Chapter Text
A week later, Seo found herself running for her life from some gigantic, sentient, flesh-eating platform shoes on the planet Itrit, with Oliver too far to get back to, and Dawn being sacrificed to the High Heel Giantess, may holy tidings be upon her name!
And Seo was just thinking that — actually, if this was what shoe shopping was always like, Aunt Dawn was right, it was brilliant! — when the entire platform shoe army stopped. Turned around, took one look at the person behind them.
And fled for their lives.
Seo turned around. And sighed.
"I'm perfectly fine defeating my own monsters and rescuing my own companions!" Seo snapped, advancing on him. "I don't need you showing up just to make sure…"
"That you do your reading?" the Doctor asked. Waggling his sonic in his hands. "You know. Like the bit that told you never, ever to go shoe shopping on the Planet Itrit in the late 23rd century?"
Seo buried her face in her hands. "Is everyone's biological father this embarrassing?" she muttered. "Or is it just you?"
"And, anyways, I didn't save Dawn!" chirruped the Doctor, ignoring her. He gestured back behind him, some ways off, where Dawn was chatting with a young London-sounding girl with brown hair. "New companion. Clara! Clara Oswin Oswald which is actually just Clara Oswald except when she's Oswin which only seems to happen when I run into her at random points in history and she doesn't remember me, and… and…" He planted an indignant look on his face, "…and stop giving me that look! I am not embarrassing! I am cool!"
Seo just kept giving him that I-am-so-hideously-embarrassed-I'm-going-to-hide-in -a-cave-for-the-next-400-years look.
The Doctor spun around. "Clara!" he called. "Aren't I cool?"
Clara glanced up at him. Shrugged. "Whatever you say, chin-boy."
"There! See! I am…" The Doctor rubbed at his chin. "Chin-boy?" Flicked his eyes over to Clara, suspiciously. Then added, in a whisper, "She keeps saying that sort of thing, too. And I still haven't worked out where the soufflés come in."
"Look, is there something you wanted?" Seo demanded. "Or did you actually just show up here to chew me out for not doing my homework?"
The Doctor leaned down, swinging an arm around Seo's shoulders and leaning in to whisper to her, confidentially. "Clara," he said. Snatching a quick glance at his new companion. "She… isn't… familiar to you, at all?"
Seo peered at Clara, a little more carefully. "Is she supposed to be?"
"Well, I just thought… what with you being raised in the Axis, which was filled with different timelines all starring me," said the Doctor, "and your knowing all sorts of completely random things about my life that really no one should ever know… that you might have seen or heard her once or twice. Be able to identify some pattern about all the different… times… she… turns up… and you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"
"I've never seen or heard her before," said Seo. "Ever. Sorry."
The Doctor stared off at his companion, his brow furrowed even deeper. Then spun back around to Seo, his voice even quieter, hands on her shoulders. "But… you said you'd seen a timeline, in the Axis, featuring me in the Dalek Asylum! She was there, remember? Soufflé Girl? Thought she was human but actually got turned into a Dalek?"
Seo stared at him, unsure what to say. "I don't know who you're talking about."
"Soufflé girl!" said the Doctor. "With the milk and the Carmen and the ability to hack the Dalek's data net! You have to remember that!"
"There wasn't anyone like that in the Dalek Asylum," Seo replied.
All the Doctor's cheer fell. "But… then… how did I escape the Daleks, if Soufflé Girl wasn't around?"
"You didn't," said Seo. "You died."
The Doctor withdrew. His eyes drifting back to Clara. A sad, lost expression on his face.
Seo felt a little guilty, now. She hadn't actually meant to hurt his feelings or dwell on his own mortality.
"Sorry, but that's what the Axis is," said Seo. "A bunch of alternate timelines for your life in which everything goes wrong, the bad guys win, and you die. All I know of your real life are the stories Dad told me. And that's not a whole lot."
The Doctor's face fell that much further.
And Seo realized she'd just made things worse.
"I know!" Seo chirruped. "If you're really confused about this Clara thing, you should go ask Alison!"
The Doctor snapped his head around. "Alison? Alison Korjensky?" He shook his head. "Why?!"
Seo looked a little sheepish. "Well… she's the person I always talk to when I can't work something out."
The Doctor never went to see Alison.
But… perhaps… he shouldn't have taken Seo's advice so lightly. Perhaps he shouldn't have brushed off everything Seo had told him so calmly.
For if the Doctor had gone to see Alison — if he had raced up to her home and rung the bell and endured the various eccentricities of her mum and dad and younger brother — he would have discovered a completely astonished Alison. Staring at Clara as if she'd seen a ghost.
"You!" Alison would have shouted. "You died back in the 70's! I remember!"
But, of course, the Doctor never did visit Alison Korjensky. And so he never learned how, even as far back as his third incarnation, a certain "Miss Clara Oswin" had died saving his life.