For a few moments, Clara had forgotten her leg wasn't truly hers. She could hear the wind whipping past her ear as she ran swiftly through the tall grass, arms slapping away blades that sliced at her palms and she shouted out loudly, "Doctor!"
He called out to her in shock, from somewhere up ahead, and she inhaled sharply because the two syllables of her name were cut by a roar from behind. A roar that belonged to a lion of a beast they'd woken accidentally as they'd searched out the fields for just the right stone to turn over and find the sliding entrance to an underground healing pool.
It would do wonders for her leg, they'd been promised.
Not grow it back or any other miracle, but it would ease the soreness in her muscles and lighten the scarring on her stump and arm if they could just find it, find the guardians, and appeal to them. Except the Doctor had used his Sonic, trying to discover abnormalities in the density of the land and that had sent a flock of birds soaring, which had roused an animal from its sleep. An animal that seemed a cross between a black bear and a panther that had growled menacingly at the Doctor as Clara watched from several feet away.
"Clara…" he'd begun and she understood – get back to the Tardis as fast as she could.
Now she could hear the huffs of its breath and the ground shook with each gallop of its tremendous paws towards her and the Doctor called out again, this time nearer and she could hear in his voice that he was running at her. The Sonic blasted and there was a howl from behind her and Clara gasped just before the monster swiped her legs out from under her, sending her tumbling to the ground with a pained groan.
"No, Clara!" The Doctor's voice broke as she rolled onto her back in a daze and then it clamped its teeth into her prosthetic and tugged roughly in either direction. She screamed as it twisted her knee and she kicked out with the other leg, catching it in the eye with her heel and just as it jumped back, the Doctor reached her, arms curling underneath hers to help her back up to begin limping away from it.
He blasted the beast with his Sonic again and Clara listened as it whimpered angrily, but then it began to run at them again and she clung to the Doctor as the prosthetic crumpled under each step, broken in half. And then it swiped at the Doctor, sending them both to the ground with a set of grunts before the Doctor turned and jabbed both of his feet up into its throat. It gasped, swatting at him in frustration before dropping back to cough roughly and Clara watched it, eyes wide, ragged breaths burning her lungs as the Doctor swung her up into his arms and broke into a rapid run towards the Tardis.
They fell inside in a heap and then he leapt away from her, slamming the door and rushing towards the console to begin working the controls as she crawled closer to him, turning when the ship shook with the force of the monster's collision against it. The Doctor jumped over her as she settled herself just underneath the console, dropping onto her back and wincing at the shock of pain in her right knee. And then the time rotor began to brighten and she turned onto her side to grip at her leg and bite back tears as they moved through the vortex and straight into one particular office at UNIT.
The door was opening as soon as they landed and the Doctor fell beside Clara, lifting her to cradle against his chest as Martha stepped inside and gasped, seeing them on the ground. She moved swiftly to them and Clara could see, through narrowed eyes, the look of surprised concern on the other woman's face as she hissed, "What happened?"
"Unexpected company on Srouth; I need to get her knee looked at straight away."
"Doctor, you're bleeding," Martha breathed and Clara turned to see the Doctor shift slightly to look at the blood now soaking along his waistcoat at his ribcage as Martha stood and moved around him, giving a shocked gasp before rushing past them both back out into her office.
"Doctor?" Clara asked, voice shaky as she looked up at his face, going pale before her eyes.
He laughed anxiously and whispered, "Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch."
"That's not even funny," Clara replied as her lips turned down and trembled.
"I forgot," he sighed, "You'd understand the significance."
Clara pulled herself up and growled, "Any idiot would understand the significance," and she dragged herself around him as he fell against the console with a pained groan. "Doctor," she cried, seeing the tears through his clothes, four puncture wounds in his right side that dragged out lightly against his skin. She shoved him forward just as Martha re-entered the Tardis and Clara ripped the cardigan off her shoulders, pressing it into him, murmuring, "No, no, no, this is not happening. Not now," she moaned, "Not like this."
"Clara," Martha urged, "We've got to move him, get him to our surgical bay."
She raised her eyes to see the woman approaching with several men and a set of wooden flat board stretchers and she understood, they were both injured and needed to be tended to, but she shook her head, "No, you take me with him; I go where he goes."
Martha shook her head, "Clara, have you seen your prosthetic? That attack could have popped your knee out of its socket; you need to be looked at by someone…"
"I go where he goes," she bellowed. "You can have someone examine me alongside him."
Nodding slowly, Martha looked to the men and commanded, "You heard her; she goes with her husband."
They laid a board at her side and Martha touched her arm, giving her a nod so she would let go of her cardigan because they had to move her to get to the Doctor. With a low wail, she relented and shifted away, letting them lift her as Martha quickly jumped to the Doctor's side, helping slide him on his stomach onto the second stretcher where she held Clara's cardigan against the wounds as they moved out of the Tardis.
Clara looked to the blue box as they existed and she snapped her fingers weakly, watching her doors shut behind them and lock and she turned back to see the Doctor's eyes as they found hers, a small smile on his thin pale lips before his eyes slowly closed. "Doctor?" She called.
