Clash and Clamor
Written for the who_contest
Title: Clash and Clamor
Rating: PG 13
Genre: Cannon AU: Regeneration Fic for Eleven
Word Count: 3,000
Pairings/Characters: Eleventh Doctor, Clara Oswald, smidgen of Twelfth Doctor
Spoilers/Warnings: Filming spoilers for the Christmas special, although they are mild and have been released all over the internet in pictures/video, I know some are avoiding any kind of spoiler // Still keep in mind that they are very vague spoilers, don’t really contribute much to the storyline, and mostly everything I wrote here is based on speculation. I’m sure the show will go in a different direction than my fic. // Lots of angst in this one, please keep that in mind. Written to the beautiful haunting Murray Gold theme ‘A Secret He Will Take to his Grave.’ Murray Gold is pure genius.
Summary: Happy holiday clatter turns to noisy horror.
Disclaimer: I disclaim. Doctor Who belongs to BBC/Steven Moffat. I write for fun.
Theme: Noise
**
Clash and Clamor
How can it be? To come from one moment to the next? Flash of emotion to lightning alteration?
How can the messy and yet lovable noise of happiness suddenly become the screech of pain?
How?
It was just moments ago it seems, for time machines are odd creatures. They make minutes pass like wicked blinks of the eye. Hours become seconds, days swallowed up into hours.
They were outside, a bit of chill in the air, but mostly England’s murk of clouds and battling big star of sun.
There was the joyful racket of running around on the fielding grass, a bright glowing crown upon her head. It was a gift from the Doctor, came all the way from the majestic planet Florana. Add to that fantastic peculiarity the turkey that just wouldn’t behave when it came time to cook, oh that annoying birdzilla. Doctor’s touch reached out to her then, and with its reassurance was her grateful flying hug. Of course after that was some more playing around, moments of loud silliness. So light was the mood, festive, and full of coming holiday.
The silver gleam did not belong, but somewhere within it found its time to surface and cut through the joyful racket solemnly.
After refusing to succumb without a fight, she could feel her defeat and was taken. Her eyes’ movement trailed down to her human hands, and then up to that mechanism of knives and machines, all silver glowing. Faintly she could hear it, her terrified scream.
Doctor. Doctor help me. Please.
Imperceptibly she could remember what she should have no recall of, and yet the echoes were pieces of her, microscopic elements, and so even if now latent, they still lived within her mind, and found beat inside her heart.
Where am I? Where am I? WHERE AM I?
Just like Asylum of the Daleks. Machines again. Wires and knives. Containing her. Turning her into one of them.
I am human. I am human. I am a dalek. I AM A DALEK.
I am human. I am human. I am cyber---I feel noth-
No. Not again.
Where are the green grasses? Where’s that birdzilla turkey that refuses to cook right? Where’s the Doctor?
Doctor!
This time she won’t be a Dalek. Instead a Cyber monster. This time it will be the real her. Not just an echo. And she’s helpless to fight it. They start to wrench apart her emotions, turn them to nothing. Squeeze them out like sponge’s water of life released.
Soon she will be one of them, an emotionless machine.
An-
It’s there. It cuts through. A ripple of action. A lifesaving tube.
Another kind of noise. An oh-so familiar noise.
“NO! CLARA!”
Doctor?
She’s grabbed and pushed, thrust out of the way, so hard that pools of blackness fill her eyes for moments. Screams flood her ears. Horrid shrieks of agony. So befuddled she is, she’s not sure where they come from, if even it is herself letting out these awful sounds.
Within there is a faint command.
“Run, Clara. Run.”
It sparks her to life, that voice always within her mind now, forever inside her heart, since the time of being one with its stream.
Getting up to her feet, ignoring the dull pain in her head, she runs…runs with the intention to get far far away. But with it are precious memories, linked onto her chain of furious survivor’s thought.
No. We don’t run. But when we’re holding onto something precious we don’t let go.
We don’t let go.
I’ll always find you.
Him. Her mother. Him?
Always.
We don’t let go.
Doctor.
