True Love Lies
Chapter Four
The only sound to interrupt the perfect, unnerving silence that had descended over the bedroom was that of Clara beginning to slowly hyperventilate as the Doctor's words wrapped around her.
"So... let me see if I've got this straight... you're saying that my parents... the people I grew up with... aren't actually the people I think they are at all," Clara stated, a note of hysteria beginning to creep into her tone. Her eyes ticked quickly from the Doctor to Rory and back again, never lingering too long on either face as her mind attempted to make sense of all she had been told.
"They're still the same people, Clara," the Doctor explained, gently and patiently, an understanding glimmer present in his eyes, "they were just... wearing a disguise, if you like."
"But I don't," Clara snapped immediately, her upper lip curled in anger, "I don't like. Not one bloody little bit. This is... It's insane! My whole life... Lying to me my whole life?!"
She spun around on her stool to confront Rory, her eyes blazing ferociously in a manner that reminded him so much of Amy that he sucked in a sharp breath immediately.
"How could you?" she demanded, although her voice had grown quiet and trembled horribly, threatening a sudden onslaught of tears.
"We did it to protect you," he replied, his palm covering his face momentarily as previously repressed memories assailed him at a hundred miles per hour. "Everything was always to protect you. At any cost, she said."
"She?" Clara inquired, a little of her hostility melting away as she felt a familiar sense of grief prickle her heart.
"Your mother," Rory confirmed, finally removing his hand from his eyes and meeting Clara's gaze. He swallowed hard before quickly glancing away, unable to hold himself together at the seams as the moment required.
Clara's gaze fell to the floor, and she blinked against the tears that now streamed steadily from her eyes. "I don't... I don't even know what she looked like. My own Mum, I don't know anything about her... not really."
Rory felt his mouth growing increasingly dry, and he swallowed hard against the wave of emotion that had lodged in his throat and kept him on the verge of tears.
"You know everything about her," he said gently, coaxing her to remember the mother who had given up her own existence to keep her child safe, "she was brave, and stubborn, and funny... and... and exasperating sometimes, and clever. So clever. She loved to laugh, she loved adventure. And... she was so beautiful, and so alive."
Rory closed his eyes and brushed his fingertips over his eyelids as his words became his undoing and tears began to flow down his cheeks.
"I've never met anybody who embraced life like your mother did. It was like she had this light around her, like... she made everything better. And she loved you so, so much, Clara. Everything we did... everything she did, it was all for you. To keep you safe. To stop them taking you from us again."
The Doctor found himself growing uncharacteristically emotional and he cleared his throat as an unfamiliar burn signalled that he too was on the precipice of tears. The fate of Melody Pond had always rested heavily on his conscience and his hearts, so knowing that she had been found - that the past had been changed - brought him immense joy and relief. But the terrible fate that had ultimately befallen his friend, his Amelia Pond, was almost too much to bare.
"He's telling you the truth, Clara," the Doctor said gently, "all of it. It's all true."
"Clara?" she repeated, shaking her head as she turned to her dressing table to pluck a tissue from a Kleenex box. Reconsidering her actions, she picked up the box and passed it to Rory, who rewarded her with a watery smile of thanks.
"That's not even my name though, is it?" she demanded, arching a dark eyebrow at her father, who cleared his throat uncomfortably.
"It was my gran's name," he shrugged self-consciously, "we needed to leave our old lives behind and calling you 'Melody'... It wouldn't have seemed right. Not when we'd already lost her once before. It was our second chance, Clara."
"Lost," she repeated in little more than a whisper, "all my life, I've always been so afraid of being lost, of not knowing where I am."
The Doctor smiled kindly, "Perhaps now you know why."
Clara's jaw set in anger and, just when she had seemed on the verge of accepting their somewhat convoluted version of events, her own stubborn nature refused to let her believe and anger overcame her once more.
"The 1980's? You've got all of space and time to choose from, and you decide to live in the 80's? Were the pair of you big Wham fans or something?"
