Skeleton Man

The Doctor rushed out of the TARDIS the moment that it appeared on Clara's roof, thankful to find the girl, in her dressing gown, standing there as expected, staring at Santa Claus and two of his elves in pure shock. "Clara, I want you to step inside the TARDIS. I don't want you to talk, I want you to do as I ask. Please."

Clara just looked at him.

"That was good, with the box," one of the elves commented, eyeing the TARDIS.

"Hmph," the other said. "Not often we get upstaged on a rooftop."

The Doctor stepped closer to Clara. "Yes, I'm really here. I'm back. Now get inside the TARDIS." Clara obeyed him silently, stepping back into the TARDIS with Adelaide as the Doctor turned to Santa. "I know what this is. Adelaide knows what this is. We know what's happening and we know what's at stake."

Santa shook his head. "I don't think you do, Doctor. But I promise, before this Christmas day is done, you will be glad of my help."

"Happy Easter." He entered the TARDIS, leaving the elves to chuckle about it behind him.

"Be sure to save some room for a tangerine, Doctor," Santa called after him, making the Doctor grimace.

"Nobody likes the tangerines." He closed the TARDIS door, turning back to face Clara and Adelaide, who was in the process of setting the controls.

Clara looked between them, the entire situation finally seeming to really register for her. "I'm really back here. This is...this is real, yeah?" the Time Lords said nothing, the Doctor just walking up to help Adelaide fly the box. "Doctor? Adelaide? Talk to me. I never thought I was going to see you again. What is going on out there? What's happening?" she looked up, laughing, as the time rotor started to spin. "Oh, that noise. Never knew how much I loved it."

The Doctor turned to look at the human. "There's something you have to ask yourself, and it's important. Your life may depend on it. Everybody's life." He paused. "Do you really believe in Santa Claus?"

Clara considered it for a moment before she started to smile. "Do you know what? Yeah. Right now, here, I think I do."

|C-S|

Since Clara was a human, she donned a large parka as the group of time travelers landed at the North Pole. They managed to get into the infirmary to find one woman in the center of the room and four other people lying on beds around the room, faces covered by sheets.

It didn't help that the one woman there whose face they could see screamed at the sight of them. "We've got ghosts!" the woman gasped, speaking through an earpiece. "Yeah, yeah. It's a skeleton man, a girl in a nightie, and tree nymph."

Clara moved to one of the beds, frowning at it. "Adelaide?"

"No, no, no," the woman shouted as they moved towards the bodies, "you're making me think about them. Don't make me think about them!"

"What are they?"

But as Clara spoke, the four people sat up. "Look, just don't ask, yeah? And don't look. Don't make me think about them." The sheets fell from their faces as they stood to reveal that their faces were covered by face-crabs that both Time Lords recognized, though the Doctor a bit more.

The Doctor scanned them with his sonic. "Deaf. Blind. How can they see us? How do they even know that we're here?"

"They can only see you, yeah, if you see them," the woman told them. "So just...so just don't look, don't even think about them."

"Oh, telepathic. They can home in on their own image in someone else's brain. Third-party perception. Mind piracy." The Doctor nodded. "We're being hacked."

Clara stepped back, moving closer to the Time Lords. "What does that even mean?"

"The visual input from your optic nerve is being streamed to their brains," Adelaide explained. "Close your eyes."

Clara did so immediately, but the people still moved closer. "They're still coming, aren't they?"

"It's because you're still thinking about them. So long as you retain them as an active memory, they can still home in. Think about something else."

The woman started to sing under her breath, making Clara frown. "Why is she singing?"

"She's running interference," the Doctor said, speaking quietly. "She's trying to distract herself. Five hundred and four minus seventeen."

"Sorry, what?"

"Plus twenty. Just do it!"

"Five hundred and seven," Clara answered.

They all moved closer as a crack started to form on the creatures. "Minus fourteen, times four."

"One thousand nine hundred and seventy-two."

The Doctor frowned. "Stop being so good at arithmetic."

"I can't help it!"

