What if they had kept traveling, losing Clara to old age was bad enough, but to the raven? Twelve lets himself become even more open for touches, and just being close to Clara is comforting (it’s still not cuddling), and Clara is more than happy to indulge him, she’s the boss of hugs after all.
Surprise, Whovians! Check out this new series iconic in all of it’s explody, spacey glory, and don’t forget to watch the premiere with us on September 19th at 9/8c!
kitkate91060said:whouffaldi fluff my fav!! They’re too cute I swear . Seriously gotta thank you for all these amazing fics! Have u ever made one where they’re both teachers? Clara doing her normal job and then 12 as a professor like in s10. I wouldn’t know what plot u might come up with. But I did find it funny that that was the one job he ended up going with in s10. Like a little part of him remembered something about a teacher.
I’ve actually made a few that would fall into such a category! I’ve got the hard-line fill of that, where it’s them both being teachers…
Mister Atif needs a substitute again, which this time means the Doctor taking on a class. Clara is more than mildly impressed. Content warning, as Clara gets turned on by Dad Skills.
There’s something about the Doctor’s continued presence at Coal Hill that makes the students seem a bit more giggly and mobile-dependent, so leave it to Miss Oswald to figure out why.
translation error 404 not found[tumblr]/[FFN]/[AO3]
The Doctor fights with plumbing and Clara serves as somewhat of an interpreter.
This doesn’t necessarily mean I’m done with the topic either! The above is just the closest to answer your question. I do believe that Clara being a teacher did have a heavy impact on s10 Twelve (not just as a whole), and it really shows.
Now that he is facing the possibility of going back to the way things were, Basil hatches a plan [3112 words; a HTTYD!Whouffaldi AU]
Basil avoided going out for the better part of the next week, staying in the house and refusing to even leave his bedroom. Clara promised to not tell why he was sequestering himself for the time being, though she took a chance and had Bill be the one to bring her father his meals while he was doing his best impression of an ill hermit. The young woman would take a tray up, knock on the door, then leave—it would be cleared when she went to check an hour later, and then the cycle would start over again.
Bill, however—as her stepmother correctly guessed—was not the sort of person who was liable to keep going without question for long, and on the fifth day of her father moping, she brought the tray directly into the bedroom.
“Feeling better?” she asked. She saw that he was hiding under the blanket, avoiding her. “You can’t be that sick, are you? Should we go fetch one of the physicians in the Great Hall?”
“Go away,” he grumbled.
“Well, you don’t sound sick,” she replied. She put down the tray and tugged the blanket from her father’s upper half, causing him to curl up at the chill in the air. “You don’t look sick either.”
“Leave me alone, young lady,” he ordered. Ha—fat chance.
“Clara!” Bill shouted over her shoulder. “Can you tell me what’s wrong with Dad?”
“Uilleam, don’t you dare!” Basil threatened. He stumbled out of bed, falling on the floor and crashing into the wall as he got up again, reaching for his daughter with hands that grasped in not quite the right spots to get a good hold. “Don’t you dare tell anyone!”
“Tell anyone what…?” She looked Basil in the eyes and saw that he gaze was—although forwards—was not entirely meeting with hers. “Are… are you blind again…?”
“He is,” Clara responded. She stepped into the room, having just come from putting Aodh down for a nap, and frowned. “Basil, you really just need to give it up.”
“I can’t let people know that my vision’s gone again,” he said. “How quick do you think they will brand me a liar?”
“Despite the fact that the number one rule that ‘the Doctor lies’ is only partly sarcastic… not as quickly as you’d think,” Clara replied. She looked at her stepdaughter and the expression of confusion on her face. “Yes…?”
“What do you mean it’s gone?” Bill asked, scrunching her nose. “He just fixed it.” She waited until her father was sitting back down on his bed before putting the tray in his lap, guiding his hands from his sides to the meal before him. “It went back to normal after healing the dragons, so what’s healed is healed, right…?”
“Whatever it was that made it click back into place must have gone away with sleep after he had last healed a dragon,” Clara mused. “I’m sure it’s like taking a nap to get rid of a headache, except we didn’t want to get rid of this.”
“Do you think that it could still come back again?”
“Who knows?” Basil admitted. He sipped at his drink and frowned sadly. “It could have only happened that once because it was something I was originally born with, or maybe it wasn’t even supposed to happen at all.”
“You got it back, for just a little bit, and that’s what counts,” Bill said. She pulled her father close and gave him a hug, which he awkwardly leaned into. “We’re here, Dad, and I’m just glad for that. Now stop pretending you’re helpless and practice doing things again before we let you out into the rest of Berk. Those kids at the school are bound to be trip-hazards.”
“Yeah…” he reluctantly agreed. He reached up and held his daughter’s face, leaving a kiss on her forehead. There was a million things he’d rather do instead of practicing daily tasks without his sight again, but now… well… he had no choice.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
After a long afternoon of practicing, as well as heading to dinner in the Great Hall, Basil remained despondent. While Aodh seemed to take the news in the nonchalant stride typical of small children, the rest of Berk seemed curious and it irritated him. Their questions, though concerned and inquisitive and genuine, grated on him enough to the point he left immediately after dinner, with Clara walking alongside him as he tried to count his steps back again, making it with only one turn-around. He tried to retreat to the bedroom alone once in the house, though his wife had nothing of it, using the short window of privacy they had to remind him that he was no different to her.
Eventually, Bill came home with Aodh and it was time for the family to all ready for bed. Clara acted as though nothing was amiss—as it had not been even long before the trip to Bill’s former den that upended everything—and they went about their routine as normal. She read aloud to her son as her stepdaughter volunteered herself to put together evening tea and her husband shuffled about in an effort to find errant toys to pick up. Insisting that it was the perfect family evening, Clara made it clear that there was nothing that was going to change her mind in that regard.
Eventually, the tea was had and the story was finished, which meant bedtime for everyone that night. Bill helped Clara wrangle a particularly defiant Aodh, while Basil sourly retreated to his room. He undressed and laid there—room already dark—and waited silently. It felt like hours, days, months, and years before Clara padded into their bedroom and joined him under the blankets, cuddling into his side supportively.
“Good night,” she murmured.
“Night.”
More time passed; he laid there, eyes open despite knowing the night hid most of the details of his bedroom and the world to those with sight. Lifting his right arm, he splayed his palm towards the ceiling, as though he was looking at the back of his hand.
‘There has to be something,’ he thought. ‘I wonder how many dragons have to be sick for it to be permanent… how many times do I have to heal others to be able to heal myself…’ He felt Clara shift next to him and she held his torso as she slept, clinging to him for once instead of the other way around. ‘Willallour children be grown when I can finally see them without a dragon suffering first? How long will I have with them after that…?’
Basil allowed his mind to wander, remembering clearly Clara’s face, Aodh’s face, Bill’s face… gods, Bill was a haunting reminder of her mother—though with some added height from him, thank goodness—and he wanted to see the child he genuinely missed out on raising. He didn’t want her to be alone for as long as he could help it, and if he could see…
…that was it!
Was it an extreme long-shot? Of course it was. Then again, he was used to low odds, wasn’t he? The odds of him surviving his sister attempting to kill him twice had been low. Surviving on his own, with only Idris for company? Lower. Hitting a skua that brought him to his second chance? His eldest child living and surviving and finding him again after so long…? It had been a very, very, very small chance, and yet he was on the winning sides of all those odds. That is what he was though, wasn’t he? A wild, lone dragon, plan and simple. He would have to wait to put his plan into action, though if he recalled correctly, it wouldn’t be a long wait.
The only thing he did know, however, was that this was something he had to do alone. There was no way that Clara could come along, despite the fact she was going to insist the moment he told her of the plan. He had to be discreet about it… had to make sure that there was no way for her to possibly follow… though he was still going to figure out who to take along that would sufficiently ground her in Berk. There was Danny, as much as he disliked relying on him to help him look for things normally, and running off with his young son in-tow would be more like asking her to find him than anything…
…that only left one other person he could possibly trust with such a thing, and what right did he have to ask such a thing of her? Dare he bring back his daughter to the place that ruined their lives, that broke their family apart, that caused them to believe one another dead for well over a decade? Would the intense risks involved to her be worth the reward, or would their mending relationship have a whole new wound open and risk it bleeding out?
He had no choice, Basil decided.
All he could really do was hope that she would forgive him.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
A few nights later, after much debating with himself and cautiously prepping while his wife and daughter were teaching at school, Basil decided that he was going to put his plan into action. In the middle of the night, he gently slipped out of Clara’s grasp once he heard and felt her fall asleep. It was simple work to find his clothes, pull them on, and carry his boots under his arm so that he made minimal noise as he counted the steps he took down the corridor. Softly entering his daughter’s room, he found Bill in her bed and gently shook her shoulder, waking her up.
“Wha…?!”
“Hush; come with me,” he whispered. He knew the look on her face, even if he couldn’t see it, and walked out, trusting that she would follow. As he went out the room and down the stairs, he could hear her footfalls close behind—perfect.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Bill yawned. “What are you waking me up for?”
“We need to go,” he said. Basil went to where he had hid his knapsack and began to gather up remaining supplies from where they normally sat.
“I just got here,” she replied, insulted. “I can’t leave after I just got here… after I just found you again…”
“We’re going together. Idris, come here.” He snapped his fingers and the dragon in the corner woke up, completely alert.
“This… this isn’t like you,” she said. “We have a whole family again… why are we going?”
“You’ll find out; now come on, I need you and Pilot,” he said. “We have to move quickly.”
