In a park, in London, sat two very strange people. One was an older gentleman in sunglasses and a hoodie, the other was a younger woman with brown hair and a leather skirt. Both of them were sat on the swings, watching as a troop of school children in their uniforms were lead into the area by their teachers.
Danni shifted slightly on her swing, letting herself rock back and forth on it. "This feels rather creepy," she commented. "We don't have kids. Two adults sat in a park looks a little like we're… I dunno, planning our next abduction."
"We're not abducting anyone," the Doctor replied as the children all rushed in, heading to their favourite parts of the playground. "We're just here to talk."
Two young girls, both with blonde hair and pigtails and looked pretty identical, paused to look at the pair for a long moment before they headed off to play with their peers.
"They recognised us," Danni commented. "But they didn't seem surprised. They were expecting us."
"Nothing good ever comes from being expected," the Doctor replied and Danni nodded in agreement. "We're supposed to be in deep cover. No one's supposed to recognise us."
"You're wearing sunglasses," she countered. "That's not as deep a cover as you think it is. Plus, as I said before, we're two adults without kids at a park. People are going to notice us."
The Doctor shook his head; his disguises were always amazing. She only saw through them because she knew him so well. She'd see that soon enough.
He stood up off the swing. "Come on."
Danni grimaced slightly. "I-I think it might be best if I stay here and you go gather the intel."
The Doctor frowned. "Why?"
"Because…I like the swing," she offered lamely, giving herself a couple of swings back and forth to reiterate her point. He stared at her, like he didn't believe her and she sighed. "I just- I don't do well with kids," she told him. "I don't know what it is. I don't know how to talk to them, I don't know how to behave around them. I just don't get on with them."
"But you've always loved kids," the Doctor protested. "You were the one who kept insisting they come in the TARDIS."
"Yeah, I know. I don't know what to tell you," she replied with a shrug. "It's your turn now. I'll wait here."
She knew it didn't sit well with every one of her previous regenerations, but for some reason whenever she was even around children she would feel awkward and out of place. They were young, and full of questions and hope and they very rarely knew much about anything. How was she supposed to help if they suddenly started crying and all she could think to do was mimic it until they stopped? It wasn't much help, as she had found out on more than one occasion over the years.
She watched the Doctor walk over to the two High Commanders, leaving her to swing gently on her own. She knew they weren't really children, but that part of her that went into a panic around children was already trying to rear its ugly head. It was better that he dealt with them, and she would deal with the big, sucker-covered red aliens that they were most likely going to see soon.
She continued to swing as she pulled out her phone, redialling the last number she had called. It rang out and she looked around, as if she was expecting the person on the other side to miraculously appear behind her.
"Clara, you're probably on that bloody bike of yours, but you really need to answer the phone," she said to the voicemail listening on the other end. "We're heading into the Nightmare Scenario. Just go home and stay home. Don't answer the door to anyone, not even me. We'll come in the TARDIS to let you know when it's safe. Just stay at home."
She hung up and held the phone tightly. It really wasn't like Clara not to answer when she rang, but she also knew that without the TARDIS rerouting the call, there was a chance Clara was doing something normal and human and she just couldn't answer the phone at that point.
Danni really didn't like it. She also considered calling everyone else she knew, but she couldn't tell anyone outside of the know about the Zygon Peace Treaty. It had to be kept a secret. That's why the Nightmare Scenario was so terrifying.
Even though she was expecting Clara to call at any moment, she always was expecting UNIT to as well. Kate's name was the one that came up when her phone rang and she answered it without so much of a missed beat. "Hello Kate," she greeted. "Going that well?"
"They've kidnapped Osgood," Kate replied without any preamble, "and they've stolen the location of every Zygon on Earth."
"Osgood?" She placed her feet on the ground, skidding to a stop. "They got Osgood?" She looked up, motioning to the Doctor to come over. He caught her gaze and left the two little girls alone.
"The ceasefire's broken down," Kate confirmed.
"We'll be right there," Danni promised as a van pulled up next to the playground. It caught her eye, because it was so unassuming, just a maintenance van, but she hung up and hopped of the swing and tried not to pay it much mind. "The Zygons have Osgood," she explained to her husband. "And where everyone is. We need to get to UNIT."
Of course, that was when a large red, Zygon-like bomb was thrown into the playground. The children started screaming as red smoke began billowing out of it. The two Time Lords shared a horrified look before they ran towards the crowd.
