Sleep came swiftly for Clara. It had been a long and exhausting day and the Doctor had insisted on playing along to Kemix greatest hits and "improving her taste in modern music". To be fair she quite enjoyed it-Kemix were a plasma tech funk band from the fifty-fourth century apparantly but Clara thought they sounded a bit like Muse. The Doctor reckoned he played with them on tour once after the lead guitarist was exterminated by a Dalek. She'd teased him about having groupies and he'd retaliated by suggesting that she was "an overachieving groupie." She knew it was hogwash-they were both a lot more to each other than that, despite everything.

The soft hum of the TARDIS lulled Clara into a deep slumber and she found herself in a terribly dark space. Desolation. Alone. Nothing or no-one to control. She shouted, she screamed and she cried but there was no-one to pay heed to the Impossible Girl in the void. It was pure nothing yet she found it claustraphobic. The deep blanket of darkness was smothering her. Clara Oswald wished and she begged to be "anywhere else but here." The despair of being trapped in the void was surely worse than fighting any monster or supervising any lame school trip.

Clara awoke groggily, what a horrible dream she'd had last night and she didn't even feel that rested. Just thinking about the void made her feel sick so she forced herself up out of bed and into the shower. As the water activated she wished she could wash the lingering emptiness away.

She found the Doctor in the console room, he seemed to be studying something intently on the screen. As he heard her approach he turned to look at his companion and his eyes widened. This definately wasn't her usual look, there wasn't a trace of the schoolteacher or the demurely pretty woman with this getup. The Impossible Girl looked amazing in the tight red leather trousers and matching ruby crop-top, amd she was taller in the red high-heeled boots. The Doctor had intended to make a remark- something like "Where do you think you're going dressed like that!" But he was aware that that would have sounded like he was trying to be her Dad. Maybe "you look nice" would suffice but nice just wasn't the word she was magnificent. So magnificent that the Doctor ended up not saying anything, he just stood there gawping.

Clara smiled a little and stepped towards him and the screen before reaching up and closing his mouth. The Doctor flinched in shock as he realised that his jaw had actually dropped.

"Good afternoon Clara." He tried to regain his dignity with the formal greeting.

"Is it really that late?!" She asked embarassed that she had been in bed for so long.

"Hang on..." She looked up at the time lord suspiciously.

"When and where are we?"

"Back at yours." Replied the Doctor.

"Why?"

"I thought you'd want to come home."

"Oh." Clara stared down at her boots briefly before looking back up at her friend intensely.

"Well I don't. Not yet anyway." Clara seemed quite fired up at the moment, there was a hunger in her eyes for a new adventure. The Doctor wasn't about to complain-travalling wasn't the same without her but he remembered the days when she was so insistent on keeping this separate from the rest of her life, when he had to pick her up on specific days and cope without her when she was gone.

Clara was staring at the screen now, her eyes focused on the image in front of her.

"What's this?"

"That is the Fausinium of the Namor Empire. Genius architecture, one of the one-hundred wonders of the Vandros galaxy in the twenty-third century. Only being there once, did too many shots at the Emperor's birthday party and woke up in a tent with well...you don't want to know Clara."

Clara giggled, trying to imagine the Doctor that pissed.

"Hey I was wild once."

"Are you sure you weren't just having a midlife regeneration crisis?"

"I can't remember..."

"Sounds like it could do with a revisit."

The Doctor took out his shades from his jacket pocket, put them on and gripped a lever charismatically.

"Vandros galaxy here we come!"

Clara held on to the console as the Doctor pulled the lever and the journey on the TARDIS began.

A/N: There will be some real action in the next chapter. I do intend this to be mainly a psychological and character focused fic but things will get more exciting!