Please please read and review :) Whether it's good or bad or ugly, let me know! It's a new fandom for me, and I'm still learning its nuances. I've had so much more time to write since all the staying at home stuff. That just got extended to the end of the month for me, so should be able to get some updates soon :) This is the end of this story, but if anyone want's a sequel or maybe a flipped situation of Clara's adventures inside his timestream saving him, or there's an episode you want me to tackle, let me know! Send the reviews and ideas! I am so glad to have my writing muse back! Skippy, if you see this, I will have some BatB up soon :)

"I have to gather up and scan all of the memory books in the vault that have the Doctor guy in them."

Oswin spoke quickly, out of breath, as she hurried down a long hallway, with the Doctor right behind, his grey hair bouncing with each step.

"Once they are all gathered up, I can take them to the exit bay. I will leave the Inner Consciousness at that point. And you can continue doing whatever it is that you do."

"Is someone from the Outer Consciousness going to meet you there?" The Twelfth Doctor asked, trying to piece the story together as he ran. He couldn't remember being this frazzled in a long time. Was he getting stressed? It sure felt like it. It's always about running, he thought to himself. Running is part of it. He rolled his eyes. I may need to change that rule. I am getting too old for this.

Oswin shrugged, having not noticed his dilemma. "I assume that they will be there to take me on board. How else are they going to harvest the memories? If the memories simply exit the Inner Consciousness on their own, they will drift into time and air and space, and will be lost forever. There will be no way to recall them or use them as a weapon or trophy. They will be fragments floating through space, forever in a stasis state with no hope of piecing them all together again. This scanner they gave me will hold all of the memories, so we don't have to carry all the books, and it will keep them all together until the Outer Consciousness arrives to claim them." She waved a long thin object in the air, which looked strangely like his sonic screwdriver.

"I already gathered one row of memories. We have a whole library left and time is wasting." She waved the scanner like a sword and waved him on down the hall.

The Doctor felt a sinking feeling starting in his stomach. So that was the plan. Even Missy could not have known how deep the Dalek hate ran. Her plan was simply to show him that everyone had a potential to be good or evil (he hoped). But where her lesson ended, the Dalek lesson continued - with the knowledge and proof that some people were capable of utter, complete evil and destruction, and that was the sum of their entire existence.

If Oswin succeeded in removing all of his memories from Clara's subconscious, then it would be as if he never existed. The Dalek's would be able to rewrite the past with Clara's consciousness. His wide eyed dreamer would become a harbinger of evil, a vessel to carry the Dalek hate, and inadvertently play her part in destroying him, if it didn't destroy her too in the process. However, Oswin was part of his timeline too. Wouldn't she disappear into nothing as well?

"What happens to you?" The Doctor spoke again, his gentle eyes watching Oswin scanning a row of memory books. She faltered for a moment, glancing from him to the memories. 'What happens after this mission?"

"They will remove me from the Inner Consciousness when they take the memories." She replied confidently, but her face reflected her uncertainty.

"Are you sure about that?" The Doctor asked, moving to stand in front of her, his towering figure casting a shadow across her face. She would not meet his stern gaze.

"I - don't know." She spoke quietly, glancing up at the haggard, lined face above her. "I do not know. I - I feel -" She closed her eyes and her voice trailed off.

"How do you feel, Oswin?" The Doctor spoke barely above a whisper, studying the beautiful face with the long lashes, and was surprised to see them holding a glistening tear when she raised her face to his again.

"I am afraid, and I do not know why."

The Doctor put his hands on the wall above her head and leaned forward. "What are you afraid of Oswin?" He asked in his low, urgent growl, eyebrows knit together, intensity written on his grimace.

"You." She replied in a small voice. "I am afraid of you."

The Doctor's eyebrows flew up. "It's not Clara." His mind reminded him gently. A memory nudged at his mind, and he let it in. Bow-tie. Big friendly button.

"Do you feel safe?"

"Of course."

"Give me a number out of ten. Ten being whoo hoo, one being argh."
"You're being weird."
"I need to know if you feel safe. I need to know you're not afraid."

"Why? I'm sure I don't know you." Oswin gazed up at him, no recognition on her Clara face. "I just - don't know why - I am afraid."

Just see me.

