Oh my god, I am so nervous to post this.
Please let me know if it makes sense, I read it over and over, trying to make it as straightforward as possible.
Oh by the way, if you guys haven't noticed, the bold letters of the each chapters (yes, each chapters.) spell out a message!
(If you missed it, go back and check it out!)
Enjoy and thank you to everyone who's reviewed :D
- Jenna
Clara paced around the console room anxiously. She looked at the Doctor, whose body was leaning against the TARDIS door. His face was pale and sweaty and in pain. The whole TARDIS was so quiet. Even the humming of the TARDIS had quietened down.
"Doctor. Please, you have to wake up." Clara crouched down, trying to wake him up. She touched his shoulder, but her hand went straight through. This was cruel, too cruel. There she was, trying to help, but all she could do is to see her best friend dying in pain. Drops of tear fell from her eyes.
Suddenly, the silence was disrupted.
"Sir, we found this box in the storage room." There was a voice from the outside.
"Open it up, but with caution. It might be a bomb from the enemies." Another voice commanded.
First it was thumps and clanks. People using hammers to try to get the door opened. Then, it was loud sledgehammer noises. Clara looked sadly at the Doctor, who was still leaning against the door. The noise soon after became worse. Constant grinding noises, smashing sounds and people yelling.
"STOP!" Clara screamed as she blocked her ears. "Please!" She begged.
The power tools miraculously whirred to a stop. Clara looked up in surprise.
"I don't think it is working. There's not even a scratch." The voice outside said.
"Right, throw it in the volcano. Let it melt away, not our problem."
Clara's eyes widened. "No!" She started panicking. She yelled into the Doctor's ears. "DOCTOR, WAKE UP!" she sat on the floor next to him. "Please. The TARDIS needs you. I need you."
There was a crash, and then the TARDIS started warming up. The console in the middle let out some sparks, and an alarm started ringing.
WARNING: Floor zero breached.
The TARDIS was heating up, yet not a sign of life from the Doctor, he was fighting his own battles with the poison.
Clara hesitantly stood in front of the TARDIS telepathic circuit. "Right, I don't care I'm dead or not. I still exist to my knowledge and therefore I have a conscience. I may not have a body, but I still have a mind. Please, just listen to me and get us to safety." Clara linked her hands into the TARDIS. She felt something bite into her fingers. She held on. "Please, just find me, and get us out of here."
'Error: psychic link failed.' The monitor said.
"You are registering my connection to you." Clara let out a dry laugh. It was better than nothing. "Come on, you can do it. Do it for the Doctor. I am Clara Oswald and I exist. Find me." She turned around to see the Doctor. "Love is not an emotion, love is a promise… and I promised to look after him."
The light bulbs on the central column started blowing out, and the TARDIS became hotter and hotter.
"Please. I love the Doctor, and you know that more than anyone else. We have to save him. Together." Clara begged.
Just as she finished the sentence, the TARDIS started groaning. It landed somewhere with a thud, and the TARDIS started doing self-repairs. As the TARDIS cooled down again, the Doctor stirred and slowly opened his eyes.
"Doctor!" Clara approached him. "You're still here."
"I can't die now." The Doctor said. "Not yet." He whispered.
He struggled up to the TARDIS console. "We've moved?" He whispered in confusion. "How?"
"Me." Clara stood beside him and hovered her hand on top of his.
There was a knock on the door.
The Doctor picked up his cane and struggled to the door. Tia was standing in front of her. Behind her, she could see a lonely house on a blackened ground.
"You're not dead yet." She said, looking at his pale face. Her hair had gone grey and so was her face. Everything had been worn out.
"I'm very… close." He gave her a sad smile. He looked at the watch. "45 minutes."
"Me too." She smiled back. "Turns out, you were right." She pointed behind her. "The enemy found out about the poison, and used it against us. We all died… or in the process of dying. Scientists estimate the Polinian race is going to go extinct in less than a week." She looked at the ground.
"When our planet was doused with the poison, the government did the only humane thing they could. Kill everyone before they die of terrible deaths." She said in sadness.
"Me, as a creator of the Polovox toxin, and other scientists who had a slight possibility of saving what we have were saved from this." She started sobbing. "I managed to commit genocide twice in the name of my parents. I am ashamed and I tried to fix it."
She handed him the vial his blood back. "One drop was enough. I made the cure."
The Doctor looked up in hope. "You did?"
She handed a clear piece of cube shaped structure. "I did."
She paused and continued. "This needs the energy of a Time Lord. You just need to pour your regeneration energy into this while it being connected to an infected person. Once it's done, you will have a walking host of the antitoxin."
She paused.
"I created the cure, but once I did, the Time Lord was gone. Everyone was gone. I was too late."
"I can go back and save people. I'm a time traveller." The Doctor said, with his optimistic eyes.
