Flotsam

Clara

She stared from the crashed ship to the Doctor until she noticed a trail of pinkish, strawberry ice cream cresting his bottom lip like drool.

"C'mere, you have ice cream on your face," she said, and he looked at her, flummoxed. She reached over and wiped the ice cream away with her thumb and then licked it off, "I've never been a fan of strawberry ice cream."

"I've always liked orange ice cream, but they won't do orange Cornettos for at least twenty years. I'll have to be sure to pick you some up one day, they are marvellous. There was a lesser-popularised range of bacon-flavoured ice cream, but nobody ever really took to it, funnily enough." Through the distraction of the downed spaceship, neither of them truly forgot the conversation they had been having moments ago. Yet this new incident took priority.

"Do you know what kind of ship that is?" she asked.

"Mmm," he said knowingly. Then he leant over as though he were on the brink of sharing some great secret, "Don't let the fact it's in the sea fool you, darling. It's a spaceship." He tapped the side of his nose and winked. Clara punched her husband very lightly on the side of his arm.

"Arsehole," she muttered.

"Oi! As a matter of fact, I do. It's a very generic and mass-produced kind of shuttle presently accessible to a great deal of species, so as it happens I shall have to wait to see if the pilot climbs out to get a rough idea of what the situation is." She watched the dark waves lapping the hull of the vessel, its lights still glowing beneath the surface of the water. People were still screaming around them. "What is your favourite ice cream flavour, then?"

"Cookie dough. Obviously. You know that. I'm always eating it. There's a great ice cream parlour near where I went to school that do really nice bubble-gum, though. And any milkshake you can dream of. I'll have to show you it one day," she smiled, and he smiled back, but then the green spaceship lights went out. He told her to watch and see what happened next, him moving to lean forwards with his elbows on his knees as though he were watching an incredibly engrossing film.

The roof of the spaceship slid off like the lid of a teapot, pushed up by an unseen force and moved so it sat on a precarious angle, until the sloshing of the machine in the waves caused it to wobble enough to splash down into the sea. The Doctor and Clara stared at it with identical expressions of curiosity and enthralment, squinting. Something pumped into the sand, making a dent, like it had been landed in, and splashed wet, gold mud around in the sea-foam. Clara jumped as they observed and very conspicuously slid along the bench to be closer to her husband (for warmth more than anything), and he glanced at her for a short second when he saw this advance. More dents began to appear, loping along in a one-two, one-two zigzag pattern: footprints. They were footprints. Large and freakish footprints and whatever was making them was nearly invisible - just invisible enough to make a mottled ripple in the bleak, navy horizon.

"What is that? Are you going to do something?" Clara asked him urgently.

"Do something? Why ought I do something?"

"Because that - whatever it is - is totally not a human and just crashed in a spaceship," she said, waving a hand in the general direction of the invisible fiend.

"Yes, well, I'm 'totally not a human' and have crashed to Earth in spaceships before, it doesn't make me a danger," he said, "I'd rather wait until I know what it is and try and speak to it."

"You're just a coward."

"Coward?"

"Yeah, you're scared. Fear of the unknown, and stuff," she said.

"Well I rather think you're the one with a fear of the unknown," he commented in a tone of voice she could not pinpoint. She asked him what that was supposed to mean but was met by him clapping his hands together and standing up, declaring they best have a look-see inside of the wreckage. He offered his hand to her when he stood up and she took it and pulled her down the beach, her not happy about the ends of her dressing gown getting covered in damp, cold seawater and dirt.

Unfortunately, the ship was at an awkward height. It was six feet tall (taller than the Doctor) and its bulbous, doughnut-like body made it very difficult for either of them to drag themselves into it. In the end he had to give her a boost, and she toppled head-first onto a large pilot seat in a very small space that was like the cockpit of a larger ship just ripped off. The seat was very low down though, and she was resultantly hidden from view from the outside.

"Are you alright?" the Doctor called. She struggled for a minute or so to force herself to be sat in the chair properly, experiencing second-hand memories of the chair in the imaginary SS Alaska's cockpit from what shadows she could recollect of Oswin's life.

