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's discovery puts her in danger and the Doctor finds out who the true masters of Chicago are.
A/N: So did you guess all the fears in Clara's fear landscape? If not, here they are in order of appearance: 1) being helpless/loss of control, 2) abandonment, 3) being lost, 4) rejection, 5) fear of dying, 6) fear of killing an innocent, 7) fear of failure, 8) fear of herself. Did you get them all?
In the car on the way back to Erudite, the Doctor came to a decision. This had gone far enough.
He still couldn't get the images of Clara's fear landscape out of his mind, each one flashing across his mind's eye with painful clarity. To watch her go through that, to be forced to confront the very darkest depths of her own psyche, was a more painful torture than any he'd ever undergone. And he'd seen his fair share of torture chambers over the millennia.
He'd guessed some of them. Of course he had, she was one of his best friends but…not even he realised how scared Clara was of herself. All this time, he'd been judging her for how she was changing, and what she was changing into, when she'd already been terrified of that herself. Or had been. He wasn't so sure anymore.
Whatever, enough was enough. After tonight, he'd ask Missy to contact Clara and leave the factions. After he'd hacked into the Erudite mainframe and dug around for any more information on the shadow system Clara found.
He felt Missy's swift glance as his resolve hardened, and he knew she could feel it. With barely a flicker of her eyelashes, she assented and turned to stare out the car window at the passing city. The Doctor glanced up, and frowned.
Osgood was staring at him again.
He hadn't noticed it at first, the incessant staring when she thought he wasn't looking at her. The careful looks, the flashes of concern. Her offer of confidence if he ever needed it.
Suspicion bloomed, but he said nothing, just looked away.
When they reached Erudite, they said goodnight to their companions without delay, claiming to be tired, and no one batted an eyelid, too busy excitedly examining the simulation data and the new improvements. The Doctor felt Osgood's eyes on his back as they left the lobby area.
Missy waited until they were alone in their apartment before speaking. Although not aloud.
So, what's the plan? I know you're up to something in that grey old head of yours…
The Doctor rolled his eyes at that. It's not grey, it's silver. We need to find out what we can about this surveillance network shadowing theirs, then we get out. It'll be much harder to track us down if we're away from the factions. We can contact Clara and meet her somewhere.
Fine, but if I'm going to be spending the next few days scrabbling around ruined buildings, I want my own clothes instead of these ridiculous rags. Be back in five! Missy replied, before disappearing into their bedroom. The Doctor sighed but didn't stop her. A part of him wanted to copy her and change back into his old clothes immediately. He needed to feel like himself again, to feel like the Doctor again.
He needed his Tardis back, to be with Missy and Clara, safe and sound. He needed all three of his girls safe.
With a sigh, he placed the tablet down and gave in. He went and got changed.
He emerged a few moments later in his old clothes, the black cloth slightly wrinkled from where it had been in storage, but he immediately felt better. He felt more like himself.
Missy, on the other hand, was taking forever rearranging her hair back into its usual crazy style, so he left her to it. He was no hair stylist.
As he waited, he paced their living room, thinking hard. If there was surveillance covering the city, monitoring every inch of it, he knew there was a good chance they had more surveillance than purely computer-based. There were probably hidden cameras and listening devices planted everywhere, or piggybacks on the Dauntless security systems.
No wonder Clara had been so jumpy when she contacted Missy and reopened their telepathic link. He shuddered to think how much they might have overhead, from their conversations in the past few days. Fear sank its claws in deep, but he refused to let it rule him.
He flung himself onto the sofa nonchalantly, as if aggravated by something, then slipped a hand into his pocket. The pocket where his sonic screwdriver resided, squashed between the sofa arm and his thigh. It was a crush, quite literally, but he managed to get his thumb on the button. It was a simple matter after that, just sending out a jamming signal to nullify any listening devices in their immediate vicinity, then the cameras. He hadn't dared do so when they were first captured, but he couldn't afford for them to realise what he was doing too soon.
Just as he opened up the tablet to start work, Missy emerged from the bedroom, once more resplendent in her purple cambric coat and skirt, hair elegantly coiffed and make-up retouched. He wasn't about to tell her what an improvement it was, she knew it already by the smug glint in her eye.
But if he'd looked bad in blue, then she just looked wrong. Blue definitely had not been her colour.
