**Notes: I apologize for how long it took to get this up. I had to wait for my lovely beta to have seen the episode before we could discuss my own plans for it... then we had a bit of a debate over when the dream really began. So, I'm working on the next chapter right now and I hope to have it up for you very soon. Happy New Year!**
Chapter Twenty-Two - Last Christmas: Part one
Evander and Alex sent the TARDIS into the time vortex and began setting course for Vienna. Before they could proceed, however, there was a knock on the TARDIS doors.
"What?!" Alex exclaimed in shock. While in flight was impossible enough, but while in the vortex?
"Not again," Evander said in exasperation.
The doors opened without any influence from them and in walked Father Christmas once again. "Sorry for the interruption, Doctors, but you've definitely put this off long enough," Santa Claus said impatiently.
~'Rose, love, I think you need to come back to the console room. We seem to have a visitor,'~ Alex thought to his wife.
~'But I'm only half dressed! Corsets aren't exactly quick to put on you know,'~ Rose replied.
~'Just make yourself presentable enough for modern times and get back here. We need to go help Clara right now, I think,'~ Alex told her in a worried tone.
"Clara needs you to come get her now or she and several more people will die. You'll know where to go once you've retrieved her," Father Christmas said and exited the TARDIS once more.
At that moment, Rose came skidding into the console room wearing a red and back corset, black stockings and white pantaloons. Her hair was still down and her curls cascaded over her shoulders. Both of her Doctors gulped loudly at her disheveled appearance.
"Ok, what's the big emergency that means I couldn't finish getting dressed? I thought you said we had a visitor?" Rose asked as she descended the stairs to the main level of the room.
"Umm," Evander began, as he seemed to be the first one able to get his brain back on track. "Father Christmas just came back again to give us a proverbial kick in the arse. Apparently, we need to get Clara into the TARDIS now or she and several other people will die."
"Then let's get a move on! The Stuff of Legend, off to save the day again," she said with a smile as she took her place at the console. "Shift!"
"Right you are, love!" Alex said with a shake of his head to clear it of some less than pure thoughts about her attire.
The trio proceeded to pilot the TARDIS to Clara's location, which happened to be on her rooftop, with a crashed sleigh and a few odd characters. Upon landing, Evander immediately ran outside to retrieve her. Alex began programming in a new destination for their next stop.
"Where do we need to take her?" Rose asked him curiously.
"Long story," Alex replied absentmindedly.
Outside the TARDIS, Evander found his young friend in conversation with Father Christmas and two elves. He approached her quickly and looked her straight in the eye. She was dressed in her nightgown, a winter coat and boots. She seemed a little hazy about what was happening around her, but seemed to be hanging on what he might say to her.
"Clara, I want you to step inside the TARDIS. I don't want you to talk. I want you to do as I ask, please," the Doctor told her, firmly.
"That was good with the box," he heard one of the elves whisper.
"Not often we get upstaged on a rooftop," the other replied.
"Yes, I'm really here. I'm back, now get inside the TARDIS," he told her again since she was staring and not moving as he had asked her to. Finally, she stepped past him and walked into the time machine, but her gaze was glassy and she seemed dazed. Once the door had closed behind her, he turned back to Father Christmas with a scowl.
"You told me lives are at stake. Are you going to tell me where the problem is?" Evander asked him sharply.
"Alex is already entering the coordinates," Santa replied with his thumbs hooked in his belt.
"How would he know where we need to go?" The Doctor asked suspiciously.
"I told you that you'd know where to go. You don't trust me right now, Doctor. But I promise, before this day is done, you will be glad of my help," he answered.
Evander scoffed at him and muttered, "Happy Easter," as he walked back to his time ship and opened the door.
He heard the elves whispering to each other again, "Oh, brutal!"
"Cool exit line though," the other replied and the Doctor smirked to himself.
"Be sure to save some room for a tangerine, Doctor," Santa called as he tried to have the last word.
Evander looked derisively over his shoulder at the red suited man and said, "Nobody likes the tangerines."
