Nowhere Girl

2

Fog curdled in the bleak air and delicate dewdrops sparkled on the summer grass. For July it was more than a little chilly, Clara wearing her coat as she stood outside the old cottage smoking. A month and a half she had gone without smoking a real cigarette, and that one had been a brief lapse caused by their minor transition to the previous century, but now she had given up again. She blew out a thin stream of smoke into the cold morning; it was half past eight and the sun had been up for hours but was obscured by heavy grey clouds. Nearby was one lonely TARDIS, Ten's TARDIS, which he had picked them up in from Brighton in the middle of the night. Jenny was still in possession of Thirteen's ship, and Jenny and her ilk had yet to hear the news.

Only shortly after she had left to satiate her stress-induced nicotine craving was she joined by somebody else.

"I thought you didn't want to be near me if I was having 'one of those things'?" she quipped when her wife opened the backdoor and stepped out. On all sides they were surrounded by dense forests, a good few miles outside of the civilisation of Newport, the largest city on the whole island. There were villages here and there, but nothing within walking distance, and very bad internet signal to say it was the middle of the 21st Century. The Doctor didn't say anything. "It's cold out today. I don't think it was this cold at home." The Isle of Wight was relatively close to Brighton, only sixty miles away and practically horizontal to one another.

"The UK is a microclimate," she said, "With notoriously inconsistent weather. Maybe it's a bit of subliminal pathetic fallacy."

"Maybe," Clara sighed. She was still quite tired after being awoken at five in the morning after a frantic and incoherent phone call from Rose Tyler, the phone promptly being taken by Captain Jack who explained to them calmly that the worst had happened, Mickey and Martha had died in hospital together. She'd been trying not to think about it for the last two weeks or so, assuming that the medicine of the future would save them, but… "Do you think they were young?"

"Everybody's young to me."

"You know what I mean, though," Clara implored, "Eighty and seventy-eight? Life expectancy is over a hundred for most people these days."

"Oh, but at what cost? Nobody's ever ready to say goodbye to someone they love, no matter how long it's been."

"Only in our lives could the simple act of dying be considered so controversial…"

"Time's no measure of having lived a full life. Would you want to live forever if you didn't have the Echoes?" Thirteen pointed out the end of the shiny scar that snaked across the back of Clara's left hand, which she was holding her cigarette with, and which continued up the whole length of her arm.

"I'd have you," said Clara, self-consciously switching the cigarette into the other hand and letting the sleeve of her coat hang down, "And there's still Matilda."

"Coo," she lowered her voice considerably now, "They weren't going to get better. We know that, we visited this weekend and… it was heart-breaking. That's why Jack and Rose have been staying here with her all this time, which – well – isn't really a permanent solution. Everything has its time, and everything ends. And everyone has to say goodbye to their parents."

"I know, it's just at her age, and I remember what it was like when mum died, but this was both her parents, and she doesn't even really have anybody else."

"She's still got her godparents. And us, apparently. We'll all be there for her if she wants us."

The Tenth Doctor opened the door and they both stepped aside as he came hurrying out, midway through putting his coat on and looking sombre. Well, how else would he look? None of them were anywhere close to being happy, and Clara felt like none of the others were even calm. Her wife kept fidgeting with everything, after all, which she only did when she was especially antsy.

"Something happening?" Clara asked him.

"I'm going out to break the news," Ten said, stopping on his way to his TARDIS, "Do something useful, at least. Better to do it in person, don't you think? Than over the phone? Nobody's spoken to Tish and the cousins yet." If he was volunteering for that grisly task, then Clara certainly wasn't going to try and stop him.

"I'll tell Jenny," Thirteen offered.

"But I was-"

"I said, I'll tell her," she said firmly.

Fifty years and she remained the only Doctor to actually get into Jenny's good books. Well, along with Tentoo, but Thirteen had a bad habit of getting very annoyed when people included Tentoo among the list of Doctors. Though his human physiology had seen him go the same way as Mickey and Martha now had a dozen or so years ago. Ten just nodded, visibly irritated by Thirteen, and finished sorting out his coat as he stole away to the ship. Rose would be fine as long as Jack didn't leave, too. The TARDIS thrummed and disappeared.

