"Clara! Clara!"
"Which one?" she groans, before she is heartily sick. For a few minutes the world is nothing more than her roiling stomach and thumping heartbeat, echoing around her skull. Her ribs ache fiercely. She spits the last of the acid bile away and apologises.
"You were—"
"Nightmares," she cuts across him. "I know."
He nods and she loves him fiercely in that moment; for not needing to press the issue; for accepting her words just as they are and letting things she cannot face yet simply lie.
He has parked the speeder in a needle-leaved scrubland on red limestone platforms. The embers of a fire glow nearby, her feet still tangled in a bedroll of assorted rags to cushion her aching bones. She tugs them away from her puddle of sick.
"There's a stream," he says, "just over there. Drinkable. And you can wash in it too."
"Is that your subtle way of telling me I smell, Doctor?"
"Humans always smell," he frowns, waspish as ever, "but I know washing is important to you. There's some other clothes in the pack, if you want."
"Thank you," she says, surprised.
He shrugs. "I wouldn't thank me just yet. You haven't seen what they look like."
They turn out to be somewhat oversized but soft, dry, and mostly clean. After a bracing wash in the icy stream that is all she really cares about.
"Your turn," she says, returning to the little campsite to find him poking the remains of the fire. For a second he looks ready to argue, eyebrows shooting into his tangle of hair. He settles for clucking like an angry chicken at her order instead, and then does as he is told.
There is still a wildness about him when he returns, but the water has tamed his curls at least. "What?" he demands, taking in her amused smile.
"The beard."
He touches a hand to his chin, as if the news is a surprise to him. "Oh. Oh yes. I'd forgotten that tends to happen. Huh, it's good insulation though. You should grow one too."
She licks her lips, never quite sure if he's joking or not with comments like those. "I'll bear it in mind," she settles for. "Doctor, where are we?"
"Gallifrey," he says, looking concerned that she might have forgotten.
"… yes, thanks, I know that much. But there's cold water and plants here. Not endless desert."
He nods, understanding dawned. "We're in the foothills of the Cannon range. Further west than Perdition and within the territories of the King. Climate control is still established here."
"Within the territories?" She tries and fails to keep the note of fear from her voice.
"Yes," he says, more soft. Hesitantly, he extends his hand to take hers, giving her fingers a reassuring squeeze. It's still as if he's reading from an internal script rather than acting on instinct, but the gesture is a welcome comfort nonetheless.
"I'm sorry," she finds herself saying.
He frowns again, confused. "Why? He captured you. Tortured you. A bit of healthy fear never hurt anyone." She looks away at that, and he presses on. "Clara. I can't t that we're safe here. But I swear, I will not let him take you away again."
She swallows, eyes on the limestone until she is sure she has her voice under control. "Is that a fact?"
"It's a promise."
Now she meets his eyes, swimming with tears he does not let fall. She squeezes his fingers in return. "Me too," she returns. "I promise." She draws in another painful breath. "So, what's the plan now? You mentioned rebels in the mountains."
"Yes. The Cannons are under his jurisdiction but not his control. There's too much difficult ground to cover. Escaped prisoners are living in the hills. Sometimes they target farm convoys, steal equipment."
"How do we find them?"
"I don't know. The King's sources are vague. We're in the right sort of location but if they don't want to be found…"
"Well, they must need shelter, water, some source of food," she reasons. "Find that, we find them."
He nods, considering. "Onwards and upwards then."
She watches him gather the spiny brushwood for the evening's fire, ragged blanket around her shoulders. They are higher now; the air is colder, thinner. The cool means more moisture, however, and the scrubland cover is thicker. Nestled in a valley fold between two steeper slopes, their camp feels more secure.
"How long has it been?" she finds herself asking, as he deftly weaves the sticks and spines.
"How long has what been?"
"How long have you been out here?" There is something far too practiced about his movements; old habits of laying out a bedroll, building a fire.
"Oh, I don't know," he lies.
"Yes you do. You always do."
He continues to play with the sticks, avoiding her eyes. "A while."
"I know he was manipulating the temporal plates. He made me…" she hesitates. "I mean… I could see."