“Why? What’s going on?” She watched him stuff some things in his bag and fumble around for others. “Dad… what’s going on…? Answer me.”
“I told you: we need to move.”
“Are you and Clara… fighting…?”
“No, it’s just…” He paused when she placed her hand on his, stopping him momentarily. Exhaling heavily, he closed his eyes as he attempted to keep his composure. “I need you to listen to me. We have to go before it’s too late.”
“…and leave Clara? Aodh? Idris? Berk?”
“We’re taking Idris, and we’re coming back.”
“Should I write a note or…?”
“No need—we should be back soon.”
“I’m still writing a note; what the hell is it that we’re rushing off to do in the middle of the night?”
Basil stopped and considered that. How much of his plan should he divulge? He calculated the risks and nodded slightly.
“Then tell her I know how to get my sight back now,” he said. “We might not be back for a bit, but she shouldn’t worry.”
“Dad, where are we going?”
He did not answer.
“Dad!” she snapped, trying not to shout. She grabbed his upper arm, stopping him from moving away. “Where are we going?! Tell me!”
“Back,” he replied simply.
“…back where…?”
“Gallifrey,” he said, “the long way around.” Bill let go of his arm and he heard her take a step back.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I most certainly am,” he replied. He imagined the expression on her face, horrified and disgusted as her mother’s would have been, and it made his heart sink. “As much as I enjoy the thought of the place, it’s the only way.”
“After all that happened there…?”
“Yes.”
Bill exhaled heavily, the tone being the one that she had whenever she’d known he or Mels had been right. “I’ll meet you by the cliff at the edge of the wood.”
“Knew you’d see it my way.” He grinned, despite the fact he knew she was doing nothing of the sort.
“Doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re insane,” she mentioned. “Now go before I change my mind.”
Basil finished putting Idris’s saddle on her and secured the packs to it before letting her outside. He climbed onto the saddle and secured himself into the tack before snapping the reins. The dragon grumbled before spreading her wings and taking off, climbing high into the air before gliding down to the agreed-upon meetup spot. They waited patiently, with Bill and Pilot landing next to them about ten minutes later.
“Ready…?” she asked. “I don’t even know how you plan on getting there.”
“Your old dad still has a few tricks,” he chuckled. He exhaled heavily and cleared his mind, feeling power begin to flow from his fingertips. Dragging his pointer finger over the back of Idris’s head, he drew a circular glyph, knowing that it was the same soft, glowing gold from when he healed the dragons from Bill’s den, though with none of the healing factor from before.
“What are you…?!”
“Bringing her back to her hatching grounds; now fly, Idris! To the beginning!”
The dragon roared and took off, leaving Bill and Pilot to hurriedly catch up.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
The sun was warm as Clara felt it shine down upon her face in the early morning glow. She opened her eyes and found that at some point earlier, Basil had left and Aodh crawled into the space left behind. Ruffling the boy’s hair to wake him, she watched as he sleepily opened his eyes and stared at her.
“Hey, did you see Dad?” she asked.
“No… and Bill’s gone too,” Aodh murmured. He scooted closer to his mother and cuddled against her for warmth. “Did they go flying without me?”
“I think they’re allowed a morning fly by themselves,” Clara chuckled. “You know they have a lot to catch up on. They didn’t see each other for a long time.”
“Oh…” the boy nodded. He paused, groggily calculating his next move. “I’m hungry.”
“Then let’s get dressed and head on down to the Great Hall—I’m sure we’ll meet Dad and Bill there,” she replied. Aodh squeaked and rolled off the bed before shuffling out of the room and down towards the nursery, leaving Clara to dress by herself. Once out of her nightdress and into day clothes, she found her son flopped unceremoniously atop his blankets, which made her scrunch her nose and try wrangling him in an effort to get the child to eat breakfast in time for them to head over to the school. She was so concentrated on getting him to move that she almost did not see the piece of paper on the sitting room table before they left.
It was a note.
“Oh, hold on, let me see what Bill has to say,” Clara said, halting the morning proceedings. Aodh climbed up into a chair and curled up with a cushion and a hatchling that had gotten in overnight, cuddling with the warm dragon while his mother read the paper. The handwriting was shaky and unpracticed, but what time had her stepdaughter been able to afford towards her penmanship?
‘Clara,
‘Dad and I are taking Idris and Pilot on a long trip. I don’t know when we’ll be back. I don’t want to go and leave you, but Dad is giving me no choice. He wants to fix his eyes so he can see you and to do that he thinks we need to go back to Gallifrey.’
Her heart skipped a beat as she read the note. Gallifrey. Basil and Bill’s ancestral home. The place where Velda went mad and tried to kill her entire family. They were going there…?
‘I will try to get him to turn back,’ the letter continued. ‘Please don’t try to follow us. Even the best navigators canget lost trying to find this place. Tell Aodh we’re looking for a special dragon egg, so he can ride a dragon like Idris and Pilot one day. I think the excitement over possibly getting his own dragon will keep any tougher questions from needing to be answered. In fact, you can tell that to anyone who asks, if you want.
‘It’s too soon to lose my dad again. I will bring him home. You can count on that.
‘Bill’
It was all Clara could do to sit down on a chair instead of sinking directly down to the floor. She dropped the note as she did, her mind too occupied to be concerned with holding onto a piece of paper.
Gallifrey.
They had left for Gallifrey.
“Mum? What’s wrong?” Clara snapped back to see that Aodh was now standing next to her, the dragon hatchling sitting atop his head as he stared up at her. “You look scared.”
“Of course I do,” she smiled gently. “Dad and Bill have left to go find dragon eggs without telling me first. I wanted to go along to help Dad, but now he’s taken off without me.”
“Oh! Egg hunting! What kind of eggs?!” The boy’s eyes inflated as he bought the lie; the Number One Rule was that the Doctor lies, and he had yet to learn it.
“They want to see if they can find you a dragon like Idris and Pilot,” she said, scooping her son up and carrying him towards the door. She put him down once they got outside and pointed towards the horizon. “Now they’re somewhere out there, and I wouldn’t even begin to know where to look.”
“I guess that means we’re stuck here,” Aodh nodded. He then looked up at his mother with a toothy grin. “Should we tell Uncle Danny? He gets worried about Dad sometimes.”
“Yes, I think we should,” Clara agreed. “Uncle Danny needs to know about this. Let’s go tell him right now, before breakfast. He will be very interested.”
The following chapter contains modern Scots Gaelic as a sort of culturally-appropriate “other” sort of language, which I’ve been learning via an app. Some of it I’ve been able to write myself, but other bits I’ve had to run through a translator, so if there’s anyone with more fluency who want to correct my vocab/grammar, please feel free.
Basil meant for his peoples’ secrets to die with him. Now all that threatens to burn up in flames as he brings his daughter to the last place either of them want to go. [2746 words; a HTTYD!Whouffaldi AU]
The flight took what felt like both ages and nothing at all.
Basil’s skin prickled as they flew close to the island, with Idris flying true as she could back to the den of her hatchling years. His face began to shift into a constant scowl and his daughter took notice. She attempted to roughly chart the course while she rode atop Pilot, knowing that when they returned to Berk, she was going to have a better time of it if she handed her stepmother something at least close to a map.
Eventually, they came to the home of their ancestors: Gallifrey. Basil could feel its presence long before Bill could even see it on the horizon—there was a feel to it, an energy, and it was something that he had never wanted to experience ever again. They landed on the island—a rocky expanse of land—and dismounted from their dragons.
“Do you need me to…?” Bill began to offer. She held out her forearm, brushing it against her father’s elbow. He recoiled and pulled away, beginning to walk towards the entrance to the caves that was their former home. “Dad…?”
“Walking around blindfolded was part of our fun as children,” he explained brusquely as he continued on, unassisted. Head held high, he navigated the caves of Gallifrey, once teeming with life and dragons, now an empty husk of nothing.
Possibly, it was a good thing that he could not see the caves and what became of them. Dragon bones lay scattered around the floor of the main cavern and scratches gouged the walls, showing the level of struggle that the den had gone through in the days and weeks after they had first left. An uneasy feeling overcame both humans and their dragons, though they pressed on.
“Are you sure we absolutely had to come here?” Bill asked.
“Of course we did,” Basil replied. “There are some things that are only possible in the Home of the Dragon Lords.”
“Berk is that now.”
“Not in this way.”
Silence passed between them as they entered the tunnels of the humans’ living space, where there were alcoves carved into rock to make rooms, poorly separated by doors of rotting wood and cloth. There was evidence of smaller dragons making use of the alcoves for their own uses, but they too were long-gone and the spaces just as abandoned as the rest of the caves. Glowing lichen illuminated their path, though only one of them could see it.
“I know how long it’s been for us,” Bill mused aloud, “but I wonder how long it has been since Aunt Velda was here?”
“Long enough,” he replied. He continued along, not even needing to feel the wall to know where he was going. Bill followed him dutifully, though as they traveled further and further in, she began to shiver.
“I don’t like it here, Dad,” she said. “There’s too many memories in these caves… and not good ones.”
“More memories than the ones you’re aware of,” he stated. “I intended for them to become secrets, and for them to never reach you, but now I have no choice.”
“…what do you mean…?”
“You’ll see.”
They continued going deeper and deeper into the cave, past where Bill had remembered going prior. When she had been little, there were areas that had been off-limits, and she had reluctantly listened due to the inherent danger involved with below. Though she was now an adult, the winding, sloping corridors were still plenty unsettling.
“Why are we here again?” She looked at her father and frowned. “I would think that this is the last place you’d want to be… ever…”
“There’s a reason why Gallifrey was where our ancestors bred and raised dragons,” he replied. “There is a magic here that has benefited our efforts beyond measure…”
“I remember you saying there is no such thing as magic: only science and skill.”
