Chapter 25: To Grow a Tardis

"Doctor, look!" Clara pointed out the window.

The Doctor turned around and followed her gaze. Recognizing the celestial body they were passing, the Doctor knew their journey was nearing its end. "Ah, Pluto." He smiled. What a sight for sore eyes. "I can't believe the pudding brains took away your planethood. What a shame. You're still a planet to me."

Martha sauntered up to the pair. She had her arms crossed and a pleased look on her face. "Looks like we've entered Earth's solar system."

"Indeed." The Doctor replied. He turned to the beloved old physician he called his friend. "Martha, what will you do when we get to Earth? Will you stay with us?"

She shook her head. "Nah, I've got plenty of work here. After we drop you two off, we're going to go resupply at the Europa moon base behind Jupiter, and then go find other Dalek Camps to liberate."

She held up a photo of the Doctor waving with a cheeky grin. "See, we've got Clara's program and this lovely picture of you to show the Daleks. Piece of cake."

"Oh, so I've become a glorified computer virus then?" he chuckled, raising his eyebrows. "A pop up ad?"

Martha snorted, "Yeah, pretty much."

The Doctor smiled and held out his hand, "Martha, I can't thank you enough for taking care of me here. You saved my life."

Martha ignored the offered hand and went for the hug instead. The Doctor stiffened up momentarily but then managed to hug back. Clara smirked. He was learning.

"Whatever," Martha laughed. "You've saved mine plenty of times before that. You owe me nothing."

They broke the hug and Martha patted him on the chest where his pocket containing the Tardis crystal laid. "You just take care of yourself and Clara. Get that Tardis up and running again and visit me sometime, 'kay?"

"Yes, doctor." The Doctor grinned warmly. "You've got my number. Well, when my phone line is back up anyway."

Captain Scaye appeared next to them. Clara wondered how he could move so silently despite all those rustling scales. "We have reached Earth," he announced. "We are currently in locked orbit over Cardiff." He flashed a toothy reptilian grin, turning to Clara and the Doctor. "Are you two ready? Bags packed?"

Clara nodded. "We're ready to go home."

"Good." Malonyo smiled, pulling something out of his pockets. He fitted them with transporter bracelets and set the coordinates the Doctor had given him earlier. "It's about time we were rid of your carcasses. I've run out of coffee and sugar because of you two."

"Shut up," Clara giggled. She hugged the Silurian tightly, patting him on the back softly. She was going to miss the old lizard. "Thank you for everything, Malonyo. You've been an amazing Captain. Keep it up, yeah?"

"Yeah," he broke the hug. "I've gotten used to it now. First thing we're going to do at the outpost is ditch this ship for a new one. Maybe a few new ones. This one draws too much Dalek attention. I'm sure we could get a nice price for its parts."

"I have to admit though," he stroked a pillar mournfully. "I'm gonna miss her."

"And not me?" Clara teased, her arms outstretched in a huffed gesture.

"You?" Malonyo chuckled. "Nah. Now get your asses to Earth. Your time rift awaits."

The Doctor shook Malonyo's scaly hand. "Farewell, Captain. Thank you for the ride."

Malonyo's arm had finally healed back to brand new again. He shook back with vigor, showing off its strength. "You're welcome. Come visit sometime. Bring your own coffee." He fought back his emotions. He would never let on, but he was sad to see them go. He steadied his hand over a button on the access panel next to him.

"Ready?" he asked.

The Doctor and Clara nodded. With that, a shimmer overtook their bodies and Martha, Malonyo, and the ship, disappeared from view.

The bleak streets of Cardiff, Wales came into view. In a blue shimmer, they materialized into a grim alley between a butcher shop and a theater. Of course, it was raining.

"Oh great." The Doctor grumbled. "We should have checked the weather first." Fat raindrops pelted down on them. His normally bouncy curls slicked back flat on his head. His clothes were quickly soaked. Clara didn't seem to mind.

"I'm home, I'm home!" Clara jumped around with glee. She hopped from puddle to puddle, taking in all the Earth sights and smells. It stank behind this butcher shop but she didn't care. It was home. "God, finally!"

