Clara smoothed down her skirt yet again, checking the clock on the wall. She was sure they were supposed to be there ten minutes ago. The Doctor promised that he'd be on time. Perhaps she shouldn't put so much faith in his piloting skills.
The diner was pretty. She wasn't sure why it was in the middle of a desert, but then again she had just been told where to stay until they were ready to drop by for a visit. He'd told her to make it look like one down the road, randomly placed in the Nevada desert. She wasn't sure why. It was supposed to blend in with the surroundings. She was supposed to blend in with the surroundings.
Still, because TARDIS's were designed to be ignored by the world around them, no one came in to take a look. She kind of wished they had. Maybe having to keep up the pretence of running a diner would have helped her calm the nervous energy that made her unable to stand still behind the counter.
Any minute now.
Any minute now.
She was surprised by the small jingle of the bell that indicated that the door had opened and there she was. Danielle Fielding, her brow slightly furrowed as she stepped into the diner, followed by the Doctor. She was wearing that leather skirt that made Clara go slightly weak at the knees. The Doctor's hair was longer, his look more relaxed with a nice black jacket with a hoody underneath. It looked like it had been a while since she'd seen them last, for them anyway. She wondered how long.
Danni paused, looking around with a hint of distrust on her face. The diner was nice enough. It looked like any other American-style diner from the 20th century, possibly later if it was trying to be nostalgic. Everything was chrome, with a jukebox lit up in bright colours playing a song by the Killers.
She tried not to smile at the sound. She loved the Killers, but it just made her feel a little bit more uneasy. Everything seemed to these days.
There was a waitress behind the counter but no one else in there. That also made her feel like perhaps they should leave. There was something eerie about being in an empty diner in the middle of nowhere.
"What's this place again?" she asked the Doctor.
"This is where we met up with the Ponds," he reminded her gently. He steered her towards the counter, where high stools suggested that was where they could sit. "Before we went back to meet Canton Everett the Third."
"So, Nevada, right?" she asked and he nodded. He sat down first, shooting her a bit of a look so she joined him. His feet reached the foot rest. Hers didn't quite make it.
He could see her eyeing everything suspiciously, like someone was going to jump out and attack her. If it wasn't Missy, then it was probably something else from her memories that had become jumbled up inside her head. She was still recovering from losing so much and so he'd thought taking her on a tour of her history would help her memories form around the hole she'd created in them. And it was a good way of slotting in Clara without her noticing.
Clara shot them both a smile, pushing her unsteady heartbeat and the lump in her throat down and away from the world. "Hi," she greeted. "What can I get you?"
"Um," the Doctor started, trying not to seem like he knew Clara at all. Instead he watched Danni barely pay attention to her. "Two milkshakes. Your biggest ones."
Clara tried not to roll her eyes, and instead of fetching them both their drinks she leant against the counter, propping her head on her hand. "You're far from home," she commented.
"We're never too far from home," he replied cryptically. Danni finally turned her attention from the shadows around her and met Clara's gaze and Clara's heart broke more than she thought possible. There was no recognition, no fondness. Just the look of someone who didn't trust the world around her, and that world now included Clara.
"We could say the same for you," Danni stated. "English, right? You're very far from home."
"Nah," Clara dismissed. "Home isn't a place, it's the people." She turned her back to them, hiding her shaking hands. "Two milkshakes coming right up."
~0~0~0~
Losing her mother had been the hardest thing Clara had ever been through until she'd lost Danny Pink. Each death was a tear on her soul that, no matter how long she may or may not have lived, would never heal. Both had been too soon, and both had been beyond her control. She'd not been able to save either of them.
But watching Danni's legs give way from underneath her was something else entirely. Her dazed look, the way her hand let go of the neural block, just highlighted what she had done. The Doctor barely made it over to her in time to catch her before she hit the cold floor of the unfamiliar TARDIS. She was already fading. Her fate was sealed. It felt like an eternity before Clara could move over to her, but in fact it was a fraction of a second before she was at Danni's side, hands on her arm, shaking as tears streamed down her face.
