Checkmate

Warnings: Violence, character death, explicit scenes.

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or its associated trademarks, unfortunately.

Chapter Playlist: 'Mind If I Cut In?' from 'the Dark Knight Rises', 'Sacrifice' from 'Divergent', 'Final Test' and 'You're Not Gonna Like This' from 'Divergent, 'Lokasenna' from 'Thor: the Dark World' and 'Remember Me' from 'Doctor Who - Series 7'.

'To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.'

- Auguries of Innocence, William Blake

The first thing Clara felt upon awakening was the prolonged ache throughout her entire body. The second was the bone-cold chill of the metal beneath her legs and arms, where she was curled up on the metallic, over-the-top throne. Well, after last night I know he's not compensating for something…

The thought skimmed across her mind, calmed and at peace after her interlude with the Doctor in the safety of her mind. She didn't know how long she'd been asleep but she could only vaguely remember the Doctor leaving her as the Cyber-Planner rebooted, and Mr. Clever's psyche reasserted itself.

She still felt that peace, despite the knowledge of everything that was about to come. The final pieces in her long chess game were about to come into play, and the courage she needed to see her endgame through to the end filled her. The Doctor had helped her with that, erasing her shame and the anger at her actions with Mr. Clever, and reminding her that it would soon be over and it would never have happened at all.

Memories of his forceful passion, his possessive kiss intruded, along with the treacherous thought that had haunted her since the moment their lips had met. Why had the Doctor never dared to touch her like that? Before, she'd thought their warm, loving but strictly-platonic-but-not-really relationship had been enough, had to be enough. Now, having experienced passion in his arms, she didn't know if she could go back to the way they had been. Even if it hadn't been entirely him. Or maybe Mr. Clever was more him than the Doctor was, all his dark impulses unfettered by the rules he so ruthlessly enforced upon himself. It doesn't matter, she told herself sternly. This is exactly what he wants, to confuse me about my feelings until I'm helpless to do anything. My feelings don't matter weighed against all of Time and Space…

As Clara straightened, stretching out kinks in her spine from her awkward position, she glanced around the chamber but it was empty, devoid of Cyber-Planner. She stood carefully, testing out her legs but they were steady despite the ache in her muscles. Good, she'd need her strength.

As she stood, she took a mental inventory of her body, a trick she'd learned from Madam Vastra. She noted her boots had been placed back on her feet but her leggings were gone. Probably beyond repair, she thought wryly, remembering Mr. Clever's forceful touch. Her dress had been put back into place, the tear in the fabric all but unnoticeable now she was standing upright, and apart from the general ache of her muscles, she was unhurt. Except for the patch of skin on her neck, over her carotid artery, that burned slightly as she put a hand to it, hoping the coolness of the chamber would alleviate it. His claim, his mark of ownership over her.

That's what he thinks. The sarcastic, slightly gleeful, thought rose to the surface of her mind, and she couldn't resist a slight grin. Just a little one, in case there were cameras watching her. Which there probably was.

Inventory done, Clara slowly descended the steps of the dais, watching every shadow for the Cyber-Planner, wondering where he was. There were no entrances to the chamber, so no hope of escape without accessing the transmat system, not that Clara intended to escape. That wasn't her role.

She felt the judder as the ship suddenly dropped out of the vortex, and she felt only a faint sense of horror as a very familiar planet appeared in the window. Earth.

Shivering, she crossed her arms over herself as her eyes roamed over the blue planet below her, white clouds scudding across its atmosphere. Her heart ached at the sight of the continents, once showing at least some green but they were all now desolate, lifeless expanses of desert. In the beginning, she'd fiercely wished that the Cybermen would get sand in their joints and freeze up.

She felt the cold shimmer of the transmat at her back, but she didn't move from her perusal of her home planet. She didn't move even when she felt hard, hot arms encased in black, encircle her waist and pull her back a step into a familiar embrace.

"Awake at last. I was beginning to think I had permanently damaged you during our little interlude," he murmured against her ear, his lips caressing her skin with heated, infinitesimal caresses, as he ran his hands over her body. Clara let herself moan and sink back into his arms, letting herself enjoy the sensations for just a moment longer. Just a few more moments until everything ended.

"Not to deflate your ego, an impossible task I know," she gasped, reaching up and back to sink her hand into his hair, grazing the implant on his face. She felt his amused smirk even as she scratched her nails over the nape of his neck, making him inhale suddenly. "But I'm tougher than I look."

