Notes: Sorry, didn't even realize that I hadn't posted this chapter yet. I'm working on the next one, just got delayed due to exams.
"Am I going to have the nightmare tonight?" Francesca asked Clara as she tucked the children into bed.
"Definitely not," Clara insisted.
"How do you know?" she questioned.
"Because someone's coming to help," Clara assured her with a smile.
"Who?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Clara replied.
"Is it one of your stories? Your definitely true ones?" Francesca asked excitedly. Clearly they enjoyed Clara's stories and one of them just might cheer her up.
"Ha! All my stories are true," Clara insisted.
"Like how you were born behind the clock face of Big Ben?" Digby questioned, clearly not believing it.
"Accounting for my acute sense of time," she replied, knowing that her sense of time had more to do with her genetics than where she was born.
"And you invented fish," Francesca continued, reminding her of an even more far fetched tale.
"Because I dislike swimming alone," Clara responded, remembering that story fondly.
"So what's this one?" Digby wondered.
"There's a man called the Doctor," she told them as she fondly thought of her grandfather. "He lives on a cloud in the sky, and all he does, all day every day, is to stop all the children in the world ever having bad dreams."
"I've been having bad dreams," Francesca argued.
"He's been on holiday. But I am confident he has now returned to work. And as a matter of fact, he's right here," Clara told them as she watched the candle flicker from the breeze of the door opening. Turning to greet him, she added, "Aren't you, Doctor?"
Clara's bright smile disappeared when she saw, not her grandparents, but a woman made of ice slide into the room. The children screamed and leapt from their beds as they ran to the opposite side of the room, toward the door that led into their playroom.
"Bloomin' hell!" Clara cried at the sight.
"The children have been very naughty," the ice woman announced, following them threateningly.
"Get back. Now. Quickly," Clara warned the children, keeping herself between them and the creature.
"Naughty, naughty children," it repeated.
"Run!" she called, ushering the children into the playroom. She shut the door tightly, but knew it wouldn't hold her for long.
"What do we do?" Digby questioned.
"Frannie, Frannie, imagine her melting," Clara instructed, remembering what had happened with the snowmen.
"What?" Francesca asked, not understanding what that had to do with anything.
"In your head. Melt her," Clara repeated. She tried to place her fingers against the girl's head to bolster her mental strength, but the blocks that her granddad had placed before leaving her there had made it difficult. She didn't really have much experience with anything like that anyway.
"I can't!" the little girl cried when her thoughts kept circling in fear.
"I'm getting impatient!" the ice woman shouted as she finally forced open the door. "You have been very naughty!"
"What about the man? You said the man was here, the cloud man," Digby argued, trying to hope for someone to save them all.
"Well, he's not, is he?" Clara cried, just as eager to see him.
"Where's the Doctor?" Digby shouted, starting to cry.
"I don't know!" she answered, then was surprised to hear a familiar voice, speaking high and squeaky behind them.
"Doctor? Doctor? Doctor who?" the voice asked from behind the puppet theatre, a little Punch hand puppet holding the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. Activating the device, the Punch puppet shattered the ice woman and cried out, "That's the way to do it!"
The Doctor's head popped up from behind the theatre and Punch kissed him on the face.
"Oi! What are you doing?" a Judy puppet asked from beside him and they playfully started the two puppets fighting with each other.
"Where did she go? Will she come back?" Francesca questioned, her heart still racing.
"No, don't worry. She's currently draining through your carpet. New setting. Anti-freeze. And you're very welcome, by the way," the Doctor told them.
"I'm very grateful. I knew you'd come," Clara answered.
"And how did you know that?" Rose asked curiously.
"Well, I… it's just. The way that lizard woman talked, like I could count on you to come," Aria answered awkwardly.
The Doctor turned to a mirror over the fireplace to straighten his bow tie. "Well, I am extremely reliable," he preened.
