im_thedoctor (im_thedoctor) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-10-31 19:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, clara oswald, eleventh doctor |
Who: Clara Oswald and Troy/Eleventh Doctor
What: More dream fallout
When: [backdated] 29 October 2015
Where: Their home
Warnings: Dalek related issues
Status: Log | Complete
Working with Missy was hard enough. She didn’t trust her, but it was a matter of necessity in this instance. They needed to save the Doctor. The entire situation was contrived, but Clara had long since learned that sometimes uncomfortable things were necessary. Like working with someone who was supposed to be dead and knowing your best friend lied about it, or hoped she was alive despite everything. But that meant he had to make it up to her. That meant the Doctor couldn’t die because he still had to make it up to her that he had lied.
That was all it was supposed to be. But things were never easy. No. They were on Skaro, the home of the Daleks. She had heard the Doctor without hope and while Missy had seemed intrigued or at least not bothered, it broke Clara’s heart and she knew that they needed to get to him.
Things never went as planned, though. Clara being stuck in the empty armour of a Dalek? Not something she was exactly happy about, but if it would get them to the Doctor and to save him? Well Clara would deal with it. Even if ouch things being attached to her skull and having to adjust to thinking orders. That was enough but…
“No. Missy, no no no!” Getting closed in!? Bit claustrophobic. “I’m Clara. I’m Clara Oswald!” Why was it saying she was a Dalek?! And now Clara was getting panicked. An echo of pleading in the back of her mind. I am Oswin Oswald. I am not a Dalek! But it was lost in the haze. But forward they went until it seemed Missy was going to let her be killed as a way to control the Doctor… And then…. what was going on? Why was there… Confused and scared, Clara stuck in the Dalek armour, went in search of Missy and the Doctor only to find him and him not realising it was her. Of him thinking she was a Dalek who had killed her, all because of Missy.
“I’m right here! Doctor, it’s me! I’m Clara! I’m your friend..’” She could feel the desperation rising as he pointed one of the guns at her, anger, fear, emotions she couldn’t place and her heart breaking again, trying desperately to get through to him. “I would never kill you. You’re my friend, you are the one person I could never kill…”
Out of the dreams, Clara had fallen asleep on the couch. Out of the dreams, she was tossing and turning, as if trying to get out of the Dalek armour. Pleading into nothingness, begging for the Doctor to recognise her. This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be how she died, trapped as a Dalek and the Doctor unable to see or hear her.
Troy had been doing all that Troy did anymore, and that was fidget. Life was boring for him. He was the Doctor, he was meant to be traveling, searching, exploring and rescuing planets, civilizations, empires. And yet, here he was, stuck in a small corner, of a small planet located in the small corner of the solar system, in the small corner of a galaxy, in the small corner of the Universe, which in turn was in the small corner of the Multi-verse. He knew, he knew all of it was out there.
Whether or not Troy recognized himself as the Doctor or not, whether it was ‘fated’ that he be like the Doctor, that wasn’t the point; the point was that he knew, and he had that drive, that desire to be out in it. Life traveled so slowly here. Even in Orange County, where some bizarre things did occur.
So today he was fidgeting trying to read a book in his study, when he heard the soft muffles of Clara from the other room. At first he didn’t take anything from it, she was sleeping; it was fine, but then he heard her calling out his name, heard her pleading, begging, and he knew she was having one of those dreams again.
Setting the book down, he adjusted his bowtie and stood to his feet to make his way towards the living room, and looked at Clara from the other side of the couch.
He thought, as he watched her, of just letting her sleep and experience the dreams. They were memories, and they’d make her curious and he knew that. Still, it was traumatizing, and the dreams would return, and if she knew it was coming it might be better.
Making his way around the couch, the Doctor knelt down and placed a hand on her own, and another to her forehead as he gave her a soft shake and muttered quietly, “Clara, Clara… wake up, it’s okay. I’m here. I hear you.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she could hear Troy, she was aware of his presence. But at present, she remained locked in the dream, the memory and the fear that the Doctor wouldn’t hear her. Wouldn’t know it was her and would think she was just a Dalek. A Dalek who killed Clara Oswald. She could see it in his face, the fact he was prepared to kill her but then he got hung up on the fact she was saying mercy. That the term shouldn’t make sense, shouldn’t be something a Dalek understood.
