Chapter Four

Fools and Feelings

"The Fool? I've never heard of you." The Doctor said, his face almost bored. Clara thought she heard something in his voice that spoke of deeper interest. The Fool nodded and smiled vaguely, not particularly off-put by the Doctor's dismissive statement.

"I'd be surprised, to be honest. What are you - twelve hundred or so, lad?"

"Fifteen hundred." The Doctor scowled. "Ish."

"You can tell that by looking at him?" Clara asked.

"It's a thing." The Fool shrugged, and turned back to the Doctor. "I've been down here long before you were a tinkle in your father's time stream, lad. Far, far longer. Frightfully depressing, really. Best not to think about it." He shook his head, as if to clear it.

"There would have been some sort of record, though." The Doctor frowned. "Something in the archives. When I say I've never heard of you, I've never heard of you."

"Do you have access to the Gallifreyan archives?" The Fool leaned forward eagerly, his heavily lined face lit up. "I've been cut off for...quite some time. I'd be interested to see how much things have progressed out there in the universe, and the Time Lords are the very devil for detailed analysis."

The Doctor looked over the old man, carefully guarding his expression. Gallifrey was inaccessible, as were the legendary archives. If he said that, there would be further questions. The Fool was old – that was entirely obvious. He was surrounded by age and antiquity, from his TARDIS to the almost tangible cloak of heavy time and loneliness that seemed to settle on his stooped shoulders.

Clara elbowed the Doctor in the ribs, which prompted a flare of anger in his eyes. The Doctor kept it in check, and avoided the subject of Gallifrey.

"Haven't any of the other ships – the hundreds, the thousands of ships out there – told you anything about the outside universe?" the Doctor asked.

"Are you sure you don't want some of this tea?" the Fool asked, gesturing to the tray. "It's really quite ingenious, the things people come up with. And no, not really. Only scraps, I'm afraid. There tends to be a lot of damage when a ship pancakes against a hard surface at high velocity. Data cores and informational systems tend to be delicate."

The Doctor nodded slowly, and let the Fool continue.

"That's why I needed one of my own race, you see. Our ships don't so much impact as insinuate themselves into a location."

"Oh, I've crashed a few times." The Doctor said offhandedly. The Fool shuddered visibly.

"That can't be good for your, er, TARDIS's systems."

"We get by."

We, thought Clara. But which we?

"Alas, the damage to most ships is fairly extensive. Thankfully, I have a suppression field set up over a wide area around my capsule that stops most forms of combustion."

"You can do that?" The Doctor leaned forward, and absently picked up a biscuit.

"I collected a few little gadgets in my travels, " shrugged the Fool, "and some larger ones. I can't quite recall where I, ah, acquired the device that limits combustion but it's certainly come in handy. Not too many explosions, you see. "
"I wondered about that." The Doctor admitted, chewing slowly. He didn't even seem to be aware that he was doing so. "And I don't quite buy it. If a race had developed a device that completely stopped combustion, I'd know about it. There has to be an excess of energy that the suppression field can't stop."

"Quite right! Well done." The Fool beamed. "I also use a hybrid Leech Module I pieced together from Sycorax and Cyber Empire technology to take the excess and store it directly into my own craft."

At that, the Doctor winced, and shook his head.

"That's incredibly foolish." he said, "The science is plausible enough, but almost insane. A TARDIS shouldn't be able to charge up on that kind of energy. You're probably frying systems you don't even know you have."

The old man tilted his head and echoed the Doctor's words back at him with a smile.

"We get by."

"What about people?" Clara asked. "Surely the lack of explosions and poisonous gasses and radiation and whatever else means that someone survives from each crash? Or at least some crashes?"

"Sadly, I don't believe that there has been a single living being left on any of the ships that have arrived so abruptly." The Fool said.

"Except the Cybermen and the Daleks." The Doctor corrected.

"Hardy little buggers, aren't they? But you can't call them living creatures – not really. Not much of a life there. One has no feelings, and the other does nothing but hate."

"I think we can agree on that." The Doctor noticed he had the half eaten biscuit in his hand, scowled at it and wasn't quite sure whether to continue eating it or put it down. Clara sipped at her tea. It tasted odd – not bad as such, but not quite right either. She frowned, looking at her cup. The Fool noticed.