"Right. Brave, good, and brilliant, I'll give you, but reliable?" Rose argued.
"It's cooler," Aria commented.
"Yeah, it is, isn't it? It is very cool. Bow ties are cool," the Doctor responded, thinking that she was talking about his new outfit.
"No, the room. The room's getting colder," she corrected.
They all looked on in horror as an ominous bulge grew beneath the rug where the ice woman had shattered.
"She's coming back!" Digby shouted.
"What's she going to do? Is she going to punish me?" Francesca questioned fearfully.
"Er, er, she's learnt not to melt. Of course, she's not really a governess, she's just a beast. She's going to eat you. Run!" the Doctor told them.
"Always finding the best words to calm down the terrified children, dear," Rose chastised as they fled the attacking ice woman.
Running down the main staircase, the group came face to face with Captain Latimer.
"Children, what is the expla... Who the devil are you? What are you doing in my house?" he demanded of the strangers.
"They're my, umm, parents! Yes, these are my parents come for a visit," Aria told him quickly. Rose looked at her suspiciously for a moment.
"Captain Latimer. In the garden, there's snowmen! And they're just growing out of nowhere, all by themselves. Look!" Alice shouted frantically as she ran down the hallway.
There was a knock on the front door and she rushed to answer it. Alice was suddenly faced with Vastra and Jenny.
"Good evening. I'm a Lizard Woman from the Dawn of Time, and this is my wife," Vastra told her prompting the poor woman to scream and turn, only to bump into Strax, who had changed from the suit he'd been wearing into his battle armour.
"This dwelling is under attack. Remain calm, human scum," he informed her.
Alice fainted on the spot.
"So, any questions?" the Doctor asked Captain Latimer.
"Your parents look the same age as you," he protested.
The Doctor decided that the man was useless in their situation. "Vastra, what's happening?"
"The snow is highly localised, and on this occasion not naturally occurring," Vastra replied.
"It's coming out of that cab parked by the gates," Jenny added.
Looking outside, Rose could see Doctor Simeon standing beside the cab. Some kind of machine was mounted to it, blowing the alien snow over the entire property. "It's Simeon, and he looks far too pleased with himself," she told her husband.
"Sir, one pulver grenade would blow these snowmen to smithereens," Strax interjected.
"They're made of snow, Strax. They're already smithereens," the Doctor argued. "See, Aria? Our friends again."
"Aria? Who's Aria?" Captain Latimer asked.
"Your current governess is in reality a former barmaid called Aria," the Doctor informed him.
"That's the way to do it!" came the voice of the ice woman descending the staircase.
"Meanwhile your previous governess is now a living ice sculpture impersonating Mister Punch. Jenny, what have you got?" the Doctor prompted and Jenny tossed him a portable containment field generator. He tossed the ball up the stairs, encasing the ice woman in a sphere of energy.
"That should hold it," Jenny told him.
"For a little while anyway," Rose added.
"Sir, this room. One observational window on the line of attack and one defendable entrance," Strax reported after surveying the nearby rooms in the house and directing everyone into the study.
"Right, everyone in there. Now. Move it. You, carry her," the Doctor directed the Captain to move the unconscious Alice into safety.
"Do we have a plan yet?" Rose asked her husband.
"Working on it," he replied and quickly kissed her cheek as they followed the others into the study. "Strax, how long have we got?"
"They're not going to attack. They made no attempt to conceal their arrival. An attack force would never abandon surprise so easily, and they're clearly in a defence formation," Strax reported his analysis of the situation.
"Way, aye, aye. Well done, Straxie. Still got it, buddy," the Doctor told him, rubbing his head affectionately and kissing his bald head. He immediately regretted the action.
"Sir, please do not noogie me during combat prep," Strax protested.
"So there's something here they want," the Doctor decided.
"The ice woman," Aria said assuredly.
"Definitely, but why do they need her?" Rose asked.
