It takes a certain perspective to be able to see things that way. I wasn't able to until recently.
[But she's found a way to see most tragic things as beautiful since dying. It's funny how that happens, she thinks. It's sad that Alina already sees things that way. She's far too young to have to.]
i don't think there would be flowers for my memorial. ravka sells the bones of their saints as good luck charms. we're all objects to them.
[ morbid, indeed, but she knows that isn't what clara is getting at. alina lapses into thoughtful silence, despite the dread suddenly churning whirlpools in her stomach. ]
honestly? i'm not sure i know how to answer that. beautiful that your memory touched someone enough to live on in someone's heart. tragic that you would have to leave behind the life you wished for, and the people who will mourn you. but i suppose it's hopeful, too. that life can grow from death.
And that is exactly why you have to let me take you away one day. Ravka doesn't take care of things that shine the brightest. Things that shouldn't ever have their light burnt out.
[The idea of anyone trying to sell Alina's bones once she's dead and gone is horrifying. She won't stand for it, even in this conversation of hypotheticals.
She's so focused on saving Alina that she doesn't even bother addressing that second part that is relevant to herself.]
no, they don't. my country has never loved me, even when i begged it to. maybe ravka as a nation doesn't care for me, but its people deserve someone to save them. not for its rulers, or men with power, but for children who have to come into this world already knowing loss. for the citizens and soldiers ravka passes over and forgets.
[And there it is, her big responsibility. Left out in the open, where Clara can do nothing but stare at those words for several minutes before responding.]
[ and the urge to turn it back on clara is tempting, if only to avoid the responsibility resting like stone on her chest, crushing her bones into ash and dust as more weight and more weight is added. she exhales, unseen, slow and shaky; perhaps if she shares, clara will find the strength to confront what she's been sidestepping, with her hints of memorials and death. ]
centuries ago, a man called the black heretic created the fold and divided ravka in half, like a rupture at the heart of the country. everything it touched turned to darkness and dust. the only creatures that seem to thrive inside of it is the men and women and children that were turned into monsters.
eventually, ravka did what all desperate people. they created a prophecy about a saint who would wield sunlight and destroy the fold forever. everyone thought it was a myth, and why wouldn't it be a fairytale? no sun summoner had ever been born before.
until me. there's no one else who can purge it, and that might never be.
you shouldn't have to face that alone. I would save you from having to do it if I could.
But the truth is that I can't save you.
I can't even find the courage to save myself. Not when I'm not afraid of dying, not when I demanded the Doctor do nothing and let me go. I don't want to live so I can keep living. I want to survive so I can keep the Doctor from losing himself. And at the end of the day, that's the only goal I have left to see through to the end.
[All of those admissions make no real sense. It's a jumble of emotions that come out in words that don't paint a full picture. She isn't telling the full story, but she's dropped a large enough half-truth bomb just now.]
[ it's a thousand jumbled puzzle pieces, and alina is helpless to fully connect them and find the fuller picture. memorial. death. save. every word is an omen pointing to an ending, a tragedy that hasn't yet written itself in what she knows of clara oswald's life. ]
[It takes her a long time to decide to send the next message. She talks herself out of it and almost doesn't respond. She'll apologize to Alina later, she thinks.
But then, before she thinks better of it, she hastily makes the choice to let down her walls. Alina has done nothing but prove she can be trusted.]
I can't tell you about what happens like this. Can I come over now?
[That's good to hear because Clara is already standing outside Alina's door. There's a soft and quick series of knocks about five seconds after she gets the message.]
she doesn't have even a fraction of a moment to consider how her room might appear to clara. her gaze goes topsy-turvy, wheeling itself across the undeniable mess her shared space with rhys has become. for as cozy as it is, homey in its reminders that it's been lived in, it looks like a storm swept through and knocked their belongings loose.
alina shoots one last self-conscious, fawn-stricken look at the mess she's dragging her friend into, before she quickly swings open the door. her foot nudges a pile of what looks to be expensive dress shirts aside, pooling silk onto the floor, knocking it behind the bed. a messy tarp comes into view, hung up over one side of the wall, as alina gently grasps clara's hands to lead her inside.
with another kick of her foot, the door clicks closed behind them, if only to let clara have her bubble of privacy. there's no need for anyone to intrude on whatever secret she's been keeping, whatever sadness is festering inside of her. greetings pushed aside, alina's brows furrow, searching out answers in the lines and paragraphs of clara's expression. a book alina could read, if only the language it's written in was made known to her.
quietly, she ushers her to sit on the end of the bed with her, perching beside her. ]
Is everything okay?