"I hope that didn't wake Mattie up," Thirteen muttered.

Clara smoked some more, her mind elsewhere, "Yeah… do you think she'll come with us? Mattie?"

"I don't know. Maybe she won't want to. Rose would move to Earth to look after her, I'm sure; Mattie's her whole world."

"We should probably get a room ready, though," Clara began, after thinking, "For whatever she decides. You keep saying you want to do renovations."

"Transdimensional renovations, though, and you keep putting off discussing that."

"I just wasn't sure there was a need for it, but now, well, the loft's a conversion and it's full of stuff from the TARDIS. If we cleared that out it'd be a good bedroom, don't you think?" The Doctor said nothing. "It's just a good idea to talk about this sooner rather than later."

"I guess. I don't know."

"Good distraction?"

"Distractions aren't always a good thing when you're grieving, they'll just cause stutters in the process."

"Sweetheart…"

"Let's just see what she says, what she wants." Clara's cigarette had almost run down now, so she dropped it onto the small, concrete patio and stubbed it out under the sole of her boot.

"Okay," she smiled somewhat sadly, taking the Doctor's hand. Clara had been about to make a particularly bad joke, as she always did when she was in an unpleasant or uncomfortable situation, about how this wasn't the way she had wanted their summer to go, but the noise of a twig snapping somewhere in the woods cut through the air. They paused. "What was that?"

"Probably just wildlife," said the Doctor.

Simultaneously, hundreds of birds all took off from within the trees. Being as it was midsummer, that was a lot of birds. Cawing and screeching they fled into the gloomy skies above from all around the lonely cottage. Then, something appeared from between the dark trees in a blur and scared the life out of Clara, who actually shrieked and grabbed tighter hold of the Doctor. The miscellaneous object struck the kitchen window right behind them and made the glass shake until it dropped to the ground. Clara was horrified to see it was a dead cat.

"Hey!" she shouted, taking off towards the trees. But the Doctor held her back, staring at the darkness ahead of them. It may have been the daytime and the sun was in the sky, but the flock of fleeing birds made the shadows dance between dense tree-line. Promptly, the backdoor was practically kicked down by Jack and Rose arriving.

"What was that!?" Rose demanded.

"Uh…" Clara faltered, still semi attempting to go towards the woods.

"That just hit the window," Thirteen explained, "After all the birds flew off." The birds were still swarming above them but beginning to dissipate. Something had definitely spooked them.

"Did you see something?" Jack asked Clara, her eyes still fixed on the trees.

"No," she answered after thinking for a second, "Nothing. The fog's too thick." Rose crouched down to peer at the dead cat. It was a ginger tabby, certainly not wild, though it didn't have a collar. Around its ears and cheeks Clara could see blood.

"It hit the window?" she asked, "You mean like, something threw it?"

"I don't like this," said Jack, following Clara's gaze, though the cat-killing assailant remained hidden.

"Really? Because I'm thrilled," Clara said sarcastically. Rose glared at her.

"We don't need this today…"

"Go back inside," Jack ordered Clara and the Doctor, "Rose and I will go look."

"What? Why you?" Clara questioned, the Doctor still holding onto her arm to stop her from going off, "Surely it should be me and Rose. We're the most powerful."

"Yes, that's why one of you goes into the woods and the other stays at the house."

"It'll be fine, I already stopped a drunk driver last night," Rose said, getting up and stepping away from the cat. "Probably just a badger. They can get nasty." Clara highly doubted that a badger had thrown a cat out of the woods so hard that it died on impact against the wall of the house. She doubted that badgers could throw anything at all, since they didn't have thumbs.

"Coo, just… come on," Thirteen tugged on her arm again, Jack and Rose apparently waiting for some sort of go-ahead from Clara. Or rather and assurance that she wasn't going to follow them and be an annoyance.

"Keep us posted," Clara said, "We'll stay with Mattie."

