Inciting and Inviting

2003

Martha was in hell. Or, possibly, the closest thing to it anyway, she thought as she stared blankly at the page before her.

In the last twenty-four hours, she had slept a total of six hours, which sounded impressive until the hours she had spent poring over her textbooks were stacked up against them.

Groaning, she let her head crash lightly onto the desk in front of her, wondering vaguely if there was technology available where information could be transferred based on pure physical contact with a textbook. Someone ought to invent that if it didn't already exist.

The mobile phone beside her began to vibrate. When it didn't stop after a full minute, she answered it with a defeated air, already knowing who it would on the other end - because honestly, who else called her these days?

"Hi Mom," she said, hoping it would be a short conversation.

There was an update about Aunt Millie and her Pomeranian.

Another about Tish and her new boyfriend (Must be nice having time for boys, Martha thought bitterly).

There was a report about her American cousin Janice and how she'd gotten her migraines cured by a preacher during a healing session under a tent in some field in Kentucky.

"Show me a faith healer and I'll show you the devil," Martha muttered. "Ruthless con artists, all of them."

"What did you say dear?" her mother paused.

"Nothing," Martha shook her head. "Not funny enough to be worth repeating."

Her mother made an irritated noise.

2015

There was no point letting panic cloud her judgement, Clara thought, desperately attempting to quell her panic. At this stage, all she could do was her best to escape, because the alternative was…well. There wasn't one was there?

There were only a few pieces of knowledge she had about her current status:

1. At some point over lunch, she had been drugged

2. The person who had drugged her was Ben Parker, who was obviously involved in the killings in some way, if the interior decorating of the room was anything to go by

3. She had a small hunting knife stashed inside her left boot, one she had been carrying around since she'd started the investigation. If her time with the Doctor had taught her anything, it was that she was going to get in trouble sooner or later.

As far as knowledge went, that wasn't very much to go on. Even the small knife didn't offer much comfort, because if she were honest, she was almost certain that she was more likely to end up stabbing herself by accident. She had lost a fight with a filing cabinet only a few days ago.

She had no idea how long she had been locked away, but she was quite sure her captors were not the least bit worried about her retaliating - they hadn't even tied her up, a fact which could either be a very good thing, or a very bad thing.

Breathe Clara, breathe, a voice whispered in her head. It was comforting, gravelly and Scottish, and it made her stomach twist.

Footsteps approached the doorway, causing her to start and back away.

"I just want to see check and see if she's awake," one muffled voice said.

"Don't see the point." Another replied.

She considered trying to reach for her knife, but before she could make a move, the door was already opening.

The two men, Gary and Ben, stopped and stared at her.

"We don't want to hurt you," Ben said after a few moments.

"That's a relief to hear you say it. I must have been confused by the part where you drugged and kidnapped me." she replied sharply.

"Can I gag her please?" Gary asked, looking down at Ben.

"Dude no. I hate it when you do that to them." Ben shook his head in disgust. "It's so degrading."

The smaller scientist approached Clara carefully. "We don't have to gag you right? You're not gonna scream or anything?"

Clara considered her options once again.

"No." she said finally, shoulders slumping in defeat.

"Good." Ben smiled his sweet smile, the one that she had found so endearing less than twenty-four hours before. "Look we're going to need you to help us with something ok? Something important and special. Something that we can't do ourselves because we need to be the ones monitoring the process."

"I'm honoured." she said drily, trying not to think of the pictures of corpses she'd been staring at for weeks.

"You should be," Gary admonished, leaning against the doorframe.

"We'll start in a few hours." Ben's face seemed to redden in embarrassment. "We didn't realize we ran out of some supplies. You know how it is…rituals…"

"If its more convenient for you, I can come back later." Clara found herself quipping. Her voice shook only a little.

"If there's anything I can do to make your…um…stay more comfortable, let me know ok?" Ben backed his way out the door.

"I'll ring down to front desk, don't you worry." Clara snapped.

The door shut, leaving her alone. She waited until she could no longer hear their footsteps before she sank to the ground, burying her face into her knees as tears coursed down her cheeks.

"There are a million and one Benjamin Peters," Martha murmured as she scrolled through addresses on her laptop. "You need to be a little patient."

"Right. Of course. I need to be patient while Clara is getting her liver cut out as a sacrifice to some alien creature masquerading as Satan." The Time Lord snorted.

"There's never been a case yet when the liver was cut out." Martha said mildly.

"Oh. I feel much better now, thank you." the Doctor almost snarled as he paced behind her. "You know what, we've done it your way. My turn."

Stalking around to the other side of the TARDIS console, he slipped his hands gingerly into the spongy slots on the dashboard, remembering as he did so, the last time they had been put into use by another pair of slender hands.