"Because she's a perfect duplication of human DNA in ice crystal form. The ultimate fusion of snow and humanity. To live here, the snow needs to evolve and she's the blueprint. She's what they need to become. When the snow melted last night, did the pond?" the Doctor rambled.
"No," Aria answered and he snapped his fingers as the point proved his hypothesis.
"Living ice that will never melt. If the snow gets hold of that creature on the stairs, it will learn to make more of them. It will build an army of ice. And it will be the last day of humanity on this planet," the Doctor concluded, just as the doorbell sounded.
"Stay here," the Doctor told everyone.
"Yeah, right," Rose scoffed and followed him into the hallway.
Aria followed as well, prompting both Rose and the Doctor to turn and confront her.
"Oi, I told you to stay in there," he argued.
"Oh, I didn't listen," Aria replied.
"You do that a lot," Rose told her.
"Runs in the family," she said with a smirk.
"About that, your parents? Really?" Rose questioned. It was the strangest thing for her to come up with as an excuse when they really did look about the same age as her. She couldn't know that they were really centuries old.
"I panicked," she answered.
"You panicked more about who to say we were than about anything else that's happened in the last few days," Rose argued, but they were interrupted by the doorbell ringing once again.
"Later, you two," the Doctor told them and opened the front door.
"Release her to us. You have five minutes," Doctor Simeon instructed before turning away again.
The Doctor shut the door and consulted with the two women on a plan. "We need to get her out of here but keep her away from them."
"How?" Aria asked.
"The usual way," Rose answered.
The Doctor pulled an umbrella from the nearby stand and took his wife's hand, making their way toward the staircase. "With this. Do I always have to state the obvious?"
"Those creatures outside, what are they?" Captain Latimer asked, coming out of the study to see what was going on.
"No danger to you, as long as I get that thing out of here. You, in there, now," the Doctor insisted, pushing him back into the room and closing the door.
The Doctor and Rose faced the ice creature through the forcefield and prepared themselves for the usual amount of running and dodging. Aria was right behind them, of course, unwilling to be left out of the adventure.
"What are you doing?" she questioned.
"Between you and me, I can't wait to find out," he told her. He sonicked the forcefield to let them in and planned to put it back up with Aria safe on the outside, but she ducked inside with them before he had the chance. The energy field was now up with all of them on the same side as the ice woman. "Right, if you look after everyone here, then I can… Aria!"
"Doctor!" she shouted and pulled the two of them out of the way as the creature swung her sharp fingers in their direction, running up the stairs with them in tow.
"That was stupid," he told her.
"You were stupid, too," she argued.
"I'm allowed. I'm good at stupid."
"He's had a lot of practice!" Rose added.
"That's the way to do it!" the ice woman repeated, following them up the stairs again.
"Why does she keep saying that?" Aria wondered.
"Mirroring. Random mirroring. We need to get on the roof," the Doctor answered.
"Will she mirror anything she's exposed to then? 'Cause that's not from the lady in the pond," Rose reasoned.
"This way!" Aria told them, pulling the couple towards access to the roof, since that's where he said to go.
"No, I do the hand grabbing. That's my job. That's always me!" he protested.
The trio ran through the hallways, sliding around the corners and smashing into the walls. Aria kept one hand firmly on each of theirs as she pulled them behind her. Rose and the Doctor looked at each other in confusion as Aria seemed to know exactly how their life worked on a daily basis. When they got to a large window that led out onto a flat section of roof, the Doctor went through first to help the girls after him. The rooftop was slippery with ice and snow after all, and footwear of the period was not particularly skid-proof.
"Come on, quickly! What are you doing?" the Doctor asked when Aria stopped halfway through the window frame.
"My bustle is stuck," Aria complained, not used to the things even after so many months in this time.
"Your bustle?" the Doctor asked.
"Yes, Doctor, those stupid wire things they put in women's dresses to make our hips look larger than our waists," Rose lectured as she helped pull Aria through the narrow opening. Rose had been climbing all over the place while wearing hers recently, not letting period fashion impede her adventurous nature.
