Paved With Good Intentions

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Doctor Who

Copyright: BBC

"Who was the Bad Wolf girl?"

"What?"

"The one he … the one the other you was talking to. The one in leather. He kept talking to somebody no one else could see."

Clara wrapped her arms around her middle, a bit unnerved by the memory of the elderly man's war-haunted eyes staring at nothing. He was still her Doctor, just as all the others were, but it had been difficult to reconcile him with the handsome young man in the bow tie standing right in front of her.

"I remember now," said the Doctor soberly. "From all three perspectives, actually. Bad Wolf … yes, it's no wonder she chose that form."

Clara looked up at him, confused.

"She was the interface for that weapon, obviously. A sentient operating system. That's why that particular weapon has never been used," with a sardonic smile. "It probably puts the fear of the gods into anyone who tries. She appeared to me as Rose Tyler, an old friend of mine who once broke into the heart of the TARDIS to save my life, destroyed a fleet of Daleks, and accidentally made someone immortal. Hence the appellation 'Bad Wolf'. It's not much of a story, really. Just business as usual."

Clara put her hand to her forehead. She had more or less gotten used to the Doctor's rapid and confusing explanations over the months of travelling together, but sometimes they still left her bewildered.

"She broke into the heart of the TARDIS? I didn't know that was possible!"

"It shouldn't have been. But she did it." The Doctor stared down at his console with a complicated sort of smile, one whose meaning she couldn't even begin to guess. "I gave one of my lives to take the TARDIS energy out of her. That's how Sand Shoes back there began, you know. Hers was the first face he saw."

"She was … special to you, wasn't she?"

Clara didn't mean for her voice to waver like that. She felt embarrassed, sounding like a jealous teenager on account of this thousand-odd-year-old alien who belonged to nobody. This man who had loved so many women throughout history, many of them more brilliant and fascinating than she could ever be. Nothing could happen between them, she knew that. Still, the sudden reminders always hurt.

The Doctor, however, must have heard everything in her words that she wanted to keep hidden. He circled the console, raised his hand to her cheek, and gazed down at her with wide, earnest green eyes.

"Everyone I travel with is special," he said.

She put on a smile. "I know."

"If you must know," he lowered his hand in order to take both of hers, "I think the reason why the Moment took Rose's shape is because I associate her with the Time War more than any of my companions. She was my first … afterwards."

"The one you call Granddad?"

"No. The next one. Black leather jacket, ears like sails, throwback to our childhood local dialect that the TARDIS, for some reason, chose to translate as Yorkshire. Even grumpier than Granddad, if you can believe it. He … I didn't remember it then, you see."

Clara swung between faint amusement at the Doctor's description, to sharp pity for the man who'd first learned to live with that terrible guilt.

"Rose was … a breath of fresh air. She was so innocent. Just what I needed at the time. I'd forgotten … how innocence can go hand in hand with carelessness."

"Carelessness?"

"Captain Jack Harkness." He gestured to the silver bracelet on her wrist. "Former owner of that vortex manipulator you're wearing. Let's be having that back, by the way."

"Oh! Right." She unclasped it awkwardly and passed it over. Kate Stewart's solemn voice echoed in her mind: It was bequeathed to us on the occasion of his death. Well, one of his deaths. "Wait – was he the immortal one?"

"Is," the Doctor corrected grimly. "He is, and always will be, no matter what his body goes through. The Man Who Cannot Die. She didn't mean any harm, of course. All she wanted was to save him from the Daleks. But with all that TARDIS energy flowing through her, she did the job just a little too well. I didn't stop to think of it back then – regeneration can be terribly distracting – but these days, Rose Tyler is my living example of the old adage about paving hell with good intentions."

Clara could not repress a shudder. She remembered, for one mind-bending instant, the experience of jumping into the Doctor's time stream.

"It was an honest mistake," she whispered, feeling a sudden kinship with the unknown girl. "It could have happened to anyone … anyone who tried to mess with powers she didn't understand. It could have happened to me."

"But it didn't." He smiled down at her admiringly. "You knew what you wanted, and you held on to it. You didn't lose yourself."

"Only because you came to find me." She felt a glow of gratitude, thinking of his arms carrying her out of that shadow-place where she had been so lost. "Where'd you get that leaf, anyway? I never asked. I thought … I thought I fed it to the Old God of Akhaten."

"Oh, you did."

"So?"

"It was my time stream, after all," said the Doctor smugly. "You didn't think the normal laws of physics applied in there, did you? I created it." He snapped his fingers. "Out of nothing. Well, not nothing, but close enough for human understanding."

"I'm glad you did."

Casually, as if he did this every day, he put an arm around her shoulders and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. "Nothing less for my impossible girl."

His impossible girl. It wasn't bad as a sobriquet. She leaned back against him, just a little.

Only one more question left.

"What happened to her?"

"Stuck in a parallel universe." His arm tightened around her. "Again, carelessness. Mine as much as hers. Also an inordinate amount of bad luck. But don't worry – I've had about four hundred years of experience since then, and I will go through hell and high water before I let that happen to you."

He said this with all the fervency of a vow. Part of Clara, the one that had died all those deaths already for him, was tempted to inform him that she wouldn't hold him to any such promise; no one could predict what could happen during one of their escapades, least of all himself. But instead she let him have this moment; let herself have it, too, the belief that she would always be as safe as she was now in his arms.

Rose Tyler, she thought, with compassion now instead of jealousy, must have felt the same once.

Her mind circled back through love, to promises, to wedding vows. She slipped ut of his hold and turned to raise a reproachful eyebrow at the Doctor.

"Before I forget, I meant to ask … "

"Oh, what now?" he groaned in comical despair. "You're worse than a toddler for questions, you are!"

"That's why you keep me around. I meant to ask – what about Elizabeth the First? You promised her you'd be right back."

"Ugh, yes. That … that didn't work out so well."

"Did you?" she asked pointedly. "Come back, I mean?"

"Yes. And don't look at me like that, I was as tactful as that incarnation knew how to be!"

"Oh dear."

"Stop it! Elizabeth knew me. She must have realized that I only proposed to her to unmask her as a Zygon duplicate. How was I to know that even the real one would say yes? A husband was always the last thing she wanted, even an alien husband unencumbered with the barbaric gender politics of that era … anyway, she must have known that I only married her to get her off my back, stop her from complicating our mission by throwing us in the Tower again! Not that she isn't marvellous in her way, but …. I guarantee you, Clara, she must have understood and forgiven me eventually."

Clara folded her arms and cocked her head.

"Just … not then," he admitted, smoothing his hair ruefully. "And not for a couple of decades, either. I distinctly remember being chased by arrows." He rubbed the back of his neck, possibly remembering how close one of these might have come to hitting their target.

"Oh, Doctor," said Clara, between giggles. "You smooth talker, you."

"Shut up, Soufflé Girl, and let me drive."

He flipped a lever, and they both clung to the console as the TARDIS went careening madly into the Vortex. The past might be painful, the future a mystery, but in the present, all was well with Clara's world. After all, even if the path to hell was paved with good intentions, so had her path been, and it had led her right where she was now.