"The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story"

-Peter S. Beagle, in 'The Last Unicorn'

[Paths]

There had never been room for any pretense of "before", not for either of them. They had been entwined from the very beginning, feeling and breathing the evidences and consequences of the other's existence in this world all around them all the way from where their paths first began, on the opposite sides of the milky way, the eventual inevitability of their coming together in an universe that contained them both sending ripples deep into the past and far into the future.

It had, however, taken them both some time to connect the dots and notice just that, so that period of unawareness might be used to pinpoint or define something like "a time before their paths crossed", before he had taken notice of the the girl with those clear and unhesitating eyes, whose seeming certainty in questions of what she wanted was bound to leave a firm impression on an aimless vagabond like himself –

Although she had begun to guide the course of her life onto clearly defined rails from a young age, studiously strivng towards the top spots of her priority list, she had spent much of that time absorbing, first her mother's tales, stories and anecdotes, then books and articles, from physical depictions and examinations on the subject, to guidebooks by amateurs and professional psychologists alike, because, of course, you could never be prepared enough, and all these things weren't just helpful for one's own application, but as another part of a clearly laid out model of how this world was supposed to work and what drove the people inside them to their actions, which could then be used to predict or analyze, and ultimately dispense sufficiently helpful counsel, comfort to the people around her; That there might have been a component beyond wanting to help and get things right, to hear the sound of her own voice sprouting clever things and be looked up to by her friends, to join into the discussions of the adults around her and have them praise her father for his mature and sensible daughter... that did not occur to her at the time, although she was certainly aware of, and deliberate in her cultivation of an objective, perhaps more detached perspective that was closer to the undiminished yet unembellished truth of what existed out there.

Regardless, casual conversation and the feedback garnered from that was the most she had gathered in terms of feedback data; In her high school days, she had been concerned with things other than the practical application of those ideas, and the relative degree of maturity found in most of her classmates gave her little incentives to change that; It wasn't that she looked down on anyone who wasn't excessively shallow or pointlessly air-headed, and even those cases, she could calmly identify as a mere case of being need of some growing up; Rather, she usually wound up being the big-sister like figure in any given group of her peers, the sort you could always count on or help when you were being harassed or needed help with your homework, but perhaps perceived as a little too distant and serious to address in a completely casual manner.

While she did have a few admirers, they were mostly resigned to doing their admiring from a distance, thinking her too distant, too focused to be attained.

When the subject came up between the other students, the general consensus was that the person who could sway her heart, and more importantly, have any hope of keeping a tight hold on it when they had to share it with the thinkers of old, the heroes of myth and the lure of the foreign lands her faraway thoughts existed in, would have to be cut from the same cloth as her, a displaced old soul, and an interesting list of other requirements in which to match her, although no one could be sure of its exact contents; In all of her life, there were very few people that Clara Oswald had ever made privy to all of her secrets, in most cases, it might even be a fairly useful working hypothesis to say "none".

Although she was reasonably popular and generally well-liked (but never one of those focal points that stood in the middle of gossiping crowds, wearing the clothes everyone else was trying to imitate), she rarely had any really close friends her own age, seeing as her interests were never very much like those of most other school girls, either. She couldn't really relate to their squealing outrage over various actors or musicians that she covertly found rather dreadful even then.

After school, she went straight for university. No dawdling, no 'orientation phase', no party break, her decision had been made a long time ago and ever since, she had merely been waiting for the moment in time when she would physically set her plans into motion – While she still had her mother's keepsake book in the topmost drawer underneath her desk and her yearning for the wider world stashed away in her dreams (and unaware that this choice would indirectly lead to said dreams being shelved, and then, much later, reprised beyond her wildest fantasies, as if to reward her willingness to wait), but, first things first, even if her relatives wouldn't most likely just scream if it occurred to her to do it the other way around and go chasing pipe dreams before obtaining some proper, solid education that would guarantee her a future; Those were her priorities, too, having things assured and reasonable expectations of employment to fall back on, and really, her father's at the time quite newly acquired wife had not scored any points for assuming otherwise the very moment she's ever first mentioned her intentions of seeing the world at some point.

