CHAPTER 31
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PORTENTS OF THE FUTURE
Danny Pink was patiently waiting for Clara outside of her home as he slowly thought over everything that she had just told him about herself the day before. If he hadn't seen the Terileptils in the restaurant with his own two eyes, he would have thought that she was completely mad by the time that she was finished. He still wasn't sure that she wasn't if even half of the things that had happened to her while traveling with these alien friends of hers were true.
He didn't remember saying much after she had finished telling him the whole story. He had mostly just stood there staring at her in silent shock as she gave him a small knowing smile.
"Yeah, you're probably going to need a day or two to take all of that in aren't you? Don't worry. I understand perfectly. Go on home and think it over for a while. Then if . . . if you still want to continue in a relationship with me, come back here late in the day on Wednesday say around 7 or 8. That's usually when I ask Cass to bring me back so that I have a little time to recover from our little jaunts together," Clara had said to him after she was finished.
Then she hesitated for a moment and he could clearly see a frightened look in her eyes as she said, "And if you're not here when I get back, that's okay. I'll understand."
The look on her face when she said those words almost broke his heart. She looked so vulnerable in that moment even though she was trying her best to appear brave in front of him. All he could think about was how he never wanted to see that look on her face again.
That was the first time that he knew for sure that he was in love with her.
So despite his reservations about the life that she led he was there dutifully waiting for her to return just as she had asked him to be. There had never been a doubt in his mind about that.
What he did have doubts about was how were they ever going to have a successful relationship together when she was constantly risking her life somewhere on some distant planet or off trying to save the universe and he was content to lead a perfectly ordinary life as a teacher. It didn't exactly sound like the basis for a good marriage (which was definitely what he wanted someday) especially since he had already told her that he wasn't sure she should keep traveling with these friends of hers after everything that had happened to her as a result of it.
That had gotten a less than positive reception from her to say the least.
"I bet I know what you're thinking, yeah? That you're in way over your head?" A young woman in her early twenties with long dark hair, large brown eyes, and a sympathetic smile said as she suddenly seemed to appear out of nowhere next to Danny.
He looked at her in surprise since he hadn't even seen her approach which was unusual for him because he had been trained to constantly notice everything around him at all times. Admittedly he had been so distracted thinking about Clara though that she had probably just slipped right underneath his radar.
"Didn't see me coming, did you? Don't worry about it. No one ever does. I'm constantly being told to quit sneaking up on people and how annoying that it is that I do that. I don't mean to honestly. It just sort of happens," The woman said with an amused look on her face.
"So you sneak up on total strangers and just start talking to them quite a lot then?" Danny asked.
"No just you. You looked a bit freaked out over something and I thought that I'd come over here and see if you were okay. Am I bothering you?" The woman asked.
"No. I'm not sure if it will bother my girlfriend or not though so maybe you should leave. I wouldn't want her to get the wrong idea," Danny said.
The woman's face was immediately filled with repulsion as she said, "I don't want you to get the wrong idea either. I am definitely not and I repeat not interested in you in any way. Period."
She immediately added, "No offense meant."
Instead of being offended by this however, Danny actually laughed as he said, "None taken. Why are you here then if it's not that?"
"It's just like I said. I wanted to see if you were alright. Well, that and to tell you to give your relationship with your girlfriend a chance. Yes, it will be hard at first but it'll be so worth it in the end. Trust me," The woman said.
"How did you know what I was thinking?" Danny asked as he started not to like just how personal that this conversation was suddenly becoming.
He was also wondering if this woman was a mind reading alien of some sort out to get Clara. He almost smiled at how that kind of a thought wouldn't even have occurred to him just a few days ago and now it almost seemed normal.
"I'm a bit psychic," The woman said with an enigmatic smile.
"Right," Danny said not certain of how to respond to that.
"I'm freaking you out, aren't I? I can already see a glazed look coming over your face. Now you're thinking, 'Yeah, yeah. Blah blah blah. Please go away, Annoying Girl.' Am I right?" The woman asked with a chuckle.
