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Clara scuffed her heel on the pavement to try and dislodge the wet leaf that had got stuck there with a sigh. Besides a handful of ships and a few stragglers from the night before, there was little else to distract her from the grey clouds and her mood.
They’d landed the TARDIS in a large warehouse in the shipyard at the crack of dawn. Clara had emerged into the fledgling day in a dress perfectly suited for the early nineteenth century and excited for the day ahead. Even Me’s usual sighs and comments hadn’t dampened her spirit.
“There’s no good that can come from becoming attached to mortals,” she reminded her as she fixed her lace gloves. “It will only break your heart - if it worked to start it.”
Insisting she’d rather watch paint dry for three centuries than join Clara, Me left her to “find something vaguely interesting in this cesspit of a time period” and she had practically ran to the address written in tiny script on the scrap of paper she’d had for a few years now.
While she would never reach thirty, Jane had already bypassed the milestone and Clara had learnt to space out her visits.
She was more than aware a miscalculation piloting the TARDIS could result in accidentally making it her final visit and she wasn’t ready for that yet, no matter how much she dismissed Me’s warnings. Over time she was beginning to appreciate what the Doctor must have gone through to visit her.
All of her precision had been for nothing, however. When she reached Jane’s house, there was no answer and, judging by the state of the garden, no one had been there for a while. Clara inquired about the Austens with their neighbour and discovered they were off visiting someone.
A couple of hours of wandering the streets of Southampton had led her to the docks. She could always have found Me, but she’d found over the years that it was usually easier to wait for Me to cause a ruckus as it made her much easier to locate.
“Would you like one?”
Clara, who had been paying attention the small boat bobbing along between the larger ships, nearly fell off the curb. She spun around to see a blonde woman about her height, looking terribly out of place in trousers and t-shirt, holding out an unwrapped package filled with sliced pound cake.
The woman didn’t seem at all fazed by Clara’s surprise, and shook the package with a smile. “I think they’re called ‘cake.’ Would you like one?”
“Um… okay.” Hesitantly, Clara took a slice of cake. “Thanks.”
When the woman continued to beam at her, Clara gave her a small smile and carried on with her walk along the old town wall. She’d barely taken a couple of steps when she noticed she wasn’t alone.
“You looked a bit sad and this cake made me really happy so I thought I’d share,” she explained, rewrapping the cake. “It’s brilliant, isn’t it? I like a lot of things around here. It’s all very exciting. Look at this wall! It’s hundreds of years old! Amazing!”
Despite Clara ignoring her, the woman continued to witter on about everything around her as though this mundane autumn morning was the singular most exciting that had ever happened to her. It wasn’t even the things that had caught Clara’s attention that she focussed on, like the boats and the sun casting blurs of colour onto the clouds, but things like passing dogs and benches.
It reminded her of another life and thousand other times with a different person. The reminder was comforting and Clara found she was fading in and out of her commentary as though it were soothing background music.
Occasionally she’d glance across at her and the seemingly never-ending smile on her face. She was quite pretty.
“Look at that man putting up that stall! He’s got the support beams all wrong. Should I help?”
Clara followed the woman’s point and saw the man in question was yelling at the child trying to help him.
“Nah.”
The part of the stall that the man had managed to erect collapsed, a plank of wood landing on his toe as it did.
The woman laughed and made a comment about the man’s treatment of the child that Clara completely missed because she was taking the opportunity to look at her properly for the first time.
‘Quite pretty’ had been a gross understatement.
You were here to visit Jane.
“You still look sad. Are you sad?” asked the woman. Clara was pulled from her own thoughts and was distressed to see a frown was ruining the perfect joy that had been written all over on her features since the moment they had met. “My dad looked sad sometimes. He had friends to cheer him up. Where are your friends? Have you got any?”
As though Clara had hidden legions of friends behind a wall, the woman spun on the spot, her hair whipping about and nearly hitting Clara in the face. She stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“Sorry - what’s your name?” she asked.
