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: Clara faces her final test. The Doctor and Missy bear witness.
Clara slept only fitfully that night, as thoughts of what she was going to encounter in her fear landscape refused to leave her. Eventually, frustrated with trying to sleep when it was quite clear her body wasn't going to let her, she got up and padded barefoot to the window of her apartment, staring out at the dim sky as the first signs of dawn approached.
The past few weeks had been brutal, punishing, far more than the physical training phase had been. Being forced to confront and accept her worst fears had turned out to be a more damaging, violating experience than the Aptitude Test.
And the Doctor and Missy would be there to see it all, see her laid bare, her every fear revealed. Not just the ones they knew, especially the Doctor, but the ones they didn't and even Clara wasn't sure of.
As Clara leant her head on her knee, staring out at the lightening sky, she thought about the Doctor. Ever since his regeneration, she'd thought of him only in terms of varying levels of annoyance, at first. Then exasperated affection, anger, and confusion. She hadn't understood him, for so long, and she hadn't understood herself. How could she? For so long, she had convinced herself that she hadn't changed, hadn't been changed by her travels with the Doctor. He had changed, but she hadn't.
She had to admit that had been nothing but a comforting lie. How could all the things she'd seen and done have not changed her? How could jumping into his time stream to save his life, and in the process being torn to a million pieces of herself by the time winds, not change her? How could losing two men she loved not change her?
And how could she have simply ignored the knowledge seared into her heart, for so long, that he loved her?
A wry smirk lifted her lips as she remembered the way she had once compared the Doctor and Missy to Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. The analogy fit now, with her added into the equation. If the Doctor was Sherlock, and Missy was Moriarty, then she was Irene Adler, the Woman. The one woman he couldn't ever entirely work out, the mystery he'd never solved. It had been Clara who had worked out the mystery on her own, standing in front of that jagged, scarlet gash in time and space, staring into it almost hypnotised, the words of River Song echoing in her head. And even now, he couldn't work her out entirely. She kept surprising him.
And not always in a good way…her mind whispered, as her smile faded, and she sighed.
Unconsciously, as she wrapped her arms around her torso, her fingers traced the intricate design decorating her shoulder. She was like the mythical bird on her shoulder, always rising from the ashes, always finding ways to move on.
When this was over, when they found the Tardis and left this crazy, dangerous world behind them, she'd find a way to move on again. With him.
And with Missy.
She couldn't help but recall Missy's words to her, oh so long ago, when they'd first met again after Danny's death and that awful scene in the graveyard. Her taunting, seductive words…
"You're only just discovering exactly how far you're willing to go for the ones you love…"
Clara had given up one of her most precious mementoes of her mother to save the Doctor; she'd made terrible decisions to protect him, hurt so many people, lied and cheated to keep him alive. She'd torn herself apart for him, lived and died over and over again to save his life, fought tooth and nail to get back to him on Trenzalore and convinced the Time Lords to give him a new life. She had done terrible things, wondrous, terrible things that might brand her either monster or angel in the eyes of others.
Clara supposed she was a little bit of both.
And Danny…poor, brave, wonderful Danny. She had hurt him, lied to him, and lost him. She had betrayed her best friend for him, then been willing to kill the woman she'd deemed responsible for his death. Even if the Doctor hadn't been capable of killing his old friend, Clara knew now she possessed the coldness to have done it.
She would have pressed that button and erased the Mistress from existence with barely a blink. But what would she have become, if she had?
In many ways, Clara was glad that the Doctor had stopped her that day. Among other things, Missy was as much a living reminder to her, of what she could become, if she let herself.
If the Doctor could try to be a good man, then Clara would try to be a good woman. But she knew also knew, in her heart of hearts, that she would do anything to protect him. And Missy.
She didn't have a name for whatever it was that existed between them. It was dark and painful, and far from healthy. But Clara also sensed its longevity, how long it could endure, and wondered if that was the closest Missy could come to love in her twisted, damaged psyche.
It was not what she'd have chosen for herself, but it was hers and it was all she had left. Clara hugged her legs a little harder, burying her head as the first rays of sunlight pierced the clouds and stung her eyes.
So this is Dauntless…I'm far from impressed…Missy mentally sniffed as she followed the crowd of Erudite scientists through the bowels of the Dauntless compound. So far, it seemed to comprise of inadequately lit tunnels and some kind of grunge-techno-industrial aesthetic. How very boring.
