A/N so this is kind of a companion piece to Supermassive Black Hole/Madness. It's got the same sort of main idea. Except this is from Clara's POV.
Wait also can we please talk about the 50th trailer. I REALLY need to let some of these feels out. Or I might explode. Okay here we go I have a list, it may not be coherent but I do have a list:
1. Rose as bad wolf...I think. Whatever. Still...my rose!
2. John hurt John hurt John hurt and is that red crystal thing the moment? TIME WAR OH MY GOD
3. Eleven has a fez! His last ever fez-wearing! Cry
4. David FRICKING TENNANT. What happened to your antigravity hair? But still sexy as ever might I add hahaha I'm a sad person
5. The sonic thing ohmygod. Also the specs.
6. Eleven and ten's synchronised sassy thing! (can you ship the doctor with himself? Is that incest?)
7. Lastly, who-fricking-ffle. Clara cries. CLARA CRIES. I'm gonna cry. That double hi five thING. SO CUTE MY BABIES. THEY WERE TOTALLY GONNA KISS OKAY. also spinny hug. SpinNY HUG. SPINNY HUG. GIGGLING AND LAUGHING IN A SPINNY CLOSE HUG AROUND THE TARDIS. I AM DEAD.
ahem.
As you can see the 50th is going to cause me to dissolve into a puddle of feels. Meaning I will not be able to function due to my being liquid emotion. I apologise for dumping my feels on you. Okay here it is goodbye and thank you.
P.S whoops I forgot the song is called 'Not One of Us' and its from the Lion King 2 (yay for nostalgia). It was recommended by TimeSpaceAnomaly, big thank you to her, you go girl.
P.P.S this involves Martha Jones because she is a bamf and I love her and also I have always wanted to write her and Clara meeting. It's set before Martha left UNIT, and when UNIT was still a big bunch of dickheads. pre-TNOTD.
God these A/Ns are getting to be really long and sort of unintelligible and capslocky. Sorry about that.
•••
Deception
Disgrace
Evil as plain as the scar on his face
Deception (An outrage!)
Disgrace (For shame!)
He asked for trouble the moment he came
Deception (An outrage!)
(He can't change his stripes)
Disgrace (For shame!)
(You know these Outsider types)
Evil as plain as the scar on his face
(See you later, agitator!)
Deception (An outrage!)
(Just leave us alone!)
Disgrace (For shame!)
(Traitor, go back with your own!)
He asked for trouble the moment he came
(See you later, agitator!)
Born in grief
Raised in hate
Helpless to defy his fate
Let him run
Let him live
But do not forget what we cannot forgive
And he is not one of us
He has never been one of us
He is not part of us
Not our kind
Someone once lied to us
Now we're not so blind
For we knew he would do what he's done
And we know that he'll never be one of us
He is not one of us
Deception
Disgrace
Deception
Disgrace
Deception
•••
This time, when she pushed open the TARDIS doors, Clara was greeted with nothing but an irritated whir from above and the familiar glowing chamber that now radiated emptiness.
And a ringing phone.
The sound was so out of place in the TARDIS, echoing jarringly back from the metal walls, too harsh in her ears. As if in answer to the ring, there was a crash and a shout from somewhere close in the maze of corridors.
"Clara? Can you get that? I've just got –bit of a problem...or maybe–fine, it's a quite big bit of a problem...maybe even an entire problem..." whatever his next words were going to be, they were drowned out by another crack and a roaring rush of water.
The frantic splashing and gurgling echoing back from the corridor didn't sound particularly good, but she heard another shout of "answer the phone!" and figured the Doctor valued this call more than whatever water damage he was causing his TARDIS.
It took her at least another three rings to locate the phone, a slim mobile hidden on a shelf under the console, scattered in dust and vibrating angrily. There was no caller ID, just a blocked number.
She pressed answer, wondering who on earth–or any other planet, for that matter–would be calling the Doctor on a 21st century mobile phone.
"Doctor, finally! Thought you'd never answer the thing."
It was a female voice, young yet authoritative and irritatingly unfamiliar. "Hello?"
There was a pause. "Who're you?"
"You're the one calling."
"This number can only connect to one person. What are you doing with that phone?"
"Heard of telephone etiquette?"
The woman on the other end muttered something she couldn't pick up. "Dr Jones, UNIT, scientific and medical advisor."
"Clara Oswald. You want the Doctor?"
Dr Jones, UNIT, etcetera etcetera, sighed. "Yes, I do."
Finally the Doctor emerged from one of the hallways, dripping wet and brandishing a waterlogged top hat. "The old girl may have confused the wardrobe with the swimming pool."
