Terry landed to find Eleven in a frenzy in the middle of the console room as he threw around items of clothing with one hand and tugged on trousers with the other.
"Doctor?" Terry asked, puzzled, and the Doctor stopped midway through as he whirled on her in surprise.
"Angel!"
His entire face lit up, glowing with such radiant joy that Terry was momentarily taken-aback.
"Doctor-?
Terry was cut off when the Time Lord pulled her in for a deep, passionate kiss that she had no heart to pull away from. When they eventually broke apart, the Doctor's face was still close to hers as Terry tried to gather her bearings once more.
"What was that for?" Terry breathed, feeling quite heady.
"That was for leaving me for a year and then showing up as your adorable but clueless first self." He grumbled as he pulled her in as close to him as possible.
Terry's eyes widened as she realized around when this must be for the Doctor, and then her lips twitched into a smile despite herself.
"How long have you been...?" Terry asked knowingly, and the Doctor cocked a brow.
"Too long." He answered, his voice dipping lower. He cast an eye down over her left hand and then over her neck. He grinned when he saw the familiar gold chain peeking out from under her collar, knowing what hung on the end tucked out of sight.
"You have been neglecting your responsibilities, wife."
"Dear, dear."
Terry tried and failed to hide her smirk when he pressed against her to drive home his point. Almost literally.
"Then it looks like I have a lot to make up for… husband."
The Doctor replied by pulling Terry almost harshly against his body as he kissed down her neck while she uttered his name. Terry matched his eagerness with her own, and soon the Doctor's clothes were again scattered everywhere, mixed with Terry's as neither bothered to even relocate to one of their bedrooms. If the Tardis could speak, she might have; but even though she could have hummed her protests, the good old girl kept silent despite her indignation as Terry's knickers hung off one of the levers on the console.
"So, what was going on before I arrived?" Terry asked as she pulled on a fresh yellow shirt. She paired it with a jean jacket and skirt after some mild deliberation - somehow, she felt like the change today, and she was satisfied as she pulled on blue oxfords over blue stockings to complete her outfit. One couldn't run without shoes, after all. Well, one could but Terry had done it once and she highly didn't recommend it.
"You seemed quite focused on getting your clothes on, but it was clearly not important enough if you were willing to lose them again so quickly." Terry added as she finished slipping on her shoes and wrapped a purple scarf around her neck.
"Nothing is more important than you, my dear." The Doctor replied affectionately as he nipped Terry's ear, making her giggle like a schoolgirl.
She swatted him away, pretending to be stern and failing miserably. The Doctor smiled and Terry began tying his bow-tie for him while he returned to her earlier question.
"I found her again. Clara."
Terry looked up, instantly interested, while the Doctor continued.
"But I'm afraid she didn't take to me very well. I was a monk, or I was dressed as one, and monks are not cool."
"That's not what I thought when we went to that Chinese temple in the 1100s." Terry answered absently as she smoothed his purple coat for him before the Doctor's words sank in.
"Wait, what did you say? You've already seen Clara?"
"Yes, and she shut the door in my face." The Doctor complained but Terry paled.
"Theta, when was this?" Terry demanded and the Doctor gave her a questioning look.
"Right before you arrived, so maybe half an hour ago?" He estimated. "Or maybe it was three hours. You know I'm not good with time-"
"Oh no." Terry gasped as she looked at the Doctor's coat with new eyes. She'd assumed because it was lying on the ground that he had started wearing it already - she hadn't thought it was the first time he'd picked it up.
"Theta, we have to go."
She grabbed his hand and broke into a run. The Doctor followed Terry instantly, but he couldn't help from asking as they raced out of the Tardis, "What's going on?"
"We need to save Clara!" Terry answered as they reached the Maitlands' front door. "Sonic!"
The Doctor handed her his sonic at once and Terry unlocked the door. The moment the door opened, they saw Clara lying as though dead in the front hall while her voice cried over and over again, "I don't know where I am. I don't know where I am!"
"Clara!" Terry exclaimed as she bent over the companion and soniced her.
"What's wrong? Is she all-?" The Doctor broke off as he saw the source of Clara's panicked screams. The spoonhead, shaped like a little girl, stood on the stairs right in front of them and on its head was Clara.