When does anything impress you? The Doctor replied, and she could imagine him rolling his eyes derisively. You're impossible to impress…
Not true, Missy pouted. I can be impressed, just not by these stunted apes. Call this a military base? The Brigadier would have a heart attack at the sight of it…
She could feel the Doctor's mixed emotions at her reference to their past: the good ol' days of tangling with UNIT and dragging the Doctor into whatever escapade she'd concocted.
Only to drag you out of it, when you got in over your head. Which was often…The Doctor, catching the tenor of her thoughts through their link, remarked sarcastically.
You're exaggerating! Missy sniffed again, huffing as they reached the floor of the compound. The Pit. Aptly named in Missy's opinion.
She'd seen glimpses of it, of course, on Clara's nanotech footage but…it hadn't looked quite so utterly primitive and basic. Barely any technology in sight, and architecture that looked ready to implode in on itself at any moment. No wonder the faction was called Dauntless if they actually lived there.
Although perhaps the 'Brainless' might have been a better choice of faction name… she thought, eying the crowds of people, dressed head to foot in black, not a fashion choice she could fault them in for once, covered in tattoos, outrageously bright hair dyes and piercings. Really, what had that foolish girl got herself into, coming here? She's lucky they didn't stick her full of metal and call it a fashion choice in her first week…
The Doctor couldn't quite hold back his amusement at that, but she sensed the yearning underneath his amusement. He was desperate to see his Impossible Girl, in the flesh, and not on the screen of a tablet.
If she was being honest, not something she often attempted, so was she. After all the weeks of pain, of sensing Clara's fear and distress and triumph, Missy wanted to see her silly little human as much as the Doctor did.
Not that she would ever admit that out loud. No, she was still in staunch denial about that. Her, Missy, the Mistress, care for a human? Get real. That old fool had read one too many Mills and Boon novels…
That was one time! He protested, as she smirked at feeling his chagrin as she recalled the incident, back in the good ol' days at UNIT, in his third incarnation. He was sulking now. I know you care, so why you waste your energy denying it…
Missy didn't say anything, just rolled her eyes. Shutting him out as he grumbled, she quickly accessed the part of her mind where her link to Clara resided. The girl was keeping her at bay for the moment, seemingly intent on something else, but Missy could feel her emotions. Fear, anticipation and dread.
Ever since the physical stage of Clara's training had ceased, Missy had wondered exactly what the next stage entailed. Erudite files on the matter had been annoyingly vague and generalised, never giving too much detail. Oh, plenty of academic analysis to be certain, especially since she had joined their neuroscience team, but very little detail about the affect of the fear landscape simulations.
From all accounts, it was stage two of Dauntless training that exposed the most Divergents. Missy could only hope that Clara was up to the challenge of hiding her true identity. Their time in Erudite had exposed the true scope of the phobia surrounding Divergence. It had only reinforced Missy's growing certainty that the Tardis was somewhere in Dauntless, and there was some other player at work in the city.
"Missy? John? It's this way," Osgood called from the front of the group, as Missy looked up to realise they'd fallen behind as they climbed the long, narrow paths up the side of the Pit.
And that was another source of irritation for Missy. That blasted child, Osgood. Why did they have to land in a universe containing her alternate self, of all people? Not that Missy regretted killing her, but she was used to her victims staying dead once she'd killed them. Osgood had the temerity to be born again in another universe. Of all the insolent cheek…
Missy was well aware of the rules of Multiverse theory, but it irritated her. She almost felt like killing her again, if only to stop the Doctor's incessant prattling about remorse and karma and other Earth mumbo-jumbo he'd picked up to torment her. She could barely wait to leave it all behind.
Their group was escorted into the Pire, the glass building sitting atop the Pit, and into a circular room where their equipment had already been set up. A single chair waited for its occupant, beside the computer. Two screens were set up for the Erudite group's use, while the Dauntless leaders would be directly observing Clara's fear landscape in the simulation itself.
Despite her concern, Missy was undeniably curious about what exactly little Miss Control Freak was scared of, and how such revelations would affect her. She'd come a long way since that day in the graveyard. This could be the final push Clara needed, in Missy's opinion, or it could break her entirely.
Missy was just as scornful of the idea of a broken Clara as she was about actually caring for the girl.