“All magic is something we don’t have an answer for,” he stated. “There are some things we will never know how it works—never know the rules of—but while we are alive, we work to understand what we don’t already, because it means we are that much closer to understanding everything that we can.” He carefully felt along the wall, searching for a specific hold. “What many people refer to as magic is a thing we can do because we have discovered the rules and skills behind it—a Great Plan, chaos, happenstance, it doesn’t matter how—don’t think that because I said one thing now and another thing before that they are supposed to be wholly different.”
“They sound wholly different.”
“Yeah, and that’s why you’re still not a full Dragon Lord yet, despite declaring your Promise.” He turned his face towards her and smirked, knowing that all it did was irritate her—there were sixteen years he needed to catch up on, after all. Sliding his hands over the moist stone walls, he finally found what he was looking for, his fingers catching in a small latch. “Ah, yes, here it is.”
Releasing the latch, Basil stepped back and let the door sink into the wall and shift away. He had last been there decades prior, when it was only him and his sister wandering the caves, though he remembered clear as though it had been the week before instead of in his youth. Once the door was fully opened, he stepped forward, prompting Bill to grab his arm.
“What are you doing?!” she panicked.
“Showing you something I should have a long, long time ago.”
As dragons and riders entered the new chamber, the room began to prepare itself for them. Torches gently sparked on from sconces in the walls thanks to a tripwire on the door, filling the stale room with much-needed light. The floor was smooth and dry, having been carefully-worked at some point in the past, and the walls intricately decorated. Closer inspection showed Bill that some of the decorations were actually bones from dragons and humans alike, which caused their mounts to remain cautiously near the entrance.
“Dad… what the hell is this place?”
“It was supposed to be our final resting place,” he said solemnly. He continued on, scaling a series of steps leading up towards a dais. “This was where I laid my parents, and where I should have laid your mother and aunt both, and now… we are seeing if the legend is true.”
“…which legend…?”
“One of the many that were supposed to die with me.” He made it to the top of the stairs and paused for a moment, knowing that there was an altar before him. The dragonsblood stone was smooth under his hand as he touched it, feeling the powers of the Old Ways jolt through his system for the first time in ages.
“Tha mi a’ faicinn dorchadas,” he told the altar, using words he last spoke long ago. “Nach fhaic thu mi? Leig dhomh faicinn, taibhsean… no am fàg thu mi a ‘fulang?”
I see darkness. Don’t you see me? Let me see, ghosts… or will you leave me to suffer?
“What are you…?” Bill wondered in trepidation.
“If you put your hand on the dragonsblood altar and challenge those who came before us, it is said they will grant your wish.”
“…so, legend states if you blaspheme atop a creepy dragonsblood altar locked away inside an even creepier crypt, Granddad’s ghost will heal you out of spite?”
“Essentially.”
“Doesn’t that sound stupid?”
“When you put it that way, of course it does.”
“…and what did you… um…?”
“You have to speak their language in order to challenge them properly,” he explained. He then turned back to the altar, sneering. “Freagair mi a-nis, taibhsean!”
As he challenged the ghosts of the bones in the crypt for a second time, Basil felt the altar beneath his hand warm to a point he knew was impossible for just his hand to accomplish. Bill gasped as she saw what was happening: golden dust was beginning to emit from her father and the altar, surrounding him in the light from when they were in her den. His head lolled back as he began to float in the air, the magic lifting him as it swirled around and poured from him. Bill even had to shield her eyes, as not only was it terribly bright, but there was a wind that was somehow picking up as well.
“Dad!” she shouted. “What in the hell is going on here?!”
He did not answer.
“Dad! Dad! Come on!” She tried to pull him down to the floor, yet it was no use—she couldn’t even get close to him, let alone touch his hand. The dragons growled from their spot by the door, unable to aid her in the slightest.
Eventually, Basil began to glow so intensely, he seemed white-hot. He slowly sank to the stone floor in front of the altar and crumpled in a heap. Bill reached out to touch him, yet there was a spark that shocked her hand away.
“Idris! Come over here!” Her call was answered and—now free of threat of the Old Ways—the dragon in-question bounded into the crypt. She nuzzled her snout against her human… she was able to touch him. “Wait a moment… how can you…?”
Bill thought for a moment; if Idris could touch her father, yet she couldn’t, then there truly was some sort of freaky Dragon Lord magic at play. She placed her hand on the dragon’s head, feeling her scales beneath her fingers.
“Listen,” she said, “I’m going to go get Clara. If she and Dad are the Hybrid, then she’ll be able to help him. I don’t think there’s much we can do right now.” She and Idris both glanced down at Basil; one more try and she still failed to so much as touch his face. “I’ll be back soon, yeah?
The dragon made a low rumbling noise in its throat and Bill knew it was going to be alright. She dashed for the entryway, Pilot waiting for her there, impatiently stomping his feet. They both ran through the winding corridors, careful in the tight spaces, with her hopping onto his back soon as the caves opened up. Within moments they were in the open air, headed back towards what they hoped was Berk.
There was no time for rest—she needed Clara.
She needed Clara to save her dad.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Don’t worry—I’ll get to the bottom of this.
That was what the note had said, and yet that was the one thing that Clara could do. Night after night, she paced and fretted and picked at her fingers, not wanting to leave Berk in case of her husband and stepdaughter’s return, and yet at the same time, she could not help herself but worry. They had taken both their dragons without even a hint as to where they were or had gone, making searching for them close to impossible.
Thus, for near two weeks, she was left to wait… and if there was anything she was not good at, it was waiting.
“This isn’t good,” she said, brow furrowed in worry. She was panicking, doing laps around the ground floor of her house as Danny sat in one of the chairs, her friend holding a sleeping Aodh. A fire was going in the hearth and a pile of hatchlings slept in the corner. “What if he needs me?”
“Relax, Clara,” Danny insisted. “Something tells me he’s gotten into worse scrapes than whatever he’s in now.” He stroked Aodh’s hair as he rocked the chair gently. “It’s Bill I’m concerned about.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean: can we trust her?” he mused. “It feels very convenient that soon after she shows up and dumps her dragons here, the two of them vanish.”
“We can trust her,” she nodded. “That’s not even close to why I’m worried.”
“…but the last time we encountered a family member of his, some things happened.” He gestured to his prosthetic leg, which caused Clara to exhale heavily in guilt. “I want to be wrong on that, Clara, but you can’t help but admit it’s suspicious. She seems like a good person…”
“I know, I know,” she sighed. She rested her hand on her stomach—a reminder of what it was at risk. “I just wish it wasn’t like this.”
“All you need to do is say the word and we’ll deploy.”
“I know.”
“We’d figure it out.”
“Without a doubt.”
Clara continued to flit around the room anxiously as Danny held her son and kept quiet company. She couldn’t help but worry—there was so much going on in her head that she wondered what could have possibly been going on in Basil’s. There had been no indication that he would do anything like this—he was done running—so why was he gone…?
Just then, a dull thud could be heard outside and the front door flew open. Bill and Pilot came thundering into the house, causing Clara and Danny both to jump in surprise and Aodh wake with a start.
“Clara! You have to help!” Bill gasped.
“What’s going on?!” Clara asked. “Where’s Basil?!”
“Gallifrey.”
Both Clara and Danny felt as though weights dropped in their stomachs.
“Are you sure about that…?” Danny asked, the small child in his arms now clinging to him crankily.
“I spent the first eight years of my life there, and Dad confirmed it,” Bill replied. “Dad’s in Gallifrey, and he’s in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?!” Clara demanded. “What’s going on?!”
“Dad… he took me to Gallifrey, and showed me this room I’d never seen before,” Bill tried to explain. “It was big and creepy and then he, like, dared Granddad to make him better, and now I think the dragonstone’s too much on him and he’s going mental!”
“…and you just left him there?!”
“I had no choice! I couldn’t get close to him!” Tears welled in Bill’s eyes—she was just as scared as they were. “That place does weird things to people, Clara. I just got Dad back and I don’t want to lose him again—I don’t want to lose anyone else to that hellhole. Please… help me.”
“Of course,” Clara said resolutely. She held Bill’s shoulders at arm’s length, looking her directly in the eyes. “Your dad is my husband, my children’s father, and I will do anything to bring him back to us.”
“I can gather the Stealth Riders and be ready to go in the morning,” Danny said. Bill shook her head.
“We’re going to need to plan this,” she replied. “Gallifrey didn’t exactly survive for as long as it did because it’s easy to find.”
“…but you just came from there…”
“I had no stars to guide me—it’s often cloudy there, shrouded in mist, and the large amounts of dragonstone ward off many dragons not from the den. The fact my mum was able to sail there was a bloody miracle.”
“Then we wait until morning and gather together the best we got,” Clara decided. “We’ll get the Riders, maybe some accompanying boats, supplies…”
“Bill… where’s Dad…?” Aodh asked, finally awake enough to realize what was going on. His sister took him in her arms and hugged him close.
“Dad’s back where we lived when I was your age,” she explained. “It’s a very scary and dangerous place. Mum and I have to figure out a way to fetch him.”
“Is he hurt?”
“In a way, but we can get him back,” she assured. “Idris is there—she won’t let anything too bad happen to him in the meantime.” She kissed her brother on the brow and held his head to her shoulder, hiding her face from him. It was hard, as she grit her teeth and closed her eyes in an effort to not cry. “We’ll bring Dad home.”
“Promise?”
