Clara stood blinking at the confused and somewhat angry faces of the Jones' in front of her, embarrassed and slightly mortified that he lacked in the most basic of manners. He hadn't even looked at them.
"That's not the Doctor." Martha Jones declared; on a different occasion Clara might have been thrilled to meet her and the husband. But right now, she was just pissed, only she couldn't decide who with most, the Box or the man inside it.
"Oh trust me its him!" Clara muttered. "Unfortunately he isn't always a charmer. Especially not when his TARDIS declares mutiny." She turned accusingly hands on her hips to stare at the Blue Box, she felt it stare right back. "Oh don't you give me that you Old Cow. One holiday, would it have killed you to give him that? He might be a crap engineer this time round but he disabled that autopilot for a reason, the least you could have done was pretend to let it stick for a few days."
"Seems like the same old Doctor to me. Never did like mixing it up with the 'exes'." Mickey snapped looking a lot tougher and older than the one that flittered though Clara's memory.
Jack sidled up beside her she expected to see the same anger the other two former companions were failing to hide, instead he wore the biggest grin and he was aiming it straight at her, his arms enveloped her and she almost inhaled him as he planted the biggest kiss on her lips, his eyes flashing with delight as he drew away slowly, clearly savouring it. "I knew I'd recognised that name, accents a little different now, but that face..." he grasped her face and kissed each cheek with a little too much enthusiasm. "Unmistakeable."
Clara held her hands up warding him off. "Easy. Down boy." She leant back, but he wasn't releasing the hold he had around her waist.
"Oswin Oswald of the Starship Alaska right? Don't tell me you don't remember Agent Jack?" he was giving her 'come to bed eyes', but all Clara could do was stare back, the unpleasant sensation of memories from another her stirring from where they had safely integrated and stayed buried when the Doctor had pulled her out of his time stream.
Jack turned back towards his bemused looking colleagues, a dark haired women with a strong welsh accent was the first to respond. "Oh for heaven's sake Jack, give the girl a minute, you're not that memorable."
"Oh trust me Gwen, Oswin and I had a memorable time, back when I was still just a mortal man of course, working for the Time Agency in the 51st Century." he smirked back at her like a secret shared between them and Clara felt her face whiten with the sudden onslaught of another life, another time, of hot sweaty bodies, laughter... and guns. "She asked me to show her the stars... well we got about as far as Orion's belt." He let out a boisterous laugh, dropping his arm over her shoulder and tugging her in close to his well defined chest.
"Oswin, are you alright?" Martha stepped forward, her hand out. "Jack, she's not alright, grab her." Clara hadn't even realised her knees has gone from under her as Jack caught her fast, lowering her to the floor gracefully his hands cradling her face.
"Oswin. Oswin can you hear me?" Jacks voice floated in and out, the fleeting pleasant memories and rush of lust her former self had passed, skipped right through to the single defining moment in her life, to the Daleks... they had carved her up, filled her full of hate and thrown her in a tin can.
"Eggs."
"Did she just say eggs?" Gwen voiced everyone's question, coming to kneel down beside her, the presence of so many around her, human hands touching her forced hate to surge through her strangling all reason.
"Doctor!" Martha shouted. "We need you, Oswin's in trouble!" Clara felt a hand against her neck and she tried to strain away from it but her muscles weren't under her own control. "Pulse is thready, I think she's seizing, God jack what did you do?"
"Nothing." Jack spluttered, his hands strong against her shoulders as he pinned her.
"Move!" the TARDIS doors banged open and Clara gasped for air, struggling against the agony raging inside of her, but now it had a focus as she felt him beside her as he pushed the others out the way.
"Eggs." She heard herself say.
Strong firm hands took her face. "Clara." Her name, her actual name... only she wasn't Clara, she was Oswin... only she wasn't Oswin she was...
"Eggs... Exterm,"
"No Clara. Stop this."
"Exterm...inate."
"No!" his roar was primal and it lit something dark inside of her "Fight it! You are Clara Oswald, you are human!" The Doctors voice reached her and her hand flew up as she opened her eyes, looking into the unfamiliar steel ones as her hand closed around the windpipe of her Predator the Doctor. Feeble instruments these appendages she assessed, but they would do.
"I am Dalek!" Her voice screeched into the face of her greatest enemy, drawing strength from the hate as she pushed up, bringing her second hand around his throat and squeezing hard.
"Oh my God! Grab her." Gwen barked and she felt hands take her, trying to pull her off the Doctor.
