clashildr one shots

Motions of Life

TW - blood, knives, violence

    Autumn had always been Ashildr's favourite season, for as far back as she could remember - and probably before that, too. She adored the way the golden leaves would be caught by the wind and move in such a way they could almost be alive. That, and for a long time, she was sick of people. Spanning thousands of years, she saw humanity make the same mistakes over and over again; it felt like watching a bee bump against the glass of a window repetitively when the opening was but six inches to the left. She grew reclusive. Would hide in the days, and only ever emerge at night. One of the mindsets she never managed to shift was that that she was a creature of the night - everyday, when the sun sank behind the horizon and the sky turned a tortured blue, she would tell herself that every second after was hers. In many ways, in the emptiness of the streets, it was. In the silence of the night, under the waning light and the clouds tinged orange by the final few flames of the dying sun, she was properly alive. And for those few moments before the stars lit the sky with their pinpricks of light, she could breathe air clean of desperation, and prepare for the depravity of the day she would wake to tomorrow.
 

Every so often, Clara and Ashildr would skip ahead to an autumn of a year with low air pollution and breathe in the crisp air; Ashildr would watch as the sky as the evening dwindled into the deep black of space unlit, and Clara would watch Ashildr's face flash with the memories that played in her mind as if she was watching someone else.

     Then, of course, they would usher themselves back to the diner; women are not paid well for staying out late at night, as strong as the pull that still sat over Ashildr's heart was - on truly beautiful evenings, they would hop an hour around the world and watch the sun set again. That's the thing with time travel: summer never has to end, and the sun never has to set. It never matters how dark things get, how thick the clouds are, or how deep the nuclear winter - the sun is always right behind the clouds, and all one ever has to do is endure the cold until it returns.
     The sky was still a burnt orange in places as Ashildr deliberately dragged her feet through the leaves. Forested areas were a treat at this time of year as the dead leaves fell and danced their last lease of life before settling on the mud. The diner had been parked (rather expertly, Clara would say, although it was average at best) on the outskirts of some town they'd landed near. The TARDIS itself had been uneasy going to the place they had; she had materialised in a very similar way to that which one pulls a thorn - like what is to be done needs to be, but causes great pain.
     Eventually, the night set in, and, as tempted as Ashildr was to sprawl herself out across the leaves, to hold her wife to her side and point out the constellations through the grasping fingers of the shedding trees, Clara was growing anxious. Unspoken agreement led them back to the mercifully-close diner, which was, unfortunately, not unattended.
     A deeper darkness clung to the glass wall and blocked the door. Ashildr recognised the shape immediately, so haunted had her dreams been by it.
     Jeremiah.
     Before she could breathe a word, the shadow dislodged itself and made directly for her. Her mind couldn't keep up with what was going on, and, the next thing she knew, Ashildr was out cold.