Rory took a moment to blow his nose, wincing at the sound the action made that seemed entirely inappropriate given the serious nature of their conversation.
"He..." Rory nodded over toward the Doctor, " he said we had to go somewhere nobody would ever want to come looking for us, so, your mum said 'what about the 80's?'"
"She had a point, to be fair," the Doctor bobbed his head, his expression betraying his disdain, "I mean, the fashions were scandalous."
Hugging the mug tightly in both hands, Clara mulled over the possibilities for only a moment. When she lifted her head to regard the two men, the ferocity of her gaze instantly commanded their attention even though her tone lacked equal conviction.
"Prove it."
"What?" Rory frowned, looking toward the Doctor, who appeared similarly confused.
"If the woman with the space hair is really me... or I'm really her," Clara winced as she found she couldn't even come close to contemplating that as the truth, "if what you're saying is the truth and I'm really your daughter, and I was born two hundred years in the future on a bloody space station run by some evil cow with an eye-patch... prove it."
Rory opened his mouth, quite clearly poised to protest, but the words died on his lips as he became subject to Clara's narrow eyed, entirely furious glare.
"How?" he inquired meekly, swallowing as he watched anger and sorrow vie for dominance upon Clara's features. Finally, the former won out and she pursed her lips as she turned her attention to the Doctor.
"You're a big shot alien, you help him," she stated, leaning back in her seat and crossing her arms, her arched eyebrow almost daring either of the men to protest against her demand.
"It's not really that simple, Clara," the Doctor explained gently, his eyes conveying the sympathy he felt for the young woman whose world had all but been turned upside down during the course of a simple Christmas lunch.
"Yes it is. You own a bloody time machine," Clara retorted, lip curled into a snarl that exposed her teeth, "make it that simple!"
The Doctor paused, knitting his fingers together as he frowned at his companion, who really seemed to have descended into a foul and wholly unreasonable mood.
"The problem is, Clara," he began softly, peering at her through hooded eyes, "if we hopped into the Tardis now and I somehow managed to pinpoint one of the exact moments that would be relevant to proving to you that what we've said is nothing but the absolute truth... the sheer energy that would be exuded from two versions of the Tardis existing side by side would not fail to draw the eye of any and every creature in the universe that had sought to take you away from your parents since the second you were born."
"It could change history... Our entire lives..." Rory added, understanding dawning as he digested the Doctor's words. The Timelord only nodded, his expression regretful.
Clara paused, shaking her head in disbelief as she set her mug down firmly on the dressing table. Her head whipped around and she peered at the Doctor with such startling intensity that he was almost rendered breathless.
"Well, you'd better find a more human way to do it then," she challenged, tilting her chin defiantly upwards as she crossed her arms to punctuate her point.
The Doctor mumbled unintelligibly to himself, and he rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he appeared to mull over her demand. His impossible girl was most certainly living up to her name.
Rory too seemed lost in thought, until he suddenly lifted his head and raised his hand meekly, as if to appeal for their attention. "I know. I know how to prove it."
Leaning in closer toward the Doctor, Rory whispered quietly into the Time Lord's ear and ,when he had finished relaying the basics of his plan, he stood back to watch the alien contemplate his suggestion.
The Doctor instantly seemed to brighten and he released an oddly celebratory laugh as he ruffled Rory's hair with an exuberant hand, "Ah! Rory! Yes. Brilliant. I knew I could rely on you. Good old reliable Rory, that's what we always called you."
"No. You didn't."
Rory attempted to unsuccessfully smooth down his hair, finding that his affection for his old friend was quickly being equalled by a familiar sense of irritation. He'd almost forgotten how simultaneously brilliant and obnoxiously annoying the time travelling alien could be.
