Occasionally I switch the Doctor's pronouns from she to he during flashbacks. These are in italics. The Doctor's thoughts are also in italics, as well as emphasis. Sorry for any confusion.
She doesn't know how they got here, but she knows this place.
"Doc?" She hears Graham ask, but it's distant now. Her skin is on fire, she's burning up, her flesh is charred and she can feel it's hands on her, it's breath in her face, and the buzz of flies-
"Right." She turns around, a painfully fake smile plastered on her face. "Let's get a shift on. I know this place too well."
She does. She knows how the walls move, how the rules work here. And she sees the portrait of Clara-she can remember now, the regeneration knocked a few things back into place-hanging on the wall, cracked and old.
4.5 billion years old.
It's not real, she tells herself. It's not real and you know it. Because there is no reason for the Time Lords to bring her back to this place.
She hopes. Because she doesn't know if she can do it again.
"Where are we?" Yaz asks, and the Doctor's throat clenches.
"Someone's trying to get my attention, so they somehow built a replica of a place I've been before. I don't know why, or how, so let's figure it out, yeah?"
It's overly simplified, she knows. They're going to want more information, but the screen is on and it's coming closer.
"There's something coming for us. Follow me, we need to get to the other side of the castle."
The four pick up their pace, following the Doctor blindly, filled with so much trust.
"Doctor? What's going on? What's coming for us?"
Yaz, always with the questions.
"I'll explain when we're safe. The rules here aren't the same as they are out there."
She glances to the nearest screen as they round the corner, and sees the portrait of Clara in its view. She narrows her eyes.
That was far too close.
It takes a while to get to the other side of the castle, but eventually they reach the dining room. And suddenly she's-
Sitting there alone, the spoon drops while his heart does, and he stands up, narrowly escaping its clutches-
"Sit down. Eat. We don't have much time." She's dropped the mask of whimsical happiness, and the companions seemed to have noticed this. It would be hard not to.
"Doc, what's going on?" Graham questions her, looking around the castle.
"This place can't be real. If the people who trapped me here originally were going to do it again, they wouldn't pick somewhere that I know how to escape. This is meant to scare me." The Doctor thinks out loud, pacing back and forth.
"What are we running from?" This time it's Yaz speaking.
The Doctor slows down; stops pacing.
"There are rules here," she begins, "It moves slowly, but it never stops. Wherever we go, whatever path we take, it will follow. Never faster, never slower, always coming. We'll run. It will walk. We will rest. It will not.
"And I don't mean to intimidate you, really, you're my fam, I wouldn't do that, but you need to know the stakes. I can get us out of here, but I need your trust."
"You have it." Ryan, who's been oddly quiet up to this point, speaks up.
"The screens show where it is. It'll come here slowly"-
-Always so slowly, never stopping. Why is he here? Why won't it stop?
Wrong question-
"The only way to keep ahead of it is to keep moving. It takes almost exactly eighty-one minutes for it to go from one end of the castle to the next. That's when you sleep, eat and plan. And if it manages to catch you, you have to make a confession-
-I'm scared of dying. I just realized that I'm actually scared of dying-
"-Something you've never told anyone before. That's the only way to win here.
"On the other hand, this isn't the real place, it can't be the real place, so that means it might not want information. I don't know if it'll freeze up once you confess, so best to just avoid it entirely, yeah?"
The companions let her words hang over them, contemplating and listening and learning. That's something she's always loved about humans, they learn fast and can run pretty fast too.
-x-
They haven't gone to sleep, it's not time for them to, the Doctor knows that. But she also knows that as time goes on, their bodies will be begging for rest. The intervals-
-Click
Click
Click
Click
She's counting down, she's always counting down, but it's been a long time since she did it outside her head-
-won't be a long enough time for them to get proper sleep. And once the stop sleeping, they won't be quick and death will be right around the corner.
This place wasn't designed for humans; it was designed for her.
These companions have been in bad places, there's no denying that, but compared to what Amy, Rose, Donna, Clara, and all the others faced…
They're new, they haven't seen those things yet.
And now they were in one of the most horrifying places she's ever gone.
Not only that, but who knows if the rules are the same. What if it isn't eighty-one minutes after all?
What if there's no way to stop it, what if it's faster, what if-
She has to stop. There's no time to think about that. There are more present issues right now, like escape.
Last time she'd escaped it had taken 4.5 billion years.