Her black boots scrape the ground with her sudden cease of movement, her body whipping around, dark strands of hair flying in the wind as she turns anxiously to see. To hope.
So many long moments of cyber clatter, not holiday carols. No sight of him. No-
Doctor?
You don’t run out on those you care about. Wish I was more like that.
It’s insane. Clara knows it, but doesn’t care, and doesn’t heed the frantic warnings of her mind. She simply runs forwards until the noise of the cyber workings are so profound it’s like they are beating throughout her body every clash and clamor, competing with the frantic thumps of her frightened heart.
Always.
“Doctor!” Clara yells out, searching for him through the messy haze of emotion stealing monsters.
And then finally, blessedly, through an ugly murk of gray and smoke, he’s there.
Long giraffe floundering limbs. Heft of poke-your-eye-out chin. Sweep of bouncing hair lock. And of course that silly precious beautiful bowtie.
Glorious familiarity cutting through all the terrifying noise, it makes her heart bounce with joy.
“Oh.” Clara laughs, and claps her hand over her mouth. “Oh good! Doctor!”
“Run, Clara! Keep running! I’ll be behind!”
“What happened?” She yells in question, but he’s still surrounded by gray murk and so all she can catch with her eyes is his waving frantic arm. “Just run! Caught me for a moment, but managed to escape.”
It’s there, a madman’s grin, and yet his voice sounds so labored. Clara wonders.
The Doctor tells her more urgently. “Run!”
So now Clara does. She runs without stopping, looking back a few times, seeing too much haze to get a good sight of him, but at least she can make out the length of limbs following her lead. He’s echoing her movements with his legs that usually outdistance hers easily. Now the tagalong.
Moments feel like painful hours, but then finally they’re far enough away from the cyber prison.
He fought it. She knew he could. He’s the Doctor after all. Nothing too horrible ever happens to the Doctor. Not without him finding a way out. It makes her smile with loud joy. It makes her turn around. “I knew you wouldn’t let Mr. Clever take you over. I knew you were still inside. I knew you would stop them. I knew-
But then suddenly she stops because he’s stopped. And he’s starting to not stand.
He’s commencing to fall.
His long limbs clumsily tangling, he barely manages to grasp the ground with his hands.
His bloodied hands.
Clara stares at all the red, the bright ugly crimson, not the beauty of holiday poinsettia, but the hideous shine of body fluid. He bleeds the same as her, alien blood as red as human blood. And it’s spread all over, she realizes now with noiseless horror. It’s a red river flowing through hideous rips and gashes of purple material. His prized coat is ruined. And his face is so so pallid.
“Doctor?” Clara questions, a tear escaping her eye, a mutter eliciting from her trembling lips. “No. Doctor, come on.”
He doesn’t move, just shakes and breathes with ugly ragged breaths. “Clara…”
“Oh.” She runs the steps necessitated, falls down to her knees and brings her hands to his pale face. “Doctor?”
His scarred hands graze upon her bow tie sweater that she found and bought just to show him excitedly how she was becoming like him, with her own silly bowties too. Now its soft black is stained with his blood as he whispers so quietly. “You never run out on the people you care about. I’ve always liked that about you. Taught me to do the same. After what the Daleks did, I couldn’t let it happen once more, couldn’t let them hurt you. The cybermen started to turn me, but I got away.
Just a little too late.”
That’s why the blood is there. They were conjuring him into their leader. That’s why she fell so hard. He pushed her to keep her safe. The Doctor saved her life and now…
It’s too quiet.
Just the tears of his labored breathing. And a new sight to behold. It streams around his skin. Golden flows of light.
She knows their intention all too well.
“No.” Clara begs, holding his stupid chin. “No. please.”
He smiles, reaching out to one of her tears. “I’ll still be here. I’ll just have a different face. New body. Hey, maybe I’ll be ginger! Finally ginger.” Even through his pain he grins madly.
“Huh-uh…” It’s a half laugh, a half sob that escapes Clara’s mouth. She can’t hold it in, and his fingers reaching out tell her she doesn’t have to. It hasn’t come so far yet to the point where she needs to step away. It’s only the beginning golden pond.
