Who: Anatoly Sergievsky and Clara Oswald What: Random run in. Clara is struggling with her dreams/self and thus v. flirty. Anatoly worries about her mental wellbeing because it's his job and he has personal experience with it. When: 28 March 2015, late morning/early afternoon Where: Park in Irvine to Clara's flat Warnings: Some flirting (because Oswin). Talk of mental illnesses (specifically Dissociative Identity Disorder) Status: Thread | Complete
Okay so, most of the Dreams she had experienced thus far had never lingered like this. Oh sure, there had been repeats before, but never nightly. Never making her still feel all confused and unsure of who she was. Wednesday night, Thursday night, and now last night. Three nights in a row and the same thing. Mostly. First it had been all of it, from start to horrible end. How she had slipped and kept calling Rory 'Nina'. But she had brushed it off as being tired. So yesterday, after a second night of dreaming of that horrible place, Clara had decided to visit Troy and make a souffle. It had been too beautiful to live (meaning, she'd burnt it) and she had just brushed it off. Had been upbeat and maybe just a tad bit flirty. And by tad bit, much more flirty than usual, especially with Troy.
She wasn't thinking about that. Not really. In fact, Clara was very good at pretending things didn't happen. No thought required.
Now it was Saturday and Clara was out. For whatever reason, she had been keen on the colour red, so that was the colour of her dress that day, compete with red flower behind her ear. It was festive! Right. That was it. Really and truly, that was the only reason. It had to be. She knew that people seemed to shift into their dreamselves, she had picked up on that in her post and from what she had read. But that was absurd, there was no way that Clara was changing or becoming Oswin or any of that rubbish. She just felt like wearing a red dress.
Just like she had been wanting to make a souffle for some unknown reason. Just like how she had called Troy 'chinboy' the day before and how she had flirted with him.
Nope. She was totally fine and there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Besides, it wasn't like it had been noticeable. There was a slight fear, of course. A fear of going to sleep in case she saw things she wanted to forget. In case another echo of herself suffered worse than Oswin. She would figure that out later, though. Would figure out a way to work around it. (Stay with someone or just not sleep. It was a toss up. It also required a bit more study before she made a proper decision.)
Lost in thought, trying to piece together what had happened and trying to find the best way to handle it and ignore it, Clara didn't see where she was going until she ran into a body, iced coffee she had decided on in case the weather got too ghastly while she was out spilling on the poor person she'd been on a collision course with.
"Oh, I am so sorry."
It was then Clara recognised Anatoly from both the network and the bookstore and her eyes lit up some.
"Oh, hello! You know, we really need to stop meeting like this."
Because why not just jump right into the flirting? Yeah. That wasn't normal for Clara, especially like this.