Clara got the distinct impression that he was biding his time. The Doctor had spent much of the previous evening deep in thought and she left him to it recognising the particular set of his face and the detached tone of his voice. He was thinking hard, thinking and planning, but also fortifying himself mentally for whatever lay ahead. When she went to check on him later she found that he had drifted off to sleep on her bed, so she tucked the blankets securely round him and retreated to the couch. He needed to heal and she needed to think.

So the Doctor had just reappeared, as though cast from the clouds and she'd thrown herself into whatever was going on with the storm. She'd tended his wounds and given him a place to be while the TARDIS tried to repair itself or whatever it was doing in siege mode. But neither of them had really given more than a cursory acknowledgement to the separation they had endured. And Clara did think that 'endure' was the right word. She had suffered these last few months without Danny, without a clear sense of future, and without the Doctor. Now she knew he'd been sitting in orbit, looking down on earth and 'regrouping.' He hadn't been more specific than that but still waters ran deep with him and she knew they would have to address it all at some point. Their friendship, the change he had seen in her, her relationship with Danny, his death, the Master's death and that bittersweet parting of ways. A parting that had been thick with lies as both she supposed had tried to protect the other.

Currently however she had an injured Doctor, a defunct TARDIS and an apocalypse to deal with.

Clara made more tea and sorted through the multitude of breakfast things in the stockpiled fridge. She hadn't wanted to starve if she had been snowed or flooded in and now she was grateful for the extra food. She decided she might as well do the full English and set them up for the day. With the TV on in the background showing more hurricane force blizzards in the north of England she set about frying sausages.

'Why aren't you humans more concerned about this?' the Doctor asked from the living room. Clara stuck her head round the door to find him standing in front of the TV, hands in trousers pockets and jacket flared behind him. She'd done quite a good job on the rip even if she did say so herself, the seam blended into the fabric almost as good as new.

'Brits are obsessed with weather,' she said, 'They love watching endless reports about snow and things. It's probably all the excitement that's blinding them to the fact that it's worrying.'

'Hmm….' He was still in thoughtful mode.

'I'm making food,' Clara said, 'You should eat. Come through it's nearly ready.'

The Doctor was still glaring at the screen watching cars slippy slide down icy roads.

'Doctor!'

He twitched and then caught himself, wincing. Clara stepped forward casting her eyes over the healing gash on his face, less disfiguring than it had been the day before, 'How's it all feeling?'

Finally he looked at her. 'Painful,' he said rubbing one of his arms distractedly, 'And stiff, I can barely move. But that's the least of our problems.'

'Anything I can do?'

He gave her a warning glance, 'No I'm sure it will loosen up of its own accord. Why did you let me sleep? If I'd been awake I wouldn't have seized up.'

'You needed to sleep, you were injured and traumatised,' she vanished back into the kitchen.

'Injured yes…. traumatised is a bit dramatic, I am used to this sort of thing you know.'

'Your TARDIS is in bits and someone is trying to destroy the earth, you'd had a rough day, even for you,' Clara started dishing up fried things for them both, 'Stop arguing, you must have known when you landed here I'd insist you did things like sleep and eat.'

The Doctor gingerly lowered himself into a kitchen chair, flinching forward when his shoulders touched the back of it, the bruising still deep and painful. 'I still don't fully understand why she landed here.'

Clara paused mid dish, 'Don't you? Because I do.'

He looked at her curiously.

'Sometimes I wonder if you really are a genius or not,' she continued ladling baked beans onto the plates, 'Timeline, echoes, saving your life, watching out for you etc,' she ran through the list.

'Oh,' the Doctor looked at the table, 'Yes well I suppose it makes some sense, our timelines have… history… you've… got me out of a few jams…'

'Understatement,' Clara scoffed, 'anyway that and you're my best friend,' she reassured taking a seat at right angles to him and handing him his breakfast, 'And even the TARDIS knows that you can always come to me… even when your pride thinks you can't.'

He shot her an offended look, 'My pride?'

'Yes, Mr Floating in Orbit for Months. Pride. I think I understand why you didn't say about Gallifrey but really… you could have. You spend enough time on your own, you didn't have to vanish completely. God, even a phonecall… it's me, Doctor, you could have told me.'

