Author's Note: I hope I don't bore you with this one but I gotta get the situation explained so might as well get it out of the way now.
Clara stayed silent. Her mind racing so fast with what had just happened that she couldn't find what to say first. Everything was so confusing! One moment she's in the kitchen arguing with a beat up and moody Doctor, and the next she's sitting on a wet Doctor's lap while they try to catch their breath after running away from water. And what was with the water?
A stabbing pain shot through her and she looked down to see the Doctor inspecting the wrist she had injured earlier.
"Sorry." He said with genuine concern in his voice. "Wanted to check that it wasn't broken – which it isn't by the way. But it's starting to get a little swollen. You need to be more careful."
"Me?!" His proximity to her suddenly became blatantly obvious and she felt her face heat up at realizing that she was still sitting on his lap. Scrambling to her feet in a panic, she backed away a little and pointed an accusing finger at him.
"It's your fault! Your tinkering with your stupid Tardis made me slip in the fucking shower! And then you show up in the kitchen with a bleeding arm and shout at me when I try to help you but you act like a git and just leave-"
"Yeah, maybe you should-"
"And then you show up again soaking wet with no injury whatsoever and knock me to the ground and tell me to run from a flash flood and then the water just randomly disappears and now you're telling me to be more careful – what the hell is going on?!"
She was hysterical, pacing back and forth while trying to even out her breathing after her shouting.
"It's okay, Clara – hey, look at me." She resisted at first, not knowing what to think of the situation or his sudden change in demeanor but soon he had her in a firm grip from her shoulders and turned her to him, waiting until she met his eyes as he rubbed his hands up and down her arms to try and comfort.
"Everything is going to be fine, just calm down." She nodded, closing her eyes and taking slow and even breathes while taking pleasure in the warmth being produced by his hands despite the fact that they were relatively cold and his clothes were dripping on hers a little.
"Better?"
She nodded again. "Yeah."
"I take it, from your missing watch and that outburst that you are at the very beginning of our little maze game, right?"
"Please start making sense or I'm going to punch you so hard."
He smirked and she found it annoying that he was so amused when nothing was making any sense whatsoever.
"So you are then. You know, you said that you were going to be a little frantic but I didn't think it would be as bad as-"
"Doctor, explain."
"It's the Tardis." He stated, making a show of looking around the quiet corridor. "Her internal systems are malfunctioning."
"Okay, but what does that mean exactly." She asked, moving away from him so that she wouldn't be splashed with water as he wrung his coat and shook his hair. But she just ended up stepping into a small puddle, wetting her slippers. Ugh, knew I should've put on some trainers.
"It means that she can't control what's going on inside her." The Doctor continued. "As far as I can tell only rooms and parts of corridors are being moved around uncontrollably, with the rooms themselves staying intact inside, but if I don't find the console room and fix the systems soon, she'll begin to loose control of other, more important, things as well."
"Like what?"
"Like the air around us might be sucked out of our lungs at any moment."
Her eyes widened. "So we can suffocate at any time?"
"That's just one possibility. We could also get crushed by an increase in gravity, or the temperature could change drastically so that we die of hypothermia or get burned alive or-"
"I get it." She interrupted, starting to get more worried by the second. He must've noticed because he came closer to her again, only this time instead of aiming for her arms, he brought a hand to her face, thumb stroking her cheek almost imperceptibly. His hands were still cold and she shivered a little.
"Don't worry." His voice was above a whisper but it somehow sounded so low and intimate, as if it was trying to hide from any prying ears even though they were completely alone, like it was only meant for her and no one else. She didn't know what to make of it.
They were silent for a second before the Doctor seemed to catch himself and quickly pulled away, running a hand through his wet hair before continuing with what he was saying before.
"The rooms and halls may be shifting unnoticeably but the Tardis isn't taking this passively. That shaking? That's her doing her best to fight back and fix things, isn't that right old girl?" He patted the wall affectionately and Clara rolled her eyes.
