Terry waited with Clara inside the Tardis, the Time Lady sitting on the console while Clara peered at the door impatiently.
She then jumped as the doors opened once more, and the Doctor re-entered, calling loudly through his helmet: "Back off. Hot suit."
Clara backed away, holding her hands up as though in surrender to show the Doctor she wasn't going to touch his smoking spacesuit while he stumbled inside, complaining: "Hot, hot, hot."
"When are we?" Clara asked curiously as Terry began to twirl the dials again while the Doctor stripped off the suit.
"About six billion years ago." The Doctor explained as he pulled off his helmet. "It's a Tuesday, I think."
"Wednesday; but you were close." Terry replied.
"It's Tuesday now, though." She added as she nodded to the doors as she landed them once more.
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After several more pit stops, as they jumped through the Earth's whole life, Terry landed them one last time while the Doctor suited up in his spacesuit again.
"Back in a mo." The Doctor called as he walked out.
Clara just stood with tight lips and a bitter expression in her eyes as she stared at the Tardis scanner, staring as it showed the dead, volcanic Earth outside.
Terry waved to the Doctor as he closed the door behind him, before she sighed, and turned to Clara as she said: "All right. Talk to me."
"You already know what I'm upset about, don't you?" Clara demanded, turning on Terry with tears welling in her eyes, and Terry sighed again.
"Yes, Clara." She replied. "But I like to think I could have put it together even if I hadn't had my foreknowledge."
Clara pursed her lips, before she conceded that she'd been wrong to accuse Terry. It didn't make her mood any lighter, however, as she demanded: "But then, explain it to me: how are you two okay with all of this?"
It was at that moment that the Doctor returned, having taken his picture once more, and he paused as he noticed the tension between the two.
"What is it?" The Doctor asked, glancing at the Tardis. "Did the Tardis say something again?"
"No, she behaved." Terry answered as she continued to meet Clara's gaze steadily.
"Okay... then what's wrong?" The Doctor asked warily, looking between the two women. Because, they couldn't have fought, right? He'd never seen them argue; they were usually on the same page and ganging up on him if anything. Actually, most of the companions seemed to do that with Terry, it was most disgruntling. Or, it would be if Terry wasn't so adorable in his eyes most of the time.
"We've just watched the entire life cycle of Earth, birth to death." Clara stated, bringing the Doctor back to the situation at hand.
"Er, yes, yes, we did." The Doctor answered, glancing at Terry in confusion as he wondered why Clara was so upset.
"And you're okay with that?" Clara asked him incredulously, and the Doctor shrugged as he answered: "Well... yes."
"How can you be?" Clara demanded, looking from the Doctor to Clara. "Either of you?"
The Doctor shot Terry another look, completely mystified, as he answered: "The Tardis, she's time. Wibbly vortex and so on."
"That's not what I mean." Clara retorted shakily, and the Doctor asked loudly: "Okay, some help?"
He looked between Terry and Clara as he asked: "Context? Cheat sheet? Something?"
Terry just looked at Clara, as she said: "Clara? Would you like to say what's on your mind?"
Clara looked at Terry, before she blurted out: "I mean, one minute, you two are in 1974 looking for ghosts, but all you have to do is open your eyes and talk to whoever's standing there."
She continued, speaking faster and faster as her agitation grew: "To you, I haven't been born yet," she looked at the Doctor, "and to you I've been dead one hundred billion years."
The Doctor blinked, realizing what the problem was, and he averted his gaze as Clara demanded while looking between Terry and the Doctor: "Is my body out there somewhere, in the ground?"
"Probably." Terry answered shortly, while the Doctor turned away with a clenched jaw.
"But here we are, talking." Clara retorted, her tears welling up even more though she refused to cry. "So I am a ghost. To you, I'm a ghost. We're all ghosts to you."
Terry just stared back at Clara, as the companion whispered: "We must be nothing."
"No, you aren't." Terry replied calmly, and Clara demanded: "Then what are we? What can we possibly be?"
"My friend."
Clara blinked, startled by Terry's candid response, while the Doctor slowly turned to watch them as Terry continued, looking Clara in the eye: "You're right, it's almost cruel how easily we can fly through time, time where you haven't even been born yet and time where you're long dead."