He looked back to his work just as Missy's head shot up, face alert and cold. He frowned at her, opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, when she held up a warning hand and glided past him to the kitchen. He watched her go in utter confusion, before his own senses clicked into place. He'd been so intent on what he was doing, he'd almost missed it.
Someone was coming.
They were walking extremely quietly, and carefully, trying their best to avoid detection but they were clearly an amateur in the sneaking business and no match for heightened Gallifreyan senses. Millions of years ago, there had been hunters in Gallifreyan society and while those senses had become numbed and disused, like an atrophied muscle in most Time Lords, Missy and the Doctor were not most Time Lords. More than once, the Doctor's senses had saved his life and they were better attuned than some.
Missy, however, was in another league. A natural hunter, a predator, used to stalking her prey.
He had no choice but to trust her.
Nevertheless, when she emerged from their kitchen with a knife in hand, he frowned at her even as his hearts froze in instinctive alarm. A weapon in the Mistress' hands never boded well, for anyone.
And quite often, especially him.
She caught his worried look, and rolled her eyes contemptuously. As if I'd kill you now, in such an inelegant, primitive way as this? Idiot.
The Doctor felt immediately defensive, but she pointed to the door with the knife as she raised a finger to her lips. He glared at her but moved to the door anyway, while she took her place to the other side, where she'd be hidden from sight.
To his surprise, there came a light, uncertain knock at the door.
Cautiously, the Doctor opened the door only to find Osgood waiting on the other side. "Osgood? What are you doing out at this time of night?" he asked, with a disarming smile. "What can I do for you?"
"I need to talk to you," she whispered. "It's urgent. I think Clara might be in danger."
His smile wiped away, the Doctor moved back to let her in, holding out a hand to Missy to stand down. As Osgood stepped inside, she glimpsed the flash of metal in Missy's hand before she slipped the weapon in her coat pocket. Her eyes widened.
"Were you going to kill me?" she gulped.
"The night's still young-" Missy purred with a feral grin, as the Doctor sighed.
"Missy!" he snapped.
"But right now I'm more interested in what exactly you think you know about Clara," Missy finished, taking no notice of him.
Osgood took a deep breath, as the Doctor locked the door behind her. She glanced around, but he shook his head, guessing the tenor of her thoughts. "There's no surveillance here. I know the Council have been keeping an eye on us, but I've disabled all surveillance. We haven't got much time before someone notices-"
"The Council don't know anything about you," Osgood interrupted, fidgeting. "If there's surveillance here, it isn't them."
The Doctor frowned. Yet more puzzle pieces, but they were slowly coalescing. He looked sharply to Osgood, who was eying Missy warily. His earlier suspicions reared their head, coalesced and crystallised.
Missy beat him to it.
"And how exactly does a lowly engineer know what's on the Council's mind, hmm?" she asked, with just an undertone of contempt for the human, but he sensed concern seeping through their link.
Osgood bristled. "Look, I don't know what your problem with me is, but whatever grudge you're holding won't help us now," she snapped heatedly, before the fire left her eyes and she sighed. "I know what the Council's up to because several of the Council members are Divergent."
"Jamie told Clara he would contact other Divergents in the factions to help her," the Doctor mused, before his face cleared. "You're one of them. You're Divergent."
Osgood nodded. "Erudite and Dauntless," she told them. "Despite the risks, I didn't think I was cut out for Dauntless. Not really the fighting type."
"Sometimes being brave isn't about being strong or a fighter. There are other ways to be brave," the Doctor told her, and she smiled slightly.
"As amusing as I'm finding this motivational pep talk," Missy interrupted smoothly, just a hint of annoyance in her voice. "How did Jamie contact you and why is Clara in danger?"
"Jamie and I were in the same class at school, before the Choosing Ceremony. Sometimes I help out with the farming equipment if I've got nothing to do here. He contacted me after Clara's Aptitude Test and told me everything and asked me to help," she explained. "Anyway, that doesn't matter now. The problem is that they're already suspicious of Clara's fear landscape. There were some mutterings that she got through it too fast and too easily."
The Doctor snorted. He'd have called Clara's fear landscape many things, but easy wasn't one of them.
"You mean they suspect her Divergence," he clarified, and Osgood nodded. "We're leaving the factions tonight anyway. We'll arrange somewhere to meet up, but there's something we have to do first."
"Locate your ship," Osgood nodded, and the Doctor stared.
"You are well-informed," Missy drawled, one brow raised.
