honeynoir.

fic: there was a time (River/Eight)

2013-12-14T20:47:10Z

Title: there was a time
Characters/pairing: River, Eight (River/Doctor, River/Eight)
Rating/Wordcount: PG, ~700
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.
Summary: The Doctor is dead. On Karn, of all places. River always knows and she's always there.
AO3: Here.
A/N: This is a missing scene from Night of the Doctor, so you kind of really have to have seen that. (Put River in all the episodes!) For flowsoffire, who is always brilliant. ♥

Note on warnings: Not really sure what to warn for, so I'm choosing not to, but -- Eight is technically dead, fic is somewhat shippy.

The Doctor is dead.

No one challenges her, speaks to her, looks twice at her. So easy, always was, Melody Pond Mels Malone River Song steals some robes and rubs some tangles into her hair and smudges her eyeliner and joins the back of the crowd.

The whole thing would have been terribly boring if she wasn’t quite taken; it was mostly a relief at this point, invisibility.

They’re not on Trenzalore or by Lake Silencio and it isn’t in battle nor by her hand, like the stories used to go, but on Karn, of all places. Crashed spaceship. The impact. No time to regenerate. He’s not surrounded by family or friends or even fans, but the Sisterhood of Karn. This has always happened, though, before the game she was made for was ever invented. It had taken him, her Doctor, a very long time to tell her, but now she knows she has to see it. She knows what’s going to happen, too (she always knows), but it’s living history; she’s an archeaologist, it’s what she does.

They’re taking him from the wreckage of the ship, four women carrying the stretcher, everyone else wielding torches. (Not River, though; she’d engage in every bit of non-conformity she could to please him, even when he was dead.)

The walk is an utterly quiet one and sombre as a funeral march, discounting the tinge of elation in the others’ body language. His head’s lolling from side to side as they climb closer to the crest of the hill, to the temple, and she’s too far away to do anything. She's very possibly limping in response, favouring him like a sprained ankle, even now before he was broken.

They’re not very careful, dumping him on the ground like a bag of bones; a restoration project; half on the stretcher and half on the floor. He gets only one torch for company, a fragrant one keeping lonely vigil and sucking at the oxygen. He was a corpse, after all, and logic prevailed: the Sisterhood, too, were Gallifreyan at their core. River almost wants to be found out, if only to see if they would be fooled by the beats of her double hearts.

Karn isn’t time locked. Karn isn’t burnt or frozen or lost. This isn’t a fixed point, either, but important so important.

While the Sisters rush off to brew their science, she kneels by his side. The Doctor is dying, please, please help.

He’s extinct in her time, this Doctor. The Eighth and last of the ones who ran for no reason, just because they could. Oh, he’s the same, of course, the very same, but he’s not regretting, not burying, not overthinking, not hating.

This man does not yet need a weapon to stop him. He’s not the War Doctor for fourteen whole minutes.

She’s not-quite touching the sweat and engine oil coating his temple, not quite wiping it off with a piece of her robes. (Who’s done this, he’d think, the Sisterhood were never big on small favours and don’t mention big ones, and so she leaves it be, to cool and curl his hair.)

She touches his arm instead, brushes the wear and tear of a thousand small defeats and a thousand smaller victories; there’s not a reaction from one single cell, not a single mitochondrial tremble. Not even her Doctor would have been able to fake it that well, especially not under her touch.

When he has just over seven minutes of life left, and River knows they’ll come for him very soon, to revive him and let him make his choice, she kisses him. It’s painfully familiar; him still and sprawling, her bowing her head. Her kiss of life is of no use this time; she has nothing left to pour into him, nothing except a gnawing realisation of the true depletion of her regeneration energy. His lips are cold, his cheek stubbled, and his mind is silent. I’m sorry my love, she thinks, and straightens his neckwear, just a fraction – it’s the principle of the thing.

She could steal him, steal away with him into the vortex, every dead hair on his head intact, but without this ending, this new beginning, she’d never have her Doctor. (Hers gets younger all the time, fuller of face and brighter of wardrobe and easier to enthuse, but sadder. It must mean she’s getting older.)