"It doesn't look like she's doing a very good job of it. We almost drowned!"
"That was my fault actually. I fell into the ocean earlier. Once on shore I tried using the sonic to locate the exit but I guess I must've messed with the room's already delicate circuits because the room's center of gravity changed and pushed everything out the door."
Clara was about to ask how in the world there could be an ocean in the Tardis, but then remembered that she had once come across a room that had a mountain range that could possibly rival the Himalayas back on Earth. She sometimes wondered if rooms like that were built into the ship's systems for a reason, if the Doctor designed them out of boredom, of if the Tardis created them simply for the sake of showing off her infinite space. Either way, now really wasn't the time to inquire about it. She still had more important questions to ask.
"Can't you use the sonic now? Use some tracking setting-thing to locate the console room?"
"After what happened with the ocean, I'd rather not risk damaging the systems any further. Besides, I had already tried doing that when I first noticed what was occurring and it didn't help things much. The shifts are happening too randomly. Every time the sonic had at least half a path traced down to the console room, the halls would change again and the sonic had to start the calculations all over. For all we know, the halls have changed over a hundred times whilst we've been standing here without us noticing."
She took a moment to look around, imagining the earlier flood disappearing and reappearing in some other distant part of the ship. If the changing positions of their surroundings were the only problem she would have found the entire situation intriguing and exciting, if a bit annoying. But with the threat that they could literally die at any moment hanging in front of her, the idea didn't seem like as much fun.
"How long ago do you think this started?"
"Ah," He smiled again, eyes shining with his earlier amusement. "That depends on who and when you ask." She gave him a puzzled look.
"You're being cryptic again."
"I probably should've mentioned it earlier: the shifts aren't only happening through space, they're also happening through time. Luckily the Tardis' lose of control of that bit isn't as profound but it's still enough so that it's happening around the recent past and the near future. That's another thing we need to look out for: ourselves. We can interact with one another but we need to stay clear of our own self. Don't want to create a paradox; especially now that the Tardis is so vulnerable. Got it?"
Clara nodded slowly, her mind still processing this onslaught of information.
"Wait, so you're from the future?"
"Technically yes, seeing as I've been stuck in these halls longer than you have."
"So the you I fought with in the kitchen…"
"Was probably a future me since I haven't been in the kitchen with you. At least not yet." He smiled, obviously taking pleasure in these strange events and Clara still found it to be a little weird seeing him so at ease; after all the last two times she'd seen him was when they were both positively furious at one another. This whole situation was one massive headache after another.
"Okay, so how long have you been stuck here?"
"As of now? Lets see, it's been about…" He lifted his wrist and Clara finally caught sight of the infamous watch. It looked like any other wrist watch and was pitch black.
"10 hours, 44 minutes, and 26 seconds in counting."
"10 hours?!" He nodded.
"And it seems that that's only the beginning. The last time I saw you you told me you'd been stuck here longer than that."
She opened her mouth to ask how much but thought better of it. It'll only bring more stress to know how long she'd be trapped in this so called maze.
"What about you?" He inquired. "How long has this you been walking around for?"
"Since that shake in the shower, I'm guessing 3 hours." She said. He bowed his head in a single nod, pursing his lips together in thought. She was about to speak up again when the lights suddenly began to dim to a very soft glow before going out all together. She couldn't see her surroundings and jumped a bit when she felt something grip her hand. Her eyes soon adjusted to see the Doctor's hand holding hers.
"Right, we need to move on. We've been standing here for so long that we've practically been begging for something bad to happen. I'm surprised the ground hasn't opened up below our feet and swallowed us whole already."
"That can happen?"
"That's how I got separated from you and fell into the ocean; almost got my fingers chopped off when it was closing in again."
