Clara Oswald had no heartbeat.
She had no need for food or air or sleep. Although, sleep she still did - even all these centuries later. Maybe it was habit. Or maybe her racing mind just needed the rest, if only to dwell in dreams for a time.
Her waking mind could only hold so many memories at a time, struggling along as the years slipped through her grasp. She kept handwritten diaries with Ashildr, storing them in the Tardis's accommodatingly expanding library. The present was always just a little bit hazy with the patina of the new and uncertain. But her unconscious mind could recall the past in crystal clarity when she dreamed.
Her dreams were colorful and varied, mostly things she'd seen and done when she was still alive though sometimes the stories twisted and turned, exploring paths untaken. No matter where she went, or when, her dreaming mind always found its way back to him.
His long fingers tucked into hers as they ran, breathless and giddy. His piercing gaze under that heavy brow, making the heartbeat she'd once had stutter from its rhythm. The strong burr of his voice, breath tickling her ear as he murmured instructions or other, more significant, words.
Clara wished that she'd known then to catalogue every moment and store them away like the photos on her mobile. Then perhaps she could close her eyes and choose a particular moment to live over and over again. But it was at the whim of her unconscious and, much like its owner, her mind could be capricious.
So it was that Clara went eagerly to bed between adventures - much to Ashildr's amusement. The other immortal girl didn't understand. She'd lived too long for idle sentiment. She'd loved many times, long and well, and buried them all in the past.
But there had only ever been two such loves for Clara.
Danny, she thought of one time each day, keeping a promise once made in her dying mind.
The Doctor, she couldn't have forgotten if she tried.
It had taken some adjusting at first but Clara no longer thought about the other functions she no longer needed. Sometimes she would go months before remembering she hadn't eaten in a while.
Ashildr didn't really need food either but she liked to remind herself of different flavors every few decades. So, Clara would join her in the diner, a 'Closed for Business' sign slung on the door in the language of whatever planet they'd landed on. The two of them would rifle through old diaries, digging up references to favorite meals, and put together a menu lavish enough to put the Louis XIV of Naturoun 8 to shame. They'd cook and cook and cook until the air was saturated with smells from all over the galaxy.
It was in one such frenzy of culinary exploration that there came a knock at the door.
The women ignored it at first but it came again. They exchanged looks. Ashildr shrugged.
"We're closed. Come back tomorrow," Clara shouted over one shoulder, knowing full well they'd be long gone by then.
"Sorry to bother but, ehm, I seem to be stuck here for a bit and it's really quite cold outside. Would you mind if I came in and just warmed up a bit?" A woman's voice carried over the bubbling pots and sizzling pans.
Ashildr raised an eyebrow. "Told you we should have changed the outside appearance."
"Well when you figure out how to unstick a Chameleon circuit, we'll get right on that." Clara replied goodnaturedly, flipping a Vrendesian hot cake with a wide plastic spatula.
Ashildr shrugged again and moved a rattling pot off the burner.
The woman at the door knocked once more. "You know, those Vrendesian hot cakes smell a bit burnt but I would be happy to whip up some Fflusetin sweet sauce that would perfectly compliment the char."
Clara's mouth pursed. She slapped the spatula down on the counter and turned toward the door. "Insulting my cooking doesn't really seem like a wise way to gain entry…"
"Consider it constructive criticism?" The woman called back.
Ashildr gave a snort of amusement. "Oh, just let her in." She reached past Clara to turn off the burner under the hot cakes.
Clara sighed. "I was going to. My hands were just full with burning dinner apparently" she flounced across to the door and flung it open.
A slender woman with blonde hair cut to her shoulders stood outside. She was wrapped in a trench coat that was clearly too thin to keep out the chill wind. Her bright eyes met Clara's and she inhaled sharply, something unreadable flickering over her face before it settled into a cheery smile. "Thanks ever so much. A… a friend of mine has borrowed my…. ride. I'm sure she'll be back any moment but in the meantime… anyway, thanks."
Clara's hand flexed on the door handle as she tentatively returned the other woman's easy smile. "We aren't open but you're welcome to wait here and have a bite. So long as you serve yourself." That last bit was only partly a joke. Clara could be friendly enough but she really wasn't cut out for food service. A fact she'd discovered quite quickly, traveling in a pretend diner. She ought to have known how much she'd hate taking orders of any kind.
