Chapter Text
Clara entered the chamber in time to see the Doctor press the hand-pulsar against his face. It sparked. The Doctor's head jerked back, the hand-pulsar still pressed firmly against his cheek.
"That's cheating," he grated out in the horrible, gravely voice of Mr. Clever.
The Doctor's teeth clenched. Blue lightning ran over his face and down his chest and arm. His entire body went into a spasm. He let loose a long, terrifying howl that Clara barely recognized as the word, "No."
She didn't know who was voicing their defiance, Doctor or Cyber-Planner.
"Doctor!" Clara shouted, running towards him. She didn't know what to do; only that she had to act.
The device against his cheek sizzled and a familiar smell filled the room. Clara's stomach turned as she simultaneously identified why it was familiar — all of those summer barbecues with Angie and Artie, all of those holiday trips with her parents when she'd roasted hot dogs on sticks — and saw the smoke rising from the hand-pulsar and knew that her scent memory of those happy days was ruined forever. The Doctor convulsed one last time before collapsing face down on the chessboard.
The black king fell over at the impact and toppled off the board onto the floor.
*
"Doctor?" Clara asked, cautiously shaking his shoulder.
The kids, the punishment platoon, and Porridge milled uncomfortably in the background. Outside, the metallic marching of the Cyberian army was getting louder. It had been only a handful full of minutes since Clara entered the chamber. The Doctor — or whoever he was now — had been unconscious for less than three. But time was a precious commodity, rapidly slipping away. The soldiers had blocked the chamber entrance, but their barricade was a paltry thing compared with the strength of three million Cybermen.
The first loud bang came against the solid timbered door and everyone in the chamber flinched.
"We don't have much longer," Porridge said. "Another few minutes and they'll be through, and then…"
"I don't want to die," Angie said. "Dying is rubbish! I'm only thirteen!"
"We all die some time. Besides, dying would be a favour compared to what they'll turn you into."
"Doctor!" Clara said, shaking him more urgently. "Please wake up and please be you."
Another bang rattled the door, and finally the Doctor stirred.
"Just taking advantage of the local resources," he murmured.
Clara backed away from him.
"He's still possessed!" said one of the soldiers, the redheaded teenager with the glasses.
"I am not," the Doctor said indignantly, but when he lifted his head from the table the Cyber-parts were still there. Worse, they were burned into his face with the metal melted and fused into weird, dripping shapes, and the skin around them red and inflamed. He looked like the monster out of a horror film.
"The Cyber-Planner is gone," the Doctor said confidently, "Out of my head and distributed across three million Cybermen right now and from the sound of those knocks at the door he's already woken them up. Next step is to kill us and then start constructing spaceships, and can someone please untie me before that happens because I have no desire to be 'upgraded' twice in one day. Very unpleasant prospect. Clara!"
"Yes Doctor?"
"Why are you standing over there?"
Clara observed him. The voice was right, the demeanour was right, but she'd been fooled already and now the stakes were higher. Granted, they'd probably all die whatever happened next, but she still had to know it was him.
"Do you think I'm pretty?"
"No. You're much too short and bossy and your nose is all funny."
He didn't look at her expectantly or try to convince her of his identity. He said the insults flippantly. He was cruel, intentionally or not; he didn't notice who he hurt. As far as knights in shining armour went, he was more than a bit rubbish, but she'd take insults over Mr. Clever's creepy come-ons any day.
"Good enough for me," Clara said, untying him.
The Doctor smiled and twiddled his bow tie, then bounced out of the chair and started waving his sonic at the detonator. Everyone in the room, (Clara included, if she was honest with herself) was still more than slightly nervous of him as he fired out questions about the secondary voice activation.
Then Angie showed her true intelligence and saved them all. Clara had never been so proud.
*
"Your boyfriend is creeping me out a bit with his face like that," Angie confided to Clara on their way home. "How do you know for sure that he's him and he's not just waiting for his moment to zap us?"
Clara sat with the kids watching as the Doctor bustled around the console flipping switches and levers. The Cyber-parts burned into his face were difficult to ignore, and while she was almost, completely, 98% certain that he was the Doctor again, that niggling 2% wouldn't leave her alone.
"I don't think that he'd have blown up the planet if he still had the Cyber-Planner in his head," Clara said, trying to sound like the confident adult that she knew Angie wanted to hear, whether she'd admit it or not. "It's not very logical."
"But it could be a strategy, like, to get into your boyfriend's timeship, 'cause it knew it would lose the chess game. Maybe it's just pretending to be gone, maybe he even thinks it's gone, but any second now it's going to come back and…"
"Stop it Angie, you're scaring Artie."
"Sor-ry," she said, including a classic Angie eye-roll.
"We've arrived," said the Doctor. The TARDIS chimed the door opened. The Doctor held out his arm to indicate the way out. "London, Earth, 2013, the Maitland family household same as you left it. But before you go, a present for you Angie. New phone!"
"Thanks," Angie said, taking the phone while awkwardly trying to make it appear like she wasn't avoiding looking at the Doctor's face. "Sorry I said this box was stupid."
Angie and Artie ran out the door and back in their normal lives as fast as politeness would allow them. The Doctor turned to look at Clara. Would she stay, or would she run away from him as well? She edged towards the door.
"Clara…" he said.
"Next Wednesday then?" Clara said, trying to stay chipper and cheerful, and, exactly like Angie, trying to avoid looking at the Doctor's face.
"No," said the Doctor. He flipped a switch on the console and the doors shut, and normalcy and home and Angie and Artie were shut away behind them. Unreachable. The air seemed to get colder.
"This isn't part of the deal," Clara said. "You don't get to kidnap me in your snog box. One date a week, we agreed. Now let me out."
The Doctor stepped away from the console. He seemed… slumped, diminished. The lights on his half-melted implant flickered weakly. His eyes closed and he looked like he was in so much pain, so exhausted.
"The control for the door is there," he said, waving weakly at the switch. "You can press it. I won't stop you. You can leave. I won't stop you. But. Clara. I —" He paused. His eyes opened, grey and hurting. He lightly touched the ruin of metal and burnt skin of the left side of his face. "I don't think I can fix this on my own."