Clara Oswald is going the long way round (alwaysbeenthere) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-03-30 17:13:00 |
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She’d had this dream before. It was as if it were lurking within her soul, clawing out and trying to take control and no matter how much Clara fought it during the day, refused to give in (She was human), at night? At night it came back. Just this section. Just this nightmare was from before Troy and Rory and Amy showed up. The conversion. The trauma so terrible that even in her Dream, Clara - Oswin - had blocked it out and lived in a world where she had escaped and was just waiting to leave the Asylum. She had hoped that staying with John that night would keep it at bay. The idea that if she wasn’t alone, the dream wouldn’t haunt her, the dreams would move on to something else.
She’d been wrong.
She was on the Alaska and they had crashed. She had been out in the cold, searching for answers and a way to save the ship when she heard them. Daleks. Her senses were on high alert. Everything was amplified, adrenaline and fear coursing through her. But no matter how she fought, how far she ran, they were there. The nanocloud seeping into the skin of her crew, turning them into Daleks. But not like this.
“No! I am human! I AM HUMAN!”
She kept fighting it. Screaming. Thrashing as the Daleks began to tear into her, rip her apart bit by bit. Kill Oswin. Create a true Dalek. Subtract love.She was too clever for her own good. Add anger. And now… Her voice was raw, her mind on fire all neurons firing in rapid succession, twisting, morphing. Still she she fought it. Fought to stay in control of her mind.
Out of the dream, Clara was thrashing in the bed, tangled in sheets, pillows knocked to the ground and crying out in pain. She fought. Continued to fight because it was all she could do in her unconscious state until she woke with a strangled “NO!” and lay there gasping for breath for a second before she struggled to untangle herself from the mess of sheets wrapped around her as if trying to keep her locked in place.
The fight left her covered in sweat, night shirt and hair sticking to her, paler than usual from the fear, sobbing as she checked her limbs as she moved to sitting, pressed against the wall, to see if she was still her. In the dark it was so hard to tell. She wasn’t in her room, and she was all but sobbing in fear, forgetting where she was, forgetting that she wasn’t alone. “Where am I...where am I?!”
Ever since his own rash of nightmares, John had become a progressively lighter sleeper. Attributing it more to his Time Lord physiology coming around rather than the dreams at this juncture, however, it all meant that he broke away from his own odd array of dreams to sit upright at the sound of her scream. Reaching out for the empty space beside him, a habit he’d developed since Rose started sleeping next to him, he reoriented himself to the present in time to hear her call out again.
Her? Right. His eyes widened. “Clara,” he murmured and hurried out of bed--not without nearly tripping over his own sheets.
K9 and Wolf both acknowledged his swift exit from the room, but didn’t pursue him. Hurrying into what had been Rose’s room, he switched on the light to find his cousin a crying mess. Wordlessly dropping to her side, John remembered the sort of man he’d been before the dreams had taken a grip of his personality and slowly supplanted it with that of a man who traveled among the stars. He would have immediately roped her in for a hug--had that changed? All of his wires were crossed, but one thing stood out brighter than anything else: she needed someone.
So, he relented and placed his hand gently on her forearm just to let her know she wasn’t alone. “Clara,” he said insistently, hoping to draw her attention away from whatever happened to her. “What’s happened? What did you dream?”
At that moment, Clara was too far lost in her mind, trying to get out. Trying to figure out who she was, where she was. Everything was a jumble of panic and fear, and she was still in a haze of waking up yet again from that nightmare. Her heart rate was erratic, hyperventilating. She almost expected Troy just because he was the one who kept showing up in her dreams as the Doctor. He was the one who broke the illusion…..
The hand to her shoulder jolted Clara out of the confusion and she seemed to scan the room wide eyed until her mind finally registered John. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she noted that this wasn’t quite how he would have responded before. There were questions there, questions about if he knew she would become a Dalek. If it was happening, but they were so buried within her subconscious at the moment from the confusion she didn’t care. Because at least there was contact. If she weren’t human, she wouldn’t have been able to feel the touch to her arm. Wouldn’t have made the connection.
Right?
Rocking back and forth and struggling for her breath, her voice, she said the only thing she could think of. The thing that was right there in the front of her mind. One word. One dreaded word.
“Daleks.”
Her voice was quiet and raw from the fighting. Scared. She didn’t know how to explain what happened in the dreams. The conversion. She wanted to block it out. Wanted to pretend it didn’t happen, that she hadn’t landed on the Dalek Asylum, that she’d been close to Skaro. One word really was all was needed.
The moment that name left her lips, his hand retracted from her shoulder as though he’d been burned. A terrible conundrum, guilt flooded him immediately for abandoning her at the very mention of his old enemy. John had many dreams of Daleks, too many, and knew them intimately well as executioners. Why was she dreaming of them? A part of him, a very large part of him didn’t want to know.
