Trouble finds him the moment he sets foot outside the hospital doors. Makes sense, really. With the exception of a few nasty, sticky, Sontaran or samba-dancing type incidents, hospitals have always been safe places. They're not fair game, what with all those sick and vulnerable people being inside them. It makes a degree of sense that evil should have to wait politely outside until he deigns to leave the sanctuary.
He sees it the moment he steps into fresh air. It's not quite the evil he was expecting. It's not nearly so obvious as the evil he was expecting. Had it been this Louis thing waiting for him, he is certain he would have lingered in the lobby, maybe found a nurse to talk to. He might have asked around inside, if anyone had seen anything out of the ordinary, if anyone had been in to ask about him, and all the while knowing that Louis was outside. That's what burning, radiating dark can do.
This is different. This is the sort of evil he can ignore. He clocks it, and then turns away and walks on, to see if it follows.
It won't be hard to tell. Hell, this time, has come to him wearing little wedge-heeled ankle boots. It's come to him wearing a little red dress, and a black jacket. Wearing glossy black hair and big dark eyes and a sweet, round face the same way it wears any other part of its costume. It makes him very angry to see evil wearing this.
After all, what's the point? It's not as if this thing could be trying to trick him. It knows, it must know, that he just left Clara up in the quarantine zone. What on Earth could be the point of dressing itself up as Clara?
It is smoking a cigarette too. Did he mention that? It has clothed itself as his dear friend, and trails behind him all heel clicks and the stench of tobacco smoke. The Doctor shoves his hands into his pockets rather than give it the satisfaction of seeing him ball up his fists. He walks on, the very picture of calm, until he hears the hum of a police drone approaching from a side-street. Here he turns, abruptly, and when the Clara-ish thing turns after him, he grabs her by the shoulders and puts her right in the robot's path.
"You're out of your time," he tells her triumphantly, as it lowers its scanners. "This is 2086. Tobacco is a highly-restricted drug, and if I've got my states right its out-and-out illegal here. All commercial fields were destroyed more than thirty years ago. You're in trouble now, Missy." The light of the scanner runs over her face. Then it retracts into the body of the drone, and the machine moves on about its business. "No, hold on," the Doctor calls after it. "That's hardly fair!" He turns back when he hears Clara's laughter. Whatever the shape shifter might be, it is standing on the spot where he left it. Its hand is still turned out, two fingers still curled, but there is nothing between them anymore. There is no butt on the ground, no ash. And, as the Doctor discovers by giving the air all about it a thorough sniff, there is not one trace of the disgusting smell.
"Me?" she giggles, "Smoking?" Gives him that flash of the eyes that Clara can do when she's being very naughty indeed.
The Doctor sighs. If you'd told him, when he woke up this mor… well, the last time he woke up, that he'd spend the day surrounded by a brace of talented ladies, he'd have been very happy indeed. He would have flung himself into that day with zest and blooming gusto. This, however, would not have been what he had in mind.
When you can no longer demand that an unknown party identify itself in accordance with the Shadow Proclamation and the blah-blah-blah, so on, so forth, all that, with any conviction or force, that's how you know you've stayed up too late.
"Alright," he says. "Here we go again. What're you, then?"
"Whatever I want to be."
"Then kindly be something else. I'm not sure you know how dangerous it is to walk about grinning at me from Clara's face."
There's no shift, no change, no process of transformation. It is simply that it is Clara, and then it is someone else. For the Doctor, the only shock at all is that suddenly the person in front of him is male. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a strapping young man. "What do you think?" he says. "Will I fit in?" Yes. Yes he will. He's the picture of classic, American perfection, and his accent is flawless. It will fit in absolutely anywhere. Now that the drone is gone, the cigarette is back.
The Doctor has no real reply. Odd; he can't remember the last time he was speechless.
This new-former-college-football-player steps next to the Doctor. As it develops a small fleur-de-lys tattoo behind its ear, it claps a heavy hand, nothing like Clara's, square between his shoulders, where Clara probably couldn't reach very well. "You're tired," he says. The Doctor finds himself starting to nod. Yes. Yes, he's very tired. Too exhausted to argue. Better just go along with all this, for now. "Let's get you a nice, Limey cup'o'tea somewhere, huh?"
Oh yes, yes. Tea sounds like a very good idea.
You know what else sounds like a very good idea? Bringing Jessica with him when he left the quarantine zone, but oh well. Live and learn.
Live and learn. He likes that phrase. In part, it explains why he's so clever. It also explains why he's so stupid sometimes. For instance, the Doctor has never before noticed, but 'live and learn' is only part of that problem. You live and learn, yes.
