"Always separate, always together, once something has begun it has begun forever."

Concrete Pigeon – Kate Tempest, Sound of Rum (ft. Polar Bear)

Beneath the towering spires of Gallifrey's citadel, something was stirring. Voices. Whispers. Rasping and rattling faintly across the stone walls of the Cloisters; at the edge of the universe, give or take a star system, previously unspoken truths were beginning to echo, growing in volume. Ethereal silently screaming figures slid amongst the dust and dirt, their flickering faces frozen in horror as the whispers gathered, finding their strength until the ground all but shook with the sonorous pealing of a thousand ancient bells.

In the dark, as far from the safety of the lift shaft as he dared to tread, Gastron – newly promoted and feeling all the weight of that extra responsibility on his shoulders at this precise moment – stood, trying to hold his fear back as he sweated profusely under his uncomfortable armour. He wasn't sure what to say. How could they have got it all so wrong? A wraith passed a couple of lengths away and the soldier hated himself for instinctively shrinking back. He thumbed his communicator nervously.

"General?" His voice rang hollowly through the chamber. He felt like a new born; out of place, out of time, out of his depth...

"Report."

"I..." Gastron collected himself. "The wraiths are talking, ma'am." There was no response on the other end. The bells continued to toll, rolling and repeating. It was starting to give him a headache. "Ma'am?"

"All of them?" The General said. If Gastron didn't know better, he would have said she sounded shaken.

"Yes, ma'am." A pause.

"And the bells are still ringing." This wasn't really a question, Gastron knew she would be able to hear them in the background of his transmission. "What are they saying?" She asked, tinny over the communicator. Gastron swallowed. He had known that would be the next question and he wasn't sure he wanted to be the one to answer it. He held his communicator aloft so that the General might hear for herself.

The prodigal son is lost forever, the time of darkness approaches. When all that was will never be and all that never was encroaches.

"That's it, ma'am." He reported. "Over and over again."

"A new prophecy." She stated. Gastron could sense her weariness acutely. "What have we done?"

Gastron closed his eyes for as long as he dared and breathed out heavily. "We could not have known." It didn't sound anywhere close to reassuring.

"Come back up to the Council Chambers," the General ordered. "We're going to have to convene the new High Council, determine a plan of action."

"Yes, ma'am."

Gastron turned his back and made his way to the lift doors, anxiously waiting for them to reopen. He tried to not think that perhaps having a plan of action was the very thing that had got them into this position in the first place. The lift doors quietly whooshed open and Gastron stepped inside.

It was only then that he noticed: the bells and the voices had stopped. Across the Cloisters, amongst the columns, the wraiths had gathered. Twelve of them in total and all stood facing him, ghostly visages shining across the dark. He gulped, torn between stepping forward to face them and praying for the lift doors to close so that he didn't have to.

After a long moment, as though of one mind, the wraiths turned away and slid off into the deepest depths of the crypt.

Clara was fine.

She was fine at first. It felt fitting, almost, their separation.

They had always been impossible, she supposed. Why not take that to its logical conclusion?

Of course, if she stopped to think about it too long, she got that feeling of dread at the thought of him being alone again.

If she stopped to think, she got that painful burning lump in her throat (which seemed to be an emotional rather than a physical sensation, she was surprised to learn) at the unfairness of the universe conspiring to take the memory of her away from him. He deserved to know what she had told him in the Cloisters, didn't he? It had taken them so long to get to that point, even longer for him – god, to the end of the entire bloody universe, he was such a subborn git – and yet the sheer potential of what lengths they might go to once they had finally acknowledged what they were had left the mighty Time Lords of Gallifrey quaking in their more or less immortal boots.

Part of her was curious to find out whether or not they were right. Some days, she couldn't see how they could possibly be a destructive force, the two of them. The Doctor and Clara Oswald. They saved worlds, they didn't destroy them. They saved each other, time and time again. There was nothing that she wouldn't do for him...

...And that was the problem, wasn't it? Because when you put that devotion and that furious possessiveness into the hands of time travellers, you can't guarantee that there won't be collateral damage.

Take Ashildr, for example: Clara shook herself slightly, loosening her thoughts to peer over the console at her companion as the other woman focussed on sticking labels next to every lever and dial in an attempt to learn their functions. Ashildr was a permanent reminder of why they couldn't be; still alive at the end of all things because the Doctor had seen something of Clara in her and had to save her. Call it a dry run in saving Clara herself. It could have all gone spectacularly wrong and, from the sound of some of the stories Ashildr had shared from her diaries, it sometimes, catastrophically, had.

No one was supposed to live forever, no matter how much they were loved. The Viking girl who stood across from her now, whizzing through time and space, shouldn't be there. She'd had no choice in what had happened to her and had suffered beyond the telling of it as a result. Apply that to the whole universe, to all those planets and systems Clara had so far only glimpsed and her new companion became a stark warning of how their narrow-minded selfishness to be together at any cost could end up. How had Ashildr put it over wine one night? They were too young.