It wasn't just the nerve of her to dare opine on this, to squeeze herself in like she somehow had a say in this like she was actually trying to pose as a replacement for the most irreplaceable person, Clara was already familiar with that and the usual game of trying not to be... allergic to the woman and see things that aren't there, what constituted a rather particular kind of insult were the however implied allegation that she lacked ambition, or hid behind modesty, because she wanted to become a teacher, in spite of how she could supposedly "do anything" with grades like hers. That was personal and evoked spite she didn't want to be capable of, but couldn't quite put away in any way that would have been honest and consistent.

It wasn't just the ridiculing as her chosen path as some sort of settling for less, that she dared doubt the ambition that drove her forward every day – as much as that, in itself constituted a deadly insult to her as someone who very much pursued what she wanted with all her energy, even if it wasn't as likely to bring her money, power and glory as destinations that were more commonly associated with "ambition"; Maybe the things she wanted weren't what others wanted, or what other might arrogantly decree to be what she should want, but she did really want it and pursue it along clear, systematic priorities – yet, as far as that went, that was something she could at least defend from others through outrage, to show them all up with every bit of success and fulfillment she'd derive from her work, whether anyone else could appreciate or acknowledge that or not, without even necessarily having to admit to being annoyed – but something about the words, especially that bit about 'everything else she could do with her grades' , had tugged at some further wound, a deeper thing that was not as easily dismissed, because it did not come with any such clear solution she could invest into to work towards make it all go away, a paradoxical little feeling that had unwelcomely entered her thoughts, breached her consciousness once it escaped from those parts and stretches of her being that she hadn't even known she had been sealing away; Not until she met the man who watered them with care and fed them harsh fertilizer.

It was a thought born from the same place that had birthed her desire to travel and see the world to begin with, a hunger for more that was not quietly slumbering, but creating ripples and waves as it dreamed away wherever she had stuffed it when she put it away for the moment: Just because she had chosen one path, that didn't mean that she had been completely blind to any others, or never even considered a world beyond her immediate surroundings. Of course she did, of course she had; Try as she might to suppress it, her eyes had gone wide when she'd first sorted through the university's pamphlets, leaflets and its long, associated list of all the wildly different things one could mayor in nowadays, and, for brief moments, she had imagined herself in many different roles and futures that each of those different possible paths could lead her into. She could go for business management and become the head of a large company, putting her smarts and dominant personality to good use to cleave herself a path through that dog-eat-dog, male-dominated world; She considered computer science exactly because she didn't know the first thing about computers, (given that her need of quiet one-on-one entertainment was mostly satisfied by her books) but sort of always wished she did, if only she would find the time to indulge her curiosity as far as it would go. There was something inside her that longed for those possibilities, that wanted to feel and experience – well, not 'everything' per se, there were plenty of things in the world that she didn't have the slightest interest in, but, of the things she chose to have in her life, as much as possible. Her dreams of seeing foreign lands were yet another expression of that, and as much as she tried not to, she did lament the paths not taken, the things she still wanted even though she'd given them up in favor of others that she wanted even more;

Sometimes (Oh the irony) she wished she could live ten lives instead of just one, so she could be born in ten different cities, be raised in ten different cultures, have ten different professions, live and experience ten different times, read ten lifetimes' worth of books... and fall in love with the same person every single time.

Because, of all the stories she had read or heard, the one that had impacted her the most at this point in her life was that of her parents.

She found Sunday school quite entertaining, alright, it was interesting to see how the same old stories with emotionally ambiguous, undefined characters could come to mean so much, and yet, so different things to many people; But any belief she might ever have had in impossible heroes, fairytales, silly ghost stories and rubish such as "fate" or "destiny" had been short-lived at best; She certainly wouldn't spent her life hung up on unrealistic sappy love stories as the media commonly tried to sell them – then again, she didn't have to, because she had at least one love story that she knew to be real, as surely truthful as the fact that she'd been conceived, that she ever existed in this world to move about and speak and touch things; The story of her parents was not an idealized puff of smoke no one could actually attain, but a honest, undeniable glimpse at what people could actually attain in this world, if they were ready to prove themselves when it counted, a "soulmate" not as something that falls into your lap if you wait long enough , but something that can be made to happen through the right choices and actions.

