There is a softness, of the kind recently absent from Clara's life. Not the hard mattress of her bunk-bed on Cora's TARDIS, nor the coarseness of desert sand. This feels like cotton over feather pillows, cool against her cheek.

She opens her eyes. A floor-to-ceiling window dominates the room, grey sky beyond. Three eggshell walls, broken only by a small framed picture of a bucolic landscape. She turns her head and realises the scene is three dimensional, yawning back inside the frame.

Time Lord art.

Her skin is crawling now, the prickle of unease forcing her up, out of bed. Her feet are stockinged in grey wool, padding soft across dark polished floorboards. A neat nightdress replaces her desert-suit. There is a duck egg bruise on her temple, throbbing painfully. And no door. She wonders muzzily how she has been placed inside; crosses to the window.

Fingers ghost against thick glass as she takes in the world beyond. She is high in the air, hundreds of feet above a landscape ripped from the pages of a fairy tale. A flashing ribbon of river winds its way through canyon floor. There are tilled fields, stands of woodland, with white domes of rooftops dotted amongst. Away in the distance a red rock walls rise, spires and turrets hewn into stone, architecture caught between castle and anthill.

"Where the hell am I?"

In answer to her question a door opens. She spins as a part of the wall simply peels away; no hinges, no crack of light to betray its presence.

"Hello," says the man revealed in the doorway. "I'm glad you're awake."

"Me too," she says, matching his friendly smile. He is small, only half a head taller than she is, and thin. Attractive in a fine-boned sort of way. "How did I get here?

"The work crews found you, unconscious. People don't normally… Uh." His mouth hangs for a second as he contemplates how to finish the sentence. "Well, anyway. They bought you to me. And here you are." He laughs. "What do you think of the place?"

He's insane. She's met enough of the crazed-with-power types to spot them a mile off. "It's beautiful," she replies, careful to maintain her smile, and rolls the dice, "your Majesty."

His grin broadens. "I knew you'd be clever. Have to be quick, to keep up with him!"

"Keep up with who?" Eyes fixed on his face as she tries to work out the angles, the distances, an escape route; all from her peripheral vision.

"The Doctor, of course." The King steps inside, the walls sealing shut behind him as if no door ever existed. Her heart leaps into her throat as he crosses to her. "I know you're not Gallifreyan. One heart, not two. Human, I think you say. His type."

He faces out, ostensibly looking at the spectacular view. Only the flicker of his eyes betrays his interest. Unthinking, unseeing, his trembling fingers brush the delicate lace of her collar, tracing the pattern away from her neck and down her shoulder.

"You know him?" she asks, turning to look at him, fighting down nausea at his uninvited touch. He does not meet her eyes.

"Of him, certainly." He appears to realise himself, withdrawing his hand and clasping it, chastising. "Forgive me. I'm not used to... You're not one of my subjects."

"No, your majesty," she replies, "I'm not." There is a flash of something petulant and vicious across his face, triggered by her warning. His smile turns savage for a second. She pretends not to notice. "My name is Clara. Where is the Doctor?"

"Oh." He takes a step back, much to her relief. "Gone, I'm afraid." He throws open those quivering hands. "My troops have been looking, but to no avail. Probably just as well."

"Oh?"

He laughs again, a hearty chuckle. "Well, if they did find him, of course, they'd eat him." With that flourish his smile is instantly gone, replaced with something cold and calculating; psychopathy unmasked. "Like they should have eaten you."

"Those creatures were your troops?" she says, still light, still calm.

"Yes," he snaps, mechanically. "The Meanwhile. Did you like them?"

"No, I'm afraid not, your majesty."

"Ha! Brave too. Well, I suppose you'd have to be. Getting in that mad old box with him." He clicks his fingers and the door springs open again. She almost leaps to flee, but there are two burly guards standing beyond; a fight she knows she cannot win. "Take her to the laboratories. We have work to do."

"I'll go willingly," she says, raising her hands as the two men advance. "You don't have to-"

But their syringe has already found her neck, and the world fades away for a time.


A light flicks on, circle of white, painfully bright in the black. She blinks, blinded. Manacled to the table; able to move her head but arms and legs still unresponsive.

"You didn't have to do that," she says, slurring, her mouth sluggish. Vestiges of a sedative still in her system. Hopefully when it wears off fully she'll be able to feel her limbs again. She doesn't dwell on the alternative – why else would they have bothered to bind her?

"Don't presume to tell me what I can and can't do, Clara."

His voice, over an intercom rather than in the room.

"Why are you doing this? What do you want?"

"Oh, many things. Answers, mostly."

A hum, electrical. Something powering up. Adrenaline in response, heart beating fast. "Talk to me then," she says, willing life back into her numb fingers. "You don't-argh!" Crackling agony, a thousand white-hot needles in her flesh, transmitted through the embrace of her bonds

"I told you," his voice says, almost drowned out by the pain, "don't tell me what to do."

"Okay, okay!" she cries out. "I'm sorry! I won't… I won't do that again. Please, please-!"

"Good."

