It hadn't really been her choice to be equipped with a Soulmate Timer, her friends had thought it would be a fun birthday present – three months worth of time – but the moment they'd activated it, she'd regretted the decision to go along with it all because… it'd been blank. The unfortunate product of being one of the firsts to have the device was that not many people in the world had them yet and she'd sighed on the drive back, looking at the strip attached to her wrist.

Stuck there for three months because she agreed.

"What's the harm, Clara," Nina had lamented, "If it never activates, it's not your money; doesn't waste time; doesn't interrupt your life in any way – but if you get a number, you know, it's something."

Clara had nodded and smiled and the group of them had gone out for ice cream, occasionally giggling when they caught her turning over her wrist to look at the null displayed out. After a week she'd stopped looking at it consciously, but people in the streets asked her all the time and she found she'd inadvertently become a walking billboard for it.

"Oh, dear, I should have my son get one – so many girls running around looking for their soul mate while the boys are on about a football match," they'd tell her. And no one believed her when she said it'd been a gift; that it wasn't as if she were actually longing for some man to sweep her off her feet.

Clara had never been that sort of woman.

Of course she grew up listening to her mother's retelling of how she met her father. She grew up rolling her eyes at them as they kissed over dinner, or stared just a bit too long into each other's eyes moments after either of them had finished their conversation – as if it continued on in the looks they gave one another. Clara watched her parents bicker playfully about dinner or the government or the state of the world or who left the sock in the living room while a good lot of her friends were watching divorces and splitting their time between houses. But she didn't consider herself a romantic because of it – she simply considered herself blessed to have witnessed true love.

Love, she knew, that couldn't be counted down to with a clock.

But when she woke up one morning and glanced down at the strip that sat atop her wrist and saw that it blinked a number back at her, she gasped and held her hand as though it were about to fall off. Except, she frowned, the number couldn't possibly be right. It listed six thousand years, three months, and two hundred and thirty two days into the future and she tapped at it to see if it would correct. Clara lifted her phone to her ear and she dialed, then held it between her ear and shoulder as she waited, listening to Nina groggily ask her if she was dying.

"Clara, I swear, if you're not about to pop off, I don't want to hear…"

"It activated," she interrupted quickly, "But Nina, I think it's malfunctioning – either that or someone's pulling a joke because the date, it's… impossible."

Nina sighed and Clara could hear her sucking at her teeth lightly before asking, "Impossible how?"

"According to this, I'll meet my soul mate in six thousand years."

The light laughter on the other side of the line as Clara stood and made her way to her closet to begin looking for an outfit, brought a soft chuckle to her own throat. Nina allowed, "Well, you'll have time to prepare."

"Build a time machine, more like," Clara spat in amusement.

"Maybe it's gotta adjust or something," Nina offered and Clara could hear her chewing on breakfast, listening to her own stomach grumble angrily at her accusingly.

Clara sighed and plucked a blue dress with flowers out and went to drop it down on the bed, telling her friend slowly, "You're probably right. Call you later?"

"After coffee would be preferable."

"First cup, or third?"

"Fourth," Nina snorted.

Clara pulled the phone away from her ear and hung up, smiling and tossing the phone onto her bed to go down for breakfast, pulling Artie out of the jar of cookies and frowning when Angie gave her a frustrated scowl. The girl came to her side and caught the date on her timer and mumbled, "You'll be dead a few thousand years before that bloke comes along – fat lot of good it did, getting that installed, apparently your soul mate is a necrophiliac."

With a sigh, Clara turned and watched Artie's face contort with understanding before the boy offered, "I'm sure it's just knackered, Clara – maybe you bumped it too hard on the counter, or it got water in it from a shower."

She smiled, hand running over his head before she handed him a plate filled with cereal and ushered him to the table, glancing back at Angie to argue, "Attitude like that, you'll need to pay a necrophiliac to come near you after ten thousand years."

Artie chortled as he fell into his seat and Clara stared at the girl who rolled her eyes and took her pop tart up the stairs with a groan. Clara smiled at the boy she sat next to, plucking an apple from the bowl at the center of the table to take a large bite from it before glancing down at her wrist and shaking her head. The time had changed, and this time, just as amusingly, it read an impossible date. Eleven thousand years in the past.

"Now he's the dead one," Clara groaned, showing Artie with a sigh, "I think it's defective."

