Hello everyone; here's chapter 5! (Finally!) Sorry for the wait. I have been immensely busy. But I wrote you am extra long chapter to make up for it. It's probably extremely confusing, because I'm not good at putting my ideas on paper, so let me know if you have any questions. I hope you enjoy!
To my Guest reviewer: Thank you! Glad you are enjoying this!
They didn't get very far.
The TARDIS was right there in the corner of the room, but it was blocked off by hordes of people under the control of the Conscious.
They almost made it. Both of them were running at an impossible speed. The TARDIS was twenty feet away... ten feet away...
And then a sallow-faced man with a bristly blonde mustache and unfocused blue eyes stuck out his leg. Clara tripped over it and stumbled to the floor, falling face-first with a grunt. She instantly began attempting to pick herself up, but it was too late. The man bent down and fastened his hand around her throat. Displaying an impossible amount of strength, he picked her up by her neck and held her in the air.
Clara's small body trembled as she tried in vain to force him to drop her, her feet scrabbling for a foothold. In desperation, she resorted to biting his hand. The man seemed to cringe, but did not relinquish his grasp.
The Doctor was watching the scene in horror. "Clara!" he called, his voice hoarse. "Clara!"
Her face was reddening from the damage to her windpipe, and her eyes were widened in fear. "Doc-tor!" she choked, her voice no more than a throaty gargle. "Go! Don't wait for me!"
"I am not leaving you!" he shouted. "Listen to me, Conscious! Let her go! Just let her go!"
Fritz - or the human-shaped vessel for the Conscious that had once been called Fritz - leered at the Doctor. Why would we do that?
"Just... let her go, and you can have me too." The Doctor bowed his head in defeat, his voice cracking. "I'll surrender peacefully. Just... please. Drop her."
The man disdainfully released his hold on Clara. She crumpled to the floor, gasping and massaging her throat, her eyes watering with involuntary tears. "Doctor... no... why..." she croaked.
"Why? Because I'm the Doctor, and you're Clara. That's why." The Doctor narrowed his eyes at Fritz, his countenance so thunderous that Clara could practically hear lightning. Then he turned to face the crowd of passengers, his arms dramatically outspread. "So you've got us now. Me and Clara. Wouldn't hurt for you to answer some questions. How did you know I'm the Doctor?"
A hissing, slithering sort of sound emanated from the air around them. Clara shuddered as she realized that it was a laugh. Easy. Your little friend here told us.
"I am not little!" Clara cried, despite her aching throat.
Twelve groaned and slapped his forehead. "Of course. The Conscious are limited to the memories of the people they control. They can only know the information they have taken from others and heard around them. They didn't know who I was until you said my name... I mean, I've had experiences with the Conscious before, but never in this body." He paused and then added, "If you hadn't called me 'Doctor', we wouldn't be in this predicament."
"Well, how was I supposed to bloody know?" Clara shot back. "And besides, they'd probably have devoured our memories anyway, even if they didn't know who we were!"
Agatha slipped out of the crowd, her eyes the same glowing color as Fritz's. "So much spirit," she purred. Thankfully, she had retained her normal voice. "I can't wait to eat you!"
Clara frowned. "Thanks, but I can wait just fine." She suddenly let out a barely audible grasp and slid to the floor. "Ow... I feel faint..." Tears welled in her eyes. "My throat... it hurts so much..." A sob escaped her.
Agatha giggled maddeningly. "Perhaps I'll take a little bite now...? Just a teensy-weensy one?" Malice flickered in her eyes as she began to sidle closer to Clara.
"STOP!" the Doctor roared, his voice echoing throughout the dining hall. The possessed passengers shuffled uneasily, but did not otherwise react. "Clara! You've got to let me see her! If you're going to take our memories now, at least... At least let me see her!" His body shook as he stared at his young companion huddled on the ground, moaning miserably. "What happened to her? She - she just..." He was clearly attempting to use his favorite tactic: stalling for time.
The Conscious inside Fritz laughed sibilantly once more. She is human. She is weak and puny. The candle that is her life can be blown out at any second. And now, it is guttering in its socket. She will -"
"Oh, I have had BLOODY ENOUGH of this poetic rubbish," a voice snapped.
