"So where are we going?"
"Somewhere very exciting, Clara."
"And you're not going to be any more specific than that?"
"No."
"Why not? Should I be scared? Is exciting scary? Are you just saying 'exciting' so I'll feel better about being in mortal peril?" Oh, she's getting used to me far, far too quickly. It's a little disturbing. Makes it hard to answer her. I mean, just look at her. Those big dark eyes, all glittering and excited (ironically) over the idea that it might be scary.
How can I look into those eyes and say, 'Because I have no idea where we're going yet'? How, in good conscience? I can just imagine her disappointment, the way that little face would fall.
It's nobody's fault, really. I'm just not naturally a very organized person. Alright, so I make a point of tidying the console room every Monday, but the non-linear shape of my life means that Mondays can be few and far between, and then I could have a month of Mondays, and there's no tidying to do. It doesn't really count as organization. Companions just expect so much of me. 'Something amazing', they'll say, and I have to pluck something magically out of the air, even though there's too much to choose from, and my definition of 'amazing' won't necessarily match theirs and…
Look, it's stressful, alright?
But we can find out where we're going. I only went to pick her up because the Tardis had a message for me. It came up whilst I was tinkering with Raikoninck technology I picked up last week. I say, tinkering, I was trying to figure out what it's for. All I've managed to do with it (thus far, anyway) is amuse Clara for ten seconds. The moment she stepped aboard she wanted to know what the 'big melty patch' on the floor was. I just told her not to step on it, if she can help it. Don't know yet if it's dangerous or not… Because I received a message, yes, that's how I got onto this story.
What message? Well, loosely translated, made intelligible for humans, beneath the level of interface I and my extraordinary machine have reached after all this time together, it comes out as, 'You've Got Mail'.
I set said-Extraordinary-Machine down on a small asteroid near the July nebula. Clara, before I can warn her, rushes out the door, expecting miracles, and alien worlds, and dancing elephants and all sorts of silly, frivolous things. She sets on foot on cold blue stone and just stops.
"Doctor? Somewhere exciting? I mean, unless this big rock is hurtling towards an alien sun, I don't see how this is exciting. Is it? Hurtling towards an alien sun, I mean?"
"As much sense as it makes for you to no longer have any fear of death, I'd love it if you didn't wish for it quite so fervently."
"What do you mean, 'makes sense'?"
…I ought to fill my shoes with sugar. That way, when I keep putting my foot in my mouth with Kitty Ninelives over there, at least it'll taste nice. "Nothing. Hanging around me. It happens."
"Nearly dying? It happens a lot." I take out the sonic, set it to find a specific signal, and follow where it wants me to go. Clara is never more than a step behind. Actually, at one point, her toe drags rather painfully on the back of my ankle. I stop, and turn to her. She's just looking up, tentatively smiling, "We're going where the excitement is, now, aren't we?"
"We are going to the part of 'this big rock' that was on top when I first landed here."
"So what's there?"
I point past myself, at something just beginning to show itself over the next ridge. Clara, feeling very adventurous today, goes running on ahead. At the crest, she stops again, just as she did outside the Tardis. That's mildly irritating, actually. Not because of the ingratitude, or the fact that she's in space and the year is Thirteen-Thousand-and-Something and she can still be disappointed, though those could be irritations if I was a more irritable fellow.
No, it's because I quite like what's over that ridge. She's not sharing my enthusiasm. That's what's irritating.
Here, on an asteroid in the deep time of her future, barrelling through space at thousands of miles per hour forever with no impetus to do so or to stop, there is a classic American post-box. Sorry, mail-box. You know. The kind that looks like a bomb shelter for a tiny man, with a flag on top to show when he's in, like at Buckingham Palace, on top of a pole.
My one has a face painted on the front, with a duck's beak, and twin windmills that would paddle like duck's feet except that there's no wind in space. I'll admit it, I didn't think that one through. Mea culpa. But he's still very, very cute. And the flag is up.