Clara Oswald, as a general principle, did not wait for happiness to be given; Rather, she would take off running and chase after it for herself, or at the very least, those obscure keys and magical doorways through which that elusive substance might be acquired and imported.

Sure, she prided herself of being a conscious citizen of the 21st century, of trying to see past people's sweet-talk and decorations right to their intentions; As an university student, she found herself in a very different microcosm than the one at school, a place filled with interesting, accomplished people full of potential, but also immature youths; Even then, she tried her best to be self-sufficient and make her own way in life, so she worked in a bar to support herself instead of relying on her father's money or burdening anyone else (although getting away from his wife was also an incentive to start living on her own as soon as possible), and in that environment, the practiced use of her charms became yet another thing to be understood and mastered so she could excel at it and use it as a means of controlling the world around her. She learned to flirt and mesmerize, to keep people guessing at all times and add an enchanting tinge of warmth to her steely demeanor from her school days, but also how to apply the appropriate caution and never make herself too obvious, to even turn those hard-to-hide quirks of hers into a strategical advantage:

Clara Oswald, professional tease.

It was because, and not despite her way of wanting it all out of life that she found ways to squeeze those pursuits somewhere between work and her studies, sacrificing less essential things like relaxation if she had to, and while she did have a couple of fleeting encounters, silently nursed crushes on some of the professors and even one or two people she felt might have become more, a spirited, if flighty girl with streaks of pink in her hair and a man with a proud preference for black turtlenecks and philosophic conversations, but when it came to taking things to a serious territory, she still very much believed in that story, a solid, founded belief she saw as justified by her very existence; Details that didn't fit in, addendums introduced by later events such as her father's remarriage were not even swept under the rug, but as things that she would do better, things she would get right when her chance came; She'd decided that when she'd really fall in love, she would fall in love once and forever and never say these three words to a second person ever again or ever before, without even considering any kind of affairs or parallel constructs as something she'd have to think about as long as she didn't plan on cheating on anyone, and she certainly didn't, nor did she see how things could complicate themselves without her consent, after all, it should be perfectly possible given that it already happened once:

Boy meets girl, girl saves boy's life and really impresses him in the process, boy shows up at girl's doorstep with a massive crush, boy and girl come to see that hey actually happen to have a lot in common, and at the end, he uses a token from their first meeting to affirm the value she, and she alone has for him, and she'll know he's the right one by the way he makes her feel special, like he has made her the center of his world whenever they were together...

And in some ways, that idea of hers wasn't completely unfounded; Of course things could go like this, for some people, maybe even most people at least in theory, people who didn't fall in love with a person from a book and found all the wonders they could ever want in their immediate vicinity. But not all people.

The world was big, the world was unfair, the world was full of strange corners, dark alleyways and inhabited shadows; It was a place where unpredictable, random events might waltz in unannounced at any time of the day, and sometimes, boy doesn't meet girl until after he's been through a long and convoluted story with shadowy beginnings and an uncertain end. Sometimes, girl saves boy's life and makes a big impression of him in the process, but thanks to the wonders of time travel, she has no clue that she has done, or will do that by the time boy shows up at her doorstep with a massive crush already in place, and they both begin circling each other in a wild courtship dance of suspicion. Sometimes, boy and girl don't meet until they are already man and woman and have to confront the circumstances that made them that way. Sometimes people misunderstand, people lose their temper, people grow apart, people get separated by accidents, and sometimes, people just die, with no greater purpose and narrative behind it. Sometimes you run into the wrong guy first. Sometimes, you run into whoever is suitable for this segment of your life but not necessarily the next. Sometimes feelings refuse to be controlled, whether it is to make yourself like someone who should by all means be the right, ideal choice, or whether we can't stop loving someone tainted and flawed. Sometimes, people try their best to get things right, but cannot make each other stay because they simply don't want the same things out of life, without either of the having to be an irredeemable asshole for that. Sometimes people even part ways even though neither of them really wishes to part because neither feels ready for the other yet, and even rarer, sometimes these same people and end up at each other's doorsteps again and again, time after time, no matter what convoluted circles, spirals and pretzels their paths have led them down in the meantime.

But none of that was a real, tangible part of Clara's life yet.

