Double Blind

6

Clara almost screamed when she knocked into a tall, shadowy figure in the dark house in the middle of the night. She backed straight into it and an object fell, clattering to the floor and echoing in the large room. The Doctor grabbed her arm and pulled her away.

"Shh," she whispered, but Clara was desperate to know what she had encountered. Squinting, moonlight coming through the large windows – which were surely original Georgian features – her eyes eventually adjusted enough so that she could see what had happened. She wished her eyes had never adjusted, however, because it turned out to be quite horrific: an array of twelve bizarrely dressed mannequins lined the large drawing room in a circle, like points on a clock face. "Oh my god…" the Doctor breathed, "Clara – these are my clothes!"

"I thought we were trying to be quiet?" Clara whispered back. The Doctor turned a glare on her, but her expression melted into one of shock and horror almost immediately. They certainly were her outfits, Clara recognised most of them from files saved on the TARDIS, the foggy memories of her Echoes, and the Doctors she had met. Only one mannequin was incomplete, currently boasting a hooded leather jacket almost identical to the one Thirteen was wearing at that very moment, and a pair of distressed skinny jeans also almost identical to Thirteen. "I think she's really captured your essence." Next to the Twelfth mannequin was the Eleventh Doctor's, one which caused Clara a great deal of sadness to look at; his meticulously recreated tweed jacket and bowtie… she sighed and thumbed her wedding ring, twisting it around her finger.

The Doctor tapped her on the arm and pointed into a corner. Squinting, Clara just managed to see a TARDIS swim into view, stuck in a dusty alcove out of sight and out of mind. Tentatively the Doctor approached, stepping over the object Clara had knocked to the floor – which she now realised was a black umbrella with a red question mark on the end of it. While the Doctor did that, Clara picked up the umbrella.

The doors creaked when she pulled them open, but its interior was empty.

"Is it a replica?" Clara asked quietly.

"No, I think it's an original police box pulled off the street somewhere. Maybe it was in a museum."

"I think this place is a museum. A museum dedicated to you."

"Yeah, well, be sure not to point out how creepy she is to her face. We need her to help us dispose of a body, after all, since there was apparently no way to save his life…" she grumbled. Clara rolled her eyes.

"He literally injected himself with-"

"I know," she whispered, closing the phone box's door gently, "Hey – I was wondering what happened to that!" she spotted the umbrella and came to take it from Clara, "This is the real deal! I lost it when I regenerated for the seventh time… do you like it? It has a question mark."

"Why?"

"Because! People are always asking me, 'doctor who?'"

"Maybe if you picked a less ridiculous name."

"Well, you're Mrs Doctor Who." Clara was not amused by this.

"Why did you carry an umbrella around with you? Does it do anything?"

"Of course it does things, Clara," said the Doctor, beckoning her closer, then she said very seriously, "It's got this crazy in-built gadget you can use when it rains; it unfolds, and then it stops you getting wet." Clara stared at her. "I know. I couldn't believe it either."

Clara leant towards her then said very quietly, "I hate you so much." To add insult to injury, the Doctor proceeded to open the umbrella in Clara's face, making her stagger backwards. "Why did you do that!?" she almost shouted, while the Doctor laughed.

"You're too easy, Coo," she said, closing it again.

"That's bad luck, you know, opening an umbrella indoors."

"You people have such adorable superstitions, honestly. But I'm keeping this. It's mine, after all. It's got my trademark smell."

"Don't know what that means…"

"You don't think I have a smell?"

"You do now, but I've never met the Seventh Doctor. And I'm not smelling your umbrella. Look, let's just find her bedroom, persuade her to help us, and get out of here."

"You're no fun. You don't want to explore the house of my number one fan?"

"I don't."

"Look at this…" the Doctor spotted yet another collection, a table with a row of devices on it. One of them she picked up and examined in the moonlight, "I broke this the day I met Martha. I was trying to stop a plasmavore and she had these slab drones, had to kill it with roentgen radiation. Burned up the sonic in the machine because I had to increase it so much… I guess she… found it? Would it be rude if I take this, too?"

"And do what with it? Isn't it broken?"

"I don't know – I could give it to Mattie. I told you, it was the day I met her mother. And I saved both our lives with it. Without this little guy, there's a possibility Matts wouldn't be here," she said. Clara thought she was finding a very weak reason to take it. She put it behind her ear like it was a pencil. "C'mon."

They left the mannequin room, the first room they'd stumbled across after phasing through the wall into the isolated country manor Petronella Osgood apparently occupied (having to park the TARDIS far enough away that she wouldn't hear them coming), to find a big hallway. The staircase was lined of photos, which Clara quickly realised were random sightings of the Doctor over the years, framed and mounted; there were none of Thirteen so far, but a fair few of the others, where they had snuck into family photos, important historical moments, UFO sightings – the works.

"So creepy…" murmured Clara.

"Our house is also full of photos of me," she began to ascend the staircase.

"Yeah, because you live there, and we're married."

"I think you're being too harsh on her."

