Clara woke up in the TARDIS from feeling starved. She brushed her teeth, walked down the corridor to the kitchen and got a sandwich from a fridge and made a nice cup of tea. After that, she was cautiously walking down another corridor, which uncommonly didn't change its direction. Odd.
There were no sudden holograms of Weeping angels, no blunt cut of gravity, no tricks from the TARDIS she knew. More than that, it might have been only her imagination, but wasn't it brisk? Clara was perplexed by the TARDIS detachment. She remembered a trick the Doctor had used once when the lights had gone and decided to try it out.
Having put on the floor everything she held, the woman touched a wall to check for any vibrations. The Doctor had told her that life was pouring through the walls of the TARDIS. Back then, he had used this trick to lead them back to the console and find the problem.
Apart from her blood throbbing in her hand, Clara didn't feel anything. She closed her eyes and focused.
There was nothing. No ticks, no tocks, not even the rushing sound of energy that had used to pour through the walls; a pure silence ringed her, and she was inside this hushed box, she had been sleeping in it and was heading to the library as usual without a single thought until now, that the TARDIS was as if it was dead. And how long had she been sleeping? Not too long, but she knew the Doctor. If he hadn't fixed it, then it was far too serious than it had used to seem.
Clara gathered her tray from the floor and continued. They still had two more days to chill before they hit the road to York.
She entered the library and headed to her spot, the one where she used to have breakfast and a bit of reading after that. She turned the corner and was surprised to see the Doctor himself, resting in her favourite comfy armchair.
She wanted to send him away, that was her beloved place, and he knew it; he must have known after hearing it from her approximate a dozen times previously. But she went softer when she remarked that the Time Lord's eyes shut, and his breathing was slow. Curious. She saw him sleeping rarely and only in the console room, where he had his own nice armchair.
Her eyes darted from his carefree face to the book in his lap, he had been reading it at some point. It was Harry Potter. As it was adorable, it was also very odd. He had read it once, a long time ago, and it hadn't been a pleasing time.
Having decided against waking him up, she took a chair and sat next to him, putting the cup on a coffee table. She was eating her sandwich and watching the Doctor scrupulously. He seemed disturbed, his brows knitted together just a bit, and his mouth was slightly open. It looked like he was whispering something from his nightmare, but she couldn't understand his babble. After eating, she washed her hands and returned to the library. The Doctor woke up.
"Have you been sleeping?" She asked him, not sure what answer she wanted to hear. But the Doctor was the Doctor, and he chose the sarcastic one to give her.
"No, I've been thinking with my eyes shut. See the difference."
"I see that you're snoozing too much nowadays. And you looked anxious just for a second," she added with hesitancy.
"Did I?" He tried not to give himself away, but she could see through his veil. "Well, that was because I've been sleeping in your armchair. It's a miracle I'm still alive."
The book fell from his lap as he stood up. He looked at it in surprise, seemingly he had forgotten it had been laying on his knees all this time. But now, he couldn't deny he had been reading it.
"Doctor. The last time you read Harry Potter was when–" Clara was saying, only the Doctor cut her off rapidly.
"I just had to read something different from that riddle."
"Ah."
Of course, he wouldn't accept that something was wrong with him. Maybe she should try the next time. "Do you have any thoughts on it?"
"Um. Yes, actually. But you won't like them."
"Why?"
"Because I didn't like them."
"Oh, then I certainly won't like them. What are they?"
He discarded two pieces of paper from his pocket and gave them to her. Having unfolded them, she saw that they were two notes. They were red sluggish "HE S KOMIN TO TH VALL" and "FALAW MI". The last one she'd seen, but the first one must have been written by Rodwell.
"They're both written alike," Clara realised.
"Yes. But they were written by completely different people; the first was a peasant, the second was a royal."
"Hang on. You said that Rodwell, a peasant, had died, right?"
The Doctor nodded, leaning back in the armchair. "You're right, Clara. They're not so different as it might seem."
"But the Earl, if he sent us a message, surely he must be still alive."
"He's sixty years old, Clara. We can't be sure that when we're in York he'll greet us personally! More than that, there is the third note."