'Ok I get your point,' he said awkwardly. 'But equally you could have said about Danny. I imagine you've been sitting here alone, grieving. I wouldn't have left if I'd known. I do care, Clara.'

The words stung a little but needed to be said, she could see that. Clara nodded shortly and backed down registering his discomfort. It would do for starters. 'OK,' she said shovelling bacon into her mouth, 'That's fair I suppose. So tell me Oncoming Storm, what we do now?'

The Doctor picked up his knife and fork and attacked a sausage. 'I need to get inside the TARDIS,' he said, 'Even if she can't fly right now there may be something useable. If I can fix her even better but we're a bit tight on time. She's Plan A…. if I can't get into her we'll have to see about Plan B.'

'Which is…?'

'Which I'm… working on,' he replied. 'Eat up, we're going to have to brave the elements shortly.'

XXXXXX

That morning's insane weather consisted of more wind and lashing rain with a smattering of hail just to stir things up a little. Clara stood outside the box shaped silver TARDIS huddled in her coat and trying to ignore the sting of the little frozen pellets beating against her cheeks. The Doctor had his hands on the side of the ship and was leaning into it, his fingertips sometimes tracing the engravings gently as though he was trying to caress 'her' into opening up. The rain ran down his face in rivulets and over his closed eyes as he pleaded with her, his jacket was soaked through, his trousers clung wetly to him. Clara was cold enough, he had to be frozen.

'Can't you just sonic her open?' she asked over the deafening wind.

The Doctor glanced sideways at her, 'Do you think if it was that simple I wouldn't have done that by now? She's sentient Clara, she has to be persuaded. She doesn't know if she's coming or going at the moment, she's confused, she's in pain, she's not even sure what's caused all that pain some alien force or me, so she is taking a lot of convincing.' He looked back at the TARDIS, 'Poor confused old girl, whoever they are they are going to pay for this. Come on, just let me back in, we'll fix it.'

Clara looked at him and tried to rub warmth into her hands. There was something terribly moving about him begging his old spaceship to trust him. The one constant in his life she supposed. She drew her jacket around her tighter trying to cut off the biting wind. Well the one constant other than the woman in his timeline, she thought.

Does he think of me that way? His constant?

She watched him lean his forehead against the TARDIS and whisper to her. He was so focused that he forgot himself entirely, laying bare the emotions on his face.

If I shut him out would he beg me like that to let him back into my life?

The thought shocked her, unsure where it came from or what it signified, but she knew she wanted to mean something to him in the way he meant something to her. She just wasn't sure what that was.

Clara's thoughts were stopped in their tracks by the sound of metal tearing. She saw the Doctor take a pace backward and the flat silver surface of the TARDIS shimmer. The circular Gallifreyan symbol pulsed pale blue light and then opened, rolling to one side with a painful screech. Clara stepped forward and peered inside at the darkness of a broken and indistinct console room, while behind her during a tiny lull in the wind she heard the Doctors muttered gratitude.

'Good girl,' he said softly and patting the entryway stepped over the threshold. The door slid closed behind them.

Clara squinted round the room aware of a few flying sparks and dim background lighting but little else. She heard the Doctor move to her right, clanking across bare metal and then the green light of his sonic came on like a torch. He twiddled with the settings until its light grew bright enough to illuminate the whole room and propped it against the remains of the central console. He looked around him slowly.

'Dear God,' Clara breathed. The room was a disaster. Above them the balcony was completely destroyed, bannisters dangling off the sides of the floor which now lay at a forty five degree angle, its metal crumpled and scuffed. The bookcases were lying on their sides and backs, books strewn over the ground and tumbling like leaves down through the levels below them. Everything was blackened on one side of the room, including what looked like the remains of the Doctor's leather chair. The smell of burned leather books and oil still hung in the air although the smoke was gone.

Clara picked her way through some debris to the console and cast her eyes over the controls. Many were burned out, wires hung from beneath it sparking together and crackling, beneath that on the floor a strange blue viscous substance seemed to be oozing from the central pillar of the console.

The Doctor followed her line of sight and spotted it, his face registering his alarm.

'Gooey stuff not a good sign?' Clara asked.

