A/N: Unlike the previous two chapters, this chapter is new material for those of you who have read the one-shots before.
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or the characters. If I did, we'd have an episode in between "Name of the Doctor" and "Day of the Doctor" probably titled "Clara Alone." But I digress.
Clara shoots up in her bed, sweating profusely, crying out in gasping breaths. She tries to blink the darkness out of her eyes, tried to quench her sobs, tried to remember where she is. She is dead, she died, she died again–
She pulls her knees to her chest and hugs her shoulders, shaking. She tries to steady herself. It's all under control, Clara, she tells herself. You've got this. You've got this.
Her eyes have adjusted to the dark. She is fine. She is safe. She is in her own room at the Maitland home. She realizes she is rocking back and forth, and stops herself. She closes her eyes tightly and takes a deep breath. And another. And another. But she can't push from her mind what she just went through. Her deep breaths crack back into sobs again.
It was a dream, she tells herself. It was only a dream. But she can't tell herself that it wasn't real.
Because it was. She had fallen, fallen from the sky with no way to change her coarse, no way to be in control, just falling helplessly. Falling from the TARDIS, the one place she thought, she felt, she knew, was safe, was home. And even so she was ripped from it and thrown to the hard, cold, painful earth. Helpless as her body crushed itself on impact with the icy ground, helpless as she lay fading away.
But at least this time he had been there. The Doctor had been there, holding her hand. He held her hand and said it would be alright. She didn't believe him. She told him to run. But he stayed and held her hand as she forgot how to breathe, as she–
Clara buried her face in her knees and wailed.
The Maitlands say nothing, but Clara knows they can tell something is wrong.
The first few nights they had been concerned– not that they aren't now, but as Clara had refused to talk about it, they had stopped asking. Mr. Maitland says nothing as he helps Clara set the table for breakfast before heading off to work. Angie says nothing, but looks at Clara funny, like she was confusing. Artie says nothing, but looks at Clara with pity in his eyes, wanting to help yet not wanting to intrude.
"Maybe you need to see your family," Mr. Maitland had suggested. As if Clara's family would be able to help. As if they could begin to understand what she had done to herself. She had been unwoven and burst and scattered through time and space like so much sand in a pool, and at night she can't keep out the pain. At night she can't stop herself dying, dying over and over in a hundred thousand ways. At night she is helpless.
She says nothing.
If her eyes were glass they would have a crack in them, like a broken mirror. A bulb flickering off and on. Only sometimes does her smile match her eyes. Much of the time her eyes are fogged up with thoughts, clouded with the breath of lives she shouldn't have known.
She shakes her head. She is staring out the window of her bedroom, out at the neighborhood, out at the nothingness beyond. She is slipping. She has to get a grip. She has to get a grip on something, or she'll fall again.
Falling is terrible. Those who say it's like flying, they're lying, they are lies. Flying you have control, you have the freedom to change your direction. Falling, you are in the arms of gravity, and gravity is a cruel mistress to those who start off in the sky.
Clara trembles. She screws up her eyes and counts. She heard it worked for some. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, eleven, eleven, eleven... She trembles again. She bites her lower lip. Keep it together.
Eleven.
She let out a sob. She didn't want to bother him. He had better things to do, worlds to save, she had seen that over and over. Over and over while his back was turned she toppled and fell and– and the one time he turned round he'd held her hand. He'd held her hand as they ran, as they fell, as she...
Clara Oswald reaches for her mobile phone. She begins to dial the best helpline in the universe.
She had told the Maitlands she was going home. They assumed it was to her family, her dad and her gran.
Artie had looked up at her with his big eyes. "But why do you have to go?"
Clara had hugged him one last time. "I need a breather, is all. I'll see you again soon, okay?"
She had them drop her off at the train station. She wasn't waiting for a train. And she knew exactly where she was going. She was waiting for a police box and she was going home.
She stares at the gray English sky. It is full and bleak like a haze of smoke, like her eyes. She stares and stares at the sky, sometimes at the sky, sometimes at nothing, sometimes at the stars she knows are there somewhere.
The grinding sound startles her, the deep wheezing groaning of the TARDIS materializing. She jumps. Then some instinctual memory reawakens and she runs to the blue box, her safety. She has nothing to run from but she runs. Or maybe she is running from everything.
And the door opens and there is the Doctor. There he is with his bow tie and his big sad eyes and his arms open and she runs to him. He holds her in his arms and Clara buries herself in the only thing she can know is safe anymore.
And she sobs.
She told herself she wouldn't, she told herself she would be strong and cool and collected and she failed, she failed that too. Now she is weeping into the Doctor's shoulder.
He shifts uneasily, as though he doesn't quite know how to react. He just adjusts his grip on his Companion and hugs her tighter, resting his chin on the top of her head. He doesn't know what to say. So he just stands there feeling useless and helpless as his Companion breaks down.
It feels like a long time before Clara pulls herself together. She takes a deep breath, then a second, then a seventh. Then she sighs, relaxing her tense muscles. She is safe now. She is safe now. The Doctor is here.
"I need you" was all she had said over the phone. That was all she would say. He feeels completely unprepared. He hadn't known if there was some threat or just something she needed to say. He came anyway. Clara needed him, and he came. Clara squeezes tighter the arms she had wrapped around her Doctor. He wasn't going to walk away, he wasn't going to run past without a second glance,he wasn't going to turn his back on her, he was here.
"Thank you," she pushes from her lungs through her wet mouth. She has tears in her eyes. She clings to him and doesn't let go.
"It's okay now," he manages. "It's okay, I've got you, it's okay."
It's okay, she tells herself. But she isn't sure if she believes it yet. The last nightmare she had she was taken from the TARDIS itself, from within her home out into the frozen air and thrown to the frozen earth and he couldn't save her, he held her hand but he was too late, he wasn't fast enough to catch her as she fell and fell and fell–
"It's okay, Clara," he says again, frantically. Clara realizes she has begun to tremble again, she was lost in thought again.
"My Clara," he moves his hand to cradle the back of her head.
All my fault.