He closed the door behind him and found Clara staring at the two new occupants of the TARDIS. "Ah, Clara, I'd like you to meet Rose and ... well, and..." Evander trailed off as he tried to think about how to introduce Alex. She would of course recognize that face.
"But... but that's you! That's the Doctor that we did the whole Zygon thingy with." she said, nervously pulling the front of her coat closed over her nightclothes.
"It's a long story," he said sharply and went to help Alex with the controls.
Rose looked at Evander strangely at the remark. It was too much like the response she had gotten from Alex a moment ago. Deciding to let that oddity slide for now, she moved towards Clara for a proper introduction. The young brunette looked at her, up and down, eyes wide, before Rose remembered what she was wearing. Of course, Clara wasn't much better in her nightgown (except for the coat, Rose was probably wearing more layers than she was, even if hers was a little more provocative looking).
"Right, umm, I'm Rose, as he said. It's very nice to finally meet you, Clara," Rose said as she extended a hand toward her.
Clara shook her hand absently and stared up at the rotating gears on the ceiling when the TARDIS began to take off for their mysterious destination. "I'm really back here. This is... This is real, yeah?" Clara asked out loud.
The Doctors were both completely absorbed in their tasks and seemed to be ignoring her. Rose looked at them, a little worriedly. Something didn't feel right about this situation.
Not used to being ignored, Clara moved to Evander's side. "Doctor, talk to me. I never thought I was gonna see you again. And it's probably serious if there's two of you here. What's going on out there? What's happening?" Clara asked as her own dazed eyes seemed to clear a bit.
Evander was fighting through a cloudy haze that was trying to take over his concentration. There was a problem. Alex shouldn't have just known where to go. And Clara seemed to be experiencing the same force pushing on her consciousness. There was also a pain starting in his right temple. The possibilities that were occurring to him were frightening beyond belief.
Abruptly turning to Clara, Evander said, "There's something you have to ask yourself, Clara, and it's important. Your life may depend on it, everybody's life." He gripped her upper arms tightly as he asked, "Do you really believe in Santa Claus?" He stalked away from her then and stood directly in front of Rose.
Behind him, Clara looked around the room, taking in the sights that were so familiar to her. Ones she never thought she would see again. Happily she said, "D'you know what? Yeah. Right now... Yeah. I think I do."
He looked deeply into Rose's eyes, he was terrified of what might be happening, but knew that he would need her to get through this. He pushed his fingers into her hair and pulled her mouth against his for a fervent kiss. Releasing her with a gasp, he turned back to the console.
~'Does your head hurt?'~ Evander asked both of his spouses. Alex seemed to be having more trouble breaking through the haze than he was and he could see very little sign of it at all in Rose right now.
~'Yes, I thought it might be left over from my accident earlier,'~ Alex replied.
~'Maybe a little,'~ came Rose's response.
"Right," Evander said aloud as he clapped his hands, the sounds of the TARDIS materializing faded as they thumped to a stop. "There are apparently several lives at stake and we are needed here. Wherever here is."
Clara was gaping and looking back and forth between him and Rose, obviously shocked by their rather intimate interaction. Grabbing Clara's hand, he began to pull her outside with Alex and Rose following close behind. Alex put his trench coat over Rose's shoulders when they found themselves outside of some kind of official looking building, with a dark sky and lots of blowing snow. Evander led them to a side door and opened it with his sonic, hurrying the two, rather underdressed, ladies inside.
There was a girl on the floor wearing headphones with her eyes closed as she hummed along to a Christmas song. Her eyes popped open suddenly when she felt the cold breeze from the doorway and she shrieked. "We've... we've got ghosts!" she shouted into her headset. "Yeah, two tall skinny guys and a couple of girls!"
Seeing they were in an infirmary, Alex and Evander immediately ran over to take a closer look at the four people lying on hospital beds along one wall of the room.
"Doctor?" Clara asked uncertainly as she shifted away from the girl freaking out on the floor and the strange creatures that were slowly sitting up on the beds in unison.
"No, no! You're making me think about them, don't make me think about them!" the young woman on the floor shouted and covered her face with her hands.
"Do you know what they are?" Rose asked her husbands. She watched the creatures carefully for any sudden moves, but didn't get any closer.
