Toffee vanishes the door with a wave of her hand and falls into the hotel room. Two feet of blue ash stake juts from her left shoulder, beneath the collarbone. And while she knows the pulse that she can feel against it is only the pump of the bleeding, the jagged javelin is perilously close to her heart.

The pain is blinding. On the floor, she hangs over her knees, head down. But she judders; all over, her skin and hair gutter different colours like broken neons. There's no concentration, nothing to give. What she wants to do is reach into herself, imagining every broken vein and imagining them reconnected. If she could only listen to herself, if she could pay attention, it would not be impossible to repair the torn flesh. But it hurts. She can't even stabilize whether her shoulder is round or sloping or square, feminine or masculine.

As a matter of fact, the only thing Toffee Lees knows is that there is a long, fragile sword with a snapped end sticking out of her. It's the only certain thing in the burning world and, therefore, it is the only thing she cannot change. She can't imagine life without it. Can't imagine life. Can't imagine.

There on the floor in the physical world, she rolls back to sit against the wall. Her right hand lifts up shaking, fingernails changing colour like sunset, and wraps around the nearest end of the stake. She tries to tighten it, to pull. As it turns out, this is another thing she can't do.

"Let me help you."

Louis. His voice, and all that's left of her resolve crumbles. Her hand falls away limp. In all of this, she'd almost forgotten about him.

She shuts her eyes so she only has to hear the chains she made for him clatter away. She feels him get close. Feels the larger, stronger hand take hold of the stake. Then he stops. "Have you got something for me?"

"Please…"

"Toffee… I asked you a question, dear."

"I didn't get anything from the Doctor, not yet. The witch made me, I was getting somewhere, but she-" The rest is cut off with screaming; rather than pull, he pushed. The stake went deeper and, on top of that, the side of his fist came to rest against the wound.

It's madness. She has no other way to describe it. It's like falling into the darkest part of insanity in an instant, and feeling as if it will never end.

But instinct survives. Basic and animal, it balls up every scrap of hope and energy she's still capable of and throws it at him.

There's another clatter, and a bellow like before. It's difficult to listen to, but when Toffee opens her eyes, the chains are back. With no chair this time, Louis is lashed to the floor, away from her. He burns, the rage gone beyond even words. "I can't do anything for you," she whimpers, "if I bleed to death."

Now that his wrists aren't shackled, he can deal with her properly. The earlier insubordination was going to be punished one way or another. Now she'll be lucky if he leaves any of her precious love in the vial at all. Maybe he'll tip it out onto the floor and force her to scoop up what little of the golden dust she can retrieve. Maybe he'll inhale it all, and make her take it back with a kiss. Louis pushes one heavy arm free between the chains, and reaches to that secret place behind his ear, that pocket of flesh she never wanted to be close enough to find.

"No," she starts to plead. He likes it when she begs. He likes watching a new sort of tear mingle with the agony already in her eyes. It's nourishing. "No, please. I didn't mean to chain you again. It was just what was in my heart, it wasn't a decision, it was just – Please!"

The pocket is bruised and tender from brutal handling. It is also empty.

All the 'no' and 'please' from Toffee stops. There is a moment of blank incomprehension. Slowly, it turns to wonder. "It's gone," she breathes. "You don't have him anymore. Apple. Apple must have him!"

It's the first time in long, long years that she's felt anything like a spark light up her heart. Now her right hand is strong. It folds again around the stake and this time pulls it free. Blood tries to gush after it, only to be caught in a bubble against the wound. Her pulse weakens, but only momentarily, as Toffee begins to reroute.

"Is it really that easy?" Louis says. The words are mild and tame and utterly unruffled. They terrify her. But yes. Yes, it really is as easy as this. Toffee's medical knowledge is slight at best. She can't repair muscle, for instance, because she doesn't understand how it works. But she can stop the bleeding, close the skin over.

And the stake, well, that's real. She can pick that up, without a second's thought or a moment's hesitation. She can turn it to Louis and tuck the point beneath his chin.

Yes. Yes, it's this easy. Love makes it easy. Hope, and especially hope where hope had been so dead and all but forgotten, hope makes it easy.

She thinks she'll leave him where he is, for the time being.

Toffee Lees thinks herself back onto her feet. Looks down at her ruined, bloody gown with approval. "I never liked this dress anyway. But I guess you sort of knew that, right? Used to be you didn't have to care, but I think now you might. I think it would be a good idea for you to start caring, Louis Sieverts, don't you?"

She understands enough about pain to know how to kill it. Her left arm is weak, hangs straight down below the wound, but that's okay, it's okay… A flick of her right hand and the zipper of the blue dress comes undone. It falls around her feet, right next to what she now thinks of as her former tormentor. Former. What a beautiful word. It echoes like music in the cheerful daze. So she reaches into thin air like a closet and brings out her favourite dress, the loose, drifting shift she wore to meet the Doctor and slips it on (thinking the seam of the left sleeve unpicked until it falls around the arm, and then repairing it).

For the first time since she met Louis, she feels powerful again. Her husband, when he could still talk to her, used to say she was a genie. She is beginning to feel like a genie again. Beginning, too, to be able to think of her husband without feeling as though the pieces of her shattered heart were stabbing her

What a difference one little spark can make to the soul…

Holding her pulsing head, almost dancing with joy, she is finally gathered enough to express herself. "This ain't nothing but a game-changer, old friend, ain't nothing but…"

Still calm, no more admonishing than an English teacher, "Kindly attempt to be grammatical, dear."

