2.

The Girl from the Diner was taken to the same room the Doctor had been given shortly after he had crash landed in London all that time ago. Pulled from the wreckage of the American Diner, she was carried by the stout Sontarian straight up the stairs to the comfortable bedroom without pause or struggle. He had found no other survivors on board and the ship had appeared too unstable to venture too far beyond the console room. After depositing his load he suggested diving back into the fire but was quickly held back by Madame Vastra when she noted that even his tougher skin had blistered from the heat where it had been exposed.

The group focused itself on the girl while the Doctor brought the flames outside under control with the help of the TARDIS. His head was spinning and he grasped at the practical mission to try and steady himself before facing the gravity of what he knew would be happening upstairs. In the meantime the women stripped the survivor of her burnt clothing and with Strax's help began to try and sooth the injuries she had sustained in the crash. She was unconscious and badly injured, the burns covering the best part of her torso and left leg, and edging up her neck to her right cheek. They had little advanced medicine to hand so they soaked cloths in Sonatrian balms, dressed her best they could in bandages and laid her peacefully in the bed.

He had hovered outside the room for a spell before plucking up the courage to knock, afraid of what he might find, afraid that she might regain consciousness before he quite knew how to respond; afraid of himself for being afraid she might wake. How he wanted her to wake, how he wanted her to be safe, but the thought of that first conversation tied his stomach in knots. Seeing his anxiety Vastra had encouraged him inside and placed a chair near the cabinet on which the balms and soaks were scattered. At her touch he felt her trying to calm him psychically and was grateful.

Now the Doctor sat by the bedside studying the Girl's face. He recalled it as the one painted on the side of the TARDIS and as belonging to the Girl he had met in the Diner before, but beyond that he could find no association with the woman in front of him. He took in her profile, her closed eyes and dark lashes, her delicate pink lips. He noted how the burns had marked her cheek and neck and where Strax had applied a smooth honey balm to the rawest areas. He tried desperately to see in her features something that would spark recognition of its own accord; buthe couldn't.

The Doctor sat in the chair by the bed and watched the motionless form of the young woman in front of him and felt nothing tug at his memories. It filled him with sadness and with the strange doubt that it was really her. How could it be her and he could feel nothing?

But this was Clara. The others confirmed it with worried looks and hushed voices. They fretted over her injuries as they worked to try and help her. He saw Jenny tearfully try to fix her hair, singed at the ends and smelling of fire. He saw Vastra lay a gentle hand on her forehead trying to read the depth of her coma.

The Girl that was Clara lay perfectly still and eerily suspended in time. She did not breathe and her heart did not beat and Vastra could read nothing from her mind. As such Strax confessed that he had no idea how to help her with the medicine he knew, indeed he could not be certain she lived. He had few vital signs to scan and if it had not been for her steady temperature he could have been convinced she was dead.

Dead. Ironically really. She lived so close to it.

But the Doctor knew, he knew somehow she would live. She could not die, except for that moment on Trap Street where her death was fixed in place. The knowledge gave him little comfort however, because she could still be injured. She could still be unconscious, she could still suffer so much damage that without help this could be it. Technically alive, but in a coma, neither healing nor deteriorating as a living person might. She could remain unconscious and if she could not be woken he could have no choice but to return her to Trap Street to complete the circle.

The thought horrified him. The thought of going back to Gallifrey with her lifeless body in his arms only to slot her back into Time and close the loop. And all that still without his memories.

He looked over her body, calculated the extent of the bandaging and the severity of the burns. He wasn't sure how it worked or what her capacity for healing was while she was in stasis, but he sensed she was up against it here. She needed help. The kind of help that only he as a Time Lord could give. It was his gift, he had used it before on people he had loved, but it was never to be taken lightly. It would drain him of so much he might need himself one day.

Did this woman deserve it? On so many levels he didn't know her; but he was sure he loved her, behind the wall in his mind.

He loved Clara, didn't he?

