A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points ...

FIC: Of Spectrums and Spoons [The Avengers]

atraphoenix — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 12:39:26 GMT

Title: Of Spectrums and Spoons
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Thor, Nick Fury and Maria Hill
Rating: G
Summary: Natasha had been taught to pretend – to make eye contact and to act and respond just like she was supposed to act and respond - from an early age.

Author's Note: Written for this prompt on avengerkink. Special thanks go to sasha_lilyrat for her encouragement, her proof reading skills and her general awesomeness. For more information on the spoon theory, visit this wonderful website.

It was Bruce who noticed first, of course, but Tony was the next one to put the pieces together. That was partly because he was Tony Stark and he liked to keep a close eye on what was going on under his roof and partly because, as a child, it had been suggested that he was somewhere on the spectrum himself. He’d done his research at the time and, as an adult, he’d made sizable donations to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and been an outspoken critic of the ridiculous vaccination controversy. He’d once got into a heated argument – which he liked to think that he’d won, although Pepper had pointed out that it was impossible to have a logical debate with someone who was so hard headed and ignorant – with one of the board members from Autism Speaks at a party in Los Angeles. He was definitely not on Jenny McCarthy’s Christmas card list.

“I don’t care that Natasha’s autistic,” he griped, picking up a screwdriver to toss idly from hand to hand as he leaned against the laboratory bench. “I just want to know why she didn’t tell us.”

Bruce looked up from his microscope, removing his glasses with the long suffering sigh of someone who had realised that Tony Stark was up to something that would stop anyone else from getting any work done that day.

“Maybe because it’s nothing to do with us?”

“We’re supposed to be a team.”

“We are a team.” (If someone had told the Bruce of a year ago – the Bruce that had declared the Avengers Initiative to be a time bomb rather than a team – that he’d come to believe that wholeheartedly, he’d have laughed aloud.) “That doesn’t mean we have to tell each other everything.”

“We need to show her that we don’t think her autism makes her a liability.”

“As simple as that?”

Tony jabbed at him with the screwdriver. Bruce swatted it away with a roll of his eyes.

“Yes.”

“How?”

Tony shrugged.

“The plan’s still a work in progress.”

“Maybe you should talk to Clint. He’s known Natasha the longest.”

“Yeah, we should start there.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. Come on, jolly green. I’m calling a team meeting.”

***

It started with the perfume.

Five months after the battle against Loki and his Chitauri, and nearly two months after Jane Foster had completed the calculations required to open a permanent bridge between the Earth and Asgard, the Avengers had been rushed to Brazil for an urgent mission. They hadn’t had time to pack. They’d barely had a chance to prepare. They had been waiting for Fury’s helicopter to arrive when Bruce had noticed that this was having a negative effect on one member of the team in particular.

Natasha rarely relaxed. Given her profession, that was more than understandable. A relaxed assassin wouldn’t survive for long. This was different. She was anxious as well as typically tense. Bruce knew the difference. He was, after all, a bit of an expert on stress. He didn’t get a chance to ask what was wrong or how he could help, though. Before he could speak, Clint appeared, a travel sized bottle of perfume in his hand.

“I thought you might need this.”

He held out the bottle. In her eagerness to take it, Natasha all but snatched it out of his hand to dab a little on her throat and wrists. It wasn’t until much later that Bruce worked out that the perfume was an important part of her routine before missions. And that the positive and familiar scent kept her anchored in the potentially chaotic world of the battlefield.

***

He started to notice other things after that. It had been clear for a long time that Natasha didn’t speak unless she had something to say (and, sometimes, not even then). At first, Bruce had attributed her stoic silences to what she was rather than who she was. After all, assassins weren’t really known for being loquacious and she’d worked alone or with only Clint for company for as long as she’d been with SHIELD. She wasn’t used to being part of a group. She wasn’t used to having that many people to talk to. As the Avengers started to spend more time together both on and off duty, however, it became harder for Natasha to conceal the way that she occasionally went nonverbal. Or the way that she occasionally said a bit too much, even in inappropriate situations. (Nothing compared to Thor’s pronouncements or Tony’s antics, of course, but enough to attract Bruce’s attention now that he was keeping an eye out.) Or the way that she could occasionally be found with her knees hugged to her chest, rocking gently backwards and forwards. Or her rigid resistance to certain types of change.

She refused to be interrupted during her training routines and she was the last one of the group to move into the newly renovated Stark Tower. (Tony had done his best to make her rooms comfortable for her – “So, how many guns do you think you need to make a place homey?” – but she’d responded to his efforts with a cool indifference.) Maybe the change in accommodation had been one change too many. Maybe she had been unwilling to share a kitchen with a god who destroyed toasters on a weekly basis and ate an impossible amount of pop tarts. Bruce didn’t know and he certainly didn’t mind. The Black Widow was a consummate professional. None of the things that he’d picked up on inhibited her ability to do her job and do it well.

He wouldn’t have noticed anything if the Avengers hadn’t started to spend a lot of time together and that wouldn’t have happened if Natasha hadn’t started to trust her new team mates. They all needed time off, but Bruce got the impression that having so many people to spend her time off with was new to her. It had just been her and Clint for a long time. (Which was hardly surprising, given what he knew of her life before SHIELD. He didn’t know much about her past, but what he did known often felt like far too much.) She wasn’t sure how to act around her new friends, so she tried to act how she thought the world expected her to act.

It wasn’t going to be easy to prove that they were not only aware of her autism but accepting of it. And if they couldn’t, they wouldn’t be worthy of her trust.

***

It was with great trepidation that Clint made his way to the meeting that Tony had called, but, in the end, he didn’t have to make use of any of the threats that he’d had lined up in his head. The team had the utmost respect for Natasha. (They’d respected her from the moment that they’d met her – or, in Tony’s case, been introduced to Natasha instead of Natalie – even if they hadn’t necessarily liked her very much at first.) That wasn’t going to change just because there was a new label involved.

“So, that’s it?” he asked, looking from one to the other. “You don’t care?”

“Were we supposed to?” Bruce asked.

“I thought it would be more of an issue. So did Natasha.”

“Hey, why’s everyone looking at me?” Tony asked, “I’m not totally insensitive.”

(“That’s news to me,” Steve muttered, not quite under his breath.)

“Look, I don’t want to piss her off either,” Tony continued, not missing a beat, “And not just because I’m pretty sure she could kill me with her pinkie. We might be the world’s most dysfunctional family, but we’re still a family. It doesn’t matter where she is on the spectrum …”

“You know,” said Natasha from the doorway, “I’m pretty sure this is a conversation that I should have been included in.”

Her expression was so cold that even the normally unflappable Tony Stark hesitated when she stepped inside.

“Hey, Natasha. We were just …”

“I know what you were just discussing.”

“Tasha, it isn’t like that,” said Clint quickly, “They were just trying to work out how to let you know that they know.”

“Well, now I do.”

“It doesn’t change anything,” Tony continued, “We all know how good you are at what you do. The way you read people …”

“Which isn’t my ‘special skill’,” she interrupted, fixing Tony with a hard stare, “If that’s what you’re about to say. It’s my job. It’s something I’ve learned to do. And I’m good at it.”

To his credit, Tony looked suitably contrite.

“Point taken.”

“Look, Natasha,” said Bruce, speaking apologetically rather than defensively. “We weren’t having this meeting to try and decide what’s best for you. We just want to make sure you know that it isn’t going to be an issue.”

It was harder for her to stay angry at Bruce Banner than it was for her to stay angry at, for example, Tony Stark. He was so earnestly honest. He always tried to do the right thing. Not just because he wanted to atone for the damage that the Hulk caused, but because the alternative simply didn’t occur to him.

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” she said, eventually. “We’ll see if anything changes when we’re out in the field.

“It won’t.”

It was a promise. She wanted to believe him, but she’d been a professional liar for so long that she was used to thinking the worst of people.

“Like I said, we’ll see.”

The Black Widow left the meeting as quickly and as suddenly as she’d joined it.

***

“Well, that could have gone better,” said Tony, breaking the awkward silence that followed her departure.

“I can understand why Natasha didn’t say anything,” said Steve, eyeing Clint thoughtfully. He’d been surprisingly quick to grasp the concepts that Tony had wanted to discuss. It had turned out that Steve had passed an anti vaccination picket during one of his many trips exploring and reacquainting himself with New York. Given how sickly he’d been as a child, it wasn’t a surprise that he was a supporter of vaccination. Bruce also suspected that the ‘cure’ rhetoric that was endemic to the movement had reminded Captain America of some of the attitudes he’d seen in Germany. “But why didn’t you tell us? We’re a team.”

“It’s not my business, it’s hers. Besides, I didn’t know how you’d react. I mean, I was pretty ignorant until I took an arrow in the knee.”

“Wait, you play Skyrim?” Tony interjected, to blank looks from the rest of the group.

It was Bruce that tried to repair the conversation that Tony had derailed.

“Natasha shot you?”

“No, a rogue agent did. Tasha saved my life. There’s no one I’d rather have watching my back. I don’t give a damn what her medical records say.”

“Neither do we,” said Steve, firmly.

“I am glad we shall all rally to defend the Lady Romanoff’s honour,” said Thor, speaking for the first time in a low rumble. “Even though she has no need of our protection, that is what allies should do. I have only one question.”

“Which is?” asked Tony, speaking in the tone of someone who knew exactly what was coming next.

“What is this spectrum of which you speak?”

***

Bruce slipped away while Tony and Clint were using an old fashioned game of rock, paper, scissors – “Come on, Barton! That wasn’t fair. Best out of three?” – to decide who had to try and explain autism (and, by extension, neurodiversity and ableism) to a well meaning but thoroughly confused demigod. He came from a warrior culture and Bruce suspected that he’d have trouble understanding why anything less than a limb lost in battle would even be considered a disability. He’d manage it, though. Despite his ongoing battle with the toasters of Stark Tower, Thor was far from unintelligent and he had a good heart underneath all that muscle.

He found Natasha in the gym, sitting on one of the benches with her knees pulled to her chest, rocking gently back and forth.

“What happened?” she asked. She didn’t turn her head to look at Bruce when he sat down next to her. “I know Clint won’t have talked. Did Stark hack my medical records?”

“Actually, we worked it out.”

“Worked it out?” she repeated, fists clenching in anger.

He nodded.

“You don’t have to be angry because you didn’t … what? Act ‘normal’ enough to fool us?”

Her stony silence was an answer in itself.

“Look at the people you’re working with, Natasha. There’s Tony Stark, Captain America, one of the world’s best professional assassins and the god of thunder.”

“And you.”

“And me.” Bruce gave her a wry smile. “And together we protect the world from aliens and supervillains. What do any of us know about normal any more?”

***

From an early age, Natasha had been taught to pretend – to make eye contact and to act and respond just like she was supposed to act and respond – but, in the end, that wasn’t what she’d learned. She’d learned to play a thousand different roles. She’d learned to trick people into seeing exactly what they wanted to see and to use their foolishness and vulnerability to uncover exactly what her employers wanted to know.

As she got older, it became even easier. Not just because she’d had more time to learn how to read people but because she was beautiful, apparently. When her targets saw her beauty, they didn’t see anything else until it was far too late for them. The real Natasha – the girl who had once been Natalia Romanova and who had sat in silence while the other orphans in the Red Room wept and screamed, lining up her toys in the same way that she now lined up her weapons – and her habits remained largely unchanged. Everything that people thought they knew about her was a mask. An act. Until meeting Clint and joining SHIELD, she had never stayed in one place long enough for anyone to catch a glimpse of who she really was.

She’d saved Clint’s life on a bloody battlefield in Volgograd and, three months later, he’d disobeyed a direct order from his superiors in order to pay off his debt to her. He’d even encouraged them to offer her employment instead of a prison cell. It wasn’t an equal trade. She might have saved his life, but he’d given Natasha a life that she’d never had in the first place. She could fight by his side for a thousand years and never pay off that sort of debt.

That wouldn’t stop her from trying.

Somewhere along the difficult road from their first meeting to the Avengers Initiative, mutual respect had developed into a real friendship. SHIELD were the ones who had diagnosed something that she hadn’t realised needed a diagnosis, but that wasn’t the moment when everything had changed. It was only a label. Everything had changed when she’d let Clint in on the secrets of the routine that she always followed before a mission. (She’d followed it for as long as she could remember. Daily routines weren’t really an option for someone with her career, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t fond of routines in general.) Neither of them had commented on the intimacy of the moment – they never would – but they knew what it meant. It meant that she trusted him. It meant that she’d really let him in.

Despite her relative disinterest, Natasha had done her own research into autism after receiving her diagnosis. For every website that had struck a chord with her and every story that had been almost familiar, Natasha had found a stereotype or assumption that made her grit her teeth. On the whole, however, it didn’t bother her. The people who mattered weren’t that stupid and the people who were that stupid were usually marks on a mission. She never let them see anyone other than her assigned persona and she rarely saw them again when her business was concluded.

She could only think of one moment when ableist ignorance had made her snap. It was a relatively recent memory and, consequently, still raw. She’d been on edge since Clint’s disappearance and one of the few members of SHIELD to have read the contents of her file expressed surprise when it came to her concern for him. She’d reacted so quickly that Coulson and Fury hadn’t had a chance to reprimand him before she’d grabbed him by the throat.

(“Oh, I have emotions. Can you guess what this one is? This one is anger. My partner is missing. I’m autistic, not a robot. Of course I’m worried.”)

She had emotions and she understood emotions, even if she didn’t always enjoy them. The fear of losing Clint, the best friend that she’d never expected to have, had been more palpable and terrifying than any other fear that she’d ever felt.

***

Glancing over at Bruce, she saw that he was looking up at the ceiling instead of at her, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. The Avengers were the first people since Clint that she’d found herself caring about. She’d started to trust them, so she’d put up a mask to hide anything that might make them think less of her. That might lead to her losing them.

After a long pause, she finally replied.

“You’ve got a point,” she admitted.

Bruce turned his head, giving her a glimpse of his familiar self deprecating smile.

“It has been known to happen.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He gave her a softer, warmer sort of smile. “It’ll be ok, you know.”

“I know.”

One day, she’d probably believe that.

***

The Security Council were on the line again.

Nick Fury stepped away from the central console of the air ship and into a small side chamber that had been set up specifically for these calls. He hated these calls. Didn’t he have enough work to be getting on with?

Although, in theory, SHIELD worked for the council, Fury made sure that he kept a close eye on what the individual members were up to. Just in case. He knew, for example, that one of the esteemed members was having an affair with another. And he knew that they’d been reading the medical files of the individual Avengers very recently. Which was what this waste of time was going to be about.

“Director Fury. We’d like to know why we weren’t informed about …” He paused. It was the pause of someone who knew that he was about to say something offensive but was too ignorant to stop himself. “Agent Romanoff’s condition earlier.”

“That would be because it’s a non issue,” said Fury, implacably. The Avengers had put the pieces together a few days ago and, as Steve had so emphatically stated when Fury had asked if the new information was going to cause any trouble within the team, knowing the truth didn’t change ‘a damn thing’. “Romanoff is one of the finest agents we’ve got.”

(Besides, given the assorted dysfunctions of the rest of the team, Agent Romanoff was the least of his worries.)

“Nevertheless, the council thinks it would be a good idea to remove her from duty until we can be certain that she will not be a liability in the field.”

“She’s never been a liability before,” he pointed out, darkly. “And this is the same council that thought it would be a good idea to fire a nuclear weapon at a civilian population?”

He didn’t smile, but he felt a certain degree of satisfaction when they struggled to reply.

“Director Fury …”

“If you try and take her off the team,” he interrupted, “You’re going to have five extremely pissed off superheroes out for your blood. And you won’t like any of them when they’re angry, believe me.”

“This is your decision, Director. You will be held accountable for what happens next.”

“Nothing is going to happen. The Avengers are going to carry on doing what they do and you’re going to regret the day you tried to bring your bigotry into my organisation.”

“Your organisation?”

“Yes, my organisation. SHIELD is my organisation. The Avengers Initiative is my project. I put the team together and I’m proud of every single one of them.”

They blustered for a little longer, but Fury hadn’t given them much room to manoeuvre and they seemed eager for him to bring the discussion to an abrupt close. When he turned away from the wall of screens, he found Agent Hill waiting for him in the doorway to accompany him on the journey back to the deck.

“Proud of them, sir?”

“Hill, if you tell Stark I said that, I’ll make sure you’re on desk duty for the rest of your career.”

“Understood, sir.”

***

As soon as he’d understood the basics, a well meaning Thor had asked Clint if there was anything that he could do to make Natasha’s life easier. Clint’s response had been a vague shrug – “Why don’t you ask Tasha? She knows herself best.” – but, as usual, the demigod had not been deterred. Which was why he was currently sitting at the dining room with Clint, Natasha and the contents of the cutlery drawer.

The spoons were lined up in a row in front of him.

“And how many spoons will it cost me to prepare for a battle?”

“We’ll make it three,” said Natasha, removing them from the line.

“More if he wants to style his hair first,” called Tony from the doorway, waving at the trio as he passed on the way to the laboratory.

“Four,” amended Clint, taking away another spoon. “Which means you’ve only got six left for after the battle.”

“Five if you count the one you always keep in reserve.”

Thor furrowed his brow, regarding the spoons intently before looking back up at Natasha.

“Lady Romanoff, your comrades in arms will always be there to help you find an extra spoon when you have need of it.”

“I know,” she murmured.

As Clint squeezed her hand under the table and Thor gazed at her with guileless acceptance, Natasha realised that she was starting to believe that.

FIC: Our Own Fairy Tale [Disney]

atraphoenix — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 18:46:01 GMT

Title: Our Own Fairy Tale
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Disney [Beast and the Beast / Sleeping Beauty]
Characters: Belle/Briar Rose
Rating: PG
Summary: A real story doesn't have an ending.

Author's Note: Written for the 2011 queer_fest.

In a castle surrounded by a wall of vicious thorns lay a princess, cursed by a magic spell to sleep for a hundred years. It was said that only a kiss from her true love could break the spell and free her at last.

Many princes tried to slay the enchantress who had cast the spell and fight their way through the thorns to the sleeping maiden. They failed. The princess slept on, unaware of the bloody events unfolding outside and the steady passage of time, until, one day, a woman – claiming to have known the princess in their youth – travelled to the kingdom.
***

Briar Rose had the most beautiful hands that Belle had ever see. While the long hours that she spent helping her father in his workshop meant that her own fingers were habitually stained with ink or machine oil, Rose’s fingers were slender and pale and, despite the fact that she helped her aunts with every one of their many household chores, free from calluses and other commonplace signs of toil. She was perfect in every way – from her warm red smile to her cascade of golden curls – but it was her hands that Belle had noticed first and her hands that had continued to captivate Belle ever since.

Belle had been walking in the woods in search of a peaceful place – far from the whispers of her new neighbours, who were not sure how to react to the eccentric inventor and his peculiar daughter – to read her favourite book. Briar Rose had been walking in the woods to gather berries for her supper. Their paths crossed when Belle, nestled in the branches of a twisted old oak, dropped her book down to the ground. Before she had been able to climb down to retrieve, Rose had held it up to her.

For a moment, it had seemed as if the princess from her story had somehow stepped out of the pages to offer her assistance.

Fortunately, it did not take Belle long to discover that this princess was sweet and softly spoken, as different from the haughty creature of the fairy tale as it was possible to be. Despite the cloud of secrecy that surrounded Rose’s life – indeed, only her well meaning but stifling aunts and Belle’s beloved father knew of their friendship at all – they managed to build a relationship that went from strength to strength as the years passed. She provided Rose with a window into the world outside her forested home. Rose gave Belle that acceptance and understanding that the villagers would never manage.

Whenever Belle spent the night at her friend’s secluded cottage, they would share Rose’s narrow wooden bed while Flora, Fauna and Merryweather slumbered next door. Occasionally, those perfect fingers would move – idly, absently, affectionately – to her face, brushing a stray strand of hair off her cheek as they lay on the edge of slumber. In those blissful moments, Belle felt as if everything was truly right with the world.

Together, and without realising what they were doing it, the friends began to construct their own fairy tale.

***

She found the book by accident, more or loss. The shopkeeper – one of the few friends that Belle had in the city, a kindly old man who accepted her headstrong nature and encouraged her voracious appetite for fiction – seemed to have gone out of his way to keep it hidden from her. For no reason other than that, Belle’s curiosity had got the better of her. As soon as he disappeared into the back room to fetch something, she ducked beneath his desk to retrieve the mysterious volume. She’d return it as soon as she was finished with it, of course. She simply wanted to see why he’d swept it out of her way when she’d reached for it earlier.

With the book hidden in the folds of her cloak, Belle bid her friend farewell and returned home. Her father was working on a new project and, consequently, it wasn’t until an hour after sunset that she managed to retreat to her room and read.

***

She read until the candle burned out on her bedside table and, when the light finally flickered and died, stared up at dark ceiling, unable to sleep.

In her eighteen years of life, Belle had read more books than she could count. She had never read a book like this before. It described things that she had never thought – never dared to think – about. Things that should have occurred between a man and his wife but, in this volume, occurred between two women – one dark haired and one fair haired – in ways that left Belle blushing in the darkness.

The girl with the golden hair and the crimson lips reminded her inexorably of Briar Rose. They had the same hands. Imagining Rose touching herself in the same way as the woman in the book – touching her in the same way as the woman in the book touched her companion – made Belle’s heart race in her chest.

When sleep finally claimed her, it pulled her down into dreams of pale bodies entwined on silk sheets, of dark and light hair spilling together on a pillow, of lips and teeth and tongues and perfect fingers. It felt as if she was drowning, but when she woke, flushed and warm and trembling from the intensity of the dream, she realised that she’d rather drown than carry on treading water without feeling a thing.

***

“Belle? Belle, are you listening to me?”

Belle opened her eyes to find her friend frowning at her and, with an effort, offered her a smile in return. Her nights had been far from peaceful over the last few days and she’d dozed off while her friend braided her hair, soothed by Briar Rose’s familiar warmth and soft voice even as she was distracted by her hands.

“You were miles away.”

“Oh, I always am.”

It was well known that the inventor’s daughter spent most of her time with her head in the clouds, after all. It was always a book that put her there. That much hadn’t changed, at least.

“It’s more than that, Belle. Is something wrong?”

“I’m fine,” Belle protested, agitatedly combing the half finished plaits out of her hair with her fingers, “I haven’t been sleeping well, that’s all.”

“Bad dreams?”

“No!”

Unacceptable, perhaps, but certainly not bad. Never bad.

“Oh,” said Rose, with a knowing smile, “I understand. You were dreaming of your prince, weren’t you?”

“I don’t want a prince, Rose!” Belle protested, “You know that! I want adventure!”

Her books provided her with a window into worlds of adventure and excitement – worlds that were so much more than the world that she lived in – but the romance had always been secondary to her. She’d never wasted her hours day dreaming about Prince Charming. She never would.

(Besides, it wasn’t a prince that she wanted. It was a princess.)

“I want … “ she sighed, glancing around at the woods to the west and the village to the east. Her entire world and she could walk from one end of it to the other in less than a day. “I want more than this.”

“More than the life that our families have planned for us,” finished Rose. Belle met her friend’s eyes at last and saw her own feelings – her sense of isolation and her dreams and her hunger for adventure – reflected back at her. They were both trapped in lives that were far too small for them.

“We’ll find it,” she vowed, squeezing Rose’s hand. “I know we will.”

“Together?”

“Of course.”

***

She didn’t leave Briar Rose alone in her room for long – it didn’t take a great deal of time to make a pot of tea and carry it down to her father’s workshop, after all – but she left her alone for long enough. When Belle returned, her friend was sitting on her bed with the book – the book, which she had hidden so carefully beneath her mattress! – in her lap.

Her cheeks flushed crimson. She opened her mouth to offer up some desperate excuse, but the fear of losing her dearest friend made the words stick in her throat.

In the end, it was Briar Rose who broke the silence first.

“The woman with the dark hair reminds me of you,” she said guilelessly, gazing up Belle with wide eyes and a strange expression on her face.

As Rose crossed the room and placed a palm over her racing heart, Belle realised that they were going to drown together. They kissed and kissed, clinging together in a stormy sea and knowing, even if they didn’t dare to speak it, that they’d never be able to let go.

***

Armed with sword and shield, and with courage and love burning in her heart, the woman faced the enchantress and succeeded where so many others had failed.

With the witch dead, the woman was able to cut her way through the thorns until she reached the princess’s bedside. With one kiss – not from a prince, as had been foretold, but from a woman – the princess awoke and the spell was broken.
***

“It doesn’t have an ending, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

Belle propped herself up on her elbow to study Rose’s face. Her friend – lover, she corrected herself with silent delight – was lying on her stomach, reading the book by the early morning sunlight that managed to slip through the curtains. She reached out her free hand to trace the curve of her bare back, savouring her softness and warmth of her skin.

“The book,” Rose replied, rolling over until they were face to face and Belle’s hand rested on her hip. “It doesn’t seem to have an ending.”

“Good!” Belle exclaimed, illustrating her fervour with a kiss before replying more seriously. “Only stories have endings. Real life … carries on.”

“Of course. Who’d want an ending when they could carry on having adventures? That’s what you want, isn’t? Adventure?”

“And you.”

“You have me,” Rose smiled, nuzzling her cheek affectionately, “What about a happy ending? Surely you like the sound of that?”

“In a fairy tale, the happy ending always starts with a kiss from a prince.”

“We’ll write our own fairy tale.”

“Oh?” Belle raised an eyebrow, giving Briar Rose a challenging look, “How will it end?”

“Like all fairy tales, of course. ‘And they lived happily ever after’.”

***
And they lived happily ever after.

FIC: Pursuing Perfection [Black Swan]

atraphoenix — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 23:02:49 GMT

Title: Pursuing Perfection
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Black Swan
Characters: Nina Sayers/Lily, Erica Sayers and Thomas Leroy
Rating: R
Summary: Every dancer in the company wanted the lead. They hungered for it. They lived for it. Sometimes, they were even willing to die for it.

Author's Note: Written for the 2011 yuri_challenge.

The first few days in hospital passed in a blur of white coats and sharp needles and unforgiving machines. Nina watched it all from a distance. Her mother was at her side constantly, of course. Even when the nurses ushered her out of the room to give the patient a bit of space, she was there. Watching and waiting. Saying over and over again that she’d tried to warn her stubborn child. Blaming everyone but the woman who had stopped her daughter from building a life outside the ballet studio.

Thomas visited once or twice. He kissed her chastely on the cheek and left a bouquet of flowers on the bedside table when he departed. For a moment, Nina – drifting in and out of consciousness like a piece of flotsam in a turbulent sea – confused the rich red bloom of the flowers with the rich red bloom of blood on the White Swan’s dress. She cried out so loudly that she brought the doctors running and faded away into the shadows as they tried to work out how her wound had reopened.

They gave her new medication after that. New medication and harsher machines.

Her mother made sure that visitors were kept to a minimum.

***

Sometimes, she dreamed of Lily.

Unlike Nina, Lily hadn’t been born into the role of the Swan Queen. She’d simply fallen into it. She lived her life with a glorious and reckless abandon, taking what she wanted it when she wanted it and dismissing everything that wasn’t of interest. She was the Black Swan to the core, but she didn’t have enough innocence to dance as the White Swan.

That was what her mother said, talking in hushed whispers with the nurses on the other side of the glass door.

That was what the reviews said, in the newspapers that Nina slipped out of the bin in the nurse’s station.

That was what Nina had believed all along.

***

When Lily visited for the first time, it was outside normal visiting hours and Nina’s mother was asleep in a cheap plastic chair in the corridor. The hospital was dark and silent. She crept through the halls with a dancer’s preternatural grace, charming the grim faced guards and slipping under the usually sharp radar of the nurses.

“What are you doing here?”

Lily closed the door softly behind her, giving Nina a mischievous smile. The dim light filtering through from the hallway stretched her shadow and made wings of her slender arms as she slid off her coat.

“I came to see you.”

Nina sat up in bed, painfully aware of her tousled hair and unflattering hospital gown. Her face was pale and pinched from too much medication and too little sleep. Lily looked both radiant and wicked.

“It’s been a month since you danced the Swan Queen, you know,” Lily informed her. She sat down on the edge of the bed. The worn springs creaked. Her ebony wings formed a barrier that shut out the rest of the world. “We all miss you.”

A month. It could have been a life time ago.

“No, you don’t.” She hadn’t been popular in the company. She’d been too quiet, too isolated, too much of a perfectionist. “You were my understudy. With me out of the way, you get to dance the lead.”

Every dancer in the company wanted the lead. They hungered for it. They lived for it. Sometimes, they were even willing to die for it.

“Why would I want you out of the way?” Lily almost laughed. The laugh sounded alien – beautiful, but alien – in the clinical hospital room that had been Nina’s home since her first and final lead performance. “I watched you dancing, Nina. I’ve never seen anyone dance like that.”

“But you dance like that.”

“I want to dance like that. We all want to dance like that.”

“Thomas said that you’re more natural than I am …”

“You looked pretty natural when you were performing as the Black Swan. And, one day, you’ll get to do it again.”

Suddenly, Nina found herself wondering what would have happened if she had kissed Lily after her dance, rather than Thomas. Would she have kissed back? Would Lily have been seduced by the allure of the Black Swan – the freedom and power that had surged through Nina as she had finally given herself over to the dance – as well? She couldn’t ask. She couldn’t ask but she needed to know.

It was impossible to tell who moved first. It could have been her, gripping the other woman’s hand to attempt to prove that it wasn’t a dream, but it could just have easily been Lily herself. Her hand was far warmer than Nina’s cool skin. It was the first time she’d first anchored – felt real – since being brought to the hospital. Since her dance.

She wasn’t surprised when her mother burst into the room. She was the one who controlled Nina’s life and she would never willingly relinquish her hold on her daughter. In the ensuing chaos, she tried to draw back into herself, but Lily wouldn’t let go.

“I’ll be back soon,” she called over her shoulder, “I’ll visit you again soon.”

It took a long time for the feeling of her hand to fade. When Nina finally drifted off to sleep, that dangerously bright smile continued to burn behind her eyes.

***

Together, they would have given a performance that would have changed the world. Apart, they would never truly achieve perfection.

***

Nina was permitted to use the shower now, as long as she didn’t lock the door. (Her mother hadn’t wanted to listen to the nurses when they’d told her to remain outside, but they were forceful in a way that Nina would never manage and, in the end, she’d had no choice but to listen to them.)

She stood with her eyes closed as the water cascaded down her body, soaping her breasts.

No razors. No scissors. No mirrors. Just herself and sudden freedom.

One hand slid downwards, following the contours of her damp skin. She spread her fingers over the puckered scar tissue of her stomach – a war wound from a battle that she should never have fought – before allowing them to inch downwards. By the time she gathered up the courage – or had she simply relaxed enough to lose her inhibitions? – to press the heal of her hand between her legs, it was no longer her hand. It was Lily’s hand. Lily’s slender fingers caressing the innermost part of her. Lily’s devilish smile burning behind her eyelids.

“Nina?”

Her mother, sharp and anxious, calling from the other side of the door

“I’m all right!” Hastily, tangling herself in the shower curtain, Nina stumbled out of the shower and snatched up her towel. “I’ll be out soon.”

The room was empty again. She didn’t even have her reflection for company.