Above their heads, a circular gantry ran the circumference of the room, shielded from onlookers by glass windows. There, a huge crowd of Dauntless gathered, waiting and expectant. They whispered and muttered above her head, like an endless droning swarm of insects she longed to swat out of existence.
Just then the droning increased in intensity and volume, as Missy turned with the others to see three people enter the room. The two tallest, a male and a female that Missy recognised as Clara's instructors from the nanotech footage, flanked Clara as she walked slowly but surely into the centre of the room.
She had changed. It wasn't just the new hairstyle, so much shorter and sleeker than her old hair, or the tight-fitting black clothes; it went deeper than her external appearance. There was a new strength there now, a peace and a calm that had been missing before. It was a calm that uncomfortably reminded Missy of the Doctor. It was the calm before a storm.
Her two instructors patted Clara companionably on the arm as she stopped in front of the chair, looking down at it coolly. Then she looked up.
Missy met her gaze from across the room, and couldn't help a reflexive shiver down her spine. Unlike before, she felt no fear, no dread now. Only calm.
She saw Clara's gaze sweep from her to the Doctor, before she nodded just slightly at both of them, a strange smile flirting at the corner of her mouth. Missy swallowed, feeling oddly discomfited, as Clara looked away while she hopped up onto the chair. She was so short, her feet swung incongruously for a second before she swung them up onto the footrest.
Missy watched as some tattooed ape stepped up to Clara's side, hefting a syringe. She emptied the contents into Clara's neck, before stepping away.
Once again, Missy met Clara's gaze before her eyes slowly closed and her head dropped back against the headrest with a gentle thud. A flash of irritation shot through Missy when she heard someone tapping out that cursed four-beat rhythm on the edge of the computer. It wasn't until the Doctor gently took her hand that she realised she'd been the one doing the tapping.
As the simulation loaded, and the first images appeared onscreen, Missy swallowed hard, letting her contempt mask her concern.
She was standing in a corridor, tubular and constructed of rusting metal. Clara looked around, but the light was only dim. But then…
"HUMAN FEMALE DETECTED! SEEK! LOCATE! DESTROY!"
Clara felt the burn of ozone as the Dalek's ray carved a groove in the wall above her head as she instinctively ducked. Without a second thought, she ran-
Missy could feel the Doctor's anxiety as the Dalek appeared onscreen. This was their worst-case scenario, for Clara's fears to have manifested in such a way. But as she glanced up from the screen, no one seemed concerned beyond basic scientific interest. She looked back down at the screen, as the Dalek's screams echoed in the fear landscape.
Clara saw the door, and felt terror rush through her as it began to close. She forced herself onwards, drawing on every last shred of speed she possessed but…it wasn't….going to…be enough!
She slammed into the door just it came down with a final clunking sound. She'd lost the Dalek back in the corridor, but she could hear the hum of its repulsors as it glided along, sure of its final triumph. She had nowhere left to run. She'd failed.
Her fists clenched and her heart rate raced to the rhythm of a sprint. The moment the Dalek was in range, she'd be dead. There was no way out. She was helpless.
Clara grit her teeth, blinking back the tears of panic in her eyes. No, there was a way. There had to be a way…
The Dalek came into view, as the idea took form in Clara's mind. Her knuckles turned white as she waited. The Dalek stopped, paused… "EXTERMINATE!"
Clara threw herself sideways at the last possible moment, feeling the ray graze her side. It collided with the door, making it explode. Before the smoke had even cleared, Clara slipped through the jagged gap, and jumped off the ledge beyond into nothingness-
Missy glanced up as a cheer rose up from the surrounding Dauntless. "That's one down," Osgood explained, at the Doctor's questioning glance.
Clara landed heavily, just managing to keep her footing as she crouched on a metal floor. Slowly, carefully, she rose from her crouch, eyes straining to see in the gloom.
Movement. The creak of ancient metal and decaying flesh. A horribly familiar shape in the gloom.
The Half-Faced Man stepped out in front of her.
Clara stayed still, eying him narrowly, as he began to circle her, his hand removed to reveal that awful blow-torch appendage he had threatened her with.
"You are all alone. There is no Doctor to save you this time…" the cyborg's monotone, emotionless voice made her shudder as she recalled the last time she'd stood in this room, dizzy from oxygen starvation and adrenaline, thinking as fast as she could, drunk on fear. Wondering if the man who she'd once known as the Doctor had truly abandoned her.
