AN: Sorry that this Whoufflé storyline has dragged on so much (ten whole chapters - ridiculous) but then, none of you have complained. Besides, I let it grow more organically than I usually do lately; trying to make all my storylines very uniform.

Echoculum

Clara

To them, it was Sunday evening when they returned to the TARDIS, no worse for wear, laughing together, the Doctor carrying the transdimensional briefcase in one hand. They were probably, again, mocking the ridiculousness of Wade Sawyer fainting the previous night, Clara boasting that she had never fainted. The Doctor argued with this, saying she did, in fact, faint twice the day she met him. Though she argued that having your mind sucked out by an omniscient 'AI-thing' (as she called the Great Intelligence) was not the same as fainting. And then she blamed him for not stopping it sooner.

It was this conversation, rehashed, that they were tracing over when they entered the console room of the ship. And it was this conversation that Oswin Oswald interrupted with a very loud and very theatrical cough, and the two of them noticed her sitting there on the little leather chair with her arms crossed and her cane leaning on the railings.

"Where the hell have you two been all day?" she questioned. It was a little bit like coming home a few hours later than your parents expected you, Clara noted, being faced with her disappointed sister. It was strange to read that kind of maternal anguish in her own face reflected back at her.

"All day?" Clara asked, "As in – just one day?" That was a terrible thing to have said. Oswin's jaw dropped.

"How many days have you been gone for!?" she demanded, "And you didn't tell anyone where you went! What if you needed helping, or something, hmm? What if you didn't come back?"

"Babe, I think you're overreacting," Adam Mitchell – another person neither Clara nor the Doctor had noticed there – said. Clara glanced around for any more people who might be hiding, again reminded of her terrible habit of not paying attention to anybody else around her when she was in the company of her husband (though he was just as bad.)

"We've only been gone for a weekend," Eleven said, displeased with his sister-in-law treating him like a child, "Why are you so bothered?"

"A weekend? Is it even your birthday anymore, Clara?" she questioned.

"Well, no, not technically…" Clara said.

"Oh. Fine. I suppose you won't want your birthday present, then," Oswin said.

"Is my birthday present having my wonderful favourite-daughter in my life, her looking out for me and making sure I'm okay?" Clara countered her bitterness with – gasp – sincerity, hands on her hips.

"Do you know," Eleven clapped his hands together and interrupted them, after putting the briefcase down next to him, "I rather thing I ought to go with Adam Mitchell to fetch his car." He just wanted an excuse to leave, she could tell.

"You what!?" Adam demanded. Clara was shocked; he looked angry. Adam Mitchell, angry. It was like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs. "Which one!?" Oswin looked alarmed, too, and leant over so that she could hold his hand. He didn't object.

"The DeLorean," Eleven answered.

"You're freezing me!" Oswin protested, and they all saw that he was freezing her, her hand, by accident. Immediately he let go, leaving her fingers coated with ice. Good thing she was a hologram or she may have gotten frostbite.

"I can't believe you're destroyed that DeLorean! It's not supposed to be driven! It's not a replica, you know – it's the real set-piece they used on Back to the Future 2 and now – now it's gone!" Clara thought he was at risk of crying. She was amazed that the car wasn't a replica – just how rich was her sister's boyfriend that he could afford the actual DeLorean?

"We didn't destroy it!" both Clara and Eleven said together, the Doctor adding, "It's fine, I just forgot about it, it's parked in front of a hotel out there. Nothing the matter with it at all, we barely drove it. And Clara was driving. Mostly."

"You let him drive?" Oswin asked Clara, "Him? That's like letting me drive something."

"He had to drive, I was naked and had to put my clothes on because we were chasing a lizard to a theme park," Clara explained.

"Oh, well, that makes perfect sense," Oswin remarked.

"In all fairness," Clara said to the Doctor, "You did destroy the roller coaster."

"Oh, I destroyed it? I think it was a mutual effort," he said.

"Let me check on the car," Adam said.

"Yes – car – right – of course," Eleven said, motioning to the door, and they swiftly left to check on the wellbeing of one of Adam Mitchell's most prized possessions. Clara sighed and walked over to lean on the centre console in front of her sister (the TARDIS making a small, indignant whirring sound, because the stupid spaceship still hadn't warmed to her.)

"So, he swept you away for a romantic weekend on your birthday, and you didn't even bother to come and get your present from me? Or see me?" Oswin asked.

