Wiggle Room

He was close to finishing the story when the lift arrived again.

"Twenty feet of pure diamond. Harder than diamond." The lift opened. "But you break through anything, given time."

"How much time?"

It was the General and Ohila, approaching from Clara's back. "Miss Oswald."

The human glanced at them. "Stay back."

"I'm sorry, but we have to find a way to extract you..."

"I said, stay back!" She spun to order that, and they obeyed, lowering their eyes and stepping back. Clara returned her attention to the Doctor. She felt, almost, like crying. "The Hybrid, what is it? What's so important you would fight so long?"

"It doesn't matter what the Hybrid is. It only matters that I convinced them that I knew. Otherwise, they'd have kicked me out, I'd have had nothing left to bargain with."

"What were you bargaining for?" Clara knew the answer. She knew it and didn't want to know it.

"What do you think? You." There was no Adelaide left here. Clara could feel the Time Lady closing her eyes. Abandoning a burden only she could survive. Running away from something she could never escape. "I had to find a way to save you. I knew it had to be the Time Lords. They cost your life on Trap Street, Clara, and I was going to make them bring you back. I just had to hang on in there for a bit."

"How long?"

"It was fine."

Clara stood, turning to address the General – regenerated now, into a woman – and Ohila. "One question. And you will answer. How long was the Doctor trapped inside the confession dial?"

"We think four and a half billion years," Ohila said.

"He could have left any time he wanted. He just had to say what he knew. The dial would have released him."

Clara turned back to the Time Lord still waiting on his knees. He hadn't listened to Adelaide. He hadn't listened to her. "Four and a half billion years?"

He didn't look surprised. He didn't look anything. "If she says so."

Clara dropped to her knees again. "No. Why would you even do that? I was dead! I was dead and gone! I'd made my choice! Why? Why would you even do that to yourself?"

"I had a duty of care." A duty Clara had never asked for, a duty that Adelaide had tried to liberate herself from. Separate herself from. A duty that the Doctor could never forget. "Listen, I'm nearly through here." The panel made more sounds. "If I'm right, there should be a service duct under here. We'll be able to get to the old workshops. They'll have TARDISes there."

Clara grabbed his hand. "Okay, listen. I have something I need to say."

"We do not have time."

"No, my time...my time is up. Doctor, between one heartbeat and the last is all the time I have. People like me and you, we should say things to one another. And I'm going to say them now."

|C-S|

When Clara finally stood and walked back over to the General and Ohila, the two Time Lords searched for any sign of Adelaide. "You're monsters." They didn't find her. "Here you are, hiding away at the end of time. Do you even know why? Because you are hated. You are hated by everybody. But by nobody more than me."

Ohila frowned "What did you say to him?"

The human shrugged. "Oh, nothing I'm going to tell you, or anybody else. Except maybe this one part. I said..." they heard metal moving behind her, "'don't worry, Doctor. They'll all be looking at me.'"

A light appeared from the trapdoor the Doctor and Clara had found.

"You need to tell us what the Doctor is going to do now," the General tried.

"You really are thick, aren't you? The Doctor is back on Gallifrey. Took him four and a half billion years to get here. What do you think he's going to do now?" A very familiar something wheezed. "Why, he's stealing a TARDIS and running away." Clara waved. "Bye!" An original TARDIS – a large grey cylinder – appeared around her. Clara spun around to look at the console, where the Doctor was working. "You were quick."

"Time machine." The Doctor shrugged. "I backed up a bit."

"Doctor!" Ohila called, for the Doctor had yet to fully leave the Cloisters. "Doctor, face me! Doctor, can you hear me? Get out of that TARDIS and face me, boy!"

Clara smirked. "Boy?"

The Doctor, ignoring her, went to the door and stuck his head out.

Ohila may have left the Time Lord and human, but Ohila remembered her. "You have gone too far. You have broken every code you have ever lived by."

"After all this time, after everything I've done, don't you think the universe owes me this?"

Ohila, almost, didn't need to answer. The Doctor, in the furthest part of his mind, easily compared her expression with Adelaide's favorite. "Owes you what? All you're doing is giving her hope."

He narrowed his eyes. "Since when is hope a bad thing?"

"Hope is a terrible thing on the scaffold."

The Doctor didn't answer. He pulled himself back into the TARDIS and to the console where Clara was waiting. "What do you think of the new wheels?" he asked, piloting them away.

