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She didn’t know where she was. There was a ringing in her ears that was disrupting her focus, and her head seemed to be pounding in tune with the noise she could just barely make out in the background. She started to push herself up to a sitting position, decided immediately that it was a bad idea, but didn’t let that stop her. She wondered briefly if she had just heard a groan of pain escape from her mouth or if it was only more background noise.
Her slightly-more-upright position gave her a better view of the landscape, but she couldn’t pick out anything she recognized. She was obviously on some kind of battlefield, but that was about as far as she got. The figure closest to her was a woman whose long skirt and heeled boots looked completely out of place, wherever they were. The lasers she seemed to be firing off relatively indiscriminately, however, fit right in. Her hair, which had apparently once been held in an immaculate up-do, was spilling out in strands that billowed in the smoke across her back and over her shoulders. Something about it caught her attention, and Clara was sure that if the woman would just turn around, let her see her face, then everything would come back to her-
All of a sudden, the woman’s face was directly in front of Clara’s. She didn’t remember even seeing her move. Her heart sank when she found she couldn’t recognize her at all. So much for that clue! The woman was looking at her expectantly, and Clara wondered dimly if she’d just been asked a question. She blinked and shook her head, hoping to do something about the ringing in her ears but only managing to make herself feel sick from the pain. “What?” She was startled by the loudness of her own voice.
“I said” -she paused to fire her weapon at something Clara couldn’t see- “can you walk?”
“Of course I can walk,” Clara snapped, still not understanding the situation she had found herself in. She took the hand the woman was offering and pulled herself up with considerably more difficulty than she had expected. She stumbled as the world started to spin off its axis and the ground came up to make her acquaintance once more. It looked like the woman had tried to keep her from falling, but she was on her knees too quickly for it to make any difference. What was happening to her? “Give me a minute,” she mumbled as she tried to stand up again. Spots danced in front of her eyes, and the ringing in her ears seemed to get even louder, as if that were possible.
She barely registered the other woman’s presence from that point, continually trying to push herself up despite the insistence that she “just stay down, stupid!”
She couldn’t remember how she got off the battlefield, but there she was, sat up in a chair inside somewhere while the woman from before seemed to be giving her a cursory medical examination. She’d discarded the jacket she had been wearing outside and rolled up her sleeves, but her hair was just as messy as it had ever been. She sat patiently as her body was checked for bleeding, her limbs were manipulated here and there, and her eyes had an annoying light shined in them. The ringing in her ears had subsided somewhat, but the headache was effectively picking up the slack. “Can’t I have an Advil,” she pleaded, “before you finish taking me apart and putting me back together?”
“I told you, I don’t have any. Now could you focus for 5 minutes?”
She most certainly had not told her that already, but fine. Focus. Clara could focus like nobody’s business. She could focus on whatever she was meant to be focusing on. Probably the woman in front of her, she reasoned. She could do that just fine. She was already starting to realize how pretty she was, after all. Pretty, if a little scary. But maybe she liked scary. Okay, Clara, that’s not focusing, she admonished herself. Back to Earth now. Or, wait? She wasn’t on Earth, was she? Okay, she told herself, she’d focus as soon as she figure out one thing. “But where are we?”
“We’re the same place we were the last time you asked!” She could sense the frustration in the woman’s answer, but that didn’t make any sense. She hadn’t asked that yet, had she? When had she asked that? When had she gotten inside? She didn’t even know where she was! How did she get here? As if she could see Clara’s internal panic written all over her face, the woman spoke again, firm but also somehow soft, frustration controlled and put away onto the shelf for the moment. “Clara, you’re hurt and you’re confused. You need to calm down. Focus on what I’m saying, and let me finish examining you already.”
“But you haven’t told me anything!” she argued back, although she was suddenly very unsure of that fact. Her head hurt. How was she supposed to focus when she was feeling like that? Maybe she could try, if the room would stop spinning.
The woman, apparently not a fan of repeating herself, returned coldly to the clinical process. Clara tried to tamp down her panic, turning her confusion over and over in her head, trying to find some scrap of information in her brain that could help her make sense of her situation.
Unfamiliar people, unfamiliar places. Unbelievably dangerous situations. She was quick to test her theory once she’d put together what she thought to be a coherent narrative. “Where’s the Doctor?” she asked the woman, interrupting a sentence she hadn’t even realized she’d started saying.
“Excuse me?” The woman’s face blanched at her question, for reasons Clara couldn’t begin to fathom. Perhaps she was with the enemy, someone who didn’t want the Doctor meddling in her business? But if that was true, why was she trying to help Clara instead of, whatever, executing her or something?