Terry took a deep breath before she inquired: "But has it occurred to you, Clara, that that might be our curse, more than it is your pain? If you were really nothing, then there would be no point in traveling with you and having our laughs."
The Doctor watched quietly as Terry continued: "You ask how we can be unaffected – but the truth is, we're probably the most affected. You say you're alive in the early 2000s, so it's cruel that we can look out without batting an eyelid in the year five billion and know you're probably buried out there somewhere. But, has it occurred to you, that in the year 2000, there are people we knew and loved who are long buried?"
Clara blinked, before lowering her head, as Terry went on – not once raising her voice or even changing it from the kind tone that made it all the more unbearable to listen to.
"Yes, our adventures are only possible because of the Tardis – or at least, the Doctor's adventures are. But even so, we are cursed to live far longer than you ever could, Clara; and the only way to cope with that is to look passed the deaths, to the life that is possible elsewhere, and to continue to hope and be excited by that. Because otherwise, we'd have died of heartbreak long before we even met you."
Clara stared back at Terry, before she nodded.
"Okay..." Clara murmured quietly, looking between her friends. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Terry replied with a shrug as she turned back to the console to take them off again. "It's natural you felt that way; you're only human, after all."
Clara looked at the Doctor, who just nodded back. She looked down thoughtfully at her feet, while the Doctor moved around to hug Terry from the back as she landed them once more.
"Thank you for saying all of that." He told her softly in her mind, and Terry just nodded once.
"It was only the truth you wouldn't say." Terry answered as she pulled away from him.
He watched her go with a sigh as Terry called, gesturing for Clara to follow: "Come on; we've still got a long night ahead of us."
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Back inside the Caliburn sitting room, they all gathered around a projector as the Doctor soniced it on, saying as he showed them the negatives from the camera film that he had put together into a slide show:
"The Ghast of Caliburn House. Never changing, trapped in a moment of fear and torment. But, what if she's not?"
Palmer frowned, intrigued, as the Doctor went on: "What if she's just trapped somewhere time runs more slowly than it does here? What if a second to her was a hundred thousand years to us? And what if somebody has a magic box - a blue box, probably - what if said somebody could take a snapshot of her, say, every few million years?"
He flipped through the slides, before finally coming upon the last one which showed a clear image of a dark-skinned woman in a white overall, running across the Earth's surface.
Emma's lips parted slightly in understanding while Clara's eyes widened, and the Doctor murmured: "She's not a ghost. But she's definitely a lost soul."
He stepped up to the projector as he explained: "Her name is Hila Tacorian."
He soniced the projector so that it zoomed in on the woman as he went on: "She's a pioneer, a time traveller, or at least she will be in a few hundred years."
"Time travel's not possible." Palmer protested. "The paradoxes-"
"-Resolve themselves, by and large." The Doctor finished firmly.
"How long has she been alone?" Emma asked softly, pityingly... and empathetically.
Terry looked at the woman, while the Doctor explained: "Well, time travel's a funny old thing. I mean, from her perspective, she crash landed, well," he checked his watch, "three minutes ago."
"Crash landed?" Emma repeated incredulously as she looked at the Doctor. "Where?"
"A pocket universe." Terry explained, and the Doctor added: "It's a distorted echo of our own. They happen sometimes but never last for long."
The Doctor blew up a blue balloon, and then a red one for visual purposes to help the others understand as he said: "Our universe."
He held up the blue balloon.
"Hila Tacorian's here," he held up the red balloon, "in a pocket universe."
He then looked right at Emma as he added: "You're a lantern, shining across the dimensions, guiding her home, back to the land of the living."
He brought the balloons next to each other, letting them touch as he made his point. Palmer looked from the balloons to Emma, while Emma stared in awe at the Doctor, before she laughed a little as the Doctor let the air out of the balloons with the sound of a small raspberry.
"But what's she running from?" Clara piped up with a frown, and the Doctor answered as he clicked his fingers at her: "Well, that's the best bit. We don't know yet. Shall we see?"
He clicked onto the next slide, and they got their answer. Well, partly.
"Oh." The Doctor muttered as they all stared in shock at the blurry creature that was coming out from behind a tree near Hila in the pocket dimension forest.
"What is that?" Clara asked slowly, and the Doctor answered quietly: "I don't know."
He then clapped his hands as he added lightly, turning back to the group: "Still, not to worry."