And he figured it out. She was was out, Missy gone after he told her to run. There was an anger there as he worked to get her out of the armour and then they were running to where the TARDIS had been destroyed only..it wasn’t, just dispersed. And he was going to… Clara didn’t know. She was relieved to be out. Safe.
And awake with a start. Breathing quickly as she readjusted to being awake, the brunette scrambled up and swatted at invisible wires at her temples.
“Get them off…” but there was nothing there. Nothing connecting her to the Dalek armour beyond the figments of memories, not really seeing Troy right then.
When Clara awoke and she seemed terrified by something, he reached out and grabbed her hands, struggling to get them under control before pushing them down towards her chest and leaning forward to lay her back some, speaking loud enough to make sure his voice was heard in the haze of her sudden awakening, “Clara. I’m right, there’s nothing on you. Everything’s fine, everything’s okay, you’re safe.”
Troy held her hands down to keep her as relaxed as possible, moving to kiss her forehead, a thing he knew helped her recognize it was him even when confused, and he just stroked his thumbs along her hands, “It’s okay, breathe Clara, breathe. Everything’s okay…”
He let his voice continue to try and guide her, waiting for her to become aware, and feel where she was before he’d bother going any further with it. He just continued to lean there, staring down at her, “you okay?”
No Daleks. She wasn’t on Skaro. The Doctor didn’t need to detach her from the Dalek Armour. Safe. She was safe. Slowly the words seemed to register. Slowly she realised it was Troy helping her and not her dad. The Doctor in her dreams, but different. And here she kept them more separate. She had to.
Slowly her breathing seemed to regulate and she became more aware of her surroundings. She was in the living room of the home she shared with Troy. Who was there. Shaking and still feeling the lingering effects of fear and heartbreak, Clara just hugged Troy. Real. Solid. Not a dream. Not going to vanish.
This wasn’t Skaro. This wasn’t the Dalek Asylum.
If she never saw another Dalek again, it would be too soon. It almost would have been poetic had she actually died either by Dalek or mistaken as one given she now knew the Doctor’s first memory of her was Oswin. But no. She was alive. It was okay.
Troy let out a breath of relief when she hugged him and seemed to be aware of his existence once more. Hugging her back snugly, he secured her in his embrace and just held her while she seemed to get her bearings straight. He moved his hand up and down along her back, before finally leaning back and bringing both hands up to her cheeks. Staring back into her eyes, “Are you okay Clara? What’s wrong?”
He brushed at her hair a bit and stared back at her, “Is it more dreams? Or recurring? Repeat of the Dalek Asylum?” He figured, only because she seemed so terrified and it had been awful, and he knew how terrified she’d been in that dream.
“Can you see me? You know where you are?” Even as he said this, he finally moved one hand down to the inside of his jacket, and pulled out that screwdriver, running it over her to make sure she was okay physically at least, and he glanced at it. Nodding his approval, and looked back at her, “What were you dreaming?”
Physically, Clara was fine. Thankfully. Given the nature of the dreams, given she knew people could get injured from them, given she’d been injured from them in a way, at least in terms of being pulled apart by the Time Winds, it was always a risk. But there weren’t any injuries, nothing that would show up on the Sonic.
And cue the questions, which really she knew would come. The handful of dreams she’d had since they started up again hadn’t been this unnerving. There was the organism pretending to be Danny, there was running into one of her echo selves… but nothing like this. Then again, between being stuck in the armour of a Dalek and feeling powerless to prove who she was, and the flashes of Oswin now intermixing?
The Dalek Asylum would probably be on the list of her most traumatising and re-traumatising dreams. There were others. Where Danny died. But when it came to fear and panic? The Dalek Asylum was it.
“New one… Skaro.” He’d know what it was. Even Missy had been terrified. The shame in the Doctor’s eyes. She knew her dad hadn’t dreamt it, not yet. He would have called or just shown up. It was just one of those dreams and she knew that would be his response. Even so, she really didn’t want to elaborate and so she didn’t say anything else in that moment.