Clara eyed it. "Basic."

"Classic! Look at the color scheme."

"It's all white."

"Genius!" The Doctor thought Adelaide would have loved it, but he wasn't thinking that much about Adelaide right then. There was a jolt that nearly made them fall. "Check your heartbeat again. I think that you'll find you have one."

"Yeah?" Clara began to check.

The Doctor, meanwhile, celebrated. He was good at celebrating. "It should have restarted when we broke free of Gallifrey's time zone. You're alive! Now we just have to shake off the Time Lords. There's only one place we can do that. What do you say to lunch, followed by breakfast? Because we're time travelers and that's how we roll. Then cocktails with Moses. Then I'm going to invent a flying submarine. Why? Because no one ever has and it's annoying. And maybe we should use this TARDIS to find my proper one. I need to change my shirt."

"Doctor," Clara spoke quietly, "I still don't have a pulse."

"Oh, you just haven't found it yet. Try again."

She shook her head. "I know how to take my pulse. Look, I know how to do it. See, no pulse, right?" The Doctor put on his sonic glasses, turning her to check the back of her neck. Before she could speak, he'd stepped away, tossing the glasses off, face dark. Adelaide had stepped back to Clara's shoulder. "Is it still there? Don't lie to me."

"Er...maybe we just have to fly a little bit further, give it a bit more welly."

Clara had begun to feel incredibly guilty. The Time Lady could do that to you easily. "They said, your lot, that if you saved me, time would fracture. What does that mean?"

"Oh, they're exaggerating. They exaggerate all the time. History will be fine. Time will heal. It always does."

She raised her eyebrows. "Always?"

"Yeah. It'll sort itself out." Clara remembered what Adelaide had told her about fixed events. She knew that that wasn't how it worked. "It'll be all right. You'll have a heartbeat. Or don't you trust me anymore?"

"No, not when you're shouting. Where are we going?"

He typed something into the console. "Nowhere in space, forward in time. We're going to the last hours of the universe. We're going long past where the Time Lords were hiding. Literally, to the end. They won't be able to track us there. We'll just be there for a minute. I just need to...I need to make an adjustment."

"To what?"

He waved a hand. "It's nothing, really. It's this." He flashed the device the engineer had given him.

"The neural block. Human compatible, that's what you said."

The time rotor stopped. The TARDIS settled. "We don't have to stay here long." It was quiet. "Er...check your heartbeat again." She did. "Your timeline must have started by now. A pulse, yeah? You have a pulse, yes? Pulse? Let me do it." The Doctor reached for her, but Clara leaped out of his reach.

"I am checking it properly!"

"This should work. This has got to work."

"What if one last heartbeat is all I've got? What if time isn't healing? What if it's a fixed event? What if the universe needs me to die?" There were opposing forces at work in Clara. Her humanity didn't want to die. Her humanity was willing to do anything to survive. But whatever Adelaide had instilled into her, everything Adelaide had made her, told her that she needed to die.

"The universe is over!" he sneered, and Clara really saw the Time Lord Victorious. And she was terrified. "It doesn't have a say anymore! We're standing on the last ember, the last fragment of everything that ever was. As of this moment, I'm answerable to no-one!"

Clara prayed for Adelaide.

Someone knocked four times.

"How can there be anybody there?" Clara hissed.

Someone knocked four times.

The Doctor looked down. "Four knocks. It's always four knocks." Clara moved towards the door, but he stopped her. "No. This one I do alone."

"What's out there?"

"Me."

The Doctor left Clara in the TARDIS. They were still in the Cloisters, but there was light drifting in from above now. Everything had crumbled. Everything was decaying. Despite the mess, Adelaide would have preferred it – far more light.

"I told you once," he said to the room, seeing a figure in the center, "so long ago, that the universe would become a very small place when I'm angry with you. Small enough for you yet?" Ashildr was sitting in a chair at a chess set. "Hello, me."

"You don't seem surprised to see me."

He shrugged. "At the end of everything, we should expect the company of immortals, so I've been told."

"Even the other immortals are gone. It's just me."

"The one and only me." The Doctor nodded. "Finally, you earn the title, sitting here in a reality bubble at the end of time itself." He glanced around them. "How are you sustaining it, by the way?"

"Brilliantly. I've been watching the stars die. It was beautiful."

"No. It was sad."

