Her Story Was Done

A.N.: In which a version of Clara Oswald saves Sherlock Holmes' life as they work for MI6. Pre-series one.

He sends the others away. "Oh, how amusing it is to watch you slowly slither away.", he says, a soft accent embracing his words. He fixes the cuffs on his suit. "Any last words, agents?", from the back of the room, Sherlock only grunts as he is unable to say much more. Mastriani smiles. "A-a. Where are your manners, Mr. Holmes? Ladies first; even in death.", he says with a smirk. He looks down at the woman on the floor in between him and Sherlock.

"My name's Clara Oswald.", she says, crawling as she slowly hisses every time her already cracked ribs crack a bit more while she moves, her eyes fixed on the man in front of her. She's glaring at him, killing him in her mind in a million different ways - eighteen of which are done only with a paperclip and as painfully slow as it gets - and he's just laughing. Laughing like he's watching an episode of The Three Stooges that just came on TV. But, there were only two of them; Clara Oswald and Sherlock Holmes, and they were certainly not comedians. They were agents, and she would rather die than to let the bastard that is Christopher Mastriani kill her partner.

Sherlock was lying in the back of the room, leaning his back on the wall just enough so he could see her and that it would not hurt an awful much, the wound in his leg bleeding fast. He could barely breathe, as he could feel one of his ribs puncturing his longue, and he stood still, his head facing her, his eyes not leaving her petite frame as she moved closer to Mastriani and further away from him.

Sherlock was never a team player, unless it came to Clara. And that, he would never admit.

Love was for children, and Sherlock Holmes was not a child.

(But maybe - just maybe - he was, but only ever for Clara Oswald.)

Clara pauses for a moment and looks at her surroundings. She didn't let her eyes linger too long on the gun she was crawling to. She didn't want Mastriani in on her intentions - even if he already knew what she was about to do, she wanted him to think she'd die before her fingers even manage to place themselves around the gun. She wanted him to think he had already killed her and that she was holding on to false hope.

He thought of her as weak. That, she surely wasn't.

"I'm the Impossible Girl.", she continues, her breathing becoming faster and more shallow as she struggles for breath. Her throat burns and she feels like her insides are being ripped apart with every breath she takes, but she continues. She continues breathing and moving and living. She has to do this. She can do this.

She's the Impossible Girl. She's one of the best damn agents MI6 has ever had. She's fast and intelligent and sharp on her tongue and she once took down a suspect with a single bullet from a hundred meters away. She can do things no agent has ever dreamed of. With the help of Sherlock Holmes, she took down the top ten most wanted criminals in the world and stopped at least twice as many from even getting on the list. She nearly got herself killed more times than she could remember, broke every single goddamn bone in her body and the only reason she is alive right at this very moment is because Sherlock made her leave the last mission before it got too late. She owes him so much. She owes him her life, and she will repay that dept, so help her God.

She moves and moves and moves, grabbing ahead with her arms and pulling herself forward as her legs follow with difficulty. She hisses at the pain, but continues going. She continues because she is Clara Oswald.

And Clara Oswald fell in love.

She fell in love with the one person who does not do love. Who does not do any kind of emotion whatsoever. With a man who considers love nothing short of a disadvantage.

She fell in love between the cases and the undercover missions and the rare time off and the days where they secretly helped out DI Greg Lestrade - who thinks they're John and Jane Smith (even though she knows he doesn't believe them one bit; heck, he must've dig up their files ages ago) - solve cases the MI6 is too good for. Between watching Sherlock Holmes solve cases in a blink of an eye and watching him smile in those rare moments where he did do love and emotions.

She fell in love slowly, but surely, and she remembers kissing him lightly on the cheek and once on the lips - when she was oh-so bold and oh-so drugged on morphine because gunshot wounds to the chest hurt really bad - and she can almost remember every single fragment of her life as she crawls the final few feet to the gun.

She can hear Christian Mastriani give a bitter laugh as he takes his own gun in his hand and points it to her head, can hear Sherlock's cry that gets cut off midway because it's really not that funny when your rib thinks it belongs in your lung.

"Clara, d-"

She knows what he's going to say.

Well, she never really listened to him, anyway, so why start now.

Her fingers tighten around the gun and she takes a deep breath.

"And my story,"

One shot, Clara Oswald. Your specialty.

She closes her eyes, says her silent goodbye, and in mere seconds her eyes open again and she's pushing through all the pain and finding her last bits of strength as she turns around. "is done."

She pulls the trigger.

So does Mastriani.

The bullets both hit their targets at the right place.

The last thing Clara Oswald hears is Sherlock Holmes' hoarse scream, and the sounds of the long-awaited back-up filling the room.

"Clara!"

She sighs. "Sherlock."

Her story ends.

(The thing is, he didn't want it to.)