Whistling as he walked down the street, the Doctor tossed his TARDIS key carelessly up and down in one hand. Rounding a corner, he came upon the TARDIS, parked next to a couple of rubbish bins on the sidewalk. He frowned when he noticed someone had dashed some sort of soda onto the TARDIS' exterior before they'd carelessly dropped the paper cup on the ground. He picked it up, slung it into one of the bins, and turned to the doors on the TARDIS. Fitting the key into the lock, he pushed the door open.
Once inside, he faced the doors to close them, then turned to the time rotor and the control panel. His oversized chin dropped almost down to his bow tie as he took in the interior of his beloved ship.
Instead of the gleaming copper and gold interior, with broad walkways and stairs leading off into its depths, he found himself looking at a sterile, blue-grey circular room with roundels on the walls, flashing their lights off and on. In the center was the time rotor, surrounded by a clean, orderly six-sided control panel. The glass floor was replaced by silver metal.
Mouth still agape, he staggered further into the room, gingerly reaching for the control panel to see if it was real. His hand had just graced the cold metal, when the sound of bare feet slapping against the metal floor distracted his attention. Someone was coming up the stairs opposite from the door. He turned to see who it was, and found his eyes almost popping out of his head.
Striding up to the control room from somewhere inside the TARDIS, was a lovely, dark eyed young woman, apparently wearing nothing more than a short, thigh length white bathrobe, toweling off her wavy brunette hair. She smiled as she approached him.
"Did you have a good visit?" she remarked, finishing the toweling and leaving her hair hanging damp over her shoulders. She walked straight up to him and leaned into him.
The Doctor, still flabbergasted over the change to the TARDIS, and now gobsmacked by the vision of this scantily clad, overly familiar female in front of him, stepped back a pace and sputtered out something decidedly incoherent.
"You okay?" the female asked. "Did something bad happen?" A dimple appeared beside her smirking mouth, and she pulled on his arm. "Poor baby. Come on back to the bedroom. You can tell me all about it while I make things all better, husband mine."
Husband? MINE?! At the shock of hearing himself so referred to by this obviously attractive but strange to him female, the Doctor lost all ability to speak, and dug his heels in, resisting her attempt to get him to follow her somewhere deeper into the TARDIS. Everything was making less and less sense. Who was this woman? What had happened to his TARDIS? What the devil was going on?
As if she sensed his thoughts, the young lady stopped and turned to him, puzzlement on her face. "Are you okay? You don't seem like yourself," she mused.
A voice sounded from behind them, making the Doctor jump. "Maybe because he isn't your Doctor, nor your husband," it remarked, in tones the Doctor immediately recognized. Mostly because they were his own. He spun on the spot to find himself looking directly at…himself. Leaning on the TARDIS doors, arms crossed, was a mirror image of him, right down to the brown tweed and dark blue bow tie.
The young woman immediately backed away from the Doctor, and moved towards the one at the door. "Sorry! He walked right in and I thought he was you." She gave the other Doctor a pert look. "Nothing happened."
He reached over and bopped her on the nose with one finger. "His loss." Standing away from the door, he approached the Doctor. "As you may have guessed, Doctor…I am you…from the future."
The Doctor straightened his bow tie. "Nice to know we still look cool in the future," he remarked. "So…why are you here?"
"Visiting the Ponds, same as you," the future Doctor smiled. "I don't normally dress like this, but I thought I'd better so they wouldn't think anything of it when I came by."
"Don't tell me you've given up the bow tie?" the Doctor frowned. "And..,who's she?" He gestured at the young woman, who was leaning against the TARDIS' doors, arms behind her back. Upon finding herself brought into their conversation, she skipped forward and introduced herself. "I'm Clara Oswald. Your wife."
The future Doctor shifted uneasily and turned to her. "Clara…that was not the best thing to reveal to—"
"My…wife? But…River…where's River Song? She's my wife," the Doctor stated, looking puzzled. "What has happened to River?"
"Spoilers," the future Doctor said, in a clipped tone. Then he pasted a smile on his face. "Cheer up! Because we've crossed timelines, you won't remember this at all, so you've still got lots to look forward to. In fact, you should probably be getting back to your own TARDIS. She's just down the block a bit from mine." He walked forward, put his arm around the Doctor and lead him to the door.
The Doctor turned and took one more look around the TARDIS interior. "You redecorated," he remarked. "I'm not sure I like it."
The future Doctor sighed and rolled his eyes. "Why do I always seem to insult myself somehow? You'll like it once you get there."
"We'll see," the Doctor grinned. He regarded Clara again. He took in her big brown eyes, dimpled smile, turned up nose, chocolate brown hair and firm bare legs. He gave a cheeky wave in her direction. "Nice to meet you, Clara! I look forward to meeting you again in the future. I'm pretty sure I'll like that."
"I did," Clara smiled, waving back. "It was the best day of my life."
