Fate's Purpose
Written for the who_contest
Title: Fate’s Purpose
Rating: PG
Genre: Cannon AU: time of Clara’s Echoes
Word Count: 1,463
Pairings/Characters: Clara Oswin Owald {1st person POV, one of her echoes}, mentions Eleventh Doctor, River Song, Amy Pond
Spoilers: Only if you haven’t seen series 7
Summary: She never believed in ghosts…until she became one; now she is just an echo with fate’s purpose.
Disclaimer: I disclaim. Doctor Who belongs to BBC/Steven Moffat. I write for fun.
Theme: Superstition
Author’s Note: This is a tiny bit AU as I can’t be sure this really happened, but interesting thing about Clara’s echoes, she lived in the Doctor’s time stream. She could have been anywhere.
-^-
Superstitions. Silly.
Don’t believe in them. Don’t believe in ghosts. Never have.
Until I became one.
It all happened with one jump that I have no recall of until it’s time to jump again. Time to fall again. And every time I land it’s to find him.
It’s all my life is now. Be born. Live a little. Find the Doctor. Save him. Die.
I’m not a real thing. Just an echo. A ghost of a once live person. I’m that superstition I never believed in.
Proving it is easy. Most of the time you see, I do the deed and he’s blind to it. Doesn’t care. Doesn’t listen. Doesn’t show any bit of perception.
And it hurts. It aches. Because since jumping into this stream of his personal time, I love him even more than I did when I was whole. When I was real, and not just an echo.
It’s an egotistical type thing, this odd fractional existence. For it surrounds, encompasses all I live, all I breathe.
Doctor Doctor Doctor.
That’s all that is here. One. Two. Three. Four…
And so on and so on.
Now…
My Eleven. The one the whole of me first knew and ordered the echoes to save.
I caress all the faces with my ethereal fingers. I touch them all with superstitious shivers of something he never cares to see.
Something he doesn’t even think of at the moment for he is in tears. He is in agony. The pain rains down his face as this time he loses more than one. And that second one is who gave birth to this regeneration. She might as well have. She was his first face to see.
Oh Amy Pond. How he loves you. I bet if you were a ghost he would still see. He would still hear and touch. But now you go to somewhere he cannot follow. The angel sweeps you up with her open mouth and you are taken. One second there. The next gone.
You fade. As it will soon be my time to fall back into the shadows again.
There is another angel. One not even River Song sees, River who has been carefully keeping her eyes forward all this time for his grief is so great he has buried his face in his hands, just like a crying statue, but he will not become the corpse of one, even if he might crave it. The hideous angel waits for the Doctor to view her, to blink. She wants to take him. She wants to kill the Doctor.
Like all those other foes who hate him. All those ghosts now for if he couldn’t defeat them, or his companion couldn’t, or a friend was unable, I did it. I took them away to save the Doctor. My Doctor.
Egotistical feeling, but now I live in only his egotistical world. You can’t blame me.
The angel weeps. She waits with a clandestine smile. And I smile back.
It’s time. Tick tock goes the clock. Time to save the Doctor.
River sees me. She shakes her head, starts to say something, but I push my finger to my lips. Shhhh. Say nothing. Do nothing.
She nods slowly. Acts as if I’m nothing more than a ghost. For I will be to her. She’ll forget me.
And the Doctor will never see.
I blink.
The angel no longer weeps. She lifts her hands to me, her face one of a monster. I look away. To my weeping Doctor.
So consumed in grief. I think how will I save him next?
He doesn’t seem to want to be of this world anymore.
I can feel the ice in his heart. Second one. As the first breaks. Tiny little cracks and the blood leaks out, crimson ugly tears.
I still my own beating heart, the one that is never meant to last long. So temporary are hearts of an echo. All I am now. A fragment. A shard of glass. Ever so fragile. Ever so incomplete.
I take a deep breath and turn away from him. Knowing what will be. And indeed it is.
She towers over me. Her fingers are ready to claw me away. The angel is so near, so obscenely close.
Tick tock. I’m about to be that ghost again. That crazy superstition. But then I always am. Even as I live it is only to die. It is only to take him away from the havoc of the G.I.
That is why I fall and land, and repeat it again.
Today I came here almost on a whim. First I left my home of Jersey to live in New York City. Oh exciting fantastic New York. The opportunity was given to me by the mother of a child I used to sit for. She helped me get this apartment right in the village, where all the life is. I was going to be an event organizer at this posh hotel, take over the kids’ side of things. Because even the richest of kids had to have fun, right?
I just started the job, had it for one week. Tomorrow we were going to take a trip to one of New York’s many museums. We were going to have a picnic later in Central Park. So fun.
I was really starting to live. Really starting to be happy and not feel I had this other purpose I had to follow.