It was Clara Oswald, ready for action once more. All vestiges of pain had suddenly vanished, and her eyes were alight with triumph. "You think I'm weak? You think I'm fragile?" She met Fritz's gaze, and then Agatha's, daring them to answer. "Well, you're wrong. You're weak. I am Clara Oswald. I'm the Impossible Girl. I just made you fall for the stupidest trick in existence. I just made you lower your defenses. And right now, you should be very, very scared of me."
Moving faster than the eye could see, Clara suddenly shot to her feet and kneed the man standing next to her in the crotch. His breath hitched and he doubled over, moaning in pain. Before he could recover, Clara sped away, racing towards the TARDIS.
"WELL, DON'T JUST STAND THERE, YOU BLOODY IDIOT!" she yelled over her shoulder to the Doctor. "COME ON!"
He shook off his confusion and hurried to catch up with her. Fritz, Agatha, and the possessed passengers seemed frozen in shock.
Clara and Twelve skidded to an ungainly halt in front of the TARDIS. He fumbled urgently in his pockets. "I haven't got the key!" he hissed urgently.
Clara shook her head in disgust. "You left it behind on the shelf inside the TARDIS, didn't you."
His silence told her everything she needed to know. Clara sighed. "You know, you really do need me to work for you." She glanced over her shoulder; the Conscious finally seemed to be regaining their composure. "Come on!" She fastened her hand around Twelve's arm and dragged him away.
They ran for several minutes, a flood of Conscious-controlled people on their heels. Clara soon began to tire, but the Doctor refused to let her stop running. "Keep going, keep going," he urged her. "Keep those little sausagey legs of yours moving."
"If I wasn't so tired..." she panted," I would slap you so hard right now. How are you so good at running, anyway?"
The Doctor offered her a crooked smile. "I've had lots of practice." Without warning, he veered left and burst through a door that read CREW ONLY. They ascended a flight of metal steps and found themselves at the beginning of a thin walkway that led into the bowels of the airship. Massive canisters surrounded them on all sides.
"They're not following," the Doctor realized.
Clara paid him no attention. "Oh God, I'm going to die," she groaned, slumping against the railings, her chest heaving from the exertion.
"Yes, go ahead, but why aren't they following us?" the Doctor breathed, not listening to her in the slightest. "Oh, wait... they don't need to. We've got nowhere to go; they're in the room with the TARDIS. They know we'll have to come out eventually." He looked askance at Clara. "I don't fancy our chances right now."
"Me neither, thanks to you," she told him sharply, finally regaining her breath. "Nice stunt you pulled, forgetting the keys."
"Oh, we're talking about stunts now?" he fired back. "Well, what was that stunt you pulled, falling to the ground like a heap of potatoes? I legitimately thought you were dying!"
"Fell for it, then?" Clara smirked. "I was good, wasn't I?" She proudly tossed her French-toast colored hair.
"How did you know that kicking him in the... well, you know... would work?" The Doctor seemed genuinely interested. "It's true that the Conscious have silly physical limitations - they feel pain when they're trapped inside or are possessing a human - but how did you know? Lucky guess?"
Clara gave him a mock frown. "You're attributing all this genius-" she indicated herself - "to guesswork? No way! I tried to bite him earlier, and he seemed to feel the pain. So I thought, well, there was my escape route."
The Doctor seemed to be about to say something, but she held up a hand. "Wait, hang on..." She leaned forwards, concern evident in her eyes. "There's something in your eye."
"What? No there isn't."
"Yes, there is... It's a tear, right there, see? You were crying," she teased him in a singsong voice. "You actually, really, literally thought I was dying, didn't you?"
"I was not crying," the Doctor informed her. "There's an eyelash in my eye."
"Well, if your eyelashes are as poky as your eyebrows, I wouldn't be surprised you're crying. But your eyes are definitely red."
The Doctor snorted and turned away.
Clara couldn't resist a final dig. "Know what that sound was?"
"There was no sound."
"It was your dignity slipping away," she giggled. The sight of his face sent her into hysterics.