"All fine," she replied.

"Anything in there?" he asked. It was very dark.

"Have you got a torch?" she called. There was a pause.

"Catch!" he shouted, and a torch came flying in from above and landed in her lap, causing her to make a noise of mild fright that was a little less than being a shriek but not quite hopeless enough to be a whimper.

She did not thank him, but when she turned the torch on she genuinely did shriek, and lifted her feet up from the floor, because there was something there. Something pale and slimy-looking. It was alarmingly similar to snakeskin, had the same scaled quality and reptilian sheen, just instead of being more greenish it was on the red-end of the colour spectrum with pink tints between the scales. Then she heard sirens outside.

"The fuzz are coming," her husband warned.

"Don't call them 'the fuzz.'"

"What should I call them? The coppers? The bobbies? The rozzers?"

"How about you just call them the police?" she suggested sarcastically, standing on her feet on the chair, the roof of the ship coming up just above her waist as she leant on it.

"Or an inconvenience."

"As long as you don't say it to their faces," she muttered, seeing the red and blue lights of police cars drifting into the scene at the edge of the beach. Maybe in London, UNIT would be immediately called and would embark upon a clean-up, cover-up operation. However, this was not London, this was Blackpool, an ex-tourist trap with a grotty theme park and an aquarium. It had no military or governmental presence – unless the local council were particularly concerned with UFO conspiracies.

"We're extra-terrestrial experts belonging to Undercoll," Eleven made up a cover story for them quickly and related it to her.

"Why would we be here so soon?" she tried to poke the same holes in it that the advancing authorities would.

"Obviously because we're married and are taking time off work for a weekend away to… visit your family. Coincidence. Partly true. Not a fan of your family," he said. She raised her eyebrows at him.

"What about the bit about us having a weekend away? Is that true?" she asked on a more serious note. Before he could answer they were shouted at by the police to put their hands up, which they both did out of lazy habit. It was alarming the amount of times people tried to arrest them. Clara would like to get out of the skin-filled spaceship as soon as possible, and obsessed herself thinking about how vile the ship interior was, until she realised she knew one of the detectives. She only recognised him when he said her name, surprised. There were about a dozen officers there on the summer beach.

"Clara Oswald?" a man she knew to be DI Sawyer asked. She stared at him. "Is that really you?"

"Uh, yep," she said awkwardly, for this was the father of a boy she had dated for roughly three months when she was fifteen. In fact, it was the father of the boy she'd lost her virginity to years ago, this Sawyer. His son was Wade, he was Geoff. She mumbled, "It's been a while…" She had dumped Wade when Wade's best friend turned out to be an arse who mistreated his girlfriend eventually, and Clara had been there to pick up the pieces of her broken heart. And sleep with her. They'd not really spoken much after that – that beginning her stint as a career whore. Although, 'career whore' made her sound like a prostitute. Hobby whore?

"What are you doing?" Sawyer asked.

"I'm… just here. On a weekend getaway with, um, Theodore here. My husband," she indicated Eleven, smiling awkwardly. Of course he hadn't a clue where she knew Geoff Sawyer from. "I work for the government now."

"Dave always tells me you're unemployed," Geoff said. Urgh. She would have to have words with her dad. Then again, what was her dad supposed to tell people who asked after her? The truth? God forbid. She'd forgotten the pair of them went to the pub together all the time.

"Well, obviously, because it's a secret who I work for. Can't just tell people I work for the government. Most people don't even know it exists."

"I think most people are aware the government exists, Coo," Eleven said quietly.

"Undercoll. Specifically. I mean Undercoll. That little… sect…"

"I thought you were an English teacher?" Sawyer asked.

"Undercoll had a shortage of English teachers a while back," Clara said curtly, as though this made perfect sense.

"Regardless," Eleven began, clapping his hands together and taking attention away from the odd reunion, "This is a crashed spaceship. We saw it crash. We were just over there." He pointed to the bench.

"Were you? Why? Undercoll here already?" some constable questioned them.