But the Doctor can feel it, a warning. This time it will be fast. This time he’s very scared.
For Clara’s sake alone he pretends not to be as she mutters something incredulous to him.
“You could have just let them take me. Then you’d still be okay.”
His eyes pierce hers for a hard moment. They are definite. “No I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that ever Clara.” His stained fingers graze upon her cheek. They tremble still. His other hand pushes upon the ground, but the leverage is barely there. “Clara…help…help me please. Have to get back to her.”
Clara nods. She reaches out and the Doctor reaches out to her in kind, which brings their faces in close. She can’t resist. Hopefully he won’t pull away like he did from the echo.
Clara kisses the Doctor’s lips and feels the hint, the little shadow of him kissing her back. The blessed echo of his lips responding.
Just for a tiny moment.
And then he’s still. But there is the awful noise of his weakened breathing.
He’s bigger and so it’s hard to give hoist of assistance. It’s clumsy and awkward, but she gets him up and he finds enough strength to not lean too heavily.
It’s a long walk. It’s a long way back to his TARDIS.
There’s no ease. He stumbles and she nearly falls along the way, but they manage to hold on, until finally they are there.
It’s more profound now. She has noticed it all along the way. The golden healing lights are like a river through his body. They are everywhere. They are beautiful. And they frighten her, for she knows their meaning.
New face. New body. New Doctor.
He won’t die. He’ll regenerate, but still it’s painful. Still she wishes time could go back, change all this. Not be so foregone that the hope is faded.
He touches the door with the sad realization. His mind is almost mad now, crazy and frightened. And alone.
Or it will be in the next moment.
“Clara…I left something at the back. Will you get it?”
She nods and goes around.
But there is nothing.
Nothing but an awful noise.
BANG
The door shuts. Clara runs back around to the front of the TARDIS. “Doctor! Doctor you have to let me in. Doctor!”
She calls, expecting the door to just suddenly open. And yet it does not. “Doctor!” Clara bangs on the door now noisily. “Doctor, I’m locked out!”
“I know Clara.” He is sitting upon the floor, the other side of the door, his head heavily leant against. “I know. I locked you out.”
Fisting her hand at her waist and giving a roll of her eyes, Clara states plainly, “Well then how about you unlock me out?”
Inside the TARDIS the Doctor smiles at the bit of snark, but sadly shakes his head. “I can’t.”
Clara’s heart starts to beat a jarring unsettling cacophony. “Why?”
“You can’t be with me for this Clara.” The Doctor responds grimly.
Clara tries her best to lighten things. She has to get in there. He’s insane to think he can fly the TARDIS alone, so injured. He needs her! “Look, I’ve already seen that heft of chin enough times to not get spooked.”
No answer, as the Doctor feels his emotions twisting. Oh how he wishes he could let her in, but that’s just a selfish thought. He can feel it already. Going from Ten to Eleven was bad enough. This will be worse, something Clara won’t be able to understand. Mr. Clever still lurks within, pounding against his flesh to get out. Beyond that is the hideous memory of the time war, and the one between Eight and Nine, who decimated Gallifrey, and turned away from the name chosen, the Doctor.
It’s all him of course, even Mr. Clever. Dark and ugly sides. You could argue he is the monster.
None of it really matters though except this. It’s time for a new face, new body, new everything.
A time for him to be alone. A time Clara cannot be part of, even as the noise rings through of her terrified yells and her knuckles fisted against the door, bang, bang, bang.
The Doctor’s eyes close, his hearts turning away the sounds, as he tells her again, this time more forcefully. “You can’t be with me Clara. I have to do this alone!”
“You can’t! I know how to fly the TARDIS---sort of. I know what’s going to happen! I know you’re going to change. It’s nothing new. I can handle it. You can barely move. Let me be with you. Please!” She screams with disbelief. And then, as he seems to pay her no heed, her lips whisper, tiny trembles leaking through, “Why? Why are you doing this? Why won’t you let me come too? Doctor, why?”