"My little capsule's systems do their best to extrapolate all possible data from what we know about tea and then recreate it in the food dispenser, but as I've never had an actual sample she does her best with the little written data that we've pieced together from arriving Earther ships." he said apologetically. "I'm sure it's not quite right, but it's the best I can do."

"It's good." Clara admitted, causing the old man to smile gratefully. "Different, but good."

"How often do ships come?" the Doctor asked.

"Oh, let me think..." the Fool scratched his chin slowly. "There's no real order to it. Sometimes there are years – decades – between arrivals. Other times, I'll get several in a month. This is the first time I've had two within hours of each other."

"And one is Dalek." reminded the Doctor. "Other things that start with D include dangerous, and dead. You said something about a device – a docilator? - that would stop them."

"Poor souls." the Fool's smile dropped away, melting like icecream in the sun. "So many thousands of souls, coming from all over time and space. They heard my signal, curious and brave, but always ending in death. Always death." With a sigh, the Fool ended with an almost plaintive whisper. "I'm so ready to go home."

Clara looked at the Doctor, empathy in her eyes. The Doctor shook his head slightly, as if to say I know what you're thinking, but no. Definitely not. Clara leaned forward and touched the Fool gently on one sagging shoulder.

"You call yourself the Fool, " she said gently, "That's got to be an interesting story. We have the Doctor here – he tries to fix people. Do you try to make them laugh?"

"That's not necessarily accurate." the Doctor cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I mostly fix problems, not people."

"Six of one, half a dozen of the other." Clara muttered with a shrug, keeping focus on the rapidly waning old man. "But you...why the Fool? It's a bit of a fun name and I'd love to hear how you chose it."

"We don't really have time for – " the Doctor began, then shook his head in exasperation. "Go on then, don't mind me. Chat about unimportant things. I'll just sit here waiting for something interesting to happen."

"Doctor, would you like a short, sharp visit from the slap fairy?" Clara asked with an exasperated huff. "I have her phone number. Now, please tell us why you're the Fool?"

"Well, " The old man straightened up a little, and tried to pull himself together again. "It is a rather a bit amusing, I suppose. In a way."

"Do tell." the Doctor sighed, giving in. In the battle between aloofness and curiosity, the c-word came out on top once more despite everything. Cautious, angry and irritable he might be, but this was a Time Lord outside the time locked Gallifrey. He might not like it, but the Doctor needed to know more. "Leave out no detail, however small and insignificant."

"You see, back in my first body so very long ago now, I had a teacher with a marvelously long and red nose. Nothing hideous, you understand, but it certainly had zeppelin-like qualities. And of course, children do so love to mock the mildly different. So I got into some mischief about it – among other things, of course." The Fool paused, his voice taking on a wistful note as he thought back into the deep past.

"I used to sketch pictures of this teacher in notebooks, with his unwieldy sniffer and leave them about the academy. Unflattering, amusing sketches. It made me somewhat popular, which of course increased my desire to be a bit of a wag. I started sending him bawdy love poems and signing them 'The Woodpeckers of the Arcadian Forests', that sort of thing, you know?"

"Once, I slipped a sedative into his morning cocoa and when he fell asleep in his chair in class, I hung a female academy student uniform from it and took pictures, posting them up around the academy. Don't ask where I picked the uniform up, that young lady has probably forgiven me by now."

"So you were a bit of a rogue as well as a mischief maker?" Clara urged.

"A little." Admitted the Fool. "Well, more than a little. Nosey was only one of my targets, of course. I played pranks on many of my fellow students, and several of the more serious minded teachers. Attaching small antigrav units to the furniture in one classroom set to activate mid-lesson, that sort of thing."

"To her credit, " he continued, "the Magistrix teaching us differential temporal calculus carried on with the lesson though we were all upside down for half an hour. Then we had to sit through a test that way too. Smooth, but spiteful, that lady. Afterward, of course, I got a stern talking to. There were a lot of those."

The Doctor, affecting a front of boredom to disguise his actual interest in the silly story, picked up the Dalek energy booster module and began to examine it. It only took a few seconds for the sonic screwdriver to be back out, humming and singing to itself. The Fool looked at the Doctor curiously and then back at Clara.

"Am I that dull?"

