Chapter Text
/part one
She’s stood in Waitrose examining kumquats when she gets the call.
“Martha! Hi,” Clara wedges the phone between her shoulder and her ear; Martha Jones is her agent at UNIT – its unique investors in talent or something. She’s been with them so long that the acronym got lost within her years ago.
“Hey, Clara – ”
She swiftly cuts in before Martha can reply. “What’s your opinion on kumquats?”
She can hear Martha sigh on the other end of the receiver. “Kum-what now?”
“Kumquats,” she replies, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “They’re sort of like oranges. But smaller. And narrower. Do you reckon they’d taste like oranges?”
“Clara, I have absolutely no idea, and if you’re planning to cook with them I’d strongly suggest you decide against it.”
Clara frowns, but she supposes she has a point. Baking is hardly her forte; most of the agents at UNIT could back her up on that one, especially Martha, who she vaguely remembers vomiting in her toilet the time she cooked cottage pie for her. “I wouldn’t call it cooking. More – an experiment. If kumquats are like oranges, they might go well in a soufflé.”
“It’s not the ingredients that are the problem. It’s you,” Martha assures, “And anyway, forget the kumquats. Believe it or not, I actually called you for a reason.”
Clara tosses the fruit in her empty basket anyway. Her heart instantly feels heavy. She can’t remember a professional call with Martha that’s gone well, recently, and if it does it’s usually for some shitty, badly-paid advert work that she has no choice to accept because she’s broke.
“Fire away,” she says reluctantly, taking her phone in her palm, “Who has rejected me this time?”
“Dear God, Oswald, you’re such a pessimist,” Martha iterates disapprovingly, “Where’s your Northern grit gone?”
Clara snorts. She’s wandered into the dairy aisle, reading the sell-by dates on yoghurt. “That disappeared the twenty-sixth time someone told me I wasn’t good enough.”
“That’s show business, honey,” she says in a deliberate American drawl, “And I have information regarding your Hell Bent audition.”
Clara automatically rolls her eyes. She can feel her mood quickly decelerating, her heart dropping from her chest to her stomach. That’s what repeated rejection does to you. You forget every outcome other than the one that’s sorry, you’re not what we’re looking for.
Hell Bent was one hell of a leap. It’s the biggest cult TV show in the UK – she only managed to hitch an audition last minute because Martha pulled some very serious strings. Clara’s never had an opportunity like this one, and she never will again, she can feel it well within her bones. She felt the audition scripts in her hands two and a half weeks ago for the role of Jenna and honestly, she’s never felt so attached to a character before. Jenna is her in another life. And she doesn’t get that feeling for one-off soap appearances and extra work in Casualty.
Her heart still pumps harder when she remembers saying those lines, quickly ingrained into her soul, when she had to act alongside the Doctor himself. She felt something, then. But everyone must feel like that when put next to the Doctor – he’s like that, sharp and edgy and electric. He’s irreplaceable. There’s hundreds like her.
She doesn’t realise that she’s crushing a carton of Greek yoghurt in her hands.
“Go on, then. Constructive criticism, please, brutal can come later. I’d rather not hear it in the middle of the supermarket.”
Martha sighs, not for the first time in the conversation. It’s not the most reassuring sound. Clara prepares to build up the defences that have evolved over time. She’s an actress – well, trying to be. She knows how to assemble protection otherwise she’d have crumbled years ago.
“Clara, I…” – a pause envelopes her heartbeat - “Clara, they fucking adored you!”
She almost drops her basket.
“They what?!”
“I’ve just had Jack Harkness on the phone now. Jenna is yours, if you want it. I said absolutely.”
She can feel her chest going into override. Her face is overcome in a hot flush, but a good kind, like the sun has broken into her veins. She feels a smile on her lips but she can’t remember how it got there.
“You’re serious,” she breathes, “Actually, properly serious.”
Martha laughs. She’s as ecstatic as Clara is. “Actually, properly serious, my darling. You’ve made it. This time, you’ve made it.”
Clara begins to grin uncontrollably. She suddenly feels completely out of place in the middle of the supermarket; she’s stood in the dairy aisle holding a basket full of kumquats and yoghurt but now, it’s all irrelevant. She’s going to be an actress and she’s going to be on BBC One and it all feels like such a long time coming, and she knows that this moment is the point in her life that everything changes. In another life, she’s stood in the same supermarket, disappointed. She’s just glad it isn’t this one.
“What happens now?” she asks, her tone easy, “What do – I do?”
“You’re going to dinner with the cast tonight, you go to the read-through of the first episode next week,” Martha reveals, “And you be what you’ve always wanted. An actress.”
She abandons her shopping, handing her basket to a bemused shop assistant who doesn’t ask why she’s laughing. She’s going to be an actress. An actual, proper actress in an actual, proper show that people watch religiously. But, funnily enough, Hell Bent isn’t the thing that changes her life. It does, but it’s not monumental. If we’re talking monumental, alterations in the tilt of the Earth and fractured constellations in the night sky, that’s not Hell Bent.
That’s the Doctor.
---
/two weeks ago
“This is an absolute nightmare.”
Jack declares this dramatically, poring over file upon file attached to numerous girls that are not quite Jenna. The Doctor grimaces. He hates auditioning even more than Jack does, but understands it’s a necessity. His throat is surviving on cold black coffee and scraps of adrenaline.
“None of these girls are what I had in mind,” Jack states pointlessly. They both knew that already. “Number Twelve was okay, Sally something…”
The Doctor shakes his head resolutely. “She’s not Jenna at all. Too tall, for starters.”
