Hey guys; sorry for the long wait! Here's chapter 6 (I know; I'm Captain Obvious). Anyway, just to let you all know - I will be going on vacation next week, and this may be the last chapter I post until I get back a few weeks from now. I will try to write another but I don't know if I'll be able to. Also, this plot line is nearing its end (I think?) which means I will soon be accepting prompts! :) Enjoy the chapter! Please review, especially if you find any mistakes! I would love to know how to improve my work.
TheFezWearer15: Thank you! I'm glad you are enjoying this!
Evangeline Pond: I will certainly consider it:) honestly, I'm starting to ship Whouffali myself. But I don't want to make it too romantic. That would spoil it for all those non-Whouffaldi shippers.
I've written you another cliffhanger. I'm no better than Steven Moffat, haha.
"I swear the Hindenburg is bigger on the inside," Clara groaned. "These corridors are going on forever." She and the Doctor had been wandering the innards of the Hindenburg for at least an hour, attempting in vain to locate an exit.
"Can't be," the Doctor grunted absently, "I don't think you humans have discovered that technology yet."
Clara was too exhausted and sweaty to explain that she had been joking. The temperature inside the airship's inner corridors was stifling, perhaps due to the close proximity of the engines, which she guessed were behind the wall of large metal canisters. She and the Doctor had already passed three panels sporting levers and buttons that might have been intended to control the engines and the hydrogen inside the canisters.
The temperature itself did not bother Clara, although it was making her hair annoyingly frizzy. No, it was the eerie silence that was setting her nerves on edge. One would expect to hear clanks and growls while standing near an engine, but the engines of the Hindenburg were, somehow, utterly silent. In fact, the only sound that reached Clara's ears was the clicking of the Doctor's footsteps on the metal grille of the walkway.
When you were traveling with the Doctor, complete silence was never a good thing. All too often it meant that someone or something was watching you... or worse, ready to pounce.
Before she could freak herself out any more, the Doctor's gruff Scottish burr sliced across her thoughts. "Look. Over there." He pointed ahead, where the walkway branched into two thinner paths that led in opposite directions. "Which should we take?"
"Left, I suppose," Clara answered. Her voice was hoarse from dehydration.
"I think we should go right," the Doctor muttered, his eyebrows contracting upon hearing her response.
"Then what was the point of asking?" she demanded. "Come on, we're going left." Without waiting for a response, she turned left. The Doctor dithered uncertainly behind her for a few seconds before following.
They walked in silence, Clara too grumpy to talk, and the Doctor too grumpy to listen. Both were worried about their predicament, but neither of them wanted to confess their fear to the other.
The Doctor strode onwards, murmuring to himself. "Not much time left... How to stop the Conscious? Don't know... Does Clara know? Of course not... Clara... where's Clara?" His eyes widened in dismay as he suddenly realized that she was no longer next to him.
"Oi, space cadet," Clara called from behind him. He spun around in relief to see her smirking at him. "You walked right by a door."
Shooting her an angry glare at her snide insult, the Doctor walked back to where she was standing with her arms crossed. There was indeed a door set into the sordid wall between two panels of buttons. A sign above it read, 'Pilot's Cabin'.
"What do you think? Our way out?" Clara wanted to know.
The Doctor scrutinized his companion's face. Her hair, which had been meticulously curled, was now mussed and stuck out in every direction as though she had been electrocuted. Her face was grimy and pale in the dim lights that shone from the ceiling of the corridor. Her dress was rumpled and her makeup was smeared.
But her eyes were fierce and ready to fight, and her mouth was set in a determined line.
She was beautiful.
"I rather think it is," the Doctor told her, smiling. He placed a cautious hand on the door and pushed gently. It opened without resistance.
Together, Clara and the Doctor slipped through it and found themselves in a spacious cabin. Large windows were set into three sides of the room, in front of which two pilots were seated before a large control panel. The curved exterior of the Hindenburg was visible through the window above the ceiling of the pilot's cabin. Below it, partially concealed by wisps of roiling fog, was the ocean.
"It's circling," the Doctor whispered, fitting his mouth directly to Clara's ear so that the pilots couldn't hear him. "The Hindenburg is circling around the beaches because of bad weather in Lakehurst, where it's supposed to land."
Clara had to stand on her tiptoes to reach the Doctor's ear, but she finally achieved it. "Okay," she breathed back, her warm breath tickling his ear. "But what are we going to do? Are we going to talk to the pilots?"
The Doctor winked at her and cleared his throat, intending to address the two men. "Hello, don't be alarmed that we snuck into your cockpit, I'm the -"
Simultaneously the pilots whirled around. Their eyes were flat and lifeless, and their movements were jerky. We know. You cannot hide from us, Doctor. We are the Conscious. We know you. You belong to us.
"Oh my stars," Clara muttered, closing her eyes in disbelief. "That is so not fair."
The Doctor groaned and smacked his forehead. "Stupid Doctor. Of course the Conscious took control of the pilots. Why wouldn't they?"
Clara swallowed hard. "Erm, Doctor? Do we need to be alive for the Conscious to devour our souls?" There was a slight tremor in her voice.
He laughed sardonically. "Now that would be nice. No, we don't. Why?"
"Because they're about to kill us." Clara pointed with a shaking finger to the leftmost of the two pilots. His face creased in a malicious smile, the possessed man slowly reached into the pocket of his trousers and began to pull something out.
The cold handle of a gun was visible between his fingers.
The Doctor stared at it. "Now that is an unforeseen development."
"Get us out of here!" Clara hissed.
He assessed the situation in an instant. There was no way they could bluff their way out of the situation, since the pilots were being possessed by the Conscious. The fact that they were being possessed would also give them extra strength, which meant that there was no point trying to physically overpower them. If the pilot shot him, he would simply regenerate.