"No, it wasn't like that, sweetheart," Clara said softly, sighing a little, "I was just… having a bit of a panic in the middle of the night, and I was really homesick, so we just went to sit on the beach and I had to talk to him about some… private, marriage-related things. Then this spaceship crashed into the sea, typically enough. We stayed to look into it, and because… I just needed a break from the TARDIS. I didn't even remember it was my birthday at all."

"What marriage-related things?"

"Private, Os," Clara said sternly, "I don't ask you about you and Adam all the time." That annoyed Oswin, because it was true, but she remained nosey and unsatisfied by not knowing something about Clara's life.

"…What's this about a roller coaster and a lizard, anyway? Or is that more private stuff? I know – you married a lizard, didn't you? On a roller coaster! And then he must have destroyed it to stop you. Or did the lizard kidnap you and trap you on the roller coaster? Oh no, wait, that's what happens in Super Mario Sunshine…"

Clara proceeded to relate back to Oswin the whole of the events concerning the lizard – which did, unfortunately, include those involving Wade Sawyer, stalker extraordinaire. How it had crashed, had killed a roller coaster designer, had thought the roller coaster was in fact a spaceship it could use to escape the toxic atmosphere, how the Doctor had bravely lured it onto the roller coaster before the entire thing ended up as a gory, mangled mess of metal and sinew on the ground outside.

"And then he fainted," Clara concluded, "We waited for him to wake up, and then he called the police and said we were crazy and he didn't want to marry me, after all, and he was going to tell my father all about how I was a 'dangerous lunatic' and had married a 'madman.' We left pretty quickly before the rest of Blackpool's finest showed up."

"Then you came back, right? Came straight back to the TARDIS?"

"Well… no…"

"The police didn't come after you?"

"Apparently Geoff came to speak to one of us while I was asleep – I don't know, I suppose the Doctor must have threatened him, or something, but they left us alone for all of today. The stuff with the lizard was just last night. I've been sunbathing, mainly."

"Eurgh. Sunbathing is just masochism dressed up in a bikini," Oswin grumbled. Clara laughed.

"How's that?"

"The sun isn't good for you, Clara. Its warmth is, but not its toxic radiation. You're just going out and burning yourself on purpose, you lunatic. You might as well climb into an oven."

"Of course you'd say that, you grew up on Saturn."

"If I grew up on Saturn then you grew up in that wretched theme park," Oswin countered. Clara had told her story now, and there wasn't much else to say. Her day hadn't been filled with the most astounding of activities, not after everything with the alien reptile had been quelled, she had just been very lazy. They had got some ice cream at a point, and he had kept asking her if they could climb the 'Eiffel' Tower, because he knew that calling Blackpool Tower the 'Eiffel' Tower would annoy her (and it did, but they didn't climb it.)

"We went to the aquarium as well," Clara said, and Oswin pulled a face. "What?" Clara feigned innocence, "Do you not like the sea? I thought you love the sea. You're always going in it."

"Yeah, and I wish I wasn't," Oswin crossed her arms huffily, still trying to be angry at Clara.

"…The Doctor got me a camera for my birthday."

Oswin scoffed, "Pfft. I got you something way better than a camera."

"I'll have to see it to believe it," Clara challenged, trying to coax Oswin into giving her this present she seemed so desperate to bestow. Oswin narrowed her eyes but did, finally, give up. She leant down to pick something up from the floor next to her, which was something of an indiscernible shape covered in shiny red wrapping paper, which had the word 'birth' written across it in messy writing a few times. Clara laughed warmly. "That's adorable."

"Well I tried really hard! And you weren't around to appreciate me."

"I'm appreciating you now! God, you're a nightmare sometimes – it's like having two spouses. Or… three. If you include Thirteen. I don't know."

"Careful with it. It might… do something. When you touch it. I'm not sure what, though," Oswin said, "Hasn't been tested on the genuine article, only fakes." Clara frowned.

"Fakes?" she questioned.

"Open it!" Oswin entreated, so she did, surprised at how neatly it turned out to be wrapped, considering the queer shape. Not that unwrapping it enlightened her at all to what it was, as she sat down, carefully suspending herself in the air with telekinesis because there wasn't a spare chair close by, to examine it. "You kind of hold it in the palm of your hand. I had to put a counterweight on the front; it kept falling over, because of the mirrors," Oswin explained. Clara did hold it in her palm, and was shocked to see these aforementioned mirrors sort of unfurl themselves from out of the back of an orb-shaped device, full of tiny pieces of clockwork, and in her palm lights within the mechanisms glowed softly amber. It fit in her hand very nicely, her fingers clasped around its gold curves.