And that was her, before he came, some dreams shelved, some plans derailed, but still very certain that she was consistently living her life along the guidelines and priorities she had laid out; In the end, what put a stop to her dreams of working as a teacher and traveling the world was the very same thing that, much later, eventually made her give up the traveling once she actually got to it: The thought that a friend in need would be better off if she staid behind.

Not that she had given up, though; She may not yet have had access to the luxury of a time machine that would allow her to do it all at once, but she never had the intention of giving any of it up, her mother's book remained in her drawer waiting to be filled with mementos of future travel, and her diploma was right beneath it, waiting for her first class of students. She would get to it eventually, for it was what sh wanted to do - She had good reasons to want it and she was damn proud of them: Being an English teacher was probably the closest one could get to those times her mother, her actual mother had read or told her stories as a child, and somehow get paid for it, and perhaps as such, a more systematic, posher version of that, but at heart, rather the same thing, in the role of a caregiver who'd lead those malleable young individuals full of potential through the harsh experience that adolescence could be as un-stifled in their personalities and as harnessed in their potential as possible. She knew very well how harsh it could be, when the sudden loss of her mother turned what was already an unsteady time of transformations and transitions into the most horrible feeling of having nowhere left to turn to, no one to share their thoughts with, adrift and horribly lost like a wayward boat that had been cut loose from the harbor, waiting to sink with no one around to recor it or retain the memory, alone with the painful awareness that the person who normally came and found her, the person who promised to find her every time would never look for her again... The structuring influence of coming to school every day had at least given her something to focus on, small, compartmentalized tasks in the scope of which everything could be perfect and alright even if her life as a whole wasn't. Throwing herself into her studies had given her a way to take back control of her life, to do something other than just curl up with a book and retreat into herself, to move forward even through her tears, and through her example, become for others what her mother had been for her, and spare them the experience, the sensation of endless fall, at least to an extent, and in that way, it would be as if Eleanor Allison Oswald were still physically affecting the world, doing what she was always best at doing – Although nothing of her dynamic, self-aware consciousness remained in this world and no new pages would be added to her stories, there was still a lifetime's worth of what she had left behind in information, the static, hollow negative of her imprint on the world as it could be reconstructed from all she had ever communicated. Words, statements, expressions of feelings and beliefs, from which some traits could be abstracted and packed into neat symbols of sound and language, memories of patterns of what she would do in various situations, what she might do in any given one, preserved in memories, blueprints, genes, recipes, which, given physical vessels or willing channelers to act upon the world as embers of her will, and the chance to act as such alone made this path worth choosing, given that this was probably the closest experience to encountering her that was left in this world after her death.

And then, there was the aspect of a mentor's standpoint - Clara had loved books ever since she was a little girl so it just fit, from an angle as simple as working with something she loved and wanting to share her passions, to acquaint others the way the enjoyment of a story could increase if you knew to appreciate the detail and craftsmanship that had gone into creating it. The power of words to convey revolutionary ideas change minds and send shock waves through societies and how to use it as your tool and make yourself heard.

She recalled some distinct experiences she had not too long after she became able to read stories by herself (which was earlier than you'd perhaps expect), when she would go to gush about them to her family or the other kids; It was, perhaps, the definitive moment that first led her to notice that her ability to spot patterns, draw connections and pay attention to detail was anything beyond the usual, and with it, to this feeling that she might not really be suited to the world in her immediate surroundings. She would notice all those little patters and ironies in a story, the structure and architecture of how it was constructed and arranged or, in less fortunate cases, just plain holes and inconsistencies, and when she went to share that with the people around her, she got only confusion or placating smiles and nods in reply, and was forced to make the harsh conclusion that many of the people she very much wanted to keep looking up there would never understand – Her mother and gran each told her, in different ways, that this meant she was somehow 'gifted', but at the time, it did not feel like a 'gift' at all, merely a reason to feel alone and misplaced – and the experience certainly influenced how she handled her charges, but also the path she would take, when it was a book that showed her a way to put into words what her expansive, yet still immature mind had long understood, but not quite processed.