"Hey! Away! Out of the way!" the Doctor cried, waving his hands to instruct everyone to run away. Danni did much of the same, both of them running into the smoke, looking for the source of it.
Danni jumped in surprise as a rather large, angry-looking Zygon emerged from the thick smoke, snarling. She reached into her pocket but both of the little girls the Doctor had been talking to screamed as they were grabbed from behind.
She held her gun up but the smoke only thickened, blocking her vision and her chance of a clean shot at any of them. The Doctor reached through, grabbing her arm and she spun, aiming at the surprise attacker. When she realised it was her husband the pair ran out of the park, after the maintenance van which screeched away.
Danni came to a stop first, cursing vividly. The Doctor stopped just in front of her and watching the van speed off. He turned back on his heels, panting lightly and saw the pure frustration on Danni's face.
"I couldn't get a clear shot," she ranted. "That bloody smoke was too thick! I didn't even see them until they appeared in front of my face!"
"It's fine," he reassured her quickly but she shook her head.
"It's not fine. It's fucking annoying, that's what it is," she continued. "I used to be better than that! I used…" she growled, cutting herself off from what would be both an epic rant and probably a dump of information that the Doctor would have welcomed, but was more appropriate to when the world wasn't at the brink of collapse. "We need to get to UNIT," she declared. "If they've got Osgood then they're farther along than we thought."
~0~0~0~
There had been a time when Clara didn't wake up to an international emergency. She was sure she, at one point in her life, didn't have to deal with the fallout of an impending war between the humans and aliens. She knew that she used to just be a nanny who looked after children because they needed someone after their mother had died.
She knew it was true, but she couldn't remember it.
The Zygon Ceasefire began to break down incredibly quickly after those first whispers of an uprising. Her training ended rather abruptly and she was called up to being a relation scientific operative – or something like that, she was never great with job titles – with very little warning.
She loved it. She worked great under pressure.
With Osgood being off the radar somewhere in the United States, it had fallen to Clara to try and negotiate with the Zygons they were in contact with. Clara's job was intelligence gathering and decoding. She'd been to the bank to see Fred and Holly, who hadn't heard much but promised they'd pass on information when they got it because they were happy on Earth and didn't want to lose their kids. They were a sweet couple.
She'd been there when UNIT had brought Yvonne in for further questioning, but the intelligence they'd gathered from her only pointed to the same New Mexican town that they'd heard whispers about.
Clara stepped out of the car, looking up at the office building with a rather bored look on her face. "I do get sent to the best places," she said.
"That's what you get for being the newbie," her driver replied. Well, he wasn't her driver, but he had been driving her around London and, come on, his name was Alfred Jenkins. He may as well have been called Butler McButler.
"So, basically, I'm just going to have to wait until they hire someone else to get into the good stuff?" she asked him as a few more cars showed up, this time containing her backup.
He nodded. "That's exactly it," he replied. She sighed.
"What's the brief?" she asked.
"We're here to see Jay and Dianna," he explained as they headed into the building. "Should be on the second floor unless they've been promoted. They were data analysers last time we checked on them."
"Wow, even more excitement," she drawled. "Just what I signed up for."
She didn't really mean it. Of course, interviewing people wasn't the most exciting part of her job but she was also checking in with Zygons to gather information about an uprising that could destroy the planet. Travelling with the Doctor and Danni, though, usually meant that she was in the heart of the action as it was happening. Going to long – and human – way around took a little getting used to.
The elevator opened on the second floor and she stepped out to see a bunch of faces looking at her, bewildered. It was instantly obvious that these particular workers didn't get a lot of visitors.
"Hi, sorry to barge in. HR," she introduced herself. "We're just looking for Jay and Dianna?"
Two women stood up at the back of the room. One of them looked positively terrified, but the other just looked angry. It immediately put both her and Alfred on edge and she leant in closer to him. "Get the backup," she whispered.
"We're not going anywhere with you," the angry one spat out. "UNIT are the cause of all this."
"Dianna, please," the other one pleaded. "There's no need…"
Dianna turned to the other woman, glowering down at her. "My name is not Dianna," she snarled before turning back to Clara. "Truth or Consequences!" she shouted. She reached into her desk, pulling out a red, sucker-covered thing that she chucked on the floor. The humans in the room started to scream as the room started to fill with red smoke.