“I thought she was perfectly tall,” says Jack, but the grin on his lips reveals his true intentions, “Anyway, we’ve got a few more to go. The pessimist within me is screaming to abandon this and do something way more fun.”
“We both have very different concepts of fun,” the Doctor murmurs quietly – almost too quiet for Jack, who laughs anyway. “Let’s do the next couple then pack it in.”
“Agreed.”
He calls for the next actress to be shown in, and number eighteen is exactly what the Doctor isn’t expecting.
She’s tiny – couldn’t be more than five foot two – and she’s got a perpetually curved smile and a small turned-up nose. She’s wearing a dress that’s exactly what he’d picture Jenna wearing; floral, navy, resting just above her knees. A leather jacket covers her shoulders.
“Hi,” she says a little nervously, and she catches his eye and it’s like she just realises it’s him, the Doctor, but her expression doesn’t waver. She isn’t the star-struck type, thank goodness. “I’m Clara Oswald.”
She wanders over to where they’re sitting. Jack looks at her approvingly, extending his arm. “Jack Harkness – lead writer, producer and casting director.” She shakes his hand and it’s surprisingly sturdy for someone so small. “And this is John Smith. Well, the Doctor.”
“You might recognise me,” he says, staring her straight in the eyes. They’re a warm brown colour. He thinks of autumn leaves and petrichor. Her hands are swallowed by his.
“Of course,” she says confidently, “I’m a fan.”
He gets that a lot, nearly every day, in the street or on social media or by a television interviewer. For some reason it feels a lot more important, more special, when it comes from her. He let’s go of her hand. She doesn’t have to say a word for him to know that she’s Jenna. It’s like the character jumped out of Jack’s scripts into the room in front of them.
Jack notices their automatic chemistry. He almost doesn’t want to disturb them. He claps his hands together. “Right. Let’s get started, shall we? Miss Oswald – I believe you have already received the script?”
“Yep,” she pops the ‘p’, “Whenever you’re ready.”
The Doctor rises from his chair, slowly walking to the centre of the room alongside Clara. He’s about to spout the same words he’s being saying all day: varying degrees of emotion and prosodic emphasis, all situated around Jenna, a character that doesn’t officially exist yet. He’s played Peter for such a long time now that it feels strange introducing a new fictional entity into his fictional life. Peter has always been lonely. The next series of Hell Bent is supposed to be about how it doesn’t always have to be that way.
“Okay guys, we’re going to start with scene three,” Jack initiates. He leans forward over the table. His hands are clasped together as he looks up at his latest hopeful. “Let me picture the setting for you, Clara. You’ve seen Hell Bent before, right?”
Clara nods as if to say obviously, who hasn’t? The Doctor half-smiles. She’s done her research – he appreciates preparedness.
“Then you’ll know about the rest of the main team – Karen and David. Essentially, within this scene, it’s just Jenna and Peter left in the aftermath of a massive explosion. Karen and David are lost somewhere,” Jack pauses for a second. He glances at the Doctor. “And basically, Peter is the one who has picked Jenna up. He’s obsessed with keeping her safe, even though he knows fine well she can handle herself. Jenna finds herself fighting him as well as an other-worldly force in order to regain control.”
Clara is taking it all in, listening carefully, letting the information settle in her brain. The Doctor’s heard it all before. He knows the idea of Jenna, how much she’s supposed to mean to his own character. He’s never actually associated the concept to a face until now.
“You have to show you care but at the same time you’re your own person,” Jack instructs, “You have to push Peter away with the emotion of a girl who has lost everything but doesn’t need looking after. And obviously, I want a little of your own interpretation too. Think you can do that?”
It’s strange that Clara doesn’t look at Jack. She looks at the Doctor, half a smirk on her face, her eyes assessing him like he’s a puzzle waiting to be solved.
(It takes him a while to realise why she does that, but he finds out eventually. It’s a good day.)
“I think so,” she says. And she does.
-
“I have a duty of care!”
“No you don’t, because I never asked for that.”
-
If there’s one thing the Doctor knows after acting alongside Clara, it’s that she pours her whole soul into her performance. They’re talking about supernovas and black holes and strings of constellations but when she talks he can see them in her eyes, in the way her lips curve round words. She doesn’t talk like she’s acting: in this moment, she is Jenna, and he is Peter, and nothing else matters. It’s tangible, what they have between them. He definitely did not feel like this with the other potentials. Like the atmosphere between them could be set on fire and they just wouldn’t notice and they’d just keep talking and talking until the whole city burnt to the ground.
When they finish, she looks temporarily agape, like she’s spent minutes in another room. It doesn’t take her long to remember where she is, though. She combs through her hair with her hand.
“Was that okay?” she asks, but she’s not looking for reassurance. She doesn’t need it.
He’s about to reply, but Jack cuts in first, like he rightfully should –
“We’ll get back to your agency on that one Miss Oswald,” Jack says, coy as ever, “Thank you for coming along.”
Clara breathes out, slowly and steadily. He almost says shut up, don’t worry, you are fantastic. He almost says that out of everyone in this universe, you were the one who stepped into this room, and I’m not half glad of that. He almost tells her a hundred million things that people like him do not say, especially on first meetings, so he just raises his eyebrows and shrugs a little. It seems enough for Clara, who smirks as she turns her back.
“Thank you,” she’s left her satchel at the door so she slings it over her shoulder, “Hopefully I’ll hear from you soon.”
The look Jack gives him as soon as she closes the door is she’s It.