The TARDIS console buzzed as comfortingly as it could, with the entire room an eerie green to express the mourning it felt for its fallen master. It hummed encouragingly under Clara's absent-minded touch, whirring under her fingertips in an attempt to get her to try just one button, any button she wanted. As long as her new master was happy, she could deal with the loss of her beloved Doctor, the perfect thief.

Clara didn't respond to the TARDIS. She remained completely numb, sick to her very core with how wrong everything felt. She was back in the place that she considered her true home, but a defined presence was gone and it left a gaping hole. The sound of jovial, defiant laughter, the whirl of running willy-nilly around the time machine, the cocky smile that could turn Daleks on their tail and make them run... There was a hole that Clara had torn in the fabric of her life, her family, her home, and there was nothing to fill the black hole.

John came out of the living room in the back corridor and strode up to her. "Clara. Come on."

She made no move to leave, even when he gently put a hand on her shoulder. "Come on, luv-your mother's worried about you. She doesn't want you to be here, on your own. Come with us."

She stared blankly at him. She couldn't read what his face meant, and none of the words made sense. There was only blind confusion, and all she could see was the past hour, when the best man she'd ever known had gone from standing and breathing and loving her to lying down on the ground, sprawled out under them with a new, unrecognizable face that had only had seconds to see the sun before leaving, forever. She remembered River's broken body, curled around the form of her dead husband, whispering apologies into his neck and willing the knife wounds to close and the regeneration energy to bring him back to her. She remembered the foreign and unwelcome tears streaming down Sherlock's face and John's gaunt frown, and she remembered being pulled off of her father with River as Sherlock carried the body back into the TARDIS. Thankfully, he put him in the sick bay and jimmied with the wires to keep the body from decaying. If Clara pretended, she could fool herself into thinking he was still alive. Just dozing off, with fake knife wounds.

The Doctor was dead. She had killed him with her weakness. River never would have asked him what his name was, but somehow she'd let the Fields get into her head, and the horrible thing was the Doctor hadn't hated her for it. He forgave her even before it happened.

John tugged her to the living room, where River and Sherlock were hunched over tea that John had made. He'd assumed the role of caretaker for his friends in the hours following the Doctor's death. Clara sat far from River, embarrassed to be in her presence after what she'd done, but River moved herself to Clara's side and showed she wasn't going to leave.

"So," John began, "is there a way? Can we bring him back?"

"Obviously," Sherlock replied. "Didn't you get my text?"

"Clearly I didn't, Sherlock, I've been a bit busy," John snapped. He checked his phone and read the text aloud. " 'Fields told me there are shadows of us that exist on a higher plane of consciousness as a result of a lasting paradox. Also, we got married in an aborted timeline. SH.' What the hell?"

"Hold on, I'm about to be very clever on a multi-dimensional level," Sherlock said. He pressed his fingers to his lips and hummed. "All right. The Fields told me that when Clara was born, Moriarty shot John and he was on the brink of death, and I asked the Doctor to go back in time and save him from being shot. He did this-oh, and he married us at my request, John, to answer your question-and as a result, the John and Sherlock who got married subsequently ceased to exist. We're the Sherlock and John of the new timeline where John didn't die, and this is where it gets interesting."

"Netherspace," River said quietly. "The Fields said something to me about Netherspace, that I had to learn how to get there."

Sherlock nodded gravely. "The Doctor who came back to save John ceased to exist as well, since there were two Doctors at the time and they couldn't coexist. He disappeared along with John and me that way. As a result, I was able to remember what happened before I disappeared because of an imprint that exists only on the level of Netherspace. It's another dimension where things that don't exist disappear to. Since I still technically exist, the version of me that stayed with John and disappeared acts as a spaceholder in Netherspace, a sort of record that doesn't exist fully without me. Using the same logic, we can assume there was an imprint of the Doctor in Netherspace while he was still living, and now that he's... Well. There's a possibility that that's where he went after his death. Or, at the very least, there's an imprint of him there that we can try and revive, if we get there."

"So, we need to find a way in," River decided. "Brilliant. I'll do it."

"River..."