"I don't know where I am! I don't understand. I don't know where I am!" The Clara on the spoonhead screamed over and over, looking around wildly as she tried to understand where she was.
"Angel, my sonic." The Doctor said darkly. Terry handed the tool over without a word as she held Clara's body protectively.
The Doctor soniced the spoonhead, unrelenting in his attack. The spoonhead started to fizzle and the hologram projection around the machine flickered revealing the spoonhead's true shape beneath the little girl facade. Finally, the hologram failed entirely and the Doctor slowly soniced the machine all over.
"Walking base station. Walking wifi base station. Hoovering up data. Hoovering up people!"
He pocketed his sonic and ran toward the kitchen.
"Doctor, upstairs! First door on the left!" Terry instructed. The Doctor turned on his heel and raced up the stairs instead and into Clara's room. Spotting her laptop, he slammed it shut.
"Oh no, you don't."
He carried it down the stairs to where Terry was still leaning over an unconscious Clara.
"We need to stop the signal." Terry explained when she spotted her husband. The Doctor instantly perched on the ground next to her, crossing his legs as he opened Clara's laptop. Luckily for him, it wasn't password protected (and the Doctor lamented Clara's technical idiocy) and the Doctor quickly started hacking into the laptop's wifi system.
"Oh no, you don't." He muttered as he tried to reverse the upload of Clara's soul. A bar popped up, showing that she was 73% uploaded and the Doctor gritted his teeth.
"Come on, come on, come on..."
The Doctor beamed as the upload bar suddenly started to decrease.
"Yes!"
"Don't count your chickens before they hatch." Terry warned just as the upload reverse froze.
"Oh, no, no, no, no, no." The Doctor muttered as he quickly started typing again, trying to block the other party that was attempting to stop his hacking.. "Not this time. You don't get to take Clara this time."
Terry bent over Clara worriedly, waiting for a sign that she was fine. She believed in the Doctor and always would, even when she already knew he would pull through. And like she predicted, the spoonhead suddenly glowed and a beam of light shot from it to Clara's head.
"Oh, thank God." Terry muttered as Clara immediately inhaled sharply and she started coughing even as she continued to sleep.
Terry stroked Clara's back, easing her coughs, while the Doctor slumped over Terry in relief.
"Okay. She's okay. She's back."
He kissed her temple while Terry leant against him as well, emotionally exhausted but pleased.
"Yes, she is." Terry agreed as she kissed the Doctor's cheek in return. "Thanks to you."
Terry gently placed a glass and a jug of water on Clara's bedside table. Looking down, she smiled as she watched the girl sleep peacefully.
"Hello, Clara." Terry murmured to herself before she looked toward the doorway as she heard movement.
"Well, I've let our new friends know who they're dealing with." The Doctor announced as he joined Terry by Clara's bedside. "They know now that she's under our protection."
"Good."
Terry nodded, looking back at Clara fiercely. But a rustling sound made her turn back toward the Doctor and she shook her head fondly as the Time Lord opened an entire packet of Jammy Dodgers. He sniffed it delightedly before emptying the whole lot onto a plate - but not without snagging one for himself first.
"Want one?" He asked as he bit into the treat and Terry smiled.
"Don't mind if I do."
She took the one still in his hand, which the Doctor gave up willingly. While she munched on the sweet, the Doctor noticed an old book on Clara's bookcase and he pulled it out.
"101 Places to See." He murmured, flipping through the book. He smirked. "Humans. So limited."
"Not for much longer." Terry pointed out calmly. It would be only a matter of decades from the current time before humans spread out across the universe.
"True."
The Doctor paused as the book fell open onto a page with a pressed maple leaf. Picking it up, he sniffed it before giving it a lick. Terry saw him and she sighed.
"Must you behave like a pet dog?" She asked but there was no bite in her tone.
The Doctor just smiled and he glanced out the window.
"The stars are starting to come out. Do you want to go outside?" He asked and Terry nodded.
