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sheliesshattered · 1 year ago

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Whouffaldi non-canon AU. 8 chapters, 32,000 words. Rated Mature for heavier themes in later chapters, alluded to and discussed but not shown; please contact me privately if you’re worried about triggering topics.

Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor. Mystery, pining and angst with a happy ending. Available on AO3 under the same username and title. Originally posted in 2020.

This Isn't A Ghost Story

Chapter 1 - The House

14 November 2014, London

There was a certain amount of irony, Clara reflected, that her first reaction was I’m going to kill him.

Her ‘special friend’ had just cost her the sale of her late grandmother’s house. Again. This had to be roughly the twelfth adorable family or nice couple that had stepped into her ancestral family home only to turn tail and run before they’d even had a chance to hear about the antique hardwood floors or the fully restored kitchen. At this point, he wasn’t even being subtle about it anymore.

The longer the house sat on the market, the fewer calls she was getting to schedule walk-throughs of the property. She was beginning to worry that word of the house’s strangeness was getting around the local real estate community. If things kept up at this rate, she was going to end up permanently saddled with an inheritance whose tax burden she could barely afford, in the form of a one hundred and thirty year old, gorgeous, sprawling, haunted house.

Clara used her key to let herself in through the ornate front door, grumbling under her breath. As soon as she closed the door behind her, the cabinets in the kitchen began to rattle ominously.

“Oh, shut up,” she snapped, dropping her purse and keys on the small table in the foyer. “It’s just me.”

The door to one of the bedrooms upstairs slammed shut.

She groaned and buried her face in her hands and counted to ten before looking up again. “Listen, I get that you’re cross with me for bringing people by, but I am beyond livid with you, so let’s skip the part where I yell and you throw things and just agree to be angry with each other in silence, okay?”

The house went quiet in a manner entirely too creepy for her liking. If not for the undercurrent of petulant passive-aggressiveness, she might have actually been scared.

Not that Clara had ever really been scared of the ghost that lived in her Gran’s house. He had never once made her feel unsafe, not since she’d first spoken to him as a small child. But the sudden silence was still unnerving.

“Well, good,” she said into the preternatural stillness, more to prove to herself that she wasn’t scared than anything else. “It’s nice to actually be able to hear myself think, for a change.”

The top step of the staircase creaked once, as if to make a point.

“Still shut up,” she grumbled.

She went about the short list of tasks she’d come to see to, putting away the food she’d set out for the potential home buyers, watering the plants, closing the curtains, and flicking on a few lamps to make the house look lived-in. Of course, she didn’t envy anyone who tried to break into the house while it sat apparently empty. At some level, a poltergeist was better home protection than a dog could ever be.

Her chores complete, Clara returned to the foyer to find her purse where she’d left it, but her keys conspicuously missing. She sighed, hands on her hips, and turned towards the cold spot she could feel forming near the foot of the stairs. He was nothing but a faint wispy outline in the direct light of the setting sun filtering through the stained glass window over the front door, but even that outline was familiar enough that Clara was able to find his eyes and fix him with a displeased glare.

“Where are my keys?” she demanded. She still hadn’t forgiven him for his behaviour earlier, and she was in no mood to play find-the-lost-trinket tonight.

“I didn’t want you to leave before I could apologise,” the ghost said, not quite meeting her gaze. His voice raised gooseflesh along her arms, as usual, but she much preferred the low rumble of his Scottish brogue to the slamming of doors and rattling of cupboards. Not that she would ever openly admit that to him.

“So apologise and tell me where you’ve hidden my keys!”

“Clara,” he said, and she clenched her teeth against the shivery reaction she always had to the way he said her name, like it had been invented just so he could say it. There were days when she lived for that rush — and many, many lonely nights, in her love-struck teenaged years — but today was absolutely not one of them.

“...Was there more to that sentence?” she asked when he didn’t go on. “Saying my name does not constitute an apology.”

He glanced up at her, looking increasingly solid as the sunlight waned. “I’m sorry I upset you. That wasn’t my intention.”

“No, your intention was to make certain I can’t sell this house, and don’t bother to deny it.”

He chewed his incorporeal lip for a moment, then shrugged. “I won’t deny it. I don’t want you to sell the house. But I’m still sorry I upset you.”

Clara sighed. “I have to sell it. You know this. And someday, someone too brave or too stupid to fall for all your clattering will decide to buy this place, and that’ll be that.”

“Don’t say that,” he pleaded, his eyes glinting blue in the gathering dusk.

“It’s the reality of the situation, so you’d best start making peace with it,” she said evenly. Another irony not lost on her: arguing the state of reality with a man dead nearly a century. “Now, where are my keys?”

Her ghost hesitated. “You don’t have to leave,” he said. “You could stay?”

“I never stay the night in this house. That was your advice to me, more than twenty years ago. No sense in breaking with tradition.”

“I think maybe I was being overly paranoid at the time.”

“And I think maybe you’re acting like a lonely old man now,” Clara snarked back.

“Alone in a house that you of all people are dead-set on evicting me from? I can’t imagine why I’d be lonely!”

“It’s not like you’re stuck here! You’re not tied to the house, you can go anywhere you want!”

“But it’s my house!”

“Keys, now!” she snapped. “Traffic is already going to be horrendous—”

“All the more reason to stay,” he said petulantly.

“But,” she went on forcefully, speaking over him, “tomorrow’s Saturday, so I have the day off work. If you tell me where my keys are, I’ll come back first thing in the morning. I still need to finish going through all those old boxes in the attic. We can spend the day working on that together, okay?”

“You’re going to drive all the way home only to turn around and come back in the morning? Why not just—”

“Or I could spend the day doing something fun with people my own age, very far away from here,” she bluffed. “Your choice.”

“Oh, fine,” he said, shoulders sagging. “Your keys are hidden in the parlour, I’ll show you where.”

“Thank you,” she said mildly, and followed him into the next room.

As promised, Clara arrived back at her grandmother’s house early the next morning, take-away coffee cup in hand. There had been a moment, whilst she stood in the queue to order, when she’d found herself thinking she ought to get two coffees, bring her ghost a peace offering to smooth over their row from the night before. Thankfully she’d realised how ridiculous that sounded before it was her turn to order, but she still felt strangely off balance as she unlocked the front door and let herself in, like she had forgotten something important.

“Hey,” she called to the empty house, as soon as she closed the door behind her. “It’s just me, no need to go rattling the hinges on my account.”

Her ghost appeared in a shadowy corner of the foyer, smiling at her shyly. “Good morning, my Clara,” he said. “You look lovely today. Have you had a wash?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to ignore the somersaulting of her heart at the way he said her name. My Clara. “Why are you being nice?”

“Because it works on you,” he shrugged nonchalantly. “And because I really am sorry about yesterday,” he added.

“Well, apology accepted,” Clara said. “And I’m sorry I yelled at you. The process of selling this place has been entirely too stressful, and I’m really starting to worry it won’t happen before the property taxes are due,” she sighed.

He ran a semi-transparent hand through the short curls at the back of his head, the ring he wore on his left hand briefly catching the light. “Yeah, about that...”

She winced. “What did you do?”

“The post came early today,” he said, voice even more apologetic than before. “I didn’t open it, but one of the envelopes has a rather official looking return address. I put it on the dining room table for you.”

She left her keys and purse on the table by the door and trudged off to the dining room, unable to contain her groan when she saw the envelope in question. Opening it, she found that he was right: property taxes were due in six weeks, the total even higher than she had anticipated. It was more than she made in a month at her teaching job. Even with the small amount she had stashed away in savings, she would hardly be able to pay it and the rent on her flat, and still expect to feed herself.

“What about the rest of your inheritance?” he asked, sounding genuinely worried.

“I put it all into fixing up this place to sell,” she said.

“Which I’ve made impossible,” he murmured.

Clara covered her face with her hands, trying not to cry and hoping he wouldn’t notice. Yes, he was the reason she hadn’t been able to sell the house to any of the dozen or so buyers who had shown initial interest. But he was also the only one in her life who even knew or cared what she was going through.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she told him honestly, still hiding behind her hands. “If I don’t pay it, they’ll just add late fees on top of that already ridiculously large sum. If I can’t sell the house soon...”

She felt a cold touch drift across the back of her hands, felt her hair stir in a nonexistent breeze, and wished, not for the first time in her life, that her ‘special friend’ was the sort of friend who could offer a hug when she so desperately needed one.

“I don’t suppose there’s a secret stash of diamonds in the attic?” she asked him, only half joking. “Or a map to buried treasure?”

“You are descended from a line of exceptionally adventuresome women,” he replied, voice sounding distant and thoughtful. “I haven’t been up to the attic in years. I don’t know what all is in there, but anything is possible.”

Clara dropped her hands from her face and squared her shoulders, not looking at her ghost until she was certain she wouldn’t spontaneously burst into tears. “Well, let’s hope there’s something up there that will help.”

The attic had never been Clara’s favourite place in her Gran’s house, cramped and dusty and full of ancient boxes that gave off a far creepier vibe than the literal ghost had ever managed to do. But on the plus side, it was also windowless, dim enough that he was able to appear to her in a fairly solid state and even move lightweight objects as though he were a real person existing in the real world.

She had removed the larger pieces from the attic weeks ago, furniture and blanket chests and trunks of old clothing, all sorted through and donated to charity or brought back to her flat, or else restored to the best of Clara’s ability and set out to decorate the house in a manner befitting its age. All that remained were boxes of keepsakes, photographs and journals and old letters, small family things that required far more of her attention to sort through.

Despite the lingering threat of the taxes due, it was a pleasant morning, sitting together amidst the papers and dust, slowly uncovering the history of her family, layer on layer, like an archaeologist digging through levels of sediment. Her Gran had spent her entire life in this house, from the time she was a baby, used it as a homebase during her adventurous youth, married and raised her own daughter in it, and continued to live in it after her husband died. The boxes that littered the attic bore witness to all those many decades.

“Oh my god, these photos of Mum,” Clara said, turning the yellowed album towards her ghost so he could see them, in all their early 1970s glory. “She must have been, what, about fifteen in these?”

“Ellie’s first formal school dance,” he confirmed, leaning in to examine the photos. “With that older boy, I forget his name. Your grandfather did not approve.”

Clara snorted. “Can’t say I blame him. Look at those sideburns. I’m not sure I would have let her go out with him at all.”

“They had a huge row about it, if I remember correctly. In the end, your grandmother took your mother’s side, and she was allowed to go.”

“Why didn’t you ever appear to any of them?” she asked, flipping through the pages and pausing to linger on what looked to be polaroids of a rugby game. “You were here all that time, but you never talked to anyone until I came along?”

He shrugged. “You were the only one that was you.”

“Thanks. That clears it right up.”

“It’s the only answer I’ve got,” he objected.

“I scared the daylights out of Mum and Gran when I told them about you, I was probably all of six years old at the time.”

“Five, I think,” he said quietly.

“God, five. I might have a heart attack if my five year old started talking very confidently about her special friend the ghost that lives at Gran’s house.”

“I seem to remember advising you against telling them.”

“And in all the time you’ve known me, when have I ever taken your advice?” she asked archly.

“Hmm. There was that one time you actually listened to me, about that chap you were dating, what’s-his-name.”

Clara winced, remembering it all too well. “I thought we agreed never to speak of him again.”

“Gladly,” her ghost replied emphatically.

She shook her head, more than happy to dismiss the subject. “As a child it didn’t make sense to me not to tell Mum and Gran about you. You live in Gran’s house, the house where Mum grew up, I just assumed they already knew about you. I mean, why wouldn’t they?”

“I’m not sure I could have talked to them, even if I’d wanted to. And I never did want to.”

Clara turned her gaze to him, studying his face in the dimness. Without direct sunlight, he looked almost human, almost alive, the blue of his eyes and the salt and pepper of his hair appearing so very real, so very close at hand. He still seemed as ageless to her now as he had when she was a child. Ageless and ancient, wise and funny, solemn and sardonic. She thought perhaps she knew his face better than any other, living or dead.

“But why didn’t you ever want to talk to them?” she pressed.

“Why do you need a key to enter the house?” he asked in response.

She felt her eyebrows come together in consternation. “Because the door is locked.”

“But why that key?”

“Because... that’s the key that fits. That’s the key that goes with that lock.”

He shrugged, most of his attention on the page of the journal he’d been perusing. “You are the key that fits. I can’t give you a better answer than that.”

Chapter 2 - The Box

When Clara’s stomach informed her that it had to be well past lunchtime, she glanced up from a shoebox full of black and white photos of her Gran’s travels and spotted the ghost standing in the far corner of the attic, staring at a dusty and crumbling box she didn’t recognise, a calculating expression wrinkling his brow.

“I forgot this was here,” he murmured so quietly she almost didn’t catch it.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Oh, just letters and photos and journals and such,” he said louder, not shifting his gaze. “The same as the rest.”

“I’m not sure I like the way you’re looking at it,” she told him playfully, shuffling through the photos in her hands. “What are you thinking?”

He hesitated. “I’m wondering if I can get it downstairs now,” he said slowly, “or if I’ll have to wait until after sunset to be able to move it.”

“Why do you want to take it downstairs?” she asked absently.

“That’s where the fireplace is. Probably ought to keep it contained. Don’t want to burn down the whole house.”

That caught her attention, and Clara put down the photos she’d been concentrating on, giving him her entire focus. “What? Why would you want to burn it?”

“It’s for the best,” he said obliquely.

“What is in that box?” she demanded, standing and crossing the cramped space towards him to get a better look at it.

“Clara,” he admonished, trying ineffectually to block her view of the box.

“That’s my family history you’re contemplating burning there, mister,” she told him. “I think I should at least get to see it first.”

“I would really rather you didn’t—”

She felt his cold touch brush against the back of her hand as she reached into the box, but it wasn’t nearly enough to deter her.

“These photos are ancient,” she said, noting the sepia colours of the few she’d managed to snag. “Who is the woman in these pictures? It’s not Gran.”

“Clara, would you please just—”

“You don’t want me to see these,” she said, putting together the pieces. “Why?”

“There are parts of the history of this house that you’re better off not knowing,” he said, more ominous than the rattling of cupboards that had scared away so many potential buyers.

“No, hang on a second,” she said, looking closer at the photos in the dim light. “Who is this? She looks exactly like—”

He winced. “Please don’t.”

“Exactly like me.”

“Clara, please.”

“What is going on with you?” she demanded, turning her gaze to him. “In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never behaved like this.”

His jaw worked soundlessly for a moment before he finally said, “That’s your great-grandmother. The one you’re named for.”

She peered at the photos, pacing closer to the bare lightbulb hanging from the slanting ceiling to try to see them better. “Okay, but that is actually creepy. I look just like her. Why has no one ever mentioned that?”

“No one alive now remembers what she looked like. She died when your grandmother was a baby, you know that.”

“Why would you not want me to see these?” she asked, a chill working its way down her spine.

“Clara—”

“You’re scaring me,” she told him. “Really, properly scaring me, for the first time in my life. Why would you want to burn this box, rather than let me see these photos?”

“Sometimes the past is better left buried.”

“But this is ancient history! Nearly a century ago! What harm could it possibly—” she cut off as he abruptly disappeared, leaving her with the dust and her lingering questions and the echoes of familial pain.

After their confrontation in the attic, Clara didn’t want to leave the strange old box alone with her ghost, so she carefully carried it downstairs with her, setting it on the kitchen table as she scrounged up a make-shift lunch out of what little food there was on hand. The house had gone eerily silent after he’d disappeared, and she found herself humming under her breath as she ate and cleared up, trying to calm her jagged nerves.

“Could you not?” his voice came from behind her, and she jumped, spinning to face him. He was hazy and translucent in the early afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows near the table, but she could tell his eyes were fixed on the box and not on her.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“Would ghostly footsteps really have been any better?” he asked sourly, cutting his gaze to her briefly.

“When I know they’re from you, yes! And since when has my humming bothered you?”

“It’s not the humming so much as your choice of song.”

Clara blinked at him, trying to remember the tune. “I don’t even know what it was.”

“That’s exactly my point.” She watched him try to grasp one corner of the box, his hand passing through it, as insubstantial as cobwebs. He made a face and dropped his arm, but didn’t move away from the box.

“You still want to burn it,” she said, not quite a question.

“I’m reconsidering my stance on burning down the entire house, if that’s what it takes. Would you still have to pay the tax bill if the house were no longer here? What’s the insurance situation like?”

“I cannot believe I have to say this, but please don’t burn down the house. I will figure out how to pay the taxes, one way or another. And whatever is in that box can’t possibly be that bad.”

He looked up at her and held her gaze across the width of the kitchen. “Can’t it?”

“What is it that you’re so afraid of me knowing?” Clara asked, and he turned away, staring down into the box again. “So I look like my great-grandmother, what of it? I’m named for her, too. It’s just family resemblance, it’s hardly surprising.”

She honestly wasn’t sure which of them she was trying to convince. She’d hoped that in the bright daylight and modern setting of the kitchen, a reexamination of the photos would prove that she only somewhat resembled the long-dead woman, but her ghost’s odd behaviour was throwing that fragile hope into serious doubt.

“It’s more than that, and you know it,” he murmured, still faced away from her. “Deep down, you know it. And now it’s only a matter of time until you realise...”

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and her heart thudded against her ribs. “Please tell me what’s going on,” she breathed.

He reached into the box, the shadow cast by its raised edge allowing him enough substance to shuffle through the contents within. “I never spoke to Margot — your grandmother,” he said, voice distant and detached. “Or anyone else after she was born, not until you were old enough to talk to me. But I’ve always been here. I moved things, when no one would notice. Hid things. I hid this box so long ago, I’d forgotten it was there. But I’m certain Margot never found it.”

“Why did you hide it from her? If it’s just old photos, then why—”

“I made a promise, Clara. I had a duty of care. Almost eighty-seven years keeping that promise, only for this box to resurface now.”

