A/N hello everyone! Me again. Just a note that this fic will be updated a lot more irregularly than my other whouffle one. Like, I might post one chapter a day or two after the other (like this one!) or there might be a gap of a week or two. It depends on my writing mood and motivation. Sorry :(
Also, it would be BRILLIANT if you guys could suggest some ideas for one shots, prompts and songs. Additionally, if you review I will love you forever.
Today's song is Thousand Years by Christina Perri, which I think is from twilight? Idk I haven't seen it but it's an awesome song you should go listen to it for the full effect. Thousand years is basically the whouffle anthem, every single word fits them perfectly (especially in TNOTD). On that note, this one is basically an insight into Clara and the Doctor's minds during that last scene. Plus additional cool stuff. Enjoy :)
•••
Heart beats fast, colours and promises
How to be brave?
How can I love when I'm afraid to fall?
But, watching you stand alone
All of my doubt, suddenly goes away somehow
One step closer.
I have died everyday waiting for you,
Darling don't be afraid, I have loved you
For a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more.
Time stands still, beauty in all she is
I will be brave, I will not let anything take away
What's standing in front of me.
Every breath, every hour
Has come to this
One step closer.
I have died everyday waiting for you
Darling don't be afraid, I have loved you
For a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more.
All along I believed I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me
I have loved you
For a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more
One step closer.
•••
"I have to go in there."
The realisation struck Clara all at once, now it all made some semblance of sense. The Doctor had seen her before. He had seen her die. Because she had, at this moment, entered his timestream and copied herself a thousand times along it. To save him from the Great Intelligence.
"Please. Please," the Doctor moaned, no longer writhing in pain but collapsed limply on the ground. "No."
"But this is what I've already done. You've already seen me do it. I'm the impossible girl. And this is why."
She had to do it. She had to.
"Whatever you're thinking of doing, don't," River said. River Song. Whoever that really was. The Doctor's wife? But ignored this niggling voice at the back of her mind, it sounded a little like jealousy.
"If I step in there, what happens?"
"The time winds will tear you into a million pieces. A million versions of you, living and dying all over time and space. Like echoes."
Torn apart. Could she do that? Splinter her very being?
"But the echoes could save the Doctor, right?"
"But they won't be you. The real you will die. They'll just be copies."
Copies.
Not real.
But real enough.
"But they'll be real enough to save him. It's like my mum said, 'The soufflé isn't the soufflé. The soufflé is the recipe.' It's the only way to save him, isn't it?"
She was the recipe. The echoes would be her, the echoes would save him.
"The stars are going out!" Madame Vastra had re-entered the chamber. "And Jenny and Strax are dead." Clara didn't miss the desperate struggle for control in her voice. "There must be something we can do."
There was something. There was her.
"Well how about that?" she did all she could to keep her tone and words light, but could not deny that the sight of the crackling red tower of energy and prospect of nonexistence truly frightened her. "I'm soufflé girl after all."
"No. Please," the Doctor grunted, pleaded. She didn't listen to him. It was his only chance.
"If this works get out of here as fast as you can. And..." these could be her last words, maybe, what did she want them to be? What did she want him to know, do, after she was gone? "Spare me a thought now and then."
She knew she couldn't bear it if he'd just forget her. She found it a little ironic, actually, that she'd sort of planned for situations like this. That was why she had denied the so easy and simple way she had grown attached to the Doctor for so long. That was why she had her trick, her rule, that she could travel with him and see planets and save worlds, but she couldn't fall in love. That was the rule. And she had made it to avoid things just such as this, as she knew that to fall in love with that man would end in no happiness.
But here she was. Sacrificing herself, saving him.
"No. Clara!" he half-shouted again. She still ignored him.
She hoped he wouldn't forget her. Because she would never forget him.
"In fact, you know what?" she said, looking back at him and smiling a little. But, dear God, she was afraid. "Run. Run, you clever boy. And remember me."
She leapt forward.
Into the light.
The red light.
Faces.
So many faces.
And voices.
And words.
And stories.
And worlds.
All the Doctor's.
Victories, battle cries, celebrations, winners.
Deaths, fading screams, funerals, losers.
