She is armpit deep in a shattered power cell when they return, earlier than she was expecting. She drops her spanner, wiping a smudge of grease across her forehead as she hurries to the door.
"Are you okay? What happened?"
Gryf pulls down the scarf that covers her mouth and nose, face streaked with desert dust. "We found someone," she gasps.
Evin staggers in to the console room, struggling with the weight of the body he carries over his shoulder. She helps him lower the unconscious man to the floor. He is tall and thin; caked in fine sand that has turned his hair and face chalk white.
"Anyone we know?" she asks.
Evin shakes his head. "Not him. But you're going to love the other one."
"Other one?"
Their third patrolman, Horas, enters on cue. His burden is smaller; carried like a child in his arms. Even under all the dust she recognises the face of the rescued girl. How could she not? It's her face, the one that greets her every morning, when she meets her eyes in the bathroom mirror and reminds herself: You're still here.
"She's me," she says slowly, turning her own head to match the lolling angle of the unconscious copy.
"We hope," says Evin darkly.
She purses her lips, but the young Time Lord has a point. "Take them both through to the infirmary. We'll set up a containment field. Just in case."
"I thought you might be in here."
She jumps at the sound of Evin's voice, breaking the hush of the sick bay. The lights are dim, mostly to save power, but she hopes it brings a restful peace to the patients.
"Did you?" His supercilious tone crawls under her skin at the best of times, shortening her temper. He has every right to come in here, she reminds herself; irritated nonetheless at his disruption.
"Is it safe, do you think, for you to sit behind the containment field?"
Another thinly veiled barb. "They're hurt," she says, trying not to sound defensive, "Company is good when you're healing."
He almost rolls his eyes, possessing just enough self-preservation to check his condescension. "Right," he says flatly, which is almost as bad. "I'll bear that in mind."
"Evin, if you have a problem, spit it out," she says shortly.
"I think you're letting the fact she looks like you cloud your judgement," he snaps, pointing to the duplicate. "We've no idea if that's your future self or something far worse. They could be dangerous, very dangerous, and your expertise is the only thing holding this TARDIS together. Without you, we die. And I don't want to die."
She draws in a breath. "Well, maybe you should have thought about that before you stole a broken TARDIS," she returns evenly. "And trust me, if we found someone with your face lying in the dust out there, you'd give them the benefit of the doubt too."
"I'd never let my emotions cloud my judgement like this."
She examines the long fingered hand of the sleeping man minutely as she considers his statement; biting the inside of her cheek until the urge to slap him silly has diminished. "No," she says sadly, "I don't suppose you would."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I'm not a Time Lord, Evin. I don't have your breeding and I certainly don't have your education."
She takes the stranger's hand between her own, squeezing it gently, reassuring. I know you, she thinks, even though his face is unfamiliar. She's never been so sure of anything in her life.
Evin laughs, still angry. "How do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Say something like that and still make it sound like an insult."
Because I mean it as one, she doesn't say. She shrugs. "Practice?"
The man's fingers twitch under hers. "Is he waking up?"
"I think so," she grins. The young Lord draws his bolt gun, and she makes a noise of irritation at this melodramatic flourish. "Put it down, Evin. If he's Meanwhile it's not going to make a difference anyway."
The stranger opens his eyes, finding her face and smiling at her. "Clara," he says, voice hoarse, clearly relieved. "You're okay."
She swallows. "It's Cora," she corrects, "But close. Do you know where you are?"
"No idea," he says muzzily, eyes glassy for a moment, before he refocuses on her with frightening intensity. "What do you mean, Cora?" He pulls his hand back sharply, struggling up onto his elbows. "No. No… this. This can't be real."
"Calm down," she says raising her hands to show she is peaceable, "Your friend is here." She indicates the still sleeping woman that shares her face.
He throws off his bed covers and crosses to his companion, touching a gentle thumb to her cheek before finding the pulse in her neck, clearly reassuring himself she is alive.
"She's suffered a primary cardiac failure," she hears herself saying, "But she's stable."
"Primary cardiac… what are you talking about? And why are you wearing her face? Stop that. Stop that right now. Tell me where I am. And you, idiot with the bolt gun; stop waving it around before you hurt someone."