"We'll be, like, five minutes," Rose said, then motioned for Jack to follow her. He drew out his gun (had he taken that with him to the hospital?) and the pair of them walked off in the direction the cat had come from. The birds had mostly finished her escape by now, and Thirteen pulled Clara back indoors by her hand.

The last time they had been in Mickey and Martha's house had been the previous Christmas. She and the Doctor had begun visiting them on Christmas Day once they had moved to the Isle of Wight, meaning the festive season was potentially lonely as every subsequent move made it harder and harder for Martha's family to visit. Of course, Rose was always there though, every week or more without fail. As the end of their lives drew in, Clara didn't think that they had ever really gone wanting for company.

There was a bloody mark on the kitchen window. Clara watched the shapes of Jack and Rose disappear into the trees and then kept watching for a few more seconds, but saw and heard nothing else of note.

"It is chilly," Clara reiterated to her wife.

"Heating probably isn't on. It is July, after all."

"I'm gonna go turn on the boiler."

"Just leave it."

"No," she sighed, "I need something to do."

The boiler was in the ice-cold downstairs toilet, situated right next to the back door so that the breeze from outside swept in and made it a very unpleasant place to be. It was also full of spiders, and the boiler controls were high enough that Clara had to stand on her tip-toes to work out what they were. How had Mattie and Martha dealt with that? Mattie took after her mother in terms of height, after all. After a good few minutes of fidgeting she finally managed to get it to work, she hoped, and left to find the Doctor pacing up and down again.

"How are you doing?" Clara asked now they were somewhat alone, Matilda fast asleep upstairs.

"I don't know," she shook her head, "I'm just… all over the place."

"I think it just gets weirder. People dying."

"'Weird'? That's the word you choose?"

"When they're the people we used to live with, yeah. It's strange, like… in some ways it really does feel like a lifetime ago, but other ways it seems like just yesterday that it was all of us, and now… the numbers keep getting smaller."

"Welcome to my world. Deep down though, I'm selfish."

"Why are you selfish?"

"Every time one of our old friends dies, it just makes me think I'm lucky that I'll always have you. And you've really been through the ringer, there's not a lot that you can't survive."

"That's true, I did get shot in the head a few years ago. Anyway, you know I don't stick around for you, I stick around for my clones. And now Matilda as well, apparently… do you fancy a cup of tea? Matts won't mind if I make some tea, will she?"

"I don't think so. I'd love one, honestly. It's been a long night."

As with the boiler, it took Clara a while to navigate the kitchen, seeing as nothing was where she was used to it being, especially when she still felt a little like she was in a daze from being woken up in the middle of the night with the news of tragic deaths. Willing the kettle to be a little quieter as it boiled so that Matilda got some much-needed rest, Clara eventually brewed their drinks and carried them over to the sofa, handing a mug to the Doctor. They settled in to wait for Jack and Rose's return.

Unfortunately, Jack and Rose's return did not come. Nor did they hear the TARDIS come back. Clara and Thirteen didn't have any particularly exciting conversation while they waited, and they both grew more and more uncomfortable as the minutes rolled by. First ten, twenty, half an hour, forty minutes – Clara began obsessively checking her phone. But no news. When it got to half past nine she tried to give Rose a call, after all, they couldn't be wasting time wandering around in the woods. If there was nothing to find, they ought to come back; Jack's collection of papers had been left on the coffee table. Mickey and Martha's Wills.

But Rose didn't answer the phone. The phone didn't even ring, just emitted a long beep like the line had been completely cut off. In that decade, it was very rare for a phone not to have signal. You could be in the middle of the ocean or the dessert and the satellite coverage for everybody would make any phone call crystal clear, not to mention that Clara's phone was modified by the Doctor. It was able to make a call anywhere and anywhen in all of space and time, as was Rose's.

"Listen to this," she said, giving the Doctor the phone to listen. The Doctor had nothing to say, however; she didn't know what it was, either.

"Strange…"

"Why would that happen? Something throws a cat at a house and the phones go dead?"

"Maybe it's a joke?" she suggested.

