Chapter 17
His hand moved towards his aching head, rubbing the spot at the back from where the pain spread towards his temples. At first, he had taken it for a sign of too much ale, but he couldn't remember drinking any. He couldn't remember being struck, either, in fact, not even his own name came to his mind straight away.
"Geoffrey!" a voice called from a distance and it rang a faint bell in his hurting head. That voice was familiar to him, that name was familiar to him.
It took him a moment to realise that he was Geoffrey and with the realisation of who he was, the rest began to return as well even though a part of him wished that it could have remained forgotten. The headache was nothing compared to the aching in his heart when he thought about Michael. His memory was accompany by a sudden urge to lay back down and drift off into oblivion.
"Geoffrey!" the voice called again and when he looked up, the Doctor came running towards him, flapping his arms around in a manner Geoffrey had seen on children, but never on a grown man. Of course, the Doctor was an alien. Everything from his clothes to his manner of speech was so foreign that Geoffrey found it hard to believe he hadn't seen through it himself.
"What happened? Where's Clara?" the old man asked him when he came to a halt next to Geoffrey.
Before he realised what was happening, the Doctor had his hands on Geoffrey's arms and pulled him up. Time Lord, that's what Clara had said he was. An alien who travelled through time and space in something she had called a police box, whatever that was.
Clara. That had been the Doctor's question.
"I don't know," he admitted eventually, finally looking the Doctor in the eyes. As he did, Geoffrey had the impression that maybe, he was even older than his grey hair made him appear, but he didn't understand how it was possible at all. "Something hit me, I think. We were on our way to the barn to find the alien girl."
"Come along, then," the Doctor replied impatiently and between one breath and the next, his hands were gone and Geoffrey was left to stand on his own.
His feet still felt a little wobbly, but he followed the Doctor regardless and from a distance, he marvelled at the strange torch the alien had pulled out of his jacket pocket. It emitted a green glow and a weird whirring sound while the Doctor lit the path in front of them. Sometimes, it felt like a dream and Geoffrey wished that it was. He wished to wake up and discover that Michael was still with him, sleeping peacefully in his bed across the room, wished that the sorrow hadn't taken his wife from him. He wished so hard to wake up, but whenever he did, he found that the dream was actually that of his family and everything else was all too real.
"You know what's interesting?" the Doctor suddenly asked, tearing Geoffrey out of his thoughts and bringing him back to reality.
He looked ahead, but couldn't spot anything interesting in the darkness at all.
"You were knocked out where I found you, but there's still two sets of footprints leading towards the barn," the alien explained and came to a halt, illuminating the ground so Geoffrey could get a better look.
As he bent down, he instantly saw that the Doctor was right. Two sets of footprints: a smaller one that left a strange, patterned print in the moist earth and a larger one that might have been his own - only that he hadn't walked here.
Looking for an answer to this new, strange mystery, Geoffrey raised his head and stared at the Doctor. Maybe it was the eerie, green light of the torch, but his gaze seemed darker all of a sudden.
"Whose footprints are these?" Geoffrey wanted to know.
The Doctor inhaled deeply and hesitated for a moment as if gathering his thoughts. For a brief second, Geoffrey thought that a hint of fear had crossed over his face, but it was gone before he could be sure he had seen it. Surely, the Time Lord wasn't scared? Geoffrey felt a tingle down his spine as he considered the possible danger. If something scared a being so powerful as the Doctor, they were truly lost.
"I think the grown-up alien found us and I think it knocked you out and shapeshifted into you," the alien explained carefully, his voice too calm and quiet for what he was saying.
Quicker than Geoffrey could comprehend, the Doctor spun around and darted off into the darkness, heading in the direction of the barn and he had no other choice but to follow. As he wandered through the darkness, a strange feeling started to grow inside of him and he didn't like it. Geoffrey had pushed it aside until now, ignored it, pretended it wasn't there, but what he was really feeling as they approached the barn was fear. Geoffrey was afraid of what they were going to find, afraid that something had happened to Clara, afraid that his son was beyond saving even for the alien Doctor.
He stopped abruptly, almost bumping into the Doctor who had already reached the barn. It was hard to make out in the darkness, but luckily for Geoffrey, the Doctor quickly went on to explain.
"They're gone," he announced and when Geoffrey had suspected to hear defeat in his voice, he was wrong. The Doctor sounded angry, furious even. The determination in his voice might have been enough to make the structure of the barn collapse.
The Doctor spun around on his heels and stared straight at Geoffrey who stepped back instinctively under his frighteningly dark gaze. If he had been an enemy instead of the Doctor's friend, this was where he would have started to run for his life.
"What are we going to do?" Geoffrey found himself asking, his voice shaky and weak compared to the Doctor's.
"We will find them," the alien replied, half growling his words. "Clara, Sally, your son. We will find them and we will get them back."
As much as Geoffrey loved to hear him sound so convinced, a part of him was still scared, maybe even more than he had been five minutes ago. "How are we going to do that?" he wanted to know.
The Doctor took a step closer, but his eyes remained on Geoffrey as if he wanted to determined whether the blacksmith was up for the task. "Clara and I found their spaceship. We will go there and demand our family back."
Geoffrey opened his mouth, ready to protest, ready to ask a million more questions. How were they going to talk to aliens? How would they convince them? Wasn't it dangerous? Were they actually going to seek out the aliens and venture into their territory? Was he about to see an alien spaceship?
He had no time to ask any of these questions as the Doctor stomped past him and headed towards the hole in the colony's fence, angry and determined to get back the person he had lost. Geoffrey should have felt the same anger, but as he feet started to move, all he could feel was fear.