Closing his eyes, he forced his mind to settle and collected his thoughts. The Doctor tried his hardest to concentrate on telling the TARDIS to search for Clara Oswald, the schoolteacher from Coal Hill. But try as he might, he couldn't stop himself from remembering the the smooth fall of her hair, how the corners of her eyes crinkled each time she laughed, how her small hands somehow fit perfectly within his larger ones.

Unbidden, his mind recalled the shape of her face as she leaned back to look at him, the softness of a smile that was a confusing mix of joy and mourning.

"Will there be dancing on this space train of yours?" she had asked, fiddling with her hair as he arranged his bow-tie. "Will you finally show me if you know how to twirl?"

"I absolutely do not do twirling," he stated sternly, although right before they stepped out of the TARDIS, he had conceded by saying, "I suppose there may be some sort of live music situation."

Please, he thought. Please…just be safe.

"You'd have made a terrible soldier," Danny leaned back on his elbows. They were on a hillside, staring down at the graveyard where she had last spoken with him. He was wearing a plaid shirt this time, though his face looked as dead as ever.

"Well I'm not a soldier am I?" she brushed her hair out of her eyes. The wind was picking up, and the picnic mat they sat on flapped wildly.

"Whatever," he chuckled, looking at her. "We don't have a lot of time."

"Why not?" she asked, wrinkling her nose. There was a horrible smell all around them.

"They're coming back very soon." he said, eyes darkening. "You're wasting time right now, you understand that right?"

Clara closed her eyes against the bright day, and knew that he spoke the truth.

"What do I do?" she asked quietly.

"You need to use that big brain of yours." he said gravely. "You need to strategize. You're armed - they don't know that. You have reflexes, trained from dozens of different encounters with a hundred different enemies."

"I have the element of surprise." she laughed mirthlessly, opening her eyes to look at him. "Cliched, don't you think?"

She was surprised to see that he was suddenly looking as vibrant as the day she had met him.

"Clara…" he reached for her hand. "If…when you get away, I need you to do something for me."

"Don't." she shook her head frantically.

"I need you to let me go," he continued as if he hadn't heard. "I need you to try and live your life. Please."

"I don't know how," she whispered.

"I can't rest until I know you're fine." he traced his fingers along her bare arm.

"I'm sorry." she choked out.

"And I love you," he told her. "No matter the lies you've told me or yourself."

Clara awoke with a sob.

"Hey, you ready?" Ben asked in a way that could almost have been mistaken for concern.

"Do you know why I moved out here?" Clara asked softly, looking up at him from where she was seated on the ground, her hands clasped under her knees like she was a little girl.

"No." Ben shifted uncomfortably. "I don't think we ever got around to having that conversation."

"My boyfriend…he died." she said. "He died, knowing that I lied to him the whole time we were together, about who I really was."

The astrophysicist said nothing and simply stared at her.

"And then after he died, I lost our baby." she continued. "Just…out of the blue. I was already a few months along."

"Fuck." Ben said with what sounded like sympathy. "I'm sorry. That's…that's pretty awful."

"Yeah." she nodded, looking down. "It really was."

Slowly, he approached her. "Listen, if this works, everything will be better. You'll be elevated, far beyond all these problems."

"You sure?" she questioned. "Do you promise?"

Ben knelt down in front of her and rested a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Yeah. I promise."

She lifted her chin and looked him in the eye. "Thank you."

In one swift movement, her knife was buried into his side. He barely had time to scream, but instead, he let out a thin, reedy protest of shock.

Without hesitating, she pulled her arm back before plunging the blade back into his body. Despite the fact that the hilt was slicked with his blood, Clara held on tight as she yanked the weapon out for the last time, allowing his body to collapse to the ground with a loud thump.

"Ben?" Gary called from somewhere downstairs.

Avoiding the puddling blood, Clara scrambled to her feet and stepped around the fallen scientist, hurrying to the open doorway. Ducking into an adjacent room, she waited as the larger astrophysicist ran up the stairs. The moment he was past her, she wasted no time in dashing to the stairway, willing herself not to look back even as Gary began to scream in rage.

Her feet were sure and her steps were quick, but still, she could hear him closing in on her as she fled through the house, which seemed impossibly large.

The front door was too far away, she realized when she got to the first floor. Quickly, she turned to her right and stepped into a bedroom, locking the door behind her.

Turning around, she took a good look at her surroundings, and found that she couldn't stop a scream from slipping past her teeth.

They stepped out onto a street filled with identical brown houses.

"You couldn't have been a little more specific with your directions could you?" Martha asked.

"Hush." the Doctor cocked his head to the side. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Martha was instantly at attention.

The Time Lord didn't answer, choosing instead to run towards one specific house in the middle of the block.