"Trying!" Mickey snarled, his arm went around her throat and she lashed out with an elbow smiling in satisfaction as she felt it connect with a crunch and heard an answering grunt of pain.
"Get off her, let her go!" the Doctor rasped struggling for breath, the hands fell away and she turned her full attention on him. "Exterminate!" she screamed their faces inches apart as he tried to prise her hands loose with success as he threw them aside. His grip on her face intensified and she felt his mind pierce hers like a weapon.
"That's it good girl, let me in Clara, I can stop the pain, I can stop the Dalek. Let me in." Clara let out a sob that was entirely her as she felt him inside her mind, breaking her free of the memory for the barest of moments.
"Doctor." She breathed.
"Fight it. You did before, you are Clara Oswald, you are human, you fought the Daleks and you won." His words rattled through her very being, alighting more memories, other battles, other hers, fighting dying... winning.
"I... am... human." She bit out.
"That's it, cast aside her memory, she is not all of you. Just an echo one in thousands of voices. Let that Oswin go." She heard him with her ears and her mind, saw as he held the wall up between her and the memories of the Dalek conversion her alternate self had experienced. Clara pressed forward, helping him hold the wall. 'Visualise it Clara, wall this part of you up.'
Clara obeyed, hearing the command strike to her very core as she began to painstakingly layer one brick after another around the vision of herself entombed in the Dalek cage, feeling the Doctor slip away as she focused on the task until her breathing evened and she felt the hate recede. She was Clara Oswald, she was human, she fought the Daleks and she was winning.
The Doctor pulled out of her mind gently and cradled her form as he lowered her to the floor, checking her breathing, slow and steady, the rhythmic pounding of her heart telling him she would recover, as he could still feel her quietly building that wall even now, deep into unconsciousness.
"What the hell was that?" Jack's brash voice declared and the Doctor felt a hand on his shoulder demandingly as he was forced to turn and face the man that had so nearly killed his precious Clara.
"You!" He snarled, feeling his fingers curl as he stood, leaving her body to the care of Dr Jones. He got right up in Jack's face, his very skin crawling at the wrongness of the man, he yearned to reach out and right it, to throw him into the void and stop the swirling maelstrom of paradox his very existence created. He felt his hands curl around the other mans coat, dragging him in and startling his old friend enough to let him.
"You could have killed her." The Doctor barked.
"Hey easy now." Gwen stood slowly, her voice a soothing balm as she eased closer to them, her hands up, but the Doctor knew it wouldn't take much to have her reaching for her weapon. "Now Jack was an ass, yes, but I can't see a damn thing he did wrong except recognising a girl, and then locking lips with her... but aside from that."
The Doctor felt the air leave him, but not the rage. He longed to tear into something, anything for the pain those monsters had unleashed inside of her mind, the horror of the conversion she had been forced to re-experience. His Clara. All for the sake of something this fool said.
"Hey Doc, you're the one that left her out here!" Jack bit back shrugging him off, his finger pointing at his chest accusingly. "And she said her name was Oswin. I never forget a face, not even after the years between the man I was then and now. And definitely not that night." The Doctor felt jealousy and guilt lash him with equal measure and he turned away from the idiot before he felt the urge to act on either, staring instead at her finally peaceful face, his mind touching hers briefly, the wall was constructed, she'd need to sleep now.
"She saved my life." Jack admitted. "My mortal life; which was kind of a bigger deal back then, almost dying."
"Of course she did." The Doctor snarled, feeling his rage switch to the Universe's perverse sense of humour when it came to this new version of him. "Because you have and will save my life. If you didn't exist, then I might not."
"I'm confused." Mickey was staring hard at him, arms crossed, a million miles from the teenager with no ambition or future who'd been terrified of a mad man in a box running away with his girl. "Is she Oswin, or is she Clara? Is she human... or Dalek?"
The Doctor sighed, rubbing his temples, the mental battle he'd waged partly on her behalf had been taxing and he felt prickles of pain radiating throughout him from the exertion. "She is my Impossible Girl. And that means that this unfortunate and utterly extraordinary girl ripped herself apart thousands of times to scatter herself along my time-stream and save all of me... every moment of my many lives. Every death I could have experienced. Every time the Great Intelligence interfered in its infernal quest to unmake me. She but my entire life back together, made sure all of it happened as it was supposed to."
"Then why'd she call herself Oswin?" Gwen argued.
