Chapter 1:

I gave him almost three minutes - to be precise, it was two minutes and fifty-three seconds - to process the situation before I spoke again.

"So. Clara Oswald."

"How?"

He was completely shocked, and I almost started laughing. I could certainly understand why the Warrior seemed so calm when he saw us, as opposed to how we felt. It was rather funny, expecting to be meeting him but seeing how surprised he was. Of course, I could understand how he felt, but then again-

"How can you be here?" He asked, cutting my thoughts off. "More-"

"-to the point, why am I here?" I joked, remembering my meeting with the Tenth Doctor – if you don't mind, for the purpose of simplicity, I'll refer to him as 'Ten' – and the Warrior.

He didn't follow, even though I know he remembered it. "What are you doing here?" He asked, still serious.

I turned serious. When I called Clara from Trenzalore I thought the only thing I didn't like about him was that he's grey; now I realised there was more to it than just that. He was too serious. "I'm here to help you find Clara," I replied. "Well, I suppose you'd have to remember her first, but yeah, then we'll save her."

"You knew her?" He asked cautiously.

"Of course I did." I didn't want to say we wouldn't have been here without her, not just yet. I needed to ease him into the idea. "We've met her in the Dalek asylum."

He frowned. "The Dalek asylum," He repeated slowly. "That was when we still travelled with the Ponds."

So he's not as serious as he pretends to be, I thought, studying him silently for a moment. He was looking at me, eyebrows furrowed together, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He seemed overly serious, but then, he called them 'The Ponds'. He was still me. Us. The Doctor, that is.

"It was," I agreed. "But that was when we first met her. You see, it wasn't quite her, but that was the first time we noticed her, so you could say it's the first time we met her." I scratched the top of my head, a habit I know I got from Ten. "Although technically the first time was when we stole the TARDIS, and the first time we've met real Clara was when she called us-"

"You still haven't answered my question," He said, cutting me off. I hated when people did that. "How are you here?"

"Well... You could say it's a tiny bit of a..." Don't say timey-whimey. "Stretch of the rules of time." His eyes narrowed again. "That's not the point. Look, I'm here for Clara. She's saved us too many times to give up on her now. If anything... We owe it to her."

He studied me for a long moment that felt like eternity. I could practically hear the questions running through his mind – well, my mind – about how I'm there and why this Clara is so important. Of course, she was our companion, so she had to have been more important to us than others, but it was even more than that. I couldn't understand how he could possibly go on after losing all memories of her; she was too deeply intertwined with our past to be able to forget just her. Forgetting her meant, for the most part, forgetting parts of our past. It was easier, true, especially with all we had to remember, but it was far too much. Even for us.

"Look, Clara... She's our Impossible Girl," I continued, seeing as he had no plans to speak. "She saved us. More times than I can say. And we've known her for too long to just move on after something like that. Actually, I'm surprised you remember our past at all," I admitted, "Considering all the Claras you had to have forgotten."

"Claras?" He asked, stressing the fact it was plural.

I nodded briefly. "Look, it's a long story, and I don't really have the time for it. I need to be back on Trenzalore soon. Then I'll regenerate and you know what happens next, but before that, we have to save her." If he was near me, I'd have tapped his forehead. "And your memories," I added.

"If she's so important to us, how could I forget her in the first place?"

I rolled my eyes. I always had a habit of focusing on the wrong things, except only now that I was short on time I understood how annoying it really was. "I don't know what stupid thing you did that caused that," I replied sarcastically, "But if there's anything we can do, it's something that stupid." He glared at me, even though he didn't even seem to notice he did that. "Now, we've got to move. Fast. So are you coming or you're gonna let me do this alone?"

He looked at me silently for a long moment, considering his options. I knew he was curious about Clara and wanted to know more about her, but at the same time, he knew whatever I had in mind had to have been risky. On the other hand, 'risky' never bothered us much, and knowing my habit of rushing into things before thinking, I had a feeling he'd rather be there with me instead of letting my run around alone. It was hardly fair, considering I was the Doctor and could still be serious and responsible, but I wasn't gonna argue over that now. Not when that might just be the thing to convince him to come.

"How are you planning to do this?" He asked eventually, still studying me seriously.

I shrugged. "First I suppose we should find out what you did to your memories," I replied casually. "Then we're gonna reverse it. Then we'll save Clara and I'll go back to Trenzalore, regenerate and end up doing whatever it is you were doing afterwards."

He said nothing for a long moment before nodding briefly. "One last question." He stopped me as I got up and turned towards my TARDIS. I turned back to look at him questioningly. "How did you find out?"

I smiled. "The Impossible Girl, of course," was all I said before heading into my TARDIS, leaving the door open behind me for him to come in.