He's Not You
888
The console smoked. Sparks still periodically flashed from on high fizzled downwards and disappeared into the air. Clara sat against the railing staring into the middle distance. The man who had charged into the TARDIS was now fiddling with the console, haphazardly grumbling as he twiddled bits and bobs.
"I think I've got her down!" He said as he fiddled some more and shook his shoulders.
He tugged at his neck and grumbled. The TARDIS lurched slightly and the rotor shifted half a cycle downward before a shuddering 'chachacha' hissed from the bowels of the machine and a loud 'dong' rang out as the ground beneath them bounced up and down.
He looked at the screens. They all were fuzzy with static. He grumbled as he tapped monitors and twirled dials accomplishing nothing, except the odd pop as circuits gave up and burst angrily. He said something huskily under his breath and sucked his finger and then looked at Clara.
"Are you sure you don't know anything about any of this?" He asked his blue eyes sharply searching her for answers.
"The only time I flew this thing…" Clara started and then stopped, she couldn't remember when she flew it. She knew she had. It was a definite memory but it didn't seem to fit anywhere. A small headache was forming deep in her memory the more she prodded at trying to remember flying the TARDIS. She shook her head and looked at the new man. "He always drove."
"He? Who's he?" The new man asked sharply, his intense blue eyes cutting at her. He fingered the tie snug against his neck and yanked at it pulling it loose and throwing it to the floor.
"You…when you were…someone else." Clara said, looking away from him, to the bow tie the new man had tore off his neck and discarded on the floor. She felt a lump forming in her throat. "You remember don't you? You remember being him right? You remember the Doctor…"
"Oh what are you babbling about? Of course I remember…the…Doctor." He looked quizzically in the distance, closed his eyes and shook his head. The man grumbled and looked to the console. He fidgeted and shifted his shoulders. "I can't think in these clothes!"
He quickly shrugged off the lavender jacket and the tweedy vest and reached for the braces.
"WAIT!" Clara shouted and grabbed his arms. "I've seen you naked once in a different body, I don't really think it's something I want to repeat in a new one…"
"Yes, quite." The man said sizing her up with a curmudgeonly scowl. "I can understand. I'll be back in a minute…I hope."
He turned and walked out of the console room through a large archway that Clara wasn't entirely sure was there a few minutes ago.
She leaned against the TARDIS console. "I know this shouldn't be so…disorienting. I've seen his other faces, I know he changes but this…." She looked towards the archway that very likely hadn't been there before, "this is far more than I expected. I just wish….I wish I had a chance to say…"
"Hello? Helloooo!?" There was a voice, it was his voice. The Doctor's voice, not the man that was currently in the TARDIS but the Doctor's real voice. The voice she knew as the Doctor. She spun around.
"Oh…this…this isn't…" Clara stared at the young man, in browny-green tweed a red bow-tie and a light blue shirt. His hair quaffed to impossible quaffiness. "It's you!"
The man looked at the woman with mild surprise. "It is me…and it's…you?" The man looked surprised and walked around Clara. "Is it not supposed to be me? Clara…are you who you are? Not some Zygon infiltrator waiting for his commander who's disguised as me are you?"
"No, it's just…how can you be here?" Clara asked her eyes inspecting him for fakeness. "I just saw…"
He put his finger on her lips. "No, don't say another word. I don't want to know, I'm guessing this is the future…" He looked around the console. "Looks a bit explody…can't say I like it…" He looked to Clara. "Something's wrong though….something about me…you were surprised it was me…oh…no not that it was me…that it was me….very intriguing..."
"But how…"
"Oh the TARDIS is a bit omni-temporal…the TARDIS is also very sentimental noted your distress via the telepathic circuits and created a localized temporal phase synchronization…to bring me to you to comfort you." The Doctor said as he peered at the scanners. He looked to Clara. She was scratching the back of her head with a quizzical look on her face. He smiled to himself. "Or…you know…you wished really, really hard and poof…here I am…"
"But you can't be here…" She said in a whisper. She nodded towards the archway. "He could be back any minute…"
"TARDIS would never allow that." The Doctor said quickly as he stood straight up.
"Who are you talking to!?" shouted the other man's voice from the archway. Footsteps were coming closer and a shadow formed on the far wall.
The Doctor ducked down below the console and looked to Clara apologetically.
"No…one…just myself…mostly…the TARDIS a little…" Clara said sheepishly as the other man poked his head around the corner. He was in a large sequined jacket that would make the rhinestone cowboy look conservative. Clara looked incredulously at the man. "You're not…thinking that are you?"
"Why not…Elton John gave it to me…it's a favorite…" the man said with a stern look.
"It's just a bit…attention grabbing…" Clara said, biting her lip against the giggle.
The man looked down, frowned slightly and then looked back up to her. "Yes, I can see that…says shoot me now, Dalek, doesn't it? Not very good for slinking about dark corridors…Right…back to it then!"
He disappeared back down the corridor and Clara looked at the Doctor wide eyed and then started to laugh. The Doctor jumped up and looked at her sternly.