With a gasp, she realised that more cyborgs were stepping from the shadows, but they all resembled the Half-Faced Man. And they all repeated the same words, echoing eerily in that dark chamber. "He has abandoned you, he cannot save you…"
But the Clara who'd last stood in this room, facing this monster, was a very different girl from the one who stood there now.
As the Half-Faced Man moved in for the kill, Clara pushed aside her fear, and smiled coldly. "I don't need the Doctor to save me anymore…"
As the Half-Faced Man raised his arm to strike her down, she blocked the blow with her own arm, before striking him back across the face with her elbow. He fell to his knees, as did all the others-
And then she jolted upright, as she was back there on that mist-blanketed rock, surrounded by echoes and ghosts of a life not her own, faces not her own. Her own memories unravelling by the moment.
Familiar words fell from her lips in a desperate scream. "I don't know where I am!"
Missy felt the Doctor tense when first that cyborg from Victorian London appeared to threaten Clara, then her heartbroken cry as she landed in the nothingness at the end of the Doctor's timeline. But this time, there could be no Doctor to save her.
Clara fought to calm her breathing, to force her heart rate to settle, but her panic was only mounting. This was her first, greatest fear, she was lost, lost, lost-
With a deep breath, Clara took a firm hold of her rioting emotions, and forced them into abeyance. She concentrated only on the sound of her own breathing, letting other memories drift to the surface of her mind's eye. The Doctor, the sound of his voice, the feel of his hand in hers.
She felt warmth and light on her eyelids, and opened them-
As the scene changed once more, Missy sucked in a breath at the sight of that accursed graveyard as it materialised around Clara as she successfully moved on to the next fear. She watched as Clara stood from her kneeling position on the ground, and looked around as figures appeared around her.
Some were all too familiar. She felt the Doctor tense as his previous self appeared beside Clara, then that ape-boyfriend of hers, and then faces Missy had only disinterestedly observed before. Her mother, her father, her grandmother. A student.
She looked incongruous, stood there in their midst in her Dauntless clothing, her hair cut short and her shoulder inked in scarlet. The polar opposite of the Clara who had stood there before.
Missy's brow rose. She could surmise what the previous scenarios had represented, which fears they manifested. But this one she had little clue of.
She wondered, by his tight grip on her hand, if the Doctor had a clue.
She was back in that graveyard, early morning mist rising from the dew-covered graves around her. Above her head, the clouds still massed threateningly.
But somehow, Clara guessed they weren't her biggest problem just yet. As she stood from her crouch, several figures appeared from the mists, making her heart race even as it raced.
The Eleventh Doctor stepped out to her right, resplendent in his purple frock coat, his gold watch glinting in the dim sunlight. His eyes were cold as they raked over Clara's form. "You betrayed me, betrayed everything I ever stood for. Betrayed everything we ever stood for," he spat at her angrily. "You're not my Impossible Girl anymore."
Then, her Mum and Dad emerged from the mists. They looked at her with remorse, with regret and with disappointment. Then her Nan, as she shook her head with a mirthless smile. "How could you, Clara?" they asked. "How could you do this? How could you just run away?"
Clara's eyes filled with tears as Courtney appeared next, her eyes narrow and accusing, disgust in her voice. "You abandoned us!" she hissed.
Her lungs were screaming for oxygen, her heart sprinting, even as she gasped in air, when he finally appeared next. Somehow, she knew he would come.
Danny.
He looked just the same as she'd last seen him, nailed into that dreadful Cybersuit, gaunt and bloodless skin, haunted, pained eyes holding her accusingly. Hatefully.
"You betrayed me. You picked him over me, you betrayed me!" he stated, so quietly, that Clara flinched. She wished he'd shouted, she wished he'd struck her. Anything but that quiet, resigned, accusatory voice. "You lied to me, for so long-"
"Danny," she breathed, stepping back as the ghosts surrounding her took a step forward in unison. "Danny, please-"
"You ran away, you threw everything I did for you back in my face," he continued, as if she hadn't spoken. "You're a liar and a coward, Clara."
"You're not the daughter we loved and raised!"
"You're not my granddaughter!"
"You're not my teacher!"
"You're not my Impossible Girl anymore! I don't know who you are!"
The hateful shouts filled the air, as Clara felt a sob escape her lips as the pain of rejection filled her. But she knew what she had to do to beat this fear. Forcing in a deep breath, Clara opened her eyes and took a step forward towards the ghosts.
They moved back.