Ashildr must have sensed Clara's mood. She stopped her revision and moved around to stand next to her. "Having a wobble?"

Clara smiled, grateful in a way that Ashildr had been there for both times when she and the Doctor had been torn away from each other – she didn't have to explain.

"Just a little one," she said, demonstrating the approximate size of the wobble with her thumb and forefinger. "Perhaps we should avoid landing in Scotland for a bit, if at all possible."

"Even in the twenty eighth century?" Ashildr asked, raising an eyebrow. Clara shrugged, briefly feeling a little pathetic. "...Right," Ashildr nodded. "I'll add it to the list."

"Please don't tell me you've got an actual list," Clara groaned, finally spurring into movement and pulling off her new leather jacket before flinging it on the chair she'd eventually convinced the TARDIS to fabricate.

"I've got a list until we don't need one anymore." Ashildr said, not unkindly. Clara gave a hollow laugh. There might be a list for some time then. She tried to clamp down on her internal arguments for a moment and took a second to look around at the bright white walls of the bare console room. She nudged the solitary chair with her boot and watched as it wheeled over to where Ashildr was stood, worrying.

"Do you think it's time we tried to make some more furniture?" Clara asked as her friend brought the chair to a halt with her heel.

"Oh, absolutely." Ashildr grinned, crisis averted. Clara rubbed her hands together and spun around, taking in the space.

"We're going to need some bookcases."

Halfway across the galaxy and at a completely different point in time, the Doctor furrowed his brow at something in the corner of the room. The ambient lighting in the TARDIS brightened slightly, with a sigh. The Doctor put down his sonic screwdriver and the dilation cog he was trying to resonate, pausing just as he was about to wipe his hands down the front of his checked trousers.

"Use a cloth, for god's sake."

That little voice in his head again, muffled but absolutely and most definitely not his. Maybe it was Donna's. Sounded a bit like her. He smiled.

He pulled an oil covered handkerchief out of his coat pocket, careful to not touch the velvet. He wiped his hands, probably putting more grease on them than he was removing. Happy now? He asked the voice. He harrumphed when no reply came.

He stood for a second, distracted. He'd completely forgotten why he'd stopped resonating in the first place. He shook his head to clear it and gave a shrug. He was just about to pick the sonic up again when the TARDIS gave a little mewl and a light flickered in his peripheral vision. Oh. Okay, then. He wondered over to the side of the antechamber, ducking under some low hanging cables whilst giving his beloved ship an affectionate pat on the column that rose up through the floor and into the ceiling above.

A small stack of well-thumbed books were piled hapharzardly on an alcove that had clearly at some point been repurposed as a shelf. Like he didn't have enough of those in the library or in the console room, for crying out loud. Next to the books, an empty coffee mug. The Doctor picked up the mug and sniffed it. Ikea. Earth, twenty first Century. There had been hot chocolate in it at some point, with some of those little pink marshmallow things that...

His thought dried up. Interesting. He picked up the top book next and turned it over slowly in his hands. A first edition of Pride and Prejudice. It felt new though, as though the text had just been bound a few months prior. The Doctor's right eye twitched slightly. He could feel a familiar fuzziness radiating through the centre of his head, grey and viscous. That bloody neural block again.

He had figured out some time ago that his inability to recall anything about this 'Clara' he had apparently travelled with was the result of a neural block. It took an awful lot of effort to meddle with the memory of a Time Lord – there's not a great deal else other than Time Lord technology or one of those damn worms that would do the trick. And he knew he'd been on Gallifrey, as much as he knew he had no immediate desire to go back. Either way, he had summised that whatever exactly had happened when he had been there, with her, had not been good.

He also knew it was very, very unlikely that anyone would have been able to force him to be blocked that, short of an incredibly cunning trick (which most likely wouldn't work because he was somewhat of a genius and would certainly have seen straight through it), there wasn't really anyone he knew of who would be able to make him take a neural block without a fight. His reasoning led to two scenarios, neither of which he particularly liked to dwell on:

One. He'd given himself the neural block. Two, she had.

He ran an exasperated hand through his hair and turned the book over again to look at the front cover. He had the strangest feeling he knew what he'd find if he looked at the dedication page. It would be so easy to carry on playing detective like those first few weeks after he'd woken up in Nevada. She'd clearly been there when he'd met Jane Austen and who better to describe his mystery companion to him than the world famous author? The TARDIS rumbled what sounded like a warning. "Oh, shut up." He muttered. "Why go to the effort to show me this in the first place if you don't want me to look for her?" But he relented and set the book back down in its place, his fingers bewilderingly stroking the spine of their own gentle accord.

