OCTOBER 2019 - CHISWICK, LONDON
"Oi, Clara, there you are! Sorry about the TARDIS… been sulking since Trenzalore, but I'm sure it'll come out of the carpet. Say, did you get a new sofa?"
Clara's heard the phrase that blew my mind before... but until this moment, she's never realized just how accurate it could be.
She can't think.
She can't move.
She can't breathe.
And she has no idea how long she's stood frozen in her front hallway, gaping open-mouthed at the dead man in her lounge.
If you'd asked her an hour ago, she would have sworn she remembered him perfectly.
Now, a room's length from him, live and in the flesh, she realizes just how wrong she was about that... how the passing years have stolen him from her, blurring and bleaching his image in her mind.
But here he is, and yes, yes, that's just how his voice should sound… that smoky, posh staccato he can plunge into thunder at a moment's notice. Those are his real eyes, light-mixed and changeable as opals. He's being restored to glorious Technicolor inside her head, and she doesn't seem able to do anything but stare at him, her senses snatching greedily at every rediscovered detail and hoarding them for later.
"Clara?" the Doctor says tentatively, taking a step forward, his hand outstretched. "What's wrong? Has something happened?"
She swallows a hysterical titter, sternly reminds herself to get her priorities straight.
There's the universe to consider.
She waits until she's certain that she's gotten her voice perfectly calm and even before she speaks. "You're crossing your timeline right now. I know that's bad, so… hadn't you better go?"
"I've showed up last week again?" he winces, wringing his hands. "Er, there's just one, slightly awkward boo-boo. As mentioned previously, sulky TARDIS; she's gone and ditched me. Suppose I could just hide upstairs for a bit until I'm gone…"
He makes it three steps towards the stairs before he freezes.
"Hold on a tick," he frowns, pointing. "Comfy new sofa wasn't there last week."
Clara hopes she doesn't look as panicked as she feels. "Of course it was!"
"I have a keen eye for detail, Clara, and that sofa was most assuredly not there last time." He's on the prowl now, twirling around the room. "And neither was that table, or that one, or those chairs, or that window, and the fireplace was on the other side, and…"
"Penny in the air…" Clara mutters.
The Doctor rushes towards her, clamping his hands on her shoulders, his eyes wild. "Clara, this is a whole different room! This is a whole different room in a… a… a whole different house!"
He flings himself at the kitchen door, giving it an obscene lick and smacking his lips. "Last week did not have this funny sort of prawn-y aftertaste."
"Doctor," Clara tries. "Timestream, remember?"
But it's too late. The Doctor has gone unnaturally still, truly seeing her for the first time since he's arrived.
In the silence that falls, each tick of the hallway clock seems to grow, to echo.
Waves of emotions crash over his face: horror, sorrow, guilt. He pushes his hair back, swallows hard.
"Clara," he begins, his voice slow and pained, "Please tell me I haven't done this again. If I've left you waiting for twelve years…"
"Twelve years?" Clara sputters. "You think it's been twelve years? I'm taking that night cream straight back to the chemist."
That shocks a chuckle out of him, and he tilts his head, examining her face. "How old are you, then?"
She arches an eyebrow. "How old do you think I am?"
"Not falling for that one again," the Doctor declares. "Still got the bite marks from Joan of Arc."
She can't help laughing, and he beams in a way that cramps her heart.
"Can I hug you?" she blurts, then bites her lip. "I mean, if it won't short out the time differential o-or reverse the polarity of the neutron flow…"
He sweeps her up and spins her before crushing her to him, his fingers threading through her hair to cup the back of her head.
She's trying so hard to record every single second of this for later. She's lived a million lifetimes, been to both ends of creation… and nothing has ever left her quite as awestruck and grateful as getting to be here, to do this again.
She will not be the first one to let go. She rests her head against his chest, eyes closed, gulping in greedy lungfuls of his scent.
"Oh, my Clara, I'm so sorry," he murmurs, kissing the top of her head.
"For what?"
"Whatever boneheaded thing I did that made you leave me." He tucks his fingers beneath her jaw, lifting her gaze to his. "How long has it been?"
Oh, God, the look in his eyes… she can't, she can't, she can't…
So Clara does what she does best: hide it all inside a joke.
"Who says I left? Maybe he got sick of me," she says archly. "Maybe I sassed him one too many times and he chucked me out over Cardiff."
"He," the Doctor frowns. "You've said… he. More than once..."
Clara pales. The Doctor's moved away from her again, stabbing at the air with his Thinking Finger.
"I regenerate again, don't I? Shouldn't be possible, but somehow... and into someone so different that you don't even think of us as the same person."
"I know you're the same person," she insists. "Who knows that better than me? It was just… different."
His eyes narrow. "Valeyard different?"
"No, no, nothing like that, you haven't got anything to worry about. It's just… you know. You changed, as you always do. He... you... said Jammie Dodgers were like stale strawberry bogeys."
The Doctor looks absolutely scandalized.
"He was just... more like a… well... a mentor, I suppose."
The Doctor drops bonelessly into an armchair, plucking a pen off the side table and glaring at it. "A mentor."
"Now look, you know we can't keep talking about this!"
He rolls the pen between his fingers, mouth set in a tight line. "He hurt you."
She blinks. "I never said that."
"Which is a rather different sentence than No, he didn't."
"He's a good man," Clara insists. "Very good. It was just my time to go."
"Did we ever — I mean, you and me, before… " the Doctor blurts, but snaps his mouth shut.
