* Hello everyone. So the resolution of the Silence chapter is upon us and I hope you enjoy it. Very action-packed chapter, with electricity at the heart of it. There's not too many Doctor/Clara moments in this chapter but the next one is very Whouffle, so I'm hoping to make up for it. Nevertheless, enjoy and many thanks to everyone who has followed, favourited read and reviewed. Please keep reviewing, it means a lot to me :) TPD*
Clara could almost feel the electrical current running through her as she kicked down the door to what looked to be a warehouse of some sort, thankful she was wearing insulated boots that didn't attract electricity. The Doctor had told her that this building would have the maintenance access she required, as according to him it was the purpose of it. Sure enough, as she clambered down the metal steps, desperately trying to avoid touching anything, she spotted a door in the corner of the basement. She soniced it open and stepped into the eerie tunnel. It was dimly lit and small, making Clara instantly feel claustrophobic and reminding her of a Cold War submarine from so long ago.
It had probably been a year, she realised, her heart jumping with a jolt. The Doctor always tried to even out days, so if they spent a month on the TARDIS, he'd compensate by taking a month out of home life. He'd saved up a lot of TARDIS time, so the fact that they hadn't gone home in a month was counterbalanced by that. And, according to the Doctor, they'd taken a week's holiday, which she didn't know was possible in a school but rampart food poisoning had that effect. They'd have to do something to celebrate. Like get married. As soon as she thought it, she felt her stomach twist the way it always did when she considered it; a mixture of excitement, nerves and terror. She knew that was normal with any marriage, let alone one to a 1200 year old alien with two hearts, a time machine and an insane sex drive. But it felt incredibly weird to consider that in a few months, she'd be marrying the Doctor. When they got back, she decided, they had to have a massive party, invite everyone and announce it. She smiled at the thought. They could do it in the new house. The Doctor apparently still had some friends kicking about he wanted to invite and she thought that it was sweet that he'd instantly ruled River off that list, although she sensed River wouldn't like the idea of watching her husband become engaged anyway.
As Clara reached the end of the corridor, she was pulled out of her thoughts and back to reality. There was a fork at the end and the Doctor had told her to use the sonic and let it guide her. As she reached the fork, she prepared to scan, though what she was supposed to be scanning for was beyond her. She hated this psychic interface business, why didn't the sonic just tell her where to go? But as she looked to her left, she saw a Silent and froze on the spot. It snarled at her and Clara knew she had to run. But the second she stopped looking at it…Unless someone told her to run away from it…
"Clara, run!" she told herself and swivelled, running down the corridor with no real idea why other than that she was probably in danger. She could still remember her task down there, so putting two and two together, she reckoned she'd seen a Silent. She would have glanced over her shoulder to see if it was still following her, but she didn't want to have to keep repeating the same internal reasoning over again. She felt static build up around her and heard the Silent roaring. If you could call it a roar. It was more of a hoarse gasp. Clara reached a doorway and ran through, electricity crackling around her, as she threw it shut and soniced it, hoping it would stay put under the Silent onslaught. She could still feel the electricity coursing through her and it was really starting to hurt. Clara was also beginning to feel faint. She was starting to think she should have been worried when the Doctor mentioned dangerous levels. Clara looked around and figured that she had to be in the control room. There were lots of complicated computers and generator things. She quickly looked around and realised that there was a set of switches, numbered 1-20. She grinned. That must control the lights, she reckoned and flipped them all up to maximum. She felt a pain in her chest and staggered back, the crackling electricity on the other side of the door getting louder and being compounded by a loud banging. The Silents were getting in.
The Doctor had just finished fiddling with the light when the city began to be flooded by lights. He smiled to himself, hopping down from the cart he'd been stood on to look around. Everything was set then. The lights were up to maximum and he'd configured the chain to blast inwards when it overloaded. All he needed Clara to do was overload the system. He bit his lip. He hoped she was hanging on alright down there. If there were Silents down there with her, they'd be buried alive in… nineteen minutes, but they could do plenty of damage in that time. At least with the lights up to full, he knew she'd found the control room and was probably safe. More safe than him in any case. They would be awake by now and that was even assuming that the dozen they'd fended off were the only Silents around. The Doctor kept glancing around, ensuring he had a pen handy to mark his skin if required. He cursed himself for not giving Clara the same advice.
The Doctor kept mostly to the shadows, lingering on the edge of the circle. He'd need to message Clara twenty seconds or so before he soniced and he had every intention of sonicing the light from outside of the circle, rather than inside it. He had a sudden thought for the TARDIS, trapped in the middle of a swirling, electromagnetic vortex, but told himself that he was being silly and she was sufficiently shielded. He supposed that he'd probably need to get inside her anyway and he hadn't quite figured out how he was going to take down the force field before the overload. Ah well, one problem at a time. Seventeen minutes. A horrible thought hit him. If they didn't overload the system in the next seventeen minutes, then there would be no system to overload and who knows what the Silents would do then? He took a deep breath. Time to draw them out then.