The blonde stepped over the threshold with a nod. "I meant it about that sweet sauce. I'm quite handy with a spoon."
Clara swallowed involuntarily, suddenly overwhelmed with a powerful deja vu. To cover, she gave the woman a perfunctory tour of the kitchen area, all the while feeling like her movements were redundant.
The woman nodded sharply, taking in the whole smoky mess, the jumble of cooking implements, with an amused and intelligent eye.
Clara moved as though she was in a dream, her mouth running away with unnecessary descriptions of their culinary endeavors. She could feel the woman at her back, listening attentively. Each time she turned, she could swear the blonde had stepped just a little closer, testing the boundaries of Clara's personal space. Clara couldn't bring herself to mind.
Ashildr watched them both as she stirred and added final seasonings, the corner of her mouth quirked upward.
Once acquainted with the kitchen, the woman set to work, dashing together a delicious smelling sauce as Clara and Ashildr dished up. The three women sat down to the table and dug in with relish.
Companionable silence gave way to pleasant small talk. The blonde woman artfully evaded personal questions but happily supplied amusing anecdotes about her missing friends (there turned out to be more than one of them). She didn't seem particularly concerned about their whereabouts or exactly when they intended to bring back her aforementioned transport. Clara and Ashildr simply took it in stride, having met more than their share of fellow travelers over the years.
Despite her easy, carefree demeanor, Clara felt a thread of something urgent - almost desperate - in the way the woman's eyes kept seeking out Clara's, and then darting away. For just a moment, something would pass between them, the blonde's lips parting around an unspoken word, her gaze intense and consuming. Then her expression would shift, wiping itself clean and fading back into that blandly polite smile. She'd ask one of them to pass the buttered Parsileran potatoes (which were not actually potatoes but no one could call them by their native name without a second epiglottis) and Clara would think she'd imagined it.
"By the time the Queen regent had pieced together the real story, of course, we were long gone. But there's yet another garden I suppose I'll never get to see again…" the woman laughed, a clear and lovely sound, and Ashildr joined her merriment.
Clara smiled broadly, still feeling dreamy and slow - though whether it was due to the massive food consumption or the company, she couldn't tell. "Tell me, have you been back to Earth lately?"
The blonde woman tilted her head, a gesture that immediately brought both owls and bushy eyebrows to Clara's mind. "Mm, not recently. Though we had thought to head back soon. I believe they are due to celebrate Christmas."
"Christmas…. that's the one with the trees and the imaginary bogeyman who rides a… was it an elk?" Ashildr mused.
"Santa's not a bogeyman. He brings children the presents they most longed for through the year," Clara explained. "Providing they've been good, that is."
"Well who is he to judge the behavior of children? And how does he know?" Ashildr queried with a teasing grin.
"He sees you while you're sleeping; he knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good…" Clara sang, giggling a little at the end.
"That's quite creepy. Spying on children." Ashildr grabbed several empty dishes as she stood up.
"I have to say, it doesn't exactly disprove your bogeyman theory, does it?" The other woman addressed this to Ashildr, running one hand through her short hair. "But from all accounts he's really quite nice. Jolly, they say. Perhaps a bit snarky but a good sort."
Ashildr's mouth twisted. She was clearly already losing interest in a very human event to which she no longer felt any connection. "Suppose they aren't mutually exclusive, jolly and creepy. I'm gonna let these soak. Less clean up later."
Clara barely noticed as Ashildr disappeared around the kitchen partition. The tickle in her mind had grown too vast to ignore, the familiarity and slippery wrongness and utter rightness of the evening culminating here and now. She narrowed her eyes at the blonde, a whole world of questions pressing at her lips. What came out was this: "So, in all your travels, you've never, ah, met Santa? Jolly St. Nick?"
The blonde licked her lips, suddenly looking anywhere but Clara. "Oh, do you think he's really real? Not just a story? I mean, gifts to every child in the world in one night? I…" here she took a long breath, "I always figured that would be… impossible."
It was like waking up and falling into the deepest sleep all at the same time. Like fireworks exploding in Clara's mind and liquid happiness fizzing beneath her skin. If she'd had breath to steal, it would have been stolen away. Her hands gripped the edge of the table, an anchor to keep her from floating out of reality completely.
