14. The Bells of Saint John
They sat at a table on the cafe's rooftop terrace awaiting their drinks. The Doctor was looking at Clara strangely, again.
"What?" She asked a little brusquely.
"I was just wondering who that woman in the shop was."
Clara was puzzled for a moment as she tried to work out what shop he was talking about. Her confusion must have shown because the Doctor proceeded to clarify what he meant.
"When you called me thinking I was a technical helpline, you said that a woman had given you my number."
"Oh. Well, you know what I was like before I got uploaded, I had no technical skills. I probably just dialled the wrong number," Clara responded airily.
The Doctor noticed that Clara had evaded mentioning the woman and this piqued his curiosity more. He was about to question Clara further when their drinks arrived. Clara was about to take a sip of her drink when she realised something.
"1207," she said quietly.
The Doctor raised his eyebrows in question.
"It really was a different timezone, wasn't it?"
"Well, yes. I was speaking to you from Cumbria in the year 1207."
"What were you doing there?"
The Doctor paused as he thought of how to reply. He couldn't really tell her that he had painted a portrait of her and had spent many weeks trying to work out who she was and decipher her final words. It was creepy enough that he had arrived on her doorstep seconds after speaking on the phone. Also, having just met this Clara, he wasn't even sure that she was the same person as the one who had died for him in Victorian London. So, he decided to tell her part of the truth.
He cleared his throat and began to speak, "It's complicated and I don't want to go into too much detail. But, I lost someone and I needed a break from time travelling. So I decided to join a monastery."
Clara had known loss too so she understood what the Doctor was going through and didn't push the subject.
"Ah, that explains the monk outfit," she said. "I did wonder why you were wearing that but I had other things on my mind."
"Like a madman standing next to a 'mobile phone' banging on your door?" The Doctor said with a smile.
"Yes. And the fact that I got sucked up into the Wi-Fi cloud by a fictional character that was actually a spoon."
"Walking basestation," the Doctor corrected.
"No. It was a spoon. A bit like this one here," she said as she held up a teaspoon to demonstrate her point.
The Doctor chuckled. He had a feeling he was going to like this Clara a lot.
Author's Note: I'm really curious about that woman in the shop who gave Clara the Doctor's phone number and said it was 'the best hotline in the universe.' I'm tempted to write more about it but I don't know anything about that woman. Who was she? Does anyone have any ideas?
Also, I had to giggle a bit when I wrote about the Doctor raising his eyebrows. Eyebrows, what eyebrows? :P No offence, Matt Smith, you were brilliant as the Eleventh Doctor and almost all of the time I didn't notice your lack of eyebrows; I was concentrating more on the storylines and characters.