She remembered reaching for her helmet, her fingers brushing over the smooth, hard plastic and then darkness. Nothing. Almost like a switch had been flipped and all the lights in her world just went out. Clara had fallen unconscious before. She knew the sensation of reality slipping away and being unable to hold on. This time was different. One moment she was about to climb onto her bike and the next she opened her eyes to a stark room, devoid of anything but the chair she was sitting in and one other impossible object.

The TARDIS. It stood silently almost two meters away from her, positioned just right so that it would be the first thing she would see. It was still and uninviting, almost … angry. Every inch of it seemed to tell her to stay away. Clara tore her eyes away from it and looked down at her chair. She was not strapped into it but she saw that the straps hung from the metal arms that her own hands laid on lightly. This chair had been constructed for the sole purpose of holding someone still against their will. She swallowed hard, a wave of unease rising through her. Even though she was not confined to its grip now, she knew that it was only a matter of time.

The Doctor did not bring her here. Though grumpy and difficult in this latest incarnation, he was not deliberately cruel. She was not here for the Doctor. She was here because of him. Was he alright? Did he know she was here? Slowly she rose from the chair and approached the TARDIS. Her hand reached to touch its wooden surface.

A voice erupted from the silence behind her. "Clara Oswald, you are not the first person I have taken captive." The level of malevolence in the woman's voice paralyzed her. Clara couldn't move. She could not turn around. "I have had a great deal of experience in identifying those who will be of use to me, obtaining them and extracting what I need." The woman approached, the click of her heels echoing in the empty room, her voice growing louder as she drew closer.

Clara was frozen with fear as she felt the woman stop directly behind her. "Everyone upon opening their eyes and discovering their fate says the same thing." The woman spoke now in nearly a whisper close enough that Clara could feel her breath on the back of her neck. "Every time. Every instant. Everyone until you. 'What do you want from me?' You didn't ask me that, Clara, and I think I know why." The woman stepped into Clara's view. She was tall and elegant. Her suit was expensive, Italian and very feminine. Her blonde hair was swept up in a severe coiffure and her lineless face made it difficult to determine her age. Her ice blue eyes held nothing but malice as she spoke. "You already know. You know exactly what I want from you."

Clara swallowed hard before finding her voice. "You won't get it," she said in a tone too small to be defiant. She thought of all of the times when the Doctor had frightened her, robbed her of hope, broken her heart. Her mind shot her the image of a grated door falling between them as her left her behind, the words, 'Sorry, too slow,' echoing in her ears. She had to believe that she could not be used against him. She had to believe that he wouldn't come for her. "You can do what you want to me. It won't matter. He's left me before."

The woman laughed softly as if explaining something to a small child. "You don't understand. He's not going anywhere." She stepped towards the TARDIS but would not reach for it as if her touch was forbidden. She looked to its mass with something akin to desire. "I have spent the better part of a decade amassing the technology to build this tachyon cage. Your beloved Doctor and his fathomless machine are immobilized in a single moment in time and space." The woman turned on Clara now, her wickedly beautiful face contorting into something fearsome. "I don't need to back him into a corner by threatening you. I don't need to force his hand. His hand is forced. He is trapped. All I need for you to do is open the door. "

Clara tried to fill her mind with dark thoughts, something, anything that would make her seem indifferent but she couldn't. Trapped. The Doctor was trapped. She couldn't see him. She didn't know for sure. Before she could clamp her lips shut and be silent, the question spilled out, "Is he alright?"

The woman's cold voice whispered right at her ear. "Open the door and find out."

Clara pulled back her hand, only now realizing that she had reached for the TARDIS' door. That was close, ridiculously so. She folded her arms around herself keeping them tightly confined from acting on their own.

"He's become Schrödinger's cat," the woman remarked with amusement. "Theoretically alive and dead at the same time." She laid her hands on Clara's shoulders to give her a literal push to do what she wanted. "Only you can release him from this uncertainty."

Without conscious thought, Clara untwined her arms and reached for the TARDIS again. Watching herself act with so little thought filled her with a horrifying chill. "No, no, no," she cried. She collapsed in upon herself, covering her face with her hands. "What's wrong with me?"

"Don't worry," the woman said without a hint of reassurance. "While you were unconscious I administered a drug to you." Clara could almost sense the twitch of a smile in the cold voice. "Experimental, of course."

All reason began to slip away then and Clara didn't even try to hold on. The woman continued to speak of the drug she feared would bring her failure. "The first dosage was merely in aerosol form." Hands wrapped around Clara's upper arms, pulling her body up and back. She was only barely aware that she moving away from the TARDIS. "I have found that this substance can make its victim quite suggestible." Despair seeped into what was left of her rational thoughts as the hands pulled and then pushed her into the chair she had first awoken in. "You came amazingly close to achieving your goal with just a breath of the chemical. Imagine what you will do when it is injected directly into your blood stream." The chair's straps came into play then and Clara felt a needle slide almost effortlessly into her arm. She wanted to scream but she had to hold onto what sanity she could. She didn't know if the Doctor was alive, if he could hear her. She wouldn't scream for him. She was all that stood between the evil woman with the cold voice and him and the power that the TARDIS could bring. All she had to do was keep herself from opening a door.

AOSDW AOSDW AOSDW

Platform One. The year 5.5/Apple/26.

The Doctor had wanted to impress her. That was a fact he wouldn't admit to himself. Rose Tyler was young and pretty and she had a mind that was open to so much possibility. He needed someone, a companion but he did not understand how he had come to that conclusion. It was almost as if he had seen how much better he could be if he had someone with him.

He glanced down at the psychic paper he had used in place of an invitation. For a moment, so fleeting he nearly missed it, a message appeared and just as quickly vanished.

