Editors note: Anything that is not contained within "quotation marks" but is in italics is thought by one of the characters. Thanks for reading :)

Swinging the door open, Clara tentatively walked out into the first floor hallway, with the Doctor in tow. She felt tense in the darkness, ready to dart back into her room if necessary. What would she find? Surely it had to be something so very dangerous if even the doctor didn't know what it was? To her right were two doors, one leading into her luxurious bathroom, complete with a whirlpool bath with candles littering its side. She had always been more of a bath person. The other door led to the spare bedroom, a welcoming room painted in a light blue, much lighter than the TARDIS.

To her left, in an indent in the wall, were the stairs. She didn't have fancy spiral staircases or anything; just your bog-standard UK carpeted stairs. They were new stairs as well, just recently installed. And they certainly never creaked. A wave of fear crashed over her again when she realised this; whatever was down those stairs purposely made them creak. It wanted her to look for it.

It was waiting for her.

She was frozen to the spot. "D…Doctor?" she said fearfully. She jumped as she felt something touch her shoulder, making a little squeak. "Oh it's only you!" Thank God! Clara suddenly found great relief that the Doctor was by her side. He had put his hand on her shoulder, and was now squeezing it lightly, letting her know he was there.

As quickly as she felt the touch it was gone, and she saw the Doctor move towards the stairs. "Doctor, I'm just a teeny bit terrified."

"So am I" he replied ominously. How can there be something that he didn't know of? And why was it waiting for someone to find it? It all just didn't make sense. 'If only I knew! Why don't I know?' the Doctor scolded himself silently. He wished he could just get out of there, and more importantly get Clara out of there, and to the relative safety of the TARDIS. He couldn't let any harm become of her again. He had let her die too many times. He wished that she would just leave it all to him. He couldn't really put into words how he felt about her, when he gripped her shoulder he felt a connection, like she had been with him for all his life, whispering in his ear or holding his hand. He didn't let his touch linger, he couldn't allow himself to get pre-occupied with his feelings, not now anyway.

"Ok Clara, around this corner there's something extremely dangerous so I'm just going to stick my head around the corner and wave my screwdriver at whatever it is. Hopefully whatever it is is scared of green lights."

Clara was taken aback by this. "And then what Doctor? Are we supposed to fight it?"

"Clara…" The Doctor sighed. "You know when I tell you that everything's going to be fine, and you think I'm probably lying just to make you feel better?"

"Yeh," she replied, cocking her head ever so slightly to the left, a confused look on her face.

He smiled, "Everything's gonna be fine." Turning around again towards the stairs he removed the sonic screwdriver from his inside pocket, straightened his bow tie and prepared for the worst. Another creak! Louder than ever. Ooh this is a new feeling, what is this? Everything's standing on end. This must be, oh I don't know what is this? The Doctor tapped his head firmly. Oh I know! I'm scared. So very scared. I don't really know what's going to happen now. The Doctor's thoughts were racing. Whatever's down these stairs it must be huge. To be able to make a creak that loud!

This should be fun.

The Doctor took a sharp breath. Time seemed to slow down, and he wasn't even in the TARDIS, he held the button on the sonic screwdriver, and turned round the corner to peek down the stairs. He quickly darted back round the corner away from the stairs. "What did you see Doctor?" Clara asked worriedly, "What was there?"

"Something very dangerous and evil and ohh you don't want to go down there… wait a second," the Doctor paused, thinking. I saw something what did I see, what was it? He racked his brains trying to think. What did I see? Something's missing here. The stairs creaked again. What's missing!? Not a moment later it hit him like a tonne of bricks. He knew why it all felt so wrong. He knew what was missing.

A monster.

"Impossible!" the Doctor remarked.

"What? What's wrong Doctor?" Clara asked, worried now.

"Everything. Everything is wrong. There's nothing there!" The Doctor looked around the corner once more, making sure that his eyes had not deceived him the first time. Whilst he was looking incredulously there was another loud creak, directly in front of him. Clara was by his side.

"Doctor, I don't like this…" She grabbed a hold of his jacket, searching for some comfort.

"Neither do I." The Doctor scanned the area with his sonic screwdriver, running up and down the stairs three times, four. He crouched down, examining one of the stairs, as if he could find an answer woven in the fibres of the carpet. How can there be nothing here?