[ obviously not. she cringes at her own stupid question, but — she's relieved, at least, to find clara unscarred and unscathed. ]
[Clara's usual immaculately put together look extends to her room. Or rather, her portion of the room. The Doctor's portion is beyond help and out of her control. Having to live among that chaos for so many months now helps soften the chaotic nature of stepping into Alina's shared space. The odds and ends strewn about are given slight glances, but her eyes are only on the other woman.
She sits rigidly straight next to Alina, feeling her heart racing. It should be easy to tell the truth, to be honest with someone she's come to care for. But it isn't, and Clara finds that peeling away the layers needed to just come out with it is terrifying. She almost can't bring herself to face that fear and do it. She's so afraid of Alina feeling like she needs to protect her, or being so saddened by her fate that she does something even worse and pities her.
Clara never has been able to stomach the pity of others.
Her fingers curl into the fabric of her skirt, tightening and releasing. And when that isn't a good enough method of getting out her anxiety, she stares straight ahead and twirls the ring on her thumb. It's spun three times before she can bring herself to look over at Alina, wondering if she can feel the way her heart is pounding with how close they're pressed together.
Sitting side by side with someone she trusts doesn't make burderning her friend with the truth any easier.]
I'm honestly not sure.
[Her words are barely a whisper, her voice soft enough for only Alina to hear.]
But I thought it was time to stop speaking in riddles or hypotheticals, at least when it comes to you.
[ dread submerges her stomach, a churning wave of nausea that worsens the longer clara takes to speak. she has the clues to the puzzle in front of her, if she dared to look at them, study the finer details of the bigger picture. kovacs' need to save someone. clara's devastation, once they had broken apart to go their separate ways. her insistence that the chapters of her life wouldn't end happily.
no one has ever needed rescuing from a happy ending. a prick of discomfort gnaws at her — guilt, alina realizes, for possibly knowing more about clara than she has any right to know. here she is speaking of riddles, and alina's pockets are filled with secrets she isn't prepared to share. isn't ready to drag them into the light, where her own eyes can examine them too closely.
she hesitates, unsure of how to offer clara comfort — helpless, as her eyes fall to clara's spinning fingers, rotating her ring in dizzying circles. alina leans forward to clasp her hand on instinct to ground her, offering a reassuring squeeze. ]
Some riddles are worth solving.
[ and solving others will only hurt. she can't be certain which this is; every secret kept from her, locked away in the dark, has only ever been intended to mislead her down a path she wouldn't follow otherwise, to use her. but something nags at her, a sense that the one person this secret harms above all else —
is clara herself. the small, ruby charm clasped to alina's necklace dangles when she leans forward, a free hand settling between clara's shoulder blades. there, the thundering beat of the other woman's heart is painfully obvious, stampeding against alina's palm. ]
Whatever it is, I'm not going anywhere. [ a beat, her fingers weaving tightly between clara's own. ] You don't have to run.
The Doctor's words replay through her mind over and over. And for an awful moment, all she can do is relive the moments leading up to her walking out to her death on Trap Street. Everyone has to be brave and face their death in the end. It's not her death that she's afraid of.
It's having to continually have nightmares of the part that comes before, of facing the reality that the Doctor watches her die in a horrifically painful way. She can still recall the exact way it felt to have her soul forcibly removed from her, the sensation of it slipping free of her body in a dark cloud still numbing her lips.
Her hand grips hold of Alina's a little tighter, and she very carefully stares straight ahead.]
