Chapter 1

"Well, it all began with the TARDIS being hijacked," The Doctor revealed, finally taking a small, neat sip of his beer before glaring down at it resentfully. "God, how do you people drink this stuff?" He was just being grumpy. She'd also ordered him a glass of water and a plate of bangers and mash, insisting that he should eat and hydrate, though assuring him that she wasn't hungry or thirsty at the moment.

Definitely not an explanation she wanted to get into with him.

"Eat up," Clara ordered crisply, in caretaker mode. "So, a TARDIS hijacking. Sounds like the kind of thing that usually happens to you about every other Tuesday or so."

"Yes, and if it didn't, I'd probably worry that I might have done something wrong," The Doctor confirmed, swirling creamy mashed potatoes around his spoon with a dubious expression. "Anyway, there I was, there they were, these two alien scientists who'd snuck up on me, banged me on the back of the head with one of their ridiculous blaster-guns. It was right out of a bad episode of Star Train."

"You mean Star Trek?" Clara giggled, glad he'd had a few bites of food. Being alone was never good for him, especially in the aftermath of disaster. Who knew how long it had been since he'd eaten, or for that matter, slept.

"Whatever," he waved his hand dismissively. "You know, it was totally stereotypical, mustache-twirling space villain nonsense. Frankly, insulting. Not that they had mustaches. That actually would have made it more interesting. But, no. I woke up to find that we'd landed on their planet, and they dragged me out of the TARDIS without saying a word."

"Rude," Clara noted.

"Yes!" The Doctor agreed. "Thank you — eh, what is your name, anyway? You never say." He pointed his finger in the air and observed, "See? Mysterious."

"Uh, you can call me…" Clara's eyes wandered the room, grasping for a name, any name, and landing on a movie poster on the opposite wall. The Quiet Man. Okay, then. "Maureen," she finished a little too triumphantly, showing her hand.

"You're just making that up, aren't you?" The Doctor looked behind him. "That's her, ay? Maureen?"

"It will do for now," Clara said, her tone making it clear that the subject of her true identity was closed.

"The Quiet Man — what's that about?" The Doctor asked. She knew he was stalling telling her the next part of his story and played along, loving the rhythms of his habits, the quirks that defined him.

"Oh, it's brilliant. You'd like it, I think," Clara explained. "It's about this drifter, this man running away from his past, and he meets this feisty, amazing woman. And they fall in love, they just need each other so much, you know? But they can't figure out a way to make it work."

"What a ridiculous idea for a movie!" The Doctor guffawed, to Clara's unspoken, pained amusement. She might as well have been talking about the two of them, but he couldn't understand that now. "I can't believe that even got made!" He laughed again.

"Sooo, the alien scientists pushed you out of the TARDIS and right onto their planet, showing a remarkable and offensive lack of manners," Clara recapped. "Then what?"

"Oh, that," The Doctor resumed, feigning forgetfulness so adorably that her lips twisted into an affectionate smile of their own volition. "Well, then I got really mad. Because I looked all around me, Maureen. The ground was all covered in this purple sand, and the wind was blowing hard. There were enormous mountains in the distance, but one of them was more than a mountain. I saw the capital city a short walk away in the other direction, and I knew where I was. The planet called Ruille. The site of a massive disaster that takes place this very year, about a week ago."

The Doctor took another sip of his beer and swallowed hard, staring into her eyes fiercely.

"A fixed point in time."

"Ohhh," Clara sighed, "I hate those."

"You have no idea what I'm talking about," The Doctor replied.

"No," she lied.

The Doctor shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead. "It means that I cannot alter the historical fact of something happening. It would disrupt the very fabric of time and space, and it goes against everything I stand for as a Time Lord."

"Oh, dear," Clara said sympathetically, "That does pose a problem."

"Especially," he continued, "Since the planet was days away from an explosion that would destroy it, and everyone living there."

"So why did the aliens, the Ruillians?" He nodded as she guessed at their names. "Why did they bring you there?"

"Because if there's one thing I've learned with certainty, it's that people are stupid and selfish, and they never change."

"Rather dark of you," Clara observed softly.

"Or just observant," The Doctor said harshly. "They begged me to save their world. They knew that the end was coming soon, their enemies had told them as much, just to intensify their agony. But they didn't know where or how the event would occur. That was why they had brought me there. You see, they knew I might have said no if they'd asked properly, so hence the hitting and the stealing. I told them I was still going to say no, that there was absolutely nothing I could do to prevent the destruction of Ruille."

"How was it to be destroyed?" Clara asked, her heart sinking as the story inched towards its awful ending.