He frowned and hesitantly took one of her hands in his, passing his thumb softly over her knuckles. He could read nothing in her mind, so deep was the coma. He tried to piece together her story. The Doctor had gone to the ends of the universe for the woman in front of him now. He knew he had nearly destroyed it in her name. He knew he had remained in his confession dial for just a chance he might be able to save her. He knew logically that he had loved her more than life.

But he couldn't remember and he couldn't feel it now. He only had her story to go on and the distress the Paternoster residents felt as they so gently tended to her wounds. It was clear to them she was worthy of a great deal of love and concern and that swung the balance for him.

He trusted his friends, and his own actions in the past spoke clearly of his utter dedication to Clara.

So he would do this. He would give this gift that he had given to so few in the past, the last being his wife, River, but this would be a larger gift and draw on his reserves more than any other had before. He wasn't sure quite what that would mean for him, but somewhere behind the walls in his mind he felt his memories championing his decision. He would risk anything for her, always.

He lent forward, closer to the bed. 'This won't hurt a bit,' he said quietly and closed his eyes.

He focused on the feel of her fingers, on the softness of her skin, and the golden light began to gently glow where their hands met. The Doctor frowned slightly, trying to guide the healing force to where the worst burns were.

'Take what you need,' he said. 'I think you're owed. It feels like you're owed, by me.'

XXXXXXXXX

The woman called Clara remained as lifeless overnight as she had been on her arrival and come morning the Doctor had left her bedside to investigate the rather charred remains of her TARDIS. He and Strax made their way across the snowy courtyard after breakfast and ran some preliminary scans.

'No life forms detected, sir,' Strax elucidated.

'No-one?'

'No-one, sir.'

'Any organic matter that might indicate a casualty?' the Doctor asked. Strax reprogrammed his scanner with a grimace and ran it over the ship.

'No, sir,' he said.

'I wonder what happened,' the Doctor pondered. 'TARDISes don't just fall out the sky, they don't just burst into flames…'

'I would be happy to investigate further, sir…'

'No offense but this is Gallifreyan technology, Strax, on a good day even I only understand half of it…'

'Doctor!' they were interrupted by Jenny's voice calling from the kitchens. He looked round to find her leaning out of the door and waving, her smile nearly splitting her face into two. 'She's awake, sir, I don't know what you did but its worked and she's awake! Ma'am is with her now. Come in, come in…'

His guts churned. Clara would know him, know and remember, but he was still unsure how to play his part. Did he tell her he knew who she was or play dumb? After the incident with Vastra in his subconscious he had doubts as to whether he should try to retrieve his memories or make any connection with the woman called Clara at all. She was technically still a stranger and that might be the only thing protecting both of them. Maybe the only thing protecting the universe if the stories were to be believed.

He looked down at the sonic screwdriver he had been using to scan her TARDIS, and thought of the words he found printed on his chalkboard. 'Be a Doctor,' they had said. Try to be a good man, try to do the right thing. He passed a hand wearily over his face. What was the right thing here?

'Come on,' Jenny encouraged, 'Come and see for yourself, sir!'

Still undecided he pocketed the screwdriver and crunched through the snow to the house.

XXXXXXXX

'How much does he know?' Clara asked softly as she pulled herself into a sitting position in the bed.

'He knows you're Clara,' Vastra said from the window where she was watching the Doctor's journey across the courtyard towards them. 'He know you're the Girl in the Diner and therefore you have to be Clara, but he can't remember you. All he has is the knowledge of your existence, your role if you like in the stories you acted out together. The emotions and the details of your personal shared memories are trapped behind the neural block.'

'And he tried to force that down? Break the block?' Clara asked.

'He said he wanted to remember you, that he had a right to,' Vastra said letting the curtain fall closed again. 'He swore that he was not trying to find you; that he just needed to remember, that he couldn't bear the gap in his head where you had been.'

Clara adjusted her position again, the skin under her dressings itching horribly. 'And you agreed to help?' she asked incredulously, 'We nearly made time unravel and you agreed to help him remember all of that again? We didn't do this casually, you should have respected that, thought of the consequences.'