"Not at all! Go on, please." Clara smiled winsomely.

"Well, if you say so. There were quite a few 'serious talks' during my time at the academy, my dear, but everything came to a head the day I thought I'd try the old Vanishing Room trick."

"What's that?" Clara asked. There was a snort from the Doctor, who spoke without raising his eyes from the energy booster.

"That I've heard of. There was a long standing caveat that anyone who attempts a Vanishing Room trick got immediate expulsion from the Time Lord Academy. Nobody really knew why."

"That would be me, probably." the Fool smiled, mischief in his eyes once more. "You see, the Vanishing Room trick isn't really a trick so much as an exercise in physics, basic engineering and a little hands on carpentry."

"How does it work?" Clara asked.

"What you do, my dear – or rather, what you apparently don't do these days – is tie strong ropes to everything in the room – all of the furniture and anything else you want to move about. Delicate or small objects can use string, which is of course a wonderful tool in any prankster's kit."

"Then, " he continued, "you rig up a rudimentary pulley system with the ropes leading out a single window. Halfway down the ropes will hang buckets of sand or rocks or anything heavy – I used the marble busts from the nearby library because some of those faces looked like they needed a good hanging. Do you follow so far?"

"In a general sort of way, " Clara nodded, "But not exactly."

"Ah, don't worry too much about it. You see, after you have the weights attached, you loop the ropes back through the pulley system, up into the classroom and attach them to the door – firmly enough to hold the weight of the busts hanging from the window, but loose enough to escape."

"Okay," Clara asked, "What about the carpentry?"

"Very important step, the carpentry. With a saw, you spend an industrious but careful time cutting deep into the furniture. You don't want to destroy it, you understand, but make it extremely fragile instead. It's important, because you want it all to come apart but not until the trick is actualized."

Clara tried to picture it all in her head and frowned. She still didn't quite understand how the pulley system would link up, or even what a 'rudimentary pulley system' would consist of, to be honest. The Fool continued on regardless.

"The plan is that when the teacher opens the door, the rope attached to it comes loose – this causes the weights to drop with speed, gravity being a faithful mistress. As the weights fall, the ropes yank the furniture which then goes flying toward the window all at once." The old man took a breath, then continued, "As all the furniture strikes the window frame with force it breaks into pieces due to ones skill with a saw and everything goes flying out the window all at once, with gravity pulling the entire room out into the garden – much to the astonishment of the teacher."

Clara laughed at this as the image cleared in her head. She didn't get the basic engineering, but she could see everything being pulled out a window with speed and force.

"Can you imagine it?" the Fool chuckled. "One opens a door with their mind on Interspecies Politics or Temporal Stitching or whatever, and the rooms contents vanish on you with a loud fuss and bother? Can you imagine the expression worn on ones face?"

"I can!" Clara giggled. "That's definitely funny, isn't it Doctor?"

"The epitome of mirth." replied the Doctor tonelessly, still probing away at the energy booster.

"So then you started calling yourself the Fool, right?" Clara turned back to the old man.

"Not quite. You see, my dear, the head of the academy was out for a morning constitutional and his amble around the academy grounds took him right under that particular classroom window at the precise time that the Vanishing Room trick was triggered."

"Oh dear."

"Regretfully, " the Fool said, but his eyes spoke of mirth rather than regret, "the contents of an entire classroom landing on him, along with several large busts of vaguely felonious looking Time Lords of the past and a web-work of rope was enough to have me pulled aside for the most serious of talking-to's I've ever had, by no less than four separate authority figures. And after that, I had to speak to the man himself and that was a shade worrisome."

"I can imagine it would be." Clara commiserated.

"The head of the academy said to me that day – after he had uncovered himself and sought some minor medical attention – just one thing, before sending me from his office. Just one. He said..."

The Fool closed his eyes, and quoted.

"You're a fool, boy. You've always been a fool and, unless you start taking your studies more seriously, all you'll ever be is a fool. You'll never amount to anything, never accomplish anything of import, and never be anything more than a superfluous part of our society. You'll be a waste of time – even for the Time Lords."

That was unkind." Clara said.

"But true." the Fool shrugged. "I took his words to heart."

"You knuckled down, studied hard and laid off the pranks?"