"A joke?" Clara asked incredulously, "Played by who? Today of all days?" The Doctor didn't have an answer. She couldn't even work out what was wrong with the signal, yet no matter how many times Clara tried to ring Rose or Jack when she moved on to him, the issue persisted.

"Try to call someone else," the Doctor implored, "Call, I don't know, 111? Or 101?" The numbers for the NHS and the police non-emergency helplines. They should always be available; however, Clara was faced with the same problem: no connection. As a last resort she attempted 999 for the actual emergency services dispatcher, and still: dead. "Maybe it's your phone, maybe the sim's burned out, or something." Thirteen took Clara's phone and slid her screwdriver out of the belt on her jeans it had been wedged in. She scanned for a while, Clara watching, then held the phone up to her ear and shook it like she was listening for something. "Hold on… if I can just…" The Doctor dialled Rose's number again and sonicked it while it rang, the device on speaker.

A shrill ringing pierced the air, so high-pitched and unpleasant that the Doctor dropped the phone instantly on the floor, flinching like it had burned her.

"Turn it off!" Clara shouted at her, her ears pounding in tremendous pain, hands clamped over her head. The phone fell and Thirteen accidentally kicked it under the sofa, diving after it and struggling to grab it and hang up the line. After the noise ended Clara still heard the ringing distinctly and snatched her phone away from the Doctor. "What did you do?"

"I just amplified it, that's all," she said, "I thought I heard interference."

"And?"

"And that was the interference, that noise."

"Well, what is it? Something messing with my phone?"

"I don't think it's your phone specifically, if I had to guess. Oh, crap – you're bleeding!"

"What?" Clara was alarmed. The Doctor reached for the box of tissues on the table, the one Rose had spent most of the night pilfering to mop up her tears, and pushed Clara's head to the side, brushing her hair out of the way.

"Did your eardrums burst? They're bleeding," she explained, wiping away the blood. It was Clara's right ear, the one that had been closest to the phone; the other ear seemed okay when Clara touched it gently. Over the echoing tinnitus Clara heard movement upstairs, a thud. The Doctor glanced up for a second before resuming her first aid.

"Stupid noise must have woken her up," Clara muttered.

"I didn't know it was going to do that," Thirteen said defensively. Clara winced, her ear throbbing.

"Will the nanogenes heal this, do you think?"

"Not sure, but the damage doesn't seem too bad," the Doctor said, though she didn't have a light or an otoscope with which to examine Clara's ear properly. Nor was she remotely qualified. "Hasn't bled too much, just a trickle. Not as bad as a nosebleed."

Matilda came thundering down the steps alarmingly loudly and was only part of the way through putting her glasses back on when she came into the living room in pyjamas.

"What was that?" she asked, staring at them.

"It was, uh…" the Doctor began, letting go of Clara now that she was satisfied the bleeding had just about stopped, "Cellular interference from an unknown source. Are your ears bleeding?"

"I don't think so – what's going on? Where's Jack and Rose?"

"Great question," said the Doctor, and then she didn't answer, she looked imploringly at Clara instead, like Clara held the answer. She didn't know where Jack and Rose were, and so stayed silent and useless, checking her phone again. "Where's your landline? Do you have a landline?"

"It's just…" Mattie lifted up her arm slightly to point at the TV stand, the house phone lying next to it. The Doctor made a beeline for it.

"Don't you put that on speaker," Clara warned her.

"Who are you calling?" Mattie persisted.

"Emergency services," the Doctor explained.

"Why?"

"See if I get through…"

"Matilda," Clara diverted her attention away from the Doctor and her phone shenanigans, "You don't have a cat, do you…?"

"No."

"Have you ever seen a ginger tabby around here?"

"Dammit!" the Doctor exclaimed, interrupting before Mattie could answer, "Line's dead."

"But it doesn't use a phone line, it uses satellites, just like all phones do," Mattie said, "How can that be dead? How can all the satellites not be working? Would one of you just-" She cut herself off mid-sentence, bawling up her fists and pressing them into her eyes.