"I can't answer any more questions about your future, Doctor. You know that. Honestly, I've told you way too much already..."
"Mentor," he pouts, crossing his arms.
She swallows her frustration, tries another tactic. "You were my best friend, you know. I haven't seen you in… well, a while… and I thought I'd never see you again. If you're stuck here for a bit, couldn't we, I don't know... go to the chippy, take a walk? Talk about something else?"
He nods, reaching out to take her hand, bringing it to his lips…
"You've got a tattoo," he sputters in shock, turning her wrist up for a better look. "In Gallifreyan?"
"I lost a bet," she smiles. "Very long story. It says something rude, I'm told."
The Doctor pulls out his glasses, arranging them on his nose and having a better look. "It's not rude. It just says Time Lady."
"But that makes no sense, why would he — oh!"
The Doctor's pulled her down into his lap, one arm winding around her waist while the other holds her inner wrist up for his inspection.
"Well, I suppose, uh, you can probably… s-see… better…" Her voice rises to a squeak on the last word, when he rests his chin atop her shoulder.
"It's an ambigram," the Doctor says, fascinated.
"A what now?"
"A message that says different things depending on how it's turned." He gently maneuvers her arm. "If I turn your wrist just a bit, look. See? Now it says 'Blue Box'."
She peers at it, but sighs. "Sorry, can't — I've forgotten almost all the Gallifreyan I knew."
"The Time Lady part is strange, too," he continues, his voice dropping to the lower register that makes heat pool in her stomach. "Are you certain future me was just your mentor, Clara?"
He drags his thumb slowly across the design, seemingly oblivious to the effect it has on Clara's breathing. "The literal translation here is Woman Time Lord, which is odd; there's already a word in Gallifreyan for Time Lady. Perhaps he had to swap the words to fit the ambigram?"
He bends his lips closer to her captive ear, drops his voice to a purr. "Swap them back, and it becomes Time Lord's Woman."
Their eyes lock and hold, the moment lingering...
Until she bursts into laughter.
"Oh, God," Clara's giggling so hard now she's nearly choking. "Sorry, sorry, but if you knew him... that's so not — I promise — it's just not. I bet if you keep moving my wrist, it turns into something like Woman That Time Lord Wishes Would Shut Her Blasted Sandgrown Cakehole."
The Doctor's grip on her wrist tightens. "He talks to you like that?"
He's hurting her just a tiny bit, but the protectiveness is so lovely she can't bring herself to mind.
They're back in spoiler territory, though, and she's rapidly gaining respect for how River has to deal with this all the time.
So she does what River would do — she changes the subject.
"What does the rest of it say?" Clara asks. "Quite curious now."
He doesn't want to let it go, she can tell, but he angles her wrist to a new position anyway. "Hmm, that's sleep chamber, and that one's — well, that's a little hard to translate. It'd be the clear light of the silver sun, I suppose, although…"
"I've forgotten almost all the Gallifreyan," Clara interrupts. "Not so far gone I've forgotten my name, thank you. I suppose it was the closest thing to what 'Clara' means."
He tries it out, whispering it against her hair. "It suits you."
"Wait... does that mean this part of the ambigram says Clara's bedroom?" she chuckles. "Cheeky."
His face flushes beet-red. "It's, ah, prepositional."
"In my bedroom, then. Still quite cheeky."
"It could mean guest room," he offers weakly.
Guest room. Clara's face pales. "And the bit before was 'blue box', you said. Blue box in Clara's guest room?"
"Something to do with the TARDIS, I suppose."
"He knew," Clara whispers. "He knew, of course he did — he remembered this. He knew you'd come here, knew I'd see you one more time..."
She touches the tattoo lightly. "Doctor, these must be instructions... a message he's left for you. The blue box isn't a metaphor — he gave me one the last time I saw him. He said he'd be back for it some day... I just didn't realize which him he meant."
They share a long, shocked look before the Doctor turns back to the message.
"Suppose we'd better see what the rest says, then. This symbol designates importance, and then there's…"
The Doctor pauses, scarlet creeping up his neck. "I-I'm afraid I can't read this next bit."
It's perfectly obvious that he's lying, and Clara's eyes narrow. "Perhaps the ink blurred over time?"
"Clever girl. I'm sure you're right. Moving on..." the Doctor taps the circles of ink with his finger. "He insults my intelligence, orders me to deliberately create a fixed point in time, insults my intelligence again, orders me to save someone, compares my physique to a marionette made of toothpicks…"
Her arm is bent so awkwardly now that she has to duck under her elbow to look at him. "All right, that stuff actually sounds like him. Now do you believe me about the 'Woman Time Lord' thing?"
He nods. "And that's where it loops back to the beginning. Something about this itches…"
"Maybe the start of the message is earlier in the loop — maybe you're meant to save a Time Lady?"
"None left," he shrugs. "It must be cipher, or a code, or…"
"Well, the last part that made no sense turned out to be a proper name. What if it's a name, like mine was?"
The Doctor stops. Gapes. Seizes her by the back of the neck and smacks a kiss above her eyebrows.
"Woman Time Lord," he marvels. "Woman. Time. Lord. It works twice, Clara, twice!"
"That's... great?" she says, having absolutely no clue what he's on about.
"You lived through the Roman Empire a few dozen times, Clara… what's 'Woman Time Lord' in Latin?"
"It's, ah… oh, I'm going to muck the grammar up, but…" she screws her eyes tightly closed. "Something like… domina tempus nobilis?"
The Doctor grins from ear to ear. "Donna Temple-Noble."