post-deerington CRAU.

When Clara first returned to her TARDIS after more than five years away, full of memories she didn't think she'd be able to keep, it was with one mission: track down even the slightest trace of the people she'd lost - Peter, Wade, Brianna, Cosima, Sarissa. Stubborn and single-minded, she scoured her own Earth, before moving on to rumors of other ones. Years of throwing herself headlong at the search with no results left her bitter and solitary, in a way she wouldn't have been without her memories of Deerington and Mask or Menace, and for a bit she contemplated giving up her immortality early, rather than traverse the universe for eternity with this grief. Gallifrey had been destroyed by now, however, and with it the device that would have returned her to her death. She was faced with a failed mission, an empty ship, and limitless lifetimes to fill up.

So, she got back in the saddle. Spruced up the diner, trashed all the Spider-Man comics and maps of San Diego, picked a galaxy to start with. She'd never be the same girl she was before, though, who had piped up with kind, clever words at the Doctor's side. Instead, she returned to the persona she'd adopted in De Chima and Deerington - the Shade, quick and cold and reckless, a little dark at the edges. The Doctor saved everyone - even the monsters, when they could - and was sung as a hero for generations; the Shade was there and gone, a legend's terrible shadow, enemies strung up in her wake. A loose cannon with a fake smile, an antihero in UNIT's files, but always on the right side of history. Sometimes there were companions tagging along, but she never got close to them, never let herself love them the way the Doctor always had. She'd had families - had yearned for one that would just stick - and losing each one had broken her.

About seventy-five years in, the antler showed up on her console, and she promptly ignored it for the next twenty-five, letting it get buried under clutter. She had moved on, become distant and forbidding and inhuman, and the draw of the antler reminded her of something she didn't think she could have again. Socked feet on the couch, her best friend's laugh, a classroom full of slouching students. Even if she found her way back, her old life wouldn't be there. Peter wouldn't be there.

Finally, just wanting to be rid of the thing, she tossed it out of the TARDIS doors, and into the freezing void of space.

Probably not the way everyone else destroyed their antlers, huh?