"Now, what's the plan?" Aria questioned, dusting off her dress.
"Who says we have a plan? We usually just improvise," Rose argued, knowing what the Doctor was up to.
"Course he's got a plan. He took that," she argued, pointing to the umbrella that the Doctor had brought with him. He hadn't used it for anything yet.
"Maybe I'm an idiot," the Doctor told her.
"You're not. You're clever. Really clever," Aria insisted.
"Are you?" the Doctor asked, tossing her the umbrella. "If I've got a plan, what is it? You tell me."
"That's the way to do it!" the ice woman sounded from the hallway.
"Start the countdown," Rose mumbled.
"Is this a test?" Aria asked.
"Yes," the Doctor replied.
"With our lives on the line?" Aria questioned.
"That's the way to do it!" she shouted again at the window, turning to snow in order to get through.
"So, come on then. Plan. Do I have one?" the Doctor pressed before she could reform on their side of the window opening.
"Oh, I know what your plan is. I knew straight away," Aria claimed. She really only figured it out when she felt the nudge of the TARDIS nearby, but she could bluster with the best of them.
"No, you didn't," he argued.
"Course I did."
"Show me."
"Why should I?" Aria asked, knowing that her granddad loved to wait until the last second anyway.
"Because we'll be dead in under thirty seconds. Do I have a plan?" he insisted, placing himself between both women and the ice creature as it began to take shape again.
"If we'd been escaping, we'd be climbing down the building. If we'd been hiding, we'd be on the other side of the roof. But no, we're standing right here," Aria rambled quickly to explain her reasoning before showing off.
"So?" the Doctor asked.
"So!" Aria responded and used the handle of the umbrella to reach up and pull down the ladder that would lead them up to the TARDIS floating over the house.
"After you, Rose," Aria said politely.
"Nah, I've got to pull him out of the fire. Up you get," Rose insisted and pushed the young girl up the ladder ahead of her.
"Come on, love, no time to chat. Her conversation skills are a bit lacking anyways," Rose called to her husband as she pulled him onto the ladder behind her.
"Yes, dear," he replied.
Once they had cleared the ladder and were onto the stairs, still heading up to the cloud where the TARDIS was waiting, Aria asked them, "So you can move your cloud? You can control it?"
"No. No one can control clouds, that would be silly. The wind, a little bit," the Doctor answered.
"She's following us," Aria told the Doctor worriedly.
"All part of the plan. If she's following us, she's not joining Simeon and the snowmen," Rose explained.
"So, barmaid or governess, which is it?" the Doctor questioned.
"That thing is after us, and you want a chat?" Aria deflected. It still wasn't time yet for them to know who she was. They had to figure it out without her telling them.
"Well, we can't chat after we've been horribly killed, can we?" he argued.
"How did we get up so high so quick?" she asked, trying to change the subject.
"Clever staircase. It's taller on the inside," he told her as they reached the cloud.
"What am I standing on, what's this made of?" Aria wondered, clouds couldn't support anything, so there had to be some kind of trick to it.
"Super dense water vapour. Should keep her trapped for the moment," he explained, using his sonic to direct the cloud to block the staircase.
"Do you actually live up here on a cloud, in a box?" Aria asked them, knowing full well that it was more than just a box.
"Best place to be," Rose told her with a grin.
"You don't have other places to go? It can't just be the two of you all alone, in a box?" Aria questioned.
"It's far more than just a box," the Doctor told her as he unlocked the door and led them inside.
Aria gasped as she took in the console room. It had been so long since she'd seen it. She was only a child when her grandparents changed it from the bright yellow and glass room to this. And shortly after that, she hadn't been allowed inside their TARDIS again. Oh, she saw them often enough, but always outside or in her parent's TARDIS. She had missed the brushed metal look of it all and the blue lighting, so different from her parents' home.
