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The paint was flaking. Every other item in the chamber was pristine and maintained; the bedsheets were soft, the scent of cleanliness still fresh despite how much time had passed; the glass was polished and sparkled like the water several storeys below despite how much time had passed; the flowers were in bloom despite how much time had passed. The decay evident on the canvas made it a pariah, but it was not the only element out of place in the room.
In the middle of it all, a hand rapped a clockwork rhythm against the arm of a chair. Time had passed – perhaps too much, perhaps not enough – and each strike of skin against wood was a reminder of how much time was left. The hand belonged to a body, but the body did not move. His eyes did not blink or waver to look, his chest did not rise or fall to breathe; the diligent forefinger of his hand was the only indication that the man to which it was attached was still alive.
‘The day you lose someone isn’t the worst,’ he said to the empty room, ‘at least you’ve got something to do. It’s all the days they stay dead.’ For three seconds, his gaze shifted to the painting above the mantlepiece, to the face of Clara Oswald. The paint was flaking. Even when immortalised through art, time had passed; the colour in her cheeks was paler, her smooth skin cracked and peeling away out of the frame—a cruel reminder of what had happened.
‘What’s the point of being a Doctor if I can’t cure you?’ he had asked her before she said goodbye.
Her reply seemed effortless. Clara was always confident and self-assured, even to the end. ‘Heal yourself,’ she commanded him.
But the Doctor was alone. Alone, and very scared.
The painting was a poor imitation. It captured her likeness well enough, but Clara – his Clara – was gone. The paint was flaking—even the memory of her would fade in time.
The Doctor stopped as the touch of his finger against the arm of the chair registered in the recesses of his mind. Time had passed. He had sat too still for too long. He had to move on.
‘This is how the world works, Clara,’ the Doctor said. Clara was gone, but an echo of her always remained with him. In the sanctuary of his mind, in an imagined version of the TARDIS, Clara was still there, still smiling. It was her that the Doctor was speaking to, ‘I tick off the seconds as they pass. My life is a countdown.’
The days passed in increments of eighty-two minutes as the Doctor ran from one extreme of the labyrinthine castle to the other, measuring every second even as his body grew wearier with each desperate escape. He could eat and sleep, but the opportunities were few and far between; his Time Lord physiology permitted him many advantages over humans (would Clara have survived were she less breakable than he was?) but he was not immune to fatigue.
‘My work is finding Room 12.’ It was a task the Doctor was thankful for, a mystery he could never resist and which he was determined to solve. The promise of answers was the only distraction from the constant fear, the growing exhaustion, and the memory of what happened on Trap Street. ‘The castle wants me to,’ he said. ‘It’s luring me. The numbering is a bit confused, as if the rooms are all jumbled up. Maybe they move around. I saw the whole castle move, when I made the creature stop.’
When the Doctor returned to the garden, it was as though he had never been there before. The grave he had dug was filled, the grass and the soil untouched; there were no disturbances, there were no traces of death, there was nothing to suggest that anyone had been here before or ever would be here again.
‘Every room, if I leave it long enough, reverts to its condition at the moment I arrive. It tidies up after itself,’ he explained. ‘Automated room service.’
The same sterility was evident in the great hall. A long table with only one chair seemed almost black in the shadowy room as the sun began to set. A golden dusk bled through the window, warming one side of the Doctor’s body and leaving the other in the dark as he tried to eat a meal. The soup was cold, the bread was stale, but he spared no thought for the quality of the food.
Instead, the Doctor considered his theory again, ‘I think this whole place is inside a closed energy loop, constantly recycling.’ He lifted the spoon and took a mouthful of the tasteless liquid. ‘Or maybe I’m in Hell,’ he suggested. ‘That’s okay. I’m not scared of Hell. It’s just Heaven for bad people.’ He looked down at the soup as a droplet fell from the utensil. A ripple formed and spread outwards. Then, it was rebounding against the bowl in a seemingly endless circuit, Then, it was slowing. Then, it was dead.
Everything ends. The Doctor was bitterly acquainted with endings. Paint would flake, time would pass, movement would cease. Everything ends—but some things had a habit of taking far too long.
‘But how long will I have to be here?’ he asked. ‘Forever?’
The spoon slipped from his grasp and clattered to the table. The impact shifted the soup in the bowl, sending another string of ephemeral ripples across its surface. With tired eyes, the Doctor watched as they died.
He was still here—he was tired.