"Aha!" The Doctor shouted jubilantly. He scanned the room again, quicker this time. He knew what he was doing.

"What is it Doctor, what do you know?" Clara knew that he was confident, and this calmed her more than anything. When the Doctor is confident, beasts beware.

He ran his finger along the wall, tasting it. "There're two sets of stairs in this house!"

"Doctor you're not making any sense, this is the only flight of stairs, what's going…ohh." She had taken another look at the stairs, seen exactly what the Doctor had noticed from the start. "But the stairs? I only got them fitted recently, how could they possibly look so…old?" The carpet on each stair had started to lose some of its fluff; like a well-loved teddy bear, the stairs were balding. "But Doctor what's happened? They look about a hundred years old?"

"Silly Clara, deaf Clara, don't you ever listen? There are two sets of stairs here." The Doctor looked her in the eye, making every word count. Frustratingly, Clara's faced stayed blank.

"Nope, you've lost me."

The Doctor sighed. "Clara, there's been a lot of timey wimey stuff going on in this house, but not spacey wacey! No that would be ridiculous! Only timey wimey that's all." Clara still looked blank. Unsurprisingly. "In this exact spot, two things are happening at the exact same time, two time streams that should never have touched. And now they've come together, and part of that other reality is seeping through the vortex. That's why we see this old staircase, it's leaked through the fabric of time like the few drips of water that always leak from the tap after it's been turned off. That's why you can hear the creaks, they're happening in this precise place in a completely different time stream."

Clara had an incredulous look on her face. "Surely that's fine then, and we can just wait and the other time will stop leaking in by itself." She secretly hoped that this wasn't the end of the excitement. Life had been boring in the months since the Doctor had left her here. It was all ordinary, no monsters, no shooting, and not even any time travel. Although she would never tell him, she had missed him.

Her train of though was broken by the voice of the Doctor, "No of course not! There must have been something that opened the tap in the first place, and that is a level 4 breach of the united galaxies time travel convention."

"Time travel convention?" Clara was curious.

"Yes! Well, I'll tell you later." Clara pouted a little at this. "The important thing is that that creaking is coming from the time stream that's leaking through into your house, and I bet that the thing that's making that sound was the thing that opened that tap. We need to get back to the TARDIS, are you coming?"

The Doctor scanned the stairs and then ran for the front door. Turning around he said excitedly, in his typical goofy way, "hurry up then!"

And they ran. Being with this extraordinary alien made Clara forget everything. She knew she was in her nightdress, running through the winter night without any shoes on, but she didn't care. The Doctor was practically glowing with excitement and she could feel it too. Him coming back for her made her giddy with enthusiasm, and she couldn't quite put what she was feeling into words.

The TARDIS was in close now, the royal blue a welcome sight for Clara. A familiar tinge of happiness and excitement washed over her. Finally! Another adventure in the TARDIS! The Doctor twisted the key in the lock and held the door open for Clara.

Walking inside, Clara once again felt astounded by the staggering size of the interior. It had been months since she had stepped foot inside that blue box, and whilst Clara wasn't stupid enough to think that her and the Doctor's experiences had all just been one big dream, she was starting to believe that her mind was just playing tricks on her. Obviously not.

"Doctor, what are we doing, you still haven't explained."

"Ah, well what I'm doing is being extremely clever and possibly quite foolish and what you're doing is watching me," the Doctor remarked smugly. "Using the sonic screwdriver I captured a snapshot of the old stairs in your house, and now by putting that information into the TARDIS I can extrapolate the exact time stream that has leaked into the house using that image. I know, I know I'm a genius."

"Yep, and I'm the boss" remarked Clara cheekily, kissing him on the cheek. He jumped a little in surprise, looking her in the eyes. No, I'm getting distracted by her again… her eyes are beautiful. A few beeps from the TARDIS took his attention away from Clara.

"She's ready, where are we going? Come on sexy, tell me where we're going." He swivelled the monitor to face himself and Clara.

"The 15th April 2072 eh? Thank God I was getting tired of the Victorian principles. I never want to see another toxic red leech again." Clara said happily.

The Doctor flicked some switches and twizzled the stabiliser orb. "Are you ready?" He asked. Clara nodded.

He pulled the lever and grabbed on tight. "Geronimo!"