It was odd to stare up at the sky.

Clara could remember vividly the way clouds dissolved as you flew through them, the way the sunlight illuminated masses of them until they looked like vats of swollen sunlight. She recalled the rough texture of his palm against the small of her back as they trilled off coordinates and codes and things that made sense to her then, but seemed largely insignificant now. She pressed her palms into the hard, dry ground and leaned back on her arms, trying to make sense of the earth beneath her, but she still wasn't used to being grounded yet. She still hadn't stopped.

She credited her military training when she found a concealed spot in the outdoors yard, a good distance from any other inmates. It was a narrow space between a garbage bin and the fence that was just big enough for Clara, and she preferred it that way. The morning had left her head spinning and it was nice to look up at the sun and exist. It was easy to ignore the periodic leers from the male inmates as they spotted her, because she knew how to take care of herself. Perhaps they read that on her face, because none of them approached her.

Of course, she often gave herself a little too much credit.

"You're in my spot."

Clara lowered her eyes from the sky. A surge of pain shot down the length of her neck from the cramped position she'd had it in for what had to have been half an hour. She shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted forward at the person coming into view. It was a bulky inmate, with hard eyes and ham-like fists. Most notably of all, she was utterly bald, with a tattoo of a goose covering her scalp. In Clara's tranquil state, she almost felt her previous self return. She almost narrowed her eyes and told her to get lost. But then the inmate slammed her fist into the side of the metal garbage bin and the sound became the deep roar of a jet spiraling down and—

Clara rose to her feet.

"Sorry. Didn't know. I'm new here." She muttered.

The inmate stepped past her roughly, purposely knocking their shoulders together. Clara tensed her muscles to keep from stumbling, just because she didn't want to give the woman the satisfaction. She wedged herself into the spot Clara had just vacated and then glowered up at her.

"Now you know, birdy. And if I see you again—even in the servery—I'll fuck you up."

Clara pursed her lips.

"Right."

She spent the rest of the hour making slow laps around the giant, fenced-in area, too uncertain to stop near anyone for fear of what she might be getting herself into.

She'd been the boss her entire life.

And then her mum died, and it was something she couldn't control. She let herself unravel.

She'd been the very first female wing commander since the merge.

And then she took it too far.

She'd once had a man's heart cradled in the palm of her hand. She could've made him do anything she wanted, but she didn't.

That 'but' had been her downfall. Her love had once been her strongest asset, but in a moment of trial, it became her weakness.

She was deconstructing herself again.

She was greeted by the sight of a cardboard box when she entered her cell.

"Screws finally dropped off your items," Vastra called, without even looking up. She was already reading a different book than the one she'd been reading last night.

Clara felt her heart lighten enough that it actually rose from its place in the pit of her stomach. She crossed over to her bed quickly and pulled the top off, her eyes scanning the contents greedily. It was all boring stuff—paper, stamps, pencils, envelopes, books, underwear, an alarm clock, trainers—but it was suddenly the greatest gift she'd ever been given. As her fingers trailed over the items, she realized she loved her father more in that moment than she ever had before. She could've cried in his arms and it would've been first time she'd shed a tear in years.

She set about unpacking her items and placing them around her side of the room. With objects that were hers, objects that she could control, she felt a bit better. She took a long time organizing everything and made a point of alphabetizing her books. She stacked her paper and her envelopes, she lined up the pencils on her desk. She placed her underwear and spare shoes in a drawer and plugged the clock up. She'd been at it for an hour before she realized Vastra was watching her.

"Did you check inside the shoes?" She asked, not at all embarrassed to have been found ogling. "They usually place smaller items inside, so they don't get lost in the shuffle."

Clara looked at her for a few awkward seconds, and then she turned back around. She pulled the second drawer open and peeked down at the shoes. She tucked her fingers inside the left, and then the right—and then she stopped.

Vastra spotted the shift in her posture.

"I figured. Most people send watches—it's miserable to be in bang-up without a consistent way to tell time. Is it a nice one? You can make some great trades with watches. They're difficult to get a hold of once you're inside."

Clara grasped the gold band between her thumb and index finger. She could hear her pulse roaring in her ears as she lifted it up and out of the shoe. She stared at the scratched face. She gently puddled it into her palm and touched the cool gold with her fingertips. Her father had cleaned it beautifully—there was no blood to be seen. There were no noticeable functional faults—besides the scratches, it was just as it'd always been.

