Amara blinked, grabbing the sides of the console to break her fall as she attempted to steady herself and wait for the blood to rush out of her head. When she felt the familiar feeling of relative emptiness in her head, she opened her eyes and blinked a couple of times, straightening up.
She looked around the room. The console was covered in metal panels and there was a soft yellowish light all around the room. The perimeter of the circular room had a huge balcony that spanned it on top. The balcony was filled with bookshelves, chairs, desks, and even a black board.
It didn't take long for Amara to put together that she was in the Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS again. However, other than that, she had no clue where she was. It didn't look like the Doctor was there, either.
She walked down the stairs and looked into the corridor that led to the console room. "Hello?" She called out, frowning. "Doctor? Are you there?"
She received no response, so she shrugged and decided that he was probably on an adventure. She walked back to the console and pulled the monitor towards her to see if she knew where the TARDIS was and if the Doctor was in any danger or anything. Because, of course, her mind had defaulted to the the possibility of him being brutally murdered outside when she saw that he wasn't in the TARDIS despite the fact that it was logically impossible.
At that moment, the doors opened and she looked up, her hand still on the monitor. In came two people- the Doctor, carrying a stack of notebooks each covered in glossy orange paper, and a short, brown-haired young woman with her hair done up in a ponytail. She was holding a black handbag and talking to the Doctor, who kicked the door shut behind him when the two of them entered.
"...And then Courtney decides that it would be fun to start an all-out paper plane war in the middle of class when I'm teaching them about Sense and Sensibility, which is important for their grade, and then they all just start throwing things at me when I ask them to stop!"
"Why would you ask them to stop?" The Doctor asked her incredulously, before rolling his eyes. "See, Clara, this is why they all hate you, you're a humongous killjoy."
"Humongous killjoy?!" Clara exclaimed loudly. "How is wanting to be on track being a humongous killjoy?"
"They were having fun, you told them to stop having fun." The Doctor shrugged, putting the books down on a table near the door. He turned to her, putting his hands out and gesturing. "Ergo, you are a humongous killjoy."
Clara folded her hands and scowled at him. "Well, you're a humongous moody stick insect." She then noticed Amara and grinned. "Mara!"
The Doctor immediately turned towards her as Clara ran towards her and gave her a hug. Amara hugged back, grinning. She'd always loved Clara, and was glad to see that Clara seemed to like her as well.
"Clara Oswald!" She grinned as Clara pulled away. "I've been waiting to meet you!"
Clara frowned for a moment. "Have you never met me before?"
"Where did you come from?" The Doctor, who had walked up the stairs by then, asked her, holding his journal in one hand and his pen in the other.
"Adipose Industries." She said, and the Doctor nodded. "Right, Clara, meet Early Amara." He gestured to her before turning to Amara again. "Early Amara, well, you've already met Clara, no point in introducing you again, anyway," He turned to the console and back to them again, "Where do you both want to go next?"
"You're making us choose?" Clara raised an eyebrow at him, and he stared at her. "No, I asked you to do it so that I know which places to avoid."
Clara raised her eyebrows and Amara blinked. "I cannot tell if you're being sarcastic or not right now."
"Oh, believe me, it's an ongoing problem." Clara nodded. "Can't even take him seriously anymore, especially with the whole moody Scotsman aesthetic he has going on here."
The Doctor blinked at her, seemingly offended, and turned to Amara. "I was being sarcastic, it is your choice. Figured I owed at least that much after the whole Venus Flytrap wedding incident."
"I don't follow." Amara folded her hands, frowning.
"Oh, that's a long story, but to sum it up, he married the king of a planet that was inhabited by humanoid venus flytraps. He wouldn't have made it out if I didn't save his arse." Clara chuckled, walking around the console. "Anyway, are you sure it's our choice?"
"Do I really have to repeat myself the third time?" The Doctor rolled his eyes, and Clara shook her head.
"The last time you said this, you shut down my Robin Hood idea." She stared at him accusatorily, her expression very much making up for her short stature. The Doctor turned back to the console, rolling his eyes again.
"But I ended up taking you there, didn't I?"
"Yeah, after Mara and I basically threatened you about it." Clara scoffed, and he turned to the two of them, sighing exasperatedly. "Alright then, wherever the two of you want. No protests from me."
"Say that again."
"What, for the fourth time?" He threw his hands up and turned to the console, "You really are pudding brains if you need to hear a single sentence five times!"
