Who: Troy and Clara Where: Their place When: Mid-May (week one of Hellmouth plot) What: The Doctor and Clara discuss the dreams, oh and he's getting more Doctory. Rating: Low Status: Complete!
Troy’s mind was a jumbled mess, filled with so many notes and thoughts and … feelings. So many feelings. Everything felt weird, his chest felt tight and his heart had been feeling like it was beating twice as fast in the past few weeks; enough so that he’d actually gone to a doctor, without telling Clara of course, to get it checked out. Everything was fine, of course, so he didn’t feel the need to tell Clara where he’d been.
Instead, Troy had been trying to move on with life as if it were normal; yet, instead, it wasn’t. In class he was incapable of remaining focused, talking about things in the stories that just went wild with conjecture, his mind never seeming to hold still. The students loved it of course, and the discussions had become lively and entertaining, but he’d made some of the staffers a bit ticked off considering he’d stopped giving out tests, finding them exhausting and unnecessary.
Sleep had become something of a foregone device; a couple hours here or there were grabbed, but always he came back even more recharged, and tonight was no different. Late into the evening, and Troy was up and moving through the kitchen with an exhausting array of motion. The place was a mess with pots and pans everywhere, drawers and cupboards thrown open, and things were laid out on the floor. One such thing was a long cable leading back towards the garage, and this cable was lying near the center of the kitchen where devices were being placed.
There was an upside down lawnmower on the floor, attached to several rakes and shovels or other such sticks, all sticking straight up and wrapped together in electrical tape; from them were broomsticks, a couple of golf clubs, and traffic cones on the end of them. A battery was on the table, well three batteries, each being strapped together with a central power core.
Troy, himself, was moving around the device before reaching into one of the cupboards and pulling out a metal strainer, spinning it in hand, and then plopping it onto the top of his head, twisting in place as he moved, “No no no… still missing something, a thing, an important thing…”
There was a lot going on. Between the beginning of the month with her dad, Buffy’s concerns and the strange happenings that came along with it, as well as how it brought up her own issues about the Dreams. Which..still were on a standstill. Part of that worried Clara just because she could feel they weren’t done, but also it was a relief since it was giving her a chance to work through some things. Well. In theory at any rate. Because with everything going on, that meant that Clara wasn’t working through things she might otherwise be doing so with, let alone feelings and complicated emotions. Who had time for that?
She was also worried about Troy. She could tell that something was going on. It was in his actions, his words, the fact she could hear him moving around at odd hours of the night. But they didn’t talk about it. It still worried her, though. Especially after what had happened with her dad, the Gallifreyan written all over the floors and walls. The week of seclusion and being locked in his apartment. So she watched. Just to make sure.
That night, she was up in her room and reading. Or at least trying to. She kept getting distracted by whatever it was Troy was doing this time. After a time, the brunette gave up on getting any reading done and instead headed down to the kitchen to see just what he was up to. And… wow was everything a mess.
“Do I even want to know?”
As strange as he was behaving though, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have any experience in dealing with the manic moods of the Doctor. And it was clear to her that was coming through. At least he seemed more aware of himself than Duncan had… Or so she told herself. Either way, she had some idea on how to handle this.
Troy moved through the kitchen with an erratic eagerness, twisting and turning here and there as he moved about, trying to gauge what it was he was missing when he heard the voice from behind, spinning in his place as he looked to Clara and then smiled brightly, “Clara! Brilliant Clara! I remember you, well, I’ve always known you haven’t I? Yes, right, of course; well, this face has always known that face, and this mind has always known that face, but this memory. That’s a question, hasn’t always known that face, well that face, but not that mind. Well… except it has hasn’t it?”
He waved that off and moved towards her, before spinning to point at the machine, “It’s a thing, a doohickey really. Never really had a doohickey, always wanted one, think it’d be rather brilliant to have one. It does a thing, not really sure yet, kind of working off of a not-plan sort of plan…”
Troy trailed off, not seeming himself at all, as if somewhere deep down in that body was buried the man he once was. Frowning as he looked at the machine, he shook his head a bit and looked to her, “Right, so you’re up. That’s good, I’m missing a piece, not sure what as I’m not sure what I want it to do, but do you have any hair clips?”
