Chapter Text
“I tell you what. I could do with one of those pods after today.” Clara blurted out, mostly to herself as she clung on to the metal railings of the TARDIS, breathless after their day, “I am well and truly knackered!”
They’d just finished off with dropping off Nagata to her family and had only now finally found themselves a moment of quiet.
Clara ran a hand through her hair, giggling to herself still in shock about what they’d just been through. She thought she’d seen it all until she’d seen walking sandmen. She’d only ever seen them in the storybooks of her childhood and then there they were, chasing her, dripping sand in their wake with every step.
The Doctor, however, was standing by the TARDIS screen, completely engrossed in what it was showing. It seemed as though it was tormenting him, like a nightmare.
The TARDIS had managed to get a hold of the video. The one Gagan Rassmussen had filmed before his untimely demise, or so The Doctor had thought. He replayed the last segment over and over - the part where the sand had finally taken over and there was nothing of Rassmussen left, but see, this is the part which had unsettled him so much. He kept watching that moment over and over in case he was wrong, but every time it only ever proved one thing to him.
“So! Where are we then?” Clara finally said, regaining her senses and buckling up, ready for the next adventure.
“We’re back on the station-” The Doctor replied, pulled from his thoughts. He noticed Clara’s eyes widen. “Just! Doing something... Won’t be a tick.”
“What? What’s keeping us?” She asked, eyeing him up suspiciously. She felt a groan within her, just wanting to move to the next thing. It was usually The Doctor complaining about having to go to the same place twice.
The Doctor simply just held out a hand to shush her up, his eyes and his focus still glued to the screen.
“Don’t you-” Clara pushed his hand away, “-shush me! I asked you a question!”
“Busy. Clara.” The Doctor said, “Can’t you see?”
“Yes. I see that, but…” Clara tried to lean in and see what it was The Doctor was looking at, but he pulled it away and she couldn't quite reach. “I still asked you a question, so…”
The Doctor finally turned to look at her when she wouldn’t stop peering over.
“So, I’d like an answer.” Clara concluded.
The Doctor sighed.
“Clara.” His next response came faster than Clara could nod. “What do you do if you know there’s something you could do, you could do it faster than that-” He snapped his fingers, “-but… but you don’t know if you can do it?”
Clara thought about it for a moment. Nope. Didn’t clear anything up.
“I’m not sure I follow. What do you do if you can do something, but you don’t know if you can do it?” She tilted her head, watching The Doctor for further information. “Doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t, does it?” The Doctor said. He looked at the screen, which was now paused on a still of Rassmussen’s face, staring down the camera with that worried look he maintained for the whole video. A good act, The Doctor thought. Not good enough.
What he needed to do was delete this video from existence. It was a danger to humanity and quite frankly any other being who happened upon it, but he couldn’t help but feel like that wouldn’t end up being the reason he deleted it. He was hiding evidence.
“What is it? You’ve got this look…” Clara said, trying to get The Doctor’s attention back on her again.
“What look?”
“The kind of look where I’m quite sure I’m not gonna like the reason behind it.”
“I don’t have that look. You don’t know this look! This look… is…” The Doctor fizzled out, a joke in there somewhere which he didn’t have the mental capacity to make at that moment.
“Something’s definitely wrong.” Clara said. The Doctor couldn’t help but cringe at how annoyingly obvious it sounded.
He wanted to be able to grab the TARDIS controls right now, take them somewhere far away and forget about any of this happening, but this one, tiny thing was preventing him from doing so. It was tethering him to this spot. Even if he did leave, that was it forever, he’d be always thinking of this spot, his every adventure past this point always ending with thoughts of that video and what it meant.
He’d been so indulged in his thoughts he hadn’t noticed Clara slip past him. She was now standing directly opposite the screen, staring at the same paused image of Rassmussen as he had just been looking at.
“Why were you watching this?”
No answer.
“It is over isn’t it? We got ‘em all. Didn’t we? Please tell me we did because I don’t think I have the energy to go running around a tiny space station trying to outrun sand again today. I’m gonna need you to take us to a nice, warm spa or something after this.”
No answer.
“Doctor?” Clara said, starting to get worried now. “It is over, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Clara, it’s over. Once this video is deleted, we’ll never have to worry about it again.”