"Danny Pink!" the Doctor tried. "What is Danny Pink up to right now? He's probably flirting with your neighbor or texting women of low moral character..." he was interrupted by Clara spinning and slapping him.

"Don't you dare. Don't you dare say that."

"I was only..."

"Danny Pink is dead."

The creatures started to growl. "No, he's not." The Doctor frowned and Adelaide was staring at the human.

"He's dead."

The doors to the infirmary opened and three others ran in, hold guns. "Go, run, now, now, now!" the young woman who'd arrived ordered.

The Doctor grabbed the woman who'd been in the room when they arrived. "Come on, quick, quick, quick, come on!"

What seemed to be spiders started to drip from the ceiling, made out of some sort of mucus that had been coming out of the creatures.

"Here they come!"

More spiders appeared, one going right for Adelaide's face...

And then there was a large explosion that opened the outside door, a tangerine rolling in first a moment later and then a series of toys. For a moment there was just a silhouette of Santa riding a rearing reindeer before the man dismounted and entered the room with his elves by his side. "Well, now. What seems to be the problem? This is the North Pole. We don't want any trouble here." The reindeer snorted. "Hey, Rudolph." He clicked a car key fob, making Rudolph's nose blink. "Easy son. Oi!" he turned to the four people and their creatures. "Sleepyheads! It's Christmas Eve, early to bed." He clapped his hands, the four returning to their beds.

"Who the hell are you?" the new young woman asked, frowning at him.

"Oh, take a guess," the Doctor scoffed. "Go on, push the boat out. Tooth Fairy, maybe? Easter Bunny?"

"Shut your mouth, wise guy, or you get yours," one of the elves, holding a balloon, glared at him.

"It's a balloon animal," the other elf, holding a toy gun, informed him.

"That's a toy gun."

"Yeah, well, at least it's unsuitable for children under four. Parts small enough to swallow, so watch out."

"No, this is ridiculous," the first girl said. "Am I...am I dreaming?"

The Doctor pointed at her. "Oh, very good."

The young woman, who seemed to be some sort of captain, strode forward until her gun was pointing at Santa's midriff. "I need to know exactly who you are, and what's happening here."

Santa gently directed the gun away from him. "Hello, Ashley. Lead scientist on a polar expedition. Oh, that microscope really paid off, didn't it? Now, your mum and dad wanted me to get you a toy one, but sometimes, I take a chance."

Ashley blinked, clearly a bit startled. "Who are you? Why are you dressed like that?"

"Why do you think?"

"Come on," the first woman shook her head, "this is mental. This is totally not happening."

"I got three words, Shona. Don't make me use them."

Shona frowned. "What three words?"

"My. Little. Pony."

She glared. "Shut up, you."

"Yeah? I've got lots more, babe."

"I will mark you, Santa." She mimed clawing at him.

"Okay," Clara turned to the Time Lords, "are either of you going to explain? What is going on?"

"It's an invasion, Miss Oswald," Santa cheered.

"An invasion of...of what, elves?"

"Whoa!" one said. "That is racist."

The other nodded. "Elfist!"

"Yeah. Which is a bit hypocritical, from someone of your height."

Santa moved back, getting something from his saddlebag and showing it, one of the creatures, to the Time Lords. "Huh? You seen them before, either of you?"

The Doctor nodded. "I've heard of them."

"The Kantrofarri," Santa agreed.

"Colloquially known as the Dream Crabs."

"Yeah. Depending on how many of those are already on Earth, the human race may well have seen its last day." Santa looked between them. "So, are we going to stand about arguing about whether I'm real or not, or are we going to get busy saving Christmas?"

"Oh, ho, ho!" an elf laughed. "Santa goes badass!"

The other nodded. "He's giving me the feels."

"Shut up," Santa snapped. "That's a...that's a verbal warning. Please, stop it."

|C-S|

While the rest of the crew took Santa to the control room, Ashley brought the Time Lords, Clara, and Santa's Dream Crab sample to the laboratory so that they could study the alien.