The Doctor turned to her, watching her with amusement. "Clara, do you have your Tardis key?"

She stopped jumping and pulled the ordinary Yale key out of her pocket and showed it to him. It dangled from a metal chain. "Yeah, why?"

"Well, just because." The Doctor pointed to several missing persons posters with her face on them glued to the alley walls.

"Oh." Her face fell. She had forgotten all about her life on Earth. She wondered how long she had been gone. Judging by the warm air, it was sometime in late summer, and she had been abducted in early January. God, her friends and family must think she was dead.

"Put that Tardis key around your neck. It will envelop you in a perception filter. We don't want cops and questions right now." He put his own key over his neck. "We don't need anyone seeing a clambering winged man on the street either."

Clara complied and felt no different. She just had to trust that it worked. Once they got the Tardis charged up, she'd go back in time and tell her friends and family she was going away on a sabbatical. That way they wouldn't worry about her.

Speaking of the Tardis. "Doctor, how is this going to work?" she asked. "I thought the Tardis was dead."

The Doctor produced the small crystal from his pocket, watching the dim sunlight and rain glint off its surface. "There is one thing Missy did not know. You can't truly kill a Tardis if its spirit is present in someone's mind. She wouldn't know because she's never bothered to form a relationship with one. She just orders them around."

"So," he held up the crystal to her. "Theoretically, in a time rift, this little crystal should grow into a whole new Tardis. It's like a seed. We used to steal these from the Archons. Shouldn't take more than a few days. I'm hoping that she will return to us."

Clara nodded, chewing on his words. "Well, let's go then."

With the Tardis keys around their necks, nobody noticed the Doctor and Clara emerging from the alley. Luckily the Doctor's memory had been good because they had materialized only about 200 yards from the rift.

"Right then," he exhaled, blowing raindrops from his nose. He offered his crooked elbow to her which she happily linked with her own. "Shall we?"

Clara nodded and they set off towards the rift. It did not seem to be visible, but the Doctor knew where it was anyhow. He was a bloodhound for disturbances in time. After a few moments, he felt the Tardis crystal grow hot in his hand and he knew that he had found it. He smiled, encouraged.

"Well, Clara, let's see if this works." He shrugged, "Can't hurt, anyway."

The crystal began to glow brighter. It vibrated softly. "Ah, there's the spark," he beamed. "Now we just need to coax the flame."

Clara cocked her head and he knew she wanted him to elaborate. "See, Clara, usually it would take thousands of years to grow a Tardis. Being on a time rift helps, but it should still take at least a couple hundred years. Obviously we don't have that kind of time," he explained. He held the crystal up to his face, studying it. "But, I believe, with a little magic, that we can speed up this process."

He cupped the crystal in his hands and breathed into it. Golden energy trailed from his mouth and bathed the crystal in its light. Time energy. "I'm speeding up its timeline, like pressing a fast-forward button. Sending those hundreds of Daleks into the future has made me a giant battery of time energy, Clara. The time vortex flows through me. Normally, yeah, that would kill me, but," he shrugged, extending his wings a little. "Can't kill what's already dead."

The tiny crystal began to shake. A crack formed along its facets. "You've broken it!" Clara gasped.

"No," the Doctor smiled softly. "It's sprouting. Clara, you are witnessing something that hasn't happened for thousands of years." He set the crystal on the ground as it cracked further. "The birth of a Tardis."

The crystal shuddered and began to grow. Slowly, a casing began to form around it, creating a nucleus. It sealed itself into a ball. It was about the size of a baseball now, growing heavier by the moment, taking in mass from another dimension.

The Doctor breathed on it again, encompassing it in golden energy. The wisps of light curled around his hands with sparkles. The ball rapidly became the size of a cantaloupe, and still growing.

Clara's eyes became wide, fascinated. She held out her hands. "May I?" she asked.

The Doctor nodded and handed her the Tardis ball. Soon, it would become too heavy to hold. It trembled with energy. Gallifreyan scripts began to etch the surface, changing. Clara ran her fingers over the etchings, feeling their texture. Seeing an almighty Tardis so small, so vulnerable like this was almost intimate. When it grew up, would it still be their Tardis?