The Doctor looked down at the scanning device that Oswin still held in her hands.

"I do."

He looked into the brown eyes, noting the faint yellow glow inside their iris. "The Outer Consciousness is using you to delete the Doctor via memories. They are scanning these memories straight to your mind, with this scanner. Whether or not you step out of this Inner Consciousness, you will have to be deleted from their system. Your mind will not be able to contain all the information about the Doctor. You and the Doctor will be gone. So will the poor, innocent girl that you are stealing these memories from."

Oswin gazed disbelievingly at him. "Oi, back off. The Outer Consciousness has taken good care of me. I have my kitchen, and my own living space. I have a job. I do my job. Why would they delete me?"

The Doctor clenched his fists for a moment. He hated his own job sometimes.

"You are dead, Oswin. You died saving the Doctor. A long - very long time ago. You are simply a memory. They have dislodged you from your timeline and inserted you into the timeline of the person who owns all of these memories." His voice lowered to a whisper. "You. Died. Oswin, saving the Doctor." His hand had crept toward her head. "Either I delete these moments and send you to your own timeline, or the Outer Consciousness will overload your memory with mine and you will have to be deleted so they can delete my memories, or before your brain melts with all of the Time Lord knowledge that you are uploading to it."

Her eyebrow crooked upwards in a question and she spoke softly. "Your memories?"

The Doctor swallowed hard. He had finally slipped up.

"Yes, I am - the Doctor."

"Doctor Who?" She asked, smirking."

He looked at her with a sideways glare. She really was acting so much like Clara. His eyes held an amused twinkle.

"Just the Doctor." He replied as he had so many times before.

It was her turn for her eyebrows to raise in surprise. "You got old."

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, I did. I regenerated. Is it that obvious?"

She smiled gently. "Not at all." Reaching up, she brushed the back of her hand across his cheek. "You should ask for a redo. They cheated you a bit on this time around. Fixed the chin though. Not as dangerous as before. But the eyebrows. Those could scare off entire planets."

"Attack eyebrows." He replied, smiling kindly.

She laughed, a clear, happy laugh, so like Clara. "You're Scottish."

He waggled his eyebrows knowingly. "I know. It's the best part, right?"

She rolled her eyes. "Then that's why you're so hard-headed." For a moment, it felt normal. Just he and Clara having a bantering chat. Then a hard glint flashed in her eyes. "But I do not want to die here, Doctor."

He rolled his eyes like she had and slumped his shoulders in defeat. "What kind of life is this?" The Doctor spoke incredulously, frustrated at the Dalek anger that Oswin was part of. He could sense there was a piece inside her that would gladly have taken him out then and there, if she had an eyestalk and a gun. He tried to reason with her. "You are harvesting all these memories and then what? You. Die. Anyway."

She set her jaw firmly. He could see the tendons in her neck tense when he said that. "What am I Doctor? Collateral damage? I have to just die right now so this person we are inside can live?"

The Doctor swallowed hard. It was near impossible to reason with a half human/half Dalek. "Yes. She has to live. Just has to. I will take down the- entire - universe – just to see to that."

"But you left me. You left me and I was her!" She shouted into his face. It was just as hurtful as if she had slapped him, but he didn't blame her.

"You – were – are- a Dalek." He replied defensively. "You wouldn't have survived. You were a complete conversion. You weren't you anymore!"

"Is that what you do, Doctor?" Her face was beginning to contort with anger. "You fly around the universe and play God? You exterminate when you want to and save those that you pick to live?"

The Doctor swung his body away from her in frustration, grasping handfuls of air in his hands as if grasping an unseen enemy. "No! Oswin, I would have saved you as Oswin. But not a Dalek. To have kept you in that eternal confinement of hatred and anger – I couldn't do that to you. You really weren't Oswin anymore. And once you realized that, you let me go! You told me to run. You sent me away and saved me. I didn't choose to leave you. You. Chose. To save me!"

A lone tear spilled over and ran down Oswin's face. "But I am myself again now, Doctor."

He shook his head. "No, Oswin, you keep switching between Oswin and – something else. Something else that is angry and vindictive."

She swallowed hard. "But I'm back, I survived. I'm here."

