It's freezing.
She dips her toes into the water, watching the ripples disturb the surface.
There's no noise. She feels trapped by the silence. Looking up, she sees the silhouette of a large bird of prey. Its sharp gaze bores into her.
'I know you,' she whispers.
Clara
She wakes with a start at her name.
"Clara?"
Clara grabs her phone from the bedside table. She realises the charging cable hadn't connected. Which means her alarm must not have gone off.
"Normally I wouldn't try to wake you but-"
"Doctor, what time is it?"
"Half eight. Are you ill? If you are, don't come near me."
She smacks herself in the forehead. Half eight. She's so late. Too late to be offended by her ornery flatmate.
"Two pages, due by Friday," Clara announced, much to the chagrin of the class. Courtney, as expected, groaned the loudest. "You think this is hard now? Wait a few years. You'll have ten pages due the next day for much shorter books."
The kids all began to pack their papers and notebooks, heading out for the day.
Clara took to erasing the whiteboard as the kids all shuffled out, ignoring the din of chatter and complaints.
"Ms Oswald," said a familiar voice.
Clara looked up and smiled at Danny leaning against the doorframe. "Mr Pink," she greeted. "How do you do it? How do you make these kids like you so much?"
"Honestly?" he asked.
"Yeah, honestly."
He looked away quickly. "Every other day I assign the odd problems in the Maths book. Which have the answers in the back."
"Cheater!" Clara gasped, throwing the eraser at him. "How do they learn?"
"Kids don't learn from homework. The ones that cheat? They don't get it. I spend more time with them. Make sure they learn it how they need to be taught." Danny shrugged.
"But there's no right answer to Literature. I grade based on the merit of ideas."
"Sounds like you're a good teacher, then," Danny offered, sitting at the edge of her desk. "You make them think about the things that matter."
"Try telling that to the Head Master," she sighed. Clara began to pack up her belongings, not overly excited about the prospect of the mound of essays she had to grade that evening.
It wasn't lost on Danny that she'd shoved a stack of papers into her bag. "Suppose you're not free for drinks, then?" he asked, nodding at her bag.
Clara groaned. "I know they hate writing this rubbish. I hate grading it."
"Is that a no or a yes?"
Clara shook her head. "Not tonight, I'm afraid. Friday night? Dinner even?"
"You're not veg, are you?" Danny asked.
"Nope. Unless we have to hunt our dinner, in which case I'm absolutely a vegetarian."
"I'm very old fashioned. I don't like to make the women I date hunt until well into the relationship," Danny teased. She sensed a bit of hesitance in him being so forward about the two of them. It was endearing.
"Why do you ask?" Clara put on her overcoat and motioned for them to head out.
"Figured I'd take you some place with a view. Just happens to be a meaty place, which is why I wanted to ask." He followed her out of the room and into the corridor. "You're sure I can't convince you into something tonight?"
"Honestly, besides grading, I did actually promise the Doctor I'd make dinner tonight."
Danny stopped and feigned insult. "You're turning me down for your weird old flat dad?"
"He's not as awful as you think he is," she argued. "He'll go days without speaking to me-" Danny opened his mouth to make a comment on the matter and Clara tutted. "But I think he's just a solitary person."
"Bit of a nutter more like," Danny mumbled, frowning. He followed her outside, buttoning up his coat and readjusting his shoulder bag. "See you tomorrow then?"
Clara mustered up a smile, feeling a bit guilty for turning Danny down in favor of dinner with her flatmate. "Yeah. Night, Danny."
Putting in her earbuds, Clara turned on some music for the journey home. She'd promised something nice for dinner a few weeks ago. The Doctor had been keeping late nights, but when he came in late, it was never accompanied by the telltale clumsiness of the pissed pub patron. Besides the opening and closing of doors, had she not been such a light sleeper, she perhaps wouldn't have even known he was out to begin with.
It was odd having such an absent flatmate. Even when she knew he was home, he often spent his time hidden away in his room. She'd begun to spend time in the living room, grading papers at his desk while listening to his records. The Doctor had never mentioned being upset by her use of the common space and figuring he wasn't one to be passive aggressive, she decided to continue making herself comfortable.
Dinner. She'd decided on some Cornish hens, truffle whipped potatoes, sauteed spinach, and perhaps a dessert of some sort. While she'd offered dinner in return for one he'd cooked a few weeks ago now, she was looking forward to some stress relief through cooking. After getting off the bus, she popped into a grocery store to pick up the requisite dinner ingredients, oddly excited to impress the Doctor with her menu.
