A/N: Play spot the Snowmen quotes and don't hate me ladies and gents… Thank you so much for all the feedback!
Health and Safety: Chapter 17 – What Buttons to Press
As the company gets farther away, our two armed guards move to flank Émeric, motioning for us to stay between them. Ria uses the tree for support and struggles to stand, taking one very shaky step forward before she is swept up gracefully by Émeric, who tosses his medical kit effortlessly to the Doctor.
"Take care of that for me will you Doctor Smith?"
Émeric leads the way, skirting us around small side streets, and through a dilapidated building, much to Ria's protests. She keeps telling him that not taking the main roads is a bad plan, through gritted teeth and a slight flush. He seems to think that staying on the path less traveled will keep us out of sight; she seems to think it will make us more likely to run into unsavory company. I'm not really sure who I agree with, but she isn't in the strongest position to argue, and he keeps hushing her in an easy tone. Eventually, she gives up and falls uneasily silent.
"Where are you from Émeric?" I ask, hoping to keep them from bickering.
"Montreal, well technically I was born in a small parish outside of the city, but you will never have heard of it and I did grow up in Montreal." He tells me cheerfully.
"What made you come out here?"
"I got a contract job as a medic for Devedas Freight right out of college, I didn't really know what I signed up for though, and certainly didn't think it would mean moving out here. When they stuck me in the middle of a wagon train, I didn't know which end of the horses was more dangerous. Luckily Victoria was kind enough to show me what was what. I'd never even sat on a horse before then, it was a relief to have someone around who knew what they were doing. When my contract was up, I was hired by Enforcement, which was a relief, much steadier work. I'm not built to live out of a saddle."
It isn't lost on me that he calls her 'Victoria' and not 'Ria.'
Somehow we have ended up back on the same road where the TARDIS landed, in a very roundabout way I think. We retrace our steps all the way back to the formerly deserted Enforcement Office, now buzzing with life.
Émeric kindly dismisses our escort once we are inside, and steers us down a brightly lit hallway towards a locked door. He carefully pulls out a key card to open it, ensuring he doesn't jar Ria in the process.
The door slides open, revealing what I think is a state of the art medical facility. It has a clean and clinical feeling to it, smelling faintly of lemons. There are several unoccupied hospital beds and metal tables full of instruments in the room, as well as a few sleepy looking people sitting at desks. They jump to their feet when we walk in, asking if they can be of any assistance.
"No, I will see to Mademoiselle London, and I am sure Doctor Smith will look to his partner." Émeric tells them, marching into a large office, which I assume is his. He sets Ria gently down on the examining table, and then turns to the Doctor.
"Doctor Smith, would you be so kind as to inform Marshal MacEwan that you are all alive still? I will show you to the communications room, he really has been harassing us all night…"
The Doctor nods, flipping a glance over his shoulder to me as he heads to the door. I give him a thumbs up and an eyebrow quirk. I'll be fine Doctor…
"So what is it that keeps happening to you Clara, what do you mean when you say you remember being different people?" Ria asks me once the two of them are gone.
Where do I start? She really deserves an answer of some kind; she has gotten tied up in all of this too…
"There was a man, more of a monster actually; he attacked the Doctor, from the inside out. He got inside of his life, and tried to destroy the Doctor all at once. Doing it killed him, but he was so racked with hate he didn't care, the real him died, but his echoes got scattered across the Doctor's life, killing him in a thousand places all at once… I went in after it and my echoes, they saved the Doctor."
"If it killed him why didn't it kill you?"
"Because the Doctor came in after me… He got the real me out again. This happened just before you found us, there is a lot we still don't understand, but when I sleep or lose consciousness, it's like my mind can't focus, and it gets caught up in the lives of the echoes, seeing what they saw, feeling what they felt. The Doctor keeps trying to get into my head, to keep me from getting lost, but I'm not very good about letting him."
She stares at me for a moment, obviously trying to digest what I just told her.
"Why not?"
"Why not what?"
"Why don't you let him in?"
"Would you want someone inside your head?"
"Not someone I didn't trust no." She answers keenly.
"How's your leg?" I ask her innocently, to which she chuckles before trying to move it again. It cooperates more than it had earlier but it's still obviously troubling her.
