Patterns

The result of some rewatching the first few s8 episodes; Just something I noticed. I find they have immense rewatch value, especially if you spent the first few episodes just... not yet quite acclimatized to our protagonist.

It does occurr too often to be a mere incidental coincidence, and is far too specific a situation for the diffuse label of being a 'tendency', but they were not concious enough of its ocassional repetition for it to be one of these phrases they would repeat to each other to tug at very particular shared meanings, associations and memories of previous encounters, like a 'motif' or perhaps a sort of insider-metaphor.

Nonetheless, this type of exchange came up often enough to constitute at least a recurring pattern.

It would start with any situation like this, the usual lottery pick between a spaceship, a high building or an elaborate underground base, or whatever else might contain a sufficient amount of steely corridors for them to run through, them, and this week's designated band of potential would-be survivors, and along the way, they would inevitably stumble about sights that were definitely not pretty – this time, she was the first to spot it, by a sound that she might have described with a more appropiately dark metaphor if she had been aware of its true nature when she first perceived it and associated it with misplaced bits of gooey strawbery jam dropping down on a table;

The source was, at least, just about the same color and consistency, but the field of associations and reactions it evoked would be very much the opposite, so long as one actually liked strawberry jam and thus connected it to the relative safety of a cozy kitchen and an appetitizing sight, which the thing that was sticking to the ceiling of the corridor and dripping down in chunky bits right now was very much not; The outward, peripheral parts of it were still identifiable as what little remained of the limbs and head of an aspiring young man they had encountered a few hours ago, back when this whole situation still looked like it might turn out to be a pleasant road trip, and those dreams and plans he had described to them still held a chance of coming true.

She recalled adressing him with words of encouragements earlier, and she thought that the Doctor had tried the same, although some of his remarks ended up being more on the counterproductive side, leaving her with the task of shutting him up, just one of the many tasks she seemed to have gotten stuck with lately – In the light of the grotesque spectacle before them, the memory lost all of its humorous tinges forever.

And there was a time where Clara would have screamed at this sight, or at least frozen up and entered a futile battle to banish the uneasy chill and discomfort that would invariably take up residence in her bones, (and unknowingly prompt a certain bow tie wearing wanderer to curse himself over his dubious justifications for bringing her into these situations in the first place) but in the wildernesses of this world, to live was to adapt, and while there would never be a day on which the thought of her own mortality would leave her completely unfazed, Clara Oswald had always been very, very good at adapting.

The idea that necessity was the mother of all ingenuity might be a comforting idea cooked up to pretend that hellholes are opportunities, but it can very much be an effective fertilizer, and what her evironment demanded right now was a further sharpening of her preexistent alertness, a grim narrowing of her eyes and a strategic tensing in certain parts of her face and limbs.

At first, nobody else seemed to have taken note of the gruesome scene, but the Doctor almost immediately noted the shift in her bearings and sucessfully utilized it to pinpoint its aim, the exact spot from which the twitch in her arms was meant to back away from, and when he turned to look, so did everyone else, and the screaming was upon them at long last, shrieks and gasps all around them, the loudest of all courtesy of the unfortunate barchelor's younger sister.

Nonetheless, the first person Clara finds herself turning towards once her body slides out of its initial frozen stupor is the one single man who remains the silent eye among the brewing storm of clamor and turmoil, a tall frame whose narrow, sharp face seems merely concentrated, its upper portions most certainly narrowed in appropiate seriousness, brows furrowed like heavy rainclouds nearing the moment of an electric discharge, but all in all, he probably appeared to be the calmest person in the room at the time she cautiously screened his face and posture for any discernable hints, and, not even certain of what she should have been looking for or what 'okay' even looked like on this particular set of hardware, asked, "Are you okay?"

And if he even perceived her, not just her voice but the entire complex construct of expression, body language and tone of voice that she's aiming in his direction, it certainly doesn't show as he simply walks past her, his attention focussed at the mystery in front of them at the expense of anything else, the very way of moving about making her wonder how he could manage to appear this inacessible with a basically human-shaped form, something about the way he had his head and limbs perched forward, that was too dominant to be labelled 'tentative', but certainly probing.

