The dust of a dying star greys her hair, creases in the lines of her face. For a second the reflection in the mirror is someone else's, silvered and hawkish. She blinks away some of the grit. A childish rendering of what she might have looked like replaces his ghost. Clara made old, if fate had not intervened.

Me's face, pale oval in the gloom, is caught in the mirror as she closes the cabinet. She sighs, annoyance at her companion's cat-like habits pointless. Me goes where she will; inscrutable as she is unconfinable.

She washes her dirty face, rinsing the façades away; of him, of who she could have been. Clara Oswald emerges by soapy inches. Perhaps it's time, she doesn't say. Me can see it in the darkness of her eyes, no doubt. Her presence is an offer; support to whatever end.

"I'm tired," she says, to herself, to her shadow. Not in the conventional sense, of course. Time Lord technology sees to that, looping her bodily functions endlessly in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Sleep is a choice. Like food, like air. Like death.

She's often mused, as the days turned into decades, on the irony of that. Control freak he called her, more than once. Now she has mastery of her most basic instincts – a switch that can be flicked to pass for human or not, on a whim. Not even Me, with all her Mire augmentation, can do that.

"You're thinking of stopping," says Me.

"No." Too quick. She rests her head against the cool of the mirror, eyes squeezed tight. "Maybe." The closed lids are no barrier to the faces in her memory, the wails of those they were too late to save—

And when I close my eyes I can hear more screams than anyone could ever be able to count!

She turns away from the mirror, to Me. Insouciant to the untrained eye. Compassion, underneath the calm, for those that know how to look.

"You write it down," she says, brokenly, "and then you can forget."

"I know."

"They're all here, Me. Always, all here." Every single person they fail to save. Every single scream.

"Maybe you should go and talk to him."

I never forget a face.

It's tempting. She could loop them back into his time stream to some point before; retcon the conversation away to preserve the past as she remembers it. Or she could find him right now, wave her sonic screwdriver; break down that bloody memory block and run and run—

"No."

"Still?"

"Always."

Me's smile is crooked for a second. "Home then."

"…no. It's too risky."

"No it's not. You just don't want to go back and not bump into him."

She opens her mouth to snap a reply and closes it again. As always, her companion has a point. "Fine. Earth it is. I'll leave the where and when up to you."

By the time she has finished washing, redressing, Me has disappeared. Outside the diner doors are familiar rows of houses, wet pavement. She steps out into the damp night, condensation beading her jumper as her shoes click over cobbles. It is dark; far darker than a residential area has any right to be. The streetlights have been turned off, windows covered with sackcloth. Blitz Britain, if she had to hazard a guess, somewhere in the North and near the coast by the smell…

The wind stirs the ragged banner of clouds, and the charcoal sketch of the Tower is suddenly visible against a scrap of sky. Oh. It really is home.

She follows a route half-remembered, left and right down terraced streets, until she finds the seafront and the pier. It is closed in black-out night, and she doesn't fancy accidentally waking up the Home Guard or some other ridiculousness just to walk to boards. Instead she drops to the sand, walking amongst the ironwork to the edge of the lapping waves. Climbs up amongst the girders, eyes on the water and tries not to think—

"Hello," says the Doctor.

She almost falls off of her perch. I bloody knew it! "Hello," she squeaks, "didn't realise there was anyone else up here, sorry—"

"Clara."

Words die in her mouth. She has no blood to rush, but her brain is happy to fill in the biochemical blank, producing the spots before her eyes and sick swoop in her stomach nonetheless. "How?" she creaks. "How can you know my name?"

His mouth quirks. "Spoilers, I'm afraid."

It is an effort to say the word, after all the times she's forced it out of her thoughts. "Doctor… Is this even real?"

He swings across, perching next to her on the crossbeam; wraps fingers over her fist clenched around cold metal.

"I'm here," he says, "this is real."

Of course, he's said those words to her in a dream before; they both know it. She half-smiles. "Did Me send you?"

"No." His hand is still covering hers, legs swinging at her side. "You sent me."

She turns to meet his eyes again, finding no trace of a lie. Perhaps it's all some clever play on words; some clue. Right now she doesn't care.

I've missed you, some part of her wants to say, as she catalogues every new line on his face, but the words are redundant. "I remember," she says instead. "Everything. Did you know it would do that?"

"No."

"It's the looping," she says, "Me thinks everything gets put into short-term memory because that's all I can access."

"It's a good theory."

"But not the right one?"

He shrugs. "Does it matter?"

She swings her own legs, considering. "I guess not." The hiss of the sea fills the silence for a time. "Is this what it's like for you?" she asks eventually.

More sounds of the surf. "Yes."

"How do you do it?" she asks, blunter than she meant to be. "How do you keep going? All those faces, all those names…"

"You let them go."

"You delete them," she corrects.

"Same thing."

"And the ones you can't?"

"Tie them to ones you saved. To the good days."

She sighs. "Good days…"

"They'll come round again. They always do."

"Or I could go back to Gallifrey," she suggests, needing to say the words out loud. "Go back to Trap Street."

"Yes," he says, sounding more strained, "you could."

They are almost nose to nose in the dark again, close enough for her to see the pain in his eyes at that thought, that memory. "It's a fixed point," she offers.

"Perhaps. Or maybe this is. Your long way home. Maybe all the lives you save are the Universe's business. I don't know."

"Liar," she says, smiling, her own eyes now swimming with tears. She can feel the weight of their gravity on one another; a sense of being pulled back into an orbit they can no longer occupy.

"Think about the good days," he says again, as her lips meet his. "They're important too."

"So?" says Me, waiting at the console for her return.

"So what?" she returns lightly, clicking her fingers to close the TARDIS doors on Blackpool night behind.

"Where are we going?"

"Onwards," she confirms, smiling. "Definitely onwards. To the good days."