The Doctor took the ball back, now basketball sized. He breathed into it again like he was trying to entice fire from a smoking ball of kindling. He watched the etchings glow golden with every breath. He could feel it becoming stronger with the cocktail of time energy and also stored cosmic energy from the supernova. "Come on, Old Girl, you can do it."

He set the ball down onto the ground and the bottom flattened out. It spread out like a puddle until it was a semicircle the size of an inflatable exercise ball. Slowly, it grew taller until it flattened on top and formed a cylinder.

"Yes, yes!" The Doctor shouted with glee. "It's working, Clara!"

The gray cylinder grew to about eight feet tall and tapered outwards until it was about four feet in diameter. Right now, it looked like a dull metal pillar with no details except for the circular inscriptions engraved across it. Equations, Clara realized.

It rumbled, a soft groaning noise emanated from within. It was beginning to form the inside of its shell. People passed by in the busy town square with no concept of the miracle happening right in front of them.

Confident that the Tardis was self-sustaining enough now to be left alone, he gave it one last breath of life and stood back. It hummed and whirred, working hard. "Alright, Clara. Let's get a hotel and leave her to cook for a day or two. We'll check back in the morning. We need to get out of this rain."

"And I'm starving," Clara piped in. She looked utterly pathetic standing in the rain. Her wet hair plastered to her face and the raindrops made her look skinnier than he had seen her in months.

"Starving?" The Doctor asked incredulously. "We just ate."

Clara shook her head, "No, I need proper food," she elaborated. "Not that same crap we've been eating for months on the ship."

The Doctor shrugged. "Tasted pretty good to me."

Clara grabbed his arm with one hand and picked up her bag with the other. Thankfully, their bags were waterproof, and the promise of dry clothes sounded great right now. "Come on, let's go."

Finding a nice tavern inn, Clara removed the Tardis key from her neck and paid for a room under a false name. With the key, she supposed she could have just walked right by into a room and nobody would be the wiser, but that wouldn't have been right. Luckily, the innkeeper did not seem to recognize her. She had lost weight since she was last seen and her hair was much longer.

Room keys in hand, she made her way to the Doctor who was busy studying the fireplace mantle. It was covered in various knick knacks and shiny things to distract him with. "I've got us a room, let's get ourselves dry."

After a brief shower and change of clothes, Clara practically ran downstairs to order dinner. The tavern had already begun to fill with regulars. This was a problem, considering she wanted to remain unseen. Slipping her Tardis key back over her neck, she decided to retreat into the room and just order over the phone.

As she stepped back into the room, she surprised the Doctor, who thought he was alone. He froze into stone immediately with her gaze, unable to escape. He had just emerged from the shower, still wet, with only a towel draped over his waist. Clara felt a sharp blush flash across her cheeks. Even in stone, he still looked beautiful. His lean body was much more toned than his clothes let on. Speechless, she cleared her throat and averted her eyes, trying to hide her blush.

"Clara!" the Doctor startled. "I thought you'd be longer. You said you were hungry, but I didn't expect you to ah…eat so fast. Let me just…" he stammered, stumbling back towards the bathroom to hide.

"No, no, don't mind me," she cried, waving her hands. "I didn't see anything, sorry to burst in on you like that. I decided to order in, I haven't eaten."

"Ah good," he sighed in relief from behind the bathroom door. "That would have been concerning. You might have blown up."

Clara rolled her eyes and turned to the phone. She could hear how flustered he was in his voice. She blushed again, thinking about what she'd seen. She smiled to herself, biting her lip.

"What do you want to eat?" she called from across the room.

"I…er. Fish and chips, yes, that sounds good," he replied. She could hear him bumbling about the small bathroom and knocking his wings into things. A shampoo bottle or something hit the ground with a bang and she could not resist a laugh.

Clara giggled and ordered two of those to be sent up to the room. She put the phone back on its receiver and looked to the bathroom. Loud thuds inside indicated his struggling. Trying to get dressed with eight foot long wings in a tiny space was easier said than done. "Doctor, do you need help?"

