#anyway i saw it and this image leapt into my brain fully formed and would not go away

[thatswhatsushesaid]

do you have any idea how hard it was for me to make a meme at my special little guy's expense. it was very very hard. if you even care

[jarienn972]

La Sirena -  Chapter Five

Captain Swan Supernatural Summer

Apologies for the delay in getting out the latest chapter of my @cssns​ story. With my kids back to school, I'm finding a bit less time to write so updates are running a little behind. I am still working diligently to keep the updates coming though!  Thank you @kmomof4​ for helping me fix a couple of minor roadblocks that I had with this chapter!  And thanks again to @courtorderedcake​ for her incredible artwork!

After leaving off with the major turning point of Killian learning the secret that Emma had been concealing, this chapter will pick up in the aftermath. Will cooler heads prevail once Killian awakens or will their budding relationship be tarnished? And of course, there's still no where else for him to go...

Read from the beginning:  One  Two  Three  Four  Also on AO3 and FF.net

Putting the Pieces Back Together

A faint tickle of a breeze caught the torch flame behind Emma's back casting uneven shadows across the cavern walls and sending delicate tendrils of smoke into the already heavy air. She was kneeling in the sand with Killian's head resting atop her thighs, not daring to stray from his side as her slender fingers combed idly through his tousled dark hair. She watched the rise and fall of his chest as she patiently awaited his awakening.

She'd frightened him. That hadn't been her intent but that damage was done and she was dealing with a relatively new emotion: guilt. Perhaps she truly was little more than a monster at her core. All of these decades of trying to suppress her innate urges and desires may have been for naught. All of her years of self-isolation hadn't changed who - or what - she was. She was still a siren. Still a threat to mankind.

Perhaps Regina was right. She'd never be able to change her nature.

But if she really was nothing more than a coquettish, evil siren, why did she have such a strong desire to protect this human? It went against every element of her being, every native instinct she'd trained and developed before turning her back on her kind. She scarcely comprehended these feelings.

Siren emotions were already complicated enough. She knew anger and indignation. She also knew emptiness. She'd been living here in solitude for nearly two centuries, give or take a decade, yet she'd never really experienced loneliness. She'd just felt that something was missing from her meager existence. She'd just never allowed herself time to think about what that void might entail.

All of that had changed the moment she confessed her true nature to Killian and he'd rejected her. Now she was overwhelmed with a barrage of new emotions - guilt, fear and something else that she couldn't yet name. For a nanosecond, she contemplated leaving him there in the subterranean cavern, doubting that he'd ever be able to accept what she was. But then she heard it again - the same tiny voice inside her head that had compelled her to save him from drowning now also compelled her to stay.

He was an intelligent being. Her revelation had been too much of a shock for someone recovering from the trauma he'd suffered. When he'd had time to process the news, he would hear her out, wouldn't he? She took a glance back over her bare shoulder at the beam of light streaming through the crack in the earth above the spring. The midday sun would soon be directly overhead and the ambient light would fade quickly within the lava tube once the sun's rays crested over the ridge.

Regina's arrival had backed her into a corner. She didn't feel as though she could adequately protect him if he wasn't aware of the scope of the threat, but now she worried he wouldn't trust her. In hindsight, she knew she hadn't handled her reveal well. Even though he didn't really have anywhere to go, she feared he'd run and the thought of that stung worse than even the most toxic jellyfish she'd ever encountered.

When at last he stirred, her siren heart nearly leapt with anticipation - another entirely new sensation for her. With a deep inhale, he raised his right hand to massage his aching skull, making incidental contact with her knee in the process. He yanked his hand away as if he'd touched a flame, his eyelids popping open in surprise as he struggled to regain coherency.

At first, he saw nothing more than darting shadows cast by the flickering torches but as his sight adjusted to the relative darkness, images gradually came into focus, becoming clearer and familiar. And then his peripheral vision captured the contour of a woman's soft, rounded ivory-skinned thigh and instantly, he was fully awake, recoiling in terror as he pushed away from the woman he no longer believed was real.