He should look ridiculous, clad only in a medical gown, eyes wild as he barks his orders. Instead she finds she has taken a step backwards, away from him and his ferocious scowl. Behind her Evin lowers his weapon.
"I'm not wearing her face," she says slowly, "She's wearing mine. As to where you are; you're inside a TARDIS. My crew rescued you."
"No," he says, shaking his head. "That's not possible."
"It is possible because it's where you are; I promise. Now, I think it's my turn to ask a question."
His mouth quirks, clearly amused by her boldness. "Go on then." A challenge, she senses, his blue eyes flinty beneath beetling brows.
"Who are you and how did you get here?"
He stares at her for a moment in frank disbelief, and then laughs. "Okay. I'll play your game. I'm the Doctor. We were travelling to Market Place of Gillespie and we ended up here instead. There was some kind of earthquake."
"Sounds like you got caught in a time slip," says Evin. She can barely hear him, her chest tight, stomach contracting painfully.
"Time slip?" says the Doctor, oblivious to her sudden distress, "What do you mean by that?"
Perhaps he doesn't remember. It's been fifty years for her, of a life lived linearly; day after day of the same work within the same four walls. Who knows how long it's been for him; how many times he's changed his face since that day she changed the target of his larceny? Perhaps he's walked so many worlds he's simply forgotten the lowly Technician that helped set him wandering.
And yet… and yet the girl. His companion that he showed such compassion for; the woman that shares her face. How can he have forgotten her when he is travelling with a copy?
"Gallifrey is cracked," continues Evin.
"Gallifrey?" There is real fear in the Doctor's face now. "This isn't… this can't be…"
"It doesn't make any sense to us, either Doctor. We were in the Vortex and then the temporal anchor was slipped somehow, and we can't−"
He stops abruptly as the Doctor staggers slightly, groping for the bedframe. He sits down heavily, corpse pale. "This is real," he says, as if he is only now starting to believe. "I'm here. I'm home."
"I'm not sure I'd go that far, Doctor," she says softly. "Evin isn't exaggerating. Something terrible has happened."
"I know," he says, turning his eyes up to meet hers. She quails under his awful stare. "It was me."
She can hear him, giving instructions to someone, which means all is probably right with the Universe. She gives this proposition some more thought. Well, probably not right, she amends. If he's giving instructions things are probably actually going to hell in a handbasket, but at least he's trying to fix it.
The world fades away again for a while. When she opens her eyes at last she finds him standing over her, a little too much relief in his expression. "Was it that bad?" she asks, voice cracking.
"Don't be so melodramatic," he sniffs, "You're going to be fine."
She dimly assembles the clues; low light, soft beeping, comfortable mattress. Waking up from unplanned unconsciousness with him generally entails a prison cell or a hospital bed. This feels very much like the latter.
"Did you find the TARDIS?" she murmurs. Her recently re-attained consciousness is surprisingly difficult to hang on to; she feels like she has been kicked by a horse.
"No," he says gravely, "I'm afraid not. On the plus side, we did find someone else's."
His words cut through even her muzzy head. "What?" She tries and fails to sit up. "Doctor, are we…?"
"On Gallifrey? It certainly seems that way."
She smiles. "That's… well, that's fantastic." He nods enthusiastically, smile just a little too manic. It's a long while since he's tried to lie to her like this, and this time around she recognises his tells. "Okay, not fantastic. What aren't you telling me?" Adrenalin has blown away at least some of the cobwebs. Wincing, she pushes herself upright.
"Hang on," he says, "I can give you something for the concussion."
He fumbles about in one of the sick-bay cabinets as she takes in their surroundings. There is indeed a strong similarity to their TARDIS's infirmary, but with an air of shuttered neglect rather than crisp cleanliness. He produces a hypo-spray at last. She turns her head, baring her neck, hoping she won't live to regret his ministrations.
After a moment the feeling that she is hanging onto wakefulness by her fingernails ebbs; the hazy edges of the world coming into focus. Fingers crossed she hasn't also been turned bright blue, or fallen victim to some other ridiculous side effect he didn't deign worthy of mention. She swings her legs out of bed, still a little unsteady on her feet, as she takes a few faltering steps towards the door.