"Well, I wouldn't have said it quite like that," Danny said.
"Of course not. You're much too polite. I'm basically right though. I know I am. So I'll just leave now because your girlfriend's coming back very soon. I hope that you'll listen to what I said though and give her a chance. She . . . She's very special and she doesn't deserve to be alone just because she's so loyal to her friends. That kind of thing should be rewarded in my book," The woman said.
"Who are you? How do you know so much about Clara?" Danny asked suspiciously.
"Don't get upset. I'm not out to harm her if that's what you're worried about. I knew I shouldn't have come here. I'll probably start slowly disappearing if I don't stop talking soon. I just wanted to make sure that you didn't decide to give up on her. Just promise that you won't, okay?" The woman said nervously as she started to slowly back away from him.
"You're from the future aren't you?" Danny asked as he started to notice for the first time just how much like Clara that she looked.
"What makes you say that?" The woman said in a shaky voice.
"The whole disappearing reference you just made for one thing. Just like Marty McFly started to disappear because he failed to get his parents together in Back to the Future. Who are you?" Danny said.
"I think you already know. As for my real name, I can't tell you that. That might just make things worse. Just call me Marty," The woman said with a small smile as she continued to slowly back away from him.
"Why did you come here then if you were so afraid of altering your own future?" Danny asked.
"It's because that you told me that I did. You said that you saw me at a time when you weren't quite certain about the future and that I gave you hope that everything would be alright. You somehow knew who I was even though I never told you anything. I was just trying to make sure that happened exactly like it should," The woman said in a worried tone.
Danny smiled liking her already as he said, "I don't think you have to worry about that anymore."
"Good. I'd better just leave then before I'm caught," The woman said.
"By who? Your mother?" Danny asked with a chuckle as he pictured an angry Clara telling the woman off.
"No, by my older sister. If you think Mum's bossy, wait until you meet her. She's always saying things like 'Eleanor Pink, stop mucking about with the timestream. Ellie, you're much too reckless for your own good. Ellie, if you wind up erasing me from history I'll punch your lights out.' She's worse than Mum and Aunt Oswin put together," Ellie said with a chuckle.
Then her eyes widened in horror as she said, "I said my name didn't I?"
"Yes, you did," Danny said with a warm smile.
"Forget that you ever heard that, okay? I never said it. It didn't happen. Whatever you do, please never mention that name to Mum, alright? Please," Ellie said in a frightened voice.
"I won't. I promise that I won't tell anyone about this but, well, apparently you one day," Danny reassured her.
"Thank you. I really should go right now. She's coming in less than a minute," Ellie said.
Danny watched in shock as Ellie started to glow with power and fade away.
"Oh, and Dad I'd stand away from that door if I was you. Bye," Ellie said as she disappeared in a burst of energy.
Danny moved away from the door just as Ellie had said even as he looked at the spot where she had just been in surprise. Clara had told him that she had powers that she couldn't use right now, but he hadn't truly believed her until this very moment.
He didn't have long to think about that though before a large blue box that Danny instantly recognized from Clara's description of it as the TARDIS materialized out of thin air and then came flying straight through the spot where he had just been standing a moment ago. As he watched it finally stop a few feet away, he realized with a shudder that Ellie had just saved him from a very nasty accident.
"You're welcome," Ellie's disembodied voice said causing Danny to look around him in confusion for a moment.
"Danny, are you okay?!" Clara shouted as she came flying out of the TARDIS a moment later.
"Yes, I'm fine. I wouldn't have been though. I was standing there just a minute ago," Danny said in a shaken voice.
"Shawn, you idiot! Cass, I told you not to let him fly the ship," Clara shouted back towards the TARDIS.
"Well, how did I know that he was going to leave the brakes off? I was just teaching him how to materialize. Don't worry. It wouldn't have killed him even if it had hit him. It was going too slow," Cassiopeia protested as she came out of the TARDIS.
