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justmcshaneLength: 3638 words
The lights are beautiful, anyway. They’re swirling and glowing and just. Just. There’s no good words to describe them, anyway, so she’s not even going to bother trying. There’s lots of greens and blues and purples, and the occasional spike of brightest red that flickers up and down between them. She’d call them ‘northern lights’ but the Doctor’s already reminded her twice that they’re not even on Earth, let alone on the north of the planet where they’ve temporarily stopped.
She can hear him rustling around behind her – doing something with a picnic blanket and a bag or two full of supplies that he’d lugged all the way from the TARDIS to this hill and refused to let her help carry. She watches the lights and drifts inside her own head for a while before she hears him click his fingers impatiently several times, trying to get her attention.
She turns in time to catch a bundled-up blanket that comes sailing through the air, courtesy of one cheerful diminutive Professor. “Hey,” she says, wrapping the blanket around her knees and turning halfway to smile crookedly at him.
“Hey,” he echoes back to her, leaning on his umbrella. His eyes glint, catlike in the darkness. She thinks that if she were younger, more innocent – pre-Iceworld – she would be scared, even if she tried very hard not to show it. “Everything all right, Ace?”
She waits for him to get closer to her, and then half-hearted swats at him, faux-annoyed. “I’m grand. Stop fussing.”
He pauses for a second, then grins and plops himself down on the picnic blanket he’s been setting up, tugging at the back of her jacket until she rolls her eyes and joins him, trailing her own blanket from her shoulders like a cape. He pushes the picnic basket – and yes, he actually brought a proper picnic basket along – towards her.
While she’s distracted with prying open the latch on the basket, he – the utter bastard – manages to sneak behind her, undo her messy ponytail, and begin to braid it. Carefully, too.
“Goddamnit,” she says, trying to twist away. “I told you, stop - ”
“Hold still,” he admonishes sternly. He doesn’t tug at her hair, exactly, but he doesn’t stop braiding.
“You’ll never take me alive –”
“I brought bacon sandwiches,” he says.
“– you… damn. All right, fine.” He knows full well they’re her favorite. She digs into the basket, finally succeeding with the clasp, and pulls out the promised bacon sarnies out, as well as a large thermos and the well-used mugs that she recognizes as being from the TARDIS kitchen. There’s also what looks like some sort of salad, but she figures that’s for him, not her, and leaves that alone for now.
She unwraps one of the sarnies from its brown paper packaging, and, trying not to move her head too much, starts to eat. It’s good; very good – the Professor hasn’t made her this in what feels like forever, from before she left for Gallifrey. (He doesn’t ever eat any sort of meat, let alone bacon, and as far as she knows, he only cooks it for her.) It’s very good. Very good. She gets through it at an impressively speedy rate, even for her, and mutters appreciatively, “thanks,” at him.
He hums.
The Professor’s taking his time with braiding her hair. He can do it in half a second flat, she’s asked him to do it before. But it feels like he’s being very deliberate about it this time. Like he’s doing something ridiculously fancy with it.
This planet is mostly abandoned, or so she’s told. So it’s just her and the Professor, who’s quietly weaving behind her, and the Northern Lights up above.
It feels… nice.
Normal, almost; except that this sort of thing isn’t exactly normal for them. She’s had more quiet days in a row since the Doctor found her again than she remembers having in her entire life before. And for the first time in about that long, she realizes that she actually doesn’t mind. Spending the rest of her life just kind of kicking back – or maybe not the rest but a good few months – would be… perfectly all right, actually. Although she wouldn’t say no to beating the regenerations out of Br – out of – out of that guy, the one that did this to her, his name just won’t stick in her mind, what did he do to her –
She becomes aware that the Professor’s stopped braiding her hair, and it takes her a second to realize why – she’s shaking all over, and he’s got both of her hands clasped almost painfully tight in his to stop her from scratching and tearing at her own scalp uncontrollably, which she’s probably been trying to do for the last couple of seconds. “I – fuck.”
“Ace.” His voice is low. Worried. “Are you back with me?”
“Yeah.” She’s not crying. Really, she’s not. Her eyes are completely dry, and feel almost itchy, like she wants to cry but doesn’t know how. “I’m fine now,” she says, biting back an apology, and untangles her hands from his, bunching them up in the folds of the blanket. “Keep going,” she adds when he doesn’t move.
