Clara wished the bloody power would come back on and she could make some tea. She didn't much mind not having tea for herself but she felt possessed with the need to look after the battered Doctor now that he was here. Now that the TARDIS had chosen to bring him back to her. They needed tea, and sustenance and to sit down and discuss how to end the storm, and what was causing it, maybe not in that order. But they needed to get back on track and address the problem.

She could feel the adrenaline already. Once again she had been dragged into another adventure and it was serving only to make her realise how much she had been missing it. There was a mystery to be solved and it was extra complicated without the TARDIS. Maybe UNIT could help? Clara stood by the kitchen counter thinking and tapping various extremities. They didn't have a TARDIS but if whatever was causing this was within range of earth surely there was something that could take them to it.

Clara glanced at her watch, she had reassured the Doctor that the apocalypse wasn't coming that morning and she believed that, but she still wanted to talk about it now. What was he doing in there anyway? The only time she spent that long in a bath was when she had fallen asleep and turned into a prune in the water.

She snorted. Maybe he was asleep. He'd never live that down. Would he turn into a prune too? Did Time Lord skin do that? He was already wrinkly so maybe it wouldn't.

She glanced at the hallway and the bathroom door. On the other hand maybe he wasn't alright, he had been injured after all. Maybe she should check. He could have some awful slow internal bleed or have passed out with concussion from that gash.

Did Time Lords get concussion?

Oh just go and check.

Clara wandered down the hall listening for sounds of water. It was silent apart from the storm outside.

'Doctor?' she called. The door was open, not by much but by a fraction that left a tiny gap. It swung back and forth on the occasional gusty draught. Clara placed her hand on it and pushed lightly, 'Doctor, are you alright?' She shielded her eyes against possible Naked Doctor and then peeked through her fingers.

Well he wasn't in the bath. Clara's eyebrows knitted when she saw him seated on the old blanket box opposite the bathtub. He was leaning on his elbows, hands over his face, oblivious to her. Clara joined him on the box and patted his thigh, 'Doctor?'

He flinched.

'Bruising,' he said grimly.

'Oh, sorry,' Clara withdrew her hand, 'Are you OK, how long have you been sitting there?'

'A while.'

The steam in the room suggested he had been in the bath, and now he appeared to have stopped half way through dressing himself. Though his lower half was completed his shirt remained unbuttoned, the cuffs open.

The lights banged on overhead.

'Oh thank God,' Clara said looking up at the newly bright bulb. The Doctor didn't move. She looked back at him and then dropped her eyes to his chest where it was clear that his injuries were rather more dramatic than he had described. She could practically see the bruising coming out before her eyes. Cautiously she hooked a finger round the edge of his shirt and pulled back, chewing on her lip as she spotted the deep violet marks which bore a stunning resemblance to the long hard edges of bookcases. She hissed.

'I just need a minute,' he said quietly, trying to close the shirt front and hide the evidence from her eyes.

'You're in agony aren't you?' she said, 'I don't know about cracked ribs, I think they're pretty broken.'

'Same thing.'

'If you weren't already injured I'd slap you for being stubborn. Is your back like this too? Your thigh?'

'Yes.'

'Right,' Clara said more purposefully, 'Come on, up you get.' He finally removed his hand from his eyes and peered up at her.

'Where are we going?'

'Bedroom.'

He looked at her uncomprehendingly.

'To lie down,' she explained. 'And now we have power I can make tea finally. And while you are lying down you can let your speedy Time Lord metabolism do its thing and start to heal you while we discuss the storm.'

'Clara…'

'Come on, like you said it's going to be more difficult to fix with the TARDIS offline, so we need to think a bit creatively and you can't do that while you're like this. Now, can Time Lords take paracetamol?'

'I suppose if I have no alternative. Vyladian Springbark is really much more effective.'

'TARDIS pharmacy not available. You can have paracetamol or aspirin.'

'Aspirin gives me indigestion.'

Clara snorted, 'Don't want a Time Lord with a sore tummy, paracetamol it is.' She turned to the door but was stopped by his voice.

'Clara wouldn't you rather stay out of this one?' he asked quietly, 'I mean I know she brought me here but it doesn't mean you have to feel compelled to help me fix this. I know you have different priorities now…'

'Doctor, there is nothing I would rather do right now,' Clara looked at him seriously.

'But…' and he took a breath the subject clearly uncomfortable but pressing him to deal with it anyway. 'But after what happened last time, how close you came to losing Danny forever, I'd understand if you just wanted to patch me up and send me on my way.'