"What manner of demon are you?" he demanded, his voice pitching higher as he scrambled to take cover behind one of the aging sea chests, squeezing his eyes closed for a moment as he dared not stare at this unknown creature's naked, feminine form. "Are you some malevolent trick of my mind? Here to drag me to the depths of hell?" He couldn't fight this monster if he couldn't see her though so he reluctantly opened his eyes, focusing intently on her lovely beguiling face. Was this how a siren killed a man?

"Killian, please… Do not be afraid. I have no intent to harm you." She made an attempt to shift closer to him, to try to assure him that she wasn't a threat, but she feared she may have already done too much damage. The terror and betrayal she saw reflected in his eyes cut straight to whatever soul she had left as he continued to shy away from her.

"Don't come near me, demon!" he cried as he fumbled for the sword at his hip, sliding the blade free of the scabbard and brandishing it with an instinctive flick of his wrist. "Stay back… or I'll…" Both his voice and hand trembled at the same timbre while he held the weapon directed at her throat.

This scared human wasn't even the slightest threat to her. She could overpower him barely lifting a pinky finger, yet she was awash with that lonely emotion and it took control, leading to an unplanned action.

"Do it," she dared him, leaning into the blade. "I am a monster. End me!"

A glint of torchlight flashed off of the polished steel, illuminating her face which was etched with determination and his resolve began to waver.

"Wait… What…?" He shook his head in disbelief at her unexpected demand. His gaze locked with hers as she pleaded for death and his tenuous grip on the cutlass' pommel loosened. "No… no…" He may have been bewildered and perhaps a tad angered, but he couldn't take her life. She'd saved him.

"I am a siren, Killian. I have lured countless men like you to their demise, but while this is what I was created to be, it is not what I desire to be. I deserve to die for what I have done in my past…"

"But you saved me…," he stated as he allowed the sword to slip from his hand onto the dark, sandy cavern floor. His tone was softer as he relaxed and exhaled a deep sigh. "Whatever you are, I owe you my life…" He plopped his weary body down to the ground and drew his knees to his chest while lowering his chin in defeat. "I've no expectation of what will become of me, but I'll not harm you. If you intend to leave me here to perish, then that shall be my fate…"

"I don't wish for anyone to perish," she replied. "That is what brought me here all those ages ago. I had no desire to harm those seafarers any longer."

"But if you are a siren as you say, are the myths not true? Does your song not lure men like me to certain death? How did I arrive here still breathing?"

"At one time, I did use my voice in that way. I watched many a human plunge into the sea, transfixed and bewitched by the hypnotic spell of my siren song, at least until I could bear it no longer. Until you arrived, I'd not even used my voice in eons."

"So a siren can have a conscience?" he asked quizzically, raising one eyebrow as he awaited her answer.

"Apparently some can - at least this one, as I've been told," she said with a faint smile curling the corners of her lips, although it didn't last long as she switched the direction of their exchange. "But Killian, if we are to survive, there is much you need to know. You need to hear more of my story just as I must learn more of yours."

"How so?" His eyes narrowed as he sought to make sense of the statement. Part of his brain still questioned the veracity of any of this nonsense, but the adventurer within him remained intrigued.

"Do you recall, before you struck your head, how I had mentioned that my sister came here because I had used magic?" The memory was vague and somewhat clouded by his own skepticism but he nodded anyway and allowed her to continue. "In using my powers, I unwittingly drew the scrutiny of the council, the governing band of the most powerful sirens - of which I used to be a part. I hadn't used magic in quite a long time so I never imagined that something so innocent would have far-reaching consequences."

"What magic do you possess?"

"Aside from the ability to change form, I have other powers. Those chests you're sitting amongst, they didn't wash up on these shores as I told you. I conjured them and their contents so that you would have the objects you desired. I wanted to give you those things that the cove could not provide. I had seen many similar chests float in and out with the tides over the years, but I never kept them. I used magic to create them and I didn't think about the potential ramifications."

Killian's jaw fell agape as he listened to her confession. No one - not even Liam - had ever offered such a generous gesture meant for him alone and he was at a loss for how to respond.

