Summary: There was a time in the life of every one of us when we'd much rather be anywhere else. All of us wished that we could just run away from it all.
A/N: In which I write a silly little fic as a result of getting a quote that seemed to make sense back then stuck in my head about a month ago.
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.
Places To See
„Oi, stop that, "Clara smashed the Doctor's hand away from the ingredients. She was in the middle of baking another one of her soufflés and she was sure she'd finally get it right this time weren't it for the Doctor deciding to drop by and be extremely nosy at that. Apparently he had decided to try licking all of the ingredients in the hope of finding some kind of new food that he had come up with once a few hundred years back, but totally forgotten what the ingredients were since then. Clara wasn't sure what the recipe could potentially be, but since it seemingly was something that 'wasn't quite nearly as good as fish fingers and custard', she thought that she most probably didn't want to find out anyway. One thing was sure though, she had no other choice but to abandon all her hopes of making a soufflé today.
She sighed and turned to the Doctor who had in a fashion so typical for him turned his attention to something completely different while she was pondering soufflés. He was jumping around the house poking his nose at the stuff that Maitland family had left behind in the morning completely ignoring their privacy.
"Doctor," she called after him. "Not that I'm not glad to see you, but we have an agreement, you weren't supposed to show up until next Wednesday. I am not flying off in your snog box today, I have stuff to do."
The Doctor seemed to be completely oblivious to what she was saying, all his attention concentrated on a book that he found lying around in the living room.
„Yeah, I know, I know, no travelling until next Wednesday, don't worry. You can keep doing your boring human stuff until then. Though why exactly you would want to do that is...," he pondered.
Clara decided it might be better to interrupt him now before he went into a lengthy explanation about how silly it was to bother oneself with all the humany wumany stuff as he liked to call it.
„So why are you here then?" she wondered.
„Because..," he started, but didn't finish and Clara noticed how he was trying very hard not to look at her.
„Because what, Doctor?" She urged him to finish.
As he sighed theatrically and approached her, his nose almost touching her face, Clara couldn't help, but think that for someone who claimed to be over a thousand years old, the Doctor seemed to be extremely oblivious when it came to invading one's personal space.
"Because, I was bored," the Doctor admitted finally. "Spent some time in Victorian London, but it's a pretty boring place to be. And Vastra and Jenny claim to have work to do. And listening to Strax prattle about grenades gets rather annoying after a while."
Clara laughed: "So, let me get this straight, you got bored in Victorian London, because your friends were doing all the normal stuff and you decided to try the modern version where I do all the normal stuff?"
But the Doctor's attention was back to the book. Only now did Clara realise that it was her valued copy of 101 Places To See.
„Oi, that's mine!" She admonished him and yanked the book out of the Doctor's hands.
His face deepened in confusion: „You know, what I don't understand, Clara? You've had that book all this time and yet you never got around to actually travelling before me. Why?"
She sighed. How could one explain this to the Doctor of all people?
"All of us have sometimes found ourselves in places we wish we wouldn't be. There was a time in the life of every one of us when we'd much rather be anywhere else. All of us wished that we could just run away from it all sometimes. But most of us never did. Maybe because we weren't brave enough or maybe because we decided to tough it out or maybe because we knew somewhere deep in our hearts that it would be over one day and there was something better waiting for us there."
„That makes no sense," the Doctor shook his head.
„Well, to you, of course it doesn't," Clara laughed.
„What do you mean?" The Doctor asked confused.
„Unlike you, we're not Time Lords and we don't have a TARDIS, so we can't just decide to go off wandering around so easily. There is so much to do and we have so little time."
„But, that's precisely my point, if your time is so limited why would you...," the Doctor broke off mid-sentence. „You know what? Forget it, I'll never understand it. Sometimes humans are just silly. "
Clara smiled: „That might very well be, but I'm still not going anywhere with you until next Wednesday."