-Epilogue-
Suburbia
Fifty Years Later…
Clara stood in the empty living room of a detached house in suburban Brighton. It was late June, the sun was shining, and she had just been handed the keys and left to her own devices by the estate agent. When she heard the familiar thrumming of the TARDIS in the back, she took her eyes away from the picturesque street she had been looking at through the living room window and wandered through to the kitchen. It wasn't a new build and came complete with many fixtures and fittings. No furniture, but there were carpets and cabinets already, as well as curtain rails. It made the task of moving a little less daunting.
The Doctor bounded out of the TARDIS and knocked on the back door, and Clara unlocked it for the very first time.
"You don't need to knock," she said, "I heard the TARDIS get here."
"Oh, but I wanted to," she smiled, stepping inside. She'd only been gone for a few minutes, collecting the TARDIS so they could lug all of their worldly possessions back and forth for the rest of the day. "How're you feeling?"
"…Strange," said Clara after a pause. "Very unusual to be a first-time buyer in my seventies."
"You're telling me – I've never had a mortgage before. Not a fan of this 'being financially beholden to the bank' schtick. But, y'know – anything for you. Do you want something to eat before we start carrying boxes?"
"What have you got?"
"Do you want an egg sandwich?"
"That's a stupid question; when don't I want an egg sandwich?" Clara asked.
The Doctor kissed her for a second, "I'll be a few minutes. Are you gonna stay here?"
"Yeah, I think so. I'll come and bother you if I need anything." She left the way she had come in, disappearing back into the sunny garden and the TARDIS.
"What's so good about Brighton, then?"
Clara jumped out of her skin, wheeling around to see Rose standing in the middle of the empty living-room-to-be.
"Bloody hell! Don't you knock? She knocked, and it's technically her house." Rose shrugged. She must have teleported in. "What are you doing here?"
"Wanted to see your new gaff."
"That's funny. Of course you show up when you want to be nosey, and not at any other point during the last – what? Three years?" It wasn't unheard of for Rose to vanish from their lives for months or even years at a time. Rose was, in fact, spending more and more time with Mickey, Martha and Mattie in their old age, but she didn't make it a habit to keep in touch with Clara or anybody else in Clara's immediate vicinity.
"It's not that long," said Rose, "Nobody's seen the Ponds for decades, give me a break."
Clara rolled her eyes, "What do you want?"
"I told you – I want to see this house. Is this the living room?"
"No, we thought we'd just leave it completely empty."
Rose glared, "See, this is why I avoid you. You're very irritating."
"Sorry."
"I got you a present. House-warming."
"Did you?" Clara didn't bother to hide her surprise. What was Rose Tyler doing getting her presents? From her jacket pocket, Rose took a small, golden trinket about the size of her palm and held it out.
"It's made of bazoolium. Tells you what the weather's gonna be like. Thought you could do with it if you're staying on Earth," said Rose. Clara tentatively approached and took the object.
"It's hot."
"Yeah, it's hot when it's gonna be sunny, cold when it's gonna rain."
"Well, I… thanks. That's… actually quite thoughtful."
"I got one for my mum once," said Rose. There was a moment of silence, then she cleared her throat. "So? Are you going to show me around?"
"Okay, fine. Since you're here already."
"How did you afford a house?"
"Adam leant us the deposit, the bank leant us the rest. It's a proper mortgage."
"Wow. The Doctor with a mortgage. We once thought we'd lost the TARDIS on Krop-Tor and might have to get a mortgage. Then I did get one, with Tentoo, but…" She trailed off and paused for a few seconds. "Anyway. Tour?"
"…This is the living room, as you so astutely pointed out," said Clara, indicating their surroundings, "And the kitchen is in the back. There's a sort of pantry, too, or laundry room. I don't know, it's just… more space."
"Is there a cellar?" Rose was eyeing the door the cupboard under the stairs.
"No. But she's already been suggesting giving some of the rooms a transdimensional makeover, so who knows. Maybe she'll stick a basement down there. There's a loft, though."
"Ooh, can I see?" asked Rose, already going into the hall and up the stairs.
"I suppose…" Clara grumbled, following. "Are you going to help us with the furniture, while you're here?"
"Uh…" Rose paused to think, "Yeah. I can give you a hand."
"Are you alright?" Clara asked.
"What do you mean?"
"You're being nice."
"I am nice," said Rose, irked.
"Have you been kicked out, or something?"
"Kicked out? By the Doctor? No. What's in here?" She opened a door.
"It's the toilet," said Clara, "You might have seen one before."
"Funny. And a shower-bath? You don't want a separate bath and shower, so you can – I don't know – stare at each other while you wash? You two are weird like that."
"We are not," she scoffed, "And we could just shower together if it comes down to it."
"I'm sure it will," Rose jibed, closing the bathroom door. There was another door immediately to the left of the toilet which opened onto a box room. "Christ. Small in here."
"It's the other spare room."
"Other spare room? How many are there?"
"Two. The other one is a bit bigger."
"What are you going to put in it?"
"Guest bedroom?" Clara suggested, "Jenny might want to stay, or Sally."
"You'd love that."
"She's been very excited about us moving here, actually; means she'll have people to hang around with now Esther's off superhero-ing. It'll fit, like, a single bed and a dresser." Rose nodded, wandering down the landing to the next door, opening it without a thought for their privacy. "That's the master bedroom."
"It's still… I don't know. Seems like there's too many rooms. You'd do better knocking the walls in and making, like, one big room," she said.