'No,' his voice was grim, 'Not a good sign at all. It's part of her core control system, a very rare substance indeed. I have some more somewhere…' he looked round the ship, 'But whether or not I can dig it out of all this is another matter, she may not let me through, she might have deleted the storeroom when she began to melt down…' he trailed off and began clattering his way round the room. Clara wandered to the steps to look at the workspace below and winced. It was largely inaccessible and filled with broken bits of TARDIS and unrecognisable burned things. So far, not so good. She looked round when she heard cursing from behind her and saw the Doctor backing away from the sealed door to the rest of the ship.

'Won't let me through,' he explained briefly, going to have to fix her up a bit before I can even get to the things I need…' He crouched in front of the console and peered up under it, grimacing, before sitting and dragging his horizontal body under the machine's core. Clara stood next to his shoulder and waited. It was a pleasantly familiar feeling standing there in the spaceship while the Doctor fiddled under its bonnet like a mechanic fixing a car. Even the clangs and mutterings sounded appropriate.

'Need any help?' she asked.

'This is going to be a long job,' his voice came muffled from under the metal, 'Let's hope the world doesn't end in the meantime.'

Clara listened but the noise of the wind had been blocked out the minute the doors had shut.

'It's a mess under here,' he continued, 'Everything is fried. There are levels of exposed tech I don't even recognise. If I can just get her communicating…' There was a fizz and a small bang and he cursed again. Clara hugged herself and swung back and forth a little wondering if she should tidy the room best she could or maybe go back to the flat and bring them a flask of tea. Tea currently seemed to be the answer to everything.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a flash and the appearance of a flickering yellow holographic image. Clara stared at the familiar female face.

'Interface is up,' she told the Doctor. He slid out from under the console and grabbed at it to haul himself up with a barely concealed grunt of pain. Clara looked down and realised he'd been lying on the torn surface of the metal floor on his already badly bruised back.

The Doctor leaned on the controls and eyed the TARDIS interface. It, or more precisely she, stared back impassively.

'Welcome back,' he told it.

'I have not yet optimised,' it replied, 'I require to be in repair mode, you have overridden my automatic hibernation.'

'Yes, I know, sorry, but it's an emergency, we need to get you back online, how long until you're repaired?'

The TARDIS paused calculating. 'One hundred and three hours, fifty two minutes.'

The Doctor looked at her, 'Needs to be faster than that, what can I do?'

'I do not require your input, I can repair in siege mode.'

'But I can speed that up.'

The TARDIS interface looked at him blankly, 'It is not required.'

'It is required,' he argued, 'Now, open up your doors and let me get to the storeroom, your oil is spilling all over the floor.'

Again the impassive stare. 'The Doctor requires repairs,' it said suddenly turning to Clara, 'He is not currently fit to pilot.'

His eyebrows furrowed, 'I am perfectly fit thank you, just a bit knocked about, I can still fly you and I can still fix you.'

'Repairs require a level twenty two technician, you are not qualified. Your physical and mental state is faulty.'

'I've read every manual on the mark 40 TARDIS there is, I am perfectly well qualified and given I'm the only Time Lord available currently I'm your best bet, faulty or otherwise. Now open the doors.'

Clara was still being stared at by the TARDIS, it was making her uncomfortable. Suddenly the interface turned back to the Doctor.

'Clara Oswald can repair me, she has the necessary qualifications.'

'I really don't,' Clara said wide eyed.

'She really doesn't,' the Doctor echoed.

'She is a qualified Mark 40 Technician,' the TARDIS stated. 'She must oversee repairs….' It paused. 'The Doctor may only assist.'

He rolled his eyes in frustration, 'You really are insufferable sometimes, how many centuries have I been repairing you, solo? Clara can barely work a sonic never mind delve into your insides.'

The penny suddenly dropped in Clara's head, 'She thinks I'm an echo,' she said leaning into him, 'She thinks I'm the echo that told you to take her, not the other TARDIS, the one who was a technician on Gallifrey.'

The Doctor looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and realisation. 'She thinks you… right fine!' he said cheerfully to the interface, 'Clara Oswald will oversee. And I believe she will wish to start with what's under there,' he pointed under the console, 'Come on Clara, let's have a look,' he nodded at her to get under the control panel. Clara sighed and crawled beneath it, being joined a second later in the tight space by the Doctor.