This dead man was going to be older, too, very soon and very quickly. At least he’ll tell himself that; that’s what he told her. The Doctor no more.

She’ll stay, of course, to see him choose. She’s killed him and revived him; she’ll see him reborn.

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dw_remix link post

2013-11-10T13:18:15Z

I made:

Title: Bright Shadow (The Don’t Be Alone Remix)
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Eleven, Vasta, Jenny, Strax (Eleven+Vastra, Eleven+Amy, Eleven+Rory, Vastra/Jenny)
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.
Summary: 'Don't be alone, Doctor.' Or, the Doctor, his solitude, and his friends.
A/N: For dw_remix. a_phoenixdragon wrote the fantastic original, Let in the Light of Your Bright Shadow. (You should also read The Color of Apathy, which also has Eleven and Vastra.)

My remixer was paranoidangel42, who wrote The Doctor Cooks (The Eleventh Time Lucky Remix). Summary: The Doctor offers to cook dinner for Amy and Rory. What could go wrong?

It's a remix of Fare/Taste, with all the Doctors and many, many companions. And cooking, obviously! It'sbrilliant and I'm absolutely thrilled!

+ there's classic Who, Torchwood, SJA, Big Finish... pretty awesome!

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Fic!

2013-11-09T12:05:50Z

Title: all i need is a bitter song
Rating: PG [slight psychic/physical h/c]
Characters/Pairing: Clara, Eleven (Clara/Eleven)
Wordcount: ~7500
Disclaimer: I don’t own Doctor Who.
Summary: Defaulting to tea and grapes it was. Clara thought she’d be home by now, but the Doctor wasn’t handling having his memories eaten as well as she’d thought... and the TARDIS just didn’t like her. (Post-Rings of Akhaten h/c.)

AO3 | Teaspoon | LJ

A/N: Cleaned up and fleshed out from the kink meme and this prompt here, re: the consequences of Eleven offering up his memories in Rings of Akhaten. Fic is not as much Eleven h/c as it is a Clara fic with Eleven h/c in it, mostly because... Clara talks a lot?

(Okay, that’s Rings. Now someone else write post-episode H/C for all the other Clara+Eleven episodes ~~so I can read it~~ because there is some fodder... there.)

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Fic: Virtuous circles [River/12]

2013-09-07T21:58:40Z

Title: Virtuous circles
Rating: G
Characters/Pairing: River/Twelve
Wordcount: ~800
Disclaimer: I don’t own Doctor Who.
Summary: “You, me, a yellow hold-all and some tepid waterfalls?”
A/N: This is loosely a mini sequel/prequel... thing to All of. Been meaning to do one since I wrote it, since it was always supposed to be Eleven and Twelve... which is why it’s been tagged v. helpfully as ‘The Doctor’ this whole time. ;)

Spoilers for Twelve? Idk, not really. Where it fits into canon? Er, somewhere.

They were finally, finally nearing the tepid falls of Kolkokron II, if the readings on her wrist-scanner were right. That marked a solid hour of going up a mountain that barely angled the favourable way, of letting her thoughts wander.

The ghost of Madame Kovarian yelled/whispered: “You will not be a Companion!”

No, River thought, no, she was not. But what was she, then? Not lover, not girlfriend. Certainly not... that word he kept using.

Yet some other vestige of her training surfaced, saying: the Doctor adapts to any situation. That was true and not-true. The Cosmic Hobo, the Predator, the Question Mark; he was the same basic chimera. She was too, but she was better at it than him.

It was dastardly slippery and foggily humid, but the Doctor’s hand in hers never moved. Still... she hadn’t ever before been so grateful for the boots with extra-grip soles and retractable spikes and five-year insurance. And the faculty had said she wasted the budget on shoes.

The Doctor stopped at a ledge that looked very much alike all the others they had passed, spat out a mouthful of water and bellowed: “That’s far enough, I think!”

River manoeuvred her hand out of his grip and massaged her aching calf. “Why are we here?”

