"Clara! Clara!"
The Doctor rushed out of his TARDIS and into Clara's living room, shouting her name.
"Clara!" he repeated. "Clara! Where are you? Clara!"
The living room was empty. The front door was open. Ellie's blanket and some of her toys were on the floor and Clara's phone lay forgotten on the sofa, but there was no sign of either of his girls. Already the Doctor could feel a sense of dread envelop him.
He quickly checked the kitchen, the bedrooms, every room and corner of the house, and found nothing. Not a clue as to where his family was nor, he realized with horror, a sign of struggle. No matter the Mistress' superior strength, Clara would have put up a fight.
Something was wrong. Clara wouldn't have left the house that early in the morning, when he was due to come home, not without warning him at least. There was no explanation for the opened door other than a rushed departure, but Clara wouldn't have fled. Yet the house was in order, as though Clara had left on her own free will- the Doctor froze on the spot. Had Clara- had she- followed the Master, willingly? The Doctor felt his breath being punched out of his lungs just as he was hit with a sudden realization and a lash of hope: the Master's TARDIS had to be near.
The door was open. Outside, then. He had no way of knowing if the time machine was even still around… but there was no mistake in his mind, as he looked down the street, that he'd found it. The red phone box, which he had paid little mind to over the weeks no matter how much it had sparked in him a sense of wrongness, was the centre of the unmistakable shifting of the continuum that accompanied the opening of the slit in the Time Vortex at the core of a TARDIS…
What a joke, what a cruel mocking of the shape his own ship was stuck in that was, he thought fleetingly as he sprinted towards the box.
In twenty long centuries, he had never run so fast.
~oOo~
Clara slammed open the door of the phone box, hoping against all odds that she had been right. Sure enough, she found herself in a control room not unlike that of the Doctor's TARDIS.
"You're a tough cookie, aren't you?" Missy asked, barely looking up from the controls. For once, there seemed to be genuine surprise and annoyance in her voice.
"You're too predictable," Clara said, feigning confidence. Her heart was beating so fast it seemed about to leap out of her chest.
"Aaah!" Ellie cried out, making Clara turn in the direction of her daughter's voice only to find her trapped in a tiny playpen that looked too much like a cage for Clara's liking.
Ellie's face was reddened and twisted with desperate crying. Clara had never heard her cry for anything other than bumping her head or being hungry or dirty or tired, and the difference was striking, heart-breaking.
"Don't cry, it's alright, Mummy's here- Ellie, don't cry," Clara tried to say, but her tension had to show in her voice and Ellie seemed inconsolable, stretching her arms out towards Clara, wanting 'up'.
The Mistress ignored the crying baby entirely.
"I'm hardly predictable if I caught you so off-guard, pet."
"Let my daughter go!"
Clara took a decisive step towards Ellie, but the Mistress was in between Clara and the playpen in a moment, pointing at her the device she seemed to use as both teleportation and a weapon.
"Ah, stop right there, Clara. We wouldn't want our baby seeing you blown to smithereens right in front of her, right? She's nearly six months old, isn't she? Wouldn't want this to be her very first memory, after all," the Master taunted, smiling evilly.
Clara still found enough bravery to raise her chin and straighten her shoulders. She'd done this before. She'd learned this with the Doctor: to talk away, to buy time, to distract long enough to come up with something, anything. Missy was different, true. She sparked in her a rage no one else had, because of everything she'd done to her, and Clara feared for Ellie as well, but she quickly convinced herself it was no different than any other villain she had faced.
"You already said you won't kill me," she said, forcing a defiant smile on her face. "Threatening me with that won't work now."
Missy laughed.
"Oh, Clara. Clara, Clara, Clara. It's always like this with his pet humans. He shows you wonders, but he never opens your eyes to the cold, harsh truth. You wouldn't be the first, y'know? Though I do prefer torture to execution. I never said I won't kill you, I only think it'd be more fun if I didn't. But you see, I'm so changeable. Force my hand, and I might just decide I'd love to see the look on your pretty face as your useless, meaningless human life leaves your eyes forever."
She smiled at her own words. Behind her, Ellie cried more loudly.
Clara was at a loss for a second, distracted by her daughter's screams.
'Wait. She can wait,' she thought to herself. "I'm more useful to you alive," she said instead. That was always a good starting point.
"How so?" The Mistress frowned for a moment, then seemed to see right through Clara's attempt at distraction and dismissed her impending answer with a wave of her hand. "Have you ever thought about it? Wanted it?" she asked with a wicked glint in her eyes. "Bet you have, if you're anything like I've made you to be. If you're anything like him."
"Wanted what?" Clara felt compelled to ask, despite the terrifying feeling that she was losing the upper hand in this conversation.
"To kill someone, duh! With your own hands, mind you. In your hands. Watch'em keel over."