"Jamie did tell me everything," Osgood shrugged. "How are you planning to find it? It's not in Erudite, or you'd be gone already. What's this surveillance you mentioned earlier?"
With a warning glance from Missy, one he shrugged off, he explained everything to Osgood. The surveillance shadowing the Dauntless computer systems, the listening devices and hidden cameras they'd detected in their apartment. The possibility that there was something, or someone, else at work in the city, manipulating events, controlling the flow of information.
By the end of it, Osgood was slumped on the sofa, head in hands and ponytail thoroughly mussed by her hands raking through it. "I can't believe this," she breathed. "Our ancestors built the wall, they told us there was nothing left, no other survivors. What is this?"
"I don't know," the Doctor sighed. Missy was apparently growing impatient.
"Well, believe it," she snapped shortly. "We've got work to do and a Tardis to find, so why don't you just skip off-"
"Have you used the data network?" Osgood suddenly asked, ignoring Missy entirely. The Doctor's brow rose.
"What's the data network?" he asked.
"Basically all computers in the city are linked to computers in Erudite," she explained. "It means we can access their files at any time."
"Well, well," Missy chuckled, one brow raised. "How very ethical of you."
"We don't have time for arguments," the Doctor cut across Osgood as she opened her mouth to furiously reply. "We could use the data network to trace the source of the surveillance, find where the signal leads. We find the source of the surveillance, we find the Tardis."
Without another word, he reached for the tablet and got to work. Missy fetched a spare tablet and joined him, their fingers blurring with the speed at which they worked. Osgood just watched and paced while outside, the night was deepening.
It took far less time than the human had believed possible. In just fifteen minutes, the Doctor smirked triumphantly. "There she is!" he crowed. "There's the old girl."
Missy glanced over to his tablet with a raised brow. "I won't tell Clara if you don't," she sighed. "She'll be insufferable."
"What? Why? Where is your ship?" Osgood demanded.
The Doctor's jaw tightened. "It's in Dauntless. The source of surveillance comes from Dauntless, from the lower levels."
"I will, however, say it for her," Missy smirked. "I told you so."
"I'm sure Clara will be so thrilled," he replied repressively. As Missy turned back to her tablet with a grin, it turned into a frown as she noticed something intriguing. She'd been trawling through Abnegation files, searching for traces of the shadow surveillance when something caught her eye.
With barely an effort, she broke the encryption protecting the file and accessed it. It was a video file, and her brows rose. "Doctor, human, I think you might find this rather interesting," she breathed, turning the speakers on and adjusting the volume so they could all hear. Osgood crowded close, her face growing paler by the moment with every word.
Onscreen, a woman sat behind a metal desk, her surroundings too dim to make out. Her hair was short and brown, and she was well-dressed, but there were shadows around her eyes that the Doctor recognised all too well. This woman had seen horrors.
" - name is Amanda Ritter and I come from outside the wall," she was saying onscreen. "In this file, I will tell you only what you need to know. I am the leader of an organisation fighting for justice and peace. This fight had become increasingly more important - and consequently, nearly impossible - in the past few decades. That is because of this."
Images flashed across the screen, of death and blood and war. Some the Doctor recognised; the Holocaust, apartheid, genocide, but there were others he didn't. It made him sick to his stomach.
"You do not remember any of that. But if you are thinking these are the actions of a terrorist group or a tyrannical government regime, you are only partially correct. Half of the people in those pictures, committing those terrible acts, were your neighbours. Your relatives. Your co-workers. The battle we are fighting is not against a particular group. It is against human nature itself - or at least what it had become. Outside the wall, we have all but destroyed each other. We designed your city as an experiment. We believe it is the only way to recover the humanity we have lost. In order to keep you safe, we devised a way to be separated from us. From our water supply, from our technology, from our societal structure. And we created factions to ensure peace, in the hope that you will rediscover the moral sense that most of us have lost. Over time, we hope you will begin to change as most of us cannot."
"Loves the sound of her own voice, this one," Missy yawned theatrically, but neither Osgood nor the Doctor took any notice. She rolled her eyes, but was intrigued despite herself.
" - but we believe that there will be those among you, who will transcend these factions. You will know that it is time to help us when there are many among you whose minds appear more flexible than the others. These will be the Divergent. They are the true purpose of this experiment, they are vital to humanity's survival. Once they have become abundant among you, your leaders should give the command for Amity to unlock the gate forever, so you may emerge from your isolation. We've allowed you to believe that you're the last of us, but you're not. Mankind waits for you, with hope, beyond the wall."