“I promise, hatchling,” she cooed. “Dad and I found each other the long way around before—we don’t have the time to do that again.”
“You don’t…?”
“Not if we want to spend as much time with you as we can,” the young woman admitted. It was the truth, that was what mattered. The boy hugged his sister while his adults all looked at one another, concerned as to how they were going to live up to that promise.
This time around, I decided to subvert personal expectations and write something that was really angsty and avoid kidfic. Since I don’t do straight-up angst all that often, only time shall tell I guess. Ialso was supposed to post this on Valentine’s Day, or at least closer, but we see how well that worked out lol
The students know that Wednesdays are when Miss Oswald sees the Doctor, because she’s always different on Thursdays. [3107 words; fic about the Hybrid and the fallout that follows]
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Explosions were going off all around her, to the point where her ears were going to be ringing later. She ran as fast as she could, making it so that she could barely stop to ingest what was going on around her. The planet she was on happened to be in the middle of war… a war no one but her could escape.
Something grabbed her by the ankle and she fell, landing solidly in the loose dirt below. She looked back and saw a hand poking out from the ground. It hissed as she kicked it with the heel of her other boot, it letting go and glaring at her with the large eye sitting inside its palm. As she scrambled to her feet and continued running, she heard it squeal in agony as something else unseen lit it on fire. She could feel the heat encroaching on her back and she knew that whatever it was, it was burning more than just the sentinel…
“Miss…? Miss…? What’s wrong?”
Clara blinked and was suddenly transported back to the present. She was sitting at her desk, a student standing in front of it with a worried look on her face. The rest of the class was also staring at her, concern plastered on their young faces.
“Oh, nothing,” she lied.
“You didn’t move for ten whole minutes.”
“I was thinking.”
“No, Miss, it’s like you were frozen solid. Like Mister Freeze.”
“Mister Freeze is the one who freezes people, you dummy!” another student chimed in. The one at the desk flipped her classmate her middle finger and turned back to their teacher.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” Another lie. “Now let’s get back to our silent reading…”
“…which ended five minutes ago.”
Glancing at the clock on the wall, Clara realized that the student was, indeed, correct. She plucked a small stack of papers from her desk and handed them to the student in front of her. “Since you’re here, I take it you’re volunteering to pass out the worksheets?” The child grumbled and took the papers, realizing that she was trapped. Her teacher watched as the kids all put their mobiles away and reached for something to write with—it was time to, unfortunately, do their coursework.
‘How long was I lost in there?’ she wondered to herself. She watched the students went through their work, filling out the answers as well as they could. They at least behaved and, for the most part, only pulled out their mobiles after they were done, which she knew couldn’t be said about their behavior with other teachers. She wondered what brought that on, and how come she supposedly froze in place, according to the kids. Her thoughts began to race until she felt a hand on her shoulder—the student—with a stack of papers as the rest of her classmates filed out.
“Rule Number One,” the tween said, “Miss Oswald lies.” She gave Clara the papers—the finished worksheets—and the classroom emptied. The sheets had all been done and peer-marked, ready for her finalization and entering into the grades software.
It felt, nearly, as though the papers were mocking her, and she stuffed them into her bag quickly before the next set of students could walk through the door.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
The short Human stood there in the middle of the dimly-lit room, with her head held high and her shoulders squared. All around her, the irritated inhabitants of the planet she was currently visiting were gathered, staring at her. There were many whispers about her ugly hair the color of dirt and the pathetic-looking limbs she possessed instead of tentacles, which was what they knew was the superior method of locomotion. To the Human, she was being threatened by a roaming pack of appetizers, though these appetizers also happened to possess the most disturbingly Humanoid faces she’d ever seen.
“You seem to not fear us,” the largest one said. The Human was referring to it as King Calamari. “This is most curious.”
“What’s curious is how you became beakless squids,” the Human said coolly. King Calamari seemed more than a smidge unimpressed.
“Then, with such an outlook, you truly do not fear us,” a Lesser Squidling mused.
“A little unnerved, to be honest, but fear? Not really.”
This seemed to irritate the appetizers. They murmured amongst themselves, trying to figure out what to do. Eventually, King Calamari went and quickly approached Clara, with fire in his eyes and looking like a force of nature. Some of his tendrils wrapped around her neck, waist, and wrists, though she remained perfectly still…
…the hold was light—it didn’t want to touch her…
It was disgusted.
“I’ve been threatened by worse,” the Human said. “You’ve forgotten the most important thing.”
“WHICH IS?!”
“When you’re the hostage, you’re the most valuable person in the room. I have nothing to fear.”
King Calamari glared at her, bringing his tentacles back to his sides.
“You are still Clara Oswald,” the appetizer scowled. “Legend states that the being that calls itself Clara Oswald is a bad omen, that it will destroy civilizations at a whim. Why do you think you would be safe, calling yourself by such a name? Do might think we might fear you too much to kill you, but for us to be saviors? The ones who put the demon Clara Oswald to the sword once and for all? I think you’re in more danger than you believe.”
The Human considered that and shrugged. “I don’t know if you really are thinking this all the way through.”
King Calamari stared at her. “How so?”
“Why am I so dangerous? How am I so dangerous? I’m just a Human.” She shrugged and turned around, making sure she made eye contact with each of the unnerving beings. “We are notoriously killable, Humans. What makes me so dangerous? Am I armed?”
No response.
“Am I strong?”
Nothing.
“Am I quick or cunning or devious?”
Again, nothing.
“I’ll tell you why there’s such a warning about me, about why I am feared throughout the galaxy.” She rested her fists on her hips and gave King Calamari a smile. “I might be a measly Human, but I have a Time Lord on speed-dial.”
Right on cue, the VWORP VWORP VWORP sound of the TARDIS began to filter in through the air. Clara grinned as it materialized around her, popping her safely in the control room. She looked over at the Doctor, who seemed a bit waterlogged, but otherwise fine.
“Say the word,” he told her, hand resting on a lever. She considered it, and grinned.
“Now.”
He threw the lever and the console room began to rumble as it began to take off, ejecting some of the spent energy within King Calamari’s domain. Once the ship was in the vortex again, the Human and the Time Lord found their way towards one another, the latter seemingly checking over the former.
“Good, nothing I need to pay another visit to them for,” he said. “Not many people I’d ask to face a Potajibia Council to give me enough time to orchestrate an escape and rig the colony to crash onto a desert planet. I don’t think they’ll try to colonize anyone’s moons without permission ever again.”
He put the ship in idle and she sat down at her desk on the upper level to do some marking, serenaded by the sound of his guitar. Everything was as it should be.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
“Does anyone know the answer?” Clara asked. She looked over her classroom full of bored tweens and raised an eyebrow. “You’re all acting like I’m asking you to pull out your own teeth.”
“Might as well,” a student grumbled.
“…and why’s that?” she wondered. “What’s so different about reading Animal Farm now compared to earlier in the week?”
“It’s just not the same.”
“What’s not the same?”
“It just is.”
“Now that’s not giving me a lot to work with,” Clara said. She frowned as she looked at her students, wondering what it was that bothered them so much. “Work with me here; you know you can tell me things.”
“You’re not the same. Every day on Thursday, you’re not the same.”
Clara tried her best not to laugh, though she could not help but crack a grin. “What do you mean by that?” The tween shrugged. “I’m still the same old Miss Oswald, aren’t I?”
The looks in the children’s eyes told her that was entirely from the truth.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Later on that week, a student goes missing.
She disappears somewhere between the school and her parents’ restaurant, where she was supposed to work a shift for the Friday night rush. The last place anyone saw her was outside an abandoned storefront, and then, horrifically, nothing. Clara called off the following Wednesday in order to keep up with the massive amount of reassuring and comforting she had to do with the other kids. The police had even gotten involved, and yet there was nothing—all signs pointed towards a trafficking-related abduction, having snatched her off the street because she was small and alone and had an accent not from the British Isles.
Once things began to calm and more parents were around to walk unaccompanied children home, Clara found one of the child’s papers and folded it up, placing it in the TARDIS’s psychic controls.
Nothing.
Couldn’t even do that, as grand and mighty as the ship was.
What good was a space-time ship then?
She and the Doctor had a row and there were no more Wednesdays for a month.
They found one another again as complete wrecks; he disheveled and twitching and having not spoken the entire time he’d been gone, while she was cranky and neurotic. First order of business was pulling themselves through a star system, burning their way across the skies, putting so much distance behind them that their time apart—and the reason—were a respectful and somber memory.
Life is dangerous when we dwell.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
There was more than a fair distance between the two travelers and Earth when they finally had another proper adventure. They were continuing to run, this time from some trigger-happy Judoon, hiding anywhere they could on the backwater spaceport. Ducking into a dimly-lit room, they tried their best to not giggle as the beings stomped right past them, effectively securing their safety.
“Miss Oswald…?”
The overhead lights turned on and, once their eyes adjusted, they saw that they were in something akin to a studio flat, though more office-like than anything. A woman was sitting up from what looked like a nap on the couch, sleep still heavy in her eyes. She looked at the two intruders with confusion, terror, and grief—she knew them.
“…Mina…?”
“Oh, it is you!” she gasped. The woman scrambled to her feet and hugged them both. “I’ve been wondering if I’d ever see the two of you again!”
“I… uh…” The Doctor pointed at the strange woman, with her brown skin and black hair in a long braid, over to Clara, his eyebrows furrowed in thought. “What’s going on?”
“That’s what I’d like to ask you,” Clara said to the woman, Mina, who merely shrugged.
“I accidentally found myself on a spaceship that was camouflaged as an abandoned storefront. No one found that I was even aboard until after we passed the Ventress System and couldn’t turn back.”