Blinking several times, there seemed to be a sudden anger in Troy’s eyes and he felt his lips purse as he tried to hold back the anger he was feeling, yet it arrived none the less, and he felt the shadow pass over his eyes, “He took you to Skaro? To Skaro?”
There was a molten venom in his voice, laced with years of fear and anger at the concept. Skaro was the worst place in the Universe, the center of hate and war. He’d never, ever, in a million years force one of his companions to go there. He’d gone there himself, of course, to do what was necessary, but to actually set foot on Skaro, and with Clara? It was unthinkable, unforgivable.
“How could he possibly think it okay to ever take anyone, especially you, to Skaro? It’s the homeworld of the Daleks. The most distasteful, horrific beings in the entire existence of the universe, and he thought it permittable to take you there. It sickens me, and my hearts, to know he’d even think of doing that…”
Shaking his head he then rested his hands on either side of her head, stroking with a frown, “Of course you were terrified, how could you not be?”
“No…” The comment was quiet because Clara was still trying to get herself calmer, but Troy was going on a tirade and while she felt the need to defend the Doctor because it really hadn’t been his choice, she knew that Troy would just talk over her. Best to let him get it out first and then she could correct him.
And there it was. The opening.
“He didn’t take me there… he sent her,” she couldn’t say Missy’s name. There was a lot of distrust and pain involved when it came to Missy, “his confession dial and disappeared. She got UNIT’s and my attention. We went to find him. We did.” There had been shame and she still didn’t know what it was he had done to make the Doctor truly feel shame and to show it. “He’d been called by Davros who was dying or something. We decided he wasn’t going alone. He tried to fight it but….”
But he had lost. The snake man had decided they would go.
“We thought it was a space station, a medical one. It wasn’t. It was only disguised as such because they had rebuilt it…”
Taking a shuddering breath, Clara just closed her eyes. There were a lot of emotions she was still trying to process. The fact the Doctor had lied about killing Missy, but that was small in comparison to everything else. The worry of losing him had propelled her forward, it always did. She would never let him face something like that alone, not if she had a say in it.
“Then we got separated.” Which really was a recipe for disaster waiting to happen. “He thought I was dead…” The words were quiet, and just remembering the sound of the Doctor without hope broke her heart all over again and she once again hugged Troy. She already knew he had said, here, that he couldn’t take losing her, not again. So hugging him it was.
He figured the explanation provided a small comfort to the concept of taking her to Skaro, but it really didn’t do anything to alleviate his concern. He just stared at her, the Doctor’s eyes staring at her with all of the millennia of years behind them, and he just frowned and shook his head, “He should never… I… should have never taken you there. I don’t care the reason, it was too dangerous… the fact you’re not dead? I don’t… I don’t know what that means.”
The Doctor returned her hug when she offered it to him, and he frowned, remembering who Duncan had been talking about, “Her? Do you mean Missy? The Master?”
He shook his head, “He put you with the Master and put you on Skaro alone with her? He’s becoming far too reckless…” Troy leaned back and watched her, brushing her hair out of her eyes, “It’s got to be because of the added lives, the new ones. He wasn’t meant to have them, and now does, and… it’s done something. It has to have, he’s far too reckless, and far too reckless with your life.”
Then Troy’s brow furrowed, “Why did he think you dead?”
“You’re not listening! He had absolutely no say in it. He was physically unable to stop us from going. He’d been shackled or whatever by the Snake man then we said we were going as well.” Yes, she was getting frustrated. Because on top of everything she was trying to process, Troy was doing the thing where he listened but didn’t and misinterpreted. But then he was hugging her and seemed to know who Missy was. “Honestly, I know each of you is different but he would never take me there or let me be in that danger. He didn’t even let me know he thought he was about to die. Just like you wouldn’t or John wouldn’t.”
And again with the not listening. Okay, so maybe she wasn’t completely being coherent or explaining it well. Breathe. She needed to breathe.
“Yes. Her. And again. He.had.no.say.in.it. We were in holding on what we thought was a space station. He got taken to Davros and we went to investigate once getting out of the shackles.” Not that she trusted Missy and she doubted the Doctor had either but again, there really had been nothing to be done about it when they were all shackled. “We realised it was a disguise and it was Skaro.”