"Oz?" Vastra asked. Clara heard her mattress squeak as she rose. Clara turned her back to Vastra as she approached, embarrassed and scared to be found crying over a wristwatch. She wanted to turn and tell Vastra to keep it, to trade it, to do what she wanted with it—but even as she felt that desire, she was latching it around her own left wrist. Her dad had taken many links out for her, so even though it was a bit large, it didn't slide off her hand. The watch face twisted to rest naturally over the blue veins of her wrist, as if it remembered the way the previous owner wore it.

"Yeah," Clara finally said. She didn't want Vastra to think she was ignoring her. "It's a beautiful one."

She turned and lifted her wrist to show her. She pretended her eyes weren't damp.

"Mmm, I see," Vastra said. She gave Clara a hard look. "You'd better keep a close eye on your hand."

It didn't take long for the implication to become apparent.

"I want to send a letter." Clara said. She was sitting on her bed, her eyes trained on the paper littering her chest-of-drawers. "I have stamps. And envelopes. What do I do?"

"You'll need to leave it unsealed and drop it in a post box. They're outside the servery." Vastra responded. "Make sure to put your prison number in there. If your correspondent doesn't include that number on the envelope when they write back, you won't get it." She'd been watching the clock for the past thirty minutes. Their hour of 'recreational time' was approaching, and Vastra seemed uncharacteristically impatient. As far as Clara knew, the inmates were free to play pool, go to the library, watch television, or go to the gym. She thought she might stay in the cell and write to Danny.

"Can I go to the post box during recreation?"

Vastra's eyes snapped towards hers, wide with something akin to horror.

"Surely you're not thinking of staying in here and writing a letter?" She breathed. She sounded almost insulted. Clara floundered.

"Oh…erm, well, I was—"

Vastra leaned forward.

"We get three hours and fifty minutes outside this cell a day. And you want to spend one hour of that in here, doing what you could be doing during the time we're locked in?" She demanded.

Clara almost caved. But the she remembered—with almost a rush of surprise—that she was still the one who knew herself best. She might not know or understand the way of prison yet, but she still knew what she wanted. She was still in control in small ways, and if that was all she had, she'd cling to it.

She spun her watch around her wrist almost nervously.

"Yes. I want to write a letter. It's very important." Clara reiterated. Her voice was firmer than it'd been the entire time, enough so that it seemed to throw Vastra for a moment. Her eyebrows rose in shock.

"Well," she started, and Clara feared she was insulted, but she smiled a moment later. "All right."

Clara was on edge, waiting for more, but it never came. Vastra turned back to the clock.

"Only an hour now." She muttered, more to herself than Clara.

And that was that.

They had forty minutes until recreation. Vastra seemed too impatient to read or write letters, so she turned to the next best hobby in the room: her cell mate.

"There's no point in keeping what you did a secret, you know," she stated. Her tone was light and conversational, but Clara could tell there was a hint of condescension lurking just below. "You're in a Cat A prison with serial killers, rapists, and terrorists. Everybody knows you've done something bad."

Clara looked up from her letter. She'd only made it twenty words in. What was there to say? She almost preferred Vastra's conversation to the wreck panning out on the page.

She considered her words carefully. Her barrister had told her not to tell anyone what she was in for, but he'd also told her there was a chance she could walk, too. And he'd been dismally wrong about that.

"I was supposed to be in a Cat B." Clara shared, after some hesitation. "Only I was a bit too "manipulative" in court."

Vastra arched an eyebrow.

"Oh? I have to say—never heard that before. Do tell. Let's hear more."

Clara ducked her head and let her hair fall in front of her face. Behind the curtain, she couldn't make out much. Her words were soft.

"I don't really want to talk about what I did."

Vastra snorted.

"Oh, come off it, Oz. I've been playing along, but there's no use manipulating me with your tragic role of guilty inmate. You're a clever criminal—or, in the law's language, a high-risk prisoner. That's why they placed you with me."

Clara shifted the book and paper off her lap. She tucked her hair behind her ear and blinked at Vastra in confusion.

"They didn't tell me that." She said uneasily.

"Of course they didn't. The OMU puts prisoners who fall into two different categories with me, so I can frighten them into submission. There are the murderous psychopaths, they make up the first group—" she held up her index finger. "And then there are the volatile vigilantes." Her middle finger joined her index. Clara watched her lips curl up into a smirk. "So which are you?"

There were red flashing lights and reverberating siren wails. Projected images of maps and quick conversations uttered in code. Sheets of hail pattering onto the roof, soldiers marching in anxious formations around command. And there were words flashing on a black screen.

Sqn Ldr John Smith—squadron to base C.

She hadn't been anxious for even a moment before. But the minute her eyes scanned over that combination of letters, she felt something shift inside of her. She shoved past commanding officers and pushed her way to the Air Commodore.