He'd been alone for too long, he decided. His recent confusing jaunt with River had shown him that much, at least. All this brooding and trying to fill in the gaps was just causing him a massive headache. Whatever reason he, or she, had for imposing the neural block, it must have been a sound one and absolutely nothing good could possibly come from investigating further; he would just have to trust his innate instinct on this one. He knew the rules and how important it was that he, of all people, stick to them.

It was time to find someone new to travel with. Yes! That was it. A new companion to impress and dazzle and tease. That would definitely help to clear his head.

The Doctor bounded up the stairs two at a time, his resonating duties temporarily neglected.

Clara tried to not yawn as the trade agreement droned on. They'd been on Aechon for almost two weeks now, and had rather successfully de-escalated a civil war. She should have been proud of their work but right now she was three hours (by her calculation) into a meeting about grain that she had stopped paying attention to roughly two hours and fifty seven minutes ago.

Absent-mindedly, she ran her fingers over the inside of her wrist. Her lack of pulse persisted, of course, but she had a different sensation to enjoy now as she felt the very slightest change in texture on her skin as she skimmed over her recent acquisition. The tattoo was smaller than the one on her neck but no less ominous: an intricate black raven stood out against the pale hue of her flesh. She'd got it on a desert moon a few stops back as a reminder of her duty to return to the Trap Street once she was done with her farewell tour, so to speak.

Naturally, the certainty of her death and her own genuine willingness to go back and face it was hardly something she was going to forget but the more she and Ashildr travelled together, the less inclined she was to face her raven any time soon. She was having too much fun, she had realised soberly as they'd run hand in hand from the Spice Cartel after destroying their stash and reputation in one fell swoop. She had ended up dragging Ashildr into the most hygenic parlour they could find so that she could have something to look at to jolt her out of complacency every now and again. After all, it wouldn't do to rip apart the fabric of time just because she still wasn't quite familiar enough with when to stop.

Ashildr nudged Clara sharply with her elbow.

"Sorry, what?"

One of the High Councillors – T'Pau, was it? That seemed wrong... – was doing the Aechon equivalent of clearing their throat. "We would move that we ratify the treaty with the Shadow Proclamation at once." The TARDIS translated what would otherwise, Clara guessed, have been a combination of clicks and whistles.

She nodded. "Sounds like a good idea to me, Councillor."

Ashildr leaned in and whispered in Clara's ear. "They want us to go with them." Clara took a moment for that to sink in, a strange absence filling the place where her heart would have previously skipped a beat.

"We can't." Clara cursed the way her voice broke as she spoke. The Councillor looked at her with a slight inclination of her antennae. "I'm sorry," Clara continued. "We can't go with you to the Shadow Proclamation. It's just not possible."

There was a murmur of disapproval around the table and Clara squinted at Ashildr in askance.

"As Arbiters of the Peace, we need to be at the ratification or it doesn't come to pass." Her friend advised. In a low whisper Ashildr added, "I know we said we couldn't go anywhere he regularly visits but we have to see this through, Clara. If we don't complete the peace process..."

"I know," Clara whispered back. "But if our timelines become entwined again -"

"We don't know that's how it works." Ashildr said.

"Exactly!" Clara raised her voice accidentally. "We don't have a manual for this, Ashildr. You of all people know what's at stake."

"Keep your voice down. The neural block is still in place, remember? So even if..." Ashildr touched her hand to Clara's shoulder, softly. She didn't have the heart to finish that sentence. "I'm sorry, but we have to do this. We knew there was a risk when we started trying to save planets instead of just sight-seeing. I tried to warn you."

The mutters around the other side of the table were getting louder as Clara stopped to think. Had they made a mistake by coming here at all? For all they knew, the civil war was a fixed point in time and was destined to happen so that the warring Aechon factions could get their grain-based aggression out of their systems. Maybe the very treaty they were going to ratify would fail within weeks and trigger an even bigger war which then had the Shadow Proclamation itself dragged into the middle of it, spreading out across the galaxy...

If Clara had been capable of breathing at that moment, she may have started to hyperventilate.

God, she thought. What I wouldn't give for a Time Lord at my side right now.

She felt the eyes of the room on her and risked a glance at Ashildr's grave expression. In the absence of any certainty about what action to take, she decided to heed the advice she'd held impossibly close to her heart over the last year: Never be cowardly and never be cruel. And if you ever are, make amends.

"Sorry, High Councillor. I misunderstood. Of course we will come with you to ratify the treaty. It would be an honour." She smiled as genuinely as she knew how and felt Ashildr relax next to her.

The whole room let out a roar of jubilation that was so heart-felt, Clara's doubts almost entirely evaporated.

Smoke was pouring from somewhere it shouldn't be, filling the TARDIS control room rapidly as the Doctor stumbled around trying to find the stupid lever to turn on the fans. He heard a hacking cough coming from the floor at the far side of the room.