I was sent home after our mission in Braccia. Years passed for me there. And at the end of it, before I was pulled back in here, I -
[She almost can't do it. Her head turns, and she looks to Alina with wide eyes. There's a wild desperation there, untamed and seeking safe harbor. Tears build, and she refuses to let them fall.]
I died. The Doctor, he tortured himself for literally billions of years because of it. And then he brought me back, only it was all wrong. I was wrong. I wasn't alive, but a moment frozen in time. Trapped forever between one heartbeat and my last. When I woke up here again, my heart was beating and things felt normal again. But I can't help but think, what if that feeling's wrong? What if I'm still defective, and nothing I do here matters?
[She exhales a shaky breath, finally looking away. She won't hold Alina hostage with that lost look on her face any longer.]
What if I'm not able to be brave enough to ask to change my contract in the end? What if the cost is more than I'm willing to pay? It means that no matter what happens here, the Doctor is always destined to go back and torture himself for billions of years. Because of me. How can I possibly sentence someone I love to that kind of fate?
[She has to make it better. And she will. She'll find a way. But she refuses to make a deal with the orb yet. She's not ready for the high cost that Viveca has warned her about, not when she knows exactly what's the most valuable thing in the entire universe to her. Given the way she and the Doctor part ways back home, there's only one option something like the orb will choose for her price.
She knows, without a question of a doubt, that the orb will ask for her memories of the Doctor in a cruel reversal of their fate. So no matter what, in the end, one of them is destined to have their mind tampered with. It's that fear of losing him all over again that keeps her from acting. It's what keeps her from opening up to the Doctor, knowing very well that no one on this station would survive two forces of nature known as The Oncoming Storm. And she makes no mistake that is exactly who both Doctors would become if they ever found out about her death.
The weight of her life being lost isn't because she's afraid of dying. It isn't because she selfishly wants to still be alive. It's because she wants to protect the Doctor one last time, and she isn't sure she has it in her to pay the price.]
[ guilt swells in her chest, swift and suffocating, rising up to cinch her throat closed. suddenly, drawing breath feels like a monumental task — like a war with her own heavy heart. how long ago had she been cursing her own existence, hoping for an escape from the dread she wakes to each morning, the chains she can't shuck off? how eagerly had she thrown the idea of her sacrifice in aleksander's face as though it were a pointed arrow, in a bloodthirsty attempt to hurt him as he had wounded her? to show him what he had turned her into — this tired, aching thing, looking for a peace she will never find.
and clara had been here all along, rattled by her fear. hoping against all odds for another chance, for another attempt at life, while alina had been mourning her own and all too eager to throw that gift away. her misery feels so stupid and childish, now. so utterly selfish, once faced with clara's fear — faced with the rippling effects of that loss, the damage it had wrought upon her and the doctor. shamefaced, alina's gaze wilts, drooping to their joined hands. it's difficult to look clara in the eye, in the wake of that, but —
her attention snaps up, quick, determination hardening the corners of her eyes. ]
You are not defective. [ immediately, she bristles at the connotations of that word. defective. wrong. so close to what alina believes she is, fearful of what she might become. it stings, to think clara could ever see herself that way. clara — who thinks of the doctor, first. clara, who had no obligation to hold her up, but has stayed to support her in her most uncertain, murky moments. who grows flowers like memories to preserve, who builds gardens for lost women. compassionate, bold clara. ] I didn't know you before, but I know you now. And the Clara Oswald I see in front of me is brave, and stubborn, and strong. Whether your heart is or isn't beating —
[ her fingertips lift, tap-tap-tapping a gentle beat against clara's sternum. softly, her warm palm settles there, fingertips fanning out. ]
— It's one of the biggest hearts I've known. You know what you have to do, Clara, and you will. Even if it hurts. Even if you think you can't possibly bear it. [ because — because people like them have no other choice. because she knows clara won't be able to walk away, if her sacrifice means saving something she loves so dearly. ] I'll be here with you along the way. It's your fate to face, but you don't have to face it alone.