Clara frowned, confused. “But Gran wouldn’t have turned eighty-seven until next summer.”

“I didn’t make the promise to Margot. I made it to the only person I’ve spoken to since my death. The only one who could ever see me.”

“Besides me, you mean.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder, his expression like an open wound. “Clara.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked again, trying to shake the unnerving feeling that look elicited. “There’s some deep, dark, family secret, I’m getting that much. But why does it have to remain a secret? Whatever it is, everyone connected with it is gone now. There’s only you and me left.”

He turned back to the box, gaze fixed on something inside that she couldn’t see. “I would like to think that I could tell you the basics of it and you’d leave it be. The trouble is, I know you too well for that. I know you won’t stop digging until you’ve uncovered all the gory details. If I can spare you any part of that pain...”

“I think I’d rather have the truth,” she told him bluntly.

“I know,” he said, sounding resigned. Carefully, as though it took all of his focus to accomplish, he lifted a single photograph from the box. When his hand cleared the edge of the box, the sunlight rendered it insubstantial again, and the photo drifted down to the tabletop, unsupported. “You always did demand absolute honesty from me, Clara, my Clara.” He met her eyes once more, and then was gone.

Alone again in the silence of the kitchen, Clara hesitated before crossing to the table to pick up the picture he’d taken from the box, curiosity eventually winning out over her lingering fear.

Like the photos she’d seen earlier, it was composed of monotones of brown, surrounded by a thick off-white border, but it was the image captured there that made the breath catch in her throat. A man and a woman stood side by side, gazing at each other rather than out at the camera, both smiling broadly. He was dressed in a dark suit and crisp white shirt, and she wore a pale satin gown with a dropped waist and a boxy cut. She held a bouquet of flowers in her hands, and there were more flowers in her short dark hair, formed into a circlet that held a long lace veil in place.

Any hope that Clara might have clung to that she bore only a passing resemblance to her namesake was shattered, the longer she looked at the photo. The likeness was uncanny, and downright eerie given the fuss made over this box. So far as she could tell, they were identical in every way, from their height and their facial features to the dimple that only appeared when she smiled. It easily could have been her in that photo. If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn that it was.

And if there was any other face that she knew as well as her own, it was that of her ghost. His ageless, expressive face had been seared into her consciousness since childhood, doodled in the margins of homework assignments in adolescence, and featured in her dreams for as long as she could remember. There was absolutely no question in her mind, not at first glance nor after careful examination, that the man stood beside her great-grandmother was one and the same. She would know him anywhere. His hair was perhaps a touch longer now, more untamed, but he didn’t look like he had aged a day.

Turning the photo over, she found a short inscription on the back. Clara and John, 12 May 1923 was written in large block letters, but John had been neatly crossed out, and above it small, looping handwriting had added the Doctor in its place.

She’d never known her ghost’s name, and when she had prodded him for personal information as a child, he had given her only a few sparse details. It had never particularly bothered her — she knew him, so as a child she had simply accepted that he was her ghost, and she was his Clara, and that was all that mattered. Besides, it wasn’t as though she could speak to anyone else about him, certainly not after the way her Mum and Gran had reacted.

But she wondered at it now, at the life he had led, long before she was born. She wondered about the man in the photograph, John or the Doctor or whatever he preferred to be called, this man that was so clearly her ghost. Had he had a good life? And what had made him want to linger in this house after it had ended?

She turned the photo back over, her eyes catching on his familiar face again. He looked so very happy in that frozen moment, gazing with absolute adoration at the woman who could have been her. Her great-grandmother wore a matching expression, giddy with happiness and clearly very much in love. Clara didn’t think she had ever looked at anyone that way. In her nearly twenty-eight years of life, she had never once felt for anyone what the two people in that photo so obviously felt for each other. Not anyone, except—

That thought cut short at the sound of music drifting down from upstairs, ethereal and haunting, even discounting the fact that she knew it was played by a man dead almost a century. Still cradling the photograph in both hands, Clara followed the music up the stairs, and found him in the dim back bedroom, perched on an old blanket chest with an acoustic guitar across his lap. He glanced up at her when she paused in the doorway, but didn’t stop playing. She didn’t want him to stop.

Clara watched his long fingers move effortlessly across the frets, felt the way the familiar melody reverberated out from the guitar, full of love and longing, and thought again about the expression he’d worn on that long ago day, captured in the photograph in her hands. As a teenager she had entertained fantasies that he might one day look at her like that, but as she’d gotten older she had come to accept the futility of it. He was a ghost, dead decades before she was born, and no matter how special he was to her, or she to him, there would never be any way to alter those facts.

But now she found herself confronted with something almost infinitely worse: here was her ghost directing that look at her great-grandmother. The familial implications were obvious, and distressing in a way she couldn’t even quite articulate to herself. It wasn’t just the likelihood that she was descended from this man who had featured so prominently in her life, or that he had never bothered to reveal that bit of information to her. It wasn’t even jealousy, exactly, but rather a sort of longing for what could have been. It could have been her in that photo. It should have been her.

She leaned in the doorway and listened to him play, and tried to imagine a world in which he wasn’t dead, and she was free to love him.

“That’s the song I was humming earlier,” she said softly, once the last note had faded away. “What’s it called?”

He was silent a long moment. “It’s called Clara,” he murmured, carefully setting aside the guitar and not meeting her gaze. “I wrote it, a very long time ago, for your great-grandmother. I used to hum it for you sometimes, when you were a baby. I don’t know if you were always that fussy, or if you’ve just never slept well in this house, but it seemed to... help, I suppose.”

“I didn’t know you appeared to me when I was a baby,” she said. “But I guess it makes sense.” She glanced down at the photograph in her hands, thought again on the familial relationship that could be inferred from it. “I’m not sure I have a first memory of you,” she told him honestly. “I remember the first time I spoke to you, the first time you responded, but even before that, you were always just there, every time I visited Gran.”

If she didn’t know his face so well, she would have missed the sad smile that briefly curled one corner of his mouth. “Ellie brought you here when you were a week old. Your grandfather’s health was failing, and he hadn’t been able to visit her in hospital. She let him hold you, but rather than look at him, you looked directly at me. Focused on me like I’ve never seen out of a newborn. It’d been fifty-eight years since anyone had seen me, and then there you were, staring right at me. My Clara.”

Her heart flipped over in her chest, and she looked down the photo again and willed herself to speak. “I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth.”

“And there you go again, demanding utmost honesty from me,” he said with fond ruefulness.

She hesitated, chickening out and deciding to take a slightly different tack. She held up the photo so he could see it. “Is this you?”

He glanced from the photo up to her face, like he was surprised at the question. “Yes.”

“Are you my great-grandfather?” she blurted out before she could lose her nerve again.

He winced. “That’s a complicated question.”

“It’s really not,” she pressed, gripped with the need to know, no matter how much it might hurt. “Either you are or you’re not.”

“Clara—”

“This is a photo of you and my great-grandmother, on what certainly looks like your wedding day,” she said, pushing the words out in a rush, as though that would make it easier. “You said you had a ‘duty of care’ for my Gran, a promise strong enough to keep you here for the last eighty-seven years. So are you or are you not my great-grandfather?”

He sputtered a moment, clearly not wanting to answer the question. “Legally, technically, yes,” he finally said. “If you go digging into the paperwork — wills and birth certificates, that sort of thing — you’ll find my name there. But in reality? Biologically? No. Margot wasn’t mine. There was no way she could have been mine, and your great-grandmother knew it.”

A strange sort of relief washed through her, quickly followed by confusion. “Wait, that’s the dark and terrible family secret?” she asked in disbelief. “That you’re not Gran’s father?”

He hesitated. “That’s part of it, yes,” he hedged. “And if anyone had ever found out, it would have cost her this house and the rest of her inheritance, every bit of anything that provided her with stability and security, as a girl orphaned at three months old.”

“That’s why you were trying to keep it hidden from her,” Clara realised.

He nodded. “Margot lived her entire life never knowing the truth of her parentage, which is exactly what her mother wanted. That was part of the promise I made, to spare Margot from as much of that pain as I could.”

“Why have you never told me any of this before?”

“It didn’t seem right to speak of it while Margot was alive,” he shrugged. “But you’re right, there’s only the two of us left, now. And I suppose there are some things you are entitled to know, as much as I might wish for nothing to change.”

Clara watched him for a long moment, studying his face. “There’s more you’re not telling me,” she said, trying to keep her tone from turning accusatory. “What else is in that box?”

He held his hand out for the photo, taking it from her carefully when she offered it to him. “This was a good day,” he said, staring down at the man he had been, and the woman who could have been her. “We were very, very happy. But there were less happy days, memories I would protect you from, if I can. If you’ll let me.”

“You can’t protect me from everything,” she told him, gently but firmly. “I’m not part of your duty of care. I never asked you for that.”

He looked up from the photo to find her gaze again. “My Clara. You shouldn’t have to ask.”

Chapter 3 - The Journal

Clara couldn’t sleep that night. Alone in her flat, she tossed and turned in bed, the day’s events replaying on a loop in her mind. The revelation of the identity of her ghost, the family secret he had spent almost a century protecting, her uncanny resemblance to her great-grandmother, it all felt like a complicated knot she needed to untangle. Beyond everything she’d learned, there was still more her ghost refused to tell her, and the thought nagged at her, keeping her awake.

Shortly after midnight she gave up on sleep, getting up and padding down the hall to her small sitting room. Given that it was early Sunday morning, she wouldn’t have to be up for work in a scant few hours, so if she was awake anyway she might as well do something useful. She flicked on the lamp closest to the sofa and pulled over the ancient box she’d brought from her Gran’s house, positioning it at the near end of the coffee table.

Before she left, she’d managed to extract a promise from her ghost that he wouldn’t burn down the house while she was away. But she still hadn’t completely trusted him alone with the box that had caused so much upset, so she’d loaded it into her car and brought it home with her, uncertain of exactly what she intended to do with it.

It’d been obvious that he was no more comfortable with the idea of her in sole possession of the box than she was with the thought of leaving it with him. You won’t stop digging until you’ve uncovered all the gory details, he had said to her, and she knew herself well enough to admit that he was probably right. Now that she knew of the existence of this box, she could hardly just let it be.

But it was more than simply feeling entitled to her family history. There was something there, some hidden edge of the mystery that called to her, something she felt like she should know. It wasn’t just her resemblance to her great-grandmother, or her attachment to her ghost, or his unwillingness to explain the situation to her. It’s more than that, and you know it, he’d told her. Deep down, you know it. And now it’s only a matter of time until you realise...

Clara shivered a little, remembering his words, more unnerved in the silence of her flat than she’d been when he’d first said them. Whatever this was, wherever this led, she had to know.

Glancing into the box, she picked up the wedding photograph from the top of the pile of papers and leaned towards the lamplight to examine it again. It was less disconcerting than it had been earlier, now that she knew some of the context behind it, but it was still odd to see her own face in a photo taken more than ninety years ago, in the spring of 1923. Staring at it, she was struck again by the feeling of what should have been, of how fiercely she wished it was her in that photo, marrying the man she loved.

But it wasn’t her in the photo. It couldn’t possibly be her, no matter how much it looked like her and no matter how much she wished it was. Perhaps getting to know the woman depicted there, her great-grandmother and namesake, would help her shake the feeling that somewhere along the line, fate had gone horribly awry. With that thought firmly in mind, she reached into the box and began pulling items from it.

There was no sense of order to the box, but as she dug through it, Clara began to suspect that it was the contents of her great-grandmother’s writing desk, quickly and haphazardly transferred to the box, however long ago. It was a mix of correspondence and shopping lists, photographs and small pieces of memorabilia, all jumbled together, fragile with age. She took each item out one by one, sorting them into piles as she went — a stack for photos, another for letters, a third for keepsakes, and a smaller pile for the ephemera of everyday life, things she probably didn’t need to keep. She could spend tomorrow going through them in more detail, reading the letters and looking at the photos in the light of day.

At the bottom of the box she found what appeared to be a well-loved brown leather travel journal, thick with envelopes and postcards and loose leafs of paper fitted between the pages. The front was emblazoned with a globe and the words 101 Places To See. She smiled softly, running her fingertips over its dips and ridges, and thought of her own brief travels after university. When her Dad had balked at the idea of her travelling on her own, her Gran had declared it a family tradition for the women in their family to travel. Apparently it was one that went back further than Clara realised.

Curious about the sorts of travels her namesake had chosen, she leaned closer to the lamp and opened the journal to the first entry, written in the same small, looping handwriting as on the back of the wedding photo:

1 March 1921, London

I purchased this journal for my upcoming holiday, but I fear the title may be more aspirational than factual. Mother and Father have agreed to allow me a solo European tour, perhaps under the mistaken belief that giving me that much freedom will quench my thirst for more far-flung adventures. If they knew of my ambitions, they would certainly forbid me from leaving home at all. We shall see how far I can get on the stipend they have gifted me, before their disapproval catches up with me.

A family tradition indeed, Clara thought, smiling wider, and flipped ahead a few pages.

16 March 1921, Paris

Paris is lovely, if not so very different from London. It is, however, an excellent hub from which to book further travel...

The next several pages were devoted to cataloguing life in Paris in the early ‘20s, an era that had fascinated Clara during her literature studies at university. She scanned through the entries on the off-chance that her great-grandmother might have crossed paths with a famous name during her time there. Seeing none, she ran her thumb along the outer edge of the pages to jump further ahead and get an idea of where she had gone after Paris.

Of its own accord, the journal opened to a place where a small sepia photograph had been wedged between the pages, and Clara carefully prised it free to examine it closer. Though it wasn’t nearly as crisp as the wedding photo, the two figures in it were instantly identifiable as her ghost and her great-grandmother. They stood side by side, her arm slung around his back and his draped over her shoulders, smiling at the camera and squinting in bright sunlight, a desert landscape rolling away behind them. Surprised, she turned it over to find her great-grandmother’s handwriting on the back had labeled it Doctor John Smith, Thebes Egypt, 19 May 1921.

Egypt? Her curiosity piqued, Clara backtracked a few pages to try to find the context of the photo, and when exactly her ghost had first entered her great-grandmother’s life.

2 May 1921, Cairo

Egypt is enthralling, everything I had dreamed it would be. Thankfully I find I am able to stretch my budget further here than I could on the continent. I sent my last letter home from Athens, and carefully did not mention my future plans — my hope is that I can spend a few weeks here before returning to Europe via Malta and then on to Italy, and Mother and Father will never be the wiser. To that end (and to ensure I don’t run out of funds and thus be forced to resort to begging parental assistance), I have already booked passage aboard a ship departing in three weeks.

The next few days detailed her sightseeing in and around Cairo, and Clara scanned ahead until her eyes caught on an entry almost two weeks later:

14 May 1921, Cairo

I met the most fantastic and intriguing man at the museum party last night! We spoke like old friends for near an hour and a half before he was pulled away by his compatriots, and it was only after he was gone that I realised we did not so much as exchange names. At the time, names felt superfluous, secondary to my desire to know him, but this morning I find myself wishing I could put a name to the face that hasn’t left my mind these last twelve hours.

He is Scottish, an academic of some description, though his interests and expertise seem so wide ranging, I can hardly guess at what his specialty might be. His has the nose of a Roman emperor, more regal than the bust of Marcus Aurelius that lives on the shelf in my bedroom back home, but recently burnt to peeling by the hot desert sun in a way I found entirely too endearing. There is no question that he is significantly older than myself, but he carries none of the condescension I typically associate with such an age difference. He showed more than polite interest in hearing of my travels and my thoughts on all that I have seen, and in exchange told me stories of his many adventures.

He is exactly the sort of kindred spirit I have for so long dreamed of knowing, and yet I know no hard facts about him at all. I don’t suppose we will ever meet again — and isn’t that sad? To have met someone as singular as him, spent an hour and a half in one another’s company, only to be forever lost to each other in the shuffle of humanity. At least he will be a fond memory of my time in Cairo.

Gripped by this introduction to the ghost she had known all her life and the man she had never had the chance to meet, Clara turned the page and read on.

15 May 1921, Cairo

I wrote yesterday that I know no hard facts about the man I met at the museum party, but on reflection I find that isn’t entirely true. His friends called him only ‘Doctor’, though that hardly narrows down his identity, with so many educated men roaming about the country. He has lived in Egypt for several years, can read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, and mentioned he was in Cairo on a brief respite from some activity in Thebes, on which he did not go into detail.

But a ‘brief respite’, by definition, should mean that he will return to Thebes, shouldn’t it? And then there is the matter of his sunburnt nose...

The on-going archaeological work at Thebes is widely known in Cairo, especially amongst those who frequent the museum. Could it be that this ‘Doctor’, this man who has not left my thoughts since Friday evening, could now be found in Thebes? I so wish to see him again, even if only to exchange our names and other such information, so that I might send him a postcard from time to time. And perhaps more, if he is agreeable.

And if he is not to be found in Thebes, at least I will have tried. I will be able to board the ship to Malta knowing that at least I tried to find him.

Despite knowing that her great-grandmother would, inevitably, cross paths again with the man who would become her husband, Clara read on without pause, enthralled by the unfolding drama.

17 May 1921, en route

I have left Cairo for Thebes, though it may well mean I will miss my ship to Malta. He has not been out of my thoughts, and I find I cannot wait any longer. I cannot talk myself out of this. And if there were anyone in a position in my life to talk me out of it, I would not let them, either. My mind is made up.

An adventure, then. To see the archaeological work at Thebes, and perhaps recognise a friendly face. I do hope his sunburn has not got any worse.

The next entry, adjacent to where the photograph had been tucked away, read simply:

19 May 1921, Thebes

His name is John, and I am besotted. I fear I may never recover.

Clara set the journal down in her lap and picked up the photo, looking again at their smiling faces. She tried to imagine it, meeting an interesting stranger and then striking out into the unknown, alone, on the hope of finding him again. Studying the picture, she could almost feel the desert sun on her face, and the giddy joy of new love. In just under two years, they would be married, but it had begun there, with a conversation in the Cairo museum and her great-grandmother’s bold decision to follow him to Thebes.