"Is it dead?" Clara asked, watching as the Doctor and Adelaide lowered themselves to eye level with the Dream Crab.

"I don't know," the Doctor said, at the same moment Adelaide said, "possibly."

Ashley leaned closer as well. "I'm assuming extra-terrestrial."

"Oh, definitely," the Doctor agreed.

"Then how can you have heard of these things?"

He glanced at her. "Guess."

"Because you're extra-terrestrial, too."

"Do you believe that?"

Ashley nodded. "Why's it called a Dream Crab, for a start?"

Adelaide looked at her. "Theorize."

"Because it generates a telepathic field."

"And?" she prompted.

"Alters perception."

"Meaning?"

Ashley frowned. "I seem to be doing all the work here."

"Meaning we can't trust anything that we see or hear," Clara finished, glancing at Adelaide as she nodded.

"Go to the window," the Doctor said.

"Why?"

"Because it gets worse."

Ashley moved to the window and looked out to where they'd parked the TARDIS. "What is that?"

"That's how Clara, Adelaide, and I got here."

"In a box?"

He shrugged. "Technically, in a telephone kiosk."

Ashley laughed, turning back to them. "How?"

"Because it's a spaceship in disguise." He paused. "You know what the big problem is in telling fantasy and reality apart?"

"What?"

"They're both ridiculous." The Time Lords knew this in first hand after the whole deal of the Dream Lord...though there, the fact that Adelaide had started to determine that the Dream Lord was actually based in the Doctor and her, lightly, meant that she'd been able to figure out the logic of the dreams.

That was a bit more difficult to do here with the Dream Crabs.

"So we don't know what is real and what isn't?" Clara asked.

"Exactly."

"Are we in danger?"

"Oh, we are well way past danger, Clara."

Adelaide nodded. "If I'm right..."

"And she usually is," the Doctor added.

"We're dying."

Ashley straightened. "Then how do we stay alive?"

Adelaide looked to her. "If you actually use your eyes, I may quite like you. Can you show us how you first encountered the creatures and what happened to the people in the infirmary? After all, you all wear mini-cams, so one can assume there's footage."

Ashley eyed her. "Is it possible I'm about to work with someone who might be a dream?"

The Doctor shrugged. "If it helps, so are we."

"We have footage on the drives. I'll see what I can pull up."

"Ashley, what's this polar base for?" the Doctor asked. "Why are you all here?"

"It's a long story." She left, leaving the three people alone.

After a pause, Clara turned to them. "What you said about Danny. Unacceptable."

"I know." The Doctor attempted to avoid the human's gaze. "I had to flood your mind with random emotion."

"Random?"

"You never told us he was dead. You said he made it back."

Clara nodded. "Well, I lied. I liked, so you'd go home to Gallifrey instead of fussing about me."

"Gallifrey isn't home," Adelaide mumbled, not looking at either person. "But besides, we never found Gallifrey. The Doctor lied so that you'd stay with Danny."

Clara looked down at the Dream Crab. "So we're dying, then?"

"Yes," Adelaide nodded.

"Why?"

"Unknown at the moment."

"How long do we have?"

"Also unknown."

"Just..." Clara closed her eyes for a moment. "Adelaide, Doctor, give me something to do."

"Use your eyes. Trust nothing," Adelaide offered. "Accept nothing you see."

The Doctor nodded. "Whatever happens, interrogate everything."

"In case it's a lie?"

"In case it's a lie."

|C-S|

Ashley reappeared to bring the group to the control room after she'd found the records Adelaide had asked for, finding Shona attempting to interrogate Santa...though it didn't seem successful. "Reindeer can't fly. They just can't."

"No, no, they can't. I know it's a scientific impossibility, Adelaide, before you say anything. That's why I feed mine magic carrots."

The Doctor eyed Shona. "You alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to talk sense into...er...Beardy-Weirdy."

He frowned. "You don't seem much like a scientist."

"That's a bit rude, coming from a magician."

The Doctor looked to the rest of the people. "Why are you out here? What brought you to the North Pole?"

