Clara waits, cross-legged on the concrete floor of her cell. Gone are soft furnishings and woollen stockings. Her clothes are coarse, ill-fitting; those of a prisoner now, not a guest. Gone too is her hair. She was shaved recently enough that her head still feels cold, the nicks of the blunt razor fresh scabs on her scalp.
Her eyes are closed but she does not sleep. Dreams are frightening, filled with the fragments of far too many lives, too many faces, to be a comfort. Instead she meditates, breathing as deep and even as bruised ribs can allow. Trying to recall every line of her grandmother's face, of Danny's face. Of the Doctors' – old and new. It helps more than it hurts; trying to hold on to those people that are important to her and her alone.
The door of her cell opens. The guards drag her roughly to her feet, no words exchanged. She goes limp, a dead weight to be dragged past rows of other cells into a now familiar chamber. There is a heavy wooden chair that she is shackled to; a regular routine. It seems easier for the guards to bend her limbs into place than she remembers, a bracelet of bruises marking her previous efforts at resistance against the manacles. She is thinner, weaker than when this all started.
But so is he.
The King enters the chamber once she is secured, looking pained. He wipes sweat from his brow, the marks of her teeth still visible on the back of his hand. Her body may be suffering but the hate in her eyes is channelled to laser intensity. He avoids her gaze.
"Clara, Clara, Clara," he says, "I have something interesting to show you today."
A new strategy, then. A flutter of fear at that she is careful to hide. He twists knobs and dials on his console, until the far wall of chamber flickers into life. A giant screen, showing several views out onto his Kingdom. The Gallifreyan equivalent of a security camera feed. It looks sunny outside; she can almost smell the cut grass of one pastoral scene, feel the warmth of the sun on her skin. Perhaps that's the point, such simple memories more torturous than she could ever have imagined before her incarceration began.
And there he is. A camera feed clearly broadcasting from some outpost of the Kingdom has picked up a distant figure on a speeder. He's impossibly small, a stick figure, but she knows it's the Doctor. There's something in the way he holds himself she recognises instantly. Her stomach lurches and she fights to keep her breathing steady. Give him nothing.
Click, tap, twist; the King changes her view. Several more cameras from the same outpost turn the screen from shades of green to orange; scrubby saw grass and dust replacing fertile fields. In one frame Meanwhile wait, pacing the edges of a cell. He's showing her a trap, she realises, that the Doctor is racing towards.
"He believes the outpost is unmanned," says the King, tracing a pale hand over the part of the screen where the Meanwhile pace. Almost a loving caress.
She shudders. "You really don't know anything about him, do you?" Her voice is still hoarse from their last round. "If there's one thing you never do; it's put the Doctor in a trap."
"Your faith in him is absurd."
"We're still outsmarting you. Found a way into the TARDIS yet, have you?"
He ignores her barb. Despite herself, she cannot help but watch the figure on screen resolve. Oh, he's hurt! One arm is bound against his body; he pilots one handed, teeth bared against jolting pain. He turns the speeder, sliding to a halt in a cloud of dust. The external camera is blinded, but she can see the door holding back the Meanwhile has been opened. They pile out of their cell and into the corridors of the outpost.
She's forgotten how fast they are, when they're free to move unfettered. They scatter across the screen, tearing open doors, racing down staircases, moving like angry wasps. Outside, the blurred shape of the Doctor is moving towards the outpost door through the dust, screwdriver in hand—
There is a bright flash and the external feed is lost. The Meanwhile have clearly found the exit, suddenly moving with obvious purpose, streaming out of the door and out of view. The King frowns, tapping at his console. Trying to restore the feed.
The screen flickers again, but sight of the outside world is not returned. Instead two words resolve, in bright white capitals.
NICE TRY
Clara smiles as the King screams; keeps smiling even as he slams his fist down and the bonds of the chair crackle into life. She judders and shakes, teeth grinding together against the pain; still grinning. When he shuts off the power she slumps, but manages a bubbling laugh.
"Anything else you want to show me?" she manages, before pain returns, chasing her back into darkness.
It is later. How much later she's not sure. Consciousness has found her back on the floor of her cell, cheek stuck to the floor with her own bloodied dribble. She sits, rubbing away the mess, trying to take stock.
What do I know?
She knows she is Clara Oswald, twenty-nine (and a bit), English teacher from Coal Hill School, London, Earth. That bit is always important to start with, as she sheds the dreams of countless other lives.
She knows where the TARDIS is, her TARDIS, not Cora's broken twin. The King has it under lock and key; has done for centuries.
And she knows that the Doctor is alive, and is coming to find her.