He slips his arm around her waist to support her. She grits her teeth, irritated she requires his assistance but sensible enough to accept it is probably required. She blinks in surprise at the familiar corridor beyond.
"We really are on a TARDIS," she says, wonderingly.
"That's not even the strangest part," he says darkly.
They enter the console room; a slightly more minimalist version of their home, lacking his leather armchair and bookshelves. The darkness is more pronounced here. Her rotor is dead, electrical innards disgorged onto the grated floor. "What happened to her?"
"They crashed," he says, "Badly. She should have died here."
He looks sickened. The idea of it twists in her chest too, wondering what has become of their twin to this stricken ship.
"But she didn't," she says, trying to reassure herself as much as him.
"They had a good engineer."
There is something suspicious in his expression, a line between his eyebrows that he cannot unwrinkled; a tension that scares her. "And who was that?" she says slowly, feeding him the line, almost against her will.
"That would be me," says a small voice, a slim figure stepping forward into the circle of light cast by the yellow emergency lamps on the console desk.
She frowns, unable to tear her eyes away from the copy that stands before her. "How? How is this possible? Are you… from my future?"
The doppelganger shakes her head, echoing Clara's shock. There is something unsettling about her own-other face, matching her confused expression and yet somehow not. After a moment Clara realises it is because the double is not in fact a reflection; her features are backwards to how she is used to seeing them in the mirror.
"I'm not you," she says, "At least, not exactly." Her voice, too, is hers and yet not. Higher than it should be, stripped of her Lancashire vowels. Like an old fashioned BBC radio announcer.
"You're… you were… You were born on Trenzalore," Clara says, understanding dawned, "When I jumped into the Doctor's time stream." You're an echo, she wants to say. Yet seeing this living, breathing person standing in front of her it suddenly seems a terrible impoliteness to suggest that she−barely able to stand and dressed like a child in a nightie−should somehow have primacy.
"Apparently." There is a muscle working in the woman's jaw, one Clara recognises the tick and the tension of; she is grinding her teeth to reign in her temper. Strange to see it from the outside.
"Can we… touch?" she asks, not wishing to bring about the end of the multiverse by paradox or some such Doctorish nonsense.
"Yes," he says, sounding surprised that they might want to.
Clara holds out her hand, determined not to be the kind of person unable to get on with her own clones. "Clara Oswald," she says, "Thank you for saving us."
The palm under hers is callused and hard; fingernails black with engine grease. A palpable difference between them, a point of unique identity to hold onto.
"Coraldiaslowswan," says the engineer, a touch shamefacedly, "But, uh, everyone calls me Cora."
"Time Lord names, huh?" She intends it as a joke, to break the tension a little, but Cora's weak smile in return suggests she has made a faux-pas.
"Gallifreyan, anyway," she mumbles.
Clara is saved from further embarrassment by the sudden blare of an alarm. They all flinch, Cora and the Doctor immediately turning to the broken console.
"What's going on?" Clara asks.
"Another time slip," he replies, reaching for a crank handle.
"Hey," she chides, staying his questing hand with hers, "Not your ship, remember?"
"Sorry, force of habit."
"It's okay," replies Cora, "I could do with some help that actually has a clue."
"Do you still have a working gyroscopic stabiliser?"
"Ye-es, but I don't see how that will−"
"Have you tried running the primary temporal anchoring systems through the stabiliser interface?"
Cora is quiet for a moment. "No. The risk of a chronometric containment breach−"
"Can be mitigated by using the chameleon circuit buffers as extra shielding." He is grinning broadly, high on his own cleverness.
"You'll never get the circuit to work again, doing that…"
"Probably not, no. But ask yourself if you really need it."
Clara almost laughs at the familiar look of scepticism Cora shoots the old Time Lord. The engineer shakes her head. "Fine." Tapping at the keyboard she makes the necessary alternations. "It's done."
"Good. You need to set the chronometric altimeters to match the local signature… Clara?"
"Yes, Doctor?"
"You need to handle the harmonic generator. Remember what I said-?"
"About keeping the revolutions between thirty two and thirty three hundred?"
"Excellent."
"Actually," cuts in Cora, "You can take this model up to thirty five." She shrugs at the Doctor's look askance. "This is a Type Forty Three, Doctor. They tuned up the engine."
