Twelve's plan in Deep Breath is kind of fucked up in the best possible character dissectey way.
Like he abandons Clara, lets her think he's changed, lets her think he's left her for dead, all on the assumption that she'll figure their captors out and successfully out-boss a room full of murderous clockwork cyborgs into giving her answers.
And he's completely right.
Fuck, it's such a deliciously messed up thing for him to do.
Because like ten minutes earlier, they're finally starting to fall back into a rhythm together. They're investigating the restaurant, piecing clues together, working the mystery. He slips the sonic out of his pocket, she kicks it up to him, they're bouncing observations off each other, making deductions together. You can actively see Clara beginning to settle into this new version of the Doctor.
Not fully trusting him yet.
And then the Doctor takes the exact thing she's struggling with, her uncertainty, her fear that he's different now, that maybe she doesn't know him anymore, and turns it into part of the plan.
He weaponizes her doubt against both her and the clockwork cyborgs.
He looks her in the eye, tells her that at least one of them has to live, and leaves.
And my god, Jenna Coleman absolutely destroys me in the scenes that follow. Clara trying so hard not to breathe, but having to try even harder not to cry, and failing at both. Walking away while desperately trying to hold herself together. The panic, the oxygen deprivation, the heartbreak of genuinely believing the Doctor abandoned her.
Because from Clara's perspective this is confirmation of every fear she's been carrying since the regeneration. The Doctor is different now. Maybe this face doesn't care about her. Maybe she really has been left behind.
But from the Doctor's perspective, the reason he can do this at all is because he trusts her completely.
He knows she'll start asking questions.
He knows she'll push back.
He knows she'll get to the truth because that's who Clara is.
So he leaves her there and trusts that she'll do exactly what he would do in the same situation while he runs off to throw together a disguise.
It's one of those moments that feels incredibly Doctor-ish and incredibly unfair at the same time.
Because buried underneath it is a weirdly profound compliment.
He's effectively saying, "I trust you to handle this."
But the way he chooses to communicate that is by emotionally throwing her into a nest of killer robots and hoping she figures it out.
Because unfortunately for Clara, he knows her almost as well as she knows him.
And unfortunately for Clara, he's right.
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