"It's called the TARDIS. It can travel anywhere in time and space. And it's ours," the Doctor told her.
"But it's... Look at it, it's," she began, knowing people's first reactions were his favourite part.
"Go on, say it. Most people do," he prompted.
Aria did what she had seen so many people do and walked back outside to circle the ship before reentering. She decided to tease him a bit though. "It's smaller on the outside."
Rose laughed out loud and the Doctor looked mildly confused. "Okay, that is a first."
"Why are you showing me all this?" she asked him.
"You followed us, remember? I didn't invite you," he told her. He had known she would follow. She had already refused to give up when they'd warned her off.
"You're nearly a foot taller than I am. You could've reached the ladder without this. You took it for me. Why?" she questioned, tossing him the umbrella.
"I never know why. I only know who," he answered and held up a key to the door.
He gave it to Aria and she felt tears forming in her eyes. For so long, she'd been told that she couldn't travel with them. She had to stay with her parents or go where they sent her. She had felt so caged in. She knew that her father had left their TARDIS when he was very young, even built his own Vortex Manipulator, and gone off to University. Her mother had been a terrible trouble maker in her youth, getting herself thrown in jail on many occasions. But they had insisted that they had no choice. She realized now, that just like her mother's life, her own looped back with her grandparents' timeline in such a way that they couldn't change it without causing a paradox. And the loop was almost closed, meaning that she would be free. She took the key and allowed a tear to fall.
"I don't know why I'm crying," she lied.
"I do. Remember this. This right now, remember all of it. Because this is the day. This is the day. This is the day everything begins," the Doctor told her excitedly as he started spinning around the console, adjusting the controls to land them safely back on the ground.
Clara had been so engulfed in her thoughts and memories that she didn't hear the creature approach her from outside. It grasped the back of her dress and started to pull her outside. The key that she had been so happy to have received, fell from her hand and clinked on the TARDIS floor as she was dragged through the doors, screaming the whole way.
"No! Oh my god, Doctor!" Rose shouted and began to race after them.
"Aria! Aria!" the Doctor called, following his wife as she chased the ice creature and their new companion toward the edge of the cloud.
"Get off of me!" Aria growled at the ice woman.
"Water vapour doesn't stop ice. I should've realised," the Doctor rambled nervously.
"Let her go right now!" Rose screamed, reaching to grab Aria and pull her back to safety. By inviting her, they were taking responsibility for her safety after all.
"Help me, please!" Aria begged Rose, their fingertips touching just before she fell over the edge of the cloud.
"Aria!" Rose shouted, almost throwing herself after them, but the Doctor grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back from the edge.
The couple looked over the side of the cloud at the ground below and saw Aria lying atop a pile of broken pieces of ice that used to be the unmelting ice creature.
########################
"What was that?" Vastra questioned when they heard screaming outside.
"It's Clara!" Jenny cried when she spotted her lying on the ground outside.
Vastra used her handheld scanner to check on her from inside the study. Clara was lying on the ground, with the fearsome snowmen all around her. The scanner told her that the young woman was close to death and would likely regenerate soon.
"Dear God. Oh, dear God. Where did she fall from? We have to get her inside," Captain Latimer demanded when he looked out the window.
"Those things will kill you," Vastra told him.
"She's hurt," he argued.
"She's dead," Vastra told him. She knew the girl would be alright in the end, but this was a crucial point in the whole time loop. The Doctor and Rose needed to be the ones to get her inside. The TARDIS began to materialize around her in the yard at that moment.
"What is that? What is happening?" Latimer asked.
"They're bringing her in," Vastra told him, though it didn't help his confusion any.
When the Doctor carried her into the house, they brought her to the bedroom. Vastra made sure to give Clara the injection that had been left with her, only having been told that she would know when to use it. The drug inside would hold off Clara's regeneration long enough to make them believe that the girl had died, allowing her to properly regenerate after they were gone.