"Goodness no, dear. Haven't you been paying attention?" The old man grinned. "I hung someones underwear from a flagpole, filled the swimming pool with a gelatinous pseudoform, slipped a combination of sedatives and laxatives into the drinking fountains and left the academy without graduating, never looking back. Stole a transport capsule, went off to prank the universe and called myself the Fool thereafter."

Clara laughed at this. The Doctor smiled thinly.

"And it was such fun, you know?" The Fool continued, waving his arms merrily. "So many worlds, so little time – even for such as us! I spent a good year or so hanging around with a crab-like species called the Makra who were quite a grumpy lot, if you ask me. I did manage to convince them that I was a minor prophet of some sort, and got the locals ending every sentence with 'according to the prophecy of Mai Boo-Tocks.' Almost got hung, in the end, so off I went again. Crabs don't really know how to hang someone very well. Not much neck to speak of."

"Next, I went to Earth. Wonderful place. Oh, those Vikings. They already had all sorts of myths and legends so it wasn't too hard to fit in with that and be a mischief maker for a while."

"Wait, are you saying that you're Loki?" Clara blinked. The old man laughed and shook his head.

"Not at all, dear. Those myths and beliefs were already in place. I just took advantage of them and did a pretty good job pretending to be the Lie-Smith for a while. After I got bored with that, I went on to the Horse-head nebula and hung around with a squidling race that lived there teaching them how to play the harmonica. They were worshipers of music, you see, but unfortunately the harmonica was very quickly declared a heretical instrument. Lost my first life there."

"How did you – " Clara was going to ask how he died, but then realised it might be a bit crass.

"Sometimes some entities just have no sense of humour. Best not to think about it, really. Bad things – well, they happen but should be ignored. Yes. Yes! Where was I?"

"Squids with harmonicas."

"Squids reviling harmonicas, dear." corrected the Fool. "And yes. So I had my second body – big strapping one that was, too. Quite the looker, if I may humbly say so. I was out of there in a hurry, just one step ahead of the tentacles – apparently resurrection isn't part of the music of the universe either. Phew, I still can't eat calamari without feeling a bit odd about it, you know."

"So you've just traveled around being the Fool ever since?" Clara asked.

"Not so much traveling lately, of course." The old man gestured around vaguely, and spotted the sonic screwdriver in the Doctor's hands. "What do you have there, lad?"

"It's a sonic screwdriver." the Doctor said, "a thoroughly useful tool and sometimes deus ex machina for all sorts of things. Had it for centuries, still discovering uses for it. This energy booster you took from the Daleks – and I'm really not sure I want to know how you managed that without disturbing them – well, it's a bit dodgy. I've done what I can, but the thing was too shaken up in the crash to be of much use. Its crystal matrix is cracked."

"Oh, it'll manage for a while, " the Fool leaned forward and took the module from the Doctor's unresisting hands. "It's not as if we'll need it for long, not now that you're here! Oh. Ohhh! OH! I remember what I was supposed to be doing! The docilator, of course! Those pesky little Daleks will be activating themselves and getting up to mischief and I really don't want them getting a firm foothold around here. Makes for trouble, that does." the Fool got to his feet and shuffled toward the door. "I'll be back in a minute or two! Enjoy the tea!"

Clara watched the door close as the old man left the tea room. She had a smile that she couldn't quite remove. The Fool was nice, friendly and sweet – and quite funny, too.

"I like him." she said honestly.

"Yes, and why wouldn't you? He's fun." the Doctor muttered.

"You can be fun." Clara raised an eyebrow. "At least, I think you can. You can be fun, can't you? It didn't all dribble out your ears and drip away when you were regenerating, did it?"

"You liked me better when I was fun." the Doctor rolled his eyes. His voice was sharp and bitter. Clara realised that he must have been a little jealous.

"I liked you better when you weren't overly hostile, broody and taking instant offense to everything I say, Doctor." Clara told him with complete honesty. The Doctor, to his credit, didn't get any more angry at this. Despite everything, he was still smart enough to realise that Clara was calling him out for being, well, a bit bratty.

"Point." acknowledged the Doctor. "But you can't trust him, you know."

"Oh? Why not?"

"Because he's the Fool."

"You said you didn't know him."

"I don't, " admitted the Doctor, "but the names we choose define who we really are. A fool isn't just a practical joker, handing out funny remarks and performing amusing acts. Even in Earth history a fool or jester is more than he seems."