In the dark and the cold she rubs the goose-flesh of her arms and grins. She knows that she can go on resisting.
I know that we can win.
Time for Clara passes linear, as it always has. She's not sure how long she's been here, prisoner of the King, but it's surely no more than weeks. Time for the Doctor appears to be passing rather differently. It's a different kind of torture; one more effective than pain and misery. To see him fail, again and again, to breach the King's defences… to come so close to her aid and fall back. That is the hardest thing to bear.
We can win.
The King cannot control the shifting of Gallifrey's fractured time-zones, that much is clear. But he can trigger random shifts, corralling Neverwere along lines of temporal instability. Again and again the Doctor comes close to breaching the perimeters of the Kingdom, only to find himself caught in a time slippage; sent out of synch from Clara again and again and again.
We can win.
And yet, and yet, here is again. Roaring out of the dust on his speeder. His hair is mane of untamed curls, chin bristling with stubble she has never seen grown in before. He is thinner than ever, weather-beaten and snarling. There is a wild desperation in his eyes that she doesn't recognise, that the camera captures before he is thrown back.
We can win.
At night she lies on the hard floor of her cell, and wills the words across whatever distance lies between them.
Oh please, oh please, don't give up Doctor. I'm here; I'm here and we can win. We can win.
Out in the desert, a man who might once have answered to the name Doctor builds a fire. The light of civilisation is an orange glow on the distant horizon. The Citadel of the King lies in the crook of an immense valley, several hundred feet below.
There's a tension in his gut; a gnawing fear. He's been here before, so certain that victory is within grasp, only for the capricious shift of chronology to snatch it away.
What do I know?
He knows that Clara Oswald is alive. The changing of time is not random; a malicious will has set against his own. Why else, if not to keep them apart?
He knows that the time zone is right; can read it from the turning stars above, from the quality of the haze on the horizon. It's not so early she is not yet a captive, nor too late that her human life is surely spent.
He warms his hands on the fire and waits for the moon to set.
I know that I can win.
"Captain?"
"What is it?"
"You might want to see this, sir."
The young lieutenant flicks on the main monitor, showing the outpost camera feed. An AG speeder, heavily modified, is skipping over the sand dunes towards the security station.
"Where does he think he's going?"
"Wherever it is, he's going there at a hell of a pace."
The Captain nods. "Send a squad to intercept."
A salute from the lieutenant in response; he hurries down the stone steps of the outpost tower to the mess room. Several outriders look up expectantly from their meagre rations.
"Squad's up, riders. Hostile contact incoming."
There is no hesitation; three of the riders immediately lay down their cutlery and head for the door. Within minutes they have mounted their own speeders, and streak off to intercept the stranger.
He's quick; far quicker than his cobbled together craft has any right to be. The lieutenant adjusts his course, pulling the outriders in tightly.
"What's he doing?"
"Suicide run," answers the Lieutenant grimly. He's seen it once before, another wanderer from the wastelands. The scratched existence too much to bear; the desire to leave the hell that Gallifrey has become in a blaze of destruction. "Deploy lances."
The wasteland AG turns gracefully, running parallel to the armoured patrol now. He is an older man, bent low over the handlebars. He turns his head as the lieutenant brings his speeder in close; for a second their eyes meet. The lieutenant shudders. There is a cold fury burning blue; not madness but vengeance.
"Watch ou—!"
The whump of the afterburners igniting drowns out his warning. The wastelander's speeder accelerates away, uncatchable.
"He's going to go over the edge!"
"No… no, he can't be…"
But the first rider is right. The enemy AG is driving straight for the canyon edge, moving so fast he seems to blur.
"How's he doing that?" asks the third. "At those speeds the dune should be flipping him."
"I… I don't know." The lieutenant is holding his breath. Surely, surely the man cannot be about to drive over the edge?
The enemy AG drops out of sight. "Rassilon's mercy," says the Captain over the comms, "he bloody did it."
"There's nothing close to the canyon wall here. There shouldn't be any other casualties," replies the lieutenant, shaken.
"Food for the rock-vultures," suggests the third.
The lieutenant nods. "Back home then, riders."
The wind, whipping cold in his face; howling around him. A curious sense of peace after the whine of the speeder's overcooked engine. The Doctor risks opening his eyes, to find the glider modification are indeed working perfectly. Rather than accelerating to his doom, he is descending lightly down onto the plain.
"Geronimo," he whispers.
He tugs the wires of the rudimentary steering system, causing the rig to wobble alarmingly, but bringing him around tight to the canyon wall. He doesn't want the King to see this coming. Stay in the cliff shadows, a speck that could be a rock-vulture or harpy-eagle. Onwards he glides, into the heart of the Kingdom.