'I declined to help at first; then I saw it with his eyes,' Vastra admitted, 'But Clara you must understand, he would never have stopped trying, never. Just like his confession dial. This is just another version of his loyalty to you. He would keep going and going, probably destroying everything in his path intentionally or not, just so he could remember you. It would drive him mad I'm sure of it. The block hides his memories from view but they are still there Clara. He still loves you just the same and it is that love that is dangerous if left trapped inside. It was only a matter of time before you were both confronted with it again. Look at this now. What are the chances of you crash landing here, now, when he is here. You both travel all of time and space and yet here you are arriving just hours apart. You're in his time stream; you are Fated, Clara, always.'

'So what am I supposed to do?' Clara asked, tired and exasperated, 'If we're Fated, but bad for one another, how are we supposed to deal with it?'

There was a creak on the stairs beyond the door and Vastra turned her head towards it slightly.

'You'll find a way,' she said, 'One that only you and he will recognise. Come in Jenny.'

The door pushed open and Jenny appeared with the Doctor in her wake. He seemed less imposing than usual, his face pale against the dark material of his jacket and the black of his jumper. He looked exhausted and anxious and was doing a bad job of hiding it.

'We'll leave you alone for a while,' Vastra said ushering Jenny out of the door, 'Please, ring the bell if you need us.'

The Doctor crossed to Clara's bedside and hovered nervously.

'Sit down Doctor,' Clara said, 'you're putting me on edge.'

'Right, sorry…' he sat quickly, still on the edge of the chair and fiddled with the long cuffs of his sweater, pulled them over his hands. It was a familiar old gesture to Clara and one she associated with the times he felt most socially awkward. On instinct she covered his hands with hers and let them rest in his lap. He peered down at them owlishly and she saw him swallow hard half expecting him to disentangle himself from the physical contact he rarely tolerated from people. The Doctor however held fast to her, whether by instinct or consciously she couldn't tell.

'I'm going to cut to the chase here,' Clara said. 'What do you know?'

He looked baffled for a moment and then began burbling. 'Well I know lots of things, physics mainly, mathematics… I'm not so hot on the social niceties but I've read a good bit of….'

'About me, right now,' Clara clarified, 'What do you know about what's going on now?'

'Ah,' he said uncertainly, 'That…'

There was a pause while he tried to avoid eye contact and Clara tried to will him to speak.

'I know you're Clara,' he said at last studying their hands. 'I knew you had to be when your TARDIS dematerialised around me that day in the desert.'

'Bit of a give away?' she asked. 'Big space ship.'

'Not very subtle no. And then there was a portrait of you, on my TARDIS.'

'Yes, I remember. We went to retrieve it for you.'

'Yes…' he hesitated again. 'So I knew it was you in the Diner and then the Diner, well, crashed.'

'Yes,' Clara sighed, 'It did rather.'

'Why did it crash?' he asked with a glimmer of his old curiosity.

'Not sure. I'm not too good with TARDISes yet, sort of learning on the go. Ashildr didn't last long with the time travelling before she found somewhere fun to explore. I got itchy feet and left her there. She has my number.'

'Ah…'

'Anyway that doesn't matter,' she said trying to refocus him. You know that I'm Clara. What else?'

'I know we chose to do the neural block together, and I know why. I know there were very good, very significant reasons for that.'

'And?'

'And… and we should respect that,' he said uncertainly, convincing neither himself nor his audience, but trying so hard to be strong. Clara's expression altered just a little, the muscles of her face just a little sadder than before. Slowly she withdrew her hands and watched as the Doctor bundled his fingers under his cuffs once again. There was a painful pause.

'You don't remember anything else, about… us, me?' she asked.

'No, nothing. I mean… I don't feel like I've just met you, but I don't know you either. I know your face, but that's from the Diner, and the portrait, but I feel like I've never heard your laugh, because I haven't since...' he gestured at his head and made a spinning motion. He smiled shyly. 'Since my reset,' he finished.

Clara bit her lip. 'You've no idea how… strange this is,' she said. 'You're my best friend…' she fiddled with the bandages on her left arm distractedly. 'How can you be my best friend and not know me?'