Assuming there was Azbantium at all, she figures a few extra hands to cut down the time would help.
But 4.5 billion years…even cut down…she couldn't ask that from them.
So she thinks of a plan.
-x-
-2 minutes
Click
Click
Click
Click-
She checks the screen, and she knows exactly where it is. She knows which hallway to take to avoid it.
"Okay team, fam, gang? Ah, work in progress. It'll be here in a few minutes, so it's best to get a head start now, yeah? Follow me."
The team gets up wordlessly, all too trusting, and follow her down the corridor. They stare down through the glass to their right, overlooking the dining room. Below them, it wanders.
I's right there. So close, through the glass. She's seen this before, every time she came to the dining room on each loop.
And there's buzzing, the flies, god, she hates them so much.
And its cloak, and its hands.
No, its claws-
-its claws on his face, burning her flesh
Charring him, holding him tight, and the flies-
Keep it together, she hisses to herself.
She knows where she needs to go, though she desperately doesn't want to. Room 12. That's her destination, in the end. Isn't it always?
And who knows, maybe she won't need to go there after all. Time will tell.
"Where are we going?" Yaz asks her.
"To the bottom floor of the next tower, there's something I need to see."
"Which is?" Ryan speaks up.
"How many skulls there are."
-x-
It takes them a while to make it to the room they're looking for, but she remembers it vividly. She dried off here after she fell-
He smashes the chair through the window
Glass shattering
The smell of salt
The density of the air
And he's falling
Clara
Clara
He hits the water and-
No time to reminisce. It took them long enough to get here, and she's counting the minutes down. 81...80…
Click.
Click.
Click.
"Alright then! You lot, stay put, I'll be back in two minutes." She strips her coat off, putting it in front of the fire.
"Oi! Where are you going?" Graham exclaims as she kicks off her boots and bends down to take off her socks.
"For a swim!" She says cheerfully, trying to distract them from the severity of the situation.
"A swim? Now?"
"Nothing like a good swim."
And with that, she opens the door to see the water. She knew it would be there, but her heart drops.
She wanted to be wrong. Just once, about this place. Because if she's wrong, it means she isn't in the confession dial. Because she can't be, right?
But every time she knows exactly where to go, what to do, how to win. She hasn't been wrong once so far.
God, just please, once, let her be wrong.
-x-
She dives down, feels the familiar splash-
Can't I just sleep?
Question one. What is this place?
Do I have to know everything?
How are you going to-
Clara, I can't always-
Win?-
-She opens her eyes, and there are skulls everywhere.
Just like before.
Maybe she is back there, maybe she is-
No, no time to think like that.
She swims down, the water gets cooler as she gets lower, and the swim is painstakingly familiar.
She grabs a skull, and swims up, higher and higher and higher, till she reaches the surface.
-x-
After getting out of the water, she renters the room and strips off her blue shirt, leaving her just in her white undershirt and pants, setting the skull down for just a moment.
"Doctor!" Yaz shouts. "Why would you do that?"
"I needed to see something." She sets herself down in front of the fire, hand on the skull.
"What did you need to see?"
"How many skulls there were in the water." She answers simply, still shivering.
"Why?" Ryan asks.
"Because now I know a few things. See this?" She points to the skull, then her nose. "Not the same nose. But I do remember that nose, the nose on the skull. I've seen this skull before, no many, many times before."
"Noses? Doc, what are you on about. What do you mean by knowing this skull?"
"What I'm saying is that this isn't my skull." The Doctor concludes.
"Well of course it's not, you aren't dead." Graham says with a raised eyebrow.
"There's ways of getting someone's skull without ending them. Killing someone and ending them are two different things." The Doctor says cryptically.
"You know who this skull belongs to?" Yaz cuts in.
"Oh, yeah. Definitely, there's no mistaking it."
"Who?"
The Doctor goes quiet for a moment, and then shakes her head. "Not important."
"You said you've been here before…?" Ryan prompted.
"A long time ago, some people imprisoned me here to get me to confess. I escaped, course, but I was here…a long time. I originally thought this was a replica, but if it is a replica…then it's perfect. Everything, perfect. But they don't want answers! I don't think so, anyway. They got all the answers they needed."
"So why are we here?" Yaz asks, looking around the room.
"I don't know…but I do know where to go next."
"And that is?"
"The top of the tower during night. I need to see the stars."