Chapter 2: The Grave Of The Doctor

Clara awoke on her floor. The memories of her dream were fading in her head, but she knew enough to grab on to them.

Hearing the Doctor still calling her charges' names, she went downstairs, to find him blindfolded and feeling his way round the living room. "Am I getting warm? You're supposed to say if I'm getting warm."

"What are you doing?" Said Clara.

"I came round and you were asleep, so I decided to entertain for a while. They wanted to go to the cinema, but I said not until you were awake. So they suggested blind man's bluff instead."

"So you let them blindfold you?"

"Yes. I thought I should go first." He felt around a bit more. "They're very good at it. Very quiet..."

Clara pulled his blindfold off. "They're at the cinema."

"Oh those little... Daleks."The Doctor struggled out. But then he saw the haunted look on Clara's face. "What is it?"


Clara explained everything she'd seen, as she put on a large pot of tea. "So who was she, that woman with the funny name and the space hair?"

The Doctor was staring at the far wall. "A friend."

"What? Like, your ex or something."

"Yes, something. Vastra asked for exact words. What were they?"

Clara thought for a moment. "He said "The Doctor has a secret he will take to the grave. And it is discovered.""

Clara was surprised when the Doctor sobbed suddenly. She'd never seen him break down like that.

"And it was Trenzilore. Definitely Trenzilore?" He said, through the tears.

"Yeah."

The Doctor wiped his eye and took a breath. "Sorry." He said, and left the room.

Clara followed him out the front door and into the TARDIS, where he took a seat below the console. "Well?"

"Trenzalore. I've heard the name, of course. Dorium mentioned it. A few others. Always suspected what it was, never wanted to find out myself. River would know, though. River always knew. Right, come here." He snapped the end off a small cable. "Give me your hand. Now, the coordinates you saw will still be in your memory. I'm linking you into the Tardis telepathic circuit. Won't hurt a bit."

"Ow!" Said Clara as he pricked her finger with the broken wire.

"I lied." He went to set the coordinates.

"So what's there then?" Said Clara. "Is it your big secret."

The Doctor took a moment to think whether or not to tell her. "No. When you're a time traveller, there's one place you must never go."

"And where's that?"

The Doctor groaned in frustration. "You never listen do you? "The Doctor has a secret he will take to the grave. And it is discovered." He wasn't talking about my secret. No, that's not what's been discovered. He was talking about my grave. Trenzilore is where I'm buried."

"You have a grave?"

The Doctor kept looking at the controls, without glancing at her. "We all do somewhere, waiting for us. The trouble with time travel, is you may end up visiting."

"But you're not going, are you? You just said, it was the one place you must never go."

The Doctor sighed. "I have to save Vastra and Strax. Jenny too, if it's still possible. They, they cared for me during the dark times. Never questioned me, never judged me, they were just kind. I owe them. I have a duty. No point in telling you this is too dangerous?"

"None at all." Clara said, gaining a smile from him at last. "How can we save them?"

"By breaking into my own tomb."

He pulled a lever and the engines roared. A second later, the cloister bell rang out and the TARDIS spun, pitched and swung beneath them, all at the same time, forcing the Doctor to cling onto the console with all his might.

"What's happening?" Shouted Clara.

"She's realised I'm about to cross my own timestream in the biggest way possible! And she's against it! So she's fighting back! Hold on!"

He flicked a switch to lock in the coordinates, before letting go and grabbing on to the railings. Despite the severity of the situation, he was unable to resist the urge to swing on them like a child. The TARDIS spun and shook harder and harder. The Console flashed and sparked, and the lights went out. But the journey didn't end with any sort of thump, the way it usually did. Instead, the TARDIS just came to a gentle stop as everything went dead.

"She doesn't want to land. She's powered down."

"So we're not there?"

"We must be close." Finding the scanner non responsive, he pulled open the doors. Below, was a blatantly desolate planet, covered by a layer of gun metal grey clouds. "I always thought I'd retire and take up bee keeping or something. Apparently not." He sighed.