"No, it was both," Ashildr corrected. "But that's not something you would understand, is it? You don't like endings. They're too logical." He wasn't looking at her. She was Adelaide now. Everyone was Adelaide. "She died, Doctor. Clara died billions of years ago."

"You killed her."

"No."

"You let it happen."

"No, I didn't. Neither did you. She did. She died for who she was and who she loved. She fell where she stood. It was sad, and it was beautiful. And it is over. We have no right to change who she was."

The Doctor had to close his eyes against the amount of Adelaide. "Ashildr..."

"Me."

"Me...go to hell." He opened his eyes. "By my calculations, you've got about five minutes."

She smiled. "You know why we run, Doctor?" He knew she included Adelaide. Everyone was including Adelaide. He missed and hated the Time Lady at once.

"Because it's fun."

"Because we know summer can't last forever."

The Doctor shook his head. "Of course it can. Of course it can. You just have to steal a time machine."

Ashildr leaned against one of her arms. "The Hybrid. Five minutes to hell. I think it's time to tell the truth. You were barely more than a child. You broke in here and the Wraiths spoke to you about the Hybrid. Why did that story make you so scared?"

"I don't know. I don't remember it."

"Sometimes you do." She almost smiled. "It's always the way with things we'd rather forget. You remember now, though, don't you? Tell me, Doctor, who is the Hybrid? Who threatens all of time and space?"

The Doctor turned, walking closer. "Oh, but that's easy. That's very, very easy. The Hybrid is...you."

Ashildr almost scoffed. "I'm human, with a little bit of Mire inside me. The Hybrid is supposed to be half Time Lord, half Dalek."

"No, it isn't. The actual prophecy specifies only two warrior races. The Daleks and the Time Lords have made assumptions, of course. And they would." He nodded at her. "Humans and the Mire, both warrior races. It fits perfectly."

Ashildr raised her eyebrows. "It's an interesting theory. You're not normally the one responsible for those."

"Do you have a better one?"

"By your own reasoning, why couldn't the Hybrid be half-Time Lord, half-human?" The Time Lord glanced away from her. "Tell me, Doctor, I've always wondered. You're a Time Lord, you're a high-born Gallifreyan. Why is it you spend so much time on Earth?"

"That's your best theory?" he turned away. "I'm the Hybrid? I ran away from Gallifrey because I was afraid of myself? That doesn't make any sense."

"It makes perfect sense, and you know it. Am I right? Is it true?"

"Does it matter?"

Ashildr stood. "No." The Doctor turned back around to look at her. "Because I have a better theory."

"Really?"

"What if the Hybrid wasn't one person, but two?"

"Two?"

"A dangerous combination of a passionate and powerful Time Lord and a young woman so very similar to him. Companions who are willing to push each other to extremes." Ashildr shrugged. "Adelaide, even Hybridized, wouldn't be nearly so destructive."

"She's my friend," the Doctor was quiet. He knew she was right. Hated she was right. "She's just my friend. Our friend."

"How did you meet her?"

Another Time Lady smirked from the shadows of his memory. "Missy."

Ashildr nodded. "Missy. The Master. The lover of chaos, who wants you to love it, too." She smiled. "She's quite the matchmaker. First Adelaide, then Clara. You should thank her."

"Clara's my friend."

"I know. And you're willing to risk all of time and space because you miss her." Ashildr nearly spat out the last three words, barely containing the mockery. "One wonders what the pair of you will get up to next. If Adelaide will finally come back to stop you." Ashildr kept saying her name. Kept bringing her back. Made the Doctor remember the one person who could actually stand against him. It was the only reason what Ashildr said now was working. She was being the Adelaide – nothing like the woman herself, but the effect was enough.

"Nothing." He said it and meant it. "Nothing at all. I know I went too far. I get it. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing."

"And what would that be?"

"I'm taking her back to Earth. Somewhere safe, somewhere out of the way. I'm going to wipe her memory of every last detail of me. It'll be like our friendship never happened."

Ashildr stepped into a shadow and became Adelaide in a blink, despite not changing at all. "That may not be what she wants."

Adelaide hated it when he took away people's choices. She hated it when he ignored the fact that his companions could make decisions for themselves. But he had to protect them.

He had a duty of care.

"I've done it before." Adelaide hadn't known how to stop him then. He wondered if she regretted it. "Usually, I do it telepathically, but this time, I've got something better. It's quite painless."

