Chapter 4 - Broken strings
"Thank you, Doctor," the two identical Osgoods say together.
"Don't mention it, it was good fun," the Doctor replies, shaking some dust off his velvet jacket, now torn at the level of his shoulder. That's what you get from fighting living mannequins that try to blow up a superstore. The jacket that Clara liked, the one he was wearing for her, now needed repairing. So much as the man inside it.
"No, don't say that," the Osgood on the left says, "you always save us and nobody ever thanks you."
"So please," the other Osgood continues, "at least accept our sincere gratitude."
"OK," the Doctor shrugs, with a sad smile on his face, placing his hand inside his jacket to take out his journal. He has another story to write, another adventure he has nobody to share with. No matter how much he tries, he can't bring Clara back again, but doesn't want to replace her and fill the void she has left with anyone either. Not yet.
"You do so much for us, and we do so little for you," the first Osgood says, concerned about the look on the Doctor's face. She remembers how joyful and optimistic he was even in the middle of troubles and great dangers last time she saw him. He had Clara, always cheering him up. But now she is gone, disappeared without any explanations, he doesn't seem to know anything about her, and he looks sadder than he ever looked before.
The Doctor stops for a moment, meditating. There is a possibility he has thought about once or twice before, but never had the courage to pursue. Maybe now he has a chance, maybe that mannequin went rabid in the shop because the universe wanted to give him a chance. He puts his journal back in his inside pocket.
"Well, to be fair," he says, "there is something you could do for me."
Today, I went shopping. I needed a replacement for my broken guitar strings, so I went to central London to look for it. I had just found the perfect strings, when I heard the sound of screaming coming from a nearby store. With great regret, I had to leave my strings in the shop and check out what was going on. People, people, people. Always needing saving.
I soon found out the reason of all the screaming. One of the mannequins had come to life and was spreading terror in the shop. It was probably just a leftover from last Nestene Consciousness' attempt to conquer Earth and get control of all its precious plastic, but was causing great havoc nonetheless.
I tried to sonic it both with my glasses and my new screwdriver, but it didn't work. Half the store was in flames, the other half was already covered in debris. The Auton wouldn't stop firing. I tried to approach it slowly and tragically failed. I was crushed against a mirror. And in that moment, taking off a piece of glass that had ripped my jacket on the shoulder, something clicked in my mind. I remembered that once I was in Clara's bedroom, and she used to have three mirrors in there. I remembered mocking her about it, saying that her face was too wide to fit in one mirror, pretending I couldn't see how beautiful she was. I don't know what I'd give to see that face once again, to remember why I thought it was so beautiful, to being able to draw her portrait from memory. But I can't, I only see a vague blur when I try to remember how she looked.
Then at one point UNIT arrived. They had lots of blasting guns too, so they could reason with the Auton a tad better than me with my harmless devices and high moral principles. Apart from all the soldiers, Kate was there, and Osgood was also there. Both the Osgoods. It's weird, knowing that one of the two once was a megalomaniac terrorist who tried to destroy the whole human race, and now was helping them. It shows that really everybody is capable of both amazing and terrible things, I suppose. Bonnie, she was called. And I remember she had taken Clara's appearance, probably thinking that it would give her an advantage over me, while it turned out to be her greatest weakness. I remember Bonnie, I remember the Zygon invasion, why can't I remember Clara? I could read through her face like an open book, and now I can't even picture it properly.
The Auton was giving a hard time even to UNIT forces, but I knew how to finish it all. Moving carefully through the debris, I made my way to the ground floor of the store, away from all the mess. That's where they always put it, the transmitter that controls and powers the Autons. I scanned everything with my sonic glasses, twice to make sure, but couldn't find the transmitter anywhere. Starting to consider the impossible, i.e. being wrong about something, I forced myself to think like a dumb Auton and imagine where else they could have placed the transmitter. I reached the elevator, hoping it was still working, to check the other building floors too. But it wasn't necessary: I found it right there. Next to the elevator camera, another small flashing light gave away the position of the transmitter. Clever location for a transmitter, next to something nobody ever looks towards like an elevator camera. The Autons are getting better, I have to give them that. With a flick of the sonic, the transmitter was turned off and destroyed. And along with it, all the noise coming from the floor above ceased.
I returned to the ground floor to meet the Osgoods, who were greeting me cheerfully. And the sight of them, remembering that one of them used to be Clara's double, made me think of an idea I had already indulged on a couple of times before. Could I dare to ask? After all, I had just saved the day, again. They owed me a favour.
"Which one of you was in the plane with me when we crushed on that beach?" the Doctor asks to the Osgoods.
"Pardon?" they reply at the same time.
"Which one of you told me the new rules about Zygons' link with humans?" the Doctor continues, "the ones about not needing the original to refresh the body print? The ones about being able to wear any face when you've acquired enough information? The ones about pulling faces from memory and wearing them even without an existing link with the original human?"