"Well getting torn into echoes across someone's life puts a nosebleed and a numb limb into perspective doesn't it? Never a dull moment for you two is there?" Ria sighs.
"Not really no." I concede.
"In all fairness though, it was kind of my fault both times. Maybe I don't know how to keep my mouth shut…"
"I would say the opposite; it's more like you know when to not stay quiet. I know it hasn't ended well for you… But those Etulians would have found us if you hadn't kept them occupied, and someone needed to try and stop Strax and that Russian."
She smiles again before grimacing as her leg twitches a bit.
"Okay, the feeling is definitely coming back now…"
"Well on the bright side, you literally got swept off your feet by a paramedic that is more than a little nice at least. The uniform helps, not that he needs it." I remark a little offhandedly, hoping to keep her mind off of her leg.
"I hadn't noticed." She snaps.
"Really?"
"No, it never crossed my mind once while I was keeping his lovely French arse in a saddle instead of letting it get trampled by thousand pound equines or heavily laden carts." She grumbles sarcastically. Oh I have definitely stumbled on a sore subject…
The French arse in question reappears, a long white lab coat replacing his Kevlar vest.
"Mademoiselle Oswald, your partner is waiting outside for you. I expect Victoria is fine, it'll just take a little while for the effects of the stun shot to wear off. I probably ought to check her over though, you two seemed to be exposed to that gas for longer than my medical opinion would prefer. I'll take a look and then send her to find you two." He tells me with a smile.
Giving Ria a last glance before I step out, I see her attention has become focused on the holes seared in her trousers, ignoring us both... The Doctor is waiting anxiously in the corridor, bobbing up and down on his feet. He ushers me down the hall with some urgency, squeaking in protest when I stop to collect what I hope is a spare paramedic uniform hanging outside a room that has the scent of clean laundry wafting from of it.
"Walt is coming to get us, to escort us back to Bordure as part of a 'special task force' sent by Estevan Enforcement sent to 'investigate' the disappearances in the immediate area."
"You didn't tell them what is really going on then?"
"No, I can hardly explain the situation. Ignorance is not Carlyle in this situation, it is bliss. We just have to wait the Etulians out, if they come up to the official landing and the exchange with the government, I expect they will honour the arrangement. After we botched their gas attack I don't think they will want to try anything else heavy handed."
"Waiting for something to go away on its own isn't usually the way we do things..."
"Nothing about what has happened is usual Clara." He says darkly.
"Where are Vastra, Jenny and Strax?"
"They're here; they started rattling chains to get this lot back to work. The gas attack helped, hard to ignore that..."
He opens a door for me, putting a hand on the small of my back and guiding me into another office, seeming to relax slightly once he shuts the door behind us.
"Mind taking off that jacket?" He asks quietly.
"We could go anywhere though, or we could stay here, why exactly are we going back to Bordure?" I reply, setting the borrowed uniform on a chair so my hands are free to unzip the leather jacket and slide it off.
He shrugs, and pulls a steel table laden with medical equipment towards him, picking up a stethoscope and setting it around his neck.
"We can't use the TARDIS to go anywhere right now, if the Etulians mean what I think they did about having some kind of device that detects Artron energy- that's time energy by the way, getting the old girl moving would be like a big beacon in the sky. I don't know how they missed us arriving here in the first place."
He motions for me to come closer and steps behind me, fingers hesitantly finding the hem of my shirt.
"What are you doing?" I ask quickly. It's a good thing he is behind me and can't see the look on my face at the moment.
"Making sure you're okay, stethoscope, you know, heart beat and… lung stuff… Like I said, the gas effects were mitigated but not totally eliminated, I want to be sure… you've had a rough go of it all recently…"
He trails off, not moving his hand from where his thumb has found its way under my shirt. Weighing my possible responses, and the impossible ones too for good measure, I just decide to nod.
"Breathe normally okay? I am surprisingly qualified to be doing this." He tells me, slipping the stethoscope up the back of my shirt easily.
What exactly are you qualified for here Doctor? And what makes you qualified? Oh, right, normal breathing…
"You're heart rate is up Clara…" He informs me somewhat distractedly, moving the warming metal slightly to the left and setting his other hand on my shoulder as if to steady me.
"Why else do you want to go back to Bordure? You usually have lots of reasons for stuff." I get out hastily.