“How long ago was that…?” Clara wondered. Mina shrugged.
“Fifteen years…? I think…? It’s tough to tell time in space on occasion.”
“Why was a spaceship that powerful hiding itself as an abandoned storefront?” the Doctor wondered.
“They were looking for you two,” Mina said. “They wanted to see how powerful you were.”
“…did you tell them…?”
“Not a word; instead I act as sort of like a guide to life on Earth here, on this station, and at the very least it keeps me safe and alive.” It was then that there was a small, croaking wail coming from behind the desk. Mina went towards it and plucked a magenta-skinned babe from its cot, bouncing it in her arms. She kissed its forehead and it calmed, cooing possessively.
“You have a tiny one,” the Doctor noted. Clara shifted in place, not sure how to fully broach the topic.
“Did you have it, or adopt it?”
“Yes.”
“…that doesn’t answer the question.”
“This is my child—I’d say I’d go back to Shoreditch with the two of you, but there’s no place for this baby there. Not in my family. Not on my home world. I don’t know how long I’ve been gone to you, but it’s been too long for me. I can’t.”
“Then what do you want us to do?” Clara wondered. Mina considered that before shrugging.
“It’s hard to say. I don’t want you to tell my parents where I am, because they will want to bring me back, and I’m no longer a little girl. There is the fact that they should stop worrying, though, and that’s worth something as well.” She shifted the baby to rest in her other arm before patting its back. “I guess this is what I get for trying to be as brave and fearless as Miss Oswald, isn’t it? With any luck, it made the community come together, and that’s worth something, after all.”
There was not much that Clara could say to that; the worth was still there, yet did it justify the pain?
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
At the next candlelight vigil, where the ever-shrinking gaggle of mournful students gathered to remember their missing friend, Miss Oswald shed the most tears any of them had seen her cry since one of the other teachers died. It was another part of her left somewhere, they knew, amongst the stars that the Doctor took her through in his blue snog-box. She was different each Thursday because each Wednesday another piece of her shattered, and there was no way to tell which part until she tried to pick up the pieces afterwards.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
“My mother warned me about you.”
Clara and the Doctor glanced at the blue-skinned extraterrestrial and simultaneously raised their eyebrows. The old man before them snapped the flints together until sparks came out and he was able to grow a spark into a flame, giving them the start of light and warmth. The suns were rapidly setting, making the need for a camp more urgent on the clear-skied desert planet.
“I didn’t know we came with warning labels,” Clara snarked. The man shrugged.
“She didn’t think it was a warning either, just a fantastic story to tell her children as they nodded off towards dreams,” he explained. “My brothers, sisters, and I were all told tales of our mother’s home world and the people from it, and you were certainly one to feature often and prominently.”
“Are you sure about that?” the Doctor frowned. He sniffed at the large stockpot readied for the coals, curious about the contents. At least he knew they could trust whatever was in there—all three of them needed to camp together that night to survive, and the only things that were available to eat would come out of what was soon to be stew. “I don’t know if we’ve been to your mother’s home world.”
“You have, many times,” he said. He glanced at Clara and then went back to tending the fire. “You even taught her.”
Clara stared at him. “…Mina…?”
“We Minanni learned from a young age that trouble follows Clara Oswald and the Doctor—two people as one, a force capable of destroying the universe on but a whim. She told of your tales until her dying days.”
“We don’t destroy, and not on whims,” she frowned.
“Tell that to the Potajibian wreckage three clicks south of here.” He watched as her expression darkened. “As I thought—Clara Oswald remembers those whom she took down with vengeance and fury.”
“…but… I…”
“…are a force to be reckoned with, the Mercurial Human and the Time Lord at her beck and call. At what point did you give into the allure of the TARDIS and the hubris that it gives? Do you even know if you can stop?”
“That’s enough,” the Doctor growled. He glared at the man, whose hospitality seemed to come at a quickly-steepening price, and contemplated his next course of action. “You don’t know what this life is, what it gives us.”
“You’re correct, and I’m glad I don’t,” the man replied. He dug into his pack and brought out a kettle, holding it out towards them. “There’s a spring just beyond those rocks—juvenile Drashigs frequent it at night—get there and back before twilight hits. Take a canteen with you for more.”
Taking the kettle and a couple canteens, the Doctor and Clara wordlessly went over the rocky ridge to where the freshwater spring sat. As they filled the containers, her hands began to shake as she held the canteen under the water’s surface. Her fingers trembled as they secured the stopper; she had to continue on.
Continuing on is what the Doctor does.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
The students could tell that Miss Oswald was hit particularly hard by their classmate’s disappearance, even if she didn’t show it outwardly at first. It was another piece that was left in the stars—another part of her destroyed over the course of a Wednesday evening—and they knew that it was simply how she was grieving like the rest of them. In how rough of shape she was on Thursday morning seemed to give them an idea of how the following week was going to go, and how that went dictated how much coursework was liable to be levied on them, of course.
Until, they noticed, that it wasn’t just Wednesdays anymore. Sometimes the blue box appeared on Mondays, or Fridays, or any day, really. There were some times that she left with him every single night, headed off in the snogbox with great aplomb. At least, they figured, he kept her busy and unworried, that the Doctor was how Miss Oswald coped with life, that he helped her process the presumed death of one of their own, and that he was what was best to keep her from going too far off the deep end. Even if they wanted to joke about standing in the street like their cousins with not-dead teachers, it wasn’t something they were keen on another of their adults accidentally doing.
Until, one day, Mister Coburn called an assembly, and broke the news to them.
Doctor Basil Brown’s time machine worked–it really worked–and now he and Bill need to get going before the clock runs out… even if they pick up someone else along the way… [a Doctor Who/Back to the Future AU]
The TARDIS rattled and shook as it wheezed to a stop. Eventually, everything stilled, causing the two occupants to take pause.
“You think it worked?” Bill wondered.
“There’s only one way to find out,” the Doctor said. He opened the TARDIS door and stepped out into the dark workshop. There were a few things tossed here and there, but to Bill, it was completely unrecognizable. To the Doctor, on the other hand… “We did it!”
“We did…?”
“This was how the workshop looked when River and I bought the house!” he gasped. He turned back towards Bill, expression manic with glee. “We went back in time! This is proof!”
“Okay, I believe you, just…” Bill peeked outside the window and saw that it was already dark. “Do you know what day it is?”
“We’ll figure that out later—let’s compare watches.” They did, and both were the same: 18:07. “We should make sure to head back here by half past eight, just to make sure.”
“…and if we don’t make it in time?”
“We’ll be stuck here as the TARDIS jettisons itself back to our home time period,” he said gravely. “Now let’s go and see if the library’s still open. We might run into your mum on the way.”
It was difficult to get the plywood off the door from the inside, but the Doctor and Bill both were able to push their way out of the workshop and into the darkening streets of St. Luke’s. There were shops that had changed, ones that had stayed the same, and—despite the buildings almost all being intact from what it was in the future—there were plenty of visual markers that said they were in the 1980s. Women were walking by with some of the biggest hair styles Bill’d seen in a long time and it felt as though she was looking at several film sets all at once. She glanced around, marveling at their surroundings.
“Cor… I knew not a lot changes here far as the buildings and whatnot, but I didn’t think it was that bad…”
“Welcome to the Dark Ages, when Thatcherism somehow reigned supreme and many couldn’t get through the decade without hard drugs,” the Doctor shrugged. He glanced over at her, who was giving him a weird look. “Hey—it’s a miracle any of us got out of this decade alive, let alone with all our wits about us.”
“It makes me wonder what I’ll be saying about my youth,” she deadpanned. They continued walking down the pavement to see that their first different building: a dance club that was pumping out some music that Bill didn’t quite recognize, but knew she heard on the classic rock radio station. “I don’t remember this place—this should be the Tesco, yeah? I thought the outside was just brand-related retrofitting.”
“It was demolished before you were born, after a fire had gutted the place,” he explained. “Some young hot-shot was playing around with pyrotechnics for a show and it exploded, catching the stage and the rest of the building on fire. She went down with the ship, so to speak, and they never even found her.”
Bill curled her lip and shuddered. One of the last things she wanted to do is think about ghosts and burning buildings and how the tragedy was so thoroughly forgotten by the time she was a child that the information had been completely new to her as an adult. The Doctor noticed her discomfort and simply shrugged.
“Let’s just get to the library and maybe we can actually accomplish what we need to before the time limit. It was in a few different spots before it settled on the building you know it as being in, so we have to get moving if we’re to check all the locations in time.”
Just as the Doctor and Bill were about to walk by the club, a young woman burst out of the building absolutely furious. She was positively drenched, her hair, dress, and the military-looking coat resting on her shoulders looking rather ruined.
“I’m going to kill him,” she seethed, fists balled tightly. Her accent was slightly jarring, with Blackpool being all over her words to the point the travelers nearly thought they had missed the St. Luke’s mark physically and landed in an eerie lookalike. Bill cleared her throat and her head snapped in the time travelers’ direction. “What?!”
“You wouldn’t know where the library is, would you?” Bill asked cautiously. The other woman looked at the two and raised an eyebrow.
“You look more like you’re going to go clubbing than to the library,” she noted, her brow furrowing as she continued to look at the strangers. Her eyes lingered on the Doctor, taking in his appearance before she brought her attention back to Bill. “Besides, it is probably closed for the night.”
“It’s a long story,” the Doctor said. He looked at the woman’s soaked form and took off his jacket, trading it for the one on her shoulders, which he then tied around her waist. “Can you please show us? After that we can walk you home, show up the pudding-brain that ditched you.”