"Anahson!" Flipping the switch and giving the fans a boost with the sonic before flapping across to crouch next to the young Janus. He gripped her shoulders as she shook, spluttering. "Are you okay?" Concerned grey eyes fluttered over her face, trying to assess the damage.

"I'm fine," she croaked. "Two mouths, twice the smoke..." The Doctor chuckled appreciatively before helping his companion to her feet. Once he was sure she was steady, he rushed back over to the console and pulled the monitor round to face him, sharply.

"What was that?" Anahson asked, brushing herself down and pulling her hood back over her head. "And where are we? Are we still on the Krillitane base?"

"Oh, I hope not." He replied absently as he chewed on his finger, trying to make sense of the readings. "Oh! That's it!" He flung the monitor away with such force it nearly went full circle around the console and Anahson found herself having to step back before it smacked her in the face.

"I am Doctor Idiot once more!" He declared loudly as he skipped down a corridor, leaving Anahson in his wake. He leaped down the stairs in two jumps, picked something up from the antechamber floor and turned to triumphantly hold it out for the bemused Anahson to see.

"You are very rarely not Doctor Idiot." Anahson replied as she stepped cautiously down into a room she didn't think she had ever seen before. The Doctor rolled his eyes. He enjoyed Anahson's company but sometimes the Janus was a little bit too zen for her own good although, that said, if she was making fun of him it definitely meant she was coming out of her shell a little.

"What is that?" Anahson asked, finally taking the bait.

"A dilation cog. I was resonating it a while ago and I got distracted by...something. Must have forgotten to put it back." He pulled a face. Whoopsie.

Anahson walked around the central column of the room, invesigating. The room had a strange feel to it. Normally, she enjoyed her inability to be able to see the Doctor's past and future – it was a relief from the usual influx of emotion she got from most species, more white noise than anything else – but something in this room flared, red and tortured. She hovered next to a small alcove where the sensation seemed to get stronger.

"What does it do?" She asked as her eyes flickered over a pile of suspiciously out of place books.

"Oh, I don't know. Looks as though it stops the console room from filling with smoke at inopportune moments..." The Doctor flipped open a hatch in the floor and lay down to poke his head in. He pulled himself further forward and stretched out his hand to put the cog back in place. It slotted in with a click and he grinned widely, only to gasp out loud as a sharp pain lanced through his temples.

He cried out and slid forward, trying to grab onto anything he could before he fell. A host of images flashed behind his eyes, too quickly to make any sense. Gallifreyan writing, covered in dirt. Hands brushing to clear the patterns. A whispering of voices raised in poetry. A pair of brown, trusting eyes filling with tears. Oh, and the pain...

Anahson flung the book she had picked up back onto the pile and rushed over, grabbing his boots. She leaned forward, grasped his arm and hauled him out of harm's way, grimacing as she noticed the several hundred storey drop into the inner workings of the TARDIS below. The Doctor's hands clutched his head as the pain flared and just as suddenly subsided. She briefly cradled him, trying to project an aura of calm as he struggled against her. Under her hoody, her second face started to animate, eyes opening into the cotton darkness.

"No," the Doctor rasped. "Anahson, stop." He scuttled away from her, trying not to notice the inexplicable tears tracking down his cheeks. "You don't have to do that. Not for me."

They had an unspoken rule that she would never have to use her abilities for him, would never have to expose her true identity as long as they travelled together. He knew all too well what their empathy cost the Janus.

"Sorry," she said, feeling ashamed for some reason. "I can't help it."

"Don't apologise!" He snapped. "I know you can't. But it's a bit daft to go all..." he gestured wildly with his hands, "just because I got zapped by my own stupid ship when I was trying to repair her." He scowled around vaguely at the TARDIS, trying to cover up the pounding of his hearts.

"Is that what happened?" Anahson asked. He was stretching the truth again and they both knew it. She tried to not be too disappointed. After all, there were things she knew that he never could.

"It doesn't matter."

He pulled himself to his feet and closed the service hatch with a metallic thunk: conversation over. "Come on, come on!" Sounding more like himself again, he flapped her onto her feet and back up the stairs. "Let's find out where the emergency landing has taken us. I've not done a good emergency landing for ages. Well, for at least three weeks by your standards."

Anahson allowed herself to be ushered out of the room and the Doctor took the opportunity to wipe his face dry with the sleeve of his jumper. Wherever they had landed, he hoped it was somewhere interesting. He wasn't sure he wanted to have any time to think about the implications of what he had possibly just seen.

The Doctor gave the old police box a reassuring pat as he hid it behind a curtain in what appeared to be a large meeting room. He tucked his key into his trouser pocket and waggled his eyebrows at Anahson to let her know to activate the automatic door. He gallantly indicated for his companion to step through first into the bustling hallway beyond, knowing that the atrium had the most spectacular view, despite its slightly bureaucratic aura.

