"You've trained in hand to hand combat before?"
Scout Ingrid looks, if anything, sceptical at her application to join the drill group.
"Yes. No. Well, a bit. Taekwondo with the Year Sevens. I probably need a bit more training."
"Right." Ingrid taps her fingers together, considering. "I'll put you in with the rawest recruits. If you find it a bit too easy…"
"Understood."
She can feel him rather than see him; watching her as she takes her place alongside the newest faces.
He drops into the chair next to her at dinner.
"That looks sore," he observes, pointing to the bruise blooming on her cheek.
"Yes, it is. Thanks for reminding me."
"Oh." He examines his cutlery for a moment. "Are we still fighting, then?"
"I dunno," she returns, "are we?"
"It's hard to keep up sometimes."
"Right."
He coughs, apparently needing to pick at this wound. "Is there a reason you were with Ingrid's recruits today?"
"Apart from the obvious?" She takes a spoonful of soup, playing for time.
"Why?"
"We're in the middle of a war—"
"We have been before. Why now?"
"Because I can't see a way of winning it that doesn't involve fighting?"
"Oh." He purses his lips, apparently satisfied. "Okay."
She takes a breath –ready to continue this proto-argument – but he has picked up his bowl and his horrible hard roll of bread, and moved away. She sighs instead, putting down her spoon, appetite suddenly diminished.
"You need to put more weight behind it," advised Cora, holding the sparring pad. "Punch through the target."
Clara tries again, ignoring the sting in her raw knuckles.
"Yeah, that's more like it! Now imagine it's someone you really, really hate…"
His supercilious sneer, she thinks, mentally pasting the face of the Doctor at his most prickly onto the mat. Smack, smack, smack; Cora winces slightly.
"You haven't spoken yet then?"
Clara shakes her head. "Not really."
"You'll work it out—"
"Yeah. I know."
Cora makes a face she thinks she recognises, but wisely keeps any more words of wisdom behind her teeth. "You should drill with Gryf, by the way."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, she's pretty expert at turning an opponent's strength against them. That's important when you're as short as we are. Or so she tells me."
"You don't train with her?"
Cora shrugs. "I don't think hand-to-hand is where my strength lies."
"Again," says Gryf, smiling.
Clara is sweating heavily, out of breath. "Just… a-a moment-"
"Again," repeats her friend, insistent. "If you can do it through fatigued muscles you'll embed the sequence better. Trust me."
Clara nods, still gasping, forcing aching limbs through the pattern of punches and blocks once more. "Why?" she wheezes.
"Muscle memory," Gryf explains, as she corrects Clara's form gently. "You don't want to think about blocking, do you? You just want to react."
"'Spose," she manages, keeping her eyes firmly on the opposite wall as the Doctor sweeps past, a collection of tangle wires and bent metal in arm.
She finds him in the garage, eventually. "What are you doing?" she says, trying to convince herself that breaking their impasse is a sure sign of moral fortitude rather than capitulation to his stubbornness.
"Trying to find a way of winning that doesn't involve fighting."
"Oh."
He meets her eyes at last, gives a grudging inch. "More specifically, working on a vector for the malicious code we need to introduce into the King's computer systems."
"How's it going?" she asks, trying to ignore the strong smell of burnt metal.
"Badly."
"Ah. I guess I… smelled that."
"Huh. And your efforts?"
"What do you mean?"
"The training."
"Oh. Oh. Um, better. I think."
"I could show you a few moves if you like."
She swallows a laugh. "Oh?"
"Venusian aikido. Very effective. Although, generally better if you have five limbs."
"Right… I might stick with what I'm doing at the moment, if it's all the same to you. Not sure I can really spend the energy on acquiring that extra limb at the moment."
He shrugs. "Your loss."
"Entirely. Look, do you want a hand? Assuming that, you know, you're not growing a spare yourself?"
"Haha." His eyes flicker to meet hers for another brief moment, recognising her offer for the apology it is, she thinks. "Pass me that synestic," he says.
She does so, almost sure the brush of his fingers against hers is deliberate – an I'm sorry too.
For them, it will have to do.
"You know, there is an easier way," remarks Sen drily, as Clara picks herself up from the floor.
"What?" she asks, wincing.
Sen sends her sprawling again, with consummate ease, before replying. "Learn to shoot."
"Ah. Ah, no. Thanks, but no."
"Why not? Because he doesn't? He's got lives to burn that you haven't."