Alfred quickly bundled Clara back into the elevator as a door on the other side of the room was thrown open. "Sorry," he quickly apologised for being rough, even though that was his job. He hammered at the close button for the doors then pulled out his radio.
"We've got a runaway," he told the backup at the bottom of the building. "Dianna is a rebel. I repeat, Dianna is a rebel and we are to assume that Jay is as well. They left via the stairwell, all troops are to find and neutralise them but do not harm."
Clara shook her head. "No, Jay wasn't," she corrected. "You heard her. She was pleading with Dianna. She's a captive."
Alfred looked at Clara, as if trying to work out if she was lying or not. Decided she wasn't he turned back to his radio. "Dianna is a rebel. One captive, do not harm either."
Clara smiled, her heart suddenly pounding at the excitement. This was what she had signed up for. Something to make her feel alive again. She nudged Alfred with her shoulder. "Knew you liked me," she boasted happily. "You listened to me."
"I listen to everyone when I'm on the job, Miss Oswald."
"Yeah, but you agreed with me and changed your mind. Means that you like me," she teased as the doors opened on the ground floor. They were greeted by two men in uniform.
"Miss Oswald," one greeted with a salute. "You've been reassigned. We are to escort you immediately."
She frowned. "Reassigned?" she asked. "Why?"
"If you can just follow us, Miss Oswald," was the reply she got. She did just that, climbing into the back of Alfred's car. Alfred, strangely, joined her after a moment of confirming with the soldiers and then the pair climbed in the front.
As they drove away from the scene, one of the soldiers looked back at Clara. "We're to take you to a safe house," he explained to her. "The situation has been raised to critical."
"Wait, the ceasefire broke down?" she asked, a little worried and a lot confused. "How? We were barely looking into it."
"There was an ambush in New Mexico," the soldier explained to her. "Officer Stewart has deemed it important for you to be relocated to the safehouse with her until told otherwise."
"Does she want me to contact Danni?"
"There was no instruction to," he replied. "You'll be briefed when we arrive."
~0~0~0~
It was hard to know who was a Zygon and who wasn't. It all came down to UNIT identification and a trust that the security would be able to tell the difference. Zygons imitated their copies so well that they still didn't, currently, have a way to tell them apart. If they did it would have made this whole endeavour a lot easier.
Clara entered the front door of the house she was taken to. It was on a street she'd never heard of, and a house that she wouldn't have paid another thought to if she'd ever walked past it. It was what made it a fantastic safe house. She was greeted by the security, deemed safe then taken into what used to be the dining room but what was now a makeshift lab.
"What's going on?" she asked Kate, who was surrounded by a lot of people looking incredibly busy.
"Osgood has been taken," Kate explained. "And her files have been compromised. The ceasefire has broken down completely."
Clara blinked, surprised, and Kate left her there as she headed over to one of the many monitors hanging on the metal frame that circled the room.
Once Clara processed the impending doom that was suddenly a rather real possibility she followed Kate over. On it were many different sound displayers, all picking up different communication attempts on any frequency.
"Is-Is she alright? Is she still alive?" she asked, concerned. "Are we going to go to New Mexico to find her?"
"No," Kate replied shortly. "The ceasefire was put in place by the Doctor. Even if you don't travel with them anymore, you would be a number one target to anyone looking to get his attention. You're staying here where you can be most protected."
"I don't need protecting, I can be useful!" Clara protested. She wasn't one to hide back when trouble came her way. It was one of her very few floors. "I was there when the ceasefire was put into place. I helped then and I can help now!"
"You were one of the few people who the Doctor allowed to see the Osgood box as it was being made," Kate countered. "You know too much to be allowed out of the country."
Clara sighed. "Should I at least call Danni?" she asked. "We could really use their help round about now."
Kate looked over her head as the door to the dining room opened. "No need, I already have done," she replied. "Here they are now."
Clara's eyes widened in horror. She turned around and saw Danni and the Doctor being brought in by two UNIT operatives. The Doctor looked as grumpy as always. Danni looked…
Did she have to wear skirts? Could she not dress much frumpier and not look so freakin' amazing?
She hadn't expected it. She had thought she had more time. But she saw the flash of pure confusion on Danni's face as she saw Clara, and the scowl that appeared on the Doctor's and knew that her time to explain was well and truly up.
"Clara?" Danni asked. "What are you doing here?"