He hesitates – she can sense him doing it – but after a long, long second, he goes back to braiding. He has to backtrack a few steps and start again from a point in her hair earlier than when he had dropped it. He’s ever so gentle about it, too, never tugging or catching. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks after another minute, in which she wonders when her heart started racing at a million miles per hour and if it’ll stop anytime soon.
“You sound like a therapist,” she tells him.
“Excellent; then that three-month intensive psychology course wasn’t for nothing.” He keeps his tone light, but there’s that undercurrent to it again. Concern, and… fear. For her, not of her or anything else. And then when she’s silent again, “Ace – ”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, I don’t really want to talk about it.” She sucks in a deep breath. The lights are dancing above and everything’s fine, everything’s alright, nothing’s in her head (unless he’s still there, somehow – but no.). “But… yeah. Okay. My head’s still kinda messed up.”
“I would be surprised if it wasn’t,” says the Professor. Now his voice has a slight layer of anger to it. “It was quite a… thorough job that my brother did on you.”
At this, Ace flinches slightly. The Professor stops braiding, and rests a hand on her back, very lightly. “Ace?”
“Right,” she says, “right. That was him.” She hesitates. “Your brother. I – his name? I can’t remember his name, and…”
“Irving Braxiatel,” says the Professor after a moment, when she trails off, still searching for words. He pronounces the name like a curse, thoroughly rolling the rs present in it. Something in Ace’s head slots into place, and she closes her eyes. She feels sort of relieved but mostly just really shaky and drained. “Was there anything in particular that… set it off?”
“Kind of,” Ace says. “I was thinking –”
“A very useful pastime,” he says, like he can’t help himself.
“– Professor, really – I was thinking about something. I can’t even remember what it was, but then I tried thinking about… you know… and, I couldn’t remember his name. It was all…” she makes an expansive gesture with her hands, and then shudders. “Wiped. Blurry. Did he do something?”
“It’s possible.” The Professor’s tone is guarded, careful. He does something and drops her hair, like he’s finished. “I can check for you if you want, later.”
“Thanks,” says Ace, and rests her forehead on the knees, staring at the blanket underneath her. There’s a long silence. “Sorry – I kind of wrecked this, didn’t I?”
“Oh, Ace…”
When she looks up again he’s sitting cross-legged in front of her. She didn’t hear him move, and she isn’t even surprised. He looks at her, and he’s got the deepest saddest eyes. He looks like he’s about to say something, but instead he just holds a hand out to her, palm open.
She reaches out with her own tentatively, unsure of what she’s supposed to be doing. He clasps her smaller hand tightly in his, squeezing. He doesn’t say anything but he doesn’t need to.
There are tears springing to her eyes. Oh, she hates herself for it. “It – nothing feels safe anymore,” she blurts. “Not that it was, you know. Ever safe. And I loved – I love it, travelling with you; travelling by myself, whatever combination it is, but – there was always the downtime, right?” She isn’t sure that she’s making all that much sense, but she keeps going anyway. “Things that weren’t as intense, things that… were. You know. Like this.” She shakes her head violently, like she’s trying to get rid of some invisible parasite. “And now. There’s, this.” More tears. Well, it looks like she’s crying properly again. “He fucked with my brain but you came and got me, which was – well, whatever he was planning for me, he can’t do it now, but now I can’t get rid of it, and he’s never going to leave, is he? I’m stuck.”
“You are not,” says the Professor immediately, firmly. He squeezes her hand again. “Not as long as I’m here. And believe me, I don’t plan to leave you again.”
“I’m thirty fucking years old,” she mutters. “Or something like that, I don’t know. But look at me; I’m crying like I’m a damn teenager again.”
“By Gallifreyan standards, you still are,” the Professor notes.
“Fucking teen angst,” she says, and for some reason she starts crying all over again.
“Your neurochemistry is most likely still scrambled slightly,” he says after an uncomfortable (for her at least) moment. “Or more than slightly. It may be a while before you feel fully like yourself again, emotionally.”