“The Doctor? I-” she stumbled, no longer so confident in her theory. “Didn’t I come here with him? Is he here?”
The woman bent down to Clara’s level and took her gently by the shoulders. She took a deep breath, as if preparing for something unpleasant. “Clara, listen. You’re clearly more confused than I realized here. You’ll probably want to freak out about what I have to tell you. It won’t be helpful, so don’t. First of all, you haven’t travelled with the Doctor in weeks-”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, voice cracking with panic. “I was with him just the other day, we- where are we? Why can’t I remember?”
“Clara! That’s enough of that! Deep breaths, dear.” The woman waited for Clara to oblige her, holding her shaking shoulders, breathing with her. When it looked like Clara was starting to collect herself, she continued. “Now, this is important. No lies, no misdirection, I need you to tell me honestly. Do you know who I am?”
“No!” The panic had come back, all at once this time, not creeping but hitting like a truck. “How could I know you? I just met you now!”
Missy had been careless, but beyond that she’d been stupid . She’d seen how disoriented Clara had been outside. Her partner had barely been able to respond to simple prompts, repeating herself in circles, and she hadn’t even considered the possibility of memory loss? Human brains were delicate things, and hers had taken a beating.
Near as they’d manage to figure, Clara’d had about a year of her own life knocked clean out of her head. She had no memory of even a single attempt on her life on Missy’s part, let alone her offer for them to travel together. The nerve! Missy hadn’t bothered to waste their time going over any of it. With any luck, it’d come back without any intervention on her part. For now though, the mess had been made, the only thing to do was clean it up. She wasn’t exactly used to cleaning up her own messes, but it wasn’t like she had volunteers lining up to do it for her. What was she going to do, drop Clara off back on the Doctor’s ship somewhere, with a little note saying “broke your toy! :( oops!”? No, that wouldn’t do. So she’d patched Clara up as best as she could, gotten her a warm change of clothes, and put her to bed.
She sat with her feet propped up on Clara’s bed, and a book in her lap that she’d given up on pretending to read. As much fun as it was to tease the Doctor about leaving trails of bodies in his wake, it was a wonder his little pets survived as well as they did. She’d never tell him that, of course, but she was thinking it now. She forgot they were all so fragile, and she wondered, not for the first time, what had possessed her to tie herself to this one.
What would she do if Clara was damaged for good? She knew enough about head injuries to know the disorientation probably wouldn’t last, but memory was a trickier business. What if she never remembered her? She supposed she could still keep her around. It shouldn’t be too hard to come up with a new pitch to get her to leave the Doctor behind if she wanted to. But would it be the same? How much of that spark that caught her attention had been there when she’d first met the girl, and how much of it had she had a hand in forming? Clara, before Skaro, before 3W, would she even be the same person? It was hard to say.
Well, if she couldn’t stand to keep the girl around, she could still always kill her.
She shook her head, trying to clear out the thoughts before they started piling up in there. She could get lost that way, and then what would that solve? Absolutely nothing, like usual. She was starting to feel a headache of her own coming on, and she certainly wasn’t helping it, thinking this way.
She gently moved her feet back onto the floor, standing briefly as she shifted onto the bed and reached towards Clara to wake her up. It was important to check on her, she thought, to find out if anything had changed in her condition. There was always a chance she’d get worse unexpectedly, and Missy just didn’t know what she would do in that case. But still, important to keep an eye on things.
The initial confusion on Clara’s face softened quickly as she tried to orient herself to her situation. “You’re the same woman from before. You’re taking care of me?” she asked hesitantly.
“I am. You hit your head, do you remember that? Be honest.”
“No, but I guess that explains the headache. I feel exhausted.”
“You can go back to sleep in a minute. I just need to check a few things.”
Clara didn’t seem to remember any more than she had before, but she didn’t seem to remember any less either. She was more focused, better able to carry on a conversation, so she seemed to be improving at least. She seemed already to be developing an attachment towards Missy, the kind woman who had pulled her from the chaos and saved her life.
Not exactly the impression she usually went with. She was hoping it wouldn’t last.
So she was resigned to playing the waiting game. Clara had gone back to sleep, probably needing it after the ordeal of battle, leaving Missy to, what? There wasn’t anything else she could do for the moment. She may have spent much of her life waiting, but that didn’t mean she liked it. Waiting just meant more time alone with her thoughts, in this case, and that was the last thing she needed. No use dwelling on things she couldn’t change, she told herself, as if she’d ever listened to that kind of logic before. She needed to find some way to distract herself.