"Oi, this is a very…sensitive time…brain's all a mess, synapses re-wiring…body's still not…quite the right size…" The Doctor looked back to the corridor, and squirmed slightly in his tweed jacket. "Plus…I've seen worse…worn worse…"
Clara reached up and straightened his bow tie. "I know…"
"Hey, you should've seen me half a dozen regenerations back…patchwork quilt….and a cat pin…that's all to be said…" The Doctor said leaning against the console and crossing his arms over his chest. "The Rhinestone Cowboy could do far worse…trust me…I had quite the fetish with question marks as well when I got middle aged. Don't let me wear things with question marks…I looked meta…"
"Won't this…screw things up?" Clara asked, leaning next to the console with the Doctor. "I mean you know now…you know you don't…."
"Shhh…" The Doctor hushed quickly. "Yes and no…the less I know the better. I doubt my memories will survive the time differential when the TARDIS puts me back in my own time stream. You're brain Swiss cheeses a bit if you meet yourself out of sequence…the past tends to forget the encounter with the future self…universe's way of working out the paradoxes. But the more I encounter the more likely I will remember something critical…best play it safe, no spoilers."
"It's just…he's not you." Clara said she reached over and grasped the Doctor's hand.
"Of course he is." The Doctor said, looking at Clara. "He's the Doctor."
"But you're the Doctor."
"Yes, I am he and he is me." The Doctor replied quietly. He chuckled quietly to himself. "And we are all together coo coo cachoo." He looked to Clara. "He may not act it, but he's terribly frightened. This process…especially now…is frightening. It's painful and you lose yourself for a while. He'll need you far more now, than I ever did. You have to be his anchor in the storm."
"He doesn't even know who I am? He doesn't know how to fly the TARDIS…."
"Clara…" The Doctor said sternly but gently. "Give it time, time mends everything, eventually."
"Doctor?"
"Yes?"
"Could you take me home?" Clara asked looking in the Doctor's eyes. "Please?"
"Clara…" The Doctor's eyes wore the sadness of the question, the disappointment.
"I just…" She looked back to the archway and then to the Doctor.
"No, Clara, I can't…I shouldn't even be here interacting with the TARDIS, getting her to move…is dangerous. It could destabilize the synchronization, blow a hole in the universe the size of…of…of Belgium!" the Doctor said pushing away from the console and spinning and looking at Clara.
"Belgium? That's a bit…"
"Anticlimatic…yes, I know." The Doctor said. He slid in close to Clara and held her hands with his. "Clara, I know this is difficult, trust me I know. But I need you to do this for me, I need you to help me with this. It's uncharted territory from here on out…you're the first face that face will see, you're my only friend in the universe right now, the only person I know. I need you to help me through this. I promise you, this will get better, but you need to promise me to wait out the storm be there for me in my time of greatest need, when I'm the most vulnerable. Do this for me? One last request? Please? Save my life one more time…"
Clara nodded quietly and sniffed sadly. "I'll miss you, you know."
"Shh, shh…" The Doctor came in and hugged Clara tightly as she started to cry. "I know, I know…but I'm not really gone. I'm part of him now, my memories are his memories. I won't ever forget any of it. Do you understand? I won't forget one second of when I was me, and we were together…" He held her at arms' length and smiled at her. "My impossible girl, brave heart, Clara, brave heart..."
The Doctor stood back from Clara and smiled. Clara smiled also and then heard the footsteps. She spun around, looking to the archway.
"Girl! I can clearly hear you talking to someone, who are you nattering with!" The other man shouted as he swept into the console room.
He was wearing a black theater jacket with bright crimson inner lining. A dark lavender vest with a black button down shirt and black pants with a pair of black shoes. He looked fervently around. Clara spun to look for the Doctor only to find he'd disappeared.
"I was…" She was searching for an excuse a reason a logical reason. He was staring at her intent to know what was going on. She bit her lip and took a deep breath. "I was getting some advice from an old friend about how I should proceed." Clara said with a smile.
"And this old friend, are they a ghost? Or just normally invisible?" The man said his gray eyebrows knitting together incredulously.
"You could say that they are a ghost…" Clara said quietly, testing the waters.
The man nodded quietly and proceeded forward. "Be careful which ghosts you speak to in the TARDIS…she's got many. Not all of them are benevolent." He swept up the dais and put his hands on the console and gently stroked it before tsking quietly to himself. "Navigational system's blown. External sensor grid is burnt out. Universal positioning system is in an infinite regression calculation….and external opticals are…" He stopped and looked closer at the monitor, furrowing his brow. "Is that fog?" The man looked at Clara. "Other words I haven't the foggiest idea where we are, nor how to proceed from here. Guess we're doing this the old fashioned way."
"Old fashioned way?" Clara asked quirking an eyebrow.
"Yep, I'll stick my head out the door if it isn't bitten off or burned off or boiled or sucked into a black hole, should be safe." The man said with a nod. "Stay here, Clara, I may need you to extract the rest of me from the gullet of something quite carnivorous."
"You…you know my name…" Clara smiled.
"Don't be daft, of course I know your name, I spent a good chunk of the end of my life trying to figure you out…you don't forget the name of an impossible person very easily, now come along, stay behind me and I'll pop my head out and have a bit of a recky." The Doctor said as he swanned towards the TARDIS doors. "Just make sure you hold on tight…and be ready to pull me in if something hungry is waiting on the other side!"
Clara smiled as she reached around the Doctor's waist. He put his hands on the door, prepared to open them. He gave her a smile, his blue eyes twinkled and he swept the doors open.
888
This is another chunk of the 'Other ending'. I'm not sure how I'm going to proceed.