"Well, it certainly wouldn't have done him any good either. How would that have looked to the paramedics I wonder? 'Sorry but my boyfriend just got flattened by a runaway blue snogbox. Those things do happen sometimes you know?'" Clara said with a frown.
"Who let that pudding brain fly my TARDIS?" An angry voice called out from inside the ship.
Cassiopeia looked terrified as Clara said with a sympathetic wince, "Now you've done it. It's time to go face the music, Cass."
"Who is that?" Danny asked as Cassiopeia went back inside the TARDIS with a look of dread.
"That's the Doctor. You should probably stay away from him, Danny. Right now he's probably not in too good a mood. Not that he ever is in this particular incarnation," Clara said.
"I thought that you said that he and his wife were lost," Danny said.
"They were but now they've been found thanks to a friend of theirs who gave the Doctor's sister half a set of coordinates on them when she came across them on a Time-Space Visualizer by accident. That led her straight to them recently and she finally rescued them. I was only just reunited with them. Oh, and the Matriarch finally showed up again too. She's the one who looks like me but isn't me. Well, she sort of isn't anyway. I'll tell you all about it later," Clara said with a huge smile.
"I'm glad that you got them back, Clara," Danny said as he returned her smile.
"I'm glad that you decided to come back. I wasn't sure if you would or not. I really wouldn't have blamed you if you hadn't," Clara said in a relieved voice.
"Well, luckily for you, I don't scare away that easily," Danny reassured her.
Just before Danny would have kissed Clara, Shawn came running out of the TARDIS with a terrified expression as he said, "Clara, you've got to hide me. I think he's really going to kill me."
"Oh, he always looks like that. Don't let the eyebrows and the menacing stare fool you. His bark is definitely worse than his bite," Clara said in a reassuring tone.
"Maybe to you it is. I'm not his best friend though. He's looking at me like I'm the Half-Face Man from the show, Clara. Help," Shawn said in a pitiful voice.
That was when the Doctor emerged from the TARDIS with a furious look on his face as he said, "You could have seriously damaged my ship. If I ever catch you anywhere near those controls again, I'll drop you off in a supernova."
"Okay, Stick Man. Just stop it right there. You've got this poor kid shaking in his boots. He doesn't know that you're just winding him up like I do," Clara said as Shawn did his very best to hide behind her which wasn't easy since he was so much taller than she was.
"Am I, Clara? Are you so sure about that?" The Doctor said in a malevolent tone.
"With this version of you, I'm never sure about anything to be honest. I am sure that Cassiopeia would probably never speak to you again if you so much as looked at him funny though," Clara said.
The Doctor's face softened now as he said, "Yes, she does have a certain fondness for the idiot, doesn't she? I'm not quite sure why. I'd just as soon take him back home myself now that I finally know where that is. That universe is dull and boring. It's exactly where a pudding brain like him belongs."
"Stop making fun of him," Cassiopeia finally said in an angry voice as she emerged from the TARDIS.
"I'm not. I'm just stating the facts about him. There's a difference," The Doctor said with a frown.
"That's not it at all. You just don't like him because I . . . because I . . ." Cassiopeia said in an emotional voice.
"Is something wrong with your voice, Cassiopeia? You seem to have a problem speaking," The Doctor asked in confusion.
That was when a blonde woman that Danny immediately recognized as the woman he saw in the war left the TARDIS and looked at Cassiopeia with a concerned expression on her face. Clara nodded as she saw Danny's reaction to Rose.
"I was right. She was the one who saved that child you almost shot wasn't she?" Clara said.
Danny nodded without saying a word as he looked at Rose in astonishment.
"It's okay. She does stuff like that. She's always mucking around through people's timestreams saving lives here and there whenever she can. You'll soon get used to it . . . if she ever gets her powers back again from the Matriarch that is," Clara said.