The Osgoods remain silent, starting to read the Doctor's intentions.
"Was that all true?" the Doctor keeps asking.
"Yes," one of the two identical women finally answers.
"Ok, good," the Doctor nods. "So, next question: which one of you used to be Bonnie?"
"Both of us!" the Osgoods reply harshly.
"Yes, but only one of you is really a Zygon and can help me with this thing," the Time Lord says.
"What are you planning, exactly?" one Osgood asks, while the other stares severely at the Doctor.
"I need one of you to turn back into Bonnie," he explains.
"No," the Osgoods immediately reply.
"I need Zygella back, she's the only connection with Clara I have left, the only link to Clara's time stream still holding. I need Bonnie back so I can plug her into the TARDIS telepathic interface and find where Clara is."
"No!" the Osgoods reply more firmly. "I'm sorry, Doctor," one of them continues, "but whatever happened to Clara, she's gone and she doesn't want to be found, so I can't let you do this. We can't risk bringing Bonnie back for something so silly!"
"OK," he says, looking down, "ignore the telepathic interface part, just turn back into Bonnie for a while, so I can meet her again."
"What use would that be?" one Osgood asks.
"If I could see her again, talk to her, maybe I'd remember something that could help me to..." his voice trailed off.
"Listen, Doctor," the other Osgood says, "Bonnie is just a copy, she's not Clara. You want your friend back, but you won't find her here. Bonnie is just a facade."
"But if I could see her face, her eyes... I'm sure then I would know... what to do," the Doctor replies painfully, covering his mouth with his hand.
"We can't let you meet Bonnie again, sorry," the Osgoods are very determined to stand their ground, "not after everything that happened last time."
They look at the Doctor, his eyes full of deep sadness, anger, grief, and so many unanswered questions. Osgood recognizes those eyes perfectly. They look exactly like her eyes when she lost her sister. And even if now she has a new sister, she will never forget how painful loosing her first sister was, and she can understand what the Doctor means perfectly. Sympathy grows inside her heart, when she finally agrees to give something to the old man.
"You can't meet Bonnie," she says, "but we could arrange something different."
Of course, right when I asked them I knew how they would react. It's how I would have reacted too. They would have never agreed to something so risky and pointless, and in all honesty the telepathic interface idea was a bit too wibbly wobbly even for me. It would have never worked. But they still agreed to give me something, which I didn't expect. Something so little, but so precious to me.
The Osgood pair was so kind to give me a little present, something small and meaningless for most, but that can offer me a little comfort during my long journeys alone.
I wanted a copy of Clara, an image of her because the real thing can never come back to me, and in the end I sort of got what I wanted. The reason I was looking for a copy of Clara was to finally know what is it that I miss about her so much. I probably won't ever really know, but now I think I have a clearer idea.
At least now I can look into her big eyes again.
The Doctor is back in his TARDIS, alone, but he doesn't look sad anymore. He is holding a Polaroid photo in his hands, looking intently at the young woman in the picture. Clara. Or at least someone who looks exactly like her, a perfect copy. Her round face, with that funny nose, is so familiar to the old Time Lord, yet so unknown. He can't stop looking at her eyes. Her big, expressive eyes which he has seen show all sorts of emotions he can't remember.
That's Osgood's present. The Zygon one of the pair changed her appearance back to Bonnie, Clara's identical copy, and snapped a quick photo of herself. Not in front of the Doctor, but in private, because the real identity of the Osgoods is a secret shared only between the two sisters, and they cannot allow to recall or linger on anything that regarded their previous life, before they became more than just human or Zygon, but a living embodiment of peace. They had to leave their past behind to protect the treaty, and could make a little exception only for someone so important as the Doctor.
One of the Osgood changed her face and wore Clara's just for a few seconds, only the time necessary for the other one to take a picture of her face to give to the Doctor as a memory of one of the most important periods of his life. Then she changed back, and when they returned to the Doctor they were both looking like Osgood again.
For the Doctor, the photo is enough to go on a little longer, when maybe the inexplicable void in his chest will be less piercing. He takes a piece of sellotape out of his bigger-on-the-inside pocket, and sticks the photo at the corner of the monitor on the TARDIS console. From there, Clara will always be able to look at him during all of his travels.
Maybe he won't be able to bring her back, but now he's sure that a part of Clara will always accompany him everywhere he goes for the rest of his endless life.
Author's notes: Sorry for posting this chapter a little later than usual, but I've been very busy with work. The title of the chapters is inspired by James Morrison's song 'Broken Strings', which I find sort of appropriate for the Doctor and Clara's story. I hope you enjoyed the chapter, I liked writing for Osgood a lot, she's one of my favourite characters. Do you think the Doctor's plan to connect Bonnie to the TARDIS telepathic interface to find Clara would have worked? Let me know your thoughts on this chapter in the comments. Thank you for reading, see you soon :)