The Doctor took out his sonic, using it as a flashlight to help them see where they were going. They walked in a cautious but brisk pace, the Doctor leading the way with Clara following closely behind, her hand still in his. The only sound was coming from their steps when soft clinks and whirls began to resonate softly through the walls. She surmised that the sounds were probably always there; but now, with everything else so quiet and the eerie green glow of the sonic gliding on the walls around them, it was getting a bit unsettling.
"This is really creepy." She said, instinctively bringing a hand up to bite at her nails. The Doctor's grip on her hand tightened.
"Don't pay attention to any that. Focus on finding a door."
"What kind of door?"
"Red door, blue door, fat door, skinny door – it doesn't matter. We need to check every single door we can find. The console room could be behind any one of them."
Coming to an intersection, the Doctor pointed the sonic into each direction, checking to see if anything showed nearby. After checking one way he was about to move to the next when Clara spotted something.
"Wait, shine it over there again, close to the ground." He did as she said, walking closer to get a better look. A small door came into view; it seemed to be barely 3 feet tall.
"Seems we finally found something that's just the right size for you, eh Clara?" She slapped his arm but smiled at the sound of his faint laugh. Turning back to see if she could spot anything else, she was greeted with the sight of a metal wall covering the way they had come from.
"It's a good thing we went this way before it changed. C'mon, let's check it before it disappears as well." Putting the sonic back into his coat pocket, he crouched down and turned the knob. The door swung open and light shone onto the hall, blinding them a little. Due to the height of the door, Clara couldn't really see anything inside so she crouched down next to him.
One thing was for sure, it wasn't the console room. Instead it looked like a storage room; random objects littered the place: on the floor, in boxes, on shelves. The Doctor sighed and reached to close the door but Clara stopped him.
"Don't. Maybe we can find something that'll help." Without waiting for him to reply, she crawled inside and began looking around. He crawled in after her.
"Clara, this is just where the Tardis dumps everything that isn't used anymore. You won't find anything useful here."
"Maybe not useful to you." She said with a grin as she shoved some things over.
"What are you-"
"Found it!" She ran over to him, holding something in each hand and showing them off proudly to him.
"…Shoes." They weren't just any shoes; they were his old cream colored Converse that he used to wear all the time in his tenth body. And they were as dirty as he'd remembered.
"You don't mind do you? I know they're too big for me but anything beats wearing there soggy slippers." She gestured to her feet.
He was dumbfounded for a second, not really knowing how to respond. Those shoes had been his obsession after all; he had never let anybody wear them before. Then again, nobody had ever asked before. But why was he finding the idea of her wearing his old shoes so… pleasing?
He cleared his throat when he noticed that she was still staring at him, waiting for his response. "Uh… yeah… sure. Go ahead."
Clara immediately set to taking off her shoes and lacing up his, tying the laces as tight as she could so that they wouldn't slip off. After she was done, she stood up, moving her feet side to side and walking a little so that they could admire her work for a bit before bursting out in laughter.
"They look ridiculously huge on me!"
"I don't know," He started, calming down a bit. "I think you look quite endearing in them." Her gaze shot up to his and she watched his eyes widen at the realization of what he had just said out loud.
"If you're going to look around, hurry up. We don't have time to waste digging through this junk." He said angrily, quickly walking away from her. Clara swiftly turned back toward the pile of stuff she had been looking at earlier, but she wasn't paying much attention to what she was digging through as she was to what the Doctor had blurted out.
Had he really just said that? Was he flirting with her? Had he just flirted with her? Well, if his panicked escape was any sign then the answer would be yes, he had… in his own way. But what was she supposed to do now? What was she supposed to say? She couldn't just let it slide, not when she'd been waiting for something like this to happen, to finally have him show her that he liked her. Liked her, liked her.
I better come up with something fast before he – something caught her attention, something among the pile of rubbish.
Two pitch black watches.
"Doctor?" A sudden yell filled the air, scaring her. She turned but didn't see the Doctor anywhere, only the opened door.
"Doctor!" She ran to the small door and slid onto her knees before taking a look at the halls outside, hoping to find him. But it was too late and just as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone.