A/n: Two posts in one week! That should get you guys to forgive me for how short this one is.

The Sinner and the Cynical

Chapter 6: Anyone who does it differently

X

Later, Donna and Clara were alone in the teachers lounge, sipping at their coffee. Clara's was black and Donna's had an obscene amount of sugar in it. This was new. She used to take it black as well. She wonders if it's a side effect of having a bonkers Time Lord invade your brain, if maybe he rearranged a few things while he was in there and she'd suddenly really love cricket or something. Or maybe it was just regenerating. The Doctor had said it makes you a whole new person, that he was a different man now. But Donna couldn't make herself believe that to be perfectly true.

"You know," said Clara, bringing her mug to her lips. "I'm sort of glad I get to be here at the beginning."

"What do you mean?"

"You have to understand Donna, I first met you years ago. Since then I've only gotten to see you as you will be. It's exciting to see where it all starts."

"So many good days ahead," Donna whispered to herself with a self-parodying smile.

"Sorry?"

"Oh it's nothing, something someone said to me once."

"It's just- I'm also glad. I don't think we would get along the same if I didn't know where we all end up."

Donna raised her eyebrows and smirked. "Don't think you'd like me much? That's alright, I get that."

"No no," the younger woman said quickly. "It's just different. The Doctor's my friend. I think I'd worry more."

"Aren't you messing with the timeline, telling me it's all going to be hunky-dory?"

"No, I mean, of course you already know it's all going to be okay."

"Didn't realize that was something I knew," she contradicted, wryly.

"Well of course you are, you're Donna and the Doctor, don't be stupid."

"We used to be Donna and the Doctor," Donna corrected. "He broke my trust. He took away my right to choose. He had no right! It was my choice and he made it for me. You know what he's like-!"

"Donna," called Clara, gently. "I'm not… You're not going to get me to agree with you."

Donna wasn't entirely sure why she'd thought she would.

"In the years to come, I promise, I side with you more than not. The Doctor is a hard man to live with. He's difficult and childish. But He loves you, so much. He would do anything to save you. He did the same for me; I've done the same for him. I'd do the same for you or Henry. You can't tell me that you wouldn't do anything for your granddad, or your mum-"

"Well, maybe not my mum," Donna joked weakly.

Clara smiled knowingly. "You say that now, but well, spoilers." She shrugged, "sorry Donna."

"Why should you be sorry?" she reached the bottom of her cup and got up to deposit it in the sink. Her back was to Clara, who couldn't see her face crumpling in pain. "You're the Doctor's friend."

And Donna knows she is not. But she also has nowhere else to go.

The Doctor found that he was greatly enjoying teaching. The audience was large, and it paid him little attention, but it was much the same as having a room full of companions listening to his newest scheme. He's used to not being understood, to apathetic eyes glazing over when he speaks. This group is only an improvement, as at least some seem to understand him when he speaks.

"Er, sir?" a young girl with her hair in bantu knots raised her hand and bit her lower lip. "That's not how the textbook says it happened."

The Doctor rolls his eyes and checks the roll. "…Deisha. Right. Who are you going to believe? Some idiot who writes textbooks for a living or someone who was actually there?"

She laughed and put her hand down.

"Moving right along. I-"

"Mr. Smith?" a man in his thirties with scruff and thick eyebrows poked his head in. "The bell rang 15 minutes ago. It's supposed to be my class next."

"I'm not finished," said the Doctor in a hard sort of way.

The teacher locked eyes with the older man for a moment, took a deep breath and withdrew.

Satisfied, the Doctor returned to his thoughts on English colonial history. A cough disturbed him. He looked up to find 30 anxious 15-year-olds glancing at the clock and sporting varying degrees of worried expressions.

"Fine. Fine! You may go." The teenagers all scrambled to gather their things and run while they still could.

When the last of them had filed out, the scruffy teacher who'd been such a nag entered and dropped his books on the desk that the Doctor was still occupying. He held out his hand to shake. What was with humans and their insistence on touching each other? The Doctor delicately took the man's pinky between his index finger and thumb and shook it.

"Dr. Smith," the Time Lord announced.

"Oh, a doctor! What're you doing teaching in a place like this?" at his silence, the human responded in kind, "Alan Paulson. I'm the guidance counselor… and I teach Maths. We're under funded." He said by way of explanation.

"My friend Donna teaches Maths," the Doctor said, without thinking.

"Really? New maths teacher," his interest piqued. The Doctor looked at him strangely. Why should he care? He'd only said it to make small talk. Clara was always telling him how important small talk was for people to not instantly hate you. "Oh, is that the redhead?"

Oh no. Sorry. WHAT.

Clara has been talking to other teachers in her off periods. When she asked them if any of their students have stopped coming to class she got the answer she had expected. "Mrs. Oswald. You're not at a private school anymore. Most of them don't graduate." Sometimes it was said kindly, other times condescendingly. She's frustrated each time. None of them have noticed anything particular about any of the kids who left.

Who cares? Who is caring for these kids? No one.

Except…

Mrs. Dina Goldberg was the librarian, a sweet little thing with a mane of frizzy brown hair, dark, freckled skin, glasses and a Canadian accent. One of the only conversations Clara has had with her was when she had mistakenly called her an American and her feeble, mouse-like temper had flared.

She approached Clara at the end of one of her classes, intercepted her at the door and ushered her back inside. "You've been asking about missing students," she whispered.

"Yes," replied Clara slowly, hope dawning.

"Well," Mrs. Goldberg bit her lip and clutched at the pendant at her throat. "There was this one boy. One of the younger years. He would cut class and read in the library. He was really respectful, would always sit in the stacks. His name was Aniq? A couple weeks ago he stopped coming. He was a good kid!" she insisted, "His English wasn't great, but he spoke French, so we could communicate fine. He liked it here, he was learning. And then-"

"He disappeared," Clara nodded and put a comforting hand on Dina's shoulder, "Shona. One of my students. She came to me after winter hols and told me that she wanted to be a scientist. That she'd try harder. Then she was gone."

"Have you found anything?" Dina asked hopefully.

"Not yet, but the cavalry's arrived."

Turns out the cavalry are very annoying to live with. Their growing frustration with each other was growing suffocating, hour by hour. They weren't even yelling at each other, just stewing in silence and making Clara crazy.

"Shut up shut up shut up," the Doctor eventually groaned as the telly droned in the background.

Donna, who had been biting her nails and doing the Times' Sudoku fisted her hands into balls so tightly that her nails bit at her skin and her knuckles cracked. She sighed loudly and glared at the back of the Doctor's head.

"Why don't you do something productive?"

"Why don't you stop being passive aggressive?"

"That's a passive aggressive thing to say."

Clara was going to turn actually aggressive if they didn't get it together soon.

a/n: I'm with Clara...

Reviews are like a scottish accent singing of life, despair and bonnie lasses. Exhilarating, sexy and incomprehensibly awesome.