“It’s different this time Clara.” He gazes upon the blood, its replacement golden ropes. “Every time it’s more violent. One day it’s just going to be me and her. You’ll all be gone. So what’s a few moments alone, eh?”
Saltwater flows onto and through the material of Clara’s bowtie sweater, already stained with his blood. But she shakes her head with determination. Can’t give up. He’s a madman after all. Sometimes so stubborn and wrong. If she has to fight her way in she’s going to get inside that TARDIS. “Come on you old cow!” She yells at the wood, banging her fists again. “Don’t listen to him and let me in! Let me in!”
It brings on the Doctor’s sad smile, the tears descending his cheeks. Losing Amy was almost his undoing. And then came Clara, a mystery so tight, pretty and full of snark. Not at all jumping at first when given the chance to travel in a time machine. She set rules and days even. Every Wednesday. Pick me up every Wednesday Doctor. That’s when I have the time.
The Time. Christmas time.
Why can’t it be Tuesday…or Thursday? Why does this process never have a return or a flash forward?
Oh. He can still feel the sweet warm drench of her lips against his. Can still taste-
“Doctor! Doctor!”
Her screams make his hearts thump sadly. Only a whisper can exit his lips. “I’m sorry Clara. I can’t. But it won’t be the last time. I promise that. We’ll see each other again.
Sooner…
Or later. Just probably not a Wednesday.” He smiles with grim determination, closing out the frantic sounds of her disapproval.
Clara holds still as new sounds find her ears. Movement. The auditory of movement. Every time. Every time this happens-he makes his way to the console. He-
The attempt at first is to walk, but it soon becomes obvious to the Doctor that his limbs can no longer take him. So he crawls instead like a newborn babe.
She hears the slide forward and continues hitting the wood, hard, her hands start to scrape with beginnings of injury. “DOCTOR!”
Grunts and moans accompany the progress, but he makes it, hearing outside her screams so loud now she sounds like she’s in agony. He can’t listen. Can’t focus on that.
It hurts. Moving his arms hurts so much, but he gets them up, gets one hand to grasp the console, the fingers searching out the needed levers. One pull. One thrust.
Goodbye Clara.
Her eyes gape with horror as it starts to happen. The wood blinks---in---out---the grating sounds of departure in sobering accompaniment.
“NOOOOOO! NOOOO! YOU CAN’T! NOOOO!”
She wrenches, the soreness clinging to her throat, the push of vocal chords too far. Her fists keep it up, their furious fight, but soon enough they are sparring with the ground, for the blue box is vanished.
“Oh…” Clara’s stomach convulses with pain as she cries. “Doctor…no! Come back! Come back!”
Her face is a storm of misery, blotched with red and water of salt. Her knuckles ache. Amongst her cries of protest, there is no recourse, she sags in defeat.
*
Inside the floating TARDIS, the Doctor whispers hoarsely, breaths nearly deplete now. “Just you and me Old Girl.”
The golden healers that started out as pond, to a river, are now an ocean of submarine within his body, waves everywhere of golden glow. So suddenly it’s happening. He thinks fearfully how he got away just in time.
His arms thrust outward, head fallen back, and with it is the most violent of explosions. As the Doctor screams so does the TARDIS. She nearly comes apart, one thread only it seems keeping her together. And him. As the alteration commences in a cacophony of tumult.
*
Clara’s tears turn to exhaustion and her screams no longer have muster. Her salt-tracked eyes close, as she lays upon the ground, eventually sleep her only holiday healing.
…
It’s hours maybe, the time changing and moving forward. It’s a dawn of morning that brings it on, a sound, a familiar grating sound.
She lifts her head under the blue light of day and sees it, a new TARDIS. Shiny and yet of darker blue. “Doctor?” Clara whispers, not moving from the ground, scared and excited.
She waits for the noise to fade. For the door to open.
And then when it does, a new face, a new body.
And a new cacophony within her heart.
He’s gone.
And yet he’s still there.
Old noise faded.
“Okay. Not ginger. Blimey. You’ve changed.”