~0~0~0~
Osgood was sat in front of a desk, in a drab office with the camera pointing at her. There wasn't anything in the room to suggest where she was. She didn't look terrified, but she also wasn't particularly comfortable either. Above her head was the three-fingered Zygon symbol for the rebel movement.
Her hands were handcuffed in front of her, and a piece of paper laid on the table. She didn't look up at the camera as she read off it.
"UNIT troops will be destroyed wherever they are in the world. The enemies of our race will be destroyed wherever they are in the world." The camera panned out and showed her flanked by two Zygons. "The war is about to begin. There will be truth or there will be consequences."
Just before the video finished, she looked up at the camera. Then it flickered to static before displayed the rebel logo once again.
"Well," Danni said. "She's keeping calm. That's good." She looked to Kate. "She would have had her inhaler, wouldn't she?"
Kate nodded. "You know she never goes anywhere without it."
"That's good." Danni pressed her lips together. She wasn't sure how to process what she was feeling. She still wasn't quite used to caring about anyone but herself and the Doctor in this body, or at least admitting that she did care. She usually just buried it until snarky comments and feeling exasperated with the universe at large. It was a good system. She'd worked hard to get it. Seeing Osgood captured and, even if she didn't seem outwardly terrified, incredibly frightened wanted to make her show how worried she was and she didn't appreciate it. Not one bit.
"She's alive, that's all that matters," the Doctor replied. "Has the uprising been going on long?"
"I'll show you what we already know," Kate said. The Doctor followed her off. Danni stood where she was, looking at the screen Osgood had been on. Clara hovered by her side. Not only was it part of her job to never leave a Time Lord unaccompanied, she didn't want to leave Danni alone. Not when she had that frown on her face. It might have looked like she was deep in thought about the situation at hand, but Clara could tell it wasn't that; that was her processing face.
"I called you quite a few times," Danni stated suddenly. "If UNIT had taken you in all you had to do was let me know."
As much as Clara wanted to be happy that Danni had been concerned for her, she couldn't help just feel guilty. "They, um, they didn't take me," she explained. "I work for them now."
Danni blinked, surprised. "You work for UNIT?" she asked. "And the school were alright with that?"
"I quit," she replied.
"You quit?" Danni repeated, a little slower. "But you loved teaching."
"I did," Clara agreed. "I mean, I still do. I guess. I just… With everything that happened with you, and with-with Danny I just… I wanted something more, something bigger."
Danni was slightly taken aback by how affected she felt by this sudden drop of news. It wasn't that she was angry that Clara worked for UNIT; both she and the Doctor worked for them, and unlike the Doctor she was glad there was some sort of protection on the Earth. And if Clara wasn't happy at the school then of course she agreed that she didn't have to work there anymore. She wanted Clara happy, not in a specific job.
But it still hurt. Her chest hurt as she looked at her best friend. She hadn't even called to tell her the news. She'd found out by accident. It explained why she'd looked so surprised when the Doctor and herself had walked into the building.
She pressed her lips back together for a moment and Clara felt like she was being analysed.
"How long was I away?" Danni asked her suddenly, sounding very curious.
"I-I don't know," Clara replied. "You've never—"
"No, not for me. For you. How long was I away for you?"
"Oh!" Clara thought back for a moment, as if she didn't have a clear number in her head. "About six months, give or take. Why?"
Danni smiled, almost a little sadly. "I just realised just how much I missed with you," she explained softly. She reached out, resting one arm on both of Clara's arms. "I'm happy for you," she said sincerely, a smile on her face. "Congratulations, sweetie."
Clara felt an overwhelming sense of relief, that was quickly taken over by being slightly flustered as Danni pulled her in for a hug that she hadn't been expecting. She had been so worried that Danni would have been angry that she was working with UNIT, or had in some way taken her job. She should have known better. Danni was always just incredibly happy for her.
An arm reached in between them and, much like a crowbar, forced the pair apart. "Please don't touch my wife," the Doctor said shortly. "Especially if you're upsetting her."
Danni rolled her eyes. "She didn't upset me. And I hugged her," she countered.
"I could see your face from across the room," the Doctor replied, as if it explained everything.
Danni didn't correct him. She didn't think they had time for his jealousy. She had always hugged the people she cared about. Just because that want had waned during this regeneration didn't mean she didn't like to pull that back out for the important moments. He also knew that he was the person in the universe she wanted to hug more than anything. He was just being childish.