"No!" he grumbled, clearly frustrated. "I've almost got it."

Clara shook her head. He could be so dumb sometimes. "You do realize I won't be able to see you right? Just come out here to get dressed, I won't look, I promise."

He creaked the door open, looking at her through narrowed eyes, distrustful. Why did he trust her with his life but not with this? How stupid. Her eyes stayed closed, so he creaked the door open a little more, clutching the towel to his waist. His halfway-on shirt draped from one shoulder.

"Here," Clara said, turning her back and moving behind a wall. "I definitely can't see you now. Go on, put your clothes on, you daft old thing."

He huffed. He finally mustered the courage to step out again. With much more room to maneuver, he quickly threw some dry clothes on. He breathed a sigh of relief. Glad that was over. "Clara, I'm decent now."

"You were before too," she muttered under her breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing!"

The Doctor furrowed his eyebrows but decided to drop it. He felt his stomach growl and suddenly began to feel hungry. "You ordered the food, right?" He asked

Clara nodded and came back into the main part of the room. She switched on the TV and settled on the bed for a rest. No Daleks, no Missy, no bad Oods, just her and the Doctor. It felt good to relax.

The weather channel came on automatically, displaying the thick storm they had already encountered. It was supposed to rain for the remainder of the night. So much for seeing the town. The corner of the channel displayed the date and time. August 11th, 2015, it read.

"Doctor, I've been missing for eight months." She turned back to the phone. "God, I should call people. They must be worried sick."

"No, no, no, no," he put his hand over the phone so she couldn't pick it up. "Not yet, we still have work to do and don't need a bunch of attention."

Clara sighed, withdrawing her hand. "You're right. I just feel bad is all."

"It wasn't your fault, Clara."

"I know, but still," she sighed. What had become of her students? Her family?

A knock on the door announced the arrival of their meal. Excited, Clara answered the door. She took the tray from the innkeeper and thanked him. Luckily, he still didn't recognize her. She closed the door and set the tray onto the little table in the corner of the room. Barely able to wait for the Doctor to take his seat, she sat down and set her plate in front of her. The food smelled heavenly. Good, real, Earth food. God, she had missed it.

Without further delay, they tucked in. The fish was light and delicate, just the way they liked it. The Doctor drizzled some malt vinegar on his, offering some to Clara who refused politely, diving into her chips. It was awkward for her to have to eat with her eyes averted. He wished to once again have conversations with her eye-to-eye. He missed those big brown doe eyes. He'd have to figure out some way around this.

"So," Clara asked. "You told me earlier about your vision. That Gallifrey is in a pocket universe and can be restored without collapsing our own universe."

"Yeah." he said, putting his fork down. "Basically, Missy was right. We can bring back Gallifrey and we need two Tardises to do it."

Clara chuffed. They should have just gone along with Missy's plan to begin with, then they could have avoided this whole nightmare. "Okay, no guarantees we get our Tardis back, but if we do, how do we bring this up to Missy without her trying to kill us or something?" Clara took another bite, waiting for his response.

"Well, Missy, the Master, is many things. If she has a certain agenda that aligns with yours, she sometimes will help to achieve a common goal. Usually some mischief happens there, but I know all her tricks this time. Once, not if," he wagged his finger to accentuate his point, "once we get our Tardis back, I have a list of things to build. For one, I need to disable that time lock she has."

Clara hummed, thinking. She remembered her last conversation with Missy in her cell at the Dalek camp. Missy probably believed she was a Dalek by now. "But Doctor, I don't think she has this goal anymore. She told me that she changed her mind. She decided that she did not want to restore the Time Lords who had banished her in the first place."

"Oh, well that's not good," he mused. "We have to find a way to convince her, or to commandeer her Tardis if she refuses. I need to take that thing away from her anyway."

The pair finished their dinner and settled in for the night. They watched a little bit of TV to catch up on the news and found that luckily no major catastrophes or invasions had happened in their absence. For once, the Earth stood still.

The next morning, Clara and the Doctor eagerly set out to the town square to check on their Tardis. The rain had stopped and the sun was actually out and shining. A rare occurrence here.

