after ever (happily)

[ladyoftime]

{Quiet and formless, a thought with no words yet to give it power; she waits.}

(Run, run, run-)

She hits the ground running because that’s what she always does, running and running forever and always. She lands on the ground, foot bent slightly the wrong way – but it’s alright, not that story, not this time – and she’s off again. It’s time to save the princess from her high tower because they never pay attention, no matter how many times she tells them to listen. Don’t touch, don’t stray, stay right where you are and don’t wander off. There’s a set of rules to follow in this world, rules she’s been learning since Susan went to school, since long nights reading fairy tales with her and puzzling out the inconsistencies.

(as fast as you can)

–And just. Fantastic, so very fantastic. She comes to a sudden halt, sighting the wolf in the middle of the path ahead; of course, she should have seen that coming. She can feel the thread of story tugging at her, but she doesn’t have time for this.

“Where are you going?” he asks, teeth bared in a smile as politely dangerous as can be.

She doesn’t smile back, not quite rude but not quite friendly, either. “What business is it of yours?”

“Oh, none, none at all,” he says, and sweeps a paw out at the woods beyond the path. “I just happened to find a patch of the rarest flowers around that corner, and I thought if I should find a pretty lady, I would take her to see them.”

“My,” she says, wry because this is a familiar tale, “What big teeth you have.”

(you’ll never catch me)

{Malice in the form of perfect, pure emotion has held her together for so long. but just that is not enough. She needs more, she needs words with power – and after so many years of waiting, they come to her.}

(once upon a time)

Her companion hadn’t registered on the TARDIS’s internal scanners. So the Doctor searched high and low because it was completely and utterly wrong, because people didn’t just disappear from her TARDIS (not like this). She spent hours, linearly speaking, poking around the internal dimensions, clearing out dust and old souvenirs she hadn’t looked at in years, until she landed in the attic. There, out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed movement to her right. A red balloon, a strand of hair. “Did you see what’s happened?” she demanded of the Sister in the mirror. “Where’s my friend?”

The Sister replied in her head, quiet and pained and impossibly young, like the terrified child she was too old to be. “You have to say it right.”

“Say what right?” the Doctor said, dangerously calm. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Mirror, mirror.”

“What game are you playing? Tell me!” She ran a hand through her hair and tried to make sense of it. Mirror, mirror. Her companion missing. “Mirror, mirror, what is that? A story? Mirror, mirror, on the wall?" The Sister said nothing, so the Doctor did instead. “Mirror who is in a lot of trouble if she doesn’t answer this, tell me where my friend is,” she tried.

The girl raised her hands so the Doctor could see she held a shard of broken mirror in her hands; and that, reflected in it, her companion rested on a pillow, silently sleeping.

After a lot of cleverness and little bit of luck (or maybe the other way around), the Doctor stood between two mirrors, cradling the shard of warped mirror in her hands and creating an aesthetic feedback loop strong enough to maintain a functional doorway. “Here goes,” she said, and gently pushed herself through the yielding glass of the mirror she faced.

{“She is coming, sisters!”}

Of course, things never go quite as expected.

“Goose,” the Doctor mutters crossly at the bird sitting on her head, “why is it always a goose?” She doesn’t need any princesses, especially not ones who’ve never laughed. Fortunately, it honks at her agreeably and flaps its way out of her hair, just in time for her to see the house to the side of the road, which is fantastic. And a witch inside, no doubt. Or just porridge and chairs and a bed, if she’s lucky. And she’s very, very lucky.

“Hello!”

She freezes, turns on her heel lightly to face the speaker. Stop and talk politely, can’t go on, that would be rude. No rudeness allowed. “Hello.”

An old woman, steeped in age and bent low by gravity, squints at the Doctor from her porch. “I’m so hungry,” she says. “Do you have food to share with me?”

The Doctor sticks her hands inside her jacket. Pockets, pockets, what has she got in her pockets? Jelly babies, field gravity detector, banana; always bring a banana to a party and a fairy tale. She offers the banana to the woman, who cackles a little too lasciviously for anyone’s comfort.

“Used to have one of these, didn’t you?” She waves the banana in the air, but relents at the Doctor’s impatient stare. “No matter; in the wood a little ways is a stream. Follow the stream, and it will lead you to your girl.”


Of course, storytellers never remember to mention how muddy the streams are. The Doctor loses a boot to the suction, then chucks the other one because one boot is just silly. Maybe some elves will find and mend them. For now, she resolves to have a chat with the Grimm brothers when this is over, straighten them out a bit. Maybe they could write some nice tales this time, ones where everybody sits around a fireplace and tells jokes and goes to bed. That would be the day, wouldn’t it?

“Pardon me, Miss,” someone says. “I believe you dropped something. Something metal and long, perhaps?”

She glances outward, then up, and finally down. She’ll have to talk with certain storytellers about their frogs, too. “Did I?” She patted down her pockets and, yes, her sonic screwdriver’s gone missing.

“I can help you,” the frog says, “if you’ll give me a kiss in return.”

The Doctor takes a few deep, calming breaths and reminds herself she’s doing this to save her companion. “Oh, all right.” It can’t be much worse than that Judoon that one time, and the frog looks like he has better skin, anyway.

The frog disappears under the currents and reappears moments later with the screwdriver in its mouth. “There, maiden. My payment, please.”

“Oh, Rassilon,” the Doctor mutters, and puckers up. “But don’t think this is going to be a regular thing.”

(never catch me)

{Even without words, she can hold a grudge a long, long time.}

Of course the castle is overgrown with thorny rosebushes, so much so that the Doctor can barely see the bloody tower over the things. She wipes residual frog off her screwdriver with her jacket, which isn’t really much of an improvement, and fingers it thoughtfully. Barbed wire could work. It’s the same principle, after all. Thorny and spiny.