He then waved towards the table, “Fish fingers and custard, try some, it’s fantastic.” He worked that around in his head, “No, that really doesn’t fit me does it? Rolls off the tongue wrong, always weird with new tongues. Still, it’s delicious, you’ll love it. Help yourself…”
Turning he began to move his way through the living room, muttering to himself, “Silence will fall when the question is asked…” Over and over again, in sporadic intervals.
Arms crossed as she leaned against the doorframe, Clara just… watched. If she’d hadn’t had the dreams already, she probably wouldn’t be able to follow what he was saying. Honestly, she wasn’t quite sure she was completely following as it was. Still, for the most part, she was able to keep up. And it seemed as though he recognised her from the Dreams. That was… good? No talk about Trenzalore, nothing about any of her other selves.
“I should hope you know me.” But as he continued to ramble, it became more obvious that not all the memories were there. The adventures. Ahkaten, the Cybermen and Porridge, Victorian London or the Dalek Asylum or the Great Intelligence or any of it. Just a face. A face in the crowd. Someone trying to get his attention. “In a way.”
And despite the confusion, she followed as he showed her… whatever it was he was working on.
“You got bored, didn’t you.”
It was a statement of fact. If there was one thing Clara knew, it was the Doctor didn’t do well with boredom. The amount of things he had done even while just guarding her when she first met him.
“Should have one, yeah.” Going to where her purse was, Clara riffled through it until she pulled out a hair clip and handed it to Troy, quirking a brow at the fish fingers and custard. And Troy saying fantastic. She knew that word, heard it in his time stream and yet… nose scrunched up, she just shook her head. Definitely didn’t sound right from Troy. At least until he started to repeat the question.
“It is a secret he will take to his grave….”
And it is discovered. The memory flashed in her mind, the conference call, going to Trenzalore. The grave, the Time Stream. How long until he got there? Well, now she was more worried.
“I did, yes. Time moves so remarkably linearly for you all, doesn’t it? A straight line, slow, and never really altering course. I swear that clock is moving at an exponentially slow rate, it’s just absurdly boring. How do you do it?” Troy frowned as he moved around the living room searching for something when she brought him her hair pin. Smiling brightly, he poked her on the tip of her nose before moving past her when she responded to his little quip.
A frown, and he turned to face her as he moved towards her, close up, eyes locked onto her own as he searched, “What did you say?”
He seemed serious now, watching her a long moment before shaking his head and turning away, “Right, yes, of course… you already know. You’ve seen everything, haven’t you? You’re ahead of me, obviously. I don’t, not yet. I know you, but only tidbits; echos really, thrown at me from my timeline in the depths of my mind. Very deep, but they’re there, and I know they’re you. I know because I know you on different levels don’t I?”
Troy sighed as he seemed to stop a bit, staring at his hairpin, “It comes and goes, my life as Troy Handsome. Oddly enough as my memories return, and yes I do recognize them as memories now, the more that Troy feels like a dream.”
Turning to look at her from over his shoulder, he frowned a bit, “You mean a lot to me Clara, and I don’t want to forget you, what we are in this life, but I also know that I know you in this other life. And that part of me doesn’t want to forget you either, it’s a bit of a struggle…”
He grinned and pointed at her, “I’m dreaming more rapidly now. I’ve seen my face, now, I feel more… him than me, I guess I’m losing that battle. Or winning, I can’t really decide…”
“Yes yes, very linear, very dull. You’ll survive.” Of course he would, he had been fine with linear time until, well, the dreams started pushing through more, the Doctor showing up more and Troy less. And then she was being poked in the nose and the automatic response was to once again scrunch her nose up.
Or he could get serious. How was she supposed to tell him what had happened? She hadn’t actually discussed it. Not with anyone. It was just a dream, one that was cycling more because of everything going on. Especially when he mentioned echoes. It was slight, just a slight tensing of her muscles as she kept her gaze on Troy as he worked through the fact that she was ahead of him in the dreams.
“You probably know me better than anyone.”
And it was true. They were ridiculously close already, closer than any cousins really were as far as she knew. Her dad knew her, of course, but Clara was pretty sure that Troy had always been the one who knew her best out of the family. But then he was saying his life as Troy was more a dream now than the Doctor, or at least part of it and Clara really wished she knew what to say or do, but first it was just letting him work through his thoughts.
“I’d be offended if you forgot me. But I think… even if we hadn’t been adopted into the same family, we would have found one another, yeah? So you won’t.”
