Summertime

Clara & Eleven

A DeLorean. That was what it was. Adam Mitchell's replica of the DeLorean from Back to the Future: Part II, complete with timey-wimey bits of plastic, pretend modifications. She supposed, in the end, she had to be grateful the Doctor hadn't stolen the Batmobile Adam also had aboard the TARDIS. Although perhaps the Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters may have been a little less conspicuous? Then again, it was a hearse with sirens… She thought Eleven was cutting the ruse a bit close with them being actual time-travellers, but he was very pleased with himself. She did still insist on driving it, though. She didn't trust him behind the wheel of a car.

"This is where your Aunt Fiona lives, then?" Eleven peered through the driver's side window. The DeLorean sat on the curb outside with the engine still purring, Clara debating cutting and running and just refusing to bother with the whole affair. Her husband was leaning right across her to get a look at the semi-detached dwelling on the end of the street. In the summer heat, the car's interior was stifling.

"Yeah. Why?"

"I'm not sure," he narrowed his eyes, "I was expecting something a little more… dastardly."

"Like what? A spooky old mansion?"

"No, no; more one of those old chateaus the Nazis used to hide war rooms in, in occupied France," he said, "You know, like Colditz."

"Colditz is definitely in Germany," Clara told him. He looked at her.

"Is it?"

"Yeah, I should know, my dad's seen every episode of it," she said, "He's got them all on video. Video. And it was a prison, anyway, not a base."

"No, no, no. What's the famous one in France? I remember it like it was yesterday; I was trapped, it was just my father and I and then, see, this enormous fire broke out and we shuffled over in these wooden chairs to the fireplace, which was actually a secret door into a hidden, Nazi war room," he told her curtly. He had one hand on the side of his seat and the other right across her and on the door on her side – in other words, he was very close.

"You're thinking of Indiana Jones."

"I'm not."

"You are. You're thinking of the third one. I remember that like it was yesterday because Dr Elsa Schneider was-" and she finished her sentence by whistling, "Well, she was something else."

He looked at her for a long while, then very pointedly said, "She was a Nazi, that's what she was."

"She was not a Nazi, she was Austrian."

"So was Hitler," he said, and she scowled.

"Speaking of Hitler, Fiona is probably waiting for us inside. And actually they made a very big deal about the fact the castle they went to was right on the Austrian-German border, so that one wasn't in France either," Clara remarked, opening the door to the car. He didn't notice her do that and so his hand slipped and he fell right onto her (which she knew would happen.)

"Since when did you pay this much attention to films?" he grumbled, pushing himself back up to get out the other side. Clara had to duck under the wing door as it rose up vertically.

"I always pay that much attention to films when they have gorgeous blonde women speaking foreign languages in them," she said, watching him get out of the DeLorean, "On that topic – how's Jenny?" she asked wryly. He tripped over his own feet.

"Don't start," he warned her, and she laughed as he walked around the car, "What am I thinking of then? Definitely in France and definitely full of an awful lot of people who don't seem to be enjoying themselves much and would rather leave…"

"That's a very gentle way to describe Colditz," she said.

"Ah! The Louvre. That's what I mean. Martians used to have pyramids like that abhorrent one they've built in front of it, you know." She happened to think that was quite funny.

The door opened as the house was approached and for a single awful second Clara thought it must be Fiona marching out to give her a piece of her mind away from prying ears. It wasn't, though, thank god, it was her father, and she smiled and waved and called hello when she saw him. The Doctor, as usual, tried to come across as friendly and jovial as possible, but he still failed at winning over her father. She wondered if Jenny would do any better.

"How's things?" Clara asked him.

"The usual," he said, and she made a murmuring noise of agreement, "She hasn't asked about you yet, she's been too busy pestering Simon about Dale," he said.

"Oh, really?" Clara asked, then she paused and said to Eleven, "Oh – that's my Uncle Simon and Dale's my cousin who is, um… I don't know how old he is now."

"Twenty, trying to drop out from Liverpool before he starts his third year," Dave said.

"Drop out of a city?" the Doctor, perplexed, inquired. He already didn't seem to be having much fun and they weren't even inside yet – god knew what would happen when he actually had to meet the dreaded Fiona.

"Uni, Chin," Clara answered.

"Oh. Right. Ah. Yes. Of course."

"Did you have universities on your planet?" Dave asked a little coolly.

