Daughter of the Year That Was

Summary: Slightly AU. After the paradox machine was destroyed at the hands of Captain Jack Harkness, the year that occurred disappeared from history without a trace. Only that wasn't quite true. This is the story of Clarelia Lucretia Saxon, the only living evidence of a year of living hell.

Disclaimer: I only own Clarelia, nothing else.

Chapter One

There she stood once more, as she had done each day since before she could remember. She didn't even truly know why she had begun to stop before the prison gates, to share glances with a blonde haired prisoner so strangely familiar, yet, like so many other things in her life, for an unknown reason. But strangely enough, it was comforting. Though she did not know why, Clarelia was comforted by Broadfell.

The young girl had often asked herself whether it was abnormal, to seek refuge outside the prison gates, or from a woman within a cell, but had given up on the question long ago. After all, she could not remember a time when she'd been considered normal.

The blonde turned away from the bars to glance up the hill that Broadfell rested on. She could see the darkened building from where she stood, much to her displeasure. 'It seems that Broadfell will follow me wherever I go.' the young girl thought, as she stared up towards the ancestral stone. However, that certain Broadfell gave the child no comfort at all, as she looked not towards the prison, but towards the children's institution of the same name. The institution that she had called home since before she could speak the word.

The institution was no home to the young girl, it never had been. Homes were places where children felt loved, safe and wanted. Clarelia had never felt that at Broadfell, only feelings of toleration, that the matron wanted to get rid of her as soon as she could. Unfortunately, as an orphan with no family, the child could not leave until she turned eighteen, a full eleven years away.

Besides, even when she did leave, she would have nowhere to go. She had no money, no family, no place to call her own. Broadfell was all she knew. Bar the primary school she had attended since she was four years old, the girl had barely ever stepped out of the institution. She knew nothing of the world she would be walking into.

The girl shook her head slightly, bringing herself out of her contemplation of darkness. It was just another day for the blonde, nothing out of the ordinary at all, and so she did not know why such miserable thoughts were running through her mind. There was a chill in the air that was harsher than any winter she had known, and Clarelia could not prevent herself from shivering at it. 'Perhaps there is something that isn't right.' the girl thought, but shrugged off the feelings as efficiently as she could do at her age, though with the amount of practice she had had at burying emotions, this was not difficult.

And so she returned reluctantly to the hell that was the institution in which she lived, knowing that they would have come out to look for her soon anyway, and that it was not worth getting herself punished for being late back, as the punishment would most likely be being escorted home like the younger children, and if that happened, then she would never see the blonde woman again. For some reason, one that she could not quite could not quite put her finger on, the child did not want to risk being separated from a prison inmate whom she had never spoken a word to.

Of course, she had been punished for being tardy in her return, but the woman that had seen her come through the door was a touch nicer than the others, and had consented for her to merely be locked in her room until the morning, instead of the more permanent punishment she had been expecting. There was nothing to do in her bedroom other than look out of the window at the town below. In the distance, the vast areas of lights that covered central London could just about be seen, and the girl took a little bit of time to admire the urban beauty of them, but in truth, she mainly focused on the eerie illumination of the sign that advertised the location of the prison. She just hoped that her awful feelings were not prophetic, as they had been, on occasion, in the past.

Somehow, even with the buzzing thoughts in her brain, Clarelia found herself unable to keep her eyes open, and soon drifted off into a troubled sleep, the blackness providing only a temporary relief from the awful thoughts in her mind. But even that did not last long, for early in the morning, just at the moment the sun began to emerge on the horizon, an almighty crash sounded, and the ground beneath even the institution shook with the impact.

The blonde girl awoke with a start, blinking the sleep rapidly from her eyes and bolting from under the covers, making for her window, where a golden glow was reflected in the glass. From the height of Broadfell Children's Home, the flames could easily be seen licking the darkness of the night sky, burning as brightly as the stars themselves. Tears pricked at the young girl's eyelids, as there was not a shadow of a doubt in her mind that the fire was all that now remained of the prison she had passed just hours earlier. It was gone now, all of it, and she would be as well. All that would now remain of the woman would be a pile of cinders and bones.

As the tears began to flow down her cheeks, Clarelia leant her face forward against the window, watching as her tears rolled down the glass like raindrops. Even the windowpane was now beginning to heat a little, due to the intensity of the flames. The cold was hardly gone by the time the girl had fallen into a deep and troubled sleep.

She did not hear the whooshing sound outside her window, nor did she see the blue box appear out of nowhere.

A/N: Please review for me!