***

Nina had been waiting for Lily’s next visit with impatient eagerness, but she hadn’t realised how desperately she’d needed it until her mother tried to keep them apart.

This time, Lily played by the rules and arrived during ordinary visiting hours, but her mother confronted her in the hallway. It was only the swift actions of the nurse at Nina’s bedside – marching into the corridor with the blood pressure monitor still in her hand – that prevented an argument from erupting. Gently but firmly, she persuaded her mother to allow Lily into the room. More than that, she persuaded her to give them a little time to themselves.

They were left entirely alone and, for a horrible moment, Nina struggled to find a way to fill the silence.

Lily, on other hand, wandered around the room as if it belonged to her. When she reached the window, she pushed it open – as wide as it could go, which wasn’t very wide – and fished a cigarette and a lighter out of the pocket of her jeans.

“You must get bored in here,” she noted, taking a deep drag and leaning an elbow on the windowsill, “You don’t even have a TV.”

“I have some books,” she said, helplessly, but Lily was right. She was bored. Dancing had been her life. It had crafted her professional life and it had eaten up all of her free time and now she had nothing to fill the void. “And my CD player.”

“Which is covered in dust.” Lily stubbed out the cigarette on the windowsill before moving over to the bedside table and examining her meagre CD collection. “Besides, this isn’t the sort of music you listen to …”

“Its music you dance to,” Nina agreed, flushing a little when she realised how forcefully she’d spoken. The Black Swan was still inside her. She’d been buried, but she hadn’t been extinguished. She wanted to dance. She wanted to fly.

“So why don’t you?”

“I can’t dance any more.”

“Why? Because you’re not well enough?”

She wasn’t goading. It was a genuine question born out of genuine concern. Her tone made Nina’s heart beat a little harder in her chest.

“Because …” Because I’m afraid I’ll never feel that perfect again. “Because my mother won’t let me.”

“I thought you’d stopped listening to her,” Lily pointed out, reminding Nina inexorably of the night at the bar and the way their bodies had moved so seamlessly – so perfectly – together. Not just in her bed afterwards, but in the club. They’d danced like two parts of the same whole. She’d never felt so free. “Listening to her is what got you here in the first place.”

Nina perched on the edge of her narrow bed, pale and tense with worry, as Lily closed the distance between them and held out her hand.

“Dance with me.”

Dancing with Lily was the freest she had ever felt.

If she said no, she’d never have the chance to feel free again.

“Ok.”

***

And so they danced.

In the harsh hospital room, with the smell of antiseptic in the air and Nina’s hospital gown brushing against their skin, they danced.

The Black Swan and the White Swan.

Lily and Nina.

They danced and they were perfect.

She felt perfect.

FIC: All That Spirits Desire [Doctor Who]

atraphoenix — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:42:03 GMT

Title: All That Spirits Desire
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Braxiatel/Romana II, Leela/Narvin and Leela/Romana II
Rating: PG
Summary: “This is more than just having a place at your side, Romana! This is a place inside you.”

Author's Note: Written for janeturenne as part of the morepolitics Gallifreyathon.

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.
-- Khalil Gibran

Romana was acutely aware of the two hearts that were beating in her chest. Not that she hadn’t been aware of them before, of course. You had to be aware of your hearts if you were going to learn to stop them, after all. This was different. This was about feeling and instinct. She felt acutely aware of her body as she slipped silently through the Capitol. It was as frightening as it was intoxicating. How did Leela cope, feeling like this all the time? The erratic drumbeat in her chest – the whirlwind of living – was enough to make her dizzy.

Under the cover of darkness, Romana – and, in her dreams, she was only Romana, not the Madam President – made her way towards Braxiatel’s chambers. Time was running out for both of them. For the Time Lords themselves. War was coming to Gallifrey and, even if the did manage to defeat the Daleks, the cost would be high. If she didn’t act on her feelings – the feelings that were usually buried out of sight and out of mind – now, she would never be able to act on them.

There was no reason in the universe. Not really. No matter what the Time Lords liked to think. Everything ended. Even the Time Lords would have to end.

She didn’t knock. She didn’t remember learning the access code to his chambers, but she didn’t knock. Suddenly, Romana was standing inside Braxiatel’s room as her advisor – her friend – abandoned the book he was reading and turned to face her.

“Madam President?”

“You don’t have to call me that when we’re alone, Brax.”

The expression on his face made it clear that he was trying to work out why they were alone. She had never visited his chambers before. His office, yes, but that was different. This was his bedroom. A line had been crossed tonight.

She should have crossed it a long time ago.

“If you insist, Romana.” Braxiatel placed his book on his bedside table and got to his feet. “Is something wrong?”

“Apart from the constant threat of war?”

“Apart from that,” he acknowledged, with a smile that was wry and a little tired, “We should really used to living with war by now. Do have a seat, Romana.”

He meant the armchair, but Romana sat down on the edge of his bed without a second thought. There was no logic to her actions. She didn’t have a plan. She was operating on instinct and the strange look on Braxiatel’s face – he kept it well hidden, of course, but he could erase it entirely – told her that she should continue to trust them.

“Is there anything in particular you’d like to talk about?”

“I didn’t come here to talk, Braxiatel.” Instinct told her to stand up again, so that was what she did. “I talk enough during the day. I am the President of the High Council of the Time Lords.”

She closed the distance between them as she spoke. Her hand was on his chest and she could feel his hearts beating beneath her palm. He might have looked calm, but they were starting to race. She was certain of it.

“I am always talking,” she continued in a bitter tone, “I talk and people listen and sometimes I just … I just …”

“You just what, Romana?”

He sounded a little hoarse. Their lips were only millimetres apart.

“I just want to feel.”

***

It had been a long time since Leela had taken the time to watch the suns setting over the Capitol. These were dark days for Gallifrey and, consequently, she rarely left Romana’s side. The Madam President certainly didn’t have time to relax beneath the burnt orange sky.

Neither did Narvin, which meant that this could only be a dream. He should have been hunched over his desk or participating in clandestine meetings under the cover of darkness, not joining her on deserted rooftops.

There had been a time when she had hated Narvin with every fibre of her being and she was certain that he had felt the same way about her. Now they were allies. Friends, even, for all that he frustrated her. If, in the dark days following Andred’s death, she had told herself that she would seek out Narvin in her dreams, she would have assumed that it was because she wanted to drive a knife into his throat. She didn’t. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to tease him and bicker with him and, sometimes, simply be with him.

She might have had Romana’s logic in these dreams, but no amount of logic would be able to make sense of her feelings.

“I’m glad to see that the presidential bodyguard is working hard,” Narvin remarked scathingly, stepping up next to her in those ridiculous CIA robes that he refused to be parted from.

“We all need to relax, Narvin. That is why so many politicians visit Davidia.”

“You are not a politician.”

“Neither are you, but you must agree with me. Why else who you be here, watching the setting suns?”

“Why, Leela, that was almost logical.” She didn’t need to turn her head to see the infuriating half smile on his face. She could imagine it well enough. “You don’t sound like your …”

“Like my usual savage self?” she interrupted sharply, “That is because I am not. It is happening again.”

“What? What is happening again?”

Was that concern that she heard in his voice?

“I am not the stupid savage you believe me to be.”

It was not an answer to his question, but it needed to be said.

“It has been a long time since I thought of you as nothing more than a stupid savage, Leela …”

“I know.” He would never apologise, but that comment was enough to make Leela’s lips curve into a smile. “I have seen the way you look at me, Narvin. As if you can’t decide if you want to kiss me or kill me.”

This time, she could not resist turning to see the flustered expression on his face. She felt perfectly calm. Her emotions were under her control and the situation would have been considerably more dangerous if her heart had been leading her head. In her dreams, it was always the other way around. She dared to say things that she would never have been able to voice in the real world, because she knew exactly how to handle Narvin and exactly how to push him in the direction she wanted.

“Leela!” he exclaimed, blanching, “You should show that neither of those options are …”

“Viable? Proper? Acceptable for a Time Lord?” She continued without giving him a chance to answer. “I told you, Narvin. I am not a savage. This is not some … some foolish impulse. I am in control. I know what I want and I know what you want. It would not be logical to ignore it.”

***

“You have been dreaming again,” said Leela, sitting down on the edge of Romana’s bed and giving the other woman an appraising look.

Romana seldom used her bed – a Time Lord rarely needed to sleep, after all – and, whenever she slept, her bodyguard remained awake. It was not unusual for her to wake up and find Leela prowling the room as she listened, as tense as a coiled spring, for the arrival of some unknown foe. The night before, she had retired to her bed without mentioning her exhaustion, hoping to spare her friend the trouble of a patrol that would ultimately be fruitless. (If an enemy managed to penetrate this far into the Capitol, then Gallifrey – and her Madam President – was already lost.)

“How could you tell?”

“Because I have been dreaming again.”

“Really?” Romana sat up, smoothing her tousled blonde hair with one hand. She felt oddly exposed without the heavy robes of office that she had worn for so long, but, if she couldn’t relax when she was with Leela, when could she relax? “What did you dream of this time?”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said, a little too sharply.

That meant that she had been dreaming of Narvin again. Once again, Romana found herself wondering if the dreams merely exposed previously hidden parts of themselves. Their hidden desires, perhaps? There was a chance that, on an entirely subconscious level, Leela displayed uncharacteristic – and decidedly Time Lord – logic in order to try and attract the coordinator with whom she so often verbally sparred. (There was a chance that she dreamed of acting in the opposite way – of acting purely on instinct and primal feeling – in order to confront her feelings for Braxiatel.)

“I thought these dreams would stop, Romana. You said they would stop!”

“I thought they would.” In fact, the strange dreams that had plagued them since their experience in the sensory tanks – an unexpected side effect of the bond they’d shared in the dreams created by ‘the broken man’ – shouldn’t have been able to happen at all. The Time Lords had mental defences that had evolved to stop this kind of thing. “It seems that everything we’ve been through since leaving Davidia has only bound us closer together.”

“I’m sorry, Romana.”

“Why? I told you, Leela, you will always have a place with me.”

“This is more than just having a place at your side, Romana ...” Leela paused. It took a great deal to fluster the warrior, but the strange intimacy of their current situation had pushed her to her limits. “This is … this is inside you.”

“You have that as well,” Romana reminded her with a soft smile, touching her chest to indicate the hearts that were beating inside.

“That is sentimental,” said Leela, laughing a little.

“It must be one of the after effects of the dream.”

“The Sevateem would call it something simpler. They could call it love.”

It was Romana’s turn to laugh now, shaking her head. The expression on Leela’s face was both exasperating and endearing and, unthinkingly, she leaned forward to shatter her uncertain frown with a soft kiss.

Romana halted the kiss before their lips could meet.

She was the President of the High Council of the Time Lords. She couldn’t afford to fall in love with anyone. Certainly not with her alien bodyguard. Certainly not with the Cardinal who had once been her tutor. It would have been a disastrous political move and, with the threat posed by the Daleks growing by the day, Gallifrey needed her now more than ever. She couldn’t afford to throw her position away.

In her dreams, the wild woman who both was and wasn’t her never failed to find her freedom. In the harsh light of the reality and the twin suns of her home planet, her own freedom would have to wait until Gallifrey was truly free.

“Our lives have never been simple, Leela.”

FIC: The End Is Where We Start From [Doctor Who]

atraphoenix — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 22:31:22 GMT

Title: The End Is Where We Start From
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: River Song/Romana II and Amy Pond
Rating: PG
Summary: The con artist, the politician and the end of the world.

Author's Note: Written for the 2010 yuri_challenge.

River Song was, among other things, a thief and a conwoman, but it was her association with Mephistopheles Arkadian that worried Romana.

The war had created niches for a large number of unscrupulous opportunists. They were unable to gain access to the Capitol, for the most part, but many of them had set up shop in the outlands. The majority made a modest sum by supplying the frightened population of Gallifrey with crude defensive shields and antiquated particle suppressors. Others put lives at risk by flooding the market with unsafe and untested weapons prototypes. Prototypes that were often – though Romana couldn’t prove it, unfortunately – provided by Arkadian’s many contacts.

Although the members of the High Council did their best to keep Gallifrey’s failings hidden, the truth was that they simply didn’t have the manpower required to stop the arms dealers. Every available man, woman and time tot had been thrown unto the fight against the Daleks.

Still, Romana knew Arkadian and she knew that he wouldn’t have sent anyone, least of all the notorious River Song, into the Citadel without a very good reason for taking the risk. He had probably ‘acquired’ something of unusual value. Something that the High President of a war torn Gallifrey would be willing to pay an impressive sum for.

(The unpleasant truth of the matter was that she would pay for it. She’d done it before. They hadn’t lost the war yet, but they’d lost a great many battles. Polymos, Elysium, Tsan, Orion, the home world of the Monan Host, Heydra … even Arcadia, now. She simply couldn’t afford to turn him down.)

Romana didn’t look up from her book when River entered the room. Instead, she turned the page and marked her place before giving the human any attention at all. Arkadian’s agent held all the cards, yes, but Romana was a politician. She was very good at appearing to hold cards that she had never even seen.

“My sources tell me that you have something that might be of use to me,” she said, eventually, giving River an appraising look.

She knew the woman by reputation – she was intelligent and opportunistic, with a finger in every proverbial pie – but this was the first time that she’d had the dubious pleasure of meeting her in person. River was dressed in the finest 51st century fashions and every bit as elegant as Romana had expected, though her expression was somewhat softer than anticipated. She looked a little … weary, in a way. Certainly not like a con artist, which was probably why she was so good at being one.

“I do. In a way.”

“Would you care to elaborate?”

“I want to help.”

“I’m sure you do!” exclaimed Romana with a burst of mirthless laughter, but River shook her head in response.

“You don’t understand. I’m not here to sell Arkadian’s toys.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I want to fight for the Time Lords.”

“You’re many things, River Song, but I hadn’t taken you for a mercenary.”

The silence that followed seemed to stretch on for an eternity. For a moment, Romana could hear nothing but River’s breathing and the sound of distant footsteps.

“I was at Arcadia.”

Of course. Arcadia.

Arcadia had changed everything. The Nekkistani fleet had been swallowed up in smoke and flames. The Sunari and Virgoan forces had been decimated. People had died in their thousands and, in the centre of it all, the Daleks had marched on, their war cry echoing through the stars. After that defeat, even the most stalwart of Time Lords had been forced to accept that their race was not invulnerable.

“And now you understand why we have to stamp out the Daleks?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, you can start by halting your practice of charging extortionate prices for basic equipment. You know as well as I do that the money could be better spent elsewhere.”

At that, River smiled. For a moment, she looked every inch the charismatic criminal that Romana had anticipated.

“Oh, Madam President,” she purred, “That would be too easy.”

***

Less than a week later, the CIA carried out a successful raid on Arkadian’s main base of operations. Before the illustrious criminal knew what was happening, Narvin and his operatives had swept in and out of the solar system, taking a large number of highly specialised and incredibly expensive pieces of technology with them when they left. It wasn’t elegant and it certainly wasn’t honourable, but it had saved lives. In the grand scheme of things, that was all that mattered.

(That and the fact that River’s information had been both freely given and perfect to the last detail.)

Of course, the Doctor didn’t agree. With time and patience and a few modifications, the weapons they’d recovered would make the de-mat gun pale into insignificance. Her friend might have been a general, but he didn’t approve of war.

Inwardly seething, Romana crossed the Citadel and made her way towards the comforting solitude of the Presidential Suite. She might have agreed with the Doctor once, but the war had forced her to become a pragmatist. The president of a race on the brink of extinction couldn’t afford to be anything else. He should have realised that!

“Who was he?”

It was River, looking cheerful and mischievous, her intelligent eyes hidden behind a pair of dark glasses.

“I hope you haven’t been spying on me,” Romana replied, coolly.

“I was just curious,” she said, falling into step beside the president. “It looked like a rather serious argument.”

“It was a discussion, actually,” she corrected. A discussion that had devolved into an argument. “How did you get past the guards?”

“By asking nicely.”

“If you’ve drugged them …”

“Romana! I’m hurt. We’re allies now.”

“No. We’re simply on the same side at the moment.”

“Very cynical.”

“I prefer ‘realistic’.”

They’d reached the door of Romana’s suite. River was still smiling.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in for a drink?”

***

The war was over, but Romana’s role in it was not.

The former president paused, briefly, to glance up on the familiar orange sky. She could see the outline of the Dalek ships that were waiting on the other side of the failing transduction barriers, but she had no time to lose and she certainly had no time to mourn. The Time Lords had always had a bit too much time on their hands, but now, at the end of everything, there wasn’t quite enough.

Rassilon controlled the High Council, but Romana and her allies had been preparing for such an eventuality since his resurrection. The Moment was ready and waiting. In a matter of minutes, the time lock would be activated and the war – the war and the desperate races that had fought in it – would be cut off forever. It was the only way to defeat the Daleks.

“Romana!”

She’d risked a great deal to leave her base in search of River but, somehow, the human had managed to find her first. Really, she shouldn’t have been surprised.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she chastised, though her hearts weren’t in and River rarely listened to her remonstrations.

“I had to find out what was going on. The allies are in chaos …”

“So is Gallifrey. The war’s over. The Dalek Emperor has taken control of the Cruciform and it’s only a matter of time before they break through the transduction barriers.”

“Oh my god …”

Romana took the other woman’s hand, attempting to get River to give her her full attention.

“River, I need you to listen to me,” said Romana urgently, “You have to leave Gallifrey.”

“Are you leaving?”

“My place is here.”

“You’ve got a plan?”

For the first time in a long time, Romana managed to smile.

“Of course.”

“Tell me what to do.”

She trusted her. They’d been enemies once, but they’d been thrown together by the war and, somewhere along the line, a temporary allegiance had developed into a friendship. Romana couldn’t pinpoint precisely when it happened, but she was very glad – now more than ever – that it had.

“Leave,” she said, tapping River’s vortex manipulator. Crude technology, but it would suffice. “If you don’t transport in the next fifteen microspans, you’re going to be trapped here.”

River gave her a questioning glance and, when Romana tried to let go of her hand, held on tight.

“We’ve constructed a time lock to isolate the war from time and space. When it’s activated, no one will be able to get in or out. Not a single Time Lord, Dalek or freelancing criminal.”

“Then what? Are you telling me you’re going to stay inside? All of you?”

“It’s the only way to end the war. If we simply destroy the Daleks, they’ll find a way to travel back in time and save themselves.”

“And the Time Lords?”

“I’ve taken the steps to ensure the future of my race.” She couldn’t - wouldn’t - elaborate. Her plan was far from perfect, but, at the moment, it was the only chance the Time Lords had. “I need you to trust me, River.”

“I trust you.”

Her skin was warm. Her cheeks were flushed. When she leaned forward and brushed her lips to Romana’s, the Time Lord managed to forget everything – the war and the Daleks and her many political enemies – for a few blissful seconds. There wasn’t enough time for everything she wanted to say, but it probably didn’t matter. The expression on her face would have told River more than enough.

“I won’t forget you,” she vowed, fierce and beautiful and so very human. With one hand, Romana tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. With the other, she activated the vortex manipulator.

“I rather hope you do,” she said, taking a step back as River started to fade away, “It would make things much simpler for you.”

Although she couldn’t hear River’s answer, she could guess what the other woman had said.

Who wants ‘simplicity’?

***

“This one’s good.”

Amy turned and glanced at the picture that River was holding up, grinning in a way that was both embarrassed and defiant. The crayoned Amy and crayoned Doctor smiled back at her.

“Stop it!” she laughed, “You’re supposed to be helping me pack, remember?”

“And I’ve already told you,” said River, turning back to the stack of drawings on Amy’s dressing table, “Space Vegas doesn’t have a dress code.”

“Is it like Earth Vegas?” Amy asked, pulling a skirt out of the wardrobe and holding it critically against herself before tossing it clumsily back inside.

“Bright, noisy and the perfect place to gamble? Yes.”

“We should take in a show,” Amy enthused, rooting through her jewellery box and sending bits and pieces scattering across the bed. “The Doctor was talking about an Elvis impersonator …”

“No, he’s not an impersonator,” River corrected, flicking through the drawings once more, “I don’t think he felt appreciated on Earth …”

She stopped, grabbing a painting so hard that the edge of the paper crumpled beneath her fingers.

“River? What is?”

In many ways, River’s life had begun after the fall of Gallifrey. Despite the money that she could have made in the subsequent scramble for temporal technology, she’d chosen to study archaeology at Mars’ most prominent university instead. (According to her lecturers, her dissertation – a piece on the ruins of Arcadia – had been “remarkably insightful”.) It had been a long time since she’d dreamed of the orange skies and silver trees that Amy’s childhood self had drawn, but the robed figure at the edge of the scene reminded her inexorably of someone who was never far from her mind.

“Why did you draw this?”

“That?” Amy shrugged the question aside, turning back to her jewellery box. “I think I saw it in a dream.”

“I know the feeling.”

***

The universe poured into Amy’s head through the crack in her bedroom wall. Sometimes, she found herself remembering a life she’d never lived. There was a key scattered across time and space and a Time Lord who borrowed the face of a princess and metal monsters and, again and again, a planet with two suns and deep red grass.

It was always came back to that planet. That planet and that key.

The pieces had slotted into place. Amy simply needed to remember how to open the lock.

FIC: The Doomed Ship Comment Ficathon

atraphoenix — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 17:11:41 GMT

Angel the Series: Drusilla/Spike

It wasn’t a very good poem. Drusilla knew poetry – she read it in the stars and wrote it on the faces of her prettiest victims – and her sweet little Spike, who had a great many talents, didn’t know how to string the words together properly. They weren’t beads or jewels or scraps of cloth. You put them together to get them to tell a story, not because they made pretty patterns.

Still, it was the end of the world. He was allowed to spend his last hours however he wanted.

(She’d seen it, you see. The circle – that vicious black circle – was tightening like a noose around the Angel Beast and his followers. Sooner rather than later, the city of the angels would sink to meet the devils.)

“My soul is wrath in harsh repose,” he said. He sounded terribly young. Strange, wasn’t it, how the years peeled away as he got older? She’d done her best to stamp William out of him, but the Slayer had rekindled the goodness. A waste of all his wickedness. “Midnight descends in raven coloured clothes, but soft, behold! A sunlight beam, cutting a swath of glittering gleam.”

Drusilla yawned widely, looking away from Spike to survey the audience in a cold, calculating fashion. Who was he thinking of? Not her. She was the moon, not the sun. She was blackness and ashes. The Slayer … but, no, he’d written this poem long before he’d met her.

This wasn’t for anyone. Her boy was singing for himself.

“My heart expands, ‘tis grown a bulge in it …”

She remembered when his heart had belonged to her. A long time ago and no time at all. They’d been pulled apart by forces beyond their control – not just the Slayer, but the threads of a destiny she wouldn’t have chosen for him – but he was still hers. Still hers in all the ways that mattered, whether he knew it or not.

“… inspired by your beauty effulgent.”

There was nothing but silence.

Moving swiftly and silently, Drusilla gripped the nearest audience member – a funny little man in a heavy leather jacket – by the throat. Her nails were already dark red. You could barely see the threads of crimson that spilled down his skin when she started to squeeze.

“If you don’t cheer for my boy,” she whispered, “I’ll have to rip your throat out.”

They all started to clap after that. Spike beamed with pride and Drusilla felt her heart – or what was left of it, at least – jump with a love she’d never really manage to forget.

Carmilla: Laura/Carmilla

With a gasp, Laura dropped the scissors.

The blood made a crimson stain on the bright white linen. When she looked from the cut on her palm to the spreading mark on the sheet, she saw Carmilla’s lips curving into a smile.

“Oh!” exclaimed Madame Perrodon, hurrying forward and shaking her out of her reverie by catching her wrist, “You careless girl!”

She opened her mouth to apologise, but, as usual, her words were brushed aside. They – Madame Perrodon, Mademoiselle de la Fontaine, even her father – had been handling her with kid gloves since Carmilla’s death. As if the slightest pressure would make her shatter.

They didn’t realise that she’d shattered as soon as she’d lost Carmilla. Her dearest friend and most bitter enemy. The other half of her.

When her governess scuttled out of the room to fetch water and a bandage, Laura picked up the sheet and, with a furtive glance over her shoulder, pressed her lips to the bloody mark.

She hadn’t wept for her. She never would. Tears, after all, were not enough to bring her back.

Robin Hood: Guy of Gisborne/Marian

She had infected him. He couldn’t sleep for thinking about her. He struggled to concentrate on anything else when she was in the room and, when she wasn’t, he found himself wondering – foolishly, desperately, inexorably – where she was and what she was doing.

It was a disease, yes, but it was a disease without a cure. He couldn’t cut Marian out of his life when she was the only thing that gave it some semblance of meaning. No surgeon would be able to come up with a remedy for an ailment that an impossibly irrational part of him savoured. No. All he could do was live his life, hoping against hope that, one day, she would look at him as he looked at her.

Guy of Gisborne – a lord without any land, with nothing but his own pride and determination to sustain him – had always known that love was a weakness. He’d seen far too many fall victim to it, falling in love and falling from grace and acting as if giving up the world – the power and the wealth that could have been theirs – had been worth it.

These days, however, he didn’t want a world that didn’t have Marian in it.

Did she know how she had corrupted him? Did she view him with contempt, with pity? Her eyes – such beautiful eyes! – gave nothing away and her demeanour revealed even less.

He was not a patient man.

She pushed him and pushed him but, in the end, she was the one who broke first.

She kissed him. Marian kissed him and Guy kissed her back with all the fervour of a man who had spent months dreaming of a moment that might not have come at all.

Oh, he could read so much in that kiss. More than he’d ever been able to read before.

Marian loved him. No one could have pretended such … such passion.

She was both disease and cure. It didn’t matter. She could run from him – she could hide herself in a nunnery if she truly wanted to – but she couldn’t run from her feelings. One day, she’d come home.

The Demonata: Dervish Grady/Meera Flame

As far as Meera Flame was concerned, fear was an alien sensation as well as an unwelcome one. She was a powerful mage and a skilled demon hunter and she was not frightened of anything.

Except losing Dervish.

Except losing Dervish.

She curled up in the chair next to his hospital bed, resting her head on her arms and drifting in and out of sleep as she listened to the uneven rattle of her old friend’s breathing. He was still sickly pale, but his cheeks had regained a little of their old colour. When Dervish finally spoke, Meera could hear the smile – his bright, beautiful smile – in his voice.

“Have you been here all night?”

“All day,” she corrected, sitting up and pulling her chair closer to the bed, “The sun has only just set.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. How are you feeling?”

“Tired.”

Gently, she leaned forward to brush his hair – his greying and unruly hair – out of his face.

“You had a heart attack,” she reminded him.

“I know.”

There was a pause that neither of them knew how to fill. In the end, Dervish was the one who spoke.

“I don’t think we could win this war.”

For a moment or two, she simply stared at him.

“No.” She’d faced demons and monsters, but she wasn’t prepared to see Dervish – not Dervish Grady, the hero of the Disciples and the man who had changed her world forever – surrender. Not here. Not now. “Don’t you dare …”

“I’m an old man, Meera.”

“Rubbish! You’re the best warrior I know. And you don’t give up. You’ve never given up. Don’t even think about starting now. Grubbs needs you. I … I need you.”

Her confession was followed by an entirely different sort of silence.

Slowly, carefully, Dervish reached out to take her hand.

“What would I do without you?” he said, softly.

Meera smiled, leaning forward to press her lips to his temple. She’d loved Dervish for as long as she’d known him. The expression on his face made her think that her dreams - her dreams of a future together and the family he'd always been too frightened to let himself have - were closer than she'd ever imagined.

After all, when the war was over and the Shadow was defeated, everything would be different.

“You’ll never have to find out.”

Torchwood: Owen Harper/Toshiko Sato

As Owen watched, Tosh bent over the alien device on her desk and pushed her glasses up her nose. Her long dark hair had fallen forward to screen her face and he wanted – more than anything, more than he wanted a beer or a kebab or a proper night’s sleep – to step forward and brush it back.

It had taken him a long time to realise that Tosh was attractive. When they’d first started working together, Owen had been so intimidated by her quiet intelligence and computer expertise that he’d had difficultly thinking of her as female, yet alone an attractive female.

She made a half hearted attempt to tuck the stray strands behind her ears, biting her bottom lip in concentration.

Bollocks.

Why hadn’t be looked at her properly when he’d been alive?

Why had it taken something as … as bloody cliché as death to open his eyes?

“Are you all right? Owen?”

At least he’d been staring into the middle distance while thinking of her instead of staring at her.

“Yeah, I’m fine, Tosh.”

He wasn’t, of course. He hadn’t been fine since he’d died and she knew that better than anyone.

He could talk to Tosh. Really talk to her. He wasn’t the sort of person who liked talking about his feelings, but she was good at listening to the things that he didn’t say.

“I …”

She gave him an expectant look, her eyes so wide and innocent that it threatened to drive him crazy.

“I was wondering if you’d finished with the 3D scanner?”

“Oh, yes!” A little flustered and pleasantly pink cheeked, she held out the device. (He’d been lucky that it had actually been on her desk, really. But Owen Harper had always been lucky. That was why he was so good at lying.) “It’s fine. Take it.”

One day, he’d get up the courage to say what he really wanted to say to her.

“Thanks, Tosh.”

But not today.

FIC: The Storyteller [Doctor Who]

atraphoenix — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:47:14 GMT

Title: The Storyteller
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Leela/Romana II and Sarah Jane Smith
Rating: PG
Summary: Leela's stories begin with one Time Lord and end with another.

Author's Note: Another piece for the dw_femslash ficathon. This one was a pinch hit for doyle_sb4.

“I am going to tell you a story.”

“Tutor said that we shouldn’t listen to your stories, Leela. He said they were illogical.”

The speaker was small and fair haired, his wide eyes blinking up at Leela as he clutched his Roentgen blocks to his chest. They were so old, these Time Lord children. Far older than they should be. Their tutors heaped too much on their young shoulders and it was fortunate that they did not break before they were fully grown. Leela, who had learned the lessons of life around the fires of the Sevateem, couldn’t understand the way the people of Gallifrey tried to teach. Their methods were truly illogical.

“Even when they are true?”

“Are your stories true, Leela?”

“Why would I lie?”

The child probably had a great many answers to that, but, when he did not voice them, Leela continued.

“It is a story about a man …”

“A Time Lord? Or ..?”

“Or an alien?” Leela finished, raising an eyebrow, “You think everyone who is not like you is alien.”

The girl who had spoken flushed a little, but her gaze was steady and this earned her a slight nod of approval. She reminded Leela of Romana, although, these days, any Time Lord who was female and strong inevitably reminded the warrior of Romana. It was good – if somewhat surprising – to see that sort of strength here in the nursery, taking root long before the prejudices that would start to grow in the Academy.

“You’re not an alien, are you, Leela?” asked the boy with the disapproving tutor. He always listened eagerly to her tales, possessing a certain spirit of his own. It rang out from him as clearly as any bell, but, because it was too like Andred’s strength, Leela found it difficult to look at him closely. She had no desire to be reminded of her husband. Not now. His death had never been avenged, even if something – his spirit, perhaps – told her that she could kill and kill for the rest of her days and never truly fill the space he had left in her heart. She knew that she had to let him go, no matter how uneasily that reality settled in her blood.