"Coincidental, entirely, I assure you. We were here for a wonderful moonlit stroll along the seafront in this fine northern weather, when suddenly this silver doughnut thingamajig flew out of the sky and crashed in the sea! Ridiculous. Are you going to climb out of it yet, darling?" he turned to Clara. She raised her eyebrows at him. Here he was suggesting that she, in front of a dozen police officers and an ex's dad, partake in the highly unflattering activity of clambering out of the thing. She wondered if it would be bad if she teleported out…

Objectionably, she acted as though there were a significantly higher step within, while she was really only using telekinesis, in order to make it so she just had to jump down into the shallow sea. The shallow sea was very cold though, and she got water on her pyjamas and her dressing gown.

"Why are you both in pyjamas?" the same nosy, female constable asked.

"We're part of a movement," the Doctor began curtly, "It's like naturism, only instead of being naked all the time we wear pyjamas. Not for any reason to do with the societal constructs of the fashion industry, unnatural and unattainable standards of beauty or - god forbid - to make a statement on right-wing politics or anything; just because it's comfier."

"Doesn't it get cold in winter?" someone inquired. It was clear they all thought he was a weirdo. Well, Clara supposed he was a weirdo, she was just used to it because she had married him.

"We don't do it all year, only in the summer. Anyway, we're actually having a brief holiday, so we'll just pop off and be out of your way," he smiled happily, which took Clara by surprise. He started to head off, and she tried to follow.

"Hold it right there," Sawyer said, "Show me some credentials you really belong to this Undercoll - which I've never heard of."

"Credentials?" the Doctor exclaimed in a manner implying he had no credentials of any sort. Then he sighed, "Oh, if I must," he produced his psychic paper from the pocket of his dressing gown, Clara very surprised that he had it on him, and held it up to Sawyer's face. DI Geoff Sawyer was not exactly the tallest of men, and his son had not been, either. Clara would be surprised if he even reached 5'6". "Are my wife and I free to leave now? We have places to be." Did they?

"If this isn't fake, why don't you help? This is your area of expertise, if it's not a hoax," Sawyer asked. He was, very clearly, out of his depth with the UFO.

"Maybe it is a hoax, how should I know? I do this every day of the week, this is my weekend off. Although, between you and I, it's in everybody's best interests to keep this out of the press. Keep the military from sticking their red berets in where they're not wanted," he advised Sawyer and the other officers, before walking off for real this time. Clara smiled uneasily at Sawyer and hurried off in her husband's wake, taking his arm once she was close enough to him.

"Why are you not investigating that UFO crash?" she asked him quietly. She had a million questions all of a sudden.

"You already investigated it, didn't you? And besides, I already knew what sort of a ship it was. Did you find anything?"

"Yeah, a huge, shod skin," Clara said, and he looked down at her.

"Really?"

"Yeah. Whatever that invisible thing was, it had red scales," she told him, and he looked ahead thoughtfully for a minute, "Do you know what it is?"

"Do you know any good hotels around here?" he changed the subject. She supposed he did know what it was, but for some reason was disinclined to tell her just yet.

"I used to live here in a proper house, I didn't need to know hotels," she said, "I know where there's a Premier Inn, but it's not close at all. It might not even be here anymore. It won't be that hard to find a hotel, Chin. They're everywhere - sixty years ago this place was a tourist trap. Why do you want a hotel?"

"To stay in, of course."

"Sorry, what?" she let go of his arm and stopped walking dead on the path. There was nobody around. In the distance the police clustered around their new spaceship with the red and blue lights still flashing. He crossed his arms and looked back at her and her shock.

"You were giving me the distinct impression earlier that you most definitely did not want to go back to the TARDIS and you wanted to continue to talk to me," he said, "Besides, I was lying about not investigating that shuttle. It's very odd and I think we ought to keep an eye on the situation... in the meantime, we should book a hotel. And, like you said, there are plenty. Unless you want to call a taxi and go to your father's?"

"I would much prefer not to go to my father's," she assured him, "And if you're putting yourself far enough out of your comfort zone to stay somewhere that isn't your fancy police box in the first place, all for me, I'd hate to make you any more uncomfortable. Just find a hotel that isn't totally grotty."