DAY 154

Like Father, Like Daughter

Jenny

To say she was a Time Lord, at present Jenny was almost entirely oblivious to the hours rolling by around her. Suffice it to say she was in a very good mood as lunch time threatened to pass her by; it had all begun that morning when Clara had woken up at the semi-ordinary time of ten AM, thanks to being on the TARDIS and away from the influence of Earth's tyrannical day to night cycle. Remarkably, this allowed them to have a breakfast date at a café in Hollowmire at around eleven, and spending time with Clara during the day was something Jenny was never going to take for granted, even if it had been rather a dreary one. It had continued with Clara reminding her that she still had to keep her evening free because of some surprise that was being planned, and so Jenny had returned to the TARDIS in high spirits with the intention of surprising Clara right back by finishing the repairs on the stolen Porsche 356 that had been shot to pieces.

It had taken a while, but she had finally almost finished and had quite enjoyed playing grease monkey for the day. She always forgot that she liked fixing things so much. In fact, she often forgot what things she liked to do. It was only recently she had remembered her passion for cooking – maybe soon she was going to try and get back into acrobatics full time. There were only a few parts of the car missing, and she was contemplating this with her wrench in her hand and sonic screwdriver behind her ear, trying to think of where to get a spark plug for an antique sports car at short notice, when she was interrupted by somebody else coming into the garage. She looked up and smiled when she saw it was her father.

"Morning," she greeted him.

"It's the afternoon, I think you'll find," the Doctor said. He was holding his psychic paper.

"No, it's like, noon."

"It's almost three."

"It's what? That means this took way longer than it should have done…"

"Yes, well, I have something to…" he stopped speaking when he took in their surroundings properly and noticed the bright red car Jenny was studying so carefully with the bonnet propped open to reveal all its shiny new innards. He gawked at it and then looked at her, so enamoured by the presence of this vehicle that he couldn't get the words together to ask her what she was doing with it. Clearly he had not been in the garage for quite a while.

"It's a 356," she told him, though she was sure he knew that, "I've been fixing it up. Just needs a spark plug until it'll be purring."

"Where did you get it?"

"It was… a present. It's my stolen car, I was talking about it yesterday. Big Sal accused Viola of killing Carlito, so to get revenge she had Mahoney steal this car. Then she pawned it off on me when I was there last investigating and that was when I got shot." She still had a solitary bandage wrapped around the bullet wound on her arm, but only to stop Martha from remembering it was there and giving her more lectures about personal safety. "Anyway, Viola annoyed me so I took the car and now I promised Clara she could have it, since Old Twelvey came and 'reclaimed' his anti-gravity bike."

"Wow. Well. I think it's very impressive."

Jenny laughed, "Thanks."

"Does she need a car, though? Can she not turn into a bat and fly?"

"She needs one for shopping. Right now she and Esther go to the supermarket together most of the time, but Esther doesn't like being a taxi driver."

"Maybe they ought to go to a different supermarket after yesterday's business."

"I heard that Undercoll are running clean-up of the meteorite, anyway."

"Who did you hear that from?"

"Oh, there's a group chat."

"There's a… excuse me?"

"I don't know, Sally made it. It's really annoying. Anyway, Esther mentioned it because James Elliott is coming up and you know all about Sally and Elliott's thing."

"Erm… apparently I'm very out of touch with gossip. The youth of today, I say. I feel like a real father at the moment with his teenage daughter explaining to him how Facebook works."

"I haven't a clue how Facebook works," Jenny confessed, "I'm really not interested in the gossip, but Clara won't show me how to put the messages on mute so I have to put up with them all."

"Which one is James Elliott, again?"

"Never met him. Apparently he's cute, according to Oswin. He keeps asking Sally out and she keeps rejecting him."

"Then where's the gossip?"

"Well, she did sleep with him," Jenny said in a lowered voice, like Sally herself might be listening.

"How incredibly scandalous of her."

"My point was that they're going to get rid of the meteor so the supermarket will be safe from now on. I couldn't care less who Sally Sparrow is sleeping with, as long as it's not with my girlfriend."

"I must say I share your sentiments exactly. Anyway, I'm a big fan of the car, very cool."

"Don't look at it like that, you're not allowed to drive it. She probably won't even let me drive it again."

"Must be nice for her having you after being so unlucky with that Danny Pink. I never liked him."

"Wow, dad, you almost sound like you're not completely grossed out by the fact I'm going out with her," she jibed.

"I happen to like Clara a lot and wouldn't wish her to be unhappy no matter what universe she comes from."

"We'll be having family dinners together next."

"Mmm." He stood with his hands in his trouser pockets for a moment looking at the car with some degree of awe, and Jenny watched him, waiting for him to remember why he had come there in the first place, which she was sure was just on the tip of his tongue. "Ah! I had something to show you…" He took his psychic paper back out again and Jenny dropped her heavy wrench back in the toolbox at her feet before wiping her oily hands on a rag. She was quite dirty after all her mechanical work that day. "Here, I got a message through on the psychic."

"That's unusual."

"Yes, not a lot of people know how to do that. River used to do it all the time."

"I wish I'd known you could send messages through psychic paper; would have saved me a lot of trouble. Two-hundred years' worth."