But Clara wouldn't. She was fragile; breakable. Too breakable.
She was the only one in real danger.
All of these thoughts flashed through the Doctor's mind in less than a second. He whirled around and frantically jiggled the handle of the door through which they had come.
It was locked. Of course it was locked.
"Are you a Time Lord or not?" Clara screamed. "Use your sonic screwdriver!"
Stupid Doctor, he told himself again. He fumbled in his pockets. There was an orange - what was that doing there?-, a grocery list, a teddy bear, a fish skeleton... but no sonic screwdriver. Inwardly cursing, he dug deeper and deeper, wishing he hadn't chosen a coat whose pockets were bigger on the inside. Where has that bloody screwdriver got to?
"Doctor!" Clara shouted. Her voice was laced with desperation. "It's too late!"
The Doctor glanced over his shoulder; the pilot had already drawn the gun out of his pocket and was preparing to shoot. The poor man was a prisoner inside his own mind; he knew exactly what his body was doing but had no power to stop it.
There was another door, he suddenly noticed, but he and Clara would never reach it; it was too far away. Clara's fingers found the Doctor's and he gripped them tightly, attempting to communicate some reassurance. He moved forward so that he was standing in front of Clara. If any bullets were fired, he wanted to be the person they hit.
Wearing a menacing smile, the pilot pulled the trigger. Time seemed to slow as the mouth of the gun spat a bullet into the air. It sailed in a smooth arc towards the Doctor and Clara. The Doctor closed his eyes in anticipation and squeezed Clara's fingers one last time.
And then...
A familiar noise filled the air, a whooshing, vibrating sort of noise, a noise that could be heard but never described.
A hollow thud sounded as the TARDIS materialized in full, wrapping the Doctor and Clara inside its safe interior. The bullet hit the time machine's weathered blue wood and gently bounced off, leaving no impact whatsoever.
For a long time, the Doctor and Clara simply stared at each other, unable to belief that they had just cheated death.
"She saved us," the Doctor murmured, his voice thick with emotion. "She materialized around us without me calling her..."
"Did you know she could do that ?" Clara asked gently, smoothing some of her disheveled hair behind her ears.
"... No." The Doctor's gaze traveled around the spacious interior of his beloved TARDIS, scanning every bit of it, and a small smile suddenly twitched across his lips. He slowly crossed over to the console and placed a soft hand on it. "Thanks, Old Girl," he whispered, bending down and brushing his lips against the console.
The TARDIS hummed in response, and Clara didn't need a translator to know what she was saying. I love you.
When the Doctor finally straightened, his eyes were gleaming. "So. We have a way out. We don't have to stay in the Hindenburg. We could leave. We could just go away." He paused and added, "What are we going to do?"
Clara didn't even hesitate. "We're going to go back and save everyone, because that's what we do."
The Doctor's hearts sank; he had expected no less from Clara. But he couldn't tell her that what had happened to the Hindenburg was a fixed point in time. The Hindenburg would blow up no matter how hard they tried to stop it. He couldn't tell her that there was no 'saving everyone'.
He couldn't tell her that this was a situation were no one could win. If they tried to save everyone, they might worsen the situation - or worse, the Conscious would kill them. If they simply left... the Conscious could very well go on to devour the souls of everyone on Earth.
No, there was no winning. In the Doctor's experience, no one ever 'won'. People either lost or they didn't lose. But they never won.
Clara had chosen their fate. Now it was time to find out who was going to lose.
The Doctor circled the console and input the necessary commands to set the TARDIS in motion. "I'm taking us to a supply closet," he informed Clara. "Hopefully the Conscious won't find us there. And then we can go about our saving the day business."
He felt a pang of sadness as he beheld Clara's excited smile. Sweet, innocent Clara. She hadn't even considered what would happen if the Hindenburg landed safely. As far as he knew, there was no way to force the Conscious to leave their hosts. Those passengers out there were dead - their bodies still functioned, but everything that defined them -their minds, their souls - was dead. The Doctor knew he couldn't let the Hindenburg land, not with the Conscious still alive. If they were unleashed upon the Earth... the consequences were too horrible to consider. Whatever the cost, the Doctor was prepared to bring down the Hindenburg himself if necessary.
Even if it meant breaking Clara's heart.
A tear began to form in his eye, and he hastily blinked it away. His primary responsibility was keeping Clara safe, and he couldn't do that if he allowed his emotions to overtake him.
The TARDIS landed with a bang. Clara bounded down the steps and glanced back at the Doctor, her eyes, the color of warm hot chocolate, glittering with excitement. "Come on, you slowpoke! Let's go!"
They exited the TARDIS together, the Doctor remembering to pocket a key before he left.
The Doctor had taken only three steps when he came to a sudden halt.
"Doctor, what's wrong?" Clara inquired with some concern.
He couldn't bring himself to answer. There was a clock fixed to the wall ahead.
As the two of them watched, the minute hand slid into position at the very top of the clock, announcing the arrival of seven o'clock.
The slight click of the clock hand moving resonated in Clara's ears like the sound of a bell. "Oh my stars," she breathed.
"She brought us too late." The Doctor was immobilized in his disbelief. The TARDIS had taken him to the wrong time or place before, but never in such an important and dangerous situation as this one. He hadn't even considered the possibility that he and Clara might arrive too late.
But they had, and there was no point trying to return to the right time. There was a possibility that the TARDIS had brought them here for a reason, and the Doctor was determined to find out what that reason might be.
If it existed.
Clara slowly turned her head until she was face-to-face with the Doctor, and voiced what she knew both of them were thinking. "The Hindenburg is going down in twenty-five minutes."