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It’s ridiculous being afraid of a Duran Duran song, actually afraid to the point of feeling her heartrate quicken and pound, but Clara’s never liked it. Made her cry when she was four: the idea of that poor little narrator, plaintively hungry and forever confined to the few spinning inches of vinyl, doomed never to be satisfied. It’s certainly the last thing she ever would have expected to have come across while travelling in the TARDIS. All of time and space, so much else to be afraid of in this universe, and honestly, what were the chances that a pop song from the 80s would ever pop up on one of their jaunts?
So of course a stupid Russian with a fondness for karaoke has to bring it up. Because that’s just how the universe works, sometimes.
But, she gets over it, even sings a few bars right before the day is saved and all’s well once again. It’s an adventure. Out here is where she hones her bravery, does the impossible, helps her deal with a little matter like one old childhood fear.
This is definitely progress.
*************
The first time the Doctor appears in her life - the first time, the honest to goodness first time, before becoming a Dalek or travelling the stars or becoming a Victorian barmaid with a taste for jellied eels - he gives her Jammie Dodgers.
After that, he mentions in an off-hand sort of way that he has a time machine that never makes you wait for breakfast. How could she not fall in love with that?
Admittedly they then spend a half-hour busking for change, but there’s an appeal to someone so forward and completely unabashed about asking for money for food. And the cappuccinos he sweet-talks the snooty barista into making would melt any girl’s heart.
*************
Her dad loves her Yorkshire puddings, the same recipe her gran passed down from her gran, etcetera. They’re soft pretty things, crisp and golden. Just what’s wanted to go with a bit of beef gravy - not too heavy on the flour, flavoured with a dollop of Marmite, and pleasantly liquid.
When Linda looks at it and declines the meat and carbs in favour of green salad, she knows that the relationship isn’t going to last. Even if her father doesn’t yet.
*************
There is no such thing as chronological order.
*************
It’s very, very hard to take a villain seriously when he’s called “Mister Sweet”. How the Doctor does this sort of thing straight-faced sometimes, she’ll never know.
The fact that the adventure turns out to involve no candy whatsoever is a disappointment. But you can’t have everything in adventuring.
*************
Clara loves her dad, honestly, with an extra tenderness born partly of guilt - when her mother died she was at uni, just venturing out into a big world, and she’s never been sure she was there enough for him at the time. With that on her shoulders, it’s easier to shrug off. even though he burns even so much as chipolatas.
It’s human. These days, the contrast gives her a better understanding of just how precious that is.
*************
She revels in the name “Souffle Girl” with a sly delight at the levels of meaning the phrase bequeaths. The Doctor doesn’t understand, of course. That’s fine. He doesn’t need to.
It’s a relief being with a man who’s so full of himself that he doesn’t need anything explained to him.
*************
The Doctor assumes that she’s a nanny as a favour to the Maitlands and while that’s sort of true, it’s also true that she needed somewhere to crash, and somewhere to get more practice with private tutoring. The whole supply teacher gig wasn’t working out as well as she’d hoped; in the economic downturn her diploma was so much paper on the wall and after four days in as many months, working didn’t seem like a plausible option anymore. At least not the way she’d first intended.
She could have moved back in with her father, but that was three with Linda and she’d promised herself to not make Gran share a room any more. More to the point, she’d also promised Gran.
So being with the family was a lifesaver, and having a London postal code ought to have been the gravy on top, but the kitchen! An experiment in frustration - gorgeously decked out down to the latest flash Guardian kitchen gadgets - three garlic presses, self-setting pressure cookers and heaven knew what else - and all that anyone wants to do is order takeout. If Mrs Maitland had been around, they would have got on so well. But then, if the missus had been, Clara wouldn’t.
But it’s hard. It’s one thing living in a converted attic and having shouting kids asking for her attention and all that - she’d signed up for that -, but not knowing whether she’s having a four-course, deluxe Indian cuisine or the remnants of week-old pizza for tea is hard on her nerves.
It’s a wonder how anyone does this who doesn’t have a time machine to slip away into sometimes.
*************
The new Doctor doesn’t feed her all that often; no late night snacking sessions in the TARDIS, where they pour chocolate on unsuitable goodies and he babbles on about the succession of Victorian heroes who had biscuits named after them. No expeditions to pick up gold-topped milk bottles straight from Jersey, or Venusian butterscotch.
She’s not entirely certain she wants him to; he’s colder and harsher now, and the idea that he might try to extend his new vague air of Scottishness to the kitchen is enough to turn her off the idea. Black pudding is one thing: black pudding made in the guts of a time machine is something she’d just as soon not contemplate.
At one point he tells her that calories eaten on the TARDIS don’t count, and for a moment it feels like someone has jerked all of history out from under her. For heaven’s sake, she needs those calories. There are times when past Clara would probably have passed out in front of a class without, so narrow is the margin between her adventuring and her teaching. Worse than working a second shift.
Yes, it’s stupid to treat a time machine as an opportunity for a free nosh, and she doesn’t - really she doesn’t - but for a moment all she can think is how terrified she’ll be when her brain finishes processing this.
