Second last chapter now. Four pages on word. You'd better enjoy it. Get the hankies out. You might just cry.
"We're ready." He hissed.
--
"Excellent!" the Doctor said, strolling up to Riel and plucking the weapon off his belt and throwing it aside. "You won't need that. Tell your army to do the same."
Riel glared.
The Doctor glared right back.
Riel gave in. "No weapons!" he yelled, stomping back to the tents.
"No weapons?" Ryo asked the Doctor.
"No weapons." The Doctor replied firmly.
--
"We need weapons." Jack said. "We want to help you fight them."
"Speak for yourself. I just want to get the Doctor and Clara back safe." Carys snorted, being shoved aside by a desperate soldier looking for his own gun.
A Clamarian male looked at them critically, then disappeared (not literally) and returning with two guns. "These will be sufficient." He said, handing them to Jack.
One hour ago, the message had come through that the Derrian army leader, Riel, had called a meeting with the Clamarians, and the Clamarian was in a state of utter panic. They weren't prepared for another conflict yet. The atmosphere was not like paradise anymore.
"That will do!" Jana shouted over the rabble. "My soldiers, be brave! We shall not cower below their feet! If we are to die, we shall die standing tall! Now let us leave!"
--
"Why are we at the back?" Jack complained.
"So I don't die." Carys replied. "Honestly, Jack, you'd think you enjoyed it or something."
Jack shrugged. "It's not too bad. You just feel stiff in the morning."
"Stop making terrible jokes." Carys ordered.
"I will, when you take the gun."
"No!"
"Yes!"
"I'm not killing someone."
"Derrians aren't human."
"Neither is the Doctor, and I'm not about to kill him either."
"He'd come back to life."
"I wish you wouldn't."
"That hurt, Carys Jones, it really did."
"Good."
"Take the gun!"
"No!"
"Why not?"
"Look, Jack, I worked for Torchwood for one week. That was enough murder to last a lifetime."
"It wasn't murder, it was self defence."
"So that's how you justify killing those aliens, is it?"
"You know what? You're just like the Doctor."
"Thank you."
"It wasn't meant to be a compliment."
"Then you really aren't great at insults."
"Shut it!" a third voice stopped Jack from replying. It was a soldier in front of them. The poor boy was younger than Carys. He looked like he was suffering from a major headache. "Look, we're all scared, okay? But please stop the bickering. It's really getting on our nerves."
Carys looked around to see most of the group of soldiers had stopped and were staring at Jack and her in curiosity and amazement.
She went pink and looked at her feet.
Jack seemed to like the attention.
--
"Here they come." The Doctor said cheerfully, as he strolled with the Derrians, with Clara firmly gripping his hand. Of course, it was the Doctor that was doing the strolling. Not the Derrians. They were marching.
Clara was terrified. She clutched her new friends' hand, letting go of the Doctor, who walked too fast anyway. Ryo looked petrified as well, but he squeezed her hand reassuringly.
They were coming.
--
"Here they come" Jack informed Carys, as he pushed through to the front of the crowd of soldiers who seemed to have frozen to the spot and Carys reluctantly followed him. "Will you take the gun now?"
"No."
Jack raised the gun.
"Oh put that down!" someone shouted from the Derrian rabble. "Come on, Captain, you're embarrassing me."
That voice. That familiar voice. The owner came out into the open and Carys threw the gun that Jack had forced into her hands aside and ran to hug him, kissing him on the cheek, generally showing that she was glad he was alive, or, in his case, was in the same body.
"Nice to see you too." The Doctor grinned. "Mind you, I wouldn't mind being able to breathe."
Carys released her grip. "Sorry!" she said sheepishly, before proceeding to tell the Doctor everything Jana had told her and Jack.
The Doctor smiled grimly. "I thought so." he sighed. "Listen!" he shouted loudly, while Carys spotted Clara beside a young Derrian boy – couldn't have been more than thirteen – and ran to hug her too.
All of the faces turned to the Doctor. He continued to speak. "This fighting has to stop! And I'm going to stop it!"
The Derrians roared. "They broke the promise!"
"Wrong, actually." The Doctor replied. "You agreed to matrimony when the girl and Prince Ryo came of age, which they haven't, yet."
"The girl is on Earth!"
"Wrong again. She's over there." The Doctor said, pointing at Clara. "You are thick."
"Carys?" Clara asked.
"Actually, honey, he means you." Carys replied.
"Me?" Clara squeaked.
Jack, who had approached them, said "Yep."
"I'm…I'm…the…I'm the princess?" she whispered. "D...do…I…do I have to stay here?"
"No, of course not." Carys replied.
"Yes." Jack answered.
"I'm afraid so." responded the Doctor.
Carys glared at the males angrily. "What do you mean, 'Yes?'"
"She needs to stop the war." The Doctor replied.
"She's just a kid!"
"People are dying!"
"She has a life to live!"
With her own people." The Doctor replied firmly.
"What about her parents?"
"King Gyron will get used to her." Jack said.
"No!" Carys almost shouted. "Her real parents! On Earth!"
"Carys…Mam would rather I disappeared than let millions more people die." Clara spoke up. "I'll stay!" she called loudly, authority in her voice, the same as when she had stopped Riel killing the Doctor. "I will marry your prince," she paused here, blushing slightly, smiling at Ryo. "On a few conditions. First, this war is as of now over. Second, you have two planets to rebuild. You will help each other. Also, you will thank my friends for ending this war."
The Derrians and the Clamarians looked at each other, muttering, ten turned to the three that weren't of their kind, muttering thanks.
"And Doctor, Carys, Jack…please come and visit me some time. And be safe. And tell my parents…tell them something." Clara said, smiling sadly.
--
"Goodbye Doctor." Clara said, getting some freedom from her people for a minute to say goodbye.
"It's never really goodbye." The Doctor said, smiling. "You were brilliant, Clara."
"'bye, Jack."
"See you, kid. Good luck."
"Goodbye, Carys."
Carys hugged Clara. "Be safe, honey." she said. She let go and saw Clara was in tears. "Oh, don't, sweetie, you'll start me off." She smiled. "Go on. Jana's waiting."
Clara nodded tearfully and ran off. She turned and waved, once, before disappearing behind Derrians and Clamarians alike.
Carys started to cry then. The Doctor and Jack both took her hand and squeezed it. They stood like that, the three in a row with joined hands until the crowd was no more than a dot on the horizon, and then…then they were gone.
"What will we tell her parents?" Carys asked sadly.
"She died." The Doctor replied. "Remember?"
"By the time Torchwood found out, she was already dead." Jack said.
"Oh…but she wasn't" Carys realised. "I see."
And then they said goodbye to the planet Clamar and entered the TARDIS.
Clara had her home now, and it was time to go back to their own.