The person who ultimately did her the favor of finding the words to make sense of that hazy cloud of unordered feelings was a long dead man from another country, reaching through to her using the pages of a book: Michael Ende's "Momo". So there was the strange young girl with her gift for listening, to simply give people's words the space they needed to lead to epiphanies and support them through her mere presence (an ability that Clara certainly wished she could have), being shown the secrets of time by the old, yet young master of its domain, and waking up after the year that the words to describe those sights had needed to mature within her, finding herself in a strange, changed world where all her friends had been led astray by the villains, alone with no one to turn to, and worse, no one to tell of the wonders she had seen, and it was at this point of the book that both Momo, and Clara (from outside of the pages) arrived at the conclusion that even the most precious treasures could become a curse if you had no one to share them with (an important insight that would come in rather handy later in her life). She also familiarized herself with the man's other works, most notably "The Neverending Story", and while she was quite awed at the time, and never stopped admiring the wealth of imagination found in those books, she later concluded that she didn't necessarily agree with all of the philosophies presented therein; Clara was all for approaching children as emergent individuals very much capable of deeper thoughts rather than unfinished half-beings whose opinions were to be dismissed so they could be shaped into something useful, but she also came to feel that the naivety and supposed "innocence" of childhood (that, in reality, was just what the veil of nostalgia plastered over careless cruelty born from ignorance) was nothing to be romanticized or idealized, but a hurdle that was a simple result of the inexperience that adults were to compensate for to allow the child to otherwise participate in life as best as they could at their stage of maturity.

It was also around that time that she first came into contact with the books of Amelia Williams with their themes of feeling out of place, chasing to fulfill one's dreams in a harsh, unfair world and finding the particular beauty in half-broken, dysfunctional things, and Clara came to love them right from the captivating wordings of their introductory paragraphs that had drawn her in immediately. While Mrs. Williams was best known for her work on books for children or adolescents, like the brilliant "Summer Falls", Clara's favorite was one of her more serious works, a thick, more obscure door-stopper that the author had composed late in life. From her later point of view as someone who engaged in the analysis of literature for a living, it's most notable particularities were perhaps the way it recounted the life stories of the four protagonists from their shared childhood in a little English village late into their adult lives, often recounted using clever, non-obvious techniques including short, artsy interludes, anachronic order and the presentation conflicting accounts from multiple, possibly equally skewed viewpoints, and a few impressive twists, one for example including the protagonist's devoted husband in the 'future' chapters, and the question of how he comes about – in fact, the character in question is introduced quite early, as one of the two barely distinct boys that seem to exist as generic friends for the principal character to emote towards, but if you look back at the earlier chapters after the big reveal, you'll notice that he was always there to support her and listen to her various troubles, a fact that the reader is probably intended to notice roughly when the protagonist herself does.

There is certainly much to be analyzed, it is the sort of book that one might need to read twice to catch all the hints and parallelism once more, with clarity, and had prepared two different layers of ideas and impressions for the first and second read through to make that work rewarding by way of allowing for many belated realizations, but what spoke to Clara the most when she read it for the very first time, with her analytical skills present but as of then not quite as honed, were probably the engaging characters – not so much the main character herself, although Clara did like her and emphasize with her in some ways, such as her love for misunderstood artists and her desire for something beyond her orderly little world, they were ultimately rather different – While she preferred order and control, the book's protagonist was rather wild and hated to be structured or tied down in any way and a definite rebel; She was a cool idea for a book, but had she been real, Clara would probably have found her and her friends to be rather reckless and irresponsible at times, with only husband-guy to provide a babysitter of sort for the other tree, although he was ever so easily dragged along by the others.

The one character that really captivated her at the time was the de-facto deuteragonist, whom the book named as "Jonathan Smythe". While protagonist-girl did briefly consider him for a summer fling in high school before she got together with the afore mentioned husband-guy (and Jonathan himself wound up with an impossibly glamorous wife, later revealed to be one and the same with protagonist-girl's even crazier, somewhat troubled older sister from the earlier chapters – the fourth main character), their overall bond was probably better described as two children who met on the playground and decided to go make mischief together; While he disclosed little about himself, it seemed that he was also by himself, also didn't quite fit in, and, like protagonist-girl, had a keen eye for the going-ons that everyone around them just overlooked or lacked the courage and fortitude needed to refrain from denying a proven reality with uncertain, impossible consequences – Later on, they both have to deal with the various consequences of the fact that neither of them are children anymore.