"We'll see who's being harsh when she cuts off your skin and wears it," Clara grumbled, then she said even quieter, "It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again."

"You're so inappropriate. First of all, that movie is a terrible portrayal of trans people, second of all… well, second of all, it's ick."

"I like Jodie Foster."

"Of course you do…"

"I bet she has a well in the cellar."

"Who? Jodie Foster?"

"No. Osgood. Also, is that her real name she was born with? It's just, my name's Oswald. And she's obsessed with you."

"Oh my god," the Doctor breathed, "You think maybe she changed her name to a name that slightly resembles the name of the wife she didn't know I had until two weeks ago?"

"Shut up. You're too sarcastic."

"No, I get it now – everything is connected. I can see the code." On the landing, they stopped talking and glanced around; which bedroom was Osgood in? The house was very large, there were numerous doors, and no indication of where each one led. Seeing that one of them had a sign on it saying 'toilet', which must be to stop all those many guests she had getting lost in her massive house, Clara took a gamble and headed for the door that was closest to the toilet.

Sadly, her gamble didn't pay off. Instead of a bedroom, she found herself met with a room that was entirely a wardrobe, full of clothes all modelled off the Doctor's many outfits. Including a very tell-tale pair of limited edition, stars and stripes Converse, stripes on the outside and stars on the tongue. They were identical to the pair the Doctor was wearing at that very moment, albeit a lot cleaner.

"How has she got all this stuff together in two weeks?" Thirteen asked, shaking her head at the shoes. Clara could see replicas of at least three of the Tenth Doctor's pin-striped suits as well as numerous sets of cricket whites, just in different sizes. All made for Osgood. "Where's the originality?"

"You're gonna have to start dressing like an atomic age housewife again," Clara said quietly.

"But it's not your birthday for another two months."

"I just mean, she probably wouldn't copy you then. There's not a dress or a skirt in sight."

"Didn't realise you were such a stickler for archaic gender roles."

"What do you want? You want me to apologise for being attracted to my wife when she wears a dress? Well, sorry, but I've always been a big fan of people who are very explicitly the same gender as me. Not to sound like a degenerate."

"You are a degenerate. Now help me break into this girl's bedroom." She turned to leave, a bit too freaked out by the wardrobe that had copies of perhaps every item of clothing she had ever worn. Osgood's Thirteen outfits were still a work in progress, thankfully.

On their second attempt to invade Osgood's privacy, they struck gold. She was fast asleep, face-down, inky Scek crawling across her skin and fusing itself to her blood vessels, snoring loudly. It was a miracle they hadn't woken her up yet. Somehow, though, the things they found in this woman's house just got stranger. Her duvet cover was a clearly custom-made creation made to look like the TARDIS; deep blue, square windows, St John Ambulance sign, wood panelling – the works. The wallpaper was white but covered in dancing, red question marks, aesthetically similar to the reclaimed umbrella the Doctor was now holding. A long, multi-coloured scarf hung on the back of the door along with pyjamas also drowning in question mark prints. The carpet was black and looked like a starry night sky. It was eclectic, to say the least. The Doctor looked at Osgood carefully, examining her. Clara nudged her.

"What are you looking at?" she almost mouthed, hardly a sound escaping her lips. The Doctor leant over to speak as quietly as possible right in her ear to explain herself.

"She told me she has tattoos of me." Clara frowned and craned her neck, but Osgood was apparently not the type of person to sleep naked.

"Bet she'll take her clothes off if you ask her," Clara whispered, smirking. The Doctor glared at her in the gloom. Clara nodded at the window. "Sleeps with the curtains open. What's that about?"

"Not everybody requires total darkness."

"Are you gonna wake her up?"

"…Well, how?"

"Just make a really loud noise."

"With what?" Clara paused to think, then got an idea and took the Eleventh Doctor's old, faulty sonic screwdriver from her jacket.

"If you sonic the sonic," she said.

"…Cover your ears," the Doctor said, deciding that this was a good enough plan and exchanging her umbrella for the screwdriver. She took out her own sonic – that was, her sonic that she hadn't destroyed in an x-ray machine fifty years ago, her actual sonic screwdriver – and held that one and Eleven's green one end to end. The screeching was deafening even when Clara had been warned about it beforehand, making her flinch and stagger. It alarmed Osgood so much she almost fell out of bed struggling to wake up. As soon as she moved the Doctor stopped the noise, Osgood scrambling to grab her glasses from her bedside table. When she pushed them on and saw them, standing there and judging her, she could only stare.

"Oh my god!" Osgood exclaimed, "It's you!"

"Howdy," said the Doctor, a word she had never said before; it was a shame she didn't have a hat to tip. "Sorry for the intrusion. And the noise." She handed Eleven's screwdriver back to Clara and stashed her own, reclaiming the umbrella and leaning on it like it was a walking stick. It was a strange persona she was projecting. Osgood practically jumped back into her bed to preserve her modesty, which Clara thought was amusing because she wasn't really immodest at all, wearing a silk pyjama set.

"That's my umbrella," she said.

"I, uh, I think you'll find it's my umbrella."