'I don't know where I am.'

He furrowed his brow slightly as he regarded the message.

"He's blue," Rose commented beside him. Her statement about the greeter had elements of confusion, and fear and just a tiny proportion of wonder.

He tucked the psychic paper back into the inside pocket of his leather jacket. The message could wait.

He needed Rose. He wasn't sure why but he was sure that watching her experience the universe through her fresh eyes was something he couldn't miss.

AOSDW AOSDW AOSDW

The Library

Dr. River Song had picked up her TARDIS blue diary and turned away from him. The Doctor knew he had pushed too far but reaching for the book with her history and his future had been an impulse he could not suppress. Frustrated with his situation, his escalating lack of control, he followed her. Forcing calm into his voice, he said, "You used the psychic paper to contact me."

She looked up at him, still reeling from some inner turmoil. "Yes, I did and it worked," she replied trying to lessen the sting in her voice. "You came."

The Doctor reached into his inside pocket for his neatly sleeved psychic paper. "Have you done that before?"

Her brow furrowed slightly as she realized their interaction had shifted gears. "Never so early in your life," she stated then added, "Why do you ask?"

The Doctor flipped the psychic paper open and then closed it again. "I've gotten a message," he said quietly. He opened the paper again, staring at it thoughtfully. "I've never been able to figure out where it came from." He closed it again and met her gaze. "Whenever I use my psychic paper, it shows up and then disappears."

River Song realized at that moment that this was the first time he had told anyone about this. Instinctively she reached for his hand. "What does it say?" she asked.

"'I don't know where I am,'" he said.

River could see his worry. Not sudden. He had had this worry for a long time. A disembodied voice calling out for help. How could he resist? "That's really why you came, isn't it?" she asked, open with realization. "You were hoping that I was the one who had sent that message."

The Doctor looked down at their hands, strangely entwined, almost out of habit, like his body was remembering forward. She caught the direction of his gaze and smiled. "Please, I'm not about to get jealous," she said softly. "I called for you. You came. I don't care for your reason why."

She spoke with affection and patience and understanding but the lie was evident. She was hurt that he didn't originally come for her. An apology crossed his mind but not his lips as he carefully pulled his hand from hers. He opened the psychic paper again and frowned at it. "Sometimes there is a different message," he said and held up the sleeved paper for River to see as well.

In small, gentle strokes, written with a shaking, frightened hand were the words : 'Did I open the door?'

River's frown matched his. "What door?"

The Doctor tucked the psychic paper back into his coat pocket. "I wish I knew."

AOSDW AOSDW AOSDW

The Playground – Present Day

The metal grating shuddered beneath his feet as the remaining engines struggled to keep the helicarrier aloft with the loss of the first engine. Coulson had reached the armory to retrieve a weapon. They had come under attack. His orders were to secure Loki from escape. He scanned the available weapons, looking for the specific one that he wanted. The prototype gleamed like a beacon. The only one that might, just might hold up against a Norse god. He reached for it.

"I don't know where I am…"

He whipped around and faced an empty corridor. It was a woman's voice, soft and plaintive, calling to him. "Hello…?" he called back.

"I don't know where I am," she called again. She was lost.

Leaving the weapon cache behind he walked back the way he came. "I'm coming!" he called to her. He strained to hear her call again, hoping to find a direction to follow, to find her.

"I don't know where I am."

Ahead, to the right. The corridor branched off. He followed it, quickening his pace. "I'm coming!"

"I don't know where I am." The desperation in her voice was growing.

"I'm coming!" A door slammed shut in front of him. He brought his hand up to open his way.

A hand closed around his wrist. He jerked back, bringing his free hand up in a fist. His eyes flew open and he froze. Dark brown eyes locked with his. He had been dreaming.

"May," he sighed, embarrassed at having her so close to him. "How long have you been watching me sleep?"

She released her hold on him as concern etched more deeply onto her face. "Only tonight," she replied in the hushed tone of nighttime talking.

Coulson pulled himself up to a sitting position and rubbed his hands over his face. "I'm not sure this is what Fury meant when he said to keep an eye on me," he said wearily.

Melinda May reached for a bottle of water sitting on the bedside table. "You were calling out in your sleep," she explained. She deftly unscrewed the cap and handed him the opened bottle. "Where were you?"

He thought back to the dream that seemed so real that he could remember the feeling of the walls on his hands, the sound of his footsteps echoing off the corridor. He looked away as the realness attempted to pull him back. "The helicarrier," he admitted quietly.

"That's understandable," May said evenly as she met his eyes. "Who were you looking for?"

Coulson turned away, pulling his legs out of the bed and placing his feet on the floor. He wanted to seem natural without the tension and apprehension he was sure she could sense from him. "How could you tell I was looking for someone?" he asked.

May leaned across his bed towards him, knowing full well the discomfort her proximity was bringing him. A part of her wanted to tease him for it but a much more significant part only wanted to put him at ease as he stood to lengthen the distance between them. "You kept saying 'I'm coming'," she said to his back.

"Oh," he sighed with realization and a renewed embarrassment at having been caught talking in his sleep. "I heard a woman's voice—scared," he explained. "She was saying 'I don't know where I am'."

May straightened and stood as she considered the source of the voice. "Maybe it was Romanov," she offered, not believing there was a possibility that the Black Widow would ever sound scared and mean it. "About the time you were facing Loki, she was engaged with Dr. Banner."

"No, it wasn't Romanov," he said quietly.

May furrowed her brow and stepped closer to him. She was bothered by the certainty of his answer and she wondered briefly if he knew more than he was telling her. "How can you be sure?" she asked.

Coulson turned and faced her. All discomfort had vanished replaced by worry and concern for something he couldn't quite name. "The woman in my dream was British."