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Clara Oswald believed in fairy tales, once upon a time. She remembers being little and lying in bed, with the rain falling rhythmically on the roof as her mother read. She remembers falling asleep listening to stories about slippers made of glass, recalls hazy dreams of racing home before midnight struck and all the magic shattered into silver dust.
But then her mother died.
And after that came a stepmother who she didn’t want and who didn’t want her; after that came a job that left Clara on her feet all day and tired before it was even half-over, with invitations she had to turn down because there was no way she could make it back in time before her day off ended. And it was just all a little bit too Cinderella for Clara, and yet not enough like it, because there was no ball on her night off and there were no slippers of glass or an ethereal, magical coach that ensured she’d beat the clock and be back on time.
So Clara Oswald grew up. Stopped believing in fairy tales and fantastical things.
And then, one day, an impossible man in a blue box landed on her doorstep.
#
The bad news is: Clara’s father and stepmother are in town. They drove down for Linda’s high school reunion and are staying the night at Clara’s flat so they don’t have to make the long drive all the way back home at midnight.
The good news is this: It’s Wednesday.
Wednesday’s were the Doctor’s days, Wednesday’s Clara could run away as far and fast and as long as she wanted and leave wicked stepmothers a thousand years and literal lightyears behind her.
(Okay, fine. Maybe Linda wasn’t wicked. But there was certainly nothing between Clara and her that could ever be mistaken for anything remotely like affection.)
And as soon as Clara steps into the TARDIS this Wednesday, she can already feel the real world fading away and the magic taking over, with the way the blue glow washes over her like star-shine, and the way the console breathes and hums and sparks with bursts of light like it’s filled with both bottled-up storms and fairy dust.
And then there’s him.
(And Clara tries to ignore the way her heart pounds a little harder, beats a little quicker just at the sight of him.)
“I thought I’d take you somewhere nice this week,” the Doctor says by way of greeting, talking as if they were already in the middle of a conversation, as if there hasn’t been a whole week between this Wednesday and the last. (And Clara sometimes wonders if maybe there isn’t for him, if he bids her goodbye and then pulls a lever and appears next Wednesday without a full minute ever going by.)
“Somewhere relaxing,” he continues, saying this bit almost more to himself than to her, as if he’s trying to wrap his mind around the concept of somewhere calm. “To make up for last week, which you complained was less than relaxing, with the - “ he claps once, gestures vaguely, fingers twirling in the air. “You know.”
“Oh,” Clara says, raising an eyebrow. “You mean with the giant carnivorous plants trying to eat me? And you dropping me off on my front steps covered in leaves and caked in alien mud? Is that what you’re referring to?”
“Yes, that.”
“Don’t know why I would complain that wasn’t relaxing, do you, Doctor?”
He taps her on the nose, and then proceeds to spin around the console, talking as he goes, “Which is why I asked myself, What’s the opposite of otherworldly Plants of Death? What won’t make Clara go off in a huff because some bitey foliage tried to eat her like a biscuit? And do you know what I came up with?” There’s a dramatic pause there as he flips a lever and the lights flicker low, before he exclaims, “Eighteenth Century France.”
“Eighteenth Century France is the opposite of carnivorous plants?”
“Yes,” he says, the obviously unsaid but highly implied by his tone. “I’m taking you to a castle ball. Dancing. Canapés. Possibly a coup. No, never mind, definitely not a coup. We’ll steer clear of coups, definitely not relaxing. But they’ll be canapés and dancing.”
And Clara doesn’t know why, but she finds herself smiling, and then he’s smiling back at her in that way he does, and they stand there for a minute, enjoying each other’s glow. It’s like either just coming on or getting off an adrenaline high, where there’s something like giddy electricity between you, but something soft and gentle too.
“Alright,” Clara says, folding her arms to lean against the console. “The Eighteenth Century it is, as long as you get me back home before midnight.”
“Midnight?” he questions.
“It’s when my father and stepmother are due home. Don’t really know how to explain you to them, quite honestly.”
He blinks, tilts his head curiously, his soft brown hair falling over his forehead. “Thought you already explained to them like the Maitlands that I was your boyfriend.”
And, oh, the casual way he says it. The open and off-handed way he just accepted it without batting an eye back when Angie and Artie started calling him her boyfriend. Sometimes Clara wonders why he easily blushes at so many things, but doesn’t fluster or protest a bit when it’s implied that they’re a couple.