"Emma… you didn't need to do such a thing…"

"I wanted to," she grinned. "I had been alone for so long and after these past few days with you, I found myself desiring to do something good with my magic. I wanted to provide for you and now, that act of goodness has put you in far greater danger…" He quickly averted his sight as she pushed herself back to stand up before starting to pace nervously along the precipice of the hot spring. "I must ask this - when I found you, you were clinging to a slab of splintered timber. Were you in a shipwreck?"

Still concentrating on focusing his gaze on the bounce of her golden locks rather than her feminine physique, Killian was taken aback. Of course, he'd been in a shipwreck…

"Aye," he replied. "Not my own ship though. I'd been taken prisoner aboard a pirated vessel that inexplicably ran aground. By the time I was able to crawl out of the flooding brig and reach the safety of the top deck, those rapscallions had all debarked, likely to an island off the distant horizon. No one was left in sight and I scarcely escaped with my life as the vessel broke apart and sank into the depths."

"You saw no one at all? Was the vessel sinking that slowly?" Emma asked curiously, pausing her pacing as she awaited his answer.

"It seemed to be taking on water quite rapidly to me so I assumed they'd taken off in the skiffs, but to answer your question - no. I saw no other men, not even my fellow crew who'd also been imprisoned, although if I'm to be honest with myself, they were likely already dead by the time the ship went down. I was the ranking officer, thereby the most valuable prisoner."

"So that's it…," she mumbled as she hovered to his right, fixated on the sparkling surface of the spring. "That's how Regina knew they may have left a survivor… Killian, don't you see? You didn't see any others aboard the ship because they'd already succumbed to the song of the sirens. The ship ran aground because no one was helming it."

"How is that possible?" he queried as he raised his head in renewed curiosity. "I heard no singing, only the cracking of aging wood and the slap of the waves on the hull."

"You heard nothing? No song?" She spun around to face him, bewildered by his statement. "If the sirens attacked the ship, you would have heard their song."

"I swear to you, I heard nothing out of the ordinary, at least not until the vessel struck the rocks and began her unraveling. Are you certain that your kind assailed that vessel? It's highly likely that the pirates merely strayed off-course."

"No," she insisted, shaking her head. "Regina specifically mentioned that a ship had sailed into siren waters… In the condition I found you in, you could not have traveled far from the wreck so it must be the same vessel she spoke of. None of the sirens would have waited around to watch the vessel disintegrate but some of our ne'er do well fellow sea-dwellers reported rumors of a survivor in the wreck and those rumors reached the council. That's the reason they became suspicious of me when I utilized my magic… You must be that survivor."

Killian's head was suddenly spinning again and this time, it wasn't from the concussion. Sirens were a part of maritime history and mythology that he'd been educated in. He'd entertained countless yarns about ships that strayed into uncharted waters, never to be seen again. All manner of sea monsters had been attributed to these vanishing vessels but tales of sirens had always been particularly beguiling. Demons taking the form of beautiful women were said to lure unsuspecting sailors into the sea where they'd devour their unfaithful hearts.

But they were all only mythical… Until now…

"According to the legends I grew up hearing, sirens preyed upon lonely sailors far from home and family. The siren song was said to enchant the unfaithful amongst them, luring them into the depths of the sea where they'd be devoured. Is that how it really happens?"

"That isn't entirely true, but it is very close," Emma explained. "The song does lure the unsuspecting sailors, but only those deemed unworthy of passage through our realm by the gods. The unworthy are not allowed to travel through our seas and the song puts them into a trance. The men will then leap from their ships into the sea and sink to Triton's lair. I honestly do not know what becomes of them after they drown, what Triton desires of them. It never mattered to me, not then and I certainly did not dwell upon it after I departed the council."

"Until you found me?" he offered, shivering at the fate he'd narrowly avoided. "This may be a pointless query, but has any man ever been found worthy?"