"Because I called her that. It was a foolish old man's inability to accept his new life an attempt to claim something new for himself. I gave no thought at all to the memories that name might stir in her, the danger it could present." For that he knew he would never be able to apologise enough, no words would ever undo the damage he might have wrought inside her psyche.
"Danger's one word for it. She'd have killed you given half the chance." Gwen pointed out, coming to stand beside Jack who was looking thoroughly unnerved, which was something he supposed.
"Same old Doctor then." Martha snapped, "Causing damage to everyone around him."
The Doctor glared down at the young woman who had grown bitter from her experiences with him with a pang of regret which was swiftly squashed by the admiration that he'd helped make her into something stronger, better even. "Yes well, that time-line rewriting time-line was also erased when I didn't die at Trenzalore, but paradoxes are fun like that. They never seem to get the memo, technically the echo's of her shouldn't still exist, but they do out there somewhere in the stars, waiting to save me and by association anyone else who ever saved me."
"So she remembers... those other lives?" Jack queried and the Doctor banked that look, whatever had happened between Jack and Oswin, it wasn't going to repeat with Clara, he'd make damn sure of that.
But the question he posed caused the Doctor to roll his eyes in exasperation. "No, not always. A person would go mad." He gave them all a look unable to believe they couldn't grasp that concept, and saw blank looks in return, irritation bubbled; Clara never irritated him like this, had they always been this slow? "When I pulled her from the time-stream the memory of the echoes re-integrated, she did what any sane person would do, she buried them. Every now and again something useful will slip out. For example she seems to have kept one of several echo's that existed on Gallifrey to help my first incarnation relatively close to the top, most likely because I forced her to dredge that up too when I forgot how to fly the damn TARDIS momentarily." Stupid old man he cussed himself internally.
"She was on Gallifrey?" Jack asked looking quietly surprised by his nonchalance at the admission and the Doctor took a moment to appreciate that from Jack's perspective he'd last seen him as a man without a home, a man without hope. A Doctor struggling to accept his own impending death and raging at the Universe with petty acts of time manipulation for his own gains.
"Will she be ok?" Martha asked her hand gently hovering over Clara's hair soothingly, her instinct to care for another still strong he noticed, even despite his rather more damaging influences.
"I expect so." The Doctor admitted, trying not to let the thought that she wouldn't be enter his mind, "She's much stronger than she looks. Even just an echo of what she was managed to resist a full Dalek conversion. The memory of it was just something of a shock to her system. She'll sleep, bury it deeper and be right as rain when she wakes up."
"Good. Then you can tell us what the hell all that was?" Gwen snapped. "We called for help, you didn't come, so what good are you?"
"You get here after the battle, which we survived, thanks for asking by the way." Mickey continued, his tone matching Gwen's bite for bite. "And take one look at us and stalk back inside of that damn Blue Box of yours. What you too big of a deal to help out your old friends once in a while?"
The Doctor held back the snarl at being barked at by this man-child, but he rather thought the expression made it to his face because Mickey blinked, clearly pausing at the idea of the Doctor's violence. He'd have to watch that, his face running away with him like that without permission. No wonder Clara had known exactly what was going on inside his head.
"Be careful boy." He managed to keep the worst of his venom out of his voice, but now, with Clara still incapacitated on the floor was not the time to let his darker instincts loose for even a moment. "The hero in the pinstripes and the sandshoes that you knew is long dead. I am the Doctor now and I have seen things you wouldn't believe, done things you couldn't imagine. Forgotten more than you will ever know."
"Hasn't made you any less of an arrogant ass. And besides, that wasn't the you I remember, I remember the grumpy northern git with the god complex and the leather jacket, the one that only saved the world in penance for burning his own."
The Doctor cocked his head, his estimation of Mickey going up further. "You all survived whatever catastrophe this was, did you not?" Mickey glowered back at him and Martha placed a gentle hand on his arm as she stood beside him, but the tension didn't dissipate from the small group.
"Yes Doctor, we made it. Just. Unit lost a lot of good men before we managed to break the mind control, fair few beasties got out through the rift they tried to manipulate which proceeded to tear into a whole bunch of innocents out there on the streets. But yes... we made it." Gwen's voice was scathing, she'd never held him in all that high esteem he recalled, clearly her impression of him wasn't improving, but he had to admire her spirit if nothing else.