Clara rolled her eyes. "See? This is the idiocy I have to deal with every day."
"What about the idiocy I have to deal with every day?" The Doctor protested, gesturing to Clara. "She expects me to tell her something five times. Five times, Amara!"
Amara shrugged. "I mean, I think she meant it as a figure of speech? You know, like how people ask other people to repeat themselves when the other person says something that's normally out of character. You know, rhetorically."
"That's just stupid human logic." The Doctor huffed, turning to the console. "Why do I even put up with the human race, that's the big question."
Clara rolled her eyes affectionately at him before pulling Amara along with her towards the balcony.
The two of them had settled on the fifth place on the second page of Amara's bucket list, which had been coming together nicely. It was a planet called Pantagruelia, where the people had been celebrating New Year for two centuries. Amara had heard the description in an episode with Clara, and she was intrigued about it. Plus, maintaining canon while also going to a place that she was curious about was basically killing two birds with one stone. Clara was also intrigued by the planet, and also added that after the hectic day she'd had with Courtney and her paper plane fights, a party was exactly what she needed.
The three of them stepped out of the TARDIS after a mostly okay ride onto a place full of different spaceships and futuristic cars. Apparently, it was the official parking spot for everyone, and the Doctor managed to register the TARDIS into a counter that had a computer screen instead of a person inside it.
"Since when do you park in designated parking spots?" Amara asked him as the three of them exited the parking lot. "What happened to fighting the system and parking anywhere?"
He shrugged, "Eh, I was a young idiot back then. Too much effort."
She raised an eyebrow as Clara shook her head from behind the Doctor. He turned around to see what was going on and scowled at Clara. "Shut up."
"I didn't say anything!"
He turned towards her and scowled, before turning back again walking forward. Amara grinned at him, shaking her head as Clara walked beside her. "He just doesn't want to admit that he actually listens to some of the things you tell him to do." She whispered.
Amara raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"
Clara shrugged. "He did say he's known you for a long time, and, well, even I know that spending so much time with someone would end in you picking up a few habits."
Amara smiled. "Well, he did mention I was his best friend, so that probably makes sense."
"How long have you been doing this whole timeline jumping thing, anyway?"
"Two months and two weeks." Amara shrugged. "Well, that's how long I've known the Doctor, anyway. I've only, well, 'jumped' to two places till now- the future, and the time we met Donna again. Stayed there for two months, and apparently that was the case, according to the Doctor I met there."
"Similar to here, then." Clara shrugged, grabbing Amara's hand and pulling her along as the Doctor turned around and started calling them and asking if they were talking about "human stuff" and if they could hurry up.
"Why two hundred years?" Amara asked the Doctor as the three of them walked up the stairs into the planet with the festivities.
"Yeah, they've been celebrating 'New Year' for two hundred years." Clara said from beside the Doctor. "Sort of defeats the purpose of 'new year' doesn't it?"
"The Pantagruelians are huge lovers of beginnings. You see, they believe that everything is as good as its beginning, so every time something new happens, like a birthday, or a new year, or a new tattoo, whatever, they celebrate. And they don't just celebrate. They celebrate." He waved his hands with a flourish, "Like their lives depend on it. And now, they've just gained independence from a horde of colonisers, so they marked the anniversary as their new year, and-"
"So they've been celebrating their new independence for the past two hundred years?" Clara skipped up the stairs, trying to keep up with the two taller people she was travelling with.
"But what if someone died or something during the festivities?" Amara frowned as the Doctor started sonicing a panel in front of a large metal door. "Like, two hundred years, that's a long time, what if someone just spent their entire life partying?"
"Sounds like a good life, that one." Clara muttered, folding her hands as the Doctor turned to her from the door, the screwdriver still in hand.
"They live for hundreds of years."
"Yeah, but what if some of them were already-"
"We're at a festival of beginnings, not endings, Amara." The Doctor said, turning back to the panel again. "Plus, Pantagruelians have this interesting ability where they can control when they die, so you don't have to worry about there being dampers to the party." He added as what seemed to be an afterthought, but unbeknownst to a somewhat relieved Amara, the Doctor smiled softly when she was looking away, a smile on her face as well. However, Clara did notice, and smirked at him, only for him to give her a pointed stare before buzzing his screwdriver at the panel one last time, the metal door opening.
"After you," The Doctor gestured forward to Clara and Amara, who walked outside onto the place where the main festivities were being held.