"Well, yes, but – I found it."

"And for that I thank you," said the Doctor, "I've been wondering where it's got to for the last few centuries. This is an odd house you keep."

"I just… I'm a fan… and now you're here! You're in my bedroom!"

"Don't get too excited," Clara muttered. The Doctor looked at her disapprovingly for that comment. "Do you have any lotion?"

"I've got eczema?"

"Course. Eczema. Must need a lot of lotion for that."

"Would you stop? It wasn't funny the first time, and it's not funny now," the Doctor told her off. She rolled her eyes. "This is Clara, by the way. You met her before, but she was a little bit unconscious."

"Hi," said Clara, holding up a hand in a meek wave, "I'm her wife."

"Don't pee on me," the Doctor told her, "Try to be nice. Now, look," she went and sat at the bottom of the bed. It was clearly the most exciting thing that had ever happened to Osgood. "I'd love to say this is just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, three AM social call. But I'm here on business. Sort of. I need a favour."

"From me?"

"You're the new Brigadier at UNIT," the Doctor pointed out, "So, yeah, you. Maybe I'll tell you where to get sneakers like these ones that aren't knock-offs."

"What do you need?"

"Prometheus is manufacturing Xboost," Clara said, going to lean on the wall near the Doctor, crossing her arms. "Did you know?"

"No. Xboost isn't UNIT business, it's still being investigated by the police at a local level," she said, "There have been a few parliamentary rumours about relaunching the HCC if it gets much worse though, and others who want to pass responsibility to Prometheus entirely and give Will Smiles more government funding."

"Smiles is dead," said Clara, "He died about an hour ago." And in that hour, they (or rather, Rose) had taken Sally and Esther back to Westminster when Esther was able to be disconnected from the national grid, convinced Dr Cohen to make a house call to the ancestral Sparrow residence and tend to Jenny's latest slew of injuries, and used the Astro TARDIS to find out where Osgood lived and sneak in. "He's been manufacturing Xboost, using what are essentially hit-squads to forcibly inject people with it, violently killing them to trigger the adrenaline rush to activate their powers, and then paying off coroners to remove their brains and hand them over to him. He's been using the brains to try and develop drugs that will give people specific superpowers, so then he can start selling superpowers for profit. He's also been trying to sabotage CyTech rain machines and almost killed the Lightning Girl."

"Is she okay?" Osgood asked.

"She'll be fine," added the Doctor.

"How did he die?"

"Injected himself with a serum that gave him every superpower he'd stolen from dead Manifests at once combined with three times the fatal dose of adrenaline. His heart exploded. He's in a secret lab now, in a skyscraper in London's financial district."

"Yeah, so, here's the favour," the Doctor said, "It would be a super-awesome thing to do if you could, like, get the red berets in there to clear out all this equipment to create Xboost and make sure nobody ever has access to the technology again. We were told by a solid source that we can trust you, even if you do have that… thing…"

"Splodge?"

"Mm."

"We can't go to the police about it because Smiles has been bankrolling them for months."

"And we can get you cures for the uncorrupted strain of the Manifest virus to close down the M.O.C.s," the Doctor said, "Won't it reflect well on UNIT to solve the mystery of where and why Xboost was being manufactured, prevent a second Manifest Crisis before it has the chance to really start, and really stick it to big pharma?"

"Just so long as we can trust you not to start any nasty UNIT experiments with the Xboost or any other Manifest serum," Clara added, "That's the whole reason why we're coming to you at all and not releasing this all to journalists and posing as whistle-blowers."

"Yes, of course I'll make sure all the Xboost is destroyed," she said, "Is there evidence for everything you're saying? Of paying off the police, these murders?"

"Well, the people die, and their deaths are ruled accidental, but the post-mortems are inconsistent with what any moron knows are violent murders," said the Doctor, "If you get the medical reports, incident reports, death certificates, and then exhume the bodies, you should be able to get all the evidence you need."

She nodded, "Alright… why was he doing it? Smiles?"

"Money and power," said Clara, "And out of spite for Adam Mitchell. You know, because Adam's a Manifest and an actual, good person." She didn't want to say much else about Adam because she didn't think it was a great idea for UNIT's leader to find out that they were related to the CEO of CyTech. They were still trying to keep her in the dark about the fact they were living on Earth and not on the TARDIS. They might pay her some highly impromptu house calls, but it wasn't a privilege Clara wanted to be reciprocated.

"Alright. I'll go after Prometheus for you," she nodded, "I'll make sure people know the truth about what happened, and I'll make sure nobody can ever make more Manifests. But I need something in return." Clara crossed her fingers and hoped desperately Osgood wasn't going to request a date with the Doctor, or something equally unbearable. "I need a way to contact you. A phone number."

"Sure thing! Coo, would you get her the TARDIS phone number?" Phone calls to the TARDIS were often routed to the intertemporal phone in their living room, though the number was the same and was completely untraceable.

