Series 9: What We Deserve
Warnings: dark themes, violence, torture, m/f, f/f & m/f/f relationships, explicit scenes.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. If I did…damn you, Moffat!
Summary: Wherein the Doctor and Clara reconnect and Missy considers her situation.
Clara wasn't entirely sure where she was. After her little confrontation with Missy, she'd wandered the corridors aimlessly, deeper than she'd ever been before. She'd stumbled across an old, clearly abandoned room of stone, ivy creepers growing haphazardly along crumbling pillars. It was cool and silent, matching Clara's mood as she had sat down on a bench, leant forward and rested her head in her hands.
She tried not to think, to keep her mind away from that encounter in the console room, but she failed. Her mind replayed it over and over again, in excruciating detail. What she'd said was mad, cruel, immoral but also achingly, hatefully…right. She had almost destroyed the planet, would have gladly stood by while the human race perished from the clouds, and watched with glee as they'd risen again as Cybermen. But she hadn't killed Danny Pink.
The hate in Clara's veins squirmed and boiled. Denied any outlet, it turned painful. She could hate Missy for so many things, but not for the most important thing. And that drained her anger away, as she sighed and rubbed her eyes tiredly.
"Clara?" a voice suddenly called her name softly. The Doctor.
She greeted him with a weary smile over her shoulder, as he cautiously made his way to her side. "Hey," she offered weakly. He sat down beside her, seemingly intent on inspecting his fingernails. "I came looking for you," she offered, needing to break the awkwardness between them.
"I was just fetching something from the storeroom," he nodded. "So…how are you doing?"
"Ok, I guess," she shrugged. "Still feel angry, but I've cried enough for a lifetime. So…what are all those equations for? On the chalkboards in the console room?"
"Ahh," he sighed. "I'm guessing you met her again. I was hoping to keep you two apart until you were feeling a bit better."
Clara frowned. "There's nothing to tell," she murmured. "I hate her for everything she's done, but I'm just going to have to live with her, aren't I?"
"I could take you home," he offered quietly, making Clara freeze. "We're going to find Gallifrey, Clara. It'll be a long trip and I don't know what'll be waiting at the end of it."
"I don't want to go home," she replied firmly, waiting for the objections, the pointed questions about her family, her job, her students, but none came to her relief. "Can I come?" she asked, suddenly feeling a bit presumptuous. He might not even want her to come with him to Gallifrey.
"Of course! I'd love you to come!" he replied, his voice overly cheery but she could detect a note of relief in his tone.
"At least this way, you'll have an ally. Other than the Tardis, I mean," she offered with a slight smile. The Doctor chuckled, before his smile dropped at her next question. "Doctor, who is she? What is she, to you?"
"I'm surprised you don't have some idea. Your Gallifreyan echo would likely have known something of her, or him as she was then," he remarked, evasively. Clara furrowed her brows, thinking hard, but her echoes' lives were foggy at best, and the memories of her life as a Time Lady the foggiest of all. She was reminded again of that strange singing, and shivered.
The Doctor glanced at her in concern. "You ok?" he asked, and she nodded.
"Just cold in here," she explained. He nodded, then held out his arms awkwardly, like he wasn't certain what to do with them. She eyed him dubiously. "What are you doing? Are you trying to do the robot dance again?"
"No! Just…come here," he muttered. "You don't get one of these very often, grab it while you can."
Clara smiled as she scooted sideways into the Doctor's embrace "Can't I get a 2-for-1 deal?" she joked, feeling the beat of his two hearts beneath her ear as he chuckled. They sat together in harmony for awhile, neither needing to say a word as Clara basked in his affection. A part of her mind was screaming at her for betraying Danny so quickly, but she could no more resist her Doctor when he gave one of his rare embraces than give him up to an enemy. She might never say the words again, that promise at least she would keep, but that didn't mean she didn't feel them. Hadn't felt them since the moment they met, when he was young and boyishly handsome, and now when he was grey and distinguished, after everything they'd been through together, it just waxed stronger despite it all.
She felt him sigh, leaning his cheek against her hair. She tensed, knowing that a question was coming, a question she probably wasn't going to like. "Would you have done it?" he asked. Clara felt tempted to feign ignorance, but she knew what he meant.
