One Last Chance |6| The Ascension

Chapter Nine: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

The Doctor huffed. "You said—"

"I know what I said," Clara cut him off. "I was the one who said it."

"You said it was looking at you funny," he pouted.

"I was tired, overwrought," she excused. "I didn't mean it. It's an appliance, it does a job."

"It's a pretty cool appliance," Wanda pointed out. "It's not a cheese grater."

Clara rolled her eyes. "You're not getting me to talk to your ship. That's properly bonkers."

The Doctor gasped and stroked the console soothingly. "It's okay, it's okay..."

"You're like one of those guys who can't go out with a girl unless his mother approves," Clara joked.

McKenzie skipped in, slipping on a baggy white tee over workout clothes. "What's he done now?"

"Hey!" the Doctor complained, even as she poked her tongue out at him. "Clara, it's important to me you get along. I could leave you two alone together."

"Okay, that's starting to sound creepy," Wanda informed him, leaning against the railings with an amused smirk.

"Why not let her drive?" McKenzie shrugged. "Worked for Donna. What's the worst that could happen?"

The Doctor made a face. "Within a few hours of letting Donna drive, Martha was kidnapped, the Earth nearly suffocated, we ended up with kids and you died."

McKenzie blinked. "Oh yeah... Well, that wasn't her fault. And you let Jack drive. A bit."

"Jack already knew how to pilot a spaceship," the Doctor reminded her.

She gave him a sly smile. "You let me drive."

He winced. "Yeah, but that's... You understood the mechanics. She's got no experience."

"And what's nine hundred years of experience got you?" McKenzie teased. "I left you unsupervised for five minutes and you crashed into not only the Titanic, but your previous self's TARDIS!"

"Do we need to bring up all the times you brought people back late?" Wanda smirked.

Clara raised her eyebrows. "I'm suddenly feeling a little less confident about his driving."

"Come on," McKenzie urged, giving her husband that familiar old grin. "It'll be fun." 

The Doctor sighed, his lips twitching. "Fine, take the wheel. Not the wheel. I'll make it easy. Shut it down to basic mode for you."

"Basic?" Clara echoed, following him around the console. "Because I'm a girl?"

He snorted, but didn't answer, instead turning a key in the console. McKenzie rolled her eyes at him. "Because it's quite hard to fly a TARDIS," she explained. "Back when we first met, he was all 'oh, fantastic', pretending like it was easy. He tried to take us to Naples, right? Where did we end up?"

The Doctor blushed. "Cardiff."

"Cardiff?!" Wanda burst out laughing.

"Hey, I got us to Bromley, didn't I?" he protested.

At that, McKenzie smiled fondly. "Yeah, you did." She gave him a quick kiss.

Suddenly, just as Clara touched a lever, the power went down. She froze. "What have I done?"

"Er..." The Doctor swallowed as the red emergency lighting came on. "Okay..."

Wanda raised an eyebrow cautiously. "Doctor? Angel?"