"No, no, don't," she begged her best friend. "Danni, please don't forget me."
Danni tried to focus on her, but Clara could see her eyes darting around, obviously losing consciousness. "You're brilliant," she told Clara and Clara sobbed loudly. She always said that, Clara loved hearing it, but she never thought there would be a last time. "You are brilliant, Clara Oswald." She giggled. A drunken giggle as she lost herself in her memories. The memories slowly fading away and taking Clara with them. "Run," she said with the slur of someone falling asleep. "Run, find your Danni-Girl, and remember me."
And like that, she was gone. Danni, unconscious, her mind unravelling their every moment together. Clara didn't know whether to scream or throw up, so settled with sobbing. The Doctor held his wife close, eyes also wide and full of tears, as Clara reached up slowly and stroked her brown hair. He didn't stop her. He didn't say a word.
Her mum had died. Danny had died. Danni did not die. But it felt worse than that. If they had been anywhere, if her mother and Danny Pink happened to be anywhere, at least they had their moments together. They could think back on her fondly – or not, she actually didn't really care – and remember that they had shared their lives together for a short while. Danni, the woman she loved, was going to be happily travelling around the universe and have no idea that she'd even existed. That love, that friendship, all gone in a flash. A whole lifetime erased.
"No," she whimpered quietly, a faint plea that no one could answer. This couldn't be how it ended. She couldn't just lose her like this. There had never been a scenario where she would live past either of them. She was never going to have to live past Danni.
She looked up at the Doctor, eyes wide and pleading. "We have to reverse it," she stated. "There-There has to be a way. We-We can undo this, right?"
The Doctor felt faint, like he was a thousand miles away from what was currently happening. He looked down at Danni, who looked like she was asleep in his arms. There had been times in his history where she had never slept, and times where he'd taken it upon himself to carry her back to their bedroom so she didn't get stiff from sleeping on couching. She'd slept outside Vincent van Gogh's house, in his yard. He wished, more than anything, she was sleeping now.
This was all his fault. She'd taken the one thing that meant the most to her and shattered it beyond recognition and it was all his fault. His mistake, his selfish act, had cost her more than she should have ever paid.
He shook his head. "No," was his soft reply.
Clara didn't believe him. "There has to be a way," she insisted, her voice rising out of panic and pain. She grabbed the neural block and waved it at him. "T-The Time Lords would never have something like this without a way of reversing it," she continued. "We can fix it. We-We just have to reverse it."
His gaze met hers. "No," he repeated. "We're not reversing it."
Clara blinked, startled slightly for a moment. "What-What do you mean?" she asked. "Why not?" He didn't reply, he just looked back down at his wife. Her anger spiked. "Why not?"
"Because look at her!" he shouted in reply. "Look what's she's done because of us! I'm not taking that away! I'm not letting you take that away!"
~0~0~0~
The Killers trailed off and into something old and pop, something that fit the settings of the diner a lot better. Danni didn't particularly like it, then again she wasn't into music anymore.
Maybe she had been. Maybe she really liked music and she'd forgotten all that too. Maybe her love of music was tied up in late night singing sessions with a best friend she couldn't remember anymore.
The waitress placed large glass of vanilla milkshake in front of them both. She seemed friendly enough, but that felt uncomfortable. She didn't like friendly. She didn't want people being nice to her because she could suddenly be in the situation where she'd need to wipe that from her memory as well. She didn't want to put the effort in. She didn't need anyone else in her life. What she had now was more than enough.
"Thanks," she said politely anyway, because friendships or not, the universe was better when manners were involved.
"No problem," the waitress replied. With no one else in the diner, she took interest in the odd couple. "On a road trip?"