"Come out, come out wherever you are!" the Doctor yelled, grabbing the handles of the cart and pushing it forcefully into the side of a building, ignoring the pain that wracked his arms through the electromagnetic forces. Another thought hit him at that moment. He was crackling with energy. Even if he was outside the circle, he would probably light up like a Christmas tree. So would... No, he told himself. Clara was earthed. Literally. There was no way the electrical currents would penetrate down that far. He licked a finger and pressed it against the ground, earning a shock for his troubles. He had to find a way inside the TARDIS in the next fifteen minutes or they were both dead. A crackling to his left shattered his thoughts. The Silents had arrived.
Clara tried to stay alert, but her entire body spasmed with electrical energy. She collapsed to the floor and tried to breathe but her lungs felt heavy. She thought back to her rudimentary physics. There was one way to get the energy out her body. The same way that the Silents did, discharge it. But she would have no control over the discharge; she would probably kill herself at this point. Unless, she did what the Doctor had done. But he'd said that was risky and would be far too dangerous. Then again, she got the impression that her entire body was about to shut down anyway as another powerful wave struck through her and she screamed in pain. The door crashed open and Clara realised she had no choice.
"Please work," she whispered. And then she activated the sonic.
The shockwave that left her felt like a release. She gasped in relief, like an incredible orgasm of electrical energy that shot all in one direction. With the sonic guiding the discharge, it flew out in a single current, straight through the two Silents that were at the door, disintegrating them instantly, before pinging all the down to the end of the corridor and crashing against the opposite wall, so far down the other end. She was in agony, but she was free of the pent up energy and it had never felt more merciful. The Doctor had just blasted electrical energy in every direction. He'd had to, in order to knock them all out. But when she'd done it, it had all discharged in one way, leaving the equipment and Clara safe. She grinned at her sonic and kissed it. Looks like it could be independently clever after all.
Reminding herself to thank the Doctor later, she turned back to the console, seeing if there was anything else she could do to help the Time Lord out. Then she spotted something that looked like it shouldn't be there. Or at least, she thought not. Everything else was grey or silver, metallic on the console, but there was a small black box, that had been manually plugged into the system. As she placed a hand on the desk, she yelped as another current zipped through her. She muttered painfully. It looked as though she wasn't completely free of the built up static yet. She examined the box further. The controls looked very annoying and complicated. Clara bit her lip. Could it be controlling the force field? Well, at this point, she sensed there was very little else it could do, and nothing that would compromise the Doctor. She unplugged the device. It gave a little splutter, then something happened. There was a noise, like something being deactivated. There were no screens though, so Clara couldn't see what was being deactivated. She turned her attention to the light switches. The red lights on top of them were all holding firm. She prayed that that had worked. Then allowed herself a moment of triumph. She was most definitely on a roll. Then, her sonic whirred of its own accord and she delved into her pocket. As she opened it, a message formed itself. GERONIMO IMPOSSIBLE GIRL! X She smiled at it and pushed her sonic against the console. Geronimo indeed. She pressed the button.
The Doctor ducked low as another bolt of electricity sailed over his head and the Silent howled in disbelief and what the Doctor hoped was anger. He was running out of time. He had just eleven minutes left to get to the TARDIS and find a way to deactivate that wretched force field. He skidded round a corner and realised that he was hopelessly lost. He was definitely going the wrong way. He couldn't remember what he was running from. He turned on the spot and ran the other way, keeping the thoughts TARDIS and force field present in his mind. He could not let himself forget, Clara's life depended on it. He knew there were Silents around somewhere, he could still hear them and he guessed he'd probably seen them. Suddenly, he realised he'd seen this part of the city before. He was finally on the right track. He passed through a square and realised that the Silents were on his tail. They'd left him nowhere to run, all the alleys were blocked off and they began to converge, howling and crackling. Well, almost nowhere.
The Doctor soniced and ran, kicking open a house door and pounding through it, hoping that when he kicked down the back door, there wasn't a Silent waiting for him. There were three, but he kept running, pushing past them as electricity crackled all around him. He yelped, couldn't remember why he was running, then thought TARDIS, force field and it all came flooding back. Clara. Silents. Force field. TARDIS. The same four thoughts, over and over again. He only had five minutes left, he thought. Five minutes until Clara died. And he couldn't have that. Not before they were married. He veered left and right, desperately weaving to avoid the blasts of the Silents. There were lots of them, he decided as they fired from what seemed like all angles. If just one of their blasts got a direct hit, he was finished. The air felt heavy with all the electricity and he staggered, running to almost a halt as he stumbled into another square.