In the spring of 1921, she would have been just barely twenty-two years old, and Clara couldn’t help but wonder about the age of her ghost. He looked so unchanged in the photographs she had seen, the length of his salt and pepper hair the only thing that indicated any passage of time. He had always been ageless to her, but her namesake had commented on the age difference, and as she neared twenty-eight herself, Clara had to admit that he still looked significantly older than her. In his forties, easily, perhaps fifties. He’d told her that if she dug into the paperwork she would find him there, and she decided to look into it in the morning, see what information could be gleaned from genealogical websites and the like, since he’d always shown such unwillingness to answer any sort of personal question.

She turned back to the journal, curious where their story had gone in the two years between meeting and marrying. The next section was filled to bulging with postcards and envelopes tucked between the pages — a period of extensive correspondence, clearly. Clara hesitated. Reading her great-grandmother’s travel journal was one thing, but in the current moment, alone in the post-midnight silence of her flat, she wasn’t sure she could bear to read the letters her ghost had written to his future wife as they fell in love. Instead, she flipped through quickly until she reached the last of the postcards, and then read the first journal entry that followed it.

4 March 1923, London

He is in Glasgow! After all these months of correspondence, of knowing my true feelings but being unwilling to divulge them via the impersonal medium of paper, the Doctor is no more than a train ride away. And yet after the fiasco of my extended stay in Egypt in ‘21, I cannot imagine that Mother and Father will react well to my desire to go to Scotland to see him.

His postcard did not say how long he plans to be in Glasgow, only that letters sent to the university there might reach him faster than if sent via the normal address. I worry that he will be this close by for only a short time. With all the news out of the Valley of the Kings these last few months, I don’t expect he will stay in dreary old Scotland for long.

I’m afraid that if I don’t seize this opportunity, I will never get another chance to tell him of my feelings for him in person. I worry that if I ask to go, Mother and Father will not permit it, and that if I take the initiative and go without asking, they will never forgive me.

And I am afraid that the Doctor does not love me as I love him, that he won’t be able to see past the differences in our ages to all that we could be, the life that we could build together. I worry that in running off to see him, I will destroy not only my relationship with my parents, but also my friendship with him.

What fear should I let rule me? Which worry is the most likely to be true?

No.

Instead, better questions: How will I live with myself if I let myself be ruled by fear? If I do not live by the truth of my heart, how can I live at all?

I will follow him to Glasgow, as I followed him to Thebes. Let me be brave. Let the fates do as they will.

The next entry was written a few days later, detailing her clandestine departure from home and the long train journey from London to Glasgow, peppered with her simmering fears at how her unannounced arrival would be greeted by the Doctor. Her worry and her longing were palpable, and Clara felt an odd sort of kinship with this woman, her great-grandmother and namesake, as she abandoned everything in her life on the chance to be with the man she loved. She had never done anything like it herself — she had never felt that strongly about anyone, besides her ghost — but somehow it felt like something she would do.

She turned the page, looking for their reunion, but found that the next entry was dated weeks later.

28 March 1923, Glasgow

The days have been too full and too happy to find a scrap of time to add my thoughts here, so in short: one of my fears was unfounded, the other not.

The Doctor loves me as I love him. It is the truth that will chart the course of our lives together, from now until the stars all burn from the sky.

And Mother and Father will never forgive me.

The pages that followed were filled with hastily jotted down notes, interspersed with little keepsakes: a visitor’s guide to the Kelvingrove art museum, a program from an orchestral performance, a short love letter scrawled on university stationary in handwriting Clara had to assume belonged to her ghost. She folded that one back up without reading it, then skipped ahead to the date on the back of the wedding photo and found that her great-grandmother had written:

12 May 1923, Glasgow

Tomorrow we will make our farewells to Scotland and start the long journey south to Egypt, but today marks the beginning of a different and far greater adventure: marriage!

It will be a very small wedding, with only a few of the Doctor’s friends and cousins in attendance, but I find I do not care. I get to keep him, and any other concerns fade out of existence in the blinding light of that fact.

Tomorrow will also be two years since our first meeting in Cairo, and I am looking forward to revisiting the scene of that fateful interaction, this time as a married woman. How wonderful it is to have not lost that intriguing stranger to the shuffle of humanity, after all.

The journal shifted in tone after that, chronicling their journey from Glasgow to Cairo and the beginnings of their life together in Egypt, as the Doctor returned to his archaeological work in the field. In the summer of ‘23, her great-grandmother decided to take up drawing, and many of the pages that followed were filled with pencil sketches of the monuments of Egypt, the series of small homes they lived in, and the familiar face of her ghost, growing ever more accurate as her skill improved.

Clara thought of her own childhood habit of sketching his face on any blank corner of paper she could find, and wondered how they might compare. Her great-grandmother’s drawings were occasionally dated, and by the spring of 1925, the journal shifted back to being more of a travelogue again, though the entries were more sparse than they had been before, and sketches continued to fill the margins.

15 June 1925, London

Even in the height of summer, London feels grim and drab after two years in Egypt. When I said as much, the Doctor merely laughed and pointed out that it could be worse: it could be Glasgow. He has spent so many years now, off and on, living in Egypt, moving from dig site to dig site as the work demands, and I think he is ready for a more settled existence for a while. The position at the British Museum suits him well, and will provide us with a more stable foundation on which to build our life — and as much as I enjoyed our transient circumstances in Egypt, there is a certain allure to building something lasting together. A new sort of adventure.

I had hoped that with our return to London, and after two years of marriage, Mother and Father might have found a way to forgive me, but it seems that door is forever closed. I am determined to focus on the future instead, and on the family the Doctor and I mean to create together.

Reading that, Clara felt a pang of heartsickness for this woman she had never known. She had been close with both of her parents before their deaths, and was grateful to have had that time with them. She couldn’t imagine her parents being so angry with her that they would shut her out of their lives, but scanning ahead, she didn’t see any indication that her namesake’s parents had ever relented. Instead, the journal dealt with the process of settling back into life in London, and her great-grandmother’s dreams for the future, with small sketches peppering the edges of each page.

As she turned the pages, Clara’s eyes caught on the rare use of colour in one of her drawings, and with a surprised blink she realised she recognised it as the stained glass window over the front door of her Gran’s house. The journal entry beside the drawing read:

1 August 1925, London

The House, as I have determined it must always be called, is a ridiculous rambling Victorian thing, all gabled roofs and ornate woodwork and stained glass windows, such as the one I have drawn here. It is entirely too large for the two of us, but it was love at first sight for both the Doctor and myself, and no house we have considered since has compared. At least there will be enough room for our ever-growing legion of books. And there are several bedrooms — perhaps it is too ambitious of me to imagine them someday filled, but despite all our failed efforts, I remain hopeful.

Having dealt so closely with her Gran’s personal details the last few weeks, Clara knew that she would be born barely three years later, in late August of 1928. Her great-grandmother died only a few months after that, and it felt strange to read of her hopes for a large family, knowing it didn’t happen in the end. Through reading her journal, it had become clear to Clara that they were alike in many ways, but on that one point they couldn’t be more different. She enjoyed children, she wouldn’t have become a teacher if she didn’t, but she’d never felt drawn to motherhood. She was almost the same age as her namesake had been when her Gran was born, and she couldn’t imagine having a baby now, much less hoping for multiple children.

Of course, she wondered if she might feel differently if she’d had the sort of fairy tale romance her great-grandmother had had. Starting a family with someone she loved felt a lot less abstract than the vague idea of having a baby. Maybe that was the difference. She could certainly understand her great-grandmother wanting children with the Doctor—

At that thought, it all came back to her in a rush, everything her ghost had revealed that afternoon, the truth of her Gran’s parentage — and with it, one of the few facts about him that she’d managed to wring out of him as a child. With dread turning her stomach, Clara quickly flipped ahead to the autumn of 1927, scanning the journal entries for any indication, any clue. There was a brief note in early November about plans for Christmas, but then nothing until:

1 December 1927

He is gone. He is gone, and I will never, ever recover.

The bruises may heal, but I will not.

Tears sprung to Clara’s eyes, but she blinked them away, reading on.

8 December 1927

Is it the House that is haunted, or me?

She stared at the words, knowing that almost eighty-seven years later, the house was very much haunted. She turned the page, feeling the tears begin to roll down her face.

12 December 1927

Perhaps it is only my mind playing tricks on me, but perhaps it is something more. Perhaps there is some magic that ties us together even now. I live in hope — for what other way is there to live, now?

The following pages were full of nothing but undated sketches of the Doctor, looking exactly as Clara knew him. I made that promise to the only person I’ve spoken to since my death. The only one who could ever see me, her ghost had told her, not twelve hours earlier. Gripped with the need to know, she turned the journal pages quickly, looking for her great-grandmother’s familiar handwriting amongst all the drawings of her ghost, until finally:

3 February 1928

I have counted out the days and counted them again. My memory of last November is far from clear, but there is no mistake in this: I am with child. And this is no parting gift, no consolation prize from the universe, only one more tragedy to heap onto the pile. This baby will not have the Doctor’s eyes or his smile or his laugh. This baby—

How am I to endure this? Alone in the House we had hoped to fill, how can I possibly find the strength to face what is to come?

I continue to dream of him, to have visions, even. Some days I fear I have gone mad with the grief, but other days, those visions are my only comfort, those dreams my only reprieve from the nightmares that plague me. Something in my heart refuses to believe that the Doctor is truly gone. Something compels me to speak to him, and hope that he will, somehow, impossible though it may be, hear me and respond.

And then:

8 February 1928

They are not visions, and I am not mad.

But more importantly — I am no longer alone.

Clara set down the journal, taking a moment to swipe at the tears on her face. She had known, deep down she had known that she would find only pain at the end of this story, and yet she hadn’t been able to stop herself. I know you won’t stop digging until you’ve uncovered all the gory details, he’d said to her, and he’d been right, of course he’d been right. Her ghost had tried to protect her from this, but she had charged ahead anyway, disregarding his warnings.

And that edge of the mystery still called to her, the unanswered questions still nagged at her. However much it hurt, she had to know. Picking up the journal again, she skipped ahead, flipping pages until she reached her Gran’s birthday.

21 August 1928

It is a girl. I have named her Margaret Eleanor, as we so long discussed. Our little Margot. None of this is her fault, and I do not love her less for it. I only wish I could love her more. I wish my heart were still capable of it. I wish I could have greeted her arrival with the joy she deserves. I wish I didn’t have to welcome her into the world alone.

The more days pass, the more I am convinced the Doctor meant what he said as a final goodbye. The last six months with him have revived me in a way I didn’t think possible, and to have that ripped away, to once again be facing the prospect of a future without him—

‘You are stronger than you know,’ he told me, and I wish I could believe it.

Even more, I wish he was still here. In whatever form, I wish he was here. Perhaps in time I will see him again. I must hold to that hope, for it is the last one I have.

The journal entries stopped after that, and again the pages were filled with sketches: a round-faced newborn with wispy hair, bits of the house that Clara recognised easily, and the Doctor, always the Doctor.

Turning the pages quickly, she came across one last entry in the journal, the following pages all blank. Her great-grandmother’s familiar handwriting was no longer small, neat loops, but instead scrawled wide with anguish, and Clara felt her heart skip a beat at the date at the top of the page.

23 November 1928

Where have you gone, my love? Why have you left me?

I suppose I cannot fault the dead for not keeping their promises. You did not choose this fate for us, and I do not blame you for it. I only wish it could have been different. I wish that we had a second chance at life, a second chance to build for ourselves everything we dreamed our life together could be.

I cannot live like this. I will not.

I will follow you, my love, wherever it is that you have gone. Wherever you are now, I will find you. As I followed you to Thebes and to Glasgow, I will follow you now.

I will see you again.

Wait for me.

Clara stared in horror at the final words on the page. Seized with a sudden nauseous dread, she dropped the journal on the coffee table and bolted up from the sofa, lurching towards her laptop on the desk across the room. Her hands trembled as she pulled up a search page, pouring out every scrap of relevant family information she could think of, ending with 23 November 1928 suicide.

The internet, that modern wonder, took only moments to confirm her fears. Tears filled her eyes again, blurring the screen in front of her, but she fumbled her way through printing the eighty-six year old coroner's report. She snatched up the paper still warm, jammed her feet into her trainers and pulled on a coat, grabbed her keys and her purse, and was out the door before she could change her mind.

Chapter 4 - The Past

By the time she arrived at the house, Clara’s hands were shaking so badly, it took her three tries to unlock the front door. Her tears hadn’t stopped the entire drive over, and in the two a.m. darkness her sniffling sounded loud in her own ears.

Finally managing to fit the key into the lock, she let herself into the foyer and closed the door behind her. She dropped her keys and purse on the table, but couldn’t make her fingers uncurl from the crumpled coroner’s report still clutched in her other hand. The house was silent, dimly lit by a lamp in the parlour and another at the top of the stairs, and for a moment she was seized by a sense of déjà vu so strong it was nearly vertigo. It had only been a few hours since she’d gone home for the evening, but it felt like she’d been away for far longer than that. She needed her ghost, she needed to talk to him after all that she’d read, she needed—

“Clara?” came his voice before she could call out to him, and she felt her breath leave her in a rush. She had never been so grateful to hear his familiar voice, and she looked up at him, finding him standing at the top of the stairs. “What are you doing here?” he went on, sounding concerned, as he descended the staircase towards her. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“I— I had to see you,” she said, her voice shaking almost as badly as her hands, and she swiped roughly at the wetness on her cheeks. “I couldn’t wait ‘til the morning.”

His steps quickened, and he didn’t stop until he was barely an arm’s length from her, seeming reassuringly solid and real in the dim light. “What’s wrong?” he asked, searching her face. “What’s happened?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she told him, stumbling over her words as her tears continued to fall, “and the box was— I had to know. I read her journal, I couldn’t stop myself. You were trying to protect me, and I just—” She cut herself off, shaking her head, trying to sort through her jumbled thoughts. “The twenty-third of November,” she forced out, looking up at him.

His expression shuttered. “What about it?” he asked warily.

“I was born on the twenty-third of November, 1986.”

“Clara, I am aware of your birthdate,” he said evenly.

She held up the crumpled paper in her hand. “Twenty-third of November, 1928. That’s the day she, the day my great-grandmother—”

“Yes,” he interrupted her.

“I was born fifty-eight years to the day—”

“Yes,” he said again, even more forcefully. “And? What is it exactly that you’re asking?”

She stared at him, grasping for the words as tears slipped down her cheeks. “Why?” she finally said. “Why would she do that to herself? Why would she leave her three month old child like that?”

He studied her face for a long moment. “I think you know why, my Clara,” he said softly.

“I don’t,” she shook her head, tears thick in her voice. “I’m trying to understand. I tried the entire drive over here, but I don’t— Why?”

He looked away, chewed at his lip. “You asked me once, when you were about eight years old, when it was that I died. Do you remember that?”

Clara nodded. “1927. You wouldn’t tell me the date, but you said it was in 1927.”

“I couldn’t very well tell you,” he said slowly, “at eight years old, that I died on your birthday in 1927.”

Realisation dawned. “She killed herself on the anniversary of your death.”

“Yes,” he said quietly, barely a breath.

“But... why?”

He looked at her in confusion, eyes glinting a silvery blue in the lamplight. “Why?”

“You said— you said you talked to her, after you died. Like we talk now. And in her journal she said— She hadn’t really lost you, so why would she—”

“I had stopped talking to her, stopped appearing to her,” he cut her off, voice soft. “Shortly before Margot was born. I wanted her to move on, even if I couldn’t. To live her life in the land of the living. I thought I was... a distraction from that. I worried if anyone found out that she was talking to her dead husband, that it would cost her everything, that she would end up in some sort of institution. Instead, I—” He stopped, swallowed harshly. “I was the one who cost her everything. By deciding I knew what was best. By ignoring her. By not protecting her like I should have done.”

She stared at him, tears still tracking down her face. “This is what you didn’t want me to know.”

“Clara...” He closed his eyes briefly, expression pained.

“You thought I wouldn’t be able to forgive you for it. That it would change the way I see you.”

He hesitated. “I didn’t want you to know about this, no.”

“...But?” she prompted, feeling like there was more he wasn’t saying.

His gaze found hers again. “What am I supposed to do, Clara? Which mistake should I repeat? Not protecting you? Or deciding that I know best?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, shaking his head. “You found out this much, you won’t stop digging until you’ve found every horrible thing there is to find. And I don’t know what that will do to you. I can’t protect you from yourself. I’m not sure I ever could. All I can do is be here to try to pick up the pieces.”

She studied his ageless face, so very dear to her. “Then promise me one thing,” she found herself saying.

He huffed out a humourless laugh. “Just the one thing?”

“Promise me you won’t ever ignore me like that.” She had to swallow down the inexplicable again that tried to append itself to the end of that sentence. “Promise me that you will never stop talking to me.”

“Clara—”

“If you love me—” The words caught in her throat and she stopped. It was an unspoken line never before crossed, a word never before spoken between them, and she quickly added, “—in any way, you’ll stay.”

One corner of his mouth curled up in a sad smile. “So long as it’s my power to stay, I don’t think I will ever be able to leave you, my Clara.”

“Good,” she said, her tears making her voice crack. “I refuse to lose you. I won’t allow it.”

“Five-foot-one and crying,” he said fondly. “I never stood a chance.” He reached up and brushed away a tear as it rolled down her cheek, his long fingers steady and just slightly cool against her skin.

Clara stared at him in shock, trying to fit this newest revelation into her over-full mind. “You’re... rather solid,” she said, more eloquent words failing her.

“Always am, this time of the night,” he replied, eyebrows drawing together. “It’s the lack of sunlight. I thought you knew that.”

