It was cold. Not that it affected her in any way as her temperature was on the low side anyway, but the TARDIS and the faintest plume of her breath informed her that it was chilly. Underfoot the grass crunched with frost, it was early still and the sun was not quite risen casting a gloom across the graveyard in front of her. As Clara walked she could just see into the windows of the houses beyond the walls, lights bright as residents ate their breakfast, the first of the Christmas lights adorning some window-frames. It was the beginning of advent, December 1st 2015. Or a week and a bit after she had died on Trap Street.

This was where a new Clara came into being. She wrinkled her nose, it made her sound like a Zombie. It wasn't so much that she had risen from a grave but that people now associated her with death. She was gone. If they wanted to be near her they came here.

Things had changed. The original deal was she would have to return to Trap Street one day, complete the circle and die. The original deal had her lying in that grave and she accepted that entirely.

Until she got back to Gallifrey and tried to do just that. Then it all turned upside down. An offer was made. Her blood started pumping and now she didn't know if she ever would lie in the grave in front of her. That it was there was surely a sign she would, but her timelines were cris-crossing, complicated and dangerous and it was perfectly possible that she wouldn't. She could end up anywhere now that she could technically die again but could technically live forever too.

Not that it mattered to her family, to them she was already dead and gone. But it mattered to her, to the new Clara it was an important starting point. She understood her life before she 'died', hectic, full, unpredictable; but since then, since the Raven, and her conversion, she had more life than purpose. She was drifting on too much time.

She had wondered about going later to her graveside. Not in the day but in the century, but she had decided it would depress her to find her grave untended and abandoned, no family to grieve, no children to make sure the leaves were swept away. She knew only too well that those were things lost to her forever. The one man she would have wanted that with was beyond her now, she would be solitary in that respect. So instead she had come today, when the soil was still freshly dug and only a makeshift wooden cross stood for her. She came when people still cared that she was gone.

She wondered if her name was on the board at school. It was an odd memorial to find in a school hallway, those lost in or around Coal Hill, a list alumni became a list of dead. She wondered how long people looked at it and remembered her, how quickly the pupils and staff returned to just hurrying past. Surely someone would stop and glimpse her name now and then and remember her existence when she had just been a school teacher and not a time traveller.

There were still flowers lying on the hummock of soil above her coffin. Some from her family, her dad and gran, made her eyes sting with sorrow. Others from the school, her colleagues, big bouquets bought with collection money. She could imagine them handing around the tin. All in all though, there weren't many given how young she had been when she had died. It told her where her heart had really lain, how much she had extracted herself from everyday human life, how much of her lived in space tied to the Doctor.

That's why this was so hard. Living in a TARDIS was something she loved, but it wasn't the same without him. He had made the experience complete. Now she had to be her own Doctor, she suddenly understood his loneliness. Even Ashildr came and went, just like his companions had too.

A crunch nearby and she quickly skipped behind a line of trees just in case, thankful when she saw who was approaching. Clara smiled when she saw Rigsy and his little family. Safe, complete and unharmed. He pushed his baby's pushchair towards the grave and with his girlfriend laid more flowers.

'Thanks, Clara,' he said, his voice raw. His girlfriend took his arm and leaned against his shoulder in comfort. 'I won't forget, not ever. I'll be here, every year. Someone's going to remember you…'

XXXXXXXXX

He was seated in the chair by the console with a cap on his head made of wires and plastic that he had cobbled together with bits from the workbench downstairs. It looked a bit primitive but it would do the trick. With his new current accentuator sticking out of the controls he punched in some numbers and instructions and began to feed in the memories to the TARDIS databanks where they would be 'warmed up,' and transferred to him. He'd have to start slow but that was OK, he could do it in dribs and drabs, control the urge to just download the lot. He was going to be sensible about this.

Clara. Clara, Clara. He picked up the first square memory chip. Right back at the beginning then, he slotted it in and waited until the images started to trickle through. First her voice, then more than one version of her, confusing. Victorian dress, modern dress. He frowned, this was the echo, he met the echo first. He knew about that, jumping into his time line, he'd just never…seen I. He sighed like a weight had been lifted.

The Doctor smiled as the images grew brighter and more rounded. Oh they had had some fun. Ghosts and Ice warriors and her sharp sense of humour, and outrage. She was stubborn and funny and brave and he found himself chuckling away at her tantrums, her frustration with him. He could see why he had fallen in love, felt some of it stir in him just from those first few memories. She was perfect for him, tiny but strong, pretty, courageous and kind.

The first chip sent a signal to alert him to its status. It had finished its download so he removed it and paused briefly. He'd handled that all right hadn't he? He wasn't about to go on a universe destroying rampage. And he was curious now, like a good book, what happened next? He wasn't angry upset of shaking, he just wanted to read the next chapter.

The TARDIS made a moaning noise, concern in the atmosphere and he patted the console in reassurance.

'I'm fine, just one more chip and then I promise I will take a break, organise it all… file it all correctly... no conflicts of feeling...' he tailed off already unpacking the next chip.