[She's lost count of how many times she's cried on Alina. One more isn't going to harm anything, not with as close as they are at this point. She crumples completely, all of the fear and anxiety she's feeling pouring out of her in tears. She winds up hiccuping in between sobs, and she just sits there with one hand holding Alina's and the other pressed over the hand that's pressed over her heart. There's a steady beating there now, and it races faster and harder as Clara works herself up to becoming nothing but sorrow and tears.
It's hard not to feel like she's feeling sorry for herself, and she couldn't possibly hope to explain that isn't the case. She's finally grieving the inevitable loss of the Doctor, though she hasn't even begun to touch that part of the story yet. How could she, when Alina is trying so hard to make her feel truly alive and that she's capable of making such an impossible choice? ]
I can't do it. [She manages to get out through her sobs.] I can't -
[Her entire body shudders as she tries to force out the admission. Her betrayal, the thing she's done right before coming back to the station.]
I can't risk losing him completely. Not after I had to force him to forget me, everything about me.
[Meaning this time here is all they have left. This is it, after this is over she'll go back to an existence where the Doctor doesn't remember her. He'll know that someone named Clara exists, that they had certain adventures together. But he won't remember her, and all she can do is relive the moment in the diner when she looked at him and realized he didn't know her at all. She had sacrificed her relationship with him then for the good of the universe, and for his own good. But she isn't sure she could do it again, that act of selflessness proving to be a heavy burden for her to try and rationalize now that she's here with not one but two Doctors.]
[ she can see it, the moment clara falls to pieces — the foundation of a woman that had been held together by little more than sheer determination, built on the crumbling bricks her bravery has become. like trying to hold a home together with string and clay alone. for as little love as her life has known, alina moves reflexively, instantly. an arm tangles itself around clara's waist, tugging her in where alina holds her tethered to her chest.
to the lull of her heartbeat, soft and steady. as though even her body senses her attempts to calm clara, beating to the tune of its own lullaby. she can't guard her from the fate that waits for her, no — but she can give clara a hiding place. where her tears are shielded from sight, a weakness she doesn't have to hold at bay, ashamed. it leaves a pooling stan on the front of alina's dress, a flowery pattern that catches clara's tears like they're dewdrops on petals.
but she doesn't flinch, doesn't shift. only buries her nose in the soft silk of clara's hair, palm planted flat against her spine. there's nothing she can say to soothe that fear — hadn't she dreaded, once, that mal had abandoned her in his past? moved past the memory of her so easily? but what clara speaks of is more permanent, more — real, and not the letters aleksander had burned to ash, to scorch away those ties to her old life. to cruelly let her believe in a lie.
she doesn't offer one to clara, either. there's no it will be okay or it won't hurt — it won't be, and it will. clara must know the truth of that. all alina can do is listen, lend her the strength to piece herself back together at the end of it all. (it doesn't feel like enough, but when has she ever done enough?) ]
You leave a mark on the lives you enter, Clara. If he doesn't have his memories left, I have to believe a part of him will always remember how you made him feel. You're unforgettable.
[ but maybe that's fantasy. maybe she's fooling herself, in turn, by wanting to believe this — this station, these strange ties they've all built — won't fully vanish as though they had never existed at all. her eyebrows crease, the quiet confusion obvious in her voice when she murmurs, ]
Why was it so important for him to forget you? Why would you force that on someone?
[ she doesn't have to ask how clara could withstand the pain. some love is larger than selfishness. some bravery outshines others. some destinies can't be outrun. ]
Edited (editing twice bc i'm dumb) 2022-01-06 07:53 (UTC)
[The questions come sooner than she'd like, the exact ones she's not wanting to hear. Hearing them means she has to answer, and she's not ready to face the truth that comes with being cornered into giving a response. Of course, Alina wouldn't press her if she absolutely refused. and she could, she thinks, break down just enough that she isn't pressed.
But there doesn't need to be manipulation here, not between someone that's become so dear to her. Alina has done nothing here but whisper reassurances and love her for who she is, all of her brokenness and faults laid bare out in the open. If she's said this much, she can tell the truth. Just a bit more, it won't hurt anything.]