“I have one heart beating in my chest, not two.”

She held out her wrist, allowing the boy to take her pulse – elementary, for a child who would soon be taught to stop his own hearts – and reveal her true origins.

“Isn’t that … inefficient?” he ventured.

“It suits me well enough. And my people.”

“Oh, yes, Leela! Tell us about the Sevateem!”

She wasn’t fond of the way they treated her people as an oddity. As if the tribe was another case study in one of their text books or a cautionary tale from their teachers. How could she make them understand using nothing but words? The Sevateem were far more than that. She was far more than that. It was about instinct. It was about the cool weight of her father’s knife in her hand as she hunted and the wind rippling through the trees. It was about the crackle of the fire and the stories of the old ones. Even Romana, who knew her best of all and held the parts of her heart that Andred’s memory had not claimed, fell short of true understanding. The Time Lords could only guess and their guesses would never be enough.

“No,” she said, firmly, “I will tell you a different story today. I will tell you about this man. His name was the Doctor …”

The children gasped.

“You knew the Doctor?”

“Does he really fly in a TARDIS with a broken chameleon circuit?”

“Is it true that President Romana used to travel with him?”

“Did he meet Omega?”

“Do you wish to tell the story?” she asked archly, but she was smiling. It was strange to see the children talking so enthusiastically about a man their elders treated with such contempt. The Doctor was usually as much of an ‘other’ as she was, despite the two hearts beating in his chest.

“No, Leela! I’m sorry. Will you tell us?”

“The Doctor travels through the stars. He says he is not lonely …”

“Is he lonely? I wouldn’t like travelling on my own.”

“You wouldn’t like to travel at all. You want to work in the archives when you grow up!”

“You want to work in the Chancellery Guard! You won’t get to travel either.”

“… and he has many friends who accompany him on his travels, so perhaps he is not,” Leela continued seamlessly, ignoring the brief interruption and silencing the children with a dark glance, “One of these friends is a woman. A Time Lord, like himself. She was as cold as ice when they first met, but her travels allowed her to thaw. She saw that life outside Gallifrey could be as beautiful as life in the Citadel …”

“Oh, yes! Alien planets! Will you tell us about alien planets, Leela?”

Leela wasn’t a natural storyteller. She had been too focused on becoming a warrior to pay much attention to the story weavers among the Sevateem. Their tales of adventures had thrilled her, yes, but she had not wanted to tell any of her own. She had been waiting for them to compose ballads about her. (Perhaps they did. She was too far away to hear them now.) Their art was not something she had wanted to learn until it was far too late.

She told stories not because storytelling was where her true passion lay, but because she wanted the children to learn about Romana and what Romana had done for Gallifrey. Her deeds deserved to be remembered.

(Leela could have told them about the Key to Time or E-Space or Shada or the Pandora creature, but the story, inevitably, started with the lonely Doctor and his old blue TARDIS.)

“Leela? The Madam President wishes to see you.”

And if Romana called, Leela would always - always - respond.

“I am coming, Annos.”

“But you haven’t finished your story!” cried an audience member. Soon, similar protests were springing up throughout the nursery. Leela rose to her feet with a smile tugging at her lips. Her animal skins looked as out of place here as they did in the Capitol, but that didn’t seem to matter to them. The children looked at her and saw ‘Leela’, not ‘the savage’. She hoped they would remember that, even if the steady passage of time eventually made them forget her stories.

“It does not have an ending yet.” The stories all started with the Doctor – even her own story started with the Doctor! – but they ended with Romana. Gallifrey’s saviour. Gallifrey’s future. “It is still being written.”

***

Romana was sitting at her desk when Leela arrived in the Presidential Suite. Her head was bent over the desk, blonde hair spilling down the back of her heavy crimson robes. She looked like a statue. Leela could easily imagine loyal subjects leaving offerings of fruit and grain at her feet. It was a shame that the Time Lords did not believe in such things. Romana often needed to be reminded of how loved – how needed – she was.

“Have you been visiting the nursery again, Leela?” she asked, without looking up.

Leela stepped closer before answering, peering over her friend’s shoulder at the papers on the desk. She made no attempt to cover them up and the gesture, although rather small, spoke of trust and friendship and a dozen other things that Leela couldn’t put into words.

It wasn’t as if she could read much of what was written there – Gallifreyan text was twisted and complicated and the words swirled across the page like oil in a pool of water – but Romana knew that she could read enough of it. Once her sight had been returned to her, Romana had taught her to read in the first place, finishing the lessons that Andred had started before his disappearance. She had not been a patient teacher, but Leela found that she occasionally missed the quiet moments they had spent together in the Presidential Suite. Their lessons, like so many other things, had been forgotten following the first wave of Dalek attacks.

“Yes. I like it there. The children do not judge me.”

“They’re young,” said Romana archly, “I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities for them to acquire the usual Time Lord prejudices.”

“No,” Leela argued, “I will not give them the chance. That is why I visit so often. I hope they will grow up to be like you.”

She had obviously said something right, although she did not know what. Romana actually smiled at the comment, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes and turning to face Leela for the first time.

“It could be worse, I suppose. We certainly can’t afford to have them all growing up like the Doctor. We don’t have enough ships to supply their rebellions.”

Leela nodded. It was a joke, but there was an edge to her words and that scraped most of the humour away. Unless you looked closely, it was impossible to tell that Gallifrey had recently – from the perspective of a Time Lord, at least – escaped from the bitter struggles of a civil war. Only the empty TARDIS bays and the ruined buildings on the fringes of the city told the true story. Romana was doing an excellent job of holding the High Council – and the rest of the planet, for that matter – together, but the effort of it was written on her face.

Gently, the warrior rested her hands on Romana’s shoulders, massaging the muscles in an attempt to draw the tension out. Inexorably, and with a soft sigh that thrilled Leela to the core, the Time Lord relaxed into her touch.

“You have not been sleeping,” Leela chastised. Romana didn’t like to be lectured, but Leela was a warrior. She was not frightened of the Time Lord’s scathing glances and sharp tongue. “You will not be able help anyone if you do not help yourself first.”

“I’m quite well, Leela. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I am your bodyguard,” said Leela firmly. She wouldn’t be satisfied with the excuses that Romana reserved for members of the High Council. They had no real meaning at all. They were just words, strung together until the listener allowed themselves to be deceived. “And I am your friend.”

“And that gives you the right to worry, I suppose?” Romana sighed again, in a very different tone. “Fine. A short break and nothing more.”

“Will you eat something?”

“You’re making me feel like a Time Tot, Leela.”

“The Time Tots are not as stubborn as you are.”

Somewhat reluctantly – although it was impossible to tell if she was unwilling to leave her papers or disinclined to step away from Leela’s touch – Romana stood up, moving across the room to take a seat in a cushioned armchair. Her robes made a soft sighing sound as they pooled around her legs, and, although they looked both uncomfortable and impractical, Leela found it difficult to picture her friend in anything else. The warrior wondered, sometimes, if Romana even had a body beneath the material, but she knew that such thoughts were foolish. When Romana stood silhouetted against a particularly bright light, her bodyguard could – and, when she knew that she was not being watched, did – trace the curves of graceful limbs with her new eyes.

“Your storytelling won’t be able to cure them of that, you know. All Time Lords are stubborn.”

“Stories are not cures. They are just … stories.”

The wide windows behind her provided a breathtaking view of snow capped mountains beyond the Citadel. Leela was inordinately pleased to discover that Romana’s eyes were fixed on her instead. There was a teasing smile on a mouth that was too often set in a frown.

“You’ll have to tell them to me one day.”

“They are still being written.”

Romana gave her a tired smile.

“One day, Leela. One day.”

***

“And so,” said Leela, turning her head to better count the steady beats of Romana’s hearts. “The Dog virus …”

“Dogma virus, Leela.”

“… the Dogma virus was no more. After many months of fear and suffering, the Time Lords were free. Gallifrey – Gallifrey, with it’s sky like fire and it’s deep red grass and the silver trees that shine when the suns set – was at peace.”

For a long time, Romana, combing her fingers wordlessly through Leela’s dark hair, remained silent. When she spoke, her voice was soft, but, beneath that, as heavy as a stone.

“It’s a beautiful story, Leela.”

Stories were just stories, but they had a power that was all their own.

The warrior – the President’s bodyguard and, since the tides of war had turned against the Time Lords, the President’s lover – rolled on to her side, propping herself up on an elbow to study Romana’s face.

“But?”

“But that’s all it is. A story. You know as well as I do that it wasn’t like that.”

No. It had not been like that. In order to stop the Dogma virus and save her people, Romana had been faced with impossible decisions and terrible choices. She had succeeded, in the end, but the costs of that success would haunt until her until the end of her lives.

“I know.”

“Then why in Rassilon’s name are you telling it to people?” asked Romana, with a laugh that was not quite a laugh.

“Because I am a storyteller. I don’t want to tell stories that tell the truth. I want to tell stories that give the people of Gallifrey hope. They need to remember what you have done.”

“So they won’t hold our defeat at the hands of the Daleks against me?”

(Leela was part of Romana’s closest circle of advisors and she knew that the fall of Arcadian had not been the first true Dalek victory of the war. But it was the first Dalek victory that Narvin, Braxiatel and the others had not been able to cover up. At last, the ordinary Time Lords – those who were not soldiers or medics or part of the inner workings of the Capitol – were beginning to realise that they might not win the fight they had been forced into. The knowledge had devastated them.)

“Daleks do not have hands.”

“You know what I mean, Leela.”

Romana pulled away from her human companion, sitting on the edge of the bed and wrapping herself in one of the sheets. A moment later, she turned her head – Leela had to fight the urge to reach forward and pull her down for a kiss – to give her bodyguard an inscrutable look.

“You’re the warrior, Leela. Tell me, do you think we can win this war?”

She was a better storyteller than she’d ever thought. The lies came easily and unhurriedly to her tongue. No one – not Romana, not the Doctor, not the finest storytellers of the Sevateem – could have guessed her true thoughts.

“Yes. We will win, Romana. I am sure of it.”

***

The woman was old – impossibly old, almost – but her bright blue eyes were sharp and intelligent. She regarded Sarah Jane, who had tracked her down after receiving a rather unusual tip off from a friend who worked at the hospital switchboard, with suspicion, but at least she hadn’t thrown her out of the room. Yet.

According to her friend, the woman had appeared out of nowhere. She was human – a myriad of tests had confirmed that much – but, to the astonishment of every specialist that came in to study her, she seemed to be ageing with impossible rapidity. The ambulance had driven a woman in her late twenties into the hospital after finding her wandering along a Cardiff roadside, but the woman sitting up to examine Sarah Jane was in her eighties at the very least.

It was remarkable.

It was impossible.

It was the sort of story that Sarah Jane Smith – freelancer alien hunter and journalist – loved to investigate.

“And what does a ‘journalist’ do?” she demanded.

“I … well, I write articles for newspapers,” Sarah Jane explained, “Stories about things that have happened.”

“You are a storyteller?”

“I suppose you could put it that way,” admitted Sarah Jane with a wry smile, but, before she could elaborate, the woman cut across her.

“Good. Her story should not die with me.”

“Die? Oh, you’re not dying. The doctors will soon find a way to treat what’s happening to you.”

“I am. Your saw bones do not understand. Without the … without the ‘biofields’ … the years I have lived will finally catch up with me.”

She sounded so calm. Her bravery shamed Sarah Jane into silence.

“You must tell her story for me.”

“Who’s story? And who am I supposed to tell it to?”

“To anyone who will listen. She sealed her planet off from time and space to save your world. To save every world.”

“Who?”

Leela smiled tiredly, fighting the desire to close her eyes and surrender to slumber. She could not sleep yet. She would not sleep.

On Gallifrey, she had used her stories to amuse and educate children or to calm frightened Time Lords. On Earth, the words would be a eulogy to a woman who deserved – no, who needed - to remembered.

“Her name,” said Leela, speaking with love and devotion, “Was Romana ...”

FIC: Down the Rabbit Hole [Doctor Who]

atraphoenix — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 18:48:30 GMT

Title: Down the Rabbit Hole
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Liz Shaw/River Song and the Third Doctor
Rating: PG
Summary: Liz found that she wanted to give River a chance that she didn’t necessarily deserve. It was unusual and irrational, but she’d felt the same way when she’d met the Doctor for the first time.

Author's Note: Written for birdsarecalling as part of the dw_femslash ficathon.

The narrow country road hadn’t been designed to facilitate large vehicles, but the Doctor had already cut down the expected journey time significantly and he had no intention of slowing down. Liz held on to her hat as they accelerated around corner after corner, sending clouds of sparrows fluttering out of the hedgerows. The last turn revealed the bustling, if hastily constructed, UNIT field station that they had been looking for.

Liz had spent a large part of the journey from HQ studying the report that had prompted them to travel to North Wales in the first place. Two days ago, a local farmer had reported seeing strange lights emanating from an archaeological site at the edge of his land. The first police car that had been sent to investigate had disappeared and the second police car had reported unusual noises beneath the ground. At that stage, UNIT had decided to take over.

A preliminary sweep had established that the site – a burial mound constructed before the Roman invasion – was, in fact, an alien spaceship of unknown origin. The Doctor had been given the task of identifying where the ship had come from, why it had arrived on Earth and, most importantly of all, what had activated it after so many centuries. Liz had travelled with the Time Lord to pass him any test tubes he might need.

She couldn’t pretend that she was happy with her role. In fact, she came very close to hating it. Liz didn’t have the Doctor’s knowledge of alien worlds, but she was a scientist in her own right. One day, she’d walk away from UNIT. For now, she was content – content enough, at least – to learn as much as she could while she still had the patience to learn it.

“Liz, my dear,” said the Time Lord briskly, climbing out of the car and holding out a hand for her to take, “I must find the Brigadier. Would you mind taking a look at the equipment in our laboratory?”

With a smile, and trying to fix her windswept hair with her free hand, Liz stepped daintily out of the vehicle. As long as he continued to refer to it as their laboratory, she wouldn’t protest.

“I’d be happy to.”

There was a woman – red haired and attractive, dressed in surprisingly stylish khaki fatigues – inside the makeshift laboratory when she arrived, picking up and discarding the bits and pieces of equipment that the UNIT soldiers had used to furnish the barn.

“Can I help you?” asked Liz acerbically.

The woman, who didn’t appear to have noticed her arrival, turned and smiled.

“I’m sure you can,” she said, looking her up and down, “But I was actually looking for the Doctor.”

Of course. They always were.

Rather pointedly, Liz – who regarded the woman with a critical eye and a hand on her hip – attempted to get her to answer the question that had been sidestepped earlier.

“Who are you?”

“Professor River Song. Archaeologist.”

“And the Brigadier assigned you to work with us?”

“Not exactly. I’m an old friend of the Doctor’s.”

“I didn’t realise he needed two people to pass him test tubes.”

She’d answered a little too quickly and far too sharply. River Song - Professor River Song, if she was to be believed – raised an eyebrow.

“You must be his assistant.”

“Elizabeth Shaw,” she replied, answering a question that hadn’t been voiced. “Doctor Elizabeth Shaw.”

“Very impressive. Can I call you Liz?”

“Certainly not.”

***

“Ooh, is that the Doctor?” murmured River, peering around the edge of the barn, “I’ve never met this incarnation before. I like it. Very … dapper.”

Liz had no idea what the other woman was talking about, but she’d followed her out of the laboratory in an apparently futile attempt to keep her out of trouble. Didn’t she realise that the site was a restricted area? Or had she decided that the rules didn’t apply to her?

“If you’re so eager to renew your friendship,” said Liz, as caustic as ever, “Why don’t you go and talk to him?”

River surveyed the Brigadier and his soldiers cautiously. For the hundredth time, Liz wondered why she hadn’t alerted the UNIT leader herself. It was the logical thing to do, after all, but there was something oddly charismatic about River Song. She wanted to hear what the apparent archaeologist had to say. She wanted to give her a chance that she didn’t necessarily deserve. It was unusual and irrational, but, well, she’d felt the same way when she’d met the Doctor for the first time, hadn’t she?

“No, I don’t think so. But I would like to see the burial mound.”

“How do you know about the burial mound?”

“I’m an archaeologist, remember?” River reminded her with a laugh, walking away from the Doctor and away from the soldiers. After a short pause, Liz – in her high boots and her short skirt – hurried after her. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Don’t tell me you’re searching for buried treasure!”

“Oh, Liz.” River’s smile – her smug, intelligent smile – reminded her very much of the Doctor’s. “That’s what I do.”

***

The burial mound – neatly marked out by pegs and ropes – was guarded by a small group of soldiers under the command of Sergeant Benton. River grabbed her arm and pulled Liz against her, behind the farmhouse and out of sight. She was reminded, inexorably, of the day she’d stolen the TARDIS key for the Doctor.

“I seem to have developed a habit of breaking the rules for complete strangers,” she remarked in a stage whisper, acutely aware of the way her body was pressed against River’s. She could feel the other woman’s heart beating steadily, despite their clandestine endeavours.

“Fun, isn’t it?” River retorted, her warm red lips a little too close to Liz’s ear.

“That really depends on what you’re planning to do next.”

“I’m planning to get into the burial mound.”

“Why?”

“Because the aliens didn’t just crash their ship, they disguised their ship.”

The penny dropped.

“That’s why you called it a burial mound. That’s what the aliens made it into.”

“Exactly. I’m writing a paper on the habits of this particular species and I was hoping to get a closer look at their work.”

“Illegally.”

“If necessary.”

“Your students must be very proud.”

“And yet you’re still helping me.”

“I must be mad.”

“We’re all mad here,” River said, with a grin like the proverbial Cheshire Cat. “Tell me, do you know why a raven’s like a writing desk?”

“Stop being so ridiculous,” said Liz, though ignoring her was easier said than done. River had such an indomitable presence. When she turned around to search for another entrance to the mound, Liz followed her without giving it much thought. She stepped over rabbit hole after rabbit hole in the farmer’s field, her heels sinking into the mud, and she didn’t realise that something was wrong until it was too late.

There were no strange noises or unusual lights. The rabbit hole simply opened up and swallowed them both. Too shocked to scream, Liz tumbled down into the darkness with River at her side.

***

They landed on the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. Liz managed to disengage herself first, pulling herself to her feet and dusting the soil off her skirt. The narrow tunnel – it looked like a larger version of the rabbit hole they’d tumbled down – was dimly illuminated by electrical lighting, but there was no sign of the sun.

“Where are we?”

“I think we’ve found our way into the burial mound.”

Liz put her hands on her hips, frowning at her companion.

“Did you know this was going to happen?”

“No,” River admitted. “But it was useful, wasn’t it?”

She reached out to tuck a piece of hair behind Liz’s ear. The gesture was so natural and so tender that her heart began to hammer uncomfortably in her chest. (Surely River would be able to hear it? The tunnel was terribly silent ...)

Before she could speak, River grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back against the wall. The tunnel was not as quiet as Liz had assumed. In the distance, she could hear the sound of marching feet and the murmur of indecipherable voices.

“I don’t think that’s Sergeant Benton’s men,” she murmured.

“They’re guards,” River replied, “They were put into stasis when the ship crashed on Earth. Your UNIT soldiers must have woken them up.”

“They’re not my UNIT soldiers. And they’re only here because a police car disappeared.”

“Then maybe the farmer woke them up. It doesn’t matter.” River’s smile – River’s Cheshire Cat smile – was brightly visible in the half light. “We can disable them.”

Before Liz could ask what she meant by that, the sound of footsteps grew nearer. There was nowhere to run, but the guards were only metres away. Cold fear – something that she hadn’t truly felt since she’d been kidnapped by Reegan – blossomed in her chest, but River stayed impossibly calm. She grabbed Liz’s arm with one hand, pressing her palm to the leather strap she wore around her wrist. There was a sharp pain in her head and a loud rushing sound in her ears, but, when it cleared, the guards were … gone? Impossible!

“What did you do?” exclaimed Liz, snatching her arm back. The tunnel – the same tunnel they’d been standing in before – was still and silent once more. River gave her a smirk that suggested that Liz was supposed to be very impressed by this turn of events.

“I moved us ten minutes into the future,” she explained, “The guards are gone.”

“Are you telling me that that device allows you to travel through time?”

“Yes, I am. And yes, it does.”

“A time travelling archaeologist?” Liz remarked, raising an eyebrow. “Doesn’t that rather defeat the point?”

River laughed.

“No wonder the Doctor likes you.”

***

The guards wore uniforms that were constructed from overlapping scales of an eerie black alloy. The metallic plates rippled with each step, shimmering in the low light of the tunnels. They travelled in pairs or in small groups, but, until the commanding officers were revived, they had no real purpose or aim in mind. They’d disposed of the police officers that had stumbled into their ship and, as soon as they found them, they would dispose of the human females that had arrived less than thirty microspans before. Then they would wait, as they had done for centuries. They were nothing if not patient.

***

“Are you all right?”

Liz nodded, opening a flap in her heavy helmet in order to catch her breath.

“I’m fine. How much further?”

The uniforms were uncomfortable and awkward, but, without them, she and River would have fallen at the first hurdle. Only a handful of soldiers had been brought out of stasis, but they still posed a significant threat. They’d passed the remains of the unfortunate police officers – brittle, papery skeletons that had been drained of moisture and life – and they certainly didn’t want to suffer the same fate.

If they disconnected the plasma canisters that were nestled in the heart of the burial mound, Liz and River could restore the stasis field before anyone else was hurt. River had described the canisters as one of the most dangerous potential weapons in any galaxy, as well as the ship’s power source. After taking a look at the remains of the police officers, Liz had been inclined to agree.

“Not far now.”

With a nod, Liz sealed her helmet and fell into step beside River. This was no longer an archaeological expedition. Let the Brigadier take disciplinary action against her! If she could save even a single life by siding with River, she’d continue to do so without a second thought.

***

River pulled off her helmet and dropped it into the dust. The gold box in the middle of the room – impossibly ornate and astonishingly beautiful – glowed softly. The aliens had gone to a lot of trouble to disguise the plasma canisters and make them into part of the mound.

“We did it,” she breathed, “We actually did it.”

Liz removed her own helmet, but, before she could make a comment of her own, River – smiling a smile that was joyful and beautiful and entirely innocent, unlike her earlier Cheshire Cat smirk – turned to her. The gap between them hadn’t been particularly large to begin with. She closed it and kissed her before Liz had a chance to come to terms with what was happening.

The kiss was a kiss of celebration and delight, but the moment was all too brief. Liz had barely started to kiss her back when the room started to shake. Someone – something, speaking in a guttural alien language – was hammering on the door that they’d been very careful to lock behind them.

“Time to go,” said River, quickly, grabbing Liz’s wrist and pulling her towards the box. The ceiling trembled with each blow, dislodging fragments of soil and making it difficult to see. She was ready for the teleport this time, though her head was still swimming from the kiss.

***

The aliens managed to burst through the door a moment later, but they were too late. They stumbled over the discarded armour and watched, furious and horrified, as the two humans faded from view.

Their triumphant smiles were the last things to disappear.

***

The hasty transport to the surface knocked the wind out of Liz. Breathing hard, she leaned back against the wall of the barn. When she straightened up, River was gone. She’d taken the gold box – and the plasma canisters – with her.

She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was. River had appeared out of nowhere and she’d been bound to disappear just as suddenly. Really, Liz had been a fool to think that the adventure they’d shared – that passionate, joyful kiss of relief and celebration – had been anything other than … than a partnership born of convenience! River had needed an assistant and Liz had been there.

How would she explain what had happened to the Doctor and the Brigadier? It would have been a difficult conversation if she’d had the canisters in her hand. Without them, it was all but impossible.

After considering her position, Liz – resigned and more than a little bitter – made her way back to the Doctor’s makeshift laboratory. It didn’t occur to her to lie to her colleagues. She could imagine the Brigadier’s displeasure and – even worse than that – the Doctor’s disappointment, but brushing what had happened under the metaphorical carpet was not an option.

The worst thing they could do was dismiss her for losing the canisters. But she was always talking about returning to Cambridge, wasn’t she? It would be all right. She had made plans to leave on half a dozen occasions. Her superiors would simply be making the decision she should have made for herself a long time ago.

She pushed open the door and paused, taking a deep breath and summoning up the courage to face the Doctor. She’d never felt so foolish. She’d been in a number of seemingly helpless situations since joining UNIT, and she had spent years in the occasionally cutthroat world of academia, but River’s betrayal – what else could she call it? – had left her feeling brittle and bitter. Liz had always thought of herself as an intelligent, practical sort of person. She’d allowed herself to get swept away in an adventure and …

... and it couldn’t be!

The plasma canisters were lined up neatly on the Doctor’s unused desk. There was no sign of the Time Lord himself, or, indeed, of the enigmatic River Song, but there was a note addressed to Liz.

Sorry for rushing off. I’ve kept the boxes – I’ve got a paper to write, after all – but I thought you and your friends at UNIT might find these useful.

I’ll be seeing you again x

Liz read the note three times before it sank in. Then, with a laugh, she tucked it into her pocket and left the laboratory in search of the Doctor.

***

Six months later, Liz stepped out of her laboratory at Cambridge University, hanging her white coat on a hook next to the door. The night watchman – the only other person in the building at this late hour – gave her a nod as she passed him and crossed into the car park. Although she’d left UNIT’s erratic working hours behind her – along with a great many other things that she refused to admit she missed about UNIT – the sensitive nature of her experiments forced her to remain behind when everyone else had already returned home. Or so she told herself. There was a good chance that she was simply trying to fill hours that now felt achingly empty.

To her great surprise, River was waiting outside, wearing a pair of sunglasses and a smirk as she leaned against the bonnet of Liz’s eminently practical Ford.

“What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you. Do you always work so late?”

“When I have to.”

“You know what they say, don’t you? All work and no play …”

“… makes Liz a dull girl. Yes, I know.”

“I was going to say ‘means that Liz needs a holiday’.”

“I can’t take a holiday at such short notice.”

“Of course you can,” she replied, holding up her wrist and her familiar wrist strap, “Time travel, remember?”

Despite herself, Liz was intrigued. Recently, she’d spent a lot of time staring down microscopes. She hadn’t realised that she’d miss alien threats – or the thrill of identifying and solving a problem that threatened the security of an entire planet – until she’d left them far behind.

“What did you have in mind?”

“I’m organising a dig in Cairo – the planet, not the city – and I thought you might like to visit the site. It’s beautiful. Crystalline deserts and a sky the colour of emeralds ...”

“It does sound beautiful,” Liz conceded, “But what’s the catch?”

“Catch? I’m hurt.”

“And I’m realistic.”

“An excellent quality in an assistant.”

Liz bristled immediately. She’d left UNIT because she had refused to spend the rest of her career passing test tubes to the Doctor. She could scarcely believe that River was making her the same unfathomable offer.

“It wouldn’t be like that,” said River quickly, “I promise. No fetching or carrying or passing equipment. All you have to do is keep me company and help me explore an alien planet. Can you really walk away from an offer like that?”

Liz glanced at her car and her briefcase and the dark laboratory behind her.

No, she couldn’t.

***

The planet was more than simply beautiful. It was astonishing. Liz stooped down to scoop up a handful of sand particles, allowing the utterly unfamiliar material to run between her fingers. The sky bathed everything – including the tent from which River, who had been sorting out the paperwork, emerged – in a soft, greenish sunrise.

“Right,” said River briskly, “Are you ready?”

Still mystified by the crystals, Liz managed a nod of ascent.

“Great. Will you pass me that chisel?”

Her expression of delight turned into a look of pure horror.

“It was a joke, Liz,” laughed River, slipping an arm through the other woman’s, “Fancy a drink?”

“A drink? At this time of morning?”

“Welcome to the 51st century.”

FIC: Clandestine [Tin Man]

atraphoenix — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:36:48 GMT

Title: Clandestine
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Tin Man
Characters: DG/Airofday
Rating: PG
Summary: Their arrangement, for want of a better word, had developed by accident.

Author's Note: kseda made me do it.

It was the middle of the day and the tavern, which was never one of the O.Z’s busiest establishments, was all but silent. A sullen barkeeper disappeared through a side door when DG joined the cloaked figure that had been waiting for her by the bar. He’d learned a long time ago that it paid to be discrete. The Witch’s reign had passed, but eavesdropping was still a good way to get into trouble in the O.Z.

“Do you have my money?”

“That depends on the information you’ve got for me.”

Airofday pulled back her hood and gave her a wry smile.

“Of course, princess.”

***

Their arrangement, for want of a better word, had developed by accident.

At first, DG hadn’t understood the extent of the damage to the O.Z or the amount of work that would be needed to repair her shattered homeland. She’d stood on the balcony of the Witch’s tower with her family at her side, gazing towards the horizon and thinking, rather foolishly, that it was all over.

Really, the destruction of the Witch had only been the beginning. As well as rebuilding the infrastructure of the kingdom, they had to restore people’s faith in the monarchy and persuade the public that Azkadellia had been another injured innocent. The road was long and hard and filled with potholes that DG hadn’t foreseen.

It took her a long time to realise the truth and an even longer time for her to find her own way to help.

Cain and Jeb – a trusted former tin man and a trusted member of the resistance – stood by them. They helped the royal family communicate with the ordinary people of the O.Z, who had lost the most during the Witch’s reign and stood to gain the most now she was gone. Raw left the palace for long periods of time, but he always returned with good news about the Animals that were gradually coming out of hiding. And Glitch … well, Ambrose … and her mother worked wonders among the aristocracy, with Azkadellia in the shadows behind them and, eventually, at their side. DG was the odd one out.

After a while, she attached herself to her father. During his time in the Realm of the Unwanted, Ahamo had built up many contacts in the underworld of the O.Z. He aimed to use these contacts to hunt down the people – usually former military men and disgruntled advisors – who had served the Witch of their own volition and had no love for the House of Gale. She watched from the sidelines at first, but, after she made contact with Airofday, she started to provide information of her own.

She didn’t trust the other woman, of course. But she was fairly certain that Airofday didn’t trust her either and, in the end, some risks were worth taking. She would do anything to protect the O.Z, even if she didn’t want to - couldn’t - tell her allies who her informant was.

***

“There is a group of rebels hiding in the woods to the east of the Fields of the Papay.”

“How many?”

“Twenty former long coats, including a guard captain and two lieutenants.”

“I’ll pass the message on.”

Cain would be very interested in the particular piece of information. Satisfied, DG turned to leave.

“Hey, where’s my money?”

DG reached into her pocket, dropping a bag of platinums on to the bar with a soft ‘clink’.

“I’ll be in touch,” she said, turning away with barely contained disdain.

“I have a room in the inn on the far side of the central square,” Airofday said, her voice little more than a murmur. DG carried on walking without giving any sign that she’d heard her.

***

The peeling wooden door – which would have been locked in a more reputable establishment – swung open. Airofday was already undressed, lying on top of the sheets with her pale hair spilling across the dark pillow like a veil. She gave her visitor a smug smile.

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

DG raised an eyebrow, slinging her leather jacket over the back of a battered armchair as she crossed the room to join her.

“Yes, you did.”

She always came.

***

They bickered constantly, but they’d only fought once.

Airofday wasn’t used to making mistakes, but she’d been pushing DG from the day they’d met and, eventually, she pushed her too far. Foolishly, and because she’d wanted to see how the other woman would react, she’d implied – slyly at first, but more and more overtly as her courage grew – that her relationship with Ahamo had been more than professional.