As suddenly as it arrived, the agony is stopped. The hum is louder now, audible over the bang of blood in her ears. A second light source, gentle, blueish, is growing in the centre of the room. She watches it balloon, sketching the rest of the cell in silhouette as it does so. One door near her feet; another across the room. Two possible escape routes. All she needs to do now is get free of her bonds…

"What is it?" she asks, willing her frozen fingers to move.

"A fracture in time," he replies.

Her brow wrinkles at this. "It doesn't look like any I've seen."

He sighs. "A controlled fracture. A nexus, if you will, of a thousand parallel realities. A touchstone."

"Why?" Come on, feet, move!

"There is a creature, Clara, on Gallifrey. A flutter-wing we call it. I wonder if you can imagine-"

"I know the sort of thing you're talking about, yes."

"Well, when you were a child, did you never pull the wings off such an insect to better see how they worked?"

"No, sorry. Can't say I did."

"I did. Direct observation. Dissection. There is much to be learned from it, I've found."

"Vivisection and dissection are quite distinct, however, your majesty."

"To begin with, certainly."

The door across the room opens on this chilling pronouncement, and a young woman is pushed inside.

"Please no!" she wails, stumbling. "It wasn't ME!"

"No, no, please," echoes Clara, as the woman claws at the door like a trapped animal. "Please, don't-!" But the pain is back, fire poured into her bones by the bonds of her bed. She thrashes in mute agony, as the woman screams, as the ball of blue light expands to engulf the stranger.

Her screams change pitch, becoming high and keening. Within the sphere of light, she is shaking, trembling. Perhaps it's the tears in her eyes, but from Clara's perspective it seems as if she blurs-

And then it is over. The ball of blue light recedes to nothing, and the woman collapses like a marionette with all her strings cut.

"Hello?" says Clara. "Are you okay? Can you hear me?" There is no answer from the prone woman. "What did you do to her?" she spits, furious, renewing her fight against the bonds of the bed.

"I showed her the truth," replies the King, after a moment of silence. "I showed her all her faces."

"What does that mean?"

From the floor there is an ominous hiss in reply. The woman stands, pale face an oval in the gloom, stepping closer.

"Are you okay? Can you hear me?"

"Ssssss…" Hands grasp reflexively, dragging steps. Clara recognises the symptoms.

"You made her Meanwhile," she says.

"Yes."

"How?"

"I showed her all it was possible for her to be. All the roads not taken. All the better lives."

"And that turns people into this, does it?"

"So sceptical, Clara! I assure you, that is all I have done."

The woman looms over her, still hissing like a snake. She snaps her teeth, fingers outstretched as claws, reaching for Clara's face… but something seems to stay her at the last second. Like a whipped dog she cringes away, snarling now. Clara cannot help the gasp of relief.

"Interesting," says the King. "They don't like you."

"Is that what happened before? In the greenhouse?"

She remembers the creatures' advance, the hot iron tang of fresh blood-

"Yes. When they touched you, you were rendered unconscious. But they did not attack. They did not feed. I must know why…"

"Maybe it's because I'm human," she suggests. "That's all. Just something new—something they hadn't encountered before. You don't have to—"

She writhes in pain once again as the bed crackles back into life.

"You are remarkably slow, Clara, at learning not to tell me what to do."

Clara can taste blood in her mouth from a bitten tongue. The smell of it makes the woman keen, but she dares not draw closer. "Old habits," she offers thickly.

"Die hard," he finishes. "If that's what you will…"

There is silence for a time. She finds she can wiggle her toes at last, though her bonds are too tight to make much progress on an escape. Then the hum and the ghostly blue light return.

"What are you doing?"

No answer. The blue light grows brighter, expanding. Her bed judders and shakes, much to her consternation, rattling across the floor. She is at the centre of it now; the light warm on her skin like the sun. She blinks-

-she is riding her bike-

-quick sharp stab of a paper cut- "Call me Clara."

-grit on her skin-

"I am Clara Oswald."

-bone-rattle of the tube running pell-mell- "Actually, it's Mrs. Harrison,"

-she clutches the yellow pole of the bus, too short to quite reach the plastic strap-

-chemicals in, electro-fizz- "most people call me Winnie" "Miss Oswald."

-feet aching- -coffee grounds bitter-

-sharp ink smell- "Clara." "NOT A DALEK" -sweet taste of chocolate-

There are a thousand voices in her head clamouring at once, a cacophony beyond imagination. She is everywhere and nowhere; the dizzy centre of a mad kaleidoscope of shifting times, places, faces and feelings. She is human and she is alien; she is whole and she is broken; wife, mother, child, lover.

"I am Clara." "Ozzie." "Clara Oswald." "Oswin." "Clara." "Call me Clara."

"I AM CLARA OSWALD!"

Her face is wet and her head is ringing. Bile in her mouth, stomach roiling. The light is gone; the woman is gone; she is alone.

A click. A breath. Her heart sinks. Not alone.

"You are Clara Oswald," the King repeats. "But what does that mean? What is Clara Oswald?"

"Human," she says, hoarsely. "That's all. Just a normal human woman."

"No," he says, "You're a complicated space-time event. Your timeline is splintered into a thousand fractured pieces. You're a wound, Clara Oswald. And you are unique."

The buzzing hum returns, the ghostly blue. She groans. "Please… I'm asking you, please…"

"I am Clara Oswald."

"I am the impossible girl."