"I don't know," she lied, glad he couldn't see her face to read the lie. That moment in the graveyard had taught her that she was very capable of killing, or wanting to kill at least. If the Doctor hadn't stopped her, talked her round, she would have done. What that made her, Clara wasn't sure she wanted to know. Ignorance is bliss, after all. "Who is she, Doctor? You didn't answer my question before…"
She felt him inhale deeply at that, as if preparing himself. She felt him shift, then he pressed something cold and hard into her hand. She glanced down and saw Missy's device in her hand, and looked up at him, shocked. He closed her hand over it firmly. "I'll tell you, but it's a long story," he began stiltedly. "I gave you this back, because I trust you, my Clara. When I've finished telling you our story, perhaps you'll understand why."
And so the Doctor began his long story with Clara nestled in his arms, against his hearts, as she listened dutifully, her hand clutched around that infernal little device.
Missy watched them on the scanner. The soft lighting of the console room threw her features into darkness, but anyone watching her would have seen the gentle jealousy and yearning in her icy eyes as she watched her Doctor and her Clara on the screen.
Yes, her Doctor and her Clara. The Doctor had been hers ever since they were two little boys on Gallifrey, scared and alone, running through the scarlet fields, never guessing how prescient that had been. Running through fields the colour of blood. Quite poetic in its own way. Foreboding, others might have called it. Their millennia long battles had been one great field of blood. But that bond had never dissipated. It never would.
And Clara had been hers ever since the day she had glimpsed her on a view screen, inside the High Council chambers as they'd watched the fall of Arcadia. She'd been in chains, still in her weakened, ever-dying form, spared only because it was clear Rassilon had failed and the Council had rebelled. And then…they came.
All four of them. The gnarled warrior, bent by shame of his own necessary ruthlessness, the tall, gangly hero whose hearts burned with love and fire, the boyish man-child with eyes of cold steel. And Clara, so tiny compared to her companions, following behind them as they'd broken out through the bubble. Fierce and righteous and so, so powerful. She had no idea of the power she wielded over the Doctor.
If Missy could wish, it would have been for a tithe of that power. Things would have been so much simpler then, but would she have enjoyed it quite so much? Probably not, she'd never enjoyed things being easy. It was the masochist inside of her.
After that, she'd known she needed to be the one sent back to their original universe. Once Romana had re-taken control and granted her old body a regeneration, she'd cajoled and manipulated her way into being chosen. When there, it had been child's play to go back into the Doctor's timeline and ensure they came together and stayed together. The man who should never be controlled and the control freak, the only woman capable at that moment of convincing the Doctor to find another way. To save Gallifrey rather than burn it. And convinced him, she had. So, so well with those doe eyes filled with tears and round little face creased with grief and revulsion. She'd almost applauded that.
And now she had both of them in her grasp. Both so near and yet so far. The Doctor would always be hers, always locked in this eternal battle for supremacy between them. The same they may not be, but inextricably bound they would always be. But Clara…she had been a pawn but that moment in the graveyard had exposed so much more. So much raw potential that Missy yearned to explore and nurture. If it were possible for a human, Missy might have considered Clara to be not too dissimilar to herself. The same gift for manipulation, the same need for control, one that could so easily be translated to a need to dominate. It was a pity she'd turned down that Emperor's proposal after that Cyberman incident, but then maybe Clara didn't want to control everything and everyone. Just one person in particular.
In that, they certainly shared a kinship.
As Missy regarded her two companions in the screen, curled up together in an embrace that spoke of love and trust, Clara's hand curled around her computer/weapon, she felt a yearning to be included in that embrace. Her brow furrowed as the Tardis hummed around her, unnerved by that odd desire. The Doctor, she could understand. A human girl? Her own pawn? Well, wonders would never cease.
The Doctor would be easiest. Despite his coldness on the plane, she'd glimpsed his deeply buried relief, felt his curiosity and that yearning in his thoughts. He wanted her and he hated her and he loved her. All facts that had been true for thousands of years. A Time Lord's mind could hold such contradictions. Missy's always had, despite how many times she'd tried to kill him. How many times he'd left her to die. It wouldn't take long to push him over the edge and past his own well-earned distrust of her.
Clara, on the other hand…she would be a challenge. The girl was attracted to her, despite herself, but her mind was clouded by hate. But none knew better than Missy that hate and love were but a knife's edge apart. Not opposites but all-too similar. Oh, this was going to be fun…
To be continued...