Tia shook her head. "No. The paradox is fixed. You don't know how many times I went back. I got a hold of a vortex manipulator. I watched my own race kill themselves in front of my eyes hundreds of times. No matter where I looked, I couldn't find you to save us. Then I found out your box… was thrown into the volcano by a stupid man with a stupid idea." She sniffled. "Then I created the Navdroids. I patched the vortex manipulator into hundreds of them, and sent them to a mission to find you. The past you. I programmed it so that it looked for people with enough background radiation. Its sole mission was to find the only man who could save the universe."
The Doctor's eyes widened. Suddenly, there was a sickening noise from the back. Tia started bleeding from the mouth and then fell forward.
"Tia?!" The Doctor dropped his cane and fell on the floor. "NO!"
Bullets started raining down on them. Tia whispered close to his ears. "You can fix the paradox, Time Lord." She closed her eyes.
The Doctor was blown into the TARDIS when a shockwave of the bomb pushed him backwards. The TARDIS closed her doors.
"TARDIS voice interface." He managed to whisper.
"Voice interface activated."
"How long do I have? ….. No, never mind. I don't need to know. Just leave it as a surprise." He sighed. He froze.
"I don't know." He uttered in realisation. "I don't know! I wasn't there to see it! I can fix the paradox!" He yelled in excitement. "The problem with paradoxes is that we have too much foreknowledge. I know how Kate died, I saw the whole process. I know how the Polinians became extinct because I was told about what happened to the Polinian race. I know about the Navdroids and their journey to find me. But there's one thing I don't know about." He glanced at the hologram of Clara. "I wasn't there for Clara's death. I don't know anything about it." He gazed at the clear cube. "Tia, you're a genius."
"What?" Clara asked. She was utterly confused.
"Voice interface, take me back to 25/02/15, London, Clara's flat, 7:45 am"
He staggered out and sonicked her motorbike. There was a spark and a trail of smoke. "Now you have to walk to school." He smiled. He staggered back to the TARDIS.
"Voice interface, now take me back to 25/02/15, London, Coal Hill Street, 7:50 am."
The TARDIS landed. With all his might, he walked out and spotted the Navdroid. The Navdroid that was about to kill Clara. He sonicked it and it fell. "Sorry dear, just need to find your ammunition." He fiddled around the Navdroid. The headache was pushing its way in him, but he didn't care. He could save everyone.
"Now, I'm programming you to be spotted by Clara. You won't fire the poison, you will drop it. I'm placing a perception filter on the crystal so that she's the one who spots it." He sonicked a big lump of crystal, momentarily paused and touched it.
"DOCTOR! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Clara yelled.
Miraculously, nothing happened. Instead, the Doctor smiled. "I just left her a message in the crystal. She will pick it up, and she'll receive the message."
He returned to the TARDIS. When the door closed behind Clara, he smiled.
"Hello Clara." He turned around and looked directly at her. His eyes were so glad to finally meet hers.
"You can see me?" Clara asked in shock.
"I could see you from the start." He smiled. He pointed at his head. "It's all changing in my head. You were here from the start of the journey."
"What have you done? I don't understand." Clara asked, confused.
"You saw Kate dying of the poison. You suffered from it almost identically to how she did. Tell me one difference between you two."
"I… don't know."
"Kate hallucinated her father. She was in a state of hallucination from start to the end. What about you? Did you have one?"
"I… I don't know." She said, after thinking about the hospital.
"Me neither." He smiled. "That's the beauty of changing time. The grey areas are in constant state of fluctuation. They grey areas are the ones that I can set to whatever I want it to be."
"And what is that in English?" Clara retorted. The Doctor chuckled. He missed her sass so much.
"In other words, you are still dreaming. You are hallucinating. THIS, is the dream." He took the cube and brought her to the freezer room. In front of her, was her body. "When you touched the crystal, I placed a psychic message to play out once you become unconscious."
He placed a wire around Clara's dead body and to the cube.
"Once you wake up, you'll be actually dying. You'll have to tell my real self. Connect yourself to the TARDIS telepathic circuit, it will transfer all the information from you that I need to stop all this."
His hand started glowing from the regeneration energy. The energy was transferred to the cube and the bright light made Clara close her eyes.
When she opened them again, There was something covering her face… she felt a burning sensation to her sides. She reached out to feel a tube leading inside her. What was happening?
"Clara!" It was her dad. Well of course it was. "Oh my god, what is wrong with you?! Going to work even though you're sick. You know, when you are sick, even just a little bit, you have to…"
Clara groaned and switched her dad's never-ending speech off. Speaking of her brain, she had a sharp headache… actually, body ache. She ripped the oxygen mask off. It finally registered that she was in a hospital. White, sterile room, worried faces… the bed and the sickly green sheet of shame she was wearing. She loathed hospital gowns. She loathed hospital in general.
"You should keep the mask on, dear. Just in case." It was her gran. The sight of her always made her relaxed. Her gran gently placed the mask on her face again.
Then, she remembered what she had to do.
"I have to call the Doctor."