“Then what’s the problem? Why are we still here? Delete it.” Her eyes scanned over Rassmussen’s stilled face once more, trying to make sense of things herself.
The Doctor sighed again. A deep, exhausted sigh from the bottom of his soul. She will never stop asking and they will never start moving.
“I can’t.”
Clara slowed down. “Why not?” She asked, with a large air of caution.
“Because…” The Doctor wasn’t sure how to word it. “Because of unfinished business, let’s just say.”
“But you said we were-”
“I said we got them all, but that was a lie.” The Doctor stared at her, eyes large and bloodshot. It was that scary look he got sometimes, which Clara didn’t much like to look at.
“Because there’s someone we haven’t got.”
The Doctor let Clara stand for a moment and try to figure it out. She was so close, he could tell, her eyes examining the frozen Rassmussen over and over trying to make something out of it. It was right there. So obvious. Couldn’t she see? No. Only he was burdened with seeing such things. What it must be like to live in ignorant bliss…
Then she got it.
“Not Rassmussen?” Clara said, bewildered. “But he was shot, I saw it. He’s dead.”
“No, Clara, he’s not.”
The Doctor strode over and hit play on the video a little harder than he needed to. The video began to play.
Rassmussen addressed the audience, as he did throughout his whole video. Then it got to the part where he stands back up, where he keeps the video going at a part where it should have ended. Clara hit pause, much to The Doctor’s deep annoyance.
“When was this filmed? It can’t have been after he was shot, he fell down, he died, I saw it!”
“Just watch the video, Clara!” The Doctor was getting impatient.
“But it-”
“Watch it!”
Clara stuck her hands up in fake surrender, rolling her eyes at The Doctor’s tone of voice before she pressed play again herself.
The video continued, Rassmussen speaking, before…
“There’s nothing left of Rassmussen any more.”
Clara watched as he turned to sand before her eyes, but she wasn’t as shocked or amazed as The Doctor hoped she’d be. She was confused.
“But that’s good right, he’s alive after all he’s some… sandman now and he’s off out there somewhere… doing-”
“I wish it was, Clara. I wish it was.”
“Then what? What’s wrong?”
The Doctor turned away, unable to face her.
“What? What is it? What is so bad that you can’t tell me?”
“I can help him.” The Doctor blurted out. Clara couldn’t see the look of fear creeping onto his face, the sweat forming on his forehead.
But she could feel it.
Her eyes went dark, something deep and knowing forming within them.
“So, why aren’t we?” She said, low and quiet. Serious.
The Doctor didn’t reply. Clara was getting sick of this.
“Why aren’t we?” She asked, commanding this time. Stern.
“Because I don’t want to!”
The Doctor was panting, his jaw clenched.
“What?”
Somehow, Clara was the one who felt a strange feeling of betrayal from this. The Doctor, her Doctor, the man who saved everyone, the man she trusted to do everything he absolutely could to help everyone, every single person, knew how to help one more person. And he didn’t want to do it. Rassmussen wasn’t exactly top of her list after what had happened, but she didn’t think he deserved condemnation, not if it could be helped. Not with what she’d come to know and love about The Doctor.
“W… why not?” She stuttered, not knowing if she actually wanted to hear the answer or not.
The Doctor reiterated again. “Because. I don’t want to.”
“But… why… why don’t you want to?” Clara was timid to ask this, not wanting to hear the answer. Not wanting to taint her Doctor by hearing it.
“Don’t, Clara.”
“No. Why?”
“Don’t.” Cold. A warning.
“Oh, don’t do this right now Doctor. Not with me. Not when I can always tell.” She paused, her own jaw clenched now to match. Her chest rose and fell quicker with every second that passed. “Now tell me, wh-”
“Because I don’t care, Clara! Is that what you want me to say?”
“No! But it’s what you’re saying!” Clara put her hand against her forehead in exhaustion, “Is it true?”
Clara noticed how The Doctor lingered by the controls, like he really wanted to use them, like he really wanted to get off this station but he couldn’t. Tethered down by this burden he’d suddenly found himself with. Clara wondered when saving someone became a burden. She turned back to look at him, expecting an answer. She got none.
“It’s because you do care…” She began, looks like she’d have to answer for him. “But you don’t want to.”