Clara sighed, and the Doctor awkwardly replied, "We had a similar sort of, equivalent. My daughter, though – she actually has three degrees, she was telling me, one of them in advanced mechanical engineering, another in advanced astrophysics, and some sort of obscure history is the third." The face her father then made just convinced her he had managed to forget that Jenny Harkness existed. Must be a very odd thing having his daughter married to someone with his own grown-up offspring. Not to mention them being aliens.

"You've met Jenny, haven't you, dad?" Clara said.

"Not sure. Might like to meet this one's daughter, see what sort of woman he's raised."

"Oh, well, I didn't do a lot of raising her, I thought she was dead and she ended up living in a swamp for a good number of years until a mafia boss sort of… adopted her briefly. And then, you know, she helped out in the war effort, against the Nazis. Don't tell this one, though, she seems to be very keen on them lately," Eleven indicated Clara, who went red and glowered at him.

"Oh my stars, she was not a Nazi! She was just using the Nazis to get to the Holy Grail," Clara argued.

"You've found the Holy Grail?" Dave interrupted.

"What? No, dad – we're talking about Indiana Jones. He's making fun of me for liking Elsa. You always liked Elsa though, didn't you?" Clara said.

"That's the woman in third one?" She nodded. "The second one was my favourite. Though I always made sure not to let your mother find out about that." Clara laughed. "I thought you liked the last one, with Cate Blanchett speaking Russian?"

"Oh, no, that's a good point really…" Clara melted away into her thoughts for a few seconds, "It's just so hard to pick only one of them. Because I did always like Willie as well…" Eleven opened his mouth and she very quickly ordered him not to say anything about her saying she 'always liked Willie.' He sniggered to himself like a child.

"What about Marian?" Dave put to her.

"Well you can fancy her if you want, but she's got the same surname as mum so it'd be a bit weird for me," Clara said, which her father found amusing, "Mum always did like Raiders the most. What's your favourite, anyway?" It took the Doctor a second to realise she was actually speaking to him now.

"I've always rather enjoyed the sixth one, but I really think they went downhill after that," he said, and neither of them could think of anything to say for a moment.

"Well ever since they went so unrealistic with the aliens in the fourth one…" Dave began a telling sentence. Eleven frowned.

"That was a joke, sweetheart," Clara pointed out, "Sarcasm runs in the family. And talking of family…" she trailed off when she saw the front door of the house opening. And out walked a very severe looking woman who could only really be Aunt Fiona.

"You're introducing him to her," Dave quickly mumbled to his daughter.

"Of course I will," she said, smiling at Fiona. It was a smile which terrified the Doctor, though. Maybe it really had been a bad idea coming over that day…

"Clara," Fiona said stiffly.

"Fiona," Clara replied, beaming. Eleven could see the hatred in her eyes. "We've just been talking about girls I'd gladly sleep with." Fiona outright ignored that comment and turned to Dave.

"You've finally convinced her to show her face in public? Though I can't say the public will be very grateful to have to look at it," Fiona quipped. Eleven could have sworn he saw some muscle around Clara's eye twitch.

"Anything to get a break from looking at yours," Clara said right back. What kind of family had he inadvertently married into?

"Now, now, be nice," Dave said, to both of them. Clara cleared her throat as Fiona walked down the thin garden path towards them.

"Anyway, this is my husband, Theodore," Clara introduced. The Doctor forgot for a moment that Theodore was the alias she had come up with for him. All because 'TED' was engraved jokingly on the inside of her wedding ring. And that was where Coo had come from as well – it was funny how these things lasted and evolved. "He's a heart surgeon and he's doing very well for himself."

"There's more to a happy marriage than money," Fiona remarked.

"Oh really? You always gave me the opposite impression." Now Fiona was the one whose mask of faux-politeness was cracking.

"Very pleased to meet you, she hasn't told me a thing about a lot of her family," Eleven said. He thought it best not to say the usual, "Clara has told me all about you," because that wouldn't go down well at all.

"I suppose you don't get to learn much about a person when you get drunk and elope," Fiona said. Well. It appeared he couldn't win either way. Along with her sarcasm, Clara's sharp tongue also apparently ran in the family. Eleven didn't know what to say. "Do you always wear a tweed suit in the middle of summer?"

"It's funny you say that about eloping," Clara interjected to come to his rescue in a rather antihero type of way, "Because I seem to remember you and Uncle Derek knowing quite a lot about each other when you got married, and he still left you. For another man." Oh, god… Fiona wasn't even pretending to play nice with her niece anymore.

"And I wouldn't be surprised if you left this one for any girl you find on a street corner you can afford – you being on the dole*," she said, then asked the Doctor, "Has she managed to tell you yet what a slut she is?"