For a moment his lips twitched into a painfully small smile. 'That can happen, happens all the time if you're a Time Lord,' The Doctor swallowed again. 'And it's not from choice,' he said. 'I… I was trying to remember, before you crashed here, I was trying to get Vastra to help me. I wanted to remember, all of it. Even if it hurts, and I know it will, it'll really hurt; and I know we made a decision for the right reasons, and I know we shouldn't but…' he trailed off and tried to steady himself his thoughts and emotions coming thick and fast and knocking him off course. He bit his thumb to stop the flow.

'It must be hard, for both of us,' Clara looked at him sympathetically. 'Hard to understand, hard to know what's best, hard to know what to do next, especially when there's no-one to talk to. You don't do well on your own, Doctor. Are you still on your own?'

He nodded, avoiding her eyes. He glanced at the door and Clara could detect the increase in his anxiety just from his posture. He wanted to run. In truth she didn't blame him.

Clara looked down at her bandages again for a distraction. 'These are driving me mad,' she complained. 'What did Strax coat them with for goodness sake, it feels like there are ants crawling about in there.'

'It wasn't Strax's doing,' the Doctor said, 'And you can probably remove them now, they will have done their work.'

'So soon?'

'Yeah,' he nodded. The Doctor pushed himself upright and moved as though to head for the door. 'They had a little help,' he explained. 'I wasn't sure what your healing capacity was now, I don't know how things work when you're in suspended animation. You might have just been stuck like that, injured, forever. So I…' he stopped. 'Well anyway you're looking a lot better and you're awake.' He smiled softly. 'That's the main thing. Clara, I'm sorry, but I…'

'You need a breather,' she said, 'It's OK. If I'm honest so do I.'

'How do you know that?' he asked genuinely bemused.

'Because I know you. I know it doesn't feel like that but I do.' Clara managed to hold his eye for a moment. 'You made yourself essential to me,' she said, 'You were my world, no one knew you better than I did.'

He hesitated. 'I… felt the same way about you?' he said.

Clara smiled sadly, 'I know you did, we both felt exactly the same way. We just left it too long to tell one another. The Cloisters… you still don't remember them?'

'No,' he fiddled with his sleeves again, skittish and vulnerable.

'You ok?'

A short nod from the Doctor seemed to be all he could manage. 'I um… I'm going to have a quick look at your TARDIS, see if I can't fix it for you while you recover,' he said, gesturing vaguely back at the door. It looked like he was asking permission of her.

Clara made to protest lightly, opening her mouth to somehow persuade him to have a difficult emotional conversation without hiding behind his usual TARDIS repairs, but she could see his struggle and both of them knew he needed space. She closed her mouth, and gave him a small smile. The Doctor stepped quickly through the door and was gone.

Clara rested back against the headboard of the old bed and continued to work on the bandage which had been bothering her so much, expecting scabs or blisters, but her eyes widened as she revealed what lay beneath. The material came away easily, without pain, and there was no sign of the Sontarian balm which had been applied to her burns.

There was no sign of the burns either.

Just the faintest wisp of trapped regeneration energy leaving her skin.

XXXXXXXXXXX

There was something very reassuring about lying under the central console of a TARDIS. Obviously he had spent the equivalent of decades lying under his own but any TARDIS would do in a storm and right now his mind felt stormy. The Doctor pulled himself deeper under the charred navigation panel and sonicked some offending wires. He could feel the strange sensation of someone else's TARDIS checking him for credentials. The ship lingered at the corner of his mind watching over what he was doing with a little misgiving but no hostility. It was Clara's ship and its allegiance was with her but it was willing to admit the Doctor's knowledge of repairs was greater than her own captain's.

Some things TARDISes can't do alone even if they do have auto-repair systems. Doubly unfortunately for this TARDIS her autorepair system was why she had been in the Gallifrey workshops in the first place. She was busted before they took her and although she'd done her best to patch things over it had eventually failed and she'd caught on fire. The doctor could feel a hint of shame in her consciousness. It had all been very undignified. Fire. So basic.