Shona shrugged. "Long story, isn't it?"

"You missed the killer question."

"Sorry, what?"

"Beardy-Weirdy," the Doctor called.

"Yeah?"

The Doctor pointed at Adelaide, but the Time Lady refused to ask the question, which made him pout slightly before doing it himself. "How do you get all the presents in the sleigh?"

Santa grinned. "It's bigger on the inside." One of the elves cheered at that.

"Adelaide?" Ashley called, both Time Lords hurrying to stand around her at the main monitor.

"What are we looking at?" the Doctor asked.

"Footage from a week ago," the final woman, Bellows, stepped closer. "A side expedition from our main mission."

He glanced at her. "What is your main mission?"

"Long story." Bellows gestured at the monitor. "Ice cave directly beneath this base. Now, look at what we found." Clusters of the Dream Crabs hanging from an icicle. "Dormant at first."

"Until you looked at them too long," the Doctor nodded. "Till you thought about them."

"Exactly."

"Sleeping. Probably been down there for centuries."

Clara stepped closer too. "And it wakes up when you think about it?"

"They can detect their own mental picture in any nearby mind."

Ashley nodded. "That's Bellows' theory."

"It's like it responds to the presence of any data concerning itself."

"Oh, that was always the legend," the Doctor mumbled. "You think about a Dream Crab, a Dream Crab is coming for you."

"This is where it gets really nasty," the man – who was in the process of eating a turkey leg – named Albert called.

"Only now?" Clara stepped back as a Dream Crab leaped onto the person wearing the headcam, switching the image to static.

"Okay, then what?"

Bellows switched the image to the infirmary, a time when they'd been putting the people attacked by the Dream Crabs into the beds they'd found them in when they arrived.

"They're a bit like Facehuggers, aren't they?" Albert offered.

The Doctor looked to him. "Face huggers?"

"You know, Alien. The horror movie, Alien."

He frowned. "There's a horror movie called Alien? I don't even need Adelaide to tell me that's really offensive. No wonder everyone keeps invading you."

"first, they just sleep," Bellows continued. "Couple of days, just lying there."

"And then they became aggressive."

Ashley nodded. "If we got close enough, yeah."

"It would take the Dream Crab time to take control," Adelaide mumbled, seeming to be thinking aloud. "Depends how much of the host brain it digested."

Ashley made a face. "Are they still alive under those things?"

"Depends what your definition of alive is."

"Are they suffering?"

"No, no, no, no, no, no," the Doctor said. "The Dream Crab induces a dream state. Keeps you happy and relaxed, in a perfectly realized dream world, as you dissolve. Merciful, I suppose."

"Compared to what?"

"Compared to that turkey leg you keep eating." The Doctor turned to the screen. "Could you rewind? I'd like to see them dormant again. Clara, could you fetch us the dead one?"

"Maybe I could fetch you a cup of tea while I'm at it," Clara mumbled.

"Oooh, yes, and a punch in the face, too."

"My very next suggestion," Clara left the room.

"Fair enough!" the Doctor called after her. "Of course, if anyone should have asked her to do that, it's Adelaide. She's your assistant, after all."

"Less talking and more thinking, Doctor." They watched the feed for a moment before the Time Lords sat back in unison, the same thought occurring to them.

"What's wrong?" Ashley asked, looking between them.

"We're thinking about it," Adelaide said, both Time Lords turning and running back to the laboratory, where they found Clara lying on the ground, Santa's Dream Crab on her face.

The Doctor rushed to her side. "Clara! You are dying. Dying! Dying! Clara! Clara! Clara! Clara! Clara, you're dreaming. You're dying. Can you hear me? Clara?"

"I assume no stimulus woke them?" Adelaide asked Ashley.

"We tried everything."

"Okay, we kill it." The Doctor nodded. "We find a way to kill it and we get it off of her. How do we kill it?"

Adelaide shook her head. "There's no way to fill it without killing Clara as well."

"And as a scientist," Ashley added, "may I just say, I don't like the way you're talking."