Clara looked at him for a long moment before taking a steadying breath of her own. 'That was the mistake I made the last time I think, sending you on your way…'

'What?'

'Danny never came back, Doctor, but I thought it was the right thing to do to let you go back to Gallifrey without me moping around holding you back, so I… sent you on your way,' she smiled a sad smile, 'Part of me has regretted it every day since.'

He stared up at her with something like horror in his eyes. 'Danny isn't…? He's gone?'

'Yes.'

'Oh Clara, I'm sorry,' the Doctor looked down at the bathroom floor in silence, his hands linked loosely and dangling between his knees. The room seemed suddenly heavy with quiet, a monotonous drip from a tap ticking like time between them.

'I…' the Doctor started, 'I suppose if we're having a rare moment of mutual honesty that this might be the time to tell you that Gallifrey is gone too,' he said at last. He chanced a glance up at Clara whose eyes widened at his confession.

'Galifrey's gone?' she echoed incredulously.

'Yes,'

'And you knew this when we met in the café?'

'Yes.'

'And you didn't tell me because…?'

'Because… of similar reasons to you I suspect.'

Clara continued to stare at him in disbelief and then her expression changed.

'Dead boyfriend, missing planet, a complete lack of communication between us for all the wrong reasons and an apocalyptic storm outside,' her laughter came out a little too high pitched and the Doctor raised his eyebrows at her in concern. 'What's wrong with us, Doctor? Why are we so hopeless? Why can't you and I ever just do something simple? Something ordinary and uncomplicated? Why does it always have to be so dramatic and painful and hard?' She grinned at him with equal measures of despair and kindness and shook her head.

The Doctor smiled shyly. 'I don't know Clara but I promise you if we solve the apocalypse, we'll do something ordinary, anything you like, you choose.'

'I'll have a think,' she promised, 'And we haven't done with this subject by the way, you don't get away with it that easily, but this isn't the time. Now come on, painkillers.'

XXXXXXXX

'You're certain you want to do this?' The Doctor asked.

'For the last time, yes, I want to help,' Clara plumped a pillow and stuck it behind his head before he could grumble any further. 'I've missed helping,' she went on lightly, 'It was scary at times, often messy, and regularly spectacularly dangerous but I missed it. Anyway you work better when you have someone with you that you can impress with your genius,' he smirked at her and settled back into the pillow.

'Well that is true,' he confessed, 'But you might have just got used to not risking your life on alien planets and quite rightly wish to decline the invitation to go into the centre of an unnatural storm with a half broken Time Lord.'

'I invited myself and you're only a bit broken.'

'You're not the one lying here in pain,' he grumbled.

'Stop feeling sorry for yourself,' Clara sat back and eyed his bruised chest. The Doctor again pulled the two edges of his shirt together self-consciously.

'What?' he asked, 'Stop looking at it.'

'Don't be silly, I've seen men's chests before and anyway I have some oil that might help that,' she said turning to rummage in one of the drawers of her bedside cabinet.

'Oil?' the Doctor said cautiously.

'Yes, oil, oil for massage. Supposed to help damaged skin…'

'Damaged human skin,' he interjected, 'Not Time Lord skin. Anyway it's a bit bruised for massage.'

'I can be gentle!' Clara protested, 'It might help.'

The Doctor looked at her warily. 'Clara I don't want to be oiled.'

She huffed at him in frustration, 'Suit yourself, but it is supposed to aid the healing process, see,' she held up the little bottle which did indeed claim healing properties and then flicked open its cap, 'Smells nice,' she said to try and tempt him.

'I am not being oiled,' he repeated. Clara rolled her eyes.

'Take your pills,' she said irritably. 'And tell me about the storm.'

The Doctor tossed back the paracetamol she handed him and obligingly swallowed down his tea, relieved to be off the subject of oiling. She seemed oddly enthusiastic about that and well it was inappropriate to say the least. He caught himself glancing at her hands and wondering just how gentle she could be before he got back to the topic in hand.

The Storm.

'I've been circling the planet watching it for the last few days trying to figure out where is coming from,' he explained.

'Where have you been?' Clara said suddenly.

'What?'

'Where have you been since the Cybermen? If it wasn't Gallifrey?'

The Doctor dropped his eyes to his tea, 'In orbit,' he said evasively.

'Orbit of earth?'

'Yes.'

'All this time? Didn't get very far did you?'

'Nowhere particular to go. I needed time to think. Regroup,' he admitted quietly.

Clara looked at him sympathetically, at that odd sadness that was back in his eyes and didn't have the heart to push him on the topic. She filed it away with the one about his missing home planet and his lies for later. At some point they were going to have a hell of a talk. 'Ok. So you were in orbit, you must have seen how the storm started.'