"Where do you get these stupid lines anyway; your boyfriend?" he grumbled. "YouTube?"
After a few minutes, Clara's laughter finally subsided. "Alright, sorry. Ready for business now."
"What business?"
"What d'you mean, what business? Spill the beans!" she commanded. "Tell me about the Conscious! We're stuck up here now anyway - they'll swarm us if we go back down - so we should at least make use of our time."
"Time..." Wide-eyed, the Doctor yanked his sleeve back and peered at his watch. "The Hindenburg is going to burn in four hours and nine minutes!"
"You better find us a way out of here sharpish, then," Clara commented. "We're no good up here in the... wherever we are."
"Why me?" the Doctor grumbled.
Clara laughed, her cheeks dimpling. "That's what you do!"
"Fine, then listen up," he snapped. "The Conscious are a race of aliens who've been around since before the universe. They -"
"They've been around since when?" she interrupted, her eyes wide with disbelief.
Twelve shot her an angry glare. "Right, do you ever stop talking?"
"It's a valid question!" Clara protested. "You think you can just drop a 'before the universe' into your sentence and no one's going to question it?"
The Doctor was clearly fighting to stay calm. "Before the universe; how is that ambiguous? It only has one meaning: before the universe! Does that clear things up?"
"Not in the slightest."
"Then shut up!"
"No one gets to say 'shut up' except me, Mister."
"Well, I just did. Now listen. No one knows where the Conscious came from, though back on Gallifrey we have a myth that they actually created the universe, to help feed them."
"So they live on... human souls," Clara intoned slowly, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
"Not just human souls. Any souls. Any souls of any being in the universe... or outside of it. The Conscious aren't picky. They don't devour bodies. They suck your souls, your memories, everything that makes you you, and they leave you an empty husk."
"You mean... Dementors."
"Essentially," the Doctor agreed. "Where do you think Mrs. Rowling got that idea from?"
Clara's eyes widened. "Oh my God," she giggled. "Seriously?"
"Seriously. I'll take you to meet her sometime. Lovely woman. The TARDIS loves her. But back to the point. The Time Lord myth says that the Conscious realized they would die without sustenance, so they created the universe. But they weren't counting on it expanding.
"Eventually - according to our myth - the universe got too big and wild for them to control, and the Conscious decided to try to devour the souls and memories of the entire universe all at once, so they could start over and make a new one."
"This is all part of a myth," Clara realized. "What do you actually KNOW about the Conscious?"
Twelve shot her angry glare. "If you could shut up for two seconds, maybe I would tell you. What I do know is that, for whatever reason, the Time Lord Council decided to impose certain restrictions on the Conscious. Perhaps it was to stop them from devouring the universe like in the myth; perhaps not. Anyway - the Time Lords decreed that the Conscious could no longer take their original forms, but instead had to adopt humanoid bodies."
"Why?" Clara tucked her legs closer to her body and scooted closer to the Doctor in order to hear him better; his words were being slightly muffled by the powerful humming of the Hindenburg as it slid through the air.
"Because the Conscious were too powerful in their original form. The Conscious actually look sort of like... like nebulas, I suppose. That's the only thing you pudding-brained humans have got to compare them with. In that state, they can do practically anything. They can travel from one end of the universe to the other in less than a second. They can devour the population of a whole planet in under a minute. That sort of power... none of the Time Lords wanted that to be unleashed on the universe. So they simply forced the Conscious to change their form, to be limited by a human body. They're allowed to create their own personas as long as they're in human form. That's why the Conscious you kicked felt the pain. They're all subject to silly human limitations. The only thing they can do while in human form is possess people, but doing so requires a lot of energy and they usually can't keep it up for long. All the people on the Hindenburg are real people; they've just been possessed. But the Conscious possessing them still feel pain. They have to physically travel from place to place, like humans do. Those limitations are meant to ensure that the Conscious are kept under control."
Clara leaned forward, her dark eyes burning with curiosity. "But if they were all-powerful, why did they listen to the Time Lords? Why not just devour their souls?"