And, stars, maybe they are a couple after all, because Clara’s hand - without even waiting to get permission from her brain - has just somehow subconsciously reached out to brush the dark lock of hair off his forehead and out of his eyes and he’s just accepted it as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Well, that may be so, but I haven’t exactly explained the whole time and space thing to them and I don’t plan on it, honestly,” Clara says, straightening and clearing her throat, breaking their gaze, because she’s the boss, after all, and someone’s got to keep their head on. “So. Midnight. Back by then, yeah?”
“Of course I can get you back before midnight,” the Doctor says, straightening his velvet vest. “My timing is impeccable.”
Clara doesn’t even need to say anything to that. She merely raises her eyebrows.
“Okay, fine, mostly impeccable,” he amends, and when her eyebrows still don’t go down, he shakes his finger at her and says, “You try driving a powerful time and space machine.”
“Maybe I should.”
He huffs at that, but before he can come up with a suitable reply, his eyes drift down over her, and he says, “You’ll probably want to pop off to the wardrobe while I park. The length of your skirt might cause some of the early eighteenth century folk to stare.”
“Oh, you mean like how you’re staring now?”
“Yes. No! I mean, I was - “ he blinks, sputtering, nearly blushing, but then he catches sight of her smirking, and he scowls.
(Clara thinks he’s doing a good job looking scandalized considering where his eyes had been lingering a moment before.)
“Stop it,” he scolds her, as if he can hear her thoughts. “Off to the wardrobe with you.”
(She manages to get one more smirk in before she goes.)
#
If anything will make you believe in magic, the TARDIS wardrobe will. It has dresses from decades past and coats from centuries yet to come, shoes and skirts from outer space, scarves and gloves from days long-gone, like a fairy godmother waved her magic wand and brought them all together. Clara passes a beaded flapper dress with a feathered headpiece, runs her fingers over the soft velvet on a Victorian gown, and she’s just passing a vintage nineteen-thirties evening dress that by all accounts should look worn out but looks brand new instead - and that’s when she sees it:
A sliver of a silver skirt, wedged between a cobolt-colored coat and an emerald-studded riding habit.
Clara parts the hangers and pulls it out, and finds that the gown is pale silver like spun starlight, and it‘s full, layered but filmy skirt is soft against her skin and shimmers endlessly as she shifts it in her hands.
She thinks it’s quite possibly the prettiest thing she’ll ever get to wear.
And now she just needs shoes. Clara remembers passing by a pair of hiking boots (useful, but hardly appropriate for a ball) as well as a pair of red converse (ditto), and then she spots a box, underneath from where she’s pulled the dress, and when she opens the lid, she finds what she can only describe as glass slippers.
(Of course, she thinks. Of course she finds glass slippers. What else would one find in a fairy tale?)
Clara’s pretty sure they’re not from her world, that they’ve got to have been crafted somewhere utterly unearthly and entirely ethereal, somewhere where you could melt the moon and mold it’s glow, where you could shape starlight with your hands and create footwear that shone like star-dusted glass.
And here is when Clara’s suddenly struck by nostalgia, overwhelmed by the memory of her mother’s fairy tales. She thought she’d grown up and moved on from stories like that, but here she is wearing borrowed finery and slippers of glass and she thinks maybe, maybe she isn’t too old for fairy tales.
Of course, in that story, Cinderella’s coach wasn’t a trans-dimensional moody old cow that sometimes hated her.
Cinderella got her own Prince Charming in that story too, she muses, and it’s as she’s thinking this that the Doctor appears in the doorway.
(Of course that’s when he chooses to appear. When else?)
And when she looks up at him, he flashes her that smile that can send stars spinning and says, “Ready for the ball?”
#
The TARDIS lands in a dark corner, behind a wine-colored curtain, and then Clara steps out into what the Doctor tells her is an eighteenth century castle ballroom.
The effect is overwhelming, astounding and amazing. Above them is a ceiling painted to look exactly like the night sky, and hanging from it are a dozen chandeliers with thousands of crystals, their light catching and refracting rainbows like they’re in a never-ending prism. And then there’s the sound of sweeping, swelling music, and the sight of dancers on the ballroom floor, twirling in and spinning out, all ebbing and flowing as one as if they’re a multicolored sea of suits and satin and silk.
“It’s all very exclusive,” the Doctor says, lowering his voice conspiringly, “no one can get in without an invitation.”
Clara grins up at him, “Unless you’re us?”
He grins back, “Unless you’re us. Of course, if they catch us, they’ll throw us in prison. But aren’t those the only kinds of parties really worth going to?”