Danni shrugged. "Something like that," she offered vaguely before taking a small sip of her drink, effectively ending the conversation. This had all been the Doctor's idea. She didn't mind travelling – it was one of her favourite things to do, if she didn't include her husband – but he had insisted on a trip down memory lane to help her mind settle down after such invasive surgery. She had just wanted to see some new sights. But he knew best. He was the more seasoned Time Lord.
"Don't stop- don't stop- don't stop—"
The jukebox stuttered as if it was stuck on a scratch in a record and all three of them looked over at it in tandem. It looked too new to have actual vinyl records in it. Didn't people use digital music at this point in time? When she was young her phone had played music. Was this universe just further behind than that?
Clara stared at the jukebox, confused. As far as she could tell, this particular TARDIS was much more reliable than the one the Doctor and Danni travelled in, the jukebox playing up didn't make any sense at all. And she was slightly horrified, for reasons she wasn't quite sure of. She didn't want Danni to think she couldn't run a diner, which was the strangest thought she'd ever had. She wanted Danni's last – and at this point only – memory of her to be perfect and the jukebox was ruining that.
The Doctor pocketed his sonic sunglasses before anyone noticed that he'd got them out in the first place. "I'll take a look," he declared, sliding off the stool. "I'm a bit of a tinkerer."
"Yeah, if you want it to fall apart," Danni muttered cheekily. He shot her a look.
"I heard that."
"You were supposed to, sweetie," Danni called after him as he walked over to the jukebox, leaving Clara and Danni alone. Danni, who didn't look up from her milkshake but didn't drink anymore of it. Clara was suddenly incredibly nervous, but didn't let it show. Instead, she watched as Danni didn't smile or engage with the world around her.
"Is everything alright?" she asked before she could stop herself. Danni looked up, scanning her face with a suspicious look for a moment before she shrugged. "You don't look like you're a willing participant in this road trip."
Again, Danni shrugged. "Don't mind travelling," she offered. "Just wish I had a say in where we were going."
"And a diner in the middle of a desert wasn't exactly your idea of a good day out?" Clara asked with a little smile on her face. Danni finally raised her eyes to meet hers. She seemed nice. She wasn't being defensive, in fact she seemed to understand the strangeness of the little outing, which was good.
"I-I lost a friend," Danni said before she realised that she was talking. "My husband thinks that a trip around my life might help me."
"I'm sorry," the waitress said sincerely, and Danni really believed her for a moment. "You must have been rather close."
"Apparently," Danni muttered to herself, unable and unwilling to go into the specifics of the nanny she knew was there but just couldn't remember or care about.
The waitress watched her stir the straw in her milkshake. "Was he right?" she asked. "Is it working?"
Danni looked back down at her milkshake. Was is it working? Going over her old haunts, as it were, was definitely something that she used to love to do, but now it all seemed incredibly fleeting. She knew the Doctor was worried about her. He'd expected a bigger reaction, a bigger breakdown, but she couldn't find it within herself to do so. It felt all so far away. She was finding it really hard to find a point to anything. She'd always been so worried about her fading memories, but how many had she already lost? How much more could she lose? Clara was taken away with just a push of a button, and she didn't really remember making that choice either. Going down memory lane felt like a pointless exercise. Those times were gone, what was the point in reliving them?
"Well, I don't like milkshakes," Danni offered in reply. "I guess that sums it up."
Clara felt awful. More than awful. She just wanted to grab Danni's shoulders and shake her until she remembered. She wanted to scream that she was Clara, she was the friend that had been lost and she was stood right in front of her. She wanted to beg for forgiveness, shout at her stupidity and everything else in between. Instead she just shot her a little smirk.
"I have just the thing," she stated, grabbing the milkshake and taking it over to the sink. She then made a little bit of a show as she opened the fridge underneath the counter. After all, she had to pretend she was making stuff and didn't have a TARDIS that could conjure anything she could ever want on a whim.
She placed the new glass in front of Danni, who looked at it, slightly surprised. "Coke Float," she declared, like it was a new invention. She even topped it off with a bendy straw. "Coca Cola and vanilla ice cream."