The Doctor stared back, his eyes glimmering with pinpricks of light. "Because they were scared of us," he answered harshly. "They still are scared of us. In millions and millions of years, no Conscious has ever gone against that rule. That Fritz fellow was the first to even slightly defy the Time Lord laws. What you heard wasn't a human voice. It was a Conscious voice."
"Gathered that, thanks." Clara curled into a ball and wrapped her arms around herself to keep herself warm. "But you said restrictions. What's the second?"
Sighing, the Doctor stared into the distance, his eyes unfocused. "Clara, Clara, Clara... that's the problem." He heaved a deep breath. "The Gallifreyan Council imposed a second restriction on the Conscious. They decreed that the Conscious could only eat once in a certain period of time. Every ten thousand years... the Conscious are allowed to choose five planets and devour every single soul that lives on them."
"That's barbaric!" Clara breathed, sounding appalled. "That's absolutely horrid! That's - that's -"
"That's survival, Clara!" the Doctor interrupted her. "The Conscious are doing what they must to survive. The Time Lords were faced with a situation in which no one could win. What do you expect, that they would have allowed the Conscious to rage rampant through the cosmos, gobbling up people like Christmas dinner?"
"Well, no - but - what about all those innocent people?" Clara demanded, her mouth still agape with horror. "Five planets... all those people... just gone! And the Time Lords let it happen!"
"Five planets every ten thousand years, or the whole universe?" the Doctor hissed. His eyes were wild, and Clara shuddered. This was a side of him she rarely saw, and she didn't like it. "Think, Clara! The Time Lords were not a cruel race! They couldn't allow the Conscious or the universe to simply die! They did what they had to," he added in a cold undertone.
"But now they're here for Earth," she murmured. "Why? What's so special about Earth?"
"The Conscious prefer to devour the souls of people with stories to tell. More memories is equivalent to a tastier dinner for them. The memories are devoured and then forgotten. It's quite sad, really. All those beautiful, beautiful lives, and the Conscious eat them without even having the decency to remember them. Like when you go for takeout and can't even remember what you got. The Conscious only remember information if it comes from someone they're possessing. Once the Conscious devour all those possessed passengers out there... they'll have access to all of their memories and knowledge forever." The Doctor's eyes were distant; his voice, bitter. "Every person on this airship has so many memories, so many moments to share, so many stories. That's why the Conscious chose Earth. What stories you people have to tell..." he chuckled softly, perhaps remembering a particular story of his own time on Earth.
"And they're all going to disappear unless we do something," Clara told the Doctor softly, placing a gentle hand on his arm. "We have to get out of here. I'm not letting anyone's soul get stolen."
"So speaks Clara the Control Freak," the Doctor replied sarcastically, his wiry eyebrows raised. "How are you going to go about doing that, eh? Do enlighten me. The Conscious are probably just waiting for us to come out. They know we'll have to eventually."
Clara shot to her feet, her hands clenched into fists. Her eyes wet steely and determined. "I don't bloody care. I've got to try." She bent down, ripped off her high heels and carelessly tossed them over the railing. A distant clang sounded several seconds later as they finally hit the floor.
"Are you feeling alright?" the Doctor asked with some concern. "I never thought you were capable of that."
"Me neither," she admitted. "But I didn't want my obituary to read, 'Clara Oswald, 24, died when she fell over while running in high heels and was eaten by giant nebula creatures.' You'll have to take me shopping again, though," she added ruefully. "Those were my best pair."
"I sincerely look forward to it," the Doctor muttered in a tone that implied the exact opposite.
"Then, with the prospect of a trip to Harrods' in mind, let's go save the planet."
Clara began to march off, but the Doctor fastened his hand around her elbow. "Clara, wait!"
"Oi, get off, you stupid twig insect!" Clara tried in vain to free herself.
"No - listen; just listen!" His eyes were bright and alert. "Before we go - remember what that Agatha witch said. The Time Lord and the Impossible One, she called us."
"So?" Clara tried to pull away once more, but the Doctor did not relinquish his hold.
"So if the Conscious only have access to the knowledge of their hosts... and if no one on the Hindenburg has ever met you... why did they call you the Impossible One?"