"The information in this video is for those in government only. You are to be a clean slate, but do not forget us," the woman, Ritter, continued with a broad smile. "I am about to join your number. Like the rest of you, I will voluntarily forget my name, my family, and my home. I will take on a new identity, with false memories and a false history. But so you know that the information I have provided you with is accurate, I will tell you the name I am about to take as my own. My name will be Edith Prior, and there is much I am happy to forget."
The screen went black, as all three sat there in stunned silence. Missy was the first to break it.
"Told you so."
Clara still felt the aftershocks of the fear landscape. They ran up and down her legs and arms in continuous shivers, her blood afire with adrenaline. It had been a surprising day.
Most of the fears she'd faced, she had guessed. But the last…she had never realised how scared she was of who she was, of what she could be. Of whom she was becoming. She'd shied away from it, denying it even as she dallied with Missy and pushed the Doctor away.
It curled in her belly like liquid fire, whispering away in her ears. It haunted her dreams where they'd been granted a blessed reprieve from the singing ever since she left the Tardis.
She was tired of running from it, of running from her fears. If anything she'd experienced today had taught her something, it was that. Maybe it was time to stop running.
Her companions apparently sensed her unease, as Ginny touched her arm gently, on their way back up to their apartments after dinner and celebratory drinks. Underneath the adrenaline, Clara's mind was buzzing with alcohol, Ryan hadn't stopped pressing it on her all night.
"You alright, Oswin?" she asked.
"Yeah, yeah I'm fine," Clara replied. "I'm fine."
"I saw your two friends from Erudite at the test," Ginny continued uncertainly. "Did seeing them upset you? The woman, was she-?"
"It's…complicated," Clara sighed eventually, wondering how to even put a name to what she and Missy had. Let alone what she had with the Doctor. "Really complicated. Not that it matters right now."
"That's the spirit," Andrew slurred drunkenly from beside her. "You've got a new family now. Don't need 'em anymore."
But she did. Her fear landscape had taught her that too.
They left the walkway along the wall of the Pit, and entered the shadowed corridors leading to their apartments. Clara shuddered as she was once again reminded of her fear landscape, that claustrophobic corridor she had run down to escape the Dalek. Except the light there had been orange and musty, while the scant light in the corridor was tinged blue.
Cold like ice.
Clara stumbled, her balance abruptly disappearing. She frowned. "Something's wrong," she breathed, trying to stand upright.
"Oswin?" Andrew asked, his brow furrowed. They had paused in the circle of light between shadows, and Clara's heart raced as shadows within shadows melted from the darkness and came for them. "What-!?"
Clara tried to drag herself upright again, tried to raise her arms like she'd been trained, but they felt like lead. Her every muscle had turned to gelatine, as she groaned and forced herself to move. She dimly saw Ginny and Andrew move to fight, then the glint of metal in the hand of one of their assailants.
She called out in warning, but Andrew fell, as a ribbon of blood spurted from his abdomen. Ginny lashed out, but she was as incapacitated as Clara, seemingly, as one of their assailants simply grabbed her fist and used her own momentum to drive her headfirst into the wall. She hit it hard and slid down, slumping to the floor.
Rage exploded in Clara, giving her strength to fight the drug coursing through her system, as she lunged haphazardly for the one who had stabbed Andrew. He caught her blow and disdainfully threw her to the floor.
"You're still coherent, I'm impressed," a voice drawled, horribly familiar, as Clara's skin crawled. Behind a balaclava, cold eyes glittered down at her. Adam. "You clearly didn't give her enough sedative, Ryan."
Shock punctured Clara's system as she turned her head sluggishly to see one of the men rise from his position knelt by Andrew, seemingly checking his vitals. His eyes were pained, and Clara could just glimpse the edge of a familiar tattoo peeking out from beneath the edge of his balaclava.
It clicked.
"You…you…" she tried to speak, but her tongue was leaden in her mouth.
"Wait, I didn't catch that," Adam taunted her, kicking her in the stomach. Clara winced and folded in on herself, pain clouding her senses anew as the drug took rapid effect.
"Enough, Adam! Our orders were unharmed and clean!" Clara heard Ryan snap in a whisper. "It's bad enough you killed Andrew, it'll be a miracle if Ginny's alright."