"A certain official-sounding Dr Jones for you." She pointed at the phone. "She says its-" she listened as Jones continued. "a Dalek? Dalik? Something creepy sounding."
•••
"Martha Jones, hello! Long time, no see, eh?" the Doctor tipped his still damp top hat at the only person in the room who actually looked happy to see them. The rest were bustling around with grim lines for mouths, and dull daggers for eyes.
Dr Jones–Martha Jones–smiled, more at the Doctor than Clara, and inspected them with a skeptical sweep of the eyes.
"Not exactly how I would have pictured this new you, going by the voice."
"What's that supposed to mean? Oh–no one appreciates the bow tie," he adjusted the item of clothing in question, scanning the faces of a group of straight-limbed officers passing them. "Bit gloomy, aren't they? Need a hug, maybe, or perhaps just some toffee crisps."
Martha smiled thinly. "Definitely the Doctor. And...Clara, Clara Oswald?"
"Just Clara, thanks. So, you've had a run in with the Doctor before?"
"A run in? Or fifty!"
"Any near-death experiences?"
"More than enough," finally, Martha smiled.
"Alright, alright, chitchat later," the Doctor stepped forward, rubbing his hands together like he did when he was pretending not to be anxious. "Where's the Dalek?"
"We've been keeping it in secure quarters-"
"Have you talked to it? Harmed it?"
Martha let out a deep breath. "Doctor, you know I joined UNIT to transform them, to help them learn about these things. I've changed a lot about them, but...not everything."
She didn't allow him time to reply, and motioned to a couple of passing officers, who saluted both her and the Doctor, before leading them out of the room and down a less crowded corridor.
Clara elbowed the Time Lord in his side as they walked stiffly along, tilting her head at Martha, where she strolled slightly ahead of them. He replied with a lopsided shrug and a whisper of "good friend, few years ago, different face, long story".
"But what's UNIT? You can't just tell me it's an 'alien MI6' and expect me to follow along!" she hissed back. He'd given her a brief explanation of the Daleks, UNIT and how exactly someone could call him in the time vortex, but all of it had been rushed in his characteristic eagerness to set off.
"But that's what it is!" he murmured back, sweeping his hands around through the air, as if brushing away her stubborn curiosity.
Clara sighed, deciding that it didn't really matter and that she could probably gather some more useful information from this Martha Jones, or some other UNIT person. The woman in question seemed pleasant enough to Clara, if you were able to get past her initial stoic trained-military disposition, which she had strangely when speaking to the Doctor.
They stopped before a large metal door, one that looked virtually impregnable for all its heavy bolts and electronic alarms. The officer who had shown then the way set to work on ardently disarming the variety of wards, before giving the three of them a salute and taking a stance by the–now open–doorway.
Clara filed in after the Doctor and Martha, while the second officer stepped in behind her and swung the door shut.
"We have to maintain maximum security in this room. Our occupant is...somewhat of an anomaly," he nodded at the Doctor.
But the Time Lord wasn't listening. He had turned, and was staring over Clara's shoulder at the end of the room that all the overhead lights were focused on. She turned with his still expression–all facial muscles straining to remain neutral–at the forefront of her thoughts.
The creature, or machine, was draped with steel chains as thick as her leg, reflecting the bright artificial LEDS into her eyes. It was metal, probably, with a couple of malicious-looking appendages and a stalk that glowed blue at the end, perhaps whatever could pass for its eye.
In itself, it didn't look like an evil thing. At least not as evil as the Doctor had described to her, back on the TARDIS. He'd used phrases such as 'divinely hateful', 'lusting after violent supremacy' and 'the most infuriatingly unmerciful abominations the universe has dreamt up'.
This thing, this hunk of metal and electronics, did not strike quite the same intense distaste in her own mind. But, of course, she did not know what was inside.
"We found it out in an unoccupied area in Wales. Just wandering around the moors. It hasn't been aggressive, it let us capture it easily. Since then its just been babbling. We're not quite sure what to make of it."
The Doctor had been slowly stepping forward, and now stood directly before the Dalek as it stared right back at him.
"Who...are...you?" it croaked, in a peculiarly curious electronic voice.
"You know who I am," he answered lowly.
The Dalek paused, its eyestalk quivering. "I don't. I don't know who you are."
The Doctor's brow twitched. "I am the Doctor. Surely you know that name."
"No. I don't. If you aren't going to let me out of here, leave. That's what all the others do. After they've sent those monsters in to slash my skin."