"Undoubtedly," he replied, running one hand up her inner thigh suggestively. His mien screamed possessive, assured domination and Clara inwardly smiled, even as her heart ached in tandem with her body, to give in. She had him exactly where she wanted him. "You did, however, break far quicker than I expected of you."

Panic flared within Clara, and she let her instinctive anger at his words colour her voice to disguise it, when she spoke. "If you're trying to 'get me in the mood', you're failing miserably!" she snapped.

"Am I?" he huffed amusedly against her neck, before pulling her lips to his, his fingers gripping her chin tightly. Clara didn't let herself sink into the kiss, fighting his dominance with her own, kissing him as fiercely as he did her. He released her abruptly, striding away from her to sit down on one of the chairs at the chessboard. His eyes were on fire and he regarded her with a cruel smirk. "Still got your spirit, my Impossible Girl?"

Clara ignored that comment, suddenly desperate for the whole sorry mess to be over and done with. She turned to the observation window, crossing her arms and forcing her expression into a worried, suspicious one. "Why are we here?" she asked quietly, already knowing the answer.

"To destroy the nerve centre of your pitiful resistance," he replied coldly. "Thanks to that lovely little implant in your brain, I now have access to every bit of data on your little band. Every hideout, every access code, even their biological data. All thanks to you."

"The implant alone wouldn't have given you access to any of that data…" she trailed off, realisation dawning in her eyes. "You hacked me."

"Correction: you hacked us and then we hacked you," he drawled, chuckling. "Did you really think that you could hack into the Cyberiad undetected and without consequences? You gave me the back door I needed to destroy your pitiful little band."

"But why? The resistance is no real threat to you, we're an annoyance at best," Clara retorted fiercely, spinning to face him, enraged and horrified. Or at least, doing her best to pretend to be. It wasn't too difficult.

"The resistance was useful to me in drawing you out. Now I have you, my Impossible Girl, they are expendable," he replied callously. "Boring. All that lingering humanity. Don't worry, I'll soon change that."

Clara had always known, since Emma Grayling had warned her about the sliver of ice in the Doctor's heart, that he had the capacity of cruelty and darkness beyond her ability to comprehend. Now she was seeing it firsthand, and she was sickened. Even if it was only temporary.

She eyed him, sat resplendent and indolent on the chair, watching with amused eyes, the implant on his face gleaming in the dim light of the chamber. His dark coat draped his body perfectly, his hair thick and luscious, his lips quirked in a cruel yet sensuous smirk. The sight of it made her both yearn to kiss it off his lips and push him out of an airlock. But she needed to keep her composure, just a little longer. Just a little longer…

"What, Impossible Girl? Nothing to say?" he asked teasingly. "As I said before, your fight is over. I have you now. I've won."

"No," Clara replied, as cool and controlled as he. One nearly nonexistent brow rose superciliously, and she let her innocent, horrified act drop, as an equally devious, cruel smile appeared on her lips. She felt a jolt in her mind, and her smile only grew as an alarm blared in the silent, tense air.

INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!

The Cyber-Planner barely moved at the announcement, but she could see his surprise and suspicion as he tensed and his relaxed mien dropped immediately. Slowly, she began to pace towards him, relaxed and triumphant.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you?" she breathed. "A door, once opened, can be stepped through in either direction."

"Do explain?" he replied lazily, but his eyes were burning into her, rage and disbelief gleaming like embers in their depths, contrasting with the cold lights of his facial implant. Clara chuckled.

"I hacked you, you hacked me but what you didn't realise was that I laid several false trails for you to follow. You had no idea what I was really searching for," she continued, drawing ever closer to him, eying the pieces on the chessboard. "Your Achilles heel."

"And what is that, my Impossible Girl?" Mr. Clever chuckled, crossing his arms arrogantly, clearly disbelieving her confidence. The alarm continued to blare, a drumbeat to Clara's final act.

"Your arrogance. Did you really think you could control a Time Lord?" she asked, as she mentally accessed the implant and her backdoor into the Cyberiad. With a flick of her mind, the Cyberiad trembled and shivered, as the Cyber-Planner flinched.

Upload in progress. 25% complete…

"The Doctor lied about how much of his brain he controlled. He isn't gone, was never gone, he just let you think you'd won."

"What are you doing?" he snapped, his voice trembling. Still, he didn't move.

