A return to the room she thinks of as the laboratory; where Frankenstein builds his monsters. She thought the King had grown bored of watching her experience a thousand lifetimes at once. Perhaps he has some new variation to try. She waits, mute, held in place by the hideous charged bonds as always. She is tired. There's almost a comfort to be had in this clinical mattress compared to her cell. She closes her eyes—
Bzzzt! Electricity jolting into her very bones. She sighs, weary, and reopens her eyes. "Was that really necessary?"
He doesn't answer. He has been almost mute recently. That should feel like victory, but stopping his words hasn't stopped the pain.
The hum of the machinery warming up and the return of the blue light. There's no trill of adrenaline anymore, just a curious sickened feeling that takes hold of the pit of her stomach. She knows what's to come; doesn't fear it. She will endure.
Instead of rattling her gurney into the blue light, the King projects familiar security camera footage onto the wall. She sighs again, more deeply this time. Far worse than enduring the fractured splinters of herself scattered through time is the sight of him; trying and failing once more to reach her.
He is on foot, this time. There is something more familiar about him than she has seen of late: screwdriver in hand, light on his feet. In spite of his tangle of wild hair, he is more like the Doctor she remembers.
"Where is he?" she asks.
"Outside this building," replies the King.
She doesn't permit herself a reaction. "You'd never let him get so close."
"Correct. Sadly, my outriders appear not to share my concern."
A wave of the screwdriver and a door is unlocked. Change of camera angle; the Doctor storming down a nondescript corridor now. He spots a control point and wheels about. Another flicker; cut to a close-up of his face. The tiniest tip of pink tongue protrudes as he works the station, expression hawkish. Her insides contract painfully at the sight of him, so familiar, wearing a face she's seen a thousand times. The challenge doesn't matter, be it saving a planet from a rampaging monster or dismantling a shower radio to make a clockwork squirrel. She knows that look.
And she knows the King. "So, what's the trap?"
"You, of course. You're the bait on my hook."
Across the room the blue light plays, crawling across the floor. She thinks she understands.
Run, Doctor. His eyes flicker on the screen. For a moment she dares to hope he might have heard her; the strength of her words unspoken beamed directly into his brain without the need for intervening ears. She's never quite certain just how telepathic he really is. His expression changes, teeth bared in a grin, and her heart plummets. No telepathy. He thinks he's found a way in.
The cameras follow him through the maze of corridors. He clearly thinks he is carefully avoiding the scientists and guards that prowl. With the King's panoptical eyes, she sees the truth; the careful orchestration of their withdrawal to lure him deeper and deeper into the trap. Lock tumblers twist, electronics bleep their surrender. He is coming to find her.
And now the snick of the lock isn't transmitted from the security feed but the sound of the door across the room permitting entry.
She opens her mouth to shout, to warn him not to open the door, but King has planned for this. Her bonds fire into life and the pain is stronger than any she has yet endured. Her jaw locks, every muscle in spasm, blinding tears of agony fill her eyes.
She expected fire and rage. She expected the Time Lord victorious to rain destruction on her captors. Instead there is flat calm, the door closed quietly behind him. "Your Majesty," he says, eyes on the ball of blue light. "You're hurting my friend."
His voice is cracked and hoarse, like he's forgotten how to use it. Oh no, oh no, she thinks, still rendered mute even as the bonds of the bed power down. The Universe is flapping loose, the Doctor on the edge of a precipice he cannot even see, and she can do nothing, nothing to help him—
"You come to bargain with an empty hand," says the King, mechanical. Before, she knows, he would have gloated and goaded. Their mutual torture sessions have taken the game out of all of this. "You imagine that you are going to stop me? With nothing in your hand but that pathetic sonic device."
"No, not imagine," the Doctor replies. "I know it."
"Ha! You haven't changed."
"On the contrary," says the Doctor, still very level, "I've changed more times than you can imagine. But sometimes, if you change enough, you bend back around into what you started as. Release her."
"No."
"I don't like to repeat myself, your Majesty."
"Neither do I."
A frown now, creasing those magnificent eyebrows. "I don't know who you were," says the Doctor. "I don't recognise your voice anymore. But this has to stop. Maybe you started this all for the right reasons; I don't know. But what you are now, what you are doing, has to stop."
"No, Doctor. It is you that has to stop. The last of a long line of Time Lords who thought they knew best. And look at what you did! Look at what Gallifrey has become, thanks to your meddling."
The background hum of energy changes pitch as the ball of blue light starts to expand slowly. The Doctor regards it curiously, head slightly to one side. "So that's how you've been making them," he says softly. Horror, for the first time, edging his words.
"It's quite effective," returns the King, "I would say goodbye to Clara Oswald, if I was you. You won't recognise her very soon."
The Doctor licks his lips, looking left and right with the kind of urgency she recognises as preceding mortal peril. "You don't have to do this."
"Goodbye Doctor."
The ball of blue goes supernova, larger than she has ever seen it, almost filling the room. The light surrounds the Doctor, who spread his arms wide—
And suddenly she is no longer looking at the man she knows better than the back of her own hand. Something else stands in the halo of light, something caught in the shape of a man, but folded in on itself; bigger on the inside. The shadow moves, walking towards her. She can hear, on the edge of perception, the crack of the cataclysm that began the universe. Something is shifting, something her human senses can only dimly recognise; the sense of something tremendous in scale groaning and moving around them. The fabric of reality warping, colours starting the bleed—
There is a thunderclap explosion, a shower of sparks, and the lights cut out. In the dark she strains against the bonds with all her might.
Bzz-bzz. She flinches automatically, but this buzz is a friendlier pitch, the screwdriver whirring into life. The Doctor's oh-so-human face lit in ghostly green.
"Clara," he whispers, as if her name is a stranger to his mouth. The screwdriver points and the hated bonds at last release.
She reaches for him, her muscles still firing strangely, hand a claw. She expected a helping arm, pulling her to her feet. Instead he envelopes her in a crushing embrace, painfully tight. Doctor, she wants to reply. But the words have died in her throat, lost in the alien sensation of beard prickling her neck; the smell of dust and sweat that surely do not belong to him.
"Clara," he says again, drawing back, his hands framing her face. Exquisitely gentle, as if she is as fragile as a soap bubble, just as easily popped. "Can you walk?"
"For you," she says, delirious in this strange new unreality, "anywhere."
The sun is warm on her face, bright even behind closed eyes. At her back is the warmth of another body, a strong arm cradling her in place.
A dream, she tells herself firmly. Perhaps it's even a memory, a page torn from the life of another Clara. She will open her eyes and find herself back in her cell, cold. Alone.
She opens her eyes to find herself curled against the Doctor, piloting what was once an anti-gravity speeder, but now resembles a rejected concept drawing from Mad Max.
"Hello, sleepyhead," he says.
"We escaped." She barely remembers; limping through the dark, his arm slung under hers as she fought to keep her shaking legs from folding.
"Uh, yeah. Well, that bit's sort of still in progress."
"Are they following us?" she says. She doesn't twist to look. No sense hastening the inevitable if they are.
"Not that I'm aware of. That little stunt took out half of the Citadel's power grid. Chameleon circuit won't fool the sensors, but it works well enough on eyeballs."
"Hmm," she says after a while. She has the vague idea she has slept again; orange day suddenly painted in twilight colours. "Where are we going, Doctor?"
"The mountains. I hacked the King's security network when I was looking for you. The rumours of rebel forces hiding in the hills have some truth to them. I thought they might make good allies. If we can find them."
She digests this. "Well, let me know how that goes," she says, letting her head drop into his chest once again. "Keep me… apprised."