“The kinds of parties where you might end up in prison?”
“Precisely.”
Clara laughs, because the party’s so nice, she thinks she just might agree, and then the Doctor pulls her close to his side, slinging an arm over her shoulders, and in Clara’s off-the-shoulders dress, she thinks the soft tweed of his coat sleeve and the warmth of his arm radiating through to her bare skin feels admittedly ridiculously nice.
“You know,” Clara says, eyes still on the grandeur in front of her. “I feel like Cinderella a bit.”
He glances down at her, “Cinderella?”
“A ball and a night away from an evil stepmother. A magic carriage and a midnight deadline,” Clara looks wistful, and for a moment, she can almost hear her mother’s voice in her mind, reading aloud from the gold-edged pages of the old leather-bound book. “Didn’t you have that fairytale growing up?”
“Ah, sounds a bit like The Cinder-Girl and the Temporal Rules of Time Displacement.”
“Sorry?”
“It was meant to teach us about timing our TARDIS landings properly,” he says, looking downright peevish for a second before adding, “I never did care for that one.”
“I’ll bet you didn’t,” she mutters in amusement, thinking of a tiny little Doctor skipping out on stories involving TARDIS driving lessons.
But. Enough of that.
Changing the subject and twisting around to look up at him, Clara says, “Isn’t it about time you asked me to dance?”
The Doctor blinks down at her, looking rather stupidly surprised for someone who invited her to a ball, and who’s currently standing there with his arm around her, the pad of his thumb absent-mindedly skimming over the soft skin of her bare shoulder.
“What?”
Clara raises an eyebrow, “Did you really take me to a ball and then not expect to dance with me?”
“Oh dancing. Love a good dance. I go to weddings just for the dancing, you know. Just not quite good at this particular kind of dancing. I’m a bit better at the drunk-giraffe-type-dancing.”
“The what?”
“The drunk giraffe.”
“Well,” Clara says, in that same voice she uses both on children and on intergalactic battle battalions, “I’m sure you can sober up for one night.”
“I could introduce you to Benjamin Franklin instead,” he offers, trying to distract her, and ending up distracting himself as he rambles. “He’s in France this century. Good ol’ Benny Franks. Renowned for his scientific mind. Not known well enough for how fast he can outrun a Dalek while drunk, quite honestly. He was drunk, not the Dalek, just to be clear. Did I ever tell you about the time I went kite flying with him? Well. One of me has.”
And he’s so busy rambling, he doesn’t even notice how Clara’s leading him to the center of the ballroom floor, doesn’t even notice how his hands have already gone to rest on her waist unconsciously. Doesn’t even notice until he catches Clara grinning up at him and then wonders why.
And he sputters and scowls and protests, because he wouldn’t really be the Doctor if he didn’t, but Clara thinks his protests are a bit much for someone who’s already slid one hand to the small of her back.
But then he spots something over Clara’s shoulder, and he pulls her in even closer, pads of his fingers pressing against her spine, the two of them standing still as the sea of dancers spin around them.
“I believe I have made a slight miscalculation,” he says, and the way he says it already makes Clara abandon all hope of a relaxing evening spent dancing.
She narrows her eyes at him. “Slight miscalculation“ could mean a myriad of things with the Doctor. On one end of the scale lay, “I accidentally invented the jammy dodger seventy years too early,” and on the other end was, “Please don’t be mad, Clara, but it seems we’ve just agreed to be sacrificed into a volcano.”
She’s hoping it’s closer to the jammy dodger end of the scale.
(It’s not.)
#
Clara and the Doctor are racing down a castle corridor, running for their lives when Clara turns the corner, and drags him into a darkened library.
“What do you mean the eighteenth century looks an awful lot like the eightieth century, and what do you mean by ‘the brief but rather unpleasant Sontaran uprising?’” Clara hisses at him.
Shouts of “Sontar-Ha” can be heard down the hall, along with brief flashes of ruby-red laser-fire, and the Doctor blinks down at Clara in the dark, as if he’s not sure how he could possibly make his explanation any clearer.
“There was a big nostalgia wave in the eightieth century, they revived everything from the eighteenth. The TARDIS gets confused,” he whispers angrily and defensively. “It’s an easy thing to do!”
“You promised me a relaxing evening and a ball,” she scolds in her best nanny-and-teacher voice.
“And a ball you shall go to,” he says. “Just as soon as we can sneak back to the TARDIS and skip out of here.”