And since Clara wasn't one, either, she wouldn't go as far as to wish or hope that this might happen to her, too, that she might meet a stranger just like herself with whom she could share her thoughts and observations, her passions and her lunacies, although the thought was obviously worth treasuring. As it turned out, this would be the first in a long line of things she had tried to control, or give up, but wound up happening anyways.

While the prominence of this general type of character in Mrs. Williams' works had many a loyal fan suspecting that she might have based them on a real person, perhaps "the one that got away", or an actual, close life-long friend of hers whose identity had been lost to obscurity, but never in her wildest dreams would Clara have suspected that she'd actually get to meet the inspiration behind them... and, first impressions be damned, find him to be significantly less Peter Pan and a lot more Holden Caulfield, stubbornly wiping the graffiti from school property, rather lost and fallen by the wayside, an underachieving dropout fleeing the certainty of things he could no longer change on a destructive trajectory, manifesting his refusal to become part of the phoniness and fakery in the world around him in obstinate, at times rather counterproductive ways that could come off as rather random, given that he had not completely managed to stave off the infestation of his world's haughty hypocrisy himself, which, as Clara never thought she'd ever know from personal experience, was simply far too easy to slip into if you had been gifted with mixed blessing of being an incredible liar.

That cheeky brat... here they were, a perfectionist English teacher and a rebellious little miscreant all grown up, order versus chaos; They should have been natural enemies, but somehow they weren't, because sometimes, chaos needs someone to rein it in and tell it to be sensible, and sometimes, order needs something to challenge it and push it to its limits so it doesn't become trapped in stagnation, and after a while, they came to realize that they are bound together, just like light cannot be without shadow.

She had imagined "Jonathan" as a savvy, fearless boy who had all the rules of the world figured before most adults had, when she probably should have been picturing a paranoid, uncouth little thing that shivered in the dark just as anyone else and probably rarely left the house without wearing a smelly garland of garlic around his neck to ward off vampires from under the bed.

He just smirked when she said that, or implied as much as she could without revealing something that she could never tell him, that, in more ways than one, what he had spent centuries looking for had been at his side all along.

"I'm never going to live that one down, am I? Even the best researcher gets the occasional false positive, that's what the process of peer review is for, in other words, what I got you for..." - as dismissive or irresponsible as that statement could have been taken, it did imply that he considered her a 'peer' of sorts, although this did not occur to her until later - "And for that matter, Vampires are for real, although the garlic thing is complete and utter rubbish."

"What? Seriously? Vampires?"

And just like that, he'll turn her around, from rolling her eyes to curious and exciting, seeing the seasoned wanderer that had sprung up in the place of the boy recount his past encounters with a variety of fearsome creatures with a cheeky edge unchanged by the years, naming various variants of bloodsucking monster and adding his speculations on just how, or why the local pudding-brains might have concocted the common myths from them, including, apparently, the ones he himself had heard recounted in childhood by an old hermit on his own homeworld, and for all his cocky flaunting of his experience grated her nerves, as much as she felt distinctly peeved for having been made to look silly and clueless when she meant to be making him look that way, her genuine interest in asking about various specifics was stronger. Intrigued, she learned that symbols of faith apparently worked on some variations, and behold! : Even got a little bit of actual praise from him when he called her question of whether it was the Vampire's own faith or that of the would-be repeller that mattered, and how a non-believer would fare in either case, and heard him call that a very good question.

As it turns out, it was faith itself, the mental state of feeling it, that caused the effect, and she heard him recount how a disillusioned war veteran with a bible had not succeeded, while a zealot with a communist badge did.

She never really expected an actual reply when as asked what he had used to repel them, because he certainly wouldn't have answered back when she first met him, but to her surprise, he actually did, looking her in the eye with an unexpectedly serious frankness: He'd chanted the names of people like her, people who had come with him, friends, comrades, apprentices, lovers, people he worked with, people he got stuck with, children he took in, people who had shared his journey.