If there was one thing she never thought possible it would be to see Missy that unnerved. Between that and the Doctor showing true shame at something…
“He thought I was dead because Davros made him watch the Daleks kill us. Only she had altered the vortex manipulators to the frequency they used and we were instead transported outside the medical centre or whatever it was and had to go through the sewers to get back in to save him.”
Clara really had thought that would be the end. And then she’d been hanging upside down while Missy explained and they had to figure out how to get in, which was through the sewers. Not like saving her did much good given what it seemed Missy’s end game had been in trying to convince him that she was dead and have him kill her thinking she was a dalek.
Troy frowned, staring at her while he watched her and shook his head, but the frown held. He wanted to be angry, but she was right; still, he was prideful enough to think that he’d find some way out of it, and wouldn’t have put them in that situation, but who was he kidding? He was the Doctor, he put everyone into that situation. He looked up at her, and then tilted his head, something catching his attention.
“Twice you’ve said he was taken to see Davros, called by him, because he’s dying? Why would Davros call me, him, to see Davros when he’s dying? What good does that do Davros?”
The Doctor’s brow furrowed but then he frowned and nodded, “I suppose in some sense we’ve been battling forever, we know each other better than anyone; we understand the other in a way that would make sense to bring someone to their death bed. Still, could it have been a trap?”
He sighed and finally looked back to her as he thought about it all, “Left alone, on Skaro, with The Master--or Missy, I suppose she’s calling herself now--that must have been terrifying. I am sorry you had to go through that… but I won’t let it happen to you. Not here, and that’s where you are now. Here.”
Then a scoff, “Though it would seem Missy has appeared somewhere on the network.”
Clara was not above pointing out that she sincerely doubted the Doctor would have brought Amy and Rory to the Dalek Asylum if he’d had a say in the matter, or just make him think about any time things happened out of his control. There was pride, of course, but holding onto it stubbornly did no good. Not in things like this.
“I don’t know….” And she didn’t. It wasn’t like she’d been privy to that conversation. She knew that something had happened that caused the Doctor shame. Davros made the Daleks, but who made Davos? “All I know is the Doctor thought he was going to die and sent his confession dial to her, while he went to have one last private party on Earth away from those who know him.” Away from her. She never would have known he had died on her. She knew he would die, she wasn’t naive enough to think otherwise. But not on her. Not again. “Probably a trap, though.”
Left alone on Skaro with Missy…. That thought alone caused her to retreat some into herself. It hadn’t been scary, not at first. They had the common goal of saving the Doctor. Missy was… well, she would never trust her but they had a common end so it was basically that or die.
“Yeah well, it wouldn’t have happened by choice.” Her voice was darker now, remembering and she didn’t seem to hear the comment on how she wouldn’t have to do that here. That she had shown up. Clara knew, of course she did. Though she also didn’t know what was worse. Being in the Dalek armour, or the notion that it was Missy who had been the woman in the shop, that she was how her paths had crossed with the Doctor. “And I’m pretty certain after what happened, even an uneasy alliance by necessity won’t be happening again.”
“He’s dying again? really now, we just can’t seem to keep ourselves alive for very long can we? Always a last hurrah for us,” Troy scoffed, jokingly of course, mostly to hide his own insecurity about knowing the fact death was eventually going to come for him in any of his faces. Shaking his head, he then smiled and looked towards her, before standing.
“Right, well, I suppose an alliance with the Master has happened in the past, and it’s to be expected; he, or she, however she may be now, is always clever. So clever, and always has a way out of it. Sort of like me, but in a far worse way I suppose.”
He rubbed his hands together, “But I promise, nothing like that here. I’m with you now, and I won’t let it happen to you Clara. No Daleks so long as we’re on this planet in this universe. None whatsoever…. now, some tea as usual for a heavy dream session?”
He then froze in his conversation and turned to face her, “but one more thing. Again, why did he think you were dead? I’m still a bit hazy on that whole purpose. Because before you woke, Clara, you kept telling me, or him I presume, that you were… well, you.”