He squats down under the mess on the ceiling all while he peers up at the spectacle itself like a predatory animal in waiting, like the motions aren't even connected to each other, just carefully ordained to fulfill their purposes by a faraway pupeteer, and even she can't fathom why he is doing this at all until she notices him using two fingers to sweep up some of the stinking red goop from the floor and hold it in front of his face to give it a good look without having to turn his neck, and when both their conciousnesses are grazed by the beginnings of voices protesting, he gestures with his other arm and gruffly barks out a "Shut up!" -

And Clara is left with far too many things to consider at all and no clue as to what to feel and when, when this spike of indignation and outrage at his callousness towards a person who just lost her brother demands her time, but said time is already split and stretched out between far too many tasks that are demanding her attention all at once, not just because he seems to have pushed the handling of the demoralized crowd off to her once again, when some parts of that very mind are still racing and processing the clues and traces of whatever might still be hiding in the darkness of these corridors as quickly as her own fear of a quick, unannounced death would let them move, but because turning to adress them involved looked away from him, and these days, she never knows what he might be doing if she let him out of her sight.

She never knew whether to be worried or unsettled or pissed-off, which in itself was enough to leave her mostly frustrated before any of the other components featured into the mix, but the questioning little voices of all she wanted to be wouldn't let her be frustrated in peace for too long before they started questioning her in mocking tones – Didn't he always use to whirr about the room with even more frantic energy, uncontrollably touching things, pressing buttons and displaying little understanding of boundaries, or was that different because she could – or at least thought she could – rely on him buzzing about and prepare for that, was it not quite so hard to expect what to expect before he'd taken to this way of just... standing in a room and letting himself absorb it with those large, unfathomable eyes, never letting her know when he might stir and do something incredibly unlikely that would require quick-witted participation on her part – with the way he was inspecting that tidbit of the man's remains, she was almost worried she might have to sprint forward to keep him from licking it, but it seemed that at the very least, centuries of experience with performing impromtu taste-tests on random substances, whether they happened to contain dead people or not, was seldom met with pleasant results, and merely contented himself with loudly sniffing at today's designated sample, which, given that it already looked barely tolerable to her as someone who dealt with him on a regular basis and knew that much of is inexplicable behavior did, ocassionally, tend to yield useful results, probably did little to calm down the rest of their small group, least of all the poor fellow's rather apalled sister, who watched in stunned disbelief as he mumbled some remarks on the consistency of the goop, turned around to face them and casually pulled out a hankerchief to sanitize his fingers with, reacting little to the woman's high, wordless gasp and its role a manifestation of just how little she could believe what was taking place before her eyes – Clara could not exactly blame her;

As much as she wished for this situation to end or proceed, if he were to ask her, she would not have denied that he brought the next thing that happened on himself, that he should have expected the recently bereaved lady to block his path as he gestured for them to leave, and proceed to stare at him accusingly with her tear-filled eyes; Everyone else in their small band was looking at the girl with heavy, affected faces.

"That. Was my brother!"

"I am aware of that, yes."

"You... you said not to go after him... you said he woud be fine! I was gonna go after him, and you told me-"

"-what was most likely to keep you from wandering off. If we spilt up, whatever did this would just pick us off one by one." he stated, in a businesslike tone, before moving to step right past the distraught woman. It was, perhaps, telling that she did not have the heart to go after him or make him look at her in any other fashion, like, say, grabbing his arm, but simply turned in his direction, too daunted by his scowl and the harshness of his voice to pose any serious resistance, her voice small and broken: "But... what about him..."

At that, he sighed in exasperation, even though he did turn to face her. "This laboratory has at least 74 floors, and if we spend our time scouring it for people whose whereabouts and location we have no idea about, we will never get to the surface alive, and what ever escaped from down here will be let loose on the city above; For all we know, your brother has already been dead since before we even noticed that anything had gone wrong, and there was nothing we could do to begin with."

