"The Name of the Wolf"
Clara looked at her. "Who is she?"
The Wolf just looked steadily at the familiar face from long ago.
"That's... me... Sort of."
"What do you mean, sort of?"
"She's me, only not. She's a shade... much like the variations of yourself that met my past selves where. She's the First, Last, Inbetween."
"What do you mean? You mean you were born as her?"
This was confusing, even for herself. "That was me, when I went by a different name. She didn't know who she was. Near the end of my fourth, I underwent, a change. To Hide. And I hated to hide. While hidden, Or should I say, going into hiding while the change took effect, I was killed... I regenerated, and because the chameleon arch was changing me into a human, became a human child, my real genetics subsumed. Before you is who the child grew up to be before she... I... regained my memories... regained my gallifreyan physiology. It was only at her death, when she fully accepted the persona of The Wolf, thereby unlocking the memories of the past, and she regenerated into me. Technically, though she was my fifth face, I'm the Fifth because she was... mostly human. Even the name was just a label for her, from when she took it to near the end, when she took it to heart."
"Huh?"
She knew what that was.
"My people had a tradition... we chose names that fit the way we wanted to live. The Doctor chose his because he wanted to make people better, my brother wanted to master everything... for quite a while that meant he wanted to do the whole villain thing before I knocked sense into him." Clara chuckled, having met the man and couldn't imagine him as a villain. "He changed his name because he felt that his... transgressions had tainted the name. Calling someone Master, well... you can imagine. It used to refer to mastery of knowledge, rather than a tyrannical leader. Or the head of a school."
"Is there any difference on those last two?"
She chuckled, but continued, "I chose my name because of her. She sent the name to her own past, even without realising how far back that past stretched. To me in the past, I chose it because I wanted to roam time and space with my family, friends. Like wolves, I learned how to protect myself and, to use the animal's descriptors, I was something of an apex predator, with only highly intelligent beings on the same threat level to me. And like wolves, I was rather pack like in who I considered friend. She wanted to travel alone. I never wanted to travel alone. And in this... The Wolf who died when she was born is the fourth Wolf, and when she died becoming me, I'm the fifth. She is the inbetween human who created us... sort of."
"Why is she a secret, though?"
"Her life before encountering the doctor... was free of, shall we say, our typical luck. I have to keep it that way." She was hedging around the rest of it, but that was part of it.
"Still keeping the truth a secret..." Clara muttered amused, but understanding there was a much more important reason for it.
"Yes."