Loves, holding hands, locking eyes, endings.
Friends, running quick, watching skies, always.
Hates, burning might, all the dead, silent.
The Doctor.
The Doctor.
The Doctor.
She knew who he was.
She knew it all. She saw it all. She lived it all.
But who was Clara Oswald?
•••
Shattered.
Clara was shattered.
Shards of herself embedded in the fabric of everything.
She could see, feel, herself living a thousand lives. Dying a thousand deaths.
But somehow, she was also here. In this swirling world of grey and black. On her hands and knees, her hair falling over her face, tears she didn't remember shedding on her cheeks.
She was here, but she wasn't. She simply wasn't. And, at the same time, she was.
But she didn't know who it was that she was.
Was she the Clara who lived a deprived life of poverty and depression, was scorned by the community and resented by the outcasts, who died of pneumonia and whose body lay forgotten on the streets of 16th century London?
Was she the Clara who had grown up too quickly from the loss of both parents as a toddler, wading through the years to become part of the Inter-galactic Union, and eventually married the short blonde boy who once bought her a coffee?
Was she the Clara whose mother wanted her to become a seamstress in 18th century Paris, who looked up at the stars and wanted nothing but to visit them, and then defied her family and her name to move to Strasbourg and become a teacher?
Was she the Clara who strived as hard as she could to get out into space, to explore the worlds, and found herself a Junior Entertainment Manager on the Starship Alaska, who crash landed on the Dalek Asylum and sacrificed herself to rid the universe of its psychotic inhabitants?
Or was she the Clara of 21st century England, who lost her mother at 16 and lost her heart to a weakened family who had lost just the same, who found a crazed monk on her doorstep and ran away to the stars?
She didn't know.
But there was something there, something that was always there. No matter the time, nor place, nor person, that something, or someone, was there. She could see him clearly, though her own self was a haze. She knew his face, though there were many of them, his voice, his words, his story, his name.
The Doctor.
I have to save him. I have to save the Doctor.
Why? Why did she have to save him?
Because he was brilliant, a god of a man, an amazing, great, powerful man. And she knew him. She knew this man.
But she didn't know herself.
And she didn't know where she was, either. A swirling black, gold, dust and smoke and shapes and shadows. Shouts and songs and whispers and winds. Where was she? Who was she? Who was Clara? Did she exist?
"Doctor? Doctor?"
Nothing echoed back but her own fearful voice.
Fear and panic was rising in a stabbing wave in her chest. The infinite, dark world she was crouching in was pressing in on her and rising high around her at the same time.
A sob choked from her throat, "Please, please, I don't know where I am!"
Or who. She knew she was Clara, Clara Oswald, but she was also a thousand other names. A Victorian governess who was really a barmaid, a psychology student in 22nd century Australia, a young servant of a Medieval king, a medic out on the front lines in the First World War, a traveller on one of the first interstellar ships piloted by the human race, and a thousand other people with a thousand other lives and a thousand other stories.
Who was she? Where was she?
She didn't know.
And it scared her more than anything.
"Clara."
A voice. A voice. The Doctor's voice.
The Doctor.
The sound lent hope to her heavy, clouded heart and order to her scattered mind, but it also made dread collect as a tangible thing in her chest, weighing her, something real in all this nothing.
Doctor?
"You can hear me. I know you can."
Yes. That, what was him. That was...the Doctor.
Where was he?
"I can't see you," Clara managed.
"I'm everywhere. You're inside my time stream. Everything around you is me."
A figure ran past, shadowed, white haired, and somehow she knew. It was him. It was the Doctor. And then more, more silhouettes, more faces. And she recognised them. She'd seen them all before.
Familiar voices came calling, whispering, shouting, all the Doctor's. All his.
"I can see you. All your different faces are here."
A man in a coat of a thousand colours, another with a swirl of blonde hair, another in a black leather jacket.
"Those are my ghosts, my past," the Doctor, her Doctor's words echoed eerily. "Every good day, every bad day."
There was a crack, a boom of something like thunder, but it wasn't. The fog of everything around her shook, screams tearing holes through it. One scream rose above the others. It was the Doctor's.