“I’m never here this late,” she reminded him, shaking her head. Seized with a sudden realisation and an urge she couldn’t deny, she took a step forward and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly.

Her ghost went rigid beneath her touch, only slowly relaxing. “Clara,” he breathed against her hair, seeming to remember what to do with his arms. He held her carefully, like he thought she might shatter, but the substantial realness of him was better than anything she could have hoped for. “My Clara.”

“You cannot imagine how long I’ve wanted to do this,” she said into his shoulder.

“I have some idea,” he replied, drawing her closer.

Clara clung to him, unwilling to let the moment end. She had thought about hugging her ghost so often over the years, but the reality of being held by him far outpaced even her best dreams. It was exactly the sort of comfort she needed after all the discoveries of the day, and gradually her tears stopped.

“I don’t think you should drive home tonight,” he said quietly, gently pulling away from her. “You’re upset, and it’s late. Sleep here, go home in the morning.”

She stepped back and nodded, but said, “I don’t know if I can sleep. It’s all still clattering around my mind, everything I read.”

He carefully prised the paper from her hand, smoothed it out and read it. “Coroner’s report,” he said grimly. “As though the journal wasn’t bad enough.”

She hesitated, then asked, “You’ve read the journal?”

“Only the final entry. But I was there for most of the rest of it. Come on,” he said, clearly changing the subject, as he folded the paper and tucked it away in his trouser pocket. “There’s still some chamomile tea in one of the decorative tins in the kitchen. Maybe a cup will help you sleep.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you’re just trying to distract me?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Because I am,” he said dryly, then turned and led the way down the hall. Sighing, Clara followed after him.

She sat at the table and watched him move around the kitchen, confidently pulling items from drawers and cupboards as he prepared the loose-leaf tea. It was still strange to think of this as his house, as the house he had bought with his wife, where they had hoped to build a future together. And tragic, too, given the way things had turned out. Based on the dates in her great-grandmother’s journal, they had lived here for just over two years before his death, between the summer of 1925 and the autumn of 1927.

“Were you happy?” Clara asked into the comfortable silence.

Her ghost glanced over at her from his position near the stove, eyebrows raised in question.

“When you lived here with my great-grandmother,” she clarified. “Were you happy, together in this house?”

He brought her the cup of steaming tea and sat down across from her before he answered. “We were very happy,” he said softly, staring at his hands folded on the tabletop. “And very much in love.”

Clara’s heart clenched in her chest, and she didn’t reply until she was certain of the strength of her voice. “I’m sorry it didn’t end well,” she said, feeling like the words were horribly inadequate. “That you didn’t get more time together. You deserve to be happy.”

He looked up at her across the width of the table, his familiar face ageless and ancient. “Things end,” he said gently. “That’s all. Everything ends, and it’s always sad. But everything begins again too, and that’s always happy.”

“And have you been happy?” she asked before she could stop herself. “In the years I’ve known you?”

His gaze searched her face for a long moment before he said, “Very happy, my Clara. As much as a dead man can be. Now, drink your tea. It’s a few hours yet before dawn, and you should try to sleep.”

She decided not to argue with him, starting to feel fatigue pull at her now that the adrenaline of her discovery had passed. “You told me as a child that I shouldn’t stay the night here,” she said between sips of warm chamomile tea. “Why?”

He looked away and was quiet for so long that she began to wonder if he would answer at all. “You never slept well here, when you were small,” he finally said. “You would wake up crying, even screaming sometimes. Ellie seemed to think it was just being away from home, but I always worried it was this house specifically, something about it that you knew even before you were old enough to talk.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t you.”

“What?” he asked, meeting her gaze, eyebrows drawing together.

Clara shrugged though a sip of tea. “Gran’s house is haunted. That’s the sort of thing that might scare some kids. Most, probably. But you’ve never scared me.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“I mean it,” she said, smiling at him over the rim of her cup. “If ghosts are meant to be scary, you’ve failed utterly.”

“Glad to hear it,” he said dryly, then after a moment added more seriously, “I’ll stay with you tonight, if you want. So you’ll know you’re safe. Hopefully I’m wrong, and you’ll sleep fine, but just in case.”

That longing for what could have been that she’d felt when looking at the wedding photo bubbled up again, but she shoved it away. He was her ghost, and she was his Clara, and that would have to be enough. “I would like that,” she said softly, her eyes on her tea. “Thank you.”

She led the way upstairs a few minutes later, choosing the back bedroom where he’d played her great-grandmother’s song for her earlier, and snuggled in beneath the quilts and blankets that she had laid out on the bed in a bid to make the house look inviting to potential buyers. Her ghost lingered uncertainly nearby until she patted the space beside her, but she drifted off to sleep before he’d finished making himself comfortable on top of the coverlet.

Clara woke suddenly, bolting upright and gasping for breath, all of her senses on high alert in the darkened bedroom. On instinct she reached for the Doctor beside her, her fingers curling desperately around his shoulder.

“Clara?” he asked, sounding confused.

“There’s someone downstairs,” she hissed, keeping her voice low, fear gripping her.

With a sigh, he put his hand over hers and squeezed it gently. “There’s not.”

“I heard a window break!” she insisted. “Someone’s in the house—”

“Clara, Clara, listen to me,” he said, sitting up beside her and taking her hands in his. “You had a nightmare,” he went on, leaning in close and trying to catch her gaze. “Just a nightmare, yeah? Everything’s alright. Trust me, there is no one in this house but you and me.”

She blinked at him, trying to make his words fit into her consciousness in between the frantic beating of her heart. “No,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m certain I heard—”

“It’s just your mind playing tricks on you. Nothing but a bad dream,” he assured her. “It’s over now, try not to think about it.”

There it was again, a noise like a rock shattering glass, coming from downstairs. “The window,” she whispered urgently, turning towards the bedroom door.

He shifted closer to her, cupping her face in both hands, commanding her attention. “It’s not real,” he said, gently but firmly. “What you’re hearing, it’s not real, it’s not happening now. Focus on now, this moment here with me.”

Clara tried to do as he asked, but it kept slipping away into the sound of breaking glass and the certainty that there was someone else in the house with them. She stared at him, forcing her frantic mind to react, to focus only on her immediate surroundings. The quiet stillness of the bedroom, the muted blue of her ghosts’s eyes in the low light, the familiarity of his voice, the feel of his fingertips, solid and cool against her skin. This moment.

“It was just a bad dream?” she said in a small voice, still not completely convinced.

“Yes,” he replied, holding her gaze. “And it’s over now.”

“It felt so real,” Clara said, unable to quite shake the lingering unsettled feeling.

“I know,” he said, his thumbs sweeping across her cheekbones soothingly. “I know it did. It’s alright.”

“Why do I have nightmares in this house?” she asked, the words bubbling out of her as soon as the thought crossed her mind. “I’ve never slept well here, since I was a baby, you said. Why?”

“Clara,” her ghost said in a warning tone, “just leave it be.”

She wrapped her hand around his wrist before he could pull away from her. “That wasn’t the normal sort of nightmare, was it?” she said, more statement than question. “You said earlier that you worried I knew something about this house, even before I was old enough to talk. What is it? What could I possibly have known when I was that young? What did I just dream?”

“I also told you that sometimes the past is better left buried,” he said, voice low.

“And sometimes not knowing the truth is a lot scarier than the facts themselves!” she shot back.

“And sometimes it’s not!” he snapped, surprising her. He sighed and shook his head in apology. “My Clara,” he said softly, his hands still gently holding her face. “Sometimes the truth is so terrible that you’re better off not knowing. Please let me protect you from this? Just this once?”

“Oh, god,” she said in realisation, nausea rippling through her. She wasn't sure how she knew, but she knew. “I wasn’t wrong about someone breaking into the house, was I? Only, it’s not happening now.”

“Clara, please.”

“Why do I know that? How? What was that dream?” The sound of footsteps downstairs drew her attention, and she looked to the door again. “Doctor,” she whimpered, her grip on his wrist tightening as terror surged through her, “there’s someone in the house.”

“Clara, Clara,” he said, leaning close to look into her eyes. “You can’t think about it. Focus on something else. Focus on me.”

She shook her head within his unrestraining hold. “You were there, too,” she said, sounding distant in her own ears. “I heard your voice from downstairs, and then a gunshot, and—”

“Not that memory,” he said quickly. “Anything else, any other memory. Please, Clara. You have to make yourself think of something else. The church in Glasgow. Think about the church in Glasgow.”

“The church in Glasgow?” she repeated, staring at him in confusion as her mind spun chaotically and her heart thundered.

He nodded. “It had stained glass windows and dark wood pews, remember? It was small, but we still only filled the first quarter of it.”

It was just a flash, there and gone, but for a moment she could see it. “It smelled of incense,” she said, utterly certain, the knowledge welling up from some deep, long-buried corner of her mind.

“Yes, good. What else?”

“I— I don’t know.”

“Your flowers,” he prompted. “That day at the church, what colour were your flowers?”

“Blue,” she replied immediately. “My bouquet was blue and white, and the flowers in my hair were blue. How do I know that?” she demanded, looking up at him. “That wasn’t me, how do I know that?”

“You know how, my Clara. Think it through.”

She heard breaking glass again, and looked towards the door. “The window,” she choked out. “Someone’s in the house.”

“There’s no one,” her ghost insisted, cool fingertips pressed to her face to pull her attention back to him. “It’s your mind trying to relive the trauma. Don’t let it. Think about— think about Cairo. The museum, yeah? The first time you saw me. Focus on that.”

“I can’t,” she said, a sob catching in her throat. Someone was in the house, and the gunshot—

“Try, Clara, please. For me. Think about Cairo, and the museum, and say the first thing that comes into your head.”

She took a deep breath and screwed her eyes shut, trying to force herself to focus on the impossible, to forget about the sound of breaking glass and think of the Doctor instead. “The first time I saw you, you were scowling,” she said, seeing it in her mind’s eye.

“Was I?” her ghost asked, sounding almost bemused through his worry.

She nodded absently. “And then someone said something to you, and you laughed, and I thought...”

“What did you think, my Clara?” he prompted when she didn’t go on. “Stay in that moment.”

“I thought you looked— interesting. Intriguing. With your angry eyebrows and your laugh-lines. I thought ‘that is a face I would like to get to know.’”

“Good, that’s good. What else do you remember? What did we drink that night? It was a party, what did they serve?”

“Champagne,” she said without hesitation. “But I didn’t like it, it was too dry.” She opened her eyes and looked at him, his face inches from hers. “How do I know that?” she demanded.

He didn’t answer her question, but pressed on instead. “You came to Thebes, almost a week later, do you remember that? Do you remember the first moment you saw me there?”

She searched within herself for the answer and somehow, miraculously, found it. “You were at the dig site,” she murmured, wrapped up in the unfamiliar memory filling her mind, crowding out everything else. “I saw you before you saw me, and you... You just looked so beautiful standing there, I wanted everything to stop. I wanted nothing to change, ever again. But then you looked up, and you grinned when you saw me. And I thought...”

Clara stumbled to a stop, feeling like the reality of what was happening was just outside her grasp, profound and unseen, some force of nature begging to be recognised. “I thought, ‘that is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.’ No,” she corrected herself, staring at him, that same heartbreaking longing coursing through her, identical to that remembered moment standing in the bright sunshine of Thebes. “I thought, ‘that is the man I want to spend the rest of the life of the universe with.’ I didn’t even know your name, but I knew—”

Swallowing past the tears forming in her eyes, she shook her head, words failing her. It was too much, her own emotions twisted up with the impossible images in her mind, her love for him tangled together with memories that couldn’t possibly be hers. “But that wasn’t me,” she insisted, her voice breaking, even as she wished desperately that she had been the woman who had met him in 1921. “That was her. My great-grandmother. How can I know that? How can I know any of that?”

“You know how, Clara,” he said again, gently wiping away a tear with the pad of his thumb. “Deep down, you know the truth. I think part of you has always known.”

She flickered her gaze over his familiar face, trying to understand, trying to fit the scattered pieces inside her together. In that moment, she wasn’t certain of anything — except that she loved him, and had always loved him. Her whole life, as long as she could remember, she had loved this man, her ghost. Loved him even though it was impossible, he was impossible. He would never feel that way about her, there could never be any chance of a future together. It was utterly hopeless, but that had never been enough to change the way she felt about him.

“Please, just see me,” he murmured.

Her eyes locked with his, pale blue in the dim light spilling in from the hallway. She knew every fleck of green in those eyes, every line on his face, every streak of silver in his hair, with as much certainty as she knew her feelings for him. And maybe, in the end, that was all she needed to know. Maybe it all added up to the same thing. The photos and the journal, her birthdate and that nightmare, her love for him and her longing for what might have been. There had only ever been one answer to any of it, and finally, Clara spoke aloud the only truth she could find.

“It was me,” she whispered, sure of it down to her bones. “It was me that met you in Cairo, and followed you to Thebes and to Glasgow. It’s me in those photos.”

“Yes,” he said, voice soft and emphatic. “It’s always been you. You found me again, like you promised you would.”

She stared at him, the enormity of that truth somehow not overwhelming her but completing her, the missing piece she had been searching for all her life. “I love you,” she said, the words bursting out of her, unwilling to let another moment pass before she told him. “I didn’t just realise that,” she clarified. “I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember. But I didn’t know it was something I could say.”

Her ghost — the Doctor, the man she loved, her husband — smiled at her softly, wiping another errant tear from her face. “I have loved you for more than ninety years, my Clara. I didn’t think I would ever hear you say those words again.”

Leaning in, Clara closed the short distance between them and kissed him, her hands finding their way to his hair as he pulled her closer. It was miraculous, and ridiculous, and incredible, the solid reality of him against her. She had dreamed of this for so long, wished for it for so many years, without realising that it had always been hers to claim. Kissing him felt like coming home. She pressed closer to him, trying to remember him and memorise him all at once.

“Not that I’m complaining,” she said breathlessly when they finally parted, her forehead resting against his, “but I’m still a little unclear on the how of all this. If I’m her, then I— I died. How is any of this even possible?”

He gently kissed her eyelids and her forehead, then shifted them around so that he was leaned against the headboard and her head was resting against his chest, his arms around her. “Reincarnation is the word you’re looking for, I think,” he replied. “Rebirth. Same soul, new life.”

She mulled that over, adding it to the truths she had found inside herself. “That’s a thing that can happen?” she asked.

“Apparently. I know as much about this as you do. But it’s hard to deny the evidence in front of us.”

“So all those times I joked about us bantering like an old married couple...?”

“Well, one of us is old, anyway,” he said ruefully.

She pressed a kiss over his silent heart. “How long have you known?”

“There wasn’t a single moment,” the Doctor said, holding her close and running the backs of his fingers up and down her arm idly. “It was countless little clues, over the years. The fact that you could see me, for one thing. The way you turn your head, the way you laugh, a phrase here and there. Your kindness, and your never giving up. And your eyes, of course. The past few years you’ve started to look more and more like yourself, your previous self, but there was always something familiar about your eyes. It was only in the last decade or so that I became convinced it was really you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She felt him shrug. “At what point, exactly, would it have been appropriate to inform you of my suspicions? By the time I was certain of it, you’d never shown any signs that you remembered, not really. Not like tonight. And I thought...”

“What?” she asked when he didn’t continue.

He hesitated, his hand stilling, and then said, barely a breath, “I thought it might be best if you never remembered. If I remained just the ghost that haunted your Gran’s house, and you went on with your life, not knowing the truth.”

“Live my life in the land of the living,” she said, repeating his earlier words. “Is that why you didn’t want me staying the night here? You thought it might trigger my memories?”

“No,” he said, taking a deep breath and sighing it out. “I didn’t want you to have nightmares like the one you just had, and the ones I suspect you had when you slept here as a baby. If that was the cost of remembering, I didn’t want you to have to pay it. Even if it meant you never remembered me.”

“That was a memory, too, wasn’t it?” she asked in a small voice, already knowing the answer. “That nightmare.”

“Clara...”

“Doctor,” she said, angling herself to look up at his face without moving away from him, “I know you’re trying to protect me, but I need to know the truth. All of it.”

“You know everything important—”

“But I don’t, do I?” she interrupted. “There are key facts I still don’t know. How you died, who my Gran’s father was, what exactly it was I just dreamed about. If you won’t tell me, you know I can find the answers on my own.”

He sighed. “I have no doubt you will.” He was quiet a moment, then said, “If I give you the basics of it, will you stop digging for the memory and let it be?”

Remembering the terror that had gripped her when she’d first woken from the nightmare, she nodded against his chest.

“Alright then,” he said quietly. “But in the morning. Some facts are too terrible for this hour of the night, and you should try to sleep again, if you can.”

“What makes you think it’ll go better this time?” Clara asked, burrowing deeper into his embrace and trying to keep her mind from straying to the memory of breaking glass. It was strange to think that when the sun rose, she would be back to not being able to touch him, but in that moment she was unspeakably grateful for the comfort of being held, secure in the arms of the man she loved.

The Doctor ran his fingers through her hair soothingly. “I could hum the song for you,” he suggested. “It seemed to help, before. Maybe it’ll help now.”

“My song,” she said, smiling against his chest.

“Yes, your song,” he agreed, and kissed the top of her head. “The song I wrote for you, my Clara.”

She drifted to sleep to the sound of that song, and didn’t wake until morning.

Chapter 5 - The Present

Clara woke slowly to the sound of birdsong and the blue light that preceded dawn, feeling surprisingly well-rested, despite the night she’d had. Opening her eyes, she found the Doctor stretched out on the bed beside her. In the first of the daylight he looked pale but not yet translucent, a reminder that the hours in which she was able to touch him were quickly coming to an end. When he saw she was awake, he smiled at her softly, his gaze tracing across her face.

“Morning, sleepy head,” he said quietly.

Humming happily, Clara stretched against the pillows. “Good morning, Doctor.”

His smile widened. “It’s good to hear you call me that again.”