"Hey, hey," Clara said softly, leaving the sofa to go over to her, "The truth is that we don't know. There's something strange going on and we don't have any of the answers. We're not keeping things from you, I promise."

"Strange how?" she asked hoarsely. She had only just woken up and she was already on the brink of more tears…

"Come with me."

"Don't show her the cat, Coo," the Doctor said.

"Why not? She might know where it came from."

"It came from the woods."

"What cat? A ginger cat?" Mattie persisted. Clara ignored her wife and left her there fidgeting with the handset, leading Matilda to the back door of her own house. Outside, the cat was still exactly where they had left it. "Oh my god. That's Church, I think. It's Mrs Ward's cat."

"Church?" Clara frowned.

"Short for something, I don't know."

"He got thrown out of the trees. Over there," Clara pointed at the spot where the cat had come from, where Jack and Rose had vanished into. "Have you ever seen or heard anything strange since you moved here?"

"Threw him?" Mattie asked in disbelief, crouching down to look at the cat.

"Yeah, after scaring all the birds off. Hit the window where the mark is. Me and the Doctor were standing right here, too – barely missed us."

"Didn't you see anything?"

"Not really."

"I can't say this has happened before. But…" Completely unfazed by the corpse, she knelt on the damp ground in her pyjamas and looked closer, "I think he looks thinner. Like, he used to be quite fat. But it's definitely Church because he this a scar on his nose. And look at that blood, in his ear, plus…"

"No – no, sweetheart, don't do – oh…" Clara had failed to stop Matilda from carefully pulling open the dead cat's eyelid, revealing its eyes were bloodied and burst as well. She had always been morbid, Clara supposed, and had yet to stop dedicatedly pursuing a career in surgery or some form of medicine. The blood was certainly strange, though; when she'd seen the cat earlier she'd assumed the blood had been because it had been bashed against the wall, but now it was all looking a bit more sinister. "Matts, stop touching it." Mattie ignored her and lifted its head. "You are grim, honestly…"

"Look at that!" she pointed out where its skull was broken, "Barely any blood there. It was already dead when it hit the window." Maybe that made sense, Clara thought, since they hadn't seen it move or heard it yowl or cry in pain.

"Who's Mrs Ward?" Clara asked.

"Our neighbour. Sort of. She lives a mile and a half down the road, Church always wanders up here and mum has me take him all the way back. He scratches. Or… he used to scratch… she shouts at me every time and says we feed him and that's why he wanders off. But obviously we don't feed him because mum's allergic." She finally stopped touching it. "What's going on? This is really weird. Someone threw a dead cat at my house."

"Yeah…" Clara said, but she wasn't exactly a stranger to the weird and unusual. She crossed her arms before she next spoke, preferring not to have to tell Matilda about their other problem. "Jack and Rose went into the woods to see what happened. An hour ago. And now none of the phones are working. That high-pitched noise is what we heard when I tried to call her." Matilda silenced and tried to touch her face, at which point Clara held her wrists with telekinesis. "Don't do that. Go in and wash your hands, Matts. In fact, wash them twice. Three times. Disinfect them."

"Church doesn't have any diseases."

"It's a dead animal, go clean your hands," Clara told her, doing her teacher-voice. Matilda clearly did not appreciate that, and while she listened to Clara she did so very huffily, dragging her feet across the floor as she re-entered the house and went towards the sink. Clara watched her closely to make sure she was very thorough and used plenty of soap.

"Internet's not working either," announced Thirteen, breaking the silence.

"The cat was bleeding out of its eyes and ears," Clara told her.

"It had been bleeding out of its eyes and ears," Mattie corrected her, "It's been dead for a while."

"A while? How long? Hours, days?" the Doctor began to think.

"Uh… I don't really know. Not long enough to decompose."

"Okay, so, the neighbour's cat – what?" Clara began, "Wanders into the woods down here, bleeds to death through its ears, and then a day later gets its corpse thrown at a house?"

"Potentially."

"And Jack and Rose go missing," Matilda added quietly.