I had no other choice. He never would have let me go otherwise.
[She's still crying, but she lifts her head and tries to compose herself a little. Wiping at her tears, she ignores the way her lip quivers and tries to keep speaking despite the way it makes her voice tremble.]
The Doctor and I, we -
[Pausing, she swallows the lump that's formed in her throat.]
There's plenty of ways to say you love someone. And even if we never have said it in words, the Doctor and I, our love was so strong that we became dangerous together. So dangerous that losing me meant the Doctor became something I hope you never have to see. He was willing to do anything, to sacrifice the entire universe, if it meant bringing me back. And if we had stayed together, it would have cost the entire universe. As long as we were together, everyone else was at risk. When I realized, I knew I had to make him forget. If he didn't remember, he could move on. The universe would be safe, and he would be able to be happy. I sacrificed the thing I love the most to ensure that.
[Only now she's here, where two Doctors are. Neither of them know the way their story ends, neither of them know that she dies. She doesn't think she needs to tell Alina that. That much should be obvious with the way she's just broken down here. Of course, it also may give some insight into why she's terrified of forgetting him. It's all that will be left in the end. Her memories of him and what they had together. But Alina is right. She'll do what needs to be done in the end, if it means protecting him.]
And I will do whatever's necessary to save him in the end. No matter the cost.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[But she's found a way to see most tragic things as beautiful since dying. It's funny how that happens, she thinks. It's sad that Alina already sees things that way. She's far too young to have to.]
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we aren't ravkans if we aren't writing grim poetry about martyrs and war.
i like tragic flowers much better than any of that.
they might be sad, but they were grown out of a memory of love. what's more beautiful than that?
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ravka sells the bones of their saints as good luck charms. we're all objects to them.
[ morbid, indeed, but she knows that isn't what clara is getting at. alina lapses into thoughtful silence, despite the dread suddenly churning whirlpools in her stomach. ]
honestly? i'm not sure i know how to answer that.
beautiful that your memory touched someone enough to live on in someone's heart.
tragic that you would have to leave behind the life you wished for, and the people who will mourn you.
but i suppose it's hopeful, too. that life can grow from death.
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[The idea of anyone trying to sell Alina's bones once she's dead and gone is horrifying. She won't stand for it, even in this conversation of hypotheticals.
She's so focused on saving Alina that she doesn't even bother addressing that second part that is relevant to herself.]
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maybe ravka as a nation doesn't care for me, but its people deserve someone to save them.
not for its rulers, or men with power, but for children who have to come into this world already knowing loss.
for the citizens and soldiers ravka passes over and forgets.
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What are you expected to save them from?
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[ and the urge to turn it back on clara is tempting, if only to avoid the responsibility resting like stone on her chest, crushing her bones into ash and dust as more weight and more weight is added. she exhales, unseen, slow and shaky; perhaps if she shares, clara will find the strength to confront what she's been sidestepping, with her hints of memorials and death. ]
centuries ago, a man called the black heretic created the fold and divided ravka in half, like a rupture at the heart of the country. everything it touched turned to darkness and dust. the only creatures that seem to thrive inside of it is the men and women and children that were turned into monsters.
eventually, ravka did what all desperate people. they created a prophecy about a saint who would wield sunlight and destroy the fold forever. everyone thought it was a myth, and why wouldn't it be a fairytale? no sun summoner had ever been born before.
until me. there's no one else who can purge it, and that might never be.
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But the truth is that I can't save you.
I can't even find the courage to save myself. Not when I'm not afraid of dying, not when I demanded the Doctor do nothing and let me go. I don't want to live so I can keep living. I want to survive so I can keep the Doctor from losing himself. And at the end of the day, that's the only goal I have left to see through to the end.
[All of those admissions make no real sense. It's a jumble of emotions that come out in words that don't paint a full picture. She isn't telling the full story, but she's dropped a large enough half-truth bomb just now.]