Clara clenched her fists. It was a truth she refused to acknowledge. She refused to be a pawn in Missy's games any longer-
"Oh boy, oooh boy. Is it me? What an honour!" The Mistress smiled smugly. "I'm always happy to be the one to corrupt the Doctor's little toy-apes. And in just a few minutes too? Why, Clara, I'm flattered! This must be a record. All for a tiny bit of kidnapping and messing around with your body?"
She gave a kick at the playpen. Ellie cowered in the opposite corner with a gasp in between tears. When she started crying again, she did so more quietly.
"Leave her alone!" Clara shouted.
"Oh no, this is too much fun. Didn't know you had it in you, darlin'." She kicked the playpen more forcefully. "This what makes you tick?"
"Stop!"
"You're too easy, I did too good a job with you." The Mistress appeared to be nothing short of delighted. "What if I kicked her instead?"
She leaned down to grab Ellie by the collar.
"No!"
Clara lost it. The anger, the worry, the resentment, the hate for what Missy had done and was doing, to Danny, to the Doctor, to Ellie, it all concentrated in a sharp blade of need to act.
Clara lunged forward and grabbed Missy's wrist, hard, digging her nails in, to hurt her, to make her suffer. The Master looked all the more pleased.
"That's more like it. Show me all of it! Hate feels good, doesn't it?" She snaked her hand around Clara's with a swift movement, forcing Clara to release her wrist, then she wrapped her fingers around Clara's forearm just as fast, trapping her wrist with a vice-like grip. "Now what?"
She smiled.
Clara winced. Her wrist hurt. She moved to kick Missy, but the Time Lady was much faster and Clara found herself with Missy's heels digging into each of her feet.
"Now. What?" the Mistress repeated, face inches from Clara's.
"I hate you!" Clara shouted, tears of anger and frustration rolling down her face.
She pulled back hard to try and break free from the other woman's grasp, but it was no use. Missy leaned in even closer.
"Good."
Clara spit on her face.
The Master looked shocked and disgusted for a fraction of second before smiling darkly.
"I do love a fighter."
She twisted Clara's wrist hard, all the way to the left.
Clara felt the air in her lungs leave her completely. She started crying almost immediately as the bone broke with a sickening 'crack' and Missy shoved her hard, away from her, applying some extra pressure on the newly-broken bone for good measure.
Clara's good hand went to nurse and support the wrist of the other as she tried to keep her balance after being pushed with a far too generous amount of that alien strength. When she looked up again, breathing heavily and with her eyes struggling to focus, she was met with a cocky grin. Missy tossed something at her and, despite the pain in one of her wrists, Clara's uninjured hand caught the object well enough, instinctively.
"It's set on 'kill'. Why don't you try?"
Clara looked down to see the weapon-teleportation device in her own hand. Between the pain and the adrenaline and she sheer feeling fogging her mind, she could only blink at it in confusion.
"Hit right here," Missy encouraged, patting her chest. "Bet you think there's nothing, inside. Or my personal favourite," she added, tapping her index finger on the top of her head.
Clara gripped the device more surely.
"Come on, Clara. Is a little poking and prodding enough to make you press the button?"
"Don't tempt me." Clara raised the device, feeling a new determination, a cold kind of single-mindedness. "Step away from my daughter."
"What if I didn't?"
"I'll make you!"
"Show. Me."
Clara waved the device at her.
"Move!" she half-sobbed.
Missy moved closer to Ellie, who was sobbing brokenly.
"If the little fun I've had so far was enough to make you hate me so much, what will it take you to press that button? Need I touch her? Beat her?"
"You won't hurt anyone I love again! I'll kill you before I let it happen again!"
The Mistress seemed to frown at Clara's words for a moment, but recovered quickly.
"Did I do something to upset you?" she said, pouting. "I honestly don't remember." She smirked.
"You know what you did! What you did to Danny, to all those others! You destroyed everything I had, made me give up the Doctor, made me kill Danny Pink with my own hands! You think I won't kill you? I killed the man I loved because of you! You don't think I hate you enough? You made me kill him! He was dead, I'd buried him, I was mourning him and you brought him back, turned him into a Cyberman-" Clara shook her head, vision blurred with tears, "and now you touch my family-"
"Clara!"
The doors of the TARDIS slammed open as the Doctor rushed in, shouting.
"Doctor!"
"Don't talk to her! She's-" He seemed to notice just then the device Clara was holding. He paled. "… Clara… put that down-"
"She did this to me, Doctor!" Clara interrupted, shouting even more angrily. "She took Ellie, she's the one who made me kill Dann-"
"NO! Don't say anything, she's from the past, you're making this a fixed point-"
Missy started laughing maniacally.
"It's been a pleasure planning your future, ah, pardon, past demise with you two…"
"Missy, no!" the Doctor shouted as Missy flung herself to the console and started the engines.
"… now I see I have much to do!"
The floor shook as the Time Lady pulled a lever too hard, too fast.
"Clara, get out!"
The Doctor pushed Clara towards the still-open doors as he bolted for Ellie, the sound of the Master's TARDIS starting to dematerialize the only thing Clara seemed capable of hearing. The device she had in her hand fell to the floor as she froze on the spot, suddenly unable to move. She thought the Doctor might have said her name as he used his full weight to shove her out of the doors, Ellie in his arms holding tight onto him.