She’d done okay decimating the ranks of soldiers she’d landed herself in, but maybe she could do something about the rest of the planet...
Her attempts to distract herself didn’t last for long. It was always a crap shoot, getting herself involved in the middle of a war zone. Probably why she tried to leave the real dirty bits to other parties, if at all possible. The screaming, the explosions, besides being generally distasteful, played havoc on her head. The middle of an active battlefield was the ideal place to go if you were looking for a migraine and not much else, and the banging in her head was keeping her from giving her plans the necessary attention. Apparently this planet would survive another day.
She retreated back to Clara’s room, telling herself she wouldn’t want her waking up and getting into trouble around the ship. More realistically, she just didn’t want her to be alone. Just because she’d suffered so much of her pain alone, didn’t mean she needed to push it onto Clara now. The girl had had that much of an effect on her.
She turned the lights as low as they could go and returned to her chair by the bed, propping her feet back up and draping an arm over her eyes. She used her other hand to fully undo her hair, dropping hairpins indiscriminately onto the floor. She slowed her breathing, focusing on every inhale and exhale, trying not to feel the thumping building up in her head. An exercise in futility, but she was familiar with those. The minutes passed, excruciatingly slow. Maybe it was better to give up for once.
She lifted the covers of the bed, trying not to disturb Clara as she slid in beside her. She let herself sink into the pillow and the pain eased off the tiniest amount. Not enough to make it bearable. She shifted to face Clara, pressing her head deeper into the pillow, the pressure counteracting the pounding, and closed her eyes.
She’d almost managed to fall asleep when she thought she heard Clara’s voice beside her.
“Don’t I know you?” she heard, soft and still uncertain.
“Of course, dear,” she mumbled back without opening her eyes. “Now shh,” she said, throwing an arm over the woman next to her. And then she was gone.
Eventually Clara was able to drag herself out of the endless cycle of sleep-wake-sleep she’d found herself in. She still had a headache that she wasn’t sure she’d ever get rid of, but she was finally starting to feel present in the world again. The fog over her thoughts had lifted somewhat and she was optimistic about being able to put together a coherent timeline of what had happened to her. She lay still, eyes closed, trying to unscramble her memories. She had vague memories of being checked over for injuries and put to bed, and supposed she must have hit her head. She thought she’d woken a couple times since then, but couldn’t seem to pull apart dreams from reality. She remembered the panic she’d felt when she first realized she was having problems with her memory. It hadn’t just been the injury, had it? She’d forgotten things that happened before she ever got here. But she was getting it back again. The woman who had helped her, it was the same person who had brought her here, wasn’t it? They were travelling together, like she’d done with the Doctor, her and-
Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted as she felt something shift in the bed beside her. Her eyes flew open and she shot up in surprise, a fresh wave of pain passing through her head. “ Missy?!”
“Ugh, you’re so loud,” came the muffled reply as Missy pressed Clara’s recently vacated pillow against her face. “Hold on!” She took a moment to shuffle any hint of pain or emotion off her face and then dropped the pillow back where it had come from. She pushed herself up on one arm and gave Clara a quick look-over. “Oh, now you remember me? Good, I was just wondering if I’d have to drop you off on a planet somewhere and leave you. Can’t keep you around if you won’t even do me the barest of courtesies, after all.” She briefly wondered if she’d gone too far as she watched the hurt flicker across Clara’s face, but too far was what she was. Couldn’t go changing now, and certainly not for this.
S o she had forgotten things. Much as it hurt, it was probably better to have that confirmed. Hearing it now wasn’t nearly as horrifying as it was in the moment at least. Besides, she wasn’t the one who’d been left to take care of somebody who didn’t even remember her. She still wasn’t sure where exactly she stood with Missy, even after leaving the Doctor, but she doubted the woman cared nothing for her. She knew she certainly wouldn’t be here if she did.
“Don’t you know already, Missy?” she asked, putting on an unsteady smile. “You’re unforgettable.” She gave Missy a harmless swat in the arm before letting herself fall comfortably back into bed. What was one more travel-related trauma for her to push aside and never address? “So, what’s next on our agenda of trouble-making across time and space?”
Missy just groaned. “I don’t know about you, but I have one hell of a headache.”
Clara laughed, despite the pain it immediately brought to both of them. “Like you wouldn’t even believe ! Guess we’d better stay right here .” She patted the bed between them, closing her eyes again.
M issy sighed, reaching over to softly ruffle Clara’s hair. “You ridiculous human,” she said, making no attempt to argue against staying in bed.