Slowly, the bushes give way to the sonic screwdriver, and the Doctor sorts through her memories for what comes next. Is this the castle with the hair or the one where everyone falls asleep? Just in case, she calls out for her companion to let down her hair (unless it was a hare, which wouldn’t make much sense, come to think of it, so probably hair). The best she gets is an odd look from a passing bluebird.

The Doctor winces. That felt incredibly silly. Never doing it again.

(run, run)

{“Nice attic in the TARDIS where this lot can scream for eternity.”}

“There were so many, Doctor,” she says from the castle doors, arms outstretched, the beautifully wicked Queen and ugly Witch together. “So many stories, just waiting for me.”

“What did you do?” the Doctor asks, Knight and the Prince and the Princess with shining hair as black as midnight; defying description and fairy tale roles.

“Just sleeping. A single prick and the castle fell asleep. Such power humans place in their tales.”

The Doctor takes a wary step forward, then another. “What do you want?”

“I want,” says the fair-haired Witch, leaning in close enough to let her breath tickle the Doctor’s face, “power.”

She turns away so she doesn’t have to feel the breath from her lungs, scalding as a fire. “I locked you away. How did you get out?”

“Oh, Doctor, you know,” Lilith whispers. “Words. I found the most marvelous ones, and the perfect vessel to carry them out for me.”

“Oh, don’t tell me-“

“’The King, to avoid the misfortune foretold by the Old Fairy,’” the Witch recites, eyes shining with delight, “’caused immediately a proclamation to be made, whereby everybody was forbidden, on pain of death, to spin with a distaff and spindle, or to have so much as a tiny spindle in their houses.’” The Witch circles the Knight. “But the princess came and pricked her finger upon the one spindle left.”

“So she found your ball and accidentally let you loose. Sleeping Beauty, of a sort.” The Doctor fingers her sonic screwdriver behind her back. “Those aren’t new words.”

The Witch throws back her head and laughs. “But so powerful. And what story for you, Doctor? The knight in shining armour?”

“I’m rather fond of J.R.R. Tolkien. Douglas Adams. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, that’s brilliant.”

“I never found your name,” she continues, eyes glittering in anticipation. “I think I’ve found just the tale for you.” She points a finger. “’Are you called Jack?’”

“No,” the Doctor says, inching the screwdriver out, just a little.

“’Are you called Harry?’”

“No.”

“’Then,’” the With says, relishing the words, “’perhaps your name is Rumpelstiltskin!’”

The Doctor doubles over, lands on the ground, screwdriver fallen from her fingers, face etched in agony. For a moment, she thinks this is it, this is how it’s going to end. But only for a moment.

‘That’s not going to work, sorry,” she gasps out, staggering to her feet again. “You’re straining yourself already, keeping so many stories intertwined here. You can’t force that name on me, not long enough to kill me. You’ve built yourself a house of straw. Take me half a minute to huff and puff and blow your house down.”

Faster now, the stories fly.

{The evil witch proclaimed a curse over the land; that it would always be haunted by dark angels who would steal the lives of its people. Terror spread through the kingdom, but the benevolent Lady of Time looked upon them with pity and hastened to mend the damage.

“But,” she proclaimed to the people, “the angels must not be looked upon, or they will turn to stone. And they cannot have this land forever – for when the sparrow and the nightingale come together, your land will be freed of this curse.”

And when the angels heard this prophecy, they wept.}
“How would you like to spend your life as a swan?” Lilith snarls, raising her hands as if to begin an incantation – but she’s stepped backwards into the castle, already in retreat.

“You’re really reaching deep for these, aren’t you?” The Doctor says.

{Curses upon curses, the witches proclaimed, and the Lady of Time countered as best she could, sometimes undoing them herself, sometimes teaching others to rescue themselves. The healers, the captains, the waitresses caught by whirlwinds and whisked off to planets of ice and icier rulers. They are her army of heroes, and they will be there for the universe when the time comes for her to leave.}
“I have a story for you,” the Doctor says, and raises an old recorder to her lips, long forgotten. “You know, I haven’t played this in ages.” She fingers the instrument, almost tauntingly. “It’s time to end this, Carrionite.”

{“And when the strange sound of piping wafted through the streets at dawn, only the children heard it. Drawn as by magic, they hurried out of their homes. Again, the pied piper paced through the town, this time, it was children of all sizes that flocked at his heels to the sound of his strange piping. The long procession soon left the town and made its way through the wood and across the forest until it reached the foot of a huge mountain. When the piper came to the dark rock, he played his pipe even louder still and a great door creaked open. Beyond lay a cave. In trooped the children behind the pied piper, and when the last child had gone into the darkness, the door creaked shut.”}
“Well, not quite the end,” the Doctor admits. The scent of magic still lingers in the air, waiting for her to remember the sleeping beauty and deliver the waking kiss on the lips.

As her companion’s eyelashes flutter open, the castle melts into the familiar dimensions of the attic, the mirrors on either side of them cracked. “What just–?”

The Doctor sighs. “At least I didn't have to kiss the frog again.”

And they live happily ever after.




Community: theatrical_muse
Word count: 2,198
Prompt: 317 – What do you still have from when you were young?
Author's note: I hate RichText. I tried to use it for this, and then it decided my story was too long and froze the screen.

Comments

[best-served-hot.livejournal.com]

This. Oh my word, this. I am at a loss to describe how utterly fantastic this story is. It blends without being jumbled but still has that note of confusion, taunting you all the way through. I really, don't have the proper words to describe this.

But this is so very amazing. Very, very well done.

[eleventh-doctor.livejournal.com]

:D! Thank you so much! I'm always a little nervous when I turn out something like this, because I know it makes sense in my head, but written out is another thing entirely.