Thank you for the reviews.

So how well is the Doctor and Clara getting on?


Chapter 7

The Doctor had proceeded to plug certain other gadgets into her laptop in some hope that he could work out where the WiFi was coming from and what they could do about it.

"Do you think that you can get them back from wherever they are?" Clara asked.

He smiled widely at her as he checked the latest device that he had placed into her laptop. "I would have thought that you would have been happy to see the back of some of her pupils."

She thought carefully about her answer. She wanted all of her students to do well as they could, whether they were the best or worst in the class.

"Some of them might be a pain in the backside but I would never want this to happen to them. Them having a sick day is like a big 'yes' moment but this. I hate this. I am just waiting for them to turn up now. I want them back in my classroom. I want to be telling them off either for talking or not doing the work or just for being on their phones when they shouldn't be."

She looked up at him when he hadn't said anything. He had stopped what he was doing, looking at her and smiling. She was still trying to work out what his personality was but she felt like he had already worked out hers and it might have been due to what she had just said.

"Why are you smile at me like that?" She asked.

"You must be a good teacher."

"I don't know about that. I just have a duty of care over them and I take it rather seriously."

"Most teachers would have been happy to see the back of some pupils."

"As you have implied."

"Writing them off as no good of nothing. You are right. You do have a duty of care to those students. You care about your job. You must do if you think that everyone deserves a chance."

"I am trying to get the point you are trying to make."

He smiled, almost bashfully. "I wish I had a teacher like you when I was at school. Someone who wouldn't give up on me. I was one of those smart-arse kids who always had an answer for everything and would usually be right about everything. There was one point that I made it my mission to prove each teacher in my school wrong. It didn't end well. I did it but I also got kicked out of school."

"We have someone like that. She once tried to say that she was a bigger Jane Austin fan than me. I probably shouldn't have risen to the challenge but I was new and I wanted to show some authority. I would never expect a quiz made up of Jane Austin questions would have excited so many students as it did. Fortunately for me, it worked out in my favour and I won the quiz. I think I wouldn't still be at Coal Hill if I hadn't.

"Why teaching?"

"Why being sort of the police?" She asked back straight away.

He laughed. "You are good."

"Honestly, I know but that doesn't answer my question. I will answer yours if you answer mine."

"I am a sort of police officer."

She shook her head at him. "Come on. You haven't arrested me so I feel like we are having a conversation rather than you investigating me. You can answer my questions."

"I didn't choose the job." The Doctor said after a few moments of silence. "The job choose me. Like I said, I saw something that I shouldn't have and that made me eligible for the role. I became the new Doctor after the last one died. There was a short period when there wasn't a Doctor. They weren't going to hire anyone else and going to shut the division down. The other police officers just turn a blind eye to anything alien. Apparently, everything has a perfectly logical explanation other than it is aliens."

"So when you die, someone else will take over the role."

"Hopefully and hopefully they will have blast with the job as well." He cleared his throat and went back to the laptop. "Anyway, why teaching teach?"

"I did a degree in English. I wanted to go travelling at the end of uni but my stepmother had stopped my dad from helping me finance the trip. I ended up taking a nanny job with a family friend and when the mum died, I suppose I felt like I should stay to help out. I lost my mum and I knew how they felt. I was then told by my stepmother that I couldn't be a nanny for the rest of my life and it was time for me to get a proper job. So I turned to teaching, maybe with the goal in mind that maybe I could inspire students like my English teacher had inspired me."

"I would expect that you inspire your students."

"You don't see their bored faces."

"As I said, you must be a good teacher."

She felt like they were having a moment. She was waiting for a question that she was sure that would never come. This was, after all, a one night only thing. Plus she had her job at the school. She couldn't give that up after speaking so passionately about it. He wasn't about to ask her if she wanted to join him. It just wasn't going to happen. She tried to dismiss the thought but it wouldn't leave her.

He swore under his breath just before the computer started to bleep. She stood up quickly and walked behind him, to look over his shoulder. The screen was full of things that she didn't understand along with those weird symbols that the WiFi was called. She knew that she shouldn't panic but she couldn't think of anything else that she could do.

"What is going on?" She asked.