A/N: And here is part three of three! Thank you so much, dear readers, for all of the kind words on this story so far! Writing Ten has been an unusual pleasure. :)
Arrêter: Part III
The TARDIS was hollowly empty when Clara slipped inside the doors behind the Doctor. The two took a brief wander through the corridors, but the new Doctor was nowhere to be found. It was only half an hour later, when they had almost decided to go looking for him that he wandered in without an explanation, or an apology.
The jerking stop and start motion that characterized the new Doctor's first few attempts to fly might have proved that the TARDIS was resilient even in the hands of an amateur, but the uncontrolled motion was grating on what was left of Clara's nerves.
We're not talking cheese grater here.
She shook her head to try to clear the specter away as she flung around to the far side of the console, trying her best to compensate for her failing co-pilot
"Ease on the brake! You don't have to wrench it like that, use some finesse! Have some respect!" The younger Doctor howled as they slammed to a shuddering stop before lurching forward again.
"Easy for you to say! You've had time to get used to your elbows! I don't think I like these ones. They're all creaky and knobby…"
"Do you like them more or less than the colour of your kidneys?" Clara snarled as she reached up to balance a stabilizer that had blown out of alignment. The poor thing couldn't get a clear reading – the motions that needed countering were changing in orientation too quickly for it to keep up.
"I haven't decided what their respective rankings are yeeeeet!" The Doctor's voice broke unexpectedly high as the TARDIS spun, throwing her passengers off to the right. Clara's single handed grip gave out on her, sending her sliding around the edge of the console. The left knobby, creaky elbow of the Doctor leapt into action, flinging around her awkwardly, but strongly enough to set her balance again before whipping back to the controls in front of him.
It took a further seven laps around the lesser moon of Suiko IX, and a few trips to both the relative past (the first time they almost took the cap stone off a pyramid at Giza just seconds after it had been set into place) and the future (where at one point they ended up somewhere in the middle of Venus the Planet, instead of the Nexicorean Temple of Venus) before the younger Doctor conceded that the newest face had some rudimentary capacity to pilot his ship.
"You're really going to need Clara's help for a while…" The Doctor panted as he leaned back into the railing. He fumbled blindly beside him, hand searching for the coat and suit jacket he'd discarded near the beginning of the ordeal. Although the metallic room usually had a coolness to it, the temperature had soared in tandem with their frustration, leaving a hazy steam in the air, and a sheen of sweat on the three occupants. Clara pulled her cardigan sleeves up higher before shifting the Doctor's clothes along the railing towards his reaching hand. He smiled in thanks.
"I can handle it on my own. Why don't you go back to your own ship, so we can go try to save our planet? Clara and I will be fine." Came a barking reply that set Clara's shoulders into a tight squaring.
There were thoughts that boiled in her mind that screamed at her to dispute that assertion – but as she tried to bring them to form words, they seemed to slip away from her grasp, and she eventually gave in to the emptiness that was reclaiming her mind. The heated words being thrown between Doctors trickled back into her ears, filling the space her thoughts had vacated with a booming volume.
"Well if that's what you think, you might want to try to do a better job of it then!"
"Heh, that's a bit rich coming from you!"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, right." The older Doctor huffed satisfactorily. "You don't know about Martha and her year that never was yet. Or Joan Redford and how you hurt her. Or about what happened to Donna."
"Donna? What?"
"Stop." Clara finally said. It wasn't a bellowing command. In fact it was barely even audible compared to the level of voice the two men had been using. But it held all the quietly unsettling authority of someone who had quite simply had enough.
She turned to the younger Doctor. His face was flushed, and those lips that could turn into such a bright smile were twisted into a glower, though not one aimed at her.
"I'll make sure we get to Gallifrey, and that he doesn't take out any ancient wonders of the world in the process." She promised.
"That capstone wouldn't have even been there if we'd arrived two minutes earlier – there would have been several feet of clearance!" The other Doctor protested behind her.