DG – hot tempered, headstrong DG – had raised her hand to hit her. Airofday had laughed, catching her wrist and encouraging DG to pour all her anger and distrust into a kiss instead of a blow.

It had all gone downhill from there.

***

Later, Airofday reclined among the tangled sheets, watching the movements of DG’s bare back as she attempted to pull on her clothes without revealing any more flesh.

“How did you know I was telling the truth about the rebels?” she asked.

“I didn’t. But you have to tell the truth or I’ll stop coming to you for information.”

“That isn’t the only reason you come to me.”

DG ignored her, so Airofday pressed on.

“What will you do when I finally lie to you? Will you hand me in to your tin men?”

Her tin men. As if Cain and the men he commanded belonged to anyone other than themselves. (DG wasn’t entirely comfortable with her newfound status – the fact that she was here in the first place was proof of that – but Airofday always enjoyed trying to rile her. More often than not, she succeeded.)

“I don’t know.” She didn’t need to turn around to see the other woman’s smirk. “It doesn’t mean I trust you.”

Sure enough, when she did up the last button and turned around, Airofday was smiling her familiar smug smile.

“Good. You shouldn’t.”

FIC: The Hitchhiker's Guide to Surviving a Dalek Invasion [Doctor Who / HHGTTG / SJA]

atraphoenix — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:41:19 GMT

Title: The Hitchhiker's Guide to Surviving a Dalek Invasion
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Doctor Who / The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy / The Sarah Jane Adventures
Characters: Alan Jackson, Arthur Dent, Dalek Caan, Ford Prefect, Maria Jackson, Marvin, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, Trillian and Zaphod Beeblebrox
Rating: G
Summary: Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was having a very bad day. The planet he had been ordered to demolish appeared to have disappeared.

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was having a very bad day.

The planet he had been ordered to demolish appeared to have disappeared and, worst of all, he couldn’t think of a word to rhyme with ‘frasmotic’.

***

It wasn’t the end of the world. They served better drinks at the end of the world.

Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox sat in a pub in Islington, safe in the knowledge that the man behind the bar – under the bar, anyway – had bigger things to worry about than their tab. And, of course, they wouldn’t be alive long enough to pay it if Arthur and Trillian didn’t come to their rescue soon.

“So what exactly happened to the Daleks?” asked Ford, addressing his semi cousin over an impressive collection of pint glasses. “One minute they were terrorising the universe, the next they were nowhere to be found.”

“It was a time lock.”

“A time what?”

“Remember … what was her name? The president of Gallifrey?”

“Romanadvoratrelundar?”

“That’s the one. She used to drink me under the table at Galactic conferences.”

“And turn you down whenever you asked her for a date?”

“And turn me down whenever I asked her for a date.”

“What did she do?”

“She managed to isolate the whole Time War. Locked away the Daleks and the Time Lords.”

“How?”

“Don’t ask me. I’ll need a few more drinks before I try and answer that.”

“And I’ll need a few more drinks before I try and listen.” To the barman, he added: “Are you sure you don’t have any hypervodka?”

***

“I flew through the darkness and the fire. I danced and I burned and I waited for a chance to be free again.”

Marvin sighed.

“Tell me about it.”

***

Alan Jackson liked to think that he was used to aliens. He’d met quite a few of them since he’d moved into Bannerman Road, after all. Usually, however, the invading aliens came to Earth. They didn’t move the planet.

Maria had phoned Luke as soon as the crisis had began, but, from what they’d gathered, he and Sarah Jane were just as confused as everyone else on Earth. Never a good sign.

Without any better ideas and with no way to get back to London and help, the Jacksons had battened down the proverbial hatches and prepared to wait it out.

They hadn’t been able to hide for long. Alan had blocked the doors, but the metal monsters – how could anything that looked so much like a pepper pot be dangerous? – hadn’t bothered to use them in the first place. They’d simply smashed through the wall of the holiday cottage and barked out instructions in their harsh, grating voices. (At first, Alan hadn’t been able to work out why Maria had complied without complaint. And then he’d realised that she was waiting for the right moment to act. His daughter had learned a lot from Sarah Jane.)

Unfortunately, the creatures had methodically rounded up most of the holiday park and that moment had yet to materialise. They hadn’t even told their prisoners what they wanted. Really, he shouldn’t have been surprised when Maria had finally asked. She’d learned that from Sarah Jane as well.

“Where are you taking us?” she demanded. Only her father, who knew her better than anyone, could tell that she was nervous. “What do you want?”

“The female will not ask questions.”

“Someone has to. This is our planet.”

“Incorrect. This planet is under control of the Dalek Empire.”

The name meant nothing to Alan, but it obviously meant something to Maria. Her eyes widened in her horror and she took a sudden step backwards. She only wanted to be closer to her father, but the Dalek that had been left in charge of the prisoners decided to interpret it as a hostile act. It raised a weapon that looked both ridiculous and dangerous at the same time, but, before it could fire, there was the sound of rushing wind. The leaves stirred on the ground by their feet and, less than a second later, there was a loud and rather resounding pop.

“Dad,” said Maria, very carefully, “I think that Dalek just turned into a beanbag chair ...”

“As long as it isn’t trying to shoot us, I don’t mind.”

***

After passing through a variety of locations – including a holiday park in 21st century Cornwall and the bedroom of a very startled Henry VIII - The Heart of Gold managed to restore normality and land in London.

Of course, when it came to Earth in general and London in particular, ‘normality’ was a very flexible word.

They arrived in the middle of an invasion. Arthur Dent wished that he was surprised. Instead, he settling for raising his hands before the nearest Dalek had a chance to order him to surrender.

Trillian, on the other hand, was less cooperative.

“What is going on?”

This was her home planet – or a version of it, anyway – and she probably had a right to know. But Arthur wished that she hadn’t asked so aggressively

“Are you scanning our space ship?” she continued, “Don’t scan our space ship!”

Arthur closed his eyes.

“Tricia, I don’t think they’re scanning our space ship. I think they’re getting ready to kill us and steal our space ship.”

“You are correct. Exter …”

Before the Dalek could complete the order, a bowl of petunias fell out of the sky and hit it on the head.

“Time to go?” Arthur asked, turning to Trillian. “The whale will probably be along in a minute.”

***

Three months after the aborted Dalek invasion, an updated copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy landed on the publisher’s desk in the offices of Megadoo Publications. Nobody had been able to reach Ford Prefect following the miraculous disappearance and reappearance of the Earth, but a freelance reporter had been passing through the Milky Way at the time and offered up her own contribution.

A politely worded but rather significant addendum had been made to the page.

Harmless? You must be joking!

FIC: Somewhere Over the Rainbow [Doctor Who]

atraphoenix — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:59:21 GMT

Title: Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Martha Jones/Leela, Romana II/Leela, the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble
Rating: PG
Summary: Martha Jones fell out of the sky and into another world.

Author's Note: A slightly late entry for the dw_femslash ficathon, written for glinda_penguin. Thank you to livii for being so patient with my fail and my flat mate for playing the role of 'slightly confused beta reader'.

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."
-- Maya Angelou

It all came down to time, in the end.

Travelling through it and, occasionally, waiting for the right point in it. At the moment, the TARDIS was passing through the vortex in the wake of the trip to Messaline. It had been a smooth ride at first, though Martha and Donna – tiptoeing awkwardly around the Doctor and his almost palpable sense of grief – hadn’t particularly enjoyed it. (They hadn’t known what to say, to each other or to him.)

Now, however, the console had started to shake and the ship was lurching unpleasantly from side to side.

“What is going on?” Donna shouted, catching hold of Martha’s arm and pulling them both over to the comparative stability of the console.

“The paradox has affected the TARDIS sensors,” exclaimed the Doctor, raising his voice over the noise of the engines. He sounded almost excited. The emergency, whatever was, had given him something else to think about. For a little while, he could forget about Jenny. “It’ll just take me a moment to fix …”

There was another jolt, more violent than the rest.

“Ah,” he said, frowning slightly, “It looks like the temporal stabiliser was shorted out by the impossibility of the journey.”

“Yes, but what does that mean?” Martha exclaimed, clutching at the console for support.

“Time is … unravelling,” the Doctor replied, forcing out the words through clenched teeth. He propped one foot up on the TARDIS console, pressing buttons and flicking switches frantically. “At least for the residents of this TARDIS. We’re passing through every point the TARDIS has ever visited, all at the same time.”

“Can you stop it?” Donna asked.

“It’s a restricted phenomena. We’re the only ones affected by it. If I reroute …”

Martha’s hand slipped off the console and she stumbled backwards. She didn’t get to hear the rest of his explanation.

For a moment, there was nothing but time. Then she fell through a floor that evaporated beneath her back, on and on into nothingness.

***

“She is awake, Mistress.”

The strange, tinny voice came from somewhere near her elbow, but it took Martha a moment or two to sit up and focus on the speaker. (The speaker that happened to be a metal dog. Right.) She was in a dark tent made of rough material, lying on a bed that was really just a pile of blankets and battered cushions. Her head was aching a bit, and she was definitely disorientated, but she didn’t appear to be hurt.

“Who are you?”

That voice, at least, belonged to a living creature. The speaker was a human – well, humanoid – female in animal skins, and she regarded Martha with obvious distrust.

“Who are you?” she repeated, sharply.

“Martha Jones,” the doctor replied, “Doctor Martha Jones. And before I answer any more questions, you’re going to have to tell me where I am. Where are my friends?”

“You fell from the sky,” said the woman. Oh, yes, she was somewhere over the rainbow all right. The tin dog could even play the role of Toto.

“But am I a good witch or a bad witch?” Martha muttered, then: “Sorry. You haven't answered my question.”

“You will answer mine first,” she replied darkly, putting her hands on her hips. She was quite attractive, Martha noted, in a ‘Jane of the Jungle’ sort of way, and she didn’t seem inclined to make friends. In fact, she looked as if she’d like nothing more than to draw her knife. “K-9, watch her.”

“Maximum defence mode engaged, Mistress Leela.”

“Leela?” Martha, attempting to remain as dignified as she could while extracting herself from a pile of blankets, stood up. She wasn’t frightened. Maybe she should have been, but this wasn’t the strangest thing to have happened to her since her first encounter with the Doctor. She trusted him to find a way to get her back to the TARDIS and she trusted herself to stay in control of the situation here. “That’s your name? Well, look, Leela, I know this must seem mad to you, but I was in the Doctor’s TARDIS and I …”

“You know the Doctor?”

Although her voice was still hard, Martha fancied that the tone had changed just a little. The name had struck a chord. Leela, whoever she was, knew the Doctor.

“We travel together.” Travelled, really, but, no matter how proud – for want of a better word – Martha was about making the decision to leave, this wasn’t a good time to argue about tenses.

“You believe you fell from the TARDIS.” The scepticism in her voice was the sort of scepticism that only a person who had travelled in the ship could manage. Leela seemed to think that the idea of someone falling from the TARDIS was ridiculous and, if she hadn’t seen the ship striped down to a paradox machine, Martha would have been inclined to agree with her.

“I don’t know what happened. The Doctor said something about the temporal stabilisers and … look, do you know where he is? Because he’s the one who should be explaining all this. I just want to get home.”

(It was a shame that clicking her heels wasn’t an option.)

“You truly do not know where you are?”

“No!” exclaimed Martha, her exasperation amplified as she tried to hide just how worried she was. It’d be a bit hard for her to get home without a spaceship to travel in and a pilot to drive it. “I was supposed to be on my way back to Earth.”

“We are very far from Earth.”

“The planet Gallifrey is located 29 000 light years from Sol Three, Mistress Leela,” K-9 added, and Martha froze.

“Sorry, did you just say Gallifrey?”

Without waiting for an answer, she stepped past Leela and out into the sunshine. Out into the sunshine from two suns in a burnt orange sky.

“Oh my god.”

***

Her watch had been broken on Messaline, so Martha couldn’t be sure how long she’d been on Gallifrey. The twin suns, which had set some time ago, had been replaced by two moons – one burnished copper and one shimmering silver. Since she’d been left with no one but K-9 for company – and the robotic dog’s unemotional replies didn’t exactly lend themselves well to conversation – she had plenty of time to sit in the entrance of the tent and think over what was happening.

Somehow, she’d ended up on Gallifrey. The Doctor had told her that the TARDIS had been passing through every point in it’s history at the same time. Maybe he’d known that that had included his home planet, maybe he hadn’t, but that was definitely where she was. There was no mistaking that sky or those mountains, let alone the shining citadel in the distance. She’d dreamed about them – and, during her walk across the continents, described them – more than once.

No, the location wasn’t the problem. What did worry her was how she was going to get back home.

“I have spoken to Romana,” said Leela, crossing the camp to join Martha – who dragged her eyes away from the moons to look at her – and K-9. She wanted to ask why they were staying in a fairly crude encampment when there was a very beautiful city nearby, but that sort of question would have to wait. She had more important ones to ask first.

“Who’s Romana?”

“President Romanadvoratrelundar of the High Council of the Time Lords,” K-9 answered obligingly, and Martha, dusting off her jeans as she got to her feet, raised an eyebrow.

“Wow. And I didn’t even have to ask you to take me to your leader.”

Apparently, Leela didn’t appreciate the joke.

***

“So you believe me, do you?” Martha asked. She had to say something. The Citadel of the Time Lords was unimaginably vast, and, as small as her voice sounded in the vast golden halls, it was a lot better than silence. She’d seen alien palaces and extraterrestrial cities, but these gleaming pillars and spires defied imagination. (That, if nothing else, confirmed that it was all real.)

“I will let Romana decide.”

“Who is this Romana to you?” Martha, who had no knowledge of Gallifreyan hierarchy, asked, “Does the President of the Time Lords get, what, elected? Is there a vote?”

“I would not get to vote,” Leela replied with a derisive laugh, “I am not a Time Lord.”

“You’re not? So you’re … human?”

“I am a warrior of the Sevateem.”

“The Sevateem. Right. Glad we’ve cleared that up.”

Martha fell silent. The only sound was the mechanical whir of K-9’s engine as he trundled across the polished floor after her. The halls were largely empty, though she occasionally caught sight of figures in heavy robes or red uniforms – Time Lords, presumably – passing through archways and out of sight again. It was a good job that they didn’t look at her, because she wouldn’t know what to say if they did. She was going to have to be careful to keep their future a secret.

Was this how the Doctor felt when he arrived at fixed points in time? He couldn’t change anything then and she couldn’t change anything now. Leela, K-9, this President Romana. Even these halls. They’d all be destroyed in the Time War.

She wished she could … apologise.

Eventually they reached a pair of heavy doors. Gold, probably, although it could easily have been an alien element that Martha couldn’t recognise. There were guards – guards carrying an impressive array of highly technical weaponry – outside, and they stepped to the left and right to let her enter.

“The Madam President will see you now.”

***

Martha had been expecting someone taller. A sort of Margaret Thatcher figure with two hearts and a sensible trouser suit. She hadn’t been expecting a slender blonde woman, even if she was wearing suitably alien red and orange robes. It wasn’t until Romana turned away from the desk in the centre of the room that Martha realised that this wasn’t some sort of joke. She had a surprisingly youthful face, given how old she must have been, but, like the Doctor, her eyes betrayed her age.

“Welcome to Gallifrey, Doctor Jones,” she said, “Why don’t you take a seat and explain exactly what brought you here?”

“It’s a bit complicated …”

Romana gave her a wry smile.

“I’ll take it all it all my stride, I assure you.”

Martha met her eyes – calm, implacable and intelligent eyes – and nodded. She sat down in the nearest chair and, as she began, Romana sat down opposite. Although she couldn’t explain everything, she mentioned the important bits – the fact that she was travelling with the Doctor and the confusing explanation he’d given when the TARDIS had started to dissolve around them – and Romana seemed satisfied with that.

“Leela tells me that you are a doctor,” she said, when Martha’s story came to an uncertain halt. (She was better at telling them when she didn’t have to watch every sentence.) “Do you have any knowledge of alien anatomy?”

She’d been expecting questions, but not that one.

“Enough.”

“Good.” Romana stood up, turning back to her desk and picking up a piece of paper covered in indecipherable text. Martha wasn’t sure if she was being dismissed or if she was supposed to wait. “We need doctors.”

“I can’t stay here.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor Jones.” It was a sincere apology, but that was hardly comforting. “Unless your version of the Doctor manages to restore the temporal field and halt your fall, you’ll have to remain on Gallifrey.”

“But what about one of the others?” Martha asked. She could hear the desperation in her own voice, and found herself getting to her feet without conscious thought. “There must be hundreds of Time Lords around here. Why can’t one of them take me back to Earth?”

“I could lecture you on the temporal physics of the situation, but I doubt that you’d find it particularly comforting.”

Martha appreciated the honesty, if nothing else, but she found that she missed the Doctor’s comforting technobabble. Even if she didn’t always understand it, it made her feel as if he, at least, knew what was going on.

“So, what? I’m supposed to just … stay here?”

She’d never get to see her Mum and Dad again. She’d never be able to chide Tish for losing her favourite eyeliner or chat to Leo about the CD she’d borrowed from him. She’d never …

“You’re welcome to contribute to the war effort.” To the Time War effort. “Leela will take care of you.”

“I don’t need a babysitter!”

It was a ridiculous thing to say in a ridiculous situation. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to tell Romana that she’d left this sort of thing – this sort of risk – behind her when she’d stepped off the TARDIS for what should have been the final time.

“And Leela can hardly be called a babysitter. Once she has explained the situation to you, I’m sure you’ll be able to take part in your own way.”

If the Doctor was going to repair the temporal whatever-it-was and save her, he was going to have to do it very quickly.

***

Time moved forward, as it always did. The twin suns set and the twin moons rose more times than Martha really cared to count. In the end, despite waiting as patiently as she could for the Doctor to arrive, Martha had no choice but to settle into something a rhythm.

It turned out that she’d arrived in one of many camps on the outskirts of the Gallifreyan Citadel. The so-called outsiders, who usually lived out in the wastelands, had moved closer to the main city for the protection it offered and because they were itching for the chance to participate in the war. Since the Time Lords – who were definitely more arrogant than Martha had ever expected – didn’t want anything to do with them, it had fallen to Leela to move between the camps, settling minor disputes and raising moral and assuring them that President Romana valued both their assistance and their safety.

(Martha, for her part, wasn’t particularly sure about the latter point. Although Romana had seemed nice enough to her, in a serious sort of way, she was still a Time Lord. Their sense of superiority had astounded her. She’d been used to the Doctor and his occasional arrogance, but at least he’d had genuine affection for humans. Most of the Time Lord seemed to act as if humans – as if any species that didn’t have a binary vascular system and hadn’t been travelling through time for centuries, actually – were a lesser race. No wonder they hadn’t wanted to let the Sontarans join in. Leela, however, seemed to have placed Romana on the same sort of pedestal Martha had once placed the Doctor. She bickered tersely with any other Time Lords that came to the camp, but she trusted the President implicitly.)

After a few days of uncertainty, she was put to work – at Romana’s instruction – in one of the many temporary hospitals set up at the edge of the Capitol. She treated Time Lords with minor injuries – broken bones and superficial cuts, things like that – that wouldn’t induce a regeneration. (She hadn’t seen many regenerations since arriving on Gallifrey, though that made sense. The Daleks were winning the war, and they couldn’t be victorious unless they found a way to halt the regeneration process and prevent the same Time Lord from coming back to fight them again and again.) It was hard work and it was difficult work, but it was a good way to avoid thinking about her own time and all the things she’d lost.

She felt terribly selfish, thinking about her own loss in the middle of such a terrible war, but that was probably something to do with human nature. It was easier to focus on relatively small things, especially when every else was so vast and so terrible. She’d lost her family and her friends and her job, but the Time Lords were going to lose everything.

Sometimes, it was very difficult to prevent grief from overwhelming over her. Within a few years – maybe even a few months, she wasn’t sure – every Time Lord she treated would be dead. The tent where she slept and the burnt orange sky she toiled under would be nothing more than aimlessly drifting atoms. Even Leela – who, despite Romana’s words, played the role of babysitter more often than not – would be gone.

It was only the knowledge that the Doctor hadn’t been able to save them – and that she was unlikely to be able to change the course of the war if he hadn’t managed it – that kept her from saying something very stupid. She knew that some things, some aspects of history, had to unfold. They were fixed points in time. Horrible, terrible and definitely unchangeable.

***

Leela of the Sevateem didn’t trust easily. That was the first thing Martha learned about her. That and the fact that she had an impressively alarming array of weaponry that she wasn’t afraid to use.

Watching Martha was low on her list of priorities. She had more important things – things that were more suitable for a warrior, too – to be getting on with. Eventually, though, Martha began to draw her out of her shell. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to get any of the Time Lords to befriend her. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with nobody but K-9 to chat to, and Leela … well, there was something interesting about her. Primitive wasn’t the same as stupid, whatever some of the more acerbic Time Lords might have said. Leela seemed to operate on instinct more than anything else, and the way that contrasted with the coldness of the Time Lords was a proverbial breath of fresh air through the Citadel.

Over the course of her first month on Gallifrey, she learned that Leela’s eyes were artificial. (She’d been blinded in some sort of explosion a few years ago, and, if Romana hadn’t instructed a group of Time Lord scientists to address the problem, she’d probably have stayed that way.) Although she was human, her lifespan had been extended by the amount of time she’d spent with the Time Lords. She’d travelled with the Doctor back when he’d worn a ridiculous scarf and had left him to marry … someone. Leela was always a bit vague when it came to her husband and Martha didn’t ask. She savoured every piece of information she could get, as she once had while travelling with the Doctor. Every word, every slight secret revealed, felt like a reward for all her hard work and patience.

Sometimes, after a long day in the hospital tent, Martha would return to the camp and find Leela sitting, cross legged and with her eyes on the night sky, outside her tent. For the first few weeks, Martha tiptoed past, afraid to interrupt whatever meditation she was trying to carry out. In the end, however, she decided to sit down with her and try to join in.

“Where I come from, meditation usually involves more chanting,” she said, though it wasn’t really something she’d ever considered. Her knowledge was coming from pop culture and Tish’s single memorable attempt to find inner peace using a book she’d picked up in a sale.

“I am not meditating,” said Leela, sounding out the word with some distain. “I am watching the stars.”

“Do you know any of their names?” she asked. Meditation or not, Martha crossed her legs to sit down next to the other woman.

“Some,” she said, “That …” she indicated a pinpoint of light in the far distance “… is Karn. The planet to the left is known as Polarfrey. The Time Lords do not name their constellations after the pictures that might be seen there.”

Of course they didn’t.

“Did the Doctor teach you?”

“No. It was Romana.”

The affection in her voice, although concealed behind characteristic abruptness, was obvious. The jealousy – which stirred unexpectedly in Martha’s stomach even as she tried to ignore it – was a bit more of a surprise. Despite all her hard work, it was still Romana that knew Leela best. It would always be Romana.

“Well, thank you, Romana,” Martha said, dryly.

***

A few days later, Leela accompanied her to the hospital. Apparently one of the Time Lords Martha had been treating the day before – Annos, or something like that – was a friend of hers, and she wished to check on his progress. Martha had been so surprised to learn that Leela had other Time Lord friends, and so pleased at the thought of having the warrior’s company for an entire day, that it didn’t occur to her to protest.

“It’s been a few months since your last trip to the Citadel, savage,” remarked a man in the uniform of the Chancellery Guards, “Are you growing tired of all that uncivilised company?”

His companion, who eyed Martha critically as they passed the entrance way, gave a dry laugh. He looked at if he didn’t consider a human to be particularly civilised.

“I would cut your tongue out,” Leela said, calmly, “If I thought I would gain any satisfaction from it.”

“I always knew Andred wouldn’t be able to tame you properly,” he said with a chuckle. Leela’s expression hardened, and Martha was suddenly very aware of her clenched fists and white knuckles.

“The Doctor didn’t manage it either,” his companion pointed out, before adding: “Are you another of his humans?”

“I’m no one’s human,” Martha replied, sharply. That wasn’t quite true. She was the Doctor’s, in a way, and while she was on Gallifrey she was probably Romana’s as well. But she didn’t like the tone of his voice. It made her feel like some sort of pet, not an equal or a friend or a companion. “Come on, Leela. Annos is expecting you.”

After a long pause – that lasted several heartbeats and seemed to last much longer – Leela turned, striding off down the hall with Martha trailing, a little confused and a little angry and very insulted, in her wake.

“Who were they?” Martha asked, as soon as they had rounded the corner. “And who’s Andred?”

”They are fools,” Leela growled, “They think that the Time Lords can win this war alone, so they insult their allies as they wish.” A pause. “Andred was my husband. He is dead now, but, when lived, he was not like them. He had a true warrior’s heart.”

She didn’t pause to let Martha say that she was sorry for her loss. She didn’t want to be consoled, but, for the first time, Martha – who found herself glimpsing a chink in Leela’s previously impenetrable armour – felt as if she was being trusted, as if she was truly being accepted into Leela’s life.

The knowledge was bittersweet and sharp, and she tucked it away to think over later.

***

The hospital kept her fairly busy, but Martha tried to accompany Leela through the camps whenever she could. Although she couldn’t convince herself that her motives were entirely selfless – she wanted to spend time with her friend as much as she wanted to help, after all – she still enjoyed the experience. Wooden barricades and battered tents wouldn’t do much against the Daleks, but Martha knew better than most that hope could be a powerful weapon as well. Leela gave the outsiders, ignored by the Time Lords and certain that they were going to be the first casualties when Gallifrey’s defences fell, hope.

She loved to listen to her. The warrior had a skill for rhetoric that was difficult to match. Leela didn’t use unnecessarily complicated words or false sentiments. Her speeches came straight from her heart. (She only had one, but she put it to better use than the Time Lords that had two.)

In many ways, Leela was a lot less … complicated than Doctor. Yes, she was from a different planet, but she was also truthful – unlike the Doctor, who kept so much to himself that it was impossible to know anything about him at all – and loyal. When she gave Martha one of her rarer, and more genuine smiles, the fact that she was 29 000 light years and an unknown number of centuries away from home seemed to matter a lot less.

***

Martha was on her way back to her tent when she saw him.

She’d have recognised that face anywhere. Although he was physically younger than he’d been as Professor Yana, she couldn’t fail to recognise the Time Lord that had spent twelve months plaguing her dreams and orchestrating her living nightmares. His eyes betrayed him.

The Master was dressed in black, flanked by a pair of guards that he ignored imperiously. He came to a halt at the top of the steps into the Presidential Palace, gazing out across the courtyard as he had recently been returned to a city that was his.

It was all over, then. The Master had been resurrected to fight in the Time War, and, although Martha didn’t know Romana well, she’d learned a lot about her from Leela. If Romana was taking such desperate, erratic measures, then the war was as good as lost.

She’d been aware of the eventual outcome all along, of course, but, every now and then, something – usually a dying patient that had been carried to the wrong tent – came along to remind her of the enormity of it all.

And if the war was already lost, would it really matter if the Master was there to fight in it?

She wouldn’t be changing much, would she? The Master’s year in power had already been forgotten. Only a handful of people remembered. Tish and her parents certainly wouldn’t miss the memories. She could save them from all that pain. She’d walked the Earth to save the human race! Didn’t she deserve the chance to save her family as well?

The Master turned suddenly. For one horrible moment, he seemed to look directly at her.

Martha, too frightened to breathe, ducked back inside the hospital tent. She sank down, trembling just a little, her back against one of the support beams.

What was she doing? What was she doing?

She couldn’t kill him. She wasn’t a killer. She’d saved the world with words, and that had been wonderful. If she murdered him, she’d save her parents … but she’d almost lose a part of herself in the process.

Resting her head against her knees, Martha wished she was anywhere other than Gallifrey.

***

“Martha?”

At the sound of her name, she looked up and saw Leela, her forehead creased with concern, kneeling down opposite her.

“The suns have set,” Leela chastised, examining Martha for obvious injuries. “You should have returned hours ago.”

“Sorry,” said Martha, too shaken to appreciate the concern. “I just … I saw someone I used to know.”

“A friend?”

A pause.

“An enemy.”

“Do you need me to kill him?”

She sounded so calm, so matter-of-fact, that, for a moment, Martha didn’t realise what she was offering. She definitely didn’t realise why she would offer it.

”Do I … what? No, no, don’t kill him!” Martha, catching hold of Leela’s wrist, shook her head. “I mean … I’m from the future, remember? And he plays a part in that future that I’m not supposed to change.”

“Even though you wish to?”

She couldn’t even begin to explain how much she wished she could change things. She’d do anything to save her family from the year they’d spent on the Valiant.

Anything except this.

“I can’t,” she said, releasing Leela’s wrist. To her relief, the other woman remained where she was. “You know what time is like. If I change that, I might end up changing something else.”

She might not have been inspired to leave the TARDIS. She might have stayed with the Doctor, growing steadily more and more miserable. Time was too uncertain. It wasn’t worth taking the risk.

“Sometimes history just has to happen,” she finished, and, to her surprise, Leela smiled.

“You are wiser than I am, Martha Jones,” she said, pulling her into a hug. Martha, a little stunned by the gesture, found herself wrapping her arms around Leela’s waist and holding tight. She could smell the other woman’s hair and feel the smooth skin of her shoulder against her cheek. Her heart was pounding painfully.

“No,” she breathed, almost to her self, “No, I’m not.”

Falling in love was never wise.

Falling in love with someone who was in love with someone else was even worse. History was repeating itself and, this time, walking away wasn’t an option. She didn’t have anywhere else to go.

***

“One day, I shall take you to see the singing fish of Lake Abydos.”

Martha, stretched out on the golden grass outside the tent, propped herself up on her elbow to look at Leela. The warrior’s skin glowed in the warm light of the coppery moon, shadows pooling in the hollows of her collarbone, and it took a great deal of effort to resist reaching out and touch her.

“Singing fish? Really?”

“Romana has told me of them.”

“Oh. Of course.”

She lay back again, frowning slightly. She recognised the tight knot of jealousy growing in the pit of her stomach and hated that she’d put herself into this position twice. Why did she always seem to fall for people who had already fallen for someone else?

“You do not sound excited. Are you thinking of your home?”

“Sort of.”

Leela, who didn’t speak unless she had something to say, let the silence continue. It wasn’t Martha who broke it, however. The stillness of the night was suddenly disturbed by a very familiar sound.

Martha sat bolt upright.

“I know that noise,” she breathed. He’d found her. He’d found her. She could go back to her Mum and Dad, to Tish and Leo. She could walk away from Leela without ever having to deal with whatever her feelings actually where.

Without waiting for a response from her companion, Martha jumped to her feet and began to run towards the Citadel.

By the time she reached the central square, Romana – dressed in her sweeping presidential robes despite the time of night – was walking swiftly down the steps of the Presidential Palace to greet the figure that stepped out of the TARDIS.

That didn’t make sense. Why would the Doctor, her Doctor, call himself the last if it had simply been a matter of returning to right point in time?

Oh.

The man that stepped out of the TARDIS had curly brown hair and a slightly pretentious suit she’d never seen before. There was no sign of Donna and there was no sign of the grinning man who had once taken her to meet Shakespeare.

“It’s not him,” she said, when Leela, who had joined her silently, rested a hand on her arm.

“He has regenerated?”