"The Shadow Proclamation!" He declared grandly, sweeping his arm around in a big arch to allow Anahson the chance to take it all in. Surreptitiously, he licked his finger and waved it in the air to double check that the TARDIS had been right about the date and time; it wouldn't do to run into a previous version of himself here, of all places. His usual trips to the three asteroids that made up the Shadow Proclamation ordinarily heralded some sort of cataclysmic event. It would be nice to have a look around without any extra pressure, for a change.

"If I'm not much mistaken, we're on the Justice Asteroid which is the most boring of the Shadow Proclamation asteroids to be honest but it does have the best catering, so I suppose they try to make up for it. There's a café over there that does a really good carrot cake with organic, non-sentient carrots. Are you hungry?"

Anahson smiled and wandered over to the large windows which stretched from the floor up and away as far as she could see, the other floors of the impressive building visible across various floating platforms. An expansive nebular cast a kaleidoscope beyond the reinforced crystal, spreading across the vastness of space, a swirling mass of colours and half-imagined shapes. It took her breath away.

"Not bad, eh?" The Doctor's brogue was soft as he watched the wonder cross her face.

"My mother came here once," Anahson announced, unexpectedly. "She petitioned the Refugee Commission when she had escaped from her indentured servitude. She was pregnant with me at the time."

The Doctor shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Your mother must have been a clever woman. This would have been the only place that would have even considered helping her."

Anahson allowed her sorrow to burn for a moment before extinguishing it. Whilst her mother had recovered from her reanimation after the stasis chamber on Trap Street, she had only survived for three years beyond their first, half-forgotten, encounter with the Doctor. She had lived too difficult a life for too long...

"What's this?" Anahson asked, blinking rapidly against her memories before pointing at a design that appeared to be frosted into the otherwise transparent crystal of the window. She waved her hand over it and the design lit up, bright orange.

"Ah," said the Doctor, waving his own hand over it and watching the display change. "It's a list of hearings that are happening in the courts today. Look -" he pinched the interactive menu at the corners and enlarged it. "Meeting room Delta Pi for an Adiposian divorce, that one we were just in is reserved for, ugh, the ratification of the Aechon Grain Treaty – very important but very boring that one, although well done them for ending that pointless civil war two decades earlier than I thought they did – and, what's this?" He paused, scrolling through the information that had populated on the next page.

"I thought you wanted carrot cake?"

"This is far more interesting than carrot cake." He gestured for Anashon to read the screen. "A Judoon mercenary being tried for murder in Court Room 7z3 slash b. Death penalty." Double checking the information, the Doctor made a mental note of the court room's location. "Murder? A Judoon? They follow orders, the Judoon. Not known for working independently or using their initiative. Sticklers for the law. That's kind of the point of them. How would someone even build a case against one?"

The Doctor felt his interest pique and gave himself a mental fist bump. A mystery to solve, at last!

"I've always wanted to be in a courtroom drama," he said as he propelled Anahson ahead of him to one of the nearby transporter pads. They stepped onto the mat and he punched the co-ordinates into the control panel on the side. "Keep your arms and legs and faces inside the transporter at all times, Anahson. Oh, and when we get up there, whatever you do..."

He turned to face her as he finished pressing the last button of the sequence, his face deadly serious but his eyes twinkling. "...Don't steal any staplers from the stenographers. They really don't like it when you do that."

The transporter shimmered into life and whooshed them away, drowning out the sound of Anahson's laughter.

"How can we be late?" Clara gasped as she tried to keep up with Ashildr. The other woman swept along the corridor searching for Meeting Room Apple Theta. "Seriously. We're time travellers. How can we possibly be late?"

Ashildr pulled up in front of some large automatic doors that overlooked the atrium and its ridiculously impressive view. Clara almost barrelled into her as she skidded to a halt, resting her hands on her hips.

"You do realise that you're not out of breath at all, yes?" Ashildr smirked. "You're just making a fuss on purpose."

Clara narrowed her eyes. "I don't like being late," she muttered. "Are you sure we're in the right place?"

Ashildr demured. "I used to work here." At Clara's widening eyes, she hastened to add: "Not now. In the future. Maybe a couple of centuries from now, give or take. I always wondered why my biometrics were already in the database."

Clara turned her back and scratched briefly at the back of her neck, a new nervous habit. She gazed out at the nebular, trying to make sense of the myriad of patterns in its mass. "Well, now you know." She said, shortly. She rounded on her companion. "Did you not think that was worth mentioning?"

"I can't always remember until it's too late, Clara. You know that."

