Chapter 5: Inferno
Surrounded in complete darkness, Clara shot up with a start. She panicked briefly and quickly inspected herself by touch for any obvious injuries.
"Am I dead?"
The fuzziness in her brain cleared and she began to notice a warmth surrounding her- something soft. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she was able to make out the dying embers of a fire.
Instinctively reaching out for a lamp that she somehow knew was there, she found the switch and the room was bathed in a warm yellow light.
It was her living room. She was comfortably bundled up in the armchair the Doctor insisted she had for her living room last month. At least four blankets had her wrapped up like a little Clara-burrito.
She impulsively snuggled into their warmth again. "Well, if I'm dead, this isn't too bad." she reasoned.
She glanced by the fireplace again and noticed all of her papers stacked neatly in a corner along with her teacher's bag and thermos. She squinted in disbelief.
Cautiously, Clara untangled herself from her burrito of blankets and pulled open the curtains of the window. It looked to be early night, judging by the position of the moon. She turned on her TV to the news channel, and sure enough, it read 16 December, 2015, 9:30 PM.
Clara switched off the TV. "I'm only one hour from where I was. And somehow, I ended up in my living room snuggled up all warm and cozy to the fire." she shrugged, "That has to be the most considerate Weeping Angel I've ever met."
The next morning, Clara tried finding the man who almost killed her on the Internet. Even with her "insane computer skills" left over by the wifi creatures, she could not find him anywhere. As far as the Internet was concerned, he had been wiped from existence.
Clara began to feel a bit sorry for him, but quickly shrugged it off. "He deserved it. One less thing for me to worry about," she decided.
She finished up the last bit of her grading and walked out the door to begin the long day of school ahead.
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One year later...
Clara continued to stay by the Tardis's side through every season. In rain, in snow, in blistering heat, she was there. She was the gossip stock of the apartment complex, but hardly anyone actually bothered her about her daily stops in the alley.
Throughout the year, Clara found herself getting into minor situations that could have been disastrous had someone not intervened.
It was the Angel. The Angel was always there at the last second.
Once, she attempted to cross the street while distracted with something on her mind. A large milk truck came barreling out right in front of her which she didn't notice until it was nearly too late.
The world blacked out, and she woke up on the opposite side of the street, safe and sound. She caught a glimpse of the Angel and reached for it, but it was gone in the blink of an eye.
Another time, she accidentally took the wrong medication for a headache and overdosed on some other medicine. All she could remember from that incident was being rushed to the hospital, sicker than she had ever been in her life. She vaguely recalled a statue appearing by her bedside.
Clara woke up on her bathroom floor, two hours before. She shook it off, believing what had just happened was merely some strange dream. She still had that headache, so she reached for the wrong bottle. At the last minute, she stopped, as if experiencing a strong déjà vu.
She reached for the correct bottle and took those pills instead, effectively erasing that future from existence.
Just a few days from Christmas break, the anniversary of the Doctor's death, Clara returned to the Tardis, as always. She laid a large bouquet of flowers at the base of the wooden doors. She couldn't resist a sad smile, knowing the Doctor would have hated them had he been around. He would have probably made a comment about the colors being too flamboyant, or Clara being to sappy or something.
The once bright blue paint of the Tardis had chipped, been chewed on by animals, and was now covered in such a fine layer of grime that the Tardis looked like the phone box equivalent of a haunted house. A window had been smashed in a hailstorm earlier that year, and the light on top now barely flickered to greet Clara whenever she rounded the bend to the alley.
Without a word, Clara simply sat down on the stool she left there and graded as she usually did.
She could feel the Tardis always there in the back of her mind, a somber brooding presence. Even without her new telepathic abilities, she still would have be able to tell that the Tardis was in great distress. Clara could sometimes hear her crying faintly in her mind, calling for her lost thief. And sometimes, Clara would cry too.
Not a day went by where she didn't feel pangs of guilt for her best friend. New scenarios of what could have been popped into her head every day. All the new adventures they could have been having all this time that now will never exist. The Tardis and the rest of the universe were suffering because of her. All who had been patiently waiting on the Doctor for help had now waited in vain.
Maybe that's why the Tardis had never liked her in the beginning, maybe the ancient time machine always knew.
