There is an unbelievable amount of blood considering how small she is. Was. His shirt is wet with it. He stands blankly at the TARDIS console, a man in a waking nightmare. So much blood.

And so much more to come. He knows in his bones. When the numb horror recedes and is replaced by wrath he will burn their world. Oh, there's many who'll say they deserve it. Across the Universe they'll rejoice to hear it – a bellicose and belligerent species finally getting a taste of their own medicine. "They were evil," they'll say. "They got what was coming to them."

He might even believe it for a while. But in the pit of the night he'll know. It won't be because of their hate, their xenophobia. Even their genocide.

It will be because they took Clara Oswald from him. One human life, worth more to him than any planet in the sky.

He pushes buttons and the TARDIS wheezes and groans, carrying him away from that broken little body. But not to where he's asked her to go. No, she does as she always will, and takes him to where he needs to be.

He pushes open the doors to find himself not at the heart of their empire, but in her flat. She is sitting on her sofa, legs folded under herself and a glass of wine in hand. A stack of exercise books on the side table before her.

"Doctor?" she says, confused.

She made such an effort, he realises. This version of Clara seems strange in casual jumper and jeans; without her make-up, hair escaping from its tie. Smaller and younger and more vulnerable. This is what you took, old man. This is what you ruined.

"Doctor! You're hurt, you're bleeding!" She is on her feet now, crossing to him.

"No," he rasps, "No, I'm not." He stares at her in muzzy incomprehension as she touches a hand to his shirt, slick with her blood.

"Doctor, what happened?"

He should get back in the TARDIS right now. Turn away and leave. Go back; stick to his original plan of burning to the ground an entire civilisation. He cannot tell her. Every law of Gallifrey, of causality, of time itself is at stake. He opens his mouth to say goodbye.

A howl emerges instead. It is not a sound he has any control over but something raw and desperate; a monstrous grief that bypasses any need for words. He falls to his knees, sobs boiling from his chest, incapacitated with anguish.

"Oh," she says.

There is a horrible surrealism to her washing her own lifeblood away; draining bathwater turned pinkish with a look of distaste. He lets her pilot him about, passing him clean clothes from the TARDIS, a hot mug of tea. The Doctor is gone; he's not sure who this creature is, looking out through his eyes right now; occupying the space of his body. Just a passing consciousness, perhaps, dully cataloguing what's occurring. Not feeling. Not thinking.

"Is it soon?" she says quietly, watching his face.

His eyes flicker to the calendar on her wall. Mere days. "Yes."

She lets out a shaky breath. "Good. I wouldn't want to have ages dwelling on it."

He shakes his head. "I must have wiped your memory."

"Don't even think about trying that," she warns, frowning for the first time.

"You don't understand," he snaps. "You came with me. Willingly."

She raises her eyebrows. "And you think I didn't know?"

He nods.

She is quiet for a time, tapping her fingers against her mug as she deliberates. "Was it quick?"

Tears prick his eyes. He closes them tightly; swallows hard. "Yes."

"Were you with me?"

He nods again. You died in my arms.

She shakes her head, expression clearing. "Then you didn't wipe my memory. I went knowing." Shrugs in the face of his hard look. "It's how I want to go, Doctor."

A sick, sinking feeling in his stomach cuts through the layers of numbness. "Don't be ridiculous."

"I'm not," she replies quietly. "Doctor, I've known for a long time how this was going to end-"

He stands up so violently his empty mug goes flying across the room. "No," he growls. "I should have… I should have stopped you."

"Ha, good luck," she scoffs.

"No! You're not… Clara, listen to yourself."

She retrieves his mug from where it has landed, saved from smashing by her thick carpet. "Don't you judge me for feeling this way, Doctor. You don't have the right."

His knees are weak from the thought of it; he sits back down heavily, putting a hand over his eyes. "Clara," he weeps, "look at what I did to you."

"Do you ever listen to yourself?" she snaps back. "You didn't do anything to me. I made myself. Who I am now is down to me."

"No," he says again. "If it wasn't for me you'd have died on Earth. Lived a life."

"No! I wouldn't. If it wasn't for you I'd have lived in the shadow of guilt and grief and died without living at all, full of regret for all the places I never saw. Doctor, you gave me the Universe. I didn't have to take it; I wanted to. Look at me. I've seen stars born and die. There are whole planets in the sky out there that owe their existence to me. I've changed history, I've made it better. Don't you dare try to take that away from me." She sighs heavily and sits back down next to him, taking his hand in hers. "Some things," she says, more softly, "are worth dying for."

"I don't know what to do," he says to his knees, unable to bear her stare for very long. "I am… afraid."

"Of the people that kill me?"

He shakes his head.

"Oh. Well, that's why the TARDIS bought you here I suppose. Stop you from doing something… stupid."

"You're going to die, Clara. How can you be so…? "

"Calm about it?" Another shrug. "We're all dying Doctor." She catches his expression of disbelief. "Okay… lots of people find out they're dying every day. My Mum did. We knew for months. What was growing inside her, what it would say on her death certificate… Knowing means… means you can live more sometimes. Do the things you were always too scared to. Say the things you need to. You know?"

Another shake of his head; this time it elicits a chuckle.

"Of course you don't. I don't think there's a thought enters your head these days that doesn't come out of your mouth. You'll have to keep using those cards I made you…" Silence fills the room for a while, as she considers the dregs of her mug. "Where will you go?"

"I don't know."

"You shouldn't be alone."

"I know."

"What about Vastra?" she suggests. "Jenny and Strax. They kept you in line before."

"Until you," he says simply. He cannot be haunted doubly in this grief.

She bites her lip. "I hate to say it, but Missy?"

"No." Not when he's this close to wiping out a species as it is. There's no telling what they might do together.

"Hmm." She leans back against her sofa, studying the strange swirling patterns that adorn her ceiling. "Stay with me for a while then."

"There isn't-"

"Yes, there is," she cuts him off. "Let's go in the TARDIS, right now. If I'm dying, there's a few places I want to see first. Things I want to do. Let's do it properly this time – a real last hurrah."

He meets her shining eyes and sees for the first time a spark of fear within. For all her brave words she is not ready to go, not yet, and he hasn't got the strength to make her.

"Okay," he says, ignoring the parts of his brain that suggest a hundred thousand reasons why this is a terribly bad idea. "Okay, let's go."