"Look, just don't ask, yeah? And don't look. Don't make me think about them!" the girl continued in her panicked state.
Both Doctors had their sonics out and were scanning the creatures as they stood from the beds and walked slowly towards the people in the room.
"Deaf. Blind," Evander listed as he checked his readings.
"How can they see us?" Alex asked as he backed towards Rose and put an arm out to keep her behind him.
"How do they even know we're here?" Evander wondered and tried to look at the back of one of their heads.
"They can only see you, yeah, if you see them. So just don't look, don't even think about them!" the girl on the floor said as she curled up into a ball and started rocking back and forth to calm herself.
"Are they telepathic then?" Rose asked.
"Oooh... they can home in on their own image in someone else's brain. Third-party perception," Alex said as he continued to keep himself between the creatures and Rose.
Evander nodded and continued the explanation, "Mmhmm. Mind piracy. We're being hacked."
"What does that even mean?" Clara asked nervously, backing toward the centre of the room.
"The visual input from your optic nerve is being streamed to their brains. Stop broadcasting. Close your eyes!" Evander said as he stood directly in front of Clara, waved his arms for emphasis and closed his eyes as well once she had obeyed.
"Rose, put your shields up, love. Think about something else... think about our wedding day," Alex said in a soothing voice and they both closed their eyes as well, clasping hands.
"What?!" Clara exclaimed, suddenly completely fixated on the idea of the Doctor married to yet another woman instead of the frightening creatures that were slowly moving towards them.
"Ah, yes, well..." Evander said, stumbling over how exactly to explain this situation. "That would be a sufficient distraction. Clara, the other Doctor isn't me from another point in time. He is an offshoot from one of my previous incarnations and now he and Rose are back and we are all happily married."
"I... no... WHAT?!" Clara stuttered and her eyes popped open again to stare at him, forgetting completely about the creatures that had been threatening them before.
The room went silent and Alex risked a glance at the aliens. They were just standing still as if waiting for a telepathic signal to follow and he strengthened is barriers more tightly.
"What do you mean, you're married? How long have you been gone? What about River? What the hell is going on?!" Clara asked, the volume and tension in her voice increasing with every question.
Everyone stood in tense silence for a moment before the door to the interior of the building burst open and two people carrying large guns ran into the room. "Go! Run! Now, now, now!" the woman shouted at them authoritatively.
"Come on, quick, quick, come on!" Evander shouted as he tried to usher all of them out of the room.
The man that had come in with the gun looked up towards the ceiling and said, "Here they come!"
Everyone looked up and began to panic as large, blue, crustacean-looking things began to fall towards them. Several people began screaming and then suddenly, in what seemed like a long blink, they were all just standing in the room again. Within the span of a breath, however, the wall exploded and sparks rained from the now destroyed wiring in the breeched wall.
A tangerine bounced through the hole and rolled across the floor. Rose bent to pick it up and looked back at her husbands curiously before her attention was once again drawn to the gaping hole in the wall by a small army of toys start parading into the room under their own power.
Outside in the snow, they heard a reindeer whinny and saw Santa riding on Rudolph's back. "Woah! Ah, good boy! Good boy," he said as he dismounted and sauntered into the room, followed closely by two elves.
"Well now. What seems to be the problem? This is the North Pole. We don't want any trouble here," Santa announced to the room as everyone gawked at the impossible figure. Behind him, Rudolph brayed and he turned back towards him. "Rudolph?" he said as he pressed on a small remote and a beeping sound was heard like a car alarm. "Easy son."
Alex turned to Evander and said, "We should do that with the TARDIS!"
"I already did, just before I regenerated away from the one that matched you; I just can't find the remote," he replied.
The man in red scowled at the two of them for taking attention away from him, then shouted past them to the room beyond, "Oi! Sleepy heads! It's Christmas Eve, early to bed." He clapped his hands and the gruesome creatures turned back to the beds, reclining once again.
"Who the hell are you?" the dark skinned woman asked as she pointed her enormous gun towards Santa Claus.