"So, what do we do?" Emma asked, still staring at the picture, and the Doctor corrected as he looked at her: "Not we, you."
Emma looked at him, stunned, as did Palmer.
"You save Hila Tacorian because you are Emma Grayling." The Doctor said firmly as he walked up to Emma. "You are the lantern. The rest of us are just along for the ride, I'm afraid."
He patted her shoulders reassuringly – though it didn't really help as Emma remained frozen in shock – before he turned to the others as he continued: "We need some sturdy rope and a blue crystal from Metebelis Three."
Terry held it up from where she'd packed it earlier from the Tardis, and the Doctor beamed at her.
"Excellent; you can always count my angel to rise up to the occasion." The Doctor added to Palmer, who blinked. "We'd also need some Kendal Mint Cake."
Terry produced that too, and the Doctor beamed at her.
"You are absolutely brilliant." The Doctor announced, while Palmer shook his head, bewildered.
"Sorry," he interjected, "but where was she carrying all that?"
"I have very big petticoats." Terry deadpanned, while the Doctor piped up: "You wouldn't happen to have-?"
Terry held up the cords that would link the Tardis power source to the crystal, and the Doctor beamed while Palmer shook his head in disbelief and Emma stared.
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As the three friends ran up to plug the cord into the Tardis, Clara asked the Doctor and Terry, now that they were away from Emma and Professor Palmer: "Can't you just, you know?"
"What?" The Doctor asked, glancing at her, and Clara shrugged as she suggested: "Fly the Tardis into the parallel universe?"
"Ah, it's not a parallel universe." The Doctor corrected.
"It's a pocket universe. Plus, it is collapsing. I mean, the Tardis could get in there all right, but entropy would bleed her power sources, you see? Trap her there until the entire universe decayed back into the quantum foam. Which would take about... three minutes, give or take, you know."
"What he means is," Terry summarized, "no, we can't fly the Tardis in. Unless we really, really have to."
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The Doctor finished setting up his device, plugging a white, elongated crystal object into the top and lighting it up as it connected with the energy from the Tardis.
"What is that?" Clara asked curiously as she reached to touch the glowing crystal, but the Doctor smacked her hand as he answered: "A subset of the Eye of Harmony."
Clara frowned, and she began: "I don't-"
"Of course you don't." The Doctor answered shortly. "Be weird if you did. I barely do myself. Right."
He turned and walked across to grab a headset attached to the other end of his device as he called Emma: "You, sit down."
Emma looked at him, startled, before she did as she was told while the Doctor picked up the golden headset with the blue crystal from Metebelis Three set into the centre as he said proudly: "All the way from Metebelis Three."
He placed the headset on Emma's head, and the woman asked a little nervously: "What does it do?"
"It amplifies your natural abilities," the Doctor answered as he soniced around the mess that was his gadget equipment – which included at least ten different clocks -, "like a microphone, or a pooper scooper."
"What exactly is this arrangement?" Palmer asked doubtfully as he, too, looked around at all the clocks that were wired to the Doctor's machine. The thing that still baffled him the most, however, was how Terry had managed to carry all these clocks in her so-called petticoats. He wasn't even sure the woman was wearing any.
"A psychochronograph." The Doctor answered Palmer, and the professor pointed out: "Forgive me, but isn't it all a bit well, make do and mend?"
"Non-psychic technology won't work where I'm going." The Doctor replied as Terry helped him put on a parachute harness. "Listen, all I need to do is dive into another dimension, find the time traveller, help her escape the monster, get home before the entire dimension collapses, and Bob's your uncle."
"That's the wrong buckle, sweetie." Terry pointed out, and he looked down to see he was buckling up the harness all wrong.
"Bugger." He sighed, before looking over at Emma as she asked in a forcefully neutral voice: "Doctor, will it hurt?"
As Terry fixed his buckles for him, the Doctor reassured Emma: "No. Well, yes."
Emma looked up fearfully while Palmer shot the Doctor an appalled look as the Doctor rambled: "Probably. A bit. Well, quite a lot. I don't know. It might be agony. To be perfectly honest, I'll be interested to find out."
"And, I think you should shut up." Terry noted as she finished fixing the Doctor's buckles. He nodded sheepishly, while Emma looked to Palmer for support and reassurance.
