Clara was woken up by a scream; it wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last either. But no matter how many times she woke up to the sounds of the Doctor screaming it broke her heart. She slipped out of bed, feeling cold from the temperature of the TARDIS and the fear in her heart. The Doctor had had a bad day today; she hadn't seen him much of the day, disappearing after being harsh and short with her all morning. She had expected him to return with that certain look of bloodlust in his eyes that meant that he had taken his anger out on someone else. She had not been prepared for the deep sadness and look of loss in his eyes. He'd been on the verge of tears, she could tell. When she had tried to reach out toward him, though, he had pulled back and disappeared into his room.
Clara climbed out of her bed and walked quickly through the hallways in the TARDIS, knowing the way to the Doctor's room well now. It was hard to believe that there was ever a time she didn't know the way. She could hear the Doctor screaming behind the door and she didn't waste any time knocking. The door was firmly locked and she beat against it furiously trying to get in; the screaming and crying behind the door made Clara sick to her stomach. Suddenly, the door opened and Clara stumbled inside the room.
The sight of the Doctor nearly broke Clara's heart. The Doctor was lying on the floor of the bedroom, blood splattered on the carpet around him and dotting his clothing and skin but Clara couldn't tell where it was coming from. The Doctor was curled in a fetal position, clutching his head as if it might explode. Tears streamed down his face as he called out, screaming obscenities at some unknown force.
Clara kneeled down next to the Doctor, putting her hand on his shoulder. He flinched and turned toward her, hands up as if he feared she might hurt him. Terror flashed in his eyes.
"It's me!" Clara said quickly before he could lash out toward her. "Clara…Doctor, it's me. What's going on?"
Panic crossed the Doctor's face as he clenched his head; he was deathly pale. "Clara…get out of here. It's coming…..it's going to be bad. I don't want to hurt you"
Confusion and fear flooded through Clara's blood. "What's coming?"
"Him" the Doctor said, as if that should explain it. "Leave…..please….."
Clara shook her head firmly. "I can't leave you…..Doctor…where are you bleeding?" she said. She was scared of the fear that had made the normally so brave Doctor crumble but she also scared for him. She couldn't leave him when he looked so desperate.
"Clara, get out!" The Doctor said, pulling away from her. Blood was beginning to run down his nose but she didn't think that's the only place it was coming from.
"No" Clara said, "I can't leave you when you're in trouble"
The Doctor jumped up from the floor, trying to put distance between the two of them. He put his back against the wall, his face so pale it looked grey. "But Clara…its Clever…..leave…..I can't hold it back anymore"
Clara felt a deep dread hit her stomach like ice water. She froze, staring at him like he was a bomb about to go off, which, if she understood him correctly, he was. "What?" she managed to gasp out. She hard to hear it again, had to be certain
The darkness, the one that Clara had come to know well in the past year that had become her hell, was already filling the Doctor's eyes as he was being buried. "Mr. Clever…..he's in my head!" the Doctor gasped before he fell on the floor in a crumpled heap.
Alarm bells were ringing off in Clara's head at the realization and she planned to do just what the Doctor had said and run. But she paused, watching the Doctor slumped and apparently lifeless on the floor. She paused just for a second but it was long enough.
Suddenly and out of nowhere the Doctor jumped up, his pale face filled with the happiness that only accompanied his dark self. He stared at Clara, thrumming his bloody fingers together, giving her the most uneasy of feelings.
"Ah…..Clara" he said, looking at her with the haughty expression of someone that viewed her as property. "I have been waiting to make my way out of his head and see you again for a long time. The Impossible girl, the one the Doctor has such a fascination with."
Clara knew that it was too late to run at this point; she could try but it was pointless. Never in her life should she have heeded the Doctor's words more than when he told her to run. Mr. Clever, the Cyberplanner…she should have seen it before. She had always known that it wasn't the Doctor doing these horrible things. She had known something had to be in his head but she didn't know what. Now it was painfully obvious; the Doctor's mean streak had come out days after his encounter with the Cyberplanner.
"What are you doing here?" Clara asked, her mouth dry but trying to muster as much courage as she possibly could. Mr. Clever would certainly hurt her, had been hurting her all this time, but if she showed weakness already it would cause her more pain in the end. "I thought you left the Doctor's mind…..went into the Cybermen that day"
Mr. Clever laughed, a cold heartless laugh, his red fingers twisting in excitement. "I hid in them for as long as was necessary….but leave? Oh no…what a waste that would be. After having seen the amazing things inside that time lord head, how could I ever leave?"
"What do you want with him?" Clara asked, rage and fear burning in her in equal measure. She didn't know how she could ever get her Doctor back but it infuriated her that Mr. Clever was using his mind for his own personal playground.
"I would think that was fairly obvious by now" Mr. Clever said, tilting his head to the side as if studying her for weakness. She couldn't tell if he found it or not.
