Chapter Text
The tender light of December morning peered through the gap between the curtains, a ray of sunlight landing across her face. Its warmth gently nudging her awake. Blindly, she turned and buried her head on what she expected to be a firm shoulder, sculpted to fit her just, but instead it was a feel of rough fabric and leather belt.
"I see someone's finally up."
Peering one eye open, she could see the source of the thick gravelly Scottish accent had been up for a while. Enough to have showered and dressed. He was sat beside her, his back resting against the pillows whilst reading the morning paper. She also spied his bag already waiting by the door.
“Don’t go,” she murmurs against the edges of his jacket. His peppermint scent enveloping her as she pulled herself closer, snaking an arm under the newspaper and around his hips. Anchoring herself to him in place.
He chuckled, said he would be back before she could miss him and she would know why when he returns. But she only shook her head. Accepting she would not let go, he discards what he was reading to have his fingers brush away the hair hiding her face.
She peers up at him and his smiling face registers to her unfocused eyes whilst everything around them was in a blur. He bends down, his lips parted about to form words but before the sound reaches her, Clara wakes.
Clara Oswald wakes because she could not bear to hear the words, not from him, so much that not even her subconscious would accept it possible. Therefore, it could be nothing but an illusion and she wakes time and time again; logic proven right.
She rubs the sleep away from her eyes but holds back a yawn as she spots her companion, Ashildr, still fast asleep. Folded on the table between them, arms cushioning the side of her head. On the far end of the table, there was a laptop with the screen refreshing on its own every few seconds. Outside, the trees pass by one after the other, with the sun weaving in between at her it starts to peer through behind the treeline. Clara rests her head against the window pane, basking in the low hum of the train engine beneath her.
The calm, however, was broken by the harsh ringing of the phone in her pocket.
Danny Pink.
Clara slipped out of the compartment as quickly as she can before answering. She bit on her lip as she listened to the person from the other line.
“I’m sorry, it was an emergency...
I know, I know. But, we finally have a lead on Missy. There was no time to call you, I had to hop on the earliest train--"
Danny's voice rose, Clara could hear it even as she pull away from the phone. Glancing at their compartment door, she walked further into the hallway. Despite every fibre of her being rebelling in having to explain, she reminded herself this was her design. She sighs against the wall, frustrated at herself more than anything. Danny was in her life because she asked him out five months ago and she made him care about her. Sometimes she forgets what it was like to have someone worried for her. When Danny have calmed down, she promises to call him once they arrive at the station.
He says something and it hangs in the air, before she replies, "me too." She knew he had been waiting for her to say it back but the words have not come easily for her in years.
When Clara returned to their compartment, Ashildr was already awake.
"We're getting closer" the younger woman said. Ashildr read a series of numbers on the laptop screen then uncapped her pen, drawing a quick circle on the map now laid out on the table.
The map had three rings in decreasing sizes inside of each drawn on. The biggest one was when they first received an activity signal from Missy's device the previous evening. Its signature, indicated it was outside London and the more they moved northwards, the clearer the signal becomes.
It had been two weeks since the explosion in the BioTech Research Department of UNIT. The fire was so big it turned the night sky orange, little explosions breaking through the windows. The Fire Marshall was ushering civilians further away when a frantic Dr Chang came running, holding a pair of take away coffee in one hand.
"She's in there!" He screamed, fighting to cross the barricade the police placed. "Missy! My boss is in there!" Two men geared up to go inside and Dr Chang tried his best to describe the area he last saw the Department head.
Clara walked up to the distraught man and made him sit down on a nearby kerb. Clara was confused why Dr Chang and Missy would still be in the building, the laboratories were closed hours ago. Dr Chang then began to tell her how someone from their team noticed an anomaly in one of the prototype machines earlier that day, his words coming in between breaths like his throat was closing up in an asthma attack. He gulps the coffee and continues to explain that the team tried to fix it but to no avail.
"What a pitiful bunch of morons, that's what she said." He scoffed, taking off his glasses and swipes at his eyes "She stayed behind to check on it herself. I just went out for five minutes to get us food and then..."
It was already dawn when it was declared fire out. All traces of studies and experiments --gone, along with the department head Missy Saxon. They tried calling and searching for Missy, hoping that she was not inside the fire. But days passed, and they are forced to accept the tragedy.
The investigation reports say that the initial explosion came from an equipment that uses a trial compound as power source, which was what Missy was working on. She would have been dead on impact if she was anywhere in the 15 feet radius.
It all sounded like an accident until last night, one of the devices registered in BioTech department was flagged for activity.
If everything was burnt to ashes, how come this piece that was supposed to be inside the building still exist? Clara knew The Mistress of UNIT would not die of something as banal as an accident. Someone was behind the explosion and she will find them.
Clara narrowed her eyes on the name the smallest circle captured:
St. Luke's University - Glasgow.