“Ugh, Clara! Why do you always say the right thing? You know what annoys me most about you, Clara? You always say the right thing!”
“It’s because I know you, Doctor. I know you, and I love you, and…”
The Doctor gives her a stern look.
“You don’t know what to do with yourself.” She corrected. “You’ve got so much knowledge, in there, about the world and history and all of time. About me, apparently. But when it comes to yourself, you barely know anything, and you can’t handle that. You feel so much and you don’t know what any of it means.”
“And you do, do you Clara? Know me better than I know myself?”
“Sometimes, I probably do. Sometimes… I have no clue.”
“And don’t talk to me about guilt, Clara.” He had that dangerous tone of voice, the one that meant shut up when Clara never knew how to. She never would either way.
“Go and get him, Doctor.” A final sentence.
The Doctor went to speak again, but then he saw the look on her face. She meant it this time. His guilt spiked ten fold. Having to force himself to step foot out of the TARDIS to save someone. He’d never admit it, but Clara was right. He couldn’t even begin to understand what it was he was feeling right now and that scared him more than anything.
“We can talk about this when you get back.” Clara said on his way out. Spoken like a housewife. A lighter tone. She didn’t hate him completely then.
The Doctor turned and walked out of the TARDIS before anyone could speak again. It creaked closed behind him, finally shutting completely with a loud click.
When he stepped out he noticed the state of the station for the first time. The station had finally crashed into Neptune, but it was still somehow mostly intact. It had crashed into the core of it, to be more precise, the entire ship surrounded by a mix of gases.
So… all he had to do now was find a Morpheus pod and reconfigure it a little.
He turned a corner and there one was, an empty one leaning against a wall. Of course, so simple.
He shoved it down, dusting it off. These things truly disgusted him. No amount of intelligence poured into them could cloud his judgement on that. Capitalising sleep. It should never be done. He connected it up to the correct cables and power supply, fixing some of the internal electronics fried in the crash and it powered up again. He glared at it as it brought itself to life.
Suddenly some wires flew out of it, trying to grab him. He dodged them and with one angry flick of the Sonic, they flopped down onto the floor, jittering with electricity. He fed the wires all back into their pod and closed the lid behind them with one solid click.
Then he paused for a moment.
There it was. It was ready. Ready to go. It was simple, really. So simple. Took him minutes.
Ready to go…
He had to force himself into action, his sonic gripped in his hand, shaking a little. He held it towards the pod and finally, after his finger hovered over the button for a while, it buzzed.
After a minute. That’s all it took. One minute. It was complete.
The pod opened by itself, and there he was, inside. Wired in. Sound asleep.
Gagan Rassmussen. Alive.
He was completely whole again, not a grain of sand in sight. Because the sandmen had inexplicably chosen him as their leader, they’d given him full form. All it took was a little molecular restructure through the exact conditions recreated within the pod and he was able to reform him almost entirely exactly.
His sleep looked completely peaceful, not a worry line in sight. The opposite could be said for The Doctor, however.
He stared and stared at Rassmussen. He could Sonic him. Wake him now. But he didn’t want to. He couldn’t. It shook in his pocket attached to his hand and never found its way back out again.
“Clara!” The Doctor gave in, shouting for she who knows best. “Clara! Can you come here please?”
Nothing.
“Clara!” He tried again, but he jumped when he felt a presence behind him, sure for a moment that it was another sandman and they’d missed something.
But it was just Clara.
“What? I’m right here.” She said, arms crossed. She shivered after that, her hands starting to rub her forearms. “It’s cold.”
The Doctor froze for a moment, unsure how to word what he desperately didn’t want to say. He didn’t want to be here. Not right now. Not in this moment. It would be so easy to get back onto the TARDIS again. They could leave and find a new adventure and, knowing the TARDIS, it would probably be impossible to get back to this exact moment again anyway, so they’d be free. But he’d know.
“I need you to stay with him. For when he wakes up. You’re better at all this kind of…” He waved his hands around dramatically. “Stuff. I’ll… I’ll be waiting for you. On the TARDIS.”
The Doctor tried to slip away, but Clara stopped him.
“But he’s gonna want an explanation or something. You know way more about this stuff than I do, I’m not gonna be much of a comfort.”
“You’ll be fine, Clara.”