"Post," I tell Clara. "Post is exciting. This letterbox is a dead drop at the end of the universe. Only some of my best friends know about it. Only very important post ever comes here. Post is always exciting."
Clara does that little smirk she does, that little toss of the head, sarcastic even before she's opened her mouth, "Got my pulse racing."
"Should I fire a laser at you while I retrieve it, would that help?" She mumbles something which I hope and pray is not, 'Might do', while I go over, grab the lovely little ducky by his beak and open the hatch.
Inside, there is one slip of heavy, very fine card. It's got a watermark and everything. Very classy. The words on it are embossed, and picked out in gold. And it begins with some of the most exciting words in the known universe.
You are cordially invited to… After that, it doesn't matter what it say. Soon as I see the word 'cordially' I'm one leg into the trousers of my tux, oh, yes. "Is black-tie exciting enough for you, Clara? You can borrow a dress, there's a walk-in wardrobe on the Tardis… somewhere… Think you have to go down the helter-skelter and turn left, but I'm not sure how you get back up-"
"What's it an invitation to?" She cut me off. I was thinking out directions, to help her no less, and she cut me off. "Doctor? What's it an invitation to?"
She's not looking up at me this time. The big dark eyes are otherwise occupied. They are narrowed with focus, looking at something on the back of the invite. It's such good card, so thick, I can't even make out the grooves of something written there.
"An awards ceremony of some sort. Giving out honorary doctorates or something. Must be someone I know but… Black-tie, Clara. Please, try and act excited."
"Maybe you've got the exciting side of the card," she says. "I think I have the scary side."
She looks at me, finally. Slowly, tentatively, I turn the invitation over, to see what she saw. There, in spiky, childish capitals, all of different sizes and veering across the card, there is another message. She's right; it seems a lot more urgent than being invited, cordially or not, to some trivial event.
'Doctor helps,' it says. It says that a couple of times, in that mess. In different directions, wherever there was a gap, a pleading kaleidoscope, it says, 'Doctor helps'.
"Not goes here," Clara reads aloud. "Wait, is the Tardis alright?"
"Of course she is, we just left her. Why?"
"Well, you said the Tardis translates for us, right? Doesn't that sound a little bit dodgy to you? 'Not goes here. Doctor helps.' Doesn't that sound like maybe it's a little bit…sick?"
At least she looks ashamed of herself when she says that. I don't mean to glower at her, but really, if she didn't hang her head at that, I'd be rather put-out indeed. Of course there's nothing wrong with the Tardis. She's never been sick a day in her life. She gets tired sometimes, yes, but only when I've run her down. Yes, I can honestly say, any off day the Tardis has ever had, I can take the sole responsibility for.
…I can honestly say that, but normally I don't. Normally I don't say that, in case she hears me and thinks, 'Oh yeah' and runs off with River. Not that she'd do that to me. Not that I've had that nightmare. Couple of times. Not that I've bought her little treats like new coolant pipes and curtains for the upstairs windows as some sort of bribe to keep her from- I'll stop talking now…
Anyway, the distressed message on the back of the card hasn't been translated. Not for Clara, anyway. It was already in standard Earth English.
Well, 'standard' is the wrong word for it, perhaps.
'Doctor helps. Not goes here. Here am being badplaces for her. Her am being frytenned. Doctor helps.'
I know that sick, dodgy English. From that, I know who wrote that desperate message on the back of the invitation. And I will tell you very solemnly that she meant every strange and begging word.
"On a scale of one to ten, in terms of excitement, where does 'saving an old friend who can usually handle herself fairly well from some as-yet-unknown terror at a black-tie event' rank?"
As we turn back towards the Tardis, those first few steps, she has a good hard think about it. With a nod for definition, "Six."
"I beg your pardon?!"
[A/N - For Vilinye, who requested the reappearance of a certain somebody, and because I got bad news and needed my Doctor, and because I'm auctioning a multi-chap at the end of the month and forgot to check whether or not I can still even write DW multi-chap and because... Because of because, okay? Because of lots of becauses. I hope there's still somebody out there who'll read this and enjoy it. Much love, Sal.]