"Come on!" he hisses, through gritted teeth. "Honestly, Clara, as if this weren't important!"
"You were the one who said it was best if I didn't leave the hospital!" She digs in her heels. Literally; pitches them against the curb and tug as he might at her arm, she is well anchored. She is, in fact, able to reel him back a foot or so, in order that the captured arm might be folded with the other. Folded arms are very much a part of her body language right now. She feels that, distinctly, and struggles for it. "Where are we going? Chasing clues?" Her face falls. "It… We can't be… It's not time to go after Sieverts, is it? Not already."
"Heavens, no. Far more important than that! Two months, Clara! It's been two whole months, or at least it has on his end, about a week to her, poor girl, she's barely relaxed at all. I ought to double back, you know, give her some real time to recoup, get her thoughts together, but I suppose I'm a bit late arriving at that conclusion-" He tugs again. She judders against the curb. A car races past, so close at her back that her hair ripples, but Clara is immovable, and waits as mild and peaceful as a goddess carved in stone. "Card shop!" he cries, maddened by it. "We have to find a card shop, don't you understand? Jessica, as we speak, is probably dancing with the Tardis monitor right now as that awful metal-faced boy she likes announces her test scores."
Now Clara brightens. She unhooks her shoes from the pavement, takes a moment to shake the stiffness out of her legs. "A congratulations card," she chirps.
Finally, a helpful suggestion. The Doctor nods. "A big one. With glitter on it. And the kind that has a big badge she can take off and wear and then keep in a little box of special things. She'll like that." They'll also have to find strawberry laces, some sort of bulk order, which may require them to wait until Jessica leaves the Tardis and sneak back to a sweet shop they know. Who knows what the strawberry laces are like in 2086? They could be too hard, too jellyish, too strawberry, not strawberry enough. No, this is a thing which must be done well and properly. The dear girl shall have them by the tonne. She shall, if she so wishes, make a bed of them and roll around until she is quite the sticky red spaghetti monster. She confessed that fantasy to him with sweet shame over the monitor, two o'clock one morning, after a university party.
His clever, clever little Jessica! Who'd have thought when they met it could ever come to this? His little diplomat. He's ended a couple of wars in his time, but he's never exactly gone about it the right way. Imagine one of his, that precious thing, going about it by the book, making a difference, bringing harmony, solace, peace.
She's good at that.
"Doctor," and Clara jerks at his sleeve. When he looks around she's pointing across the street.
"You see?" he says, "This is why you had to come with me." The Doctor himself would have missed it, so wrapped up was he in his pride and his planning how to show it. Lizzie would have walked right past it before she came to an understanding of what the place Clara is pointing at means and it's place in human culture. Her mind may only take a second to work but it's a second they wouldn't have had. Clara, though… Clara saw, and understood. Here not twelve feet away is a cake shop, and quite the best idea the Doctor could have hoped for.
A police drone passes as they cross the street. Clara winds her arm nervously through his. "Can we really be doing this now? I mean, shouldn't we wait until everything's cleaned up, all safe?"
The Doctor resolutely shakes his head. They must do this. This is the only time. This is joy in the midst of fear. This, more than anything else they could possibly do, is their stand against Sieverts and Mrs Lees.
All he says out loud, "Absolutely not."
In her deepest heart, Clara had hoped might say something of the sort. In the beginning, her smile feels stiff and unfamiliar. But it doesn't take long to regain the knack of it, and her mouth lifts on one cheeky side. She leans momentarily closer against him for a moment, just until he gets the bakery door for her. She goes ahead. The Doctor strides in behind her, "Baker!" he cries, "Friendly neighbourhood cake-maker!"