Ashildr glanced at the TARDIS. "Will you tell her what you're going to do?"

"Of course."

"When?"

"Now."

Ashildr gestured to the TARDIS for the Doctor to lead the way. "Onward, Time Lord Victorious."

He didn't respond.

Back inside the TARDIS, Ashildr following close behind, the Doctor found Clara still at the console, looking worried. "You okay?" he asked her.

"Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just, you know, my pulse." She gestured at her wrist.

"Yeah, we'll fix that somehow. I promise." He gestured back at Ashildr. "You remember Ashildr, of course."

Clara nodded. "Yeah, sure."

He frowned. "I thought you'd be more surprised to see her."

"I was watching. On the monitor." Clara nodded at the monitor she'd used, picking up the sonic glasses in the process and moving away from the console. She watched the Doctor take the neural block. "No." She stepped forward, hand out. "Doctor, whatever you're about to do, don't do it."

"It won't hurt, it'll be nothing." The Doctor could be very calming when he wanted to be. He could soothe if he tried. "You'll just pass out for a moment."

"And then?"

"When you wake up, you'll be fine."

"But..."

"Clara, just listen to me."

"Just say it." He didn't. "Say it. Come on. Tell me."

"When you wake up, you will have forgotten me. You'll have forgotten we ever even met." He looked away. "You'll have forgotten Adelaide too." The name was so painful, laden with internal and outward hatred, coming from him that Clara nearly winced.

"And why would I want that?"

"Because it's the only way." The Doctor gestured at her head. "That stuff in your head, the image of us, they could use it to find you."

Clara held up the sonic. "I...er...I used these."

The Doctor's hearts started to beat quicker. "On what?"

"That." She nodded at the neural block."

"What did you do?"

"What do you think? Ashildr's right, you see? We're too alike. Adelaide didn't teach me enough."

"Tell me what you did." The Doctor had darkened again, lost all that softness, though he still spoke quietly.

"What else? What else do you think I did? I reverse the polarity. Push that button, Doctor, it will go off in your own face."

He looked down at the device. "You were trying to trick me?"

"What were you doing to me?"

"I'm trying to keep you safe."

Clara stepped back from his attempt to take her hand. "Why? Nobody's ever safe. I've never asked you for that, ever. Either of you. These have been the best years of my life, and they are mine. Tomorrow is promised to no one, Doctor, but I insist upon my past. I am entitled to that. It's mine."

The Doctor was quiet for a long while. There was more Adelaide in Clara than anyone else could have seen. And more something else too. More something that was undeniably, perfectly human.

Perfectly Clara.

"Oh, Clara Oswald." His arm fell, freehand going limp. Time Lord Victorious was completely gone now, hiding from the combined power of Clara Oswald, who was a force unto herself. If Time Lords could be Aligned to multiple people and non-Time Lords – and the Doctor had no idea if it was possible – he knew he was Aligned to this remarkable woman. "What am I doing? You're right. You're always, always right."

Clara smiled. She didn't say that she'd learned it from Adelaide, but she would have been right then too. "So what happens now? Hey? Me and you, what do we do now?" They didn't need Adelaide for this.

Because something still needed to be done. He didn't need Adelaide to tell him that.

He looked back at the block, holding it out between them. "I'm not sure you managed to reverse the polarity. I'm not even sure that you can. It'll do something to one of us." He shrugged. "Better than flipping a coin."

"Doctor?"

He looked at his companion again, tears brewing. "You and me together. Look how far I went, for fear of losing you. This has to stop. One of us has to go." Clara returned the sonic glasses to him, letting him slip them into his pocket.

"You really don't know which?"

He held out the device for her to take. "Let's found out. Let's do it like we've done everything else. Together." They could feel the lack of Adelaide now – not the lack of the protector, as had happened briefly before. The lack of the Time Lady who loved green and stars and theories and would always solve the mystery.

They both held the neural block without doing anything. Ashildr was still in the TARDIS, watching them both, one version of the missing Time Lady, but not quite the one they wanted just then.

"How about we just don't?" Clara said. "Why don't we just fly away somewhere? Runaway?"

The Doctor almost chuckled. "Oh, that'd be great, wouldn't it?"

"God, yeah."

They fell silent again, and it was the Doctor's turn to speak first. "Good luck, Clara."

