This choice: Marooned well before her time • Go Back... Clara was the first out of the TARDIS door, before the Doctor had even finished glancing at the console. She beamed, inhaling the air and whirling around on the spot.
She liked the feel of this place. The air smelled crisp and clean, the grass was springy, the sky clear. She glanced up; huh. Blue sky, one Sun, same colour and size...
"Hey... are we back on Earth?" she said uncertainly, turning back.
Only to see the Doctor glance from the console, apparently panicked, before he and the box promptly vanished. Clara did a double take.
Had he managed to make it invisible by accident? She wouldn't put it past him. Nervously she took a step forward, stretching her arm out...and walked over the square indent in the grass. Ok, not invisible. Clara turned back around, starting to panic slightly.
'Wait, stop, slow down.' Clara began to rationalize.
She had countless lifetimes in her head, sometimes faded but always present if she tried; she'd fallen through the Doctor's timestream, experienced countless things, even on Gallifrey. Something there would have to help; she didn't like using that trick all the time, it felt a bit like cheating, but when it was urgent she'd make an exception.
Ah. It was her Gallifreyan self that provided the answer; particularly with older models like the Type 40, it wasn't unheard of for a machine to materialize before it had properly landed. It might linger, but linger was all; it hadn't anchored itself in time yet.
Which meant the TARDIS might be anywhere from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand years after this time. She paused; but that didn't matter. It was a time machine, the Doctor could come back and pick her up, easy. Right? Clara took a couple of uneasy steps away from the square indent and sat down. Idly she glanced around her surroundings.
She was in a clearing in a forest. By the look of it, too, it was fairly untamed. Chances are that meant she was away from civilization; great, no putting in a call to UNIT or whoever. For now though, she sat on grass and loose dirt. The green was splotchy, uneven, but healthy when it had taken root. After a dull half hour, Clara stood and started pacing. She picked a decently sturdy stick from a tree; there was always the danger something would show up.
"Any time now, Doctor" she muttered, her concern mounting up.
The Doctor had never been good at piloting the TARDIS. He might arrive late; to quote his common excuse, in all of time and space it was a hell of a shot to land on the right planet in even the right year. Aiming for the correct hour, or even day, on top of all of that... Ok, maybe she'd have to wait a little longer. Or a lot longer.
Clara swallowed. Ok, not ideal, but she could deal with that. She had lifetimes of knowledge, some of that would cover survival. She knew some basics as it was; find water, build shelter...
But first...if she really was stuck here, it'd be better to start sooner rather than later. Before she set off, Clara used her stick to etch letters into the ground. If the Doctor made it back here, he'd know where she was. She finished it off with using other sticks to make an arrow, then set off in that direction.
She trailed her own stick in the ground behind her. In lieu of thread, that ought to lead her back to the clearing.
Clara didn't know long she walked for, but she was grateful to find a stream. She heard the sound of water rushing, before she turned and pushed through the branches to make it out to the water.
The water's edge was clear of trees. Clara sighed in relief, glad to be away from the constant branches blocking her way.
After a moment, she glanced down at herself, and turned up her nose.
The dress she'd been wearing was... It was still bright, still decent, but lots of little holes had been tugged into it from all the branches. She sighed.
"Great..."
Still, it wasn't all bad news. There was a small plateau by the side of the water, rough and natural, but high enough that it wouldn't be flooded should the water rise, and close enough that she wouldn't want for the water. Almost ideal.
She snapped a branch from one of the trees overlooking it, planting it down base-first in a small patch of dirt. Most of the plateau was solid rock, but that sign ought to serve as another breadcrumb should the Doctor be following her. And if not, it at least made it easier to find.
She wandered for a while more, dress becoming increasingly tattered, managing to locate a tree that grew a fruit broadly similar to apples. The taste was recognizable at least, even if there were a couple more seeds. She picked a couple, then walked back to her impromptu campsite, disappointed to see no sign of the Doctor. Well, maybe that was to be expected. Clara sighed, had her dinner of fruit, then glanced up to see the sky darkening.
Great. At least it didn't look like it was going to rain; she shuffled to lay down in the shadow of a particularly uneven spot in the rocks. Damn it, the ground was rough.
She tried to sleep futilely for what seemed like hours. When, giving up, she opened her eyes, a soft gasp escaped her lips. The sky was clear. Not merely cloudless, but she could see countless stars, and the underlying glow of the galaxy behind them. If she was on Earth, this was well before any kind of light pollution. Clara sat up, glancing around. Well that settled it; she was definitely alone. And if the ground was rough, and she was going to have to wait...
Clara stood for a couple of seconds, wriggling out of her torn dress, cheeks colouring slightly to do so outside. But no, she told herself, no one would see.
She lay it down under her body, two layers of fabric now between her and the rock It was... better, at least, even if she could feel the cool night air on her underwear-clad body.
Hopefully the Doctor would wait until she'd gotten dressed in the morning before rescuing her.
What happens in the morning?
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