'Should keep her happy,' he whispered a little conspiratorially, 'Now let me just adjust a few bits,' he nudged into her as he tackled a stray wire, 'And she should open the doors and let us get on with things.'

'And what do I do?'

'Lie there and think of England?' The Doctor said from nowhere and Clara snorted only to receive an elbow in her ribs. 'Shh,' he warned, 'She'll notice.' Clara clamped her lips together in an effort to repress the laugh that threatened to burst from her chest when he winked at her.

'I have missed this so much,' she admitted staring up at the cables he was fiddling with. The Doctor didn't reply, his teeth clamped around the sonic as he twisted wires together with his fingers. Clara looked over at his profile, so close to her as they lay under the console and at the concentration in his eyes as he worked. 'Missed you,' she corrected not expecting a response but wanting him to hear the words. Instead with the arm nearest her still raised to keep bits of technology in position he reached with his other hand and extracted the sonic from his lips and cocked his head towards her.

'Feelings mutual,' he said with a soft smile, and Clara felt something in her chest swell. He held her eye for a beat longer than usual and then returned to the job in hand. 'Don't let it go to your head,' he continued, 'Here hold this,' he jabbed the sonic at her, 'And shut your eyes this might get a bit sparky.'

She heard him tinker, there was another bang and the TARDIS shuddered around them. Clara opened her eyes again and found that the level of light in the console room had gone up significantly and there was the distinctive sound of engines warming and machinery wakening.

'Excellent work, Clara,' The Doctor said at volume keeping up the pretence for his machine, 'Now where to?' he scooted out from under the console and motioned to her to join him, 'Storeroom you think, pick up some parts?'

Clara clambered up and was immediately faced with the interface's cool regard.

'Yes,' she agreed hesitantly, 'Yes,' more firmly now, 'Storeroom, oil, repairs,' she patted the console in a show of camaraderie, 'we'll get you fix up in no time you old co…. old girl,' she corrected.

The TARDIS looked unimpressed but did not argue so the pair turned to find the main door to the rest of the ship had indeed come open at last. It wasn't until they were through it that Clara heard the interface say something in reply.

'The Doctor has a fault,' it repeated, 'Tend to him.'

'Ignore her,' he whispered, 'She seems to be struggling with the concept of a few bruises today.'

They trudged through the oncoming corridor in silence for a minute. The TARDIS had indeed shut down many of her usual rooms, anything extraneous appeared to be missing and by extraneous Clara noted a distinct lack of comfort and frivolry. The swimming pool, games room and sauna had been wiped. She failed to spot her bedroom and hadn't come across the wardrobe. The pair split up and wandered separately to make better use of time. Clara noted a number of more 'essential rooms, the medi-bay and pharmacy being two of them to her relief. Every other remaining room appeared to be made of grey steel and filled with technology or engine parts. To the Doctor's relief however the storeroom was in one piece and he was able to dig out a barrel of the strange blue oil Clara had seen on the console room floor.

'The basics are intact,' he said when they met up again. He had shouldered the barrel and Clara was surprised with this unusual show of strength forgetting for a moment he was in fact a Time Lord and not a human man in his fifties, 'I was concerned she would just start shutting down randomly but she's only got rid of the unnecessary bits. Clever girl, always keeps her head in a crisis.' They began walking back to the console room, the Doctor occasionally shifting the weight of his burden slightly on his shoulder. 'I should be able to get her up and running sufficiently to get her into the centre of that storm in the next day or so.'

They came back to the console room and he dropped the barrel a little unceremoniously to the ground, reaching back immediately and grasping his spine.

'The Doctor is…' the interface began.

'Yes… yes… faulty… I know,' he chided.

'I'll deal with the Doctors fault later,' Clara reassured the machine, 'Let's get this oil… changed or topped up… or something.' He rolled his eyes at her.

'I think you mean exchanged, Clara,'

'Yes, exchanged, come on chop chop…' he glared in response to her command. 'I'm the boss,' she said smugly. The Doctor pulled himself back under the console and dragged the barrel with him.