Full summary: The Doctor and Clara arrive in a very different London in the 21st century. In a search for answers, they find out someone had been messing up with the past, allowing a reality in which Hitler had won World War II. Before they have the chance to set it right again, Clara comes across someone she had lost a long time ago, someone she was bound to lose if she dared to set the past right again.
A/N: This is set in a 2015 Nazi world, any further information will be revealed as the story goes. I don't have any beta writers so forgive me of any eventual grammar slips.
Disclaimer: None of the main characters belongs to me.
Any (clasraoswaId), this is for you.
The TARDIS materialized herself in the middle of London.
Clara Oswald stepped out of the machine and looked at her surroundings. The street was familiar to her, but it wasn't her home like the Doctor was ought to drop her. Everything was completely normal and yet there was something different in the air, at least different from the last time she had stepped in her town.
"Doctor?" she called out for him, almost yelling so he would hear her from the depths of his spaceship, "Are you sure we've landed in the right date?"
The old alien looked from her petite form just in the door frame of his ship to the monitor. The date checked correct. "As a matter of fact, yes," he said simply, not admitting out loud his machine had a bad habit of never landing where it was supposed to.
"Something's… off," her voice was low, but he heard her anyway. In a matter of seconds, she felt him hovering behind her, his height allowing him a view of the outside even though she was still standing by the door.
"It looks the same to me," he confessed, although he hadn't really taken the effort to analyze the environment. "It always feels weird coming back home after too much time on space. I wouldn't give it too much thought."
Finally, she started to walk away from the time machine, feeling the chill air touch her bare arms. Odd, she thought to herself, there were no clouds in the sky indicating the possibility of rain, and summer in England tended to be warm. She crossed her arms in front of her chest.
Her nose twitched a little, before saying, "Where in London are we exactly? I don't see any signs."
He sighed deeply, at last giving in and going after her, "If I were to guess… I'd say Baker Street."
Clara frowned her forehead remarkably, "That's crazy, Doctor. This can't be Baker Street."
"Why not?" he pondered, distancing himself from her a little, "Look," he pointed at a random building, "There's that M&S Café you took me once, saying you wanted to be the one to take me somewhere you liked."
"You didn't like it, of course," she mumbled under her breath.
"No, but that's not the point," he took a few steps to his die, "You can see the trees from that little park from here, you know, we went for a walk there afterwards."
Clara smiled at the memory, "Yeah, you were terrified of walking there at night, saying that burglars were out to get your magician coat and your screwdriver."
The Doctor chuckled to himself, "And you said I didn't have to worry, because you were taking taekwondo classes," he glanced right into her deep brown eyes, and if he didn't fear drowning on them, he wouldn't have looked away, pointing at the street below, "And if you walk down that road, you'll surely find the infamous Sherlock home."
She closed her smile, sadly, understanding he had to change the subject as fast as he could, otherwise he would start to evidently care. She sighed, still unable to take her eyes off him, "Something is still odd, I can feel it."
He scratched his chin, "Come on, Clara, let's go back to the TARDIS and I'll take you home," he stood an arm out for her.
She ignored it, "Doctor, if you're so sure about it, then tell me something, where are all the cars? I don't know if you've forgotten but Baker Street is a pretty busy place."
The Doctor shrugged, "It might be Sunday."
Clara shook her head, "Then where are all the tourists? Tourists don't stay put on Sundays, they're always walking by; we've been here for a while now and yet no car, no person, has passed us."
He seemed to think for a moment, but still wouldn't budge in, "You're being paranoid."
Her eyes widened out of the blue, "Do you think there's been an alien invasion of some form while we were away and I'm the last human standing on Earth?!
He couldn't tell whether she was being serious or simply mocking him, because she knew he would fall for it. "If you are, then you're really lucky to be accompanied of space man willing to take you to all of time and space."
Clara smiled, unsure if he knew how flirtatious that had sounded, "Seriously, Doctor, what's going on here?"
