Chapter 4: Adventures Of The Echoes:
For a second, Clara just hung there, suspended among the threads. But then they began to envelop her. Though she felt no pain, she could feel them tightening around her. Slowly, she began to feel as though the timelines were becoming part of her. Overwriting everything she was. But one thought held on longer than the others. I have to undo the Intelligence's damage. I have to help the Doctor.
She felt all the rifts where the Intelligence had gone through, causing damage and willed herself to follow. She couldn't know how she was doing it, but she was. Feeling the paths dividing, she divided herself. She felt a million different pieces of her forming in the paths she followed, each manifested itself as a whole lifetime in a perfect position to save the Doctor. She lived out those lives one by one. until she wasn't even sure where she was any more she just knew that she was running.
Before long, she began to feel like she'd lived a thousand lives in a thousand places. She was born, lived and died. And always, there was the Doctor. Always she was running to save the Doctor again and again and again. And he hardly ever heard her. But she'd always been there.
She was there right from the start. The day he'd started running. A worker in the TARDIS breakers' yard, back on Gallifrey. She saw the Doctor shepherding Susan into the wrong TARDIS. How she knew it was the wrong one was beyond her, but she wanted to be rid of a certain one anyway.
"Yes, what is it, what do you want?" The Doctor said nervously, once she'd got his attention.
"Sorry, but you're about to make a very big mistake. Don't steal that one, steal this one. The navigation system's knackered, but you'll have much more fun."
The Doctor eyed her suspiciously, then decided she seemed harmless enough and took up her offer.
A small army of fluffers had been rushed in to clear up the muck that had gathered on the London Underground, in preparation for the trains re starting. However, the boss seemed possessed with an obsession for getting a particular stretch around Covent Garden cleared straight away.
"Excellent." He said, when it was done. "Run a train to test it."
"Shouldn't we check to make sure no one's down there?" Someone said.
"Don't argue! Just do it!" He snapped.
Clara decided to check anyway. Sure enough, there were three figures moving down the line.
"What are you doing here!" She shouted. "They're about to restart the trains Quick, there's an access door just over here."
"Thank you." Said the Doctor, as she opened it for him. It was too dark to see her face, but she'd probably saved all of their lives.
Having broken the scientists from the hypnotic trance, Rubeish decided he should also do the same with the medieval workers the Sontaran had been forcing to produce weapons.
One of them was turning one of the rifles over in his hands. He somehow still retained the knowledge of how they worked. "Why, with weapons such as these, Irongron could terrorise the whole world!"
"Perhaps not." Said Clarete, a servant girl. "He had me making the parts you look through. I still kept enough of my mind to make them all crooked. Their shots will all go wild." She looked over the lab, at all the machines the Sontaran had brought with him. To her medieval mind, they looked like sorcery. "The man is a monster." Seeing the door open, she hurried out, reasoning she should get the other servant away from him.
She didn't always live full lives of her own. Sometimes she merged with others. She didn't replace them, just shared a mind. She was 100% Clara and 100% Clare Keightley. This allowed her to remember how to fly a TARDIS much longer than she had on her own. Long enough to materialise beneath the Doctor and Romana and rescue them from Scagra's spheres.
In another lifetime, she was a resident of Castrovalva. As the city began to fold in on itself, she spotted the Master making a break for it. Though she had little comprehension of what was going on, a very clear part of her mind told her the man had to be stopped. A few calls to the others nearby and they swarmed forward to grab him.
Claraoswaldoswin had moved up in the world in the last few centuries. Once a lowly breaker for derelict TARDISes, now she was working as an operator for the Celestial Intervention Agency.
As the Doctor was off battling the Valeyard in the matrix, she found herself summoned to the court room.
"It has come to our attention that you tampered with the events around the Doctor's companion's death without seeking permission." Said the Inquisitor. "It may aid your defence if you could tell us what happened.
She gulped. "Well... I thought snatching the Doctor away like that was tampering with history. They had the evidence against him anyway, so there was no need for the woman to die unnecessarily. So I just froze those scientists for the same stretch of time as Yrcanos. That way he had time to save her, as he should have."
"Well this certainly works in the Doctor's favour. Thank you."
The Yellow Kang, known as Carry Case, hurried very fast down the carrydoor. The robot in close pursuit. It had already unalived her friend Nina, now it was coming after her. The robot was slow but it was persistent. And none of the Rezzies would let her in when she knocked on their doors.
Turning a corner, she saw another robot blocking the carrydoor ahead and knew she'd be unalive very soon. All she could do now was pull out her paints and rapidly wall scrawl. She'd never learnt to write, but she could paint fast. She scribbled down an image of a robot arm lifting a Kang's decapitated head in the hope of mayhaps warning someone else about what was going on.
Miss Oswin was busy clearing up her paperwork at the end of the day, when she spotted a small bag that had fallen off a shelf. Picking it up, she saw it was the Lottery money Rose was supposed to take to Wilson.
Spotting the girl making her way out, she hurried over and grabbed her by the door. "Forgotten something?" She said, shaking the bag.
Rose sighed. At least this would only take a couple of minutes. As the others made their way out, she made her way to the staff lifts, hitting the button for the sub basement.
The Master had the entire crew of the Valliant assembled in the main hanger.
"It would seem." He said. "That someone from this vessel has been passing information to the resistance. Every time we get close to Martha Jones, she slips away. If that traitor would like to step forward, I won't get angry. Ok, I will, but it would be nice if you'd do it anyway." He wasn't at all surprised when they all remained still. "Toclafane. This crew is defective. Kill anyone who isn't a hostage and we'll get new ones."
"It was me!" A woman who's name he'd never bothered to learn stepped forward quickly.
"Hold your fire!" Said the Master. No need to make a mess. "Well then. Perhaps you could make it up to me. Just tell me. Where is Martha Jones now?"
The woman shut her mouth tightly. That was good. It meant he could employ that new torture method he'd thought up.
"Guards! Dangle her off the ship until she talks."
Clara hurried through the Buckingham Senate, glancing fearfully over her shoulder. She burst through the doors to the oval throne room, in the hope of warning the Emperor. "Emperor, we're... but the moment she looked at Churchill, she forgot what it was she meant to warn him about. By the time she could remember, the Silence that was following her had hit her with a vaporising blast.
Fortunately she was just close enough for Churchill to grab her gun. The Holy Roman Emperor was not one to leave things to the troops, as he'd proven at Issus, Game Station and Gettysburg. Before the creature had time to respond, he brought up the revolver and shot it.
"We have to get out of here!" The Doctor shouted, shortly before they lost sight of the creature. He wouldn't remember the girl afterwards. But thanks to her, he knew to run.
Author's Notes: The episodes referenced here are The Web Of Fear, The Time Warrior, Shada, Castrovalva, The Trial Of A timelord, Paradise Towers, Rose, The Last Of The Tiemlords and The Wedding of River Song.
I wanted to include something for Paul McGann, but I just couldn't think of a way to write her into either of his TV appearances.
Yes, cleaners on the London Underground are called fluffers.