"What? The killing, the torcher?" she asked, her anger making her braver. "I'd have thought that you would have had grander plans than simply using the Doctor's body to commit crimes"
Mr. Clever laughed, crossing the space between him and her, making Clara very uncomfortable. She could feel her heartbeat in her ears, throat, fingertips; she steeled herself and stared into his cold eyes as he stood less than six inches from her. Any second he could reach out and grab her; it could happen at any moment.
Mr. Clever put his entwined fingers to his lips, the smell of the Doctor's blood hanging heavily in the air between them. "I haven't seen simply using his body for my own purposes….I've been trying to set free his true inner self"
Despite her fear and maybe because of it, Clara laughed. "Yeah….the Doctor's true inner self wants to kill people, hurt them? I know him better than that"
Mr. Clever laughed, looking Clara over in a hungry way that made her feel sick. "You don't know him at all you silly, pathetic girl" he said. "He lived over a thousand years before you met him. What makes you think you know anything about him? I've been in his head, I've seen it all. You don't want to believe he's capable of the evil that he's been doing but the truth of it is that I've had to hardly had to push him at all to do the things he's been doing…..the only problem has come from him figuring out I was in his head and trying to fight back. He'd feel so much better if he just gave in"
A thousand horrible images flashed through Clara's head about the man the Doctor had become; the nights he had come to the TARDIS covered in someone else's blood, the way he was cruel and heartless to people that he used to seek to save…..the things that he had done to her. She couldn't believe that the Doctor was really capable of such horrible things without the influence of something else.
"The way he's been acting…..that's not him" Clara said, her voice quieter than she would have liked.
Mr. Clever laughed, the sound making Clara's hair stand on end before he reached out and grabbed her. His hands clenched around her wrists, pulling her to him so that her face was less than an inch from his. His grip was impossibly tight and there was no way that she would ever be able to wiggle free. Though Clara had been in dozens of frightening situations at the hands of the Doctor, this felt different. Though it looked like the Doctor, this man in this moment was not the Doctor.
"He thinks you're clever" Mr. Clever said, narrowing his eyes on Clara's. "I can't imagine why. I think maybe he just likes having his ego stroked." He smiled. "After all those times…after all the times he hit until you cried like a little girl, the times he tied you up and made you beg, the times he took your little fragile body for himself…..you still say he's all good? If you believe that then you are truly stupid."
"It was you" Clara said, her voice wavering. She tried to tell herself that she couldn't believe anything he said but it was difficult, knowing that Mr. Clever could see everything in the Doctor's head.
"He comes off as aloof, childish and lost, I know" Mr. Clever said, taking more and more pleasure in the conversation the longer it went on. "But he is anything but…..oh, the thoughts he had about you. He's filthy"
"Stop it!" Clara said, her throat constricting. She knew it was impossible to argue but she had to try. She didn't want to hear it…..didn't want to believe it.
Mr. Clever pressed up against her and she tried not to shudder. "What? I'd take it as a compliment if I were you" he said. "He spent an ungodly amount of time thinking about you. I saw all of his fantasies, his desires…I didn't force him to do anything he hadn't already thought about…..I simply encouraged him to follow his carnal nature. What you saw…that was the real Doctor"
Clara wanted to fight back so desperately but she knew there was no point; this was exactly what he wanted. Mr. Clever wanted her to get upset and insist that it couldn't be true while all the time believing that her Doctor was a damaged and deranged man inside. She couldn't believe that; her head told her not to believe it even though her stomach was clenching in fear at it.
Mr. Clever didn't get the snappy response that he had been hoping for and he grinned. "Ah…..no come back?" he asked tauntingly. "No defense of your poor, pathetic Doctor? Maybe you believe it now?"
"No" Clara said firmly, giving him an icy look. "I just know better than to argue with you. I know who the Doctor really is and you're not him."
Mr. Clever laughed his cold, high pitched laugh. "You mean, who the Doctor was I think" he said sly. "Because your Doctor is gone. Forever…he's been doing a good job at fighting back but he's lost now…the small portion of his mind he was hanging on has been taken over by me." He leaned in close to Clara so that his lips were close to her ear and she shuddered at the sudden proximity. "That means I'm in control now and you have no idea how long I've been waiting for that. I was always in the back of the Doctor's mind, convincing him to do the things that he wanted . But a small portion of his humanity kept holding on." He laughed and Clara felt herself go completely cold inside. "Oh the things I've wanted to do to you…..if you thought the Doctor was harsh, wait until you get a piece of me, untethered by him."
Clara was trying to find something to say but she knew that anything she could say would fall on deaf ears. Terror, blinding fear, filled her up as Mr. Clever took her by the arm and drug her out of the door, laughing in a terrible way as he dragged her down the hall.