He shot his shoulders up and down, "I don't know, you tell me."
She nodded, changing the view from him to the city that surrounded her. She had been there before, and although she hadn't really paid attention to the architecture, she could swear they weren't that rustic. It seemed to her most of the local stores had disappeared, vanished into thin air. It was different.
She circled around herself a couple of times, until her eyes got a glimpse of something she never thought she would see. She froze, opening and closing her eyes several times to make sure she wasn't hallucinating, opening and closing her lips a few more before any sound was formed, "Doc-tor, look…!"
His head turned in the same direction as hers. It took him a while to find what had caused her so much shock, but when he did, he felt her confusion pass along to him, "It's a… It's a swastika…?"
Clara reached out to grab his arm, holding it so tightly her fingertips were turning white. She could hear the panic in her own voice, "I don't understand, why is there a swastika in the middle of London? This can't be modern England, no, the TARDIS must have gotten it wrong."
The Doctor cleared his throat, his eyes so focused at the unusual flag they weren't even blinking, "The TARDIS never gets it wrong, Clara."
She leaned closer to him, "What are you saying, the TARDIS always gets it wrong," she argued, still a little unsteady.
"Alright, the TARDIS might get it wrong, but her monitors, don't," he explained, feeling her warm breath against his cold alien body, "If they're broken, we're in greater than arriving during World War II. We're stuck during World War II."
She took a deep breath, "I don't like this, Doctor. From all my years on school, I've never learned about the Nazis succeeding to invade Britain," she speculated, "I think we should go back to the TARDIS and stay off the radar until we figure out what's happening."
"Or," he started, his shock beginning to subside into curiosity, "We could go into some store and ask them the date."
"They would think we are bonkers for not knowing the date," she protested, but had no choice but to follow him once he started to walk away.
"We will come up with a clever story," he shrugged, "E.G., you've been in a coma for the past ten years and doesn't know what year it is so you decide to ask it around, since you refuse to believe in me and my time expertise."
"Why do I have to be the one in coma?" she squealed, rushing her little legs to keep up with his pace, "If anyone were to be in a coma, it should be you. Just look at your face!"
The Doctor looked at her with the corner of his eyes, "But what about this great story of how I've patiently waited for you for the past ten years, in the hope you would wake up but in the fear you would sleep forever?"
Clara rolled her eyeballs, "Aren't you full of yourself," she complained, "I could have been the one waiting for you."
He let out a chuckle, "Clara, your face resembles one that has just left the womb. You can't have been waiting for so long."
She raised an eyebrow, "How's that any different from having you wait for me for so long?" she snapped, finally coming across one open shop, "You know what, you stay quiet and let me handle the talking."
He muffed something she couldn't understand, following her into the store. It was a clothing shop, having little diversity on the fabrics available. But what draw Clara's attention the most was how all the women's designs were dresses or skirts down the knees.
She walked up to the clerk, who was sitting down the counter. Behind her, there was a teenaged girl, who couldn't be older than fourteen, and from their looks, she had a fair guess they were mother and daughter. Clara, on the other hand, was starting to feel uncomfortable at the way they were both staring at her, like she was England's most wanted.
She chose to ignore it, knowing the sooner she pried for information, the faster they could get out of there, "Hi, I'm sorry to bother but would you mind telling what day's today?"
The younger girl stared curiously at her, meanwhile the older one had a blank expression on, "It's April 24th, ma'am."
Clara nodded, "And the year?"
Noticing the quick change in their features, the Doctor rushed in, "Please, forgive her. She's recently awoken from a coma after ten years and she refuses to believe me when I say the date," he went along his story, regardless of how she had told him to stay quiet, "Can't blame her, though, imagine how awful must it feel to wake up and find out that ten years of your life have gone by without your knowledge."
The woman's frown didn't change, "2015, ma'am."
Much like the Doctor, the girl couldn't remain silent, "That's a lie."