The Doctor grinned, his smile not meeting his eyes. He began to walk away, actually making it a fair distance before Clara spoke up again.
“Doctor.” She said.
“Yes.” The Doctor answered, stopping despite everything in him wanting him to move.
She stood, waiting. She’d figured it out. Of course. Clever Clara.
The Doctor paused, staring down the hallway at the TARDIS, parked at the very end of it. It had an angelic glow around it, blue, from the gases of Neptune beaming in through a window.
“He’s a coward.” The Doctor concluded. “Worst kind of person.”
With that, The Doctor walked away, that same familiar guilt following him the whole way back.
Clara watched The Doctor walk away, nothing more she could ask or add. When he disappeared into the TARDIS, the door closed ajar behind him waiting for Clara, she turned to Rassmussen.
He did look peaceful. A true peaceful sleep. The sight of this right now was almost enough to win her over to the idea of these pods.
She walked over to the window to wait for him to wake up. She had no idea how long this was gonna take. Damn you, Doctor.
After a little while of standing waiting, of which she’d spent by the window, staring out into Neptune’s abyss through the vast clouds of gas, there was a stir from the pod. Clara didn’t go and help him though, just kept staring out of the window at the powdery, blue hues of the planet. It looked less beautiful up close.
There was some shuffling next to her, some confusion no doubt. The blue wires fell onto the floor with a plastic clatter and reformed feet hit the ground. The feet came closer and closer until they were near her, not close, but near enough to also see out of the window.
She could hear deep breaths behind her, but it didn’t deter her. She didn’t turn.
“I, um, used to do this a lot.” Rassmussen. Quiet. Still as meek as ever, but sounding more sure this time. More concrete.
Clara acknowledged him, but didn’t reply.
“You have no idea how many times this station would orbit this planet. Round and round every day. I was cooped up in my lab, working on my machines.” Rassmussen’s voice had a twinge of nostalgia to it. What for, Clara couldn’t tell. He peered around Clara’s shoulder to try and see what she was looking at exactly. “Every day I’d go to the window though. Try and get a look. Never thought we’d actually land…”
“People died. We landed here because people died.”
“I know.” Rassmussen replied, too quickly. He looked down at his fidgeting hands.
“Because of your machines. Because of what you did.”
“I know.” He sounded more distressed. Guilt eating away at him, Clara could only assume. She’d had enough of that for one day.
“Come on. We’ll take you home.” Clara moved away and began to head back towards the TARDIS. Rassmussen hadn’t moved with her.
“Come on.” Clara said, turning back, getting frustrated. “God knows I want to get back too.”
“I, um…” Rassmussen began. His eyebrows were scrunched up, eyes staring at something on the ground as he thought.
“What?” Clara said, a hand on her hip.
“There’s nowhere I need to go. I am home.”
“This isn’t gonna be more drivel about the sand being your home and needing to stay with your creations or something, is it? Because I’ll never hear the end of it if-”
“No. I mean… I lost my home. I wasn’t keeping up the rent. This really is my home. They let me stay in the lab.”
Clara wasn’t expecting that from him.
“They have rent where you’re from?”
Rassmussen tilted his head, perplexed by her question.
“Well, at least you didn’t have to lose any sleep over it.” She quipped.
It didn’t bring any peace to Rassmussen’s mind.
“Well, we’ll find you somewhere. Always somewhere… kicking about, waiting for someone to come and inhabit it. Somewhere…” Less reassuring and more a plea. “The Doctor will know somewhere.”
“He didn’t seem to like me.”
“He doesn’t like many people.” Clara lingered on that for a moment, thinking about it. “Now, come on.”
Rassmussen gave up. He stayed by the window for a moment, getting closer and Clara almost thought he wasn’t gonna come at all until he pulled himself away from it and followed her, each step slow, melancholic.
Clara was starting to feel off about it all all of a sudden. She felt something worming its way through her. Something she’d been seeing a lot of in everyone else and thought she’d managed to avoid but it built and built with every step. No one could avoid it.
As soon as they’d gotten nearer to the TARDIS doors, almost right outside them, she stopped him.
“What’s up?” She asked. Straight to the point.
“What do you mean? I thought you wanted us to leave, I’m coming.”
“I do, but… I want to know what’s wrong, first.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He muttered.