"Alright, that's enough. Stop insulting my daughter," Dave said right when Clara got angry, "Won't you go back inside? We'll be in in a moment, Fiona." Fiona did as her brother requested, skulking away, red-faced. Eleven thought he might rather be in Colditz. "You don't have to rise to her," Dave turned to Clara.

"Well I'm not just going to take her abuse," she argued, "Why should I? Ever since she said mum 'got herself killed' at Christmas in 2005, I don't see any reason why I have to put up with her. I did tell you I didn't want to come here." He sighed and put his hands to his temples; Clara could see that he knew he'd brought this all on himself. There was a good reason she avoided any function where there was even a whisper of her Aunt being in attendance. Looking between she and the Doctor, though, he spotted something.

"What in the world is that?" he asked, and they both turned, expecting to be faced with some alien threat. Dave was talking about the souped-up DeLorean, though.

"Oh, we're borrowing it from our brother-in-law," Eleven said, habitually calling Adam Mitchell their 'brother-in-law' without thinking.

"Brother-in-law?"

"Oswin's boyfriend, it's just a joke," Clara explained, "He's a multimillionaire. You're lucky we didn't come in the Batmobile he has. You know what, though, I might leave this jacket in the car, it's leather and I'm dying in this heat." As she took off the jacket and handed the things out of her pockets to Eleven, like it was now his duty to carry her rubbish just because she didn't have a bag (though he did still carry it), her father spotted the mess on her left arm.

"Clara!" he exclaimed in horror, staring at the burn. It had been eleven days since she had been given that, courtesy of Esther. It was by now a dark shade of pink, and she complained of it being sensitive and giving her grief upon occasion. She still had a small bandage wrapped around her left wrist, the epicentre of the burn, which remained blistered in the pattern of Esther's fingerprints.

"I forgot about that…" she said. The Doctor braced himself, because he was sure it would be him who got the blame for it, even though it always pained him to see that Clara was inflicting it on herself when it could so easily be healed by nanogenes or Miracle Medicine, or even that old burn ointment that had worked wonders on Jenny's hollow eye sockets post-facehugger attack (and gouging.) "I got struck by lightning, just the other week."

"Where?" he asked, "Which planet?"

"This one, I was just in Nottingham meeting up with these friends of ours who live in Yorkshire. The Doctor wasn't there," Clara explained, being very liberal with the truth. She hadn't, strictly speaking, told a lie. Not yet, anyway. "It was an accident, nothing to be done. And I shan't hide it, so don't ask me to. I'll be a minute." She slipped away with her jacket and Adam's car keys, leaving the Doctor in Dave's company without her to aid him.

"Is she telling the truth?" Dave asked.

"Yes," Eleven lied. It hadn't been accident, and it wouldn't have happened at all if she hadn't been trying to strangle Liam Kent.

"I don't remember you talking much about a daughter before."

"Oh, yes, well, we weren't on very good terms until quite recently. Not at all, in fact – I daresay she hated me. But things are improving now, I'm working very hard to make amends."

"How old is she?"

"Jenny's 208 now," he said, and Dave stared.

"Who's her mother?"

"Well, that's a tricky question – she was technically grown from a tissue sample of mine in a single-parent cloning machine. Doesn't really have a mother." Best not to mention Thirteen, he thought.

"Does she have a boyfriend?" he asked. Uh-oh.

"No. She has a girlfriend, though…" Eleven said uneasily.

"Really? What's she like?"

"I, um… Jenny's girlfriend? You want to know about… well, she… something tells me you would be quite fond of her…" he was very awkward now, but Clara returned.

"What's the matter?" she asked, coming back through the little front gate that just rose higher than her knees. It was a good thing her ridiculous mango tattoo wasn't visible; no doubt she would have a trickier time explaining that monstrosity away than the scar.

"Nothing, nothing. Your father was just asking me about Jenny's girlfriend," he said, praying she would save him from this conversation.

"Ah, you'll have to ask Jenny all about that herself. You shall have to reintroduce her, sweetheart," Clara said pleasantly. He was very glad of her being there to smooth this over. It wasn't the time to give complex explanations of parallel universes. "Are we going in, then? What food is there?"

"She's managed to convince Simon to do a barbecue," Dave answered as they walked towards the house, and Clara's eyes lit up.

"Oh, really?"

"You just had a full English hardly an hour ago, Coo," Eleven pointed out, and she gave him a look.

