PROSE: The Day of the Doctor

'Doctor, I'm sorry, but you are needed."

[...]

Dazed, upside down and rotating gently as he descended, the unpaid, unofficial scientific adviser to UNIT attempted to recover some dignity by returning the salute, and hit himself in the face.

Twenty feet below him, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart suppressed a sigh. She knew the men and women around her were getting their first glimpse of a UNIT legend, so kept her face straight. Next to her, Osgood was barely containing her excitement—she was all big round eyes behind big round spectacles, and now and then she even remembered to breathe. 'Inhaler,' Kate said, and Osgood took a puff, without taking her eyes from above. You wait, thought Kate, he's not what you're expecting.
'He's an idiot,' Kate's father had explained long ago. They were in the UNIT Research Institute and at the far end of a sprawling laboratory, a tall man with a mass of curly hair and a booming voice was protesting that he was caught in come kind of force field, while a dark-haired young woman patiently disentangled his scarf from a pair of double doors. Kate found herself staring at the scarf. It was stupidly long and multi-coloured. Who would wear a scarf like that? Although she was only seven, she had already guessed that this was the scary, funny man who worked with her father, and who sometimes kept the whole world safe.
'The Doctor?'
'Yes, the Doctor,' said her father, who always seemed a bit cross when he talked about his old friend. His moustache was twitching as if separately irritated.
'I thought you said he was a genius?'
'He is, of course he is. The most extraordinary genius anyone has ever met.'
The Doctor was booming away again. 'Yes, Sarah, yes,' he was saying, 'but there might have been a force field as well!'
'Then he's not a genius all the time?' asked Kate.
'No, it's all the time,' said her father, with funeral regret.
'So when is he an idiot?'
'All the time.'
'That doesn't really make any sense,' said Kate, after a moment's consideration.
'Yes, that's about the size of it,' he replied. The Doctor was striding towards them now, and as always her father straightened his shoulders and put some effort into a smile. Many years later, Kate found herself doing the same.
'Doctor,' she said. 'May I extend the official apologies of UNIT.'
'Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, a word to the wise!' said a very different version of the same man, who was now scrambling to his feet. 'As I'm sure your father would have told you,' he continued, 'I don't like being picked up.'
'That probably sounded better in his head,' said a pretty young woman, appearing next to him. She'd just emerged from the TARDIS, which had now come to rest in the square. Ah yes, Kate thought, Clara Oswald, the schoolteacher. Where does he find them all?
'I was acting on orders direct from the throne,' said Kate and nodded to Osgood—who, she noticed in sudden horror, was wearing a stupidly long, multi-coloured scarf. Dear God, this was no time to be fangirling.
Osgood had passed the thick, ancient envelope to the Doctor, who was now inspecting the wax seal with what looked like alarm. Kate frowned: alarm, she thought, or could that that be guilt? Out loud she said: 'Sealed orders from Her Majesy Queen Elizabeth the First.'
'The Queen?' asked Clara, whose eyes had somehow got even wider. 'The First? Sorry, Queen Elizabeth the First?'
'Queen Elizabeth the only,' snapped the Doctor, who suddenly didn't look like a buffoon any more. 'She didn't like being numbered, and I sympathise entirely.' He looked dubiously at the envelope, as if he didn't want to open it, didn't even want to hold it. So much for his famous curiosity. 'How do we know this is genuine?'
'Her credentials are inside,' she replied.
With visible reluctance, the Doctor started to break the seal but Kate laid a hand on his arm. 'No,' she said. 'Inside.' And she gestured to the huge ornate building behind her.
'Inside the National Gallery?' asked Clara. 'What kind of credentials do you keep in a gallery?'
'Nice scarf,' said the Doctor to Osgood, and left her fumbling for her inhaler as he strode toward the steps. Clara was already running to catch up. Kate watched them go, and kept the frown off her face. The change of mood was quite striking. 'Sometimes you get the clown,' her father had said, in his final illness, 'sometimes you get the ancient beast.' Then he'd started to laugh which had set him off coughing again, and she'd had to sit him up and get him some water. When he'd recovered, he corrected himself. 'Actually, I think you always get both.' And he'd given her that smile which had always comforted her as a child, but now just made him look frail and old. They'd sat in silence with only the clock ticking and the rain at the windows.
'God, I miss that man,' he had said at last.
'Maybe he'll visit tomorrow,' he had smiled, closing his eyes.
She could never decide, over the years, if those were the best or the saddest last words.

The Doctor and Clara were striding in step through the evacuated gallery, when Kate caught up with them.
'Did you know her? Elizabeth the First? Clara was asking.
'Unified Intelligence Taskforce,' the Doctor replied.
'I'm sorry?'
'This lot,' he said, waving a hand at the various soldiers standing guard around the building. 'UNIT. They investigate alien stuff, anything alien.'
'What, like you?'
'I work for them.'
'You have a job?'
'Why shouldn't I have a job? People have jobs. I'd be brilliant at having a job.'
'You never have a job.'
'Yes, I do. This is it. This is my job.'
'What kind of job could you have?'
'This one. This one I'm doing right now, in front of you.'The Doctor threw an eye-roll over his shoulder at Kate.
It took an effort, but Kate managed not to slap him. Had he really never mentioned any of it? Clara was obviously, at the very least, his friend. Had he never told her he'd spent years, trapped on Earth, in her father's protection, working with him? They'd stood guard on a world together, they'd been friends. Best friends, she'd thought. She fought down the memory of the dying old soldier in the hospice. Maybe tomorrow.
I'm sorry, said a voice in her head, and it almost froze her. She'd been briefed about the Doctor's occasional telepathy: low-level, they'd said, and rarely used. I miss him too.
Not now, she thought back at him, we've got work to do. She felt her cheeks flush and her jaw tighten: he should have the damn decency to stay out of her head!
As you wish, said the Doctor, and stepped politely away. But as I returned to my own thoughts, I took an image of Kate's dying father with me, and filed it for later: Alistair waiting for me. 'One should live with one's sins,'I'd told a young man once, though I couldn't remember who or why. Clara was glancing at me, so I kept striding and smiling, as she expected. Clown and ancient beast—was that really what Alistair had thought? Was that what Clara thought to? I resisted having a look inside her head.