The woman looked at him, clearly considering the offer. “Alright—follow me. The name’s Clara Oswald.”
“I’m Bill Potts.”
“…and people call me the Doctor.”
“The Doctor, hmm?” Clara smirked. She began to walk, figuring they would keep up with her quick steps; it was clear she was used to keeping stride with long-legged people. “What, are you the sort of person who simply crooks his finger and people follow?” She glanced over at Bill and tilted her head, tone turning serious. “Are you alright?”
“Uh… yeah…?”
“He’s not… forcing you to be here, is he?”
Bill burst into laughter at that, unable to stop herself. “The Doctor’s more like my dad, and a decent one at that.” That caused Clara to glance back at the Doctor to see that his face was turning a bright pink color. “We’re just here to meet up with a couple of people, then catch our ride to leave. No worries.”
“…and one of them works at the library, then?”
“Precisely,” the Doctor said. “You wouldn’t happen to know Melody Pond, would you?”
“Can’t say that I do, but I’m pretty new around here myself.” Her pace began to quicken as he expression darkened. “I’m thinking this is going to be more temporary than I had originally intended. Had been here with a bloke in a rented flat, but considering the fact he just up and disappeared on me… it’s probably time I head back home and figure out where to go from here.”
“So, your boyfriend ditched you after you were subject to some sort of—I assume—water-based prank and now you’re ready for an immediate change?” Bill surmised with a grin. “It’s a shame, really, ‘cause it’s almost like I know a guy.”
“How so?”
“I think that’s enough of that,” the Doctor said, his ears a nice, bright red now. “Let’s just get to the library, please.”
“Sorry, Glasgow—this Melody Pond of your must be some lady for you to follow her all the way here. I can respect that.”
“It’s a bit difficult to explain,” he shrugged. “All I want is a bit of closure, is that so bad?”
“I guess that depends on the closure,” Clara replied. The trio crossed the street and soon the library was in sight. “Are you sure about this? Why not wait until it’s open tomorrow?”
“There’s not exactly time,” the Doctor said. He maneuvered himself so that he was ahead of Bill and Clara and took the lead, heading straight for the building in question.
“Is he actually your dad?” Clara asked Bill in a hushed tone.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Just a friend… one I help out a lot.”
“You sound like you’ve lived here your entire life, though, and he does not.”
“I have, but…” They were now on the library, the three able to walk in without a problem. “Why is the library open this late?”
“I must have misjudged the time,” Clara said. “It looks like it’s only just before seven—library closes at nine.”
“That’s… impressive…”
“You’re telling me—I never lose track of time like that,” Clara noted. “I must have spent only half an hour or so in that club. It was so torturous that it felt like ages.”
“Speaking of, how did you get all—”
“Sshhh, I think the Doctor’s found his gal.” Clara pointed towards the Doctor; he was standing in the middle of the main entryway, staring in both terror and yearning. There, on the other side of the room from the entrance, was the woman who Bill remembered from her childhood, whom she most often saw in photos. Melody Pond, before she changed her name to River Song for publishing purposes and had gotten her doctorate in library sciences, was shelving books. Her hair was not the same blonde that Bill remembered, but her curls were instead a light brown, pulled back into a ponytail that just barely contained them, despite the fact that they would have been the envy of all those out on the pavement in their volume alone. It was without a doubt, unequivocally, Doctor River Song roughly fifteen years before she passed away.
She was there, and Doctor Basil Brown was frozen.
“Get over here,” Bill hissed, pulling the Doctor off towards some tall shelving units. “Stop standing there with your mouth gaping like a schoolboy who saw his first pair of tits.”
“I can’t help it,” he growled back. “That’s my wife.”
“Wait… you’re married to her?” Clara wondered. Oh yeah, that’s right, she was there as well. “That’s… erm… unexpected.”
“Not married yet, so calm yourself,” he replied firmly. “I need to get just ten minutes alone with her. That’s all I want.”
“You can do a lot in ten minutes.”
“Yeah, and everything I want to do is talk.” He looked at Clara and Bill and exhaled heavily, knowing that this was going to be the culmination of everything that he had been working towards for the past ten, fifteen years. “Just let me have this, alright?”
“…Basil…?!”
Bill and the Doctor both froze at the sound of his name, fearful that they were already discovered. They poked their heads around the shelving unit to see that Melody was looking at him… a younger version of him, who was approaching her with flowers in one hand and a devilish grin on his face.
“What the bloody hell is that?!” Bill whispered. “You never said anything about visiting her while she was here?!”
“I don’t remember this!” he fired back. They watched as his past self kissed Melody, her hands going into his wavy brown hair while he held her with his free arm. Bill felt somewhat nauseous at the amorous display. “Okay, this might complicate things.”
“Oh… that’s… you…” Clara marveled. She looked from the Doctor, to his younger self, and back. “That does complicate things.”
“Like I said: it’s a bit difficult to explain.”
“How difficult do you think it is?” Clara scoffed. “You time-traveled, probably to right a wrong with her, and now you’re here with grey in your hair and a grad student helping you along because you’re no good alone but don’t have a kid of your own to have inherit her curls and your arse.”
“…and how did you…?”
“I teach literature in my spare time—this seems like a pretty solid conclusion to a melodrama.” Clara then glanced over at Bill and pursed her lips in thought. “Then why are youhere…?”
“I wanted to meet my mum,” Bill admitted. Clara nodded at that.
“I’d meet my mum again if I could; I get it.” She kept her eye on the younger version of the Doctor as he took Melody by the arm and led her out of the building. “Shit—they’ve gone.”
“This complicates a lot,” the Doctor said, sounding like a broken record. “I can’t meet myself—the implications could be catastrophic.” His face glazed over for a moment before a grimace overtook him. “Oh… actually, I do remember tonight.”
“Did you at least get a leg up?” Clara asked. The Doctor shrugged wordlessly—of course he did. “Let’s go and figure out if we can get a hold of Bill’s mum, then see if we can get between yourself and your future wife long enough for you to say your goodbyes.”
“I don’t think I appreciate the tone you’re taking with preemptiving this mission,” he interjected.
“Well, you’re obviously going to be busy, so let’s at least see if we can find a phone book in the meantime,” Clara said. The Doctor looked at Bill in an attempt to find an ally, only to get the opposite response he wanted: Bill looking at Clara with hope in her eyes.
He really was off his game, wasn’t he?
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
“Are you sure your mum never went by another name?” Clara asked. The three were huddled around an open phone booth, with Clara quickly thumbing through the directory. Bill was holding her mobile over the book so she could use it as a torch, which impressed the other woman.
“Nope—never changed her name,” Bill said, shaking her head. “I know I live in the house my foster mother grew up in, but she never had much contact with my mum outside of school. Her parents would still be there, most likely, and that does us no good.”
“…and what about you?” Clara asked the Doctor. “Do you remember where your liaison took place?”
“I remember, and it wasn’t merely a liaison,” he blushed. “This was the night I first proposed.”
Bill looked at her mentor, not entirely certain she was processing everything properly. “You brought us back to the night you proposed?! As in proposed marriage?!How did you forget that?!”
“I tried to aim for a certain date, but it didn’t seem to work out,” he shrugged. “Come on… how was I supposed to know that tonight was when we’d go back?”
“It just sounds like you’re a horrible driver,” Clara cut in. The Doctor scowled at her.
“You don’t drive a time machine.”
“You certainly did try if you were able to come back this far.”
Unable to counter that, the Doctor simply folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t see you being able to drive a time machine any better.”
“Mmmhmm, yeah, just be glad I’m not reporting the two of you to the police for being utter weirdos.” She glanced at Bill’s mobile and raised an eyebrow. “If that’s supposed to be a phone, why don’t you just call on it?”
“The technology used to connect this to other phones won’t come into the area for another twenty years, and that would be in the infant stages,” she explained. “It’s not all super tech and flying cars in the future.”
“It’s the future, not Thunderbirds,” Clara shrugged. She closed the phone book and shook her head. “Do you have any idea as to where she would be hanging about?”
“No,” Bill replied quietly, turning off the light on her mobile. “She might not be here.”
“Alright, then, we should probably go and at least take care of tracking down the Doctor’s younger self and Miss Melody, get something done tonight, and maybe get lucky and run into your mum on the way” Clara decided. “Do you remember where she lived? Was it a flat or a house?”
“She rented a house, not too far from where we need to be,” he said. “After we were married and here permanently, we bought the bicycle garage on Grynden Lane and the attached house.”
“You live there in the future…?” Clara cringed. “Well, I guess you’d need a lot of space to build a time machine…”
“Not as much as you’d think,” Bill said. She followed the Doctor and Clara as they began to walk in the direction of some residential streets. Falling back a few paces, she kept looking around at their surroundings, taking in the disturbingly-stubborn similarities between the St. Luke’s she knew and the one she currently was in. It was a bit surreal… okay, it was more than just a bit surreal, but it was still interesting all the same.
Then, just as they were getting ready to turn a corner, she saw something out the corner of her eye. Down the street was a group of people all crowded around something. She tried to get a better look and saw that it was a group of teenagers crowding around a particularly short one, a backpack being held high over her head.
Shit.
“Basil, hold on,” Bill said before changing course. She stormed up to the group with her best cross-face on. “Oi, you, what do you think you’re doing?!”
“Wouldja look at that?” the lad holding the backpack chuckled. “The little freak has a friend.”
“Look at that: your manners are appalling,” Bill fired back. “Now give her the backpack. It is hers, right?”