He moved to stand in front of her once more, hands resting slightly above her shoulders on the wall. He could feel the pulsing nerves and blood vessels of his Clara inside the cells and he sighed. "Is that what you think, Oswin? That this is real, that you are real? Human?"

She laughed weakly. "Look at me, Doctor. I am talking, walking, human, two arms, two legs. Even really made souffles this time. You saw me, you even ate it."

"Well, that's actually not true." The Doctor started to reply that he had not actually eaten the souffle, but his response was stopped by another loud Dong that echoed down the hall and shook the air around them.

Oswin looked sad as she gazed up at him. "I am sorry, Doctor. But I want to live this time."

She ducked beneath his arms and took off running at a sprint. He flopped desperately after her, nearly slamming into the wall as a sharp turn hid her from his sight. He pivoted to find her standing about ten feet away, her scanner held high.

"Only one of us makes it out of here, Doctor." She spoke solemnly. "I cannot go back to nothing. I do not want to die again. Promise me that I do not die again."

"Would it make you feel better if I promised?" He asked softly.

She bit her lip nervously. "Promise me, Doctor. Promise I don't die."

"Oswin," he spoke gently, taking a step forward, hands held up in a gesture of surrender. "Oswin, I don't want you to. But – for the last time - just - don't you see? If you don't"

"Then you'll die?" She asked quietly.

He straightened. "Yes, I die. But so do you. You will be deleted from time. Because I will have never been. I never was there to save Clara Oswin from my own timestream, or from the time zombie, or the Spoonhead, or anyone, and you are a splinter – an echo of her. If she dies in this future, if I die - then it will be as if you never existed. You will die too. I am trying to tell you that. There is no other choice."

"You love her?" Oswin asked in a voice that trembled slightly, after a moment of silence. "You love this – Clara?"

The Doctor's mouth opened and closed for a moment. How could he answer that?

"Just -shut up – stop it." He managed to blurt out. How Eleven he felt. Poor chap, so easily embarrassed. He could think of nothing else lighter or distracting to say. Did he love her? Yes, oh yes, to the farthest edge of the universe and back he loved her. But to tell her own subconscious that – it wasn't the time or place.

Oswin chuckled. "Of course, you do. That is why you are so desperate right now."

He straightened his jacket, and his eyebrows frowned. "Hang on. Desperate?" He huffed. "I may be many things, handsome, brilliant, intelligent, genius-"

"Egotistical?" Oswin offered, an amused smile flickering on her face as she crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. He was pacing comically as he ranted.

"Egotistical, good looking, I own a time machine – what? Egotistical? No. Well. Maybe. You. Shut up. Desperate is definitely not something that I am." He realized with a start that his pacing had left him standing right in front of Oswin, their faces mere inches apart.

"Then why are you sweating?" Oswin asked, touching his tense jaw with a finger.

He clapped a hand to his face. "Sweating?" He stared into the distance. "Hm, sweating - never done that before."

Oswin reached out a hand and laid it on his arm. He turned to face her, just as she took the last step forward, their bodies touching lightly. "Doctor?"

He froze as he felt the scanner jabbed firmly into his side, his beating hearts pounding in the silence, so loud that she must have heard them in her own ears. Her hand was tight on his jacket, and he expected any moment to be zapped inside her scanner, trapped for eternity.

"Rule number one," she whispered, gazing up at him. "The Doctor lies. You are desperate, Doctor, very desperate. But so am I."

He looked down into the dark eyes. "I know." His voice was barely above a whisper. "I know you are."

A tear tumbled down her face again, landing on his rough hand that had somehow found its way to her face where it cradled her chin in long, steady fingers.

"And you are deflecting. You can't promise that I don't die. Let me get this straight, Doctor. For some reason, the Dalek's have put this echo of myself into this Clara's mind, for the simple reason of deleting you from all of time and space."

The Twelfth Doctor nodded once. "Yes."

"Then why me? Why do they want me to be the one that deletes you?"

The Doctor rubbed a thumb gently down the soft cheekbone. "Because they knew I wouldn't be able to be the one that stops you," he whispered.

"Then I have to make you stop me."

The Doctor shot her a confused glance. "What?"