No answer. Between the deafening murmur of the waterfalls and his selective hearing, she could shout all day without getting a shrug in response.

They were close enough to the waterfalls to get treated to the occasional spray of warm water and the glitter of sudden semi-rainbows – so naturally, the Doctor toddled even closer to the mountain edge and peered into the sudden drop that would take him back to where they started very, very quickly. She had no urge to push him.

Water was running down his neck and dragging at his cardie, pooling in the slope of his shoulders; he was wearing his age on the outside today. He’d shown up on the pavement between her favourite soup shop and the coffeehouse, smelling like the spice market of New Alexandria. “You, me, a yellow hold-all and some tepid waterfalls?” he’d said.

Sometimes she thinks he misses her older self, but accusing him of it would be pointless. Especially as she missed his. (The face had too shallow lines, too few greys, too little experience lurking in the backs of the eyes.) Today, she’d made a run-of-the-mill joke about his wellies and he’d recieved it decently while appreciating her jodhpurs, so this was somewhere in the comfy middle ground, or so she hoped.

“Doctor! Talk to me!” She righted her soaking beanie, tugged some of her wet hair out from under her collar, and tried some gentle psychic nagging.

A mere minute later, he actually turned and ambled back, swinging the bright yellow bag lazily. “Sorry! Fascinating!” The water was making his hair stand straight up in patches, all dark and light and ridiculous, and he’d managed to get some of his raggedy white scarf around one ear, while the rest of it either sagged around his shoulders or flopped in the wet breeze.

“Did you call the dentist?”

“What!”

“Dentist!”

“Tried! Interference!”

“That’s because you’re calling from the vortex!”

“No! Not because!”

“Why have you gone all monosyllabic?”

“It’s loud! I’m twelve-hundred! Why are we talking about the dentist!”

“Why not!”

“Is this because I stared into that? Here!” He handed her the hold-all with as much care as if it had come straight out of the bin.

She had asked why he’d dragged it with him, but; selective hearing. As it was, the bag contained something that was large and rounded and very, very heavy; she peered inside. “Is this a diamond shaped like your head? Natural size? No inclusions?”

He leaned very close and enunciated in her ear, “Must be, mmm.”

“Oh. For me?”

“No.” He pulled the corners of his mouth down and said, with endless tender certainty, “You’ll understand.”

“What am I supposed to do with this? Doctor? Five seconds before it goes on your bad foot.”

He looked between the falls and her, smiling like it was the simplest thing in the universe. “You get a really good grip on it, you work up some speed, and you hurl it into the waterfall! Fzooooom! Your pick as to which waterfall.” He shrugged, wetly. “We watch till it’s really truly abso-definitely gone, and then we go to Brighton with Vastra and Jenny and Strax.”

“Why?”

“You told me to! I never argue with my wife!” He finished with the twitch of a grin, blinding even through the watery haze.

River rolled her eyes. Her older self was getting more annoying by the mention. And she’d never believe he’d get married, no matter how many times he said it.

They watched till the yellow bag and the giant diamond were definitely long gone; his fingers pressing against her ribs, hers tugging his cardigan back into shape.

“Brighton next? River!”

“A minute,” she said, probably entirely too quietly.

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fic: I'll have to come to you

2013-08-25T21:23:55Z

Title: I'll have to come to you
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Eleven, Twelve, Clara (Doctor/Clara)
Wordcount: ~1600
Disclaimer: I don’t own Doctor Who.
Summary: She was his big friendly button, his reset after the dark days.
A/N: Here’s another fic that’s taken like four months to finish, woo. Mentions character death and regeneration. Also really vague spoilers for the appearance of the Twelfth Doctor. Quotes from the show are not mine, obviously.

How nice to see you taking an interest again
We was just getting acquainted

It’s Wednesday, he’s leaning decisively against the console, facing the door, brushing future lint off his trousers (checkers; cool!), waiting. Waiting, and admitting it. Waiting for her to pack and tidy the house and sit in car queues and whatever else it was she did that she wouldn’t do Tuesday evening.

With her, he’s almost patient.

Clara.

