"So Gallifrey!" The Doctor declared loudly, clapping his hands and spinning around with boyish enthusiasm. "It's out there somewhere, all I have to do is find it."
"So where do we start looking?" Clara asked, following the Doctor into the TARDIS.
"I have absolutely no idea." The Doctor replied without losing a shred of his enthusiasm. "I mean a whole planet, where could you misplace that? It's not like it would slip behind the sofa cushions or be on the top shelf behind that breakfast cereal that you didn't really like and you should have thrown out ages ago as it's so far out of date the mold on it has grown sentience and has an active space program. That really happened by the way, out in the horse head nebulae."
"No it didn't" Clara contradicted with a smile.
"Well no it didn't." The Doctor admitted. "But it should have."
The Doctor capered around the TARDIS console, seemingly randomly pushing buttons and adjusting levers whilst Clara ambled slowly around the periphery her hand idly trailing on the safety rail surrounding the dais upon which the central console was set.
"So do you think we'll run into them again?" Clara asked, pausing in her circumnavigation to gaze at her Doctor.
"Run into who?" The Doctor asked distractedly as he spun some controls and peered into a viewer resembling an antique "what the butler saw" Machine.
"Those previous ...yous." Clara tilted her head as if pondering the fittingness of the term.
"Oh I don't expect so." The Doctor answered absently. "If I remember my timeline correctly I regenerated straight after the final day of the timewar, and in my other incarnation, let's see if I'd just married Bess that would mean I regenerated again very soon afterwards."
"Only to be expected really." The Doctor continued. "Three of me in one place at one time and fiddling about with a fixed point in time. Even a Timelord's body can't cope with that sort of paradox. Regeneration would be inevitable, you can't pull a ball of timey wimey string to pieces without creating loose ends and the universe hates those loose ends and will try to snap them back into place and tidy everything up."
Clara looked hard at the Doctor, quicker to see the obvious than he was in his preoccupation with the TARDIS controls.
"But wouldn't that mean..." Clara started to say.
"NOOOO," The Doctor wailed suddenly, cutting his companion's question off mid sentence. "Not now, you can't. I have so much to do. I'm not ready."
The Doctor stared at his hands, his expression horrified. Rushing across the control room he rummaged through a box and pulled a hand mirror out and studied his face intently pulling faces and pinching his skin.
"Do I look glowy at all?" He asked Clara desperately. "Shinier than usual?"
"Umm, Doctor. You're starting to scare me." Clara said seriously. "Even more than usual that is. What's going to happen?"
"I can't keep this body, it's on borrowed time already." The Doctor explained. "And just when I'd got it the way I liked it too, more or less."
"You're going to regenerate?" Clara asked. "When? Now, soon?"
"I can feel it coming already, it's all sort of tingly. Like rubbing a balloon on your jacket and making you hair stand on end. No forget that, nothing like the balloon thing at all, don't know why I said that." The Doctor babbled. "And I so wanted to be the me that brought Gallifrey back, it's not fair."
"Should I do something?" Clara asked with deep concern. "Boil some water, fetch towels?"
"Boil some water, fetch towels?" The Doctor spluttered, running up to Clara and staring intently at her. "I'm regenerating, not having a baby. Oh, oh yes, there's something you can do. This here."
The Doctor feverishly raced back to the TARDIS controls and flipped through what appeared to be a card index system. About halfway through he gave a shout of triumph and pointed at one card and gestured for Clara to come close.
"When the time comes call this number on this phone." The Doctor ordered. "It's old friends, Madame Vastra and her gang. She'll know what to do, she can activate a homing beacon."
The Doctor rushed halfway around the console, dragging Clara with him by the hand and indicated a set of controls.
"This is sort of an autopilot Clara." The Doctor explained. "Press this once Vastra tells you the beacon is on and then this button here when this little red light is flashing."
"But you'll still be here Doctor." Clara protested. "Won't you be able to do that?"
"Ah yes and no." The Doctor replied unhelpfully. "Tricky things regeneration, never know how hard it's going to hit you. I might be out for a while afterwards or I might be bouncing off the walls. If I start acting erratically, don't on any account let me near the controls."
Clara stared at the Doctor for some moments without speaking, wondering just how she would be able to determine erratic behavior from the Doctor's normal behavior. Though she had accepted that the Doctor could regenerate and seen the proof in their recent adventures the prospect of her Doctor changing filled her with dread. Eventually she simply nodded, knowing that whatever happened she was as ready as always to do whatever it took to keep the Doctor safe.
"It's starting." The Doctor said, fear and wonder plain in his voice.
The Doctor held up his hands in front of him, backing slowing away from his impossible girl. Clara stared in wonder as his hands began to glow and wisps of golden light emanated from his fingertips. She held her breath in awe as the glow spread and intensified, captivated by the magical beauty of the light that slowly suffused her friend. The light continued to intensify until some critical point was reached. Suddenly the Doctor stood bolt upright, his arms outstretched at his sides and his face upturned.