"You can't turn down free food," she said, "It's free. And Fiona bought it. I'm going to eat as much as possible."

"You'll make yourself sick," Dave pointed out, holding the door open for Clara. He let go of it when it was Eleven's turn to enter and he had to catch it. Would Dave ever like him, he wondered? Perhaps he would prefer Thirteen.

"Even better, waste everything she's got," Clara said decidedly. No point arguing, she'd made her mind up.

The house had a small number of people milling around in the living room, but the majority he could hear in the garden outside. Clara was distracted right away, however, by spying her grandmother in one of the two armchairs, and Eleven was left feeling rather naked in a room stuffed full of Clara's – and by marriage, his – extended family. None of whom he had ever met or heard anything about. Perhaps Fiona had a point about them eloping?

He was very surprised when Clara's grandmother requested he come and hug her hello as well, though, after Clara was relinquished. At least somebody she was related to liked him – and he still had a little bit of faith that Ellie Ravenwood, had she met him for longer than five minutes total, would have been fond of him as well. She, again, had to tell this little story about being struck by lightning on her wrist.

"I think the scar's quite cool, though," Clara said, "Looks like tree roots, sort of."

"You're thinking of the veins on leaves," the Doctor told her.

"Ah – you're right. I am."

"How's the heart surgery going?" her grandmother asked him, and he was taken aback.

"How's the-? It's um, it's…" he rubbed the back of his neck, "Well, it's certainly hearty, for the most part." She actually found that funny. "No, no. It's going well… nobody's died on me recently." That was true, nobody had died recently while he had been performing heart surgery on them. Mainly because he hadn't been performing heart surgery on anyone. If he had been… well, he rather thought the mortality rate might not be so positive.

Clara thought it was very cute how nervous the Doctor appeared to be, how he was unable to figure out how to best act to come across as actually good for her. It was amusing when he cared very little for what anybody else he ever met thought of him and the way he acted, while when it came to Clara's family his aim was always to please. Probably because he was always so put-out by her dad disliking him, though she thought he was getting fonder of Eleven lately. But then she heard somebody's voice coming in from the back garden and got distracted.

"Come on," she whispered to him, stealing him away from a conversation with her gran about the nice weather. Of course, that was always the safe thing to bring up to new people: the weather. "Just going to get some food, Gran," Clara informed, taking her husband's hand to pull him out of the room, into the vacated hallway. The back door was open at the other end.

"What's going on?" he asked, stooping low enough down so that she, on tiptoes, could speak quietly in his ear. She still held his hand.

"Geoff Sawyer is out there, I heard his voice," she said, "I told you he's friends with my dad. He might know something about if our runaway alien has been sighted lately, things the Gazette doesn't."

"Runaway alien? You might as well be talking about me," he said, and she laughed a little, "But yes, that's a good point, let us know if there've been any sightings or anything lately."

"Any idea what it is yet?"

"No, but we ought to be on the hunt for DNA, really, for that tracker to get a signal," he said, "Still no reason yet to assume that it's dangerous. Not that the police generally assume much good about stray aliens lost on-" Somebody very loudly cleared their throat, and he jumped away from Clara when they did. To someone else – that someone being, as a matter of fact, Fiona on the stairs behind them – it may have looked like the pair of them were about to start kissing, they had been so very close. Kissing, rather than conspiring about the thickening plot of a stranded invisible creature from outer space.

"Again, I find my niece disrespecting me by fornicating with somebody in my own home."

"Just because you've never had anyone to fornicate with in your own home," Clara snapped.

"We weren't, as a matter of fact, I merely found it suited me to take my darling wife aside and remind her how ardently I adore her," Eleven said, smiling. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Clara blush slightly.

"Going into the garden now, Fiona. You know what a fan I am of bush," Clara said. Eleven disguised a laugh as a cough next to her as she dragged him out of the house by his hand.

"What did she mean, again?" he frowned.

"She really pissed me off one year when I was… eighteen, maybe, so I retaliated by merely seducing the daughter of one of her neighbours**. It was kind of by accident, though," she said, "Got caught fingering her in the cupboard under the stairs. Not in this house, a different one, Fiona's moved since."

"How lovely…" As usual she was unashamed of her promiscuity. The smell of burgers distracted the both of them, though, and it was just after Clara finally acquired one (and gave the same explanations of being unemployed, struck by lightning, and marrying a heart surgeon) from her Uncle Simon that Geoff Sawyer, the object of their interests, spotted them.