Entering the flat, she was happy to find the lights on. He hadn't forgotten. She'd have been very cross if that'd been the case. She still would have made the dinner, of course. But she might've retaliated by opening a bottle of wine and telling him off when he did decide to show up. Luckily that wasn't the scenario. She took off her earbuds, kicked off her shoes, hung her coat on the rack, and walked into the common area.
"Evening, Doctor," she said cheerfully, putting the bags on the counter.
No response. She looked over and saw him asleep on his chair. He looked pale, a sheen of sweat on his brow. Clara took a glass from the cabinet, filled it with water, then walked it over to him.
"Doctor, are you ill?" Clara asked, setting the water down on the table beside him.
He opened his eyes halfway, his pupils adjusting to the light too slowly.
"Do you mind if I take your temperature?" she asked, concerned.
"Not sick," he replied bluntly, his voice cracked.
Clara offered him the water, which he reached for, but immediately grimaced and held his side.
"You're hurt?"
He nodded, closing his eyes again.
"Have you been to the A&E? You should go to hospital," Clara said, starting to become more concerned by his unresponsiveness. "Doctor, tell me what's wrong."
He opened his eyes again and looked directly at her. Slowly, he hitched up his t-shirt, revealing what looked to be a small arrow shaft lodged in his side. Unable to stop herself, she reached out to touch it, not believing it was real.
At the briefest touch, she recoiled. It made her skin crawl.
"The shaft's iron," he wheezed. "Don't...you know you can't touch it."
Clara was confused. How could he have possibly known about her iron allergy? "We need to get this out of you. I'm going to call an ambulance."
She stood up and he grabbed her arm and held her tightly. "They can't help me there. They won't help me-"
"You're not thinking straight, Doctor."
"Call P.E.," he said finally.
"Danny?" she asked, surprised. "Why Danny?"
"You said he's a soldier. Must-must have experience with this sort of thing."
Clara shook her head and nearly laughed by how absurd the situation was. "This isn't medieval England, Doctor. Danny isn't Robin Hood."
"A bullet is infinitely worse than an arrow," he replied. As if he knew what a bullet felt like as well. She realised she knew so little about him.
"Please, Clara," The Doctor said, his voice cracking. "I don't have much time."
She rushed back to the kitchen, where she'd left her mobile on the counter. It was tempting to call 999 instead, but the Doctor had seemed very frightened of that possibility. Was he in a gang? Could you be in a gang as a near-pensioner? Maybe this was more of a Harry Brown scenario?
"Change your mind?" came Danny's voice. Clara hadn't even realised she'd called him.
"Danny, I have to ask you a huge favour."
"He needs to go to hospital, Clara," Danny said, looking at the wound in The Doctor's side worriedly. "I can pull this out, but if there's any internal damage-"
"P.E.," mumbled The Doctor. "There's no internal damage. Just pull it out."
Danny frowned. He looked at Clara and shrugged. "Do you have rubber gloves?"
"What do you need-" Clara started, then realised he was going to actually pull it out. "Yeah, one sec."
Clara grabbed the washing up gloves from the sink (which she had just purchased the day before and was slightly annoyed she'd have to immediately replace) and handed them over to Danny.
"Are you squeamish?" he asked.
"Not particularly," she replied.
"Still, you might want to look away." Danny said, turning towards The Doctor and bracing himself, making sure his grip on the arrow shaft was strong. "All right, Doctor? You with me?"
The Doctor made a pained noise, weak and incoherent.
"I'm going to count to three. On three I'm going to pull and I'm not going to stop until the arrow is dislodged. Are you ready?"
The Doctor groaned again.
"One. Two. Three."
There are moments when time seems to pass both quicker and slower than normal. Clara watched, not willing to look away, as Danny pulled in one deft motion, dislodging the arrow. The Doctor's eyes flew open, his not insignificant eyebrows unlocked from their usual furrowed position.
To give the illusion of time slowing down on film, the frame rate is increased and the camera captures the image quicker than normal. Back when cameras were still operated by hand crank, this would mean that the camera operator would have to turn the crank at a higher rate. Clara wasn't entirely sure why this small bit of trivia popped into her head. It maybe had to do with the fact that her brain hadn't caught up to processing what her eyes were capturing. Or maybe it was a self-defence mechanism in times when reality didn't quite fit in the box of comprehensible things. Whatever the reason, where The Doctor had sat in pain mere nanoseconds earlier there was now, impossibly, a huge bird of prey.
"I know you," Clara whispered, the edges of her vision fading.
"Clara. Clara!" The sound faded, muffled. "Cla-"