The woman's weepy protests did gain a little in intensity, if not much in streght. "My brother, my kind big brother that has looked after me all my life... – has been eviscerated–"

"No.", he interrupted, with little regards or tact. When the victim's sister looked up, partially moving out of her closed-off, half-curled up posture in both confusion and schock at the further callousness she thought to see manifested in his brazen tone, he merely continued as if he were lecturing her: "He was not eviscerated. Hasn't anyone here been paying the least bit of attention?" He gestured toward the young man's squashed remains on the ceiling with something that resembled casual annoyance. "Do you see any innards, or bones there? There's not even blood, just... goop, and the pattern it's splattered in, like he exploded from the inside out. He wasn't physically attacked, he was liquified, the whole components of the body, transfigurated and rearranged! So think about it. Question: Why carry out such a complicated process and make such a flashy mess, when you could just use a raygun or something, no shortage of those around here. Answer: Because whatever did this has an ability that can be used in an easy, quick and remote way that also happens to do this. Why would it have such an ability? Anwer: Perhaps, because it needs to. Because maybe that's how it... harvests something, something that will make it stronger with every victim that it kills. Therefore, I'd really appreciate it if none of you went waltzing straight into its arms, if you can help it!"

That shut her up.

She remained standing there, silently sobbing, as everyone else reluctantly began to move on ahead, unsure as they might be given the sight of her – and as they were beginning to pass her by, Clara took a deep breath, straightened herself up and summoned up her best impression of a calm, confident face, well-practiced as it was due to her line of work. At least this girl was someone she could more or less read, although few of the people in this corridor would have believed just how inwardly relieved she felt when it turned out that she had correctly anticipated that the younger woman, given her body language, would be receptive to a supportive hand being placed on her back as comforting gesture, and still seemed sufficiently open to, or perhaps even silently craving words of comfort, no matter which source they would be coming from; If she wasn't, she wouldn't have kept talking like that when she realized that the tall, unreadable man ahead of them wasn't going to provide any.

"...Listen... I know that this must be horrible for you. I know it must be hard. We spoke to your brother earlier at the presentation, we... heard about the dreams he had..." she began, cautiously weighing her words and their tone to match and uit what she could gauge from the other woman's face. "He spoke about you, too. I could tell that you two were very close, so... I'm certain that he would have wanted to you to be safe, to... get out of this place now."

"Then how? How? If you and this... this man really met him, then how can he be so... How can he-"

That was most certainly not the direction she'd hoped to steer this conversations toward – She didn't know if he conciously expected her to be like, his personal PR department, but between how he acted, and how she was, the things that were important to her and the things she couldn't ignore, she would probably wind up in that role one way or another, and that, too, frustrated her, because if she was going to wind up having to be his face to the world and explain him to people, it would at least help if she had the slightest clue of what he wanted her to communicate, or what he was even thinking – If she was to be honest, Clara had to admit that she could not speak with confidence when it came to any of this, but for the sake of the person beside her, she had to: "He is... He's just acting that way because he is every bit as stressed out as anyone else here. He's trying to focus on finding a way to get us all out of here, those of us he can get to in time, including you. You have to keep going... Believe me, he's doing the best he can."

"So you say."

And she wished she could say that it was the certain truth, and while it isn't, she really does want to believe, perhaps self-servingly, that it is a bit more than a lie anyways, something vaguely soaring above a mere guess, perhaps something more elusive than certainty, yet imbued with more meaning than a mere hunch, like a hope, a prayer, or a promise, that whatever else was floating around in the thick skull of the man who was walking before her, his dark clothing melting into the darkness, she would probably – hopefully – be in there somewhere, somehow.

(There were – quite a lot of things, storms and flurries of thoughts, cogwheels slowly clicking away at the problem at hand, sorting through various half-thawed threads of associations, foggy recollections of similar situations, tidbits of music that wouldn't shut up and half-finished treatises that had been in the making for years untold, a chaotic mess of various going ons with a few surprisingly focussed components and some parts where it was always raining;

And somewhere in the vastness, there was yet another surreally long blackboard, where yet another tally mark had been added to a very, very long line of these; In here, it was a truly unspectacular, thoroughly granted thing that her concern and support would be duly noted –

Of course she knew, she usually knew, more than she thought she knew, maybe not 'always', as she had once announced with that mysterious smile on her lips, but most of the time, even when he couldn't afford to let it show, even when he was too lost to find it for himself –

And should her own dark days ever come, she might just come to find that he had not forgotten. )