"Whoa," Clara said in awe, "…I still don't know what it is."

"Of course you don't know what it is, I haven't told you what it is – have some bloody patience," Oswin snapped, "Don't hold it for long, though, it might show you something you don't want to see."

"Show me something?"

"Yeah. Actually, you know, give it to me for the moment," Oswin said, and Clara obliged, wanting to know what the thing was with its mirrors and its cogs and bolts as it made a faint ticking sound. She hoped it wasn't some kind of explosive – but her sister did have such an irrepressible knack for building bombs. It was a little bit too pretty to just blow up, though, more like a sculpture than any genuine technology. Oswin did have a bit of an obsession with the aesthetics of all her inventions, though, so Clara was hardly surprised the thing was so ornate. "I call it the Echoculum. But, if you were to write it, write it with just the one O. Echooculum or Echo-Oculum would look stupid, Echoculum is more aesthetically pleasing." Clara didn't really know the difference between the different words, nor did she understand whom Oswin was addressing when it came to spellings and pronunciations of something she had just made up.

"Echoculum, then?"

"That's the one."

"You still haven't told me what it does."

"Well – that's the thing. You know about the telepathic circuits, right? Well, it's sort of like a… miniature telepathic circuit, tailored to you. You remember you gave me your blood months ago so that I could run tests on Manifesthood-"

"This thing has my blood in it?"

"Yeah. I had to go see Flek to test it," Oswin said, "Well, more sort of Eyeball to test it…"

"Have you been bullying Ressy again? I wish you wouldn't be so harsh to her," Clara said.

"She slapped me!" Oswin protested. Clara raised her eyebrows.

"What were you doing for her to slap you?"

"I can't believe you think I would have to do something for that maniac to lay her hands on me. All I did was tell her that her fiancée and I were having an affair and we were going to elope together. I had to make her angry! For science!" Oswin complained, and as she did, the Echoculum in her hand changed colour, from amber to pale blue. "Ah, see, it's doing it again." As soon as she spotted it doing something and got excited by it, it reverted back to its previous colour.

"I don't get it."

"It knew I was upset, so it changed colour to blue, to let you know I'm upset," Oswin said.

"But I know when you're upset already, we're psychically linked and we have an empathy bond," Clara said, "I have an empathy bond with all of them."

"Exactly, it's carried into your bloodstream, every bit of your DNA. But your empathy link doesn't really… work very well. It's based around proximity, that's why you can only really sense changes in me or Ressy," Oswin said, "But this will detect when they're experiencing an extreme emotion, and when you and you alone touch it, it'll show you in the mirrors what's going on."

"'Extreme emotion'?" Clara questioned wryly.

"An extreme bad emotion. If one of them cums, it won't acknowledge it," Oswin said, then added to herself, "It was very tricky getting it to ignore orgasms… Anyway. You see when they're angry or sad or scared and judge if you ought to go all guardian angel about it." After explaining what it did, Oswin let Clara have it again.

"Thank you," Clara said, "This is great. It'll really help keep them safe. I didn't think you cared about your sisters." Oswin made an almost disgusted face when Clara called the other Echoes her sisters.

"I don't care all that much. But you do. Besides, maybe I'll get into a tight scrape and the Echoculum will help you come and get me. It's self-preservation, if anything," Oswin said, trying to be indifferent. Clara didn't really believe that she didn't care about the other Echoes, or that she really disliked them much. She hugged her, which was another thing Oswin pretended to dislike, and it was then that Adam Mitchell and Eleven came back, Adam apparently making the Doctor promise to never steal one of his cars ever again without permission. Clara let Oswin go.

"You like the thingamajig, then?" Adam asked.

"Of course I do," Clara said.

"What is it?" Eleven asked, and Oswin had to re-explain, though she tried to be a little more concise about the Echoculum's purpose when speaking to the Doctor. "Ah – excellent. You ought to put it on top of the piano, Coo."

"I thought I'd keep it in bed next to me – you can have the sofa," she said.

"Even better, I love the sofa."

"I meant the sofas in Nerve Centre."

"Brilliant, right by the fridge."

"Alright, well, Adam and I are going to leave if you two won't stop weird-flirting," Oswin said, that reminding Clara how she hadn't yet told Oswin how Wade Sawyer had thought she was being mistreated by Eleven. Then again, Oswin didn't like Eleven much already, telling her that might make her even colder towards him. Though Clara was sure her sister's dislike of the Doctor was more to do with Jenny Harkness than anything else…