There the Tardis stood, looking like a sleek metal tube with a simple door in front. It had a keyhole but no other markings. The engravings from earlier had disappeared.

"Ohhh, look at her!" The Doctor ran up to his new toy with excitement. "Brand new! Factory settings."

He palmed the door, wondering if it was developed enough to go inside. He put his key into the lock and miraculously it opened. He peered inside. It was a bleak white with circular cutouts dotting the walls. In the center was a simple Tardis console with hardly any of the buttons or levers showing yet.

Clara stepped inside first, cautiously testing the floor to see if it was solid. Her shoe tapped the floor with a soft metallic thud. It sounded solid. She put weight on the foot and the floor did not give out beneath her. She brought the other foot inside and stood inside the doorway, marveling at the pristine new Tardis they had created. It hummed and whirred as it continued to work on building itself.

She stepped back out. "Well, it's definitely bigger on the inside."

The Doctor chuckled. Pudding brain humans always had to comment on that. He stepped inside cautiously, as if any sudden movement would scare or hurt it. On the console, a telepathic circuit opened up. It was small, but offered a way to connect with the ship. The white walls were cold and uninviting. There was no aura to be felt in this room. He could not feel his Old Girl's presence, even if this was her body. Her mind was not in it. A Tardis with no mind was nothing more than a machine, which is not what he wanted.

With despair, he realized that he may have saved the machine, but he had not saved the soul. He felt their shattered bond stay empty. He had hoped she would come back if he regrew her body.

Suddenly, it dawned on him. Time for Plan B.

"Clara," he beckoned. She came to his side and the door closed behind her with a swish. "Clara, let me see your mind. I want to know if you still have the Tardis tucked away in there somewhere. You two had bonded while I was gone, right?"

"Well, yeah." Clara replied, confused. "But I haven't been able to feel her presence in months. I'm not sure if she's still there or not. Why, is she not here?"

"She's not here, and she's gone from my mind too," he sighed. "We've got only one hope." He put his hands to Clara's temples gently. He closed his eyes, waiting. "Clara, open your mind to me."

She did as he asked and suddenly they were connected. She could see him in her mind, telepathically speaking. His presence was warm and gentle, as always. Even though he now had access to her most private thoughts, he chose to ignore them out of respect. She led him to the area where the Tardis had occupied before. The spot seemed vague to her, as if it had a perception filter around it. She did not have the psychic skills to investigate it further.

The Doctor prodded at the spot. He put his hands on the filter and studied it. There was definitely something in there, hiding. He felt his hearts swell. Clara's mind was not just hers.

"Old Girl, are you here?" he called.

The form within the shield seemed to bristle. It did not want to come out of its hole. He tried again, soothingly reaching out with his golden aura. "Sexy, it's me. Your thief."

The form held tightly to its shroud. The Doctor gently peeled it away one layer at a time. Poor thing had put up barricades to protect herself with.

"Please," he coaxed. "It really is me, the Doctor. Your Doctor. We have your home back. Look through my mind and see that it is true."

The shield began to melt slightly but still did not trust the voice it was hearing. Clara focused on relaxing her mind to make the environment calmer. After a few minutes, a tiny hole formed in the barricade. Carefully, the Doctor reached through it. He mingled his mind with the form's, showing it everything he was. All his memories.

Suddenly, all the barriers disappeared and the Tardis's spirit burst out of its confines. It glowed brightly, re-establishing its bond with the Doctor. Clara could hear the ship's excitement in her head and began to feel tears welling up in her eyes. She couldn't help it. Their Old Girl was alive after all. She had been dormant but safe and sound in Clara's head this whole time.

The Doctor broke the mind meld and guided Clara over to the telepathic circuit on the console. Knowing what to do, Clara stuck her hands in and connected with the Tardis. She opened her thoughts and the soul of the Tardis flew out of Clara's mind and into the fresh new body they had grown for her. The chameleon circuit activated, and the exterior of the ship turned back into the familiar blue box. The engines fired up with an excited warble.

The Doctor patted the console, smiling through tears. "You're back. Old Girl, you're really back."