“And how are we going to do that?”
“Subtlety.”
#
As it ends up, it’s not very subtle at all.
(Clara would like to say that she’s surprised, but she’s really not.)
And when they finally do make it back to the TARDIS, The Doctor is breathing heavily, his back pressed against the door, and Clara’s chest is heaving from the whole almost-getting-disintegrated-by-an-angry-potato debacle, her hair unbound and spilling over her shoulders.
Still, she thinks, it’s better than sitting at home by the fire, smelling the lingering scent of her stepmother’s deceptively sweet perfume, and waiting for her to get back from her party.
“Cinderella,” the Doctor says thoughtfully, getting his breath back. “Bit boring.”
“Yes, well,” Clara pants, “I’m sure you would’ve liked it better if she lost her slipper running from Slitheen or Sycorax.”
#
This time, he promises Clara, as he brushes a strand of her loose hair behind her ear and insists she still looks beautiful, she shall go to the ball. This time, he’s landed them properly.
(Spoiler alert: he hasn’t.)
#
When Clara steps outside the Tardis and into the castle, it’s not quite the grand castle the first one was.
Or, it was the grand castle, once upon a time, but now it’s in beautiful ruins. Most of it has crumbled and cracked, its painted night sky ceiling exchanged for the real thing, the chandeliers replaced with stars. Nearly all of the walls have decayed and fallen away so that it’s more outdoors than in, like some kind of night garden. And they stand in silence for a minute, the sapphire night sky spread out above them, the crisp night air floating in around them, breathing it all in.
“So,” Clara says, surveying the scene before her, “it seems we’re late to the party.”
“By a couple centuries, actually.”
“A bit past fashionably late, then.”
“Sorry about that. We could pop back into the Tardis,” he offers. “Think I can actually get a positive lock on the ball this time.”
But there is something about the half-ruined castle that’s magical and mysterious, enchanting and utterly fascinating, and Clara feels like maybe she’s slipped in-between the paper pages of some old storybook, like the TARDIS has tipped them out into fairy land instead and she finds she doesn’t want to go just yet.
”Let’s look around,” she suggests, and she’s not exactly sure when his hand slipped into hers, but when she moves, she finds him pulled along with her as she explores the castle ruins. And it truly is breathtakingly beautiful; deep green ivy vines entwine around half-gone carved columns, and wildflowers spill over the steps of the once-grand spiral staircase, their night blossoms blooming in-between mosaics of broken tiles, and their pale silken petals swaying in the gentle breeze.
It’s dreamlike, utterly ethereal, nearly unreal, exploring the old castle with him under this expense of dark sky, with the way the night breeze is blowing her hair off her shoulders, and the achingly gentle way the pad of his thumb is absent-mindedly brushing half-circle crescent moons against the back of her hand as they go.
And then he says, “Ah, watch out for the rain.”
Clara peers up at the sky as he moves next to a column that’s under part of the castle ceiling that hasn’t turned to dust yet, and he tugs her with him further under it, pulling her close so her dress isn’t exposed.
“But it’s not - “ No sooner has Clara started her sentence does she stop it, because three words in, and the sky opens up and a light rain begins to fall around them, dusting the castle.
She doesn’t know how he does that.
He smiles down at her, just a bit too self-satisfied, “Time Lord talent.”
“What?” She retorts, “Being smug?”
He laughs at that, low and lingering, and they’re standing so close she can practically feel it.
The covered space they're in is small, her back’s already against the half-crumbled wall, so she shifts, the full, filmy silver skirts of her dress twirling around her legs and sweeping past the Doctor’s.
“Sorry about the ball,” he says, peering down at her, and the shadows mixed with the sparkling reflection of the rain make it look like he’s got shooting stars in his eyes.
“It’s alright, I’m used to your bad driving by now,” she teases, though it’s the honest truth. ”Never did get my dance though. You can make that part up to me.”
And he - he is not a dancer. He is all long legs and no rhythm, but he is comfortable holding her (and he’s already holding her before they even begin to dance, his hand’s already found its way to curve against the arch of her back. They’re always touching each other, somehow, whether their hands are intertwined or his palm’s on the curve of her cheek, or he’s hugging her to his chest, fingers lacing through her hair.)
But they go together perfectly, like something magnetic and meant to be, and Clara thinks that this - with his hands burning through the silk of her dress as they sway to an imagined melody and the air that smells like jasmine and the rain that falls around them - this is better than any regular ball.