New noise begun.
Title: Clash and Clamor
Rating: PG 13
Genre: Cannon AU: Regeneration Fic for Eleven
Word Count: 3,000
Pairings/Characters: Eleventh Doctor, Clara Oswald, smidgen of Twelfth Doctor
Spoilers/Warnings: Filming spoilers for the Christmas special, although they are mild and have been released all over the internet in pictures/video, I know some are avoiding any kind of spoiler // Still keep in mind that they are very vague spoilers, don’t really contribute much to the storyline, and mostly everything I wrote here is based on speculation. I’m sure the show will go in a different direction than my fic. // Lots of angst in this one, please keep that in mind. Written to the beautiful haunting Murray Gold theme ‘A Secret He Will Take to his Grave.’ Murray Gold is pure genius.
Summary: Happy holiday clatter turns to noisy horror.
Disclaimer: I disclaim. Doctor Who belongs to BBC/Steven Moffat. I write for fun.
Theme: Noise
**
Clash and Clamor
How can it be? To come from one moment to the next? Flash of emotion to lightning alteration?
How can the messy and yet lovable noise of happiness suddenly become the screech of pain?
How?
It was just moments ago it seems, for time machines are odd creatures. They make minutes pass like wicked blinks of the eye. Hours become seconds, days swallowed up into hours.
They were outside, a bit of chill in the air, but mostly England’s murk of clouds and battling big star of sun.
There was the joyful racket of running around on the fielding grass, a bright glowing crown upon her head. It was a gift from the Doctor, came all the way from the majestic planet Florana. Add to that fantastic peculiarity the turkey that just wouldn’t behave when it came time to cook, oh that annoying birdzilla. Doctor’s touch reached out to her then, and with its reassurance was her grateful flying hug. Of course after that was some more playing around, moments of loud silliness. So light was the mood, festive, and full of coming holiday.
The silver gleam did not belong, but somewhere within it found its time to surface and cut through the joyful racket solemnly.
After refusing to succumb without a fight, she could feel her defeat and was taken. Her eyes’ movement trailed down to her human hands, and then up to that mechanism of knives and machines, all silver glowing. Faintly she could hear it, her terrified scream.
Doctor. Doctor help me. Please.
Imperceptibly she could remember what she should have no recall of, and yet the echoes were pieces of her, microscopic elements, and so even if now latent, they still lived within her mind, and found beat inside her heart.
Where am I? Where am I? WHERE AM I?
Just like Asylum of the Daleks. Machines again. Wires and knives. Containing her. Turning her into one of them.
I am human. I am human. I am a dalek. I AM A DALEK.
I am human. I am human. I am cyber---I feel noth-
No. Not again.
Where are the green grasses? Where’s that birdzilla turkey that refuses to cook right? Where’s the Doctor?
Doctor!
This time she won’t be a Dalek. Instead a Cyber monster. This time it will be the real her. Not just an echo. And she’s helpless to fight it. They start to wrench apart her emotions, turn them to nothing. Squeeze them out like sponge’s water of life released.
Soon she will be one of them, an emotionless machine.
An-
It’s there. It cuts through. A ripple of action. A lifesaving tube.
Another kind of noise. An oh-so familiar noise.
“NO! CLARA!”
Doctor?
She’s grabbed and pushed, thrust out of the way, so hard that pools of blackness fill her eyes for moments. Screams flood her ears. Horrid shrieks of agony. So befuddled she is, she’s not sure where they come from, if even it is herself letting out these awful sounds.
Within there is a faint command.
“Run, Clara. Run.”
It sparks her to life, that voice always within her mind now, forever inside her heart, since the time of being one with its stream.
Getting up to her feet, ignoring the dull pain in her head, she runs…runs with the intention to get far far away. But with it are precious memories, linked onto her chain of furious survivor’s thought.
No. We don’t run. But when we’re holding onto something precious we don’t let go.
We don’t let go.
I’ll always find you.
Him. Her mother. Him?
Always.
We don’t let go.
Doctor.