"Oh, take a guess, go on. Push the boat out!" Evander shouted as he raised his eyebrows at Alex and Rose in exasperation. Deciding to ignore the ridiculous scene, he moved to get a closer look at the sleeping creatures.
"Tooth fairy, maybe?" Alex said as he rubbed the back of his neck trying not to smirk.
"Oooh, how about the Easter Bunny!" Rose cried cheekily and patted Alex on the shoulder excitedly.
"Shut your mouths, you two, or you'll get yours!" one of the elves said to the pair as he threatened them with a twisted balloon dog. Alex and Rose both raised an eyebrow at him.
"It's a balloon animal," the other elf pointed out.
"That's a TOY gun," the first elf rebutted.
"Yeah, well, at least it's unsuitable for children under four! Parts small enough to swallow. So watch out," the second argued.
Santa sighed and shook his head at their antics.
"Can't get good help these days, eh Father Christmas?" Rose stage whispered to the man next to her.
"Don't I know it, Rose," he replied.
The girl who had been panicking on the floor earlier got up and started waving her arms about as she began shouting again, "This is ridiculous. Am I dreaming?"
"Oh, very good!" Evander said in sudden inspiration. He stepped back from the recumbent forms and stroked his chin in thought.
"They are, aren't they?" Alex asked him pointedly as he began making the same connections that Evander had.
"I think so," he replied and continued studying them.
"I need to know exactly who you are and what's happening here," the dark skinned woman commanded as she tried to regain control of the situation.
"Hello, Ashley. Lead scientist on a polar expedition!" Santa said to her as he approached with his thumbs hooked into his belt. "That microscope really paid off, didn't it? Now, your mum and dad wanted me to get you a toy one, but sometimes, I take a chance."
"Who are you? Why are you dressed like... that?" Ashley asked, adamantly refusing to believe her eyes.
"Why do you think?" Santa responded with a look similar to the Doctors' you've-dribbled-on-your-shirt stare.
"Come on, this is mental! This is totally not happening," cried the girl they met when they first arrived.
"I've got three words, Shona. Don't make me use 'em," Santa responded as he stalked towards her.
"What three words?" she asked with wide eyes.
"My. Little. Pony," he snapped at her as he counted on his fingers.
"Shut up, you!" she shouted and stepped towards him threateningly.
"Yeah? I've got lots more, babe," he said as he stood toe to toe with her.
"I will mark you, Santa!" she shouted and looked like she might punch him. Ashley pulled her back before it came to blows and Santa turned to walk around the room again.
"Ok, Doctor, are you going to explain? What is going on?" Clara interrupted with her stern, teacher voice.
"It's an invasion, Miss Oswald," Santa said as he walked past her and back outside.
"An invasion of what, elves?" Clara asked snarkily.
"Whoa! THAT is racist," said the elf that had been holding the toy gun earlier.
"Elfist!" added the other.
"Which is a bit hypocritical, from someone of your height," the first said with a glare at Clara.
"Ok, ok! I think everyone needs to calm down a bit here," Rose interjected. It seemed like they were all looking for a fight.
Santa returned from outside, carrying a large jar containing an unmoving, blue creature that resembled the things that seemed to be wrapped around the heads of the people on the beds.
"Huh? You seen them before, Doctor?" Father Christmas asked as he held it up for inspection.
Alex ran over to the jar and put on his glasses as he looked at it closely. Evander got up from his inspection of the one on the bed and walked towards the jar as well. "I've heard of them," he said.
"The Kantrofarri," Santa informed them.
"Also known as the Dream Crabs," Alex said and pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he tapped on the jar with his finger.
"Yeah. Depending on how many of those are already on Earth, the human race may well have seen its last day. So, are we going to stand about, arguing about whether I'm real or not, or are we going to get busy saving Christmas?" Santa said, addressing the room at large.
"Oh-ho-ho! Santa goes badass!" said the elf who had the balloon dog now tucked into the back of his belt.
"He's giving me the feels," the other said.
"Shut up!" Santa shouted at them, looking embarrassed and exasperated at their outburst. "That's a... that's a verbal warning. Please, stop it."