"What did you find out?" she asked him.
"A lot of things. Nothing useful, nothing useless," he replied vaguely. "We're heading out." He grabbed her hand and started walking towards the door. "We're going in separate cars!" he instructed Kate as he headed past. "Put Oswald in the other car."
"Her name is Clara, and she's still my friend," Danni defended. "Stop being a dick."
"I'm not being a dick. I'm being kind."
"How is relegating her to a different car 'kind'?" she countered.
"Because she fancies you," the Doctor explained. "And we don't do well in the back of transport with other people, do we, my Pet?"
Danni's mind immediately flew back to the back of a longboat and she felt herself warm up nicely. "Maybe separate cars are for the best."
~0~0~0~
Clara knew the school they landed at very well. She had interviewed for it just before she'd landed her job at Coal Hill and she had been there a couple of times to check on Jemima and Claudette. It was a nice school. It was also where the Zygon High Command had their secret base. It was a good disguise, because you really couldn't tell from the outside that it housed alien beings pretending to be children.
What wasn't nice was getting out of her UNIT vehicle, with Kate in tow, to find the other car parked and yet no one out of it but Jac, who looked rather uncomfortable. She wasn't sure if she should knock on the window or not.
"I-I was told to give them five more minutes," the woman said, flustered. That meant that Clara was right all along. She pulled out her hair bobble, tying her hair out of her face.
She took a deep breath, then hammered on the blacked-out window. "We're here!" she called pointedly before stepping out of the way. Nothing happened right away, then the door opened and Danni slipped gracefully out.
"Sorry, I hadn't realised we'd arrived," Danni replied.
Clara raised an eyebrow. "Is that true?" she asked.
Danni shook her head as the Doctor stepped out, straightening his jacket. "Nah, I just like to pretend that I'm professional," she said. "After you."
Kate took the lead, naturally, taking the small group into building. Jac and Clara was close behind. Danni watched her friend go with a frown, one the Doctor only noticed a moment after he'd started to follow himself.
"Everything alright?" he asked. She met his eyes, a frown still on her face. Clara seemed off. She normally waited for her before following anyone else in. They always walked in side by side.
Then again, Clara hadn't travelled with them for what had to be a while now. And she'd missed a good chunk of time being held by Missy. And now she worked for UNIT. Maybe this was just Clara, now. Maybe she didn't think to look for her best friend by her side because she didn't live that life anymore. Maybe Danni wasn't her best friend anymore.
Even Danni felt her metaphorical eyes rolling at that thought. Clara loved her, of course they were best friends.
Instead of voicing her concerns, she smiled at the Doctor. "Your hood's all out of line," she told him, a little cheeky hint to her voice so he knew what she was suggesting. "Turn around, I'll sort it."
He did as she asked, only turning his head to place a kiss on the very tips of her fingertips. "I noticed it too," the Doctor promised. "I'm sure she's just acting up because you're here and she wants to show off."
Danni moved to his side. "She's not showing off," she scolded. "Plus, I thought you didn't like her anymore. Why would you notice anything?"
The smugness in her voice said that she thought very much to the contrary, but the Doctor's face fell from a smile. "I don't," he replied bluntly. "I know her well so I can keep an eye on any warnings."
"Terms of the settlement, Operation Double, were these," Kate explained as they headed down to the boiler room. "Twenty million Zygons, the entire hatchery, were allowed to be born and to stay on Earth. They were permitted to permanently take up the form of the nearest available human beings."
"In this case, a large percentage of the population of the UK," Jac spoke up.
The room was dark, with the sound of steam filling the air. It looked exactly how every other boiler room Danni'd had the misfortune of entering. For all her tinkering and building, for some reason boiler rooms just gave her the creeps.
"You left us with an impossible situation, Doctor," Kate finished.
"Yes, I know. It's called peace," he replied sarcastically. He shared a look with Danni, who seemed just as exasperated by the accusation as he felt. Humans never could see the good in not having an all-out war. "What about the two little girl commanders? Weren't they helping you?"
"When Osgood left the UK, they basically went on lockdown," Clara explained. "We've known that something had been going on for a little while now. Little murmurings about a rebellion. All they would tell us was that they would handle it."
The Doctor nodded, listening to her because it was vital information and not because he thought she needed listening to. He needed all of the facts to try and avert another war. Again.