And, there she was. The TARDIS. His TARDIS. TARDIS, Clara, Silents. There were something else. Force field! He clicked his fingers and stumbled over to the old girl, pulling out his sonic again, desperate to see if there was something he'd missed. The Silents converged. Two minutes. Nothing. He'd not missed anything. Sadness turned to anger as the Doctor stared down the monsters. Then, there was a flicker. The Silents were as distracted as he as the force field clattered down. Clara had done it. She'd lowered the force field. The Doctor loved her more than he'd thought possible in that moment and sent her a psychic message. A few seconds later, the lights sparked and the Doctor ran over to the nearest one, situated right behind the TARDIS. He activated the sonic. The light exploded, a veil of energy surrounding it and it formed a chain with the two nearest lights, which were streets away. The Doctor was already moving, throwing himself into the TARDIS and throwing levers. He could hear the Silents scream as they were barbequed and he felt his sonic pulse. Clara. He rammed it into the TARDIS and the machine whirred into life, complaining about the electromagnetic field that was surrounding them.
"If you let Clara die because of a tiny bit of electricity, I'll shut you down and leave you to rot!" the Doctor yelled. "If I can handle it, so can you!" He felt his body spasm and pulse with every switch he flipped, the electricity burning his insides. "For Clara!" he screamed as the TARDIS landed. The doors opened and a very small, very scared, very static girl dived in, yelling to get out as explosions and electromagnetic forces filled the air outside the TARDIS. The Doctor flipped the take-off lever and staggered back, yelling in pain. Clara hobbled over to him, only just in better shape than he was. They fell to the floor of the TARDIS together, writhing in agony for a few seconds, before the TARDIS whined and the Doctor sat up, still pained.
"What took you so long?" Clara said breathlessly, grinning at him but holding her side. "I had to deactivate the force field all on my own, and defeat two Silents while you ran about like a headless chicken."
"I did not run about like a headless chicken!" the Doctor protested. Then, after a moment's pause, he relented. "Maybe there was a lot of running and ducking and dodging and headless, chickening type stuff. But the important thing is, we both made it. Are you okay?"
"I feel like my head's going to explode," Clara admitted. "It nearly did back there. I was so full of static, I had to use the sonic to discharge it. Luckily it worked, fried the Silents good and proper. Oh don't look so shocked, I'm awesome."
"Clara, you could have died," he complained. She could tell he wanted to hug her but neither of them could move, they were still suffering the after-effects. "But I must admit, you were incredible out there. Whatever you did, you saved us."
"Nah, you did all the heavy-thinking!" Clara giggled. "And it was mainly the sonic to be honest. There was a lot of pointing and thinking involved. So the feedback worked then?"
"Seemed to," the Doctor managed to stand and hobbled over to the console. "Even if it didn't we're alive and free from them and that's the main thing. The TARDIS is gently lowering our static levels," he informed her. "It should take a few hours to be complete, but you should be okay to stand soon." She nodded. "I love you Clara."
"I love you too Chin-Boy. Now, is there any chance in hell you could carry me to bed. All I want to do is lie back and get rid of this static build up in peace."
"I would!" he promised her as she raised an eyebrow. "But any contact between us is still prohibited, given the circumstances. The TARDIS was getting pissy with me before, about too many levers." He flinched and she narrowed her eyes. He tried to hide his hands from her, but she was just about on her feet now and hobbling towards him. He winced as she looked at them, looking around for something to use to grasp them with. There was a pair of rubber gloves under the console and she snatched them up, examining the Doctor's hands. Her breath caught in her throat and the Doctor looked ashamed. His hands were red raw and burnt to a crisp. Tears slipped down Clara's cheeks and dropped onto them, which the Doctor seemed to find oddly soothing.
"How did this happen?" she whispered. "Saving me?"
"I needed the TARDIS to cooperate," he muttered. "A lot of lever flipping, a lot of electrical discharges, it was nothing I couldn't handle."
"Couldn't handle?!" she almost exploded. "You've done some serious damage here Doctor. These need serious medical attention! Now! I can't believe you did this!"
"I'd rather that than have you barbequed the same way as the Silents," he responded, with a bitter edge to his voice. "Clara, there was no other way and I don't regret it. There's a cream, in the Medical Bay. It'll fix it. Argh!" he yelled out in pain as his hands flared up and Clara was torn for an instant between holding him, still wearing the gloves or running to get the cream. "Go. Cream. Please!" he begged and she let go of him and ran. He slipped to the floor and as hard as Clara tried to block it out, all she could hear was his yelling. The TARDIS seemed to be as in pain as she was, as the Medical Bay was the first room she came to and there was only one light on in the entire room, in an open cupboard. Clara ran to the cupboard and grabbed the only thing in there. It had to be the cream. She hurriedly read the label as she ran back to him. He'd stopped yelling, his sobs now down to almost a whimper. She unscrewed the cap and pulled off the gloves. She heard him mutter no but she didn't care. She ignored the wheezing TARDIS and poured the cream onto her hand, before rubbing them together and then lathering them onto the Doctor's. The moment they touched was pure agony, but Clara felt okay after that, as the cream covered their hands. She could hear the Doctor get better, but she could also see it. He looked up and smiled at her and they sat like that for seemed like an age. Hand in hand, the dull pain gradually subsiding, until they both fell asleep on the TARDIS floor, hands still intertwined.