When Clara walked into her flat the TARDIS was waiting in the corner, and it wasn't even Wednesday. He'd been doing that more and more lately, turning up on Tuesdays, sneaking in on Saturdays, and Wednesdays went on longer.

And that wasn't the only thing changing.

Since Christmas he'd been different. Warmer, closer, needy even: closeness wasn't unwelcome, far from it, but it was confusing. "We're hugging now?" she'd asked as he crushed her in his arms. It was hard to keep up.

The TARDIS door was open and the sound of his guitar drew her in, "Pretty Woman," again. He'd said hers was the only face that mattered, at least that's what she thought he meant. It was impossible to tell what really went on behind those ice blue eyes.

With a deep breath she stepped into the TARDIS. There he was, a spring of loose silver curls, lost in music. It looked like he'd been busy repairing something under the console, then deliberately lost himself in music; wires hung lose and his tools were scattered across the floor.

He was still playing, eyes closed. He knew she was there, though, because his lips curled into a smile.

'Where to, Clara?'

Always that question, where shall we run away to next? She paused and looked again at the half-finished work.

'Shouldn't you finish that first?' She pointed at the exposed circuits and dangling and wires.

He waved a dismissive hand. 'I was only re-calibrating the dimensional stabilizers. I'll finish it on the way.' He pulled the guitar over his head and propped it against the bookshelf. 'How about a trip to the Crystal Caves of Kastellel Three? Or the planet with a rainbow that never fades?' he said, arcing his hand over his head as he spoke.

'They both sound lovely,' she said, and they were in flight almost before the words were out of her mouth.

Maybe they could do both. Maybe she could stay a month this time. Hell, she could move in and it wouldn't make a dent in her life. What would he make of that?

She nodded at the panel, and he sighed, but sat crossed-legged on the floor to finish the job. She sat beside him, happy to watch as he tinkered with the heart of the TARDIS. Something stirred in her as she watched him work. He was an enigma, a riddle, this Time Lord, with hands that could end civilisations and make magic with an electric guitar.

'So different from anything human,' she said, nodding at the circuits he was working on, but only half talking about the technology.

'Different, yes,' he said, 'but it's an engine. It transforms energy into work.' He traced a finger along a bundle of thin translucent cables. 'The energy comes from the time vortex instead of petrol, but it's the same basic principle underneath. Not so different really.' He looked up at her as he spoke and his eyes were bluer than she remembered. She dimly wondered that his answer didn't include "pudding brain" and a reference to superior Time Lord technology.

'But human and Time Lord technology are poles apart, surely?' she said.

He took a small cylindrical chip from the panel and held it in the palm of his hand. 'See this? It's a divergence chip. Put it in your laptop and it adapts and becomes part of the system. Human, Time Lord, together.'

Her breathe caught in her throat. 'So, Time Lords and humans are compatible?' she said quietly, then flushed and looked down. Damn! What would Freud make of that slip? 'I mean technology,' she said quickly, 'Time Lord and human technology is compatible.' When she looked up he was closer still, his voice soft and lilting, his breath on her face. Her heart danced in her chest.

'They fit together perfectly,' he said, the chip still in his hand.

Her better judgement piped up, in a small voice, back off while you can both chalk this up to crossed wires.

But her treacherous lips murmured, 'The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.' His eyes locked with hers. She held her breath, her heart pounding.

A shower of blue sparks sprinkled from the dangling wires and leapt at the divergence chip. The TARDIS lurched to one side.

'Ow!' he yelped, snatched his hand back. The chip shot across the floor. 'I probably shouldn't have taken that out while the dimensional stabilisers were off,' he said, abashed, then scrambled after the chip. It rolled towards a grate. He made a lunge for it, just as it slipped out of sight.

Clara wondered what just happened. Was he trying to tell her something? For that matter, what had she been saying? Perhaps fate intervened for the better. But she had a horrible feeling something slipped through her fingers. But there was no time for contemplation: the time-rotor juddered, the lights strobed and flickered; the whole TARDIS shook as if trying to break free of an invisible force.

'Doctor, what's happening?'

'Something's locked onto us.'

'What?'

'Haven't a clue. Hold on!'

The Grifter, Devonian Space

The salvage vessel Grifter's engines complained nosily. Its owners, Jaisen Jax and Tia Yeltob, were making a fast exit from Farpoint Station after a disagreement with a drunk Telosian.

'You're my business partner, you don't fight my battles for me,' Tia said.

'That guy had his hands on you!'

'I was fine!' She was more than capable of dealing with wandering hands and laughing it off, but when Jax decided to punch the Telosian on the nose things went from annoying to lethal real fast. They had to leave before picking up fuel and their starved engines were close to shutting down.