"GERONIMO!" The Doctor, her Doctor, screamed at the top of his lungs for one last time.
Light burst forth and poured from the Doctor's mouth and sprayed from his finger tips, engulfing his whole body. Clara stared transfixed, nothing she had seen in all her amazing time since the Doctor had stormed into her life had been this beautiful and breathtaking. She idly noted that although the light seemed to blaze that there was no heat unlike fire. The Doctor's features through the haze of light seemed to melt and grow liquid, his features changing then resetting into something, someone new. The light blazed for a second or two more before diminishing and sputtering out altogether.
Clara gawped at the finished transformation as the figure standing before her held the pose in which her Doctor had screamed for that final time. A wracking intake of breath and the rise and fall of the chest were evidence of life.
"Doctor?" Clara asked tentatively. "That is you in there isn't it?"
The Doctor looked down and smiled, teeth even and white. "Still here Clara, you can't get rid of me that...ohh that voice is a bit high. Residual energy in the larynx must be throwing up a few octaves."
"Pardon me a moment." The Doctor's hand reached up to touch the throat and the Doctor coughed noisily as though trying to dislodge something. "Mi mi mi. Do re mi fa so la tee do."
The Doctor's eyes went wide and the fingers exploring the throat pressed and touched with urgency, but explore as they might no Adam's apple could be found. The Doctor felt the hair upon the head, following the tight wavy tresses down to just below the shoulders and then pulled a lock in front of the eyes and gasped at the gingerness.
"Ginger! Finally, I've so wanted to try being ginger." The Doctor exclaimed enthusiastically, exploring the hair thoroughly. Rubbing the lock of hair and sniffing it, then feeling the mass of curls. "That's a lot of ginger though, I've never had such big hair before. Ha, River Song hair and ginger."
"Seriously Doctor?" Clara said, raising an eyebrow. "The most important difference you've noticed is that you're ginger?"
The Doctor gave Clara another brilliant smile and opened the tweed jacket. Two firm mounds tented out the shirt and the Doctor cupped them experimentally, finding each a nice handful and gave them a squeeze before jiggling them playfully up and down.
"Well there are these, they're definitely something new." The Doctor replied happily. "I think they'll be fun, I always wondered what having these would feel like."
Clara stared at the jiggling breasts and then shook her head as if trying to wake herself from a trance. Leaving the Doctor to the game she seemed absorbed in she sought out the controls the Doctor had shown her before his regeneration. She picked up the receiver on the phone and carefully dialed the number from the card and was rewarded with a ringing tone almost at once. The phone rang three times before it was answered.
"Madame Vastra, is that you Doctor?" Clara breathed a sigh of relief, the Silurian detective would know what to do surely.
"Hello,hello? Can you hear me?" How the phone could reach through time as well as space Clara could not even imagine, but as with many things with the Doctor she had grown to accept the seemingly impossible.
"Clara? Yes my dear we can hear you." Vastra's voice calmed Clara, she glanced back at the Doctor. He...she was still hefting her breasts and seemed to be providing the voices as the pair had a conversation with one another. "Is something wrong child? You sound distressed? Is the Doctor with you?"
"Well sort of." Clara answered, wondering just how she could explain what she had just witnessed. "But he...it's kind of hard to explain. Better if you see this for yourself. The Doctor said you could send a signal that the TARDIS could lock onto. We need your help."
"Of course Clara, initiating the beacon now." The Silurian reassured her. "You know how to lock on the TARDIS navigation?"
"Yes, the Doctor showed me how to do that." Clara confirmed. "Locking the navigation to your signal now."
Clara did exactly as the Doctor had shown her earlier and the winking red light lit up immediately. She crossed her fingers as she pressed the button she had been shown, praying that this one time especially the TARDIS would actually end up in the exact place and time that it was supposed to. The wheezing of the TARDIS in flight was a hopeful sign and Clara hung on as the inner column of the console began to rise and fall and usual turbulence shook her. The Doctor was shaken from her playful self-examination by the motion.
"What's going on? Where are we going, and who said you could drive?" The Doctor demanded. "We don't have time for excursions, we need to find Gallifrey."
"Doctor, Gallifrey's frozen in time. It isn't going anywhere, or anywhen for that matter." Clara shouted back over the din of the TARDIS engine. "I'm taking us where you told me to earlier, don't you remember?"
The Doctor frowned, the events of only a few minutes ago apparently forgotten. "Well if I told you to then I suppose it must be alright. I always know what I'm talking about, well usually, sometimes at least."
There was a solid bump that made both Clara and the Doctor grab onto the nearest solid object to prevent them being thrown off their feet and the column ceased moving.