Amara felt warm air hit her face and blow through her hair as she walked onto the sidewalk of the street. It seemed to be nighttime, as the sky was completely dark, a purple and a blue moon staring down at them, both on different sides of the sky. And if one stared at the sky for a while, their eyes acclimatising to it, they would be able to see a huge amount of stars peppering the dark abyss above them.
The street itself was lit with colourful lights that were hung from streetlamp to streetlamp. The streetlamps themselves were curious-looking. They were shaped like transparent spheres, and they seemed to be filled with some sort of a colourful luminous liquid that had huge spherical bubbles slowly moving up and down them.
The streets were full of different kinds of people who seemed to be from everywhere. There were people with long necks with striations all over them and a streamlined face, walking around wearing yellow or orange clothes to contrast their dark purple complexions, and there were others who had done-shaped heads that were covered with colourful spikes wearing long, flowing robes.
There were stalls on the sides of the main road, the call of different peddlers overlapping about the place. There was music playing in the background- something that reminded Amara of the music played in one of the episodes of Doctor Who- the one with the Scottish and the Romans. The Eaters of Light, if she remembered correctly.
Amara looked around, observing every single detail around her, like a flower-shaped pin on one of the passersby, or the fact that the streetlamps followed a specific pattern. The whole place reminded Amara of one of those annual exhibitions in her city that her mother and aunt always loved going to, and always insisted on dragging Amara, Arya, and their cousin Amritha with them. When they were younger, the three girls would wait as their mothers looked at a random shawl or a vase or something. Amara would remind them to behave at least two times every ten minutes because if they behaved, then they would be lucky enough to ride together on the ferris wheel in the exhibition and have their picture taken with a primitive Nokia camera phone as they would wave from the top, their shadowy silhouettes being the only proof that they'd ridden on the ferris wheel.
Amara took a deep breath as she thought about how simple those times were- her biggest worries were her grades and the prospect of her becoming a prefect in school as opposed to all the nonsense she had to worry about now. Paradoxes and monsters and the next time she jumped away to another Doctor as opposed to Arya's latest mistake she had to cover up to avoid both of them being killed by their parents. The smile on her face slowly faltered as her thoughts strayed to her family. What they would be doing then. How they'd react to her sudden disappearance. Or if they'd react to it, because there was a fair chance that they could've completely forgotten about her. She didn't know what was worse- her family being worried and said that she wasn't there, or her family not even acknowledging it.
She was brought out of her thoughts by someone squeezing her hand, and another person putting their hand on her shoulder. She jumped and turned towards whoever it was, realising that the former was the Doctor and the latter was a very concerned Clara.
"You alright?" Clara asked. "You sort of… zoned out for a moment."
Amara shook her head. "No, no, yeah, I'm fine. I was just… thinking." She said, looking at Clara with what she hoped was a passable smile.
"About what?" Clara frowned.
Amara shook her head. "Doesn't matter. Not now, at least. Anyway, I think we should get going now, right?" She turned to the Doctor briefly, hoping he noticed that she didn't really want to talk about the subject. Not at that point in time, at least.
"Yeah, she's right." The Doctor said, furrowing his eyebrows at Clara when she was about to spout out a retort. She sighed and took Amara's other hand. "Alright, then. Let's get going."
The Doctor dragged them through the crowd, advising them to keep a tight hold on each other's hands as he didn't want anyone getting lost anywhere. He led them to an outdoor amphitheatre which was completely made of a smooth stone that was light blue in colour with dark spots splattered around occasionally.
They edged through the rows of people sitting down, Amara apologising softly every time one of them stepped on someone's foot, before squeezing in between an alien with a huge frill-neck, and another alien that had a long neck and a streamlined face.
A few moments after the theatre was full and everyone seemed to have settled down, a play started in the middle of the stage. It was about the creation of the universe according to the Pantagruelians and the other creatures in the local star system.
They believed that everything came out of a small vial that supposedly contained life itself. The vial had been balanced in space, but had gotten tipped over by a summer wind, causing it to spill into the dark abyss of nothingness, bringing the seven planets in the system into being and spreading across the universe, creating it as it was known as of now. The legend even stated that the liquid was still drifting about, expanding the universe as time went on.
The play had stories of gods and goddesses and tricksters and wise old people, all of them brought to life by wonderful actors. Amara was so enraptured that she didn't even hear the Doctor's softly muttered comment about how all their legends were illogical (Clara, however, did, and subtly stomped on his foot and shot him a glare to let him know that he had to shut up).