Looking back at Clara one more time, Terry tucked a stray hair back behind the younger woman's ear before she joined the Doctor as he stepped out of Clara's room. Together the couple exited the Maitland home and returned to the Tardis where the Doctor found two camping chairs for them to set up outside under the stars. Terry meanwhile whipped up some hot chocolate for them while the Doctor set things up and by the time she came out with two mugs, the Doctor was typing away on Clara's laptop. This, Terry wasn't surprised by. But she did raise a brow as she saw the wrangled mess on the ground before the Doctor that had once been the spoonhead.
"Remind me never to get on your bad side." Terry remarked as she settled down in the chair beside the Doctor.
His hands paused for a fraction of a second midway through typing, before the Doctor glanced at her with hooded eyes.
"You could never get on my bad side, angel." The Doctor murmured. Terry tilted her head skeptically.
"I highly doubt that. You certainly drive me up the wall sometimes, I should think I do the same to you too." She answered as she handed him a mug of hot chocolate.
The Doctor accepted the mug even as he shook his head. "No. Not you. Never you."
Terry gave him an odd look as the Doctor seemed to fall into deep thought. It reminded Terry of the last time she had seen Eleven, and the look on his face when she'd asked him about her lost memories. Well, not lost exactly… it was more like waking from a dream. A dream that seemed to cause the Doctor unease, for he wore the same expression he always did whenever the subject was even hinted at: wary, maybe even a little fearful, with a touch of desperation.
No, that wasn't quite right, Terry decided. The Tenth Doctor didn't seem to know anything although Donna's Doctor seemed to suspect something. But, perhaps due to something from the time Terry couldn't remember during Journey's End, the Eleventh Doctor's attitude had always been different. And yet, even that had changed somewhere along the line. At some point, the Doctor seemed to start to find the subject almost painful. Terry could clearly remember the sorrow that had been in his eyes the last time she'd seen Eleven, just after they left the Paternoster gang. And she realized now what had struck her about his expression: it was a similar look to the one he'd had when watching Ganger Amy.
'Am I going to die?' Terry wondered silently, when suddenly a voice called out to them.
"Hello?"
Startled, the two Time Lords turned to see Clara poking her head out of her bedroom window and peering down at them. Terry smiled while the Doctor positively beamed.
"Hello! Are you all right?"
"I'm in bed." Clara stated with a frown and the Doctor nodded.
"Yes."
"Don't remember going." Clara continued and the Doctor agreed.
"No."
"What did I miss?" Clara asked and the Doctor grinned.
"Oh, quite a lot, actually." He dug out the pad where he had jotted down all the messages they'd intercepted while Terry was putting Clara to bed.
"Angie called. She's going to stay over at Nina's. Apparently that's all completely fine and you shouldn't worry like you always do, for god's sake, get off her back. Also, your dad phoned, mainly about the government. He seems very cross with them, I've got several pages on that." He flipped past said pages. "I said I'd look into it. I fixed that rattling noise in the washing machine, indexed the kitchen cupboards, optimised photosynthesis in the main flower bed and assembled a quadricycle."
"Assembled a what?" Clara asked blankly.
"I found a disassembled quadricycle in the garage." The Doctor explained and Clara raised a brow.
"I don't think you did." Clara refuted and the Doctor's eyes widened.
"I invented the quadricycle. Ha!" The Doctor mused and Terry shook her head.
"Sorry to burst your bubble, love, but Henry Ford actually did and then the EU redesigned it about two decades ago from the current time period." She answered.
The Doctor looked comically disappointed by this news, but their attention was drawn back to Clara as she called down warily, "What happened to me?"
Terry and the Doctor exchanged looks.
"Don't you remember?" The Doctor asked carefully.
"I was scared, really scared." Clara said slowly. "Didn't know where I was."
"Do you know now?" Terry asked and Clara nodded.
"Yes."
"Well then, you should go to sleep." The Doctor answered briskly. "Because you're safe now, we promise. Goodnight, Clara."
Clara nodded and slowly backed away back into her room. The Doctor smiled as he sat back down to type at his computer, but Terry just waited. Sure enough, not a few seconds later, Clara suddenly opened her window again and poked her head out, unable to hold back her curiosity.
"Are you guarding me?" She asked.
Terry grinned. "What do you think?"
Clara's eyes narrowed and she asked skeptically, "Are you two seriously going to sit down there all night?"