"I am part Dalek, right. Right? I am evil incarnate inside, but my imagination and my Oswin side controls it, keeps it contained. You must stop me from taking these memories to the Outer Consciousness. Because you are the Doctor, and that's what you do. You fix things."

The Doctor took a wavering breath. "But I can not do anything that would hurt you, Oswin."

Oswin shook her head. "You can't hurt me, Doctor. I'm dead, remember. I have - inside this scanner - memories that are from your past. Memories, Doctor, that my inner Dalek has stolen and is not going to relinquish. You must keep them and me from making it to the exit portal."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "And where is that?"

She leaned close to his face. He could feel her breath on his neck and his chin. "Run, you clever boy." In a split second, she had let go of his arm and was vanishing down the dark hallway.

She was gone before he could move. Frustrated, he almost slammed his fist into the wall, but thought better of it. No use giving Clara a migraine.

Clara.

He wondered what it all felt like from her point of view. Did her subconscious allow her to feel what was going on inside? He looked up at the cellular ceiling above him and whispered "Sorry!"

Running in the direction that Oswin had gone, the Doctor realized very quickly that it was going to be hard to find her. The pulsing walls were dimmer, the farther that they traveled from the memory vault. He ran through hallways that played music. He stayed a mere second to appreciate them. Clara loved music. He opened another door in the hall to find swear words jumping around and having a disco party. He carefully closed the door and hurried on; eyebrows raised in consternation. The next door was a wall of paintings in differing states of completion. The mind could be such a strange place. It was a private place, and he didn't mean to pry. He needed to find Oswin and get out of there.

He ended up in a hallway labeled "Train of Thought." It was piled high with books of discarded ideas and half-bound pages of plans and imaginative memory books. He chuckled and moved on. It wasn't his place to pry. "Pudding-brain," he whispered fondly.

Heading back the way he had come, the Doctor found himself back in the Memory Vault. To his dismay, many of the books were dark, and their memories no longer shining and pulsing with life. Oswin must have already been here. Laying a hand on the shelf, he could sense the memories were dying, fading, and it stirred his hearts. His Clara was fading away. He could not find it in his heart to forcibly stop Oswin. There had to be a way to stop the Daleks, though. He leaned against the wall, his hands above his head. "Why did the Daleks pick you, Oswin Oswald. How did they get you in here?" A sound to his left interrupted his thought and he half turned to see a memory book laying open on the floor. Its memory playback screen was shattered. He hesitated then reached out and picked it up off the floor. He gently closed the cover and tilted it so he could read the title on the spine. In gold letters it read "Souffle Girl."

"They used you before and they are using you again." He spoke softly. "They ripped you from your timestream and programmed you to steal and destroy the memories. They are erasing their own defeat that you created, as well as you and I."

He hugged the book tightly under one arm and began to run down the hallways, calling "Oswin! Oswin Oswald, I have found a way to save everyone!"

He ran, and he ran, and he ran. The hallways were dark, empty, and getting colder. Time was fading. As Oswin kept gathering memories, wherever that she was, he was getting weaker, and more confused. "Oswin. Oswin, I can fix this."

He fell to his knees, his vision blurring. The memory book tumbled away and came to a rest a few feet away. A burning began to creep from his feet up his legs and from his hands to his shoulders. The color was draining from his skin, and he felt as if he was being dismembered one memory at a time.

"Doctor?"

On his hands and knees, he hesitated, panting, breathless. The pulsing ground beneath his hands felt distant and cold. His hazy eyes caught sight of red shoes that stood right before his face. Or were they brown? He couldn't really tell. He followed them upward till he found the face that wore them, right above his own.

"Oswin - Oswald?" His voice came out of his throat as a harsh raspy cough.

She knelt and reached a hand out to him. "Doctor? Doctor, what is wrong – what's happening?"

"I am dying." He spoke softly, closing his eyes. He felt as if he was being ripped apart from the inside out, the darkness threatening to overtake him.

Oswin looked from his impossibly pale face to the memory scanner that she grasped in her hand. "Doctor. Am I- am I - killing you?"

He opened gentle eyes to find Oswin still kneeling above him, her wide eyes filled with horror and those quick tears threatening to fall.

"Yes." He replied simply. What else could he say?