"Message reads," and here he cleared his throat, "'Commander A. Skallagrim urgently requesting the assistance of Commodore J. Young at Lunis Terminal, Texoid System, 15/5/4887, lives in danger.' Only 'lives in danger' is in capital letters. I got this through earlier and couldn't for the life of me work out what it was about; I'm assuming it is for you? Clara said she thought it might be, then she said the name sounded Viking but I thought that couldn't be right, given the date."

"You'd be surprised… let me have a look." She took the psychic paper from him and scanned the message with her own eyes, very surprised that she didn't detect any crude humour slipping through the scrawled characters that had clearly been penned by none other than Ashildr. Perhaps that meant it really was urgent. She sighed and rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand, then gave the psychic paper back to the Doctor and went about closing the lid of the Porsche. "Do you know anywhere I might get a spark plug for an antique car?"

"Potentially anywhere on the TARDIS," he said after a pause, studying her, wondering why she had not explained what the message meant.

"I need one today…" her eyes strayed to Adam Mitchell's Porsche 911 on the other side of the room. The Doctor followed her gaze.

"Is stealing from Adam really the best course of action? It's not even the same model."

"But…"

"No, no, the poor boy's cars have suffered enough for one lifetime. I'll find you a spark plug. We have a time machine, it can't be that hard. In exchange, you can tell me what that note means," he firmly offered her this ultimatum.

"Just an old friend," said Jenny, "Well, not an old friend, sort of a recent friend. And not so much a friend, really, just… someone I've met. Who I owed."

"That doesn't quite constitute telling me what it means."

"They're just asking for my help. Technically, she's my subordinate so I'm not obligated to even respond, I could just stay here trying to build a spark plug all day and could just go on my date this evening without having to worry about whatever this is. I think I'd quite like to do that, you know."

"Excuse me? Ignore people asking for your help?" he crossed his arms and looked at her with an unbearable amount of judgement. Like he was ashamed.

"It's not like that! She should be able to handle it herself, she's… if there's something going on that she can't manage, it must be very, very dangerous. And I promised Clara and I promised Martha that I wouldn't go getting myself into dangerous situations anymore, alright? Of course I want to help people, but-"

"And if they're your subordinates then it is your job to keep them safe, isn't it?"

"Not if they're soldiers, they know the risks," Jenny said. He continued to look at her, and she looked away, unable to hold his gaze. "I'm just trying to keep myself safe."

"You were already on Rospaonus this week, that's one of the most dangerous inhabitable planets in the known universe."

"And we live in a time machine, so I can just… wait a bit. And then go. Later. Not right now. Right now, I have to fix this car, so that-"

"I very much beg to differ. I think you should answer it."

"No you don't, you just want to see what it is."

"Of course I do! That's hardly a crime. What was it? Lunis Terminal, May 15th? 4887? If you're not going to answer it I'm sure they can manage with the next best thing." The Doctor turned to leave the garage to make a point to her, and she stared at him in shock.

"You can't," she said, but he ignored her completely and was out of the door before she got half a mind to run after him. She bolted away from the car - though it pained her to do so because she really did want to have her surprise date before getting involved in anything else 'dramatic', and leaving the car's side was like submitting herself to being in grave danger yet again. And really, that was exactly what she was doing. "Just leave it, dad," she called after him, trying to block his way as he turned to make the detour to the console room that didn't involve passing through Nerve Centre or the bedrooms. He stopped and looked down at her. "Send Jack after it! He'll manage. He could… he could take Esther, or something-"

"Esther? On a space station? That's terribly reckless. If she even got the tiniest bit upset she might completely break the artificial gravity."

"Just Jack then! Jack and… the others there will manage. I'm sure. Plus, he owes me for going to rescue him and reuniting him with Ianto. He can't die, he'll be fine," Jenny said.

"You're about that age now where you should learn to stick to your commitments."

"My commitments?"

"I might disapprove of you being in the military-"

"The request comes from the navy, actually, the Star Fleet."

"The armed whatever-you-call them. But I think if there are people in danger and you are directly called upon-"

"I don't want to get myself killed!"

"I won't let you get killed! I'll tag along. I'm very intrigued by this Viking name."

"She's really a lot less intriguing than she sounds," Jenny lied. Ashildr was still quite the enigma, truthfully.

"I want to know who this is who knows how to send messages to my psychic paper. I'm going whether you come with me or not."

"You can't do that, you'll get yourself killed. I don't know how, but you definitely will. What would Clara think?"

"She would think she has a wonderful new wife, I'm sure. Now, are you going to come? I'll still get you your spark plug and make sure you are absolutely home in time for your hot date."

"Don't say 'hot date.'"

"Why not?"

"Just don't. You're too old."

"I'm-!?"

"Yes! Way too old! Way too old to go on dates at all. Don't even make me thing about… eurgh."

"Funny, we went to see a musical this week-"

"Gross!"

"I think it was Rent, we went all the way to 1996 and caught it in its first Broadway run and Clara cried the whole way through-"

"Shut up, oh my god. Fine. You can come with me to the thing if you stop being embarrassing. And don't deny being embarrassing because you were definitely being completely embarrassing," she ordered him, and he smiled. "Just… let me wash all this oil off my face first. And I think we'd better take the space suits. To be safe."

"If you're not in the console room in half an hour I'm leaving without you. Understood?"

"Yes. Alright. And if anything happens to me, you have to answer to Martha and Ravenwood."

"Honestly, I think I'd rather die in space than deal with that, so consider yourself safe."

"I better be…"