Finding himself outside the future TARDIS, the Doctor gave a wistful smile. "I can only hope it will be the best day of mine," he thought, as he walked down the street a little further, finding his own TARDIS right where he'd left it. Once inside, he shook his head. For some reason his thoughts were strangely muddled. All he could remember of the last few minutes was something about a pair of bare legs. He looked down at his own, and noted they were still clothed. Maybe it was Amy's? Or even Rory's? Better yet, perhaps they were River's? Too bad he couldn't clearly remember.
He looked around the TARDIS' interior, glad to see the copper and gold gleaming everywhere. He leaped up to the control panel and started pulling levers and switches. There was a planet he was dying to take the Ponds to next, but he wanted to visit there first to make sure it was as relatively safe for humans as he remembered it being. Amy got fussy if things were a little off. Trivial things like not enough oxygen, or too many monsters. In a few moments the sound of a TARDIS dematerializing echoed around the neighborhood.
In the other remaining TARDIS, Clara and the Doctor stood next to the control panel. "So, how'd it go?" she asked the Doctor. He smiled.
"I had a lovely visit with Amy and Rory…we ate fish fingers and custard and played on the Wii. Thanks for suggesting we slip back to just around the time of the cubes, they were none the wiser that I was actually from the future. Especially since I dressed in my old brown tweed rather than my purple." He tugged at the lapels of his jacket.
Clara sauntered over to him and slipped her arms under the jacket, and around his waist. "You were gone so long, I was starting to get worried about you."
"Well…when I first stepped out, I saw the other Doctor going into the Pond's house. I didn't want to interrupt them so…I snuck into his TARDIS."
"Why?"
"For old time's sake. I sometimes miss all the coppery, goldy shiney-ness of it. You should have seen it! The clear glass floors…the stairs leading every which way…I had room to move around. Sometimes I'd just dance around the control panel as I worked." His face took on a nostalgic glow.
"Was that all you did?" Clara raised one eyebrow.
"Wellll….I might've taken it for a little spin…" the Doctor sheepishly admitted.
"That was dangerous…what if you hadn't been able to come back to the same time period?" she frowned. "I'd have been stuck here. You still haven't shown me enough about piloting the TARDIS."
"I think she wanted her old Doctor back. She pulled us out of the vortex as quickly as I entered it. Otherwise I might've gone for a little bit of a joy ride," he grinned.
"I shouldn't reward you for almost running off…but I missed you and I'm glad you're here. I was so anxious to have you back I almost dragged the wrong Doctor into the bedroom. But the real you is here now, so mind joining me in our bedroom where you can fill me in on the Ponds while I look for ways to…" here Clara lowered her lids and gave the Doctor a smoldering glance, "entertain you?" She snuggled in closer to him. Slipping one hand up she pulled his bow tie loose. "I think it might be worth your time," she purred.
The Doctor swallowed and gave Clara a rather goofy grin. "I think you might be right," he responded, with a little squeak at the end. He followed her meekly down the stairs and into the TARDIS' hallway, still wearing the same foolish grin.
Several hours later, Clara came scampering up the stairs back to the control room. "Hey!" she whispered towards the time rotor. "I've got a little favor to ask of you…"
A few more hours after that, the Doctor came striding up towards the control room from the hallway leading to their bedroom. He was whistling a cheery tune and tying his bow tie neatly. He stopped abruptly, however, when he reached the control room proper.
All around him the room glowed copper and gold. Stairs lead in swooping directions every which way from a control panel that contained a typewriter, a bell, and various other nonsensical objects on it. The Doctor's grin at seeing his old control room restored almost split his face in two. He danced up to the glass floor and waltzed around the control panel. Clara emerged from the hallway behind him, smiling. She was glad she'd thought to ask the TARDIS to replicate the old control room just this once. It was worth it seeing him so happy.
The Doctor tripped down the stairs to Clara, and whirled her in his arms. "It was you, wasn't it, who got her to do it? Thanks," he enthused, and then kissed her firmly on the cheek. "And now, back to normal." He snapped his fingers, and the whole control room converted back to its blue-grey state.
Clara looked at him sadly. "I thought you missed the old one," she lamented. "That's why I asked her to change it."
"I thought I did too," he smiled, still holding her. "But I learned something while piloting the old one. It reminds me too much of my old life, before you brought joy back into it. I like this one now. It's full of the light you restored to me. And this one reminds me of you, and the memories we've made here. I'm happy here now with you."
She snuggled tighter into his arms. "Charmer," she replied, giving him a coy look.
"Had a good teacher," he smiled, lifting her up into his arms. "By the way…it's my turn to make it worth your while to visit our bedroom." Clara squealed happily as he jogged back down the hallway to the TARDIS' interior, carrying her all the way.
Meanwhile, the TARDIS converted the control room completely back to what she looked like when this whole journey began. Right down to the mysterious round things on the walls. It cheered her up immensely. After all, the Doctor wasn't the only one who got nostalgic about the past occasionally.