They wanted him and Rory to get involved in the planning of their girlfriends funerals. He thought that notion was sick, that they were treating it like some stupid party, and couldn't even begin to wrap his head around it, because if he started to plan, if he started to tell people, if he tried to talk to her Father, then it meant she was really dead. That she was really gone.
"John," he said, trying to mimic the brotherly tone Elijah had captured perfectly. "I said no. I don't want to plan her funeral, and neither does Rory." John sighed, and sat down across the table from where The Doctor was currently working. He was typing furiously, trying to capture every detail from when he first noticed an echo of Clara, because he thought that if he saved her memory, he could save her somehow. He would save her.
"Look, I know you don't want to get involved with…" Rose swung into the room, and sank down next to him. Her blonde hair hang in lank strips around her makeup free face, and she looked truly exhausted, her eyes slipping shut even as she was talking to him. "Their resting," she chose the words carefully, "But it's making me feel better, honestly."
"You don't look like it." He snapped, and then looked down at his laptop again. He didn't ever consider that he would ever once snap at Rose, but that was when he was a foolish young man, who had not just seen his best friends die. That was in a different life, when he had a different face, and he felt like this face had seen more desolation and despair than the face she knew had ever seen, and he didn't feel like she even knew him anymore. He didn't know her anymore.
"They were my best friends." She said slowly, reaching out and gripping his hand with her fingers, "I know how it feels."
"No you don't." he said softly, "because you haven't lost John. Hopefully you never will. I've lost friends, and it doesn't hurt as badly as when you lose the love of your life." He slammed the computer shut, pulled his hand out of her grasp, and nearly fled the kitchen, disappearing into his room, closing his eyes. The love of my life.
The first time he leaves his room, and he gets bombarded with helping plan a funeral like it was prom.
The room is, quite frankly, a mess. Usually he keeps things neat and tidy, the TARDIS always used to be spotless, something Amy used to tease him about endlessly. A pair of spare sheets were strewn on the floor, the first day after Clara died, that first night, he refused to sleep in his bed. It still smelled like her, was still wrinkled from where she had lain that terrible night, and he didn't want that impression on his bed ever to fade. Didn't want that smell to fade into the distance.
So he slept on the floor. He placed his laptop on the desk and knelt down, attempting to straighten the covers from their misshapen heap on the floor. The picture of Clara he kept next to him while he slept clattered to the floor as he shaked the covers out, and he quickly picked it up and set it on the desk as well.
When Amy and Rory left him in Manhatten, and the halls of his ship were devoid of laughter and flashes of ginger hair, he built himself a cloud so no one could hear him sob at night for hours on end, so no one could hear him scream when it got to be to much, and he always kept a picture of them in his pocket. He still did. It was folded up, and whenever things got especially bad, he would pull it out with a quiet smile, examining the light on all three of their faces, and if he closed his eyes, just for a moment, he could hear that Scottish voice and that centurian, teasing him about his bow tie.
He had two pictures of Clara, one that he placed on the pillow next to him, and the other stowed away in his pocket for when it got to be to much. He pulled out that picture now, and smiled in sweet sadness.
It was a picture Elijah had taken of her one day by the lake, when she wasn't looking at him, her eyes focused on something in far off in the distance, her brown hair lifted gently by the wind, her small petite lips lifted up in a dreamy smile. His Clara.
He tucked it away quickly, abandoning his efforts to clean his room. Clara always liked things neat, and it reminded him of why he had the sudden need to be messy. He couldn't think of her and had to think of her all at once, and it was to much to bear sometimes.
A piece of paper had swirled to the floor when he bumped into the desk, and he picked it up, his breath catching in his throat when he saw Clara's handwriting.
When she woke up, the first thing she registered was white. Her eyes began blink wearily at the only spot of color in the rumbling room, which was a streak of red hair.
"Clara?" Amy's voice cut through her haze, and Clara sat up, rubbing her forehead.
"Amy?" she asked, because she was dead wasn't she? She couldn't possibly be alive. Not after that. The surface in which she was sitting on was shaking, and she could barely scoot over to the ginger girl.
"We're not in the simulation anymore." Amy whispered to her, her breath tickling Clara's ear. Clara's eyes went wide, and she stared at Amy in disbelief, before quickly scanning her surroundings. The rumbling white room was small, so small that even her short legs were crammed against the opposite wall. There was one small window, high on the opposite wall, and Clara quickly scrambled to her feet, standing on her tip toes so she could see through the slightly warped glass.