'It started like any other weather system, nothing looked out of the ordinary,' his confident tone resumed. 'It was only after a few days that I noticed just how many of these weather systems were popping up all over the earth.'

'Doesn't usually take you that long to notice something odd like that,' Clara remarked.

The Doctor glanced at her quickly, 'Will you kindly stop analysing everything I say. I had things on my mind other than earths weather, I noticed eventually, stop being so critical.'

Clara was taken aback by his defensiveness. 'Ok… sorry… go on.'

'Thank you…' he resumed his tea gazing, 'So I ran the usual diagnostics, tried to locate patterns, understand what was influencing the climate but everything came back jumbled, none of the data made sense, it was just figures and numbers, no meaning to it.'

'Something scrambled the signals?'

'Something did. This isn't weather at work, Clara, it's technology. But so far I've not been able to work out whose technology or why it's interfering. What is obvious though is that the effects are getting worse, the climate more unpredictable and that makes me think whoever it is, is aiming pretty high on the scale of potential destruction.'

'Deliberately tampering with earth's climate. So definitely not the Moon-Egg, then.'

'I thought it was the Moon-Egg as well at first,' he admitted and Clara smiled.

'You know what they say about great minds,' she said.

'And fools…'

Clara batted his arm and he flinched.

'Honestly is there any bit of you not bruised at the moment?' she asked.

'Not much.'

She pouted at him mockingly and he gave her an irritated look.

'So,' she went on watching him wriggle against the pillow and try to get comfortable, 'You decided to head straight to the eye of the storm and investigate?'

'Seemed like the quickest option once I realised something was wrong. There was one particularly impressive weather system over Europe that appeared more consistent than the others, seemed a reasonable assumption that whatever was controlling the climate sat at the centre of it. I set the co-ordinates and decided to steer manually in case it was a little unpredictable.'

'Let me guess, it was unpredictable.'

'Quite. The closer I got to the centre the more it put up a fight, which confirms my theory that the control is sitting in the middle. And it didn't just wrestle with the ship it played with it,' his voice barely covered his outrage at the idea of the TARDIS being toyed with, 'It tormented her, releasing her just long enough for us to almost get away before capturing her again in its cyclones and battering her against rock faces.'

Clara felt a stab of anger as she thought of the machine. It had seen the Doctor through two thousand years safely and she got the impression it had never been as badly damaged as it was now. His ire bubbled just beneath the surface. His ship was hurting, and so he was hurting, and she hated it when he hurt.

'Did you get close enough to have any idea what it was?'

'No, I mean almost, but not before the TARDIS was struck by lightning.'

'The TARDIS doesn't get struck by lightning, she has shields.'

He glanced at her with a look that said Keep up, 'As I said, they didn't work. As well as the scrambled data, half the systems on the ship became scrambled too, whatever it is just sliced right through her defences, the poor old girl even started hitting out at me in her confusion. Quite incredible really, it was so targeted it's like someone knew she was coming. TARDIS technology is beyond anything most civilisations can throw at it…'

'So whatever we're dealing with is…'

'… as you put it, spectacularly dangerous,' he finished for her.

Clara fell silent.

'It knows you're coming for it,' she said, 'That's how it knew how to deal with a TARDIS, that's why it played with it, because it could, because it knew how that would make you feel.'

'Yes I get that impression too,' the Doctor said. 'It feels personal.'

Clara felt the muscles in her jaw twitch. Whatever this was had readied itself for him, the Doctor, knowing he would step in the way of the harm it was doing to the planet, and it wanted to do him damage. What's more it wanted to gloat. That feeling tapped into something deep inside her which she struggled to define, something like a sense of loyalty, something fiercely protective. The Doctor might be the one fighting this particular battle but she and her echoes had long been the ones looking out for him as he fought the war and she was damned if she would let this thing hurt him now.

'How much time is there?' she asked.

'I don't know, it's been a slow build until now, as though it's enjoying the show.'

'I don't like the sound of that.'

'Neither do I. Emotionless technology is one thing, something sentient like this, something vengeful, is capricious and impulsive, it reacts emotionally, it can take us by surprise with its irrationality. It enjoys the game.'

'So what do we do?'

The Doctor looked beyond her into his memories as he answered her, his voice slightly distant and his face dark.

'This thing thinks it's can destroy the world and me in it with its tempests,' he said, 'But its game playing will be its downfall. It will trip up, it will fail and when it does it will discover that there is a reason why they call The Doctor the Oncoming Storm.'