AN: Of course nothing belongs to me, neither the characters nor the song. First Doctor Who fan fic. When it comes to DW I'm more of a lurker and admirer (just about anything with Rose/Ten gets me and has the ability to squeeze the feels out of me). Really liking Clara and although I did like Amy and Rory I haven't absolutely adored a companion since Rose. I wasn't even able to watch when Donna was the companion because all of the feels were squeezed out of me, barely made it through Martha without comparing her to Rose the entire time which I'm aware is quite horrible. This was a bit tough since we don't know too much about Clara but still quite fun and I simply had to write it after watching the episode at two am last night. Also I didn't even realize the possible pun about wishing at eleven eleven till I wrote it. Oh well, hopefully you'll enjoy my little story.
Clara Oswald did not consider herself to be superstitious.
She stepped on cracks like a daredevil; wouldn't think twice before ducking under a ladder to play with a black cat; and when her mirror had broken she had cursed at it, stuck her bleeding finger in her mouth and cleaned up the mess. If that wasn't enough not once had she tossed salt over her shoulder, salt was for cooking after all and that was something she did quite well, soufflés were her specialty.
Sometimes she made wishes. On her birthday she would close her eyes, blow out the candles and make a wish just as she had been taught by her parents. There were even times when she would wish on stars as she was making her way home, but that was where it stopped. Fallen eyelashes were meant to be swept off of ones face, searching for four leaf clovers was a waste of time, and she had never understood what was so special about the number eleven.
She wasn't superstitious and neither was she religious.
When her goldfish, Mr. Bubbles, had passed away her parents had told her that he was now in a better place. She hadn't understood how the toilet led to a place that was better than his fishbowl; his fishbowl had stickers that glowed in the dark after all. She was older when her mother had passed away and knew better. No one tried to tell her that her mother was in a better place this time. Instead they told her that she was looking after her or that she would be so proud of how brave she was being. Clara simply nodded, thanked them for their condolences and played with the ring hanging off of her necklace; it was still a bit too big for her.
The day before her trip was about to start, the trip she had been planning since she had received that fateful book, her friend had died. Once more she watched the procession of people attempting to comfort children that had lost their mother and part of her wanted to scream at them because she knew that they weren't helping in the slightest. But she didn't scream, instead she stayed and she helped in the way she had wished someone had been able to help her.
She let herself daydream and have silly wishes, most of those occurred during dull moments or when staring out the window. But not once had she let her wishes take over when she had work to do. She hadn't needed a lucky item when taking her exams, following a superstition hadn't led to her doing better in anything and neither had breaking a superstition ruined her life in some way. She wished, and she dreamt crazy dreams, but she relied on herself to take her to where she wanted to go.
It had been her newfound computer skills that had helped her when people were being downloaded, and it had been the realization that the possible future held more than the concrete past that had helped on her first trip with the Doctor. Of course the Doctor was the reason she was still around and not in the cloud, but he had used his own skills and didn't rely on luck.
Apparently being stuck on a Russian submarine during the Cold War with the possibility of the entire world being destroyed unless the Ice Warriors showed mercy had the ability to change her long standing tradition of not relying on luck. Logically she knows that Skaldak most likely showed mercy because of his warrior upbringing, which had been what they had been hoping for after all. There was also the possibility that the memory of his daughter had helped in their favour. What stuck with Clara however had been that she had been singing 'Hungry Like The Wolf' when they had been given the all clear.
She had been humming it to herself when she had her first encounter with a Dalek, when she heard it outside of a karaoke bar she had insisted that they go inside and had found a girl whose cousin had been taken by something that was very much not human, and it had been in the greenhouse of Wolf Manner that she had found the supposedly lost artifact that had almost started a very real war. Even the Doctor started to notice her slight obsession with wolves after that but didn't comment on it since it seemed to help when her nerves decided to show up.
When she found a delicate necklace with a wolf hanging off of it at a market on a planet whose name she couldn't pronounce she was practically beaming. Along with her mother's ring she never took it off.
Clara Oswald was not a superstitious or religious person but for some reason she felt comforted every time she saw a wolf during their trips. When trouble showed up, because it always did show up, she could trust that if something did happen to her then the Doctor would find her and rescue her, if she couldn't rescue herself first of course. Yet although she knew that the Doctor was an alien that was hundreds of years older than her and had saved entire worlds it was when she saw that little wolf that she knew everything was going to be alright. Really if one thought about it trusting someone who thought fez's were cool made about as much sense as trusting a wolf. Besides, she wasn't afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, it was her friend.