Daleks were always enough to draw out the Doctor he didn’t want to become.
Trying to set that aside, he salvaged his wits to focus on her. She was more important than his own dreams of guilt and war.
Sitting beside her, shoulder to shoulder, John stared ahead of them into the darkened room. He should’ve brought the sonic with him, he could have turned on the lights easier. Too late now.
“I’m sorry, Clara,” he said with guilt dripping from his words, then slid an arm around her shoulders in the hopes some contact would help further calm her down. “You’re safe now, alright? There’s no… they aren’t here.”
Well, if Clara had thought about trying to explain the dream more, John’s reaction was a loud reminder that she couldn’t. She knew of the hatred between the Doctor and the Daleks. She had felt that anger when she became one. When the illusion shattered and she was aware of what she actually had become. Or Oswin had felt it. It was so hard to keep it all separate. Hard to know who she was anymore.
Funny how much things changed the second you realised you were becoming a monster that even your family would shun you for.
But she wasn’t. She was human. And she would keep fighting it. Not like it had done Oswin any good. Not like it had done anyone done. With the arm over her shoulder, Clara just rested against John, even though she was still shaking, even if she was tensed and afraid.
“Yeah… safe…..” Until she became one. Until he put her down. Would Daniel and Troy help him? Would her dad? After all, people said you became your dream self. Maybe it was personality wise, but more than that, it was the physical aspects. If she truly became a Dalek, would her family kill her because she was a monster? Because the Doctor and Daleks were locked in war with one another?
Closing her eyes, Clara let out a shuddering breath. It was just a nightmare… just a nightmare.
“‘Course you are,” he said, giving her shoulder a squeeze. Attempting to be reassuring, so keenly aware of the evil representative in just the mere mention of the species, John couldn’t bear to put more distance between them. She needed someone and he would always be there for his cousin. He knew that any number of them would’ve done the same for her.
“Why wouldn’t you be, hm? I’m here,” he pointed out, voice light in a further effort to ease her mind from the dream. “I’m tougher than a Dalek, aren’t I?” Ah, but that was proving he knew what a Dalek was, and he hadn’t intended for that altogether. John had become progressively quieter about his dreams, because the more he dreamed--the less like John he felt.
That had to be the real reason why he struggled to be of proper support to her. He felt like he was losing the ability, but that was rubbish. No matter how many more revelations the dream world brought him, he had to cling to the bits of John that made him human.
Especially as long as he only had one heart to call his own.
This was a bit more normal, which was something she sorely needed, that much was clear. But she now knew that if they knew what she was to become, they wouldn’t be so quick to comfort her. It was something she would keep to herself, she had to. Maybe it was crazy, maybe it wouldn’t matter, but John’s reaction was a pretty clear sign to Clara that keeping the conversion quiet was the only thing that would keep it all from unraveling.
And while John may have thought it was his comment about being tougher than a Dalek that gave it away, she had already been able to tell. Even in a haze of pain and panic, she could read her cousins. And he knew exactly what a Dalek was.
“Ex...ex…” No. No she refused to trip on words. She refused to say exterminate. “Exactly. You’re tougher than them.”
She’d brush it off as hiccups from the sobbing. It was the answer that was safe. There was nothing to make of it. She wasn’t a dalek, she wasn’t.
Even the very prefix of destruction had him tensing his grip about her. What sort of monster was he? Inwardly cursing the dreams and their effects on everyone, he wished more than anything in the world he could help Clara forget. Couldn’t he though? He’d suggested it to Helena, he had the ability to access the mind. John didn’t like it, he was too human to give in to Time Lord ways. For now.
Trouble was, John didn’t comfort others very well, not in his mind. What words could be conjured to comfort someone having just experienced the atrocities caused by Daleks? A distraction, perhaps? And tea. Clara loved tea. He relinquished his grip on her fully to crouch before her, hands extended in a show of support should she need it.
“Come on, hm? I’ll put some tea on, what do you say?” It wasn’t that he didn’t want to know, he did. He’d gladly listen to his cousin no matter how useless he was to do anything about it.
Curse the dreams. Curse that she tripped on her words and scared John. Curse she was setting herself up to be put down because it was the only way to handle what she apparently would become because of the Dreams. Of course John had picked up on it, even if it was easy enough to brush off from the post crying hiccups and trying to say exactly. Of course he would know.
God this had been a mistake. She should have stayed at her flat. Alone. And just let no one be the wiser. It would have been better for all of them.
Blinking as John mentioned putting tea on, Clara nodded and wiped at her eyes. Tea. Tea was good. Tea was normal. Tea was a sign that things were fine when they both knew deep down they weren’t. She would figure out her next move later. For now, it was letting herself have at least some moments of normal with John before she found herself shunned.