me. She was an echo."
"But every echo that burns because of me…"
"Is gone. Already dead. They've all made their choices, their sacrifices. Focus on here and now, focus on me. Is there anything I can do?"
He kissed the top of her forehead.
"Just, let me stay here tonight Clara. Let me hold you. Let me hold you like I never have to let go, because I love you and I can't stand the thought of watching you die. Not even an echo."
"I love you too," she murmured and her lips found his. "It'll be okay Doctor, I promise."
In her last moments, Clara Oswin didn't think of the people she was about to kill. She couldn't. She didn't allow herself to let in the scrap of pain that would totally destroy her. Instead she thought of the Doctor who she had saved and hoped that wherever he was, he had found his Clara and that he kept her safe. Because through her, all the Clara's could live. Then, her world burned to cinders and ash.