"So, Doctor, where to this time?" Clara took a slow turn around the six-sided center console. The fingertips of her left hand gently skimmed the polished silver surface near the Intelligent panel interface. The TARDIS was happy today. She could feel the Old Girl's sigh of contentment as it raced up her arm leaving tingles of excitement in its wake. The fall at Trenzalore had damaged her irrevocably, but the Doctor was trying his best to heal her. It was a slow process, but the near constant travel through time and space was helping. To Clara, it seemed as if it was the Doctor's apology for so cruelly mistreating the TARDIS.
Clara slowly drew her forefinger across the panel in a semicircle smile to let the TARDIS know that she shared in her excitement for today's adventure. Now that the "impossible" had worn off, Clara liked to think that the TARDIS was warming up to her. She didn't get lost in the infinite corridors as frequently as she used to, and the visual interface no longer projected her own image. For some reason, it was always Professor Song with her space hair and cheeky grin.
Clara resumed her stroll around the console. "We did the Caves of Barad last week, saved the Atracori from a plague of space locusts last Tuesday, and visited Ood Sigma for tea just yesterday." Sounding like an excited schoolgirl, she added, "Where are we going today?"
The Doctor bounced around the console from panel to panel pushing buttons here and there. "Why, Clara, with all of time and space at our disposal, where do you think?" The tails of his purple frock coat billowed behind him as he twisted the dials and pulled the levers to input time and space coordinates. His golden fob watch glistened against his silver waistcoat as he danced and twirled about the room. "Somewhere awesome, of course."
Amused, Clara replied, "The last time you said that we ended up being chased by a platoon of Judoon through three solar systems."
"Now, that was a right jam, but the TARDIS got us out of that one. Didn't you, you beauty?" The Doctor stopped his movements for just a second to lovingly stroke the central pillar of the console with two fingers of his right hand. With a smile, he resumed his whirling dervish about the room.
"And the time before that, you got slapped by that American actress. You know," Clara pitched her voice an octave lower and slapped a hand to her hip in a coquettish pose, "the blonde bombshell."
The Doctor did a full body shiver from the tips of his hair out through his fingers and toes. From his lips came a prolonged "Euuuuughhhhh" as his head waggled to and fro. "Unfortunate misunderstanding with the psychic paper. Really need to stop using it on certain people."
"She thought it was a marriage license. As in yours and hers!"
The Doctor shrugged his shoulders and mumbled, "Really shouldn't have gone to that party. The things Sinatra can talk you into doing. Pfft." With his left hand clutching the console and his right hand on the brake, he changed the subject. "Now, how about a surprise? I've set the TARDIS to random. She'll set us down wherever and whenever she pleases." He leaned closer to the console. "How about it, Sexy? Wherever and whenever. All of time and space. Where do you want to go?" he whispered as he threw the controls to activate the TARDIS navigation system.
"Is that such a brilliant idea, Doctor?" Clara braced for impact. She planted her feet shoulder width apart and wrapped her elbows around the waist high bar at her back that ran around the console platform. "The TARDIS is still a little steamed up at you after all."
With a squeal of brakes and squawking violin strings and gusts from a giant bellows, the TARDIS landed. Clara imagined the blue box kicking up a bit of dust as she settled into place out of the time vortex. She was just about to ask where and when they were when the strangest thing happened. "Doctor?"
Clara tilted her head to the side. She watched with a gasp as the strange thing happened once again but more prolonged and painful looking. There was no hiding it behind his hand this time. "Doctor, did you just yawn?" she asked slowly.
The Doctor jerked around showing his back to her. He roughly straightened his plum colored bowtie. "Yawn? Don't be ri..di…cu…." The rest of the word disappeared as he yawned once more even longer and more ridiculously than before.
"I'm right. You just yawned. I've never seen you do that before. You never get tired; I'd begun to think that you didn't need to sleep."
"Don't be absurd, Clara. I may not be human, but a Time Lord has needs just like any other bipedal hominid in the Universe. After all this traveling together, you can't think that sleep is an entirely human invention." His voice filled with disgust as his tirade continued. "Nothing is ever a human invention. Ok, pens that can write in space. I'll give you that one. That is entirely human. Everyone else just used a pencil."
As the Doctor expounded on the virtues of ink pens that could write in zero gravity and dehydrated, powdered orange juice, Clara was at once certain that his vehemence and change of topic was directed more towards disguising his perceived frailty than to her ignorance. The Doctor was like that. No matter the incarnation, he was always like that. She closed her eyes as an abrupt wave of memories flowed over her. Ah, yes, right there, a first hand account of Gallifreyan biology.
She remembered, vaguely, her other selves that were scattered like leaves throughout the Doctor's timestream. Sometimes, Clara would have to really think hard to conjure up the memories while at other times, they would crash against her mind's eye like the ocean breaking ashore during a storm. The Doctor called it "Rory the Roman" syndrome. Two thousand years as a Auton in an alternative universe had stayed with human Rory. It was always there but just far enough out of reach to keep one sane.
A single, slow breath was all it took to become herself once again. When she opened her eyes, she was Clara. Just Clara Oswald, no longer the Impossible Girl, with just a single lifetime of memories and back in the console room of the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS.
"Droopy eye lids, purple bags the size of a biscuit, and is that?" She patted his cheeks then pinched them and tugged them around for good measure. "Yes, extra wrinkles on your face, just around the mouth."