“Not anymore…. I guess he thought since it was Davros, that was the end. I honestly have no idea.” Clara well knew that death could come at any moment for any person. She knew it far too well in all of her lives. Here. The dreams. Her echo selves. And she couldn’t protect against it. She told the Doctor that he needed to make it up to her for lying about Missy to make sure he would come back.
And he had. Not without thinking she was dead and losing hope and being about to destroy Skaro in the process… but he had come back and had recognised her. Clara had been more than happy to just let the conversation stay there. To say of course she would be fine here, to get tea, but then he was asking about what she’d been saying and she knew she wasn’t going to get out of the conversation.
“When she got us out of the medical centre or whatever, the Daleks and the Doctor thought we’d been exterminated so we went in through the sewers to get to him to save him from...whatever he thought was going to be his death. Only she needed me to ‘pretend’ to be a Dalek. She put me in its armour and how to control it…”
In the dreams she didn’t have as solid of memories about her echo selves. She knew that they continued on even with the Great Intelligence defeated. But that here? She had Oswin’s dreams as her own memories, just as real as any.
“When Skaro was falling apart we ran into him. She told him I was the Dalek that killed me.” Which… was one of the weirder sentences she had ever said in relation to the dreams and she’d had a lot of strange ones that came with time travel. As she explained it, Clara stared straight ahead, pale. He’d been ready to kill her. “She said she gave me to you to show the enemy in the friend and the friend in the enemy…. Like it was some sort of lesson…” Clara hadn’t had much time to respond in the dreams as the Doctor had been trying to calm her down and get her out of the empty armour, along with telling Missy to run.
“So yeah. Like I said. I don’t see any sort of… working with her happening ever again, even if it’s the only option…”
Troy looked down at her with furrowed brow, and his idea of tea suddenly became very distant and instead he moved towards her, and dropped to sit next to her, hand reaching out to take her own hand. After all she’d gone through in her past selves, remembering Oswin, and the Asylum, a memory that stuck close to him everytime he saw her beautiful eyes, he couldn’t imagine how terrible a dream like that must have been. An experience that Missy put her through.
When she was finished, he was staring off, not so much at her but through her; into the image of what was being painted for him, and a darkness swept over him that was always there, always hiding under the skin of the Doctor. Over a millennia of experiences with The Master, and Daleks, and the like rolled through his eyes. That anger was always seething beneath the surface.
“Not here…” It wasn’t like minutes before, it wasn’t some ‘oh, well it won’t happen here’. There was a far heavier meaning behind his words this time, and he looked back at her, “Not here. She will not touch you here. She will answer for every single crime she has ever committed, every single crime I have let her continue to get away with, and for what she did to you. For that she will answer most harshly…”
He then shook his head, “And I shall make sure of it myself.”
This wasn’t something that tea could fix. Not really. It would calm her nerves and eventually the residual panic would reside. Because the Doctor had realised it was her. Had undoubtedly seen Oswin, or the Dalek shell of Oswin who remained herself through it all. A Dalek claiming that it gives mercy. Has mercy when it shouldn’t understand. The TARDIS fine despite appearances. But intermixed with the Oswin dreams and Clara was struggling just a bit more to find that calm.
Nor was she used to see Troy like that. It was all the emotions she saw within the Dream and the single word of run because it seemed that the only thing keeping the Doctor from going after her there and then was the fact Clara was connected to the Dalek armour and he needed to get her out.
Clara was very much of the opinion that people got to make their own choices. That they couldn’t blame people for something they haven’t done yet. Of something they hadn’t dreamed. And while she wouldn’t call the woman out, she also wouldn’t talk to her. She would avoid her. She’d already made that vow when she’d dreamt of her the first time. Had told her dad that it was a good thing they weren’t friends when any other time and Clara would be excited that he had someone to talk to. But Missy? Oh no. This was the one time she would close the door and not let someone in.
She also knew it wouldn’t be just Troy saying that or thinking that. She knew her dad hadn’t dreamt any of this yet because it was clear this was something he would check up on her about. She had no idea what to expect when that happened. For now though, Clara just curled up against Troy. Right now, she honestly didn’t care if she was letting it show that she wasn’t as okay or put together as she liked to appear. She just needed to let her mind calm.