She was his big friendly button, his reset after the dark days. After the Pond and the Roman and the greatest story never told.

He, who had resigned himself to walking with lead in his steps and who had convinced Sexy to make him coats with wider shoulder pads for heavier burdens, he felt like knocking his heels again. Didn’t do it in front of Clara, necessarily, but maybe he should.

She deserved to see it.

She probably already knew.

Wait’s over. She skips down the lawn, finally, in the millionth variation on cute dress and wedges he’s seen, clutching 101 Places to See to her chest.

Why do you call yourself Doctor?
I saw all of you

He saw her through his own time stream – much of her, most of her; maybe. The line of her spine and the weight of her hair as she saved him, again and again.

Not an open wound any longer, but a bit raw still, and held together by plasters shaped like Clara, smelling like Clara.

To her, he’s not a mystery, and barely a moniker. He has a sneaking, side-eye worthy, cause-to-reel-backwards suspicion she considers him... a man. They should probably talk about it, haven’t yet.

He wanted to drop her off at the Maitlands’ doorstep for good; pat her head and kiss her fingers, yes, but leave her because it hurt. He wanted to not face her and to cradle her face.

He wanted to leave like he always did, and keep her painting and his life to remember her by. He’d told himself: this time was the last time.

The next Wednesday, some Wednesday, the nearest Wednesday... he was waiting on her lawn again. Leaving would be like pretending she didn’t remember all her deaths and all the times she’d saved him. To pretend like she didn’t have bad dreams and phantom pains from a million hurts. Oh, she said she didn’t, said those were just nightmares, said she didn’t know more than the paper and the ink that made up her Mum’s collection of recipes – and then he caught her just staring.

Of course she remembers.

Torn asunder
Never met you

Just as he’d mapped her life, her lives, before he’d known who she was... just as little could he stop searching for her echoes now. Oh, the TARDIS didn’t like it, and no Clara would have approved had they known, but he just. couldn’t. stop.

She was fighting for him; not with violence, but with lies and cheats and faulty information. He had to fight for her.

Don’t travel alone, Doctor
Remember me for we shall meet again

They’re subtly different, his Claras, but subtly – still so very much her. Oswin, Clara. His chicken and egg. Eggs-ter-min-ate.

She’s

(a name on a door and he waits slumped against it, yo-yoing four thousand five hundred and fourteen times. She never shows.)

(holding a cup of coffee with one hand and having parkin with the other)

(a flowery trenchcoat over tights and, logically, there’s a possible skirt underneath. It de-nerves him. She laughs, because she knows it does. He tries so hard, but she dies, too.)

(married and wears an apron and placing a pie on a windowsill. He gets out as quickly as he can, and the Universe lets him go without turning an ankle in the middle of traffic. Five years later; her funeral. Cancer.)

(inviting him into her flat and making him tea, and he touches her things, everything that meant something to her.)

(finding him again and again, most of the time, too often, (Oi!) and in his hearts of hearts it hurts to pretend not to hear.)

(limping)

(vacant-eyed)

(not listening to him)

(always saying “You’re not real”.)

Her bones were in a thousand places, a thousand times.

With Oswin, with too many, not even that.

She’s not a ghost, but the lights flicker all the same.

She’s always twenty-something. Sometimes younger. There’s never a Clara making soufflés with her grandchildren. She never grows old.

His version, the original, still has that chance. He’d saved her; with her, all the others.

I never know why I only know who
Dunno why I’m crying

Looking back, remembering times when his mind was addled by his burning timestream, when the world beneath his feet heaved and breathed like a pit of jelly slugs, when he wasn’t looking hard enough, he could never be sure if that was an unusually handsy Ace pressing her palms against his shoulders or if it was Clara in a leather jacket... if that was Barbara pushing him out of the way or if it was Clara wearing a cardie... was that Clara in Jamie’s kilt, Turlough’s uniform, Mickey’s t-shirt, Leela’s skins, Adric’s tunic and Donna’s scarf?

Did it matter, really? They all saved him.

Of course it mattered.