He fishes around in his pockets for a moment or two while Ace, embarrassed despite everything, tries to wipe away the tears from her eyes. It’s been years and decades that they’ve known each other, and he’s the closest friend she has in the entire damn universe, but she still doesn’t like showing any signs of weakness in front of him. Or anybody, come to think of it. Trust issues, Romana had said when they thought she wasn’t listening – or did she just imagine that? She can’t remember.
The Professor makes a small noise of satisfaction, drawing her out from her reverie, and produces a bright red handkerchief from the depths of his impossibly infinite pockets. He smiles, a subtle little quirk of his mouth, and hands it to her.
Or tries to, anyway, because the red handkerchief is tied neatly to a yellow handkerchief, which is in turn tied to a green one. The Professor looks at her with an almost comically over-the-top expression of surprise, and tugs firmly on the handkerchief he’s holding. And they just keep coming. Knotted to each other in an unending stream of colourful fabric, the chain continues to spill from the insides of his pockets, even as he tries.
Ace nearly chokes on her tears, and presses a hand abruptly to her mouth to stop herself from laughing.
He keeps going, muttering curses to himself under his breath, and tearing off his jacket in order to pull the chain more easily. Ace is laughing silently now, delighted. He reaches into the pocket and attempts to turn it inside out, but the only thing that’s revealed is more of the handkerchief chair, pouring out like a flood.
It’s ridiculous. It’s hilarious. It’s perfectly, quintessentially Doctor.
Finally, he reaches the end of the handkerchief chain, and holds up the loose end with exaggerated satisfaction. Then he takes off his straw Panama hat, and spends a good few seconds stuffing the entire string of fabric into its confines. He holds it out to Ace for inspection, and she looks at it and shrugs, then nods, grinning.
He nods back seriously, and tosses the stuffed hat up into the air as high as he can, so it’s briefly suspended in the glare of the sky lights above. He catches it neatly in the other hand, and then turns it inside out, before showing it to Ace again. It’s empty, which on a Doylian level she definitely had expected, but on a Watsonian level was still absolutely ace.
“Hang on, just a second,” he said hurriedly, taking the hat back. He checks it over thoroughly, peeking in under the folded inside rim, and then peels back the hatband. “Aha – there it is!”
And he produces a pristine white handkerchief, embroidered neatly with a tiny red question mark in the corner, and holds it out to her.
By this point, she’s definitely not crying any more. “…thanks, Professor,” she says, and she doesn’t just mean for the handkerchief.
“Would you believe me,” he tells her seriously, still holding it out to her, “if I told you that I in no way planned that out in advance?”
Ace loses it. She actually falls over sideways onto the picnic blanket, laughing uproariously, and she doesn’t stop for a good few minutes.
When she’s calmed down a bit, she rolls onto her back and stares up at the lights, still chuckling.
The Professor, also grinning, sits down next to her. “Better?” he asks.
“You have no idea.” Ace finally sits up, and takes the proffered handkerchief. She blows her nose noisily, and sighs. “You’re ridiculous.”
“So I’ve been told,” says the Professor lightly, and reaches over to bump a finger lightly across the tip of her nose. And then, after a moment: “take as long as you need.”
“What, here?” Ace says, confused.
He waves his hand vaguely. “No. Well, yes, but – to recover, Ace. Rassilon knows you need it. We don’t need to go anywhere, if you want. We can stay here for weeks, or go somewhere else, or we can simply stay in the TARDIS.”
“Forever?” she says, smiling a bit.
“And a day. If you like.”
Ace nods, and looks up at the sky. Something occurs to her. “What about the Time War, though?”
“To hell with the Time War,” says the Professor – suddenly, vindictively. It startles her in its uncharacteristic bluntness, and she actually turns to stare at him, incredulous. “Don’t give me that look, Ace, this has been a very long time coming. Gallifrey can deal with it. The rest of the universe can deal with it. Ace – ”
She looks at him; really looks at him – stares him right in his eyes, and sees everything there. Warmth, chill, intensity, softness, light and dark and storm, and underneath it all, immense care and compassion. For her. She’s immensely humbled. She also has no way to express it to him, but she suspects he knows already.
“Thank you,” she says again, very softly.
He just turns away, and nods. “It’s no problem at all,” he tells her, and for a long, long time after that, they watch the sky until the lights and stars above them fade away.
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Date: 2018-12-27 02:19 am (UTC)