A/N hey gUYS! How's it going? Sorry this is late. I mean really REALLY REALLY SORRY. SORY SORRY SORRY. I'm sick and had soooo much on you wouldn't believe IM SORRY!
Thank you so much for you reviews. Like, really. I love you. Oh my god.
Also, 50TH POSTER. HOLY SHIZZLES PEOPLE. DAY OF THE DOCTOR. MATT AND DAVID. JOHN HURT. EXPLODING DALEK. SONIC ON RED SETTING. BAD WOLF. GALLIFREYAN SYMBOLS. TIME WAR TIME WAR TIME WAR!
I can't do this guys I can't wait I'm going to dissolve into a puddle of nothing I can't COPE
OOHOHOH AND THE XMAS FILMING PICS. ALL THE WHOUFFLE HUGS! AND GREEN CHRISTMAS CRACKER HATS AND SANTAS AND TURKEYS. IT'S LIKE THEY'RE HAVING A PARTY. IMAGINE THAT. WHOUFFLE CHRISTMAS PARTY. IN CANON. AWWWWWWWWWWWW
but wait
no
he's regenerating
eleven is dying
...
no
•••
THE DOCTOR
When the Doctor woke, he was not surrounded by a crowd of hissing Silence, he was not bound by iron chains, he was not looking into Madame Kovarian's leering face.
He was lying on cloudy white crystal, his back aching from where the jagged edges had rubbed against his spine. The sky above was as bright white as the scene below it, and there was a lazy, regular rush seething in the chilled air.
He stood up carefully, looked out at his surroundings. A high cliff face, just a metre or so from the edge, which plunged down to a blue grey sea thrashing like a prisoner against its cell.
He thought he recognised it. Vaguely. Perhaps he had visited here early in his travels, and perhaps somewhere else on the planet. Virona? Virana?
The crystal plains stretched out into valleys and hills, on and on and on.
He was alone.
He took a sharp breath, let it out. Alone. Alone.
No sign of the Silence.
Not one.
He clutched his hands into fists, imagining the bones tearing through his skin.
He had just made an impossibly stupid mistake.
But Silence were not stupid. Oh no.
It was all a trap. A trick. A false trail. And he had followed it, step by step. Just as they had laid it out.
He had to crouch down and splay his hands against the cold crystal to steady himself against the merciless truth of the revelations that hit him, then, one after another.
The Silence knew him. They had been watching him very closely. For a very long time.
They wouldn't have been careless enough to let him catch a glimpse of them, like he had in the markets of Jottrein. That was planned. A distraction.
When he had gone off to look for them, that was when they had replaced him with the doppelgänger. Had they drugged him, too? Made him forget? No, he would have seen it. He would have felt it. Wouldn't he? He didn't know.
The other Clara he had seen. She had not been the real Clara, nor one like he had met in the Dalek Asylum or Victorian London. She had been a ganger, too. Another distraction.
All these distractions, so cleverly planned to keep his mind working and muddled and occupied. Not seeing the little things, focused on the bigger problems. While they watched and waited.
The Doctor and Clara.
He scrunched his eyes shut, couldn't bare to look at his hands any longer, they disgusted him, they revolted him, they reminded him just how much of a naive sentimental /fool/ he was.
They knew. The Silence had been watching his every step, every movement, and he had not noticed them. Because he had been too busy noticing someone else. They knew he would be distracted by the ganger Clara, they knew that would be the perfect time to pounce. They knew he'd figure it out, that he himself was a being of the Flesh. They knew if they threatened Clara, he would simply come to them, no running, no hiding. They knew what he would say to her, they knew what he would ask her to do.
They knew everything.
They knew his past, they knew his present. They knew who he was, what he would do, and why he would do it. They knew he was, at heart, a lonely old man ravaged by a thousand years of desperate emotions that he could barely control.
They knew that he would ask her to find him.
Why had he done that? How could he have been so thick as to let his feelings overtake his basic sense?
Because that was who he was. The Doctor, a man who makes people better, who fights for justice and good using only his ancient mind and a time machine. Until he wasn't. Until he was the Doctor, a mighty warrior, a desperate soul, a hopeless elder, all because he allowed himself, just for a moment, to feel. To remember. To love.
He had asked Clara for one final, true goodbye. No risk, no danger, hopefully, to her. Just something happy to remember in his probable death. He couldn't believe, now, that he had asked her that, that he had allowed himself to give voice to the monster inside him that strained towards her, towards all those he loved.
Quite a rude old Gallifreyan term slipped his lips.
They wanted Clara.
He chuckled, the sound low and hollow and almost a cry.
A flock of small bird-like creatures fluttered overhead, from one horizon to the other, and their harsh cawing sounded to him like cold, sharp laughter.
He straightened up, turned his head to the shining heavens.
He had forgotten himself. He had been confused by the Silence, by the other Clara. He had been distracted by the real one. And he had forgotten to stay logical, had jumped to conclusions too early.
The sky was darkening to a silvery grey, the reflection of the crystal dying with it, and he looked out again at the jagged shards. Each one was sharp and harsh and bare, and the Doctor was a faint mirror of himself looking up at him from one flat plane under his feet.
He was so very alone.
•••
CLARA
It took a minute or two, to gather herself, to decipher what she herself was thinking, to decide what she felt about all this. This running, hiding, lying, disappearing, begging, pleading, finding.
But she did.
Clara Oswald was going to kill the Doctor. When she next saw him, she was going to murder him.
Or at least deliver him a well deserved punch in the arm.
The TARDIS put up no resistance when she ordered it to follow the coordinates on the psychic paper, which the Doctor had left sitting neatly on the console. She paced around the control room for a few minutes, checking the life scan screen that was conveniently still in operation and working her mind around the situation.
Clara didn't exactly pride herself on bravery. There were many times in her travels with the Doctor that she had been gripped by serious, numbing fear. The thing she did acknowledge about herself, though, was the fact that she would do what she had to do anyway, despite fear. That was something she had learnt to do very well over the years, hiding her emotions, however strong, and carrying on as if they did not exist.
Right now, Clara was very very afraid. But the majority of that nestled fear was not for her own life.
She knew very little about what had happened to the Doctor, only that he had disappeared. Shortly after having one of his rare moments of weakness and unfettered emotion. Shortly after he had asked to see her for one last time.
And she bloody well was not going to let him get away with it.
"Okay, TARDIS. You don't like me, and I think talking to you is totally bonkers. But I don't know how to fly and I am politely asking you to return to this exact spot three hours in the past. Alright?"
The ship jolted, throwing her against the console, and creaked indignantly. She assumed the machine was obliging, having seen the sense in her idea. There was no point or logic into jumping straight into the eye of the storm.
Clara took a long breath before opening the TARDIS doors, making sure the key was safe around her neck, the recorder in her palm unblinking, and her arms unmarked.
She cracked open the door and peered out.
"My dear girl, did you really believe we would not account for your apparent 'cleverness', as your Doctor calls it? Three hours in the past, hardly enough time to compensate. These people that man keep, you really are amusing."
•••
A/N so I hope all of you got what I was trying to communicate in that chapter. It was really hard to write for some reason. Basically the Doctor was all caught up in emotion-y stuff, which made him jump to conclusions, say stupid things, not think about himself, etc etc etc and basically messed everything up. As he does when he gets caught up in emotions *coughdemonsruncough*
So another BIG thank you for all those lovely reviews! They only take a minute and yet they brighten my entire day!
Another sorry for the cliffhanger + late update.
-RA102
