clashildr one shots

Small Moments

"Do you want a smoothie?" Clara called.
Ashildr looked up from her book. "Pardon?"
"You heard me."
"That's why I'm saying 'pardon'. What's the occasion?"
"I love you - I'm trying to do something borderline nice." Clara shrugged.
Ashildr flicked to the next page of the book she held in her hands, placing it on the table in front of her and slumping into the booth. She pulled a pen out of her pocket and twiddled it around one finger.
"The usual?"
Clara's voice yanked Ashildr from her thinking. "Um." Her voice sounded all distorted, suddenly. "Sure?"
Clara chuckled, setting to work. Ashildr pressed her pen into the paper.
She cleared her throat, knowing that the woman trying her best to showcase her affection would want to know what she was writing.
"Often, I've wondered of how progression is seen in the eyes of those who see no progression for themselves; of course, on my first trip through, I was living through it and it was consequentially hard to decipher and notice the progression - it all just felt like the marching of time, which blurs after a while."
"How many subordinate clauses are in that sentence?" Clara slipped into the seat beside Ashildr, sliding the milkshake across the table.
"Four? Maybe five? Enough. Anyway... Which blurs after a while. In dipping in and out of time, in being able to pick and choose which eras I can visit, I have since been able to compare and contrast, as such, how the world has progressed: regrettably, my results are very much like that of a tango - one step forward, two steps back. Things get better for an oppressed group or the political climate grows stable enough for intelligent discussion and things look as if they are to improve-"
"And then they don't."
"-before something small, trivial and unimportant sends the precarious balance spinning off into space and leaving those who so dearly need help and assistance are thrown back into the void.
"Sometimes, it's saddening. When I think of all those who have lost their lives to the slow crawl of improvement... And yet, I find myself intrigued. I s'pose I'll forever be the scientist." She tapped her pen against her hand.
"Short sentences for you."
Ashildr pushed a short breath out from her nose, glancing up at Clara through her eyebrow. She continued to tap the pen, drawing a mouthful of milkshake through the straw.
"Come around here."
Clara cocked an eyebrow.
"C'mon, babe, come sit with me."
Clara cocked her head, a visible moment of "screw it", and swapped sides of the booth to sit next to Ashildr, who wrapped her arm around her.
"I keep talking of progress because I forget how lucky I am to have you." Ashildr kissed the top of Clara's head. "In a Viking village, I develop a crush on a woman who actually knows how to bathe - and does so regularly. In a diner-spaceship in space above the fiftieth century, I can tell her I love her."