“Something tells me it does.” She turned to the TARDIS doors for a moment, like she was checking they were far enough away to not be heard from inside it.
Rassmussen stayed silent, but there was this look on his face, giving everything away.
“You don’t want to leave.” It felt like a revelation coming out of Clara’s mouth, but she knew she’d known it the whole time.
Rassmussen’s face fell. He sighed, adjusting his glasses. A nervous habit.
He looked back towards a window, through the blue. Occasionally, you could see the sky through the gas, just while it had split momentarily. When it did though, a light would shine through, warm and cold at the same time.
“How could I?” He said, as a warmth washed over him from the light.
“There’s nothing here now though. No crew left. And I think you can see a little too much of Neptune now.” Clara’s joke fell on the wrong ears, only causing offense instead of its original intention. “Sorry.” She felt bad for that one. “But you can’t stay here. Surely?”
Rassmussen’s hand reached up to the glass, running down it slowly. He wished he could step foot on the planet itself.
“I can’t leave her.”
“Her?”
Rassmussen’s cheeks turned pink.
“My Neptune.”
He might as well say it.
“I lost my house about ten years ago. I have been on this station for as long as it took to build these machines and trust me, it was no easy feat. I’d dedicated the entire rest of my life to it as far as I was concerned. When it was finally completed, I didn’t know what to do with myself. You think I spent all that time socialising and spending time with other people? I was in the lab, working. I never stopped working. Not one person came to visit me. Someone from the canteen would bring me food, but they never stopped to talk. And I wouldn’t let them if they did.”
Clara stood listening to every word. She hadn’t even thought about that side of things in all honesty.
“Sounds like you were a prisoner.”
“No. I chose it. It was all I had left.”
She approached him by the window, a kindness finding her heart now. Her suspicions and doubts not leaving, but resting.
“But, it’s done now.” She said. “You said it yourself. I think you need to find something else to work on.”
Rassmussen turned his attention to the rest of the ship.
“I could work on this place.” He said, his voice not quite sounding like it believed him. “Could live here. Could be nice, couldn’t it?”
Clara wasn’t sure she agreed.
“You’d be the only one here, though. Forever.” She said. The station was dry, cold, empty. Piles of dust lay everywhere. The corpses of the rest of his crew.
“You say that like it bothers me. I was already alone. It was fine that way. I got more work done.” Rassmussen sounded more sure of himself this time.
“But forever? Because we couldn’t come back for you if you changed your mind.” The Doctor wouldn’t let them.
“I-” Rassmussen began, but he was cut off by the sound of the TARDIS door swinging open, The Doctor bursting out.
“Rassmussen! Good morning!” The Doctor said, his voice oozing with falseness. “Time to get going.”
Neither Rassmussen nor Clara moved.
“Um, Doctor-”
“Not now, Clara. Come on! Chop, chop! In you get! It doesn’t bite, I promise!” His grin had returned, but it contained a new venom now.
Rassmussen turned to view The Doctor, analysing his face.
“Come on. Don’t make me have to drag you in like a child.”
“I want to stay.” Rassmussen said.
“No you don’t.” The Doctor gave a humorless laugh.
“Yes. I do.”
“But you’re stranded on a desolate planet, mainly consisting of gas. You won’t find a single other lifeform. It’ll just be you, on this ship, slowly freezing to death as you run out of food and water. What will you do? Rebuild one of your pods? Sleep it all off? Don’t be stupid. Come with me.”
Rassmussen didn’t look sure. He hadn’t considered survival. Only work. He debated it all in his mind. He wanted to stay. The only thing he was sure about was that. He gave one more look to Neptune outside the window, its beautiful colour filling the glass. He was sure this colour couldn’t exist exactly like this anywhere else in the universe.
“Come on.” The Doctor said again.
Rassmussen closed his eyes.
Clara watched as Rassmussen physically forced himself away from the station and into the TARDIS doorway.
“Doctor, he-”
“Clara!” The Doctor snapped at her as Rassmussen shifted past him in the TARDIS doorway. There was an anger in The Doctor’s squinted eyes, its direction uncertain.
“Doctor, he wanted to stay.”
“Well, he knows better now, doesn’t he?”