“Why do I call you that?” she asked curiously, rolling onto her side facing him and propping her head up in her hand. “The journal referenced it but didn’t explain. Why do I call you Doctor instead of John?”

He made a face at the mention of his given name. “By the time we met, most people I knew had been calling me Doctor for years. It started as a joke on my first archaeological dig — that with a name like John Smith, the most distinctive thing about me was my newly acquired academic title. The nickname stuck, and I’d never been particularly attached to John in any case.”

“Is that what your doctorate is in, then? Archaeology?”

“With a special emphasis on Egypt and its ancient languages,” he said, nodding. “That’s why I was at that party at the Cairo museum, the night we met in 1921, I was part of the team that discovered some of the artefacts that were on display in the new exhibit.”

Clara let her mind drift to the hazy memories of her previous life she had uncovered the night before, trying to will them into sharper focus. “I wish I could remember it better...”

“I’m glad that you remember it at all,” he told her. “It’s more than I’d hoped for.”

She hesitated, then said, “About the other memory, that nightmare—”

“Later,” he said, rolling away and pushing himself into a sitting position. “There’s something we should do before the sun is properly up. I hid another box, besides that one in the attic, buried it in the garden out back. If we get started now, I might even be able to help you dig it up before the sunlight makes me useless again.”

“What’s in it?” Clara asked, also sitting up.

“It’s, ah.” The Doctor shot her a sidelong look, not quite meeting her eyes. “What’s in it is yours, and you should have it, even if...” He trailed off, chewing at his lower lip.

Something about his tone chilled her. “Even if what?”

“Clara, I don’t want you to be tied to a dead man,” he said carefully, gaze on the bedspread. “You know the truth now, but you still have your life ahead of you. You should live that life, even if it’s without me.”

“We are not having the ‘land of the living’ argument again,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. “I just got you back. There is no version of my future that makes sense without you in it.”

He turned to look at her. “I’m still a ghost, Clara,” he said, a note of self-loathing making his tone harsh. “That hasn’t changed.”

“But in the dark you’re as solid as I am!” she objected.

“And now that the sun is rising, that’s quickly going away.” He reached out one hand and ran his knuckles across the curve of her cheek, his touch faint and cool.

She resisted the urge to take his hand, worried that her fingers would pass right through his. “The sun will set again, it always does. It’s better than nothing. At least we’ll be together.”

“So you spend each day counting down to sunset?” he demanded. “What kind of a life is that? What sort of a life can I give you, as a dead man?”

“You don’t have to give me any sort of life!” she shot back, trying not to be offended at the old-fashioned notion. “I’ve done quite well constructing a life all on my own, thank you very much. All I want is for you to be part of it.”

“As a ghost,” he said derisively.

“Yes, as a ghost! I’ll take what I can get when it comes to you.”

“You deserve to have a real life, with someone who won’t literally disappear on you during daylight hours.”

“I have lived almost twenty-eight years only knowing you in daylight. Every moment I’ve spent with you in this life, that has been the deal. And even then, no one ever managed to measure up to you. I have loved you my whole life, Doctor, and that’s hardly going to change now. I want a life with you, whatever shape that takes. I meant what I said last night: I am not going to give you up. You promised to stay, and I am holding you to that.”

He dropped his gaze, looking away and fiddling with the ring he wore on his left hand — his wedding ring, she realised abruptly. “I’m not going to win this argument, am I?” he asked in a low voice.

“No,” she told him firmly. “Not unless you take away my say in it.” She didn’t add again, but she knew they were both thinking it.

He winced. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She softened, watching him fold in on himself. “Don’t be sorry,” she said gently. “Make it up to me.”

He looked up at her sharply, hope hidden in the fading blues of his eyes.

“If you keep your promise and stay, you’ll have years to make it up to me,” she said, smiling at him. “Decades, even. The rest of my life.”

“And you’re sure that’s what you want?”

“Very sure.” She stared at his familiar face, the face she had loved for so long, watching him become fainter as the sun began to rise outside, rendering him back into the incorporeal presence she had known all her life. “Our story, Doctor... It isn’t the tragedy you think it is. This isn’t a ghost story. It never was. It’s a love story. And if I know one thing about love stories? They always have a happy ending, one way or another.”

“Clara, my Clara,” he said fondly, raising his hand to sweep his cool fingertips across her cheekbone with feather-light pressure. “How can I argue with you when you look at me like that?”

“Then don’t argue,” Clara said softly. “Promise you’ll stay.”

“I promise,” he murmured. “And that’s all the more reason for you to have what’s buried in the garden. Come on, I’ll show you where, while you’re still able to see me.”

They went downstairs together, and he waited as she pulled on her shoes and her coat, then let herself out through the kitchen door that opened onto the garden. He led her confidently to the base of the old maple tree at the back of the garden, its branches clinging to the last of their autumn leaves. She had to sidetrack to the shed to find a spade, but the sun was still low behind the roofs of the nearby houses, and in the shadow of the maple tree the Doctor had enough form to pick up a crimson leaf and spin its stem between his fingers for a moment before letting it drift back to the ground.

Clara dug in the spot between the roots that he directed her to, relieved when she hit something solid only a foot or so down. Reaching into the shallow hole and brushing away the last of the dirt, her fingers found a metal jewelry box about the size of a paperback novel, and she carefully lifted it out with both hands. The silver surface was tarnished, throwing the raised geometric designs into sharp contrast, but it appeared to be in good condition. She glanced up at the Doctor, who was looking more translucent in the gathering daylight, and he nodded at her.

“Go on,” he said when she hesitated. “Open it.”

Taking a deep breath, she thumbed open the latch and pulled up the lid, the hinges squeaking slightly. Inside, resting against the crumbling blue felt that had once lined the box, there was a black velvet ring box and several other pieces of jewelry, the largest of which was a wide silver amulet on a delicate chain necklace. Her ghost brushed his fingertips over the ring box, and she looked up to find his gaze fixed on it.

“I’m split between wanting you to have it right away,” he said softly, “and wanting to wait until I can put it on you myself.”

“We could go back inside,” she suggested in a matching tone. “The west side of the house should still be shadowy enough.”

He shook his head. “It’s best appreciated in the sunlight, anyway.”

Clara grazed her hand over his, feeling only the chill of his daytime insubstantiality but hoping he took it for the affectionate gesture she meant it to be. Setting the jewelry box carefully on the ground, she picked up the ring box and lifted the lid. The ring inside was small and delicate, a white gold setting holding an oval cabochon sapphire flanked on each side by narrow tapered diamonds. In the indirect light, the smooth rounded surface of the sapphire was a dark indigo blue.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

“It’s your wedding ring,” the Doctor replied. “Not very traditional, perhaps, but then, we never have been, either.”

She looked up at him, her heart in her throat. “May I?”

“Of course,” he said, raising his eyes to meet her gaze. “It’s yours.”

Carefully pulling it from its velvet box, Clara slid the ring onto the fourth finger of her left hand, where it settled naturally into place as though she had worn it there every day for years. “We really are going to have to go inside,” she told him when she had control of her voice, “so I can kiss you properly.”

He smiled at her fondly. “Go look at it in the sunlight, first. I’m looking forward to seeing your reaction to it all over again.”

She glanced at him curiously but did as he asked, putting the ring box back into the jewelry box and then pacing a few feet away. The early morning sun was casting long shadows through the garden, and she turned her hand until the ring caught the light. Clara gasped. As if by magic, a pale six-rayed star appeared in the depths of the sapphire, clearly visible against the luminous dark blue of the stone.

“It’s called a star sapphire,” the Doctor said, and she looked up to find him standing beside her, his form a faint wispy outline in the dappled sunlight. “When you found me in Thebes in ‘21, I took you to see the excavation work going on at the Temple of Hatshepsut, and you were particularly fond of a section of the ceiling that was painted with stars against a dark blue sky. I was immediately reminded of that when I saw this ring.”

It wasn’t a memory, exactly, just a quick surge of nostalgia and images she couldn’t quite hold on to. “Our first date, sounds like,” she said, smiling up at him.

His answering grin was warmer than the gathering daylight. “I suppose it was.”

Despite his spectral appearance, Clara felt herself swaying towards him, overwhelmed by the need to kiss him in this happy moment. She shook herself, squaring her shoulders. “Alright, mister, inside with you, before the neighbours catch me talking to myself in my pyjamas in the garden at dawn. The last thing we need is more gossip about how strange this house is.”

She quickly refilled the hole she’d dug and returned the spade to the shed, then led the way back into the kitchen, the Doctor trailing silently behind her. Pausing only long enough to set the jewelry box on the table, Clara continued on towards the large walk-in pantry just off the kitchen, casting her ghost a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure he was following her.

“Clara, what are we—” he started to ask as she closed the pantry door behind them, plunging the tiny room into complete darkness. The rest of the question was lost when Clara pushed up onto her toes and kissed him soundly, steadying herself on the solid line of his shoulders. She felt the reassuring pressure of his hands at the small of her back and hummed in happiness, deepening the kiss.

“See?” she said when they separated, her smug tone somewhat ruined by the breathless elation of a woman well-snogged. “No need to spend each day counting down until sunset when there’s a world full of darkened rooms.”

“You make a very good point,” the Doctor agreed, and kissed her again.

The growling of Clara’s stomach eventually forced them out of the pantry and into the daylight, and with it came the realisation that there was very little food in the house, and absolutely nothing resembling coffee.

“I should shower and change into real clothes, too,” she told him as he followed her into the foyer, the jewelry box again clasped protectively in her hands. “All the more reason to get back to my flat.”

Her ghost nodded. “Will you come back later today?” he asked, voice carefully neutral. “Or do you need to spend the day doing human-y things, preparing for the work week or shopping for groceries or whatever it is you do when you’re not here?”

Clara shot him a disbelieving look. “I do, in fact, need to do all that stuff today,” she allowed, watching as he nodded and glanced away, fiddling with his wedding ring. “But I just assumed you’d come with me?”

He looked up at her in surprise, his expression tinged with hope. “Seriously?”

“Of course, Doctor. When I said I wanted you to be part of my life, I didn’t mean here in this house. Our future isn’t here, it’s out there,” she said, nodding towards the front door and the world beyond. She hesitated, a thought occurring to her, and added, “You can leave, right? You’re not tied to the house?”

He nodded, his hands still nervously occupied with his ring. “It’s been a long time since I last left, but... No, it was never the house that I was tied to.”

“What is it, exactly, that you’re tied to, then?” she asked softly, almost afraid of the answer, of the power it held over their future. “What’s kept you here all these years?”

“What do you think?” he said, looking at her like he thought it ought to be abundantly obvious. “You. It’s always been you, Clara.”

After a none-too-brief detour to the small and blessedly dark coat closet, she finally managed to get them out the door and on the way to her flat. The Doctor sat in the passenger seat as Clara drove, faint and ghostly in the daylight, but with enough form that she could clearly make out his expression. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning at the way he stared out the window in wonder, angling his head to catch a passing skyscraper or an airplane flying overhead.

“First time in a car?” she asked, only mostly managing to keep the amusement out of her voice.

He shot her a sour look. “We did have automobiles by 1927, you know. And I’ve left the house since then, back when Margot used to travel. It’s just— been a few years, is all.”

“I can see how it would be jarring,” she said levelly. “I’ll try not to tease you. Too much.”

“Clara, my Clara,” he said on a sigh, shaking his head. “We both know that’s a lie.”

She shot him a quick look, finally letting her grin break through, and tried to keep her attention on driving and not on how unreasonably happy she was.

By the time they arrived at her flat, it was still early enough in the morning that not many of her neighbours were about, and Clara silently led the way up the flights of stairs and let them in through her simple front door that matched all the others, such a stark difference from the grand Victorian house where she’d always known her ghost. He trailed in behind her, looking around in interest at her clutter and her framed pictures, the dimness of the windowless hallway making him look almost alive again.

“Left it in a bit of a mess when I rushed out of here last night,” she said with a wince once she’d closed the door behind them, setting down her purse and keys and the jewelry box on the tiny table next to the door. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had company over, let alone someone whose opinion mattered to her as much as the Doctor’s. “It’s not much, but it’s mine and I’m fond of it,” she added, trying not to sound defensive.

“It’s intensely you,” he replied, leaning in to examine a photo from her travels after university. “If I wandered in off the street I’d know it was yours.”

Clara directed a bemused smile at his back, oddly touched at his first impression of her home. “Thanks, I think,” she said as she hung up her coat on the wall rack and toed off her shoes. “Come on, I’ll give you the tour, it’ll be quick.” She led him down the hall, indicating each room as they passed. “Kitchen is in there, that’s the loo, my bedroom, and the sitting room,” she said, pausing just inside the doorway and surveilling the chaos left behind from her late night efforts to make sense of the box they’d found in the attic.

“When you said you couldn’t sleep last night...?” the Doctor asked, looking at her sidelong.

“It looks worse than it is,” she said as she crossed the room and pulled the curtains closed over the door that led to the balcony, blocking out as much sunlight as possible. “I sorted everything into piles, maybe later we could look through it together? See if any of it sparks bits of memory for me?” she added, turning back to him.

The journal was still sitting on the coffee table, open to the scrawled final entry, and as she watched the Doctor leaned down and used what substance he had in the dim room to carefully close it, his fingertips lingering on the embossed cover. “I would like that, my Clara,” he said quietly, lifting his gaze back to hers.

She stared at him for a breathless moment, still trying to come to grips with their new reality, like something out of her teenaged fantasies come to life. “I should— I should shower, and eat, and all that,” she said, shaking herself. “I won’t be long, feel free to peruse the bookshelf or whatever, make yourself at home. Which,” she laughed, her nerves catching up with her, “if we sell the house, I suppose it is, or will be, at any rate—”

“Clara,” he said gently, crossing towards her. “This is just you and me, same old, same old. Nothing’s changed, not really.”

“Right,” she murmured, looking up at him.

He watched her, his expression concerned. “This doesn’t have to be anything more than you want it to be,” he said. “I can go back to being just your ghost, if that’s what you want.”

She realised she was twisting her wedding ring around her finger and dropped her hands. “No,” she assured him. “No, I want a future with you. I want... I want long evenings and sneaking into coat closets and waking up with you beside me. It’s just a lot to adjust to so quickly.”

“Take your time,” he said easily, grazing her cheek with his cool fingertips, “I’m not going anywhere.”

After her shower, Clara carried her coffee and her breakfast down the hall to the sitting room. She found the Doctor camped out on the sofa, a rag and the wide silver pendant from the jewelry box in his hands, and a bottle of silver polish and the jewelry box open on the coffee table in front of him. At her inquisitive look, he said, “I thought I’d clean these up for you. I noticed it’s all looking a little tarnished — not too bad, considering they spent the better part of a century buried in the garden, but no reason not to treat them to a good cleaning.”

“Why did you bury the jewelry box?” she asked, settling into the empty space beside him and taking a sip of her coffee. “And when?”

“End of November, 1928. A few days after you— after you’d gone,” he replied, not looking up from methodically working at the tarnish on the necklace. “I wasn’t really thinking straight. I’d just lost you, and I didn’t want to be there, but I couldn’t leave Margot.”

“Your duty of care,” Clara said quietly.

He nodded but didn’t elaborate. “There were strangers in the house, including your parents. Your former parents, I mean, not Ellie and Dave, obviously,” he clarified, gesturing with the polish rag. “I couldn’t stand the idea of them touching your personal things, not after how they’d treated you the five years or so prior. I reverted to some sort of archaeologist’s instinct, I suppose: bury the evidence and let someone in the future piece together the true story of what happened.”

“Not realising, of course,” she said, “that the someone in the future would be us.”

The Doctor glanced up at her then back down at the necklace. “I couldn’t have imagined something like this at the time. I know I wished for a miracle, when I buried this. Wished for a way to see you again, without breaking my promise to watch over Margot. But it just felt so...”

“Impossible,” she finished for him, thinking about how hopeless her love for him had seemed, even just twelve hours earlier.

“My impossible girl,” he whispered, gaze on his work. “I should have known you would find a way. Here,” he said more briskly, turning towards her and holding out the necklace. “Ready to wear again. If you want.”

She carefully took it from him, turning it in her hand so the details caught the dim light. It was a single piece of engraved silver, heavier than she’d expected, about two inches wide and maybe half an inch tall, with the necklace chain attached at the far ends. Now that the tarnish was gone, she could clearly make out the shape of long, finely feathered wings extending from a circle in the centre, and what looked to be a snake’s head flanking each side of the circle. In much the same way as her wedding ring, it felt familiar, both the design and the weight of it in her palm, but she couldn’t quite summon up a memory that fit with it.

“This was a favourite of mine?” she asked, glancing up at the Doctor. “It looks Egyptian.”

“It is,” he said, his attention focused on removing the layer of grime from a narrow bangle bracelet. “It’s a winged solar disk, based on an image found in many ancient Egyptian temples. It symbolised their concept of the soul, which they believed to be immortal and capable of rebirth.”

“So it’s ancient, then?”

“The design is, the necklace isn’t. I suppose it’s an antique now, but it was new when I gave it to you in 1925. Part of the Egyptian revival movement, Tut-mania and all that.”

Clara frowned to herself, thinking over the dates covered in her great-grandmother’s journal — her journal. “It hadn’t occurred to me that the discovery of King Tut’s tomb would have been right around the time we were in Egypt.”

The Doctor shot her a quick look then said, “Somewhere in that pile,” he nodded at the stack of photographs on the coffee table, “there’s a photo of you and me and Howard Carter, taken just outside the tomb in 1923.”

She tried to imagine it, but her mind snagged on the memory of finding the Doctor at the dig site in Thebes in 1921 instead. “What was Egypt like, when we lived there?” she asked, running her fingertips over the engraved surface of the necklace.