He'd heard about them, a fad that swept the Earth for a few hundred generations before they finally began to chuck them to the bin, determined to make their own fate. The way it should be. But he was curious; he always did the silliest things out of curiosity. And the notion of a soul mate seemed silliest of all, but… he was curious. Was it possible to have a soul mate and how did one measure the time between installation and when one would meet that person?

It measured biometrics and he presumed it took in heart rate, the effects of coming into contact with the pheromones of others, and, possibly, small psychic pulses from the synapse fires in the mind. Harmless to attach, just as easy to remove – small shock of electricity latched or unlatched the probes that dug deeply into the skin, probes that sat painlessly attached to nerves and muscle. And he watched with fascination as the thin wires bore into his skin, seamlessly bonding the paper-thin tag onto his skin.

The Doctor grinned a he lifted his wrist up from the table as the nurse checked something off on a paper and left the room. He excitedly showed his timer to Amy, who chuckled in response as she glanced sideways at Rory, who seemed more interested in the surgical equipment. Quickly uncrossing his legs, the Doctor straightened his bow tie and fell off the chair into a standing position.

"Honestly, Doctor," Amy laughed, "A Soulmate Timer?"

"Simple experiment," he pointed to tell her, "How can I study how they work and if there's anything malicious behind them if I don't get one installed."

Rory nodded slowly and offered, "Just surprised you didn't have one of us get it installed."

The Doctor looked at him curiously and asked, "Why would I do that?" He wagged a finger between them, "You've already found your soul mates."

Amy stepped forward, small bop to her head as she told him quietly, "Are you saying you haven't, Doctor?"

For a moment they stared at one another knowingly. The Doctor had done a pretty good job of avoiding talking about his past, but he had mentioned he'd been a parent and he knew Amy hadn't forgotten – she'd simply chosen not to ask again. If he'd been a parent, he'd obviously loved someone he should consider to be his soul mate at some point in his long life.

He smiled slyly – Wouldn't you like to know?

Amy raised an eyebrow – I know you aren't going to divulge, even though I asked.

It was a simple battle between them and he always won by diversion, or maybe, he thought with a hidden smile, he lost by it.

He twisted his left wrist up to look at the device calculating quietly, "I'm saying I needed one installed and it seemed less damaging if it were installed on me."

As he moved forward, he heard Rory whisper, "He's saving us the heartache if one of us gets it and sees we haven't met our soul mate yet."

"What, you mean if we're not soul mates?" There was a light slap against to the man's chest as Amy hissed, "We are soul mates, moron."

The Doctor smiled, listening to Rory defending himself behind him just as he brought his wrist up again and stared curious at it. "A negative six thousand years," he turned to tell them, seeing the end of a kiss and grimacing before he pointed with an awkward smile, "According to this – according to something seemingly immeasurable – my soul mate is in the past."

"Doctor, this is ridiculous; you don't even know if that thing works," Amy raised her eyes to tell him.

Rory nodded, "Yeah, Doctor, it could be one of those things; you know, those things," he looked to Amy before continuing, "Where the suggestion is more powerful than the actuality."

"You're saying I'll meet my soul mate because it tells me I've met my soul mate – not because that person is actually my soul mate," he grinned and nodded his head, "You've been travelling with me too long if you've become that cynical."

"Cynical," Amy retorted, "I came aboard cynical."

Rory gestured at her with a nod, "She did."

"Oi," she threatened to backhand him in the arm, watching him shrug as she looked back to the Doctor and asked knowingly, "Do you really think there's something dangerous going on with these timers? Or did you just need affirmation?"

Removing his Sonic to scan the device on his wrist, judging that it wasn't interacting with him in any negative way, the Doctor peered up as Amy approached and he asked quietly, "Amelia Pond, what would I need affirmation of?"

She wrapped a hand around his neck on either side and touched her head to his delicately, whispering, "That someone out there is capable of loving your soul."

The Doctor grinned, and then shifted away, pocketing his Sonic and clapping his hands together, "You two, due for a bit of a holiday."

"You're deflecting," Amy told him with a roll of her eyes.

"Deflecting?" Rory asked.

Head drifting back to meet Rory's eyes, Amy called, "Rory, due for a bit of a holiday, aren't we."

"Ok," Rory pointed, "Now you're deflecting."

The Doctor smiled gleefully and moved out of the room in a rush towards his Tardis, listening to the duo who followed, still conversing under their breaths about him. He could tell by the way they occasionally glanced up as he worked the controls and the Doctor palmed the console, shifting his wrist slightly as he lead them through the vortex and as they went, he watched the digits flip erratically until he landed and they stopped.

His soul mate now stood ten thousand years ahead of him.