"We promise we won't budge from this spot." The Doctor replied, waving to the two chairs the Time Lords were settled in.
Clara's lips curved into a half-smirk.
"Well then, I'll have to come to you."
"Eh?" The Doctor blinked while Terry settled back with a laugh.
Same old Clara. It was good to know that some things just never changed.
Clara dragged out a dining room chair while Terry poured an extra cup of hot chocolate for the companion.
"I thought you said you weren't going to budge from that spot." Clara joked as she saw the extra mug that was set out for her. Terry smiled mysteriously.
"We did." She agreed, making Clara pause in confusion. Terry just grinned to herself as she thought about the thermos in her bigger on the inside jean jacket.
"I like your house." The Doctor piped up, distracting Clara.
"It isn't mine. I'm a friend of the family." She explained and the Doctor's brows shot up.
"But you look after the kids." The Doctor noted. "Oh yes, you're a governess, aren't you, just like-"
He quickly cut himself off while Clara asked, puzzled, "Just like what?"
"Just like… I thought you probably would be." The Doctor answered lamely.
Thankfully, Clara was too preoccupied to notice (or she had already accepted he was weird) and she instead settled into her chair as she asked, "Are you going to explain what happened to me?"
The Doctor held up the laptop and leaned in closer to the companion as he explained in a hushed tone, "There's something in the wifi."
"Okay." Clara said slowly.
Terry sipped her hot chocolate casually while the Doctor explained quickly, "This whole world is swimming in wifi. We're living in a wifi soup. Suppose something got inside it. Suppose there was something living in the wifi, harvesting human minds. Extracting them. Imagine that. Human souls trapped like flies in the world-wide web. Stuck forever, crying out for help."
The Doctor started typing at the laptop again while Clara frowned.
"Isn't that basically Twitter?" She asked at the same time that the Doctor clicked on the wifi list, which revealed an increasingly long list of sets of symbols.
The Doctor slowly leaned back and he glanced at Terry with a stunned expression that made Clara tilt her head.
"What's that face for?" She asked.
"A computer can hack another computer." The Doctor began slowly. "A living, sentient computer… maybe that could hack people. Edit them. Re-write them."
"Why would you say that?" Clara wondered.
"Because a few hours ago you knew nothing about the internet, and you just made a joke about Twitter."
"Oh." Clara mumbled before it hit her. Her eyes widened and she looked from the Doctor to Terry.
"Oh, that's weird. I know all about computers now in my head. Where did all that come from?"
"You were uploaded for a while." The Doctor answered as he noticed Terry's attention had been captured by something across the street. "Wherever you were, you brought something extra back, which I very much doubt you'll be allowed to keep."
The Doctor's eyes followed Terry's line of sight as he spoke, and it was then that he saw a man standing extraordinarily still by the lamp post across the road. The Doctor quickly shot to his feet.
"You, me and angel inside that box, now."
"I'm sorry?" Clara asked, startled as the Doctor hurriedly moved away the chairs and pulled on the Tardis door.
"Look, just get inside." He urged, all but pushing Terry in first.
She went quite willingly, which was a good sign in his opinion, despite Clara's protests.
"All three of us?"
"Oh, trust me. You'll understand once we're in there." The Doctor answered as he reached for Clara next. She skipped out of reach.
"I bet I will." She scoffed. "What is that box, anyway? Why have you got a box?"
"Clara!"
"Is it like a snogging booth?"
The Doctor stared at the petite woman, appalled. "A what?"
"Is that what you do, bring a booth and an extra girl?" Clara sipped her hot chocolate smartly. "There is such a thing as too keen."
The Doctor stared at the companion incredulously, but he was distracted as lights started to turn on, one by one, in all the houses on the street.
"Clara, look around you." The Doctor ordered in a hushed tone.
Surprised at his sudden change in demeanour, Clara did as he said. She frowned when she saw the same thing the Doctor did.
"What's going on? What's happening? Is the wifi switching on the lights?"
"No, people are switching on the lights." The Doctor answered slowly. "The wifi is switching on the people."
They turned around to look at the man Terry and the Doctor had noticed before. He was still standing just as stockstill as before, but as they watched his head started to spin around… revealing a spoonhead.
"What is that thing?" Clara whispered.