Rose was too busy with Cassiopeia to even so much as notice Clara and Danny at the moment as she said, "Cass, what is it? Why are you getting so upset? You know he was just winding him up."
"I know. It's not that. It's . . . I'd rather not talk about it," Cassiopeia said as she ran into the TARDIS in tears.
"Cass? Wait!" Shawn said with concern just before he ran back inside after her.
"I think that she's been living with Clara for too long. She's developed the same fault with her eyes that she has," The Doctor said.
Rose looked at him with a frown as she said, "Blimey! You are so thick sometimes that it isn't funny, Doctor. She's upset over her feelings for Shawn. She's obviously in love with him but she doesn't want to admit that to herself for some reason."
"She's in love with him? Why? She could do so much better, Rose. A jelly baby would make a better boyfriend than that one," The Doctor snorted contemptuously.
"Funny, my mother said something similar about you once as I recall," Rose said.
"Which one?" The Doctor asked curiously.
"Both of them," Rose said with a grin.
"They never did understand me. They just couldn't accept what a wonderful son-in-law that I am," The Doctor said with undisguised pride.
Rose smiled at him as she kissed him and said, "You are pretty great, yeah?"
"Yes, I certainly am," The Doctor said.
"So I was right to ignore what both of my mothers thought about you then?" Rose said.
"You certainly were," The Doctor said.
"Good. I'll bring that up to Cass then as an example of why she shouldn't listen to what you think of Shawn," Rose said with an evil grin.
"It isn't my opinion of him that's bothering her," The Doctor said in a serious voice.
"I know. I know exactly what it is and it's long past time that I have a talk with her about it too. I need to go find her, Doctor," Rose said as she started towards the TARDIS.
"Rose, I – I know that I should go with you and help, but I'm just not any good at that sort of thing anymore," The Doctor said with a guilty look on his face.
Rose smiled back at him as she said, "It's okay. I know that you still care about her even if you have a harder time showing it these days. She does too, Doctor. Don't worry about it, yeah?"
The Doctor nodded with relief as Rose walked back into the TARDIS.
That was when he finally noticed Danny for the first time and looked him up and down with a scrutinizing gaze as he said, "Who is this?"
"This is Danny Pink. He's my boyfriend," Clara said proudly.
The Doctor immediately turned his nose up and said, "I don't like him."
Clara sighed as she said, "Pay no attention to him, Danny. He never likes anybody."
"That's not true. I can tolerate you . . . more or less," The Doctor said.
"Why thank you, Doctor. That's the nicest thing that this version of you has ever said to me," Clara said with a warm smile as she kissed his cheek.
"He's not good enough for you," The Doctor whispered to her as she did so.
"Stuff it, Skeleton Man," Clara whispered back without the smile ever once leaving her face.
As the Doctor silently scowled at him in disapproval behind Clara's back, Danny couldn't help but wonder yet again exactly what he had gotten himself into. As he saw Clara smile at him though, he realized that he really didn't care.
She was more than worth it.
"Did you hear that, Danny?" Clara asked as she suddenly looked around her in surprise.
"Hear what?" Danny asked.
"I could swear that I heard someone cheering as if they had just won a game or something. I guess it was nothing," Clara said with a shrug.
"Now your ears are becoming defective as well as your eyes, Clara. You should come to the medical bay and let me check you," The Doctor said.
"Oh, shut up, Old Man! You just want to get me away from Danny," Clara said.
"I must admit the thought had occurred to me," The Doctor said.
Danny just ignored him though because he was too busy smiling. He had heard the cheering too and had recognized who it was right away.
It had come from Ellie.
"Mission accomplished, Marty," Danny said to himself in a low voice.
Meanwhile back in the TARDIS, Shawn finally caught up to Cassiopeia at last as he found her in her room. She was sitting on her bed quietly sobbing as he slowly sat down beside her.
"What's wrong? Is it what the Doctor said? I don't think he really meant it. He just thinks that I'm not good enough for you is all it is. I really can't blame him for that because he's right," Shawn said as he put his arm around her.