Clara jotted down the numbers when she noticed them change. A hundred years in the past, a million years in the future – a result the device objected each time with a deafening beep, because the result required it to alter its display too much, required it to ignore the logic of reality just a bit more than it was programmed to accept – and each time she smirked. She imagined, somewhere out there, was a man tinkering with his own device, one accidentally linked to her own.

Both defective; both somewhat dejected because of it.

She'd asked if it was possible hers had been inadvertently linked to a test model, when she finally went back to where she'd had it installed to ask them what the error was. "No," they'd laughed, "It's working just fine."

Of course, they didn't answer her questions about just how it worked, or whether she could have them simply trace the results to the other timer they'd obviously given out that was malfunctioning in the same way. Because it had to be malfunctioning.

"Clara, if they say it's working, it's got to be working," Artie offered as she stared at it displaying that now told her that her soul mate had to be in 1207. She chuckled as she ruffled the boy's hair and then sent him off to his room to get himself ready for school.

With a frown, she settled herself in front of her computer and flicked it on. Maybe, she wondered, someone else with the same experiences would be putting their tale online; maybe, she wondered, someone else had a timer telling them she was 806 years in their future. Except the internet offered her an error; the same as the night before and she groaned, then shot a finger in the air and reached for her purse, digging through until she found the helpline she'd been given by a woman in the shop.

Clara dialed, making sure Artie and Angie were ready for school as Mr. Maitland readied himself for work and eventually found herself arguing with a man who shouted at her. The family had left just as she hung up the phone in frustration, hearing a small beep from her wrist. Clara glanced down to see the device had gone blank and muttered, "Oh, for heaven's sake."

And then came the knocking at the front door and she could see the odd man standing just outside, through the glass. The strip on her wrist offered a set of low beeps she ignored as she moved down the steps and greeted him, flattening the device against her waist to mute the sound. A monk, she laughed, a monk with silly hair and an oversized chin and her name. The door slammed in his face and the beeping stopped.

She spoke to him again through the intercom, and then she was talking to a girl on the steps, a girl who turned her head and blasted her with some sort of bright light. A light that sent enough of a jolt to the timer on her wrist, detaching it and it was abandoned on the ground as the Doctor lifted her off the carpet and carried her to her bedroom.

Clara found it one day, rummaging through a drawer looking for a proper screwdriver to fix a bookshelf in the room that had been built in the Tardis for her. A strip of familiar thin plastic, discarded to time, and she held it in her hands while considering it as she glanced at her own wrist curiously – she couldn't even remember how hers had come off. And when she laid it on the console in front of the Doctor, he'd chuckled.

"Soulmate Timer," he offered, "Should have just been taking off when we met."

Clara nodded slowly, "Yeah," she uttered quietly before admitting, "Had one for a few months, but it kept acting up – date kept hopping about madly; guess it must have fallen off at some point." Clara smiled up at him, remembering then when it had, and she asked with narrowed eyes, "Why do you have one?"

"Thought I might…" he trailed, glancing sideways at her, his brow coming together in confusion before he finished, "Figure out how it worked."

Tucking her bottom lip between her teeth, Clara picked it up again and settled it in her palm, then she questioned nervously, "Did you ever figure it out?" Then she added, "Did yours ever work?"

The Doctor watched her a moment as she looked down over the strip, a small smile playing on her lips as though she had some secret and when she looked up, he tucked his own away, telling her sadly, "No."

His device had gone off quietly here and there, unexpectedly sometimes and surprisingly at others. Looking into the eyestalk of a Dalek just as he explained to the woman inside that she'd been converted; talking to a bar maid in an alley who piqued his interest with a snowman; speaking quietly to a young girl on a set of swings who sent him on a quest for solace that landed him in monk garb. It didn't dawn on him that it might mean something until he was bent in front of a smirking four year old who'd just knocked him in the head with a soccer ball.

"Think you're beeping, mate," Dave Oswald offered, gesturing at the space where his palm rested against his thigh as the Doctor smiled down at the child staring deviously up at him.

Standing straight, he glanced at the strip on his wrist and it beeped one final time, then went blank and he nodded, a chuckle escaping him as he looked back down at the girl still watching him. He pointed at her and then grinned and gave her parents an awkward laugh before turning, hearing them muttering between them about his oddity, but the small girl chimed in brightly, "I rather like the purple man, mummy."

His soul mate, he whistled as he made his way back into the Tardis.

Impossibly, he laughed to himself.

Clara Oswald.