"It's probably best if we do this now - who knows how much longer his energy is going to last."
"The markets of Nandoon are very boring even in the seventy-second century! It wasn't my fault I passed out on the way to them…"
An apology passed between her the Doctor before her.
"If you're absolutely sure."
The younger Doctor wrapped her into a hug, which she returned despite the scoffing behind them. He pressed a piece of warm paper into her palm, bending down to whisper in her ear. "I'm going to take a brief detour back to refuel at the rift in Cardiff. Don't know how much this crazy idea of freezing an entire planet will drain the old girl, so better to have her at her best. That is the TARDIS number, but with a space-time area code for where I'll be – in a nice, flexible point in time where I will still be out of sync with the rest of my timeline. If you're ever lost, if you ever need someone, please call me. And remember, you don't have to be screaming to deserve help, okay?" He stood up straight, pressing a swift kiss to her hair before striding out the door, his coat tails flying behind him.
Clara braced herself for a moment before rounding on the only Doctor left in the room. He tutted in such a way that was sure to mark the beginning of a lecture, but Clara never let him start. She understood now what needed to be sorted out, what had been so important before, but so unclear.
"What took you so long to get back here?"
"I…" He shuffled on his feet, taking on the air of a skulking schoolboy. "I got lost on the way back if you must know. I was turned around in those alleyways - they all look the same! When I couldn't find the TARDIS… I thought for a few minutes you two had flown off without me."
"Not such a great feeling, is it? That fear of being left behind. Feeling your blood turn to ice in your veins, freezing you to the spot and stopping your brain, leaving you with only the feeling of your heart racing, and you're trying to think – but you can't, so you're left with nothing but a consuming emptiness."
"Clara…"
"You will never send me away like that, again." He opened his mouth to respond, but she held up her hand to stop him, unable to keep the fierceness from her eyes. "No, stop. I don't want your promises, because I don't want lies. I told hi-" She hesitated, and he hung on her pause. His hawkish eyebrows arched up his forehead, widening his gaze that continued to burn into her.
"I already said it once," she recovered clumsily. His expression soured, though probably not as much as it would've if she'd said 'him,' instead of 'you,' again.
"If you want to travel with me, that's fine, but I've told you before, and I'll say it again: I am not bargain basement stand in. I will not have choices made for me, without even knowing a decision is going on. I will not be lied to and manipulated. I will not be someone else's 'victory.' I want to travel with you, not for you."
"You're not the one competing with a ghost." He finally said quietly.
She shook her head at him. "I don't want this to be a ghost story."
"What kind of story are we then, Clara?"
This isn't a ghost story…
Is this how he had felt before? Haunted by the way she moved, or the words she spoke that reverberated back to the echoes he had already met? Trying to work out how they connected, and how he felt about her? Trying to decide if this was all one big trap of some kind, or something he could believe in?
She took a deep breath. "I hope we're the kind that hasn't ended yet."
Her answer seemed to stir something new in him, warming his features – the new heat in his eyes radiating curiosity instead of admonishment.
"I suppose we have a rather important task begging our attention at the moment, don't we? Gallifrey and the Daleks await us."
"We do, yeah." She agreed.
He turned about on his heels, the tails of the old purple frock coat flying around him in a very familiar fashion.
He strode forward, before stooping down to pick something up off the floor.
"Clara, would you come here please?" He asked.
She pulled her arms close to her chest before following him. He took her hand, laying it flat in his palm before placing what he'd scooped up across her fingers.
It was his bowtie.
Clara wrapped the silk through her fingers, before turning her hand to rest in his. They stood absolutely still for a moment in utter silence. Even the usual hum of the TARDIS remained absent.
"You know, now that I've thought about it some more, I'm not very confident of my ability to fly this thing after all. At least… not yet. Will you… will you help me, Clara?"
The question hung between them, suspended in the brief seconds that passed by.
"Yes, I will," she tasted the word on her tongue before using it, "Doctor."