"Elena, please!" the mother scolded her, turning her head back to the time travelers, "I'm sorry for my daughter. Would you like to take a look around?"
Clara's jaw fell open as she was about to say something, probably ask what had happened since she had last stepped on Earthly ground, but the teenager spoke up first, "Mum! Get them out of her! If there happens to be an inspection, we'll be screwed for interacting with a prostitute!"
Clara looked down at her clothes. She was wearing a jeans jumpsuit that went down to a little above her knees, a white shirt beneath it. It wasn't like she was exposing too much of her skin – not that she could care if she were. "I'm not a prostitute."
Elena buffed at the statement still facing her mother, as if looking at either of them was some sort of sin. "Mum, she's clearly a prostitute and that man is her pimp. Get them out of here."
"She's been in a coma for the past decade," the Doctor insisted, "The fashion sense back then was way different than what it is now. You can't hold something she doesn't know against her."
Elena approached her mother, "You know that's not how fashion was back then. And being in a coma? No one stays in coma for longer than a month anymore, nowadays. They're either rebels of the Reich or just mentally sick."
The clerk took a long breath, looking down at the floor as she stood, "I think you both should leave.
Clara's eyes enlarged, what the hell was going on? "But-"
"Please," the woman begged, still unable to initiate eye contact, "We don't want any problems."
The Doctor wrapped his fingers around her tiny wrist, "Come on, Clara, let's go," he said, pulling her by the arm before she had the chance to protest.
The moment they reached outside, she freed herself from his grip just so she could look at him in the eyes, perplexed, "Did that girl just call me a whore?"
"She just called me your pimp, when we clearly resemble the same age!" he spatted, indignantly.
Clara frowned her brows. Sometimes she assumed he'd forgotten he didn't look like his past incarnation anymore. "You just told me you look too old to be in a coma for ten years, Doctor."
"Well, obviously, you'd be the better candidate for a vegetable, you were asleep for so long, you didn't have to work and grow old like I did," he stated the obvious.
She shook her head, "You know what? Never mind that," she threw her hands in the air, "Can we focus ourselves in the big picture here, instead? I mean, this clearly isn't the London I left a few weeks ago."
"No, it isn't" he agreed, circling around himself so he could lean eyes on everything, "Someone – something – is setting a new reality…? They could be hypnotizing people, altering their memories so they wouldn't be able to tell truth from fiction apart, therefore they can set any reality they want."
She stood still, eyeing him as he studied the environment. "Who's doing this? And why weren't we affected the moment we landed?"
"I don't know," he rubbed his jawline, still glancing up, "And probably because we weren't here the moment they took over."
"Then everybody who was born after is off the hook?" she pondered.
"Technically," he nodded, "But just like you were born knowing nothing, so were they. They don't know any better than growing up in an environment like this. This isn't fiction for them, Clara, this is pure and simple history."
Clara's expression was blank, "So unless we fix this, the whole world is screwed," she concluded.
"In general terms, yeah," he consented, starting to walk down the street. Clara was quick to follow him.
"Doctor?" she yelled from a little behind, "What are we supposed to do now?"
"Grab your phone," he demanded, not slowing his pace down so she would be able to catch up, "Google it. Someone's ought to have noticed it."
"But-"
"And be careful not to come across any spoilers," he didn't let her speak, "Anything you read becomes a fixed point, and you don't want any major events to be unchangeable."
She grabbed her phone out of her pocket, reluctantly, "I don't get it, Doctor, if we don't want to know it, then why am I googling it?"
"Just so we have a general sense of what's happening."
Clara was having a hard time keeping up with him, both physically as mentally. For some reason, he was more hyperactive than normal that day. "But you just told me what is happening."
"No," he held a finger up in the air, "I speculated what could be happening. The answer is currently lying on that artifact on your hands."
Facing her mobile, Clara stopped dead on her tracks. She was getting more and more lost by the second. "Doctor…"
"Hm? What is it?" he called her back, but had no alternative but to stop walking and turn around, as she had stopped moving. He scowled at her baffled expression, "Clara, what is it?"