It struck Clara that the Dalek's speech patterns weren't what she would have expected from a blood-lusting warrior. The vicious monotone voice didn't quite match up with the words. And these monsters, what did it mean?
The Doctor frowned again, she supposed he noticed it too. But it seemed as though he, unlike her, knew what it meant.
"What is your name?" he asked softly.
"Why should I give my name to a man who does not give me his, and stands so resolutely outside my prison?"
"I can help you, just tell me."
Martha stepped forward, started to protest, "We aren't authorised to unchain it–"
"Not it, Martha. Not it," he didn't take his eyes off the glowing blue light. "What is your name, I'll ask again?"
Another lapse in sound, where the lights on the top of the machine pulsed as if in thought. "Rogers. Will Rogers. I suppose you know that name, everyone does these days."
The Doctor's face morphed into that expression again, that one she knew so well now. That one he made when he realised something terrible, saw something terrible, or knew he had to do something terrible. This time, Clara got the impression that it might be all three.
Martha was standing off to the side, obviously perplexed. It was the previously grim-faced officer who spoke, however.
"But-but that's a human name! How have you gotten it to talk? We haven't been able to get it to respond at all, much less-"
"That's because this Dalek is not an it!" he swung round, glaring at the man. "You've captured, tortured, and chained it, haven't you? I know you've been interrogating it, I know you've been using pain against it!" he was almost shouting now, in that ferocious tone that wasn't quite a yell but was definitely more intensely emotional than his usual babbling.
"Sir, the Dalek is an unquestionably homicidal alien," the officer started to say. " It does not–"
"Not it, he!"
He?
"Will Rogers!" the Doctor continued, spinning around on his heel. "Infamous serial killer, 31st century! Murdered a starfleet captain, stole a ship, never seen since! Wanna guess what happened to him?"
Was this Dalek once a human? Was that what he was implying?
"The Daleks! That's what! Will Rogers was a genius, he had to be, to do what he did. He was also hateful, and psychotic, and angry, all those traits the Daleks just love. So they converted him into one of them, on their little planet for all the ones that go wrong. Emergency temporal shift's working, then BAM! Relocated to a field in Wales. And that's where you people find him, to lock him up and stick him with pins, electrocute him, test his limits, find his weaknesses! And all along, he's been human!"
The shouts echoed in Clara's ears, it was hard for her to piece everything together, he was just yelling nonsense that only half made sense. But the officer was cowering at the door, he looked afraid, with a hand on the holster at his hip.
"You UNIT officers with your guns and your machines, your weapons and your scanners! You think you're doing the best for the earth, but one day you're going to do the worst!"
"Doctor!" she stepped over to him, grabbed his elbow. She was going to say something more, but couldn't find the words, nor construct them into an adequate reply.
He looked at her, mouth pressed thin and taught, but relaxed his jaw. "Right. Right. Yes. Sorry, sorry, uh, mate," he murmured, patting the officer on the shoulder. The other man still didn't let go of the butt of his gun.
Martha was standing in the same stance as before, with an expression on her face that was more saddened than shocked. "Doctor," she warned. "Will Rogers. The Dalek."
Clara looked over at it–him–where it was still under all those chains.
Then it spoke a word that did not belong in its angry, synthetic tone.
"Christ."
In that single word, Clara could believe that this monstrous cyborg really was human.
"Will Rogers," the Doctor stepped forward. "Will Rogers, how did you get where you are?"
"How are...who are...what do you mean, Dalek? They've made me into one of them?"
"Where are you?" he fired back another question again.
"I'm-I'm," the voice choked a little, if that was possible for a machine. "I'm in a room. A prison cell."
"How long have you been there? What have you been doing?"
"I–I think–about four months. There's a tele-screen in here. And–and there's..."
"There's what, Will?"
"There's the monsters. They started sending them in a couple of weeks ago. I don't know what they are. They hurt me."
"They hurt you. Will, could you tell me what you've been eating, drinking? How have you stayed alive?"
"I–I haven't. I haven't been eating. How–how have I...?"
"You are not in a prison, Will. You are a human consciousness inside a Dalek body."
The eyestalk twitched about for a second. "I've been here...I've been in prison..."
The Doctor reverted to his I'm-clever-everyone-listen-to-me voice, which was a lot less frightening for everyone, however irritating. "You are an evil man, Will. You've killed so many innocent just to quench the inferno of your mind. But humans, inherently, are not evil. There is a part of your mind that still wishes to be good, and a part of your mind that will never give up its humanity. This overrides the Dalek tendencies that were implanted in you. The world you are living in is a...reflex, if you like. A survival reflex of your human mind to preserve its humanity."