A soft whoosh of air flew out of her lips when she saw what was outside. It wasn't an uncommon sight, she had traveled enough with the Doctor to get used to seeing the stars up close. She could immediantly tell that they were moving however, moving very fast, and she sank to her knees, pressing a hand to her stomach as the white streaks imprinted themselves onto her eyelids.
"To fast for you to see anything?" Amy asked her, and Clara answered with a quiet nod. She wasn't quite sure how to react to Amy, she could still feel the gun the other girl had pressed to her back, and didn't think she would forget it anytime soon.
"I couldn't control my body when I held the gun to your head." Amy said, answering Clara's unspoken worry. Clara gave her a weak smile in return, all doubt vanishing from her. She did trust Amy, and she to had no choice but to fall from that plane, her legs had minds of there own.
"Where's the Doctor?" she asked her, and when she looked up, she was surprised to see tears had risen to the surface in Amy's eyes.
"They left them." She said, avoiding Clara's eyes. "When he remembered, and you woke up, they abandoned the ship. Evacuated. Left them to live and die a thousand times in that bloody world."
"What about us?" Clara demanded.
"We're their prisoners." Amy said, staring at her feet. She didn't elaborate, and Clara didn't ask her to.
"The Doctor will come for us." Clara reassured her, "he has to." Amy simply turned her head from her, resting it against the opposite wall, as if she wanted to sleep. Clara curled her legs up underneath her, and closed her eyes as well, but she wasn't trying to sleep.
"I love you too." His words came back to her in the dark, and she bit her lip, wondering the truth behind those words. Did he really love her? Or was he simply saying that because she was dying? She had always believed in giving comfort to the dying, and she had told him as much when they had encountered a dying homeless alien in the back streets of some far away planet. Was he simply adopting her notions for her sake? Those thoughts were pressing at the barriers of her mind, and even though she tried to distract herself with real life problems, like how the hell they were going to get out of here, but it kept coming back like a recurring cold, preventing her from any escape.
"Are you awake?" a small voice echoed through the room, and the far right wall slid open, revealing a small woman with her head bowed.
"What's it to you?" Amy asked, straightening up. The woman shrank a little from her fiery gaze, but Clara just nodded.
"My Master was wondering if you would have the pleasure of dining with him." The woman said, her eyes trained solely on the floor.
"And who is your Master?" Clara used the voice she had developed when she met the cybermen, and it later attributed to her teaching skills, it was the perfect mix of bossy and demanding, and it usually worked well to her affect.
"I'm not authorized to say that Miss." The woman said, and she took a tentative step into the cell. "I'm just supposed to get you looking presentable."
"What if we don't want to go?" Amy matched Clara's tone perfectly, and Clara had to refrain from smiling. Her and Amy would make a good team.
"I'm afraid if you refuse," the woman's voice was still small, her mousy hair seemed to wilt with every continued word. "You will be forced into going."
"I thought it was optional."
"I was supposed to say that first Miss, and if you refused I was supposed to say that there is no other option." Clara's eyes met Amy's across the room, and a silent agreement seemed to pass between the two women. They both gave a brief nod, and the woman clapped her hands.
Immediately the room was filled with things. They resembled mice, but were the size of humans. They grabbed Clara and Amy by the arms and roughly heaved them to their feet, dragging them out of their cell out into the unknown.
When people say that dead bodies look like they're sleeping, they're lying. They tell themselves that to fool themselves into thinking that they're still in there somewhere, that they will wake up with an exclamation and a hug. The Doctor had never been one of those people. He had seen enough corpses in his lifetime to know when someone was dead, and Clara was no exception, no matter how badly he wanted her to be alive, he had thrown the letter across the room, because it was all to much.
"Hello." He said to her. She didn't move, she didn't respond. The people behind him tutted in sympathy, and he was sure he wasn't the first, or the last, lover to talk to his dead girlfriend during the viewing. "I'm doing okay. You know, with one heart and all." He tried to lift his voice up into a happy peaceful town, but it sounded squeaky and pathetic to his own ears. "Anyways, I just wanted you to know-" his voice choked off with the rising sob, "know, that I won't stop trying. Because we're not finished yet Clara. Trust me." He rooted around his pocket, and finally pulled it out.
It was the key. The TARDIS key. He had walked down to the lake this morning, and there it sat, on a rock. He had picked it up immediantly, and had always known, at least in the back of his head, that he would leave it here with her.
"I never know why," he whispered to her, "I only know who."
He regained his composure and walked away, examining Amy's body. Rory was staring at her face, tears still staining his cheeks, and he nearly fled. He couldn't face Rory's pain, because the terrible guilt infested his insides like worms. If Rory knew, if he even had the slightest idea of who the Doctor really was, he would stare at the other man with hatred, and he deserved it.
