The Time of Change

Imagine Your Dream

"Please don't change," Clara hisses to the Doctor, the object he pressed into her hand burning a hole through her palm. His eyes get unfocused, as if he's remembering something, or thinking deeply, and Clara grips his jacket tighter, trying desperately to keep him tethered to this world. He shrugs her off and steps away, his legs wobbling.

Suddenly, without warning or glow, his head snaps backward, light brown hair flopping madly, his chin sticking straight up in the air for a millisecond.

Now, his head flies back forward, and a new face stares at Clara, eyes wide and gasping for air.

Clara's heart stops as she examines him within a fraction of a moment. His face is older, much older, and thinner. The skin folds in on itself a bit. His hair is silvered and closely-cropped. His eyes are deeply inset in his head and are the color of frozen steel. Frosty, piercing blue, and dark, overshadowed by bushy eyebrows and a protruding forehead. His head jerks back and forward again, and this time when he gasps, he speaks.

"Kidneys!" this new Doctor rasps, and Clara hears a slight Scottish tint to his voice. "I've got new kidneys!" His wide eyes squint a little, eyebrows pulling together, and he quips, "I don't like the color."

Clara squeaks, "Of your kidneys?"

The TARDIS lurches riotously to the side, and both of them hit the control panel with identical grunts of discomfort. Clara's fingers tighten around the thing her Doctor gave her, and she peers at it as this new one straightens himself, apparently trying to get his bearings.

It is a golden wedding ring. That much is obvious to her. She is not sure why she has it as she turns it a little and sees what is engraved in beautiful script on the inside loop.

Imagine your dream, and it'll return to you, just like you returned to me.

Before she can fully process this new information, the TARDIS takes another horrifyingly steep twist to the left, and Clara screeches, "What's happening?" She shoves the ring in her pocket and tries to think about when he said to give it to himself, and why he would choose that time, and how she'll know if it's the right time, and who on earth he was married to.

"We're probably crashing!" says the new Doctor, the Twelfth. "Oh!" he shouts as something sparks on the console. "Into what?" Clara yells at him, attempting to focus his attention.

"Stay calm," he orders her, and she stills. There is something in his commanding, deep voice that fills her with a peace she knows she should not have at this time. And he only confirms her feeling by adding, "Just one question. Do you happen to know how to fly this thing?"