It was what she had to tell herself. But then he was smiling and saying he was dreaming more rapidly now and with everything she had seen just with her time with the Doctor, what she could still remember him saying to the Old God, to what she had seen in his Time Stream… she knew they wouldn’t be all good dreams. So she finally closed the distance and just hugged him. It was her go to fixing for these sorts of things apparently.
“Well, whatever happens, I’m still here, okay?”
Clara’s hug brought a calming sense of relief to the Doctor as he clung to her, sighing as he just held her in that embrace, taking a moment to himself even as he did so. Finally speaking near the end, “The Doctor’s got a big brain, I’m hoping there’ll be room in there for the both of us. You know the Doctor’s done this before…”
Troy stepped back from the hug, brushing himself off as he looked down at her with a smile, before turning back towards the kitchen and moving his way back in, reaching into the refrigerator to snag a couple bottles of water. Tossing her one, he leaned back and took a drink as he thought, “He used a fob watch, a Time Lord thing, to remove his Time Lord consciousness. This lead to him being essentially human--one heart, brilliant, but hardly other worldly, and not a single memory of the Doctor to behold. He did it to hide…”
Another drink and he furrowed his brows, “When he got his memories back, it was there, all there in front of him. He had the memories, both sets, his memories as the human, and his memories as the Doctor. But his personality completely changed again, back to what it was. He wasn’t the same man, never could be; the personality of the Doctor, who and what he is, completely overpowered him. That false man was buried inside, and lost, even if he had it…”
Troy frowned, “It’s not quite the same as before, it’s more gradual. I actually lived this life, so I have no idea how they’ll reconcile with one another in my own head… how about you? Do you feel different? Do your new and old memories clash?”
“Well, it would be rude of him not to let you use that space.”
Which okay? Really strange thing to say. True, it was about the Doctor and he was certainly a strange man. My mother says I shouldn’t talk to strange men, are you a strange man? Little her asking the Doctor that on a swing set. Of course she would, it was Clara and the first time she had met him. The dream that had started it all, really. At least for her. But he was mentioning something like this before, at least for the Doctor.
“Did he?”
And then a water bottle being tossed her way, which Clara caught and opened as Troy, the Doctor.. one of the two or a merging of the two explained about the Fob Watch, about what that had been like for him. Brilliant, but not the Doctor, a normal human life, one heart. How it was all to hide. That caused her to purse her lips together in thought, just watching. She’d never heard this story and that hadn’t been one of the times she’d been chasing after the Doctor as an echo.
It sounded so complicated and yet after all the dreams she’d had so far, not impossible. Would anything seem impossible? Of course, she knew the Doctor travelled with companions to show them things that were wonderful, to maybe get that sense of wonder from them after so much living and travelling. Would she stop finding that as well? Or would she continue to find wonder and things impossible? That was ridiculous, of course she would.
And a question about the two sets of lives. How for him it was gradual as he had actually lived this life and it wasn’t just a means of hiding. And what a complicated question that was when it dealt with emotional bleed through. Crushes she shouldn’t have, that she could rationalise about and try to talk herself out of or just… avoid thinking about at all costs.
“I don’t know. I mean…” There had been those two weeks of feeling like she was walking through a fog and not herself, where Oswin’s personality came out stronger and stronger, as if she were taking over. Or sometimes Clara Oswin Oswald. But as a rule, Clara still felt like herself. “I think at the core, I’m still me. She’s still me. Different job. Different experiences, but the core is the same. But also, not a Time Lord.” Well. Mostly. The one echo was.
“But as for memories clashing? No.. not really. There was the obvious overlap in things, but nothing really complicated like that.”
“Yes, I suppose at the core, yes, I might have me in there. Though it’s interesting, I’ve had 12 different personalities within this one body, 12. I’ve had 12 different faces, and yet the face I have now has a unique personality compared to the others, but at the core has one single personality of the Doctor…” Troy looked at her, “Now I see John, and I know he and I are the same person, but the completely different, and I don’t know how to feel about that. He’s lived my life, but not this one…”
Troy frowned and then laughed a bit, rubbing at the top of his head when he felt the strainer, then suddenly all the emotion went away, “Nevermind that though! I’ve come to show you a thing, it’s a beautiful thing, not entirely sure what it does…” He took her hair clip and slid it against the device before him, putting it into place before standing back and admiring it. He then pointed towards her.