In fact I was just on my way to work when I looked across the street and saw this ominous statue. One moment she was looking forward. The next she had her face in her hands, was weeping. I pointed it out to passers-by, who looked at me like I was crazed. I gestured wildly, but then when I turned, when I tried to get them to see, she was normal again. She was regular.
And yet like a wicked chimera it wouldn’t let me go. It was a sign. Something was going to happen.
I was one block away from work, just one, when I heard it, a man screaming.
“AMY, NO!”
I’m a curious type. I couldn’t let that go. One block. I ran to the cemetery, laughing off any thoughts of ghosts. Then I saw him. And I hid behind a tombstone, because suddenly it was in my mind again. My heart.
Doctor.
The reason why I land. The reason why I fall.
The reason why I am here now. I was never meant to live a long life. To take those kids to the museum and Central Park. To have hot dogs and soda. I was never meant for that. I will never see that. I was only meant to do this. To fall. To live a new existence. To have it cut short. To save and die. Anything else is like a silly superstition, false. Unreal. I’m meant to descend. A ghost.
Suppose there will come the time the falling will be the last. And I that ghost of superstition will simply fade away into eternity, go into extinction.
But not yet.
I still have more saving to do.
I look to River once more. I know I don’t have to say anything. She will watch over him for as long as she can. She will protect him. But that won’t be forever.
Maybe one day I can be more than this ghost, this superstition I used to never believe. Maybe I can be real again, living life for more than just one purpose. Living life out of his stream of time.
Maybe one day.
But not now.
I slowly turn back, and the angel’s stone hand claws into my skin. It rips through my flesh, tearing it like weak parchment. One more only.
Just one more.
As I hear his wails. As I notice out of corner of eye, River slowly walking toward him. As I feel his sobs upon my own cheeks, that egotistical hold he has on me, his stream never letting me go, never letting me forget for long that I only have one purpose.
“Goodbye my Doctor. Until next time.”
I blink.
One last time.
She gets me. The angel has me within her clutch, my flesh all torn and twisted, my breath stolen. But no matter.
For you see…
The Doctor lives.
And like all the other times, it happens. As it’s meant to. As my whole form intended for it was the only choice then, that fateful time at Trenzalore. It’s not about the soufflé itself Mum always told me. It’s about the recipe. The ingredients. The pieces. The echoes I am now. It doesn’t matter if I come to whole again. All that matters is this. He breathes.
I die.
Title: Fate’s Purpose
Rating: PG
Genre: Cannon AU: time of Clara’s Echoes
Word Count: 1,463
Pairings/Characters: Clara Oswin Owald {1st person POV, one of her echoes}, mentions Eleventh Doctor, River Song, Amy Pond
Spoilers: Only if you haven’t seen series 7
Summary: She never believed in ghosts…until she became one; now she is just an echo with fate’s purpose.
Disclaimer: I disclaim. Doctor Who belongs to BBC/Steven Moffat. I write for fun.
Theme: Superstition
Author’s Note: This is a tiny bit AU as I can’t be sure this really happened, but interesting thing about Clara’s echoes, she lived in the Doctor’s time stream. She could have been anywhere.
-^-
Superstitions. Silly.
Don’t believe in them. Don’t believe in ghosts. Never have.
Until I became one.
It all happened with one jump that I have no recall of until it’s time to jump again. Time to fall again. And every time I land it’s to find him.
It’s all my life is now. Be born. Live a little. Find the Doctor. Save him. Die.
I’m not a real thing. Just an echo. A ghost of a once live person. I’m that superstition I never believed in.
Proving it is easy. Most of the time you see, I do the deed and he’s blind to it. Doesn’t care. Doesn’t listen. Doesn’t show any bit of perception.
And it hurts. It aches. Because since jumping into this stream of his personal time, I love him even more than I did when I was whole. When I was real, and not just an echo.
It’s an egotistical type thing, this odd fractional existence. For it surrounds, encompasses all I live, all I breathe.
Doctor Doctor Doctor.
That’s all that is here. One. Two. Three. Four…
And so on and so on.
Now…
My Eleven. The one the whole of me first knew and ordered the echoes to save.
I caress all the faces with my ethereal fingers. I touch them all with superstitious shivers of something he never cares to see.
Something he doesn’t even think of at the moment for he is in tears. He is in agony. The pain rains down his face as this time he loses more than one. And that second one is who gave birth to this regeneration. She might as well have. She was his first face to see.
Oh Amy Pond. How he loves you. I bet if you were a ghost he would still see. He would still hear and touch. But now you go to somewhere he cannot follow. The angel sweeps you up with her open mouth and you are taken. One second there. The next gone.
You fade. As it will soon be my time to fall back into the shadows again.
