Clara first feels the cold against her spine, as it travels up her body and to her shoulders. She opens her eyes, her eyelashes brushing against the steel encased around the TARDIS floor.
"Doctor?"
Her voice is raspy and dry, her muscles stiff as if she's been there for hours. No response.
She slowly pushes herself up to assess control room, eyeing the monitor for any signs of flight or location. They're blank, as if the TARDIS itself is just shell. A few weary punches to the buttons confirm her suspicions. She vaguely remembers a flash of fire as she reached her hands towards the Doctor. Her ears should be ringing. Why should they be ringing? But sound is noticeably absent from anything and her memory is hazy.
She stares at the spot she found herself, her eyes widening to the disturbances in the metal floor. She bends down to inspect closer, scrapes and scuffs encompassing the ground all the way to the door. Its perched open ever so slightly.
"Please tell me you're okay," she whispers as she hugs her ribs in fear.
She fixes her eyes to the door for a few minutes, before dusting herself off in an act to gain her composure. Chalk flies off her palms and onto her dress, and her attention snaps to the Doctor's chalkboards. No clues, no message that the Doctor just popped out for sugar. She's fighting the urge to start shaking. All she can do is repeat his name.
She gazes at the walkway near the door, knowing she'll have to cross the threshold soon. She notices a white inscription etched violently on the side and races to it.
"Be Brave."
Clara stares at the scuffs on the floor again, heel marks matching that of a boot. The Doctor must have put up a fight. In the juxtaposition of the marks on the floor, it looks like he shielded her. From what, Clara didn't know. Judging by the struggle, she almost doesn't want to know. And above all else, why can't she remember?
She closes her eyes and runs out the door.
Pure white walls and a quiet room greet Clara.
She feels like she's in an empty canvas, aside from an odd looking lift on the other side of the room. The call buttons glow odd colors and she almost catches herself smiling at the novelty of it all.
"A red waterfall, and a green anchor?"
She hears the clinging of a stirring spoon hitting against a teacup, almost as in response to her question.
"Odd isn't it?"
She swings around and sees the Doctor sitting at a table behind the TARDIS, almost as if the room grew bigger and he suddenly appeared. She cries in relief.
"You had me so worried!" She shouts as she marches up to the table and pulls herself a chair.
"Yeah, sorry. Not my intention."
The Doctor takes a sip from a mug of tea, and keeps stirring absentmindedly.
"Doctor, what are we doing here, and why did you leave me alone like that?"
The question is fallen on deaf ears as he keeps stirring, staring at the white walls.
"Doctor?"
"Yeah, sorry, not my intention."
She jams her hands in her pockets in frustration and kicks her feet up. "Yeah, I got that thanks. Seriously, though!" She feels objects scrape her knuckle and pulls them out of her pocket. "Doctor?"
She looks down at what she's pulled, a shiny little thing and a stick of chalk. She quickly glances at the Doctor's hands, still stirring his tea. A ring, his ring, is positioned on his fingers. The same exact ring that's resting on her palm.
"Not my intention. Yeah sorry."
She turns her attention to his shoes, neatly polished and devoid of marks, no sign of the struggle in the TARDIS. Her eyes widen.
He stops stirring. "Odd isn't it?"
Clara flies from her chair and takes a couple steps back. "Doctor." she pauses slightly, the Doctor pale and weary, but undeniably himself in the flesh. "Look at me."
He stares at the call buttons on the lift. "Intention," he says in the same monotonous rhythm he's been gibbering.
"Doctor!" She slams her hands on the table, begging for a reaction. The room starts to tremble, the lights flickering from up above. Clara yelps in fear, only exacerbating the tremors and falls to the ground. Using the table as a support, she pulls herself up.
"Oh dear, I can't watch."
A man now sits across from the Doctor, a cane in his hand. Strapped in tweed and a bowtie. The Doctor's insignia pre-Trenzalore.