"Nice to see you again, Clara, and…?" Geoff forgot Eleven's 'name.'

"Theodore," he answered, offering a hand to shake to Geoff, who apparently thought he was weird. Still shook his hand, though, very firmly. The Doctor was always a fan of a firm handshake, of course.

"And nice to see neither of you in pyjamas."

"No, well, the seawater's ruined my dressing gown now," Clara said.

"You haven't been telling anyone about what you saw, have you?" Geoff lowered his voice and spoke seriously. Some gangly fellow was lingering, possibly eavesdropping, at his shoulder. "We don't want to create any hysteria."

"Of course we haven't, who are we going to tell? Everybody I know is 'in the know' too," the Doctor tapped the side of his nose when he said that, "And Clara doesn't have any friends."

"Oi," Clara argued.

"What?" he said, "It's true."

"You shouldn't be rude to her," the gangly one said. Eleven frowned.

"Who might you be?" he asked.

"Oh my stars, Wade?" Clara exclaimed, "God, you're tall now! I thought you were still your dad's height." Eleven's jaw nearly dropped. This was Wade Sawyer, the first person to ever sleep with Clara Oswald. And Wade did not seem all that comfortable with Clara addressing him so casually***. "It's been a while, a long time, in fact. Anyway, this is my husband."

"Yes…" Eleven said, "Charmed." He didn't shake Wade's hand, because Wade had a strange look on his face when he looked at Clara. He was taller than the Doctor was.

"What are you doing now, anyway?" she asked him. He stiffened and couldn't quite manage to speak to her, which she did not appear to notice.

"He's a constable now, following in his dad's footsteps," Geoff answered, "Wasn't on duty last night, though. Ended up quite disappointed he took the night off and didn't run into you, weren't you, Wade?"

"No," Wade said quickly, "Why would I be disappointed?"

"Anyway," Geoff ignored his son, "Lucky we were invited here today as well."

"I wouldn't say there's anything lucky about having to communicate with my aunt," Clara said, then she held up her burger, "I'm only here for the free food."

"Are the two of you staying with Dave, then? You didn't tell him you were coming to Blackpool," Geoff said.

"Oh, no. Dad doesn't like the Doctor. Theodore, I mean," she corrected herself, "The Doctor is a, um, nickname he likes."

"Mmm," the Doctor murmured in agreement.

"We're actually staying at the Dolphin. You know, the one on, erm…" Clara racked her brains, "It's right on the Promenade, when you have the turning for Springfield Road and then Banks Street, you know?" Geoff did know, in fact.

"By the market?"

"Aye," Clara answered, and Eleven froze when about to take a bite out of his burger.

"Aye, you just said, darling?" he questioned, "God, you're going native."

"I am native."

"Returning native then. Regressing. Devolving."

"Shouldn't have married someone from the north then, should you?" she remarked.

"No. I'll go begin work on those divorce papers you were asking after this morning." Clara laughed. Wade was perplexed.

"You're getting a divorce?" he asked.

"Uh…" Clara faltered. The sudden tension was relieved by Geoff's phone ringing.

"DI Sawyer," he answered. Neither Clara nor Eleven could hear the voice on the other end of the line. "What? I'm not on call today, I have the – how many? … Three what? … What do you mean, you don't know it's three for definite? … Body parts? … Where? … No, no, I'm eating a burger, I don't need to know the details… Yes, Michael, we'll be right there." Geoff hung up.

"Body parts, you say?" Eleven inquired.

"Three dead, mysterious circumstances. Have to go. Come on, Wade," Geoff ordered his son to follow him away.

"I rather think our visit to this party has been cut short, wifey," Eleven muttered, "It seems like our missing alien may not come in peace after all."

"Well you don't come in peace, either."

"Sorry?"

"You always make all sorts of noises when you-"

"Yes, thank you, I got it now," he interrupted her very quickly.

"Right. Anyway. Time to go?" she said.

"Very much."

"Okay. We'd better hurry up, we'll have to tail them in the DeLorean. But first – grab as many snacks from the table over there as you can," she said, nodding at a long buffet table stretching against one of the dark garden fences, "Priority is the sausage rolls and the scotch eggs. And try not to let my dad see us when we sneak out."

"Got you. Mission is a-go."

*'the dole' is informal slang for unemployment benefits, for any of my non-British readers

**chapter 977

***in chapter 980 Wade and Geoff Sawyer are introduced via Ravenwood, in which Beta Dave says that her 'death' has greatly affected and upset Wade, despite her not talking to him at all for 12 years