Outside the wind moans, an unearthly shrieking bringing more snow to the glacier ice. On their bed-rolls the victims shiver. The flickering yellow fire cannot overcome the cold held in their very bones.
"What happened to them?" asks Clara softly.
"It took their voices," replies the well-woman. "It took their stories. No one can live without those. Their hearts grow dim and fail."
"Has anyone seen it?" he says.
She shakes her head. "No, medic. Not and lived."
Clara opens her eyes to darkness and a terrible pain in her right side.
"Doctor?"
She can't remember how she came to be here; wherever here might be. But it's a fair bet that waking up alone−in the dark, in pain−will involve the Doctor somehow.
She struggles upright, shivering in spite of the thick fur she seems to be wearing. Her fingers close around the matted felt of her coat and she remembers−
The rank stink of it; blood crusted on awful talons. Borrowed steel in her hand; blade flashing as she parried, dodged, wove. Mad red eyes as it laughed; laughed and spoke the words that would strip her voice away, stop her heart.
"Don't you dare!"
Not the plan, not the plan; the Doctor leaping from his hiding place. Taking the blow in her place, knocking her backwards, falling-
"Oh, no. No, no, no."
Her fingers find an emergency light-stick in her pocket. She cracks it; chemicals mixing inside the plastic to cast an eerie fluorescence over the scene. The Dreameater is dead, beheaded by her hand rather than captured by the Doctor's electro-mag trap as they planned. The cave mouth has collapsed around its bloated body, shattered in the throes of their battle.
And the Doctor is lying on his back, still as a stone.
She is at his side in an instant. His breath wheezes through blue lips, mist in the air. Shaking hands find the pulse in his pale throat. For a second the steady throb under her fingers reassures her, until she remembers: two hearts.
Half his heartbeat is missing.
She feels sick. "Doctor." She cups his face, resisting the mad urge to shake him, hard. "Doctor! You can't do this. You can't. Wake up. Wake up!"
She swipes angrily at tears spilling unwanted, unasked. A plan; a plan, she thinks, because doing something helps stop the panic. The nomads know they are here. When the Dreameater fails to claim its nightly harvest they will come. It's just a case of surviving the cold of the cave until they get rescued.
The creature's lair is not entirely bare. An assortment of rags, rusted weaponry and foetid furs remain; detritus from previous victims. Grotesque as it is, she collects the torn clothing and stinking skins. The alternative is probably freezing to death. The pain in her side makes her gasp as she bends to pick and carry; her hand comes away bloody when she presses it to her ribs. It is almost too much to bear when she comes to move him, from the cold ground to the thickest of the pelts. He remains limp as a ragdoll, his ragged breathing matching her own as she struggles.
Hurry up nomads!
The chemical florescence of the light-stick is dying and she is starting to feel dizzy. Body heat, she thinks, all they have left now. She curls around him, wrapping them both in tatters; strokes his cold cheek. "Don't you die," she whispers. "Don't you dare." A heaviness has settled on her. Sleep, or something like it, surely coming to claim her. "Not without me," she breathes. "Not without me."
I'm already dreaming, she thinks, when she feels his icy fingers against her face and the brush of his consciousness against her dwindling self.
She remembers this place. There is a grave left unfilled on Trenzalore, a wound in time that is yet to be made. The tracks of the Doctor's tears carve a different space for now; folded inside.
Mist swirls. Footsteps, running. Ghosts of the past racing by. Yes, she remembers this place; but this time she is no fractured echo of herself, fighting to put right what great evil has undone. She is no longer his Impossible Girl. She is his Clara, seared on his hearts, and she needs no crumpled leaf to find him.
She steps forward, through the fog; ignoring the ghosts of what he was, what he will be. Until she sees him, the Doctor he is right now. Tall and thin, hair a mass of silvered curls that undercuts the severity of his hawkish face.
"Doctor!" she calls. He turns, wide eyed, scowl melting into shock.
And they are running, sprinting madly towards one another through the creeping tendrils of vapour. He cannons into her, surprisingly solid; lifts her up and spins her around in his arms. Her forehead comes to rest against his. There is salt on her lips from tears. His, hers, she can't tell. Maybe both.
"Doctor," she whispers.
He kisses her in response, taking his name from her mouth. She knits her fingers into his hair, eyes closed; surprised at his oh-so-human gasp of breath, the prickle of his stubble. She has loved him so fiercely, for so long, it seems strange this should still be uncharted territory for exploration. They have come to it too late, she realises. Robbed of his words: this is his goodbye.
She breaks apart from him. "Say something," she commands.
He swallows, shakes his head. She presses another fierce kiss to his lips.
"Say something," she repeats. "It can't take your stories. Not while I'm here, I remember them. All of them." In this place it is true; the splintered memories of a thousand lifetimes spent in his service have returned. "And as for hearts…" She presses her hand to the right side of his chest. "You carry a spare. So, say something."
He smiles sadly instead, and she could punch him.
"No! Not like this. Doctor, please; I can't-" Frustration and fear overwhelm her, fists curling pointlessly around the lapels of his jacket.
His thumb strokes her cheek, bringing her eyes back to his. "Clara," he sighs. "I wish I cou-" He stops, frowns; touches fingers to his no longer silent mouth. "Clara!" he grins.
She lets out a breath she wasn't aware she was holding, closing her eyes. "My pleasure," she manages. When she opens her eyes they are lying in an ice cave; one that echoes with the sound of shovels scraping away fallen snow at the entrance. "Doctor?"
"I'm here," he says, voice rough; clearly still in discomfort. She can feel the familiar double-beat of his pulse against her palm, however, and pain in her side is lessened.
"Job well done then," she jokes. His breath his warm against her cheek and the temptation to kiss him again, for real, is almost overwhelming.
"Thanks to you." The words seem to have brought his face infinitesimally closer; she can no longer resist the inevitability, closing her eyes-
-at precisely the moment their rescuers break through the icy seal and save the day.