“Hot,” he shrugged. “Though I seem to remember you complaining more about the weather in England when we came back in ‘25 than you ever complained about anything in Egypt. It was an exciting time to be there, an exciting time to be a field archaeologist. There was plenty of excavation work still to be done, but the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb had caught the public’s imagination, and there were more tourists than there’d been since before the war. You were far more swept up in it than I had expected, especially given the sorts of places I dragged you around to.”

She smiled in bemusement. “I read the journal entries from that time and she— I sounded happy. Even drew some of the little cottages we lived in.”

“‘Cottage’ is far too flattering a word,” he said, making a face. “Most were barely more than workmans’ huts, smaller than this flat, and a few didn’t even have indoor plumbing. And every time we moved into a new place, stepping into it for the first time, I’d think, ‘this is it, she’s definitely going to leave me now.’ But every time, every time, you would look at me with this sparkle in your eye and say—”

“‘Well, this will be an adventure,’” Clara said, quoting the words along with him.

The Doctor shot her a surprised look. “I didn’t think you would remember that.”

“I didn’t, not until right before you said it,” she replied. “But it’s like we’ve opened the door, now. It’s getting easier to remember little details like that.” She looked down at the necklace in her hand, running her fingers over it again. “Doctor,” she said slowly, keeping her gaze on the necklace, “we need to talk about that other memory. That nightmare, and the events that inspired it.”

He sighed loudly, and she looked up to find that he had closed his eyes, his hands gone still. “Why can’t you just leave it alone?”

“We can’t pretend it didn’t happen,” she said. “We can’t will it out of existence.”

“Why not?” he demanded, turning to look at her. “It’s the worst thing that ever happened to us, and you want to relive it? I can’t understand why!”

“I need to know what happened. It’s like it’s hovering at the edge of my consciousness, all undefined and foreboding. I have pieces of it but there’s still so much I don’t know.”

“I should have burned that damned box when I found it,” he said, scrubbing at the bracelet in his hands with more force than necessary. “I should have burned it years ago, as soon as I realised you were you.”

“You really think I would have been better off never knowing? That we were better off without this?” she asked, gesturing between them.

“I’m glad you remember me, but the last thing I ever wanted was for you to have to remember that night!” He tossed the rag down onto the coffee table and dropped the bracelet back into the jewelry box, his agitation evident in his movements.

Clara closed her hand around the silver pendant, grounding herself in the immediacy of its feathered edges biting into the skin of her palm. “I don’t want to remember it either, Doctor,” she said. “But if you tell me what happened, I won’t have to go digging for the memory. Please, I just— I have to know. Not everything, just the basic facts of what happened.”

“And what if telling you those facts opens the door to that memory, too?”

“Then I’ll be grateful I won’t have to sleep alone tonight,” she said, holding his gaze. “Or any night.”

The Doctor stood abruptly and paced away, bracing one arm against the bookshelf, his eyes downcast. “Why do you have to be so stubborn and headstrong?” he said in a low tone. “Why can’t you just let it be?”

“I know you’re trying to protect me—” Clara started, her voice even.

“Of course I’m trying to protect you!” he burst out, turning back to her. “I died trying to protect you, so you can see how it’s a bit of an important topic for me!”

“How would I know that?” she demanded, pushing to her feet as well. “If you won’t tell me what happened, how the hell am I supposed to know that?”

“You already know,” he said harshly. “You know everything important. But you have some morbid desire to revisit all the gory details that I frankly cannot understand.”

“I have to confront this,” she told him, sharp with honesty. “I’m not sure I ever did, before I died. I don’t want this unknown, half-seen thing looming over us. I want to be able to go into our future together with all of this firmly behind us.”

“Then just let it alone! Don’t go looking for trouble!”

“I didn’t go looking for it last night! That nightmare, that memory dredged itself up all on its own.”

“That’s just the house,” the Doctor said, shaking his head. “You’ve never slept well there.”

“Since I was a baby, you said. Last night you said you worried it was because I knew something about the house. Well alright then, here’s what I know: You died trying to protect me, so that means we’re talking about the twenty-third of November, 1927, yes?”

He turned his face away, seeming intent on not answering her.

“Someone broke into the house,” she went on anyway, “broke a window and came inside, the noise woke me up in the middle of the night.” She curled her hand tighter around the necklace, trying desperately to keep her mind in the current moment, keep it away from the memory of breaking glass. “And I woke you and asked you to go investigate. I heard your voice from downstairs, then a gunshot— ”

“Clara, stop,” he snapped, looking up at her. “I don’t see what good can possibly come from this.”

“I need to know. And if you won’t help me, I’ll piece it together on my own!”

“I am not going to indulge you in your self-destructive urges!”

“You said you would tell me! You said you would give me the basic outline of what happened that night. Why are you being so difficult about this?” she demanded.

“Because if you’re angry with me now you’re not thinking about what happened to you then!” the Doctor said, the words seeming to explode out of him.

She stared at him, flabbergasted. “What happened to me?” she repeated. “He shot you! I heard it! I saw your blood on the—” She stopped abruptly, the memory flashing through her mind in vivid colour, the chilling implications close on its heels.

“Clara—”

“I saw your blood on the floorboards,” she went on over his objection, her voice sounding far away. “I heard the gunshot and I came downstairs, and I saw... There was so much blood.”

“Don’t do this to yourself,” he insisted, “don’t think about what happened next. Not that memory.”

She shook her head. “Whatever it is you’re worried I remember, I don’t. There’s nothing after that. I came downstairs, terrified for you, I saw the blood — and then I woke up in hospital, and they told me you were dead. I’m missing that whole chunk of what happened in between.”

The Doctor was staring at her, his expression closed off and his gaze searching. “You always told me you didn’t remember it,” he said, his voice low. “But I was never certain if that was the truth. Or if you were just... trying to spare my feelings, I suppose. My guilt and my worry.”

“What did happen? Why don’t I remember? Please, Doctor,” she said softly. “I need to know.”

He sighed, and she could see the instant he relented, the shift in his expression and the way his shoulders dropped. “The man who broke in—” He cut himself off, shaking his head, then tried again. “He hit you,” he said, pushing out the words like each one took a monumental effort, “with the butt of the gun. He’d tried to shoot me a second time, but it had jammed, so he hit you with it instead. You were in and out of consciousness after that, for what came next.”

“I really don’t remember it,” she told him, searching her memory again and coming up completely blank. “Whatever happened next, I don’t remember it.”

He studied her face for a long moment. “Then that’s a small mercy,” he said quietly. “When they examined you in hospital, they said you had a concussion, along with all your other injuries, everything else that monster did to you. I’m sorry,” he added quietly, “I shouldn’t have doubted your word.”

Clara intentionally eased her grip on the necklace, letting the ache in her fingers ground her in the current moment, safe in the company of her ghost, home in her familiar flat, far away from that night in 1927. “But you remember it,” she said, not really a question. “You know what happened to me.”

Nodding, he turned away. “I saw it all,” he said softly, his back to her. “I was bleeding out on the floor of the home where we’d hoped to build our future together, but I fought to stay conscious, for you. I couldn’t just... leave you with him while he hurt you. I saw it, and if I can carry any part of that pain for you now, I will.”

She hesitated, then carefully approached him and touched his shoulder, grateful that he had substance beneath her fingers in the dim room. “You’ve carried it alone long enough, Doctor,” she said. He looked up at her, his expression anguished. “Let me be an equal partner with you in this. What happened next?”

“Clara,” he said, shaking his head, “if you don’t know, if you don’t remember, maybe we ought to keep it that way.”

The answer formed in her mind, even in the absence of first-hand memory, the pieces of the mystery fitting themselves together. The hints in the journal entries, the secret of Margot’s parentage that she’d asked the Doctor to keep, his insistence that she was better off never knowing what had happened to her that night. It all added up to only one possibility, one horrible truth. The realisation was jarring, grim and ghastly, and she found she couldn’t quite make herself think the single little word that would encapsulate what had happened to her.

“The man who broke in...” Clara said in a small voice. “He was Margot’s biological father, wasn’t he?” she said, avoiding that word and sparing the Doctor from having to say it, either. “That was the night she was conceived.”

“Yes,” he replied, his voice a harsh whisper.

“Oh,” she said on the breath that rushed out of her, dropping her gaze to the floor as she struggled with the enormity of that revelation. She had no memory of the man’s face, this stranger who had broken in and ruined everything. And perhaps that was a small mercy, too, that she had never had to look at her Gran — at Margot, her daughter — and see the resemblance to the man who had attacked her and killed her husband.

“Clara,” the Doctor said in a gentle, worried tone, drawing her attention back to him.

She looked up at him, blinking away her tears. “That’s what you didn’t want me to know,” she said. “That’s what you’ve been trying to protect me from.”

“I couldn’t protect you when it mattered,” he murmured. “I’ve spent the last eighty-seven years trying to make up for that.”

“Is that why you stayed, after you died? Because you felt guilty?”

“I stayed because I had to be sure you were alright!” he said, raising his hand to her face, his fingers cool against her skin. “Because I couldn’t stand to leave you.”

Clara stared at the Doctor with tears in her eyes, finally understanding the depth of his love for her, everything he had gone through to bring them to this moment.

“I don’t remember it well,” he went on, “my death or what came immediately after, but I know I could have moved on then. That that’s what I was supposed to do. But you needed me, so I stayed. I sat by your hospital bed, even though I didn’t yet know how to make myself visible to you, or even that I could. I just... I couldn’t bring myself to leave you.”

“I am so selfishly glad that you couldn’t,” she said, her voice breaking. “That we get this second chance.”

“My Clara,” he said, wiping a tear from her cheek with the pad of this thumb. “All I ever wanted was more time. We were supposed to get more time. It shouldn’t have ended like that.”

She smiled at him tremulously, and reached up to lay her hand over his. “We get more time, Doctor. This, right now, the rest of my life. We’ve stolen this time, and it is ours. We have our future back.”

Chapter 6 - The Future

They ended up spending the day huddled together on the sofa under the low awning of the blanket fort the Doctor helped her build. Its purpose was at least nominally to block out as much sunlight as possible, but after the emotional marathon of their conversation and the revelations of what had happened to them in 1927, Clara welcomed the comfort of the enclosed space, cut off from the rest of the world. In the darkness of the fort, the Doctor was solid beneath her touch, and she rested her head on his chest, curled against his side. He held her gently, combing his fingers soothingly through her hair, seeming to be as much in need of the reassurance of her presence as she needed his.

Clara’s mind felt overfull, crowded with everything she had learned since they’d discovered that dusty old box in her Gran’s attic. It seemed impossible that her life had changed so completely over the course of twenty-four hours, that her sense of self could shift so quickly. If not for the memories of her past life, as real as her memories of the last twenty-eight years, she might have doubted any of it was true. But there they were, vivid and visceral, memories formed almost a century ago, truths about herself she couldn’t deny.

Clinging to her ghost, curled together in the safety of the nest they had created for themselves, Clara found she didn’t want to deny any of what she had learned. She wanted to grab hold of their past with both hands and claim it for herself. The feeling of what might have been that seeing their wedding photo had elicited in her wasn’t some strange, misplaced jealousy, but rather the knowledge she carried deep in her soul, buried in her subconscious, that their story wasn’t over yet.

The path that had brought them to this moment had been anything but smooth, but somehow the universe had allowed her to keep him, her ghost, her Doctor. They had been gifted a second chance at a future, and that was more than worth the pain of remembering the tragedy that had marked their past. As much as she wanted to go into their future together with that night merely a terrible thing that had occurred long ago, Clara was glad to know what had happened. Glad that it wasn’t an undefined horror hovering at the edge of her consciousness anymore, and glad that the Doctor no longer had to carry the burden of remembering all on his own.

“I have a few more questions,” she murmured into the cosy silence. “About that night in 1927.”

He sighed, his breath ruffling her hair. “I suspected you might,” he said, sounding resigned. “And I suppose there is some sense in getting it all over and done with now. Not let it loom over us, like you said. What is it you want to know?”

She considered it, thinking about all the gaps in her memory, but decided that out of everything she still didn’t know, there was only one piece of information that nagged at her, only one answer she couldn’t move forward without knowing. “Did they ever catch him, the man who broke in?” she asked quietly.

“Oh. Yes,” the Doctor replied. “He tried to sell some of the items he stole from the house, not realising how unique and valuable they were. It took a few months, dragged on into the spring, but they caught him and convicted him of his crimes. He spent the rest of his very short life in prison.”

“You sound rather certain of that,” Clara said, not quite a question.

He was quiet a long moment. “There are some benefits to being a ghost,” he finally said, choosing his words carefully. “Places that you can get into that you couldn’t if you were alive.”

“What happened to him?” she asked when he didn’t go on.

“Clara,” he said, looking down at her in the dimness, a warning in his voice. “It’s not something I’m proud of.”

“I need to know,” she told him levelly, returning his gaze. “Not the details, but I need to know.”

His jaw worked for a moment, then he said, “I did what I could to make sure he left the world before Margot entered it. Let’s leave it at that.”

She pressed a kiss over his silent heart, mulling over that revelation, the lengths the Doctor had gone to keep her and Margot safe. “This is the secret I asked you to keep from her, isn’t it? I didn’t want her to know about her biological father, how she was conceived.”

“You didn’t want her to grow up with that hanging over her head,” he said, nodding, “or risk what it might mean for her inheritance. I don’t think anyone ever knew, besides the two of us. You listed me as her father on her birth certificate, and never gave anyone any reason to question that, so far as I know. But by 1927, we’d come to terms with the fact that we couldn’t have children — that I couldn’t father children,” he added with a sour twist to his voice.

A fragment of a memory flitted through her mind, a bit of conversation she could feel but couldn’t quite hold onto. “We’d come to peace with it,” she said, suddenly understanding how in this one aspect she could feel so very different from the woman who had written in 1925 of her hopes of filling their house with children.

He nodded. “We’d started to reconceptualise our future, in the absence of children. How we wanted to spend our life together,” he said quietly.

Clara smiled softly at the thought. “And what sorts of plans for the future did we make?”

“We talked a great deal about travelling, seeing Europe together,” the Doctor said, running his fingers through her hair again. “Which is almost funny now, with the hindsight of how turbulent the 1930s and ‘40s turned out to be. We also discussed writing a book about our time in Egypt, but my role at the British Museum made that a little iffy.”

“We could do that now,” she said. “Travel, I mean, not write a book — though I suppose we could do that, too. I did study literature at university, after all.”

“The book is the more realistic option, this time around,” the Doctor said in a low tone, his voice taking on a bitter edge.

“What do you mean?”

“How exactly would travelling together work now? You’re the only one who can see me, Clara. It’d be like you were travelling alone.”

“Except I would know you’re there,” she said reasonably. “We would still be together, see all those things together.”

“And what, hope no one notices that you talk to yourself, that you respond to someone who isn’t there? That seems like a recipe for disaster.”

“Don’t give me another variation on the ‘land of the living’ argument, Doctor, you are really never going to win that one. The world has changed in the last eighty-seven years, there are these wonderful things called mobile phones. At any given moment half the people you pass on the street are talking to someone who isn’t there. All I have to do is wear a little headset and no one will blink an eye at it. Besides,” she added, shrugging slightly, “as a child I got rather good at hiding that I could see you, after the way Mum and Gran reacted when I tried to tell them about you.”

“But you have a whole life here,” he pointed out. “A job and a flat, not to mention the house. You would give that all up? To travel the world with a ghost?”

“I would give up that and more to build a future with the man I love,” she told him with blunt honesty. “I did it in 1923 and I would do it again, without a single regret. Whatever we decide we want our future to look like, travelling or writing a book or anything else. Just so long as I get to keep you.”

“I’m not going anywhere, my Clara,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “But I don’t want you to think you have to give up something to keep me around.”

“I’m not giving up anything,” she said, curling closer to him and wrapping her arm around his middle in half a hug. “I have always wanted a future with you. We have that chance, now. We get to decide what we want our future to be. Together.”

They emerged from their cosy cocoon around sunset, reality feeling easier to face after their time spent curled up together. Alone in the kitchen, Clara stood for a moment grimacing at the contents of her fridge before she remembered that she was still only cooking for herself, same as ever. She supposed it shouldn’t surprise her, how easy it was to fall into domestic patterns with the Doctor. She’d known him for all of her nearly twenty-eight years of this life, and remembered bits and pieces of what it had been like to be married to him in her last life.

What might a future with him be like, she wondered as she cooked. The thought of travelling with the Doctor was exciting and enthralling, but there was also something so sweet about the idea of coming home from her work day to find him waiting for her. To spend long evenings and lazy weekends with him, reading together or writing a book about their life in Egypt, or anything else that grabbed their interest. Not since she was a teenager had her future felt this wide open, this full of possibilities — or this full of her ghost’s exhilarating presence.

The hiss of boiling water hitting the stovetop pulled her attention back to her task and the sudden realisation that she’d been so absorbed in daydreaming about their future that she’d quite nearly forgotten about her dinner.

Carrying her food down the hall to the sitting room, Clara found the Doctor perched on the edge of the sofa in the warm lamplight, going through the pile of sepia photos on the coffee table. He looked up when she entered, grinning at her and holding up a photograph.

“I found the one of us with Howard Carter,” he told her. “Valley of the Kings, July 1923.”

“And for those of us not fluent in Egyptology...?” Clara said, sitting down beside him and clearing a spot on the cluttered table for her food.

“He’s the archaeologist who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun,” he said, carefully handing her the photo as she reached for it. “It’d been in all the newspapers for more than six months by that point, but it took him several more years to catalogue the contents of the tomb, he was so meticulous about it.”

The photo was of her and the Doctor standing beside a dark haired man with a wide moustache, the three of them posed in front of a rock-cut staircase descending into the earth. She was clasping the Doctor’s arm and smiling up at him, seeming completely unaware of the camera. “We must have been married, what, about three months?” Clara asked, glancing at him. “We look like such newlyweds.”

“Oh, we were,” the Doctor replied, accepting the photo back from her. “Disgustingly in love and probably annoying everyone around us with it.”