"Do you have a pen and paper?" Clara asked her. The Doctor fumbled around in the pockets of her hoodie for a moment – the same one Clara had found a rare Pokémon card in some hours previously – until she drew out a small notepad with a very tiny pen wedged in its rings. "Why do you carry this? What's it for?"

"Just reminders." Clara scribbled down the number for the TARDIS, which she had learnt off by heart a very long time ago because the Doctor was constantly forgetting it, then tore off the page and handed it to Osgood. She took it and stared at it like it was the most precious thing in the world. "Don't be calling that all the time with any old minor, alien-related problem. You don't want to be the boy who cried wolf." She nodded, in awe. "So, um, what's with the clothes? Not that I don't appreciate the meticulous attention to detail, but do you have any clothes that aren't just replicas of my clothes?"

"You have a great sense of style."

Clara suddenly snorted and then began to cough. The Doctor glared at her.

"S-sorry," she said, still pretending to cough, "Just a frog in my throat… that's all… please, continue…"

"Are you mocking my dress sense now, Oswald?" the Doctor asked.

"Oswald?" asked Osgood, surprised, "Is that your name?"

"Clara Oswald. Yes. My sister's name is Oswin."

"I guess that makes me the Wizard of Oz, or something. Look, we can't stick around for much longer," said the Doctor, "As much fun as name etymology is to discuss – and obviously, it's riveting – so are you sure you're going to be able to handle everything with Prometheus for us? For me?" Clara rolled her eyes.

"Yes, of course, absolutely, my pleasure," Osgood babbled, "I have an engineering question, though, before you go."

"Shoot."

"Can you double-check my equations for this black hole generator I'm building?"

"I will in fact not be doing that, and instead advise you to not try to build a black hole generator at all or anything else that could be used as a WMD if it falls into the wrong hands. If that's everything-?" she got up to leave.

"Can you tell me how to build a TARDIS?"

"We actually grow them out of coral. You couldn't really build one, and definitely not using Earth materials. Like I said, we really need to bounce, so-"

"What about the screwdrivers? How do you make them, how many features and settings do they have?"

The Doctor clenched her jaw, trying to hide that she was getting a bit annoyed, "It's complicated, and they don't work on wood. If we could just-"

"Do you marry very many of the people you travel with?"

"I really try not to make a habit of it. Is that everything now? Because we need to-"

"Will humans ever go extinct?"

"God, I hope so."

"How many colours can you see?"

"Six. But I'm leaving now, that's enough questions," she took Clara's hand and pulled her through the door.

"What's the meaning of life!?" Osgood shouted after them.

"I don't know, uh – eat five portions of fruit and veg a day! Going now!"

"Nice speaking to you!" Clara called as they fled down the stairs. Jumping the last few steps, Clara phased them straight through the front door and they escaped Osgood's stifling museum of a home into the open countryside of her large grounds. No doubt she was going to watch them leave through the windows since all the curtains were wide open. "And we didn't even get to see her tattoos."

"I know – maybe you should've been nicer," said the Doctor, "You can charm the skin off a snake when you bring your A-game. Could've definitely got her to take her clothes off."

"Thank you for acknowledging my many talents," said Clara. The TARDIS was hidden in the trees at the edge of the estate, not far now. They could just about see its shadowy shape coming into view. "Can you really see six colours?"

"Yeah."

"What colour are my eyes, then?"

The Doctor stopped walking and looked at her, "They're brown, Clara." Clara was annoyed by that. "I'm surprised you don't know what colour your eyes are, given how much time you spend ogling your own reflection."

"I don't know why I put up with you. I should dump you and let Petronella back there have her way. Who knows where your screwdrivers have been?"

"You are too inappropriate for your own good."

"I'm being serious."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh; don't talk to me," she said as they came upon the TARDIS.

"Do you think she dresses up as you during sex?"

"Clara…"

"Do you think she does roleplay?"

"I'm warning you, if you don't stop trying to get on my nerves, I'll-"

"You'll what?" Clara challenged, smirking, crossing her arms.

As soon as the Doctor began to respond, the TARDIS doors creaked open and Yaz stuck her head out.

"Are you gonna stand out there all day?"

"We could sit down?" Clara suggested.

"Urgh! I cannot stand you today," the Doctor shook her head and entered the Astro TARDIS, which Clara thought looked like the inside of a salt lamp with all the big, amber crystals.

"Did something bad happen?" Yaz asked Clara seriously, stopping her at the door.

"No, why?"

"She sounds like she's in a bad mood."

"No, she just says things like that," said Clara, "She's really into me."

"I can hear you, and I'm not," said the Doctor.

"Did you get everything sorted out, then?" the Astro Doctor jumped to her feet; she'd been down tinkering with some part of the console. "Ooh, is that our old umbrella?" Cosmic Thirteen held up the question mark umbrella so that she could see it.

"Apparently so. And yeah, everything's sorted. Unless she double-crosses us and decides to make a bunch of UNIT super-soldiers, which… well, I hope she won't do that… So!" she tapped the umbrella on the floor, "I guess since Jenny and Esther are being looked after in London, Rose is watching Mattie, Willard's been retconned and had the record of his death erased, the Second Manifest Crisis has been dealt with, and Prometheus is about to be exposed, that's everything."