"Then you didn't need me at all, did you." His voice was just as cutting as he eyed them all dangerously daring them to contradict him as he approached Clara's fallen form and carefully scooped her up into his arms. The brief touch of her mind at the contact was a calming balm amidst the torrent around and within him. She'd want him to stop, to apologise, to help, to regret. But she wasn't awake to see him fail.
"You could have saved lives, ended it before it even started and you know it." Jack argued, but his heart didn't seem to be in it and his eyes were on the girl in his arms, instinctively the Doctor found himself holding her closer. He imagined a girl who had lived and died a thousand times would hold a certain appeal to Jack, clearly she'd held an appeal even before he'd known what she was.
"And you'd have learnt what? Not a damn thing." He accused sweeping his gaze over them all. "Maybe that's what you needed to learn, that the Doctor won't always come, won't always be there to save you. Maybe that is what will save you from yourselves when you next think about sticking your noses in where it doesn't belong." He'd longed to direct that particular rant at UNIT for a long, long time, he was quite certain it would reach their ears now and that would have to do.
"That girl you're cradling, you damn well better thank whatever stars you pray to that you found her and that she chooses to stick around, because she warned me about you." Jack was trying to be blistering, but there was a sadness, a tiredness about him which was new, it took the bite out of it somewhat. "But I didn't listen." He continued undeterred by the Doctors clear disinterest. "I couldn't believe the man I knew could fall so far. But look at you now. You hate everything you used to cherish."
"Everyone's young and foolish once. Humans are and always will be a disappointment, I can be a slow learner sometimes... but trust me I have learnt that lesson now."
"And what is she then, if not human too?" Mickey all but growled.
The Doctor didn't even hesitate. "An exception."
"And how long until you disappoint her Doctor?" Martha, that woman always could see through him.
The Doctor smiled, it wasn't pleasant. "Oh believe me she's already there, but unlike some, she doesn't walk out when the going gets tough."
"No." Jack stepped forward, his fist balled. "This one is in it until she dies... over and over."
"Kindred spirits are you Jack?" The Doctor warned.
"We'll see." His warning was just as stark and the Doctor nodded acknowledging it. "You want to be left alone Doc, we can do that. But when you get tired of sitting up there in your Box you might want to look around and see what's left."
The Doctor held back his snarl and turned his back on them stalking towards the TARDIS doors, he never got near them, he felt the lash of the Old Girls telepathic circuitry, whatever had happened here wasn't over, this had become a fixed point in time that she had now involved him in. She couldn't leave, couldn't even enter the vortex until this time-line had reached its completion. The Doctor wanted to pound on the doors, rip her central conduit apart and pull out the circuitry to find that damned stubborn streak and remove it once and for all. But he couldn't show weakness, not now, couldn't be seen to be anything less than in control. He didn't try the door, knowing there was no point, instead he chose to hesitate. Slowly he turned back, looking to Martha.
"Do you have a med bay here?"
Martha only hesitated a fraction of a second before nodding, nothing of her actual thoughts filtering through to her expression, but Jack's did, his surprise evident.
"You're staying?" Jack asked incredulously.
The Doctor turned, made a show of sniffing the air. "This is a fixed point in time, I can't leave now, not until it's resolved and just by being here I'm involved." He gave Jack his best withering look, not having to struggle hard to find it in this new face, "So how fortunate for you Jack, you get to lecture me some more about the nature of disappointment."
"What's done is done here." Mickey snapped, a gun resting at his hip that he seemed to want to reach for. His instincts hadn't improved the Doctor noted.
"If you say so." The Doctor gave him a cold look. "What would a 2000 year old Time-Lord know of temporal causality compared to a human with barely three decades behind him."
"You think something else is going to happen here?" Gwen stepped forward, waving whatever Mickey was about to snarl away with a sharp gesture.
"Well my TARDIS is time locked. If she isn't moving then events here are still in flux. So it's a good bet that no, we're not done here. So, let's get Clara to the med bay and you can show me this Rift of yours."
Jack stepped forward arms out. "Gwen and Mickey can take you through recent events, patch you through to UNIT. I'll take Clara."
The Doctor saw the challenge for what it was, Jack was testing him, trying to find a weakness, something he could use against this version of him in case he needed it. Clara was unconscious, there was no harm in handing her over, she wouldn't be aware of any of this. He rolled his eyes quite deliberately and handed her off to Jack with supreme disinterest, as he did so reaching out and brushing his mind against hers. Purile he knew, but she was comforted by the presence as Jack stalked away, her mind swimming with thoughts of her Doctor.