-

     When consciousness finally found its way through the chloroform, control of the situation had passed on. Ashildr pulled her eyes open to find her wrists and ankles duct taped to the arms and legs of a wooden chair. She immediately balled her fists as tried to wriggle her arms free, but the tape held fast. Her feet only just scraped the floor; she couldn't reach to undo her plastic shackles and couldn't stand without doing so. Looks like she was staying here, then.
     "Hey, sleepy head," Clara whispered from beside her.
     For the first time, Ashildr took in her surroundings. Clara sat on a chair similar to her own and just out of reach, also taped by the wrists and ankles. A bruise the size of an egg was forming just above her left eye.
     The room they sat in was the most dank and acrid one could ever have the misfortune of coming across. A basement, probably, the four walls pressed in on the dark emptiness contained within. A strip of light filtered down through the hole carved in the top of one wall to light a square section of the concrete floor. At the far end, barely distinguishable through the darkness, a carpenter's bench sat pushed against the wall. Behind it rose a series of wooden planks; hung on hooks protruding from these planks was a consort of nasty looking instruments such as hammers and chisels - the suspicious stains led Ashildr to believe they were not being used for their intended purpose. If she craned her neck around, she could see the steel door behind her.
     "How long was I out?" Ashildr asked, still twisting her wrists around.
     "About three hours longer than me." She smiled, following Ashildr's eyes to the welt forming on her forehead. "Long enough for me to piss him off."
      Ashildr couldn't share Clara's amusement. Although situations such as this were not entirely uncommon for the two, Jeremiah's mere participation always seemed to emancipate how dire they were; he was more ruthless than any other they had had to deal with over the many, many years. As far as she could see it, a man who meant them very serious harm (for reasons she could empathise with, if not agree) had them tied up in his murder dungeon and had already given her wife a serious blow to the skull. Whether they liked it or not, the fucker meant buisness.
     Clara leaned forward and onto her feet. She was still tied to the chair and subsequently hunched over, but managed to shuffle herself closer to Ashildr. She then plonked her chair back down again - this time close enough to wrap her fingers around Ashildr's.
     "Hey," she said. "We don't have to be alone."
     Behind them, the door scraped open. The screech of the metal against the concrete floor went straight through Ashildr and forced a judder right down her spine. When Clara's hand fell from Ashildr's, she found herself reaching for it again. She couldn't be alone.
     Jeremiah walked around the back of the chairs slowly. He then stood in the square of light that fell in through the window, illuminating all his hatred for both to see.
     His eyes were sunken further into his skull than ever, yet still shone black with their trademark sadism. His brow stuck out half an inch from his face. His arms were criss-crossed with large, pink scars from knife slashes, made obvious by the way he folded them over his chest. The boots he wore were heavy, as if for physical labour, yet still disappeared under his trousers. Hanging from the right side of his belt was the knife he had carried on the train; still as fierce out of view as it could have ever been on the table.
     After a moment, he chuckled to himself once and turned on his heel. The hard rubber soles of his boots thumped as he made his way to the array of tools behind him, eventually deciding on a rubber mallet. He weighed it in his hand by the end of the handle briefly before letting the wood slip through his massive, square fingers and letting it rest on the skin between his thumb and pointer finger. He then pulled a chair up with his free hand and sat himself down on it.
     With the man that had haunted and chased them for so long now sat merely six feet away, Ashildr's pulse started to race. Her head started to swim. Thoughts darted past her so quickly she was unsure if any of them even made sense - although she could take a good guess that they didn't. The only thing grounding her to the final threads of the real world was the periodic, gentle squeeze of Clara's fingers around her own.
     We can find a way out of this, Clara was saying. Just like we always do.
     As comforting as the gesture was, it couldn't chase away the fear that had settled into Ashildr's bones. The deep-seated dread that had plagued her since this man appeared in a torn up battlefield and put a bullet in her kidney. It had grown, of course; worsened over the time she had let it linger. The gnawing ache of fear that had cursed her and turned her stomach into a churned mess of anxiety. And now, trapped in a basement with the sounds bouncing around and the square light growing ever smaller with the setting sun, those fears inflated until they pressed against the concrete walls. Suffocating. Mocking. Emptying.
     "You two deserve everything that is coming to you," Jeremiah drawled.
     "You'd think that, wouldn't you, mate?" Clara muttered back.
     Jeremiah held the mallet up to the light and smiled calmly to himself.
     Ashildr cocked her head to him, all righteous in evil, and then caught Clara's eye. "He's gone all sullen. I think you hurt his feelings."
     "That reminds me," Clara stuck on, "do you remember that, uh, woman, from that shop in Donegal?"
     "The one with the horrendous cardigan and the inability to empathise?"
     "Yeah!"
     They were both laughing. The mere memories of the roaring idiocy they got up to in their time together was almost enough to chase away the fear.
     Ashildr tried to speak through the chuckles breaking from her throat. "She was-"

     Jeremiah had tired of the inconsequential babble from his prisoners. He stood, brought his arm back to swing it round and landed the mallet directly on Ashildr's jaw.
     She felt her bones crunch. She spat blood out, spraying the floor ahead and part of Jeremiah's shoe. She cracked her jaw back into place. "Somebody wasn't hugged enough as a child."
     Clara's face contorted with unfiltered rage. "If you touch her again I will slowly take you apart! God help me, I will make you a pile of bones and dust."
 

  Jeremiah shifted the mallet in his hand. He took Ashildr's jaw roughly in his free hand and twisted her neck around to examine the bruise that was already forming. He looked somewhat pleased with himself. "See that?" he asked Ashildr. "The true monster shines through. That is what you are." He dropped Ashildr's jaw almost as harshly as he'd taken ahold and headed back towards the bench. He placed the mallet back on its peg and, this time, it was his trusty seventeen inch knife he drew from the sheath against his thigh. He angled the point at Clara and waggled it slightly. He then laughed to himself and sunk back into the chair, elbows on his knees, scowl over his sunken eyes.
     Clara was still glaring.
     They remained locked in stand-off for more frantic heartbeats than Ashildr could count.
     Jeremiah then stood again, held the knife against Ashildr's throat for a moment that lasted wholly too long, and then spun it around his finger and sheathed it. He took his seat wordlessly and stayed that way.
     The hours passed in terse discomfort.
     "You should sleep," Clara suggested when even the light from the moon had begun to fade. She stretched out her fingers to take Ashildr's again.
     "How could I sleep?"
     The grey dawn seeped in through the tiny window above them.
     "What happened to that sweet young boy, Jeremiah?" Clara spoke directly to him now. His hands stilled at the bench. His shoulders slumped slightly before righting themselves into his signature arrogance. "What happened to you was inexcusable, but you could have fought for him. For that innocence."
     "I gave up waiting for somebody else to save me."
     A short silence.
     "It's time you did the same."