There is another angel. One not even River Song sees, River who has been carefully keeping her eyes forward all this time for his grief is so great he has buried his face in his hands, just like a crying statue, but he will not become the corpse of one, even if he might crave it. The hideous angel waits for the Doctor to view her, to blink. She wants to take him. She wants to kill the Doctor.
Like all those other foes who hate him. All those ghosts now for if he couldn’t defeat them, or his companion couldn’t, or a friend was unable, I did it. I took them away to save the Doctor. My Doctor.
Egotistical feeling, but now I live in only his egotistical world. You can’t blame me.
The angel weeps. She waits with a clandestine smile. And I smile back.
It’s time. Tick tock goes the clock. Time to save the Doctor.
River sees me. She shakes her head, starts to say something, but I push my finger to my lips. Shhhh. Say nothing. Do nothing.
She nods slowly. Acts as if I’m nothing more than a ghost. For I will be to her. She’ll forget me.
And the Doctor will never see.
I blink.
The angel no longer weeps. She lifts her hands to me, her face one of a monster. I look away. To my weeping Doctor.
So consumed in grief. I think how will I save him next?
He doesn’t seem to want to be of this world anymore.
I can feel the ice in his heart. Second one. As the first breaks. Tiny little cracks and the blood leaks out, crimson ugly tears.
I still my own beating heart, the one that is never meant to last long. So temporary are hearts of an echo. All I am now. A fragment. A shard of glass. Ever so fragile. Ever so incomplete.
I take a deep breath and turn away from him. Knowing what will be. And indeed it is.
She towers over me. Her fingers are ready to claw me away. The angel is so near, so obscenely close.
Tick tock. I’m about to be that ghost again. That crazy superstition. But then I always am. Even as I live it is only to die. It is only to take him away from the havoc of the G.I.
That is why I fall and land, and repeat it again.
Today I came here almost on a whim. First I left my home of Jersey to live in New York City. Oh exciting fantastic New York. The opportunity was given to me by the mother of a child I used to sit for. She helped me get this apartment right in the village, where all the life is. I was going to be an event organizer at this posh hotel, take over the kids’ side of things. Because even the richest of kids had to have fun, right?
I just started the job, had it for one week. Tomorrow we were going to take a trip to one of New York’s many museums. We were going to have a picnic later in Central Park. So fun.
I was really starting to live. Really starting to be happy and not feel I had this other purpose I had to follow.
In fact I was just on my way to work when I looked across the street and saw this ominous statue. One moment she was looking forward. The next she had her face in her hands, was weeping. I pointed it out to passers-by, who looked at me like I was crazed. I gestured wildly, but then when I turned, when I tried to get them to see, she was normal again. She was regular.
And yet like a wicked chimera it wouldn’t let me go. It was a sign. Something was going to happen.
I was one block away from work, just one, when I heard it, a man screaming.
“AMY, NO!”
I’m a curious type. I couldn’t let that go. One block. I ran to the cemetery, laughing off any thoughts of ghosts. Then I saw him. And I hid behind a tombstone, because suddenly it was in my mind again. My heart.
Doctor.
The reason why I land. The reason why I fall.
The reason why I am here now. I was never meant to live a long life. To take those kids to the museum and Central Park. To have hot dogs and soda. I was never meant for that. I will never see that. I was only meant to do this. To fall. To live a new existence. To have it cut short. To save and die. Anything else is like a silly superstition, false. Unreal. I’m meant to descend. A ghost.
Suppose there will come the time the falling will be the last. And I that ghost of superstition will simply fade away into eternity, go into extinction.
But not yet.
I still have more saving to do.
I look to River once more. I know I don’t have to say anything. She will watch over him for as long as she can. She will protect him. But that won’t be forever.
Maybe one day I can be more than this ghost, this superstition I used to never believe. Maybe I can be real again, living life for more than just one purpose. Living life out of his stream of time.
Maybe one day.
But not now.
I slowly turn back, and the angel’s stone hand claws into my skin. It rips through my flesh, tearing it like weak parchment. One more only.
Just one more.
As I hear his wails. As I notice out of corner of eye, River slowly walking toward him. As I feel his sobs upon my own cheeks, that egotistical hold he has on me, his stream never letting me go, never letting me forget for long that I only have one purpose.
“Goodbye my Doctor. Until next time.”
I blink.
One last time.
She gets me. The angel has me within her clutch, my flesh all torn and twisted, my breath stolen. But no matter.
For you see…
The Doctor lives.
And like all the other times, it happens. As it’s meant to. As my whole form intended for it was the only choice then, that fateful time at Trenzalore. It’s not about the soufflé itself Mum always told me. It’s about the recipe. The ingredients. The pieces. The echoes I am now. It doesn’t matter if I come to whole again. All that matters is this. He breathes.
I die.