'Never mind old girl,' he said, 'I'm appreciating basic right now. Nice and easy for me to fix and then you can be on your way…'

He stopped. On their way. Clara and her TARDIS. He wasn't sure he liked the sound of it. He wasn't sure that's what was going to happen or if it was for the best. He was sure he was spending his days stringing out basic repairs and running extra checks so that he had more thinking time in his safe spot under the console. Right now being in the house with the curious eyes of the Paternoster gang on him downstairs, and the large brown eyes of the woman called Clara upstairs was too much to bear. Everyone wanted answers somehow and everyone looked to him.

He was avoiding her. Clara. He knew, she knew it, the TARDISes knew it. They were caught in a push me pull you situation where both knew there was so much that could be said and both were too frightened to start. It didn't come as any surprise to him when Clara made the first move, not because he knew her to be forthright, he couldn't remember, but because he knew himself to be a coward.

'I brought you some lemonade,' she said from above him and he nearly cracked his head open on the console. For a moment he lay there wondering if he could face any more conversation. 'You've been in here all day, it's late, you missed dinner and everyone's in bed,' her voice continued, 'It's been a long time since I got thirsty but I thought maybe you'd like a drink…'

He pushed himself out from his hiding place and lay on his back looking up at Clara. 'Is that from out there…in the wotsit?' he queried vaguely.

'Yes,' she said, 'The Diner is fixed, think she's been clearing it up while you've been doing the more technical bits. A combined effort.'

'That's very helpful of her.'

'Yeah, she's not like yours, doesn't throw strops. I think it's because I'm a girl, I know how to handle her moods…' Clara pulled up a jumpseat and perched on top, her short legs dangling. She really was very small. The Doctor scrabbled to his feet and edged towards her to take the drink, inspected it curiously, and took a sip through the curly straw Clara had picked for him. He liked curly straws, liked to watch the liquid whizz through. Clara must know that about him, because she knew everything. That was still an odd feeling.

It made him nervous that he couldn't say the same for his knowledge of her. It also made him sad. He could feel inside of him that he used to know more, that he used to make a point of remembering her likes and dislikes. That he strived to understand her and now all that hard work was inaccessible.

'So how's it going?' Clara asked. Was that a hint of her own anxiety he detected in her voice? He couldn't be sure. He didn't know well enough what her voice sounded like normally.

He swallowed. 'Nearly done, just a few tweaks, but most of its complete.'

She nodded vaguely and looked around the room where patches were still rather charred. 'I'm thinking of redecorating,' she said, 'Might as well. Any tips?'

'Well the classic white is always a good option, and there do have to be roundels… but I'm rather into the steampunk look lately.'

'You're just an old rocker, as long as you have somewhere to plug in your amp,' she laughed and the sound trickled towards his hearts, 'I'm thinking something more feminine.'

'Not scatter cushions,' he said quickly, pointing at her. Clara looked at him curiously.

'How do you know I like scatter cushions?'

'I don't… I mean… you're a human female, origin late 20th century, isn't it compulsory?' He smiled and felt suddenly warm when she smiled back, felt an almost confidence in himself leak from somewhere behind the wall in his mind. He was sure she found him funny, more so than most people, and he was sure he had loved to make her laugh. The feeling was familiar and comforting, but when Clara continued to look at him with curiosity he became awkward and edged back to the safety of the console.

'I thought I might stick about a few more days,' she was saying, 'Been ages since I saw Vastra and Jenny and it'd be rude to get myself fixed up and then dash off again.'

The Doctor said nothing but nodded instead, fiddled with a button that did nothing on the control panel. It seemed Clara knew that trick too.

'Doctor, we need to sort this out,' she said. 'We weren't supposed to run into one another again but we have. It changes things. We need to decide what's next.'

'I don't know.'

'What are the options?'

'Go our separate ways again,' he said quietly.

Clara slipped off the chair to pace and stand in front of him.

'You don't want that,' she said.

'That's beside the point. This isn't about what we want.'

Clara suddenly took one of his hands again and he felt a ripple of emotion come from her skin. He shut his eyes.