"Yeah, there's a lot of that going around." Clara winced as soon as she said it. She was being unfair, and not just to Ashildr. She tried to shake off her bad mood. They had to ratify the treaty, make their excuses to the Aechon and get back to the TARDIS. Then it would be simply a case of picking a planet and keeping their heads down for a while until she regrouped. She was starting to worry that she was getting skittish. Ashildr activated the door to the meeting room before Clara could open her mouth to apologise.

Together, they entered the grand room which was bordered with black velveteen curtains lining each wall and tastefully decorated with ergonomically designed cross-species chairs. The Aechon were already waiting, each faction sat at opposite sides of a long metallic table. Everyone stood as they approached and, despite herself, Clara felt an electric buzz: they had done this, they had brokered this peace.

Not bad for someone who was technically dead.

"Objection!" The Doctor roared, nostrils flaring. There was an audible swivel of heads in the otherwise sombre court room as the inhabitants of the chamber turned as one to stare at him.

Anahson shrank down in her seat, mortified.

The presiding judge, a large humanoid male with a beautiful blue sheen to his skin, peered over his half moon glasses. "The court has not yet begun session, Sir." Even the accused Judoon, shackled behind his force shield, had the grace to look confused.

"Well, that's not my fault," the Time Lord replied, indignant. He pushed past the other open-mouthed spectators in his row of the gallery and made his way down the stairs. "I can't be held responsible for your tardiness, that's just unreasonable." Two armoured Judoon guards blocked his way as he tried to cross the gate over to the area where the startled defence counsel were half stood, frozen as they contemplated fleeing.

"Order, order!" Loud bangs emitted from the sonic gavel as the judge's eyes flushed orange at the indignity of the disruption.

"You can't call order, you've not overruled my objection. Seriously, are you a real judge or did you get your degree online?" He carefully pushed the guards aside and barged through to stand in front of the Judoon defendant. Two electric blasters burred into life as the guards rounded in on him. The Doctor swung around, eyes blazing.

"Put those down, now." The burly guards looked at each other, unsure, before timidly looking up to where the judge was sat. He waved his hand, dismissively – not in his court-room. With a whirr and a blip, the weapons turned themselves off. The Doctor swiftly turned his attention to the accused.

"Hello, what's your name?" The bewildered Judoon went to open its jaws but the Doctor held up a stern finger. "Ah! No. Shush. Didn't your lawyer tell you not to answer any questions before consulting with them?" He span around dramatically to face the benches of scurrying legal teams. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his wallet and held up his psychic paper with a flourish, as though it would somehow feature an explanation for his interruption. And maybe it did, he just didn't particularly want anyone to have time to read it just in case.

"I am your new lawyer!" He crowed, pausing ever so briefly to give Anahson a theatrical wink. "You don't want to be represented by these pudding brains. Look at them. I've been banging on for a good five minutes now, waltzing down here shouting the odds, neutralising the guards' weapons - yes, you heard me boys - and they haven't even tried to find out who I am. It's almost as though..." he leaned conspiratorially against the force shield, which shimmied and rippled under the weight of his elbow. "It's almost as though they don't want you to get a fair trial."

Clara couldn't shake the feeling she'd had since entering the room and it was starting to unnerve her. The electric buzz rippled across her skin again and she shivered. Far from being a rush at their peace-keeping achievements, it seemed to be something else altogether. And it was getting worse. What was it? She looked over her shoulder as the conversation carried on around her, glancing at one of the velvet curtains that was, for some reason, attracting her attention. Was it her imagination or was there a warm draught coming from that part of the room?

A rumble of delighted grunts and clicks turned her head back towards where the trade agreement was finally drawing to a close. The Aechon High Councillor shook mandibles with the Rebel leader and the Administrator of the Shadow Proclamation stamped the document with his official seal. Ashildr stood to congratulate them and Clara rose to her feet to do the same.

Suddenly, an alarm blasted out across the room and all of the inhabitants jumped. A disembodied voice came across over a hitherto unseen loud hailer: "Please remain calm. There has been a minor disturbance in Court Room 7z3 slash b. For the safety of all Shadow Proclamation guests and employees, a sectional lockdown is now in place." Everyone in the room turned to look at the Administrator, who scurried over what appeared to be an intercom by the door.

"It's probably just a false alarm," he hurriedly reassured them. "We've been having a lot of drills recently – new head of security." He turned to speak in hushed whispers to whoever was on the other end of the channel. Ashildr smiled at the Aechon to reassure them. By unspoken agreement, Clara wandered over to where the Administrator was listening for a response.

"Anything we can help with?" She asked, whilst also trying to nosy at whatever information was being witheld. The Administrator held up a finger, as a coded message flashed up on the panel. Only static came through the speaker.