"Clara, he's just unconscious, it's alright, but we have to get him into surgery – we don't know much about his biology, he could have punctured a lung, or severed an artery," Martha told her, nodding her head forward and the men broke into a swift run and Clara looked to the ones holding her.
They sped up their walk and they moved through the swinging doors several paces behind Martha and the Doctor, settling her onto a bed that had just been wheeled in beside the Doctor's. She watched, breath held, as they cut away at his clothes and she winced when she saw the open wounds; looked to Martha to see the woman setting herself to the task of studying them and then immediately working into them with cotton swabs and equipment.
And then someone turned her prosthetic and she screamed. There came an apology from an older man just before he warned, "This is going to hurt quite a bit, Clara," and he began to remove the prosthetic as she fell back against the bed, hands reaching out to grip the edges.
"Clara, we're stopping the bleeding," Martha called out to her, "Looks like it missed his lungs, vital organs – the cuts aren't as deep as they seem." She breathed a small sigh of relief, but then Clara was shaking her head and she looked up to the other woman.
"You have nothing to transfuse him," Clara managed to hiss as they unrolled the sleeve from her stump and then began to palpate her knee as she clenched her jaw against the pain. "His blood," she grunted.
The room went quiet and she took several long breaths, opening her eyes just as Martha replied, "No, we don't, but he's stabilized and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but you're going to have to go for an x-ray."
"No," Clara shouted, but hands were restraining her as the bed began to wheel away. She struggled, but each movement of her right knee sent a jolt of dizzying pain through her body. They threw a thick protective cover heavily over her and Clara gripped it tightly, feeling her body shaking in spite of it because stabilization didn't necessarily mean he would pull through and Clara needed him to.
"You're going to have to try to hold still," she heard someone tell her gently and she nodded automatically, trying to steady her breathing as they shifted an x-ray device over her knee and slipped a film underneath it and a moment later there was a pop and a wheeze as it took the photo.
Clara was shifted onto her side and they took a second x-ray and she felt herself going numb, thinking about the Doctor and how she should be at his side, the way he had been for her. If he woke and she wasn't there, he would worry and Clara cried quietly as they removed the heavy coat, leaving her shivering freely as they wheeled her into another room and shifted her into a slot by a window and left her.
She was asleep when Martha entered several hours later and the woman moved around her slowly, lifting a hand to touch her shoulder delicately and watch her dark eyes pop open to stare sadly at her, a simple question obvious in her eyes. With a small nod, Martha offered, "He's alright, Clara."
Head bopping slightly, Clara dissolved into a mess of tears and she turned onto her back with a wince and a yell because her knee was on fire and she watched Martha dig into a drawer at her side, injecting her thigh with a needle and smoothing back her hair. "They took x-rays," Clara whispered.
"Whatever it was that attacked you, did a number on your knee, but nothing a few days rest won't heal."
Clara was nodding slowly, listening as Martha detailed the muscles she'd pulled, the bruising she'd experience, and the fact that she'd have to go without walking for at least a week. The other woman promised her a new prosthetic in that time, she promised her two so she'd have a backup, and then she left the room to get her something to eat because Clara had gone white as a sheet. When she returned, she helped Clara sit up, frowning when Clara immediately tilted into her, sniffling lightly, and for a few minutes the two remained silent in each other's arms because Martha knew Clara needed someone to keep the world from spinning.
"He's going to be fine, Clara," Martha assured, smoothing her hair down and giving her back a rub.
"They took x-rays," Clara repeated quietly and Martha understood two things: the first was that her friend was in a state of shock and the second was that she and the Doctor had been trying to have a baby. Clara was concerned, Martha knew, because they'd taken x-rays without asking her if there was the possibility she'd been with child and she frowned because she'd considered it herself, after the fact.
She slipped back and twisted Clara's right arm slightly, showing her the bandage in the crook of her arm where she'd drawn a small vile of blood and she told her quietly, "You're not pregnant."
Clara's lips shifted up slightly as she offered her a nod of appreciation for the affirmation, but then they dropped down, crumpling with her resolve as she said, "He could have died."
"He's alright," Martha assured.
"Can I see him?" Clara squeaked.
Martha glanced to her side and then gestured at Clara to lay back and she tugged the bed, giving it a shove towards the door where she slapped a large button to open it. She wheeled Clara through the hallway and to a room three doors down, opening it with a swipe of her identification badge and when they slipped through, Clara laughed lightly, seeing the Doctor lying on a bed, bandages wrapped around his bare torso, a monitor measuring his heartbeats as he slept.
"We don't quite understand his biology, so we were afraid to offer him much of anything." Martha bowed her head and pushed Clara's bed against his, watching the other woman immediately reach over to take his hand. "When he wakes, I can give him hell about needing a proper procedure with respects to Gallifreyan injuries and how to handle them."
Clara laughed softly and looked to Martha, whispering, "Thank you," before she shifted herself onto the Doctor's bed with a grimace as she settled her right knee against her left and melted into the Doctor's side, hand lying just at his chest, cheek pressed into his shoulder. She kissed the skin there and listened as Martha walked back out into the hall. With a smile, she nuzzled him delicately and sighed, "My turn to watch over you, Doctor."