"Right, so how much longer should we go again?" Amara asked, stopping to stretch her leg, which was hurting thanks to all the climbing. Right after the play had gotten over, the Doctor dragged Clara and Amara with him and led them outside the festival onto a few dark hills, claiming that they had to climb one of them, and they had to do it fast. Clara and the Doctor seemed to be doing fine, but about five minutes after Amara started climbing, her legs started to ache.
She decided against telling anyone because, well, that would be embarrassing and also because she was a companion of the Doctor and that meant she had to act like one. And that meant she had to get used to the ridiculous amount of physical activity.
"We're halfway up the hill, so I'd reckon another twenty minutes!" The Doctor called back, well ahead of her and Clara. "Why, are you tired or something?"
Amara sucked in a deep breath, trying to ignore the fact that her chest felt like it was about to explode. She let out a huge breath, trying to avoid the urge to breathe in and out as she called out to him. "Not really, I was just curious!" She tried to hide the fact that she was panting because her heart was practically racing and the urge for her to breathe in and out as fast as possible.
The Doctor stopped for a brief moment and turned around, looking at something past her. He turned to her and Clara again, "Well, good news, we have a lot of time before it happens."
"Before what happens?" Clara asked him. "You've refused to tell me every time I asked!"
"You'll find out." He was far away from her and it was dark, but Amara felt like he rolled his eyes at them.
"You do know that your behaviour is creepily similar to that of someone who lures people into the woods to kill them, right?" Clara shot back and Amara sniggered.
"Yeah, Clara. I've known you for almost six years and Amara for a thousand, and of all the times to kill you, I conveniently decide to pick the day we go to a festival as opposed to letting you die and making it look like an accident during one of the dangerous adventures we've had."
"Well, can you blame me?" Clara retorted. "Ever since you regenerated and went all Scottish, there's no way to know exactly what you'll do!"
"Why do you always bring up the fact that I'm Scottish?"
"Because it's surprisingly relevant to the conversation!"
"Oh, it's always the same with you, isn't it? Basing my personality traits on a bloody accent my body subconsciously picked." He placed a hand on his chest. "I'm offended, Clara Oswald."
"Will you two stop being so dramatic?" Amara laughed, making the two of them turn towards her. Their argument had given her time to get ahead and stand next to Clara, and also catch her breath, which was perfect in a way.
"Oi, watch who you're calling dramatic!" The Doctor protested, and Clara rolled her eyes. "She's right, you are being dramatic. Which shouldn't come as a surprise, to be honest."
"You can talk!"
Amara cleared her throat as Clara was about to retort to him again. "Don't we have a mountain to climb? You know, to actually see the thing he's so desperate for us to look at?"
The two of them sighed dramatically and decided it would be best if they just continued walking up the hill instead of continuing their banter because 1) the Doctor was against it and 2) Clara wanted to finish climbing the seemingly endless hill as soon as possible. Amara shook her head at the two of them and continued climbing the hill, completely missing the grin Clara and the Doctor shared, glad that their plan had worked.
Once the three of them reached the top of the hill twenty minutes later, they sat down on a few rocks on top of the hill, Amara sitting in between the Doctor and Clara. The Doctor looked at his watch and counted down from five. The moment he finished counting, a bang was heard in the sky, emitted from a small spark that exploded into a shower of sparks shaped like a flower.
The fireworks continued exploding in the air, each forming different shapes in different colours. Some of them looked like the ones from Earth, but others looked so otherworldly that it was almost unbelievable for one to think that they were actually looking at fireworks. They took the shape of different beings, which moved about and interacted with creatures made by other fireworks, before fading into the sky, only to be replaced with new fireworks.
The three of them sat there watching the fireworks until they stopped, half listening to the Doctor tell them about how they had a fireworks show like this once a month.
After the firework show, the three of them climbed down the hill, which was a lot easier than climbing up, and went back down to join in the festivities. They had some street food which tasted different, but was still amazing, and then started to dance along with everyone else.
They'd had a lot of fun during that part. Amara had successfully dragged the Doctor and made him dance with her for a few minutes before he decided to go off to talk to one of the long-necked aliens, and Clara had gotten acquainted with a few aliens, which had led to her getting so drunk that she had to be carried to the TARDIS by both the Doctor and Amara, which was a task that proved to be harder than Amara thought it would be. However, complications aside, Amara still had a smile on her face as she was writing down the events of that day in her journal.