"So how do we get down? Said Clara. "Jump?"

The Doctor frowned at her. "Don't be ridiculous. We fall. She's turned off everything but the anti grav. Guess what I'm turning off."

He soniced the control console and the floor dropped away below their feet. A few seconds later, he turned it back on, with them a bit lower than before. The two of them thumped into the deck. "Should have thought of that." Said the Doctor. He went to the storage cupboard and pulled out some bungee ropes, instructing Clara to tie herself under the console. With them both cushioned from impact, he turned the anti gravs off and on again several more times in quick succession, each time dropping a few hundred feet, until finally, they slammed down on the surface of the planet.

The Doctor took a step outside. He was disappointed to find that he'd broken one of the windows in the door.

The surface looked even worse close up. The thick ash clouds hung overhead, leaving everything in a gloom. Lightning cracked here and there. All around, the barren surface was covered in thick layers of ash and belts of mist. The only real feature they could see were the graves, which stretched as far as the eye could see.

"You OK?" Said Clara, as they set off. When the Doctor didn't answer, she added. "You're visiting your own grave. That's got to be hard."

"It's not just that. I'm a time traveler. I've probably done more time travelling than anybody else."

"Meaning?"

"That my grave is probably the most dangerous place in the universe."

Clara looked around for some way to change the subject. "Gravestones are a bit basic."

"It's a battlefield graveyard. My last battle."

Clara squinted at an elaborate tomb. "Why are some of them bigger."

"Officers graves. The higher the rank, the bigger the gravestone."

Clara scanned around, then fell back in alarm at what she was seeing. Up ahead, a huge monolith stood, the height of a tower block. At the top, were enormous windows, while a 20 foot high placard hung over all, bearing the words Police Public Call Box. "That's something of a monument."

"It's the TARDIS."

"I can see that."

"No, it's the actual TARDIS. When a time capsule dies, the dimensional dams break down. It starts to become the same size outside. When I say that's the TARDIS, I don't mean it looks like the Tardis, I mean it actually is the TARDIS. My TARDIS from the future. What else would they bury me in?" He sighed again, and made his way towards it. Clara wondered if he was feeling the same way she had when they'd visited the lifeless future Earth.

"Don't speak. Don't say my name." Clara turned to the voice and suppressed a small yelp as she saw River standing there. "He can't know I'm here. Only you can see or hear me."

Clara turned back to the Doctor, who was beckoning her towards him. "Well, come on then!"

"We're mentally linked. It's the conference call. I kept the link open so we could talk to each other."

The Doctor came back to her. "Who are you talking..." His eyes went wide. "River!"

For a moment, Clara thought he could see her. But then he walked past her and looked at one of the graves, reading River Song.

"That can't be right." Said Clara, looking between him and her.

"No it can't." The Doctor agreed.

"She's not dead."

"Oh, she's dead alright. She's been dead a long time."

"Yeah." River said in mock awkwardness. "I probably should have mentioned that."

"But I met her!" Clara said, hoping one of them could explain how she could still be talking to her.

"Long story." Said the Doctor. "But she didn't die here."

Clara heard a whispering sound all around them. "Doctor!"

From all sides, the whispermen advanced out of the mist.

"The man must fall, as all men must.

The fate of all is always dust."

The Doctor waved his sonic at them, but to no avail.

In the middle of it all, River was as calm as anything. "But if it's not a grave then what is it?"

"Then if it's not a grave what is it?" Clara said, as calm as she could.

"Maybe it's a false grave." Said River.

"Maybe it's a false grave."

"Yeah, maybe." Said the Doctor, looking for new sonic settings.

"A secret entrance to the tomb perhaps?" Said River.

"Maybe it's a secret entrance to the tomb!"

"Brilliant!" The Doctor pointed his sonic downwards. "Makes sense. Why would they bury my wife here?"

"Your what?" Clara called, as he soniced open the ground beneath them and they fell down a chute.

Up above, the whispermen halted round the edge of the grave.