He inserted it and turned up the rate of download. The images became brighter, moved quicker until he felt he was living it. It was a good feeling and one he began to recognise. They had fitted so well, they had so much fun. The chip ended half way through an adventure so he allowed himself the next and the next, a warm and happy feeling spreading through him until he stood before a huge dying TARDIS on a planet called Trenzalore.

Until he watched her step into his timestream and sacrifice herself.

And it was then he began to understand why he had locked all of this away. It was vivid and painful and he heard himself shout to her, a younger him, long before the confession dial. He would save her, and see himself do so, but then the trouble really started. They would bind together hard, run too fast towards trouble. They were sharing a TimeStream. They were too alike, too much the same.

Too much in love.

XXXXXXXXXX

Clara watched curiously as the elderly man hobbled towards her grave.

Fifty years on Rigsy was still visiting that churchyard and so was Clara. He would bring his grandchildren and tell them the story of the woman with the tattoo and the raven. They would listen enthralled and then run off to play in the graves, avoiding the crows and ravens at all costs. For years she didn't interrupt but today, for reasons unclear to her, but probably linked to her new sense of time, she felt she had to. There wouldn't be another chance, she could see it in the air around him. Did the Doctor see that too, did he feel it in people and carry that knowledge with him every day? Did he choose not to look?

Like a ghost Clara emerged from the trees, another cold winter's day lending her feet a crunching noise on the frozen ground. Rigsy turned and staggered a little, caught himself with his stick.

'Hey, sorry, didn't mean to frighten you,' Clara said holding out one hand.

'Girl, you've been dead fifty years, you can't just appear without warning,' he told her off in his best grandfather's voice before his face broke into a wide smile. 'Kiddin' I always figured I'd run into you some day. I thought if I wait long enough they'll find some way to fix it and bring you back. Unless… Hey I'm not about to die am I? You're not here to escort me?'

Clara laughed, 'I'm a time traveller not an angel of death,' she said watching the odd aura around him pulse. 'Hey… thanks for the flowers, all the flowers, every year.'

Rigsy wiped his running nose with a gloved finger and looked away. 'Yeah well, thanks for my life… and for their lives with me. A few flowers is the least I can do when your anniversary comes around…'

Clara bent to examine those lying on her grave. By now she had a headstone which stood proudly by her mother's as she had always wanted. Rigsy's flowers were vibrant and beautiful like his art, she couldn't feel sad looking at them, they were a celebration of life. A card was attached with a simple 'thank you,' written on it.

'At least someone remembers me,' Clara said, still kneeling by the headstone, still smiling sadly.

Rigsy stepped forward and peered at the grave over the rims of his spectacles.

'He not been here yet then?' he asked, 'Don't worry he'll turn up. Always does. Every year, like clockwork.'

Clara looked up sharply at her old friend, 'Wait. Who?'

'Who do you think?' Rigsy said.

'The Doctor?' she almost couldn't say the name for hoping.

Rigsy nodded, his eyes straining to catch his grandchildren at the far end of the graveyard. 'Uh-huh, every year, on the anniversary. First decade or so nothing special, then later suddenly there's these flowers. You can tell they aren't from the florist,' he laughed, 'Some kind of weird alien flower.'

'I never noticed …' Clara stared ahead of herself, unsure what to think. Had the Doctor seen her there? 'Maybe he waited until I was gone… so our paths didn't cross…'

'I only saw them if I had to come at the end of my day, so yeah, I reckon he waited until there was no-one around… til it was nearly dark,' Rigsy mused. 'I tried not to disturb him, he looked... you know... choked up.'

All that time he'd been coming here on autumn afternoons, she must have been just minutes or hours from him. All of time and space and she'd probably missed him by less than an hour at least once.

She thought back. The last she had seen him was in the Diner and he'd said he couldn't remember more than her name, more than vague old stories. Had he worked it out? It was the sort of thing he would do, search for answers. But the flowers, that sentimentality, that made her heart leap and pray for more than the answer to a puzzle. He remembered her, he had to. He wouldn't come every year to the grave of a forgotten friend, he wouldn't bring flowers.

'Hey,' Rigsy said gently, 'I gotta see to the kids, but… if you stay here long enough, if you wait… he'll be here by sunset. I don't believe he's ever missed a year. Neither have I of course,' he said proudly then laughed, 'Well maybes a couple.'

Clara smiled and got to her feet, offering him a hug. 'It's good to see you, Rigsy,' she said, 'Some things are worth it. You were worth it.'

She watched as Rigsy carefully made his way across the graveyard with the aid of his stick and thought of how much time had changed her, how little she thought of a decade or two, of how when everything else was changing she didn't.

She thought of the Doctor's assertion about mortality. His sad eyes as he told her that immortality wasn't about living forever, but everyone else dying. Rigsy wouldn't see another winter, she knew, she felt it in her bones. More and more she understood the Doctor's point of view.

She prayed the Doctor wouldn't change, that he'd be there as he was every year. Clara picked a bench under a nearby cluster of yew trees and sat down to wait, the afternoon ticking by and the sun growing lower.