Gallifrey Returns
Disclaimer: Doctor Who is most definitely not mine. I'm just playing with the Raggedy Doctor. This story takes place after the episode "Listen".
Summary: After 2000 years of traveling through time, has the Doctor finally gone insane? He has lost his family, his planet is still in limbo, leaving him to be the last of his kind. For now.
Author's note: This is just a taste of what I'm working on.
Roaring at the young woman before him, the Doctor held up his sonic screwdriver with his right hand. "You will tell me!" he yelled but all the young woman did was smile as she had done so many times before.
Clara, standing a few feet behind the Doctor looked torn between being confused and being scared. She too had seen the young woman several times. However, the lady before them never spoke. She only watched and smiled.
It didn't matter what time they visited anymore. What planet, what place – she was there. Her appearances were getting longer in duration. Castrovalva, Kosnax, even in good old Victorian England, she was there. The young woman with long black hair, parted in the center and then tied back neatly in a bun. Her skin was pale with perfect ruby lips. It was hard to tell if the lady looked more like a Degas sculpture or like Snow White.
This time, the young woman stood inside the Tardis, an amused smile still on her lips. Maybe she looked more like the Mona Lisa with that look upon her face, Clara mused for a moment. The musing ended when the woman looked past the Doctor, straight at Clara. Those ruby lips stretched into an even bigger smile.
"Don't you look at her! You will look at me!" the Doctor ordered, placing himself firmly between this unknown woman and Clara, sonic screwdriver still in hand.
The young woman did look at the Doctor, but bit back her lips, as if she was holding back a laugh. Her eyes were nearly dancing already with amusement.
"Who are you?" the Doctor demanded again. "How did you get in here?" he asked more angrily. As the young woman's eyes slipped to looking at Clara again, the Doctor added "Don't you dare."
"Dare what?" the young woman asked. Her voice was odd. Her accent was clearly not English or Scottish. However, with so few words, it was impossible to place.
"You will look at me!" the Doctor repeated. "Not at Clara!"
The young woman's eyes narrowed and she approached the Doctor, seemingly unafraid of the strange glowing sonic screwdriver in his hand. "You hate this, don't ya?" she whispered when she was only a foot or so from the Doctor. He didn't respond; although, he now held the sonic screwdriver between them. "The not knowin'. The lack of answers. You hate this," she continued on, amusement breaking back out on her face.
The young woman spun in almost a waltz, back to the spot where she had appeared a few moments ago out of thin air. Leaning back against the railing inside the Tardis, she again peeked around the Doctor at Clara. "It really is fun having the upper hand on him," the young woman stated with a wink.
Clara held back a nervous chuckle herself, only to get the Doctor to turn around and give her a look of disapproval. With his back turned, the young woman moved towards him again. This time, the Doctor spun around quickly, his sonic screwdriver pointed directly at the young woman's head.
"Really? What are ya gonna do? Make a bookcase out of me to go next to the swimmin' pool?" she stated with a roll of her eyes.
That got the Doctor's attention. How long had she been in the Tardis? How much had she seen?
"Are you American? Are you from the South?" Clara asked, finally being able to place the accent. It was something like out of Gone with the Wind almost to Clara's ears.
The young woman leaned back against the railing again with an exasperated sigh. "A lot of planets have a South, Clara."
The Doctor froze. That feeling in the pit of his stomach, that tingling at the back of his neck, the odd smell of something familiar but not… He had said something very similar to Rose well over a thousand years ago. At least to him. "A lot of planets have a north"
Clara didn't notice the Doctor's frozen form. Instead, she moved around him to get a better look at this other woman. "Why are you following us?" she asked.
"I'm not," the woman stated smiling. It was as if she was playing a game with them and neither Clara or the Doctor were clear on all the rules yet.
"Okay…" Clara said aloud, realizing that this line of questioning was getting them nowhere. "Why didn't you speak to us until now?"
The woman stood up slowly, her eyes going from Clara to the still frozen Doctor. "It wasn't time." And with that, she winked, twisted the bracelet on her arm, and disappeared.
Immediately after the young woman vanished, again, the Doctor busily went to work around the Tardis control system. He began to pull levers and push buttons – Clara had no idea what the Doctor was attempting.
"Alright, that was weird," she stated.
"Impossible," the Doctor muttered. Clara quirked her head slightly. She rarely saw him this agitated.
"Yes…" she said, unsure of whether the Doctor was referring to what just happened with the young woman popping in and then vanishing right before them or if he was referring to Clara.
"Completely and totally impossible," he mumbled as if to himself.
"Right…" Clara said, taking a step closer to the Doctor.
He turned around to face Clara. "She cannot exist!" he stated almost jubilantly.
"So this means we are going after her?" Clara asked.
The Doctor's face fell. "No."
Clara almost laughed. This was a challenge. The kind the Doctor never walked away from. "No?" she asked in amazement.
The Doctor pulled out one of the upper monitors to show Clara what he had been doing, what he had been analyzing since the young woman left. "No," he repeated as Clara looked up to the monitor. It was a diagnostic scan – one the Doctor had installed after the incident with Donna. The monitor showed three bio signatures a few minutes ago – one human, two Timelords.
"I will not chase ghosts."