He commences to demand their finest readily-available celebration cake, to tell them what flavour he wants it to be, what he wants it to say on the top. Clara's smile splits into a grin, then into a giggle. She sits down at a little table opposite the counter, just to watch him. I want you at my wedding. The thought goes through her mind quite unbidden, quite without her permission. After all, he's told her more than once he has awful luck with weddings, even if he wouldn't go into details. But she had no control over that thought. Someday, in whatever far distant part of her relative future, she wants him at her wedding. At all of her birthdays. At her children's birthdays. Summer barbecues and Christmas nights. She'll pass him off as an eccentric uncle and get him into all the family photographs.
"Do you know him?" says a laughing, local voice.
She's been joined, at her little table. Clara didn't hear anybody sit down. Now that she looks round, now that she knows, it seems so natural. She's been joined by a little girl, about ten or so, with long blonde braids and sparkling eyes, laughing as the Doctor fusses over what colours he wants the cherries dyed in. "Cherries on top," the girl giggles. "My grandma likes that. He's so cool."
"He is cool," Clara agrees. A pleasant kid. Bet she's a real handful in the classroom. A little entertainer, a chatterbox. "What's your name?"
"Missy. What's yours?"
"Clara."
"That sounds really English, it's really right on you."
"Thank you."
"So is he your boyfriend?"
Clara splutters, "What?" The kid goes into a fit of giggles. "No, we're just friends."
"I heard you say before, you want him at your wedding. Not, like, all standing up next to you in a cool suit with a ring in his pocket?"
"You mean the best man? Yes."
Caught, beaten in her own riddle, the little girl sticks out her lip, rolls her eyes. "So, you're, like, best friends forever?" Clara nods. The girl grins at the Doctor, who has moved on now to leaning head and shoulders over the counter, attempting to craft a tiny version of himself out of pieces of what looks like plastercine to Clara. "He's really cool."
Clara would gladly have a whole classroom full of these, daydreams about it as she sits. The little girl is drumming her fingers. How sweet, her nails are painted; sloppy and inexpert. Sleepover nails, if Clara isn't much mistaken, and each of them a different colour, in rainbow order. Red and it makes Clara feel warm, soft. Orange and she almost feels sleepy. Yellow and there's untold happiness in her heart. Green brings perfect, incredible peace.
"Richard of York," she begins through a yawn, "gave battle in vain."
"That's silly," the little girl says. "Don't battle in vain. Don't fight. If you can't win, don't fight, just let it wash over you, Clara. Just let it come, okay?"
Blue fingernails and Clara is lost in wonder, utterly stunned to realize, the nails are not all painted different colours. They change, every time one of them taps the table, they change, like different coloured lights being switched on and off. Going from red, so warm, so safe, to orange and this time she yawns again, has to stretch out, can only nod mutely when the little girl repeats, "He's so cool."
Yellow, so impossibly happy, what a nice day, and how nice for Jessica, how nice to be away from all that hate and evil, just for a little while.
"Do you think he would mind," the little girl says, "if you helped me out?"
Green, so peaceful. A noise, like a laugh from a dream, breaks from Clara's throat; peace! Peace like Jessica's classes. That's neat. It fits together so nicely.
"I've lost my daddy," the little girl says.
Blue, yeah, he's so cool, how has Clara never noticed, this deeply, on this level, how cool he is before? He won't mind, of course he won't. Helping a small child who's lost her daddy, how could he refuse? Of course he won't mind.
Indigo and Clara is all but lost.
"Do you think you could come with me if I go to find a policeman?" The little girl holds out her hand across the table. Clara places hers into it. As the chubby little fingers fold around hers the nails flash a deep and poisonous violet. They stand as one, in the same moment, and begin towards the door. Clara throws only the most cursory glance over her shoulder. The Doctor is choosing between happiness-flavoured jam and strawberry honey and chocolate-and-success ganache (isn't the future so very wonderful?) and may just be about to go for all three. With a tiny paintbrush he is placing streaks of edible blue glitter into the hair of a tiny sweet Jessica. (How lovely, and isn't everything wonderful!)
"Bye," she mumbles.
She would add, 'Off to help this little star', but said-star tugs sharply at her hand, "Tell me your rhyme again. I always forget what way round the rainbow goes."