"Right, well," began the Astro Doctor, "I suppose we'd… best head off, then?"

"Could you drop us home first?" Clara asked.

"Oh! Yes, great, I'll do that now," she went around the console flicking switches, smashing buttons and pulling levers. The central column began to move up and down, the TARDIS thrumming in its usual way as it took off.

"Is that a microphone!?" the Cosmic Doctor spied an old-fashioned chrome microphone resting on the console and gravitated towards it, "How did I never think of putting a microphone in the console room?" She lifted it from its holder.

"What would you do with a microphone?" Clara asked her incredulously.

"I could sing to you?" she suggested, then cleared her throat, "Baby, I'm yours…" Clara shook her head, "And I'll be yours, until the stars fall from the sky-" The TARDIS jerked aggressively as it took off and she nearly tripped over and nearly dropped the mic.

"Sorry about that!" apologised the Astro Doctor, "Navigation's a bit sticky. You know how parallel universes are."

"See?" Clara said to Yaz, "I told you she's not mad at me."

"So, what's this about a house in Westminster? I thought Sally Sparrow hasn't got any money," the Astro Doctor asked.

"It's an Edwardian townhouse she inherited when her parents died," Clara explained.

"That's the rich for you," the Cosmic Doctor complained, "Get everything handed to them."

"Well, anyway," Clara ignored that, "She lived with Esther in Yorkshire for a while to get over a nasty breakup – dumped at the altar – and moved back to London the same time Jenny and Ravenwood moved down there. The four of them are close. They just moved into Sally's house she already owned."

"Edwardian townhouse in Westminster…" the Doctor said quietly to herself, pulling another lever. Clara frowned.

"Why do you ask?"

She looked up and smiled, "Just didn't realise she was so posh, that's all." It was a short trip. The TARDIS landed abruptly, making them wobble a little, but they were all seasoned time travellers who were used to the TARDIS's bumpiness. "I think this is your stop." The Cosmic Doctor went to open the doors and peek out; their living room was visible through the crack in the door.

"Well, it was nice to meet you all," Clara said, smiling, "Have to say I like this regeneration much more than your last one."

"So do I," said the Astro Doctor, "Apart from the sexism."

"Tell me about it," said the Cosmic Doctor.

"Yeah, nice to meet you lot, as well," said Graham. Yaz and Ryan both smiled and echoed the sentiments. "Never thought I'd see the Doc settled down somewhere."

"You're always welcome if you happen to find yourself knocking around in this universe," Clara offered, "Honestly, just drop by whenever."

"Might have had enough parallel universe travel for the moment, but thanks," said the Astro Doctor. Clara and her Doctor waved over their shoulders as they stepped out of the TARDIS and back into their house, the doors swinging shut on them. Right away, the Astro Doctor set the TARDIS off again, the column thrumming up and down, taking them back into flight. "Where do you want to go next, then?"

"You want to go somewhere else now?" Yaz asked, "I'm knackered. It's three in the morning."

"Yeah, well, just wondered if anybody wanted to pull an all-nighter."

Yaz laughed, "No way. It's been a weird enough day."

"Yeah," Ryan agreed, "Meeting your two, parallel universe wives. Finding out about superpowers. Going grave-robbing."

"I suppose when you put it that way," she laughed awkwardly, "Off to bed, then? The three of you?"

"I think we should call it a night," Graham agreed with the other two.

She nodded again, "Course, course… I've got some repairs to finish up in here, so I'll just hang about."

"I don't know how you're always repairing the TARDIS," said Yaz, "Does it break that often?"

"Just needs tweaking every now and then; she's a complicated piece of machinery," the Doctor defended herself, "Go on, get yourselves to sleep. I'll be fine here until the morning as long as I don't bore myself to death." They bade her goodnight and then slipped away out of the console room and into the hallways. Waiting for them to be completely out of earshot, she leant on the console itself, thinking.

The Doctor waited for at least fifteen minutes to check they weren't going to come back to talk to her about this or that, and it was possibly the only time she wouldn't welcome their company.

"Edwardian townhouse in Westminster… Edwardian townhouse in Westminster…" she said quietly to herself. An Edwardian townhouse in Westminster currently draining the national grid of every last bit of juice it had in order to get the all-powerful Lightning Girl back on her feet… it didn't take her long to discover just which house this was, especially when it already had more than a few traces of artron and temporal energy. Certainly a popular rendezvous spot for time travellers. Concentrating her hardest, she navigated the TARDIS as precisely as she could, aiming for the house's attic.

Her diligence paid off. The TARDIS landed and she tentatively stepped out, trying not to think too hard about what she was doing lest she start to regret it. She had made it into the attic. Moonlight managed to sneak in around the edges of thick, heavy curtains; the ceiling hung low and the air was thick with dust. Pieces of furniture covered in sheets were wedged in there. It was certainly a home fit for someone nicknamed 'Spooky Sally.'