"It looks as though we have a rogue Judoon." The thin, nervous man replied, wringing his hands together. "This is not a drill." He crossed over to where the newly signed agreement sat on the table and delicately picked it up. With utmost care, he carried it across to where the intercom panel still flashed red. With a swipe of his biometric pass, a drawer opened to the bottom of the panel. The Administrator pulled out a crystal tube, carefully rolled the agreement into it and twisted the tube shut. He placed it back inside the drawer, pressed a button and the tube whizzed away.

"What do you mean 'rogue'?" Clara asked, folding her arms across her chest.

The Administrator turned to face the Aechon. "Madame High Councillor, your treaty has been filed and uploaded to the database. You need not fear."

"But what's happening with the Judoon?" Ashildr prompted.

"The Judoon are the...rhinocerousy...species that guard this place, right?" Clara asked Ashildr, not entirely sure if asking that question wasn't a bit rude, or worse. She hadn't come across them before although she remembered the Doctor mentioning having crossed paths with the Judoon before. Something about a hospital on the moon.

"They're mercenaries," Ashildr supplied. "Expert trackers, built in blasters for dispensing justice. They live to uphold the law, which is why the Shadow Proclamation use them." The Aechon delegation bristled as one. They had experienced Judoon justice themselves in the past.

"So what's happening?" Clara asked.

"They're on the rampage, that is all I know. One, at least. Possibly more." The Administrator sounded embarrassed. "Highly irregular. But the lock down is in full effect so please, do not worry. Your delegation will be safe in here."

"Rampage?" Ashildr asked, incredulous. "That doesn't sound like the Judoon."

The Administrator blanched. "The regulations are very clear. We must stay here until the threat has passed. I assure you all, we will be perfectly safe."

"Yeah, we might be," Clara said, nodding to Ashildr, "but what about everyone out there?"

Swiftly, the duo started to case the room for another exit. "There's got to be another way out somewhere around here," Clara said to her companion as she pulled one of the curtains lining the walls to the side. "We can't just sit here and -" She broke off abruptly and stumbled back.

Oh.

There, hidden behind the curtain, stood the TARDIS. It shone brightly in the lights of the room, seeming to tower above her. His TARDIS. She had never seen the ship look more magnificent. And there was that electric buzz again, ringing across her skin and making the hairs on the back of her neck and along her arms stand to attention. Unbidden, Clara reached forward with her left hand and gently stroked the wooden door.

"Clara, no." Ashildr said, stepping forward.

"Hello, old girl." Clara murmured before wrenching her hand back down to her side, her fingers tingling at the loss. She looked at Ashildr, knowing her eyes were impossibly wide. "We need to find another way out of here."

With some considerable effort, she stepped away from the TARDIS and back into the centre of the room where the Aechon and the Administrator were huddled together as though they could protect themselves from the adventurous whims of the two crazed women they'd had the great misfortune to get trapped with during this time of crisis. Clara eyed what looked like an air vent in the ceiling. It was a cliché but sometimes clichés were so for a reason. A glance to Ashildr told Clara she had reached the same conclusion. How to get up there? She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the sonic sunglasses. Popping them on, she gazed up at what seemed to be the main vent and thought, somewhat vaguely, open sesame. There was a metallic click and, before she knew what was happening, something heavy plummeted from the vent, crashed down on top of her and thudded painfully to the floor, crying out.

"Clara!" She dimly heard Ashildr yell.

She recovered quickly once she reminded herself that she wasn't actually winded or in pain. The sonic sunglasses were askew on her face, so Clara frustratedly pulled them off and tried to slide out from under the wriggling weight that still held her fast. As the glasses came off, she found herself with a noseful of frantically curly grey hair. It was soft, it tickled the skin of her top lip and, seemingly unable to control herself, she found herself taking a deep breath to inhale an all too familiar scent. That was just before his bony knee dug into her thigh as he scrambled to get up.

"Doctor, are you okay?" A voice came from up in the ventilation shaft. Clara squinted up and saw a concerned face looking down at them. She struggled to place Anahson at first – she was a few years older than when they had last met – but knew she was right when she saw a matching flash of recognition in the young Janus' eyes. The Doctor managed to get to his feet and flung his arm down towards her, extending his hand apologetically.

She hesitated before reaching up to grab it, her mind whirling. It was him, it was him. She fought the urge to flee as her brain reminded her that she would never kick the habit of adrenaline. Destiny, she thought. The chance to hold his hand again? She'd have to be an idiot to not take it, even if it made everything harder later on. He pulled her up with ease and Clara suddenly found herself stood in his personal space again, after all this time. It felt right. She'd missed this. She couldn't help herself as she turned her face up to his and smiled as confused blue eyes met her own and held her gaze.

"I'm fine, Anahson." That voice. "Stay up there for a moment."

"Well, there's not really any way to get down without breaking anything so..."

