The clearing felt different now.
Kora stood at its center, fingers pressed into the cool bark of the trees, breathing in the familiar scents of moss and pine and woodsmoke drifting faintly from the settlement. Everything about this place was home—and that made what she was about to do hurt more than she expected.
Henrik was laughing by the stream again, ten years old and alive and blissfully unaware of the night waiting for him two years down the line.
"Kora," Rebekah said quietly. "He can't come, can he?"
Kora shook her head. "No. He stays."
Henrik looked up at the tension in their voices. "Stays where?"
Kora walked over and crouched in front of him, taking his hands the way she always did when she needed him to listen.
"You remember how I once told you some paths have to be walked alone?" she asked gently.
He nodded, brow furrowed.
"This is one of those," she said. "Rebekah and I have to go fix something that hasn't happened yet."
His eyes widened. "Is it about me?"
Kora hesitated only a heartbeat. Then she nodded. "Yes. And that's why you're safe right here."
Henrik studied her face the way children do when they are deciding whether to trust an answer. Finally, he nodded. "Okay."
Rebekah knelt beside him and hugged him tightly. "We'll be right back."
He hugged her back just as hard. "Don't take forever."
Kora rose, heart aching, and turned away before she could change her mind.
The TARDIS waited.
---
Inside, the doors shut with a sound like resolve.
Rebekah gripped the railing as the room seemed to breathe around them. The enormity what they were about to do seemed to be delaying her awe of the impossibly large room. "He's really staying behind."
"Yes," Kora said, already moving to the console. "And if we fail—"
"Don't," Rebekah said sharply. "We won't."
The TARDIS hummed beneath their feet, responding to Kora's touch as if she had always belonged here. Knowledge unfurled inside her mind: how to set a temporal destination, how to anchor to a specific moment, how to listen to the ship rather than force it.
Then she pulled the lever.
---
They arrived into moonlight and terror.
The doors flew open to a forest soaked in silver and shadow. The air reeked of blood and fear.
"Kora—" Rebekah gasped.
"I see him."
Twelve-year-old Henrik burst through the trees, face streaked with tears, breath coming in panicked sobs. He was bigger than she remembered him, different from the one they left behind. Older. Already carrying the weight of loss.
Behind him—
A werewolf got ready to lunge.
Kora ran.
The reflex enhancement snapped her forward, the world narrowing to distance and timing. She grabbed him just as claws slashed the air inches from his back.
She pulled him back to the TARDIS.
The TARDIS doors yawned open, and she dragged Henrik inside, Rebekah slammed the doors shut. And the werewolf slammed bodily into the frame, howling in rage.
Kora ran to the TARDIS console and had them disappear into the time vortex.
Henrik collapsed to the floor, shaking violently. "I—I thought I was dead."
Kora ran back to his side, dropping to her knees in front of him. "You're not."
He stared at her, eyes unfocused. "You… you look like—"
"I know," she said softly. "I'm your sister. From earlier. From before."
Rebekah knelt beside them, hands gentle and steady. "You're safe now."
Henrik's breath shuddered out of him, and he broke, sobbing as Rebekah pulled him into her arms.
After a long moment, he whispered, "Can I go home?"
Kora's heart fractured.
"No," she said honestly.
She explained—carefully, kindly—about time folding in on itself, about another version of him still living safely in the past, about how meeting himself could tear things apart.
"So I stay here," Henrik said quietly.
"Yes," Kora said. "You'll grow here. Learn. And when you turn thirteen, you'll be given a choice."
He looked around the vast room. "This place feels alive."
The TARDIS hummed, pleased.
"She is."
As if responding, a doorway unfolded nearby, revealing a warm, welcoming wing—books, training spaces, sunlight that wasn't tied to any sky.
"And she is welcoming you."
---
Returning felt wrong.
The TARDIS deposited Kora and Rebekah back into the clearing minutes after they had left, before shielding itself to look like a tall tree by the clearing instead of the iconic blue box.
The night air was calm. The stream babbled peacefully.
Ten-year-old Henrik looked up. "You're back!"
Kora crossed the space and pulled him into her arms, holding him tighter than she ever had before.
Rebekah joined them, arms wrapping around both of them.
Henrik laughed, confused but happy. "Did you save me?"
Kora closed her eyes, forehead pressed to his hair.
"Always," she said.
Behind them, unseen, the TARDIS waited—
and somewhere inside it, another Henrik slept safely, growing toward the future that would one day let him choose the stars.