Hide, pt 2

She was still thoroughly rattled when they got back to the manor house, back to the worried empath and the determined ex-spy and their muddled love story. Of course, her distraction did not go unnoticed.
"What's wrong?" Emma asked lowly, concern writ large across her face. Clara, usually able to match even the Doctor word for word in volume suddenly found she didn't have the words for this.
"I just saw something I wish I hadn't." What with the ghosts and demons about, that should be vague and off-putting enough, right?
"What did you see?" Evidently, she wasn't quite vague enough. She got the feeling that she wasn't going to be able to just blow Emma off, so she gives at least part of the right answer.
"That everything ends."
"No, not everything." Emma looks past her, to the Major, and her expression turns longing. "Not love. Not always."

Clara was saved from having to come up with an answer to that by the Doctor's excited babble - he was finally ready to share what he had learned.

And what a story it was - first, there was no ghost at all - but there was a girl, a girl from the future who had crash-landed near here, but not near here at all. She was in a pocket universe, whatever that might be, here but not here, and as fractions of seconds went by there, centuries went by here, explaining why the girl never changed in all in any of the photos.

Of course, he had a plan to save her. That's just the way things worked around him.

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They had set up... well. To be honest. She's not sure what they have set up here. It seems to involve a lot of cables, and wires, and clocks, and the Doctor going 'no not there, are you mad?' and then him moving said whatever thing a millimeter to the left. But once he was satisfied, he set Emma in the middle of it, and placed the most bizarre looking crown on her head, one with a giant blue stone that glowed with an eerie light it shouldn't have.

(no subject)

She is being emotionally blackmailed by a pair of teenagers. She is, it is horrible, and what's worse, they are getting away with it. They could at least attempt to not look smug, really, it would be kind to her feelings.

She thought though - she thought, well, he's an impossibly old and intelligent alien (who happens to like having human friends, it's odd). He's impossibly old and impossibly bright (usually) and while she has managed to be blackmailed by a pair of teenaged hooligans surely he will be able to stand his ground.

If anything, he caved faster than she did - sure, he'd made his 'cat in a twee bonnet' face, and he'd made a few minutes of sulky protests, but then he'd produced a ticket from somewhere in his pockets and announced that they were going to go on a spacy zoomba (whatever one of those was), and it was all over after that. Angie and Arty had looked properly smug after that - she's never going to hear the end of this.

She was so disappointed. And she's hoping, desperately, that for once they can have a nice quiet outing.

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"Well, here we are! Hedgewick's World, the biggest and best amusement park that will ever be, and we've got a golden ticket!" The Doctor cheers, hopping out of his ship onto a planet that looks remarkably like the moon - grey dust and American flag and all. The kids (little brats that they are) notice this, and comment. She stands back and lets them do it, because really, he's the one that brought them along, he should have to put up with their grief even if she can spot a power cable and a huge 'spacey zoomba' sign that evidently they've both missed. But it's good - they're where they're supposed to be, and they can do this spacey zoomba thing, and get the ice cream the ticket promises, and then they can go home, and it will all be fine.

And then life gets weird. She shouldn't be surprised - first by the guy in the top hat asking if they're his ride off-planet, then by the platoon of soldiers that come looking like something out of a bad sci-fi and sounding like something out of historical piece on Romans. She at least isn't surprised when they follow the guy with the top hat even when finding out that the planet has been abandoned on the whole and any sane person would be running as fast as possible.

Perhaps it's a sign how badly her own sanity has been effected that she doesn't run either.

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