Her black boots scrape the ground with her sudden cease of movement, her body whipping around, dark strands of hair flying in the wind as she turns anxiously to see. To hope.
So many long moments of cyber clatter, not holiday carols. No sight of him. No-
Doctor?
You don’t run out on those you care about. Wish I was more like that.
It’s insane. Clara knows it, but doesn’t care, and doesn’t heed the frantic warnings of her mind. She simply runs forwards until the noise of the cyber workings are so profound it’s like they are beating throughout her body every clash and clamor, competing with the frantic thumps of her frightened heart.
Always.
“Doctor!” Clara yells out, searching for him through the messy haze of emotion stealing monsters.
And then finally, blessedly, through an ugly murk of gray and smoke, he’s there.
Long giraffe floundering limbs. Heft of poke-your-eye-out chin. Sweep of bouncing hair lock. And of course that silly precious beautiful bowtie.
Glorious familiarity cutting through all the terrifying noise, it makes her heart bounce with joy.
“Oh.” Clara laughs, and claps her hand over her mouth. “Oh good! Doctor!”
“Run, Clara! Keep running! I’ll be behind!”
“What happened?” She yells in question, but he’s still surrounded by gray murk and so all she can catch with her eyes is his waving frantic arm. “Just run! Caught me for a moment, but managed to escape.”
It’s there, a madman’s grin, and yet his voice sounds so labored. Clara wonders.
The Doctor tells her more urgently. “Run!”
So now Clara does. She runs without stopping, looking back a few times, seeing too much haze to get a good sight of him, but at least she can make out the length of limbs following her lead. He’s echoing her movements with his legs that usually outdistance hers easily. Now the tagalong.
Moments feel like painful hours, but then finally they’re far enough away from the cyber prison.
He fought it. She knew he could. He’s the Doctor after all. Nothing too horrible ever happens to the Doctor. Not without him finding a way out. It makes her smile with loud joy. It makes her turn around. “I knew you wouldn’t let Mr. Clever take you over. I knew you were still inside. I knew you would stop them. I knew-
But then suddenly she stops because he’s stopped. And he’s starting to not stand.
He’s commencing to fall.
His long limbs clumsily tangling, he barely manages to grasp the ground with his hands.
His bloodied hands.
Clara stares at all the red, the bright ugly crimson, not the beauty of holiday poinsettia, but the hideous shine of body fluid. He bleeds the same as her, alien blood as red as human blood. And it’s spread all over, she realizes now with noiseless horror. It’s a red river flowing through hideous rips and gashes of purple material. His prized coat is ruined. And his face is so so pallid.
“Doctor?” Clara questions, a tear escaping her eye, a mutter eliciting from her trembling lips. “No. Doctor, come on.”
He doesn’t move, just shakes and breathes with ugly ragged breaths. “Clara…”
“Oh.” She runs the steps necessitated, falls down to her knees and brings her hands to his pale face. “Doctor?”
His scarred hands graze upon her bow tie sweater that she found and bought just to show him excitedly how she was becoming like him, with her own silly bowties too. Now its soft black is stained with his blood as he whispers so quietly. “You never run out on the people you care about. I’ve always liked that about you. Taught me to do the same. After what the Daleks did, I couldn’t let it happen once more, couldn’t let them hurt you. The cybermen started to turn me, but I got away.
Just a little too late.”
That’s why the blood is there. They were conjuring him into their leader. That’s why she fell so hard. He pushed her to keep her safe. The Doctor saved her life and now…
It’s too quiet.
Just the tears of his labored breathing. And a new sight to behold. It streams around his skin. Golden flows of light.
She knows their intention all too well.
“No.” Clara begs, holding his stupid chin. “No. please.”
He smiles, reaching out to one of her tears. “I’ll still be here. I’ll just have a different face. New body. Hey, maybe I’ll be ginger! Finally ginger.” Even through his pain he grins madly.
“Huh-uh…” It’s a half laugh, a half sob that escapes Clara’s mouth. She can’t hold it in, and his fingers reaching out tell her she doesn’t have to. It hasn’t come so far yet to the point where she needs to step away. It’s only the beginning golden pond.