#
They cut it close, because of course they do. Is there any other way to do it when you travel with the Doctor?
And Clara supposes she should be grateful to be landing mere moments before instead of minutes too late, but as it is, it’s eleven-fourty-seven, and Dave and Linda Oswald are turning the key to the door, and up in her room, Clara is stumbling out of the TARDIS and in the process is losing her shoe.
She is a blur of floating skirts and sparkling silver as she stumbles into her room, one shoe on, and she just manages to throw her long blue bathrobe on over her ball gown and watch the TARDIS shimmer and fade away when her father and stepmother walk by her door.
She smiles at them, and if she’s teetering a bit unsteadily on her feet due to only wearing one shoe then the both of them are too tired to notice.
#
Exhausted, her father and stepmother bid her goodnight, going to their room, and Clara’s only just shrugged off her robe disguise when she hears the TARDIS engines again, coming from somewhere outside her front door.
(And that - that sound’s become Clara’s favorite sound in the universe. The Doctor has taken her to Italian operas to listen to sopranos from one hundred years ago and whisked her away to hear extraterrestrial bands in anti-gravity, but nothing, nothing can beat the sound of the TARDIS landing.
Or maybe it’s just because she knows it’s because she’s only a second away from seeing him.)
When Clara slips down the hall and opens her flat’s front door, she sees the TARDIS glowing at the bottom of the staircase, with the Doctor standing in front of it, pale green eyes looking up at her.
“You lost your shoe,” he says, grinning and holding the glass slipper up, and Clara smiles and exhales a laugh because of course she did, because that’s how the story goes.
(And she knows that story, backwards and forwards, she just never imagined it happening to her.)
She starts down the stairs to take it, but she finds herself stumbling - her singular high heel making her teeter on the first step down, and the Doctor climbs up the staircase to her instead, laughing lightly as he catches her, steadies her with a hand on her waist. And then, to Clara’s surprise, he kneels before her, his left hand hooking loosely around her ankle, while his right hand slides her glass slipper back on, the soft pads of his fingers skimming the arch of her foot as he does so, sending a shiver down her spine.
(And Clara, Clara can see the moment in her mind as clear as if she’s paging through the storybook: The prince on bended knee, trying the glass slipper on Cinderella.
But, stars, Clara thinks. Who needs Prince Charming when you’ve got the Doctor?)
“It’s funny,” she says as he rises to stand, “just a few minutes ago we were in a castle, under an eighteenth century raining sky and now we’re here, right now, on a clear summer night on the steps of a modern flat. Don’t think I’ll ever be over that.”
“Same sky,” he says. “But do you know what the best thing about it being right now is?” he asks her, the corners of his eyes crinkling gently as he smiles. “It’s still Wednesday.”
Clara raises an eyebrow at him skeptically, but when she pulls out her phone she sees that it’s true: It’s not Thursday morning after all. It is exactly eleven-fifty-seven p.m. Wednesday. Their day.
“Ah,” Clara says. “So it is for three more minutes.”
“And do you know what the best thing about having a time machine is?” the Doctor continues, and she can already hear that siren-call type song in his voice, feel the spellbinding effects of his gaze as he looks at her and says, “You can pack eternity into a span of three minutes, see the entire world and still be back by midnight.”
She finds he’s tilting toward her, like the connection between them is too strong to resist, and maybe, maybe it is, because she smiles and says:
“Are you inviting me to another ball, Doctor?”
“Well,” he says, “I'm here, it’s Wednesday, you’re clearly dressed for a night out, and there’s at least fourty-seven balls going on this night in June exactly one hundred years ago in Venice alone.”
“It’d be a shame to waste a dress like this,” Clara agrees. “If you can even get us to the ball this time.”
He starts to protests at that, but Clara silences him, stops his sentences by standing on the toes of her glass slippers and gently bringing his head down so she can place a placating kiss on his cheek.
(And if he bows his head toward her, if they both turn in tandem, so that her kiss is more on the corner of his mouth than his cheek, if it’s more delicate and deliberate than by accident, more slow and lingering than fast and fleeting, like they’re enjoying the feeling of breathing each other in, well then, no one has to know but them and the stars above.)
And when they pull away, they’re both smiling, giddy and bright, and when he extends his hand, she takes it. After all, there’s so many things you can do and see before the clock strikes twelve, even if you never make it to the ball like you planned.
And as he pulls her into the TARDIS and flies her off somewhere wondrous, Clara thinks that maybe she never quite grew out of fairy tales after all.