“Naturally,” she said, laughing. “Did we know Howard Carter well, then?”

“Quite well. He was the one who suggested you take up drawing, after you commented on his method of sketching each artefact in detail as it was removed from the tomb. Though I suspect he was simply trying to give you a hobby, in the hopes of getting my mind back on my work.”

Clara smiled at the mental image as she dug into her dinner. “We should frame that photo,” she said between bites of food. “And our wedding picture, and the one from Thebes in ‘21, maybe a few others from that pile. Find places around here to hang them up. I like seeing the two of us together, looking disgustingly in love,” she added, grinning at him.

He shot her a skeptical look. “Won’t that be hard to explain when you have company over? ‘Oh yes, that’s me in 1923, haven’t aged a day.’”

“Don’t often have company over,” she shrugged easily. “There’s no one I’m that close with.”

“Has your life really been so lonely, Clara Oswald?” the Doctor asked quietly, his gaze on the photos in his hands.

“No, not lonely,” she said, keeping her voice cheerful to balance out his maudlin tone. “I have my students, and friends at work, and until recently I had Gran, of course. But I think part of me knew...” She trailed off, thinking over the feeling, and how much it had shifted during the last day and a half.

“Knew what?” he asked when she didn’t go on.

“I’ve felt for a long time like I was waiting for my future to get here,” she said, looking up at him and holding his gaze. “I don’t feel that way anymore. I think part of me always knew I was waiting for you.”

When she finished eating, Clara went to her desk to fetch the folder with her lesson plans, and then settled into the corner of the sofa with her legs stretched out towards the Doctor as he continued to sort through the piles of photos and letters and keepsakes she’d taken from the box. They descended into a comfortable silence broken only by the rustling of papers, and she thought fleetingly about how easy it was to have him in what had always been her private space. In this life, she’d never had a relationship serious enough to tip over into this sort of domesticity, but she found herself enjoying the quiet companionship, the simple joy of existing in the same place together, wrapped up in their own thoughts.

It was easy to imagine a future with him full of days like this, but even as she tried to keep her mind on her work, her thoughts strayed again and again to the idea of travelling together. She’d gotten a taste for it after university and had always intended to see more of the world, but it took on an extra dimension now, the concept of seeing the world with the Doctor. Planning their destinations together, dreaming up where they might go next, seeing ancient monuments and modern marvels with the man she loved at her side. An extended holiday to travel the world wasn’t really something she could afford on her teacher’s salary, but maybe once they sold the house...

Shaking her head, she set the thought aside and tried to keep her focus on her task, determined to finish it as quickly as possible so that she could spend the rest of the evening with the Doctor.

Some time later, she felt his eyes on her, and glanced up to find him watching her fondly, a stack of letters forgotten on the coffee table in front of him.

“Lesson plans for the week?” he asked when she met his gaze.

“Mmhmm,” she nodded, most of her attention still on the outline she’d made when she taught this unit last year.

“And just what are you teaching the youth, these days? Nothing that’ll turn their brains to pudding, I hope.”

Clara huffed out a little laugh and shook her head. “My students are working their way through a selection of Shakespeare’s plays. Antony and Cleopatra currently.”

“Bah, the Ptolemaic pharaohs,” the Doctor groused lightheartedly. “Hardly even count as Egyptian.”

“Shush,” she told him, suppressing a grin and swatting at him with one foot. “Go back to sorting through those letters, I’ll be done with this soon.”

He caught her foot and tugged it gently into his lap, and she shot him a quick smile before turning her attention back to the last of her work. Just as she finished jotting down a note to herself about the homework she meant to assign her classes on Friday, her gaze landed on the date. She sat blinking at it for a moment, surprised at how easily it had snuck up on her.

“It’s next week,” she murmured.

“Hmm? What is?” the Doctor asked.

“The twenty-third of November,” she replied, eyes still on her lesson plan calendar. “My birthday. The anniversary of your— of our deaths. It’s a week from today.”

“I suppose it is,” he said quietly.

“I don’t quite know what to do with it,” she admitted. “How exactly am I supposed to mark it now?”

“As you have for the last twenty-seven years, I expect,” he said. “It’s your birthday, Clara.”

She looked up at him, frowning. “I know, but—”

“Given the nature of the human race, any particular birthday is also the anniversary of someone’s death,” the Doctor said reasonably. “Quite a lot of people’s deaths, in fact, if you consider decades or centuries of time. That doesn’t mean birthdays shouldn’t be celebrated.”

“True,” she conceded. “But it feels odd when it’s my own death that happens to fall on my birthday. Add yours to the mix and it seems like that ought to outweigh any sort of birthday celebration.”

“Weren’t you just saying that you want to be able to go into our future without the past hanging over us?” he asked rhetorically. “Birthdays are about the present and the future. We can’t do anything about the past, about what else happened on that date. But we can celebrate the fact that we are here, together, right now. We can celebrate you getting another year older.”

Clara hummed thoughtfully, unable to argue with his logic. “Reclaim the date, in a way.”

“Exactly.”

“And what about you?” she asked, closing her lesson plan folder and setting it aside. “When is your birthday, anyway?”

“Oh, no,” he said, chuckling softly. “One of the best parts about being dead is that I’m not getting any older. Let’s stick with celebrating your birthday.”

“Spoilsport,” she muttered.

“And anyway,” he shrugged, “I was always far more interested in celebrating our May anniversaries than marking my birthday.”

“Anniversaries?” she asked, tilting her head as she watched him. “Our wedding, and...?”

“The day we met,” the Doctor supplied. “Which are conveniently only a day apart — convenient, that is, for those of us who in life were known to be temporally-challenged and easily distracted by our work, or any other shiny object.”

She laughed lightly. “And you’re saying that in death, that’s changed?”

“No, I suppose not,” he said, smiling at her and squeezing her foot where it still rested in his lap.

“How long is it that we’ve been married now, anyway?” she asked. “This last May must have been, what, ninety-one years?”

He raised his eyebrows at her in surprise. “I don’t know that we can count the last eight-seven years.”

“Of course we can,” she said, running her fingers over the smooth rounded stone of her wedding ring. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“That sort of tallying usually stops at death,” he pointed out.

Clara narrowed her gaze at him. “That little church in Glasgow, the one with the stained glass windows, that smelled of incense...”

“What about it?” he asked, confused.

“Am I right in thinking we wrote our own vows?”

“Yes,” he allowed warily, clearly not sure where she was going with this.

“And did those vows in any way mention death?”

“Well, no, but—”

“No! No ‘but’ on the end of that sentence! At no point did we agree that this relationship would end at death. Until the end of the universe, that’s how long you’re stuck with me.”

He smiled softly, his gaze distant. “‘Until the stars all burn from the sky,’” he said. “That was the phrase you used at the time.”

“Until the stars all burn from the sky,” she repeated, nearly remembering that moment, in that old church in Glasgow, so long ago now. “That’s what we promised. Don’t think a little thing like dying is going to get you out of this relationship, mister,” she said, nudging his leg with her foot. “And just think of it — in a few years, we can celebrate our one hundredth wedding anniversary! Who gets to do that?”

“On one condition,” the Doctor said, pulling the foot she’d nudged him with into his lap alongside its mate. “You don’t make me go to Glasgow to celebrate it.”

“Deal,” Clara laughed. “Now, Egypt on the other hand...”

He looked up at her with interest. “You’d want to go back to Egypt?”

“Of course, why not?” she said, smiling at him. “The number of places I want to visit with you is only growing the more I think about travelling together — 101 Places To See and all that — and Egypt is definitely top of the list. I don’t remember it well, but your memory seems sharp as ever, you can remind me of any pieces I’m still missing. And maybe being there will shake loose a few more memories.”

He was gazing at her in that way she had spent so many years wishing he would, and she felt her heart stutter at the sight. “I would like that very much, my Clara,” he said softly. “Maybe when you have time off from teaching? Next summer perhaps?”

“Why wait? Maybe once we sell the house, I’ll resign from Coal Hill and break the lease on this place, and we can make it a much longer holiday. An extended second honeymoon.”

His expression shuttered and he looked down at her feet in his lap, his long fingers curling around her sock-clad toes. “You still want to sell the house,” he said in a low tone.

“Doctor,” Clara said gently, “I thought you knew that. We have to sell the house. I can’t live there, last night proved that. And I have no hope of paying off the property taxes if we don’t sell it soon.”

He took a deep breath and sighed it out. “No, you’re right,” he said, his voice still subdued. “Of course you’re right.”

She watched him for a long moment, but he didn’t meet her gaze. “Why have you been so against selling the house?” she asked quietly. “You must have frightened away a dozen potential buyers the last few weeks.”

“I didn’t want anything to change,” he murmured.

She frowned to herself. “But now everything has changed,” she said, worry creeping into her tone.

He looked up at her finally, blue eyes finding hers in the lamplight. “I don’t mean this, I don’t mean us,” he said, no trace of doubt in his voice. “I wished so many times for a second chance like this, though I knew I didn’t have any right to hope for it.”

“What do you mean, then?”

“Before all this,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the piles of keepsakes on the table, “before your memories came back, the house felt like my last real tie to you. We bought that house together, we were happy there, we planned our future there. And when you came back... To this version of you, I was the ghost who haunted your gran’s house. Dropping the weight of our history on you didn’t seem right, no matter how much I wanted you to remember me, so I was just your ghost, and that was better than nothing.”

“But then Gran died,” Clara said softly.

He nodded. “It felt like everything was ending. Suddenly there were strangers in the house, forcing me to face the fact that I was losing you all over again.”

“So you tried to scare them off,” she said, not quite a question.

“I may have panicked,” he admitted. “I’ve never handled the prospect of losing you very well.”

“I don’t think either of us have handled that very well,” she pointed out, a surge of sympathy filling her. “I probably would have done the same, in your position.” She gently pulled her feet from his lap and shifted around so that she was pressed against his side, curling in closer when she felt his arm come to rest across her shoulders. “I have a lot of fond memories of that house, Doctor,” she murmured. “But it’s just a place. We were happy there because we were together. We can be happy in this flat, or in Egypt, or anywhere else we choose to go. So long as we’re together.”

“Until the stars all burn from the sky,” he whispered, holding her close, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

They sat beside each other late into the evening, looking through the contents of the dusty old box that had changed everything. The Doctor filled her in on the stories behind each of the photographs and keepsakes, and they read the letters they had written to each other while they were falling in love, so long ago, laughing about how much things had changed, and how much they remained exactly the same.

Eventually Clara pulled them away from the remnants of their past and off to bed, only too aware that her alarm clock would wake her well before dawn the next morning. The Doctor lingered nearby as she prepared for sleep, looking solid and real and nearly alive in the light of the lamp on the bedside table. His expression was soft as he watched her, his eyes full of that same adoration she’d seen him wear in so many of their old photos.

She had spent so long wishing he would look at her like that, dreamed of it so many times, never once believing that it could really happen. But somehow, impossibly, her ghost loved her as much as she loved him. Against all sense in the universe, she got to keep him, and their future felt wide open, full of possibility and promise. Lost in her thoughts, Clara caught a glimpse of her expression in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth, and recognised it as the same she’d worn on their wedding day: giddy with happiness and very much in love.

When she returned to the bedroom she found him waiting for her, sitting at the foot of her bed. He’d removed his boots and the dark red velvet jacket she’d always known him to wear and set them neatly to one side of the bed, and he’d unbuttoned the top few buttons of his crisp white shirt. Evidently he hadn’t heard her approach, and Clara paused just outside the door, watching him, her heart thudding against her ribs. It reminded her of that day in Thebes, when she’d tracked him down to the dig site and found him standing in the bright sunshine amid the sand and artefacts and half-filled crates. He just looked so beautiful, sitting in her bedroom in his shirtsleeves, that she wanted nothing to change ever again.

Feeling her eyes on him, the Doctor looked up at her and held her gaze for a long, silent moment. Something seemed to pull taut between them, a tension Clara had felt before but had always assumed was one-sided, part of the love she had for him that he couldn’t possibly return. To realise that the Doctor had always loved her, that he had only kept his distance to protect her from painful memories of the past, put every moment they had ever shared into a different context. Her longing for him had never been one-sided, and standing there staring at him in that endless, perfect moment, she was certain that it wasn’t now, either.

“Ready for bed?” she finally asked, a little breathless.

“I wasn’t sure...” he started, trailing off. “I don’t really sleep, as a ghost,” he said instead, “but I thought I’d stay with you. If you want.”

“I do want,” she said, eloquence failing her. “I mean, unless you’d rather stay up and read or something, if you don’t sleep anyway—”

“No, I’d rather be here with you,” he assured her quickly. “If that’s alright with you,” he added, and it occurred to her that he might be feeling just as nervous about this new phase of their lives as she was.

She smiled at him and crossed the room to sit beside him at the foot of the bed, close but not quite touching. “Were we this awkward before?” she asked.

“We had our moments,” he said, returning her smile.

“What was it you said this morning? This is still just you and me.”

“Same old, same old,” the Doctor murmured, gaze tracing across her face.

“Right,” she said on an exhaled breath, forgetting everything she’d been about to say as she stared at him. “I, uh...” she trailed off and had to start again. “I usually sleep on the left side of the bed. If that works for you.”

“You always did before,” he said absently, still staring at her.

Clara shook herself, realising she’d been leaning inexorably closer to him, longing for something she hadn't let herself consider since her love-struck teenaged years. “See, those little insights into our past?” she said, getting up and walking around to her side of the bed. “That’s why I keep you around.”

“And here I thought it was my sparkling wit and stellar conversational skills,” he replied dryly.

“Oh, shush,” she said, laughing and tossing the spare pillow to him, strangely relieved at the break in the tension. “Just shut up and come to bed already.”

“Yes, boss,” he said easily, and joined her beneath the covers.

It took them a few moments to find the right arrangement, to shift around each other and relearn the ways that they were meant to fit together. Once they finally settled, Clara reached over to switch off the lamp on her bedside table, then paused, looking back at her ghost, a question on the tip of her tongue.

“Doctor, after you died, did we ever...?” She trailed off, not quite able to get past her awkwardness to ask outright. She loved him, she had loved him her entire life, but once she’d talked herself out of her teenaged fantasies about him, she had forcibly separated her mind from any thoughts that involved both the Doctor and sex. Undoing that would apparently take some effort.

“Did we what?” he asked, eyebrows drawing together in confusion.

“Sleep together?” she managed, not exactly what she’d meant to say, but she hoped he took her meaning.

“Like I said, I don’t exactly sleep,” he said. “But I stayed with you most nights, like I did last night. It seemed to help.”

“No, not sleep sleep, I mean—” she started, stopped short, tried again. “Did we— you know?”

He peered at her as though waiting for that sentence to finish itself. “Clara, you should know by now that the obtuse thing, it isn’t an act. Sometimes I really don’t know what it is you’re trying to hint at.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, took a deep breath, and willed the words into existence. “When you came back to me in 1928, did we have sex?”

He was quiet for a long moment, and Clara squinted her eyes open to gauge his reaction.

His confused expression hadn’t changed. “No,” he said shortly.

Her stomach plummeted, but she tried to hide her disappointment. “Not an option, then?” she asked, willing her voice into a neutral tone and thinking of his lack of a heartbeat.

The Doctor blinked at her as though finally catching on to what she was really asking. “No,” he said slowly, “I don’t see why it wouldn’t be. Between sunset and sunrise, at least.”

Clara’s heart turned over in her chest, but she asked, genuinely curious, “Then why didn’t we, before?”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “You weren’t... in a good place emotionally, in 1928. I stayed with you overnight, read to you or hummed your song when you couldn’t sleep, or just held you through your nightmares. But you weren’t ready for anything more. Maybe if I hadn’t left you at the end of that summer, maybe if we’d had more time...” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, my Clara.”

“Doctor,” she said levelly, holding his gaze. “We have more time. This, right now, this is the time we wished for, this is our second chance.”

“Right, as you keep saying.”

“So...?” she said, raising her eyebrows at him.

“So?” he repeated, looking at her in bewilderment. She waited for the penny to drop. “Oh,” he said, realisation lighting up his face. “Oh.”

“Exactly,” she said, grinning at him, then reached over and turned out the bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

In retrospect, Clara supposed she probably shouldn’t have been surprised when she overslept. She rushed through her morning routine as best she could, despite finding herself continuously and delightfully distracted by the Doctor’s presence as she darted from one task to the next.

“Alright,” she said, talking rapidly between bites of toast, all too aware of the time, “the curtains are closed, lamps are on, the flat is yours. Feel free to peruse the bookshelf or watch television or use my laptop or whatever,” she told him, brushing the last crumbs of her breakfast from her hands.

Leaving the kitchen, she headed for the front door with long strides, her ghost trailing along behind her. “I’m usually home by around four o’clock,” she went on, barely pausing for breath, “then marking until six, and then I’ll be yours for the rest of the evening.” She pushed up on her toes and kissed him, grateful for perhaps the first time in her adult life that her work schedule meant she had to be up well before dawn on weekdays. “I mean— I’m yours the rest of the time too,” she quickly amended, “but we can spend the evening together.”

“Clara,” the Doctor said with laughter in his tone, “stop worrying, I’ll be fine. I’ve had eighty-six years to get used to keeping my own company. I can survive a few hours alone.”

“I know,” she said, pausing in the act of gathering up her school papers to press a brief kiss to the corner of his mouth. “It’s just— things have changed a bit since Friday, haven’t they?”

“Oh, I see,” he said with dawning comprehension. “This is more about you not wanting to leave than any real worry about me being here on my own, isn’t it?”

She grinned at him as she pulled on her coat. “Can you blame me? If it was up to me, I’d drag you back to bed right now.”

“I take it we’re going for round two of ‘disgustingly in love newlyweds,’” the Doctor said, returning her grin, not even able to fake a sour tone. “And here I thought we’d gotten past all that.”