Tia put her hand through her long dark hair and bit her lip. She looked at Jax. He was a darker shade of blue than usual; he was worried too. The Grifter's plasma system was ancient, and if they lost their remaining plasma they'd be dead in space, in the literal rather than metaphorical sense.

A light flashed on the Acquisition and Containment system control panel. The A&C unit locked on to salvageable space debris with a tight-angle transport beam and brought it direct to the cargo hold. But doing that now would be disastrous. They were already pushing the Grifter to her limits.

Tia yelled above the din of the engine. 'We're locked onto a piece of time-tech!'

The plasma gauge needle flicked out of green, into amber, then edged towards red, the warning light flashing with an insistent ping ping ping.

The engine stutter was getting louder.

'Damn it!' Jax muttered, his words swallowed by the sound of the groaning engines. The A&C unit flashed a warning: "unclassifiable object".

Tia said, 'Whatever we've locked on to is huge. No, wait, it's small. No…That's just plain weird.' Then the screen flashed repeatedly:

"Error: containment limits breached."

Another alarm sounded, adding to the chaos on the Grifter. Jax and Tia looked at one another.

Jax said, 'I'll deal with the plasma regulators.'

Tia flicked the navigation systems to auto-pilot. 'I'll get down to the hold. God knows what we've got on board.'

'Everything's jammed,' the Doctor yelled over the noise. 'We're in a containment field. We need to get out before I can re-engage the dimensional stabilisers.' The sound of the time rotor rose to a fever pitch, then TARDIS juddered and stilled. They looked at one another for a moment. This, Clara thought, was safer territory. Crashing into the unknown, no sweat. Unravelling their relationship? Far too complicated.

'Right,' he said, 'let's get that containment field switched off and be on our way.'

She nodded. 'Yeah, right.' It would never be that easy. She smiled anyway and followed him out of the TARDIS. They were in an area tightly packed with machines and tech; a half dismantled engine, piles of spare parts, and a lifeless android with no arms.

Clara squeezed through a gap, wrinkling her nose at the smell of oil and grease lingering in the air. A woman stood in the only clear space, frantically tapping on a wall panel and muttering.

'Hello,' Clara said, picking her way through the bay. 'I'm Clara, this is the Doctor, and you seemed to have salvaged us.'

The woman whipped round, stared open mouthed for a moment, then spluttered, 'What? Where?' She squinted suspiciously. 'Were you both in that box?' She jabbed a finger at the TARDIS.

Clara said, 'It's not as cosy as it looks.'

The woman scowled. 'Listen, I know my rights and this,' she waved a hand toward the TARDIS, 'is entrapment. Our legal team will make mince-meat out of a couple of maverick Time Agents pulling a stunt like this. And frankly, your timing sucks.'

The floor shook under foot. Clara stuck out her hand again, with what she hoped was a friendly smile.

'We're not Time Agents,' she said. 'What's your name?'

'Tia,' the woman said, still eyeing them uncertainly.

The Doctor grumbled, 'Judging by the sound of your engines you've got bigger problems. We'll be happy to get out of your hair. Just switch off that containment field.'

'The containment system's locked down.' Tia said, waving at the readings on the panel that she had been adjusting with a blue ended tool. 'Your box is generating paradoxical readings. Assuming you're not Time Agents –and I'm not saying I believe you- even if I could turn off the containment field chances are we'd be swamped with actual Time Agents when they detect the illegal time-tech. Sounds like a lose-lose to me.'

'Illegal time-tech?' Clara raised an eyebrow at the Doctor.

'Some places in the backwaters of the universe got sensitive after the Time War. Set up the Time Agency to police time travel. Some outlawed the use of time travel capable vehicles altogether.'

'And you never thought to mention it?'

He waved a dismissive hand. 'It blows over. I usually give this sector a wide berth.'

Clara looked at the piles of shaking equipment. A half dismantled robot lurched forward and crashed into an old engine, sending circuit boards tumbling across the deck.

She said to Tia, 'Look, we can help. He's good with engines and stuff,' she shot an exasperated look at Doctor's direction, 'usually.'

Tia shook her head as she stuffed her tool in her back pocket. 'Too late. Jax's on his way up, the engines are fried and the computer just vented the last of our plasma. We're dead in space.'

A tall blue man ran into the hold then stopped dead and stared at the Doctor and Clara.

'Who the hell are you?' he demanded.

Tia said, 'They say they're not Time Agents.'

'In four minutes they'll be as dead as us.'

The Doctor went to the control panel and gestured to the keyboard.

'May I?' he asked Tia.

She shrugged. 'Go ahead,' she went to stand with Jax. He put his arm around her shoulder.

After a few seconds the Doctor looked up. 'I can disperse the containment field enough for a short hop. Clara, back in the TARDIS we'll scan for a nearly planet or ship, then find the divergence chip. ' He started back across the hold toward the TARDIS.