Sen's words sting more than any slap. "It's not that."
"What is it then?"
At last, Clara manages to block effectively an incoming blow. "I'm not sure," she manages, momentarily jubilant, before Sen takes her legs from underneath her again.
"Energy pistol," says Cora, pointing to the sleek little weapon. "Two settings. Green lights; you're on stun. Red lights you're lethal. Simple enough."
"And to aim?"
"You just point and shoot. It's not TARDIS science."
"Right."
"No recoil like the physical weapons. No drag on the projectile. You don't have to compensate for wind or anything like that. Pistol's effective to about thirty feet. After that the energy dissipates. You need a rifle for longer distances, but there's precious few of those about."
"Right."
"Well, go on then," Cora smiles, nodding to the targets on the range. "Give it a shot."
Clara's fingers close around the cold casing, gunmetal alien in her hand. It is alien, she tells herself. Everything here, alien. There's no similarity here between her and Danny Pink, picking up a gun as a way to make the world a better place, none at all—
The thing fizzes rather than bangs, a surge of power she can only just feel. Three smoking holes are now burned into the centre of her target.
"Like I said," continues Cora, "it's not TARDIS science."
Clara puts the pistol down. "Thanks."
"No problem. Do you want to take it? On the mission, I mean?"
Clara bites her lip, weighing up the options.
"Yes," she says.
She dreams, unpleasantly, of Daleks and Cybermen. Of Danny's ruined face, and his final words. The promise of a soldier, hisses a Cassandraic chorus of Claras.
You will sleep safe tonight. Hahaha. They laugh, hollow. Sleep no more, Clara Oswald
Oswin
Winnie
Clara
Who am I?
Their faces blur, and for a second she is trapped inside a carnival house of mirrors; a thousand fractured reflections stretching away in different directions and—
I don't know where I am, I don't know where I am. I don't know who I am and I don't knowdon'tknow—
"Clara."
It takes a moment, blinking in the half light, to realise that she has been shaken awake by the Doctor.
"You were dreaming."
"Nightmare," she gasps, touching a wrist to her forehead. Sweat has plastered her tufty hair to her head.
"I could hear."
"I'm sorry. Was I shouting?"
"In here," he adds, putting a finger to his temple, as if that is any kind of explanation.
"Right. Well, I'm sorry for disturbing you—"
"I thought the nightmares had stopped?"
"They had. It's okay. Just a blip."
"You're worrying about something?"
"Just the mission tomorrow. That's normal…"
He isn't listening. His head is held at an angle, eyes narrow as he looks around the sleeping alcove. The holster for her newly acquired pistol is only half-hidden behind her coat. She forces herself not to look, wondering if she can subtly twitch—
Her heart sinks as he reaches out for the weapon, tugging it loose. "Just the mission," he repeats, voice tight.
"…Doctor?" She reaches out for her pistol, afraid to touch.
"Why?" he snaps, pulling it into his chest, out of reach.
"Why do you think?" She meets his gaze steadily, in spite of those beetling brows. "I'm not going back."
He looks aghast. "I won't let that happen."
"You can't guarantee that." She sighs at his stricken face. "Doctor… I… what's the difference, really? You're fine with me picking up a sword, using my fists. What's so special about a pistol?"
"Special?" he repeats, blinking. "… Clara. My Clara. You of all people know."
"Know what?"
"You don't be a warrior," he says urgently.
She swallows at her own words. "But I'm not a Doctor," she manages, suddenly hoarse.
"Don't play semantics. You know the difference."
"What-?" But she is cut off by his sudden movement at snake-strike speed: what would have been a ringing slap. Instead, her arm has moved to block his blow, instinctively.
"Self-defence," he says softly, eyes aflame, "a last resort." He brings up his other hand, the one that holds the pistol, raising it until she is looking down the barrel. "Murder."
"It has a stun setting," she says hotly.
He lets go, the weapon dropping onto her bedroll. "That doesn't work against Meanwhile."
"Doctor, to shoot them is defence. They'll eat—"
"They're not in control of what they're doing. You know that. They've been… forced into something terrible by the King."
"Yes, and that's awful, but they've been made into monsters. Killers."
"And that's all they ever can be?"
Her mouth drops open, horror struck. "Are you saying it's not? That you can cure them?"
He holds her gaze for a long, hot second. "I don't know," he says as last.
"But you suspect—?"
"Yes. Yes, I suspect."
She swears softly. "Oh, Doctor. You do pick your moments."
