Earth Grazer || Doctor Who

55. Date Night?

~Unedited~

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Ever since The Incident a week ago, the Doctor has been avoiding Ella, she would be annoyed if she didn't already know what was going through his head, her dreams that night explained everything through their point of Contact. He was still drowning in guilt about the last day of the time war and what he had to do to end it and she understood him, so she gave him his space. Entirely confident that when he was ready, he would seek her out again, it was unproductive to get the Doctor to talk before he was ready. In the meantime, Ella spent some time in the gym with Jack, "Where do Rose and the Doctor go when we're working out in here?"

"Oh, you know, the Doc always has something to fix on the ship. He's forever doing maintenance. And Rose? Well, she's been getting back into her painting. She's so creative!" Ella huffed as she ran, and she didn't mean to sound so sarcastic as she talked about Rose's hobby but the two of them had been jogging like this for half an hour and Ella was ready for a break.

"And you? What do you like to do?" Jack asked as they ran side by side, he flashed her a smile that could dazzle whole galaxies and Ella found the spot in between her eyebrows that were furrowed in concentration softening.

"Uh, talk until I figure out what's wrong with people." At the look he shot her she laughed, "I studied psych ... my dad always said I should go into that field because I had a bad habit of getting under people's skins and bringing their weaknesses to the surface." Ella shrugged, they stopped the treadmills and moved onto the sparring mats, their sparring was still a relatively new thing to them, but Ella had suggested it the other day. She had walked into the gym for her morning run and caught him practicing on one of the dummies pushed off to the side. Already having had a sinking foreboding sensation for weeks Ella asked if he could teach her how to fight.

He started off by teaching her a couple of easy to remember self defense moves and drilled them into her until the moves had become second nature. With the Doctor being so pacifistic, Jack had wondered why she wanted to learn how to fight in the first place. She had to think on that one for a bit, "because ... well, I won't be here in the Tardis forever ... human nature is scary, some of my worst nightmares have a human face. Some of my worst pain was brought on by people ... I want to be able to protect myself on earth so I can't be hurt again." A face flashed through Ella's mind, and it was a shock she thought of him at all when she knew exactly who he turned out to be.

Apparently, the flawless face of Liam Travers was still haunting her, and it wasn't just Taludav that left a mark on her soul. The worst things that Taludav did to Ella were when she was wearing Liam's face. Before she could dwell on it any further the Doctor stuck his head into their training room to let them know they were going out in a couple of hours and to shower and dress nicely. "Okay," Ella mumbled from her spot on the floor where Jack was showing her a move that essentially tossed her over his shoulder and onto her back. He helped her up and the two quickly left to their rooms to get ready, the burning hot water felt nice on Ella's sore back.

Now, Ella was left with a whole other problem, what to wear, the Doctor didn't really give her any hint about where they were going, he just said to dress nicely but that could mean anything. When she looked in her closet her worries were not alleviated when it appeared like all her clothes were gone except one outfit and it looked like that was meant to be her outfit for tonight. In all honesty it wasn't a bad choice, black high waisted pants with wide legs, an eyelet top with a front tie that could possibly be scandalous paired with black chunky heels. When Ella got a good look at her hair, she added in curl cream and a bit of hair oil because it looked like her hair was going to start curling in unfavorable ways. She debated on makeup for quite a while but eventually decided she liked the wild look she had right now.