He didn't mind, not really. If they always came to the conclusion that peace was better than war then he was happy to jump back and help them to that conclusion again. He knew Danni felt the same, as well.
There was a hole in the brick wall that led to the command centre. There wasn't much too it, just some power towers and a main control panel stood lit up at the other end. It was all obviously Zygon, sporting a deep red colour and plenty of tendrils and suckers. There were very old monitors surrounding the panel to create a large computer for the Zygons to use.
Danni's only encounter with the Zygons had been the few times that she had helped the Doctor sort of the breakdowns of the ceasefire. He was the expert and, in the past, she had been happy to stand back and watch him work. It wasn't much different this time around, except she wanted to keep an eye on what he was doing and not just watch him be sexy and clever.
He moved to the control panel. "That's the control polyp for all Zygons on Earth," he explained to the humans.
"It's horrible," Jac declared. Danni glanced over her shoulder at them.
"I'm sure they think the same about us," she replied. "We're all different."
"Danielle," he called over. She walked to his side to watch him splash the liquid from the middle pool in the centre of the polyp around the top controls.
"What's the liquid again?" she asked him quietly.
"Lubrication mucus," he replied. "It's to help strengthen the psychic link and allow control of the polyp." He looked to her, seeing her nose wrinkled at the mention of the word 'mucus'. "I know, I've got hand sanitiser."
"You better bloody had," she muttered.
He moved his hands around the suckers and fronds of the device, trying to break into the computer. They all watched with various degrees of intrigue. Clara pulled an amused face. "Doctor, do you want to be alone with that thing?"
"It's a command computer," he explained. "You operate it by titivating the fronds."
Danni turned her torso to look back at Clara. "He once kissed a Zygon, apparently," she said. "From the looks of it, that Zygon really missed out." Clara snorted before trying to compose herself. She was on duty and it was a serious situation, despite the jokes.
The monitors around the control panel all sprang to life, booting up and the Doctor smirked. "Still got the old magic," he boasted. The system took a moment but it quickly fired into life. "Ah ha! Okay," he declared before he started scanning over the data it presented.
"So the Zygons hatched, dispersed and integrated," Danni started. "But then this splinter group pulled off and decided, what, that peace and harmony wasn't for them?"
"Something's gone wrong," he agreed as the screens flashed over images and maps. "Mexico border, North Asia, West Africa, Australia. Panic. Paranoia. What would happen if they knew who we were?"
From behind them something beeped. "We've received another video," Jac said. They all gathered around her tablet as she loaded it up.
The screen showed the two young girls from the park. "That's the Zygon High Command. It's Jemima and Claudette," Kate explained.
The two girls stood at opposite sides of the screen. They were in the control room, with the polyp behind them.
"We have been betrayed. We were sold. Our rights were violated," a Zygon declared. "We demand the right to be ourselves. Normalise. Normalise!"
The two young girls transformed back into Zygons. From off the screen two Zygon hands stretched into view. Electric bolts shot out of the hands, striking both Zygons in the chest. They didn't scream as they were disintegrated, turning into a pile of dust and what seemed to be hair.
The camera panned to another Zygon, focusing in on their snarling face. "We are now the Zygon High Command. All traitors will die. Truth or consequences."
The video ended with the same end card as Osgood's video had. They all stood in silence, staring at the screen as the implication of the video hit them all.
"So, we have a Zygon revolution on our hands," the Doctor said lowly. He walked away from the tablet screen but then turned to address them all directly. Danni was already stood waiting, staring at him as if she had already guessed he was going to take charge. Kate looked outraged, Jac looked scared and Clara… well, Clara didn't even look surprised.
Not that he cared, of course.
"We need to open negotiations."
"I'm not negotiating with them," Kate declared with a scoff. "As far as they're concerned, everyone's a traitor."
"If you're not going to negotiate, what are you going to do?" Clara asked calmly.
"They're holed up in this settlement in Turmezistan. It's where they've taken Osgood. I'm going to order Colonel Walsh to bomb it."
"Bomb them?" Danni asked with a sigh. "You can't just bomb them, Kate!"
"The treaty's been comprehensively violated, Danielle," Kate reasoned.
"This is a splinter group," the Doctor replied. "The rest of the Zygons, the vast majority, they want to live in peace. You start bombing them, you'll radicalise the lot. That's exactly what the splinter group wants."
"'Truth or consequences'. What exactly does that mean?" Jac spoke up timidly.
