clashildr one shots

Sword Girl Pretty

     One of the many TARDIS rooms that Clara spent significantly less time in than her wife was the forge. Despite the sword left to her and prior experience, it was not something she enjoyed beyond casual necessity. Ashildr, however, had been spending an increasing amount of time in this one particular spot.
     The entire room smelled like blood. Clara wasn't sure if that was the sheer amount of metal in it or if Ashildr was sustaining injuries during her time there. The room was reasonably sized, rectangular, and cold. At one end, shrouded in the grey wall, was a propane forge, anvil, and a bunch of other things Clara didn't really understand. Tools littered a workbench along with half carved axe-heads and the occasional spear. Fastened to the stone walls were different weapons of all sorts - traditional Viking shields, throwing axes, and swords in so many varieties it was frankly dizzying. At the other end was the training area. Straws of hay littered the floor, broken by slashes through them obviously left by Ashildr's boots as they scraped across the floor. Three target dummies - sacks filled with hay and shaped into men - stood in the centre. Their faceless heads guarded the room, careful, unseeing and yet omniscient. When Clara walked in, the middle one had a slash right across his chest, starting at the right shoulder and heading down towards the left hip.
     Ashildr sat on a wooden bench off to the the side; resting on her one knee, elevated, was the hilt of her Ulfbert, with the tip dropping down to rest on her other, lowered knee. In one hand, she held the sword steady, and the other what appeared to be a stone. She scraped the stone along the edge of the blade, occasionally holding it up to the industrial lights and grunting approvingly. She barely even moved her head when Clara came in.
     "Sorry," she muttered, more to the sword than Clara. "Needed a sharpen." She held the sword up to the light once more, watching the way the light danced off the steel. Or something else. Clara had no idea what she was actually looking for.
      "Looks plenty sharp to me," Clara remarked, looking past Ashildr to the target she had minced.
     Ashildr followed her gaze - the first time her eyes had left her sword - and then shook her head. "Nah, you can see," she said, motioning with the sword, "the edges of the cuts are frayed."
     Clara approached the dummy and inspected it closely. Sure enough, the edges of the fabric across either side of the cut had stray strands poking out slightly, but the longest couldn't have been half a centimetre.
     "Shows the blade's catching. Sawing instead of slicing." She swung the sword around once, taking it up and almost over her shoulder before bringing it down again.
     Clara was ever so slightly aroused.
     She still moved out of the way, though.
     Ashildr positioned herself in front of the target that had left hay spilling across the floor. Her left hand covered her right on the hilt. Noiselessly, and with barely any visible movement, like a cobra striking, she lunged forward and plunged the sword right the way through the remaining shoulder of the dummy. Using her left arm for momentum, she spun her own shoulder and twisted her entire body off to the side before pulling her arm back and slicing right through the shoulder of the dummy. Without even acknowledging what she had done, she turned herself back around and felt the cuts with her left hand.
     "Much better. Much cleaner."
     She spun the sword once around in her palm before returning it to a set of brackets on the wall.
     Clara stood stunned for a moment. Of course, she'd seen Ashildr fight with a sword before, but never during a time when she hadn't had her own shit to be dealing with, and certainly not at a time when the collar Ashildr's short sleeved shirt had slipped down to reveal not only collarbone on one side but bicep on the other.
    For that sweet moment, Clara was sixteen again, overcome with the thought, girl pretty.
     She watched motionless as Ashildr's arms flexed as she wiped the grease off her hands with a rag.
     "What?" Ashildr finally asked.
     "Sword woman pretty," Clara choked.
     "I could take your head off in many fun and innovative ways, my Clara, and the word you use is pretty?"

-

     "You know what," Ashildr said, tucking in closer to Clara's bare side, "I think that's the best sex we've had in decades."
     Clara chuckled and raised her arm up as to plant her hand behind her head. "I think I agree."
     "We'll have to try and figure out what it was to recreate it..."
     Clara couldn't slip into the same doze that Ashildr did. She glanced down and saw her wife's peaceful face as she slept across her chest but could not take the comfort she needed from it. Ashildr had wrapped her fingers around Clara free hand, so she moved the one from behind her head out to stroke Ashildr's hair gently.
     She knew why the sex had been so good. And she hated it.
     Those things that her future self had said to her the day she appeared had cursed her. She tried so very hard not to think about them, not to let on what they were, but she always would know. Always.
     And they surfaced in times like this. When they were close. When she couldn't control the ferocity of the love she felt. The way that hands lingered a second longer, the way that kisses were a fraction deeper, the way that eyes soaked up everything they could - it was all in the knowledge of what was to come.
     It was all borne of fear.
     Eventually, Clara zoned out into something close to sleep, but held on to the brink of consciousness as not to leave her Ash.