"Good luck, Doctor."

Together, they pushed the button. Took that leap into the unknown.

The neural block whirred for a few seconds, but, to all the world, it didn't look like anything had happened.

"So...what happens now?"

Even the Doctor hadn't expected this. "I suppose...we just...er...we just wait a minute, I suppose."

Clara nodded. "And one of us...one of us will..." she started tearing up, "I don't think I could ever forget you two."

The Doctor blinked slowly. "Clara, I don't think you're ever going to have to."

He was the one to drop the neural block. He was the one to sway, stumble back and lean against the console. He would be the one to forget.

After all, when Clara Oswald wanted something done, it was done.

"No..."

"Run like hell," he told her, voice fading. He was clinging to consciousness, clinging to memory, clinging to the terribly bossy human who'd split herself along his timeline to save him.

"What?"

He slid from the console to the floor, Clara rushing to him. "Run like hell, because you always need to. Laugh at everything, because it's always funny."

Clara was crying now. Properly crying. So human. So wonderful. "No. Stop it. You're saying goodbye. Don't say goodbye!"

"Never be cruel and never be cowardly. And if you ever are, always make amends."

"Stop it! Stop this. Stop it!"

He grabbed her jacket. "Never eat pears. They're too squishy and they always make your chin wet. That one's quite important. Write it down."

"I didn't mean to do this." She was trying to hold him, trying to help him, but she'd already done everything she needed to do. "I'm sorry."

He touched her arm. "It's okay. It's okay. I went too far. I broke all my own rules. I didn't listen to her. I became the Hybrid. This is right. I accept it." Over her shoulder, there was Adelaide again, observing, but it wasn't Adelaide. It was and it wasn't. She was there and he wasn't. Protecting and betraying.

"I can't." Good old Clara. "There has to be something I can do."

"Smile for me." He tried. "Go on, Clara Oswald, one last time."

She had tears streaming down her face. She didn't, couldn't, try. "How could I smile?"

"It's okay. Don't you worry. I'll remember it."

And then he was gone.

|C-S|

Adelaide had no idea of what had happened on Gallifrey. Clara ensured that.

She didn't go to visit the Time Lady, feeling that would be too dangerous. She didn't make the Time Lady forget her, feeling that would be too rude.

Adelaide knew that Clara had died on the trap street. That was enough.

Once Clara was finished checking in on the Doctor, she stepped back into the console room of the TARDIS they'd stolen from Gallifrey. Ashildr was at the console, reading the manual.

The immortal had lived until the end of the universe without a time machine. It was time she got one.

Good thing that Clara knew how to pilot one. At least, she knew how to look like she did, and that was the first step.

"I don't think I've got the Chameleon circuit working," Ashildr said, looking up from the book. "The outer shell might be stuck as an American Diner." They'd transformed it into one so that Clara could speak to the Doctor.

"Awesome."

"Still no pulse?"

Clara checked, but she hadn't expected to find one. You didn't spend time with Adelaide and maintain hope that time might change its mind. "Time isn't healing. I'm still frozen."

"You know what that means?"

She nodded. "It means my death is a fixed event. The universe depends on it happening." She smiled. "I'm Aligned to myself."

"I'm sorry."

Clara moved around the console. "Why? Why does everybody think I am so scared? We all face the raven in the end. That is the deal." She flicked something on the console and was thankful when it did nothing serious. "If I go back to Gallifrey, they can put me back, right? On Trap Street, the moment they took me out?"

"Of course."

"Mind you, seeing as I'm not actually aging, there's a tiny little bit of wiggle room, isn't there?"

Ashildr raised her eyebrows. "Wiggle room?"

Clara nodded. "Wiggle room. Yeah, you know, wiggle room. Even Adelaide never neglected a little wiggle room." Time was going to make her death happen as it should no matter what she did. It wasn't like she was trying to disregard it, bend the rules to fit her own desires. She had every intention of returning to Gallifrey, and time would know that. "We could...you know, stop off on the way." When Ashildr grinned, Clara began typing into the console.

"Where are we going?"

The TARDIS gave a jolt as it prepared for flight, both women clinging to the console. "Gallifrey." Clara nodded again, making it clear to time and herself. "Like I said, Gallifrey. The long way round."

A/N: As much as I loved Clara's original death, I was quite happy to know she got a few more adventures in that wiggle room ;)