Clara, the Impossible Girl, born to save the Doctor, had ultimately been the one to finally kill him.
These thoughts festered in her mind every moment, becoming her identity. She was straining against herself, nearly at the breaking point. She told herself that she was a strong woman who could take care of herself, so she never sought out help- save for the comforting presence of the Tardis.
But she was dying inside.
The next few days passed at a snail's pace, but eventually ended. Christmas break began, and to Clara, it couldn't have come sooner.
Today was Christmas Day. A few carolers had knocked by a few times throughout the day, but other than that, she had the apartment to herself.
She read all her Christmas cards from family members who couldn't make it in for the holidays, and reminisced for the good old days when Christmas Day could be spent trying to cook a turkey in the time winds of the Tardis, or by having your brains sucked out by Dream-inducing crab monsters.
Things were much simpler then. Now that she was alone to do what she wished with the holidays, she found that she couldn't come up with anything to do other than watch Netflix and eat frozen comfort foods.
She had just finished grading all her students' final exams when it began to snow in a torrent.
"Just what I need," she grinned, staring out the window, "a good excuse to pop in a pizza and curl up to some Netflix."
Clara hopped up, producing a frozen pizza from her stocked up fridge- just in case she couldn't leave the place for a few days due to the weather.
She popped the pizza in the oven, accidentally knocking over a glass bottle of oil with her elbow. "Whoops," she darted out and caught it just before it could shatter on the hard floor, "That would have been a nasty fall."
She didn't notice that the bottle had managed to knock one of the burners of her gas stove on to full blast.
She closed the door of the kitchen and dove into her armchair. She selected her program and snuggled down for a good hour-and-a-half long episode of Sherlock.
As the show progressed, Clara found herself completely engrossed in what was happening onscreen, totally oblivious that in the kitchen, natural gas was gushing from her stove. The rogue burner was filling up the kitchen, bedrooms, and the front and back door areas with high volumes of the combustible gas.
Finally taking notice to the sulfuric smell, Clara took in a deep sniff. Since she closed the door to the kitchen, no gas had really come her way enough for her to detect it.
'Do I smell gas?' She took in another deep sniff and was about to get up to investigate. 'I must have turned on the stove somehow,' she thought to herself.
A loud sudden boom shook the entire apartment complex once the gas found one of her lighted Christmas candles and ignited all at once. The kitchen exploded into a huge ball of fire and blasted the heavy-made door partially from its hinges.
Clara screamed in surprise, but could not hear herself. The volume of the blast left her with only a shrill ringing in her ears. Tongues of fire came crawling up from behind the blasted door, crackling up the wall, burning up pictures, and finally reached the ceiling.
The fire fanned out against the ceiling and licked hungrily across the room. Sparks of electricity flew in bursts when the light fixtures soldered together in the intense heat.
Clara leaped up immediately. Her heart hammered in her chest uncontrollably as she scrabbled around the room desperately for an exit. The rest of her apartment was on the other side of the kitchen, including all the doors in and out. The living room itself only had windows peering out to a three-story drop onto icy pavement.
Fire now surrounded Clara on all sides. All her exits were blocked off. "Help!" she cried out desperately, "Somebody help me!"
She frugally tried to unlock the window, but it was jammed shut. "Come on!"
"Dammit!" she yelled.
By now, some of her hearing had returned and she could hear the blaring fire alarm and the rest of the people hurrying and screaming out of the complex. Her ceiling creaked menacingly. "No! No! No! No! Don't you dare fall on me!"
The fire crept closer and closer to her helpless form. Even while crouching, the smoke began to make her woozy. She gasped for fresh air as soot coated her lungs. She could feel herself beginning to lose consciousness. She collapsed onto the carpet and waited for unconsciousness.
"At least I won't be able to feel it if I'm unconscious." she rasped out.
The fire advanced closer, the heat became unbearable, and just in the corner of Clara's swimming vision she thought she caught a flash of grey.
She lost consciousness. The fire reached its destination, burning up everything in its path. Christmas ornaments exploded from the heat, windows melted, the tree ignited quickly and joined the blinding blaze.
The ceiling collapsed, and the other rooms of the complex came tumbling down onto Clara's.
Clara never felt a thing.