"How, how do I fix it? How do I stop it?" She begged, shaking the scanner wildly as if it would release him from his clutches. She dropped the scanner, grasping his shoulders as she bent over his crumpled body. The tears finally teetered and fell from her face and landed on his dry cheek.

"You can not fix it, Oswin. Only the Doctor can." He replied, ever so softly, his teeth showing in a gentle smile.

She thought for a moment, her chin quivering, eyes unfocused.

"Now, no blubbering." He whispered, reaching up to brush the tears on her chin away. "The Doctor is right here."

She considered for a moment and then, setting her jaw, she snapped her fingers. In a fraction of a moment, they were now in the floor of her kitchen beyond the spiral staircase. She stood to her feet and grabbed the tablecloth from the table nearby. She rolled it into a ball and placed it tenderly beneath his grey head. "Doctor - do – do you trust me? Do you - trust - Clara?"

She asked gently. But he could tell that she was in great distress. She needed him to trust her. But there was an ever-growing glare in her eyes, a yellow haze that spoke of the magnitude of memories that she had harvested, and he knew she would not be able to contain it within her human body for much longer. There was a fearsome, familiar light blue haze also settling around her head, and he felt a chill go down his spine. Any moment now she would probably grow an eye stalk from her forehead, and all would be lost.

But he mentally tried to pull himself together and bit back the pain and the worry. There was a fragment of Clara there. He had to trust that part. He reached for her hand and grasped it tightly. "Oswin, I trust you."

She smiled and nodded, then was gone, her echoing footsteps on the metal staircase resounding in the small kitchen long after she had vanished from sight. He hoped he had made the right decision.

Only moments after she had left, he began to feel the darkness inside fading. He weakly ran a hand through his hair. Oswin must be restoring the memories. He rolled over on all fours and climbed to his feet. The offensive souffle sat where he had left it, now a completely liquid mess. Poor Oswin. He smiled. She did keep trying so hard. He pulled his screwdriver from within his inner pocket (bigger on the inside than the outside) and soniced the despicable mess. It instantly turned into a tall, beautiful souffle. A parting gift, he thought to himself, smiling at nothing. He was such a daft old fool.

Another bell rang in the distance, followed by a Dalek voice chanting "Five-minute Warning. Five-minute Warning."

Part of himself wanted to somehow go track Oswin down, but the Doctor sat down at the kitchen table waiting for the last stabs of pain to dissipate. He absently twisted the sonic in his hands. He kept telling himself that he trusted Clara. He had to trust Oswin.

"Penny for your thoughts."

He looked up to see Oswin standing there, just plain Oswin. Her scanner was no longer illuminated, indicating that it was empty. The yellow glow was gone from her eyes, but the blue light remained. The Doctor sighed. It had been too much to hope that the Dalek inside would have gone too. He stood slowly. "Oswin – I –"

She stepped forward quickly, grasping his coat lapels in her hands. "Do not apologize Doctor. We are old friends, you and I." She swallowed hard. "Souffle before you go?"

The Doctor smiled kindly down at the pleading dark eyes. "You made a beautiful one, Oswin."

She smiled up at him. "Why thank you." Her eyes took on a faraway look and she spoke again, a slight tremor in her voice. "Doctor, do I die here. Is it time?"

The Doctor shook his head. "No, you will live Oswin."

She smirked up at him. "Rule number one, the Doctor lies."

He reached to brush the tear that slowly fell down her cheek and raised his eyebrows. "Yes, but lies can sometimes hide pain."

She lowered her eyes to his chest and nodded. "Then, thank you, Doctor."

He pulled her close for a moment, feeling both hearts break at the knowledge of the past that he was going to have to send her back to. Trapped inside a Dalek, fighting the evil inside of her, making souffles for a pastime, until she finally one day meets him. The young Doctor. And then she would die saving his life because he can't save hers.

"I found out how they got you here." He spoke suddenly, stepping away from her to where the memory book lay on the table. He motioned to the shattered screen. "They took you out of your time stream. And set you loose in here. You won't die today, but you will die in the future."

She also stepped forward, gazing into the fractured memory. "Then I have to go back." She spoke as if in a fog, her face troubled.

The Doctor nodded silently.

She took a deep breath and held out her scanner. "Then do it. Send me back. I would rather live and die and know that you are well and alive than to destroy everything good that you and I have done."