He had managed to lose his Clara and his Amy both in the same day. How was it possible to lose so much and still be breathing? He nearly ran out of the hall, determined to get away from the imagined stench of dead bodies, the echos of all the laughs he'd shared with each of them.
"Where do you think you're going?" Rory was on him before he could escape, and the Doctor warily turned around, his eyes looking anywhere else but his best mates face. "Doctor, wh
"Rory?" his eyes were now being pulled to his large-nosed friend, "How- What?"
She felt like a doll. Every single inch of her face was covered in make up, her hair pulled back into pristine curls, her body stuffed into a deep blue dress. Clara had never liked tight dresses, and this one was no exception. It clung to her like a second skin, and she immediately had the urge to fling it from her body. It was the color of the TARDIS, and it made tears rise to her eyes when she stared at it to long. It was strapless, and matched the heels that seemed to be glued to her feet. It showed far to much skin for her liking, and didn't help that Amy stood next to her in the same thing, and it looked like it was specially formatted for her body.
"Where do you think they're taking us?" Amy leaned over and whispered in her ear. She had to slightly kneel, because even in heels, Clara was still way shorter.
There was a guard on either side of them, their guns still pressed to the small of their backs, and Clara had a feeling that neither one of them would hesitate to use them.
The ship, as far as she could tell had several different levels, and was all white., except for the people and various aliens that lined the halls. No one said a word, just watched them with wide eyes as their heels cracked against the floor. Every time she tried to look down a different hall, one of the guards would nudge her even more foreword, and she would stumble slightly.
They finally made it to a pair of elaborate purple doors, so far the only color in architecture she'd seen. The guards didn't follow them in, but shoved them through the doors. Amy reached out and steadied Clara, years of practice with the Doctor's clumsiness making her reactions quick.
"Welcome, welcome, ladies." A man declared, whirling around slightly, and as he faced them, Clara gasped.
"Doctor?!" Amy burst out before Clara could reply, and she started forward.
"Yes, yes, yes." The man babbled, "I get that a lot." Clara grabbed Amy's wrist and gripped it tightly, preventing the other girl from moving any more forward. The man, or thing, before them was identical to the Doctor in every detail, except for the metal swirls lining his face, outlining his jaw. "Funny thing, that."
"How are you here?" Clara snarled.
"It is very simple really," the man cackled happily, "We needed a better Cyber-Planner, and here I am!" his voice was the same as the Doctor's, but it rose in a sickening screech, his teeth looked suddenly metallic, as did almost everything about him. His skin was pale silver, his fingers rough and clumsy.
"Why do you look like the Doctor?" Amy demanded.
"The Cyber-Planner before me sent me the data. Did you really think there was only one Miss Clara?"
"You can't be here." Clara repeated, "because we blew you up."
"Don't you listen? I am simply a copy of the other Cyber-planner, and all the information we needed to require was in your head!" he gestured towards the table, "Draw up a chair why don't you?"
"What do you mean?" Clara's voice was shaky, and she didn't move. "What do you mean in my head?"
"Well, and mine of course." A man said, and they both whirled around. "Do you like my machine? I picked him out of your memories." To further prove his words, the Cyber-planner sparked, and collapsed on the table, steam rising from it's corpse. "A few faults, but…" he trailed off.
"Who are you?" Amy sounded sick of all the games and riddles being woven around their heads, and Clara was with her.
"An old… friend of the Doctors." The man grinned, and he showed all his teeth as he did so, making it not very lovely at all. "You may call me The Master."
"The Master? That's worse than the Doctor." Amy scoffed. The Master approached her, before shoving her back into the table, she hit it with a small shriek of pain.
"I wouldn't test me, sweetheart." The man snarled. "Of course," he said, changing composures in a half a second, his eyebrows raising in a innocent manor. "The Doctor hasn't seen me in a long, long time. Jack-" he raised his voice, "Please help me in here."
Clara recognized Jack, from the hotel in the simulation, but only barely as he walked in. His face was covered in bruises and scrapes, and he looked shaky as he walked over to where they stood. "What can I help you with Sir?" his American voice sounded forced.
"Help me explain to Miss Clara, her new medical condition."
"What condition?"
"You… may have two hearts." There was sympathy in Jack's voice, but he looked like all the energy had been drained from him.
"What do you mean?" She asked, shaking her head firmly, stumbling back, but her hands were going to her chest. Two beats. "No. No." she shook her head firmly.
"Oh yes." The Master grinned, "We're the last of our kind, now that Doctor is locked in sleep."
Clara could only gape.