But the Doctor can feel it, a warning. This time it will be fast. This time he’s very scared.
For Clara’s sake alone he pretends not to be as she mutters something incredulous to him.
“You could have just let them take me. Then you’d still be okay.”
His eyes pierce hers for a hard moment. They are definite. “No I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that ever Clara.” His stained fingers graze upon her cheek. They tremble still. His other hand pushes upon the ground, but the leverage is barely there. “Clara…help…help me please. Have to get back to her.”
Clara nods. She reaches out and the Doctor reaches out to her in kind, which brings their faces in close. She can’t resist. Hopefully he won’t pull away like he did from the echo.
Clara kisses the Doctor’s lips and feels the hint, the little shadow of him kissing her back. The blessed echo of his lips responding.
Just for a tiny moment.
And then he’s still. But there is the awful noise of his weakened breathing.
He’s bigger and so it’s hard to give hoist of assistance. It’s clumsy and awkward, but she gets him up and he finds enough strength to not lean too heavily.
It’s a long walk. It’s a long way back to his TARDIS.
There’s no ease. He stumbles and she nearly falls along the way, but they manage to hold on, until finally they are there.
It’s more profound now. She has noticed it all along the way. The golden healing lights are like a river through his body. They are everywhere. They are beautiful. And they frighten her, for she knows their meaning.
New face. New body. New Doctor.
He won’t die. He’ll regenerate, but still it’s painful. Still she wishes time could go back, change all this. Not be so foregone that the hope is faded.
He touches the door with the sad realization. His mind is almost mad now, crazy and frightened. And alone.
Or it will be in the next moment.
“Clara…I left something at the back. Will you get it?”
She nods and goes around.
But there is nothing.
Nothing but an awful noise.
BANG
The door shuts. Clara runs back around to the front of the TARDIS. “Doctor! Doctor you have to let me in. Doctor!”
She calls, expecting the door to just suddenly open. And yet it does not. “Doctor!” Clara bangs on the door now noisily. “Doctor, I’m locked out!”
“I know Clara.” He is sitting upon the floor, the other side of the door, his head heavily leant against. “I know. I locked you out.”
Fisting her hand at her waist and giving a roll of her eyes, Clara states plainly, “Well then how about you unlock me out?”
Inside the TARDIS the Doctor smiles at the bit of snark, but sadly shakes his head. “I can’t.”
Clara’s heart starts to beat a jarring unsettling cacophony. “Why?”
“You can’t be with me for this Clara.” The Doctor responds grimly.
Clara tries her best to lighten things. She has to get in there. He’s insane to think he can fly the TARDIS alone, so injured. He needs her! “Look, I’ve already seen that heft of chin enough times to not get spooked.”
No answer, as the Doctor feels his emotions twisting. Oh how he wishes he could let her in, but that’s just a selfish thought. He can feel it already. Going from Ten to Eleven was bad enough. This will be worse, something Clara won’t be able to understand. Mr. Clever still lurks within, pounding against his flesh to get out. Beyond that is the hideous memory of the time war, and the one between Eight and Nine, who decimated Gallifrey, and turned away from the name chosen, the Doctor.
It’s all him of course, even Mr. Clever. Dark and ugly sides. You could argue he is the monster.
None of it really matters though except this. It’s time for a new face, new body, new everything.
A time for him to be alone. A time Clara cannot be part of, even as the noise rings through of her terrified yells and her knuckles fisted against the door, bang, bang, bang.
The Doctor’s eyes close, his hearts turning away the sounds, as he tells her again, this time more forcefully. “You can’t be with me Clara. I have to do this alone!”
“You can’t! I know how to fly the TARDIS---sort of. I know what’s going to happen! I know you’re going to change. It’s nothing new. I can handle it. You can barely move. Let me be with you. Please!” She screams with disbelief. And then, as he seems to pay her no heed, her lips whisper, tiny trembles leaking through, “Why? Why are you doing this? Why won’t you let me come too? Doctor, why?”