Not a sound.
Not a movement.
Not a thought.
Then the Dalek/Will Rogers said one short sentence.
"I regret them."
Regret who? Did he mean...
"I regret all of them. Afterwards. But then it builds up again. I can't stop myself. I need to do it. I need their desperate screams. I need their hot blood on my hands. I need the rush of adrenaline as I run from the corpse. I need it all. But I regret it. Afterwards."
The Doctor seemed unable to form words. So Clara did, for him.
She didn't exactly want to speak to this monstrous man-machine serial killer, in fact she was quite averse to the idea. But she did.
"Will?"
No answer.
"Will, you are still human. In mind."
Again, silence. But the Doctor placed a tense hand on her shoulder, as if urging her to step away. She ignored it.
"Humanity isn't in body. It's in mind."
"I stopped being human a long time ago, lady."
Clara had no idea how to respond to that. She felt like a simple sorry was both not strong and unfitting.
But Will continued. "I just want...I just want to feel it again. I'm a Dalek. Can I feel...pleasure?"
The Doctor pulled at her hand, but Clara felt she couldn't move.
"Can I feel...regret?"
She was about to step away when the metal pronged appendage on the front of the Dalek twitched, and she barely registered a white flash shooting out of it before her body went totally numb, and she was seeing only the cold metal floor.
Her mind was fuzzy, disjointed, like static on a television screen, she couldn't move her head to see what had happened, could just see the iron ridges under her cheek.
"Clara! Clara!"
Her sight shifted, the world spun, and she was upright again, propped against the Doctor's arms. Feeling was beginning to return, though creepingly, and she blinked away the dots from her eyes.
"She's fine! She's fine! We disabled the execution ray, don't worry! We couldn't hack the system well enough to extract it entirely, but it only give a slight shock, that's all!" Was that Martha?
There was a hand on her cheek, the Doctor's hand, but then it was gone as he left her to lean against the officer's shoulder, who led her out of the room.
It was only when the door was shut and bolted that Clara remembered that she didn't want to leave the Doctor alone. Not now. But it was hard enough forming words, much less arguing with the UNIT officer...she just wanted...her mind wasn't as messy now but...there was a pressure on her head...she just wanted...wanted...
nothing.
•••
There were voices. Drifting, dancing, chasing at the edge of her hearing. The Doctor–was it?– but his words were tighter, too controlled. And Martha Jones, but hers were the opposite.
"I had to do it, Martha. There was nothing else."
"Of course there was something else! There's always something else! You're the one who taught me that. At least, the other you!"
"It's UNIT who made the final call. I only recommended it."
"They wouldn't have done it without your recommendation!"
"He deserved it, Martha! He was a killer, he killed hundreds of people! And he was a Dalek, who's to say he wouldn't access the hive mind, rebuild his circuitry, run amok? Six billion humans don't stand much against even one of those killing machines!"
"He was human, you said it yourself! He was a human being! What's the real reason you killed him? Because that's what you've done, you've murdered him, an innocent man!"
"He wasn't innocent, and he wasn't a man!"
"He didn't harm anyone! He was regretful!"
"He would have killed her, Martha! I THOUGHT HE'D KILLED HER!"
Then...silence. Sharp footsteps heading away. A sigh.
Silence again.
Clara wished she weren't awake. She wished there was something to fill the silence with, other than her own voice.
But then there was a rustle, and a creak, and finally sound as she felt a hand on her forehead and tried not to flinch.
But the gentleness of his hands, the hands she knew had just done a very terrible thing, made her twitch away. And suddenly, she couldn't stand it anymore. She couldn't stand him anymore.
She sat up, letting his hand fall away, and looked right at him.
"What did you do?" she said.
He looked back at her, but not at her. He was staring into her eyes, but he was also staring at something she could not see.
Very slowly, very carefully, he replied, "I advised the UNIT head officer to shut down the electric systems of the Dalek, cutting off the life support for the creature inside. The consciousness was still partially in a dream state, and it was entirely painless."
Clara swallowed. She'd hoped, even after the conversation she'd overheard, that the worst was not true. But in her experience, she'd realised that it usually was.
"He was human, Doctor."
"He was a Dalek. He hadn't been human for a very long time."
"He had a human mind."
"He had a Dalek form, and Dalek impulses. He would have murdered so many, still. Those beasts have killed trillions, extinguished entire races from the universe. They are the lowest form of evil."
"He regretted everything. He wanted to be human. I thought that's what we were about, mercy, second chances?"
