Am I A Good Man?

It was a bit strange having a friend you didn’t quite know when the next time you would see them was.  Not for some mundane reason like a new job, or one moving a few miles down the road; but something harder to wrap your head around — like hundreds of years or millions of miles.  

She always said the same thing on her way out: ’ you know where to find me for next time.’  Somehow, he always did whether he meant to or not.  

So here she sat on the ground, legs pulled up against her chest, back to a familiar blue box that only seemed slightly out of place in Trafalgar Square to her while she watched people pass by.  No one appeared to be home at the moment, but he would be back soon enough.  It’d be easy enough to pick him out of a crowd: the hair and bow-tie had always made things easier.  

A shadow crossed in front of her suddenly.

The walk to Trafalgar Square was short, and thankfully, uneventful. Wind whipped round, slicing at his features, bags under his eyes more prominent than usual. Although his new face was an older one, he found that he had managed to settle into it, imbue it with the youth of his spirit. Not today. Today, and for the past few days, whenever he had passed a mirror and dared to look at himself, all he could think was that he looked old. Tired.

Ready to give up so soon, Doctor?

That voice in his head, not his but hers, with that accent; he wondered, was that a coincidence, or had she watched him across time and space, and matched his regeneration with her own, in some sort of perverse mirror image? That was the sort of game that she liked to play. He boiled with rage that he had even thought to pity her, to believe her, to hope that maybe she wasn't as beyond repair as they had both thought she was. To return to Gallifrey, as friends again? To make it better than it had ever been? He should have known it was too good to be true. He was too smart to believe in that kind of hope, and yet still he had hoped. Hoped and been disappointed. Now, The Master was dead, and he was alone once more. He could still find Gallifrey, but what would he be returning to? What would be the point? Now, he thought, the journey home was simply because he could find nothing else to do.

By this point, he had reached the TARDIS, and he was just reaching into his inside pocket for the key when a voice from below caught him by surprise. Stepping back as if he'd put his foot into a bear trap, he looked down and saw a blonde girl sitting there, looking up at him, her tone brash and authoritative. She was leaning back against the TARDIS, which was unsual. Most people couldn't even tell the TARDIS was there, let alone use it to relieve an aching back. Come to think of it, did he know the girl? He thought he did, but he thought he knew a lot of people, so that was hardly helpful. Little, blonde, lives in London, sort of rude?

The Doctor folds over the top of his newspaper (a newspaper that appears, by the way, to be written entirely in Wing-Dings) and narrows his eyes at Clara.

She rocked on her heels looking ever so amused. 

❝ You call the shots, babe. ❞

❝ I just wanna be yours. ❞

❝ Secrets I have held in my heart are harder to hide than I thought. ❞

❝ Maybe I just wanna be yours. ❞

❝ Are there some aces up your sleeve ? ❞

❝ Have you no idea that you’re in deep ? ❞

"Just call in today."

"No I’m not mad."

"The outside pipes need to be wrapped."

"Where’s the taco seasoning?"

"Yes dear."

"No dear."

"Are you going to take out the trash?"

"I took out the trash last week. It’s your turn."

"So…you wanna?"

"I don’t feel good."

"Do I have fever?"

"It’s ___ birthday. We need to get a card."

"What are you getting me for [insert event here]"

"Your feet are freezing!"

"Will you be my Snuggy Buggy?"

"Come be my heater."

"The tire’s flat."

"Can you check the oil in the car for me?"

"We are out of milk."

"We need to go grocery shopping."

"You know what’s missing? The pitter patter of tiny feet."

"I just cleaned that!"

"Can you open this?"

"What do you want for dinner?"

"Your cooking is going to kill me one day."

"I burned dinner."

"The dog peed on the floor."

"The cat peed in your shoe."

"Tacos? Again?"

"Please, I’m begging you. No more macaroni."

"You’re not…the Doctor. Where am I?" Rose asked as she let herself into the TARDIS. That man, could he be the Doctor?

Then the man showed her the screen, and the Kaiju. “That’s… that’s the biggest category five…” she whispered to herself. For a moment sounding a little like a small child. Then Tesla straightened, regained her confidence and looked him in the eye. 

"If you can make a machine like that I would definitely know who you are." She was an engineer after all, and the tech’s who invented that kind of thing were generally well known. At the very least in the shatterdome. Like, say, she knew plenty of about Dr. Geizler and she’d never met the guy. His reputation preceded him. All of that aside, he seemed to have no idea what was going on. Something that should have been impossible. 

"Yeah. That’s a Kaiju. We invented the Jaeger’s to fight them." She gestured a little further down the darkened and remarkably empty hall where there was a large viewing window. "

He shook those thoughts away. "Why? Do you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of every eminent engineer, thinker, and inventor that ever graced your planet? Or went beyond it? Frankly, if you did, I'd be extremely impressed, but clearly you don't, so I'm not. What a shame." He knew that he was snapping now, perhaps as a response to the shameful sentiment he had nearly let slip, but if it was offending her, he didn't seem to notice. He followed the direction of her pointed finger to the observation window, and beyond it to the metal shapes that slept in the vast hall beyond. "You know, I had wondered what those were." He turned back, almost incredulous. "Humans. You really amaze me. Incomprehensible alien beings rip a hole in the fabric of space-time so you build a giant metal-man to punch them in the face with?" The words hung in the air between them - it was difficult to tell whether or not he was offended or astonished. Perhaps he was both.