"I stopped counting," he says lightly, conversation ended. "It doesn't matter."
"It does to me."
"Why?" he snaps, putting down the bundles at last and scowling at her. "It's over."
She swipes away a tear she is too angry to let fall. "Is it really? For you?"
His frown crumples. "Clara, I'm sorry—"
"Don't be. Tell me the truth. How long has it been… for you?"
"Fifty-three years," he says, continuing over the sudden roar of blood in her ears, "nine months, two weeks. Three days, nineteen hours and forty-seven minutes—"
"Stop. Please. I'm sorry."
"Why?" he says again, sharper still. "It wasn't your fault. It was mine. I should have—"
"Should have what?"
"Been more cautious!" he shouts, on his feet now. "I have a duty of care."
"What? No you don't. I've never asked for that."
"You shouldn't have to," he snaps back, pacing back and forth. "You shouldn't have to ask."
She pinches the bridge of her nose, suddenly exhausted by their exchange. "Doctor, you owe me nothing. Look at what you've given me—" He's made a gift of the Universe to her, she wants to say.
"Yes, look," he growls, missing the point entirely; waving a hand at her bruises. "Pain. Suffering."
"Meaning. Adventure," she corrects, shaking her shaven head. "Perspective. Something to be. Doctor, please. Sit down."
He sighs deeply, but does as she asks, hunch shouldered and cross. A little bit of humour escapes through her teeth at his expression.
"What?"
"Fifty-three years?"
"Yes. Why?"
"And how many hours did we manage before we had an argument?"
"Less than forty-eight. Counting the time you were asleep." She can see his smile underneath the scowl now.
"Well, I'm hungry. What's your excuse?"
He takes the hint; rootles about in his pack. Eventually he produces a twist of suspicious dried meat with a triumphant grin. "Rock lizard."
"Delicious," she says, doubtfully, after a bite.
She wakes screaming again; shouts translated into vapour on the cold mountainside. The afterimage of a hundred other lives drag at the periphery of her vision.
I am Clara Oswald, I am Clara Oswald, she tries to say; but she isn't sure which is which or where she is.
A hand, a hand on either shoulder. Gripping her almost too tightly. "Clara," says the owner of a ferocious scowl, "my Clara."
She blinks. "Doctor."
"That's right. We're on Gallifrey together. Do you remember?"
She swallows down bile. "Yes. Yes, I remember." But there are other tendrils of herself coiled around; she remembers a child's laughter and the smell of baby powder; a night shift spent in sensible shoes, and a parent's evening that seemed to never end.
"Stop that," he says sharply. "You don't have to worry about those ones."
She nods but it's hard; memories of pain, of primal urgency particularly tug at her. The baby, the empty cot, the cold hand.
Bony fingers find her chin. "Clara," he says again. "Look at me."
She does as he asks, meeting his stare; seeing constellations wheel and change in the reflection of his eyes. "Thank you," she says, when she's sure of herself again.
"It will get better," he says.
"Really?"
"Yes. The more time you spend exclusively in your own time-stream the easier it will become to stay."
"It feels so real."
"It is real. But it isn't here, it isn't now, and it isn't happening to you."
"I know," she says, and then again more convincingly, "I know. It's cold. Is there anything else you have in that pack?"
His hand moves from her chin to her cheek. "You're warm. Feverish."
"Figures," she says, teeth chattering.
He pulls her ragged blanket back tight around her shoulders, fumble fingered and awkward. "I don't have any more clothes."
"It's ok," she says, trying to shiver less obviously. "I'll be ok." She closes her eyes, and for a second the sound of her footsteps on hospital linoleum bleeds through; the thin wail of a hungry baby.
"Clara," he says warningly. "Stay with me."
"I'm trying," she replies, "It's hard."
He pulls her closer, rubbing his hands on her arms to try and warm her up. "I want you to tell me," he says, "the very first thing you can remember."
"About what?"
"About you. The first thing, Clara. Starting school, perhaps? Day out with your Gran?" He is bundling his own blankets around them as he talks, cocooning them together.
"Um, day out at the beach," she says. "We had ice creams and I think I rode on a donkey."
"What else do you remember?"
"It was hot. Gran was with us…"