"No!" She said, and that was the beginning of everything. She felt at least twenty pairs of eyes weighing on her. "No! You cannot dispatch that squadron!"

"I'm sorry?"

"They're mine! It's part of my flying wing! I say when and where they go, and they are notgoing tonight!"

"You need to remember your rank, Oswald. Step down."

He went to circle around her. She took a step to the right, barring his passage. The room was quivering.

"Call them down." She ordered, lowly and fiercely. When the Air Commodore only laughed, she took a step closer to him. "CALL THEM DOWN!"

It was quiet then except for the echoing of the sirens and the fizzy words coming over the radio. Clara flinched when Danny set his hand on her shoulder. He'd hurried over the moment she began making a scene.

"Clara," he said gently. "Come on."

"Get your Wing Commander under control, Pink." The Air Commodore spat.

Clara turned and looked up at Danny. She was choking beneath her panic.

"Danny, he's sending John's squadron!" She wasn't thinking about her words. She was just thinking about the conversation she'd just had with these same officers only minutes before. About how this was surely a death mission. "He's mine! He can't send him! He's mine!"

Danny rubbed her shoulder, his face twisted with sadness. But Clara could tell he'd already known. He looked towards the Air Commodore.

"Arnold, can't we send another squadron? You know how well Clara's men work underneath her, Smith in particular. Why dispose of a working unit?"

"It was a calculated decision." He replied, coolly and indifferently. "Now get out of my way, Oswald. Or you'll be dismissed."

She felt Danny's hip press against hers, his pistol grinding against her hipbone. She glanced towards him for just a moment, but in that moment of eye contact, a million things transferred between them. And then Clara turned and punched him in the jaw, hard. Hard enough that he went sprawling backwards (although Clara saw him throw himself backwards with a bit more gusto than her hit could've possibly caused). Once he was lying on his back, she stood over his body. She reached down and undid his weapon. He made of show of reaching to grab her hands and wrestle with her, but in the end, he'd only wanted to caress her wrist. She kissed him with her eyes before she lowered her fist back to his skull, in just the right place to 'knock him unconscious'. She made sure the hit wasn't too hard. He played dead beneath her.

She was surprisingly steady as she turned and faced the Air Commodore. Everyone's breath was lodged somewhere in their chest. It made the room seem strangely weightless, like it was suspended in a moment right before tragedy falls. That breathless moment of no, this can't happen to me.

"STOP."

She didn't even look at what she was doing. She kept her eyes on the Air Commodore as she pressed the side button and ejected the magazine. She leaned over Danny and pulled out whatever ammo she could find.

"WE'LL FIRE!"

Empty threats and empty heads. That was all they were. She filled the magazine and then slammed it down into her palm, snapping it back into place. She gripped the gun firmly in her hand and then lowered the safety lever with her thumb. Her wrist was shaking just slightly as she righted the weapon. She could feel her eyes searing.

"You'll send him back here, or I'll make you." She ordered.

The Air Commodore made a move for his own weapon, but Clara reached up and pulled back the slide on her weapon. She re-positioned it.

"One more move and I fire!"

Everyone took her seriously this time. They lifted their hands into the air and looked around at each other. Clara felt Danny's foot bump against her ankle, but only just. No one else noticed.

"We will not follow your rules, Oswald. Stop this before it gets too far. We know you're upset. But he's already been deployed. There's nothing we can do. His coordinates are privileged; the only way you'd find him would be if you somehow got control over everyone in this room, but you alone don't have the manpower to—" he stopped. Clara saw the realization of what he'd just suggested pass over his face.

Clara lowered the gun just slightly. And then she smiled.

"Thank you, Arnold. Thank you."

"So?" Vastra pressed. "Which are you? First group or second?"

Clara closed her hand over John's wristwatch. She looked up and met Vastra's eyes.

"Both."

Danny,

Prison could be the army, except the only thing people are fighting for here is themselves. It is not enough.

"I'll think I'll come after all." Clara said. She folded her twenty-word letter and set it aside. Vastra looked at her differently now, like she respected her more, and Clara couldn't help but feel validated by it.

"You're welcome to come to the library with Jenny and me." She offered. "We're researching a ring of child pedophiles that might be transferred in sometime this month."

Clara furrowed her brow.

"Uh…why?"

"So we can punish them, of course." Vastra responded. She rose right as a screw yelled down the corridor. "Coming?"

They'd made it halfway through the common area when they heard sudden shrieks. Clara slowed and looked up at Vastra uncertainly. Vastra waved it off and motioned for her to keep moving, but the room filled soon after that with the sound of screaming and whistles. People began to panic.