“It’s ours now,” another lad scoffed. “Maybe she shouldn’t carry dangerous shite on her if she doesn’t want it liberated.”
“Give it back!” the teenaged girl snarled, jumping up in an attempt to get her stuff back. She just barely hooked her finger on the zipper pull, getting a couple things to fall out of the opening. “I worked hard on this stuff! You’re just jealous!”
“Billie! What are you doing?!” the Doctor shouted as he approached the group. The offending teens all caught sight of the older man rushing towards them and bolted, not wanting to incur the wrath of what they thought could have been a legitimate grown-up. As they ran away, Bill knelt down and helped the teen girl pick up the things that had dropped—they were small and round, only about the size of a golf ball, and looked like prop bombs.
“Thanks,” the teen said. She started stuffing the items in her jacket, which was covered in patches and pins. “Those arseholes made off with most of it—damn it.”
“What was that?” Bill asked.
“I’m headed towards my job—I do stagework at the club,” she explained. “The special effects were in there.” The teen saw the Doctor and stood up straight, raising an eyebrow. “What, are you her dad or something?”
“I might as well be, considering how much she listens to me,” he grumbled. “Come on, Bill, we don’t have that much time left before we have to go.”
“Alright—sorry about that… uh…”
“Ace,” the teen grinned. She shook Bill’s hand and ran off, headed towards the center of town.
“What did I tell you?!” the Doctor whispered angrily. “No changing the past.”
“You would have done the same thing if you noticed first.” He frowned at that, with her smiling smugly in response. “Come on now, we’ve got to go, right?” They then went and joined their somewhat-native guide, who seemed very amused at the entire situation.
A few more turns in the street and finally the Doctor, Bill, and Clara found the house that was currently being rented by one Melody Williams. It was at the edge of town, with some more trees and shrubbery around it to cocoon it from the rest of the neighborhood. That made the trio breathe a sigh of relief—there would be that many fewer chances that they’d be caught. With no lights on from the front of the house, they went around to the back garden and saw nothing was on back there either.
“We have to be upstairs,” the Doctor figured. He kept his voice low; attention was the last thing he wanted at that moment. “I’ll have to check.”
“By what, breaking into the house?” Bill hissed. He shook his head and took a chair from the patio, placing it underneath where a second-story window sat. “You’re not going to reach with that.”
“Not by myself, no,” he said, gesturing to the chair. “Come on so I can stand on your shoulders.”
“Why me?!”
“I know you can handle my weight because you’ve carried me out of things before,” he said. “Besides, she doesn’t even scrape my chin in heels.”
“Then hold her up—she looks light.”
“…and have you forgotten what she’s wearing?” They glanced over at Clara—she seemed mostly dry now, if her dress was still a bit on the ruined side—and she shrugged. “I’m not here to invoke that.”
“Wise move, Glasgow,” Clara smirked. She gave him a wink and he went red in the face, turning around so he faced the house. Why did she suddenly look really good in his old jacket?
“Let’s get going Bill; I don’t need you two seeing me and River together, alright?”
“Fine…” Bill sighed. She stood on the chair with the Doctor and helped him attempt to scale the stone wall, finding handholds until he was able to set his boots on her shoulders. Holding him in place by his ankles, she struggled to stay steady, hoping that he would be quick. “Any luck up there?”
“…I didn’t realize my body could bend that way back then…”
“Okay, you’re confirmed to be in the middle of a shag, now get off me!”
The Doctor lingered in the window for a moment before complying, easing himself down until he could jump without injuring himself. He looked over at Clara, still blushing, and tried to play it cool.
“It looks like we’ve got a clear shot.”
“Funny, so do I,” she noted. He saw she was looking down, so he followed her line of vision—watching his younger self in the middle of a premarital tumble with his future wife accidentally made him a bit tight in the trousers. Clearing his throat, he maneuvered the jacket around his waist so that it rested in front of his fly.
“We need to distract my past self so that I can talk to my wife,” he said, attempting to sound nonchalant.
“Well, we better hurry up, because we only have ten minutes before we have to head back,” Bill mentioned, looking at her watch. “What do you propose we do?”
“How about throwing some pebbles up at the window?” Clara offered. She pointed at the small rocks sitting along the wall of the house, barely bigger than pea gravel. “That can get your attention, while not going and damaging anything—”
“Hey! Who are you?!” The trio looked towards the back of the garden to see the neighbor behind the house looking over the wall at them. “Miss Williams! Miss Williams! There’s someone in your garden!”
“Shit! Run!” the Doctor panicked. The three of them rushed out of the garden and back down the street, hoping that they could keep from being caught again by the neighbor. “That bloody Mrs. Bleaker—always was too much of a busybody for our own good.”
“I guess this is a wash then,” Bill frowned. “We couldn’t see my mum, couldn’t get to talk to your wife… the only good thing that happened is that we ran into Clara.”
A heavy silence fell on them as everything sunk in. The Doctor had achieved a miraculous feat by being able to travel back in time, and yet the reasons he went were completely out of his control. He sighed heavily and scratched the back of his scalp.
“I’m sorry; let’s head back, Bill,” he said. He then turned to Clara. “I guess this is goodbye.”
“I’ll walk you back,” she said. She took his arm and they continued on, heading back to the workshop. By the time they were able to work their way into the building, the TARDIS was beginning to wheeze.
“Shit! It’s started!” The Doctor gasped. “Hurry, Bill! Before it’s too late!”
“…but Doctor…!”
“We’ll try again in the morning! There’s no time!” He shoved her towards the police box and they jammed themselves in. The machine was just about to disappear when Clara opened the door and squeezed in herself, shocking the other two.
“What are you doing?!” Bill asked.
“You don’t get to just leave like that,” Clara answered. She then looked at the Doctor as the box began to rumble. “You didn’t give a proper goodbye. Who gives a proper goodbye by running off without a word?”
“Do you realize what you’ve just done?!” he asked. “We’re going forward in time! Skipping over thirty years!” Clara instead grinned at him.
“Sounds like a better adventure than anything that idiot can give me.”
The idea for this one actually came from a bunch joking around in the Clara’s Diner Discord server and the fact that some of us are still absolutely enamored with the image of Ian having a row with a bunch of sheep.
2382 words; I guess this is a reminder that this is a fantasy version of North Ronaldsay, where there’s more than a few dozen people who live there year-round (so, more like a few hundred at the least, possibly going over the historical highs of ~500) so there’s, like, some modern flats in town and enough kids to keep the school open; this is all just Ian the Island Weirdo as seen by the normal mortal residents; Time Lord thinking/shenanigans are sort of a perfect soft-scifi analogy for fae mercurialism and I really don’t know how I should take that
The thing about Ian Morlo was that he was never entirely what the other island residents expected when they learned that there was someone new living in Orson’s place. Well… an additional new person—it already passed though Orson’s nephew to the lass who owned it currently—but who was really counting? They watched him curiously from afar, which had been the only way to do so at first, as not long after he arrived, a nasty series of storms had passed through the area, but once the sea and sky were in their summer calm, he seemed to be anything but.
“Why aren’t you in the pund?!” he shouted at a sheep as it walked across his path. He had a list in-hand and a reusable shopping tote hooked on his arm; he was on errands.
“You know, if you wanted to, you could help out,” one of the villagers said as he watched the sheep meander through the road. Ian huffed, shoving his hands in his trouser pockets.
“The sheep and I don’t get on,” he claimed. The sheep bleated from afar, seemingly incensing him. “Yeah! Don’t think I’ve forgiven you for what you did to my hair!”
“What, exactly, did that specific sheep do to your hair?” the villager asked.
“It tried to eat it,” Ian claimed, with all the seriousness of a man used to saying much sillier.
“These sheep don’t eat hair—they eat brown kelp.”
“I know what they eat, and it’s frankly an insult.” The sheep came plodding back, gently headbutting Ian’s thigh. “Don’t think you can catch me off-guard, yeh soda-shitter.”
“Ian… it’s a sheep.”
“Like I said: we don’t get on. My hair is not that salty.”
At that, Ian maneuvered his way around the sheep and kept on walking towards the town, leaving the villager shaking his head. The man lifted the wayward sheep upon his shoulders and brought it back to the pund, placing it in the low stone-walled enclosure with all the other sheep of its grouping.
“What’s with that look?” wondered the other villager who was manning the pund. She watched as he shrugged.
“I don’t know if the academic over at Oswald’s is joking or if he’s just trying to get out of doing manual labor. Could be both.”
“Ignore him—the man’s probably going to leave soon anyhow,” she replied. “With how grouchy he is and how little guff she takes, there’s no way it’s going to last much more than after those visitors she’s got coming next week.”
“Maybe… maybe not… we’ll just have to see…” He glanced down at the sheep that he had placed back in the pund and raised his eyebrow.
Now why would a sheep want to eat human hair of all things?
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
It was nearly summer, which meant that he was shouting.
Well, it wasn’t as though he refrained from shouting during the winter months. Actually, he seemed to be rather good at shouting in all sorts of weather. It was simply put that, Ian Morlo, the man who inexplicably showed up one day and made a disturbingly-quick turnaround of stuffing, then marrying, the English lass on the northern end of the island, wandered more in the summer months, and that meant that others had to hear him shout.
“I will not be sassed back to like that!” he scolded. An elderly couple heard him from inside their house, causing the wife to cringe.
“You left the window open, again,” she scowled at her husband.
“It’s such a calm day,” he justified, remaining in his armchair. When he did not move, his wife huffed and went to close the window, except, she was trapped, as she made eye contact.
“Hello,” Ian said awkwardly. The toddler on the baby leash in his hand jumped up and down and waved, babbling importantly before returning to butterfly chasing.
