Disclaimer: The only part of Doctor Who I own is my unabashed love of it. The rest belongs to the BBC and friends.
Make Haste Slowly – Chapter 14
People say that they have a fear of heights, but heights aren't innately worrisome, falling from them is what you need to worry about.
Falling, it doesn't hurt; it is just the space in time where you can't do anything except wait for the ground to come. In my dreams I fall a lot, through nothingness, there is never an impact, I just have to wait, knowing its coming. I hate waiting; I hate not being able to do anything to save myself.
That is why I find falling terrifying; because I'm helpless once it happens.
Now I am falling for real, but it's not through nothingness, and I'm not alone. I pull myself into the Doctor, and he puts his arms around me. I close my eyes as my head pushes against his chest. We have seconds, if that. I don't know how high up we really were.
If this is it though, it could be worse, it'll be quick and I'll be with someone I... who I…
Instead of a hard impact though, we bounce off of a yielding surface before being surrounded by some kind of fabric and dragged quickly. Opening my eyes I can't see anything except light filtering in through canvas, and the material of the Doctor's jacket. There are voices around us, hushed but urgent.
We are picked up awkwardly, people are carrying us somewhere. The Doctor shifts so that I can see his face and he puts a finger to his mouth, indicating for me to stay silent before he wipes a tear from my eye and starts to stroke my hair. I didn't know I had started crying, I didn't mean to…
A few moments later, the shuffle of movement slows, and suddenly we are thrown out of our cocoon. But again instead of hitting something hard, we land with a splash into cold water.
Orienting myself I break the surface, looking around I see the Doctor's head pop up as well. He swims over to me, and a voice calls to us from a small dock.
The man that Caesar spoke to is standing there with a few other legionaries.
He tosses something to the Doctor; it looks like a medal of some sort.
"Stay in the river, there is a small cave in the bank of the Tiber not far downstream, come ashore and stay there. Wait until evening and then come back for your temple box, show that to the men at the gate and they will let you in. Caesar sends his regards, and hopes that Oswin will not mind becoming a caveman for a few hours."
With that they fold up the thing they had carried us in, which looks like a sail now that I am outside of it. They must have held it out and caught us, then covered us with it before Cleopatra had time to see. Caesar wouldn't have risked her wrath; he made it look like he was going to help take us. When he had the Doctor over the railing he was showing him the sail his men had laid out beneath us. That was quick thinking, nothing slow about it, just lots of haste…
The Doctor is struggling to tread water, and motions his head in the direction that we had been told to go. Neither of us seem to be particularly good swimmers. Splashing about in the TARDIS pool for fun isn't anything like trying to make our way through the Tiber.
Not far turns out to be accurate though, and we haul ourselves ashore, crawling into the small cave, both breathing hard and sputtering up water.
"This is the second time I have ended up cold and soaked because of that women." I say once I manage to get some more air.
The Doctor looks at me, rather surprised, before shaking his head and giving me a look of wonder.
I don't want to take that look from his face, but something Cleopatra alleged is really bothering me.
"When you said that Jack wouldn't recognize you like that, you meant a bit more than the bowtie didn't you? She didn't seem to recognize you at all until Caesar called you 'Doctor' and then she said that you… changed your face."
He hesitates, mumbling several things before he actually starts forming words properly.
"When a Time Lord's body reaches the point where it is critically damaged, we have a bit of a trick… A cheat if you will, we call it regenerating; we end up with a brand new body, but with our memories intact. New face, same person, mostly at least. Each body has idiosyncrasies of course. One likes apples, another doesn't, one is strong, and another is less so and so on."
"So… when Jack last saw you, you had a different face?"
"Yeah, and the same with Cleopatra, that was several faces ago actually."
"When you say 'critically damaged' do you mean..?"
"Dying, yeah…" He tries to shrug and blow off what he just said.
He has physically died several times? I can't help but throw my arms around him, which with us still sprawled out in the cave means I am mostly on top of him.