"Christ," Vastra sighed. She grabbed Clara's forearm and tugged, weaving them through the pandemonium.

"ALL INMATES MUST RETURN TO THEIR CELLS."

Vastra looked up at the speaker spewing the command.

"Is that so? Oh, lovely," she groaned. She looked to Clara. "Go back to our cell. I'll find out what's happening. I've just got to get to Jenny."

Clara looked around her, overwhelmed by the people closing in. The room seemed to be made up of a squirming orange mass. She glanced back to Vastra to nod, but she'd already disappeared.

Around halfway between the common room and her cell, she reverted back to her training automatically. She used her elbows to maneuver through people, dodging opened doors and trash bins, until finally she spotted her corridor. She was nearing the mouth of it when something darted forward from a side hallway, effectively entering her path of motion. She'd been moving too quickly; she crashed right into it before she could stop herself.

Judging by the warmth and the sound of a rapid heart, it wasn't a something. It was asomeone. A chest, in particular.

Clara jumped back. She was about to mumble something and push past them, but then she peered up and saw who it was she'd bumped into. Her throat closed up for a moment and she stared, wide-eyed.

"I-I'm so, so sorry," Clara choked out. Her eyes were so wide she was sure she looked ridiculous. She stared at a vague point on the inmate's orange shirt, afraid to meet his steel eyes. The urge to flee was great, but she felt that would've been a mistake. She held her ground—all too aware of how closely she was standing to him—and then finally craned her head up.

He wasn't smiling, but he didn't look particularly furious, either. His eyes bore intently into hers.

"Don't be."

Her lips parted in surprise, but before she could process it any further, he turned and continued through another doorway. Clara stood still in the sea of people until a screw screamed at her to get moving, and then she shook her head and hurried back to her cell.

Vastra was one of the last to return.

Clara was staring blankly at her letter, still not sure how to go on. She welcomed the distraction.

"So what'd you find out?" She asked.

Vastra seemed troubled by something. She sat down heavily on the edge of her bed and wrung her green hands uneasily.

"The Doctor's attacked an inmate." She muttered, dazed.

Clara waited for more, but it never came. She blinked.

"Erm…is that…something new?"

Vastra lifted her head.

"You know the male prisoner Jenny showed you at lunch? The—"

"Yes," Clara interrupted quickly. Vastra lifted an eyebrow. Clara's thoughts drifted between the man she'd seen in line and the man she'd just run straight into. "Uh, yes. The…older man. Yes." She cleared her throat. "He…hurt somebody?"

"Yes. For the first time in twenty years." Vastra answered. "Everyone's so scared of him that no one's tried to hurt him, and he never went out of his way to hurt them either, until just now."

Clara realized with a sinking feeling that he must've been running from the screws when they crossed paths. Why else would he have been in the women's wing?

"Why? Do you know who?"

Vastra looked up. She seemed generously shaken up, although Clara wasn't sure why.

"A woman. He only knocked a few teeth loose, but she's terrified out of her wits. Something he said really shook her."

Clara shifted uncomfortably. Her heart rate picked up, like she'd just narrowly dodged a bullet.

"Why? Were they fighting?"

Vastra shrugged.

"As far as I know, he didn't even know her. It was Jessica. She's one of the tougher inmates—bit of a bully. You might've seen her. She's bald and she's got a goose tattoo on her head." Vastra pointed at her own head, indifferent to the way Clara's eyes suddenly widened. "But, I'll tell you one thing. The Doctor's got access to every file in this prison. He knows everything about everyone. And if he went out of his way to terrify Jessica into submission, she's done something terrible." Vastra shook her head, troubled. "I just don't know why he's waited until now. She's been in this prison for at least seven years."

Clara reached for the cup of water beside her bed. She took a deep drink and tried to ignore the way her knees were quaking. She thought back to that morning in the exercise yard, when Jessica had threatened her. She held her cup between both her hands and looked at Vastra.

"You said she's a bully, right? Does—does 'the Doctor' target bullies?"

"Like I said. He hasn't done a violent thing in twenty years." Vastra reiterated. She inclined her head to the side thoughtfully. "Actually, we don't even know if he's ever done a violent thing. Not with any real certainty." She leaned back against the wall, her legs hanging over the side of the bed. "It's all very strange. It definitely gives me something to keep an eye on."

Clara ran her forefinger over the rim of her cup.

"Yeah. Definitely." She agreed.

After consuming every bit of her dinner, she pulled the letter back into her lap and kept going.

Danny,

Prison could be the army, except the only thing people are fighting for here is themselves. It is not enough.

But I could be wrong about that.