It’s a joke of his, of course, and not a very good one. He laughs it off. She shrugs and goes.
She’s proud of herself, though. It means he hasn’t noticed a mild neurosis.
*************
The twins don’t like her souffles.
It was always a work relationship from her point of view, and while she’ll continue sending the odd Christmas card and whathaveyou, the fact that she won’t see much of them in her new Shoreditch job is something she can live with.
*************
It’s her first Christmas turkey, and by god is she going to get it right if it kills her.
The fact that the Doctor sort of does makes the thought horrifying, at first.
Then, suddenly, it’s funny again.
*************
So they’re in Victorian London, and the Doctor apparently invites her for lunch, and then a number of terrifying things happen and they never actually get lunch. Which is annoying. It feels like the universe has let her down doubly.
Happily, Strax isn’t a bad cook when he’s not mopping and it turns out fairly well considering (the potatoes are lumpy, and Clara’s positive the greenish jelly has never been within miles of actual gelatin, but those quibbles are fairly minor). Upper-class Victorians have an astonishing array of dishes to pick from.
It’s not her first pick for a living period - but it’s nice to know that if something very odd happened to the 21st century and she couldn’t get back, or something, there’s this little household. They’ve all been with the Doctor. They’d understand her, if not her little hang-ups, but then nobody would those.
Then again, people in this area think tongue is a delicacy. Her Victorian selves - both of them - would agree on this. Her 21st century one doesn’t.
But then, she’s free to contradict herself, isn’t she?
*************
There is no such thing as chronological order.
*************
One of the favourite of the time periods she inhabits, helping out unobtrusively, is with the early version of the Doctor she first met. Rory and Amy intrigue her in an embarrassing sort of way - they’re like old college mates, the oh-so-hilarious duo who your partner was apparently friends with twenty years ago and you just have to wonder how they were ever that young and daft. The two of them do love each other, so that’s something. A bit. Clara reckons rather not get married to someone who she’d shout at quite as much as they do, but each to their own.
Presently the Doctor is asking Rory whether he remembers living for two thousand years or not. She fends off a few Silence - the good thing about being all the different versions of herself is that one of them always remembers what they are and how they work - so that the two of them can have their conversation. Not so much the answer she wants to hear, as the Doctor’s reaction to it.
Rory lies. The Doctor points it out. Rory admits the truth, that he does remember, every second of it. Being plastic, now that’s a way to get around the eating problem. She doesn’t think she’d care for it much.
And afterwards - that’s it? Not a line more between them, not a hint nor even sympathy. The old soldier.
(The Doctor is a terrible hypocrite about soldiers. He mouthes off but has no compunctions about using them when he needs them.
It’s something she remembers when UNIT turns up and offers to get her a proper job in exchange for her helping them out with the odd alien scenario or five. Which is how she eventually comes to have Lethbridge on speed-dial.
Still, that little matter is something Danny Pink is never allowed to find out about.)
*************
Coal Hill school means school dinners, piping hot, every day reliably. Some people don’t like institutionalised cooking because of its blandness. They have a point, and she can cook far better dishes at home now on her teacher’s salary, but it’s nice. It’s more than nice. Suddenly she’s brisk and efficient, self-confident.
It’s a good excuse to give to people surprised by her recent change in mien, the ones who knew her before her Tardis travels. It ought to be the excuse, at least.
There are times when she wonder whether she’d be happy to stay with the Doctor for good if only she could be confidant of having meals like that on a regular basis. But then that’s silly - she can’t control what happens in the TARDIS like that. It wouldn’t be so much fun if it was. Even if it represents the part of her life in which she needs to be in control.
Wants to be in control.
Isn’t in control.
*************
There is no such thing as chronological order.
*************
The reptilian monster punches her in the gut. She goes over with more readiness than the blow warrants, and so he careens past and through the gaol door, which she hastily slams behind.
The Doctor is gruffly appreciative for a second, before promptly become distracted by the impending obliteration of the world or some handy distraction like that. Good.
He was in danger of getting a little too sympathetic there. And it’s really not an area she wants to have to explain what she’s vulnerable about.
*************
"Let me be brave, let me be brave." One thing about dying, she discovers. Everything else ever worried about seems so small by comparison. *************
Danny sounds like he wants to take her on a date, and that’s fine, he’s interesting, but when they actually get around to it it becomes dinner and they both stuff themselves. Eating helps smooth over the awkward places in the conversation, which, given their general rubbishness at anything like normal relationship behaviour - he’s too shy, half the time her thoughts are literally out of this world - is a tremendous help.
She had no idea how nice it is being wined and dined every week. Maybe she would have fallen for the first man who did that, though she’d like to think that cupboard love wouldn’t be her sole criterion for a romantic relationship. That’s not what being with the Doctor is about, goodness knows.
But then again, he is a maths teacher.
*************
“We’re going to starve to death out here.”
“Of course we won’t starve. The sand piranhas will get us long before that.”
Oh, she thinks mildly. Thank goodness for that then.
*************
The Doctor knows they met when she was six. She knows he knows. From her rather special vantage point, it’d be impossible for her not to know. The most important meeting that ever happened to them, in a way, and yet he stoutly refuses to admit it happened.