“It’s different this time Clara.” He gazes upon the blood, its replacement golden ropes. “Every time it’s more violent. One day it’s just going to be me and her. You’ll all be gone. So what’s a few moments alone, eh?”
Saltwater flows onto and through the material of Clara’s bowtie sweater, already stained with his blood. But she shakes her head with determination. Can’t give up. He’s a madman after all. Sometimes so stubborn and wrong. If she has to fight her way in she’s going to get inside that TARDIS. “Come on you old cow!” She yells at the wood, banging her fists again. “Don’t listen to him and let me in! Let me in!”
It brings on the Doctor’s sad smile, the tears descending his cheeks. Losing Amy was almost his undoing. And then came Clara, a mystery so tight, pretty and full of snark. Not at all jumping at first when given the chance to travel in a time machine. She set rules and days even. Every Wednesday. Pick me up every Wednesday Doctor. That’s when I have the time.
The Time. Christmas time.
Why can’t it be Tuesday…or Thursday? Why does this process never have a return or a flash forward?
Oh. He can still feel the sweet warm drench of her lips against his. Can still taste-
“Doctor! Doctor!”
Her screams make his hearts thump sadly. Only a whisper can exit his lips. “I’m sorry Clara. I can’t. But it won’t be the last time. I promise that. We’ll see each other again.
Sooner…
Or later. Just probably not a Wednesday.” He smiles with grim determination, closing out the frantic sounds of her disapproval.
Clara holds still as new sounds find her ears. Movement. The auditory of movement. Every time. Every time this happens-he makes his way to the console. He-
The attempt at first is to walk, but it soon becomes obvious to the Doctor that his limbs can no longer take him. So he crawls instead like a newborn babe.
She hears the slide forward and continues hitting the wood, hard, her hands start to scrape with beginnings of injury. “DOCTOR!”
Grunts and moans accompany the progress, but he makes it, hearing outside her screams so loud now she sounds like she’s in agony. He can’t listen. Can’t focus on that.
It hurts. Moving his arms hurts so much, but he gets them up, gets one hand to grasp the console, the fingers searching out the needed levers. One pull. One thrust.
Goodbye Clara.
Her eyes gape with horror as it starts to happen. The wood blinks---in---out---the grating sounds of departure in sobering accompaniment.
“NOOOOOO! NOOOO! YOU CAN’T! NOOOO!”
She wrenches, the soreness clinging to her throat, the push of vocal chords too far. Her fists keep it up, their furious fight, but soon enough they are sparring with the ground, for the blue box is vanished.
“Oh…” Clara’s stomach convulses with pain as she cries. “Doctor…no! Come back! Come back!”
Her face is a storm of misery, blotched with red and water of salt. Her knuckles ache. Amongst her cries of protest, there is no recourse, she sags in defeat.
*
Inside the floating TARDIS, the Doctor whispers hoarsely, breaths nearly deplete now. “Just you and me Old Girl.”
The golden healers that started out as pond, to a river, are now an ocean of submarine within his body, waves everywhere of golden glow. So suddenly it’s happening. He thinks fearfully how he got away just in time.
His arms thrust outward, head fallen back, and with it is the most violent of explosions. As the Doctor screams so does the TARDIS. She nearly comes apart, one thread only it seems keeping her together. And him. As the alteration commences in a cacophony of tumult.
*
Clara’s tears turn to exhaustion and her screams no longer have muster. Her salt-tracked eyes close, as she lays upon the ground, eventually sleep her only holiday healing.
…
It’s hours maybe, the time changing and moving forward. It’s a dawn of morning that brings it on, a sound, a familiar grating sound.
She lifts her head under the blue light of day and sees it, a new TARDIS. Shiny and yet of darker blue. “Doctor?” Clara whispers, not moving from the ground, scared and excited.
She waits for the noise to fade. For the door to open.
And then when it does, a new face, a new body.
And a new cacophony within her heart.
He’s gone.
And yet he’s still there.
Old noise faded.
“Okay. Not ginger. Blimey. You’ve changed.”
New noise begun.