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[ it's a thousand jumbled puzzle pieces, and alina is helpless to fully connect them and find the fuller picture. memorial. death. save. every word is an omen pointing to an ending, a tragedy that hasn't yet written itself in what she knows of clara oswald's life. ]
clara.
did something happen?
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But then, before she thinks better of it, she hastily makes the choice to let down her walls. Alina has done nothing but prove she can be trusted.]
I can't tell you about what happens like this. Can I come over now?
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yeah.
yeah, of course. always.
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she doesn't have even a fraction of a moment to consider how her room might appear to clara. her gaze goes topsy-turvy, wheeling itself across the undeniable mess her shared space with rhys has become. for as cozy as it is, homey in its reminders that it's been lived in, it looks like a storm swept through and knocked their belongings loose.
alina shoots one last self-conscious, fawn-stricken look at the mess she's dragging her friend into, before she quickly swings open the door. her foot nudges a pile of what looks to be expensive dress shirts aside, pooling silk onto the floor, knocking it behind the bed. a messy tarp comes into view, hung up over one side of the wall, as alina gently grasps clara's hands to lead her inside.
with another kick of her foot, the door clicks closed behind them, if only to let clara have her bubble of privacy. there's no need for anyone to intrude on whatever secret she's been keeping, whatever sadness is festering inside of her. greetings pushed aside, alina's brows furrow, searching out answers in the lines and paragraphs of clara's expression. a book alina could read, if only the language it's written in was made known to her.
quietly, she ushers her to sit on the end of the bed with her, perching beside her. ]
Is everything okay?
[ obviously not. she cringes at her own stupid question, but — she's relieved, at least, to find clara unscarred and unscathed. ]
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She sits rigidly straight next to Alina, feeling her heart racing. It should be easy to tell the truth, to be honest with someone she's come to care for. But it isn't, and Clara finds that peeling away the layers needed to just come out with it is terrifying. She almost can't bring herself to face that fear and do it. She's so afraid of Alina feeling like she needs to protect her, or being so saddened by her fate that she does something even worse and pities her.
Clara never has been able to stomach the pity of others.
Her fingers curl into the fabric of her skirt, tightening and releasing. And when that isn't a good enough method of getting out her anxiety, she stares straight ahead and twirls the ring on her thumb. It's spun three times before she can bring herself to look over at Alina, wondering if she can feel the way her heart is pounding with how close they're pressed together.
Sitting side by side with someone she trusts doesn't make burderning her friend with the truth any easier.]
I'm honestly not sure.
[Her words are barely a whisper, her voice soft enough for only Alina to hear.]
But I thought it was time to stop speaking in riddles or hypotheticals, at least when it comes to you.
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no one has ever needed rescuing from a happy ending. a prick of discomfort gnaws at her — guilt, alina realizes, for possibly knowing more about clara than she has any right to know. here she is speaking of riddles, and alina's pockets are filled with secrets she isn't prepared to share. isn't ready to drag them into the light, where her own eyes can examine them too closely.
she hesitates, unsure of how to offer clara comfort — helpless, as her eyes fall to clara's spinning fingers, rotating her ring in dizzying circles. alina leans forward to clasp her hand on instinct to ground her, offering a reassuring squeeze. ]
Some riddles are worth solving.
[ and solving others will only hurt. she can't be certain which this is; every secret kept from her, locked away in the dark, has only ever been intended to mislead her down a path she wouldn't follow otherwise, to use her. but something nags at her, a sense that the one person this secret harms above all else —
is clara herself. the small, ruby charm clasped to alina's necklace dangles when she leans forward, a free hand settling between clara's shoulder blades. there, the thundering beat of the other woman's heart is painfully obvious, stampeding against alina's palm. ]
Whatever it is, I'm not going anywhere. [ a beat, her fingers weaving tightly between clara's own. ] You don't have to run.
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The Doctor's words replay through her mind over and over. And for an awful moment, all she can do is relive the moments leading up to her walking out to her death on Trap Street. Everyone has to be brave and face their death in the end. It's not her death that she's afraid of.