"And Theta – try to be careful." Terry added mentally, and the Doctor smiled.
"I always come back to you, don't I?" He joked, but she pointed out flatly: "It's the other way around. So be there for when I come back."
"Always." He promised, and she gave him a sharp look.
Stepping back from him, she added quickly: "I meant, you need to be there for River."
The Doctor just nodded silently, before he turned to Emma as the woman said: "I'm ready."
"Okay. You've got this, Emma." The Doctor encouraged.
Emma closed her eyes, and she began: "I'm talking to the lost soul that abides in this place."
As nothing happened, Emma continued: "I'm speaking to Hila Tarcorian."
The clocks on the machine instantly started to go backwards, and Terry pointed to the middle of the room as the black disc from before appeared once more. Everyone turned to stare at it as the disc cracked again, before it shattered into a blinding white light portal and a strong wind blew through the room.
"See?" The Doctor called above the wind as he grabbed his rope. "The Witch of the Well! It's a wormhole! A reality well! A door to the echo universe."
He looked at Emma as he checked: "Ready?"
"Ready!" She shouted back, and the Doctor turned back to the wormhole.
He took a deep breath, cracking his neck before he murmured: "Geronimo."
And with that, he ran at the wormhole, throwing himself into it and they all watched as he disappeared, while the rope continued to unwind from the winch as the Doctor fell deeper into the pocket universe.
"Will he be okay?" Clara called over the sound of the wind that continued to blow wildly all around them, and Terry answered: "I wouldn't have let him go in there alone if he wouldn't be!"
They waited, counting the seconds, and as they hit a minute, Terry urged: "Emma, call him. Help him find his way back."
Emma nodded, and she called: "Doctor! Doctor! Come home! Doctor, come home! Doctor, we're here!"
There was still no response, but Terry urged: "Don't give up, Emma! Not just yet!"
Emma cried out as she felt her strength wane, but she called again: "Doctor! Doctor!"
"Come on, Doctor." Clara whispered anxiously, and Emma cried out again.
"Emma, hang on." Terry urged, but Emma cried: "I'm not strong enough!"
"Just a few more seconds!" Clara shouted desperately, and Emma screamed.
Palmer flinched, but Terry held him back as Emma screamed in utter pain.
"Wait!" Terry urged, and he cried: "She's hurting!"
"Not yet!" Terry insisted, as Emma screamed.
The winch suddenly dinged as something tugged it three times from inside the pocket universe, and Terry quickly let Palmer go as she helped him wind the rope back in quickly.
"There!" Terry gasped as a woman – clearly Hila – came flying in, landing in a heap on the ground.
"But where's the Doctor?" Clara cried, when Emma gasped and she fell to the floor.
"Emma!" Palmer cried as he hurried to catch the woman in his arms as the wormhole began to close, and Clara cried: "No!"
But it was too late, and the portal sealed itself once more... leaving the Doctor in the pocket universe.
"Oh, no, no, no." Clara gasped, before turning on Emma and she cried as she ran towards the collapsed woman: "Wake up! Wake up! Open the thing."
"I'm sorry." Emma cried, and Palmer shushed: "Don't be sorry. Don't be. What you did-"
"Wasn't enough." Clara interrupted sharply. "She needs to do it again."
"Clara, calm down." Terry interjected, while Palmer argued as he held Emma close to his chest: "She can't. Look at her."
"She has to!" Clara cried, and Terry said loudly: "Clara!"
Clara whirled on her friend, eyes wide and anxious, but she calmed down slightly as she saw Terry's calm demeanour.
"Now, you can think clearly." Terry said, relieved, and Clara cried: "What do we do, though? We can't leave him."
"Of course we can't." Terry answered. "But-"
She broke off as she felt herself being pulled away, and Terry sighed in annoyance: "Oh, really, now?"
"No, Terry, no, you can't leave!" Clara cried desperately, but Terry reminded her gently: "We can't use the Tardis, unless we absolutely have to."
"She hates me!" Clara yelled in despair, but Terry smiled as she corrected: "She doesn't understand you – but she will never let the Doctor die. You just have to convince her to let you help her."
"What's that mean?!" Clara yelled. "You're getting almost as cryptic as the Doctor! Terry!"
And Terry had to laugh as she disappeared, knowing Clara would work it out fine. Even with a little cheek from the Tardis.