'In an ideal world,' she was saying, 'What would you have us do?'

'You know…' he said painfully.

'Say it for me.'

He opened his eyes again and gazed tormented at the ceiling. 'I'd want to remember you, and I'd want us to be as we used to be, whatever that was.'

'As we used to be didn't work,' Clara said bluntly.

'Well there you have it then,' he protested, ruffling his hair to try to hide the hurt he felt at that comment, 'not possible, theoretical questioning not needed, option one still remains the only way.'

Clara held fast to his hand.

'What if you could remember me and we could be… something different. Something better? What if we could fix what went wrong between us, what lead us to do such reckless things? What if we changed our whole mission statement so we could be together?'

He dared to look up at her then and was immediately struck by how bright her eyes were in the brilliant white of her console room. An image flashed through his head of her standing in just the same position, the same bright eyes and a look of fear. He blinked it away; it wasn't fear this time, it was hope.

'Clara…' he started.

'I miss you,' Clara said abruptly, 'I never wanted you to forget. I never wanted all that we were to be wiped out. It's not right, it didn't feel right then. I wanted to make us work somehow but we were in such a jam and there was so much pressure and so little time. Everything felt ruined and desperate and… we had no choice. Now we have a choice. Now we have time, so much time Doctor.'

He kept his eyes averted. It was bad enough to feel the rush of warmth from their hands without also looking into her eyes. They were like nothing he'd ever seen before, it was like they inflated. How did they do that? If he looked at them he was lost.

'You're talking about second chances,' he said lowly, 'We don't get those.'

'We did before. We can again. We can make this into a second chance, or a third or a fourth, if we want it badly enough, we're practically immortal. There's room for another chance.'

He passed a hand over his face and felt the low thud of a headache begin. 'How can I judge, Clara, when I can't remember? How can I judge what to do for the best when all I know is that at some point I truly thought wiping our memories was the only thing to do.'

Clara squeezed his hand and a stronger trickle of imagery came from her contact. This time she was in the white room leaning over him with tears streaking down her face.

And a smile. Oh that smile.

His breath caught in his throat at the memory of it. He'd promised hadn't he, promised he'd remember, and he'd failed. 'Gods…' he breathed and felt his eyes sting. Clara looked at him sadly and he knew she was remembering that moment, the echo of its image in her touch.

'Trust me,' she said, 'Trust me. I know being alone and losing your memories has hurt you. But being alone and remembering has been just as bad.' The Doctor's throat felt constricted and he felt his chest heave as he struggled to subdue the emotion that threatened to spill over.

'Clara, we can't, the Time Lords will come after you, you have to keep running.'

'We can run together,' she said, 'And anyway they were mad at you too for long enough, you always gave them the slip. You said when we were stealing this ship, you said Time always heals, that if we just kept running we would be OK.'

'I went too far. I was wrong, I was desperate, frightened.'

'No!' Clara admonished, 'No. Don't say it like that. You told me if I was ever cruel or cowardly, to make amends. Well we can make amends for this too. You went too far, yes, but that doesn't mean you can never forgive yourself. Make peace with it, Doctor.'

She sounded so convinced and hopeful. He fought with himself not to be swept along only to find he was wishing he could be exactly that. Swept up in a tidal wave of Clara. Wasn't that how it had all started anyway?

'I don' t know how to remember,' he said desperately, 'Even if this is possible, even if we can keep running, even if Time heals over Trap Street and the paradox doesn't wreck the timelines, I don't know how to break the wall. I don't know, Clara.'

'I have an idea,' Clara said reaching up for his cheek and brushing away an errant tear he'd failed to realise had fallen. 'I think I know how.'

'How?'

'Like this,' she said stroking his cheek. In his mind he saw her in the console room of his own TARDIS, looking up at the rotor and smiling, 'we use telepathy,' she suggested.

'Vastra and I tried, it only put her in danger, I was reckless again I might have hurt her it's, it's… impossible.'

Clara forced him to look her in the eye. 'And what did you always call me?' she asked coaxingly, kindly. 'I'm your…'

'Impossible Girl,' he breathed.