"Nothing a shot of memory serum won't fix," Adam shrugged nonchalantly. "As for Andrew, I doubt the others will care about another dead GD."
For one moment, Clara mustered the strength to rise up and grab for the old bullet wound in Adam's leg, Ginny's voice echoing in her head. Adam howled and struck her down, as she landed hard on her front. Her eyes fell on Andrew, who lay facing her, nose ring glinting in the icy blue light, eyes glazed and empty.
Just as she felt a sharp impact at the back of her head, she screamed with all her might. But only in her mind.
MISSY!
MISSY!
The mental cry was so powerful, the Doctor felt it filter through into his own link with Missy, as she bent double, clutching her head, mouth open in a silent scream. He fell to his knees with her, clutching her to him as the psychic shout dissipated.
Osgood watched with wide eyes, seemingly still in shock from the revelations of the file.
"Doctor, it's…Clara…" Missy panted against his suit jacket. "She's…in danger."
"I know, I heard," he breathed out through gritted teeth. His head was ringing, and it had only been a secondary feedback through Clara's link to Missy, and Missy's link to him. "Osgood, the tablet!"
At the commanding bite in his voice, Osgood snapped to attention, retrieving the tablet and handing it to the Doctor with a faintly startled look. He ignored her as he switched it on, bringing up Clara's feed.
Beside him, Missy was still clutching her head, fingers speared through the elaborate curls of her hair, agony etched into her features. "She…could do…with a few lessons," she panted between gasps of pain as it slowly receded.
The Doctor fast-forwarded through as much of the footage as he could, until Clara left the cafeteria and began making her way back to her apartment, along with her two instructors.
His blood ran cold as he watched Andrew die through Clara's eyes, her cry of grief and denial, her inability to fight back as Ginny too fell, and she was beaten into unconsciousness.
"I think that whoever is behind that video file we just watched has taken Clara," he pronounced darkly, as anger began to build in his veins. The tablet went black as the footage ran out.
But the nanotech was still active.
"Her fear landscape," Missy replied. "The images of Daleks and cyborgs might be explained away as nightmares to the people here, but there's someone pulling the strings, the puppet masters won't be fooled. Especially if they already know we don't belong here."
"And if those same people took your ship, then they must want to question her about it," Osgood suddenly interjected, having seemingly recovered her faculties. "Or draw you two into a trap."
"Oh, it's undoubtedly a trap," Missy purred. The Doctor rolled his eyes.
"Traps are practically Missy's flirting," he told Osgood in explantion. "We're in a fenced city, they can take their time with Clara and come for us at their leisure," the Doctor continued darkly. But they couldn't know they'd found the Tardis. The trace they'd used was far too advanced, it was virtually undetectable. They had the advantage of surprise there, if they could just save Clara.
The rage was building in him, a rage he hadn't felt since before his last regeneration. He thought the Oncoming Storm had died in the flames of Trenzalore, but he was rearing his head once more. He looked to Missy, and saw once more that same darkness in her eyes, the same promise of pain for the people who had taken their Impossible Girl.
Missy's gaze met his, and she nodded. They would get her back.
"We can trace Clara through the nanotech. Gimme!" she held out her hand for the sonic screwdriver, and he handed it over. He watched as she removed her own nanotech earpiece and tinkered with it, the familiar buzz of the screwdriver comforting him.
"Osgood, you should go now," he turned to the human. "Thank you for coming to warn us, but this is getting dangerous. You should go now and don't look back."
"Yeah, I should," Osgood shrugged. "But I'm not going to. I can help you."
"Oh goodie," Missy muttered sarcastically from his other side as the Doctor inhaled deeply, fighting for patience.
"Osgood, I admire your bravery but stay out of this-" he began, before she cut him off determinedly.
"If someone is messing with the city, I deserve to know about it. All my life, I've wondered what the hell I am. I'd like to get some answers," she said firmly. "If we can save Clara, well then that's just an added bonus."
The Doctor stared at her, as she fidgeted. "And you think you're not cut out for Dauntless," he murmured, as she blushed.
Missy sighed. Loudly. "If we're done being all fuzzy and warm with each other, our Clara is in danger. Do try to focus, Doctor. As for you," she turned to Osgood dismissively. "Unless you have something other than idiocy and a death wish up your sleeve, run along now and let the grown-ups sort this out."
Osgood flushed, but her jaw firmed. "I've got so much more than that," she replied firmly. "I can get you out of Erudite, without being seen."
To be continued…