"You thought the implant was your way to control me, but it wasn't. You've forgotten, when the Doctor and I first met, my little brush with the Wi-Fi left me with first-rate hacking skills. Far better than your clumsy attempts to hack me," she continued, cold and merciless. "You thought you controlled me. But I control you. And the Cyberiad."

Upload 47% complete…

"You're only human. You couldn't possibly process all of that data to do anything with it," he snarled, and Clara's smile turned sad.

"And that's where you're wrong again," she whispered, her heart pounding but her mind was calm, controlled as the data packet Vastra and the others had sent her began downloading from her mind and into the Cyberiad. The Cyber-Planner's eyes went blank as he processed the incoming virus, and Clara stepped into the gap between his legs. "I'm not going to do anything with it. I'm going to destroy it."

She swept her leg over his, straddling him as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Awareness filtered back into his eyes as his arms turned to shackles around her waist. "The Doctor knew. He knew his obsession with me, the Impossible Girl, would trickle into you. He knew it would drive you more than Cyber logic or Time Lord arrogance. The data packet I carry contains a virus which will disrupt the neural link between Cybermen and your own. The Doctor will be free."

"And it will kill you in the process," he replied, a sudden calculating gleam in his eyes. "And for what? The Cyberiad will reboot and I will retake the Doctor's mind before he'd even have time to scratch his nose!"

Upload 76% complete…

"I know. But you're concentrating on the wrong people," she taunted him, smilingly. "I will be dead in a few minutes and the Doctor will be free but trapped on a Cyber-ship."

"And what have I overlooked, my Impossible Girl?" he drawled, triumph flaring in his eyes as he pulled her against his chest. Clara almost pitied his self-delusion.

"I was never the prize," she whispered against his lips, leaning in. "I was the decoy. The prize is the Paradox Machine."

"Ahh, the lizard, the potato and the serving girl, "he laughed scornfully. "They'll never make it past my Cyber-units. Your little friends will die in vain."

"Not when the virus has every Cyberman writhing in agony in a few moments," she retorted smugly, and the Cyber-Planner's face blanked.

"But the Paradox Machine will only revert to the moment of its activation, which as I recall, was after I'd taken control," he pointed out coolly, but Clara only shook her head smilingly.

"I sent a command to the Tardis to change the activation time-stamp to the moment the Cybermen awoke from their tombs on Hedgewick's. For once, the old cow actually listened to me," she replied. "Not bad, huh?"

After a moment's silence, his face softened as he pulled her in tighter to him, brushing his lips over hers lustfully. "My brilliant, devious little Impossible Girl," he purred. "You forget that I know you. You're not a martyr; you're a survivor, like me, like the Cyberiad. You'll never go through with this."

Clara let herself soften, trying not to think about his words, as his hands trailed up her back seductively, awakening the lust inside her to add to the adrenaline in her veins. "You don't have to do this," Mr. Clever whispered. "You could rule, at my side. We could remake the Universe any way we wish. Power and control would be yours, in my universe…"

Upload 98% complete…

"That's where you're wrong," she whispered, leaning away from him to run her fingers over the chess pieces on the table. His eyes followed her movements before returning, piercingly, to her face. "Both of you are wrong," she continued. "I don't want power, or control, over the Universe. Over your Universe. I've lived in a hell of fear and danger, watching people I care for die, sometimes because I sent them to their deaths. I've seen your universe and I'd rather die than live in your universe for a moment longer."

She knocked the king over with a finger, before turning back to the Cyber-Planner, a grim, steely smile on her face, her eyes alight with triumph. "And this time, Doctor, try and get it right," she whispered, with a hint of her former flirty impishness. "Checkmate."

She leaned in and pressed her lips to his, her hands shooting up to grasp his face and hold it still. He hesitated and then kissed her back voraciously, angry and fierce and possessive, his tongue twining with hers hungrily, his fingers crushing her waist.

Upload 100% complete. Incorporating new software…

Clara's back arched, her spine bending until it looked like it would break, her mouth torn from the Cyber-Planner's and opened wide in a silent scream as blood trickled from her nose and the corners of her mouth. Her limbs went rigid as her mind fought, and failed, to handle the sudden influx of information and control, and she slumped back, over the chessboard, knocking the pieces to the floor.

The Cyber-Planner flinched and jolted as if electrocuted before he gasped, the implant on his face crackling as neural feedback shut him down and he screamed.