"What's wrong? What's happening?"
"I'm inside my own time stream. it's collapsing in on itself."
"Well get out then!" she yelled. She wasn't going to let him die now, she wasn't going to let him destroy himself now. Not after all she had done. Not after saving him so many times.
"Not until I've got you."
You don't need me. Who am I, for you to need?
"I don't even know who I am," she mumbled into the swirling gold air, although who was this 'she' to mumble? Who was this Clara?
"You're my impossible girl."
And who is that? Whoever it is, she is not her. She is not his impossible girl, she is not Clara Oswald.
She doesn't know who Clara Oswald is.
"I'm sending you something. Not from my past, from yours."
Everything was blurring out, the dirt under her hands, the people lurking in the shadows, all fading into something darker. She was frightened, really frightened now.
And she looked up, fluttering down from somewhere above was a leaf. A golden red leaf. Her leaf. Her mother's leaf. Clara Oswald's leaf. It was clear, she could see it in all the waves of the past. And the future.
"This is you, Clara. Everything you are or will be. Take it."
She caught it, careful not to crumple it into nothing. As if to do so was to crumple herself into nothing. Perhaps it was.
"You blew into the world on this leaf. Hold tight. It will take you home."
She looked around, she wanted to cry, she wanted to lie down and sob herself into nonexistence. Who was she? Where was she? Why was she?
"Clara, Clara, come on!"
Was it real?
"Come up to me now. You can do it, I know you can."
She turned to the voice, the same but somehow different, and he was there. He was there. Safe. He was there. But was she?
"How?"
"Because it's impossible and you're my impossible girl! How many times have you saved me, Clara? Just this once, just for the hell of it, let me save you!"
Real? Real? Real?
She stepped forward. Oh, she hoped he was real. Oh, she wanted to go home.
"You have to trust me, Clara, I'm real. Just one more step!"
And he was there. He was real.
She threw herself into his arms, she needed something to hold into, if not herself. He was real. He was real.
"Clara! My Clara!"
His arms were tight around her too, safe, warm, home.
My Clara.
Was she delusional?
Of course she was.
But she wanted nothing more than to lie down against his warm chest, bury her face in his coat, and sleep.
And just like that the Doctor stiffened, looking at something behind her. When Clara looked up at him, there was very real fear in his eyes.
She turned, stayed pressed to his side, and he kept his arm around her. She felt that if she moved just a step or two away, she would be swallowed by the nothing. Nonexistent.
And there was a man, standing with his back to them.
"Who's that?"
"Never mind. Let's get back," the Doctor whispered, quietly, urgently.
But there was only one person that man could be. Who was it?
"Who is he?"
"He's me. There's only me here, that's the point. Now let's get back."
"But I never saw that one. I saw all of you. Eleven faces. All of them you."
"I said he was me. I never said he was the Doctor."
"But I don't understand."
"My name, my real name...that is not the point. The name I chose is the Doctor. The name you choose, it's like- it's like a promise you make. He's the one who broke the promise."
She looked at him, standing tall and grey and black in all the gold and void.
Something pounded in her head, several things, everything. Everything throbbing, screaming at her.
And there was this man.
And there was the Doctor.
And there was Clara. Who was Clara?
Not her, was it? Was it her?
Was it...
Her?
•••
THE DOCTOR
He could have kissed her.
He really could have kissed her, in the ecstatic relief he was feeling. Clara was right here. Not dead. He'd saved her. He had.
"Clara? Clara! Clara!"
She fell against him, eyelids weighing shut. He caught her before she could fall further, lifted her into his arms she was warm, light. He pulled her against his chest, he wouldn't let go. Not for anything. Not even for the man who stood before them.
"He is my secret," he said, almost to himself, sort of to the unconscious Clara, mostly to the man himself.
"What I did, I did without choice."
"I know."
"In the name of peace and sanity."
"But not in the name of the Doctor."
And he turned, with Clara held against him, suddenly not caring about the man he was leaving behind him, or where he was. Here was Clara, /Clara/, safe.
He could have kissed her.
In ecstatic relief, however. Nothing more, of course. Nothing more.
But, of that, he really wasn't sure.