"The third?"
"Yep. Found it when tried to fix her."
He gave it to Clara, retrieving it from the same pocket.
The paper had used to be some book written in Gallifreyan, it wasn't translated. On the other side of it, in the blue ink, and with more rapid and jumpy handwriting, it said "NO TRICKS FAREIDA NO TRICKS FAREIDA NO TRICKS FAREIDA ONE TRICK AND FAREIDA HERT B BRIKEN".
"Fareida?" Clara asked the Doctor.
"I looked it up. It's a word from Glaxanian language, one of the first languages in this universe," he explained. "Why is it always something ancient? Why can't it, just for a variety, be something new and something I know already?"
"I don't know. But I know that someone is totally blackmailing you."
"Oh, is he? Well, that someone should know better to threaten a person with two hearts."
"Show-off," Clara smirked at him, leaving two notes between them on a coffee table. "Any guess what the note means?"
"This someone doesn't want us to use the TARDIS, if else, the note wouldn't have been hidden in the console. But she's not damaged. There's nothing to repair, she's just…" the Doctor looked up for the appropriate word in the air, "empty. And I can't reach the engines nor the Eye of Harmony nor any other three power sources; they're deadlocked. So he has nothing to be scared about."
"I think you miss one obvious thing."
"Enlighten me then."
"We're alright." The Doctor hid his smirk with a thumb, scratching his chin.
"I didn't miss it, Clara. I'm trying to ignore it."
"And why would you do that?"
"Because the TARDIS is empty. I have no idea why, I hate not knowing why, this is my machine, my ship, I had a long time to learn her better without any manual. And still, here we are, talking nonchalantly about my new sleeping habits and what book I'm reading today."
"Well then, let's stop talking about the obvious part and move to the less obvious…"
"Your armchair?"
"If you could stop occupying it that would be great." He didn't. "I meant fareida. A Glaxanian word. Tell me more about it."
"Well, fareida is more like a bad word… I don't know how to explain it but… it's… it's like… umm…"
"Take all the time you need."
"Vocabulary says it's used when a person does the healing, but it's not… it's not good healing. Either because the healer is not helping much or his healing harms him back or he can't heal himself."
"Ah. So our blackmailer must be Glaxanian then, right?"
"It would have been obvious. But…"
"It's not," she ended the sentence for him after a long pause.
"Glaxanians are from the farthest corner of this universe. Well, not a corner, universes always expand, so they don't have corners. They're from the first galaxy. They were," the Doctor smirked, "sort of first."
"And let me guess, it's impossible to have one of them running on Earth in medieval ages."
"Yes, but not only."
"They extinct?"
"Are you reading my mind, Clara? Please stop that." But she was already on this track, blood pumping through her brain, excitement boiling in her stomach, she was really into the brainstorm.
"But nobody has seen this alien. As if it's…"
"…living in another dimension?" The Doctor suggested.
"I wanted to say invisible."
"Oh."
"Living in another dimension?" Clara echoed.
"Glaxanians were the first, hence they were the loneliest. Not much is known about them. The only thing we know, it's that they were creative and skilled and stupid enough to drill a hole in space. They thought that they might find someone there, intended to send a spaceship for checking. Instead, their home-planet was sucked into that hole."
"So, is it possible to have one of them messing around on Earth?"
"Well, the probability of it has risen, that's true, but we still can't be sure it's Glaxanian. Let's not get too much into if's and what if's, we'll only get ourselves confused if it's not a Glaxanian. I wonder though, what myths Glaxanians used to have. You see, this riddle, it strikes you as familiar, you might as well swear that you've heard it somewhere in your past but you didn't. It's so because of its melody and mythical composition. It's a myth. Maybe this myth is Glaxanian? And I wonder if it has the intention of becoming a real fact."
"Let's hope it's not."
"Oh, Clara. My sweet, sweet Clara. I'm afraid we're already a part of it," the Doctor said with a note of anxiety.
He instantly shook himself out of this state, granted a little smile and left the library, leaving Clara with the impression that he wasn't telling her something again.