Silence fell in the icy chamber, until the soft sound of panting filled it. The body slumped in the chair before the still form of Clara Oswald suddenly bucked and sat upright, his eyes snapping open.

The Doctor was back.

"Ow!" he groaned, unaware for the moment of his companion's body lying before him. "Cybernetic implants, always a killer on the pain receptors. Clara?"

He looked around before his eyes fell to the unmoving form of Clara, laid out over the chessboard like some parody of a sacrifice. Horror and grief filled his eyes, and he scrambled from the chair, bending over her frantically. "Clara? Clara!?" he shouted, as memory kicked back into place and he remembered everything that had just happened. The virus, the neural feedback…

He groaned. He'd never meant for her to go that far. The virus was only supposed to knock out Mr. Clever long enough for the Cyberiad to be left momentarily bereft of leadership and for Vastra and the others to find and destroy the Paradox Machine. Not this…

"Clara," he breathed, feeling for her pulse in wild hope and finding only the tiniest beat and fading fast. Quickly he placed his hands on her head, delving into her disintegrating mind and seeking out her memories. "Clara, I am so sorry…"

"I would never have let her come to harm, you know," a horribly familiar voice whispered tauntingly from the shadows. "Our Impossible Girl…"

Mr. Clever stepped from the shadows, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on Clara's face, on the trails of blood drying on her skin at the corners of her lips. "You're not here, you're not real," the Doctor breathed, glaring at him fiercely.

"Unfortunately. I'm a projection of your mind, until I've finished rebooting and retake control," Mr. Clever retorted, his eyes still on Clara. "I must congratulate you, Doctor. I never knew you had it in you. Oh wait, yes I did."

"I never meant for her to go this far. She wasn't supposed to die…" the Doctor breathed, finally looking down on his Impossible Girl yearningly, tears in his eyes. "Never. Not again."

"The Cyberiad is too complex a network to simply disrupt so easily," Mr. Clever replied softly, a hand reaching out to caress Clara's hair. "She realised that, knew it would take far more. Once again, she gave herself…for you."

"Shut up!" the Doctor snapped. He didn't need to hear the truth. The knowledge was burned onto his hearts. "If you'd never existed, this would never have happened!"

"Ahh, so that's your plan?" Mr. Clever smirked. "Disrupt the neural link of the Cyberiad so your little guerrilla group could steal onboard and destroy the Paradox Machine, return everything to the way it was, and then find a way to stop me from taking over your mind?"

The Doctor remained silent, eyes fixed on Clara's unseeing ones, still open and glassy. He ached for her to suddenly breathe, to sit up and laugh and shove him for being so mushy, but she would laugh at him again unless his plan worked.

"It won't work, you know," Mr. Clever's smug, knowing tones grated on his ear as his gaze darted up to his, holding his doppelganger's gaze unflinchingly. "And when it doesn't, I will take her for my own from the start, this time. I will keep her safe, even from herself, and together we will rule Time and Space. Mr. Clever and the Impossible Girl. Quite a ring to it, eh Doctor?"

"You won't win, not this time," the Doctor snarled, his voice a dark promise. "I promise you, you will never win again and you will never touch Clara again."

The adversaries' eyes held the other in a silent battle of wills, over the lifeless body of their Impossible Girl, while explosions rocked the ship and the alarm blared unceasingly in the background.

Jenny felt a sharp pain in her side as she flung herself to the floor for the umpteenth time. Beside her, Vastra fired back shot after shot, while Strax readied his acid grenades gleefully. The alarm blared over the Cybermen's constant refrain of "DELETE! DELETE!", the air thick with gunfire and the smell of scorched flesh.

They'd been fighting tooth and nail from the moment they'd detected the shields and temporal dampeners onboard the Cyber-ship lowering from their base on Earth, under heavy attack from the Cybermen, and teleported onboard. Jenny could only guess that Clara had time-delayed the commands when she'd hacked the Cyberiad, so they wouldn't lower before time and alert the Cyber-Planner.

Worry for her friend flashed through her, as she rolled towards her gun and swiped it up, firing back at the Cybermen closest to her, over a data bank. They were two decks up from the Tardis, and they needed to move or they'd soon be overrun.

Come on, Clara…

Pain twinged for a moment, not in her body but in her heart, as she recollected what it would mean when the Cybermen stopped firing. I'm sorry, Clara…

And stop they did. They froze, a protracted, collective scream emanating from every one as they stopped firing and the three fighters paused, catching their breaths.

