The Time of Change

What Happens Then?

Clara eases the door of the Doctor's clock tower home open. She peaks her head around the edge of it, peering into the swirling snow. Taking a cursory scan of the area, she concludes that it's safe once more. She turns back and beckons to the people crowded in behind her. Slowly, the throng begins filing out of the room. They keep clustered together by the rubble of some destroyed buildings, and Clara takes a few steps toward them. "It's alright," she assures confidently. "It's okay now." They seem to believe her. A few families venture around, surveying the wreckage that was their town, the small little town of Christmas.

In the corner of her eye, Clara notices a few children lingering in the Doctor's room. She starts to tell them to get to their families, to go home, but she watches as they chatter quietly amongst themselves, staring at his walls. The walls decorated with years' worth of drawings: doodles of him slaying dragons and robots alike, sketches of him standing on a cliff with a sword, tens of hundreds of cacophonously colorful drawings, all depicting him as a hero, a savior. Clara smiles ever so slightly.

"... and I think this one was done by my grandma," one of the kids, a little girl, whispers. "She told me about it, about how he took it in here and hung it up."

"I wonder why he kept all this stuff," a child quips. His tone is both inquisitive and disbelieving, while hushed. "They're just pictures. They don't mean anything."

Clara steps into the room silently and says, "They meant something to him."

The children all whip around and look at her guiltily. She gives them a kind smile; each one silently files out of the room. One child, a young boy who has not said a single word as far as she is aware, tugs on her sweater sleeve timidly. "Did he really explode?" he asks, awed and scared. Clara does not know whether to laugh or cringe, so she just smiles again. "Looked like it, yeah?" The little boy nods a couple of times. "Do you think he'll be okay?" he inquires. There is such an overwhelming sense of innocence in his tone that she stares at him blankly for a moment.

The child sees this as an opportunity to elaborate. "I mean... He's always been here. Always. That's what my Mummy said. He's always been here and he's never left, so he's not going to leave now, right? He can't. What if the bad people come back and try to hurt us again? What happens then?"

The air around Clara chills by a few degrees, but she contents herself with telling her subconscious that it is simply the cold outside.

"I don't know," she replies honestly. She pats his shoulder once and moves past him, out of the door again. A part of her chides her for leaving a child like that, but she doesn't stop walking. The boy's words put a deep fear in Clara's bones, something she cannot shake for the life of her. If she stood there and tried to think of an answer for him, she'd go insane. Was that him regenerating or was it not? And if it wasn't, what was that light? As her feet delve into the thick, powdery snow as she treks across the decimated village grounds, Clara comes to a conclusion. Standing still is ten times more maddening than the journey to find the truth.

She passes the frozen fountain, the sound of children running about resounding behind her once more, and notices a dull throb of blue about twenty feet away. Her heart skips a beat and she actually stops for a second, but now regains her step. Within half a moment she reaches the front of the box, the beautifully odd blue police box, and softly touches the wood of its door. She looks to her right and descries the emergency phone hanging off its hook. With a gentle hand, she replaces it. Her shaking hand grasps her key to the TARDIS, but she unlocks it with no hesitance.

The first thing she sees when she walks inside is the Doctor's clothing scattered over the woven metal floor, and a bowl of what appears to be custard sitting on the console. It's tilted in such a way that Clara marvels at how it hasn't gone clattering to floor yet. She moves a little farther into the main room, closing the door behind her, and now realizes that there are thick golden-breaded rectangles popping out of the custard. Clara takes one of them in her fingers and holds it up to her nose, taking a tiny sniff. Fish fingers? she thinks, half between laughing and total confusion. Carefully she sets it back in the bowl as she hears footsteps on the metal ramp behind her. She turns quickly, and --

"Doctor?"