The TARDIS hummed behind her as she looked around, trying to deduce what ambiguous shape was what object. She was somewhat curious about this archive of vampire artefacts, but the attic obviously wasn't the place where they were keeping it. It also wasn't the real reason she was there. The Doctor peered into a musty cardboard box and found an array of carefully labelled photo albums. They were labelled by date ranges, and when she searched through the first one she saw it was almost entirely grainy photos with times, dates and places underneath. One had a very eerie, blurry shape in the centre of it the Doctor had to squint at, but she couldn't work out what it was. Eventually, she realised it was little more than a collection of Sally Sparrow's many ghost sightings caught on camera, but failed to see actual ghosts in any of the prints.

What was she doing there? What was she hoping to achieve? Maybe all she was doing was poring through old photos trying to capture something, get it on film so that she could understand what she'd lost… She closed the album, having second thoughts about the entire venture, gamble, escapade. She hadn't thought it through at all – didn't even have an excuse ready for when somebody inevitably came to investigate the sound of the TARDIS arriving a few floors above. She turned on her heel to leave, dropping the photo album back in the box, but didn't get the opportunity.

Clara Ravenwood was leaning against the doorframe, ghostly pale in what little moonlight could breach the curtains, and when the Doctor looked up and saw her she froze. Clara watched her with cold, black eyes and an unreadable expression. The vampiric traces in her appearance would make it possible to tell her apart from the other one if they were side-by-side, and she no longer looked like the impeccable memory the Doctor could recall. For once, the Doctor was at a loss for words.

"And here I thought you were going to leave without saying goodbye," said Clara coolly.

"I haven't even really had a chance to say hello."

"Mm," Clara crossed her arms and looked at the floor uneasily, "I think you forgot to do that while you were shouting at me." The Doctor felt a little guilty and paused for a while before saying anything else.

"…Thought you were dead," she tried to smile, acting like this was all a very funny misunderstanding – just the sort of scrape she was always getting into.

"I am dead."

"Dead-dead, I mean. Gone."

"It's semantics," Clara said quietly. Again, the Doctor lapsed into silence and Clara continued to look anywhere in the room except at Thirteen. "…Where are your friends, then?"

"I sent them to bed," the Doctor admitted, "Told them I'm doing boring TARDIS repairs."

"Course," she nodded, "Subterfuge."

"No, not – I'm not-"

"Not what? Sneaking around?" Clara challenged, meeting her gaze. But the Doctor couldn't hold it. "You probably shouldn't be here. Which I'm sure you know since you're lying to people." Clara was right.

The Doctor paused for a long time, her arms hanging uselessly by her side. "I missed you."

"I…" Clara scoffed and shook her head, "What do you want me to say to that?"

"I don't know."

"Then why say it?"

"Because it's true?" she said unsurely. Not unsure that it was true, but that Clara, now growing visibly frustrated, wanted to hear anything she had to say.

"What are you doing here?"

"How's Jenny?" the Doctor asked suddenly, seizing the first idea she had for an actual topic, though it obviously took Clara by surprise, "I was just wondering. Thought I'd stop by. Give her some…" she stopped to search in her coat pockets and found a half-eaten packet of Starbursts. "Starbursts. Got them for her specially."

"So special you already ate most of them," said Clara.

"Well, I…"

"Put them away, along with the rest of your excuses."

"Do you want one…?"

"No."

"Right…" she put them away again, "How is Jenny, though?"

"She'll be fine. She's got three broken ribs, a broken arm, and some bruising. Cohen's ordered her to take some time away from the TARDIS and given her some painkillers; she's asleep downstairs in one of the spare rooms at the moment."

The Doctor nodded, thinking. "Who's Cohen?"

"Nios's girlfriend, she's a pathologist. Or was, she's retired, but Jenny keeps her busy throwing herself into danger."

"Nios the synth? She's still around?" The Doctor was pleasantly surprised – Nios the mass-murdering synthetic in a long-term relationship with a human.

"She has Oswin to keep her up and running."

"Good for Nios, I suppose. What about Esther? Is she 'recharged'?"

"She's fine, managed to take her costume off finally. She's sleeping, too."

"And Sally?" She continued to list everybody she'd run into that day in the hope of keeping the conversation going, finding something Clara was willing to talk about.

"Lurking in the cellar. I was just with Jenny. Cohen's gone home with Nios."

"It's just us, then."

"And you're surprised about that? Sneaking in here in the middle of the night? I'm supposed to believe you weren't trying to get me alone?"

"I just wanted to talk to you without a dozen other people all sticking their beaks in," she said. "It's not like I could call ahead. Obviously."

"Talk about what?" Clara asked carefully.

The Doctor stopped and started her next sentence more than a few times, not sure how to word it best, until blurting out, "Why were you sleeping with her behind my back?" Clara said nothing. "I mean, you didn't trust me? You couldn't have told me?"

"How would I have brought that up? 'By the way, I've got a new friend with benefits and, oh yeah, it's also your daughter.' You were… difficult back then, and you've never been a huge fan of casual sex, like, at all."

