Why is there always so much running?

Clara's breath was coming in shorter and shorter puffs, the Doctor's legs were far longer than hers, and it was quite the struggle to keep up with him, especially when he was running full speed away from the very large explosion they had just caused.

Clara was losing ground, fast. The dress she had chosen to wear today was not conducive to this sprinting, and the Doctor was starting to lengthen the distance between them. She realized he was about to turn a corner into a very dark alley way, and would surely lose him the minute he was out of her sight.

Clara yelled at the top of her lungs, "Doctor! Wait!" The Doctor, without breaking his stride, turned his head to look at her, but as he was about to reply, something else ran into him quite abruptly, and there was a yelp as the Doctor was knocked off his feet.

By the time the Doctor had recovered his breath and sat up, Clara was kneeling by his side, knowing that the spill had hardly hurt him, but worried all the same. The Doctor slowly put one finger to his lips and pointed with his other hand to the figure in the dark, who grunted slightly as they began to push themselves off the ground. The figure rose completely, and began to step out of the shadows.

"Oh my stars, you're human. It's so nice to see another human!" Clara exclaimed.

True enough, the figure that emerged from the shadows looked to be a human teenage girl, only a few years younger than Clara. She wore a dark green t-shirt, jeans, and white trainers. Her brunette hair was lighter than Clara's, but not quite blond. A brown leather satchel was swung around her shoulder, and she adjusted it as she started to speak.

"Hello! I'm so sorry for that – I'm so clumsy, never looking where I'm going. Are you alright? Is there anything I can do for…"

The young woman looked up, and when her eyes found the Doctor's face, she trailed off and looked incredibly frightened, surprised, and just a touch excited. She composed herself quickly and smiled, finishing her sentence. "You?"

"No, no, no, we're fine!" the Doctor exclaimed, smiling at Clara. "Now, if you'll allow me, let me check to see if you're okay! This cobblestone is very hard, I would hate to see you get a concussion because of me –" at this point the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the woman, "now what was your name?"

At the sight of the sonic screwdriver, the girl's face fell, and she turned around and ran into the shadows as fast as she could. The Doctor frowned at her disappearance and shrugged it off, but was suddenly lost in his analysis of the sonic screwdriver.

"What? What is it?" Clara asked.

The Doctor looked quickly between Clara, the screwdriver, and where the girl had just disappeared from.

"Well, um, well…I'm not really sure. The screwdriver is picking up something, something I've not seen in a very long time…"

Oh no. Why is he grinning? I know that grin. That grin means we're going to…

"Run!" The Doctor shouted, grabbing Clara's hand as they ran into the shadows.

"Doctor! If we're going to be running again, at least tell me what for. Did you know that girl? Is she bad? Is she human? Why did she run? Why are WE running after her? What on Earth is going on?"

The Doctor cackled as he looked at Clara.

"Good Lord, you always ask so many questions! I don't know if I know that girl, but she certainly seemed to know me, didn't she? I don't think she's bad, and I also don't think she was human. The sonic definitely picked up something that wasn't human in her, something that's supposed to be extinct. And I suppose that's why she ran away, there was something in her DNA that she didn't want the sonic to see."

"Okay, fine, but, still…why do we care? She's just a girl that you ran into. Maybe she just didn't want us to know who she was."

"She definitely didn't want us to know who she was, because from the little bit of information the sonic could gather, she shouldn't exist. There's no records that match her DNA – she's from an extinct species. The last of her kind."

"So like you?"

"Yes, like me."

"Where are we even running, though? How could you know where she went? This place is so dark!"

The Doctor smiled at Clara.

"Oh Clara, couldn't you guess? She's a lonely alien, most likely very far from home. She obviously came here with some sort of spaceship, and she's probably flying it alone, which makes her both the pilot and the mechanic. She was very protective of her bag and focused on it before she introduced herself, which means there's something in there very important. And I'm guessing it's a broken part of her ship that needs replaced. Where do you go to fix parts of your ship?"

"A shop?"

"Well, yes, a shop. But there aren't any shops on this planet. So the best place would be…."

As they turned the corner and left the darkness, Clara looked up and was shocked. Piles and piles of metal, higher than anything she ever could have imagined, surrounded them. They glinted in the light of the two moons that surrounded this dark planet.

"A junkyard," Clara breathed. She smiled up at the Doctor, placed her hand in his, and allowed him to lead her through the piles of rubbish.

Look at all this stuff. Thousands of spaceships are probably in here, in one way or another. I wonder what type of aliens flew these. Were they friendly? Did they have families? Were their ships like the TARDIS? Or were they like airplanes?