It's having to continually have nightmares of the part that comes before, of facing the reality that the Doctor watches her die in a horrifically painful way. She can still recall the exact way it felt to have her soul forcibly removed from her, the sensation of it slipping free of her body in a dark cloud still numbing her lips.
Her hand grips hold of Alina's a little tighter, and she very carefully stares straight ahead.]
I was sent home after our mission in Braccia. Years passed for me there. And at the end of it, before I was pulled back in here, I -
[She almost can't do it. Her head turns, and she looks to Alina with wide eyes. There's a wild desperation there, untamed and seeking safe harbor. Tears build, and she refuses to let them fall.]
I died. The Doctor, he tortured himself for literally billions of years because of it. And then he brought me back, only it was all wrong. I was wrong. I wasn't alive, but a moment frozen in time. Trapped forever between one heartbeat and my last. When I woke up here again, my heart was beating and things felt normal again. But I can't help but think, what if that feeling's wrong? What if I'm still defective, and nothing I do here matters?
[She exhales a shaky breath, finally looking away. She won't hold Alina hostage with that lost look on her face any longer.]
What if I'm not able to be brave enough to ask to change my contract in the end? What if the cost is more than I'm willing to pay? It means that no matter what happens here, the Doctor is always destined to go back and torture himself for billions of years. Because of me. How can I possibly sentence someone I love to that kind of fate?
[She has to make it better. And she will. She'll find a way. But she refuses to make a deal with the orb yet. She's not ready for the high cost that Viveca has warned her about, not when she knows exactly what's the most valuable thing in the entire universe to her. Given the way she and the Doctor part ways back home, there's only one option something like the orb will choose for her price.
She knows, without a question of a doubt, that the orb will ask for her memories of the Doctor in a cruel reversal of their fate. So no matter what, in the end, one of them is destined to have their mind tampered with. It's that fear of losing him all over again that keeps her from acting. It's what keeps her from opening up to the Doctor, knowing very well that no one on this station would survive two forces of nature known as The Oncoming Storm. And she makes no mistake that is exactly who both Doctors would become if they ever found out about her death.
The weight of her life being lost isn't because she's afraid of dying. It isn't because she selfishly wants to still be alive. It's because she wants to protect the Doctor one last time, and she isn't sure she has it in her to pay the price.]
cw: mentions of suicidal ideation
and clara had been here all along, rattled by her fear. hoping against all odds for another chance, for another attempt at life, while alina had been mourning her own and all too eager to throw that gift away. her misery feels so stupid and childish, now. so utterly selfish, once faced with clara's fear — faced with the rippling effects of that loss, the damage it had wrought upon her and the doctor. shamefaced, alina's gaze wilts, drooping to their joined hands. it's difficult to look clara in the eye, in the wake of that, but —
her attention snaps up, quick, determination hardening the corners of her eyes. ]
You are not defective. [ immediately, she bristles at the connotations of that word. defective. wrong. so close to what alina believes she is, fearful of what she might become. it stings, to think clara could ever see herself that way. clara — who thinks of the doctor, first. clara, who had no obligation to hold her up, but has stayed to support her in her most uncertain, murky moments. who grows flowers like memories to preserve, who builds gardens for lost women. compassionate, bold clara. ] I didn't know you before, but I know you now. And the Clara Oswald I see in front of me is brave, and stubborn, and strong. Whether your heart is or isn't beating —
[ her fingertips lift, tap-tap-tapping a gentle beat against clara's sternum. softly, her warm palm settles there, fingertips fanning out. ]
— It's one of the biggest hearts I've known. You know what you have to do, Clara, and you will. Even if it hurts. Even if you think you can't possibly bear it. [ because — because people like them have no other choice. because she knows clara won't be able to walk away, if her sacrifice means saving something she loves so dearly. ] I'll be here with you along the way. It's your fate to face, but you don't have to face it alone.
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It's hard not to feel like she's feeling sorry for herself, and she couldn't possibly hope to explain that isn't the case. She's finally grieving the inevitable loss of the Doctor, though she hasn't even begun to touch that part of the story yet. How could she, when Alina is trying so hard to make her feel truly alive and that she's capable of making such an impossible choice? ]
I can't do it. [She manages to get out through her sobs.] I can't -
[Her entire body shudders as she tries to force out the admission. Her betrayal, the thing she's done right before coming back to the station.]
