DAY 18,259

Cherchez la Femme

Thirteen

It was an uneventful few days. They were supposed to be cooking and cleaning to help out, and Thirteen gladly helped Strax with the cooking (Jenny actually did manage to tear herself away from her wife long enough to join them at least twice), but where the cleaning was concerned there was just not a lot to do. Mainly because neither the Doctor nor Clara were particularly messy. Admittedly, they were both quite bad when it came to leaving dirty laundry lying around their house, but they had always worked well at splitting up chores like that. But, in Paternoster Row, neither of them made much of a mess of anything, and Jenny and Vastra had been living almost exclusively in their bedroom, which was completely off-limits. Thank god. The Doctor didn't think you could pay her enough to clean that room, and that wasn't just because she morally objected to the concept of currency and the monetisation of necessary labour. It was gross.

And so they were left, with no TARDIS and no jobs, with very little to do. The Doctor busied herself poring over a collection of very interesting books and alien specimens Vastra had gathered in her upstairs conservatory, and Clara made good on her promise to try and write some poetry while they had this void of responsibilities. Though the Doctor, as was Clara's habit, was forbade from reading any of it until it was done. Clara always did this when she was writing poems about her. The Doctor did not mind, but it did mean Clara wasn't as good company as she usually was, when she sat hunched over one of her notebooks she carried around everywhere in case of a sudden bout of inspiration, scribbling.

The morning of their fourth day was a different affair, however, because when Clara grew stumped over use of the word 'cosmic' twice in one stanza, she put her pen away to re-join the Doctor at breakfast. Jenny and Vastra were not at breakfast, they had been up very late the night before and were now sleeping in.

"I just want it to sound… I don't know, sophisticated? Hasn't my whole clandestine career been building up to this one poem?" Clara asked her, like she knew the answer. The Doctor was eating a rasher of bacon with her fingers because she was lazy and had made too much, using up the last of the bacon that was in the house. This, Strax had told her off for, because Vastra always liked to have a frankly astonishing array of meats in stock just in case she got a craving for any of it. Anything she didn't eat would oftentimes be pushed off on the closest orphanage. Orphans in this time period scarcely got to enjoy bacon and steak and rump; it was a bit of a treat, Thirteen supposed.

"Sophisticated?" Thirteen questioned, tearing off a shred of crispy bacon fat to eat, "You?"

"How am I not sophisticated?"

"You drooled on me in your sleep last night," the Doctor told her. That shut her up. The Doctor went back to what else she had been doing, which was just reading that morning's paper. She had to admit, that was something she liked about living in one time and place for a while – the news. On the TARDIS, there was no news. The TARDIS was as fluid as it was static; a real paradox of progress. "I think you're putting too much pressure on yourself, Coo."

She was about to say something else, when they both heard a thud from above them. A few seconds of silence followed, then a girlish giggle that was becoming all too familiar.

"Unbelievable," Clara muttered, slouching down on the table, "It's nine in the morning. They've barely slept."

"No rest for the wicked," Thirteen jibed, and she smiled. Clara quietened while they tried to ignore the sounds from above, which were just on the brink of being too intimate to stomach, and watched the Doctor read the newspaper.

"I don't understand papers in this time," Clara said.

"Can you not read English?"

"Very funny. I mean that, they're more than twice the size of papers in the future, and the font is half as big," Clara said, "How can anyone sit and read the entire thing? Is there even anything interesting in it?"

"Charles Lightoller has testified that the loaded forty less people in the lifeboats of the Titanic than the boats could hold, that's the main story this morning," Thirteen said, "Wired last night in a telegram all the way from the Capitol Building. What a feat, y'know?"

"Is that true? They loaded the boats with less people?"

"That's what Lightoller says."

"Were you on the Titanic when it sank?" Clara asked, and Thirteen paused for a while.

"…Yeah. But don't look at me like that! I didn't have anything to do with it sinking, and I saved a ton of people," she argued, "I couldn't exactly warn the Captain to steer a different way, it's a fixed point in time."