"She did it," Jenny breathed, tears filling her eyes. "Clara did it."

"Come, we haven't time," Vastra called, her voice sad. "The neural feedback won't last long. The Cyber-Planner will reboot in a minutes. Come on!"

Jenny thrust aside her feelings with difficulty, following her wife and Strax into the shadows of the corridors, sprinting with new energy as she realised how close they were to winning. To this damned war finally being over…

Or never happening at all.

They darted around frozen Cybermen, Jenny trying not to flinch from the screams that echoed around her, the hole in her face where her eye had once been aching, a ripple of pain pounding in her head. She ignored it with gritted teeth, making sure the grenade belt around her torso was secure as she ducked beneath the upraised arm of a Cyberman.

Suddenly, she was forced to duck as a gunshot imploded the metal bulkhead above her head. "They're waking up!" Strax barked. "Hurry!"

They were so close. Jenny could practically feel the tortured groan of the Tardis as she felt them draw close. At last they stopped before two great metal doors with no keypad. "It must be accessible to transmat only," Vastra breathed, cursing under her breath a moment later. "We'll have to use Strax's grenades. Strax!"

More gunfire, and renewed cries of "DELETE! DELETE!", as Jenny gave covering fire for Strax as he prepared his grenades. Vastra grabbed her and pulled her aside as Strax set them off with a remote, imploding the doors. And within, a short distance away in the chamber…

The Tardis.

"GO!" Strax shouted. "I will give covering fire. GO!"

Vastra didn't waste time on objections or goodbyes. She inclined her head in salute to the Sontaran before grabbing Jenny and dragging her inside. They heard Strax's glee-filled shouts of battle lust as they ran, and Jenny shut her eyes for a moment when she heard his death cry.

They reached the doors of the Tardis and Vastra paused with a sad smile. "Go on, my love," she whispered. "I will hold them off while you prepare a nice welcome for them."

"Madam…Vastra," Jenny breathed, tears in her eyes. Vastra grabbed her in a loving, deep kiss, reassurance in her jewel-like eyes.

"I will see you after, my love. Have faith," she whispered. "Now go."

Steeling herself, Jenny tore herself away, rushing into the Tardis as the doors slammed shut behind her. She tried not to think as she heard Vastra's taunting calls, her weapons fire, her grunts of pain. She concentrated only on setting up the grenades in the required places, before she rushed to the monitor. The Tardis groaned and gasped around her, the red light pulsating as the Cloister Bell rang continuously.

With a sigh of relief as her eyes scanned the console monitor, the Tardis showing her what they'd hope Clara would achieve. The time stamp for activation had been changed!

It put a grim, triumphant smile on Jenny's face as she turned to face the Cybermen as they broke through the Tardis doors, their weapons raised and pointed at her. She held the remote trigger unit in her hand, as she stepped away from the console, her single eye flashing with determination and satisfaction. "'Ello boys!" she called tauntingly. "You're just in time for the party!"

And she pressed the button.

Paternoster Row, London, 1889

Jenny blinked as she paused in her task, pouring the tea for herself and Vastra. Phantom sensations of trousers instead of skirts, a gun in her hand instead of a sword, and the pain of a missing eye overwhelmed her for a moment, as her hands shook and she dropped the cup she was holding.

"My dear!" Vastra was at her side in a moment, her hands helping her solicitously to a seat. "I've heard that this can be a bit disorientating."

"She did it! The Paradox Machine is gone!" Jenny whispered, almost in awe, before looking to Vastra in sudden doubt. "Isn't it?"

Strax suddenly bustled in with the newspaper and fresh tears rose to Jenny's eyes at seeing her friend resurrected, again.

Vastra took the newspaper and checked the date. "I believe so," she murmured, looking towards the handsome antique cloak on their mantel. "As long as Clara does not arrive in the hall in five minutes' time."

Jenny, Strax and Vastra waited with bated breath as the clock ticked down the minutes. When the clock struck twelve' o' clock, Jenny laughed with delight and relief. "It's over!"

"I always knew the boy had it in him!" Strax cheered, as the other two rolled their eyes.

"Technically, it never happened," Vastra corrected with a smile. "We only remember because we were at the eye of the time storm."

"And Clara? Will she be…?" Jenny asked, tentatively. Vastra smiled, unease in her eyes.