"If you were happy, I would have-"

"I wasn't happy," she interrupted, then waited before continuing, "Why do you think I was doing it? It was completely self-destructive, and she was doing it for a bet to piss off her toxic husband at the time."

"But… you're married now? The two of you?"

"I fell in love with her. She had enough of Jack and dumped him. I died, I came back as a vampire, I didn't remember a thing, my whole life was over, I had to change my name and go into hiding, and do you know who was there for me the whole way through? Do you know who's still there for me now? Jenny. And the thing about all those bad things and losing absolutely everything to the point where I'm not even allowed to be in the same universe, is that it really puts stuff into perspective. So I told her I loved her, and we've been together ever since. Six years after that, I proposed to her. Me, I proposed. Two years after that we were married. And I have to wear a wedding ring made out of wood because precious metals burn me." She held up her hand to show the Doctor a dark, glossy ring, polished and shiny. "Jenny's never been too scared to tell me how she feels."

"Don't say something like that."

"Why not? You've met them. They're in love, they're married, they're us. They're me and you. In all the time we were – I could never tell you that I… how would you have reacted?"

"I don't know."

"And what's funny," her voice shook, "Is that now I don't need to tell you anything at all, because of them. There are no secrets, there's no room for denial, even from you. Because I know that Eleven-" She cut herself off and changed where she was going. "Not that there's a point to any of this anymore. It all looks stupid now."

"It's not stupid."

"Is that why you're here? Is it? You've – what? Had a few hundred years to think things through, and now you're ready for-"

"No!" she was aghast, "No, of course not! I would never dream of doing something that would make you unhappy."

"And yet here we are. The hybrid."

"I'm not convinced that prophecy really is about us…"

"So, I died for nothing?"

"You didn't die because of that."

"Why did I die, then? I still don't know the whole story.."

"We went to see Rigsy. He had a tattoo counting down, a chronolock, and when it reached zero Ashildr's pet Quantum Shade would come out and kill him as punishment for a murder he couldn't remember. You didn't want to let that happen, so you took the chronolock away from him. The Shade killed you."

"It was Ashildr's fault?"

"In a roundabout way."

"Maybe that's why she's never properly told me…"

"And then I couldn't bear it, so I took you out of a fixed point in time and you were a bit… frozen. Stuck between heartbeats. I ended up wiping my own memory of all trace of you, and you went off with Ashildr. When I regenerated I remembered. I suppose if you were stuck, and now you're un-stuck, it makes sense for the memories to have never actually formed."

"She says I travelled with her in a TARDIS for ten years and we were apparently dating, but I'm still not sure whether I believe her. She's sort of, friends with Jenny now," she frowned when she recalled this. They were still keeping their distance, standing at odds a few feet apart.

"You said she stabbed Jenny earlier."

"No, she did do that too, and they fight a lot."

"Over you?"

"No, just for fun, I suppose… Thanks for telling me. It's been a bit strange not knowing how I died all this time."

"No problem…" There was another long lapse between them. "You live on the TARDIS full-time now, then? Something you never wanted to do with me."

"We've lived in lots of places. We even lived in the Wild West for a bit. And it's been good for Jenny to be trusted with the ship. You don't know what she and the other Doctor have been through to repair their relationship."

"No, I don't," she sighed. "I'm glad you're alright, though. And you're happy. And you're making Jenny happy. Even if the Great Vampires are the sworn enemies of the Time Lords."

"Well, Sally and I don't spend too much time with other vampires. We do sometimes have to go cover up their messes, though, but the ones we meet don't really like us. Probably because we drink synthetic blood and don't kill indiscriminately. Or kill at all. I've never killed anybody, not for blood or any other reason, and neither's Sally. You know, she was actually the maid of honour at my wedding. If only I'd known that you remembered who I was…"

"Did she do a good job?"

"She didn't have much to do, it was small and she didn't have to make a toast. Of course, Eleven was there to make a father-of-the-other-bride speech, not to mention my dad."

"Doesn't Dave think you're dead?"

"Um… we went and told him it was a witness protection thing…" Clara admitted, "I couldn't just leave him like that, thinking I'm… he and Sally were literally the only people on my side of the wedding."

"Sorry I missed it."

"You weren't invited," Clara made a small joke.

"Did she take your name? New name, I should say."

"It's mum's name," said Clara. The Doctor had remembered that. "And yeah, she did, but she changes her name constantly. She's Jenny Ravenwood now."

"The Other Doctor's taken your name, too. Dr Oswald."

"Mm, Clara thinks it's unbearable; we've never liked 'Oswald' much. What's funny is Oswin's apparently never minded it, she hasn't changed her name to 'Oswin Mitchell.'"

"Things are different in the future."

"Yeah. They Are.

The Doctor smiled a little, more to herself, but wanted to talk about something other than Clara's wedding. At least things were starting to thaw.

"What's this vampire archive, then?" She crossed her arms as she got to the thing that was really intriguing her.

"The Gutkeled Archive?" The Doctor nodded. "It's just paraphernalia, it's more Sally's thing. She likes archives and collections." Thirteen glanced at the box full of meticulously recorded ghost photos with this in mind.

