The Doctor had been waiting at the TARDIS for nearly three minutes, and was about to resign himself to tracking down her bloodied remains when she came trudging heavily around a corner with a broken bottle in her hands, looking less dry than she ought to, as though she'd come into contact with more water.
"Thought you were dead," he said bluntly. She flinched but said nothing, coming to lean against the side of the TARDIS beside him.
"Sorry," she finally told him, biting down on her lip. "Was side-tracked by a Solorith; got rid of him quick enough though. Are we Torchwood-bound?"
There was something wrong; the Doctor could sense that right away from the stiffness in her voice and shoulders. "Everything alright? Was it a close shave?"
Klára turned her head away, hugging herself tightly. "No, it was fine," she said in a voice of forced-calm. "I just ran into someone, that's all."
"Who?" asked the Doctor, intrigued and turning to look at her properly. He had thought she was alone, after all, and for her to run into someone that seemed to unsettle her was…well, unsettling.
Quicksilver eyes bored suddenly into his, secretive and defensive. "It was no one. Are we going to let the Solorith eat everyone in Seattle or what?"
The Doctor shook himself mentally, straightening. She was right; of course they had to leave and get Torchwood. It would be nice to see Jack again, though he wasn't entirely certain he approved of exposing Klára to the Time Agent just yet…. Within seconds he had gotten lost watching her again, holding herself so tightly as if to make up for a missing mother's comforting embrace, looking so wound up that if anything jostled her she would fly off into the cosmos and never come back.
This one would have to be watched carefully; first, he would need to ensure she didn't get scared and fly off. "Would you like to get your things, before we go? Just in case we destroy the city in the process of getting rid of the Solorith," he suggested lightly, not moving until she moved. A smile bowed her mouth slightly at the joke.
"D'you still want me?" she asked in the same light tone, but with a distinct shine in her eyes that made the Doctor look away, "I know I can be difficult, and I definitely have been more difficult than I usually am today."
Instead of answering, the Doctor smiled and replied, "Lead on, Frost."
She smiled a small smile and led him down the street, away from the market, into a run-down corner of the city, and to a sad excuse for what must have previously been a coffee shop, brick walls crumbling away and what looked like a model Japanese teacup on top above the front doors.
"This is where I live," said Klára a bit stiffly as she pushed the door open. "You can wait outside if you'd like." Naturally, the Doctor followed her in.
The smell of many poorly-washed, closely packed bodies, of sweat, dirt, and sickness, came from the open door like a tidal-wave; the Doctor tried not to cringe or sneeze, however, because of the faraway look in Klára's eyes as she charged into the shelter headfirst, picking through the nests of sad lonely people as quickly and carefully as possible. While she dug through a cardboard box under a wide window, the Doctor looked around to give her privacy. There was a reception desk almost immediately inside and to the right, with a sign-in sheet on top (the Doctor signed the sheet with their names in Gallifreyan text, just to be silly; he had to improvise with Klára's name by how it sounded since she had no real Gallifreyan name). The left wall, on the other hand, was lined with three garage doors, like in a community center, probably where food was served to the homeless people in evenings.
Once he was finished fooling around, the Doctor looked up and watched Klára carefully pick her way back to him, a patched skirt holding several small trinkets cradled to her chest and a black plastic bag with what looked like clothes inside. It was probably one of the sadder things the Doctor had seen in quite a while. Not the saddest, but it was definitely in the top 10 on his list – a human girl's most treasured things reduced to nothing more than the worth of a garbage bag.
"This is all I need," she said briskly, blinking subtly.
The Doctor didn't miss the glance out of the corner of her eye toward the window; he was good with looking out of the corners of eyes, leaning against the door and smiling in his mysterious way that he knew drove Amy mad more than once in her time. "You know," he said, "the console isn't the only room in the TARDIS. There's plenty of space if you want to bring more."
Gnawing on her already-worse-for-wear lower lip, Klára handed the Doctor her garbage bag of clothes and skipped her way back to the window where the light shone right through her, and she pulled the rest of her trinkets from the box.
"Right then," said the Doctor, clapping his hands as well as he could with a garbage bag in his hand as they left the shelter. "Torchwood, on!"
"Right…" Klára replied faintly, looking back over her shoulder at the place she had been forced to call home for three years. She walked backwards a few paces, taking in the shelter for what she desperately hoped would be the last time. She'd been lying to them about her age ever since she showed up so they wouldn't turn her in to the authorities. Despite its cramped quarters and the questionable inhabitants, she would miss the place, it's wide airy windows, the volunteers who brought her books to settle her restless mind, that silly teacup on top….
"Right," she repeated, suddenly breathless. "Doctor!"
The older man spun on his heels, arms flailing about in that odd baby-giraffe-just-learning-to-walk sort of way. "Yes, I'm here, what is it?"
Klára turned to face him, pointing with a trembling hand up at the teacup on top of the shelter. "That's it! That's their ship!"