She knew. With absolute certainty, with impeccable clarity, she knew .
It took some effort but Clara finally caught and pinned the blonde woman's galloping gaze. "I've always believed in the impossible," she said gently.
Silence stretched between them, thick as taffy. Neither able to look away. Neither really wishing to, now that permission had been granted to freely look.
Then the other woman's lips trembled slightly before curving slowly up at both corners. Her eyes went silvery with tacit relief and a million other things she'd likely never admit to feeling. Her voice, when she spoke at last, was barely a whisper.
"Yes. I could see that about you. You've a face that has seen wonders, Clara Oswald."
Everything in Clara screamed to reach out, to fold the woman in her arms and never let go. Her knuckles were white as she continued to cling to her Formica lifeline. So close and yet so far. Always so far from where they'd once been.
They both knew it was ground that could not be retread. The centuries between them were a heavy reminder.
Together, they were simply too dangerous, a supernova burning bright and combusting so fast it would leave only the most deadly of black holes. This world they both loved so dearly, that they explored and learned from and kept trying to change for the better, could only exist without the Hybrid.
There was a whooshing noise outside and the woman broke away from Clara's gaze to look toward it. She swallowed hard and slid from the booth, announcing, "Well, that's my ride. Thank you for a lovely evening." She looked directly at Clara again as she added, "I won't forget it."
Clara stood up and grasped the woman's hands, impulsively. Her lips parted but no words would come. She'd been waiting for this moment for so very long, dreamt it a million different ways. But now it was happening, nothing seemed to fit. At last she tilted up on her toes (of course she was still the shorter one, even now) and gently pressed her lips to the other woman's. She tasted galaxies in a span of seconds, eons of hope and loss, joy and regret. And just a hint of salt tears that could have belonged to either of them.
As Clara pulled back, the woman was smiling again, but not in her polite way. She smiled in the way that one only does when sharing a beautiful, painful secret.
"Happy Christmas, Clara."
"Happy Christmas." Clara hesitated a moment before adding, a little smugly, "I told you I'd know you anywhere."
At this the woman laughed, squeezing Clara's hand and keeping it in hers as they head to the entrance. Their joined hands fell apart as the woman opened the door.
"Good night and thank you again for your hospitality," she called toward the kitchen.
Ashildr poked her head around the partition wall. "Oh! Good night and thank you for the new recipe, Doctor!"
Clara's mouth fell open but The Doctor only winked back. Hesitating a moment longer, she tucked a lock of hair behind Clara's ear. "There's never really goodbye for us, is there?"
Without waiting for a reply, she was gone.
Clara let the door close before she could even catch a glimpse of that old blue box. Her unmoving heart already hurt too much.
Instead, she grabbed some more dishes and head to the kitchen. Setting them down, she planted her hands on her hips and cleared her throat. "So, you knew the whole time?"
Ashildr's eyebrows lifted. "I think you forget how long I was around before we started traveling together."
Clara held out both hands, shaking her head. "You didn't say anything."
"I figured if she wanted you to know, she'd have introduced herself. Besides, you figured it out once I gave you a moment together. Why do you think I stepped in here? For the ambiance?" She waved a casual hand at the stacks of dirty dishes.
Clara's face felt hot though she no longer blushed. It was the sense memory of a blush, of the ability to be embarrassed when she was not the top of the class. "Oh. Oh right." She cleared her throat again, looking down at her feet. "Thank you for that."
Ashildr slung an arm around her shoulders. "Happy Christmas, love. And if you really want to thank me, you can get a head start on the pots and pans. Life's still too short for pruney fingers."
Clara laughed and hugged her companion back tightly. "I'll get right on them tomorrow. All that food made me want to take a nap."
"You and your naps," Ashildr grumbled gamely. "Alright. Tomorrow, dishes. Tonight… Sweet dreams." She left the room with a meaningful backwards glance.
After clearing away a few more thing, Clara settled into her bed and waited for her dream mind to take her away.
Clara still didn't need to sleep, but sleep she did that night and many others after it.
Sometimes she dreamt she ran from danger with a tall, owlish man whose eyebrows did the talking. Sometimes she was with a young, clumsy fellow who had nearly no eyebrows at all.
But sometimes the hand in hers was that of a slight blonde woman with a lovely smile and just a hint of sorrow in her bright, wise eyes.