If they can’t admit the truth to each other about something that basic and straightforward, how are they ever going to tell the truth to each other about anything else?
So Clara doesn’t try very hard to tell the truth. Eventually this slides into lying. Which is a terrible reason for lying, of course, but then a great many people do terrible things not even for terrible reasons but for just having not thought matters through very well. Like most of the villains they fight, for instance.
This is the sort of behaviour that eventually winds up with her staring at a wall full of sticky notes covered in lies, and it’s about that time she realises that she has not only lost track of her temporal order, she’s lost track of the ordinary that she’s tried so hard to keep making sense. If only for the sake of some sense of perspective.
She picks up the mobile and calls Danny.
(That’s not what happened. She started lying because after Rory, it was clear that the Doctor didn’t care so why should she?)
(That’s not what happened. She started lying at the Maitlands because dealing with the contrast between what she needed to be doing to fit the environment and what she was actually feeling was a divide so wide. People have filters, they code-switch, they have double lives. Hers are simply more layered than most.)
(That’s not what happened. She’s not quite certain what did happen to start all this, and the only thing she is sure about is that as soon as she knew she started lying to herself about it.)
(And habits are transferable. But then, would anyone have better reason to know that than Souffle Girl?)
*************
“It’s an eating disorder, isn’t it?” River Song suggests helpfully over tea, one morning. They are sitting in a dirty open-air booth at a market garden, waiting for the Doctor to come back with the Tardis. As he’s going by oxcart, this process may take a while.
Clara can’t stand River. Too brash, too clever by half. This is what she’d be like without any uncertainty in her makeup, and as uncomfortable as insecurities are, if River is anything to go by they are clearly good for a person.
“You can see I’m eating,” she points out, hoping to paper over with deliberate misunderstanding. “At least, what I’m fairly certain is edible for a person with a human metabolism. I’m not sure about that blue stuff.”
“If you say so. But remember, I’m a pathological liar. I know how the game is played.”
“Then what makes you think I’d tell you the truth?”
“Oh. Boredom. I’m easily bored, you know. Don’t you find personal gossip an amusing way of passing the time between interstellar catastrophes?”
Missy threatening to eat her seems so comparatively civilised.
*************
Cybermen do not eat well-prepared meals. Obviously.
It’s curious how much of the time she spends hugging her boyfriend, for their last few minutes together, she spends thinking about the last time period she was in. Another of the Doctor’s companions, another death. There wasn’t anything she could do about that one either.
Meanwhile this is another sort of lying, implying that he meant the universe to her when in fact he was only rather sweet and a good lay, but this one is benevolent. She hopes. He’s not going to find out the contrary.
Most of those lies were meant to be benevolent.
*************
She leaves a message on her father's answering machine, saying that she's broken down under the stress and has taken a vow of perpetual solitude in a Buddhist monastery, never to return, but she's safe and she loves him and Gran. It's not a very good lie - she's done much better - but this one will have to serve.
And he believes it on trust. Just texts her phone, saying "Be well. Watch for the leaves. Make sure they feed you properly."
It would be nice to think he believed her.
*************
The lady at the mobile phone shop smiles as she writes down the phone number of the help line, smiles and hands her an apple from a basket. It’s a shining red one. Clara bites into her first food of the day with a relief that she fervently hopes isn’t palpable.
“Thanks for this,” she says, between bites.
“Keeps the Doctor away,” the lady says, with a very toothy smile.
*************
Clara smiles to herself, pirouetting around the console room. This waitress dress isn’t half-bad as a look - shows off her legs astonishingly, to say nothing of her figure. She might keep it.
“I will ask why you decided, of all the possible ways for you to confront the Doctor for the last time, you wanted it to be in a diner?” Me calls out. Her nose is still stuck in the pages of the Tardis manual, though her eyes peek above it occasionally. Eyes that had seen the end of the universe and still had gentle humour in them.
She shrugs. “I wanted it to be on my terms, where I felt comfortable. That’s all.”
“Odd place to feel comfortable.”
“Odd name you have. Maybe we match.”
Me shrugs and goes back to her book, for real this time. Housebreakable, probably. It’s not as though she hasn’t had plenty of practice with an intractable near-immortal before.
Though maybe this is a good chance to not make the same mistake she made with the last one. If it was a mistake. The Doctor, she feels certain, would be bored stiff by anything as basically human, as mundane, as a somewhat over-exaggerated concern about where the next meal is coming from.
“Ever heard a death-bed confession before?”
“Undoubtedly. Don’t remember, so I’m a safe confidant. Gimmie some truth, then.”
The chain of associations runs too quickly to halt - truth, John Lennon, mother hubbard, empty cupboard, Duran Duran again. What a banal thought to be having under the circumstances, Clara thinks, and for a moment almost thinks she notices her heartbeat restart under the impression of a fight-or-flight terror reflex.
“Right. Get a pencil. I’m going to tell you my mother’s souffle recipe.”
No more lying.
Maybe this whole travelling-in-a-time-and-space-restaurant is something she can get used to.