"Oh, now there are two of you," the Doctor groaned, turning to Santa. "Santa, in the infirmary, you told the Sleepers to go to bed and they obeyed you."

"Sorry, doesn't mean I can get that creature off her."

"No, but you can get back in there unharmed."

Shona frowned. "What? You're asking Santa for help? He doesn't exist."

"And when did you become an expert on what does and doesn't exist?" Adelaide asked her. "Scientists never assume they know everything."

Santa smiled slightly. "I can commit several million housebreaks in one night dressed in a red suit with jingle bells, so of course I can get back into the infirmary."

"Good. Because there is only one way that I can communicate with Clara." The Doctor looked to Adelaide and she knew what he was suggesting, what she would let him do.

What she, who noticed everything and could recognize dreams, really should have been doing but was thankful he wasn't making her.

Adelaide had had quite enough of being trapped inside her own mind for the rest of her regenerations.

|C-S|

Even though Adelaide knew that the Doctor was going to be fine – as she kept telling herself – the sight of him lying next to Clara with a Dream Crab on his face was not a pleasant one.

"Have we just killed him?" Ashley asked her. "Have we just made it worse?"

"He thinks he can join the dream and get her out," Santa answered for Adelaide. "Have a little faith."

Adelaide said nothing, but she let out a breath when the Doctor and Clara sat up straight, their Dream Crabs falling from their faces. Immediately, she knelt by Clara's side. "Clara, look at me. Breathe. Breathe. Just breathe." She glanced over at the Dream Crabs as they turned to dust. "Breathe."

It was only once Clara nodded that Adelaide stood and used a pair of tongs provided by Ashley to pick up the one bit of the crabs that hadn't truly disintegrated to put in Santa's jar again. "So these creatures, when their feeding goes wrong, they die?" Bellows asked.

The Doctor nodded, helping Clara stand. "The carnivore's hazard. Food has teeth too." He watched as the human started to feel her temple. "You okay?"

"No."

"Good. There are some things we should never be okay about."

"There doesn't seem to be a wound."

"No," he agreed. "And the pain's still there, isn't it?"

"Is it the ice cream pain?" Shona asked. "Just here?" she touched a spot on her temple. "Cos I've got that."

"It's the cold, I think," Bellows offered. "Some sort of reaction."

"But only on one side, just that spot there," the Doctor touched the same spot. "Doesn't that strike you as odd?"

"Well," Albert shrugged, "we've all got it."

"Okay, so why do we all have that pain?"

The Doctor grinned. "Theorize."

But Clara just rolled her eyes. "Don't treat me like a beginner. I've been traveling with Adelaide this whole time. I was dreaming, then I woke up."

"Did you?" Adelaide asked. "Ever woken from a dream and discovered you were still dreaming?"

The Doctor nodded. "Dreams within dreams. Dream states nested inside each other."

"Extremely possible, especially when one is dealing with creatures who have weaponized dreams."

"I don't know about anybody else, but I'm pretty certain I'm awake right now," Bellows said.

"And your evidence for that?"

Ashley frowned. "Evidence?"

"How can any of us be awake?"

Shona shook her head. "I don't understand."

"Remember how we all first met, in the infirmary?" the Doctor asked. "All those creatures coming down from the ceiling, attacking us. We never stood a chance. How did we survive that?"

"Well, we...we were rescued."

"Yeah, we were rescued. And who was it that rescued us?" The crew looked around, finding that the man had vanished.

A/N: At some point Adelaide's penchant for wearing green would get her a nice nickname ;)

One chapter left of this story, and then we move onto the next story, the title of which you get to find out in said next chapter. It will certainly be an interesting one...

Notes on reviews:

lautaro94: Well, now that's on my list of episodes I need to watch. I have always liked the idea of having a spin-off where Adelaide either encounters planets that the Doctor has been to or just encounters the Doctor before and somehow neither of them realize who the other is.

Arashi - IV - VI: I'm so glad to hear that! Glad you're enjoying it!