"That green woman said she was dead. How can she be alive now?" Captain Latimer asked.
"This technology has capacities and abilities beyond anything your puny human mind could possibly understand. Try not to worry," Strax replied, in as soothing a manner as a Sontaran was capable.
Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor was scanning the fragments of ice from the creature with his sonic. Rose sat on the jumpseat, crying softly.
"Isn't the creature still a danger? It could reform," Vastra asked the Doctor.
"No, not in here," he answered, feeling his wife's grief and guilt flowing over him.
"Then you should be with Miss Aria," Vastra told them.
"She's going to be fine. I know she is. She has to be," he assured her.
"It's my fault. I should have been faster. I should have caught her. It's all my fault," Rose cried.
"What is the point of blaming yourself?" Vastra questioned, worried about her friends despite knowing that this would all work out for the best.
"None. Because she's going to live," the Doctor insisted, wrapping his wife in his arms. "This is as much on me, my love. I wanted to bring her onto the TARDIS. I should have known that the cloud wouldn't hold back a creature of snow and ice."
"Why didn't the Wolf help me save her?" Rose questioned, looking up at him.
"You need to remember, the when you became the Bad Wolf, you saw all of time and space. That power, as wonderful as it is, is guided by what can be and what must not. But I believe that the Wolf didn't save her, because it didn't need to. So, let's go and finish this shall we? Then we can take our new companion on her first trip," he insisted and pulled Rose to stand with him.
Rose carried the metal box that the Doctor used to store the up melting ice creature pieces that they would use as leverage with Doctor Simeon. Before they left to face him, however, they went to speak to Aria.
"Hey. Hello," the Doctor said to her softly.
"They all think I'm going to die, don't they?" Aria asked. She knew she could regenerate, but had been told by Vastra that it would be held back while her grandparents were there and it might be painful for her.
"And I know you're going to live," the Doctor told her.
"How?" she questioned, worried that he had figured it out.
"I never know how. I just know who," he insisted, repeating his former words and again, handing her the TARDIS key.
"Aria, I am so sorry about what happened. I should have been faster, to catch you," Rose told her, tears streaming down her cheeks again.
"It's alright, you can't change the past," Aria said softly.
"We're going to fix this, Aria. And then, we want you to come with us, please," Rose told her, kissing the young girl's hand.
"Yes," she answered, her blue eyes sparkling.
"Well then. Merry Christmas," the Doctor said with a grin.
He took Rose's hand and walked with her to the front door, where Simeon was waiting. Rose held up the box tauntingly as the Doctor spoke.
"We have, in this box, a piece of the Ice Lady. Everything you need to know about how to make ice people. Is that what you want? See you at the office!" he told them, then slammed the door.
"We're taking the TARDIS? Is it something to do with that globe thing?" Rose asked him as she helped pilot the ship to the study at the Institute where they pretended to be Holmes and Watson.
"Yes, you said it yourself. The ice lady was mirroring whatever she came across. The snow itself doesn't have a consciousness, it just copies. Who knows how long that thing has been feeding off of Simeon, but he's been channelling all of his hate and greed into it for years. What we need to do is cut the puppet strings," the Doctor explained and held up the jar he'd been searching for.
"And how is that Memory Worm supposed to help?" Rose wondered. "It just made me miss a couple days of our vacation in the New Caribbean last time."
"Yes, well, brief contact only erases small amounts of your memory. If it bites you, you can lose decades. So, we hide this inside the box and let it bite Simeon. Then, he's still alive, but forgets about all of this and is therefore not mentally controlling the Intelligence anymore," he told her.
"Sounds suspiciously like a plan. I hope it works," she said as they emptied the metal box of the dangerous ice and carefully replaced it with the worm.
"Of course it will work! Are you doubting my brilliance, Rose Tyler?" he gasped as they piloted the ship into Simeon's office.