"Doctor, were these all-"

"Shh!" The Doctor cut her off, and Clara understood why immediately. Just around the corner, it was obvious why. Someone was struggling around the corner, and it sounded exactly like the girl that had run away from them.

"Hey! Get your filthy hands off me! I've done nothing wrong! This is a junkyard! It's not stealing if someone's thrown it away! Let! Me! GO!"

The Doctor and Clara turned the corner and saw the girl struggling against two cyborgs, who were holding her arms firmly behind her back. They were trying to reach her satchel, but she kept twisting her body so it swung away from their clumsy, mechanical hands.

"What's this?" The Doctor asked, clasping his hands in front of him. The struggling ceased as the two cyborgs glared at the doctor, while the girl looked up in horror.

"What are you doing here? I can handle these old pieces of metal!" The girl snarled as she kicked one of the cyborgs. It growled at her and pulled her arms closer together behind her back, making her whimper in pain.

"I believe it might be best if you let me do the talking on this one," the Doctor advised. "Now, cyber-guards, what has this young woman done? What crime has she committed?"

"She has been caught stealing from a private waste facility," a metallic voice replied.

"He's lying!" The girl shouted, struggling again.

"Hush, now. I'll tell you what – let's compromise. If you give whatever you took back, I'll take you to a different planet and you can buy whatever you need there. Fair?"

The girl scowled at the Doctor.

"I don't need your help, sir. I'm quite fine on my own. If these jerks would just let…me…go!"

The girl swung around in an attempt to get free, but as she did, her satchel swung with her. The top of it became unhinged and several pieces of metal flew out, bouncing near the Doctor and Clara's feet. The Doctor bent down to pick one of the pieces up, and his jaw dropped slightly.

Why did she need any of this? It's all a bunch of junk! Clara thought. I mean, look at what the Doctor's got in his hand. It's just a flashlight, probably so she could see where she was scavenging. We're wasting our time here, we could be doing something exciting!

"Doctor, it's just a flashlight," Clara argued, ready to leave this dismal planet and go somewhere nicer. Maybe a nice beach? Anything was better than here.

"Is it?" The Doctor asked, breathless. He pressed a button on the side and the tip of the device lit up a bright blue, and it eerily emitted a very familiar 'sonic' noise. Clara looked at the girl's face intently, as the girl changed from looking scared to downright guilty.

The Doctor as in front of the girl's face within two steps, and he bent down to look her straight in the eye.

"This is a sonic screwdriver, isn't it? Who are you? WHAT are you? How could you possibly have this technology, it should have died out years ago. You probably can't even use it – you can't access the psychic fields properly."

The guilt on the girl's face turned into a sly grin and a glint formed in her eye.

"Oh Doctor, Doctor, Doctor. Did you not get a good enough scan before? Do you still not know who I am?"

"Who are you? How do you know my name? Where did you get a sonic screwdriver? Did you steal that, too? Are you a trap? A trick?"

The girl rolled her eyes and tugged free of the cyber-guards, who had loosened their restraints while trying to follow what was happening. When they went to grab for the girl again, the Doctor sonic-ed them, and they fell limp as their power was drained.

"I'm going to ask you one last time, who are you?"

The girl sighed as she carefully placed her things back into her satchel, and snatched her sonic screwdriver from the Doctor's hands.

"Oh Doctor, I knew you wouldn't recognize my face, but you were always so good at looking past the faces. Do you really not remember me? Maybe if I addressed you in the old way, you'd understand. After all, it has been quite a while since we last saw each other."

The Doctor stepped back, aghast, as the girl smiled and stepped closer to him.

"Greetings, My Lord Doctor. It's been far too long."

Clara grabbed the Doctor's elbow and tugged on it twice.

"My Lord Doctor? Is that your title or something?"

The Doctor spoke breathelessly.

"No, Clara. I mean, yes. It's kind of my title. It's how the Time Lords used to greet each other."

"But, you said the Time Lords were dead. That you were the last one."

The Doctor turned around and faced Clara, excitement spreading across his face.

"I thought I was. But there's a reason my sonic said that girl didn't exist – because her DNA matches mine, and the sonic never checks for Time Lord DNA because we're extinct. But I know this girl, she was much older last time I saw her, but the eyes, the eyes are still the same…"

The Doctor turned back to the girl and smiled, his face excited and scared as he let the words he had been dying to say for hundreds of words leave his lips.

"Greetings, My Lady Demacrex."