"I'm sorry," she breathed, then repeated louder and stronger. "I'm sorry."
She turned to her parents and grandmother, reaching out to them as tears ran down her cheeks. "I'm sorry I ran away," she whispered. "I'm sorry I disappointed you. I never meant to. But I am who I am, and I will always be your daughter. I love you."
The disappointment left their eyes, and as she reached out to them, they dissipated into nothingness. She turned next to Courtney, arms folded defensively as she eyed her former teacher with contempt. "I'm sorry, Courtney," Clara whispered. "I'm sorry I left you behind, I'm sorry I didn't stay. But I couldn't, I wasn't strong enough, and I'm sorry for that too. But you don't need me, you never have."
She didn't watch Courtney disappear, as she turned to the Doctor. Her bowtie Doctor, with his gangly limbs and mad hair. Her Doctor.
She stepped closer to him, raising a hand to his cheek, as the tears fell thicker and faster now, her words shaking. "I'm sorry, Doctor," she whispered. "I'm sorry for disappointing you, I'm sorry for betraying you. I tried so hard to do the right thing, to make up for my mistakes and I just ended up losing you both in the end. I'm sorry I couldn't save you on Trenzalore, I'm sorry you still had to give up everything to save me, to save the Universe. And I'm sorry I tried to make you choose between me and her. I love you, Doctor, and I'm sorry for not saying it before as well."
The coldness left the Doctor's eyes, as he raised one hand to mirror Clara's on his cheek, as she closed her eyes, wishing it was real. "My Clara," he whispered.
Clara turned to the last ghost, fighting hard for that last little reserve of courage. "And I'm sorry for that, Danny," she whispered, stopping in front of him and raising the same hand with which she'd caressed the Doctor to his ruined face. "I promised I'd never say those words again. I didn't mean to. I'm sorry for not loving you enough, for not being what you deserved. I'm sorry you lied and I'm sorry you were too busy listening to me on the phone when you stepped out into that road. I'm sorry that being with me brought all of this down on your head, that I made you a target. I love you, Danny Pink, and I'm sorry I wasn't everything you thought I was. But I won't apologise for who I am."
She stood on the very tip of her toes, and pressed her lips to his cold, dead ones. They chilled her as she lowered herself back down, glancing towards the ghost of the Doctor stood beside him. "I am who I am," she whispered. "And I won't apologise for that."
She stepped back and turned away, taking one step after another. She refused to look back.
Lightning struck and the clouds rumbled-
Missy felt an odd urge to squirm as she watched the footage. Usually she had no qualms about invading others' privacy, even their very souls, in order to fulfil her aims, but this…felt too intimate, too invasive even for her tastes. Once, she would have relished the chance to discover Clara's fears for herself, to use them against her and watch as they destroyed her. But that was then and this was now…
Missy's eyes narrowed, as the ghosts disappeared. The Doctor's hand tightened almost painfully around hers.
It began to rain.
- Clara ran, dodging tombstone after tombstone, as the rain came on. It spread out behind her, a curtain of innocuous looking water raining down from the clouds above.
Clara looked ahead, but there was no sign of shelter. The rain would catch her, and she would die. And rise again as a Cyberman.
She'd once admitted that she was terrified of dying. In a room not unlike the one where she had struck down the Half-Faced Man, she had admitted she would take hours of torture to keep herself alive.
She knew what she had to do.
She forced herself to stop running, turning on her heel and waiting. As the rain curtain rushed towards her, she shut her eyes and breathed in. As the first raindrop hit her forehead, she breathed out, one last time-
Clara opened her eyes again, as blinked as light pierced her retinas, making her flinch. The light receded, and she was left standing in a room, facing someone tied to a chair.
On a table beside her was a loaded gun.
Her stomach plummeted as Clara realised what she had to do. She looked to the prisoner, and shrank back. It was a child.
A little girl with dark hair and icy blue eyes. She looked up at her challengingly, tauntingly. Her chin stuck out in a show of defiance, but her eyes were filled with tears. She was shaking.
Clara frowned, blinked. One minute, the girl was defiant and taunting her, the next she was scared and crying. Which one?
"Kill the girl!" A voice suddenly barked, sharp and brusque. An order.
Ginny had once told her that sometimes Dauntless soldiers had to carry out orders even if they didn't like them. This was one order Clara never wanted to hear.
The girl was an innocent. And she had to kill her.