"It's cosy," said Clara, who didn't think the size of the bedroom was much of a problem. It would just about manage a double bed, dressing table, and however many wardrobes they could shove in (they were thinking of having one each, but Clara knew everything would be mixed and matched in a matter of days.) "Besides, I think the Doctor likes having more, smaller rooms rather than fewer big ones."
"The same woman who's been living on an infinite spaceship for a thousand years?" Rose questioned.
"Yeah, alright, maybe we are… downsizing… but, you know, it's… it's for the best."
"Why are you moving?"
"That's a personal question," she said guardedly.
"What, and I'm not worthy of asking?"
"Well, fine," Clara relented easily, "I just got tired of it on there. I couldn't stay any longer. I want… I just want a life, a normal – ish – life. For a while. Things got really bad, if you must know. Like, we-almost-broke-up bad."
"Oh," said Rose, genuinely sympathetic, "Yeah. It is a lot, being married to the Doctor." She left the master bedroom to examine the final door on the first floor, which gave way to the second spare room, which was only a tiny bit larger than the first. As she opened it, Rose was overcome with a brief glimmer of the future: this room transformed into a vast library, the size of the entire house all over again, with gadgets, gizmos, bookshelves, trinkets, a space-age grand piano, and – a trampoline? It seemed that the Doctor wasn't going to stay away from 'time and relative dimensions' for long, much as Clara wanted normalcy. She did not say a word about this premonition. "Are you expecting a lot of guests, or something?"
"Alright, so the layout is a bit funny," Clara admitted, "The estate agent said the last owners had a few kids, so they had these little rooms added. It's a loft conversion upstairs, too." Rose took to the narrow, wonky staircase leading up to the top level, the loft. It was spacious and well-lit with skylights letting in the best of the summer heat.
"Why not make this the bedroom?"
"Too far from the loo," said Clara honestly, "Besides, she's got about a million boxes full of rubbish."
"Loads of space for just the two of you," Rose pointed out a moment later.
"We've got a lot of books."
"Oswin not coming with you?"
Clara sighed, "No. She's staying on the TARDIS."
"…Will she be alright?"
"I hope so…" said Clara, though Oswin's wellbeing was one of her biggest concerns about leaving.
"It's nice here, though. Nice house. Do you have jobs?"
"Yeah, at this school – Turing High. Named after Alan Turing."
"I think I've met him," Rose thought, "The code-breaker? Didn't he go to prison?"
"For being gay, yeah. I'm going to teach English, finally. I never got the chance before."
"How do you know if you can hack it?" she joked.
"After putting up with Oswin for most of my life? Teenagers will be a breeze."
"What's the Doctor teaching? Physics?"
"She wishes – they didn't have any science vacancies. She's had to settle for History."
"Better hope she doesn't get carried away with personal anecdotes – like that time she told Kennedy the Bay of Pigs was a 'disaster waiting to happen.'" The Doctor did love telling that story. Clara heard a door go downstairs. "Speak of the devil."
"That'll be my egg sandwich."
"You never asked my question," said Rose as they left the room, the Doctor calling Clara's name from the ground floor. Clara jumped down the steps two at a time with Rose in her wake.
"What question?"
"What's so great about Brighton? If you're moving to Brighton, you might as well move to London."
"You know, contrary to what Londoners believe, there are actually places outside of the M25. It's nice here. It's by the sea and it's not Blackpool; god knows I wouldn't want to live there again. Plus, it's full of gays."
"There you… what are you doing here?" the Doctor asked when Clara and Rose emerged. She was holding two fried egg sandwiches wrapped in foil.
"Wanted to look around. I told Clara I'd help you move, if you want."
"Oh… Really?" she asked this of Clara, who was already unwrapping her sandwich to eat.
"Mm," she nodded after taking a large bite. The Doctor was very sceptical of Rose wanting anything to do with them.
"Do you need me to fix you a sandwich as well?" The Doctor was asking out of courtesy, she quite clearly did not want to go traipsing back to the TARDIS to cook for Rose too. Rose knew this.
"No, no; I've already eaten. I'll, um… start bringing stuff in? If you want? I could get the TV, see if there's anything good on in this decade. Do you think they still make Come Dine with Me?"
"I think you'd have trouble getting them to stop making Come Dine with Me," said Clara. "Feel free. It's all boxed up already." Rose nodded and disappeared in a shower of gold dust. "Nice of her to think to visit," said Clara, taking another bite.
"For the time being," said the Doctor, still unconvinced, eyes on the TARDIS outside, "Let's just hope she doesn't make it a habit."
AN: Anyone who follows me as an author and has author alerts turned on, which I'm assuming is basically everyone reading this, will see that I have just created another fic called "Scattered Thoughts From Across the Cosmos." It's gonna be a place where I put extras, basically, but a few full storylines – formatted in single-chapter 'novellas' like "Jenny Who?" – might make their way in there; I'm currently working on another crossover with the canon that should star Jenny, Oswin, the other Doctor and Yaz, and if/when that's finished it'll go in there. I also have an idea to write another story about Jenny's time working as a detective at Scotland Yard which will probably be short and fun, and small one-shots and fluff drabbles might also find a home there. Currently, the first chapter in there is a short story about a strange TV that I wanted to put in "Retrograde" somewhere but it wouldn't work.
Note on the references to the Ponds' disappearance: I'm thinking of writing them back into "Retrograde" (maybe, if it ends up being bad then I won't), but will say here for the record that they've "vanished" because they're out of sync with everybody else.