"Are you okay?" He asks, worried.
"You tell me you have been killed more than once and you ask me if I'm okay?"
We just lay there for a while, I'm not sure how long, until we hear people over our heads, it sounds like a cart has stopped above us, we must be under a road by the river.
"Caesar's country houses were just outside of the city, Rome isn't far away. We have a few hours to kill before he thought he'd have Cleo cleared out, Clara Oswald, would you like to go to Rome with me?"
I laugh against his chest and nod my head.
He pushes himself up, hoisting me in the process.
"We're both soaked, aren't we going to stick out a bit looking like this?"
He grins, his eyebrow waggling a bit before he pulls out his bag from our first trip into the city.
He takes out two long cloaks, one of which he drapes around me and the other around himself. They mostly hide our soaked, modern clothes. When I say 'modern' about the Doctor, I am speaking in relative terms of course. Even he is modern looking next to a Roman after all.
"You're wearing Caesar's cloak." I say to him, amused.
"He gave it to you, so technically it's yours." He murmurs as we climb the river bank, coming to a stone road which follows the river.
He pulls out the sonic screwdriver, and starts flashing it about, walking down the road with me in tow as he starts to take readings.
"The rift must be right in the city. Well, you know what they say about roads-"
"They all lead to Rome." I finish for him as we head towards the large city in the distance down the laneway.
The city seems… tense when we arrive, slipping through a gate unnoticed with a group of other travelers. The Doctor is much more careful waving his technology around this time, and has put the hood up on his cloak. We don't want another adoring mob with the Pharaoh of Egypt hunting us down. We skirt into allies, around corners and behind walls as he tries to track the rift. I still can't tell that time is apparently speeding away from us here, but I will take his word for it.
Our trek takes us far from the outer edges of the city, into what I can only assume is a richer neighbourhood, based on the splendor of the houses.
We come to a plaza, where there is a group listening to a town crier.
"A reward is offered, to anyone with information regarding the disappearance of Marinas Claudius Auifidia, last seen leaving the house of the Glabae family, yesterday, the 13th of March."
The Doctor's head suddenly spins to look at the man.
"What did you just say?"
The man looks grumpy, but repeats himself for all to hear. The Doctor then quickly stalks off to the nearest place hidden from view.
"Do you know where Marinas is? Do we need to go find them?"
"No, it was the date I was worried about, not the missing person… Clara, we need to get out of here quickly, because tomorrow Rome is going to be bedlam…"
"…why..?"
The Doctor takes a deep breath before looking me right in the eyes.
"And you Brutus?" He echoes me from earlier.
"The Ides of March…" I whisper.
Caesar dies tomorrow, or rather, Caesar is killed tomorrow…
"Come on…" The Doctor takes my hand and leads me along again, but I can't stop thinking about what he just said.
Caesar has helped us more than once, and I know he is going to die tomorrow.
"Can we help him?"
"No, there are some points in time that can't be changed. All of Western history would go wrong if Caesar lived, I'm sorry, we can't Clara…"
I stop walking, which brings the Doctor to a halt to. I feel a tear roll down my cheek, but this time I don't stop it.
"We are going to find the rift this afternoon."
"Yes, I hope so."
"And then, we are going to find him, and we are going to say goodbye, properly."
The Doctor looks terrified at the prospect for some reason.
"That probably isn't a good idea Clara, leaving him alone would be-"
"No Doctor, we are not leaving him alone. We can't change, but we can help him, we can say goodbye, like a real friend would if they knew they weren't going to see you again."
The Doctor looks deeply uncomfortable with that notion. I put a hand on his face, a different gesture for me, a personal one… While I accept all of his little touches, I don't make a lot of them myself really…
"This is us, not walking away in the only way we can this time." I tell him.
The Doctor swallows, before nodding slightly, and turning back to his work of tracking the rift. He points the sonic up the street, and it starts going mad.
"Looks like we will be visiting the senate after all Clara…"