"A walking base station. You saw one earlier."
"I saw a little girl." Clara protested.
"It must have taken an image from your subconscious, thrown it back at you. Ah! Active camouflage. They could be everywhere."
But Clara had stopped listening as she saw something else.
"Doctor? Doctor!" She called as she tugged on his arm. The Doctor turned to look at what Clara was seeing: all the lights throughout the city turning off except for the row of houses all along the street they were on.
"What's going on?" Clara wondered. "Our lights are on and everyone else's off. Why?"
Terry suddenly poked her head out of the Tardis and she called sharply, "You two, inside, now! We've got a plane to catch!"
"What?" Clara asked but the Doctor just grabbed her hand and hauled her along. He'd seen what she'd missed: lights that were coming rapidly toward them from the sky.
"Will explain later! In the box!"
He pulled Clara inside the Tardis behind him before he let go of her hand and dashed to the console where Terry was already taking them off. Clara stopped dead just inside the doors, staring with wide eyes around the Tardis as the Doctor called over his shoulder at her.
"Yes, it's a spaceship. Yes, it's bigger on the inside. Now, I don't have time to talk about it."
"But, but, but, but it's-" Clara stuttered as she stared around in shock.
"Sweetie, don't pull that lever." Terry ordered and the Doctor protested, "Short hops are hard enough without the stabilizer."
"You rely on that far too much considering it's not actually a stabilizer." Terry remarked dryly.
"Bigger on the inside." Clara continued to stammer. "Actually bigger."
She yelped as the Tardis suddenly rocked, almost throwing her off balance.
"Must you always park so suddenly?" Terry sighed even as she grabbed the Doctor's hand.
"Oh, you love me and you know it." He answered before he called to Clara, "Come on, Clara!"
"We're going to go back out there?" Clara asked in bewilderment as the Time Lords started for the doors again.
The Doctor chuckled. "We've moved. It's a spaceship. We flew away."
"Away from the plane?" Clara asked in relief as she followed them to the doors.
"Not exactly." Terry admitted as she opened the doors and promptly almost tumbled down the nearly vertical aisle. She and the Doctor barely managed to catch themselves on the edges of the nearby seats at the back of the plane while Clara clutched the Tardis door to stay upright.
"How did we get here?" Clara cried as she looked around the plane that was apparently headed on a downward trajectory. None of the passengers seemed bothered however as they remained unconscious in their seats, held in place only by their safety belts.
"It's a ship. I told you." The Doctor answered as he and Terry hastily made their way down the plane and toward the cockpit. "It's all very sciency."
"This is the plane? The actual plane?" Clara asked, still unable to believe it. She paused and added worriedly, "Are they all dead?"
"Asleep." The Doctor called back as Terry reached the cockpit. "Switched off by the wifi. Never mind them."
"Sonic!" Terry called, holding back her hand toward the Doctor.
The Doctor handed her the sonic and she unlocked the door as Clara reached them. The Doctor and Terry almost tumbled into the cockpit where the pilots were slumped over, ignorant of the flashing warning lights all over the controls. Terry handed the Doctor the sonic again just as a blue light started to appear around her.
"What's going on?!" Clara cried, staring at Terry in alarm as she stopped in the doorway of the cockpit while the Doctor looked up as he spotted the familiar light from the corner of his eyes.
"Don't worry, this happens." Terry answered quickly, looking from the Doctor to Clara.
"Doctor, pull that lever on your left up and the plane will lift. Clara, you'll see me again very soon - blonde me, that is. But who knows when I will see you next, so I suppose I should say, until next time, my dear."
"That makes no sense!" Clara yelled but it was already too late.
Terry just smiled as she disappeared in a flash of blue light.
Terry landed to find herself standing beside a hospital bed in what could only be described as potentially any hospital ward on Earth and several hundred planets in the wide universe.
Her sudden appearance caused the person in said bed to jump, startled almost out of his wits. The good news was that the bed was curtained off for privacy so no one else had likely seen her mysterious arrival. The better news was that she had arrived beside someone she knew and the best news was she was fairly certain she knew where and when exactly she was.
"Hello, Sweetie." Terry said with a soft smile and Ten smiled back at her.
"Angel."