"The man who lies will lie no more,

when this man lies at Trenzilore."


On a massive ledge, outside the giant TARDIS, Vastra and Strax were groggily waking up.

"We have you surrounded!" Strax shouted to the air. "Lay down your arms and your deaths will be merciful! This planet is now the property of the Sontaran Empire! Surrender your women and intellectuals!"

Vastra, meanwhile, saw her wife's body lying not far away, and promptly ran to it. "Jenny! Jenny! Strax please!"

Strax saw her situation and decided surrender negotiations could wait until after he'd taken care of his medical duties. He pulled out his scanner and ran it over the boy. "No heartbeat. Complete cardio collapse. Shock induced."

Vastra shook his arm hysterically. "Get her back to me! Get her back, or I will cut you into little pieces!"

"Unhand me, ridiculous reptile!" He shook her off and adjusted the controls on his scanner, before jabbing her, with a little zap. Jenny coughed back awake. "There we go. Just a standard electro-cardio restart. She'll be fine."

Had Jenny not been in such a delicate condition, Vastra would have held her more tightly than ever at this point. Instead, she rubbed her arms gently. "Jenny. Can you hear me?"

"The heart is a relatively simple thing." Said Strax, as he put his scanner away.

"I have not found it to be so." Vastra smiled.

But this reunion was then cut short, as the whispermen returned. This time, with their leader at their head.

"I see you have repaired your pet." He said. "No matter. I was only attracting your attention. I presume I have it."

"Doctor Simeon!" Vastra gasped. "It is not possible."

"And yet here we are." He said casually. "So very far from home."

"But he died. You told me." Said Jenny.

"Simeon died. The creature that possessed him lives on." Said Vastra. "I presume I am now talking to the Great Intelligence?"

"Welcome to the final resting place of the cruel tyrant. Of the slaughterer of the ten billion, and the vessel of the final darkness. Welcome to the tomb of the Doctor!"


The Doctor and Clara made their way through a series of narrow, dark tunnels, using a flame torch as a guide. "Where are we?" Said Clara.

"Catacombs." Said the Doctor.

"Great. I love catacombs. So how come I met your dead wife?"

"Well, you know how it is. When you love something, you make a backup."

"I saved him." River appeared out of nowhere, in that way Clara was rapidly getting used to. "So he saved me into the biggest library in the universe. He left me like a book on a shelf. Didn't even say goodbye. He doesn't like endings."

From down the passageway, came the sound of whispering. "Run!" Cried the Doctor.


The Paternoster gang knew they should be feeling something like fear or concern at this point. But all they felt was anger, against the insufferably superior entity that had captured them.

The Intelligence led them up to a set of steel doors, at the top of a ridge, overlooking a huge swathe of graveyard. "It was a minor skirmish, by the Doctor's blood-soaked standards. Not exactly the Time War, but enough to finish him. In the end, it was too much for the old man."

"Blood soaked?" Jenny cried.

"The Doctor has been called many things." Said Vastra. "But never blood soaked."

"Tell that to the leader of the Sycorax, or Solomon the trader, or the Cybermen, or the Daleks. The Doctor lives his life in darker hues, day upon day, and he will have other names before the end. The Storm, the Beast, the Valeyard."

"And how do you come by this information?" Said Vastra.

"I am information."

"You were a mind without a body last time we met." Said Jenny.

"And you were supposed to stay that way." Vastra added.

"And so I did." The intelligence took hold of the side of its face and ripped it away like a bandage, revealing a hollow head beneath. The body promptly collapsed. Seconds later, one of the whispermen stepped forward. The features on its face warped and shifted and gained new colour, finally becoming Simeon's face. "As you can see."


Deep down in the catacombs, the Doctor had found a steel door, which he soniced open. This, he could tell, was one of the TARDIS interior doors, brought to the surface as it expanded.

As he and Clara hurried through, she felt a cold hand grasping her arm and dragging her back with surprising force. "Doctor!"

"The girl who died, he came to save.

She'll die again within his grave."