Hi all! I'm back, not as soon as I expected but hey, I have to deal with an angry vampire monkey and I don't have enough bananas :P Thanks for your reviews!
Doctor712: Hazelly loves you too xD
The eternal diva: Hahaha, yeah the Tardis is back -ish :D
Bloodsired: She is his carer. It's her job! lol
Dragons-Twilight1992: Of course!
Various guests reviews: Thank you! I'm glad you like it! By the way, I never though you would be afraid to read more… omg, what I have done? xD
As always, I want to thank Calgarry (my beta reader) for been so patience with me! ;)
Tired, the girl turned away to see the Doctor standing by the door, with the little squirrel on his shoulder. Both of them had shocked expressions on their faces. The squirrel dropped a hazelnut from its little frozen hands as it blinked very slowly. The dried fruit falling to the ground was the only sound in the room.
"Shut up!" she said quickly. But, as expected, he just couldn't.
"Seriously, were you shouting to yourself?"
Chapter 29: Run away
The squirrel made a sound, and the Doctor nodded his head. "Yes, I think she needs some rest too."
Clara raised her arms, defeated. "No, no! A squirrel isn't going to tell me I'm the mad person in this room, because I'm not!"
Slowly, and trying to keep his balance, the Doctor approached her, worried at her nervousness.
"I'm not mad," she repeated, as he grabbed her shoulders.
"I didn't say that, but I think you should rest."
"No, no, you don't understand…" The girl stopped abruptly. "It's difficult to explain. Look, I know it doesn't make any sense, but I need you to do something for me."
He narrowed his eyes. "I'm not eating more green food."
"It's not that."
"I'm not cooking green food for you."
"Doctor just shut up!" She exhaled heavily before continuing, "Please, don't ask why, but could you snap your fingers?"
"I would ask why, but…do you put that puppy face every time you want something? It's incredible how your eyes are bigger than your whole extremely round face, you know."
She made an effort to not answer that. "Please?"
The Doctor smiled. "Can I have ice cream for dessert?" Her eyes threw invisible daggers at him. "Okay, okay. It was only a joke."
Reluctantly, he snapped his fingers as she looked back expectantly.
"Are you happy?"
And then it happened. As the girl expected, the door of the Tardis opened for the Doctor. At that point, she wouldn't deny being a little jealous about that.
"Come on!" Clara said, grabbing his hand and smiling at his shocked face. "Oh, and stop doing that owlish think with your eyes, because just for your information, they're bigger than mine."
Of course, he had a shocked face. "What. What is that?"
She was enjoying that moment, a very rare one, when the Doctor was shocked and speechless. At the same time, she was nervous. Would he recognise the Tardis? Would he remember it? Her gaze looked at him, not sure about what to expect.
"I'll show you," she said confidently.
He wrapped his arm over her shoulder for support and allowed her to lead him to the mysterious door, and to a more mysterious thing: he wanted to know why the girl couldn't stop smiling.
They crossed the invisible door and stepped inside. It was dark, very dark. In fact, the only light was coming from the entry itself.
"Come on, be a good ship," the girl muttered.
After endless seconds, and a dozen mental insults by Clara, the round things of the Tardis began to glow, one by one, illuminating the control room.
He looked around, completely astonished "Woah. This is…"
Clara's smile grew bigger "Yes. Say it. This is a…?"
"This is bigger on the inside!"
Quickly her smile faded away. "What?! No, no, no, not that."
"This is much, much bigger on the inside. Oh my goodness. Do you see that?"
"That's not the important thing!" she protested as he advanced to the console. "Please, Doctor, tell me you know what is this."
"Of course I know what is this!" For a moment, he forgot about his weakness and began to walk around the console. "This is fabulous. No. This is fantastic." He pointed a finger at her. "No. This is fabultastic!"
He was talking so fast that Clara tried to stop him. "Doctor, calm down!" The Time Lord was about to fall down when she grabbed him just in time. "Got you. Don't do this idiotic thing again. No. Shush. Don't talk just breathe, ok? Fabultastic? Seriously?"
He leaned on her but his eyes couldn't stop looking at the console. After a long moment, a whisper broke the silence. "It's a Tardis," he said.
Clara let out a breath, relieved. "Yes it is. And you know this because…?" Of course she didn't want to tell him, she needed him to remember by himself.
"Because I have seen a lot of them in my Academy books. Oh look at it. Isn't it the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?" Slowly, his fingers tried to reach the nearest lever, but stopped when he was about to touch it.
"No, no, no." He stepped back, pulling away from Clara. "This isn't right."
At first she was worried, but seeing him disoriented and so distressed was truly frightening her. Hell, he couldn't even take a full breath!
"It's okay. Calm down." Her voice was low, trying to sound relaxed. She didn't want to shock a person who already had serious heart problems.
The Doctor felt a twinge in his chest, and had to hold on to the railing. The girl started to run to his side when the cloister bell of the Tardis began to sound, making her look up, scared. "Yeah well, I'm worried too!" When her gaze returned to where the Doctor was supposed to be, the only thing she saw was the door closing again.
"What?! How did you manage to run away so fast?" Then she rolled her eyes. "Of course, you're the Doctor, even if you can't remember it." She tried to open the door to follow him but, as expected, it didn't open.
Clara turned around with the angriest face she was capable of. "Don't you dare! He needs me! For heaven's sake, he could be having a heart attack right now!"