“Jenny,” she replied as though she were proud of this fact. “What’s yours?”
“Clara. Where are your friends, Jenny?”
Jenny shook her head. “Don’t have any. A lot of people think I’m weird.”
The way she had said it, as though it made no difference to her, saddened Clara. For years now, she’d only had one close friend. Everyone else was temporary or part-time. They had to be or they’d ask questions or their loss would be too much.
She wondered if one day she’d answer the same question with the same cavalier attitude.
Rather than dwell on that line of thinking, she took another bite of her cake and carried on her walk at a slower pace. Unsurprisingly, Jenny followed.
“Do you bake?” she asked once she’d swallowed her mouthful. “Make cakes?” she elaborated when Jenny looked confused.
“Oh no,” she chuckled. “Wish I could.”
Clara licked a crumb off her bottom lip. “Maybe I could teach you some time.”
“Really?” Jenny’s face lit up just as Clara expected and she smiled back. “I might be really bad at it. I’m not really built for it. I won’t have much time to practise either. I’m trying to invent time travel, you see,” she explained, frowning again. This time it was an adorable, tiny thing, just creasing the space between her eyes that Clara couldn’t help staring at.
It was so distracting that she almost missed what was said.
Of course. Only she could be in Hampshire in 1807 and be approached by and then lightly flirt with an alien. Unless Jenny was just a bit nutty. Either way, it was very typical of her day to day life.
And when did her first reaction to odd behaviour become ‘alien’ anyway?
“Right. Time travel, did you say?”
“Yeah, I can go backwards, but not forwards. It’s how I ended up here.”
“Sounds terrible,” replied Clara, trying to work out if Jenny was telling the truth or just believed she was.God, why were the hot ones always bonkers?
Jenny shrugged. “Yeah, but at least I missed the Titan-” She closed her mouth with a click and stared straight ahead, her blue eyes panicked.
Clara, however, almost sagged with relief. Beautiful oddball could be an issue, but beautiful alien she could definitely work with.
Not that she was looking.
“Were you about to say Titanic?”
“No.”
“Huh.”
The pair carried on walking, the path gradually becoming busier as locals headed to work. Many stared at Jenny, but she didn’t appear to notice. As Clara ate her cake, she spent less and less time watching the ships and eyeing up the latest fashions and simply watching Jenny’s eyes dart around the place in wonder. Though she appeared naive, there was something intelligent about her. At one point they passed a group of children kicking a crude looking ball around. One of them miskicked and sent it flying straight at the back of Jenny’s head, but she was able to catch it at the last minute and threw it back at them with a chuckle.
Her energy was contagious and the bleak day Clara had been having vanished into nothing.
“I might be able to help you with the time travel thing,” she said eventually.
By this point they had sat on a bench, chucking bits of cake at seagulls and swinging their legs above the floor.
Jenny grinned at her. In that moment, Clara didn’t mind if the whole meeting blew up in her face. It was worth it to see her smile.
“Time travel, baking - you’re amazing!”
Clara laughed at her new friend’s sincerity. Travelling with Me was fun and they met plenty of interesting people, but it’d been ages since she’d been able to properly enjoy herself like she was with Jenny.
Without warning, Jenny hopped off the bench and grabbed Clara’s hand.
“Let’s go.”
“Now?” She made no move to get off the bench so Jenny pulled her to her feet. She ended up almost nose to nose with her which didn’t affect Jenny nearly as much as it did Clara.
“Why not?” Jenny whispered.
“I don’t know anything about you except your name and that you want to time travel.”
“That’s not going to stop you though, is it?”
Before Clara could think of another mock protest, Jenny had flashed her a wink and set off at a run down the cobbled street, dragging Clara willingly behind her. Though she knew they were heading in the opposite direction to the TARDIS and Me would never shut up if she “brought another stray home”, she didn’t care because life felt like something worth living.
Besides, someone once told her she needed to run like hell and laugh at everything and who was she to ignore advice like that?