“No, he hasn’t. Not yet. Not into my Doctor.”

“We should leave. You cannot meet him.

“I know … I just thought …”

She’d thought that it had all been over, and Leela, probably guessing as much, slipped her hand into Martha’s and began to lead the way back to the camp. The walk had never seemed to long. Martha, desperate for some sort of distraction, asked the first question that came into her.

“What’s it like? Regeneration? I’ve never seen it happen.”

“It is different for each Time Lord,” said Leela, with a slight shrug. “It alters more than their faces.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Their personality is altered. They are the same people … but they are different.”

“Have you ever seen it?” Martha persisted, a little desperately. “What about Romana and Andred?”

Too late, she realised how stupid that question was. If Andred was dead, he obviously hadn’t been able to regenerate successfully.

“I have never seen Romana regenerate,” said Leela, without giving Martha and chance to apology and without replying to the more foolish part of her question. “I do not wish to think what will happen when she does.”

The significance of changing personalities suddenly dawned on Martha.

“You’re more than a bodyguard to her, Leela,” she said, “She won’t just … let you go.”

Leela laughed a little, dryly and without humour, at that. “I will not be around to see it. If Romana dies, I will have died to protect her first.”

That shouldn’t have been such a surprise. It was a small hurt, on top of her disappointment about the Doctor and the realisation that she wouldn’t be going home tonight, but it still pierced. If Martha Jones had been a different sort of person, she might even have cried.

***

They lay side-by-side, watching the sunset. Their shoulders were touching and, although Leela’s hair was drifting in the breeze and tickling Martha’s cheek, neither of them wanted to move and brush it aside.

Martha knew that she shouldn’t be there. Her feelings for Leela were complicated at best and dangerous at worst. The tent was only a few metres away. It would have been very easy to get up and leave Leela to enjoy the stars on her own.

Well, not very easy. But simpler than staying here. It was only a matter of time before she did or said something stupid. Leela was far more perceptive than the Doctor had been. She wouldn’t ignore Martha’s feelings for her, and the friendship they’d spent the last three months cultivating would wither under the power of three little words.

“That,” said Leela, raising her arm to indicate a shape in the sky, “Is the planet of Anquar.”

“More lessons from Romana?”

“From K-9,” Leela corrected, lowering her arm back to her side. Her fingers brushed – accidentally, it had to be accidentally – against Martha’s hand.

“You’ve been getting astronomy lessons from K-9?” Martha asked, trying to keep the hitch out of her voice. Leela had taken her hand now, rubbing the back of her wrist lightly with her thumb.

“He knows I am interested in the stars.”

“He …” Oh god, her hand was moving up her arm. Why was her moving up her arm? “… probably knows you better than I do. Every time I think I’ve worked you out, you go and make me change your mind.”

“And what are you thinking now?”

“I’m thinking …” That I wish I knew what was going. That I wish you’d just kiss me. That I wish I could be the sort of person you want me to be. “I don’t know.”

“Romana told me that …”

With an exasperation exclamation, Martha sat up. Leela’s hand on her arm had given her foolish ideas, and the realisation that they were just that – just ideas, just fantasies – flickered a switch inside her. What was she doing?

“No,” she said, sharply, “No, I’m not doing this again! I’ve had enough. I spent so long waiting for him to notice me. I can’t leave – I’ve got nowhere to go – but I’m not going to spend my time here wishing I could be better. Because I might not be a Time Lord or the perfect companion, and I might not be blonde, but I’ve saved the world and I …”

“And you talk far too much,” Leela finished, putting her finger to Martha’s lips and cutting off her tirade. “I am not a Time Lord either, and I know the Doctor did not think me a ‘perfect companion’. I am stubborn and savage and I am not wise. I think with my heart, and, though I do not have two of them, I know that there is room for both you and Romana inside.”

Leela lowered her hand, but Martha couldn’t speak. She didn’t know what to say. It hadn’t occurred to her that Leela would feel the same way. She’d convinced herself that history was bound to repeat itself, that she was destined to play second fiddle for the rest of her life.

“Shall I kiss you now?” Leela asked, when the silence continued to stretch on.

“Yes please.”

***

When Martha woke up the next morning, the suns were already up and a member of the Chancellery Guard was standing to attention outside the tent.

“Mistress Romana has requested your presence, Mistress Martha,” said K-9, trundling through the door flap. He was the strangest guard dog Martha had ever seen, but, since he’d managed to keep the messenger outside, she wasn’t about to hold that against him.

“She has? Why?”

“Insufficient data.”

“Great.” Martha reached clumsily for her clothes, trying to pull on her jeans and button up her shirt without emerging from beneath the blanket. She was very aware of Leela’s eyes on her bare back. It was a stupid thing to get embarrassed about, especially given everything that had happened last night, but she couldn’t help herself. “Are you coming with me?”

“No. I must visit the other villages and see that their defences are holding.”

“I’ll see you tonight, then?” Martha asked, running a hand through her hair and turning back to face the other woman.

“Tonight,” Leela confirmed, her lips curving into a smile. Unlike Martha, she didn’t appear to be embarrassed by her nakedness. The blanket slipped down her body as she sat up, and, even though Martha had studied her skin in great deal the night before, it took a lot of effort to leave the tent instead of returning to the bed for a bit more exploration.

***

For the first time in three months, Martha found herself hurrying through the halls of the Citadel. She was surprised to find that she missed Leela – the warrior hadn’t been much of a comfort during her first trip here, after all – but at least K-9 was with her. Maybe she just didn’t want to be left alone with the Time Lords. There seemed to be more of them in the building this time, and there was a bit more urgency to their movements. If they’d already brought the Master back, they must be getting pretty desperate. What if Romana needed her help with something dangerous, some war-related task that only a human could complete? She was probably more expendable than Leela.

It surprised Martha to realise that, if Romana was calling her in to ask for her help, she’d throw herself into the war willingly. Not just for the sake of the universe, although she’d seen what the Daleks could do. And certainly not for the general Time Lord population, as obstinate and conceited as they were. She’d fight for Leela and for K-9 and for the Doctor and maybe even for Romana. She wouldn’t win, but that wasn’t the point, was it?

“The President wanted to see me,” she informed the guards outside the Presidential Suite, even though they’d probably already known that. It made her feel a bit better to vindicate her presence. I might not be welcome in your halls, but I’m fighting this war, just like you.

“Go in,” the tallest Time Lord replied, pushing open the door for her.

Romana looked tired. Her eyes were as sharp and intelligent as ever, but she couldn’t hide the weariness in her face when she turned to face Martha.

It couldn’t be easy, leading an entire planet into war. Even if she didn’t know what the eventual outcome would be, Romana had to know that there would be causalities. She had to know that the world would be changed forever by what happened over the next few months. The Time Lord had the weight of the universe on her shoulders, just like the Doctor.

“What is it?” Martha asked, immediately.

“I have a detected a temporal anomaly of a currently incalculable magnitude,” said K-9, who had followed her into the room and came to halt at Romana’s side.

For one confusing moment, Martha wondered if the war was coming to an end already. (Since she hadn’t seen any of the battles – apart from a few Time Lords with minor wounds, she hadn’t even seen the casualties – it was difficult for her to judge what was going on outside. She’d expected a few more explosions, though.) But then she realised that Romana was hardly likely to call her if her planet was disintegrating around her. And that could only mean …

“Oh my god,” Martha breathed, “He’s found me? My Doctor! He’s coming to get me?”

“It would be more accurate to say that he has started to stabilise the temporal field around you,” said Romana, with a ghost of a smile on her lips, “But you will, I hope, be returning to your own place in the time stream very soon.”

Relief, more potent than anything she’d ever felt before, bubbled up in her chest. Then she thought of Leela and it stuck in her throat.

“Leela!” she gasped, “I didn’t even say goodbye …”

“I’m sure she’ll appreciate the urgency of the situation.”

Martha felt a tug somewhere around her navel, and almost doubled over in surprise.

“I am detecting an increase in the levels of artron energy around Mistress Martha.”

This was all happening so quickly. Martha wanted more time to say her goodbyes and to savour the burnt orange sky that she’d never get to see again. She didn’t want to forget anything, from the way Leela’s skin felt under her palms to the way the mountains gleamed when the light from the setting suns caught the snow-capped peaks. For the last three months she’d hated the amount of time she’d had on Gallifrey, and now she didn’t have enough.

“I didn’t think I’d leave so suddenly,” she said, weakly.

“Paradoxes are extremely complicated,” Romana noted, “You’re lucky to be returning home at all.”

And that reminded Martha, suddenly and inexorably, of the other paradox she’d seen reversed.

“I will remember this, won’t I?” she said, urgently, “When I get back to my time? I will remember Gallifrey?” Romana didn’t answer. “K-9?”

“Insufficient data.”

“Even Time Lords have difficulty predicting the effects of time, Doctor Jones.”

“Martha,” she corrected, automatically. “Last time I was caught up in a paradox, I remembered everything. We were in the eye of the storm, the Doctor said.”

“I suppose you’ll simply have to wait and see, won’t you?” asked Romana, as the room began to dissolve.

“I won’t forget!” Martha exclaimed fiercely, “I will remember.”

“I certainly hope so, Martha.”

***

She opened her eyes.

There was a familiar face leaning over her, and he grinned when she looked up at him in comprehension.

“Welcome back, Martha Jones.”

“Doctor!” she exclaimed, sitting up sharply. Her stomach lurched a little, protesting against the sudden movement, but she seized him in a tight hug anyway. “I am so happy to see you!”

“Where did you go?” Donna demanded. Despite the sharpness of her voice, the other woman looked pale and drawn, squeezing Martha’s arm as soon as the Doctor broke the hug. Martha wondered how long she’d actually been gone for. Hours? Days? At least her Mum wouldn’t have had a chance to miss her.

“I …” Martha paused, looking over at the Doctor as she pulled herself to her feet. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to see, but the bright grin made it clear that he didn’t realise that she’d just spent three months on his home planet. “I went to Gallifrey.”

And she remembered every second of it.

For a long time – or what seemed like a long time, anyway – nobody spoke. The Doctor took a step backwards, separating himself from Martha and Donna and leaning against the TARDIS console.

“Who did you see?” he asked, his voice a little too measured. There was an unfamiliar hunger in his face, no matter how much he tried to conceal it. He was desperate to know what – who – she’d seen, but, at the same time, he was frightened of the answer.

For a moment, Martha considered pleading ignorance. But then she remembered Leela’s proud features and Romana’s intelligent gaze. He was the only one who remembered them now and that wasn’t fair. They deserved to be remembered. They deserved to have their stories told.

Martha Jones was very good at telling stories. She’d had a whole year to practise.

“President Romana,” she answered, and, although the flicker of recognition that crossed his face was almost painful to see, she didn’t stop. “Leela. K-9. The Master. I even saw you, but that was only from a distance. We didn’t speak.”

His face was unreadable.

“I’m sorry.”

He was sorry. He was sorry that she’d found them only to lose them again just as quickly. The Doctor had been around for nine centuries, but he still didn’t realise that some things – from travels in time and space to nights with Leela under the Gallifreyan stars – were worth getting hurt for. Despite what had happened in the end, Martha didn’t regret her time in the TARDIS. She wouldn’t regret Leela either.

“Don’t be,” she said, firmly. “They were all so brave.”

“You didn’t tell them?”

“What was coming? Of course not!”

“Right. Good.”

The Doctor turned back to the TARDIS console. He started to press buttons without purpose, just to give himself something to do, and fell still as soon as Martha put her hand on his arm.

“It was even more beautiful than you said.”

He turned to face her, and Martha tried to pretend that she didn’t see the tears in his eyes. She put her arms around the Doctor, who hugged her close in return, and they mourned together.

FIC: Section 3-52 [Doctor Who / Star Trek XI]

atraphoenix — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:42:39 GMT

Title: Section 3-52
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Doctor Who / Star Trek XI
Characters: James T Kirk/Zoe Heriot and Spock
Rating: PG
Summary: Zoe couldn’t continue to wander around the bridge in that catsuit. It was Kirk's job – his duty, even – to get her out of it.

Author's Note: biichan suggested it, and, since there can never be too much timey wimey crossover fanfiction, I was happy to run with the idea.

“Her outfit does not meet Starfleet regulations, Captain.”

Jim unwillingly dragged his eyes away from Zoe Heriot and her shiny catsuit to glance sideways at Spock. He didn’t give a damn about Starfleet regulations at the moment, and he couldn’t believe that any red – or green, as the case may be – blooded male would actually bother to point them out when someone like Zoe was standing in front of him in a skin tight one piece.

Part of him honestly believed that his first officer was enjoying a private joke at the expense of the rest of the world, seeing how far he could push them before someone finally realised that he wasn’t being serious. (The other part knew that Spock was just a ridiculously stoic hobgoblin of a … hobgoblin. His friend had a sense of humour, if you could call it that, but it didn’t stretch to laughing at official protocol. Not yet.)

“I know, Spock.”

“Section 3-52 of the Starfleet uniform code states that all personnel must …”

“I know, Spock. But she’s new. And she’s a scientist. She’s just eccentric.”

Spock gave him a quizzical glance.

“The human concept of ‘eccentricity’ is often associated with high levels of intelligence. However, I do not believe this is an adequate reason for her to remain in an improper state of dress.”

With a slight shake of his head – and one final, brief search for the nonexistent sarcasm in Spock’s eyes – Jim turned his attention back to Zoe. She was currently discussing mathematics with Chekov. It was impossible to tell if she was having a conversation with him or simply talking at him, though, because the young ensign seemed to be finding it very difficult to respond. Spock was right. She couldn’t continue to wander around the bridge in that catsuit.

It was his job – his duty, even – to get her out of it.

***

“I didn’t realise that Starfleet captains made a habit of buying drinks for their new crewmembers.”

They didn’t, of course – not unless the new crewmembers looked like Zoe and the captain was Kirk – but he wasn’t about to tell her that. It had been hard enough to coax her into leaving her equations and coming to the recreation room in the first place.

He should have guessed that a brilliant young scientist – especially a brilliant young scientist with degrees in astrophysics and astrometrics and half a dozen other things that sounded equally complicated – would be a bit cold. She was as fond of logic as Spock. There was a certain iciness about her, but, well, he liked a challenge.

He liked a challenge and he loved her outfit.

“We do things differently on the Enterprise.”

“I know, Captain. Your record speaks for itself.”

If he hadn’t known better, he’d have assumed she was teasing him. As it was, she looked perfectly serious. It was nice to have a bit of notoriety – he was apparently the captain of the most accident prone ship in the Federation – but he had a feeling Zoe wasn’t all that impressed by it.

“So does yours. What exactly is parapsychology, anyway?”

“It’s a very interesting discipline,” she said, in what was probably her most enthusiastic voice, “It involves the investigation of psychic abilities using a purely scientific method.”

“Really?”

She nodded, smiling at him over the rim of her glass.

“I’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the pioneers in the field,” she continued, “Including Doctor Thomas Syme. He experimented with enhanced emotional detachment in order to emphasize a person’s natural ability with facts and figures.”

“That sounds more like brainwashing to me.”

It sounded pretty Vulcan, too, actually, but it just wasn’t natural for a human. He suddenly wasn’t surprised that her crewmates on the Wheel – the ones he’d spoken to during their brief sojourn there, anyway – had referred to her as a human computer. Her senior officers had pumped her full of facts and figures until all her feelings were pushed aside. Starfleet might have a few faults, but at least the academy allowed people to learn that other things were just as essential as numbers.

“There are more important things than logic,” he added, finishing the statement off with one of his trademark grins when it occurred to him that he was probably being a bit too serious. He didn’t have a set seduction plan, but that probably wasn’t the right path to take.

“Logic just enables a person to be wrong with authority,” she agreed with a smile that was far more open that her previous smiles. It took Kirk by surprise.

“That’s pretty good. I’ll have to try it on Spock.”

“I think an old friend of mine said it to me.”

***

James Tiberius Kirk had a feeling that he was a little bit drunk. Not the sort of drunk that would make it difficult for him to get out of bed tomorrow, but possibly the sort of drunk that would have him waking up Bones for an early morning pick-me-up.

Zoe Heriot, her head falling absently against his shoulder as they wound their way through the corridors of the ship, wasn’t quite as inebriated. It had been hard to get her to drink anything, actually. She’d quoted figures about the effects of alcohol on the body every time he’d tried to top up her glass.

“You know,” he said, as he leaned forward to press the button on the turbolift, “You’re really not supposed to wear something like that on board a Federation vessel.”

“Something like what?”

Smiling, he ran a finger down her arm. “Like this. It’s against regulations.”

“I’m sorry, captain.”

“Oh, believe me, you don’t need to be sorry …”

“I had to wear a uniform on the Wheel,” she continued, acting as if she hadn’t heard him, “But I’m afraid I’m still waiting for my Starfleet uniform to be provided.”

Should he have rushed that through?

“And this is all you had?”

“This was all I felt comfortable in. Don’t you think that the short skirts are a little …”

“Illogical?”

“Impractical,” Zoe concluded, raising her head off his shoulder to look him in the eyes. She was smiling again. She had a nice smile, when it stopped being logical and started being natural. She could feel, but it didn’t come easily to her. The Enterprise was going to be a learning experience in more ways than one.

“I didn’t pick them,” he said with a shrug. He’d probably have shortened them by a few extra centimetres if he had.

“You didn’t protest either, did you?”

Jim laughed delightedly. “When I meet with Starfleet command, I have more important things on my mind.”

“Things like avoiding court marshals?”

Her expression was impassive. Maybe she was having a joke at the universe as well? (The parallels between her and Spock were starting to scare him, although he had a feeling that his first officer wouldn’t look anywhere near as good in a tight silver material.)

“I think you’re going to fit in just fine here.”

“Thank you, captain,” she said, “You are aware that you’re leading me towards your quarters rather than mine, don’t you?”

“I am? Isn’t that … careless of me?”

”Is it? I thought it was a rather transparent seduction attempt, myself.”

He stopped in front of his door, pressing the panel and leaning against the frame.

“Has it worked?”

She stepped past him, reaching for the zip of her suit, and that was the only answer he needed.

***

“I see that Ensign Heriot has decided to select a more appropriate outfit for her time on the bridge.”

Resting his elbow on the arm of his chair, Jim leaned forward to watch Zoe cross the bridge with a stack of folders in her arms. His lips curved into an easy grin as she walked past him in the blue mini dress of the female science officers. It must have been waiting for her in her quarters when she finally managed to return there.

“I just taught her a bit about life on the Enterprise.”

There was that infuriating quizzical look again, and even Zoe – who seemed to have heard him – glanced sideways at Jim, smiling in a way that fell just short of being demure.

“Your dedication to the Starfleet uniform code is admirable, Captain,” Spock remarked, and Jim’s grin widened. If the uniform continued to involve miniscule blue skirts, he’d happily defend it until his dying breath.

Zoe caught his eye before disappearing into the turbolift. He was always happy to help a crewmate in need. She was beautiful and intelligent and it was crucial for her to learn to let go of logic.

“Hey, I’m always pleased to do my duty, Spock.”

“Indeed.”

FIC: Rise by Sin [Wicked]

atraphoenix — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:14:59 GMT

Title: Rise by Sin
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Wicked
Characters: Nessarose, with Elphaba/Glinda and unrequited Nessa/Glinda
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Nessarose knew that she’d been born wicked.

Author's Note: Written for the 2009 lgbtfest.

“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.”
-- William Shakespeare (Measure for Measure)

Nessarose knew that she’d been born wicked. The knowledge had settled about her shoulders like a cloak as soon as soon as she was old enough to garner some understanding of the world around her.

Everybody was born wicked. They wore their sins like a second skin. Prayer and piety could wash it away, but it had to be constant prayer and constant piety. Sin – a solid entity, a palpable foe to fight – would return if you did not remain vigilant, like a weed creeping through the flagstones or a leak in a roof. Small at first, but, by the time you finally rose up to take action, it would have threatened to overwhelm you.

As a child, Nessa had assumed that her sins were ordinary sins. Pride in her fierce sister and her darling brother, and envy when she looked at the whole young girls that occasionally passed by their house. Wicked, yes, but not irremovable. Not irreversible. She could cleanse herself. She could still be the holy daughter that her father deserved.

It wasn’t until her fourteenth summer that she realised the depths of her potential depravity.

Their small house – it was more of a cottage, really – was only a short distance from a brook that was often frequented by young Quadlings. Nessarose had never dreamed of walking down there herself, but she could see the frolicking children well enough from her father’s bedroom window. Sometimes she would kneel on the floorboards and say a silent prayer for the splashing boys and girls, hoping to absolve them of sins they probably hadn’t realised they were committing.

(Nobody had thought to tell her of the things that went on between men and women, but she knew about marriage and she knew a little about what occurred afterwards. She even knew that it could, in its own way, be something close to holy. There was nothing sinful about reproduction, although Nessa doubted that the ‘games’ in the brook were being played with anything so focused in mind.)

Only balmy summer day, the brook was occupied only by two girls. At first, Nessarose was relieved, since this meant she would no longer have to pray for them. (Although it would mean a few more prayers for herself. Jealousy – even teenage jealousy of their carefree games and thoughtless days – was a terrible sin. It sickened her to know that she could feel it.)

Soon, however, her relief turned into confusion, and then into something else entirely. She watched – astonished, reviled, thrilled – as one girl (dark haired, like Elphie) leaned forward to kiss the other. The water was cold, but the sunlight filtering through the canopy was warm. The light dappled their bare skin as they clung together. Slim fingers tangled in long hair and crimson lips traced the contours of damp breasts. Nessa’s breath caught in her throat as narrow hips bucked in response to the actions of a questing palm and gasping mouths pressed feverishly together again.

She didn’t understand what she was feeling, not really. She knew only that it was far worse than envy.

Prayers would not be able to save her now.

***

She had fallen in love with Glinda at first sight. Quadling Country was not known for being beautiful – the beauty it did possess was a beauty all of it’s own, difficult to understand if you hadn’t experienced it first hand (rather like Elphie, in fact) – and Shiz was far too loud for somebody who had grown up in relative isolation. Despite the warmth of Elphaba’s greeting, Nessarose had been frightened and painfully aware of every movement she made.

And then she’d been introduced to Glinda. It was a name she knew well enough, from her sister’s letters, but that was all she’d known. Elphaba had not described her roommate’s beauty or grace, only her existence. (If it had been anybody else, Nessa would have suspected that the descriptions were omitted because the writer had realised they wouldn’t do Glinda justice. As it was Elphaba, Nessa was inclined to think that she simply hadn’t noticed.)

Nessarose drank in her loveliness as if she was a flower glimpsing the sun for the first time following years of darkness. She had pushed all thoughts of Quadling girls – of fingers tightly gripping slender hips and bare breasts rising and falling rapidly with ragged breaths – out of her mind since that fateful day, focusing instead on scriptures and the purity she simply had to maintain. Glinda’s movements filled her with the same sensation of revulsion and pleasure as the girls in the water.

She would never forget the intensity of Glinda’s first appraising glance. Although she didn’t realise that she was being compared to Elphaba – not at first – Nessa couldn’t miss the frank, and rather unexpected, judgments being imposed on her. Glinda’s expression was hard, somehow, as if she was … less for being elegant, rather than more.

For the first time, Nessarose was truly aware of how different she was.

She’d always been conscious of being different, naturally, but she had never been conscious of how different she was from her dear Elphie. In the past, she’d linked them together automatically – the green girl and the broken girl, the daughters of Frexspar the Godly, the sinner and the saint – but her sister had built up a life of her own in Shiz. Nessarose wasn’t sure that she was going to be able to fit into it. She would have to fashion a space of her own.

There were precious few places available for a broken doll like her, of course, but she would do her best. Elphaba was still there, at least. Standing by her side was better than nothing at all.

***

Nessarose had expected life at Shiz to test her, but, in truth, it was almost too easy.

The genuinely pious were always tested. It was both their birthright and their punishment (for choosing a path that only the pure – who would relish the pain – dared to tread). She had intended to rise to the challenge. She had intended to prove that she was worthy. She had not intended to make friends, or to live a sweet and simple life at a university that felt more like home than Quadling Country ever had.

She was startled to find that she fitted in here, like a missing piece in a puzzle. Picnics by the canals, quiet conversations in the library, coffee in the many pleasant shops at the centre of the town … even her religious conversation was tolerated, if not enjoyed, by her companions. She found herself living the life she had so often dreamed of. Hours would pass without her being acutely aware of how damaged she was.

When she finally remembered, she would be struck by something close to a fever. There were no recognisable symptoms, and prayer – her cure for most ailments, physical or otherwise – did little to restore her to normalcy.

It didn’t occur to Nessarose that she was simply too happy to worry.

In fact, if it hadn’t been for Glinda’s place in her new life, Nessarose suspected that she would have gone for days at a time without devoting hours to dutiful contemplation and prayer.

Her presence was not the sort of challenge Nessarose wanted, because it was not the sort of challenge she thought she could win.

She found that she started to speak of religion more often than she ever had before, wrapping her holiness around her like a mantle. (As if Glinda would notice. As if Glinda would care.) What good was holiness if the rest of the world couldn’t see it? What good was piety if it could not protect you from yourself?

Sometimes Nessa was able to believe that she was a good as she wished to be. Sometimes she felt her sinful thoughts solidifying, coating her skin and filling up her throat.

As long as people only saw her righteousness, she could live with the corruption. She was fighting for her soul, and it was not a battle she intended to lose. Not yet.

***

After six months at Shiz, Nessarose realised the truth about Elphaba and Glinda.

She should have seen it sooner, perhaps, but she had been too blinkered, too focused on her own struggle for piety, to guess that her sister had already lost a similar battle. Elphaba had been her protector for as long as Nessarose could remember. A green knight without any shining armour to enclose her narrow frame, and spindled arms and a strong voice instead of a sword and shield. It was almost impossible to imagine that she would give herself over to something as dangerous as love. It was certainly impossible to imagine closed, ferocious Elphaba exposing herself so intimately to another person.

Nessarose didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when the truth – glimpsed in small gestures and shy smiles, and ignored for months – finally dawned. Her sister had never been able to comprehend religion, and Nessa had always known that she had to be pure for both of them, but it was almost too much to realise that Elphie was committing the same sin she was fighting against.

Prayers weren’t enough, but she said them anyway. It was the least she could do for her sister. It was the only thing she could do.

Sometimes, she would lie awake at night, listening to the soft sounds coming from Glinda and Elphaba’s room. (Glinda-and-Elphaba. Their names belonged together now, like rhyming words, like Elphaba-and-Nessarose once had. The green girl and the pink girl, the sinner and the sinner pretending to be a saint.) She would forget Nanny’s snores – forget Nanny entirely, in fact – and focus on the murmurs and moans she could pick up through the door.

She had no hands with which to touch, no palms to press against white skin and pink silk. Even if she dared to confess her sins – and how could she possibly confess? – Nessa would never be able to touch Glinda as Elphaba did. She could caress with her eyes, and nothing more. She would throw away her purity for an incomplete wickedness.

All she could do was lie still and listen to the soft mumbles and stifled groans on the other side of the wall. She couldn’t even trace a hand down between her own legs, to mimic dreams that would never - never – become reality. She pictured gold curls fanning out across her stomach as Glinda’s head dipped down past her navel, and graceful white fingers tracing the contours of her broken body. She tried to imagine pressing her lips to Glinda’s skin, nipping lightly at the flesh to leave a mark and taste the sin pooling in the hollows of the older girl’s collarbone, but she would always remember – before the picture became too solid, thank the Unnamed God – that Elphie was the person who was lucky enough to do that sort of thing. Not her. Never her.

Purity was supposed to hurt. It wasn’t supposed to break your heart.

***

There had been a time – a long time ago now, in another life – when Nessarose had been bruised by gossip. She’d been rather disgusted by hearsay – a waste of words when there were so many prayers in need of being said and so many worthwhile scriptures waiting to be written – and horrified by the lies people were happy to concoct about each other.

She’d been much younger then, of course. Softer. Her shell of religious fervour had hardened in the years since Elphaba’s disappearance. She was untouchable now. Incorruptible.

(Nessa had been bruised by wickedness then as well. Ironic, really, given the nickname she’d now earned for herself. She fought against wickedness these days. She struck out before the sin had a chance to settle.)

You had to make sacrifices to get anything done in life. Elphaba – the sinner, the green girl, the lost daughter of Frexspar the Godly – had sacrificed her sister and her lover for her cause (whatever it was). In a way, Nessa had been happy to sacrifice part of herself for the same reason. At least she knew what her cause was. At least she was still purer than Elphaba. (Her sacrifice had been the right sort. The godly sort. The sort that made her punitive purity all the clearer.)

She hadn’t seen very much of Glinda since leaving Shiz. She’d kept track of her movements – her marriage and her social circles and her regular trips around Oz – in the way a reformed alcoholic makes sure he is aware of the location of the drinks cabinet in any house he visits. Not because he wants a taste – not anymore – but because it is always best to be aware of your weakness. It is easier to avoid something if you’re aware you have to fight it.

Glinda was not going to claim another of the sisters. Elphaba had paid the price for her sins. Elphaba had paid the price for her love. Nessarose was not going to make the same mistake. Unlike Glinda, she would share her purity – her gifts from the Unnamed God – with the rest of the world, instead of her sin.

She bewitched axes and dispensed brutal justice and pulled apart happy couples if their sinfulness outweighed their godliness.

When she walked back to her room at night, her silver heels made sharp clicking noises on the stones of the hall. She would hear the wails of the bereaved and the sobs of the parted lovers through the open windows, and she never looked back.

FIC: To the East [Carmilla]

atraphoenix — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:45:32 GMT

Title: To the East
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Carmilla
Characters: Laura/Carmilla, mentions of Carmilla/Bertha and Laura/OFC
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It wasn’t accurate to say that Laura moved on after Carmilla’s death. She moved forward, certainly, but that was only because she had no other way to go.

Author's Note: Written for the 2009 lgbtfest.

I had a strange conversation with Carmilla after dinner today. Sometimes I feel as if I hardly see her, as she rarely stirs from her room before noon, but this evening she was in one of her more pleasant moods. We sat together for a long time, talking about everything and nothing.

It was the easy conversation of friends who know each other better than they know themselves, or even the hushed dialogue of two lovers seizing a moment together in the quiet corners of busy ballrooms. (I was eager to savour our time together, so I elected not to protest against the strange intimacy of the moment. I believe that my father, sitting on the other side of the parlour, failed to notice it entirely. He couldn’t fathom the depth of my feelings for my dearest friend even if I did tell him.)

I admit that I do not know her better than I know myself, of course. I often feel as if I don’t know her at all. She is nothing but secrets. It is so hard to fathom that someone as good and beautiful as Carmilla could have anything eerie lurking behind her façade of purity, but that may well be the truth of it.

(Or as close to the truth as these things can be.)

Conversation eventually moved on to our families, as such meandering discussions will when the speakers have no particular direction in mind. She wished to know about my mother, and, after offering a few intimacies, I attempted to persuade her to divulge some details of her own.

She would not tell me about her family – I should not have been so surprised by that – but she eventually consented to tell me a little about her home.

“My home lies in the direction of the west,” she said quietly, her cold hand slipping in to mine, “I’ll take you to see it one day, my dear heart.”