Cassiopeia looked at him in anger as she said, "Don't you ever say that about yourself again!"
"Why not? It's true. You're perfect in every way. You're beautiful, smart, sweet, and full of compassion for everyone. You help save people every day and are always helping to make the universe a better place. I'm lucky if I can walk around without tripping over my own feet most of the time," Shawn said.
"Stop it, Shawn. You're not that bad and you know it. You're a lot better than you give yourself credit for, okay? Don't ever forget that. And for the record, I'm not perfect," Cassiopeia said.
"Yes, you are. As far as I can see, there isn't a thing wrong with you in any way. There isn't a single flaw. If you don't deserve to be called perfect then no one does," Shawn said meaning it.
Cassiopeia smiled at him warmly as she said, "I know that's how you see me and I love for you it. It's not true though."
Her smile faded as she said, "I'm not perfect. I've done terrible things and hurt so many people. I'm the one who's not worthy of you, Shawn. I don't know how you can stand the sight of me. I don't know how anyone can."
"That wasn't you. You were brainwashed just like River was. I saw that on the show. It wasn't River's fault what she did. The same thing is true about you. You're a good person, Cassiopeia. In fact, you're the best person that I know. I wish you could see yourself like I do then you'd know that," Shawn said.
Cassiopeia began to smile once again and looked at Shawn with pure love in her eyes as she said, "You really don't care about my past at all, do you?"
"No. All I care about is your future. I – I'd like to spend that future with you. If you want me to that is," Shawn said in a nervous voice.
Cassiopeia smiled as she said, "I couldn't think of anyone better or more perfect to spend that future alongside."
Then her face darkened as she said, "If we even have a future that is. I failed, Shawn. I trusted the Matriarch like a fool and she stole Mum's powers from me. I may have just doomed us all especially if she starts messing around with the laws of the universe. The universe is already at a breaking point as it is thanks to Missy doing that."
"You didn't fail. You just wanted to believe in her because she was a part of Clara. You have a kind heart, Cass, and you always want to believe the best in people just like your mother. That's not a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. I don't think the Matriarch is really that bad anyway. I honestly think she just wants to help us. She just has a very warped twisted view of how to do it. Don't worry, Cass. It'll all be alright in the end. I'm sure of it," Shawn said.
Cassiopeia smiled at him again as she said, "Talk about wanting to see the best in people. I believe that you may be even worse than me. I guess that's a good thing though. It keeps you from seeing me as I really am."
"Please don't say things like that. You're not evil. You're just not," Shawn said in an upset voice.
Cassiopeia looked at him with a smile as she said, "You really do believe that, don't you? You make me almost believe it myself whenever you say it. That's one of the reasons why I love you."
As soon as she realized what she had said, she said in a scared voice, "No, I didn't mean that."
"Sorry, it's too late to take it back now. Yes, you did mean it too. Stop being afraid to let yourself be happy, Cass. By the way, I love you too," Shawn said.
Then he took a deep breath and kissed her for the very first time while she was conscious. She hesitated at first and then she finally started to kiss him back.
Rose smiled as she watched them. It appeared that she wasn't needed to help Cassiopeia work through her problems with Shawn after all.
As she silently left them behind in order to give them some privacy, she began to smile to herself as a sudden thought occurred to her.
"Pay up, Clara. I just won the bet on when he would kiss her," Rose said with a grin as soon as she walked out of the TARDIS.
The Doctor collapsed in an unconscious heap on the ground soon afterwards.
"Well, I'd say that he took that much better than I expected," Rose said with a chuckle.
Next: Rose and the Doctor suddenly find their entire world changed and yet neither one of them even realizes it. In fact, all of their friends' lives have been changed as well including the lives of Clara, Polly, Jamie, Victoria, and Zoe. How have things changed for them and who or what is behind it all? Will things ever return to normal? They will if Victoria has anything to say about it.