"Google… Google is gone," she let out a cry, too in shock to look back up.
"What?!" he rushed back to her side, "Have you tried refreshing the page?"
"Of course I have," she grunted, "This doesn't add up. Had they taken down all the satellites from Earth, the universal reach chip you gave me still would have been able to access it. Have they taken down Google instead?"
"It's possible," he suggested, "Getting rid of Google would be a great way to control people's access to information, especially now in an era in which humans simply don't use paper anymore. Check other websites."
"They're all gone," she sighed, "Twitter, Wikipedia, BBC. Everything's gone," at last, she restored the eye contact, repeating, "I don't like this, Doctor."
"I don't, either," he confessed, "Whoever's doing this, they're in deeper than we originally thought."
"What happens next? What are we supposed to do?" she wondered, stepping a little closer to him. Feeling his presence next to her was all the comfort she was taking in that moment.
For the first time since their arrival, they say a person passing by. A man, in his mid-twenties, on the opposite side of the street, walking in a quiet motion. Eyeing each other, they both agreed they should try and gather some information from him.
"Hi," the Doctor called for him, midway through the street, Clara following close behind, "We're new in town, would you mind-"
"Get back to the brothel you come from," he didn't even bother himself to hear them through, looking at Clara with disgust, as he rushed away from them.
She could feel her blood running angrily through her veins, on the verge of losing her temper with everybody making assumptions about her, so irritated with the way she was getting treated that she stepped right in front of him, blocking his way, "Why's everybody thinking I'm a whore?" her voice had gone one scale up, "I'm not a whore, and my clothes certainly do not define who I am, so I think it's time for you to get your outdated patriarchy out of your tiny little mind."
The Doctor simply stood back, watching her with half a smirk on his lips. If there was something that he had no doubts about was that she could damn well stand up for herself.
The man looked down at her with intimidating eyes. He made sure to lean down at her height, assuring her of his superiority. "And I think you should shut up, because men don't like women with attitude, and it's very likely that one of them might take it the wrong way, besides feeling provoked with your clothing, and end up doing things you wouldn't like. Or, who knows, maybe you do enjoy that kind of power over you."
Clara felt sick to her stomach with his words, but that didn't make her back down. Instead, she rose her finger just a few inches away from his face. "You're not superior to me. You don't get to threaten me. You don't get to call me a whore."
Without any previous warning, he angrily and tightly grabbed her by the wrist. Clara tried to break free, but he was stronger than her. She ordered him to let go of her, only getting him to toughen his grip over her. He was about to say something when the Doctor pulled him away from his companion with a strong shove of his shoulder.
"You won't lay a finger on any woman," his voice was calm, but fierce nonetheless, "Especially if she's accompanied by me," he saw her scratching her wrists, now red with the stamp of his fingers. "Clara, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she muffed under her breath.
The young man started to laugh, "Do you really think I'm scared of a draft old man and his escort? You should fear me, because there is a police officer approaching and I could easily get you both arrested."
The Doctor turned around, only to notice there was indeed a uniform getting closer. There was still quite a distance them, so he could only make the red fabric of his upper left shoulder. He heard her say, "We haven't done nothing wrong. If anybody's in trouble, it should be you for vain respect and harassment."
The Doctor took a step back, as his eyes finally understood the sign in his arm. "Clara, I don't think he'd be willing to help us."
Without any morals or decency, the guy yelled to the policeman, "Officer! This prostitute is coming onto me, arrest her!"
Clara quivered away, standing right next to the Doctor, "I… I think we should…"
He nodded, wrapping his fingers around hers, "Run!"
A/N: of course, this is a reality set in my mind only, therefore I have no idea how a Nazi world would be in the 21st century, but I did my fair of research and tried to make it as accurate as I could. If you have any ideas of how you think things would be, I'd love to hear them, so any reviews are appreciated :)