The Tardis made a protesting sound.
"Yes, I hate you too but please, it doesn't matter now! I have to help him!"
The lights began to turn off. Only one remained on.
Clara looked at the illuminated spot. It was a door. She didn't recognise it. "What is this? I have never seen this door before. And I'm very sure this was never here, I would remember it."
A new noise answered her. "Oh, really? Now you're doing ironic sounds. Why doesn't that surprise me?" The Tardis illuminated the plate over it and Clara tried to read it. The problem was she could only see circles. "Gallifreyan is so frustrating."
When she was able to leave the Tardis, she quickly found the Doctor in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed and apparently lost in thought.
Clara sat down next to him, relieved to see him calmer. After some moments of silence, she cleared her throat. "I'm sure the wall is very interesting, but it'll be more interesting if we talk about what happened."
"No." he stated.
"Yes. We're having this conversation, whether you like it or not."
"No," he insisted. "A conversation is a way of communication between two persons. If one of them isn't participating then it's a monologue, or worse: a lecture."
"I do have the right to lecture you! You scared me to death! Look at you, did you just have an anxiety attack?"
"Not your problem."
"Of course it is! Just tell me why you freaked out like that!"
The Doctor looked down at his hands, and Clara immediately regretted shouting at him. It wasn't fair and she knew it. She was about to apologise when he turned to her.
"Have you ever run away from something?" he asked her. "Because deep down you knew if you stayed you'd end up being talked into doing something you'd regret?"
Clara was aware that she had just opened the Pandora's box, but wasn't sure if she wanted to look inside.
She bit her lip, thinking very carefully what to answer. Clearly he wasn't in his best mind, and she didn't want to upset him more, so she chose to just remain silent.
"I can't keep going like this. I tried to understand why, I tried to be who they want me to be, and I have done things that I shouldn't. Perhaps they're right about me."
Clara looked at him closely, not sure if that conversation was a good idea. After all, it was him starting to open up a layer of his shell. His first one, but surely the worst, the one that make him run away.
"Who?" she asked.
"The Time Lords. Sometimes, I wonder if they're right."
"Doctor, stop talking like that. It's like you think you're a bad man or something."
His face was serious when she said that.
"Wait a moment. Do you really think you're a bad man?" Her eyebrow rose incredulously.
"I…" He trailed off. "I'm not prepared, I just...just want to run away. Does that make me a coward?"
Clara smiled sympathetically. "Of course not. When you leave unexpectedly, no matter how good the reason, most people will consider you a coward. What those people don't realise is that making a decision to leave takes a lot of strength. It's often easier, even safer, to take the path of least resistance."
His features softened a bit. "Now I know why he likes you to stick around."
"Don't speak about yourself in third person. It's annoying."
"I have to; I don't remember what I was like."
"For me, you're the same, just in your teenage years."
He made a rude gesture before speaking again with a soft voice. "Thanks for trying to cheer me up, but I will never make it."
"Why not? You could take a Tardis and run away."
"I tried it, for the sake of Rassilon, I tried! I enrolled to be a pilot. I failed all the exams, but it didn't matter, because when the council found out, I got kicked out of the academy and they forbade me to be in a Tardis…ever."
The girl was starting to hate those people. "Why they would do that? Why they would be so paranoid about you?" she asked, but something in the Doctor's eyes told her not to push for more. "I'm sorry."
He laid on the bed with a gesture that the conversation was over, waiting for Clara to just leave him alone. That didn't happen.
"Why don't you steal a Tardis and run away?" she asked, trying to sound casual.
He chuckles at that. "Don't be ridiculous. Anybody knows that no one can steal one."
"Why? Because they told you that?"
"You're not going to drop the subject, are you?" He exhaled tiredly. "Because they're not just a ship. They're more than that." His eyes closed as he talked. "They are the most beautiful living creatures that exists in time and space, that's what they are."
"That sounds amazing. But doesn't explain why you can't take one."
"Do you know what Time Lords did with such incredible creatures? They enclosed them within a dimensional matrix, and built a machine around them. That way, they could control them. In fact, the design includes a mechanism that means that all of them can be controlled by the council."
"That's horrible."
His eyes opened. "Do you still think there are good Time Lords?"
Clara was aware that he was trying to make a point, but she just couldn't accept him calling himself a bad man.
She chose to ignore the remark. "So, you can't steal one because the council control all of them. Right. But, what if someone could steal a Tardis from the repair shop, one that is so broken that they couldn't track it down?"
"You don't give up, don't you?"
She shook her head with the best of her smiles like she had never harmed a fly.
"Look. The repair section is one of the most secure areas of Gallifrey, you just can't walk in there. And…come on, a broken Tardis? That 'someone' would be just a poor mad man."
"A mad man WITH a Tardis," she remarked sarcastically.
"Hypothetically, that's impossible. Because even if you could steal one, you still need six pilots to fly it."
"Well, what if that 'someone' is smart enough to do it alone? Or better, travel as possible, anywhere and appear at the wrong place and where his companion would not give a penny to go."
His gaze was fixed on hers, with shocked eyebrows asking without saying a single word.
"Yes. That mad man managed to steal one. You know it's true because it's parked in my living room. And as I've already said, it is very irritating to talk about you in third person."
If you've finished to read this chapter: thank you very much! And if you want to leave a review... that's would be fabultastic! :)
