AN: Thank you for bearing with me through set up. Now we can get to the good stuff.
Reviewers are like angels – both kinds. They are lovely when they arrive and bless your writing, and they only move when you aren't looking. I'll shut my eyes, promise.
A newborn cries out for the first time. The world is a blurry, icky mess. Too bright for eyes so young, and too noisy. Voices that were always muffled before have found focus, and that's scary and loud. The air feels wrong. It doesn't support floating the way the warm fluid that was home for so long did. Her body is so heavy without the buoyancy of all that water. And what's this? An unfamiliar sensation of a foreign object coming in contact with skin! Nothing ever touches her skin, unless she accidentally brushes against the walls of her mother's stomach or her cord. This is outrageous! Why did she ever want to come out of the safety of her mother's belly in the first place? The world is a terrible place! She wants to return to the dark and muted comfort of the womb. She cries and cries and cries and can she please just go home – but this is new. She is wrapped in something so soft and warm and supported by strong arms. That's not so bad really. She could get used to this. A familiar voice murmurs in soothing tones something musical and calming. Her mother, of course. She is safe here, she knows. Somehow she is sure of it. The voice whispers something in her tiny ear, "Welcome to the universe, Os."
Clara stumbled, the movement carrying her forward. There was a loud slurping like the sound of boots pulling out of thick mud, and she felt like she was rushing towards the surface of a deep pool, the roar of water filling her ears, building into a deafening crescendo. Suddenly she heard a pop, and she hit the floor on hands and knees. Her vision cleared, and she looked up.
"What the hell was that?"
A pair of small black flats walked around to stand in front of her, "I would imagine that was a memory. You walked straight into the bubble when you opened the door." A blue hand reached down to help her stand up. Clara took it gratefully, finding her feet again before taking in her surroundings.
The room they had entered was gigantic, practically a grand hall or old fashioned throne room in size. In appearance, however, it was far from that. The floor was a dazzling white, and was in fact the only source of light for the space. It was bright enough that it could have easily defined and illuminated the far corners of the room. It would have if the walls and ceiling were not such an intense shade of black. They practically pulsed with their chosen hue; the color itself seemed to consume the light around it. The darkness was so complete, in fact, that Clara wasn't positive there were walls at all – the floor might have just been a platform hanging out over a void.
Drifting around the room like so many dancers at a ball were colorfully undulating bubbles of light. They looked a bit like reject crystal balls. Instead of being clear like well refined glass, they were murky and full of imperfections that caused the images inside of them to blur out of focus. This was when Clara realized the orbs held moving representations of different events. Different memories? Probably. She turned to look at the way she had come. Just in front of the door, one of the bubbles hung at just about eye level. Almost as if it had been waiting for her by the door like a faithful pet. She smirked at the thought, then started to turn back when –
"Look out on your left!"
There was a sound like a stone dropping into thick soup, a rush of water like falling into a lake, and a growing crescendo of noise, until
She is five years old. Her father holds her hand tightly. It hurts, but she knows he doesn't mean it, and she's squeezing his hand just as tightly. She is so excited. Mummy promised to bring her back something really great this time to make up for being gone so long. A full three days! She can hardly believe she hasn't seen her mother in three days. They have been the longest three days of all her five years of life, but any moment now her mother will appear in her TARDIS, just like she promised. Os is not sure why, with a time machine, Mummy can't just leave and come back two seconds after she left, but apparently there are some very grown up rules about TARDIS travel which mean she can't.
Suddenly the air begins to swirl around them, and a silver cylinder begins to blink in and out of existence a few feet in front of Os and her father. She tugs excitedly on his hand, and he grins down at her. He glances at his watch, "Perfectly on time, as always!"
They walk towards the familiar TARDIS. Os is ready to run into her mother's arms the moment she catches sight of her. She wonders why Mummy is still inside her ship. Usually she leaps out as soon as she lands, sweeping her daughter into a big, safe hug as her very first homecoming present.
The door slides open, and an unfamiliar man steps tentatively out from the ship. He seems nervous. Os is confused. Did Mummy bring a friend home?
The stranger approaches her father, slowly, like he isn't sure if he should. She looks up at her father. He has let go of her hand. She is glad of this because his hands are balled into fists. His face has paled drastically, and his jaw is clenched tightly shut. Os can see his lower lip quivering. Fear? It makes her nervous to see him this way. It makes her distrust this stranger almost instantly. Why did Mummy bring this man home if Daddy doesn't like him?
The strange man leans in close to her father and whispers something into his ear. Her father closes his eyes as a single tear runs down his cheek. His next breath seems to cause him physical pain, but he does take it and open his eyes. Now it is the other man who looks frightened. Os is very confused, and wants to know what the man said. She is more confused when her father cracks a smile for the other man and pulls him into a bear hug. Relief washes across the stranger's face as he accepts the hug, and when they separate, they are both crying, but also smiling. Her father kisses the man's forehead, just like he kisses Mummy sometimes. Os does not understand anything of what is happening, and is beginning to grow impatient. She pulls on Daddy's robe, "Where's Mummy?"