"What do you do with it?"

"Keep it away from other vampires, mostly. A lot of these ancient texts have things in them about turning everyone else into vampires – they've proven persuasive in the past. Some fledgeling will find them and then go around biting as many people as they can, it all gets a bit messy, so… and because Sally just gets bored, especially now with Esther always away." The Doctor nodded, thinking. "I'm not taking you downstairs to see it if that's what you're after. I'm not having Sally find out you're up here lurking; I'd have to swear her to silence, and she hates it when I do that." The Doctor made a face, annoyed. She did want to see the Archive. "What did you do after I died, then? Get yourself killed and regenerate?" Clara clearly wanted to talk about something else. The Doctor, knowing how stubborn she could be, relented.

"Not right away. I was with Bill for a while. Have you met Bill, over here?"

"Don't think so."

"You would've loved her. She's a lesbian, and completely hilarious, honestly. Always called me out when I was being 'difficult,' as you said. Left me because she met a girl."

"She fared better than most," Clara quipped, "Maybe I'll go look for her in this universe, she sounds like fun."

"The girl, Heather – she can turn into a sentient puddle and travel through time. They both can now, actually. Maybe they'll end up here."

"Um, what? Did you say sentient puddle?"

"More of an oil."

"…What?"

"A puddle of oil."

"…Sorry, what do you mean when you say, 'she can turn into a sentient puddle and travel through time'?"

"That she can turn into a sentient puddle and also travel through time."

"I don't follow."

"It's not that complicated. She can turn into a sentient puddle able to travel through time." Clara opened her mouth again to question this entire concept, but the Doctor interrupted. "You can turn into a bat."

"…Point taken..."

"I'd rather be a sentient puddle than a vampire."

"Apparently sentient puddles get all the girls, so," Clara joked.

"Did you know about Osgood?" she changed the subject once more, "Being the leader of UNIT?"

"I did. I find it deeply troubling. I heard she has tattoos of your face in this universe."

"And nothing to do with Zygons."

"Well, could you imagine if there were two of them here? That's twice as many tattoos of your face. I feel like it's only a natural progression if she cuts off your skin and wears it next. It puts the lotion-"

"Don't start with that," the Doctor told her off. "You know that film has transphobic overtones?"

"Mm, but it's got Jodie Foster in it. So, um, how'd you meet this lot?"

"Fell through the roof of a train, and there they were."

"Wow. That's so much simpler than me."

"I suppose. But you're still…" she didn't finish her sentence. "They're good. They're nice. They're my best friends."

"Glad to see you've gotten over me."

The Doctor thought for a long time, fidgeting, before bringing up something else that had been on her mind for the last few hours since Smiles' demise. "The other Clara told me not to ask you to come back on the TARDIS."

"She's right. Don't ask me that," Clara's tone became serious again.

"Is that because you'd say no or because you'd say yes?"

"Just don't. Don't come here and even entertain the possibility of trying to convince me to uproot my life, for you," Clara argued with her. "I'll say no. But it will make me think less of you."

"I wouldn't ask." She didn't know if she was telling the truth. "You've got your own TARDIS. And like you said, someone who'll tell you outright how much you mean to them. You should probably get back to her, in case she wakes up and comes looking for you."

"You're right. I should." Clara looked at her expectantly, waiting.

"And I'll… go?"

"Yeah."

"It was nice to see you. To find out where you are, what you've been up to."

"And it was nice to find out how I died. Although, that's probably the weirdest sentence I've ever said."

"I am glad that you're happy," she said as she approached the TARDIS, "And maybe the thing with Jenny isn't as weird as it seems at first glance. She is a lot like me, after all." That was a risky joke, but Clara at least found the humour in it, trying to hide her smile.

"Goodbye, Doctor," she said, "I'm sure we'll run into each other again someday. Now you know where I am, you could even visit on purpose, stay long enough to have a cup of tea. See if Sally will let you see her crap."

"I hope we will, and maybe – I'm intrigued by this collection, and I know you always make a brilliant cup of tea." Clara smiled. The TARDIS doors creaked familiarly when she pushed them open, bidding Clara Ravenwood, née Oswald, farewell.

"Bye, Doctor."

"Goodbye, Clara."

Ravenwood stepped back from the blue box and crossed her arms tightly, steeling herself as it began to warp away, fading in and out until it had finally disappeared. The attic grew dark, and her Doctor was gone.

For now.

AN: While it might seem a bit random and unnecessary to just throw Jenny and Ravenwood in there at the end, I did it for two reasons: 1) because I didn't feel like this crossover would be complete without Ravenwood and the Other Doctor reuniting in some way and I think them having an honest conversation gives important closure, and 2) because it's here to set up Jenny's role in the next storyline since she's going to stay with Clarteen for a while to recover from her injuries.

I would love to do another crossover with different characters there because I think it's a shame they didn't get to meet Oswin and only the Doctor saw Jenny, but I have no idea if I'll be able to find the opportunity.