"Well, he's a Time Lord too." Clara shrugged.

"Exactly." the Doctor said firmly. "He has hidden depths, this Fool does. Trust me on this."

"He's an old man now though." said Clara. "What's he going to do, chat us to death?"

"A fool uses his own act of silliness as a distraction to serve his own interests. He's much more than a man in a silly hat and bells."

"I wonder if he ever wore something like that." Clara mused. She tried to picture it and smiled faintly. "Probably in a different body."

"It's probably that he did. Archetypes exist for a reason and stories always come from somewhere. We need to be careful." insisted the Doctor.

"You're jumping at shadows, Doctor." Clara dismissed his concern. "Ever since you changed you've, well...look, there's caution and there's paranoia. Everything you've said has been how you've acted before. You used to use silly as a defense. You used to be tricky and clever to disarm your foes."

"And I used to be funny." the Doctor shot back. "Until I died. I keep trying to tell you, I'm not the same man. It's not as if I just started behaving contrary, Clara. I'm not the same jolly fellow in a different body and I don't know how many times I can stress this – I'm an entirely new personality drawn from subconscious facets of the whole."

"But you're still the Doctor." argued Clara.

"Yes. I'm still the Doctor. I just may not be your Doctor."

There. It was said. A long and very pregnant silence followed, with neither Clara nor the Doctor willing to give birth to the next line in that particular drama. As the silence grew longer and more uncomfortable, and the Fool showed no sign of returning, the Doctor fought with himself over what he should say next.

He didn't want Clara to leave, of course. At the same time, it would be unfair of him – and to him – to pretend to be the same man he was when they first met. Still...

"That neutered Cyberman was a bit of a surprise." the Doctor ventured cautiously. "I wasn't expecting that."

"Me neither." Clara admitted, grateful for the topic change. "It was almost a brown moment – I couldn't move! But you...you jumped up and tried to sonic it without a second thought."

"Well, I couldn't have it shooting holes in you, Clara, nor your awful cardigan."

There was a small smile between the pair. Things weren't resolved, but maybe there was something salvageable there after all. He wasn't the same man, he'd said that – and deep down Clara knew it even if she didn't want to admit it. Maybe this was a shadow of what this Doctor could be.

"Come on, " the Doctor stood up, and extended his still-strange thin and worn hand to Clara. "Let's go and find our absent host. I've never seen the inside of a Type Seventeen TARDIS before."

"What happened to caution?" Clara's heart leaped. Maybe, just maybe...

"Don't worry, you'll be walking in front of me." the Doctor replied.

Well, maybe not. Clara sighed inwardly.


Outside and far from the Fool's capsule, at the wreckage of the recently arrived ship came the soft whir of a Dalek emerging from the craft. It had been originally a vibrant blue but due to the arrival and impact its body was scored and blackened in places. Apart from a dirty appearance, however, the Dalek ran an internal check and found that it was completely functional.

A second whirring sound caused its top to turn and look back at another Dalek – this one red – emerging from the cavernous chunk of ship that remained intact. It, too, looked battered but functional.

"Report." The blue Dalek demanded of the red. There was a slight pause before it responded.

"Eighty seven Dalek units operating at acceptable capacity." Red Dalek stated flatly. "Craft is not salvageable without extensive replacement parts. Signal of Time Lord still broadcasting."

It's very telling of the Dalek psyche that no mention was made of the Daleks that hadn't survived the crash. Dead Daleks were obviously defective in some way, or they wouldn't be dead. The blue Dalek turned its ocular unit to the wreckage fields all around and let its own sensors scan over the area. An anomaly shone out, faint but definite.

"A second energy signature is detected. Our forces must be split – I will lead five Daleks to the original signal and acquire any Time Lord technology present. You will lead five Daleks to the secondary energy signature and obtain further data. Remaining Daleks will gather necessary salvage and repair our ship."

"Acknowledged." stated the second Dalek, cold and emotionless.

With no further instruction necessary, the Daleks moved out.


(Author note: I know we've been big on the talking and the feelings so far, and I think that's okay but it's time to get some actual action happening. From Chapter 5 onward, it's going to start to ramp upward. Thanks for sticking with me so far.)