"It's just the usual kind of nonsense these idiots call themselves," Kate snapped.
"It's in New Mexico," Clara stated. Everyone stared at her, surprised. "It's a town in New Mexico. Truth or Consequences. Er, they renamed it after a TV show, for a bet or something. It's a Trivial Pursuit question. I used to memorise Trivial Pursuit questions so I could win."
"Of course you did," the Doctor muttered harshly.
"That's the last place we received signal from Osgood's phone, isn't it? New Mexico," Kate realised.
"Okay." The Doctor nodded to himself before pointing at Kate. "Kate Stewart, no bombs for you. Go to Truth Or Consequences. See what you can find out. Danni and I will go to Turmezistan. Negotiate peace, rescue Osgood, and prevent this war, cos that's what we do." He turned to the remaining humans. Danni would want Clara to come with them. He didn't want that as all. "You two stay here. This is your country. Protect it from the scary monsters. And also from the Zygons."
Clara didn't look too put out by the order. Once again Danni couldn't help but feel rather concerned that Clara just didn't want to spend time with her anymore. "Is that alright?" she asked Clara, hoping for a reaction.
Clara shrugged. "Fine," she confirmed.
The Doctor started towards the hole in the wall but paused, turning to Kate. "Oh, and do you still have the presidential aircraft?"
Clara crossed her arms, smiling fondly. "I thought you didn't like being President of the World," she commented, much to Danni's surprise.
"No, but I like poncing about in a big plane," the Doctor replied.
Danni shook her head. "No, no, wait a minute," she said before looking up at her husband. "President of the World?" she repeated. "When did that happen?"
~0~0~0~
Danni wasn't sure what airport they were taken to, but it seemed rather quiet and already full of UNIT soldiers. Kate took them to one of the large planes, one that already had a set of steps up to the door and the engines running as it waited for them.
"President of the World," Danni muttered as she looked up at the plane. "I miss all of the good stuff."
The Doctor took her hand. "Not all of it," he replied. She had taken what had happened when she had been taken rather well, although he expected that to change once the situation calmed down. Until then, though, he could make it even better for her.
Instead of leading her up the stairs, he let her go up the first couple in front of him. He paused then turned to Kate. "Does this count as being on the plane?" he asked.
She placed her hands in her jacket pockets, slightly amused. "I don't see why not," she replied fondly.
He grinned, turning to his wife. She looked incredibly confused, and just as with all of her other faces she looked adorable. "I'm President of the World," he told her.
She smiled. "The giant plane says that, sweetie," she replied.
"As my newest act as President I'm turning it over to you," he declared. Her smile fell away to bewilderment.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"You're now President of the World," he told her. "I'm the First Man. Well, I think I'm the first First Man, which seems not only long overdue but also I can enjoy all of the perks of being President without being in charge." He grinned. "I can be the arm candy for once."
Danni shook her head. "I don't want to be President," she told him bluntly.
"Neither do I," the Doctor replied. "But there's no one I'd rather have in charge of anything than you. You keep me from losing my way. If you can do that than a few billion humans should be no problem at all."
She stared at him for a moment. All of this had happened when she had been taken, so she hadn't been there when he'd been given the title nor for the fallout from that. She'd heard a little bit of it on the car ride to the airport. He said he hadn't wanted the job.
She kind of liked it. She didn't really have roots on this particular Earth. Her mum was from Earth but was born in space. Her father was from the Boeshane Peninsula but lived on Earth, but she'd been raised away from this universe, let alone this Earth. She never felt like it was her home. If she was President of it then it would definitely be her home, wouldn't it?
Plus, she then had the world at her disposal for the inevitable moment Missy would rear her ugly head and she would be able to fight back.
She shrugged. "Yeah, alright then," she said. "I can totally be the President."
"Totally," the Doctor repeated with an ever-growing grin. "The best President. The most good-looking President."
"Not the smartest, though?" she countered cheekily before catching them before they fell into flirting and banter. "Let's get to Turmezistan."
"Yes, Madam President," Kate said.
Danni looked positively outraged. "Madam?" she repeated, turning to the Doctor who kept hold of her hand and headed up the stairs. "She called me Madam. Do-Do I look like a Madam?"
"I don't know," he replied. "What does a madam look like?"
"Not like me," Danni retorted, pouting slightly. She was old, but she didn't look her age, did she?
"I look amazing," she grumbled. "I'm not a Madam."