The door slams shut behind her, as Goggles pulls the Doctor aboard. The terrible noise of the war-machine and the Razorback are muted.

"Who are you?" she finds herself saying.

The gunner pulls off her mask to reveal the infectious grin of Gryf. "Hello Clara," says the dusty Time Lord. "I didn't recognise you under that wig. Hello Doctor."

"Hello," he replies, sounding almost embarrassed.

Clara ignores his odd reaction, allowing Gryf to pull her into a hug. "I can't believe he did it!"

"Did what?"

"Got you out!"

"Ah, well," says the Doctor, positively writhing with shame, "you know…"

"I guess I can forgive you for stunning me," Gryf continues, mischievous, "knowing it was all worth it in the end."

Ah. Clara raises an eyebrow. "Something you want to tell me, Doctor?"

"I don't think so—"

"Does someone want to tell me," snaps a strangely familiar voice, "what in seven hells is going on?" Cora strides into the cramped little cabin, scowling, ready to square up the tall stranger at the turret door. She freezes as the Doctor gives her an uncomfortable little wave.

"Hello," he says again.

"Doctor," she replies, very faintly. "Is that really you?"

"Ah, um, yes," he blusters, pulling off his false nose. "Yes, it's me."

And suddenly he is stumbling backwards under her weight, enveloped in a fierce hug. "You bastard!" Clara hears Cora shout, muffled by the Doctor's coat. "I thought I was never going to see you again!" She draws back, sizing him up. It's strange to see from the outside.

For a second Clara feels like she is flapping loose again, adrift in her own multiverse, stomach turned to lead.

"How long has it been?" her clone demands.

"What do you mean?"

"For you, how long?"

"Fifty-three years," he says.

"Rassilon's mercy."

"He did it, though," says Gryf, breaking the spell between the two of them after a long, long moment of silence.

Cora snaps around, smiling, taking in the still-shocked Clara. "I'm glad," she says, reaching out for her counterpart's hands, giving them a friendly squeeze. "Truly glad. But if you're free, what were you doing clinging to the side of the Razorback?"

"Ah," the Doctor says, and coughs, melodramatic as ever. "Crime."

"You were after the dataslice too?" asks Cora shrewdly.

"What makes you say that?"

"That was part of our plan," says Gryf. "Cora's plan. To take down the King."


Clara runs a comb through her damp hair, avoiding her eyes in the sliver of mirror. Outside, revelry continues.

There was drinking; scout Ingrid's secret still behind the AG workshop providing enough moonshine to render the whole encampment half-blind. Too much of the potent brew is still tingling in her veins, flushing her cheeks.

There was dancing. Music, Clara has found in many desperate corners of the Universe, has almost magical properties. A tin drum, a whittled whistle. Such things are enough to transfer the meanest hovel into a place of joy. Evin—lugubrious and limping these days, no trace of the arrogant Lord Clara remembers—had whirled Gryf around the floor so forcefully she took flight.

There was a long awaited reunion. When Sen dropped down from the battle-wagon to find Rob engaged in a full-blown shouting match with Cora, Clara felt the world hold its breath. There were tears; a tight, wordless embrace. Later, several mugs of inter-engine brew later, there was possibly even some kissing. Both disappeared into the mountain night several hours ago.

In the midst of the celebrations she had turned to find the Doctor; out of habit, never far from each other's sight these days.

And he wasn't there.

She meets her own dark eyes in the slice of mirror and sighs.

He was standing with Cora by the rows of battered tankards, talking animatedly. Dignity had told her to look away, but instinct held her gaze instead. The little engineer was smiling indulgently, awaiting pause in the flow of his words. Her hand, gently cupped against his face, smile then quirking. A kiss when he finally stopped; fast; almost chaste.

His blinking surprise in the aftermath, as Cora turned away. A hand to his lips, wondering.

And afterwards he came to the alcove, as if nothing had changed.


"What are you doing here?" she says, lightly, calmly.

"You came to sleep," he replies, that same blinking confusion in his eyes.

"So?"

Confusion turns to panic at this challenge. He doesn't want to say it. "So I normally… am here. Assuming that you're… that you're sleepy."

"You don't have to be," she says, practically breezy.

He opens and closes his mouth a few times. I want to be, he doesn't say. "Oh."

"Good night, Doctor." He recognises the dismissal, frown tightening.

"Clara…"

"Pretty tired," she says, her airy calm beginning to fray. She lies down, turns away. "Going to sleep now." Screws her eyes tight and hopes for… what?

Possibly not the swish of the curtain, judging by the sudden plummet in her chest. Probably not the sound of his retreating boots, either.

Oh fuck, oh fuck, she thinks. She really isn't very good at this.


The battle-wagon looks, if anything, even more enormous alongside the rag-tag AGs of the rebel fighters. The height of an articulated lorry; maybe half the length. Enormous caterpillar treads crawling down both sides; an angry fanged face for a bonnet.

Cora drops lightly down from the armoured turret on the right hand side. "Hard to believe she started out as an AG too."

Clara smiles, suddenly shy. "You built her."

"We all did."

"She's amazing." A marvellous machine, a home, a point of departure. All at once. She's the TARDIS. The thought twists in her gut but tightens her resolve.

"Were you looking for the Doctor?" Cora asks, and she recognises that oh-so-breezy tone; could laugh to hear it now from her own-other mouth.

"No," she says, truthfully, "I was hoping to find you."

"Oh." Cora considers this for a moment. "Do you want to come on up?"

Cora's room on the wagon is small, barely more than a bed and cramped desk, right in the roof of the vehicle. It should feel awkward, sitting cross-legged together on her covers. Instead, the air is confessional, almost a relief.

"I, um," Clara says, "I… oh, God. I can't believe I'm going to say this."

"What?"

"I mean, there's so much going on out there. Life and death. The decay of a whole planet. A war. It feels stupid to have to say anything about… something so small in scale as this. In the grand scheme of things." She takes a breath. "I won't stand in the way. Of you and the Doctor. I mean, I'm not saying that we have… it's just if you wanted to… I wouldn't want you to feel you couldn't because of me. I'm fine with it."

A sigh. "Clara."

"Sorry, I-I just… it'd be such a cliché, us fighting over him. I just wanted to-"

"-to take control?"

"Yes."

Cora chuckles. "I understand. I think probably more than anyone else can." She looks down at her hands for a moment. "I appreciate what you're trying to do. But you're wrong."

"Wrong?"

"It's not small. And you're not fine with it."

Clara swallows. "I would be. In time."

"I know. Oh, I know." Cora's fingers fold around hers. "It's been fifteen years since that greenhouse, Clara. For me, anyway. This plan to stop the King… I've been thinking on it for almost all of that time."

"The same plan as the Doctor. You think alike."

"No. He's a genius. Oh, and an idiot too, don't get me wrong. But he devised that plan in an evening – watching you sleep. He told me."

"So?"

"So you think whatever... force there is between you, whatever you want to call it... You think it's small in comparison to the great big world, the great big war out there. But he spent more than fifty years trying to get you back. Don't you see? If Gallifrey mattered he'd have turned that big old brain to the task years ago. He'd be King of this whole planet now, if that's what he cared about. But he just wanted you. Safe, with him."

Clara makes a noise somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. "I never asked him for that," she manages, almost plaintive.

Her reflection laughs. "That's not how it works though, is it?" She lets go of her hand. "No one asks to be loved. They just are."