"Richard," Clara says, through a yawn, "of York, gave ba… bah… I saw a police drone going this way before."
"No." She is led, and allows herself to be, in the opposite direction, just down the street. "It's this way. My daddy is this way, okay?"
"Okay."
A car directly ahead is only parked at the curb. Idle, and Clara would have sworn there was no one in it. But maybe she's just tired because when she looks again, there's a man behind the wheel reading a newspaper. When she looks again, there's a taxi bar lit up on top.
She looks down at the little hand wrapping hers. Violet fingernails and at the hearts of them are storms, muddy pallettes, deciding which colour to be next. "No," Clara mutters. Her protest is neither strong nor heartfelt. From a million miles away, beyond oceans and mountains, she begins to hear screaming. It will be a long time from now before she realizes, that's her own voice. Her own voice screaming, begging to be heard, "No, stop, it's a trick!"
"You were Jessica before," she breathes, but another body-wrenching yawn destroys the words. By the time they reach the cab, she's grateful to sit down.
"Clara!" The Doctor. His scream is closer. Still, the street behind them looks much longer than it felt when they walked down it. It's all too, too strange, and Clara's mind and heart give up at once. She slumps to one side, peacefully asleep again, unconscious before she can even hear the car door being slammed.
No one on the street sees the little girl become her proper self again. Toffee Lees crackles, every bone shifting back into place as if she had to crush the length of her limbs into the child's shape like a too-small jumper.
The Doctor charges at her, across all that distance she created between them. His hand is already stretching out, reaching for the handle on the car door while he's still miles away. "Give her back. Clara! Clara, listen to me, come to my voice!"
"Too late." Toffee slaps the roof of the car and her imagined driver pulls away, taking Clara where she needs her to be. "Sorry, Doctor. Almost can't believe she fell for it again, myself. Twice running, I thought you kept them smarter than that…"
His screwdriver can't stop the car. It can, however, change the lights from green to red up ahead. They change for all a second. Toffee blinks and they become green again. "Falling for it," he hisses, with nothing else to go on, "has nothing to do with it. Nobody has a chance to fall for anything with you. You force it on them."
Her foot is tapping. She notices and steadies it. It's just so hard to stand here and listen to him when she's so close to the end.
"She won't feel a thing," she says. Like him, she's giving up all she has. All the hard work is done, lines drawn. They are standing toe to toe like knights in check, waiting for mate. Her eyes flicker to the screwdriver when the claws pop open. Her brow furrows; "You going to give me another headache, Doctor? I've already got one. And I'm my basic me right now, so you can't make me reveal myself. Really, while I'm imagining the driver of that car, it's in Miss Oswald's best interests if I keep my concentration."
The screwdriver is snatched away again. The Doctor comes to the same conclusion Toffee already has. There's nothing more to play for.
"Where to from here?" he bites.
"Go back to the hospital. Get the witch. Walk west. Mr Sieverts will meet you along the way."
"Why bring Lizzie?"
"If you want Miss Oswald to keep her soul, it's a requisite."
"And I have your word on that, do I?"
"No."
The Doctor points at her. "Then you are to be there with him. I don't care if you stand in the corner and whistle, I want you where I can see you." His pointing, all of a sudden, becomes too tempting. The length of his finger is just right, the strength of his fist. He pokes her, just once, at the point where her shoulder is hunched tight. Toffee gasps and grabs tight at the barely-sealed wound.
Jessica did that. The Doctor thinks of what a hard time she gave herself over it. He straightens, lifts his chin, running his eyes over this vicious, selfish creature in front of him. Clara's in no real danger; none of his girls ever could be. They have too much to give and too much fight in them. Even if Lees and Sieverts could force them to give up their essences, they wouldn't be able to handle it. Goodness would destroy them. He's confident in this.
Toffee wills the tears out of her eyes and snaps back. "Wouldn't miss it."