Then you hope you live long enough to apply the lessons learnt.
"I'm not tired," he says. Perhaps saying it can make it true. The shapeshifter said he was and it came true, so maybe if he just believes it, "I'm not… I'm not tiii-eeeeyrd." If the words weren't stretched out around a yawn, it would be easier to believe.
"You work too hard," says the young-man-who-was-formerly-Clara. "Don't be so tough on yourself. All these long, long years? You're getting too old for all this running around."
Yes. Yes, he's very old. Yes, he feels old. Yes, as he glances down, he's having trouble keeping his old, bony fingers curled up into fists. Oh, and look at all those big blue veins across the backs of his knuckles. Were those there earlier? Five minutes ago, was the skin of his hands so thin and papery? Well, after all, he's very old. Maybe he saw them and just forgot.
The Doctor is leaning on the lad's much stronger arm by the time he is guided to a seat outside a little coffee shop. Right in the sun. That's nice. That takes the chill out of his old bones.
But wasn't it night when he went into the hospital? Where is the sunlight coming from?
There's a waitress by the table. He didn't see her walk up. He didn't hear an order being placed and anyway there hasn't been time, but there is tea and cake for him. Coffee for the smoking boy. "How are you feeling? Good to sit down, isn't it?"
"Nice to take the weight off," he agrees automatically. "Yes, most kind. Do try a bit of cake."
"Oh, no thank you. You haven't even touched it."
"I know, and I would like to, but frankly I don't trust you one inch, so after you."
The boy reaches over, pinches off a piece of the crumb and eats it happily. With an easy smile, "Delicious. Don't be so paranoid. Come on. Eat, drink. Enjoy. I'm trying to be a civil host, y'know."
The Doctor picks up the fork from the side of the place. Stretches out with it. It really does look like good cake. Rich and heavy, deep and chocolaty, and the glossy pink sauce on top is just cresting the edge. There's a seed in it. It makes one droplet heavy and draws it temptingly down the side, pooling in the warm, dark sauce of the inside.
But it is too big to be a raspberry seed. Too round and juicy.
He scoops it up on the end of the fork and holds it out the boy. "Pomegranate. You're an educated young man, aren't you? You've read your Greek myths."
"Yeah, you've got me," he laughs. "But honestly, it's just a joke. You can eat it. It's got nothing to do with trapping you in the Underworld, cross my heart."
"No thanks." The Doctor shoves the plate away. The boy shrugs and starts to fill his face.
The Doctor, in the meantime, is thinking very young thoughts. He's thinking of springtime and cartons of juice and playing with Lego bricks. He's thinking of romance, and a girl he knew when he was just a boy, whose name was Alison and who trauma had forced to regenerate at a very early age, leaving her with blue hair and blonde eyes, and who was his first kiss in an empty Temporal Physics classroom. It's working. The warmth and colour are starting to come back into his hands. He keeps them beneath the table, out of sight.
"I'd like to know who you are," he says, and still affects an old man's gruffness on his voice. "Really, I mean. At your core."
The boy shakes his head. "Whoever you want." Before the head has finished shaking, it has changed. It has sunken down to belong to a much shorter body. It is smaller and paler and a great mass of untidy black hair swings behind it. "Really, Doctor, him am having much-many questions can be asking. More-gooder questions." Better, Jessica, the word is better. He opens his mouth to say this. Then remember what he's really talking to and closes it again. "Please-yes. 'Better' am being one of words that him was saying would always remind her about. Doctor recalls?"
Yes, he recalls. Better is one of them. Now is one of them (though her former heretimes has been almost stamped out). There has been little reason, of late, to correct Riversing to just River, but it's still on the list.
"How do you know that?"
"Knows everything. Her am always doing much researchings before meeting new persons for worktimes. Is knowing all things about Doctor that can be able to be known. Like, by insty-ances, is knowing how much him am wanting to be knowing more about Jessica Apple. Him am feeling much sorry for her, because her am knowing no-things about her hyzz-try. Her am not having any real family-persons. Is being why him am fetching LizzieWitch, right-yes?"
"You're getting the grammar wrong," the Doctor tells it. "It ought to be 'how much him am wants for knows more about Jessica'. 'Wants for knows', see? The closest translation is 'longing for knowledge'. It's really a very high form of language she uses, she just doesn't express it terribly well." The not-Jessica rolls its eyes, sulking. While he's got it on the back foot, the Doctor adds, "And she can pronounce 'history'."