'Doctor!' Clara called.

He turned around. Clara nodded towards Jax and Tia, who were standing among the clattering debris. She cleared her throat and nodded again.

The Doctor said. 'You two as well. I haven't got all day,'

Jax looked uncertainly at the blue box sitting among the salvage. 'What good will it do us being in that thing?'

'You'd be surprised,' said Clara, and led the way to the TARDIS.

Jax stepped through the doors into another world. 'I knew it! I bloody well knew it. Trans-dimensional engineering is possible. I told you, didn't I?' he said to Tia, and started grinning, running around the console room like a kid and laughing.

'I've said for years, the stories are true!' He skidded to a halt in front of the Doctor. 'So, you're a Time King then!' He couldn't believe it, here he was on an actual time ship. He felt giddy.

The Doctor said, 'No, no a Time Lord.'

'Don't tell me, you must be…General Gah'len? Castellan Quicksilver? The Mighty Ren?' The stories he'd grown up on went through his head: the Kings of Time fought the evil Daleks in epic battles across time and space. He'd lived on those stories as a kid. For sure, not everyone thought the battles were epic. Some people blamed the Kings of Time as much as the Daleks, but Jax was a sucker for a cracking tale with laser blasters and high adventure, and he'd lapped up every last story. Maybe there were a few details the history books got wrong. They were Time Lords, not Time Kings, for example.

The Time Lord was grumbling, 'What? No, the Doctor, Clara told you, I'm the Doctor.'

Jax hopped from foot to foot, barely able to contain himself. 'I know all the legends. "The March of Kastaborous." "Terror of the Tampering Schism."'

The Doctor shook his head despairingly. 'Terror of the what? You lot need better historians.'

Jax went on regardless, still grinning, 'The Thief and the President's Daughter…'

'Actually, that one may have been me,' the Doctor admitted, coughed, and his face redden a little. Clara raised an eyebrow. Jax just stood with his jaw hanging open.

'Really?' he spluttered, 'You? You're the thief who took a time ship, eloped with the President's daughter and stopped the Time War?' He looked back and forward between the Doctor and Clara.

'Well not on the same day.' The Doctor blushed and busied himself at the console. 'The nearest vessel looks like a big luxury class liner. We'll try to land there.'

Jax continued to stare open mouthed at the Doctor. He was in the presence of the most vaunted Time Lord of them all: the one who stopped the Time War. Whatever else his people thought about the Time Lords, they agreed on one thing: the man who ended the Time War was a hero. And if this was the thief from the stories, then who else could Clara be but the President's Daughter? They acted like a couple, so it made sense. Lucky guy.

Then Jax saw the ship looming on the view-screen.

'No, no, not there! That's the Royal Frigate, time-tech is-'

'Too bad,' the Doctor said. 'There's nothing else in range.' Smoke poured through the vents into the console room, and the TARDIS shuddered.

Jax turned to Tia, she was fighting back tears. He cursed himself silently. He was acting like a star-struck kid, while the Grifter was disintegrating somewhere out there in space. Their business, their home for the past three years was gone. There'd be no reason for Tia to stay with him now.

Jax coughed and spluttered as the smoke thickened and stung his eyes. After what seemed like an age the lurching stopped.

'Tia. I'm sorry,' he said, but it didn't seem like enough. He hung his head. Tia smiled sadly at him.

'We had a good run, didn't we? On the Grifter?'

He smiled and nodded with a lump in his throat. It felt like she was already saying goodbye. He didn't have a clue what to say.

'Where are we?' Clara was asking the Doctor. She was standing close to him, and they were exchanging a look. She flicked a button and then tapped a view-screen, but no image appeared. Even the Time Lord was starting to cough as smoke hung in choking clouds.

'Look, hadn't we better clear out a while and let the TARDIS settle down?' she said to the Doctor.

He nodded. 'Yes, boss.' He flicked open the doors and gestured Clara out of the TARDIS with an after-you flourish. Jax looked at Tia, and shrugged.

'I'm sorry about your ship,' the Doctor said. They followed him out of the TARDIS and barrelled right into Clara who had stopped abruptly. Jax looked over her shoulder. They had landed in a luggage compartment full of traveling trunks and boxes. Surrounding them were eight angry Royal Guards, in tarnished silver helmets and red cloaks. They were all armed to the teeth with deadly blast rifles.

Every last weapon was directed squarely at Clara.

This story was written for Dreameater1988's Whouffalid Challenge#2

Please tell me what you think of my story! How have I done with the characters? How is my tech-talk? Does the story hold your interest? What works well? What is not so good?

I am trying to learn as a writer and get better so all feedback or good bad is valuable! Regress