I can't risk losing him completely. Not after I had to force him to forget me, everything about me.
[Meaning this time here is all they have left. This is it, after this is over she'll go back to an existence where the Doctor doesn't remember her. He'll know that someone named Clara exists, that they had certain adventures together. But he won't remember her, and all she can do is relive the moment in the diner when she looked at him and realized he didn't know her at all. She had sacrificed her relationship with him then for the good of the universe, and for his own good. But she isn't sure she could do it again, that act of selflessness proving to be a heavy burden for her to try and rationalize now that she's here with not one but two Doctors.]
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to the lull of her heartbeat, soft and steady. as though even her body senses her attempts to calm clara, beating to the tune of its own lullaby. she can't guard her from the fate that waits for her, no — but she can give clara a hiding place. where her tears are shielded from sight, a weakness she doesn't have to hold at bay, ashamed. it leaves a pooling stan on the front of alina's dress, a flowery pattern that catches clara's tears like they're dewdrops on petals.
but she doesn't flinch, doesn't shift. only buries her nose in the soft silk of clara's hair, palm planted flat against her spine. there's nothing she can say to soothe that fear — hadn't she dreaded, once, that mal had abandoned her in his past? moved past the memory of her so easily? but what clara speaks of is more permanent, more — real, and not the letters aleksander had burned to ash, to scorch away those ties to her old life. to cruelly let her believe in a lie.
she doesn't offer one to clara, either. there's no it will be okay or it won't hurt — it won't be, and it will. clara must know the truth of that. all alina can do is listen, lend her the strength to piece herself back together at the end of it all. (it doesn't feel like enough, but when has she ever done enough?) ]
You leave a mark on the lives you enter, Clara. If he doesn't have his memories left, I have to believe a part of him will always remember how you made him feel. You're unforgettable.
[ but maybe that's fantasy. maybe she's fooling herself, in turn, by wanting to believe this — this station, these strange ties they've all built — won't fully vanish as though they had never existed at all. her eyebrows crease, the quiet confusion obvious in her voice when she murmurs, ]
Why was it so important for him to forget you? Why would you force that on someone?
[ she doesn't have to ask how clara could withstand the pain. some love is larger than selfishness. some bravery outshines others. some destinies can't be outrun. ]
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But there doesn't need to be manipulation here, not between someone that's become so dear to her. Alina has done nothing here but whisper reassurances and love her for who she is, all of her brokenness and faults laid bare out in the open. If she's said this much, she can tell the truth. Just a bit more, it won't hurt anything.]
I had no other choice. He never would have let me go otherwise.
[She's still crying, but she lifts her head and tries to compose herself a little. Wiping at her tears, she ignores the way her lip quivers and tries to keep speaking despite the way it makes her voice tremble.]
The Doctor and I, we -
[Pausing, she swallows the lump that's formed in her throat.]
There's plenty of ways to say you love someone. And even if we never have said it in words, the Doctor and I, our love was so strong that we became dangerous together. So dangerous that losing me meant the Doctor became something I hope you never have to see. He was willing to do anything, to sacrifice the entire universe, if it meant bringing me back. And if we had stayed together, it would have cost the entire universe. As long as we were together, everyone else was at risk. When I realized, I knew I had to make him forget. If he didn't remember, he could move on. The universe would be safe, and he would be able to be happy. I sacrificed the thing I love the most to ensure that.
[Only now she's here, where two Doctors are. Neither of them know the way their story ends, neither of them know that she dies. She doesn't think she needs to tell Alina that. That much should be obvious with the way she's just broken down here. Of course, it also may give some insight into why she's terrified of forgetting him. It's all that will be left in the end. Her memories of him and what they had together. But Alina is right. She'll do what needs to be done in the end, if it means protecting him.]
And I will do whatever's necessary to save him in the end. No matter the cost.