Her father glances down at her, then to the other man. He takes a deep breath, as if getting ready to jump into a pool of water. Kneeling, he pulls his daughter into a hug before turning her to face the newcomer, who is also kneeling now. He begins murmuring to her.
"Sweet, do you know how only you, your mother, and I know your real name, and only you can tell anyone else?"
Os nods. Of course she knew that.
"Well, there is a very good reason for that. You see, sometimes the people we care about change. Sometimes we don't recognize them by the way they look because they are so different. So we tell our loved ones our names so when they change, they can tell us and we will know who they are. There are other ways to know, but some of them you won't be able to use until you are a little older. Do you understand?"
Os nods, "Like Rassilon in my story book."
"Exactly. But it's not just in your storybook, darling. Sometimes we, as Time Lords, go through a change called regeneration when our lives are in danger, and we come out looking very different."
At last the other man speaks, "But we are still the people we were before at the very core of us. And we care just as much for our loved ones."
Os nods again. Yes, she understands this well enough. She isn't entirely sure why the information is important right now, but she understands.
The other man meets her gaze and holds it. "Your name is Os. I promised you I would bring back something really great this time. Do you want to see what it is?"
Os simply stares at the strange man for a moment until the pieces of the puzzle finally snap into place. This man is her mother, regenerated. She understands that fact, but it is difficult to wrap her head around it. Os stares deeply into the man's eyes, suspicious despite the long explanation from her father. This stranger? Her mother? No, that was ridiculous. Her mother had always been so soft. This man looked much harder, and sharper in a way.
Then she catches sight of something hiding inside his iris. It is something so familiar to her, something she is instinctually tuned to. There is a pattern, a signature of sorts imprinted on the soul of each Time Lord and Lady. They carry with them a small portion of the Time Vortex itself, unchanged and untouched by death or rebirth. This is what allows Time Lords of different regenerations to recognize friends and enemies with a new face. Os had seen the signature in her mother's eyes, and she saw it here in the eyes of this stranger. An inborn Gallifreyan instinct took over at the realization. It was alright. Of course it was alright. All of the tension and worry flooded away from her as she smiled and flung her arms around the familiar stranger, "Mum!"
The world came rushing back in a haze of colors distorted through glass and a thunderous rumbling. With a shluuuur-pop! she snapped back into the room. The memory that had just snuck up on her continued floating away to her right, unhindered by its passage through her head. The TARDIS giggled, "That was so weird. It jello-ed around your head!"
Clara struggled to regain her sense of the present setting (which was, of course, entirely in her head to begin with. That wasn't helping her ability to grasp her pseudo-reality.) Somehow she managed to steady herself enough to raise a playfully scornful eyebrow at her companion, "Jello-ed?"
A bright red tongue stuck out at her indignantly from between blue lips, but it was followed by a flash of white teeth, "It's a perfectly valid verbification."
"Verbification? You are an eight year old – most highschool students don't know that term!"
"Your point is?"
"You are too smart for your own good." The pair grinned at one another, then the TARDIS flicked her eyes behind Clara; "Duck."
She crouched down quickly and watched the bright orb pass over her head at a leisurely pace, like a blimp over a crowded stadium. When at last it had cleared her, she straightened, keeping an eye out for more colorful globes approaching her position.
Clara shook her head, "This isn't going to work. I don't want ninja thought clouds assaulting me at random. I need some order to this."
Before her sentence had even ended, the orbs in the room seemed to grow agitated, darting about more quickly than before. A thought for their organization occurred to her, and instantly the orbs moved – whizzing across the room. Now they hung above them in the vast darkness like a rolling, churning cloud. In the center of the room, a white pedestal rose out of the floor, flowing upwards in a slick motion. A keyboard morphed out of its smooth surface. Something very much like a search box appeared in the air above this newest addition to the room - a white cursor blinked inside a long box, clearly awaiting input
A satisfied little smile twitched her lips upward. That was more like it. The little girl beside her didn't seem to agree. She pouted, "But they are boring now! It was cool when they were just floating around."
"Yeah, well you weren't the one getting attacked by memories without warning." Clara approached the keyboard, mulling over what to type into the search bar.
"I see whatever you see, Clara." When she bristled at that, the girl quickly added, "I'm not being nosy, but I AM inside your head. It's hard to avoid. Besides, I am an eternal, nigh-omniscient super being. I already know most of this. Experiencing it all firsthand is what appeals to me."
"Since you know so much, miss omniscient, why don't you give me some idea of what to search for?" Clara had intended the comment to be teasing, but the girl looked genuinely thoughtful. Finally she turned to the keyboard. She had to stand on tiptoes and peer over the edge of the pedestal to see where her fingers were on the keys. Slowly words revealed themselves in the text box:
NAME CEREMONY
The little blue hands dropped back down to her sides, and she looked up at Clara. "On Gallifrey, the name you choose is a promise you make. Let's find out what your promise was."