"There is much yet we do not know about Miss Clara Oswald. I'm sure she will surprise us as always," the reptilian warrior remarked firmly. "Somehow, I doubt the Doctor, or the Universe, has finished with the mystery of Clara Oswin Oswald."

Jenny chuckled, despite her worry. "Impossible Girl, indeed."

"Indeed," Vastra agreed with a grave smile.

Hedgewick's World Of Wonders, several thousand years later…

"Clara! Clara!"

A voice pulled Clara from her fitful nap, slumped against a parapet on the castle walls. The sun was rising, making her wince as she stretched, getting rid of the kinks in her limbs.

Only half-remembered sensations of pain, of rough hands caressing and claiming her, of cold skin and flashing silver, of strong shoulders under her hands, of anger, fear, triumph and grief washed over her, and she blinked.

She fought to concentrate, to try and remember but the details slipped away from her grasp.

"Clara?"

She looked up at the sound of her name again, and found Brains watching her warily. "You ok?" he asked, concernedly.

"Sure, just a nightmare," she murmured, getting to her feet with a groan. She was freezing cold and exhausted from worry and fear. Fear for the Doctor, for the kids, and for everyone else.

For a moment, her mind conjured an image of lips pressed possessively against her own and a velvety, all-too familiar voice whispering "Checkmate…"

She shook herself, ignoring Brains' worried look. "Just a nightmare," she murmured to herself, reassuringly.

A few hours later, the Tardis, London, 2013

The Doctor watched as Clara skipped out the door, happy and impishly grinning. He feared she would have residual memories from the alternate timeline he had just managed to avert, that he hadn't been fast enough to suppress them before she died, again. It had been a close-run thing, closer run than he liked.

He'd almost lost her, again.

Thankfully, three years had been plenty of time for him to work out how to defeat the Cybermen and Mr. Clever permanently. The answer had, quite literally, been at his feet the entire time. Porridge, or rather the Emperor, and the hand pulse he'd tried to use on poor Webley.

It had been simple, and so easy in the end. It had just taken the destruction of three million years' of Time and Space, and the torture and deaths of his friends before the Paradox Machine was destroyed.

The Doctor shuddered as he remembered the monstrosity Mr. Clever had come up with, a thousand times more powerful, and abhorrent, than the one the Master had built. His poor Tardis had taken a battering, but she recovered quickly as she always did.

The Doctor sighed as he thought of another powerful, resilient female that he'd almost lost. That he had lost, again. She had died, in the moments before the time reversal and the destruction of the Paradoxes it emanated from, from the neural feedback from a virus she should never have had the knowledge to create, yet alone use.

His hands fisted on the railings as the Tardis sang soothingly in his mind, reminding him that they'd triumphed, that he'd saved her in the end. That she was alive and just outside the doors, happy and well, her heart beating strongly, all memory erased.

He supposed he should have felt bad about erasing Clara's memories without her permission or knowledge, but he couldn't find it in his selfish hearts. She had changed, had been forced to change, and he didn't want it all to have been in vain. The war had never happened now, after all, and she shouldn't have to face the nightmares and the pain of her memories.

No. Better to revert, like the rest of the Universe, to her previous state. Happy, carefree and bright, still so bright like a flame in the darkness.

His battle with Mr. Clever, with the darker aspects of himself, had destroyed that. For once, he'd truly been a Doctor and healed the damage as best he could. Even if there was a part, an infinitesimal part that still clamoured with all the arrogance and the dark impulses of Mr. Clever, to leave her memories intact, to hold her again and kiss her, to possess her in a way the Doctor would never allow himself.

He firmly shut that part out, as he shook his head with a breathy sigh. "Impossible Girl," he murmured. "A mystery wrapped in an enigma, squeezed into a skirt that's just a little too…tight…."

Phantom sensations of soft skin, of fierce cries, of pleasure rushing through every cell of his body as he looked down into deep, doe-brown eyes, filled his mind. He caught himself with a jolt, frowning darkly.

"What are you?" he finished grimly, turning away to the Tardis console. Three times now, he had lost her. Three times, he had watched her die.

As he piloted the Tardis away from Earth, away from Clara and all her mystery, the thought reverberated throughout his being, as he shut out his own memories of her, of Clever's memories of her, determined to solve her before she could be taken from him again.

No more…

Finis

A/N: So here we come to the end of the story. Hope you enjoyed and there weren't too many plotholes. Temporal physics always gives me a headache if I think about it too long.