Danni smiled slightly and pulled it towards her. "It's been a long time since I've had one of these," she commented quietly. She took a sip and it was absolutely delicious.
~0~0~0~
Danni felt dead in his arms. He knew she wasn't, he knew that her chest was rising and falling to indicate her breathing, and he knew that while her memories had been tampered with, it was perfectly safe and he wouldn't have even considered it with Clara if it hadn't been. But her unconscious body in his arms felt like a dead weight and he couldn't let her go. He wouldn't let her go.
This was all his fault. His own failing at being able to handle his own grief had led to her taking it into her own hands to end it once and for all. She had been right – she was always right. His every action had come from the grief at not being able to save her, all the way down to never having said goodbye to her second body. He'd missed the third completely. And now he'd caused more damage to the fourth. On his own Clara would have stayed dead. He would have grieved and he would have moved on. She was alive because he couldn't let another person down like he had Danielle.
He was broken more than he'd realised. And it hit him in the gut and weighed heavy in his arms.
She'd taken the most extreme step to finally get him to see. Her memories were her life. She'd given them up to stop him.
"Not letting me take that away?" Clara exclaimed, outraged. "You can't blame this on me! I never wanted any of this!" She pointed at him accusingly. "I never asked you to bring me back!"
She was right, of course. Clara had gone to her death knowing it was her death. She'd gone willingly, and brave, and in his foolishness, he'd taken that away from her as well. He knew, at some point, the guilt from that would come back. Now all he could feel was Danni's weight. He looked back down at her face. She looked peaceful. He wished she looked like she was asleep.
"Why?" Clara begged. "Why won't you fix this?"
He gently laid Danni back down the ground. "Because this is how it's fixed," he told her. He stood up and all of his pain couldn't be contained anymore. "Because she's right! This is the only way!"
Clara shook her head. "No," she stated. "There is always another way! You always find another way!"
He shrugged. "And this time I haven't," he replied cruelly. "The only way to keep the universe safe is for one of us to leave. We could walk away from each other, but she couldn't."
"That's not fair!" Clara exclaimed, visibly upset. "When-when you forgot her I fixed it! Me! If this was the other way around I'd be finding every way to bring her memories of you back! Why won't you help me?"
"Because there's only room for one Doctor in the universe, Clara," he replied simply. "That's always been the issue. You are not the Doctor. You are Clara Oswald. You are not her wife, you are not the woman she loves and you are not me!"
He couldn't look at the hurt look on her face, but looking down at Danni didn't help either. He just turned his back, walking away from the console. "She did this so I didn't have to," he stated, his voice softer than it had been. "I'm not taking that away from her. She'd never ask me to, either." Ha paused. "I'm the Doctor. I'm not supposed to hurt people, I'm supposed to help them," he said. "I've been doing a bad job of that lately, but I'm going to get better. I'm going to help the universe by helping her."
~0~0~0~
"Can I ask you a question?" the waitress said as Danni continued to drink her float.
"I get the feeling you're going to," Danni retorted, trying not to sound annoyed. She wasn't, really, but usually people only asked that when they were going to ask something you didn't want to hear.
"This friend you lost," she started. "Was it sad?"
Danni paused for a moment, about to take a sip of her drink. That was a strange question. Of course it was sad, she'd lost someone. How was that not sad? But the waitress was watching her curiously, like she was expecting a story behind it.
"I guess so," was Danni's honest reply. "I don't really remember it. But losing anyone is sad, even if you can't remember why."
The waitress nodded. "I guess you're right," she agreed thoughtfully. "Was it long ago?"
"A while ago, yeah," Danni confirmed. "My husband has been trying very hard for a long time to make me better."
"And he's still buying you milkshakes?" the woman asked, a little amused. "Perhaps he's focusing too much on making you into what he thinks is better, rather than what is actually better for you."