Vanity impinged, the Doctor grabbed the scanner to check out his own reflection. He made faces at the screen to try to find the new lines. He jutted out his chin to elongate his face. He wiggled his nose as he frowned. He smiled and laughed and sighed all at once. He pulled his mouth into shapes of words that Clara didn't recognize. Then, he yawned once more.
He batted the screen away. He watched it dejectedly as it circled round the central pillar of the console. With a disgusted sigh, he wrung his hands, "When a Time Lord travels as often as we have been travelling, the exertion eventually begins to take a toll on you. I don't need to sleep as much as a human. Awful waste of time that is, but I do take a kip now and then."
"And the last time you bothered to take a nap?" Clara watched the Doctor shrug once more. She knew the answer. Just like always it came to her. A vague memory from a time she lived through but could not always remember clearly. The Doctor had not slept since the "dark time" he had spent in Victorian London with Jenny, Strax, and Vastra. He had not slept since before the early days of his search for her, before Trenzalore, before his secret was discovered. "So you never bother to sleep when I sleep?"
"No. What do you think I do when you are off in slumber? Twiddle my thumbs and just wait for you to wake up?" He crossed his arms against his chest and looked down his nose at his diminutive companion. "I tinker. I read. I knit. I visit people, places. I wrote a book once. Total rubbish. Had to edit it five times. Never could get it quite right. I had to actually go take lessons from this monastery on Libros V. Wonderful place. Quite tidy really for a planet full of literary geniuses raving about with ink stained fingers."
Clara hid her smile as the Doctor's train of thought jumped tracks. "How much sleep does a Time Lord need?" she asked to put him back on target.
"Oh, just a bit now and again. It's a complex biological process that fluctuates based on age, travel, energy expenditure, location, nutrition, radiation…" He ticked off the list of variables on his fingers. He stopped when he got to the second hand. Clara had that bored look on her face again. The one that told him silently that it was past time to shut up. "It could be as little as five minutes or as long as, well, however long it needs to be. I slept for a year once."
Clara's eyebrows raised at that. "You. In one place. Not moving. For a whole year." The staccato of her sentences emphasized her disbelief.
"Oi! I got a lot done in that year. More than you lot do in your sleep." He scoffed at her pained expression. "I cleaned the TARDIS from top to bottom, I did. Knitted a lovely sweater and invented three new dishes. Even a sleeping Time Lord has got to eat."
The Doctor was acting like a petulant child who had stayed up too late the night before and was refusing his afternoon nap. "Why don't you go lay down?" Clara pointed to the exterior doors. "Whatever is outside those doors will still be there when you wake up. If it isn't, we'll just pop back in time and try again."
He chucked her on the side of the nose with his finger. "My Clara, what an extraordinary traveler you have become."
"Right." She took a step back knowing he was trying to trick her into forgetting his need for sleep. "Off you go. No bedtime stories for you, chin boy." She shooed him out of the console room with an, "I'll be fine. I'll go read a book or something. Maybe swim a few laps in the pool."
The Doctor disappeared down the corridor but reappeared a minute later. He had changed out of his familiar jeans and waistcoat and was wearing a long white nightshirt that had seen better days. The thin blue pinstripes had faded as the white fabric had aged to yellow. The hem around his ankles was frayed, and the patch at his left knee needed replaced. About halfway up his torso, the shirt gaped open where one of the large two-hole pearl buttons was missing. What looked like a scorch mark decorated the area near his left hip. "What? It was a gift!"
The Doctor smoothed his hands down the front of his beloved nightwear perhaps a little glad to have not put on his sleeping cap yet. "Rules. Do not open those doors. Do not wander off. Do you understand?" He shuffled forward in his black socked feet.
Clara watched the doctor wring his hands in frustration. He did not believe the trustworthy expression Clara was trying to paste across her features. The Doctor shook his finger at the console deciding to take his plea directly to the TARDIS. "I'm trusting you to keep those doors locked. Don't let her talk you into anything. Do you understand?"
His eyes darted between Clara and the console until it was apparent he had received an acceptable answer.
"Sleep well, Doctor." She watched him walk away not bothering to look back and probably muttering to himself as he walked down the hall. The Doctor was off to sleep, and she was left alone with the TARDIS.
What to do, what to do? She could finish that book she was reading. No, she didn't feel like reading. She was restless. She needed to do something. She walked counterclockwise around the console. Her fingertips drummed along the gleaming silver edges. Clara could feel that the TARDIS was just as restless as she was. After the constant travel, sitting quietly in one place didn't suit either of them. "Yes, I thought we were off on an adventure today, but I guess we'll just have to be patient." She sunk down onto the side step between the outer console panels. She rested her chin in her hands and sighed. "He won't sleep for long. The Doctor can't sit still for five minutes. I doubt he'll even sleep for an hour. We won't miss much. Besides, if he can keep busy while I sleep, I can return the favor."
Five minutes passed as she ran through a laundry list of things to do but discarded them all. Nothing appealed to her. She buried her face in her hands. Bored. She was so bored. Bored on the TARDIS. Who ever would have guessed?
"What was that?" Her head jerked up as a faint noise repeated itself. Yes, it was a distinct tap in a repetitive pattern. "Did someone just knock on the TARDIS door?"
Clara's hands grabbed the scanner. "Display a live view of the outside."
A familiar face popped up on screen. "I thought he'd never shut up and go to bed." Without a single touch, the door to the TARDIS opened despite the Doctor's direct order. The vivacious strawberry blonde strolled inside as if she owned the place. "River Song, archaeologist, at your service. You, lovely girl, must be the Doctor's companion."