Clara reached out and hefted the pistol in her right hand, testing its weight. She thumbed the safety catch to 'off', then tightened her grip as she turned to face the girl.
She raised her arm, using a two-handed grip just as she'd been taught, her finger curled into the trigger guard.
The defiance disappeared, the girl was crying now.
Clara pulled the trigger-
Missy felt the Doctor flinch beside as the gun discharged and the figure tied to the chair slumped in her seat. Clara's face was composed and cool, giving nothing away to anyone who didn't know her.
But Missy did. So did the Doctor.
Missy had never been troubled by her own capacity to kill. Most beings possessed it, and Missy couldn't be bothered with the self-righteous delusion required to deny it. Not like the Doctor, who denied it with his every waking breath, who refused to admit it unless forced.
She's always wondered which category Clara would fall into, if ever faced with the choice. After she almost killed her in the graveyard, Missy had been certain she'd be like her, cold and detached. And she almost was.
But for the slight shaking of her hand where it was wrapped around the handle of the pistol.
Suddenly the footage became blurred as the computer registered the successful completion of the obstacle and downloaded the next. Missy felt on edge, wondering what fresh horror Clara would have to confront next. Knowing yourself was one thing, she supposed, being actively confronted with it was another.
As there came a very familiar sounding scream of pain, and Clara rushed down a corridor, Missy supposed that was what truly marked out the brave from the cowardly.
- Clara was running, as the screams continued. There were both masculine and feminine, alternating between both, filled with pain and despair. She knew who they were.
The corridors she ran through stretched on and on, a hellish labyrinth without end, as the screams grew in intensity and agony, punctuated by pointless calls for help and cries for mercy. Clara tried to shout, to call back, to make them hold on but her voice died on the air and her lungs were too busy forcing in air to help her.
Her blood ran cold. A gunshot. Two.
A high, cold, cruelly feminine laugh.
She'd failed.
Clara saw a door up ahead, the end of the corridor at last. She burst through it, blood roaring in her ears, heart racing, gasping for air. Until she saw them.
The Doctor and Missy, laid out on the floor, limbs askew and haphazardly flung out where they'd landed. The Doctor and Missy, eyes glazed and unseeing, staring up at nothingness. The Doctor and Missy, dead.
Clara dropped to her knees, a sob welling up in her throat, as she looked at the last two people she cared for, the only two in existence who understood and accepted her for who she truly was. She'd failed them, she wasn't fast enough, wasn't strong enough to reach them in time to save them. There wasn't so much as a flicker of golden regeneration energy on either one of them.
With a shudder of will, Clara forced her breathing to calm, pushing the sobs that crowded her chest and begged for relief down, as she stood shakily, only too aware of her own heartbeat.
She heard that laugh, that cold, cruel laugh again, and looked up-
Missy had always found it most disconcerting to see herself, dead. She'd died enough times to know it wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and frankly she never stayed dead for long anyway so the whole concept was rather a gauche waste of time. But that didn't mean she liked seeing herself that way.
But then the scene changed again, and an intrigued grin spread across Missy's lips. Well now, this is surprising…
The Doctor was as tense as rock beside her, clearly suffering some kind of emotional guilt attack at seeing the psyche of his beloved companion laid so bare. In truth, Missy wasn't exactly comfortable watching this. But it was very intriguing.
It seemed Clara Oswald was far more complex than she'd given her credit for. And even more promising.
- Clara looked up, and gasped.
A woman stood on the edge of the roof, watching her with laughing, mad eyes. Long brown hair hung in perfect curls to mid-back, streaked through with scarlet red and Tardis blue, a gun in her hand.
She looked human. But there was no humanity in her eyes, there was nothing good or human about her. She was evil.
She was Clara.
She was dressed the same, she looked the same. Her hair was longer, her eyes outlined by kohl and her lips painted blood-red. There was blood on her hands.
Clara almost laughed. Her greatest fear…was herself.
Of what she could become. Of what she knew she was capable of, deep inside.
"Pleased to see me?" the doppelganger called tauntingly, gesturing to the two corpses at Clara's feet. "Sorry about the mess. They were getting in the way."
Clara rose from her knees, muscles tense and expectant. "What are you?" she replied. How was she supposed to beat herself? How was she supposed to beat this fear?