"He's not trying to make me into anything different to what I am," Danni retorted, a little defensive. "If there's anyone in this universe who could make me feel better then it's him."
The first chords strumming echoed in the silence between the two and they both looked over at where the jukebox was sat. Instead of the music playing, the Doctor had his guitar and was sat on one of the tables. His jacket had been chucked on the long, red seat the accompanied the table. He didn't seem to be paying much attention to either of them.
Danni instantly recognised the song and, with it, her spirits raised just slightly.
Blind men say; 'only fools rush in'…
The waitress didn't look annoyed that someone had just started playing their guitar in her diner. Instead, she watched him fondly. "Thinks a lot of himself, doesn't he?" she commented and Danni nodded to herself.
"It seems that way, doesn't it?" she replied, not quite agreeing. "He's doing this because he thinks it'll cheer me up."
"Will it?" the waitress asked and Danni smiled to herself before she shot her a smug look.
"Not turning this away, am I?"
~0~0~0~
Clara didn't know what to do. The Doctor wouldn't look at her, probably out of his own guilt and Ashildr had just stood there, watching the pair silently with the grandeur of someone who had lived long enough to hold herself like she was both above it all and yet in awe of everything. The idea of Danni forgetting her completely felt like a blow she couldn't survive and yet, with a little cynical laugh to herself, she knew she couldn't die. She was in the middle of dying. Perpetually stuck between one heart beat and her last until she returned to finish the job.
She must have been pretty indestructible, actually. Immortal in the same with that Danni had said that Jack was.
"What-What now?" she asked, her voice breaking. So many questions were held in those two little words. What do we do now? What do I do now?
The Doctor finally turned to look at her. "I'm going to take Danni back home," he explained. "I'm going to help her heal, just like you told me to, and we're going to travel the universe like we always should have been. And you…" He waved a hand at the console. "Well, someone has to return this," he continued. "And you will have to go back eventually. Your death still needs to happen."
Clara felt like he was sending her off to die. She knew that was stupid, and that she had walked out to her death without looking back, but it still felt like he was turning her over to some universal police to make sure she was exactly where she needed to be when she needed to be. As much as she had protested at that choice being take away from her, she also didn't want him not to care.
"We were friends, once," she pleaded one last time. "Please, Doctor, don't let this happen. I don't want to lose her."
The Doctor tensed, like his words made a dent and she had the hope, for a moment, he might actually help her. "I'll let you say goodbye," he replied, almost apologetic and she felt herself crying. "That's the best I can do."
~0~0~0~
And that was how Clara ended up saying goodbye to her best friend, the woman she loved, and the man who she had once considered her friend. Danni wasn't paying attention to her at all, but she couldn't take her eyes off her. She was smiling softly, truly happy watching her husband play the guitar. The sun was slowly starting to set, the golden light illuminating him and it felt like the most bittersweet ending to anything ever. No more words were shared between the two, but Clara felt herself slip out of Danni's life for good. Their story had ended.
The one thing, one thing, that stopped Clara breaking down was the fact that she was so happy that they would be getting in the TARDIS together and flying away. All she ever wanted was Danni happy. And she knew that nothing would make her happier than seeing the universe with the Doctor.
He finished the song off and Danni slid off the stool, strolling over to him. She didn't sit down on the table next to him, but still offered him a smile. "Time to go?" she asked.
"Whatever you like, my Pet," he offered, genuinely meaning it. She nodded.
"Let's go somewhere new this time," she suggested as he twisted his guitar around on its strap so it was sat on his back. "Somewhere neither of us have been."
She took his hand, slipping her fingers between his and he felt ready to burst. She was starting to feel more and more like herself, he could tell. "I've been around here quite a few years more than you," he reminded and she rolled her eyes.
"Way to pull the old man card," she retorted.
"Are you sure you don't want me to give you a tour of the best?"