"There was a volcano among those mountains, but not an ordinary one. It had been rigged with nuclear-level weaponry by the enemies of the Ruillians, who were determined to wipe out the whole race. They believed that if the Ruillians were killed, their own great destiny would be achieved, according to what their gods had told them."

"They sound like assholes," Clara remarked bluntly.

"Reductive, but apt," The Doctor agreed. "Obviously, to allow such an atrocity to be committed by murderously short-sighted zealots in a cult mentality also goes against everything I stand for as a Time Lord. And you should have seen those Ruillians. Standing there, pleading for the lives of their children. Their antennae trembling!" He gestured his hands about madly.

"So, you had to do something," Clara concluded, pulling her chair closer until they were almost touching. She cupped her face in her hands and rested her elbows on the table next to his almost-empty plate.

His features shifted from angry to a softer inclination she couldn't identity. The Doctor's face bore the appearance of tender emotion as he looked at her, but Clara knew he couldn't see her with anything other than friendship and gratitude.

The Doctor seemed to shake off the momentary lapse in his attention from the story, dragging his gaze from Clara and staring instead into the vague distance, at nothing in particular.

"Yes, Maureen. I had to do something. I let them take me into their city, among the people, on this, one of the last days they'd all be allowed to live. That was stupid and selfish of me. I wanted to help when I knew I shouldn't. And I never learn."

"It seemed to me," he continued, steel in his voice, after a momentary pause, "That there might be a loophole in this scenario. Perhaps, I could save the people but let the planet be destroyed, therefore fulfilling its immutable destiny. A risky endeavor, but the only possibility I could imagine. And of course, it brought its own set of problems."

"Like where to put all those Ruillians?" Clara guessed, prompting him to nod.

"Exactly, Maureen. Where to put all those bloody Ruillians." He shook his head. "So, I thought of an abandoned planet nobody wanted, but it was in another galaxy. Not a problem for me, but I'd need to make a lot of trips."

"A planet nobody wanted?" Clara was surprised. "How does that happen?"

"It had been inhabited by a race of very high and mighty aliens who built an empire on other worlds and abandoned, almost entirely, their home world. A perfectly good planet, I might add, with the exception of the giant, venom-toothed dogs and the occasional drought."

"Better than having no world at all, though those dogs sound like a problem," Clara said.

"You learn to stay out of their way," The Doctor explained. "I don't think those dogs are really all that unreasonable, come to think of it. At any rate, there I was, ferrying the entire Ruillian civilization, one group at a time, to the new planet. And in their midst, enemy spies."

Clara couldn't help it. She felt the conclusion of the story coming and took his hand. To her surprise, instead of registering shock at her touch, he submitted to the contact gratefully, smiling despondently. "I told you, Maureen, I don't deserve a friend. I led those people right from one death-assured scenario to another. While I was on my way back to pick up another group of Ruillians, their enemies killed every single one I'd dropped off on the new world. Then their associates back on Ruille set off their weapon in the volcano."

"I'm sorry," Clara whispered. "I'm so sorry, Doctor."

"So you see," he said tightly, "No redemption this time. I took a bad, yet inevitable situation and made it worse by giving them hope."

"Well, what are you going to do now?" Clara asked sympathetically.

He shrugged. "Nothing. This. Drift along until one of my enemies finds me again and I'm jolted back into my usual existence. Till then, I've got nothing but time to think about what happened and how it proves I'm doing more harm than good. I don't know what I'm gonna do about that."

Clara rolled her eyes and pulled him up by the elbow until he stood beside her. "Now, that's a load of nonsense. You'll do no such thing. You're going back in time to the beginning of the whole scenario, and you're going to find another way to save those people."

"Don't be absurd," He said angrily, yanking his arm free. "I already made a mess of a situation one would have assumed to already be about as bleak as it can get. Now you're asking me to take another gamble on meddling with a fixed point in time and see how it comes out this time? No, thank you."

She waited for him to be halfway out the door before she caught up with him. The Doctor was so startled by her sudden proximity that he backed up against the door, looking at her in total bewilderment.

"I'll go with you," Clara offered, knowing the risks, knowing why she had to put those risks aside for now.

"You?" The Doctor chuckled. "What do you know about traveling in space and time and saving people? Come now. You could get killed as well, and we don't need that. Believe me, Maureen, this planet, the one you're on right now? It needs people like you. Good listeners. Kind friends to the slightest of acquaintances. Someone considerate and clever and mysterious." One corner of her mouth tugged up in a smile, prompting him to release a deep breath and relent.

"Oh, alright, fine, what have we got to lose, anyway?" He threw his hands up in surrender. "Follow me." Clara slipped her hand into his outstretched one, the feeling so natural and soul-restoring.

"Of course," she answered.