The Doctor moved to the side, leaving enough room for Clara to go past him. Rassmussen was already inside leaning against the metal railing, watching her, unmoving. This was wrong. His hands were gripping the railing behind him hard enough to turn his fingers white.
Clara couldn’t stop looking at him.
When everyone was inside, nice and secure, the door shut behind them all, the TARDIS finally making a move. It disappeared from that space station, leaving dust flying everywhere as it left.
As it left, the windows were as blue as ever. More blue than the TARDIS itself.
Rassmussen was silent the entire journey, and so was Clara for most of it. The Doctor would violently shove or pull a component of the TARDIS’s controls and everyone would flinch as he did so. He noticed it. He hated it. He ignored it.
Eventually they made it to the one place Clara wasn’t expecting. Rassmussen looked tense as ever as he realised they had landed.
“Earth.” The Doctor said. “You’ll fit in here I think, you look the part.”
Earth. Home. Not for some though. Earth was so familiar to Clara she didn’t think twice, but she doubted Rassmussen had even heard of it.
The Doctor walked up to the TARDIS doors and they swung open, predicting his moves. He walked away out of sight. Rassmussen watched him do so, trying to peer out of the doors. He couldn’t hide his slight fear for the unexpected beyond those doors, despite his efforts to try. Clara had spotted him, noticing immediately.
“It’s Earth.” She said, reiterating The Doctor’s words. “I’m from Earth.”
It was supposed to be reassuring, but Rassmussen didn’t trust neither Clara nor The Doctor at all.
Rassmussen slowly approached the TARDIS doorway, keeping his feet still well within its safer zone. They’d landed in a field, this he knew. It was large, with lush green grass.
“Lovely.” The Doctor stood and sniffed the air. “Come on, come and feel the grass.”
Rassmussen bypassed every warning signal blaring in his head and carefully forced his feet to step out of the TARDIS. He almost fell over as he felt his feet sinking in the softness of the ground below him. He’d only felt the metal grates of the station for the past ten years of his life. This felt like something new entirely.
He knelt down to touch it, his hand rebounding as it felt the dew on the grass.
He stood up and quickly took his shoes and socks off, stepping out of them into the grass, feeling each strand beneath his feet. It felt unlike anything he'd felt before, and it wasn’t like this was his first time touching it either. It felt like he was sinking into it. He worried for a moment that he was, but it was quickly squandered by a soft, cold breeze blowing his hair across his face. He looked up in the direction it was coming from, taking off his glasses and closing his eyes, letting it hit him in the face.
The Doctor and Clara were lingering in the TARDIS doorway, watching him. They couldn’t help but share in his awe. This was always the best part when meeting new people. Watching them enjoy something new. It was like you could feel it through them. Clara felt, even though she knew the Earth like a close friend now, she was feeling it in an entirely new lens, through Rassmussen’s own.
Rassmussen put his socks and shoes back on, straightening his glasses on his face, before he turned to face Clara and The Doctor.
“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not sand anymore. I’m me. With a mind of my own.” He said, like he’d read their minds.
The Doctor considered this. He hadn’t before. It was silly of him, really. He’d forgotten that once Rassmussen was reformed, the sand part of him would be gone. Just the man from before it all remaining.
“I know.” The Doctor concluded, watching him. He was almost studying him, but for what, he was unsure.
Nothing changed the fact that he was still the man who made the machines.
Clara and The Doctor gave one more look to Rassmussen, then to each other, before they turned, about to head back inside.
“When are you able to see it?” Rassmussen quickly asked, looking at them to make sure he’d gotten their attention before looking up at the sky.
Clara had an idea of what it was he was talking about after their last conversation, and she had a feeling she knew what was coming.
“See what?” The Doctor said, distracted. He was starting to get fidgety now, wanting to leave.
“Neptune.”
Clara watched them both warily. She hoped for it to end on a good note, for all their sakes.
“Oh.” The Doctor couldn’t help it. He laughed, before stopping himself. That is unfortunate.
“What is it?” Rassmussen asked, but his building anger had just turned into a timid fear now that it was to do with this topic.
“Neptune is the only planet you can’t see from Earth.”
And before Rassmussen could conjure a response, Clara and The Doctor had retreated, the doors closing behind them. Then the TARDIS disappeared before Rassmussen’s eyes.