He then veered off into blatantly, clumsily trying to connect to her with a recollection of something they could snark about together instead of at each other, an instance where he had met a batch of 'vampires' in medieval Venice, which, despite actually being fish-people, managed to have a lot more in common with actual vampires than certain modern renditions, (*sparkles*) and, incidentally, just in case he hadn't impressed her enough, he happened to have done that alongside Amelia not-yet-Williams and her husband-to-be, who, by the way, was also the inspiration behind the tale of the Lone Centurion (another of Clara's favorites), and... Professor Song's father? She'd met Amelia Williams' Daughter? Long story, obviously. Wow. Apparently, Clara had even met the Williamses herself, while she was in his time stream, but the Doctor asked her not to try to remember because, basically, the Daleks got her. It sucked, though, to have met her favorite writer, and not remember it. And how cool was that, that her closest friend actually knew her favorite writer... sure, he knew a lot of writers, one look at the man's library, or nowadays, his console room, would immediately tell you that while he may not look it, he was one hell of a bookworm, as much as Clara was, and she could imagine that he, too, had dreamed away most of his youth with his head buried in pages, and his fondness for Earth Culture apparently extended to its literature. So it was no small wonder that he had, one way or another, come across them all: Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, HG Wells... (although, as she had once embarrassingly found out, Jane Austen had not been added to that list yet) but of course, the one he actually traveled with (turns out she was, ironically, Legs girl from the TARDIS' visual records. Not how she would have imagined her at all, but it sort of made her appreciate the catty time machine's sense of humor.) for a longer amount of time justhad to be Clara's favorite... that man. Like he was made for her, like even his flaws and imperfections were tailored to make her learn about herself and the world. The man she's saved, the man who'd rewarded her for that with his unending devotion and gratitude, who was all this even after he'd come a long, long way, walked a bizarre, anfractous path before he'd ended up right here, a path which twisted upon itself, which had bits of it scattered throughout time and space in no particular order, crossed and influenced many others, being influenced and redirected in turn, and, to say the least, could not be further a neat, orderly progression in the vein of 'Boy meets girl, and happily ever after' -

He kept dropping names then, of course, historical figures, important leaders from the future, names she she didn't know because they were part of that hidden, invisible world that everyone else chose to forget. Hunters of the paranormal, both organized and independent, and names she did know – Grant and Jovanka, the activists. She'd read about their efforts. Dorothy McShane the philanthropist, although the charity was, so he implied, probably a front for UNIT or the like, or maybe she working on her own from beneath her huge mansion (Clara had heard of her on TV before, and already thought her to be a pretty cool person before finding out she was basically Batman; She sort of wanted to go meet her one day, if he could be persuaded to drop by...) – His fingerprints had been all around the world she lived in every day, his handwriting plain to see for those who could recognize it, she merely had to notice...

And and interesting as all this may have been, as delightful as it was to be privileged to see through the facade and surface of what made up the world and begin to grasp the mechanisms and interconnections that kept it together and gave it its shape, there was an even more urgent thought that floated to the top in the ocean of her mind, something that gave her pause earlier and wouldn't be ignored or dismissed. Mention of Professor Song, or a famous love story that involved someone who had waited out a long separation... that made her recall Trenzalore. – And come to think of it, hadn't he half-deliriously mentioned an "Amelia" at the time, too?

All those concepts and associations floated around in the back of her mind and tugged at her consciousness in the form of a question, one that she dared not say out loud; She had already upset him enough, back in the day, no use in dragging out old sleeping dogs that could be comfortably ignored... instead, she asked something that, all things considered, was probably equivalent in at least some of its overall dimension of meaning, not necessarily a metaphor, but rather the opposite, an application of the principle that was even more fundamental:

"About the vampire stories, though... If you were that scared of all those freaky fairytales and creepy nursery rhymes, why'd you ask that hermit friend of yours to tell you yet more creepy stories? Did you want to face your fears?"

"Face my fears, hah! That what he spoke about at the time, but I didn't really understand what he meant until much later..."

Once again, she surmised that his younger self was better envisioned as what most would dismiss rather difficult instead of adorably precocious, any pretense of wisdom he may have now being the cumulative result of much harsh experience; He'd probably have fit right into her "gifted and talented" group.

"Then why, if it wasn't that?"

"Well, I supposed the monsters would get me anyway, whether I knew about them or not, and I'd rather know what hit me..."

