Clara

It Isn't Just The Angels Weeping

Clara found herself flat on the floor and boiling hot, like she had a fever. Her face was sweaty and one side of her head was pounding like someone had punched it. Had she fallen over? She dabbed her hand on the side. Blood. She must have.

She saw a wall nearby and crawled towards it, propping herself up and being able to take in whatever it was she was looking at. Amy and Rose were also lying on the floor, as though they had all just fainted upon entry of the certain room in the TARDIS. She coughed as she took deep breaths, taking note of the small pool of blood on the floor.

"Rose! Amy!" she shouted at them both. "ROSE! AMY!" she shouted again when there was no answer. They both gasped loudly too, taking deep breaths like they hadn't taken a breath for hours. Rose propped herself up on her hands, coughing, her blonde hair stained red, too. But there wasn't nearly as much blood on her head as there was on Clara's. Amy, however, coughed some blood onto the floor, her nose bruised and bent out of shape, her forehead also purple.

"Two hours up!" the Master's voice cackled. They'd been knocked out for nearly an hour, and they'd been stuck in this tiny room, and now they were all injured. "From Team One, it's... Rory Pond! And from Team Two - now that ISa surprise... Rose Tyler!" Rose gasped, "no, I'm just kidding. From Team Two, it's... Amelia Pond!"

"No! You can't make me!" screamed Amy, terrified and furious at the same time, tears starting to stream down her face while she tried to get to her feet. Rose moved desperately away from her so she wouldn't get sucked down into the floor as it opened below Amy. She screamed as she fell and the two challenge rooms were projected onto the wall opposite Clara and Rose, who were both crying silently themselves for the loss that was about to happen.

There were the two rooms, either side on the projection. At one end, the end where the camera was situated, stood the room's Pond. At the other end of both stood a weeping angel. There were small dry walls placed around the room, each one with a light switch on them. At the moment, the lights were on and the Ponds were staring, fearful, at the Angels.

"I call this game, Don't Blink or Turn Out The Lights! Because, you see, there are two creatures here! Or rather, there are 500,001. One of those is the shamed Time Lord you're facing. The other is the Vashta Nerada, tiny, flesh eating monsters! Some of those shadows are safe, some are infested! And some of the light switches are broken! Get to the door on the other side of the room. You'll figure it out as you go along." he said.

"I won't do it," said Amy, remaining on the floor where she had landed, "I won't!"

"Then you'll die anyway," said the Master, sounding slightly bored when neither of his competitors moved of tried to take part in his game. "At least you have a chance of winning if you play."

"But if I lose him then I'm not winning," said Amy.

"Oh, this is cute! I'm going to let you hear each other," said the Master.

"Amy? Can you hear me?" said Rory from his screen on the right.

"Yeah," sniffed Amy.

"I won't play," said Rory, "I... I can't play." The lights flickered once. When they came back on the Angel had moved halfway towards the Ponds and the shadows had shifted out closer to them.

"I can't either," said Amy. They were both sobbing uncontrollably now, "How many times have I had to say goodbye to you?" she laughed slightly, a strained sound. Rory laughed slightly too.

"Too many," he said. The lights flickered again in both rooms, the angels ever closer.

"I can't watch..." said Rose, putting her hands over her face and crying.

"I thought we'd said it for nearly the last time," said Amy in a tiny, high voice.

"Don't cry," said Rory, trying to do his best to comfort his wife who was in a completely different room. He couldn't even see her.

"Don't tell me not to cry, I'm dying, Rory!" said Amy as the lights flashed again. Both of them staggered back a few paces against the wall, staying out of the shadows and the Angel's reach for a few more precious seconds.

"I love you, Amy," said Rory after another flash, unable to move side ways because the vashta nerada were closing in, inches from his feet, and the Angel's face was warped into a scream, her hands almost at his throat.

"I love you too," said Amy. The lights flashed one more time. When they came back on, the rooms were completely in shadow, the Angels were glaring at the screens, and the Ponds were gone. The projection died and the door grew back out of the opposite wall. Rose and Clara were both allowing tears to run down their faces, streaking the makeup and stinging the eyes.

"There's no point," said Clara eventually. They had been sat in complete silence for a while. She didn't know how long, but she didn't want to move. Her head still hurt, physically from her injury and also from the pain of losing four people in just two hours. Four friends. "We're going to die no matter what happens."

"He said we could get to the middle," said Rose.

"There probably isn't even a middle," said Clara, "It probably goes around in circles. It'll never stop, not until we're all dead."

"What did you see?" Rose asked a while later.

"See when?"

"When we all fainted. I had a sort of vision. Different mes," said Rose, "trying to tell me something."

"What do you mean?" asked Clara. Rose hadn't jumped into the Doctor's time stream and died a thousand times, how could she have past lives?

"I saw me as a child," said Rose, "I saw me just before I met the Doctor. And I saw the Bad Wolf."

"I saw a few of my other lives," said Clara, "I saw Oswin, the total-screaming-genius who was also a Dalek. Then I saw me as a Time Lady. And I saw the Victorian version of me. They were trying to convince me I'm in love with the Doctor."

"Are you?" asked Rose.

"I'm not having this conversation a second time," said Clara firmly. Rose sighed. Neither of them were in any mood to press matters, or talk about themselves. It felt a little selfish, given what had already happened.

"They were trying to get me to tell my family where I am. To tell Mum, Dad, the other Doctor. I kept telling them I don't know how without that phone," said Rose.

"I'm sure the Doctor can drop you off minutes after you left," said Clara.

"If I survive," said Rose.

"If you survive," confirmed Clara. The pair of them spoke for the entire hour, shifting occasionally to try and relieve the aching. Clara was sure she'd done something to her ankle when she'd fallen, it was blue and bruised and painful even when there was no pressure on it. They spoke about their adventures with the Doctor, they spoke about the funny things he did sometimes, they spoke about the TARDIS and speculated about why it hated Clara so much, they even spoke about what they had done before they had met the Doctor and their childhoods. But it came to an end far too quickly, feeling more like fifteen minutes than an entire hour of trying to escape from their inevitable fate.

"That's three hours completely down the drain for you. Aaaand I wonder who's up for game number three? From Team One it's no other than the Eleventh Doctor's first wife, Professor River Song! And from Team Two – well, who else could it be? – it's Clara Oswald, the Eleventh Doctor's second wife!"