This isn’t a ghost story it’s a love story
Something awesome

He thinks about regeneration sometimes, of course he does; he’s a Time Lord with a body of a certain age.

He’s still not prepared when it happens, but Clara’s there and he can’t think of a better hand to hold. It’s like having kin present, which is how it was meant to happen, how it had never happened for him. She’s wearing one of her little dresses, one that happens to have a collar almost as high and well-buttoned as the ones he’d grown up with on Gallifrey, but hers was softer, with a pattern that was definitely human.

Afterwards, she says – sorry, hints – that he wasn’t regenerating quite right, that he should have relaxed and lain down during. Hah. Then she’d turned and whipped him in the new face with her ponytail.

Twelfth Doctor, thirteenth body. I saw all of you.

No need for boring explanations. He’s reborn content and hungry and barely has to stop for breath. She enjoys getting to know a new him almost as much as he enjoys getting to know himself.

They keep travelling, of course; she’s only actually seen 44 of her Places (and only heard 45).

It doesn’t take them long to run into the Daleks. Always the Daleks.

They still don’t know him, aren’t afraid of him. It’s so much easier like this.

He’s crouching in a battle-scarred corner of a smoke-filled corridor, waiting.

Clara, despite being her original not-prone-to-wandering self, has wandered off; worrisome, because he knows he knows she remembers being Oswin and being Time Lord and being exterminated again and again and again.

After facing some Daleks valiantly, as usual, he’d gathered the remains of his tattered coat triumphantly (because he hadn’t his name to throw around triumphantly) and laughed; too loudly and for too long, probably. He’d run off, then, because the Daleks had been gathering their wits and he’d had enough of banter.

Clara has to be well, he thinks, the cold from the wall seeping into his ribs. She can’t die at the hands of the Daleks, not now. Not the Daleks.

There’s one coming; he hears it close in. Just one. He stands cautiously; never really knows what to do when there’s just one anymore.

The Dalek rounds the corner, trundling unsteadily. Damaged. The eyestalk points upwards at an impossible angle.

He has some excellent taunts in store.

Except there’s suddenly a lot of scratching and whirring coming from that Dalek and he loses his train of thought. There’s a shudder followed by a great pop, and... Clara’s head in place of the dome.

She’s absolutely ashen-faced, translucent-faced, brave-faced. Clara Oswin Oswald. “Found an empty casing,” she says. “Led most of them the wrong way, but some are... not far, coming here, you know how it is.”

“Why on Earth would you get in there?” He barely gets the words out, and he always gets the words out.

“Why not? You’ve done it. Knew I could get out. Defeat the Daleks, put some nightmares to rest... all in a day’s. Remind me to thank Nina for dragging me to yoga.”

“You ran off. I thought you had a plan!”

“I did. Then this one came along.” She pats the top of the casing. “Would’ve been even better if I’d figured out how to use the plunger thingie, but...” She reaches dirty hands toward him. “Pull, would you, old man? My foot and my shoulderblade were not meant to be this close.”

He eases her out and into a hug, holds her up because her knees are shaking. He could have sworn he’d meant to regenerate shorter this time.

“You smell like a smokery and you’re pressing my nose against the only button left on that waistcoat. Good thing, it was hideous.” She pushes off his chest, spins around and weaves down the corridor. She’s barefoot and has a hole in the back of cute dress number two million. “We’d better go back the way you came.”

“Impossible girl”, he says. First time with this new mouth; he’s held back for months and months. It still feels right on his tongue.

She turns, slowly and unsteadily, and grins.

The navigation system’s knackered
But you’ll have much more fun

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Fic: Museum piece

2013-06-08T11:38:48Z

Museum piece. G. For the fanworkathon and the prompt: Time Lady Clara (Claroswinoswald? Oswinclaroswald?) and the cantankerous, broken-down Type 40 TARDIS who refuses to be properly repaired.

“Faulty ones, all of them. These cannot move at all – Are you not paying attention, Clar-a?”

She hid a smile at the obvious distaste her supervisor held for her choice of shortened name. “And that one?”