"...and knowing you, you wouldn't pass up a chance to show off one last time before you get eaten."

"I suppose I don't have to tell a control freak you about the inexplicable comfort some people find when they're able to slap labels, categories and explanations onto things..."

"So basically, knowledge is power?"

Right then, she didn't want to bother with returning his little jab.

"...Yep. And, once in a while, the stories about a given monster do actually come with some useful information as to how to ward it off. Your garlic necklaces."

Judging by his expression, he fully expected her to laugh at this, or at least concoct some snarky retort, but instead, to his puzzlement, she reacted with a quiet, fond smile.

The sort of memory that summoned up had nothing to do with silly boys, but rather, included the sight of a grown man who had finally found the power to turn his dreams and ambitions into reality, someone who had turned his defects into superpowers and his uniqueness into strength, the perfect picture of all she had been trying her hardest to become for most of her life, the scared little boy all grown up, out there doing the things only he could do, everything he was in full bloom –

("We surrender!")

Strange how... the recollections of a time they nearly parted and, for all intents and purposes, was mostly spend in a state of melancholy and regret whenever they weren't fearing for their lives would have become one of her fondest memories of them, a day on which she came to further refine her understanding of not only him, but also herself.

Once resolved, the conflicts and doubts of the time just seemed to fade into the background compared to what it felt like to snuggle up against his arm and rest her head on his shoulder, to be looked at with such tender, almost brittle expressions of longing, or those words she really shouldn't have said, but wouldn't take back for anything in the world.

It as a day on which she discovered yet another of the unexpected grains of truth in the many stories that had always filled her dreams, one of many such days that had followed the very first... discovery that had always been waiting for her, an encounter with the brooding menace and half-glimpsed mysteries of Captain Nemo coupled with the anarchic heroism of Robin Hood, standing up to become worthy of his muse , the power and experience of Merlin coexisting with the work an almost professionally practiced fool that could rival jesters like Till Eulenspiegel, the unwordly, detached calculations of Sherlock Holmes needing a Watson to explain them to the world, a person of abstract concerns and, at the same time, without even a necessary contradictions wells of hidden passion for the individual pieces that made up the larger picture, even just one, that were enough for his feelings toward one single girl to remain unextinguished over the centuries spent in the cold, lightless fields of Trenzalore, not unlike a like a certain Roman friend of his; The snobbish, socially unpolished exterior of Mr. Darcy waiting for a certain proud, discerning girl with high ideals to accept more shades of grey into her view of the world find the surprisingly caring person beneath, the Belle in the castle of the Beast, torn between something seemingly ideal that she should want, but cannot be obtained without pretending to be something she is not, and someone dangerous, broken and flawed whom she's been frequently warned of, but would love and appreciate all of her just the way she is, as long as she were willing to return that favor... on the tragic quest of Lady Amalthea, old as life, old as the moon, yet, with a newness to her like she was not born yesterday, the very last, looking for the others that she would never fit back in with after the experiences of her long journey and her time among her mortal fellows, dreading the days she would carry the weight of knowing their names after they were long gone, her skin, face and hair already without a speck of color when she was still coming to terms with the form she found herself in, unsure of how to utilize her face and limbs to produce an expression, or how to even make sense of the feelings that were buzzing around inside all that, dreaming away her days when the others she sought for so long were just steps away, hidden inside the sea, trapped behind a crack, same thing, the same, bittersweet conclusion; A literature expert such as Clara would know that every bit as well as a hero like Prince Lir: They cannot be together, because the happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story, and this poses more and more of a problem the longer a story goes on.

Regardless, even knowing what this meant, Clara could never have forgiven herself if she had allowed this story to end on Trenzalore, not yet, not on her watch, not on either occasion –

After all, he was, if nothing else, her favorite story of them all.

A/N: Haven't seen the special yet, but I will right now. Just trying to get this out before everything possibly changes... Expecting the worst and hoping the best...

EDIT: I've finally seen it. Turns out I didn't hope best enough. While I ship this so much it's embarassing, I never thought this would actually get cannon beyond the subtext level... but it did. It's cannon! Clara basically said she doesn't want a husband unless it's the Doctor, and he was like... "You'll never look any different to me" *dies* Expect new chapters shorty, this must be celebrated.