Her voice was soft and low, as if she could scarcely manage to fill her lungs with each breath. If it hadn’t been for the surprisingly strength of her grip, I would have called my father over and told him she was sickening with something. Her gaze struck me as more than a little feverish.

It is strange to think that she plans to take me to a place she won’t even name, but, at the time, I didn’t think to question her.

I should have pulled away. It seems like such an obvious solution now. I am sitting alone in my room with nothing but my diary and my pen for company, and the world has taken on a new clarity. Things seem much more real now I can smell ink rather than Carmilla’s peculiar perfume.

I do not believe that I will ever be able to pull away from her.

I do not believe that I want to.

***

It wasn’t accurate to say that Laura moved on after Carmilla’s death. She moved forward, certainly, but that was only because she had no other way to go.

Her father had assumed that she would return to her former happiness after the vampire had been killed. He didn’t understand the depth of Carmilla’s influence. He certainly didn’t understand that she couldn’t simply forget everything she’d realised at Carmilla’s insistence. You didn’t notice the shadows until somebody pointed them out to you, but, once you had acknowledged them, you knew that they were there even after you’d blown out the candle.

In Laura’s opinion, he was a fool for assuming that ‘dead’ and ‘gone’ meant the same thing, but she did her best to humour him. Though it was generally acknowledged that she hadn’t been in the wrong – how could they blame a mere girl for falling under the spell of a wicked creature like Carmilla, after all? – she couldn’t entirely erase the guilt that stirred in her chest when she thought of what she’d put him through. To make it up to him, Laura put on an overly cheerful façade, smiling and laughing more than she ever had before Carmilla had insinuated her way into their lives. He was so happy to see the mirth in her eyes that it didn’t occur to him to question the sincerity of it.

He suggested – just once – that they leave the schloss, but Laura waved away the idea without really considering it. There was, in theory at least, nothing for them to run away from now.

Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, one of Laura’s two governesses, was inclined to agree.

“There is nothing more dangerous than memories in this house now,” she said with a sage smile. Memories of dark eyes and slender white hands, of footsteps in the hallway outside Laura’s bedroom, of kisses stolen in private moments and secret corners. Memories that were probably dangerous enough.

A month after that, her father suggested finding a new companion for her. Unfortunately, this was something she couldn’t protest against. It was the sort of thing that good, polite girls were supposed to do, and he was very careful to make sure that the companion was suitable. There was nothing remotely mysterious about Ada. She was the daughter of one of her father’s old colleagues. She was said to be quiet, polite, pleasant and a dozen other virtues he was careful to list repeatedly before her arrival. He was attempting to soothe Laura, and, until the girl arrived, it was successful.

She wasn’t beautiful, not like Carmilla – was that one of the qualities her father had included on her list of requirements? – but she was pretty enough, with auburn curls and a small nose that turned up at the end. There was something pleasant in the way she held herself, and the way she laughed musically at every joke, no matter how poor it was. Carmilla had been much more taciturn.

Carmilla. Carmilla. It always came back to her, in the end. Despite her best attempts to accept Ada, Laura couldn’t help but compare everything she did to the vampire.

She couldn’t tell her father how unsettled she was, any more than she could mention how little she’d been sleeping. He would assume she was sickening for something.

Perhaps she was.

The seed Carmilla had planted in chest was growing. The vampire’s death had not been enough to extinguish her wickedness.

It was going to choke her. It was going to choke her, and no new companion would be able to save her.

***

I am trembling so acutely that I scarcely know if I can write this entry, but I feel as I must. If I do not record it now, I will not be able to reflect on the details at a later date, and I will have no hope of forming a more coherent reply.

My father did notice our strange behaviour in the parlour last night!

(He must have. I cannot imagine what else could have prompted his conversation today.)

Carmilla was still in bed when he asked me to take a turn about the gardens with him, and I confess that I was rather surprised by his actions. He is usually content to leave me to myself until my dear companion stirs.

Things have not always been this way. Father and I have spent many hours together since his retirement, walking and talking and taking great pleasure in each other’s company. I truly think that he would be at a loss if I ever married. Not that I can see such a decision on any horizon. Sometimes I wonder if I am the marrying kind.

But I digress. I was sitting in the morning room of the schloss with Madame Perrodon, who was speaking in rapturous French about how pleasant it was to have two young ladies about the place, when he approached. She is not Carmilla’s governess, but seems as taken with the girl as she ever was with me. Not that I can blame her. I do believe that it is impossible to meet Carmilla without being struck by her. However, I was happy to accept my father’s offer and leave my teacher to her poetic monologue. Something about Madame’s words made me feel uncomfortable, as if she was trying to decipher and echo my own feelings for our beautiful visitor.

We had almost reached my favourite bench – I was inclined to ask him to sit a while, so we could enjoy the aspect in peace – when he spoke.

“I have been thinking,” he said, “It has been some weeks since we heard from General Spielsdorf, and the poor man must be suffering greatly.”

I felt an unpleasant stirring of guilt in my stomach at his words. I have not given as much thought to our friend the General – or, indeed, to his poor ward’s untimely death – as I should have. Carmilla’s arrival dulled whatever grief I should have felt, and I often find it difficult to pin my thoughts to one subject when my friend is around.

“We should visit him.”

“Father, we do not know for certain where he is! Besides, Carmilla’s condition is delicate. She would not travel well.”

“She would be quite safe here, with Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine.”

I let out a gasp of consternation. How could he even consider leaving without Carmilla? I could not imagine, at the time, where such an unthinkable notion had come from.

My reaction seemed to be an adequate response in itself, as he continued before I had a chance to speak again.

“I worry that you are becoming to close to her, Laura,” he said, placing a hand on my arm. It did not feel right there. His skin was unpleasantly warm, and I longed suddenly for Carmilla’s cool touch. “She will not be able to stay with us forever.”

I was saved the trouble of forming a reply by Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, who wished to speak to my father about some domestic matter. Hastily making my excuses, I returned to the safety of the house. Carmilla awoke soon after this, and I was able to avoid my father’s attentions by spending the rest of the day in her company.

I do not know what he could have meant by his surprising speech. We are not “too close”. He should be glad that I have a little company at last. All young girls are prone to forming intense friendships, particularly friendships that make little sense to those outside. It is our nature.

***

Ada’s bedroom was in the west wing of the schloss. It made Laura dizzy to think of her sleeping with her face turned towards Carmilla’s former home, although she felt even worse when she imagined her bathing or dressing in the same room. Improper thoughts would step, unbidden and fully formed, into her mind as she climbed between her own bed sheets, and there was nothing she could do to shake them. It was all she could do to prevent her hand from straying downwards, between her legs, to compound sinful thoughts with sinful actions.

She wished she could hate Ada, much as she had once wished she could hate Carmilla. Hate was a much simpler emotion than love, or so Laura liked to think. Perhaps it was too close to love? They both required a certain depth of obsession. She should settle for dislike instead.

Unfortunately, it was rather difficult to dislike her as well. She was the opposite of Carmilla in every way. A perfectly ordinary girl, not particularly intelligent or particularly remarkable. To Laura’s intense surprise, that seemed to be what pulled them together. The sense of the exotic, of the unknown, had been the root of her relationship with Carmilla, and now the normalcy of the time she spent with Ada fuelled something equally terrible.

Was she doomed to a life of wickedness? Ada was everything pure and good, but in her dreams Laura corrupted her as surely as Carmilla had once corrupted her.

Horrified by her own thoughts, Laura retreated into her shell and spent as little time alone with Ada as possible. This was a difficult task, given how eager her father was for them to become fast friends. He’d almost lost her to Carmilla. He knew – or thought he knew – that he couldn’t possibly lose her to Ada, so he pushed them together.

Ada, for her part, seemed to think that Laura was shy, and needed to be coaxed out of her shell. Why couldn’t she realise what she might unleash?

She would slip her arm through Laura’s, walking her around the garden as if she was a child who would stray from the path without supervision. Her skin, or what Laura could feel of it through their gowns, was warm, as was her own. Carmilla had been cold – a symptom of her illness, or her rotten core – but at least her unnatural physically had matched her unnatural nature. Laura looked, for all intents and purposes, like a normal girl.

Her new companion – she didn’t dare to call her a friend, whatever her father might hope – kept to neutral conversation topics. The weather and the autumn leaves, the new book that Madame Perrodon had suggested for their amusement. Laura rarely listened. In fact, her attention was only truly captured when Ada mentioned something about her home life.

One morning, she talked about some of her friends at home, and it wasn’t until later that evening that Laura identified the strange feeling that had been souring her stomach all day. It was jealousy! She’d been foolish enough to assume that the relationship between herself and Ada – a relationship that she’d been working very hard to avoid, no less! – had been special.

She was a fool.

She had once assumed that the relationship between herself and Carmilla had been special as well, but hadn’t Carmilla behaved in just the same way with Bertha, the General’s ward? Laura remembered the fond way her father’s friend has described the girl – her radiance and intelligence, her sweetness and gentility – and felt her stomach tighten unpleasantly. She didn’t want to think ill of the dead, but she hated the idea of her and Carmilla together, sharing secrets and kisses Laura had once assumed were hers alone.

Oh, she was truly wicked! How could she be jealous or a poor young girl who had died for her love, when she had come so close to sharing the same fate?

She hadn’t been like this before … before Carmilla came to the castle. The witch. The vampire. She had lit a candle in Laura’s head, waking up things that should sleep in the mind of a proper young lady.

Was that why she couldn’t keep her thoughts from straying towards Ada? Was she jealous of the other girl’s normality – of a normality she no longer had – in the same way Carmilla had once been jealous of her?

She suspected that, if she ever kissed Ada – and Laura knew that she never would, never could – she would taste the purity on her lips. It would never be enough to make her good again, but, for a moment, she might be able to believe that she was.

***

For many nights now, I have been having the same peculiar dream.

My sleep has been filled with a great many imaginings since the first appearance of the spectre that so strongly resembled our Carmilla, but this particular dream is different. At first I did not realise it was a dream at all. I changed into my nightgown and performed my usual ablutions with the assistance of my maid, before climbing into bed. I left my candle burning, though now I cannot recall why. The night was strangely hot and heavy, although outside the schloss it was clement at best, so perhaps I could not bring myself to move.

Whatever the reason, I always lie in what seemed to be a state of sleeplessness for many hours, before, at last, my bedroom door opens. It is not my father or one of the servants, but, to my great surprise – and it is always a great surprise, no matter how many times I see it – Carmilla!

She is wearing her own nightdress, and, despite the fact that she is hidden from throat to ankle by white cotton, I recall feeling as if I could see her for the first time. All of her. The curve of her hip as she moved across the room, the swell of her breasts, the shadows beneath her beautiful eyes. It is almost painful to look at her.

Without speaking, she would climb on to the bed and lie down next to me. Our bodies never touch – not quite – but I can feel her there as acutely as if she had wrapped her arms around my waist. Soon, I cannot recall who the bed belongs to, for it truly felt like it belongs to both of us. Our hair mixes on the pillow, strands of golden and strands of ebony tangling together until I can scarcely stand the thought of separating us. I feel as if I am trapped – my limbs turn heavy and lethargic, and my mind too slow for me to comprehend what is occurring – by her presence.

When I wake up, I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. I hate her – oh, how I hate her! – but I do love her.

How can love and hate be so closely linked? How can I stand this?

***

Laura woke up with a start. She had been dreaming – the details were already fading, and she was struggling to remember if the face she’d seen had belonged to Ada or Carmilla – but the soft tread of a figure in the hall jerked her into wakefulness.

It was Ada, her hair tousled and her eyes heavy with sleep. She looked much younger, somehow, but Laura had barely a second to dwell on that. It wasn’t important, not when she considered the fact that Ada had entered her room of her own volition.

The sky outside was still dark, but Ada was in her room.

She was reminded, inexorably, of Carmilla, and hot panic bubbled up in her chest.

“You were crying out in your sleep,” Ada said quietly, and Laura shook her head. That wasn’t right. The phantom of her dreams – the Carmilla of her dreams – never spoke. The phantom certainly never hesitated at the foot of her bed.

“Are you unwell? Should I fetch your father?”

“No, no, I’m quite all right. Forgive me. I believe I am not quite awake yet.”

She certainly felt half asleep. Her head was heavy and her limbs leaden. It was as if the other girl had crossed an invisible line, and neither of them had been aware of it until it was far too late. Something had changed.

“Were you having a bad dream?” Ada asked gently.

“Just a dream, I think. I can hardly remember it now.”

“Sometimes that is when a dream is the most frightening.”

“When we don’t know what we’re running from,” agreed Laura, in a voice barely above a whisper. Ada was still standing at the foot of the bed, neither advancing nor retreating. The fact that she didn’t make her excuses and flee meant more than Laura could ever say, though she also knew that, as far as Ada was concerned, there was no reason to flee. She didn’t understand Laura’s wickedness. She had never even heard of Carmilla.

“It was only a dream, Laura.”

“Dreams come from our subconscious, do they not?”

This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Laura didn’t want to infect her, she didn’t want to corrupt someone so beautiful and innocent with her own sin, she didn’t …

She didn’t want to corrupt her.

Carmilla, on the other hand, had wanted nothing else. That was what vampirism was. It was a fascination with another person. It was a desire that resembled love but fell vastly short of it. It was a need to break down the beautiful and transform it into the sinful.

Whatever else she was, and whatever else Carmilla had left behind in her mind, at least she did not want that.

“I believe that you are a better person than you seem to think you are,” Ada replied, interrupting her reverie, and Laura couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“You do not know me.”

“No,” she agreed, taking a step closer but still remaining at a safe distance, “But I would like to, if you can bear to let me in.”

Laura was struck by a sudden urge to close the gap between them and touch Ada’s cheek, if only to see how the other woman reacted.

“I … I think I can bear that.”

Ada smiled, and, before Laura could speak again, it was the other girl who had moved, enveloping her in a tight hug.

It was not a romantic embrace. It was not one of Carmilla’s embraces – which had always left Laura torn between revulsion and desire, trapped in her own emotions – either. It was Ada’s alone, and Laura could not imagine anything more wonderful.

Gentle breath stirred the hairs on the back of Laura’s neck. The arms that held her were soft and warm. She could even feel a pulse when she pressed her face against the other girl’s collar, and smell the traces of the powder that Ada had failed to wash away during her evening ablutions.

Carmilla had never felt like that – she had never smelled or breathed or even truly lived in response to Laura’s touch – and yet she’d never noticed. It was strange, really, how things failed to be conspicuous by their absence when you had something else to fill your mind.

It was time for Carmilla to become the absent one, not Laura herself.

As the first rays of the sun started to creep over the horizon and through the gap in the curtains, Ada slipped a warm hand into hers and led her over to the window to watch the sunrise.

She knew that Carmilla’s house lay in the direction of the west. It was high time she started to look towards the east.

Time to Switch off for 'Earth Hour'

atraphoenix — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:36:55 GMT

2009 is an important year when it comes to climate change (and global action against climate change). In fact, with the Global Climate Change Conference occurring in Copenhagen at the end of year, it is probably the make or break year when it comes to climate change.

My classes this semester have been filled with doom and gloom warnings about the state of the planet, but they've all been concluded with a largely positive message. It'll be too late soon, but it isn't too late now. Not if we're fast.

Today is a good day to try and do something. 50 million people switched off their lights during 'Earth Hour' last year and the goal is even more ambitious this year. All you have to do is switch off your lights for one hour - between 8.30 pm and 9.30 pm, wherever you are - and you can make it clear that you won't stand for indolence anymore.

You can get more information from the Earth Hour website and sign up via the WWF.

Some major landmarks will be turning off their lights - Sydney Opera House, the Great Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, Tapei 101 and the Empire State Building, to name but a few - and I really hope you decide to join in as well.

(Don't forget to promote the event, too. The more people who switch off, the clearer the message!)

FIC: By Candlelight [Merlin / Robin Hood]

atraphoenix — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 15:46:53 GMT

Title: By Candlelight
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Merlin / Robin Hood
Characters: Marian/Gwen
Rating: PG
Summary: The engagement ring – stolen away by Robin in a fit of typical impetuosity – was gone, but she could still feel the weight on her finger.

Author's Note: I blame gnimaerd for this.

“I don’t want to marry him.”

It was an unnecessary statement, really, but Marian had spent the entire day with the words stuck in her throat. She’d been desperate to voice them, desperate to free herself – just a little, just a little – from the nagging guilt that filled her. She didn’t want to want to marry Gisbourne.

The engagement ring – stolen away by Robin in a fit of typical impetuosity – was gone, but she could still feel the weight on her finger.

“He isn’t all bad,” said Gwen soothingly, lifting Marian’s nightdress out of one of the drawers. It wasn’t a particularly cold night, but Knighton Hall wasn’t as well tended as it had once been. The wind slipped in through cracks in the unpainted sections of the wall, chilling Marian to the bone and threatening to extinguish the weak yellow light from the candle flame. It was best to dress warmly, even if you did have somebody pleasant to share your bed.

“Oh?”

“He has … qualities.”

“Qualities?” Marian laughed, torn between amusement and incredulity. Coming from Gwen’s lips, the words sounded almost believable.

“His feelings for you are certainly genuine ...”

“And that’s what matters?”

“It’s better than nothing, isn’t it?”

Despite herself, Marian smiled. She’d have to tell Robin that, and try and echo Gwen’s conviction as she spoke. In so many ways, her maid was a miraculous person. Her indomitable faith in the human spirit both entranced and infuriated Marian, who considered herself as icy as any bitter English evening. It was like watching a person from another world. Gwen would probably be able to think of something nice to say about the Sheriff, if given enough time!

“Will you be going out tonight?” Gwen she asked, interrupting Marian’s reverie.

“No,” Marian replied with a shake of her head, glancing sideways at her maid as she undressed and pulled on her nightdress as quickly as possible, “I think the Nightwatchman needs a rest this evening.”

She was mildly disappointed when she realised that Gwen wasn’t actually watching her. She’d hoped to feel the other woman’s eyes tracing her profile, trying to catch a glimpse of briefly exposed white flesh before it was hidden away by the heavy garment. Unfortunately, her maid was ever professional, bustling around the bedroom and tidying things away.

“Good. You ripped your cloak a few nights ago. I need time to sew it.”

“What would I do without you?” said Marian with a smile, but, as Gwen crossed the room to open the wardrobe and collect the costume, she found herself shaking her head. “No, don’t. Stay with me. I’ll help you sew it ...”

There was something terribly domestic about sitting and sewing industriously by candlelight, and Marian rather liked the idea. She could pretend to be another maid in Knighton Hall, rather than the lady of the house. They’d gossip about the upcoming wedding – the light, airy gossip of two people who are watchers rather than participants, of two people who won’t be effected by anything as vast as the return of King Richard.

No.

That wouldn’t be her, would it? She couldn’t be a non-combatant. (Her life as the Nightwatchman proved that.) She could never be anything other than herself, no matter what her father wished or Sir Guy of Gisbourne believed.

Catching her maid’s – her friend’s – eyes, she realised that Gwen, at least, understood that. She also knew full well that Marian’s sewing skills left a lot to be desired. (Marian herself couldn’t work out why wielding a needle was so difficult, when wielding a sword felt perfectly natural.)

“Don’t look at me like that, Gwen,” she said with a laugh, sitting down on the edge of her bed, “We’ll just talk, then? Anything you like.”

“Anything?” repeated Gwen, a smile flickering across her lips. Marian flushed.

“Within reason,” she promised, and her maid sat down on the bed next to her. Their hands didn’t actually touch, but the sudden closeness sent a shiver of electricity up Marian’s spine. “Although, when I am with you, I find that I’m anything but reasonable ...”

That made Gwen laugh.

“That’s why you need me.”

They both fell silent for a moment. Gwen’s hand moved inexorably, as if being tugged along by an invisible forced, her fingers linking with Marian’s.

“Will you come with me?” Marian asked, softly, “After I’ve married Gisbourne?”

“You know I’d follow you anywhere, my lady.”

“Then I shall bear it.”

FIC: The Strength to Let Go [Doctor Who]

atraphoenix — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:03:21 GMT

Title: The Strength to Let Go
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Liz Shaw/Martha Jones and the Tenth Doctor
Rating: PG
Summary: “I have no illusions about the Doctor. I don’t expect him to stay forever, just as I’m sure he doesn’t expect me to stay forever.”

Author's Note: Written for wishfulaces as part of the dw_femslash ficathon. I've taken quite a few liberties with dates, and I may have overstretched the definition of 'a historical setting', but I really enjoyed writing this.

Sometimes, Martha Jones couldn’t help but wonder if she’d made the right decision when she’d stepped aboard the TARDIS. Oh, it was wonderful, of course it was. But, every now and then, something went wrong. Abandoning your family to jet off to Tigella or Catrigan Nova or some other exotic alien planet was one thing, but abandoning them to live in Hackney and serve cold chips for a living was something else entirely.

The Doctor had been taking her to a planet called Zazz – “A planet of jazz lovers, Martha, can you imagine it? All that music! Makes 1920s New Orleans look like a ghost town …” – when the Angels arrived. Before either of them had worked out what was going on – or how to react to it – the TARDIS was gone and they were standing in a filthy alley behind a marginally less filthy chip shop.

She wouldn’t have been quite as furious if the Doctor had been at least a little bit upset. He was good at taking things in his stride, but the TARDIS was gone. Why wasn’t he panicking? He’d made more of a fuss when her coffee mug had left a ring mark on the console, for goodness sake!

“What are we going to do, Doctor?” she asked, after giving him a few moments to poke around the alley and mutter various technical expressions she didn’t understand. She was fed up of waiting and her patience was wearing paper thin.

“Do you remember Sally Sparrow?” he asked, and the expression on Martha’s face made it clear that she didn’t. Fortunately, he decided to be tactful for once, and didn’t chastise her. The Time Lord seemed to have the memory of the proverbial elephant, and often forgot that humans didn’t.

“Well,” he continued, “Good old Sally Sparrow gave me this …” – he paused for a moment, producing a plastic folder from one of his ridiculously deep pockets – “… and told me I’d need it when I ended up trapped in 1969.”

“So what is it?” questioned Martha, raising an eyebrow, “A step-by-step guide telling us how to get home?”

“Exactly!”

“Great!” Martha exclaimed, scepticism vanishing in the face of unashamed relief, “Well, what are we waiting for?”

“Ah,” said the Doctor, running a hand through his already rather messy hair, “That’s the problem. It’s going to take a few months …”

“So what are we supposed to do now?”

“Oh, you know. Find somewhere to stay. Get jobs. We might have to pretend to be married, depending on the landlady.”

“Brilliant,” she said, flatly, “Just brilliant.”

***

The Doctor was doing his best to remain jovial, but spending so long in one time and one place simply didn’t suit him. Martha did her best to keep him occupied, but, since she couldn’t really think of any key events occurring in 1969 – apart from the moon landing, of course, but they’d already seen that – her attempts often fell short of the mark. The Doctor, for some reason, seemed to know quite a lot about this year, and the three years that followed it. It was almost as if he’d spent time here before. Which was ridiculous. With the whole of time and space spread out in front of him, why would he pick England in the 1960s and 1970s?

In the absence of any better ideas, Martha had started to do all she could to keep him out of the flat. His job helped – he was inordinately pleased to be working in the little shop at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and she wisely decided not to ask why – but it wasn’t enough. She’d drag him out of London every Saturday, and they’d spend the day wandering through the countryside talking about silly little things. It was all very domestic, which was, perhaps, another reason for the Doctor’s unease. (She tried not to think about that.)

One particularly Saturday – no different to the other half a dozen Saturdays they’d spent in 1969 – they caught the train to the middle of nowhere. However, as they left the station, it became apparent that this was not a peaceful expanse of English countryside. They crested a hill to find themselves looking out over a vast – and extremely noisy – industrial complex. There was a strange smell in the air, and it was much warmer than it should be, even if it was summer.

“Someone’s drilling,” noted the Doctor, sniffing the air.

“Oil?” ventured Martha, whose own nostrils weren’t quite as sensitive his. It seemed an educated guess, and she was dimly aware that she loved throwing out comments like that, desperately hoping for a bit of praise. A puppy begging for scraps.

His nostrils flared again.

“No,” he said, slowly, “Not oil. Something else.”

Martha grinned at him. This was perfect! Mysterious occurrences at scientific research stations were right up the Doctor’s alley. Perfect for breaking him out of his funk!

“Come on,” she said, automatically starting forward, “Let’s go and take a look …”

“No!” exclaimed the Doctor, grabbing her arm and pulling her back towards the nearest patch of trees. His vehemence surprised her – he should have been leading the way instead of stopping her! – but, when Martha turned to complain, she realised the Doctor was staring straight past her. His eyes were fixed on an old yellow car that was parked on the other side of the fence, outside one of the warehouses.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s mine.”

“The car? But you don’t have a car …”

“Not anymore. It was mine. Is mine. Ooh, I hate having to explain this bit.”

“Try.”

And he did. It made more sense than a lot of the things he came out with, but Martha still struggled to wrap her head around it.

“So you’re telling me that a different version of you is already down there?”

“Yes. It’s called the Inferno Project. I was working with an organisation called UNIT at the time, and we were dispatched to see what was going wrong.”

“But …” she shook her head, “I just don’t understand how something like this can happen. Aren’t there rules you have to follow?”

“Well, they’re more guidelines than anything else,” he said, with a sheepish shrug. “This sort of thing happens when you’re travelling through time. We’ll probably be fine, as long as I don’t march up to my other self and say hello.”

“Probably?” repeated Martha, but the Doctor was miles away. Or, more accurately, half a mile away, inside the warehouse.

“I’ve always been a bit confused about the dates I worked with UNIT,” he commented, then: “You can’t go down there either, you know. Just in case.”

“Why?” said Martha, who had been wondering exactly that, “If I see a man in a pinstriped suit I’ll turn the other way, I promise.”

“If you ..? Oh. Right. No, I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. Sorry. It just isn’t worth the risk.”

But Martha Jones had acquired quite a taste for risk taking over the course of her travels with the Doctor. His warnings only served to deepen her curiosity. Besides, she had a chance to find out something about the Doctor’s past. She couldn’t very well walk away.

***

The yellow car was gone by the time Martha reached the warehouse, which was unusual. Although there’d been some sort of commotion half an hour ago, with lots of people running around and barking orders, she hadn’t noticed it driving away.

Things seemed to have died down now. It was relatively easy to enter the warehouse. She’d been spending too much time with the Doctor. She should have felt a little bit guilty about breaking and entering.

There was a woman inside, which was unexpected. It had seemed deserted from the outside, meaning that Martha probably had a lot to learn about the art of espionage. The woman was wearing a lab coat and a frown, although she would probably be rather pretty if she smiled. And toned down the eye makeup.

“Can I help you?” she asked archly, and it took Martha a few seconds to answer her. The woman’s skirt was ridiculously short, even by the standards of the 1960s, and she had rather nice legs. Not that Martha noticed that sort of thing. No. Of course not.

“What? Oh, yeah, sorry. I was looking for the Doctor.”

“The Doctor?” asked the woman, raising an eyebrow.

“Doctor John Smith,” added Martha, quickly. He’d probably be using an alias to work with a human organisation, and that one seemed to be his favourite.

“I’m afraid the Doctor isn’t available at the moment.”

Martha was forced to concede that that was probably for the best. It would be terrible if she caused a paradox just because she couldn’t contain her curiosity.

“Perhaps I could help you?” the woman added.

“Sorry,” said Martha, “Who are you, exactly?”

“Dr Elizabeth Shaw. Liz. I’m the Doctor’s assistant.”

“You’re a doctor, and you’re his assistant?”

She’d obviously touched a nerve with that comment. Liz’s face – already carefully closed off – became a shade darker, and Martha had a horrible feeling she was going to be thrown out any moment now. She had to be more careful.

“I’m Martha, Martha Jones,” she continued quickly, “I’m a doctor, too.” Well, almost.

“Did Professor Stahlman send you?”

She nodded. “He wanted me to check how things were going.”

“I’m sure the Brigadier has made the situation perfectly clear.”

“You mean the problems with the drill?” Martha ventured. It was worth a try.

“I meant the problems with the Doctor.”

“The Doctor? What’s wrong with him?”

Another bad move.

“You weren’t sent by Professor Stahlman, were you?” said Liz, taking a step closer, eyes dark, “Who are you? What do you want?”

Oh no. She was going to get arrested for breaking into a top secret research institute fifteen years before she was born, and, since the Doctor didn’t know where she was, he wouldn’t be able to waltz in with his psychic paper and silver tongue and sort things out. This was not good.

In fact, there was only one thing that stood even the slightest chance of working.

She was going to have to try telling the truth.

***

Liz had listened to her story in silence, her eyebrows slightly raised and making it impossible to tell if she was surprised or merely sceptical. When Martha stopped speaking, she’d expected some kind of sarcastic comment (Liz looked as if she was rather fond of sarcastic comments, for some reason), followed by an arrest, or, at the very least, an altercation.

Instead, Liz started to tell her own story. She informed Martha about the nature of the Inferno Project, which was aiming to retrieve a highly volatile power source from the centre of the Earth using a specialised drill, and added in details of the Doctor’s sudden disappearance. The two were almost certainly linked, although even Liz – who was brilliant as she was beautiful, apparently, and had been drafted in from Cambridge against her will – hadn’t been able to work out how yet. Although Martha knew it would all turn out fine in the end – the man currently waiting for her on the other side of the fence was living proof of that, wasn’t he? – she couldn’t help but shiver a little at the story.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, “How do you know you can trust me?”

“Because the Doctor trusts you,” Liz replied with a smile that was slightly less abrasive than her earlier tone would have suggested, “And, if you were trying to break into the facilities, I’m sure you would have chosen a less fantastic story.”

“I suppose nothing seems fantastic to you, now you work with the Doctor?”

“Of course things still seem fantastic!” Liz exclaimed, “If I wasn’t learning something new everyday, I would have returned to Cambridge long ago.”

“Well, that’s one thing you can say about life in the TARDIS. It’s never dull.”

“In the TARDIS? So he does manage to repair it?”

“Eventually, yeah. Sorry. I’m probably telling you things you shouldn’t know.”

“Oh, don’t worry. My lips will remain sealed.”

And they were very nice lips, too. Martha’s eyes had drifted to them a lot while she was listening to Liz’s story. They had been very distracting.

“When he does fix it, do you think you’ll go with him?” Martha asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Liz, and, for once, it seemed as if she genuinely didn’t know something. It was rather strange to see her caught off guard, since she’d been so matter-of-fact and concise earlier, but it hinted at a vulnerability Martha found she rather liked. For all her scientific precision and heavy mascara, Liz was still a woman who had been exposed to things the human mind wasn’t designed to cope with. She was dealing with it rather well, but, every now and then, she had to sit back and take a deep breath to calm her nerves.

Just like Martha herself, actually.

“But you’d like to?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, again. “I have a place here. I have a job to do at UNIT and I have my research projects at Cambridge. If I’m ever allowed to return to them.”

“You’d pass up the chance to see alien planets because of a research project?” asked Martha, incredulous.

“No, I just think I can make more of an impact here on Earth. We’re not all adventuring Time Lords. We have to help the universe however we can. I’m not a hero. I’m a scientist. My place is here and the Doctor’s certainly isn’t.”