"No."

"Then might I very briefly interrupt this pathetic little party-for-one to speak?"

"No, sir. I'm thinking maybe it's 'bout time you stopped interrupting and correcting my speech and started to listen to what I'm speaking, don't you?" But she has nothing to say. She laughs with hysterical joy until her ribs ache, until she loses concentration and feels the stab wound echoing behind the smooth replacement skin. She toys with the three feet of steely stuff which, all of five minutes ago, felt like it might be the end of everything, tossing it like a baton. It's only when all these little celebrations are done that she even really sees the creature that has so abused her for most of a century. "Why," she breathes, airy and wild-eyed, "Why somebody gone beat you black and blue, mister! Who done that for me? Apple? Damn, I gotta let that kid live. Hell or high, whatever way she wants to fight. I forgive her near running me through and every-damn-thing, I forgive her and forget it too."

"Really, Toffee, this is getting embarrassing. I really must say something to you."

"No!" she screams, for the simple fact that she can scream now. "No more words! You don't get to talk me down or talk round me on. Simple facts is, Louis, you don't own me no more! And I'm gonna go and find Miss Apple. I'm gonna get my husband back from her. I'm gonna give her everything she's ever wanted, and then I'm gonna go find my man's body and get him back, and him and me will go and thank her all over again. Jessica Apple, you excellent little thief, I could kiss you!"

Nodding, agreeing with her, "Oh, she's a very talented little soldier. No mistake about that. And so many talents! Who'd have thought she restores nihilium stocks now too?" Toffee doesn't protest, or beg his pardon. She doesn't argue. She stops. Only stops. "It's funny; I'd always believed it was a quality of my species, this transference of a soul in and out of the host. I had thought it was an inborn gift. But if Miss Apple has found a way to do it, well, that's all to the good! You've beaten me, Toffee, fair and square. I hope you and Henry are very happy together, and that you move on from all of this eventually, forgetting these tortures. Well done, love."

Toffee fades. The glow in her skin, the gloss of her hair. She ages ten years in an eye blink. Very slowly, seeping through the new skin, her shoulder starts to bleed again.

"No," she mutters, swaying her head. "There's a way. There must be a way."

"Not in this day and age. Maybe somewhere in the far-flung future, science will catch up with the natural abilities of my people. But not yet. And you have no time travel capacity, do you? That was something you always needed me for."

"I could make you give that up to me."

"No you couldn't."

"The Doctor," she says in desperation. Rushes the wall that is covered in her research and runs her grasping fingers over the papers and print-outs. "I'll go to him. I can offer him anything and-"

"And he'll turn you down for the pleasure of doing it. Toffee, he caught you once. He'll never trust you."

"No," she says, but it's a half a sob. Defeat. Where there was hope for just one glorious moment, defeat creeps back in like the shadow of someone who is not there.

From the floor behind her, with the first hint of threat since he regained composure, "Release me, Toffee. Now."

She cries with her head against the wall until he repeats himself. Then she thinks the links all broken. Louis stands, raining half-hoops of steel. He's coming closer, but she can't move. She hasn't got the will to move. She wants to turn herself to stone, beginning with her idiot heart, that went off like a Catherine wheel from a single spark.

Louis' hand creeps, fingertips like spider legs, over her shoulder. It's alright. There's fabric between them. She can bear this. But one finger begins to tease at her neckline. She sighs, cringing. "Did you enjoy your little dance, while it lasted?" he asks. It's hard to deny. She did, she did. It was all going to be so perfect…

She can just about bear to have his forefinger tracing lazy circles on the glazed-over wound. She has switched off the nerve-endings there, at any rate. So long as he does no more than this, she'll be fine.

Toffee was so ready for all this to be over.

"You are going to bring me the Doctor, as agreed. And if you ever want your moronic spouse to look at you with recognition again, you will return the vial to me, and only be grateful if I don't fling the contents to the four winds, Mrs Lees. But then again, this is no more than what we had already discussed, is it? And I think you'll agree, I have been mistreated here today, have I not?" She was so ready for this to be over. He shoves himself harder against her and her tears stain the image of the Doctor's face. "I asked you a question, Toffee."

"Yes. You have. I was wrong, Louis, I'm sorry."

"Sorry… Yes, that's the word. But really it's just a word. However will you make it up to me, my dear?"

"Whoever you want. Just name it. Apple, I'll bring you Apple back, you can devour whatever you want of her this time."

Louis curls his lip in disgust. "No. I wet my lips at that cup already. Chaotic, fractal. Trauma is, of course, the most delicious of flavours. But it's like good vanilla; sickly in too great a quantity. No, leave Apple where she is. We'll let her ripen, come back when she's sweet… No, for now, Toffee… For now I would like Miss Oswald. There's a tasty heart, if ever there was one."

Words of rejection die on Toffee's lips. To tell him that there are people who depend on Clara, and rightly so, to suggest that her loss might be more than some parties could handle, none of that will make any difference to him. To tell him she just doesn't want to, he'll probably add another condition to her imprisonment, some other unreachable soul to obtain.

But for too long, she doesn't say anything.

His fingertip stops circling and pushes. There is, after all, only a thin layer of skin patched over the deep, round sword wound. He pushes and pushes, up to his second knuckle. He is in her bloodstream. Pumping around his lethal touch, it carries him around her body like poison. The void runs in her veins, fills up her eyes and shows her the nothing into which the universe expands, and it is terrible.

Choking, barely able to form the word, Toffee croaks out, "Done."