“What do you think it does?” His mood kept jumping, his mind flip-flopping from happy, ecstatic, to sad, lonely. It was obvious there were so many personalities coming through at once, and it was hard for him to keep himself cemented in one spot.
He rubbed at his eyes, then pulled the strainer off, “I feel it might be connected to the dreams somehow. Not really sure how, but it must. That’s the sense I get from it…”
A frown came across his lips then, as he glanced towards her, “Why do you think I lived two lives? Why did any of us? Is it dimensions bleeding through, or is it more sinister than that? Were we all hiding, running from something?”
Twelve faces? Wasn’t he the eleventh… Wait, no. The face she wasn’t supposed to see, the man who was him, but not the Doctor because Doctor was a chosen name, a promise. It was complicated. She had seen all those faces, chased after them, some had some interaction with her yet nothing that would be remembered until Troy. Eleven. The one who she had saved.
“I don’t know…” Because it wasn’t like any of her echo-selves had shown up. That would have been weird. Really weird. She couldn’t even imagine it. Just fading in and out of them.. That had been hard. To see someone who had lived all of the lives yet they hadn’t lived a specific life? She said it plenty of times, but time travel was weird.
Then the mood changed and he was showing her the thing he had created and had needed her hairclip for. On instinct, she just laced her arm through Troy’s. It was familiar and if it would help him or not, who knew as it was a very common situation for her and the Doctor as well. Though she had no answer for what it could mean, if it was tied to the dreams or what. It could be, she had seen him tinker on plenty of things in them. The quadracycle or whatever from the garage.
And another question that she didn’t know the answer to, though she did sigh before responding.
“I’m not quite sure…..” Part of her did still wonder if it was a defense mechanism, if it was a dream. She wasn’t lost in that haze anymore, she felt whole again. But that question did linger. “Could be a way to protect us from something… Could be a multiple universe theory but that’s going into science and things I’m not so sure on. I wouldn’t be shocked if we were all hiding though.”
She was contemplative, but that thought did haunt her when she thought too much on it.
The Doctor frowned, or rather Troy frowned, the running and jumping between his mind between identities continued to exasperate and punish him for whenever he tried to come up with a proper answer. Waving his hand a bit, he then looked towards her and smiled as he took her face in his hands, “I’m sorry, I’m doing that thing that makes people worry. I shouldn’t do that. I’ll have the answers soon, if there’s anything me getting this big brain would at all be good for, I suppose it’d be that right?”
He poked her nose then moved towards the machine, and began to rummage around it, before clicking his tongue, “Clara Oswald…. I think I’m building a machine to find the TARDIS. That’s what that is, at least, the little hair clip of yours is for. It’s a thing, a thing that is yours that it might connect to. I have a thing of mine, a thing of John’s. I now need to get something from Rose, and anyone who has had contact with the TARDIS from around here…”
He turned to face her, smiling, “Then maybe I can figure out a way to call her here from across the stars. The universes. It’s probably the most absolute answer, a sort of pocket universe living within a universe. A parallel world so thin that two beings live within other beings. Two consciousnesses. It wouldn’t be completely unbelievable, and maybe a bleed is happening. Or it’s one of infinite parallel worlds where two memories do simply live in the same being. There are infinite possibilities after all.”
Troy smirked, though it was obvious he couldn’t control which of himself shined out more, “I love it. I might be on to something. Oh, this is brilliant and exciting isn’t it?”
Clara just gave Troy a sad smile as he said he was doing the thing where people worried and that it would be fine, that he would figure it out. Because he was trying to make her feel better as was his wont and she could just follow along. She had no answers. Just memories and dreams and feelings.
“That it would.”
Arms crossing once he went to investigate the thing he had built, Clara just followed, walking around it as he explained it. It could work. She had to wonder which TARDIS would show up though. With the many versions of the Doctor, the redesigns that were flickers in the mist for her… No way to really know, of it would work.
“Don’t think it likes me much.” Random comment, but Clara and the TARDIS had a very...rocky relationship. It at least seemed to let her on without too much fuss after going into the pocket universe to save the Doctor. Still, felt like it watched her, which was absurd. “Martha Jones and Jack Harkness.”
The names were spoken distractedly. But she knew they were around and she recognised them from passing. But he was getting excited about possibilities, and it was hard to deny such excitement was infectious. So she smiled and walked over to him, kissing his cheek.
“Very exciting. Now if you’ll excuse me. I need tea.” When in doubt, go make tea.