"Um... Question," Rory began, folding his arms across his chest as he struggled to make his demeanour more imposing and fatherly, and his gaze shifted between the Doctor and Clara."I know I'm slightly hazy right now, and I was admittedly having my brain sucked out of my cranium by an alien with the unlikely moniker of 'Linda', but... what exactly is going on here? How... Why... I mean... Why are you... and what are you doing... you know... together?"
The Doctor dug a finger down the collar of his shirt and swallowed nervously, "Sorry?"
"You... you said he was your boyfriend," Rory pointed accusingly at Clara, who instantly tilted her head and rewarded his curiosity with an arched eyebrow and a hiss of annoyance that reminded him of her late mother.
"What's your last name, again... Dad?"
Shrinking back, Rory held up his hands to placate her and nodded, in a move that had been well practised when arguing with his late wife.
"Okay. Good point."
"Pond!" the Doctor supplied helpfully, glancing interestedly between father and daughter with this head propped in his hand.
"No it's not. Will you stop that!" Rory protested, finding that almost thirty years later, ' The Ponds' issue was still a cause for irritation.
Suddenly bored with the direction the conversation had taken, the Doctor bent down to adjust his bow tie in Clara's dressing table mirror and smiled approvingly at his reflection.
"Right then, off we go..." his eyes betrayed his enthusiasm, and as he reached out to grab Clara's hand he propelled her to her feet, leaving no room for arguments from his companion or her father.
"Hang on a minute, where are we going?" Clara demanded, scurrying to keep up with the Doctor's long strides as Rory trailed behind, all the while recalling the years he had spent doing just that.
"You'll see when we get there," the Doctor replied, suddenly drawing to a halt that left Clara skidding to a standstill behind him.
Eyeing the pile of bubbling goo that had once been a Klaxopratorian called 'Linda', the Time Lord wrinkled his nose in evident disgust and stepped rather demurely over the mound of entrails.
"Shouldn't we do something about that?" Clara queried, yelping as the Doctor tugged her hand and she was forced to jump over her former step-mother and follow his hurried steps toward her front door.
"Oh, I don't think she can hurt anyone now," the Doctor replied, waving brightly to Gran as she chose that moment to turn around and tear her gaze away from the television screen, where a panoramic shot of the Austrian mountains was slowly coming into view.
"Oooh, The Sound of Music! Lovely!" the Doctor enthused, "Julie Andrews, orphans wearing some rather splendid curtains and the Third Reich, what more could you want, eh? Right. We're just popping out for a bit..."
He gesticulated toward the door, hoping his babbling would ensure the elderly woman had no time to question them.
"Cheerio, Doctor," Gran called out, waving merrily back even as she returned her attention to the television screen and the box of Quality Street tucked down the .
"This is mad," Clara bit out as the door slammed closed behind them and the three almost tumbled out into the hallway.
Rory and the Doctor took the lead, Clara trundling along behind them with crossed arms, a petulant expression and little enthusiasm.
"You wanted proof, young lady, we're going to give you proof," Rory stated, nodding his head as he walked, trying to shake the distinctly disorientated feeling that still clung to him.
"And... and what if I refuse to go, eh?" Clara suddenly blurted out, stopping dead in her tracks in the middle of the hallway even as the Doctor stabbed the button on the wall at the end of the corridor to summon the lift.
"Clara..." Rory stated, his tone softening as he peered down at his daughter, "I'm your father."
Swallowing hard, Clara shook her head, "No... you're not."
Sighing and lowering his head, the Doctor walked hesitantly toward the woman, one hand outstretched. Without much thought, Clara reached out and slipped her fingers through his. She was still beyond furious but the gesture was almost unconscious.
"Clara, do you trust me?" he murmured softly, squeezing her hand gently.
Chewing on her bottom lip, Clara slowly bobbed her head.
"Always."
His eyes shone with unchecked affection, and he raised her hand to his lips and pressed a gentle kiss against her knuckles before tucking her arm through his.
"Well then, Clara Oswald," he began, his eyes searching her face intently, "time to find out who you really are."