“That one only makes short trips, and those are far between. It has a tendency to materialise just outside the Capitol. Has left a fair few of us out there, while it... returned here. The flaws are unusual. It will take a lot of work.”

*

She was definitely in the shop more often than she was meant to as the most junior assistant repairer, but here she felt a sense of purpose. There was something about the broken time capsules that called to her. The obsolete models, sitting there waiting for another chance... they made her hearts ache.

And then there was the last one in the row. The one that had been there perhaps the longest. The one that could be made to go on short trips only to dump its pilots. The one whose door had to be forced open every time. The one who wasn’t broken as much as just... stubborn.

Their meetings go like this:

Clara enters.
The console room plunges into darkness.

She stomps.
The sad little psychic link they’ve been able to form floods with noise and pressure and the none-too-subtle insistence Clara go somewhere else.

She removes a roundel.
There’s a zap and her hair stands on end.

She pushes at the immobile dematerialisation lever with every little bit of her weight and determination. “If you can’t be repaired, you will be left to fall apart, you outdated, obstinate...!”

She tries to wipe off the central column: the smoky remnants of written orders of old cling to the glass.
A puff of soot from somewhere below ruins her uniform and protocol demands she claim another one.

“You can leave me outside the dome! Doesn’t that sound like something you would like? Come on, please, just move!”
The console disappears. Just... poof and Clara almost falls headfirst into the capsule’s shouldn’t-be-exposed-Heart. Much, much later, when they’ve finally recovered the console from inside the Panopticon Archive, she throws her tool belt to the floor and kicks it into a corner.

The link between her and the ship immediately widens ever so slightly, and she finally gets the chance to listen to this TARDIS. She hears the desire – the decicion – to see the Universe on no one else’s terms. She hears the longing and the waiting and the plan to steal a companion. Clara never picks the belt up; eventually, it melts into the floor.

(That one time she accidentally put her hand on the co-ordinate oscillator, the bite of electricity she got was... almost friendly.)

It’s him, of course. The TARDIS has chosen him. Clara’s seen him over the decades, as she’d grown from tot to student to Time Lady. The father, the grandfather, getting surlier and tenser and always glancing toward the sky.

She’s always known her place in his life, even though she was technically younger, even though they’d never been formally introduced – as surely as she knew Time, she knew she would help the Doctor. "Don't worry," she tells the TARDIS, "he'll come."

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I can't stop writing this kind of fic

2013-06-07T21:49:40Z

infinite. Eleven/Clara. G. Note: Brief mentions of death. ~300. For the Clara fanworkathon and the prompt: Eleven/Clara, written in the stars.

There’s always the Doctor, and always Clara Oswald.

Fingers entwined to the point of pain, they try to reconstruct her through the fragments in her mind, the hole she’s left across the constellations. They make all those short jumps the TARDIS hates, from place to place and time to time and climate to climate. They always watch, never interfere; that part of their story is done, off-limits.

Clara’s hand is alternately freezing cold and stickily sweaty in his, but he’s never letting her go.

Her echoes are hiding in the shadows when his selves arrive, or running behind him cupping her hands around her mouth while he stares straight ahead, or... they’re already dead. Two steps in front of him or two steps behind. Setting up the pieces or cleaning up after him. Always a hand hovering above his shoulder, too rarely one he gets to hold.

They find her footsteps in dust, her handprints in mud, variations on her name through all of time and all of space.

They find her slipping into the sea or falling off ledges, in grand tombs and unmarked graves.

They find her walking away from explosions, or scarred by shrapnel, or being Queen of the Universe.

They find the most enourmous statue of a grinning Clara wielding a sword and wearing chest armour and a flowery skirt.

She was too perfect, and still just a girl whose fingers trembled in his. She wanted to see, to find herself. “You...” he says, when they slump against the console, surely done for the day, “are amazing.”

Clara shrugs one shoulder. “Behind every man...”

He has to laugh at that.

Here’s the future, the one they can write together: the blue box and the leaf and Wednesday dinner at the Maitlands’, and Angie announcing: “It’s Clara and Clara’s boyfriend.”

They’re still holding hands.

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