Compass Star

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Doctor Who

Copyright: BBC

(Author's Note: Wikipedia mentions that one of the upcoming Series 8 episodes will be called "Robots of Sherwood", which is where I got the idea for the opening scene.)

"Did I just hear you being rude to my assistant?" said the Doctor icily, eyeing a certain outlawed knight with fearless contempt. "You'll apologize at once, or you can forget about my help with those so-called 'demon knights'. Oh, I'll take care of them, all right," waving away the young man's horrified gasp, "But Miss Oswald here and I can do it on our own. And what's more, you won't get a single line in the ballads."

Sir Robert of Loxley, the outlaw who would come to be known as Robin Hood, shook his blond head in disbelief, making the feather in his hat bounce like a rooster's crest. "Fie, Doctor! You would not break our pact over a mere female – would you?"

"Try me."

Clara rolled her eyes and folded her arms, which was not easy to do in a borrowed medieval gown with sleeves past her fingertips. "Give it a rest, you two! If I say I forgive him, will you both stop bickering with each other and focus on what's important? Like, I don't know, the army of robots heading for the village?"

The Doctor's glare did not abate one moment. It was Robin who, finally, swept off his hat and swirled his green cloak in an elaborate bow to Clara.

"Mistress Oswald, I beg your pardon. You are heartily welcome to join our strategy discussion – if you can follow it – and I give you my word that neither I nor my men will laugh at your ideas. No matter how charmingly impractical they might be."

The Doctor took a step forward, muttering to himself in his low Scotch voice like a distant thunderstorm. Clara, though she couldn't blame him (God only knew how poor Marian put up with that man!), stopped her friend with a firm hand on his arm.

"Robin, er, Sir Robert, apology accepted. We'll see who's laughing at the end of the fight, that's all. Doctor, enough. Robots. Strategy. Now."

She jerked her head towards the tent set up by the Merry Men, where (assisted in their thinking by liberal amounts of Friar Tuck's ale) they were gathering to make plans against the invasion. The Doctor glanced at her face, then down at her fingers on his arm, then around them at the sunset fading from the forest clearing. Then, without another word, he placed his own hand on top of her arm and steered her into the tent.

Robin hid a snicker unsuccessfully behind his hand as the Doctor followed the "mere female's" order without question.

/

"Why is that?" she asked him, many flying arrows and alien robots, several close calls, and one brilliant solution later. They had said goodbye to Robin and his band on friendly terms (and after a much more sincere apology when one of Clara's 'charmingly impractical' ideas saved their collective bacon) and were back on the TARDIS, unhurt and relatively unshaken by the Doctor's standards. It was with great relief, however, that Clara had changed out of her corseted gown into the breezy sundress she had worn on her arrival.

"You're different with me than you are with anyone else. It didn't used to be like that. The other you was sweet to almost everyone, but now … it's like … it's like I'm your Kryptonite or something."

"Wrong myth, my girl," said the Doctor wryly, keeping his face turned away from her as he worked on his repairs. "But you're getting warmer."

"Am I?"

"Hm, I'd have thought you knew already." His shoulders hunched in his navy blue blazer as he bent over a very small keyboard. "Weren't you Gallifreyan once, in one of your echoes?"

"I was, but … " But what does that have to do it? she was about to ask, when the mention of that particular echo-self brought a string of memories, like a magician's scarves, flowing out of that box in her mind she usually kept locked for the sake of her sanity. One scrap of memory fluttered close, brightly embroidered with dreams and jokes and a young adult's assumed cynicism, pretending to dismiss an old belief while having no idea just how deeply rooted it was. Her eyes flew wide open as she understood.

"You mean when you regenerated, I became your compass star?"

The Doctor flinched and whirled around to glare at her. "'Compass star?' Is that the best translation you can come up with?"

"Well, excuse me if I can't get the Gallifreyan word to come out right." She blushed hotly with annoyance, and beyond that, a touch of pain she did not care to examine too closely. "Human brain, remember? No psychic powers or whatever you … we … you lot have."

"Right. Still … " He gave her an uncomfortable look that might have been apology. Despite both their best efforts, they still had not succeeded in freeing his home planet from the other universe, and were no closer to figuring out what to do with its warmongering Council even if they did free it. " … The intricacies of spatio-temporal navigation are not to be compared with floating around in a wooden sailing ship. It's a concept my people have held sacred since the beginning of our civilization, and you can't just … " He bit his lip, turned his back on her abruptly and began fiddling with a lever she could have sworn he'd adjusted two minutes ago.

Her blush deepened. He had just all but admitted that the compass bond was sacred to him too. Trust him to show it by becoming pedantic about translation, of all things.

The connection didn't have to be romantic or sexual; in fact, it often wasn't. A compass star could be a friend, a family member, even the enemy who had ended your previous lifetime. Some people had a different one for each lifetime; she knew without asking that the Doctor was like that. The bow-tied Doctor's compass star must have been the woman called Amelia, the one whose name he had called in his last moments before dying. Clara was not jealous; she only wished she could have met Amelia and talked to her about the rare experience they shared.

But it didn't have to be unique for it to be the most powerful bond in a Time Lord's life. She had seen him out of one life and into the next, anchored him against the terror in between. Clara felt fortunate beyond words that she had been there at the right time and place.

"I didn't know it was a real thing," she said softly. "Thought it was a fairy tale."

"It's true." He turned around again, smiling faintly, and murmured something in Gallifreyan which, even without the undercurrent of a psychic link, she could still understand.

"The first face seen with eyes remade …"

" … shall be the light by which I trace my journey," they finished together, Clara speaking awkwardly in English, even as the TARDIS translation circuit blended their words into one.

"And on that note," he added, smiling ironically, but with something very earnest in the depths of his eyes, "You'd better not let me crash."

"Oh, I won't." She moved pointedly to stand next to him, ready to help fix any of his mistakes in a navigational sense as well. "If you crash, I promise you, it'll totally be your fault."

"My fault, eh? Thanks for the vote of confidence, lass," he rumbled.

"It's what I'm here for, after all."

She smiled innocently up at him, and his mock-glare faded into a subtle smile of response.