The eyes turn thoughtful. "Right-yes," it mumbles, with mild surprise. "Was to be learning that because of university learnings. All Peace Studying am being studying for history-wars, so that preventing all future wars…"
The Doctor has heard that same tone. New knowledge bubbling up out of a forgotten place. He's heard it recently. "How are you learning all that? And please, answer me out of a less offensive face."
"Him am wants for her being somebody… harmless?" She's corrected her grammar, he notices. By the time he's finished noticing, she is no longer a she. Her face is very harmless. Matter of fact, her face is one of the faces you'd like to see when you suspect harm might be done. It's a defender's face, honest and inoffensive and charmingly blank. "Will this do?" it answers, with an empty, puppy dog happiness that makes him almost as angry as having to watch Clara smoke.
"You've got the nose wrong."
"No I haven't. It was definitely this size."
"You have. Whatever picture you learned this stupid imitation from, it was before he ran headlong into Strax's back and broke his nose on the armour."
Pushing an accurate little lump into the long, Roman line of the offending appendage, it chuckles, "That is so me."
"No," the Doctor tells it. He can't keep pretending to be old and exhausted. Too angry to pretend, he gets his old force back. "No. It was so Rory, yes, it was so Rory it was unbelievable, but it was not you. It never could be."
"I'm in character!" it laughs, "Give me a break."
One of the Doctor's secretly restored hands flashes to his pocket, takes out the screwdriver and fires the single most excruciating sound he can possibly imagine into the creature's head. He's heard the Krillitanes all leave the planet when their queen goes into labour, otherwise their skulls might explode. He stops just short of that level of sonic vibration.
The not-Rory-not-Jessica-not-Clara-not-anybody-it-can-make-up falls off its chair away from the table. It lies on the pavement stiff and twisted, silently screaming. For the first time, the Doctor gets to watch it changing. It fights to keep the forms it has already shown him, flowing in and out of outfits and noses and dark glossy hair. But it's in too much pain. Confusion sets in; the wrong faces appear on the wrong bodies. The curves of an ear momentarily contour a shoulder that shouldn't be bear. The cherry end of a cigarette glows in a navel that stretches out into a mouth and tries to cry before the shapeshifter finally gives up.
What is left at the end, curling up on itself, cradling its head, appears to be a human female. This means little; this is only its most accustomed form. This is the factory setting. It has no reality of its own. But this is where it settles. A woman. Floating dress, beaded sandals, red hair braided around its head. A wedding ring on her left hand. Keening, clutching her head.
The Doctor helps her to sit up. "There now. Quiet, and the echoes will stop."
"What was that?!"
"A little trick of my own. Now tell me what to call you and what you want."
"We could have done this the easy way," she tells him. Her more natural voice is almost local, though the drawl is from farther south. "You could have called me anything." She tips up her head to hiss in his ear, "Could've called me River." The claws of the sonic screwdriver pop suddenly open. "Toffee. Toffee Lees, if you have to have a name for me."
The claws close in again. "And my second question?"
"Oh, I don't want anything." She moves away from him. Edges sickly to the curb and pushes herself up, dizzy. But she's recovering her strange powers; over her shoulder, there is now a taxi. Not one second ago it was just an idling car. She backs away from him and there is no traffic where the road was busy before. The cab driver is getting out the open the door for her. "But Mr Sieverts – he's my employer, the two of you met? – he asked me to let you know, as best I possibly could, that if you want to play games, he is more than up for that. Did I let you know that, Doctor? Did I do a good job?"
She starts to fall off her feet. The extra step or two between her and the taxi closes. Her trip puts her right down in her seat. The driver closes the door on her, and takes her away when she waves.
The Doctor watches her disappear. Literally – Toffee Lees decides she doesn't want to be seen anymore, and the shape of her vanishes out of the cab windows.
For a while he sits exactly where he is, cross-legged on the pavement. Briefly closes his eyes and counts.
The witch-slash-intelligence-bank, that's one.
The sleeping-only-more-sort-of-slightly-dead boy from the collapsed tunnel, that's two.
The force of utter evil that went after Clara makes three.
Three is his limit. Three mysteries at once, provided they seem to be connected, that's manageable. Now you add on Toffee, with her prodigious ability to manipulate reality, and the Doctor is beginning to feel really quite unstable. Nothing but uncertainty to stand on, he's starting to get a bit seasick.
No, no, it simply will not do. One of these mysteries has to be solved. Soon. Very soon. Now, in fact. Yes, now. It must be now, before he ends up mad.
He sighs.
Then again, he really could use that cup of tea now.