"Jack and Rose will be fine," Clara said, "Neither of them really has a choice in the matter."

"But they're supposed to be, like, invincible!" Mattie argued quite animatedly, getting soap suds on Clara by accident as she protested. "…Sorry." She rinsed her hands. "Nobody's meant to be able to get them."

"Jack's constantly getting into trouble, I wouldn't worry about him too much," Thirteen said, "Very regularly gets himself kidnapped by all kinds of people. And Rose? She likes to make everybody think that she has all the secrets of the universe at her fingertips, but she's more like… a vessel. The time vortex uses her to make sure things happen the way they're supposed to, and she can only really manipulate the one universe."

"Only one measly universe," Clara quipped, "They'll be alright, Matts. Now – go get dressed, yeah? Go put some fresh clothes on and then we'll go and see this Mrs Ward and tell her about her cat. You'll need to give us directions."

"I don't really want to go out anywhere or get dressed…"

"I know, but it's dangerous here, and we all need to keep each other safe until we can work out what's going on." Clara really didn't want to come across like she was bossing Matilda around or trying to rush in to fill the vacuum of Mickey and Martha, but she was struggling to work out how she should talk to Matilda as opposed to all the other teenagers she looked after every day. Thankfully, while Clara was the teacher often derided for being much too strict, the Doctor was beloved by all, and it was she who now stepped in.

"Mattie, if the phones don't work, we can't contact the TARDIS. You can't go there to stay safe, and we can't stay here when Ten and Rose might need our help. Trust me when I say we both understand what you're going through, we've been through it too, and this is the last thing any of us want to be doing. But they're still your godparents and they might need us." Mattie didn't say a word, and after a few moments she gave them a small nod and then shuffled away. She left them in the main room and trudged up the gloomy stairs alone, leaving Clara and the Doctor behind.

Clara put her hands in front of her face and took a few deep breaths once Mattie was gone, sitting down on the sofa again.

"This must be the hardest day of her life."

"It might the hardest day of her life, period," the Doctor came to sit next to her, "Which means that, well… it can only get better, right?"

"Maybe…" Clara sighed, "I just… she's right, about Jack and Rose. Maybe they're fine, it's not like we heard anybody scream."

"If Jack and Rose are fine then we're just going to have taken a little detour to tell a woman that her cat has unfortunately died," said Thirteen, "Try not to make it out to be more than it is."

"What do you think?" Clara implored. The Doctor took a while to answer, clearly debating how honest she should be. Clara thought she might prefer it if the Doctor lied to her to make her feel better.

"It's not exactly the wilderness out here. Those woods aren't big at all. This entire island isn't that big. If you walk long enough in any direction you'll get to the coast, and then there's an entire National Trust maintained footpath around the edge. Not that I've ever even known Rose to get lost since she got those superpowers. Plus, Mattie's right about the phones all using satellite coverage. Nobody ever loses signal in this day and age, which concerns me. And even without signal we should still be able to connect to the emergency services."

"And the dead cat that got thrown at the house?"

"Well, yeah. That too. Was she upset about seeing it?"

"No, thank god. She kept touching it. Seems like something you would do, to be honest. Maybe more so Eleven than you, he would have just picked it up, I bet," said Clara, a sliver of nostalgia for her 'deceased' husband coming back to her. "God… why does this have to happen now? Why today? And without us even being able to take her anywhere safe… I just…"

"What?" The Doctor took Clara's hands and Clara breathed deeply once again before continuing.

"What if this screws her up?" Clara lowered her voice considerably, "Like, really badly, I mean? Oswin was seventeen when the cracks started to show. And mum died when I was sixteen and I still have the dreams sometimes."

"Coo… nobody goes through life without bad things happening to them. Really bad things. There's no one alive who's unscathed. And she's fifty, they died of natural causes to do with old age. I'm not saying that that isn't the most heart-breaking thing in the world, or that grief is any kind of competition, but I don't think she's going to lose her mind. Besides, this is Matilda we're talking about; she got kidnapped by Daleks when she was, like, five and has never seemed particularly traumatised." Clara leant her head on the Doctor's. "What about you? Are you gonna be okay?"