Martha realised that Liz really believed that, too. She was so sure of her place in the world. If she’d encountered the Doctor on the moon, she’d have walked away from the TARDIS with only a minimal trace of regret. Liz Shaw knew who she was and had no desire to search for something else among the stars. Martha was almost jealous.

“Besides,” Liz added, “I have no illusions about him. I don’t expect him to stay forever, just as I’m sure that he doesn’t expect me to stay forever.”

Before Martha could reply, the room was filled with the sudden wail of the main laboratory’s siren. Something else had gone wrong with the project, and she saw Liz’s gaze drifting momentarily to the doorway. The scientist wanted to be out there, helping, instead of trapped in here. But she couldn’t stray too far. The Doctor could return at any moment, just as suddenly as he’d disappeared, and Martha couldn’t begin to imagine how exasperating that must be for her.

“Do you think you’ll be able to stop it?” Martha asked, pausing in the doorway. She knew it was an irrational question – she knew the answer – but her lips had formed the words before her mind had really computed them.

“Oh, I’m sure the Doctor will manage,” said Liz as she turned back to her equipment, a barely discernable hint of bitterness in her voice, “I’m just the assistant.”

Martha could hear heavy footsteps outside, as another contingent of UNIT soldiers rushed past. Things were getting worse here, and she knew she was in danger of pushing her luck.

“I’ve got to go soon,” she said, more softly that she’d anticipated, and Liz nodded.

“I’ll phone the Brigadier and see if I can’t convince him to come rushing down to the main building without locking one of the side gates.”

Martha laughed, delightedly, and nodded. She wasn’t sure why she was laughing, but it was easier than saying goodbye. Was this how the Doctor felt when he parted from his companions? She was never going to see Liz again …

“You’re not just an assistant, you know,” she said, pausing in the doorway, and Liz gave her a surprisingly warm smile.

“Oh, I know. And I also know that I should return to Cambridge while I still have a career to salvage. But it’s rather hard to walk away from a man like the Doctor.”

It was Martha’s turn to laugh. Perhaps she wasn’t that sure, then. “Yes. But you’ll manage it. Maybe I will too, one day.”

“When you do, will you come and find me?”

The lab seemed impossibly still all of a sudden, and – despite the background hum of the machines – impossibly silent. Martha Jones, who had spent the last few months piecing together possible futures involving the Doctor, found herself suddenly presented with a future that didn’t contain time or space or a big blue box. It so close that she could actually reach out and grab it, if she really wanted to.

“I think I’d like that.”

***

“Why do they always wander off?” asked the Doctor, directing his question at no one in particular. He was sitting on the ground beneath a couple of shady trees, watching the traffic winding its way in and out of the project compound. He was itching to run down there and investigate, but, of course, he was already down there investigating. That was the whole problem. And now Martha had disappeared, and she was just bound to say something she shouldn’t and get them all into a lot of trouble and …

“Who always wanders off?” asked Martha, sitting down beside him. Her hair was visibly messier than it had been a few hours earlier and she was grinning broadly.

“My companions …” he began, “Look, it doesn’t matter. Where have you been?”

“I just wanted to have a look inside.”

“You didn’t talk to anyone, did you? A rather dapper man in a nice velvet jacket ..?”

“Velvet jacket?” repeated Martha, raising an eyebrow before shaking her head, “No, I didn’t meet you, if that’s what you mean. I talked to your assistant, though. Liz.”

The word ‘assistant’ grated on her tongue, but it was the only one she could use. The name ‘Liz’ felt much better, though.

“Liz,” repeated the Doctor, grinning, “Liz Shaw. Oh, she was brilliant. Far too clever for me.”

“You mean you like assistants you can patronise?” said Martha sharply.

“No! I like assistants who can learn from me.”

“Don’t your assistants ever teach you anything?” asked Martha dryly, and the Doctor merely grinned at her.

“Come on,” he said, standing up, “We should get back to the flat. I’ve got to work tomorrow. Ooh, I’m never going to get used to saying that. Me, with a job. A proper job! Me!”

He grinned at her again, before turning and striding back towards the path.

“Oh,” he called over his shoulder, “And Martha?”

“What?”

“Your t shirt is on inside out.”

***

Time moved on. It has a habit of doing that, even when you’re jumping from planet to planet far too quickly to dwell on an offer made in kindness and accepted without thought. She and the Doctor battled zygons and space pirates and robots, traversing the galaxy arm in arm. A normal life was a million miles away, and the idea of leaving the Doctor rarely crossed her mind. Rarely.

She thought of Liz a great deal during the year she walked the Earth, though. Her research on the effects of electricity on the Toclafane made it possible for Martha to bring one down in Africa, and again in England with the help of Tom Milligan.

Liz paid the price for her rebellion, of course. She was slaughtered when the Master stormed the ruins of Cambridge, and Martha Jones, saviour of the Earth, who had walked across the ashen wastelands of Europe, sobbed her heart out when she heard the news. She made no attempt to hide her tears from the refugees she was staying with and the story she told that night wasn’t the same as her usual stories. She fell asleep with a different, but not necessarily new, name on her lips.

She fought for the Doctor. She fought for her family. She fought for the Earth. And, when she stepped out of the TARDIS for the last time, she realised she’d also been fighting for the woman who had given her the strength to let go.

***

It wasn’t that hard to get access Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratories, not when Martha had determination and sleek new UNIT credentials on her side. She’d spent an instructive morning reading up on Liz’s rather prodigious career, feeling her chest swell with pride as she learned what the woman had achieved since leaving UNIT. Acclaimed papers, record breaking articles, world renowned theories. It was incredible. Leaving the Doctor had been the best decision Liz Shaw had ever made, and Martha Jones was going to do the same. She was going to make her mark and she was going to make it here on Earth. Leaving the Doctor was going to be the best decision she ever made, too, even if it didn’t seem that way right now.

Dressed in her new black uniform – similar, but not too similar, to the clothes she’d worn during the trek across the globe – Martha strode across the entrance hall as if she was carrying out urgent business. (In a way, she was. It just wasn’t UNIT business.) Liz’s laboratory was on the third floor, and a plethora of assistants and postgraduate students worked under the sharp eye of one of the country’s foremost research scientists. Like a conductor in an immaculate lab coat, Liz stood in the middle of the room dispensing wisdom and instructions to the mere mortals around her. Martha grinned.

She was older now, with a dusting of grey in her beautiful hair and fine lines around her eyes. The eyes themselves, however, hadn’t changed in the slightest. They were as fiercely intelligent as ever, and, when Liz turned to face Martha, she felt a shiver run up her spine at the intensity of the gaze.

It had been over a year for Martha, and decades for Liz, but that didn’t matter. Of course things had changed. The Martha Jones who had visited the Inferno project in 1969 was very different to the Martha Jones who visited Cambridge University in 2008. She’d been strong enough to walk away, for a start.

Wordlessly, she stepped across the room and straight into Liz’s arms.

It was ridiculous, really. A bizarre re-enactment of the awful romantic comedies Tish used to watch on lazy Sunday afternoons. But then, somehow, Liz’s lips had met her own, and Martha was temporarily unable to worry about anything. She was trying to communicate things in the kiss that could never quite be conveyed with words, and she didn’t know if the tears on her cheek were her own or Liz’s, but it didn’t matter. She’d found her. She’d found her.

“Welcome back to planet Earth, Doctor Jones,” said Liz, softly, when they finally broke apart, and Martha smiled. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was where she was supposed to be.

who_otp's Rare Ships Month

atraphoenix — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:22:31 GMT

Romana/Master

(I'm probably going to some sort of special fandom hell for this. Join me?)

FIC: A Man's Game [Doctor Who]

atraphoenix — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:31:41 GMT

Title: A Man's Game
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Liz Shaw/Sarah Jane Smith, Liz Shaw/Jean Basemore, the Third Doctor and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Rating: PG
Summary: Science is a man's game, but Liz Shaw likes to think that she knows how to play along.

Author's Note: Written for the 2008 lgbtfest.

homosexual [ho-mo-sex-u-al]
- adjective
1. Relating to, or characterised by, a tendency to direct sexual desire towards another person of the same sex.
2. Relating to, or involving, sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex.

Science is a man’s game. Of the 777 Nobel prizes awarded since 1901, 698 have been given to men. With occasional exceptions – Marie Curie, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin and Winifred Goldring, for example – the majority of the century’s major scientific discoveries have been made by men. This isn’t because women are any less capable. They just don’t get the same opportunities.

Elizabeth Shaw grew up with this knowledge drawn around her like a cloak. It was the reason her mother wanted her to enrol in a ‘History of Art’ degree, rather than ‘Advanced Physics’. It was the reason her father – an intelligent and respected scientist in his own right – didn’t tell any of his colleagues about his daughter’s aspirations.

It was the reason she was so damn determined to prove herself.

And prove herself she did. Liz passed her O Levels, and then her A Levels, with flying colours. She outstripped not only the rest of her class, but also her own father. When she applied to Cambridge University, she was snapped up immediately, to the dismay of Edinburgh, London and Oxford. At Newnham College she met dozens of likeminded woman, all out to mark their mark on the world and prove they were better and brighter than anyone, male or female, who tried to pull them down.

She was delighted, determined to throw herself, body and soul, into her work, forsaking the social life usually associated with university life. Everyone had to make sacrifices to follow their dreams, after all.

But then she met Jean Basemore, her allotted roommate, and – despite her scientist’s mind – Liz’s polar opposite. This complicated things a little bit.

Jean was intelligent and beautiful, but she was also wild, so full of life that Liz, who’d spent her whole life burying herself in her books and her work, was inclined to dislike her immediately. Jean, however, seemed to mistake this animosity for shyness – of all things! – and made drawing Liz out of her shell a special ‘project’. It wouldn’t gain her any extra marks or any academic kudos (which was probably why Liz could never bring herself to try and understand Jean’s motives), but she seemed to gain a strange sort of pleasure from it.

Liz found herself dragged – kicking and screaming at first, it was true – into a world she never expected to be a part of. A world of miniskirts and mascara, of sexual fluidity and unadulterated freedom. It was an age of change and liberation, and Liz found, to her intense surprise, that she wanted to be part of that too. Jean showed her that she could be and scientist and a woman – the roles weren’t as mutually exclusive as Liz has grown up to believe. although it was difficult to cling to this newfound knowledge once outside the clubs that were crammed with people who thought and felt exactly the same way as she did – and drank and danced with a reckless abandonment that Liz could never quite manage.

She began to wear miniskirts and boots, but refused to soften her ‘severe scientist’ hairstyle. In the laboratory, her fellow physics students (all male), regarded her as something of a curiosity. A woman playing at a man’s game, even if she did complete her doctorate a full year before the rest of them.

By that time, Liz felt considerably more secure in her own skin, but, at first, their unspoken criticism bothered her a great deal. She’d return to the dormitory and bury herself in her books for hours at a time, determined to ignore the world, or, more specifically, whatever wild excursions Jean had planned, succeeding right up until the moment when her friend’s hand slipped into hers, leading away Liz away from her books and right into Jean’s arms.

Initially, Liz didn’t realise that her feelings for Jean had turned from friendship (it had taken long enough to reach that stage, after all!) to something else which Liz – for all her scientific expertise – couldn’t quite name. Lust, maybe? Not love. She was far too practical for something like that. Sharing her bed with another woman was impractical enough without adding emotions into the mix.

Although sexual freedom increased throughout the 1960s, and although homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967 (when Liz was reaching the tail end of her degree), the old prejudice were as strong as ever outside the safety of Liz and Jean’s more bohemian circles. Liz and Jean couldn’t allow their relationship – if it was a relationship – to become public knowledge. Or, indeed, any kind of knowledge. Their positions were tentative enough.

Liz had been accepted into a research program at the university after completing her doctorate, which was no small feat (even her parents had admitted that), and she knew she couldn’t be seen to do anything that might jeopardise her career. She’d always been aware that she’d have to make sacrifices one day. She just hadn’t realised she’d have so much to sacrifice.

Jean evidently found it too hard to live that way. She left Cambridge in a whirlwind of eyeliner and rapturous energy, to ‘find her place in the world’. Liz was a little jealous, but she didn’t have the courage – or even the inclination – to do the same.

She only saw Jean from time to time after her friend leaving Cambridge, and they never shared a bed again, even when they did meet, but Liz remembered everything her friend had taught her. She drew that knowledge around her like a cloak, alongside the fierce determination to prove herself (which she’d worn resolutely since childhood). She was no longer ashamed that she was a female scientist, treating her gender – and her sexuality – as a totally unrelated issue.

Liz didn’t know if she could ever bring herself to love a man, but that didn’t really matter. They had enough power over her – a young female scientist at the beginning of her career – to begin with. She was much happier sharing herself – her heart – with someone who was just as vulnerable as she was, if she shared it at all.

***

love [lo-v-e]
- transitive verb
1. To hold dear.
2. To feel a lover’s passion, devotion or fondness for.

As it turns out, Liz was completely wrong. She did end up falling in love with a man. A man named the Doctor, with two hearts and a truly miraculous mind. And, although she gave her heart to him utterly and completely, she had no desire to give him her body as well. The Doctor didn’t seem to mind. He treated her as an equal, talked with her about scientific theories that occasionally bordered on heretical as if they were solid fact, and taught her things she hadn’t believed it possible to learn.

There was life out there, among the stars. And here on Earth, too. Her Doctor knew all about it. He even had the ability to travel in time, or had possessed it, once. He was working on it, and, despite her scepticism, Liz resolved to help him as much as possible.

When Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart – infuriatingly old fashioned Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart who seemed to feel that, as a female, she was made of glass and needed to be treated as such – pulled her away from Cambridge, she’d been fully prepared to be furious. She hadn’t expected to enjoy her time at UNIT. She passed the Doctor test tubes, for goodness sake! She was just an assistant!

This wasn’t the type of sacrifice she’d had in mind.

And, even if, somewhere deep inside her, Liz knew it couldn’t last – that she couldn’t stay as a subordinate forever – it still came as a shock when it ended.

Jean was the one who made the decision for her, even if she didn’t know it. Jean was incapable of knowing anything by that point. Jean Basemore – her first love, the life changing better part of herself … – turned her cold metal face towards Liz, and Liz turned away from the Doctor in the same instant. There was alien life out there, but it wasn’t beautiful. It was terrible.

She said her goodbyes and returned to Cambridge. It would have been a lie to say she didn’t look back, though. Because she did. Too many times to count.

In the end, however, she moved on. She had to. She wasn’t the sort of person to allow herself to be eaten up by grief. There was too much to do, even on Earth. Jean would have died even if Liz had found the courage to admit her feelings earlier. Liz would have left UNIT eventually even if Jean hadn’t been ‘converted’. These were facts, solid and undisputable. Liz liked solid and undisputable.

Simple.

She kept in touch with her friends from UNIT. The Brigadier told her about the Master, and the return of the Autons, and the Doctor’s recently regained freedom. He told her that he’d taken his new assistant, Jo Grant, off to see the stars. Liz wasn’t jealous. Not really. It was just another sacrifice. She was making a difference here on Earth now, changing the world – slowly but surely – with her discoveries at Cambridge. That was the important thing.

Liz published a revolutionary paper on computational physics. Jo Grant left UNIT – and the Doctor – for the rainforest and her new husband. The Doctor began to travel with a new companion, a woman named Sarah Jane Smith. The Doctor, somehow, changed his face once more, cheating death.

More facts.

The Doctor left Sarah Jane behind.

Solid and indisputable.

Liz met Sarah face to face for the first time at the UNIT Christmas party, a few months after the Doctor had disappeared. She wasn’t entirely sure why she’d received an invite in the first place, since she no longer worked there, but the Brigadier had sounded so earnest when he’d phoned her. Like an overeager child. Liz hadn’t been able to refuse. She just hoped that he wasn’t harbouring any romantic intentions. That would have been disastrous for all concerned.

Miss Smith was standing in the corner when she arrived, surrounded by a crowd of admirers. Liz, collecting a drink and sitting down with the Brigadier, was both a little disgusted and a little impressed by Sarah Jane’s ability to wrap all the men in the immediate vicinity around her little finger. They were queuing up to bring her drinks and fighting to the privilege to dance with her. It was almost farcical.

“Poor Sarah Jane,” commented the Brigadier, who was also watching the group on the other side of the room. (Presumably to make sure his soldiers continued to behave themselves.)

“Poor?” Liz raised an eyebrow, “She looks perfectly happy to me.”

The Brigadier gave her an appraising glance, which confused Liz a little bit. She hadn’t been looked at in that way since she was in university. As if she was stupid, rather than one of the most intelligent women – and renowned physicists – in the country.

“She misses the Doctor,” he said, as if explaining the alphabet to a particularly unreceptive child, “But, of course, she’d never admit as much out loud. She’s a lot like you that way.”

Liz was saved the trouble of thinking up a suitable response – demanding to know why he felt himself qualified to make that assessment, perhaps? – by Sarah Jane herself, who had abandoned her followers to join them, a wide smile on her face. She had a nice smile, but the Brigadier was right. There was something underneath the cheerful façade that Liz couldn’t quite place.

“Hello, Brigadier,” Sarah said, terribly brightly, “Hello ..?”

“Liz,” she supplied quickly, “Liz Shaw.”

“The scientist?”

Liz blinked. Thrown off balance so early in the conversation? That was strange. That was new.

Sarah Jane sat down in the chair the Brigadier had recently vacated. Neither of them would realise, until much later, how strange that was as well.

“I’m a journalist,” she explained, “And I recently did an article on female physicists. That’s one of the reasons I came to this party, actually. I was hoping to meet you.”

“I hope I live up to your expectations,” said Liz with a laugh, and Sarah beamed.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” she replied, “Would you like to dance?”

“What about your admirers?”

“Let’s make them jealous,” suggested Sarah Jane with a grin.

It was the sort of thing Liz had always been too frightened to do, and it certainly wasn’t a journalistic discussion of science and feminism. But she found that she couldn’t say no. She allowed Sarah Jane to drag her to the designated dance floor without protest.

It was the sort of thing Jean would have done.

The evening passed in a bit of a haze. They danced and laughed and drank. If it hadn’t been for the men wandering around in UNIT uniforms, Liz could have easily pretended that she was back in university, hiding out in a tiny bar where gender, sexuality and appearance made no difference to the enjoyment of the evening. She was a rebel again, hiding her desire for liberation behind the mask of a scientist, unleashing it in a flurry of alcohol and enjoyment every weekend.

“You aren’t what I was expecting,” said Sarah Jane, when they finally retreated to a silent corner table with their drinks, exhausted from dancing. From living.

“Neither are you,” Liz retorted, although, in actuality, she hadn’t thought about Sarah very much before this evening. Like Jo Grant, Sarah Jane Smith had become faceless, another person standing alongside the Doctor until something – maybe even her own consciousness – caused her to step aside.

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know,” she replied honestly, “Certainly someone a lot less cheerful. The Brigadier said you’re missing the Doctor …”

Sarah Jane interrupted with a dry laugh. Thankfully, however, she looked more amused than outraged. “The Brigadier said that?”

“Is it true?”

“Perhaps,” Sarah admitted, after a moment of silence, “But it doesn’t do to let people see that you’re upset …”

“And it doesn’t do to show weakness,” Liz finished, automatically, prompting Sarah to look at her in astonishment.

A brief moment of rather alarming understanding passed between them, and Liz tried to end it by choking down the rest of her drink. Choke being the operative word. She coughed and spluttered, and, when she focused again, she realised Sarah Jane had taken her hand and was looking at her with almost tender concern.

“I’m fine,” Liz assured her, before she could ask, “Although a little embarrassed, I must admit.”

“I thought I was going to have to give you mouth-to-mouth!” Sarah laughed.

There was a sudden tightness in Liz’s stomach. “And would you have done it?”

Sarah smirked. “I think I might have been persuaded …”

The world was suddenly filled with possibilities, and Liz’s heart ceased to beat in her chest and lodged somewhere in her throat instead.

Sarah Jane Smith was still holding her hand.

But then party was ending and the steady trickle of people heading out of the doorway – their loud goodbyes – jerked them both back to the real world.

“We should leave as well,” Sarah suggested, “Unless we want to be left tidying up?”

Liz shook her head and obediently got to her feet. Her movements were slow and sluggish, as if she was wading through treacle, and Sarah looked so free and calm that she almost hated her. Almost.

“You’re not heading back to Cambridge tonight, are you?” Sarah Jane asked, as they collected their coats, and Liz realised too late that she’d missed her train. By quite a few hours, actually.

“I wasn’t intending to stay for so long …”

“Don’t worry, you can stay with me,” said Sarah Jane airily, “I have a new house, on a place called Bannerman Road. It isn’t far, and there’s plenty of room …”

More possibilities.

“Goodnight, Miss Shaw, Miss Smith,” said the Brigadier, passing smiling knowledgably – and perhaps a little smugly – at them both as he left.

They watched him disappear out of sight, then burst out laughing.

***

life [li-f-e]
- noun
1. The quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body.
2. The force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings.

Life isn’t a man’s game.

Life isn’t anyone’s game.

There are no winners and losers. No role of the dice can dictate where to go next. It took Liz a long time to learn that. She’d spent so long studying nice, sensible formulas that she forgot the rest of the world didn’t operate that way. She’d tried to rationalise everything. Even love, when she wasn’t running away from it completely.

Sarah Jane Smith finished the lesson that Jean Basemore had started. It was ok for Liz to be a serious scientist and to be a lesbian. She wasn’t defined by her sexuality or her career. They were just two things that happened to make up the bigger part of her.

Their relationship was never going to be easy. Sarah and Liz couldn’t walk down the street holding hands. It would be many years before same sex couples were given equal rights and the ability to have children of their own.

But it didn’t matter. They were together. They were happy.

That was how they lived their life.

FIC: Once Upon a Time [Doctor Who]

atraphoenix — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:30:29 GMT

Title: Once Upon a Time
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Barbara Wright/Ian Chesterton
Rating: G
Summary: Ian Chesterton was a scientist. He wasn’t supposed to believe in fairy tales.

Author's Note: Written for livii as part of the the_chestertons ficathon.

Ian Chesterton was a scientist. He wasn’t supposed to believe in fairy tales.

As a child, he devoted a great deal of time to them, much to the chagrin of his sanguinely practical parents. Rather than learning his times tables, or even the chemical elements, he memorised Madame d’Aulnoy, Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm.

The playground became the dark forest and the other children, possessing an unerring ability to find and latch onto anything more exciting than homework, would race through it after him.

His family tried to discourage him, of course, but the natural course of childhood is difficult to redirect. Eventually, they stopped protesting and allowed him to carry on, determinedly secure in the knowledge that, one day, he’d grow up to be just as sensible and serious as they were.

He did.

The ideals he learned from the stories and games remained, however. Although he didn’t believe in witchcraft or fairies any more, he believed in what they represented. He believed that good always triumphed over evil eventually and that the winners always received a wondrous reward for doing the right thing.

Most importantly, Ian Chesterton believed in love. He believed in it as earnestly and wholeheartedly as he believed in Einstein and Newton and Aristotle, who replaced his formerly beloved authors when he reached his teens.

In retrospect, his view of love wasn’t particularly different from their scientific theories. Love was just another part of the universe, as ordinary as gravity.

A force.

He knew that it would start acting on his life sooner or later.

***

Gravity acted on everyone, but you didn’t feel it. It was perfectly natural process. Smooth and flowing and graceful. What you felt were the effects and, unfortunately, considerably less fluid.

Ian knew this. He had studied various forces, including gravity, in depth while at university. Somewhere along the line, he had started to assume that love would be the same.

But, in the end, love struck him just as suddenly and just as sharply as Newton’s proverbial apple. The process was flawless, but the effects hit him like a tonne of bricks and shook him to the core.

And, like Newton, he couldn’t put a name to the process straight away.

He found himself spending a lot of time wondering if Barbara Wright believed in love as fervently as he did, but, for some reason, didn’t quite make the connection.

The scientist within him did his best to rebel against the stories, and half succeed.

Cinderella went to the ball but lost her shining slipper. Belle picked her enchanted rose but ended up trapped in the castle.

Narrative convention.

As natural (and unavoidable) as gravity.

They weren’t magical. Their life wasn’t a fairy tale. Barbara wasn’t Rapunzel, trapped in her tower, or Little Red Riding Hood, skipping through the dark forest. She didn’t need rescuing, and he was no Prince Charming at any rate. It didn’t really matter. Everything worked wonderfully well when they were just being themselves.

Gravity.

Ian worried, occasionally, about how hard it was to have a fairy tale romance without the adventure that was supposed to lie alongside it.

Unfortunately, when they did start adventuring, there was no time for anything else.

Poisoned apples, and cursed spinning wheels.

No kisses just yet.

***

Every fairy story needs a heroine. A Cinderella to slumber in the ashes while waiting for her handsome prince or a Briar Rose to lie in a ruinous castle for a dreamless eternity.

Barbara Wright might have been a million miles away from the fairy princesses of Ian’s youth, but it didn’t matter, since they were a million miles away from Earth in any case. She was braver, and more beautiful, and more intelligent, than anyone he’d ever read about.

Ian was forced to reshape all of his views while travelling in the TARDIS, and this included his views on love.

He didn’t get to play the hero all the time. He managed it occasionally, of course, but Barbara and the Doctor took on the role just as often.

Narrative convention?

Madame d’Aulnoy hadn’t mentioned Sensorites, or Daleks, or Voord. This made it difficult to cultivate romance. Their life was so unpredictable and the romantic within Ian often protested at Barbara’s independence.

It definitely protested when she formed a worryingly close friendship with Leon Colbert.

Fortunately, it did not last. They came back to each other. They always came back to each other, no matter what they saw and what they experienced.

Planets in perpetual orbit.

Gravity.

Life onboard the TARDIS wasn’t easy and it wasn’t always beautiful, but that didn’t matter, because aliens were far more interesting than elves, on the whole, and Barbara herself was incomparable.

***

Even the greatest adventures have to end at some point.

The princess marries the prince and everyone lives happily ever after. The big bad wolf is slain. The wicked witch gets her comeuppance.

The two teachers find their way back to Earth.

Ian had never really considered what happened after the happy ending, but all of a sudden, he found himself living there.

***

A ripple of excitement was running through the schoolyard.

“You won’t believe this, Vicki, but Miss Wright just took on the man who tried to rob the post office!”

“I heard that she was in her car, and blocked the road so he couldn’t escape.”

“No, you’re wrong. Jackie was there, and she said Miss Wright tripped him up and held him until the police arrived!”

“Wow!”

“Not bad for a history teacher!”

Barbara had found it difficult to adjust back to an ordinary life. It was hard to carry on being an ordinary person – a teacher, of all things! – after saving the world, and playing the hero, so many times.

She seized the chance to relive that life, even for the brief of moments, without a second thought.

***

Ian found her in the staffroom, gazing out of the window and pretending, with little success, to mark the stack of books in front of her.

“Apparently you’re quite the hero,” he remarked, sitting down beside her. “If only they knew how much.”

Barbara smiled softly. “You don’t look particularly happy about it.”

He returned the smile, albeit a little distantly. “I just worry about you.”

It was strange how the idea of Barbara fighting Daleks no longer fazed him, but the idea of her taking on a potentially armed human burglar made him physically sick. What had seemed so real during their travels in the Doctor was now nothing more than a fairy tale. Human horrors were the problem now.

“There’s no need, Ian,” she said, looking at him with the faintest trace of amusement in her eyes. “You know I’ve dealt with worse.”

“That was different.”

She cocked her head at him. “How was it different?”

Because it wasn’t here and now, on Earth, in our time. Because it was during our adventures with the Doctor, and, although it was very real, it seemed less so.

“Because I’m supposed to be the hero. I’m supposed to be the one who rides in one a white charger and saves the day …”

He stopped, his words fading away as soon as Barbara took his hand in hers.

Perfectly natural. Uncontrollable.

“You are.”

To the Desk of Jack Harkness

atraphoenix — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 21:49:41 GMT

From: Brigadier Bambera
To: Jack Harkness
Subject: Inappropriate Behaviour During Our Recent Mission

I am well aware of the fact that UNIT and Torchwood have never been the best of friends. Your tendency to withhold crucial information has not left you with many friends in the UN, and your general attitude is even less favourable.

Although, in this particular instance, it was necessary for our two forces to work side-by-side, you seemed determined to take charge. You may be 'beyond the government', Captain Harkness, but UNIT still has priority. One word from Geneva and your funding will be cut indefinitely. Try to remember that.

UNIT is a military organisation. We are professionals.

Calling yourself 'Captain' will not make my soldiers follow your orders. Flirting with them will not make my soldiers follow your orders.

If UNIT ever have the misfortune of working alongside Torchwood again - and I sincerely hope that never happens - I ask that you remember as much.

Furthermore, it has come to my attention that one regulation UNIT cap and two sets of reinforced regulation handcuffs have gone missing from the lockers in HQ. I don't want to speculate what you might be using that lot for, but I request that whatever it is occurs out of earshot of my office.

Yours,

Brigadier Winifred Bambera

FIC: Forget Me Not [Torchwood]

atraphoenix — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:58:05 GMT

Title: Forget Me Not
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Toshiko Sato/Owen Harper
Rating: PG
Summary: In the aftermath of ‘Adam’, Tosh and Owen attempt to come to terms with the gaps in their memories.

Author's Note: As always, I blame the fact that I've written this pairing on noneofyours.

The memory can play tricks on you.

Tosh found herself remembering things that never were, and a life that had never been, and a kiss from a person that she couldn’t quite place.

Warm lips pressed to hers. A promise to die for someone she didn’t even know.

She shook her head, trying to disperse the thoughts and get on with her work. The Hub was in chaos. They’d lost two days and even Jack didn’t know why. This wasn’t the time for daydreaming and false imaginings.

The flowers were still sitting on the desk beside her. Every now and then Tosh would stop typing and lean over to inhale the soft fragrance. It probably wasn’t appropriate now, since Owen had so vehemently denied buying them for her, but Tosh couldn’t bring herself to get rid of them just yet.

It was so strange. If she hadn’t known any better, she would have sworn that she could remember Owen standing there, right beside her desk, and asking her something. But she couldn’t remember what, and she couldn’t remember how she’d answered.

Damn.

It was clearly a day for odd occurrences and tricks played by the mind. She knew that much. There was the mystery of the missing CCTV, and the bag on Jack’s desk, labelled with a name none of them recognised.

Even Owen’s rather endearing, but certainly unusual, new hairstyle was a bit of a puzzle. It wasn’t like him at all (although Tosh had to admit that she rather liked it).

Her new top was another example. It showed considerably more cleavage than usual. She had tried several times, a little self-consciously, to adjust the neckline, with little success.

Unfortunately, her eighth attempt just happened to occur when Owen exited the lab and appeared behind her.

“Awwh, don’t do that, Tosh,” he said, making her jump, and drop her hands as if she’d just been electrified, “It’d be such a waste.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it isn’t polite to sneak up on people?” she said, flustered, but Owen merely grinned in reply. They probably had, but Owen Harper wasn’t the sort of person to listen. Even with his new refined hairstyle.

“Nice flowers?” he said, fingering a white petal with seemingly scientific interest.

“They’re beautiful,” she agreed, watching him carefully, wondering exactly what his point was. Surely he had one?

“That proves I couldn’t have bought them, then,” he snorted, leaning on the desk next to her. Nonchalant and utterly infuriating. “I’d never be able to pick out beautiful flowers!”