The doppelganger snorted derisively, a cold pity in her achingly familiar brown eyes. "I'm you, Clara Oswin Oswald," she replied, jumping down from the edge nonchalantly. "I'm what you could be if you just stopped wasting our time, if you accepted what you really are. I'm who you really are."
"No," Clara breathed weakly. The other Clara laughed cruelly, throwing her gun away.
"I'm you, Clara. Time to stop running from me, time to stop denying me," she continued, moving closer. "I'm getting bored of being stuck in the depths of your psyche. I want to play."
Clara felt her windpipe crushed as her doubles hand lashed out and grabbed her by the throat, throwing her backwards. She landed hard on her back, coughing.
The other Clara stepped over the bodies of the Doctor and Missy like so much rubbish. As Clara forced herself over onto her front, scrabbling upright, the sight made her angry.
She lunged at her other self, her fist driving towards her face. The other Clara twisted sideways, grabbing her arm and wrenching it behind her back, forcing her to her knees. Clara gasped, tears running down her face, as the other Clara straddled her back and forced her head up by her hair.
"I'm what you are beneath those sweet little smiles, and those big, innocent eyes. I'm the rage, the cruelty, the manipulation, the control freak. I'm the monster in your head, Clara," she whispered in her ear. "You're lethal, a liar, a killer. You're a monster."
"ENOUGH!" Clara snarled, bringing her elbow up and striking double across the face. The move wrenched her arm even more, but she didn't care about the pain, as she twisted onto her feet and went for her double. The other Clara smirked and raised her fists, as Clara threw a punch at that smug, disgusting face-
Well now, that's really surprising. I love surprises…
Missy made sure to keep that particular thought to herself as she watched Clara fight a dark version of herself onscreen, battling back and forth, but neither were making headway. How does you win a fight against yourself?
She glanced at her silent companion, and saw a muscle twitching in his jaw as he watched the footage.
- Just as Clara blocked another kick to her ribcage, epiphany struck. She knew how to beat this fear.
The realisation distracted her for a moment, as she was thrown backwards by another punch to her gut. Winded, she landed right beside the gun her other self had discarded.
"Just give it up, Clara," her other self crowed. "I'm stronger than you, faster than you, better than you. I can do things you would only cry about. You can't beat me."
"Can't I?" Clara hissed, snatching up the gun. The other Clara froze, as she pulled herself painfully to her feet, her aim steady this time.
"You won't do it," her doppelganger taunted her. "You'd never have the guts to pull that trigger."
"Oh, but I do," Clara panted, her finger tightening. The other Clara laughed.
"That's right, I nearly forgot. Of course you do," she replied, with a cruel smile. "You almost killed Missy once before, after all. What's one more? Do it, Clara, and finally accept that you're just like me."
"I may have a dark side," Clara gasped. "Everyone does. You might be inside my head. You might be a part of me. But you will never control me. And I would rather die than become like you!"
She turned the pistol on herself and pulled the trigger-
Missy felt relief course through her as Clara gasped and sat upright on the chair, as the screens faded to black in front of them. All the Dauntless burst into applause above them, and her two instructors rushed to her side, clapping her on the shoulder.
Osgood appeared beside the Doctor, pale-faced but looking faintly impressed. "That's was a good time," she breathed. "And the new serum is working perfectly. But that was.." she shuddered. "Poor Clara. She's so strong."
"Yeah," the Doctor breathed beside her, his death grip on her hand easing slightly. "Yeah, she is. Too strong."
She felt faintly annoyed as the others tried to drag Clara away immediately, but just before she left the room, she darted a glance over her shoulder at them and Missy shivered.
Through their bond, she felt Clara's exhaustion, her fading terror, her pain. She also felt the flicker of a promise against her consciousness, and licked her lips.
The sooner they got off this forsaken lump of rock, and back to the Tardis, the better.
"Well that was certainly interesting,"
"Her Divergence is off the scale. We've never seen anyone so strong before, in any of our tests,"
"Not to mention, she traced our surveillance equipment. She's dangerous. If the Abnegation discover her Divergence…it's too soon. It shouldn't be possible. She shouldn't be possible."
"Well, of course not. She's not from around here, clearly. I think it's time we had a little chat with Miss Oswald."
"What about her friends? The two in Erudite?"
"Watch them. But it's Miss Oswald we need. Give the order."
To be continued…
A/N: Can you guess what fears the scenarios represent? There's a one word clue in each, if you can find it. I'm eager to see your interpretations of Clara's fear landscape.