"Urgh, it's like… Like I haven't had a chance to even take it in, or… or maybe it's a long time coming, so it's not… I don't know. I don't know. It's all a mess and this definitely isn't going to help anybody." She moved away.

"In over a thousand years I still haven't found a way to make it all feel better. I'm sorry."

"No, no. You haven't got anything to apologise for, sweetheart." Neither of them had much more to say. They were stuck in the middle of a mystery yet again while simultaneously trying to mourn the painful loss of two of their oldest, closest friends. "But… the haemorrhaging… doesn't it sound familiar? And what do you think about the weather now? I did say it was chilly."

"Could be nothing. Could be a weird disease, a microclimate, maybe Jack and Rose are just being super meticulous. Maybe a satellite has had a freak malfunction, and nobody knows about it because, obviously, with the satellite down, they can't get any news out." Clara doubted all of those theories, but it was the Doctor's way of admitting she didn't know anything without actually having to admit she didn't know anything. "I hope this woman's not too upset about her cat."

"Well, we'll just tell her it got run over, I suppose," said Clara, "I'm not a fan of cats."

"I know, you're not a fan of any animals. That reminds me – did you feed Captain Nemo before we left?"

"No, did you forget?"

"Darn it…"

"I'm sure he'll be fine."

"Who'll be fine?"

Mattie interrupted them, having come downstairs incredibly quietly for once. Clara had the sneaking suspicion she had been careful so that she could try and catch them eavesdropping about this or that – teenagers did so enjoy the idea that everybody else was having a much more interesting time than them.

"The lobster," Clara explained.

"Lobster?"

"We have a pet lobster," Clara continued, "The Doctor 'rescued' him from a restaurant."

"I couldn't just leave him there to die, Clara," Thirteen argued.

"You could've, because he was the last lobster they had, and I was really looking forward to having lobster for tea…"

"You have literally no empathy for living creatures."

"That's a bit much. I was just hungry."

"He's blue, Clara! You can't eat something that's blue. He's too cool to be eaten. And I did let you name him. See, Mattie, I wanted to name him Trotsky, but Clara was all, 'that's a stupid name for a lobster.'"

"It is a stupid name for a lobster," Clara muttered, "Look, this isn't important, we'd better go. I'll leave a note on the coffee table just in case Jack and Rose come back." She stood to do this, though she thought the likelihood of them coming back was slim to none; she had a very bad feeling about the whole day so far but didn't know how much of that was grief and how much might be genuine intuition.

"Why keep it and not release it?" Matilda asked the Doctor.

"He's cute!"

"He's not cute," Clara said, scribbling a note on the nearest thing she could find, which happened to be a sheet of kitchen towel and not an actual piece of paper, "He bit my finger off and ate it."

"And now we have chainmail gloves for cleaning the tank. Lessons were learned. And if you'd let me get a dog-"

"You're not getting a dog," Clara said firmly without looking up from where she was going over her writing half a dozen times just to get the ink to stay legible. How many times had they argued about getting a dog? She couldn't count.

"You liked Laika."

"I remember Laika," said Matilda. She must have roughly resembled age ten when they'd had Laika the space dog, decades ago now. They'd brought Laika to visit Mattie, Mickey and Martha before, a few times. It was good for her to get exercise outside of the ship, after all. Funny how Clara so adamantly refused to get any kind of pet – and really would rather they didn't have Captain Nemo – and now they had a teenage girl to look after. But at least teenage girls didn't need to be taken on walks three times a day, nor did they make a habit of pooing wherever they liked. Those were her main issues with dogs.

"Can we use your car, Mattie?" Clara tried to get the Doctor away from reminiscing about a dog that had died nearly twenty years ago, "I'd rather not walk out in the open with so much going on."

"Jack's got the keys."

"We'll be alright without the keys, if you don't mind me driving it?" Thirteen had her sonic screwdriver, after all.

"Yeah, I guess," said Mattie.

"Great. Then let's go."