"Hold on, hold on – fifty years of being married to you and I've never even known this?" Clara was shocked. Thirteen was about to speak again, but instead of hearing her talk they heard a moan from upstairs, and she shut her mouth immediately. That was when their breakfast – which was almost done anyway – was interrupted by Strax, who'd been scrubbing the oven clean.

"Sirs – the pantry is almost empty as Miss Flint hasn't had the chance to go into the market to buy groceries recently," he said, "I have to take the carriage into town – would you care to come? It will be a completely safe trip, don't worry – I am heavily armed." The Doctor felt like this was just an excuse to get out of the house, but she and Clara were both very ready to do anything to get out of there. "People have certain inhibitions about selling food to someone of my…"

"Potato-ness?" Clara suggested.

"Exactly," he agreed. And so he bade them to quickly hurry up and get themselves in order before things really picked up upstairs, which meant scrounging some shreds of period clothes from the washing line hanging in the kitchen. At least Clara always looked stunning in period dress. As for herself? She didn't care what she looked like, but corsets were not her thing.

"When I was a boy nobody made me wear a corset…" she had grumbled to Clara when struggling to even put the thing on.

"You're always telling me how we have to fit in. Or was making me dress in Victorian clothes that time we went to Yorkshire fifty years ago just because you really fancy me in a bustle?" she had asked wryly.

It was a brief journey in the carriage, and if they didn't have to buy things and bring them back they normally would have just walked, but that didn't stop the Doctor from complaining the entire ride about the unrealistic standards forced on women in that century. It was something Clara had heard many times before, and it always amused her, especially when she pointed out how Eleven never would have thought of how corsets were uncomfortable. Eleven would have just told her she looked pretty.

"You do look pretty, but I don't see how that's the point," Thirteen said.

"That's the whole point," Clara had argued, "Why else wear one?"

"Maybe Jenny won't come and get us for another thirty years and we can hang around until the damn things go out of fashion," she had complained just as they arrived outside of Spitalfields, the covered market. They had never stayed long enough in a period aside from Clara's own to have to do shopping.

"I will watch the horse, if you don't mind. He's been of a nervous tendency ever since we ran over a cat six months ago," Strax said of the horse, a large black stallion called Archie. Strax wasn't lying, that horse was a nervous wreck, it jittered every time something crossed in front of it. He was getting old, too. The Paternosters had had him for over twenty years, now. "But don't worry, if anything happens, just give me the nod and I will deploy the grenades."

"…Sure," Thirteen said after a second, reaching up to take the shopping list from him while he remained in the carriage seat with the reins, "Don't shoot anything until we get back."

"Understood. As soon as you get back, be ready to shoot things. I always keep an assault rifle handy, Doctor."

"That isn't what I… whatever, keep your guns holstered," she said, shaking her head and then beginning to wander into the market with Clara close by, "It's a wonder he hasn't blown up Big Ben yet." Clara laughed.

"You never finished telling me your Titanic story," Clara pointed out a short while later. It was a long shopping list. She wished they had a sack, or that she hadn't left her bag back at Paternoster Row. Then again, there was a wide variety of raw meat on Madame Vastra's shopping list, so she'd rather not be stowing all that in the same bag as their clean changes of clothes and toothbrushes. Best just to suck it up and carry the groceries.

"Oh, right," Thirteen said, "It was a long while ago now. I was in my… let's see… seventh regeneration. Y'know, when I had the umbrella and all the question marks. God, I did like those question marks… I still have that jacket, d'you think it'd suit me now?"

"Uh, no."

"I might wear it anyway…"

"You do what you like, sweetheart. Titanic?" Clara prompted, but at this moment they had just arrived at the vegetable section of the closed market. It had begun to rain; they could hear it bouncing and echoing loudly of the roof above. At least it wasn't too busy, though. Not over-crowed, at least. They had a fair amount of potatoes to buy.

"Have you seen this list?" Thirteen showed Clara when the greengrocer was finding the desired amounts of an array of fruit and veg for them. Tomatoes, apples, onions, broccoli; the usual things.

"No, why? Is Strax's handwriting bad?"