The Doctor looked around the room, trying to get his bearings. He didn't seem to realise that he was still holding on tightly to the hand of the woman who had broken his fall. "Sorry to drop in unannounced," he joked, nodding to the horrified Aechon delegation. "You know me, I'll fall for anything. But! This is no time for jokes." He eyed Clara seriously, eyes twinkling. "We cannot underestimate the gravity of the situation."

He opened his mouth as if to continue but stopped, noticing for the first time that he was still clutching her hand. He frowned, grasping her by the wrist and turning her hand over. Something was off. Clara stuttered back a cough as he ran his thumb over the raven on the inside of her wrist. Her throat tightened.

"What..." His voice sounded impossibly low and Clara knew she had to step away, now. She disentangled herself in a rush, looking everywhere but at him. Thankfully, Ashildr had managed to pull herself together and chose that moment to step forward.

"Doctor."

"Me." He scowled but couldn't exactly recall why he had such mixed feelings about seeing the immortal girl again. He decided he was probably over whatever it was and settled on a mildly creepy smile instead. "What are you doing here?"

"We're brokering the Aechon Grain Treaty. But never mind that – what's happening with the Judoon?"

"Oh yes!" The Doctor burst into life, rushing over to the TARDIS to unlock the door as though he'd forgotten why he had been scrambling around in the vents in the first place. "That's just a little misunderstanding. Someone may have accidentally discovered a control subroutine in their armour suits and...unintentionally enchanced it a bit."

There was a squeaking and metallic rattling from up in the vents as Anahson tried to shimmy forward. "Doctor, how many do we have?" She called. The Doctor had disappeared into the TARDIS but the door was still swung open as clattering, banging and scraping noises, accompanied by the occasional gruff babbling filled the air. Clara took the opportunity to compose herself; she walked over to Ashildr and shared a concerned look. The other woman gave her elbow a quick squeeze of solidarity.

The Administrator decided it was time to reassert some control over the room. "Sir, I trust you have the appropriate papers to be navigating our ducts in such a manner?" He called into the TARDIS, as he tried to peer around the door. "This area is in lock down. You are not supposed to leave your quarantined zone." The weedy man scuttled backwards to half hide behind the Aechon High Councillor as the Doctor loomed out of the TARDIS, pulling a large box.

"Who are you, again?" The Doctor asked, his lip curling in a snarl. Without waiting for a response, he darted back into the TARDIS and brought out a ladder. He carried it over to the air vent and carefully lent it against the opening. The Administrator flustered and pretended he had some urgent business back over by the communication panel.

"What can we do to help?" Ashildr stepped forward as The Doctor crouched down to get some items out of the box. He glanced up at Anahson, who nodded.

"We need to round up the affected Judoon," he explained. "They're not responsible for their actions but they're dangerous, very dangerous. One had its armour corrupted, giving it orders to become an assassin. When I tried to trace the signal, some kind of failsafe triggered and the order passed on to all the other Judoon in the radius..." He ran a weary hand through his hair and Clara could sense he was feeling guilty. She wanted to tell him it wasn't his fault but, with a glance up to where his current companion was patiently waiting, she knew that wasn't her role any more. "Apart from the original target is already dead so now they're a bit confused and...shooty."

"So what's the plan?" Clara asked before she could stop herself. The Doctor looked at her and tilted his head to the side, curious. He held up one of the items he'd pulled from the box: it was a stolen traffic sign from Earth emblazoned with the words 'NO ENTRY'.

"Okay, not exactly what I was expecting," Clara said, bemused.

"The Judoon are sticklers for rules," Ashildr said, getting the plan quickly. "They adhere to the law to the point of pedantry so they will yield to these signs, assuming they're not completely corrupted. And then what?"

"We're wasting time standing around here chit-chatting," the Doctor breezed in a tone that Clara knew meant he had absolutely no idea what his endgame was. "But we could use your help. The sooner we get them rounded up, the better. There's an awful lot of innocent people in harm's way." He climbed the ladder and started passing some of the signs up to Anahson.

"Of course we'll help." Ashildr turned to the Aechon. "I hope you don't mind, High Councillor. We'll return with you once we're done. Please, stay safe in here for now. We'll let you know when you can go home." The Aechon, with their unwieldy bodies, would be next to useless even attempting to climb a ladder. The High Councillor bowed to Ashildr respectfully.

"I shall remain to keep watch over the delegation." The Administrator declared, grandly.

Ashildr was already half way up the ladder, following The Doctor into the vent. Clara looked back at the Aechon as she waited to ascend. "Oh, Administrator, I wouldn't expect anything less." With a deep breath, Clara started to climb the ladder. Part of her was screaming that by joining in this adventure with the Doctor she was about to make a grave mistake and seriously jeopardise everything they had agreed upon on Gallifrey - her hand trembled as she moved it up to the next rung - another part of her, however, by far and away the bigger part, couldn't stop the excited grin that seemed to have plastered itself across her face.

Bring it on.