She paused as they reached the door. The waitress was right; looking back wasn't going to help her. She wasn't going to feel better about what happened, with Clara or with Missy, or anything else. She had to find happiness in front of her. The Doctor was in front of her.
"I don't want to see the best," she said to him and he looked rather amused at her words. "I want to see the new and the exciting. What's the point in seeing the best? You've got nothing to aspire to."
He let out a little chuckle. "Well, I can't argue with that," he agreed, leading her out of the diner and they headed towards the TARDIS together. That was until he paused, anyway. "My jacket…" She sighed, like a mother of a forgetful child, and she held her hand out of his guitar. He handed it over and placed a kiss on her cheek. "Won't be a moment."
"Oh, don't forget to pay for the drinks," Danni called over her shoulder as she entered the TARDIS. "I don't think either of us did."
The door shut behind her and she walked over to the console, leaning his guitar against it. The waitress was nice, but she didn't even ask her name. She used to ask everyone their names. She was finding it harder to care. Had forgetting Clara really made her forget how to make new relationships?
She had no idea how deep losing her memory had affected her, and she was scared that she'd broken something inside of her. Scared, but not convinced.
With every old place the Doctor took her to came this nervous hope that Clara would be there. That she would suddenly be accosted by some strange woman begging that she remembered who she was. She expected Clara around every corner, expected to recognise her. Donna would sometimes be sad but not remember why, she expected to recognise Clara even if she didn't know why.
She sighed. The waitress has been nice, but she didn't even ask her name. She didn't recognise her without knowing why. She had absolutely no idea who she was. She can't have been Clara.
She stroked her hand over the console. "Maybe next time, Old Girl," she said to the TARDIS. "We'll see."
~0~0~0~
The Doctor stepped back into the diner where Clara was still stood, as if she hadn't moved since Danni had walked out. He picked up his jacket and carefully placed it over his arm.
"Thank you," she said to him, clearing her throat. "I-It- This was nice."
"That's a fantastic lie you're telling yourself there, Miss Oswald," the Doctor replied, but his normal bite wasn't in his tone.
"What do I do now?" she asked. The Doctor considered her a moment. There was a moment in time waiting for her to return. She needed to head back there, fix her timeline, and die with the bravery and dignity he'd taken away from her.
He took in the diner. His TARDIS probably could make something much more impressive, but then again why would she do that? Her blue box exterior was beyond perfect.
"Clara, you're too much like me for your own good," he told her. "I'm not sure if that was because you jumped into my time line, or because it had always been there." Her brows furrowed slightly. He shrugged. "So, do what I did," he clarified, like she was an idiot. "You've got a stolen TARDIS, haven't you?"
He headed to the door and she grinned to herself, eyes filling with tears. "Doctor?" she called after him and he paused but didn't look back. "Goodbye."
He smiled sadly to himself. "Goodbye, Clara."
And he disappeared with a quiet ring of a bell. Clara watched him go, half wondering if he was ever going to turn back up in her life again, but knowing that she probably was never going to be seeing them again. After all, the universe was huge and he was an expert at running away.
She headed to the back of the diner, where the console room of the new TARDIS waited for her, and Ashildr sat, looking more intrigued than bored.
"How was it?" she asked, curious.
"Sad," Clara replied. "And beautiful." She began flicking some switches, wondering if she was doing it right, but realising she probably could just make it up as she went.
"And now you're heading back?" Ashildr prompted and Clara wrinkled her nose.
"Where's the fun in that?" she retorted. "No, I've got a promise to live up to." She looked over at Ashildr. "Danni told me to run," she clarified, "and find my Danni-Girl. I can't leave that open ended, can I?" She smirked. "Fancy a trip out?"
Ashildr shared her happy grin as she flicked the switch and they flew away.
~0~0~0~
Not a monster of a chapter like the last one, but I still think it's pretty sweet. I couldn't let Clara go without one last little look back at her. I hope you all enjoyed it!
Reviews were all lovely about the last chapter, thank you all! :) x