I Will Always Come And Find You
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Doctor Who
Copyright: BBC
"Are you all right, lass?"
The speaker was a tall, silver-haired man in a black suit, standing with his hands in his pockets, almost as still as the tombstones surrounding them. His nose jutted out from his face like the prow of a ship, surrounded by many years of frown and laughter lines. There was something fierce about the set of his eyebrows, and yet the expression he wore was one of warm concern. Fourteen-year-old Clara Oswald took all this in at a glance, then turned her face away as her eyes became too wet to see. She was on her knees in front of her mother's headstone. "Does it look like I'm all right?" she snapped.
Most people would have backed away at this point, but the stranger did not. "Fair point," he said, smiling sardonically. "Stupid of me. Blame it on my age."
"Don't you have dead people of your own to visit?"
His blue eyes softened. "I do, actually. My … friend. I thought she'd be here, but it looks like I'm too early."
Was there a funeral scheduled here for later that day? Clara reflected dully that she had better get up and leave, but she could not move. Her legs had gone to sleep, her head ached, her whole body felt heavy as lead, and her mother – at least the mangled remains that were left of her – was down in the dirt below. Clara was at rock bottom, the point where physical and emotional pain were no longer distinguishable, and she no longer cared what anyone thought of her. Least of all a nosy old man.
"D'you believe in heaven?" she asked suddenly.
He took a long pause before answering. "Hmm .. I can't say that I don't," he finally said. "But I could not declare with any certainty that I do, either. There are forces in the universe none of us understand, especially where life and death are involved. But if you mean the fluffy, cloudy, harp-playing sort of heaven – certainly not. I can't imagine a more boring way to spend eternity."
Clara caught herself laughing a choked, guilty little laugh.
"I don't believe," she confessed. "Never have. My mum … " She forced the words out past the lump in her throat. "She was a journalist. She taught me never to believe anything that can't be proved. And now … now that she's gone, I … " She sobbed. "I want to believe there's something left of her. When I was a kid, I got lost at the beach once … I was so scared … but she promised me that, wherever I went, she'd always come and find me. She promised … but there was never gonna be any 'always', was there? She lied to me!"
That, more than anything, made her feel torn to pieces. She wished her mother would come back just so she could scream at her. But what kind of horrible, heartless wish was that for a daughter? She put her face into her hands and sobbed until she shook.
"Hey … hey! None of that now." A thin, surprisingly strong hand shook her by the shoulder, while another hand passed her an old-fashioned linen handkerchief embroidered with a question mark. "Crying has its place, but this much can't be healthy for a human. Clara. Listen."
She froze.
"How do you - "
"I once knew a journalist who made a point of keeping an open mind. She really needed it, considering … ahem. Never mind. Clara, there are infinite possibilities in this world if you only look at it the right way. Your mother's promise … how do you know she lied to you? Who's to say she wasn't speaking in a broader sense?"
"If this is some way of trying to convert me to some sicko cult - "
"I'm talking science, Clara. I'm talking DNA!"
He crouched down next to her, ignoring the grass stains that would grow on his elegant suit, and raised both hands to gesture. His eyes were lit up with passionate conviction, as if the most important thing in the world right then was to convince her of whatever he had to say. He looked familiar, she realized, even through the murky fog of her own anger, shame and grief. Wherever had she seen that look before?
"Your mother is part of you," he told her earnestly. "She's in your blood, your bones, your very cells. She taught you everything you need to know. She gave you the building-blocks of your life and watched you pile them high into a castle. If you need to look for her, all you have to do is look in the mirror."
Clara's eyes opened wide.
"You look so much like your mother," people had told her all her life. As a little girl, it had been the best compliment she could possible receive. Since hitting puberty, it had begun to annoy her a little, since she wanted to be her own person and not a copy. But had she ever considered it in this light before? Could there really be something of her mother's courage, whimsy and cleverness inside her?
She looked down at her hands. Could those hands someday write about the majesty of Mount Kilimanjaro, the purity of a Buddhist temple, the opulence of the Taj Mahal? Could they move like dancers as she spoke of her planned adventures, flatten the crumpled corners of a map, stir eggs and milk into a flawlessly rising soufflé, and smooth the forehead of a worried child?
Perhaps they could. Perhaps.
"I can't … talk to the mirror," she said, with a sigh.
"I know," said the stranger, and his deep voice was heavy with the sorrows of the world. "Oh, Clara, I know … but there must be someone."
Dad. She remembered, with an entirely different shade of guilt, how little they had talked since the funeral. Her father's hair had turned gray, as gray as this stranger's, seemingly overnight. He did not seem to care about anything but his newspapers, following politics with a fascination that bordered on obsession. He seemed to think it was the entire government's fault that no salt had been scattered on the icy road the night his wife's car had spun off it. Clara had been so caught up in her own grief that she'd never stopped to think of how he must be feeling. How did this fit in with his faith that everything happened for a reason?
She scrambled to her feet, awkwardly using the stone for balance. To her distant amusement, getting up was even harder for her elderly companion; he actually held out both hands to her for help. They both grunted as she hauled him up.
"There is someone," she said. "My dad. And I should get back to him. But, er … "
"Aye?"
"Thanks." She squeezed his hands before letting go. "You, um. You helped."
"Ah, well." He showed her a kinder smile than she had seen yet. "It's what my friend would have wanted."
His friend. The one whose funeral he'd come for. Of course.
"Will you be all right?"
He shrugged, and the lines of sadness came back into his face. "Don't you worry about me, lass. I'm an old man. I've done this before."
On impulse, she reached out and touched his arm in sympathy. Not until after she'd done it did she remember it as one of her mother's gestures.
"People don't have to be related to … to become part of each other," she said, "Do they?"
He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Hmph. I see what you did there."
She smiled.
"Well." He stepped back, with the sort of brisk formality that men, especially British men, tend to assume in retreating from a scene of intense emotion. "Well. I should be going. Take care, Clara, all right? And travel safely."
"What makes you think I'm going to travel?"
"Everybody does." He smoothed his jacket, adjusting it for ease of movement, as if the mention of it energized him. "If only forward in time at the rate of one second per second. But you, if I'm not mistaken, seem like the type to go much farther and faster than that."
Considering the circumstances, she tried to see that as a good omen rather than a bad one. She felt almost hopeful, for the first time in days, as she waved to him and watched him stride away between the rows of stones. If there were people like him in the world, who would help a stranger without hesitation, the world without Ellie Oswald might be a place worth living in after all.
It only occurred to her then that she didn't even know his name, and nor did she know where he'd learned hers. Maybe he'd seen the name carved on the stone, connected it with the obituary in the local newspaper – Eleanor Oswald, survived by her husband David and daughter Clara – and, Sherlock-Holmes-style, made the deduction from there.
"Oh, and by the way," he called over his shoulder, "If you happen to meet a fellow who looks about your age and wears a bow tie … "
"Yeah?"
"Give him my best regards and tell him he's a prat."
Clara shook her head in utter mystification as she headed for the gates.