"I know you'll both be dead soon anyway, but it's just so dull when the heroine has no hope. No plot. No... finesse."
Clara stares at the man, stunned. "Dead?"
The man nods at the Doctor. "He's in shock, if you haven't noticed by the mini earthquakes and the blabbering idiot in front of you. He's very...Madame Tussaud's at the moment if you ask me."
Clara takes a seat next to the man. "Earthquakes?"
"Oh?" The man laughs. "You don't get it yet, do you?" He nods towards the Doctor. "Feel his pulse."
"Why?" She crosses her arms.
"Stop asking questions. The old man's on borrowed time. Feel his pulse."
She presses her finger's against the Doctor's neck. She feels nothing. No pulse, no clammy skin, no warmth nor cold."
"I'm dreamin'" She states, almost in a relief.
"He's dreaming. Dying in his sleep. You just got pulled along for the ride, sorry about that. I was just going to kill you after he rebooted."
"Reboo-"
"Please miss Oswald, the questions are too much."
She stamps a foot on the ground and scoots her chair closer to the short man in front of her.
"Rebooted?" She repeats herself in a stern manner. The tremors in the room are less pronounced.
The man sighs and waves his arm towards himself, as if bowing to applause. "Dreamlord."
He waves a finger to the Doctor. "Dying timelord."
"Or a trick," Clara nods, mostly to reassure herself. Her fist is white from gripping the Doctor's emerald ring. She quietly slips it onto her finger. "Where is the Doctor The proper Doctor?"
The Dreamlord smirked and waved his hand, as if shooing the Doctor who sat in front of him away. The Doctor, whatever he was, disappeared to the Dreamlord's command. "He does like to choose the clever ones. Not as clever as the ginger bird he spent his time with, but I digress."
He continues to dodge Clara's question, as if returning back to a story he's never actually started. "He knows me, almost killed me. I was so powerful, creating worlds for him and his silly little companions to play in. I only barely survived, as a speck in his subconscious."
The lights start to drain, and darkness begins to fill the room around the table.
"Lightning storm in the Lambda-9 Galaxy affected the TARDIS circuitry, the part of the needy little machine that has a soft telepathic link to you and the timelord. The bits that translate your tele-novellas into the Queen's English without a second thought."
Clara crosses her arms, the Dreamlord gives her a grin. "Go on," she pressures.
"Think of your mind like a computer. You have a breach in the security, and a virus can take control of your whole machinery. Have lightning, and you can also overload the circuitry and knock a timelord out cold as he pilots the TARDIS. Perfect time to harvest the living mind of the timelord and take over all the physical bits."
"And You're the Virus. Or Mr. Sandman. Think your proper scary, then?"
The Dreamlord laughs and grabs Clara's hands. She instinctively pulls away, but it's useless. "You're definitely not the computer in the metaphor Miss Clara. You're more of a primitive cassette player. A floppy disk stuck in a giant web of information. And you've been stuck here for quite sometime."
She grits her teeth.
"The lightning jumbled you all up in my breach through the TARDIS telepathic pathways. And here you are, your feeble consciousness getting suffocated by the Doctor's literal mind. And I've had quite alot of time to sort through it."
Clara shivers involuntarily at the thought, much to the satisfaction of the Dreamlord. She steadies herself. "You're being awfully helpful," she offers, trying her hand at nonchalance.
He waves his hands around the barely-lit room. "Just being nice to a dying woman, is all. Call it charity. In reality, you're both dying on the floor of his grubby little time machine. But somehow I think something will kill you in here, first. The Doctor is quite a dangerous man. Imagine what he's capable of when his mind's privy to my parlor tricks."
Clara snaps her head toward the lift, instinctively thinking up an exit strategy. She turns back and she's alone in her chair, no table, no TARDIS, no lords of time or dreams alike to be seen.
"Right." she says to no one. "Green anchor or red waterfall?"
Author's Note: Sorry for the tense change between chapters. I got bored with past tense, apparently. Thanks for reading!