The Doctor looked from her face, where the blue glow was intensifying with each second, to the dark and empty memory book. "Are you sure, Oswin?"

She nodded silently, squaring her shoulders back. "We must not allow the Daleks to erase you, Doctor. You are our hero. Our savior. The universe -it needs you."

He looked away. "I don't know about that."

"Then do it for Clara," she responded, her chin set at a stubborn angle, an expression he fondly remembered as Clara's. He took a deep breath and held out the scanner, pointing it directly at Oswin.

"Hurry, Doctor," she prompted. "I can sense their anger. It is growing. Greater and greater. You are their enemy. Enemy. Ext-er-"

The Doctor raised his eyebrows at the confusion on her face.

"What was I going to say?"

He pursed his lips. "Give me three guesses and I would say all three times that it's a word neither you nor I want to hear or say."

She smiled weakly. "Goodbye then, Doctor. Remember me?"

He smiled, a warm gentle smile. "I will always remember you, Oswin Oswald." With his thumb, he pressed the scanner button and Oswin vanished, just as the final bell pealed around them. He had won the battle for his Clara.

He pointed the scanner at the broken memory, and in seconds, there she was inside it, happily stirring her souffle inside her imagined Dalek world. It was early. She had yet to meet him in that world. It would be a while before she died. But he did not want to watch events play out. His own memories were too painful at that same time. There were people he had lost too. He gently closed the book. The kitchen faded around him and he found himself standing alone in the memory Vault hallway. There was only one empty space in the glowing wall before him. He carefully placed the memory book inside the gap, and it melded into the ones around it. The timeline was restored and whole. Everyone was safe. "For now." He promised, and the hallway faded away.

"Doctor?"

Clara woke suddenly. The Tardis was humming gently, and a new fireplace had appeared in her wall. The flames flickered on the warm walls, and it smelled of a gentle rain in the air. She sat up and looked around in confusion. The Tardis was being unusually kind. That was peculiar. A warm knit blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, and there was a plate of jammy dodgers by her bedside. Brow wrinkled in confusion, she took one from the plate and threw off the covers. Barefoot, she ran to the control room.

"Doctor?"

"Yes, Clara?" He stood above her on the second story balcony, a large book open in his hand. "Get your nap over? Such a human thing, naps. Now we Time Lords-"

She held up the cookie. "Jammy dodgers?"

"Sure, why not." He cast her his trademark sarcastic smile. "Toss one up." He replied, leaning over the balcony with an outstretched hand.

She glanced from his ridiculous acrobatic move to the simple cookie. Amazing how just a cookie could cause such a flood of memories. Airplanes, a monk with funny hair, Wifi, a coffeeshop, and a stupid fez. And a bow-tie and the preposterous chin. Her Doctor. Those were her Doctor's favorite.

"Why jammy dodgers?" she asked in frustration.

"What? They are British, I thought you British people liked those things." The Doctor tossed aside his book and descended the stairs in a huff. "I'm Scottish, those aren't really our thing to be honest. We much prefer -"

He stopped speaking for a moment, noting the tear in Clara's eye. "I thought they would make you happy." He finished dismally. He simply wasn't Eleven. Even the journey he had just been on inside Clara's mind told him that. He was gruff, hard, running, trying, always running. But that was his lot in life. He was still the Doctor. An idiot with a box and a screwdriver perhaps, but he was the Doctor.

Clara looked down at the cookie in her hand, feeling its sugary crumbs between her fingertips. He was definitely not the same man she had known before. But he was still the same Doctor. She clasped her arms around him, nearly losing her footing as he threw his hands up as best as he could since Clara was balanced on one foot, hanging around his neck.

"I have told you about the hugging thing," he spoke halfheartedly, trying to keep up his gruff exterior. "I don't do those."

His Clara laughed softly, her breath tickling his ear.

"What good are jammy dodgers without the tea?"

She relaxed her hold and looked up into his eyes. He smiled down at her and then held up a delicate blue and yellow china cup filled with steaming tea in his left hand.

Her eyebrows flew upwards. "Really, Doctor? Did you - How did you just do that?"

He smiled as she gladly took the cup from him and offered her a friendly wink.

"I'm the Doctor, you don't ask questions."