The Doctor walked through the door into the diner below the rusting sign saying 'Drinks and Gas'. He was in the middle of the Nevada desert, and this was the only building he had seen for hours. He edged in the stiff door and made his way across the black and white chequered floor towards a red leather bar stool, holding his red guitar slung down across one shoulder, a large rucksack on the other. The waitress dressed in a sky blue tunic and white apron faced away from him sat on the counter, busy writing orders, although the place was deserted. She had mid-length brown hair, tied up slightly. Music played quietly from a neon jukebox by the front door. She turned around to look at him.

"Hi," she said breezily, hopping down from the counter and turning to face him. "What can I get you?"

"I don't have any money," he said quietly, "but I play." He held his guitar up in his right hand, looking at her through dark sunglasses.

The waitress looked momentarily confused, "Ok." She smiled at him.

The Doctor moved to sit on the red bar stool opposite her, sitting his guitar on his lap and removed his sunglasses carefully to the counter where they made a soft whirr. He set his bag gently on the chair next to him.

"Don't you need to plug that thing in?" the waitress said nodding towards his guitar, leaning lazily on the counter towards him, leafing through the last through pages of a magazine.

"You're English," he said.

"You're not," she replied tensely.

"How did you get out here?" He looked at her with curious eyes.

"Magic," she replied looking back down at the magazine. "Or maybe I went to an airport and caught a plane," she said with the faintest hint of sarcasm.

"Ah," the Doctor sighed with a wide painful smile.

"You?" she asked.

"Oh," he paused, mirroring her earlier tone, "magic." He touched his sunglasses and then the nearby radio crackled to life with the sound of his guitar as he strummed the strings.

The waitress looked on with wonder, "I believe you." She alternated nonchalant looks between him and her magazine. "You been travelling?" she said as she continued reading.

"Yeah, from time to time," he looked at her, hoping for her attention. When she continued reading, he played a few chords and a melancholy melody on his red guitar.

She stopped reading, captured by the tune. "Is it a sad song?"

"Nothing's sad til it's over. Then everything is." He continued, playing the same tune but in a marginally major key this time, and she was clearly captured by it.

"What's it called?" she asked.

He finished the end of his melody. "I think it's called," he paused, allowing the last note to hang in the air faintly, "Clara."

She looked up from her magazine, intrigued, smiled a wide smile, looking at the man with large brown eyes. "Tell me about her."

"I travelled with her," he looked down at his sunglasses lying on the counter. "We had extraordinary adventures, she trusted me to look after her and I let her die. I watched her die."

He paused, trying to think what to say. He thought about his words for ten seconds, a searching look on his face. "Could I have a lemonade?"

The waitress looked confused, suddenly stood up lifting her elbows off the counter and turning round towards the drink bar behind her. She was taken aback by the question, and replied curtly, "of course, you like a cliff hanger don't you?"

The Doctor had a perplexed look upon his face as she turned back with two large clear glasses and set them down on the counter. She poured the homemade lemonade from a large jug into both cups, and placed a red and white paper straw in after. She put two straws in hers.

"What did you do?" she asked tentatively.

The Doctor looked away out of the door. "I waited, a very long time," he paused, exhaling, "to go back to those that took her away and find a way to bring her back."

"Who were they?"

"My people, but in doing that I put myself at risk, I was, I am, a wanted man"

"So you went back to your home town –"

"Something like that," he interrupted her.

"Glasgow?" she enquired, recognising his accent.

"Err, well, sort of Glasgow. Space Glasgow"

"And there was this gang boss who wanted to kill you?" She was hooked now.

"Wanted to, yeah," he said whilst nodding his head intensely.

"Is this a story or did this really happen?" she asked, propping her head up with her hands on the counter. Her eyes were glinting in the lights, wide and curious.

"Every story ever told really happened," he paused, looking down at his glass. "Stories," he paused wearily again, "are where memories go when they're forgotten." He looked up at her, her face exactly opposite and much closer than before, eyes blinking heavy with mascara, and an intrigued smile.

"I killed this, this, gang boss, as you say, in order to get her back. I shot him."

"This Clara person, you must really like her."

"Why do you say that?"

"You killed a man." She let that hang for a second, "you don't seem the type."

"Maybe," he trailed off.

The Doctor interlocked his fingers, looking down at them, lost in his own thoughts.

She looked at him, watching him repressing all his emotions.

The Doctor shook his head. "I took it, the neuro. It was the only way."

She took a sip of her lemonade and played with the straws between her fingers. "So what was it, the thing you took?"

"There was only one way to keep Clara safe. I had to wipe some of her memory"

"Of what?" She continued spinning the straw in the glass unwittingly.

"Of me."

She half smiled back at him, looking straight into his eyes.

"Except it didn't work, it was me who forgot."

The waitress looked puzzled, "It doesn't sound like you've forgotten."

"When something goes missing you can always recreate it by the hole it left. I know her name was Clara, I know we travelled together. I know there was an Ice warrior on a submarine and a mummy in the Orient Express."

