#whouffle

From my new prompt fill here:

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…

An Index Card for You[tumblr]/[FFN]/[AO3]

Another instructor at St. Luke’s catches the Doctor’s eye… now if only he could remember how he knew her…

The Professor, the Doctor, and Bill Makes Three[tumblr]/[FFN]/[AO3]

The start of a s10 AU where Clara and Twelve both teach at St. Luke’s and take an interest in Bill.

…as well as a soft-line fill where Twelve is mucking about in Coal Hill academia…

When Silver Adorns Both Our Brows [tumblr]/[FFN]/[AO3]

Prompt where Clara is an older school teacher nearing retirement. Her and 12 are still just as in love except that they both are silver haired now.

Doctor Robotics[tumblr]/[FFN]/[AO3]

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.

vines by: malcontentowlcaretaker[tumblr]/[FFN]/[AO3]

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.

This has been languishing in Edit Hell and for that I am sorry.

Chapter1-2-3-4-FFN-AO3 

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.

Chapter1-2-3-4-5-FFN-AO3 

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.

We’re back! I hit a snag in writing, plus the Prompt Dump that was December, tangled a couple things, but we’re still going along!

Part1-FFN-AO3

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.”