“Hello there, Ian,” the elderly woman replied. “Could you please keep it down? I don’t know why you insist on talking to your daughter like that.”
“Oh, it wasn’t Terra, it was the wood nymph,” he stated, pointing at the tree next to him. A moment passed and he grunted sourly at the plant. “You try doing this sort of thing day after day and see how pleasant you are.”
“Ian… son… you’re talking to a tree…”
“I’m talking to the wood nymph inside of the tree. Now if you excuse me, Terra and I were going to meet Clara at the school, and I don’t think,” he glared at the tree, “I shall endure this abuse for much longer.”
“Are you alright, lad?” the woman asked. “You seem a bit stressed.”
“Been worse,” he shrugged. Ian then gently tugged on the leash, letting his daughter know they were about to start walking again. “Come on, pup; let’s go meet Mam at work so we can walk her home.”
“Mamma! Mamma!” the toddler shrieked happily, clapping her hands as she followed her father. The old woman shook her head and returned to her chair, not even bothering to close the window.
“It was the tree this time,” she said.
“I thought he said it was the nymph inside the tree.”
“There’s no pulpy tart inside that tree; be careful, or you’ll get just as mad as he is.”
“Seadh, a ghràidh,” he replied. There was no use arguing it. Now he just needed to learn to keep the damn window shut.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
If Charlotte had not seen him do something this level of strange before, she almost would have not believed her eyes.
She was returning to the pund after lunch, getting ready to continue shearing the small remaining portion of the flock she was in charge of that day, when she saw him: Ian Morlo. He was comely, that part was not to be mistaken, but the woman was not too keen on the fact that island’s resident nutter was standing atop the stone wall of the enclosure, dangling a lamb by its hind legs. The other sheep were bleating at him, possibly in an effort to have him put down the lamb.
“Ian!” she scolded. “What are you doing?!”
“I need to keep track of this one,” he claimed. He gestured with the lamb, as though that explained everything. “It’s the only one without a brine-soaked brain.”
“Put that lamb down right now!” she insisted. He didn’t, so she forcibly pulled it from his hands and let the creature go within the grassy pund. “You could have just looked at the eartag and remembered that.”
“That is inefficient—they can break and come off, and then what?”
“Then we just put another tag on it—simple,” she replied. “What the hell has gotten into you?!”
“I didn’t think there was anything—oh! Clara!” Ian waved as he saw his wife begin to walk towards the pund, their two-year-old daughter running along behind her. He walked along the top of the pund’s walls and walked right off the edge to land on the grass before them, seemingly not missing a step. “I think you need to explain to Charlotte how rare it is for me to find one of these kelp-munchers that actually is pleasant to be around.”
“What did he do this time, Char?” Clara asked.
“Looked like he was ready to drop a lamb from twelve feet up,” was the reply. Clara frowned at her husband as he picked up their daughter and allowed her to cling tightly to him.
“You’ve taken to threatening lambs now?”
“No! The very specific lamb I had was one of the good ones…!” He was cut off by his wife raising her hand, which he took as his cue to listen to her (and only her).
“If you’re going to threaten the livestock, then at least do it when they’re not captive in the punds, and stick to the adults,” she said.
“I told you,” he insisted, “I was keeping track of it…”
“Ian, be an adult about this.”
“Fine…” he muttered. His shoulders sank, which his daughter took as permission to climb onto them. Once there, she began to pet his fluff of hair, which he was allowing to grow a bit on the longer side as of late.
“Fwuffy!” the little girl cooed. “Daddy! You fwuffy like sheeps!”
“I am not ‘fluffy like the sheep’, young lady,” he groused. The flock bleated at him and he shot them a glare. “I’m watching you! Now don’t ruin that lamb’s chances at becoming something actually worth maintaining this pund for, you kelp-hoovers!” More bleating and Ian’s face went red. “You watch your mouths!”
“Ian come on, let’s go,” Clara insisted. She began to pull her husband along by his elbow, giving Charlotte an embarrassed grin. “I’ll see you when you come to pick Lorens up tomorrow!”
“Tìoriadh!” Charlotte said, giving her friend a half-hearted wave. She then readied to begin shearing again, trying to keep her mind off of why Clara kept Ian around; even with those looks, she was surprised that the other woman’s patience hadn’t run out long ago.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-
To Lorens, there was nothing really like being at home.
His cousins would tease him for it, which he figured was fine. It didn’t matter that he moved in with his mam’s sister and her family in Lerwick for secondary school, nor did it matter when he visited his dad’s sister and her family in Bathgate, because none of his cousins knew how good it was when he’d step off the ferry and finally be back on the island. It was almost nine years since he had lived regularly on North Ronaldsay, and he was eager to pick that back up again. It was the familiarity of it all: the clusters of buildings, the high-built drystane dyke that kept the sheep in their preferred pastures, the folks with whom he had grown up with and around…
…even if some of them were nuttier than a bag of cashews.
“Hi there, Mr. Morlo,” Lorens said as he ran into one person in particular. He remembered the Spring when Mr. Morlo was wrecked off the coast and taken in by the now-Mrs. Morlo, as he seemed to be fiddling with the lock to the school’s front door. The other man lit up at the sight of him, seemingly taken aback by his presence.
“Lorens, your parents didn’t tell us you were coming in,” he said. “How’s the gap year coming along?”
“I’m honestly surprised that I don’t smell permanently of fish,” Lorens chuckled weakly. “I’ve hauled enough mackerel to feed all of the island for at least two years, and probably a good chunk of Sanday on top of it.”
“Did you hear from uni yet? I can’t be the only hopeless academic on this island.”
“No, but I sent out my paper a while ago, so I expect to hear from someone soon, no matter what the answer might be,” Lorens shrugged. “I did what you said in regards to sourcing the poems—my old instructor in Lerwick loves it.”
“Well now that;s goo—hey! What do you think you’re doing here?!” Lorens looked over his shoulder and saw a fully-grown seal flopping its way across the pavement. “You know not to haul out in town! There’s bicycles and cars up here! I don’t care if the sheep are being dense!” Mr. Morlo ran after the seal as it lumbered around without caring it was being shouted at.
“Oh God, not again.” Lorens looked back towards the door to see Mrs. Morlo stepping over the threshold, staring exasperatedly at her husband. She then caught sight of Lorens himself and smiled kindly. It used to be that she was taller than him and now, well, he had even grown taller than her husband. “Well, this is a much better surprise. How are you doing?”
“Well—thought I’d surprise Mam and Dad with a visit while work’s shut down—a fire, of all things.”
“Yes, I read about that; it’s good to know that you’re alright and no… one… was… hurt…” She seemed distracted, as she was looking up and down the road. “Did you see where the kids went?”
“Were they supposed to be with Mr. Morlo…?”
“Please, you’re old enough—we’re Clara and Ian—now where are those two?”
“Mam! Mam! Mam!” Right on cue, Terra and Douglas came running up to their mother, the former pulling a toy wagon behind her. “Oh! Hi Mr. Lorens!”
“Kids,” Mrs. Morlo groaned, “why is there a seal pup in your wagon?”
“Her name is Bridget and she wants to visit the crofts!” Douglas said excitedly. The fuzzy seal barked and the boy nodded. “Yeah, that’s our mam, and that’s one of our sitters, Mr. Lorens. He doesn’t come by too often.”
“So you named the seal Bridget?” Lorens asked cautiously. Terra shook her head as importantly as any nine-year-old could.
“No—she told us that herself.” The seal pup barked again, seemingly happy. “Bridget Dagmarsdottir of Clan Gannet, yes, we know.”
“Kids!” Mr. Morlo shouted from down the road. “Is that Bridget?!”
“RUN!” Terra shouted, pulling away the toy wagon as fast as she could, her younger brother right behind. Mr. Morlo attempted to chase after them, yet however double-backed a few strides and handed his wife a set of keys.
“Please lock up I have to go before Dagmar eats a small dog in protest bye see you at home,” he said all in one breath before scurrying off, his arms flapping in the air. The hauled seal—the presumed Dagmar—flopped after him.
“So… they all talk to seals now…” Lorens noted. Clara exhaled heavily.
“Yeah.”
“Sheep still too?”
“Everybloodyday.”
“You know… my auntie’s neighbor is a psychiatrist… his office has children’s and genetics specialists.”
“Your mum told me. Several times.”
“Just… erm… putting that out there…”
“I know… I’m not cross,” Mrs. Morlo said as she locked up the school. “Just very tired. These kids just need to slow down… but you know that.” She patted Lorens on the arm before beginning to walk down the road and out of town. “Depending on how long you’re here, ever consider stopping by to babysit?”
“I’m loving it because we’re in a very different place with the Doctor and Clara in the modern series (S9). It’s been a while since I’ve seen the early stages of the Twelfth Doctor trying to pretend that he doesn’t fancy Clara. He used to be saying, ‘Oh, you’re ugly…Oh, you’re disgusting…Go away!’. Now he’s saying, ‘Stop looking so good’. So that’s fun.”
—
Steven Moffat talking to Jaci Stevens in late 2014
At the BAFTA screening of Listen on Sept 10, 2014, Steven Moffat clearly states that the Twelfth Doctor is “besotted” with his companion. The definition of the word besotted is:
In my opinion you don’t have to wait for series 9 to see that these two have an obvious connection, whether they admit it or not…
But, in case you did miss it, once again the creator of the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald goes out of his way to say that Twelve fancies Clara. How much more proof does anyone need? Series 9 would just cement what we already knew…
Twelve & Clara are literally crazy about each other.