Clara remembered the sound of the three of them falling heavily on the sidewalk and the sound of dematerialization, the pain of landing on her broken wrist. Then nothing but darkness.
~oOo~
Clara sat silently on the bed as the Doctor sat next to her and slowly tended to her wrist, only one hand to the task since the other was pressed against the side of Ellie's face. Their daughter was snuggled up against him, between his thighs, nose buried in his jumper and his scent as she took gasping, shaking breaths.
Clara knew it was her fault. Her throat burned for how much she wanted to cry, but she knew she had no right. No. Right.
How could she have failed to understand Missy had not met her before, yet? The signs had all been there. Clara had just been too emotional to notice.
It was all her fault. All of it. Danny, the attack of the Cybermen, everything. All because she had lost control like an amateur, as if this was her first run-in with an enemy, or the Master, for that matter.
"Will this be her first memory?"
The Doctor did not answer. Instead, he finished wrapping gauze around her wrist, tying it off with a tiny knot before securing a sling around her neck to support the weight of her arm. The dead weight of it hurt and pulled her head downwards uncomfortably, but at the moment Clara was grateful for the pain, which dampened her emotions at least a little.
"I cannot know that," he replied eventually. "It might be, it might not."
Clara closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing steadily, in and out.
"If she remembers, will you make her forget?"
"… no. No, I won't."
His jaw was tense when he moved both hands to hold Ellie to him.
"But-"
"I don't want to discuss it now, Clara."
There was a strain in his voice that made Clara look down in shame. She wished she knew what he was thinking, but he had kept his thoughts strictly to himself since she had woken up, as well as avoiding skin-to-skin contact.
"I'm sorry," she murmured, though it meant next to nothing. The only thing she could be relieved about was that at least she had been the one to suffer most of the consequences of her stupidity and emotional outbursts.
"I know."
"Do you… do you want me to leave?" she dared to ask.
The Doctor sighed tiredly, caressing Ellie's hair.
"You think I blame you."
Clara blinked at him, stunned, but he didn't meet her eyes, instead staring into the mid-distance.
"Of course you do! It's my fault, I-"
"You think you did this out of hate."
"I did, I did, I'm sorry, Doctor, I'm so sorry, I was so mad and she kept-"
"Clara."
"I have no excuse but-"
"Clara." She looked at him again and this time their eyes met. "You think you did this out of hate," he repeated. "You didn't. No one ever does. Hate is a flimsy, feeble thing. You tell yourself that's why you did it, because the truth is so much simpler and so much more frightening. You think you pointed a weapon at Missy out of hate. You think that's why she's like this, chases me, hurts me. You think that's why I don't want you in my head right now. But it's not." He took her hand and squeezed. "Clara."
'It's not.'
The force with which he pulled her into his mind was enough to startle Clara, and what she found in his thoughts surprised her even more.
'You think I don't love you anymore. You think I'm angry. You've gone off after Missy on your own. You would have taken a life, given up your soul. You put your own life in danger. All of that, you did out of love.' "You think I'd stop loving you after what you have done, Clara. But after that, after that, Clara, I could never, ever stop."
Clara paused to just feel what the Doctor felt, so different from her concerns. The certainty he held that she had never done anything hateful, only fierce, loving. The way he saw what the Master did and had done for centuries, the attempt to force a friend who had wants and worldviews too different to allow reconciliation to come back.
"Hate is banal. It's petty and ordinary. From it can come unspeakable pain, but no outstanding gesture ever comes out of so dull a feeling. Love is what makes things great, for better or for worse."
"I think you were wrong." Clara whispered, squeezing his hand in turn. "When you said that love isn't complicated."
"Love isn't complicated, Clara. What makes things complicated is what we are ready to do in its name and what we are ready to ignore and overlook when we are in love with someone."
The Doctor leaned against her then, letting her rest her head on his shoulder and his head on hers, bringing her hand to touch Ellie's. Slowly, with both her parent in her mind, the little girl gradually calmed down and eventually fell asleep. She looked serene, Clara thought, as though nothing had happened, but Clara doubted that things would ever be the same ever again, regardless of what the Doctor thought.
"It will be okay, Clara," he reassured. "We'll be okay."
Just then, Clara was content to believe him and hope his certainty would be enough for her, too. Because she trusted him. Because she loved him.
And that, in itself, was not complicated at all.
.
.
.
A/N: What can I say? I like bittersweet endings. I hope you don't hate them too much.
I know it's been almost a year since I updated. It was a year of depression, anxiety, chronic illness and having to drop out of university. Still, you stuck with me all this time, giving me your support, and for that I'm eternally grateful. I tried to finish this fic before S10 starts tonight and we get to know a different companion… I hope I'll get back to writing more often now, but even if I don't I'm proud of this fic and all of you make me so, so happy. You've been wonderful, thank you for sticking with me 3