"No, John Watson, no. Don't you dare argue with me." She glared at him. "The Fields told me that I was going to die soon, in an adventure with a past version of the Doctor, but that I had to trust that when I died, he'd find a way to save me. I'm positive that whatever information I need will be in the Library, and after I die, I'll be able to access it. I just can't tell the Doctor what I know about his death." She kept thinking. "We all technically should exist in Netherspace. Versions of each of us disappeared after the Doctor saved John. Maybe I can learn how to get us there."

"Mum, you can't," Clara insisted. "I only just found you, and I only have you. You can't just let yourself die."

"It's not right now, sweetie," River said. "I have to wait to get in on the expedition team. It could take a week or a year. You'll still have me. But I have to do this. It's the only way to get him back, dear." She wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. "We can do this. I'll need your help."

"Of course I'll help." She sniffed. "What do I do in the meantime?"

"You're the new Doctor, sweetie. The TARDIS is yours. He wanted you to have her."

She shook her head vehemently. "No. You take it. TARDIS hates me, and I don't deserve her."

"He wouldn't have agreed with you." River took her by the hand. "Come on, sweetie, I'll teach you how to drive her. We've got a plan of sorts. Let's drop these gents off."

With patient coaching by River and a few rocky landings, Clara managed to take the TARDIS back to 221B.

Sherlock nodded to the girls, knowing he'd see them soon, and exited the TARDIS without a word. With everything they'd dealt with that day, he wanted to do what Sherlock Holmes almost never did voluntarily—sleep the entire night and day away. John remained in the doorway of the TARDIS, looking very lost. "It doesn't feel right, just going back to the way we were. I don't want to…I don't think I can just go back."

Clara didn't say anything, so River spoke for them. "He needs us to. You're still going to see him again, one day. You need to make that future happen when he meets you for the first time."

"But you won't. You won't see him again."

River shook her head. "Come on, sweetie. I'm all out of spoilers, but I know we can do this. We'll get him back. Go take care of Sherlock—you're getting married in a few weeks. They'll certainly fly by."

John seemed amenable to that. He left the TARDIS and River and her daughter were alone. Clara still wasn't talking.

"Well," River said, "I think I'm all traveled out. Except for maybe one more stop." She stood close to Clara and took her hands, moving them across the console to different levers. "See, this one…that's where you type in the year you want to go. It's a bit tricky and it doesn't always work, so you have to concentrate on it. This lever starts the temporal engines. Crank it twice to get a good kick out of it. Oh, and this one—you use the keypad to enter in coordinates. You'll have to start memorizing them, but there's an almanac under the control board somewhere."

"Why are you doing this?" Clara asked quietly. "Why…Mum, you should hate me."

"Oh, do hush up. I don't hate you, darling," River said matter-of-factly. "I never could. I only just found you…and I did lose…my husband, today. But I gained a daughter I thought I'd never have." She hugged Clara gently and ran her fingers through her dark hair.

Clara didn't freeze up in that moment. She threw her arms around River, to her surprise, and pulled her close. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You heard him. You're forgiven, Clara."

"No. Not Clara." She sniffled into River's shoulder. "I mean, I don't mind if other people call me that. I've been Clara for so long. But I'd like it…that is, if you wouldn't mind…if you'd call me Lyra."

River smiled. "It's what he named you."

"I know. 'The song that illuminates the answer.' Maybe I'll figure it all out."

"Lyra, my beautiful darling, I have no doubt that you will. Come on, then," she said, taking the TARDIS to a nearby galaxy, "I'll show you how to take care of the old girl, and then you can drop me off. I'll wait for my expedition to take off and we'll start to save him. But before we do all that, there's something I want to show you."

The doors opened to show a constellation she'd seen only a day before. Was it really only a day since she found out who she really was? The daughter of a Time Lord…the daughter of the Time Lord. The only one who'd ever mattered. The bravest and the best. Her friend.

He'd taken her to see it. It's how this trouble had started in the first place.

"He showed it to me," she confided to River. "It was how he found out who I really was. I could hear the song."

River smiled grimly and squeezed Clara's—Lyra's —hand. "Do you think…maybe we could just listen for a while?"