He pulls the stethoscope from under my shirt, moving to face me and placing it just below my collar bone, two long fingers hovering just underneath the neckline of my shirt to hold it in place as his other hand finds my forehead.
"No fever… Are you able to breathe normally? Is it difficult at all?"
My eyes are fixed on our feet at the moment so I can't see his face, but his tone is wrong, it isn't the one that usually comes out when he is worried about me, it's verging on amused…
"Clara, is it hard to breath?" He asks me again, more slowly, voice lingering over my name.
You.
Daft.
Idiot.
We can place full responsibility for my rapid heart rate and shaky breaths on an alien alright Doctor, just not the ones you seem worried about.
"Why else do you want to go back to Bordure?" I repeat.
He takes a step back, setting the stethoscope down and looking at me with a rather peculiar expression, as if he is arriving at a conclusion he likes but may not have expected.
"It's a busy place, lots of comings and goings; if we stick with the Enforcement detachment we may be able to pass unnoticed, for a few days at least."
Hoping that we of all people can pass unnoticed is a rather optimistic idea…
"There is something else we can do for trying to go unnoticed."
"And how would we do that?"
"With this." I say as I point to the paramedic uniform in the nearby chair.
He picks up the hat experimentally, twirling it in his hands before arranging it carefully over his hair and giving me a look that can't mean anything other than 'I wear a beret now, berets are cool."
"How does this help us go unnoticed?" He asks before tossing the hat back into the chair.
"Do I always have to state the obvious?" I ask with a smirk, snaking my hands up around his neck and undoing the bowtie, winding it around my hand so he can't take it back.
"Clara, what are you doing?" He inquires curiously.
"You heard what the Etulians said Doctor, the person they are looking for is known to 'cavort' with an alien who can't dress to fit in? You're going to have to take those clothes off. "
We have skipped the part where I find out if he came to the same conclusion as I did about me being the one they were after, but oh well, since when have we cared about doing things in a proper linear progression? We have a time machine; we never have to wait for breakfast if we don't want to.
"What is wrong with the way I dress?" He asks leisurely
"We're actually working on undressing you right now Doctor."
Instead of his eyes flying wide like I expected them to, they actually narrow as his shoulders drop, making his whole posture more grounded towards me. Seeing no protest, I start working on his vest buttons, carefully unclipping the delicate pocket watch from its fob and letting it slip into my own pocket.
This is all a purely practical exercise, entirely, totally, utterly and completely, obviously… Just like him checking my heart rate was… probably..?
"Doctor?" My voice quivers out in a question as the last button on the vest comes undone. I expected him to stop me I think, I expected me to stop me, I was just going to get him started on this with the bowtie, because I have wanted to get that off of him forever and this was a brilliant excuse, I mean reason, to do so.
His response is nothing more than a low hum as shrugs off his vest before raising one of his hands to rest on my shoulder and pressing the other against my hip.
His bracers are the next thing that needs to go.
Right?
Why am I doing this again?
"Doctor, I… one way or another you're going to have to take those clothes off." I say once more.
That would, of course, be the moment that Ria chose to walk into the room, just in time to hear that.
"I… sorry I… sorry… didn't know… well didn't think... crazy aliens and the kidnappings and all... not that you two haven't… um, sorry, bad timing, I have it, a lot actually. Didn't mean to interrupt you..." She sputters helplessly, looking everywhere in the room except at us.
"You didn't interrupt anything Victoria, Clara and I were just discussing... health and safety." The Doctor tells her, taking his hands back but not stepping any farther away from me.
Neither of us graces his feeble joke with a laugh. Well I call it a joke; he might not have meant it that way…
His eyes keep flicking between my face and Ria's, expectedly waiting for one of us to break the maddeningly loud silence that has enveloped the room.
She moves her hands around a bit, gesturing like she is trying to propel her voice back into being before she finally starts speaking again.
"Okay, well, I was going to... ask… something… Émeric wanted to know… but on second thought it really doesn't matter..." Her voice trails off for a few seconds before she continues.
"I'm just going to take the elephant in the room out for a walk; we both feel a little crowded in here..."
She mimes clipping a leash onto the imaginary elephant and limps back out of the room as quickly as her still unsteady leg will allow.