The TARDIS burbles happily at them when they burst through her doors, giggling like children and still holding hands. (This feels important, earth-shattering even; Clara wants to live inside this moment forever.) They skid to a stop right in front of the console, the Doctor's free hand already reaching for a row of buttons.

His grin is lopsided, his eyes the bluest blue she's ever seen. "I know the perfect place to go next."

All she can do in response is laugh. She's been back on the TARDIS for the space of ten seconds and even now she can feel the expectant pull of the universe, the siren song of the stars. It's a kind of relief is really what it is, like finally being able to breathe properly after a long run: this is where she belongs, where she has always belonged. The Doctor and Clara with the vast expanse of space spread out before them.

She laughs again because she can. Between the two of them, they probably look like crazed, Cheshire cats, but Clara doesn't much care. "Show me what you've got, spaceman," she says.

He nods, letting go of her hand to reach for a dial and give it a ferocious spin. Then he cuts a glance at her nightgown. "You might want to change," he points out. "Not that your dress isn't lovely..."

Clara's already shaking her head. "No, Doctor, not a dress."

"Oh." He squints at her, turning his head from side to side until he settles on cocking his head to the left at a rather awkward angle. "Oh right, yes. I see."

He has absolutely no clue what she's on about. It's nice to see that some things haven't changed.

"Anyway," he starts abruptly, not quite understanding the inexplicable look of nostalgia that's crossed Clara's face, "the TARDIS will show you what to wear." He gestures in the general direction of the ship's wardrobe. "You know where to go."

The TARDIS dresses her in furs, pale brown and the softest things she's ever touched. Clara buries her face in the sleeve of the coat as soon as she slips it on.

"Where are we going?" she asks, words mostly muffled by the fur, but she figures that the TARDIS has heard her anyway. "Hmmm? I know you know."

But the ship remains annoyingly silent.

"C'mon, just a hint." It sounds far more whiny and wheedling than she'd intended it to be, inside her head. At least the Doctor's not here to make a face at her childish tone and turn it into a joke about -

"It's supposed to be a surprise, Clara."

The sound of his voice from the doorway makes her jump. When he laughs at her reaction, she spins around to face him, coat momentarily flaring out around her ankles. "I hate surprises," she declares loftily. She frowns once she's actually looking at him properly. "You haven't changed."

"No," he says, swiping a palm down the slope of his jaw, "I figured I would keep the face; I'm kind of attached to it." He finishes with a shark grin that makes Clara roll her eyes.

"No, you big idiot, I meant your clothes. You're still wearing the same thing."

The Doctor fiddles with the zipper of his hoodie, peering at her curiously from across the room. "What's wrong with hoodies?" he asks.

The look on her face mirrors his own, as though he is a mystery that keeps complicating itself, unfolding and unfolding and unfolding long past the point when she thought she knew all his answers. "Nothing," she says eventually. "Absolutely nothing at all."

"Good." The corners of his mouth curl upward. "Now let me show you your surprise."

It's St. Petersburg, Russia in the early 1900s, during the careful quiet a couple years before the outbreak of WWI.

Clara gasps at the sight of the glistening, twilight city spread out before them. It's snowing, making the world around them a familiar, frosty white. She sticks out her tongue, managing to catch a few fat flakes. "Thought you'd be sick of snow," she says thoughtfully when her tongue is back in her mouth.

He thinks about it for a moment then shakes his head. "Are you?"

"No."

"Excellent. Now, c'mon."

He leads her to a little café where the owner immediately recognizes him and practically pushes the two of them into the best table in the whole establishment. Almost as soon as they sit down, a harried waiter comes over with two steaming cups of hot chocolate and a sugar bowl full of marshmallows.

"Your usual," he says to the Doctor in heavily accented English, "compliments of the house."

After he leaves them, the Doctor reaches for the marshmallows, grabbing a handful and then rather unceremoniously dumping all of them into his hot chocolate. When he catches Clara staring, he shrugs. "I may or may not have saved this café from a mob of very angry Zygons disguised as palace guards. And this," he says, pointing to the cup in front of him, which now looks to be more marshmallow than hot chocolate, "this is the only proper way to drink this stuff."

She laughs, shaking her head at him. "Honestly, you are the most ridiculous...How do you manage to survive when I'm not around?"

He hears, of course, what she's not saying, and it sounds an awful lot like God, but I missed you. He pushes the sugar bowl toward her, an offering, an understanding. She rolls her eyes at him, but takes a couple marshmallows anyway.

A few other patrons sit near them, chattering away over cups of hot chocolate and generous slices of Tula gingerbread. Clara turns her attention to all of them for a moment, mesmerized by the way their mouths form words that to her come out sounding like English, but to everyone else is Russian, before looking back at the Doctor.

"Are things going to be different now?"

The Doctor freezes, his hand halfway to grabbing more marshmallows. He won't look at her, and that realization makes something rise up in the back of her throat, something like panic, dread. She can't lose him so soon after having found him again.

"It's just that, you came back for me. I didn't think you did that." The words are rushed, shoved together all into one breath. "Since when do you go back?"

What he says isn't really an answer. "Do you want things to be different?" He realizes now: he's not bound to be consistent. Nobody is. He can be anything he wants. They can be anything they want. The possibilities seem endless and full of stars and he has a spaceship time machine; they could go everywhere.

"I don't know." Clara bites her lip. "I like us, I like the way we work together. But we could always...grow." She winces. There's a gap between what she feels and what she's saying, but she doesn't know how to bridge it and she's not sure he understands.

But he nods. "Okay."

They sit in relative silence for the rest of the time that they're in the café, right up until the moment that the Doctor drains the rest of his drink and then looks across at her expectantly.

"Ready?"

"Yeah."

She thinks, but she's not sure because of the cushion of the furs around her, that he guides her toward the door with one palm pressed to the small of her back.

This time when they step out into the cold air together the city around them has gone to sleep, the moon overhead peeking out from behind clouds. The Doctor puffs out a breath, letting the air around his face fog up, and then he rather abruptly marches off across the street, without so much as a backward glance. Clara practically trips over herself trying to catch up.

He's sitting on a park bench when she finds him again, legs crossed casually, brow furrowed, as though he is deep in thought.

When she sinks down next to him on the bench she fully expects him to make some snide comment about how her short legs were clearly not made to keep up with his long, superior, Time Lord ones. But. He's not looking at her (he's, what, ignoring her?) and this is so not good at all. This is the exact opposite of what she was trying to tell him that she wanted earlier.

"Doctor?"

Once he finally turns to look at her it feels as though she is being measured, a decision being made. The Doctor watches her carefully, and he hypothesizes. He imagines air pressed into her lungs, the sensation of cold brushing over her skin. The way stars look to her eyes.

Suddenly, it seems so easy: her and him and the stars. He reaches for her hand.

"Clara," he says, and that's answer enough. She smiles.

Sometimes he finds that the suns and the moons and the vast, unending spirals of planets before them are nothing compared to her. It scares him, that feeling. But maybe it's time to embrace it.

She squeezes his hand like she understands, and then lets her gaze slip down, eyeing his hoodie skeptically. "Aren't you cold?" she asks, a non sequitur. He can tell by the way she says it that she already knows the answer; she's just looking for something to say, some way to make this new them not awkward.

He shakes his head, buoyed by the press of her fingers against his. "No, not really," he replies softly.

They're back in the TARDIS again when she says, "So, now what?"

He grins broadly, coordinates already tripping off his fingertips and finding their way across the console, pressing buttons, pulling levers. "Anywhere and everywhere," he replies. "With you."