"Strax didn't write it, see?" Thirteen showed her. Both sets of handwriting were relatively neat, certainly too neat to be written by a three-fingered Sontaran, but distinctive enough that it was easy to tell one from the other. The more elegant writing said: A variety of fruit to make sure Jenny is eating well. The item 'sugar' had been crossed off and re-added numerous times, with a string of notes from Jenny wanting to know what on Earth Vastra wanted sugar for, which ended in what looked like a very bitter admission of Vastra's plan to try and bake a birthday cake. This back-and-forth concluded with: you're a terrible baker, from Jenny, and a drawing of a smiley face. Clara and Thirteen were still to pick up the sugar, though.

"Aww!" Clara exclaimed, "That's actually really cute, they send notes to each other. Why don't we do that? We're married, we should do cute things." A man gave them a funny look as he went past. Lucky the greengrocer didn't hear Clara say that, the greengrocer who promptly passed them two brown paper bags full of fresh fruit and veg.

"You write me a sonnet every year for my birthday," the Doctor pointed out to her, "That's cute. Now, where is the butcher's section? Look how specific it is – she wants every piece of meat from a different place."

"Sweetshop," Clara pointed out, grabbing the Doctor's elbow and steering her back.

"What do you want in a sweetshop for?"

"I fancy some sweets. You still have some money left what you nicked from that bloke, don't you?" Clara questioned.

"Probably…"

"Then great. Plus, Jenny wrote that she wants fruit pastilles," Clara said, pointing it out on the list. So the Doctor sighed and resigned to go where Clara requested, each of them carrying a bag full of veg, Thirteen with the shopping list between her fingers. It was up until she spied the jelly babies on a shelf and decided she wanted as many of them as she could possibly carry that she stayed relatively bored and cold. "Oh, remind me to get some cigarettes."

"With whose money?" the Doctor questioned her.

"I've run out."

"Oh, boo-hoo."

"Oi! I need them."

"You're addicted."

"Took you long enough to notice," she muttered. It was about that point as they bickered about Clara's smoking (again), when Clara's assortment of fruit pastilles, liquorice and humbugs was being weighed by the vendor, that they heard shouting from elsewhere in the market which drew everybody's attention.

"'Ere! That woman's a thief! Someone nab her!" a man was shouting. The Doctor and Clara both strayed away from their sweets to try and get a glimpse of what was going on, "That stuff's prescription only!" he was shouting. An old woman tore past them, carrying a bundle of something in her arms. She had a veil over her face hanging from her hat – like Vastra wore to hide her green scales – but it was only thin, and didn't stop the Doctor from recognising her at once. She didn't know if she had been recognised back, because then the woman had passed them, and behind her were two police officers, dressed all in blue, in pursuit.

"Uh-oh," said the Doctor, immediately dropping the whole bag of produce and turning to Clara, "Catch that woman – I'll distract the cops!" Clara was stunned, and it took her a moment to do anything. "Go, Clara!" and then she, too, dropped her paper bag, leaving apples to pulp themselves on the ground, running off after the woman on the Doctor's instruction. Then the Doctor returned to the sweetshop and lunged for the tub full of aniseed balls.

"Oi! What are you doing!?" the vendor shouted at her.

"Don't worry, I'll pay for them!" and she unscrewed the lid of the jar and threw the aniseed balls out into the middle of the market, which had exactly the kind of clumsy, comedic effect she desired. She tossed a shilling at the vendor and ran off to try and find Clara, the two police officers tumbling over each other.

She promptly found Clara in possession of this certain old woman in a shadowy doorway to one of the other exits.

"What's going on, then?" Clara asked her urgently, holding this woman against the wall. The woman was struggling, but wasn't really a match for telekinesis. Nobody was. Thirteen heard the police approaching, and with Clara and the woman ducked behind a stall selling an array of scarves which hid them from view for a moment, until they passed by. Then she could get back to her interrogation.

"Well, well, well," the Doctor said, crossing her arms. She was annoyed that this woman was a little taller than she, but nonetheless, plenty smug.

