Her Impossible Wolf

4

"That's not possible!" Clara exclaimed, after Rose's statement had sunk in a little. "How can I have two heartbeats?"
"I don't know, Clara, but you do." Rose paused, watching Clara. "Maybe that's the source of your chest pain. Maybe it's that new heart you seem to have suddenly gained."
Clara laughed. "You think?" Speaking to herself, she added: "Another heart! Maybe my body decided to be more time lord!"
"That may well be more true than you think, Clara. You let me know if you feel like you're about to regenerate. I'll take you to the bottom of the garden! We live quite far from other people, so you should be alright there!"
Clara half-laughed, but was really hoping that regeneration wouldn't be on the cards for her new 'upgrades', so to speak.
Jackie Tyler came back into the room at this point, so the two women stopped joking about time lord physiology. "Hello, Doctor," she said, automatically, when she saw Clara sat up.
"Oh! No, I'm not the Doctor," Clara replied. "I just used to travel with him." Clara smiled kindly at this new arrival, the other voice she had heard when she had woken up. "My name's Clara. Clara Oswald."
"I'm Jackie, Rose's mum." She paused and looked at Clara carefully. "I knew an Ellie when I was younger. We went to school together. Ellie Ravenwood, I think her name was. You look a lot like her. I had an invitation to her wedding, because we'd been friendly at secondary school. I think her bloke's surname was Oswald."
"Ellie Ravenwood was my mum." Clara practically whispered this. Rose noticed, and also saw that she seemed to be on the verge of tears.
"You were out for three days, you know, Clara. I think we should probably give you some alone time. Let you rest and catch up and stuff. I'll check up on you in a while, yeah?"
Clara nodded, mute. Rose ushered her mother to - and out of - the bedroom door. She was about to leave when Clara spoke. "Rose," she said. Rose turned, to see what was up with her new friend. "You wouldn't mind bringing my stuff closer, would you? I want to check all my things are still in my pockets."
"Sure," Rose said, leaving the door and carefully grabbing all of Clara's things, moving them to the chair by the bed. "Can you reach them here?"
Clara leant out of the bed towards her things. She could reach them easily. "Yeah, there's great."
Just in case, Rose moved the chair slightly closer to the bed. "Try and rest," she whispered. "I'll be back soon, and I can help you stretch your legs if you want." Clara nodded and thanked her new friend. Then, Rose left the room and shut the door.
Clara reached for her things as soon as the door had clicked shut. She pulled her jacket onto her lap and started checking the pockets for her sonic device. She found it in the little outside pocket. It had been a fake pocket, but she'd opened it, and put in a pocket lining, so she could still store things. Fake pockets were almost worse than Daleks.
She scanned herself quickly with her sonic and found that her DNA had become over eighty-five percent Gallifreyan. "Eighty-five percent!" she exclaimed under her breath. "Now that was unexpected!" She stowed her sonic back in the no-longer-fake pocket, then checked the other pockets.
There was the psychic paper she'd bought in a flea market on a planet called Janet. Genuinely. Janet the planet. It was in the FEMA system. Though technically, Janet was actually a modified asteroid stuck in orbit around a newborn star. On a whim, she opened the psychic paper. Somehow, she had a message. It read: "Clara Oswald, this is General Kenossium from Gallifrey. You must return to Gallifrey immediately upon receipt of this message. The changes your body is facing are still currently reversible and, should you wish to remain in possession of the time ship you stole after your healing, we would not forcibly remove it from you."
'Oh General,' Clara thought, unaware that the General would be able to receive this, due to her holding the paper and directing the thought. 'I can't return. The changes have me in great agony, and I would be unable to fly my TARDIS. I shall return to Gallifrey as soon afterwards as I am able.'
Clara wasn't expecting the thought to have gone anywhere, let alone to receive a reply on her psychic paper. "Miss Oswald, there are only two ways your pain will subside. We are offering you a return to your life. Ours is the quicker and less painful way of returning your body to a pain-free state. The other way is to allow the change to finish.
"If you insist on finishing the change, may I recommend spending as much time in your ship as you can, as it will ease the transition somewhat. If you complete the change, you will have no need to return to Gallifrey, and you will be allowed to travel as you see fit throughout the universe. We only request that you do not interfere with any lifeforms you study."
Clara could have laughed. 'I'll certainly try to avoid getting involved, but I can make no promises, as I am rather fond of helping people when they're in trouble. Thank you, General, for giving me the courtesy of a choice. I shan't be seeing you again any time soon, I should think.'
She dropped her psychic paper back into the pocket it had come from, as if that resolutely solved the problem in itself. She would have to be more careful when using the psychic paper from now on, too. Then she continued to search her pockets, looking for her phone. She knew she wouldn't have any message from the Doctor, whom she was sure still couldn't remember her.
She found it in the other inside pocket. She was surprised to find a message from an unknown number. It read: "Clara, dear. It's Missy. I heard what happened with you and misery guts. Well, I heard that he didn't remember you, so I've kept quiet for you. He has me locked in a vault to attone for various... incidents, shall we say? He brings me nice things though. Like a phone.
"He still has your number saved on his phone. On his bad days, he sits and stares at your contact, expecting you to jump out of it, I would guess. If you're worried he's alone, don't. He has me and Nardole.
"And this new student that he's taken a liking to. Bill, she's called. I expect she'll visit me too at some point, but I'm not counting on it. I think I would like it if you visited. Please don't ever read this message, I just admitted that you're tolerable. Sorry it's late. Missy xxx"
So, message naturally meant she'd sent three because Clara had a mini essay. She was weirdly at peace with Missy having her number, which confused Clara somewhat. Still, she decided better than to reply. She did add Missy's number to her contacts, should she ever need the psychopathic time lord's help.
"Damn you, Missy," she whispered. "You're making me feel things."