The waitress smiled, the lights reflected in her dark brown eyes as she begun to feel moisture collecting in the corners of them.

He leaned back in his chair, "I know we sat together in the Cloisters and she told me something very important, but I have no idea what she said, or what she looked like, or how she talked, or laughed." He shrugged, "There's nothing there. Just nothing."

The waitress's smile had faded, her eyes were about to drop a tear from one side. She swallowed the lump in her throat and without blinking chose her words carefully, to disguise her emotions.

"Are you looking for her?"

He looked to his right, out towards the desert, looked back at her and sighed. "I'm trying."

"She could be anyone, right? You don't know who you are looking for. I mean, she could be me for all you know." She gazed willingly at him.

"There's one thing I know about her, just one thing," he paused again, "if I met her again I would absolutely know."

The waitress choked back the lump in her throat, and tightened her lips to stop her chin giving away her pain.

"I think that we were here, you know?"

The Doctor stood up, turned around and looked down to one of the empty tables behind him. The waitress stood up and turned her back on him, holding the back of her hand up to her face to wipe away a stray tear.

"I think that we were here together once. I'm sure I'll remember. Over here," he held his hands out towards the table, the guitar hanging limply. "Stupid Doctor! Amy and Rory! It was Amy and Rory."

The waitress turned back to him, biting her lip.

"What about your TARDIS?" she said whilst wiping the last of a small tear from the side of her nose, "Have you found that yet?"

"No," he said sharply. "Somebody's moved it from London, still looking." He looked around the diner with confusion, "But this diner, it was always here wasn't it? It used to be on the other side of the hill-"

"Well maybe someone will find your TARDIS for you," she interrupted. She then turned away from him with a smile that gave her dimples but with sad tearful eyes. She walked from behind the counter towards the door at the back of the restaurant. As she did this, the Doctor began playing the melancholy song again in slow strums, and as she placed her hand on the metal handle to pull open the door she paused and turned back towards him.

"What Clara told you in the Cloisters-"

"I don't remember a thing about it," he interrupted, immediately stopping his song.

"You said memories," she paused slightly, emotional through tears but keeping the smile on her face, "become stories when we forget them. Maybe some of them become songs."

He smiled at her kindly and resumed playing. "That would be nice," he said. The Doctor then turned away from her.

She waited, still holding the door, and then said, "Yeah it would be, wouldn't it?"

Clara paused to take one last look at him, tall, backlit again the glass front door leading out to the desert playing his sad tune and it floating through the air. She nodded to herself and then went through the door, keeping her eyes on him until she was inside. Ashildr was there waiting for her. The door shut softly, automatically, behind her as she walked into the gleaming white TARDIS console room where the Doctor had laid on the floor, his memory wiped completely of her.

The Doctor struck his final ringing note as the diner faded around him. He found himself in the desert next to his beloved TARDIS, covered in floral graffiti and a faint portrait of a woman, unable to make it out. He went inside and looked around, the light cascading in from outside. He walked to the back where on a chalk board it was written, "Run you clever boy, and be a Doctor." He changed his jacket and snapped his fingers to close the door, ready to start a new adventure. As he left the graffiti burnt off, leaving Clara's portrait a collection of tattered ashes on the dusty desert floor.

"I don't think I've got the Chameleon circuit working," said Ashildr, inside the console room. "The outer shell might be stuck as an American diner."

Clara grinned cheekily and then paused slightly, "Awesome".

"Still no pulse?"

Clara shook her head neatly. She looked at Ashildr, "Time isn't healing. I am still frozen"

"You know what that means-"

"It means my death is a fixed event, the universe depends on it happening" Clara said over her.

"I'm sorry," Ashildr said looking down.

"Why?" Clara shrugged. "Why does everyone think I am so scared? We all face the raven in the end. That is the deal."

Ashildr looked at her, curious of her fighting spirit.

"If I go back to Gallifrey they can put me back, right? On Trap Street? The moment they took me out?"

"Of course."

"Mind you," she said nonchalantly, "seeing as I'm not actually ageing there's still a tiny little bit of wiggle room, isn't there?"

"Wiggle room?" Ashildr questioned.

"Wiggle room," Clara confirmed quickly. "Yeah, you know, wiggle room."

Ashildr watched her pace around the console towards a different set of controls.

"We could, erm, you know, stop off on the way." There was a glint in Clara's eye.

Ashildr recognised that look, "Where are we going?" she asked, smirking as she said it.

"Gallifrey," Clara replied as she moved a control. "Like I said," she paused, "Gallifrey"

Clara pulled down the vortex manipulator and the entire TARDIS juddered, like a large ship hitting a rock. Ashildr lost her balance, planted her feet and steadied herself to stay upright.

Clara took hold of Ashildr's right hand on the console and smiled broadly at her and then looked up at the white light of the TARDIS. "The long way round."

Ashildr looked up in wonder at the lights and marvelled at them, they were beautiful. She smiled nervously towards Clara, her hand still holding hers. Clara looked back reassuringly as the lights and sounds became blinding and deafening. They were moving, but Ashildr did not know where.