This was true. But Tosh couldn’t stop a little voice in her head from repeatedly shouting out that all evidence pointed to the contrary.

“It’s your handwriting on the card,” she reminded him, handing him the rectangle that had been sitting next to her keyboard. Owen studied it, his forehead creasing just a little, and then shook his head, flicking the cardboard away. As usual, if something was too complicated or too confusing for him to cope with, he just ignored it. Tosh almost sighed.

“The CCTV,” he said, gesturing at the computer screen and changing the subject with a very Owen-like lack of delicacy. “Find out what happened to it yet?”

“Not yet,” she said. If he wanted to change the subject, then who was she to argue. She wasn’t the sort of person who could – or would - go against a person like Owen. It was probably one of the reasons why he’d never looked at her twice, and why those flowers were probably nothing more than a joke or a mistake.

“It looks like a very professional job,” she continued, showing him lines of code which would mean absolutely nothing. “An internal job.”

Owen blinked at her. “So you think one of us did it?”

“Oh no!” gasped Tosh, horrified by the suggestion, “Not at all. But whoever did do it has been inside the Hub and possibly even studied our systems.”

There was a pause, as both of them considered this uncomfortable option, lining up possible candidates in their mind’s eye.

One of the suspects was dead. Probably for good, this time.

The other …

“Jack’s ‘partner’?” said Owen, the word partner clanging with irony, “You don’t think …”

“I don’t know,” said Tosh, a little too quickly. Frantically. She was unwilling to actually consider the possibility unless it became absolutely necessary. “But if it is, I’ll find out.”

“Find out soon, Tosh,” said Owen, running a hand through his hair and running his new hairstyle (and unintentionally betraying how worried he really was). “We can’t afford to wait around where he’s concerned. I’ve still got the scars from last time!”

He said the last sentence flippantly, but Tosh looked up at him in horror.

“Don’t joke about that, Owen!” she gasped, but he merely grinned at her.

“Why not?” he asked genially, “He got you too, remember?”

“He only hit me!” said Tosh softly, “I thought he was going to kill you.”

To her surprise, Owen bit down on whatever characteristically blasé response he’d been about to come out with.

“That?” he shrugged, “Nah. It was nothing, really.”

“You should have let me take a proper look at it, just to make sure,” she pointed out. At the time, he’d stubbornly resisted her attempts – her many attempts – to check his bandages and apply antibiotics, snapping that ‘he was the damn doctor’. She supposed that letting her patch him up would have been as good as admitting that he wasn’t infallible, and that would never do.

“I was fine, Tosh!” he snapped, and Tosh turned quickly back to her computer in a valiant, but unsuccessful, attempt to hide how hurt she was. Why did he hate the idea of someone caring? Why did he refuse to let anyone in? She was hardly loud, or dangerous, or abrasive. Tosh failed to see what sort of damage she could inflict. He wouldn’t even let her near his heart, and Owen tended to wear that on his sleeve a lot of the time.

“Sorry, Tosh,” he said softly. The apology startled her – hadn’t he spent a lot of the evening trying to prove how he didn’t do apologies? – but she was determined not to look at him nonetheless.

“Don’t worry,” she assured him automatically, “It’s been a rather stressful day for all of us, without opening up old wounds.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, “Especially since we’ve all forgotten what stressed us out so much in the first place.”

“You weren’t expecting something normal, were you?” she said with a dry, humourless laugh. “Not in Torchwood?”

“Of course not,” he said with a shrug, “I just wasn’t expecting Jack’s ex to show up again. Not after last time.”

“It might not be him,” Tosh reminded Owen. Ever the voice of reason, despite the fears beating hard in her chest. Someone had to be.

“But it might be,” said Owen. Definitely not the voice of reason.

***

John, wooden bat in one hand and gun in the other, smirking, advancing on Owen while she lay helpless.

“The efficiency of a gun or the brutality of wood ... ”

***

“If it is …” she said, carefully, a little shakily, “We’ll stop him. We’ve done it before.”

“We?” Owen laughed, “Who was the person who thought up the blood cocktail and stopped Gwen from being blown to pieces?”

Tosh couldn’t help but laugh too. Owen often had that effect on her, though she was usually very good at hiding it. He made it hard to take things seriously.

“Ok, you can stop him again,” she conceded.

***

“Touch her again and I’ll kill you!

***

“Of course I will,” he said, crossing his feet. “Someone has to be the resident hero when Jack is busy. I’ll protect you, Tosh.”

Despite herself, she laughed again. It wasn’t quite as funny, but laughing was easier than taking the statement seriously and getting hurt again in the not-too-distant future.

“I will!” he protested. He evidently didn’t find it amusing either. Tosh couldn’t understand why.

“It’s ok, Owen,” she said honestly, “I don’t expect you to protect me from anyone. It’s not as if you’d really have killed him. Not for me.”

She kept her eyes resolutely fixed on the computer screen. Too afraid to pull them away.

“Yes I would,” he said. And he seemed to mean it, too.

***

“I can’t keep this a secret any more! I’ve got so much love to give you, Tosh, and you won’t know it unless I tell you. So here I am, telling you that I love you.”

Oh God. Say something?”

FIC: Break, Break, Break [Pirates of the Caribbean]

atraphoenix — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:43:10 GMT

Title: Break, Break, Break
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean
Characters: Elizabeth Swann/Jack Sparrow, Calypso and William Turner the Third
Rating: PG
Summary: The sea was coming to claim it's own.

Author's Note: Written for the potcfest.

Break, break, break
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson

Elizabeth could have been anyone. Anything.

She was the Pirate King and the horizon was hers to claim as she saw fit.

Or, at least, it should have been.

The third month of her reign was her last. Elizabeth Turner was force to abdicate, abandoning her ‘throne’ in Shipwreck Cove for a tiny cottage far from the citadel.

Only Mistress Ching actually watched her leave. The rest of the Pirate Lords were too interested in the freely flowing alcohol and the crash of the waves on the rocks below. Her lips twitched, briefly, into a smile of pity, before she turned away just as suddenly. The meaning was clear. Piracy was a realm dominated by men. Mistress Ching had spent decades fighting to get them to respect – and fear – her. Elizabeth had been so close to joining her.

Such a waste.

***

At first, Elizabeth was inclined to agree with Mistress Ching. Her stomach grew larger and her temper grew darker, and even the smallest cottage in the world seems vast when you’re living in it all alone.

Relief, however, came to her from a most unexpected source, five months after she left the Brethren Court.

It was a cold night. Unusually cold. She couldn’t begin to imagine who would be calling at this hour, or, indeed, why anyone would be calling at all. The midwife visited once a week, and a boy came round once a day to see to all the jobs Elizabeth was dismayed to find she could no longer handle, but that was all. It was no wonder she was so lonely.

Occasionally, the boy would stay behind to talk to her after his chores had been completed, but it wasn’t the great comfort and privilege he seemed to think it was. He was young and vapidly handsome, completely in love with one of the girls from the village on the other side of the island. She listened to his love struck babbling with derision, and was somewhat alarmed when she eventually realised he was only a little younger than herself. She’d been like that, once. In love and foolish with it. This was where it had led her.

“If he’s planning on telling me another story about something ‘his’ Mary has said, or done, or thought,” Elizabeth muttered to herself as she lumbered across the living room, “I’m going to scream!”

She reached for the latch, and one hand drifted, automatically, to the hilt of the dagger she was now forced to carry in place of a sword. She lacked her former balance and agility, but she was still capable of defending herself. Probably.

Her hand dropped helplessly to her side when she caught sight of the figure outside.

“Jack Sparrow! What are you doing here?”

“Can’t a loyal subject come and pay tribute to his king?” he asked, sweeping off his hat with a flourish, and bowing in such a way that Elizabeth couldn’t help but smile.

“I’m not the Pirate King anymore,” she pointed out, but Jack merely grinned at her.

He didn’t seem to mind.

***

She didn’t ask why he had decided to visit her, or why he decided to stay, and Jack didn’t volunteer the information. Elizabeth knew he must have some sort of ulterior motive, but she couldn’t begin to guess what it was and she was sure she could defeat him when the time finally came. For now, it was nice to have some company.

It didn’t occur to Elizabeth that he might actually care, and that he was staying with her because of loyalty. Or worse, because of …

No. Those thoughts were truly terrifying.

***

“Jack!” he said firmly, proudly, “Good strong name, Jack. Can’t go wrong with it.”

Elizabeth, curled up in an armchair, shook her head and smiled. She was watching him with her hands clasped protectively over her stomach, which was, by all accounts, a rather standard position for pregnant women. Elizabeth couldn’t see why. No one would try and steal their child from them before it was born.

(Afterwards would probably be a different matter.)

“I don’t know,” she said genially, “I rather like the idea of naming him after my father, if it is a boy.”

Jack stared at her for a moment, before spluttering with indignation.

“Weatherby!” he yelped, dropping his bottle of rum with a loud clunk, “You can’t call the child Weatherby!”

“Why not?” Elizabeth smirked.

Jack considered this for a moment before retorting fiercely: “All the other children will pick on him!”

Elizabeth laughed delightedly. At least choosing a potential girl’s name had been easy. Jack had campaigned for Anne – after the infamous Anne Bonney – but the battle hadn’t lasted very long. There was no way Elizabeth would be swayed from naming a daughter after her own mother.

Periodically, Elizabeth wished that Will was here to join in with conversations like this, but then Jack would make a joke or launch into another story, and it was all too easy to forget someone it hurt so much to remember.

His tales of adventure on the high seas made her ache with longing. Although the stories were clearly embellished to impress her, she could still feel the sea spray on her cheeks and the wind tugging at her hair.

She would sigh in sorrow, but it was no good dwelling on her loss. She was becoming terribly practical as her pregnancy advanced. It was no good missing what you could never recreate.

***

The child, when it was finally born, was named William Turner the Third. Elizabeth thought it was appropriate, although Jack did roll his eyes and sulk when she first informed him. He was clearly sore that the ‘whelp’ hadn’t been named after him, and, according, attempted to ignore young William as much as possible during his first month of life.

Elizabeth had been prepared to be furious with him for treating her son – Will’s son! – that way, but soon realised that, whenever her back was turned, he cooed and fussed over the infant as fervently as any of the women who visited from the village.

“You’d make a good father, Jack,” she commented, watching from her favourite armchair as Jack cradled the baby (albeit rather tentatively, as if young William was going to attack at any moment). Her son was nearly five weeks old now, but still able to do very little but gurgle and cry. She could see nothing of herself in the child, and nothing of Will either, for that matter. She wondered if babies were always so dull.

“I’ll settle for being the godfather, Lizzie,” he replied with an immediate shake of his head, but he grinned despite himself, and she couldn’t help but return the smile.

***

“Storm brewing,” said Jack, peering out of the window at the ebony sky outside. The night sky was darkening even further as heavy grey clouds gathered on the horizon. “Sort of night that makes me glad I’m not out at sea …”

Elizabeth stepped up beside him, resting a hand on his arm, determined to savour one of the rare moments they had alone, with William sleeping peacefully – but heavily – in the next room.

“Is there nothing else which makes you glad you’re not out at sea?” she asked. It was a little flirtaceous, naturally, but also a little tentative. She was still waiting for him to spring whatever elaborate plot he’d been concocting over the last few months, but it was getting harder and harder to think like that now. Now she only worried about what she’d do when he left and why he hadn’t already done so.

Jack turned away from the sky and faced her, smiling in a way which she would have considered tender, if she hadn’t known better. It couldn’t be love, but it was better than nothing when she didn’t have the real thing anymore.

He’d protected her from the emptiness of her cottage and now he saved her from the emptiness of her bed.

It couldn’t be love.

“I can think of something, love,” he said, grinning at her with eyes filled with promise. Her heart was racing as painfully as it did when he told her stories of seafaring adventures.

It couldn’t be love.

He turned to face her, but, before they could kiss, the door burst open.

Elizabeth leapt back as if she’d been burned. She knew, with miserable resignation, that it couldn’t be Will, but an image of him standing there, silhouetted against the clouds, flashed through her mind before she could stop it.

“You!” snarled Jack, and the figure in the doorway smiled, stepping into the room before Elizabeth had regained her composure enough to look up.

“Aye, Jack,” Calypso said, slipping seamlessly into the form they were most familiar with, “Me.”

“What do you want here?” Elizabeth asked, stepping up next to Jack. She wasn’t scared, yet, but she was a little unnerved. Tia Dalma had been eerie, rich with power, but the raw energy of the unbound goddess hung heavy in the air of the room. She felt dizzy with it.

“I came to see why two o’ my most loyal subjects have suddenly given up da sea.”

She smiled at them with false sweetness, before her gaze slipped sideways, to the half-closed door of the next room and the cradle within.

“Ah,” she crooned, her smile widening and her eyes glittering, as black as the stormy sky outside. She wasn’t surprised.

Jack followed her gaze to the door, and, when she stepped towards it, stepped swiftly sideways to block her.

“What do you really want, Tia Dalma?” he demanded.

“You know dat is not my name,” she laughed. It was a terrible laugh. There was no humour in it, but there was the power of ice and rain and crashing waves, strong enough to make Elizabeth stagger a little as she joined Jack.

“You don’t know what dat child is, do you?” she cooed, as if talking to a petulant youngster.

“He’s my son,” Elizabeth replied, furious and finally a little scared, but comforted by Jack’s warm presence beside her. He didn’t look afraid. He’d have a plan. He always had a plan, somehow.

Calypso laughed again. “The dead an’ half dead were never meant to get life on da living,” she explained, eyes like coal black pools burning into Elizabeth, “So the Sea, it come to claim it own, before the child can claim more than the sea can hold.”

Her words were as cryptic as anything Calypso had said in the form of Tia Dalma, but one phrase in particular caught Elizabeth’s attention. The sea was coming to claim it's own.

“William is not yours,” she spat, her voice laden with a degree of hatred that Elizabeth hadn’t even realised she possessed. Even Jack looked a little surprised, although he didn’t dare take his eyes off Calypso to look at her.

“Which William?” Calypso enquired gently, “They are both mine, Elizabeth. Body an’ soul, they are mine. You husband, he sail da seas for eternity at my command, an’ your son, my spirit flow through him veins.”

“You’re wrong,” Elizabeth whispered, “Will put his heart in my care. He loves me.”

“But him obey me,” retorted Calypso, her voice crashing into Elizabeth like the tidal wave it echoed. “Even your lover would abandon you at my command.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that, Calypso,” said Jack suddenly. He seemed unwilling to look at Elizabeth as he spoke, but the younger woman was staring at him as if she’d never actually seen him before. Maybe she hadn’t.

Calypso, on the other hand, looked furious.

“You do not mean that,” she snarled, “You are mine, Jack Sparrow. You have always been mine. You gave your soul to the sea many years ago!”

“Aye,” said Jack, gaze slipping, just for a second, to Elizabeth, “But it seems I didn’t give my heart.”

Calypso followed his gaze, eyes burning into Elizabeth for a moment before she looked back at Jack.

“So this is your choice?” she asked, and Jack nodded. Calypso’s eyes darkened, but, a second later, she dipped her head in a barely perceptible nod of her own.

“Curious, isn’t it? Seems I’m a hard man to predict,” Jack said genially, echoing words Barbossa had spoken once, what felt like a whole lifetime ago. Elizabeth felt her heart swelling with pride and affection. Why was he doing this? A good deed, with no real reward, save her gratitude?

It couldn’t be love.

“Very well,” Calypso growled, her voice becoming truly inhuman. She seemed to grow in size as she spoke, filling the doorway, filling the room. Elizabeth grabbed Jack’s hand, and he pulled her behind him automatically, as if he could protect her from the fury of a goddess by sheer strength of will.

“Just remember this – the child is not truly yours, nor is he him father’s. He is mine. The sea is in his blood. One day he will return to me.”

Then she was gone. The door slammed shut behind her, and for a moment the only sound was the soft hiss of the rain outside.

In the next room, little William began to cry.

Elizabeth, still pale and trembling, hurried to tend him, but Jack – admittedly against his better judgment – disappeared out of the front door after Calypso.

The goddess had already reached the sea by the time Jack reached the cliff top, and was several metres out when he skidded to a halt on the sand. The waves were still only lapping at her ankles, even though they should have been at least waist deep there.

“Every sailor returns to you eventually,” he called out, “It doesn’t mean you own them.”

Calypso turned to face him, lips curling up into a cool, humourless smile.

“I hope you know what you are doing, Jack Sparrow. Siding with her.”

“I never do,” he said, with a lopsided grin. “More fun that way.”

FIC: Paralysis [Torchwood]

atraphoenix — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 22:05:01 GMT

Title: Paralysis
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Toshiko Sato/John Hart
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “You need to lighten up, Toshiko. I know you’re all uptight in the 21st century, but you are just ridiculous.”

It had been a long day. Tosh was well aware that she should probably go home and catch up on her sleep, but the intimacy of Jack and Ianto’s farewell, coupled with Gwen’s daily dose of wedding planning, had left her feeling bitter and resentful. She needed to overwhelm her senses, to drown herself in the noise and life and energy of a crowded Cardiff bar.

A vain attempt to make herself feel a little less lonely, perhaps, but at least the alcohol would help.

***

Tosh had been in the bar for about an hour when she realised she was being watched. In fact, the man seated in the corner had been regarding her with peculiar intensity for at least half an hour. It was an alien sensation, but not entirely unpleasant. The only thing that worried her was the fact that the man’s face was shrouded in shadow. He could be anyone. Anything.

Her mind had already supplied several handy worst case scenarios, but she hadn’t abandoned the bar or pulled out her phone and called for help. Because there was always a chance, no matter how slim, that the guy was just genuinely interested in her, rather than in Torchwood.

Tosh still hadn’t abandoned her rather extraordinary capacity for hope.

Apparently the mysterious observer had realised that she’d become aware of his presence, because there was suddenly the sound of a chair scrapping loudly across the floor, followed by the clunk of boots on polished wood.

Tosh kept her eyes turned resolutely forwards, surveying the liquor bottles in front of her over an array of empty glasses. She only looked around when the footsteps stopped.

Oh dear.

“Hello Toshiko,” Captain Hart purred, “Can I get you a drink?”

***

She said yes, eventually. Not on purpose, of course, but it’s always difficult to say no when the offer is being made by an extremely attractive man. It’s even harder when he’s smiling at you as if you’re the most stunning woman in the universe.

Tosh cursed herself, briefly, for being so fickle. But it wasn’t her fault. No one else ever looked at her like that. She was used to being the invisible girl of the Hub. Kindness knocked her off balance more than violence ever could.

“So,” said John, watching her lazily over his second glass of brandy. “Where’s your gallant Captain? Or your doctor boyfriend? Abandoned you, have they?”

“He isn’t my Captain,” Tosh said, a little too sharply. Her own drink remained resolutely untouched. “And Owen certainly isn’t my boyfriend”

“So defensive,” Hart smirked, “Touched a nerve, have I?”

Tosh ignored him. Her right hand slipped down, just a fraction, towards her pocket. She never actually carried her gun around unless she was working, but she’d momentarily forgotten that. She only ever used it when she had to and left it locked up in her desk the rest of the time. The cool metal in her pocket made her feel exposed rather than safe. A killer rather than a protector.

(It was a nice sentiment, but, as her fingers itched to wrap themselves around a nonexistent handle, she started to regret it.)

“Don’t they realise it’s dangerous to let a lovely woman like yourself wander around without a chaperone?” he continued, moving a little closer. Before Tosh could reply, he grabbed hold of her wrist, stopping her from reaching for her phone. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you. I don’t want to hurt you, Toshiko.”

“Why should I trust you?” she growled. She didn’t bother trying to pull her arm free – his grip was like a vice – and her tone of voice seemed only to spur him on. She remembered, briefly, the man who he’d hurled from the building, and her heart began to pound unpleasantly in her chest.

“Because I’m a model citizen?” he suggested, smirking.

“You killed Jack!” she snapped.

“He came back, didn’t he?”

“That isn’t the point. You’ve been to murder rehab!”

“And how do you know about that?”

“I …” she blushed, and glanced down at her feet, “I tracked down the CCTV footage of your reunion with Jack.”

“Oh …” He grinned at her. “Like what you saw?”

“Before you started trying to kill each other? Yes.” There was no point denying it. They were both cute. “That isn’t the point either.”

John laughed. It wasn’t an unpleasant laugh, actually. It wasn’t the sort of laugh a person like Captain John Hart was supposed to have. Tosh had to concentrate to prevent it from overwhelming her. She wasn’t used to this. She was the invisible girl at the Hub. She was forgotten until her expertise was needed. People didn’t flirt with her!

“You need to lighten up, Toshi,” he announced, draining her glass since she’d shown no inclination to do so. “Have some fun. I know you’re all uptight in the 21st century, but you are just ridiculous.”

“I’m not uptight,” said Tosh, in a tone that suggested the opposite and made John’s smile widen even further.

“Sure,” he said, “You’re just ‘sensible’. ‘Dull’. Pick your synonym. It all means the same thing.”

Tosh visibly deflated. Sensible, dull Toshiko, with her machines and her computer programs, who it was so much easier to just ignore. No wonder Owen wasn’t hers.

She didn’t have time to sink back into her misery, however, because John was talking again. And, if she wasn’t mistaken, he even looked a little guilty.

“For what it’s worth, Toshiko,” he said, and the tender way he said her name made her heart race, “I think Owen and the others must be mad. You’re gorgeous.”

Her cheeks flushed crimson, despite the fact that she’d heard him referring to a poodle in a similar way only a few months earlier.

“I still don’t trust you,” she said, but it was difficult to get the words out. Her guard was slipping further and further which each passing second. He’d let go of her wrist, but she hadn’t made another attempt to go for her phone.

“No need to blush,” he smiled, toying with a strand of hair that had been lying against her cheek, “Just stating a fact. Your friends are blind.”

She shouldn’t believe a word that came out of his mouth, no matter how sugared it was. He would be using her for something, revenge or information or worse. But his face was only inches from her own now, and her heart was beating so hard it seemed to be threatening to burst from her ribcage. She couldn’t have left the bar and phoned Jack if her life depended on it.

And it probably did.

He drugged Gwen using paralysing lip gloss. Drugged Gwen and left her to die.

His face was coming closer now. Their lips were millimetres apart.

“Under no circumstances let him kiss you.”

Tosh jerked her head back sharply, just in time. Her cheeks, already flushed crimson, darkened even further.

“How do I know you aren’t wearing your ‘paralysing lip gloss’?” she asked, voice catching in her throat as he slid his arm around her waist. It doesn’t even occur to her to protest about that.

“Because I have a lot of plans for this evening,” he whispered, lips brushing against her ear, “Some of them might involve handcuffs, but none of them involve you being unconscious.”

FIC: Some Grand Adventure [Doctor Who]

atraphoenix — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 11:38:53 GMT

Title: Some Grand Adventure
Author: atraphoenix
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Barbara Wright, Ian Chesterton, Susan Foreman and the First Doctor
Rating: G
Summary: Most heroes are just ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations, doing the very best they can.

Author's Note: Written for chicafrom3 as part of the classicdw_fic ficathon.

They’d saved the world today. It was becoming almost commonplace.

If asked, Barbara would admit that she enjoyed being a hero, but, in the same breath, she’d add that ‘hero’ probably wasn’t the right word. Some people – people like the Doctor – are born to do remarkable things, but most so-called heroes are just ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations, doing the very best they can.

Barbara had never thought that she would be one of them. She’d never been the sort of person to spend her life staring up at the stars, searching for some grand adventure. In fact, when she first found herself caught up in the Doctor’s wild life, all Barbara had wanted was to return home. She had longed to be back in a time and place where the soil felt familiar beneath her feet, and the sky above her head held no terrible secrets, even if she’d never really appreciated those things before.

Eventually, however, things changed. She changed. The universe, which had once seemed so small and so safe, was suddenly vast and unimaginable, and Barbara Wright, history teacher and purely logical being, was swallowed up by the enormity of it all.

The person left behind called herself Barbara, and even looked like Barbara, but it wasn’t her. Not really.

She was surprised to find how little she cared. There was never time to mourn her old self’s passing, and Ian seemed rather fond of the person she’d become. There was no point in clinging to something that could never be recovered.

***

They’d saved the world today. Barbara wasn’t smiling.

You couldn’t celebrate when there were always so many people that you didn’t manage to save, and one of the casualties – a most unexpected casualty – was standing right outside the TARDIS.

“Grandfather!” Susan exclaimed, tearful and terrified, and Barbara’s eyes were drawn momentarily to the Doctor. He was staring fixedly at the screen, and Barbara was rather glad she couldn’t see his face. His expression would only reveal something she didn’t want to acknowledge.

“Listen, Susan, please,” he said, in a painfully matter-of-fact voice. “I’ve double locked the doors, you can’t get in. Now move back, child, where I can see you.”

Susan obeyed him, eyes as wide as saucers. She was clearly unable comprehend what was happening, and Barbara longed to rush out of the TARDIS to comfort her. She looked so lost, dwarfed by the world she’d found herself thrown into. Although Barbara had been able to pretend nothing was wrong when she felt that way, Susan clearly wasn’t as adept at hiding her emotions.

Silently, Barbara slipped her hand into Ian’s.

“During all the years I’ve been taking care of you, you in return have been taking care of me …” began the Doctor, but Susan cut across him, frantically.

“Grandfather, I belong with you!”

“Not any longer, Susan,” he barked. There was no real emotion in his voice. He simply wouldn’t allow it. He believed he had to be strong, for Susan, and Barbara knew that the Doctor would do whatever was necessary to keep up the pretence.

“You’re still my grandchild, and always will be,” he said, his voice low, and bitterly hard, “But now you’re a woman too. I want you to belong somewhere. To have roots of your own.”

As much as he loved her, that was something the Doctor could never provide. What sort of grandfather couldn’t give his only relative a home that didn’t move every other day, and a life that wouldn’t leave her constantly at risk?

Even if it broke his own heart, the Doctor was determined to do what he thought was best for Susan.

The poor man. He would face down Daleks and stand up to the Sensorites, but he still had so much to learn about how people worked.

As the TARDIS began to dematerialise, Barbara squeezed Ian’s hand a little tighter. He didn’t speak, but she knew he understood, and that was more than enough.

***

They’d saved the world today. It was a rather hollow victory.

The Doctor’s grief, once he allowed it to flow, was terrifying and all-consuming. He seemed to have forgotten that Ian and Barbara were even in the TARDIS. Eventually it would be safe to return to the Doctor’s side – provided they didn’t mention Susan – but until then they decided it was best to leave him to mourn.

Barbara, who hadn’t even been able to grieve for her self, certainly wasn’t able to grieve for Susan. Instead, she remembered. She lay in the darkness of her room and recalled all their conversations and all their adventures. The way Susan had spoken and laughed and smiled. The way she had lived. The way she would live.

Worryingly, the thoughts that ran through her head sounded a lot like a eulogy, even though she didn’t doubt that Susan would be perfectly happy with David. After all, her naivety would be her greatest strength. Susan would be able to see the world with new eyes – ones which were not influenced by her grandfather’s view of the universe. She would be able to be her own person, and lead her own life…

Yes. Susan would be just fine. She had to be. Barbara didn’t dare think otherwise. The idea of the wide and vicious universe swallowing up Susan Foreman as easily as it had swallowed up Barbara Wright was too terrible to contemplate.

In the end, when her memories had been recycled so many times that her head was beginning to spin, the former teacher swung herself out of bed and made her way towards the console room. There was a slim chance that the Doctor’s desire for isolation had already passed, and anything was better than just sitting here.

As she made her way down the corridor, she could hear the sound of Ian tossing and turning in his own bed. But, as much as she wanted to go to him, it was the Doctor who needed her at the moment.

When she reached the console, she found him slumped in an armchair. He looked older than ever before. Defeated.

“Ah, Barbara, my dear,” he said, looking up at her with tired eyes, “We’ll be arriving soon, I’ll let you know when we do …”

She wondered if he was even aware what he was saying. His mind was clearly elsewhere, and his body longed to follow it.

“How are you, Doctor?” she asked, gently, and the Doctor didn’t even bother answering.

Barbara knew what he wanted. He wanted her to reassure him, to tell him that he’d done the right thing when he left Susan behind. But she couldn’t because, despite her earlier attempts to convince herself, she just didn’t know. Susan had seen so much, but she was still so terribly young.

“We couldn’t stay for the wedding,” said the Doctor, “She would never have stayed if we’d given her a chance to leave.”

That was true, so Barbara nodded, and pulled up an armchair beside him, ready to listen, and comfort as best she could, whenever he decided to speak again.

“There will be no one to give the bride away,” he said eventually, a few minutes later.

“Oh no,” said Barbara quickly, “They all liked Susan, I’m sure there will be plenty of people who she can choose from. Tyler, perhaps. And I’m sure Jenny will help her organise everything …”

“But it won’t be me,” the Doctor protested, “She should have family there.”

“David will be her family soon,” Barbara said, and she was relieved to see that his expression was changed very suddenly. He looked almost relieved.

“Yes. She loves him, doesn’t she?” he asked. “I have never experienced love, but I believe it is very important.”

Barbara’s eyes widened, and she inwardly chastised herself for being so astonished. Very few people really understood love, whatever their species, and even fewer actually found it. She didn’t, and hadn’t. Her childhood boyfriend – followed by an even briefer fling during her university years – certainly didn’t count.

But there was Ian …

“You look tired, Barbara,” said the Doctor, disturbing her from her reverie. She decided it was easier to nod rather than protest, even if she felt more distracted than tired now. It was probably best if the Doctor didn’t know her current train of thought.

“Will you be alright, Doctor?” she asked, rising from her chair, “I probably should get back to bed.”

“I’ll be fine, my dear,” he said, almost laughing, “I am always fine.”

She didn’t believe him, but there was nothing she could do now he no longer wanted her help. The four of them had been travelling together for months, but Barbara was well aware of the fact that they didn’t know their pilot at all. And probably never would. She doubted that the Doctor would ever let anyone in this universe – human or otherwise – get that close to him.

Perhaps she and Ian would return home, one day. And then the Doctor would be left travelling the universe alone. Always alone. How could he bear it?

“Will you really go back, one day?” she asked. In the stillness of the TARDIS at this time of night, it was easy to ask questions she wouldn’t normally dare to ask. It could all be forgotten by tomorrow, if necessary.

The Doctor laughed a little. “Even a Time Lord cannot make a promise like that, Barbara. Even we cannot tell what the future will hold.”

A Time Lord. What a fitting title. Terrible, and proud, and majestic.

“I … I’ve always wanted to ask,” she said, turning back to face him for a moment, “Who exactly is Susan’s grandmother?” Hadn’t he love her, at least?

“Ah, that’s the problem with travelling in time, you see, my dear,” the Doctor said with a rueful smile, “I haven’t met her yet.”

She nodded, and found herself smiling back. So he wouldn’t be alone forever, then. He’d find her – whoever she was – sooner or later, and Barbara just hoped that, when he did, she actually deserved him.

***

When Barbara reached her bedroom door, she didn’t enter immediately. They’d saved the world today, she thought, but even that didn’t matter anymore. What mattered now was tomorrow.

She turned on her heel and moved back down the corridor, towards the room where Ian was still lying awake.

Tomorrow mattered. Tomorrow, and the next grand adventure …

What happened after that was up to them.