The Doctor opened his mouth to answer, probably with another meaningless argument, but there was a knock on the door. Martha entered, pointedly ignoring the Doctor, and smiled at her.
"You feeling better?"
"I'm...mostly, yeah, thanks."
"Okay if I look you over? There is a reason I'm the medical advisor," she laughed hollowly, flicking her eyes over to the Doctor. He seemed to get the message, and stood up, brushing himself down, before exiting the room.
After Martha double checked her pulse, eye movement, and asked several questions about headaches and coordination, Clara finally said something.
"Did he used to do things like that, when you knew him?"
Martha spent a minute putting away her stethoscope in a bag before saying, "He was different, then. Different face, different personality. But a lot of things are the same. And, yes, he did things like that. It was up to me to try to stop him."
"I wish I had."
"It isn't your fault. I tried my best, and you were unconscious. I just wanna give him the slap in the face he deserves."
Clara laughed a little. "Don't worry, I've given him enough of those to last a lifetime."
Martha smiled back sadly. "I should hope so. He needs it, sometimes."
Her laughs died away into a heavy silence, weighed down by the combination of both of their thoughts. Clara stood up, she'd had enough of these silences.
Before she could go out the door, she heard Martha say something that froze her hand in place on the doorknob, "I know you love him."
Clara took a breath in, and out.
"The Doctor, I mean. I did, too. For a while."
Another breath.
"You shouldn't."
That was what made her turn around and shoot back an answer. "I hardly think an almost stranger can dictate the rules of my nonexistent love life," she covered up the steel in her own voice with a short laugh.
Martha didn't react. "He's not human, remember that. He's a Time Lord. He's not like us. He doesn't see things the same way. He'll do the same to you as he did me. The only thing you can do is move on."
Clara shrugged, half to pretend this conversation wasn't affecting her in the slightest, and half to convince herself that she didn't have to pretend.
"Please, you're smart, I know. Get out."
Clara laughed again. Even to her, it sounded fabricated. "What are we, high schoolers? Platonic relationships do exist, you know. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Time Lord to slap."
•••
As it turned out, she wasn't able to tell the Doctor what he deserved to hear.
And here they were, standing far apart like they hadn't since her very first day on the TARDIS, while the Doctor twiddled with the controls.
She was still thinking. About the Dalek, about Will Rogers, about his death, about the Doctor's shout that she would have been killed, about Martha and about the man himself as he stood before her.
But was he a man?
He'd informed her of his being an 'alien' on their very first meeting. Along with his two hearts, and twenty seven brains.
She got the feeling he'd lied about much more than simply the number of neural organs in his head.
He is not one of us. He is not human.
Did that matter, to her? Not really, but did the lack of humanity go further than simply physicality? Was it that this man was missing some of those inherently human traits, some of those very important things that should have held him back when he did what he had done today?
When she thought about, she supposed that perhaps it wasn't that he was missing some things, but it was that he had too much of others. Anger, for example. Arrogance, vengeance, loss, regret...perhaps even love.
He'd thought she was dead, he'd become emotional. She knew from experience that it was emotions that caused his mistakes.
The Doctor was just a man. Just a thousand year old man who had seen too many things, and was grasping at the fraying threads of his own morality. Not a human, surely, but still.
Just two decaying hearts pounding faster to keep themselves warm.
"Can you take me home?" she asked simply.
He nodded, after a moment, and set to very deliberately pulling levers and spinning knobs, sending them back to the Maitlands'.
When the TARDIS landed, the Doctor opened the doors for her and she stepped out. But she had a thought, from his resigned expression and heavy movements, and turned back around to face him.
"Next Wednesday, right? Same time?"
"Yes, of course!" he exclaimed. "Next Wednesday."
The look in his eyes said otherwise. In fact, they screamed it to the heavens.
She took his hand, which took less effort than it should've. This hand holding thing had been almost subconscious lately, so it wasn't surprising.
He smiled, a half-fake one, but a smile all the same. That's when she stood on her tiptoes and quickly kissed his cheek. "Next Wednesday."
With that, she spun around and up the path to the house, with the Doctor's embarrassed blush still imprinted on her mind, his eyes crinkling with innocent fondness she knew he would never admit to.
He definitely wasn't human.
But Clara definitely knew that she could help him to be; not in body, not in strength, not in mind, but in morality, if nothing else.
•••
A/N so how'd you all like that? Pretty please tell me what you think. I've been feeling a bit sad/scared/stressed/generally unstable lately and you would not believe how happy those reviews make me, even thought they only take a second to write. Please talk to me. Especially about Doctor Who. And the trailer. And the 50th. ExcitemENT.