“Shush, ninety-one years married still counts as newlywed if we say it does. Speaking of—” Clara turned away from the front door, keys in hand, completely forgetting what she’d meant to say in favour of kissing him again, too overwhelmed with love to even care that at this rate, she would barely beat her students to class.

“Are you capable of finishing a thought without stopping to snog me?” he demanded playfully when they parted.

“Signs point to no,” she quipped back. “But as I was saying: give some thought to that second honeymoon idea, places we might want to travel once we sell the house.”

“Yes, boss,” he said, anticipating her next move and leaning down to kiss her. “Now go, or you really will be late. Go fill the pudding brains’ minds with Antony and Cleopatra, I’ll be here when you get home.”

“I love you,” she told him, pausing with the door partway open.

“My Clara,” the Doctor said, smiling at her with adoration in his eyes. “I love you too.”

Chapter 7 - The Museum

13 May 2021, Cairo

“I suppose it’s too much to ask that the museum stay open late for us, today of all days,” Clara said quietly, as they strolled side by side through the nearly empty Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. Even after so many years travelling the world together, she was still cautious about attracting any undue attention from curious strangers, aware as always that no one but her could see or hear her ghost.

“We’re lucky enough as it is that they’re open until nine p.m. on Thursdays,” the Doctor replied. “If the thirteenth had fallen on a Monday this year, we would have been stuck visiting before sunset, they close so early. In 1921, the museum was only open that late because of the party celebrating the new exhibit.”

“You know, until we started planning this anniversary trip, it hadn’t occurred to me that the thirteenth of May that year was a Friday,” she said. “So much for the unluckiness of Friday the thirteenth.”

“Actually, the ancient Egyptians considered thirteen to be a lucky number. To them it symbolised immortality, resurrection, and rebirth.”

“Well, there you go,” Clara said, laughing softly. “Or rather: here we are, a hundred years later. And you’re sure we met at nine?”

He nodded. “The lecture on the exhibit ended just before nine, and we met a few minutes later, as everyone started to disperse into the surrounding rooms. It was half past ten before my colleagues from the dig site were able to pull me away. Unfortunately the museum won’t let us stay that late tonight, but at least we can mark nine p.m. in the right place.”

“One hundred years,” she said, directing a quick smile his way. “Things have changed a bit since then, I suppose,” she added, looking around at the few remaining tourists, half of them reading information about the exhibits on their smartphones. She self-consciously adjusted the small bluetooth headset she wore for show, but no one seemed to be paying her any attention, thankfully.

“They have and they haven’t,” the Doctor shrugged. “The building itself hasn’t changed significantly since I first arrived in Egypt, and the public remains fascinated with the archaeology and the history of the region. Obviously the exhibits have been rearranged over the years, newly discovered artefacts added, but honestly it still looks quite like it did then.”

“I meant more the people than the place. I seem to remember the party in ‘21 being a bit more of a formal affair.”

“They still host black-tie parties here, now and then. We could come back for one someday, if you’re feeling nostalgic.”

“Might be worth another trip to Cairo, if we can figure out a way to get an invite,” she said. “Do you remember what I wore that night?”

The Doctor kept his gaze focused ahead of them and his face carefully blank, but Clara swore he would have blushed if he could. “Yes,” he said shortly.

She laughed fondly and leaned into his shoulder briefly, charmed by his awkwardness even after six and a half years of living as a married couple again. “You’ll have to describe it for me sometime. In a more private location.”

He hesitated then said, “We won’t be able to stay here long tonight, anyway. Play your cards right and I’ll describe it for you in detail once we get back to the hotel.”

“I’m going to hold you to that, mister,” she said, grinning.

They lapsed into comfortable silence as the Doctor led her confidently through the halls of the museum, ending in a smaller room tucked away from the main flow of the central corridor. They had the room to themselves, and Clara let herself relax, shedding her perpetual wariness of someone seeing her interact with her ghost.

“Oh, this wasn’t here before,” the Doctor said as they entered, sounding surprised and pleased. “This is lovely.”

“What is it?” she asked, bemused by his obvious interest.

“It’s a reproduction of the burial chamber of Thutmose the Third, which is in the Valley of the Kings, near Thebes,” he said, looking around at the illustrated walls and the stars painted on the low ceiling, his expression like a kid in a candy shop. “That’s the mummified pharaoh himself, just there,” he added, nodding to a glass-enclosed display case in the middle of the room. “And I imagine the other artefacts are from his tomb, as well.”

“The ceiling is just like my ring,” she noted, glancing up at the spindly stars against the dark blue and fiddling with her wedding ring, its stone opaque now in the diffuse artificial light.

“It was a popular artistic element in the Eighteenth Dynasty,” the Doctor said absently, as he leaned in to examine an intricately carved scarab figurine on display. “Thutmose the Third was the step-son of Hatshepsut, after all, whose temple I took you to see after you found me in Thebes.”

“I forget, sometimes,” Clara said affectionately, “that this is what you spent your life working on. Your true academic passion, above all your other many interests.”

He shot her a quick smile. “It’s why I was in Egypt in the first place, that night in 1921.”

“And you’re sure this is the right place?” she asked, looking around. “The room where we met?” Like the rest of the museum and Cairo in general, it felt vaguely familiar, but nothing specific jumped out at her.

“Quite sure,” he said, meandering around the edge of the room to join her again. “A friend of mine stood in that archway just there, off and on for the better part of an hour, trying to get my attention while I studiously ignored him.”

“Naturally,” she said lightly, “being that you were otherwise occupied with an intriguing stranger.”

“Luckily for me,” he said, smiling down at her.

“So, what are we looking at here?” she asked, gesturing to the complex mural of stylised stick figures that adorned every inch of the walls of the room. “Put that doctorate of archaeology to good use and tell me about this, as we count down to nine p.m.”

The Doctor stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her, and Clara leaned into him, glad for the relative privacy of the enclosed space and the rare chance to touch him while they were in public.

“It’s the Amduat,” he told her, his voice soft near her ear. “Which translates to ‘The Book Of What Is In The Underworld.’ It’s a funerary text that details the sun god Ra’s journey through the land of the dead each night, from sunset to sunrise, on a river that flows from west to east. It’s found painted in the tombs of several pharaohs and on various papyri fragments. The text is divided into the twelve hours of the night, the different gates that Ra — and the recently deceased, who travel with him — must pass through to reach rebirth with the sun at dawn.”

“The twelve hours of the night?” she said, glancing up at him. At his nod, she recited the last eight lines of the poem from memory:

He whispered, “And a river lies Between the dusk and dawning skies, And hours are distance, measured wide Along that transnocturnal tide— Too doomed to fear, lost to all need, These voyagers blackward fast recede Where darkness shines like dazzling light Throughout the Twelve Hours of the Night.”

“...Seriously?” the Doctor asked when she finished, his voice sour. “We’re standing in the middle of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities and you’re subjecting me to Ashbless of all people?”

Clara laughed. “You say ‘The Twelve Hours of the Night’ and my mind spits out that poem. I studied English literature at university, it’s a reflex, I can’t help it.”

“You know, I’m not convinced he actually knew the first thing about Egypt, much less the Amduat. Most of the rest of that poem is complete gibberish.”

“He did live here in Cairo for a time,” she said reasonably.

The Doctor sighed in exasperation. “It’s two minutes ‘til nine,” he said. “Are we going to stand here and debate nineteenth century poets of questionable literary value, or can we enjoy the moment?”

Laughing again, she turned her head and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. “Yes, let’s just enjoy the moment. Who else gets to celebrate their hundredth anniversary, after all?”

“Technically that’s not for another two years yet. And we’d have to go to Glasgow,” he added, and Clara knew without looking at him that he was making a face at the thought.

“Our wedding anniversary, sure. But I meant the anniversary of when I fell in love with you.”

The Doctor was quiet for a moment. “You think it was that night?” he asked softly.

“I know it was,” she answered in a similar tone, squeezing his hands where they were clasped low on her stomach. “I wouldn’t have followed you to Thebes otherwise. It just took me a while to put the word to the feeling.”

“You were — what was the phrase you used? — an intriguing stranger for me that night. But when you showed up at the dig site, that’s when I knew.” He took a deep breath and sighed it out, stirring strands of her hair. “I also knew you were less than half my age, far too beautiful for the likes of me even if you hadn’t been, and extremely unlikely to return my feelings.”

“And how’d that work out for you?” she asked playfully.

“Quite well, as fate would have it,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his tone.

Before she could reply, she felt him go rigid behind her, then sway in an alarming way. “Are you alright?” she asked, concerned.

“Bit lightheaded all of a sudden,” he said. “I think I ought to sit.”

She helped him to a bench at the back of the room, grateful that his hand remained solid in hers. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Possible explanations crowded her mind for why a ghost might feel lightheaded, none of them good.

“What is it?” she asked him, worry twisting her gut.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice distant. “I feel strange...”

Clara knelt in front of him looking up at his face, so familiar and beloved, now alarmingly pale and drawn. Somewhere in the distance she could hear an announcement, repeated in multiple languages, that it was nine p.m. and the museum was closing. She ignored it and focused on the Doctor, and on her fear that something had just gone terribly wrong. There was a sudden knot in her stomach, a growing dread that this happy semblance of a life they’d managed to build together the last six and a half years couldn’t possibly last.

“Is this it?” she said, and she could hear the panic colouring her voice. “Have we run out of time? A hundred years exactly and I’ll have to lose you all over again?”

“My Clara,” the Doctor murmured, his low voice cutting through her frantic rambling. “All I ever wanted was more time with you...”

“No, you’re saying goodbye, don’t say goodbye!” she cried, cupping his face with one hand. The pain of that possibility rippled through her, the unimaginable thought of facing a future without him. “Don’t go. Stay with me,” she said desperately. “You promised. You promised you would stay.”

He found her gaze, his eyes red-rimmed as tears began to form. “Clara.”

“Everything you’re about to say, I already know,” she told him before he could say anything else, afraid that at any second, he would fade out of existence right in front of her. “I’ve always known. If this is it, if this is all the time we get—” Her voice cracked, her tears overwhelming her, and she shook her head. “Until the stars all burn from the sky, that’s how long you’re stuck with me. That’s how long I’ll love you. I will find you again someday. I promise.”

The Doctor took her hand from his face and kissed her knuckles tenderly, and she clung to the solidness of him, trying to commit it to memory one final time, in case this was the last moment of this life she had left with him. He had been abruptly stolen from her once before, on that horrible night in 1927, and suddenly the agony of that was fresh and new all over again, threatening to swallow her whole.

“I love you, my Clara,” he said despite her assurances that she already knew. He squeezed her fingers, and raised his other hand to wipe a tear from her face. “I’ll love you ‘til the end of the universe.” His gaze held hers, blue eyes flecked with green that she would never, ever forget. “And I know how much you like to be right,” he went on, his voice gentle. “But just this once... Do you think you could bear it if you were totally and completely wrong?”

She blinked up at him, tears catching in her lashes. “What?” she asked, uncomprehending, as he moved her hand to press flat against the left side of his chest. It took her a moment to understand, to register the strong and steady heartbeat under her palm, utterly strange and unexpected after so many years grown accustomed to the lack of it. She stared at her hand in disbelief, then raised her eyes to his face, realising that he no longer looked nearly so pale. “How?” she demanded.

He shrugged, smiling softly at her. “Honestly? I’ve no idea. Lucky thirteen, perhaps?” he suggested. “I can’t claim to understand it. But it feels so distinctly different from the last ninety-three years, I can’t really question it, either.”

“We get more time,” Clara breathed.

“We get more life,” he corrected. “A real second chance. Somehow, we’ve passed through the twelve hours of the night, and now the sun is rising again.”

She stared at him for a moment, her heart still stuttering in shock at the sudden reversal of their fortunes, then leaned up on her knees and kissed him soundly, reveling in the living warmth rolling off of him. Her living, breathing, very much not dead husband. The reality of it was better than anything she could have wished for, and she clung to him, hardly believing what had just happened.

“Sir, ma’am?” called an unfamiliar voice as they broke apart. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s after nine p.m. and the museum is closing.”

“Quite alright,” the Doctor replied, his gaze never leaving Clara’s face. “It’s time we were getting home, anyway.”

Chapter 8 - The Temple

18 May 2021, Deir el-Bahari

“Do you ever wonder if we’ve done this before?” Clara asked, her voice hushed as they stood together looking at a wall full of hieroglyphs and painted figures illuminated by the sunlight filtering in through the open walls of the temple.

The Doctor glanced at her, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion. “Visiting the Temple of Hatshepsut was more or less our first date,” he replied. “A hundred years ago this week, in point of fact.”

“No, I mean— lived before,” she clarified. “Transversed the twelve hours of the night and come back out the other side. Rebirth and all that.”

“It’s possible, I suppose,” he said, frowning. “We know it’s happened at least once for each of us, so why not? What makes you ask?”

“There’s something... Not quite a memory, but a feeling, I guess.” She turned away from the temple wall in front of them and led the Doctor back to the large display near the entrance that informed tourists about the history of the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the photo of an ancient artist’s sketch on a limestone chip depicting a man in profile. She glanced up at the Doctor and nodded at the drawing on the display. “Tell me about him?”

“That’s Senenmut,” he said, following her gaze. “He was the chief architect of this place, royal adviser to Hatshepsut, and tutor to her daughter, among dozens of other titles. Many people believe he was also Hatshepsut’s lover, even though he was a commoner and at least twenty years older than her.”

Clara made a thoughtful noise and walked a few steps further, squinting up at a towering statue set just outside. “And that’s her?” she asked, looking to the Doctor for confirmation. “Queen Hatshepsut?”

“She was Pharaoh in her own right by the time this temple was built, but yes, that’s her.” He eyed Clara curiously. “Why the sudden interest in Hatshepsut and Senenmut? I thought you’d be more taken with the ceiling.”

She pulled her gaze away from the statue to grin at him, and then stepped back inside the temple just so she could see that high ceiling again, a deep dark blue covered in spindly stars, so very like the star sapphire of her wedding ring, twinkling in the midday sun. “I do love that ceiling,” she told him, lacing their fingers together without looking away from the sight above. It had only been a few days since that miraculous moment in the Cairo museum, and Clara found herself taking every possible opportunity to touch the Doctor during daylight hours, still not quite used to finding him warm and solid beneath her hands. “If we ever settle down anywhere long enough to have a house or a flat again, I might just have to paint something like that above our bed,” she added.

“You should see the ceiling in Senemut’s tomb,” he replied. “Stars like these, but organised into detailed astronomical information. The oldest of its kind in Egypt. It’s not open to the public, but it’s just around the corner from here,” he said, gesturing vaguely back out at the desert behind them. “He wanted to be buried as close to Hatshepsut as he could possibly manage.”

“You’re practically making my point for me, Doctor,” Clara said, finally dropping her gaze from the ceiling and turning towards him.

“Which is what, exactly?” he asked, looking at her as well.

She used their joined hands to pull him back to the visitor’s information. “He has your nose,” she said, pointing at the ancient sketch of Senenmut. “Your chin, a bit, too. Give him your eyebrows and the resemblance would be downright uncanny. And her,” Clara shifted her attention to the other side of the information display, to a photo of another statue of Hatshepsut, considering it critically. “It’s not nearly as jarring as the first time I saw our wedding photo, but there’s something...”

“Your cheekbones and your giant eyes,” the Doctor agreed thoughtfully. “She was about your height, too.”

“It makes me wonder, is all. If this isn’t the first time we’ve done this, if we’ve found each other before. And there’s something comforting in that, I think.”

“How so?”

She shrugged. “Just the thought that maybe some things don’t end. Not love, at least, not always. That maybe there are dozens or hundreds of versions of us, out there scattered throughout history. Finding each other and falling in love, getting it a bit more right each time.”

The Doctor was quiet for a long moment, then said, “I’m not sure it matters to me, in all honesty. If we’ve done this before, or if this is the first time — I’m happy with this version of us, the here and now. That’s enough for me.”

“You mean the here and now where we’re stuck in Egypt while we try to fabricate enough of a legal identity for you to be able to travel?” she asked dryly.

“Since when have we ever been stuck in Egypt?” he snarked back. “I love it here, and I suspect you do too, your complaints notwithstanding. But maybe you do have a point. Maybe there’s a reason we keep gravitating back to this place in particular.”

“A reason you were drawn to study ancient Egyptian languages, and that I was so set on seeing Egypt in 1921.”

“Exactly. And you’re certainly right about one thing,” he added, studying the image of the pharaoh queen, “her face is weirdly round, just like yours.”

Clara snorted and elbowed him playfully.

“Ow, hey,” he said, rubbing at his ribs in mock-injury. “I can actually bruise now, don’t forget.”

“And sunburn, as it turns out,” she sighed, glancing up at him. “Your nose, again. Come here,” she said as she pulled a bottle of sunscreen from her bag. “I suppose some things never change: my round face, your sunburnt nose.”

“I could do with a little less sunburn,” he grumbled, bending down so Clara could apply more sunscreen to his nose.

“I’m happy, too,” she told him softly, her focus on her task. “This version of me and this version of you, and this second chance at a future we’ve been given. But who knows, maybe in the next life, we’ll get to travel the stars together,” she added, glancing up at the painted ceiling overhead, the rows of spindly stars against the deep dark blue.

“It’s a nice thought, my Clara,” the Doctor agreed, and leaned in to kiss her in the bright desert sunlight, standing together under those ancient stars.

Fin

Behind the scenes extras for each chapter

#Doctor Who fanfic #Whouffaldi #Whouffaldi fanfic #Clara and the Doctor #Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor #Clara/Doctor #Clara Oswald #Twelfth Doctor #12th Doctor #please comment and reblog!#AUs #my fanfic #my writing #This Isn't A Ghost Story #new cover art by my sweetheart and long-suffering beta reader Jack!#I've been meaning to post this as a single Tumblr post in celebration of the new cover art #but it took the AO3 outage to get me to finally do it #I have two new extras coming as well so watch this space

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