"And who might you be?"

"Oh, you know me," the Doctor said, "I believe you owe me a laser spanner." And her jaw dropped.

"I daresay, I can't believe my eyes."

"Uh-huh. Is it with you? Give it back. I don't trust something like that in your hands."

"Since when did you have a laser spanner?" Clara asked Thirteen, letting this woman go when she no longer tried to fight against being restrained. No, she was much too enthralled with the Doctor for that.

"Lost it," she said.

"You're a liar!" the Doctor exclaimed, "I bet you've got it stashed away somewhere."

"Who is she?" Clara asked, "I swear I recognise her…"

"Probably from the wanted posters," the woman said proudly. Clara frowned.

"What were you stealing?" the Doctor asked, and the woman hid her hands behind her back. But the Doctor had always been a better pickpocket than she gave herself credit for, and managed to wrangle it free. It was a glass bottle full of some sort of liquid. She lifted it to her eyes and squinted at it. "What is this?"

"That? The would simply be medicine, my dear. For my heart. I'm a fragile creature these days."

"Fragile my ass," she said. The woman scowled, and the Doctor turned the bottle over so that she could see the label. Then she gasped. "Heart medicine!? How stupid do you think I am!? This is nitroglycerin!"

"Yes! For my heart. Call yourself a doctor."

"Oh, your heart, your heart – there's nothing wrong with your damn heart," the Doctor snapped, "What's the game? Detonate this with my spanner? Hmm? Whose house were you going to blow up with this?"

"That's a minuscule amount. It will be divided among the post-boxes. But blowing up a house seems like a marvellous idea…" Goddammit, she thought to herself.

"You're not getting this back."

"Fine. I have other, less reliable places where I can find that sort of… medicine."

"Seriously, Doctor," Clara interrupted again, "Who is this?"

"Clara Oswald," Thirteen began, addressing her wife and speaking very bitterly "May I introduce her light-fingered-ness, Emmeline Pankhurst." And Clara nearly fainted.

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Oswald," Pankhurst said, holding out a hand, "Are you a convert to the cause?"

"It's Mrs Oswald," Thirteen corrected on Clara's behalf while Clara, now star-struck, shook Pankhurst's gloved hand, "And sure thing, she believes in votes for women, but I don't think she believes in stealing nitroglycerin to blow up the postal system with. Y'know – activist and arsonist aren't synonyms. And you owe me a laser spanner*."

"That spanner is a valuable resource of the WSPU," Pankhurst argued, "We need it in a certain scheme of my daughter's against Lloyd-George. And what of you? You who was – if you don't mind my pointing out – most definitely a man the last time I saw you? How can I be sure you're even the same person – if not for your lack of finesse and brashness making it clear? You make a mess like writing a signature."

"Then I suppose that's how you know it's me."

"Come to lend your support to the cause?"

"Come to visit some old friends," Thirteen said coolly.

"Emmeline Pankhurst, sweetheart!" Clara hissed at her.

"What an interesting creature you are, changing your face, and this out-of-place accent," Pankhurst said, "To think I hardly believed you all those years ago when you told me you were not of this world."

"No, my world doesn't support blowing each other up."

"You blew up your whole world," Clara told her. She paused.

"That, my darling, is… totally not relevant, okay!?" she argued, and Clara put a hand on her hip and looked at her; her you're-being-a-hypocrite look, so the Doctor protested further in the petty way she sometimes did, "She stole my spanner! My laser spanner!"

"I heard you the first hundred times," Clara said. They began to hear the police making their rounds again.

"I say, do you think you might let me leave? I'm a wanted woman, after all. Lucky they didn't see my face or half of Scotland Yard would be out here. And I have a rather urgent appointment to keep with a private investigator," Pankhurst said.

"Get out of here," the Doctor said, "But just you make sure I don't ever see your face again unless you're bringing me back the technology you stole."

"I'll be sure to avoid any funny, blue boxes."

*Yes, according to the Tenth Doctor himself in S3 E1 ("Smith and Jones"), Emmeline Pankhurst DID steal his laser spanner