"Well, long before my creation, there was a single human whom Poseidon deemed to be worthy to pass. That man went on to become a great leader of his land and for a while, there was peace between the realm of man and that of the gods. Unfortunately, that man's successors were nothing like him and the years of peace ended. Triton ordered all of the creatures in his command to defend our realm from the evil of mankind. Poseidon unleashed innumerable monsters including dozens more sirens, including myself and for many years, I followed the orders of the gods…"

"I've heard many tales of these legendary gods of the sea. Never in all my dreams did I imagine they were real and that they alone determined the worth of a man."

"I broke away from the council when I began to suspect that the gods harbored more of a vindictive grudge against these men of the sea. I could no longer be convinced that there weren't good men among those we had deceived. Not every man could be so evil."

"Indeed, there are men with good hearts out there but I shan't deny that there is evil in the world. I've encountered those who might barely be described as human, yet most folk are just going about their lives and wish no harm. It would seem that the same might be said of the legendary siren as there is at least one who possesses a good heart… But if we are to circle back to the pirate ship I escaped from, how did I come to survive? Was it because I was secreted away in a cranny of the cargo hold? Was I too far below deck to hear the songs?"

"No, it doesn't work like that. The siren song resonates through every inch of a vessel and carries for several leagues out to sea. It is intended to be heard by every human ear that ventures into our realm."

"That makes little sense to me then," Killian countered. "Why didn't I hear the siren voices? I hear you speaking to me just fine as I am not deaf and despite my injury when you rescued me from the water, I had been fully conscious just prior to the ship's grounding."

"I… I do not know," she stammered. This was another first for her and she had no response. She honestly did not have any inkling as to how he'd resisted.

"Do you still possess the ability to sing?" he asked her bluntly and she found herself ill-prepared to answer.

"I am not entirely certain…," she told him, her voice trembling at the possible implications of the question. "It has been centuries… I believe I am still able to sing, but I cannot predict the outcome. There may be ramifications that you aren't ready for and it may hasten Regina and the council's return…"

He tried to avoid the darkening of her olivine eyes as she pleaded wordlessly for him to reconsider, but it was the only way he might discover how he'd managed to remain alive.

"Emma, you must," he pressed. "It's the only way I'll know… That we'll know. You would be able to tell right away if the song has the desired effect, correct?"

"Of course, I would know. I just cannot promise that I can stop it as I've never tried…"

"Then consider this your chance to find out," Killian stated bravely, although inside, his stomach was churning at the huge risk he was taking. "I must learn why I was spared, Love. Please, indulge my curiosity and desire to solve this one mystery…"

"Killian…" She didn't want to do this. She'd vowed to never sing again and she certainly didn't want to endanger this man she'd become so fond of. Could she deny him the answers he so desperately wanted? She'd know within a few notes but even if the song ended abruptly, would she be able to reverse its effects if he wasn't immune?

[rubbishrobots]

I wrote a Doctor Who story for Christmas

It's been a funny old year. High highs and low lows. My brain processes everything in terms of Doctor Who, so I thought I'd write a little story about a crap Christmas.

Doctor Who - “The Best Of it”

The drop in air pressure was first detected on December 24th. About 3% approximately every 5 hours, which might not seem like that big of a drop, but when you’re in a big research base right down at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, any air pressure escaping is a bit of a big deal.

And so I found myself, on Christmas Eve, in a big clunky OxySuit, lumbering around upon the sea floor at the deepest point in the Earth’s Ocean. I moved around the outer walls of Cameron Base One with great difficulty, pushing my limbs forward through the high-pressure water, the headlamps on either side of my helmet providing minimal light.

Reaching the West Wing of the base, the first thing I saw were the cracks in the floor. It began right where the wall of the base touched the ground, and then snaked out and broke off until the ground in front of me looked like a shatter pattern. This was an alarming sight, to say the least. It meant that the ground which Cameron Base One sat on, that the crew walked across, was unstable. I would have turned around immediately and gone to raise the alarm. But I didn’t.

Because the second thing I noticed was the tall, blue phone box. With a lamp on top and two square windows that sent wavy shimmers of light wafting through the ocean. It was right at the furthest reaches of the cracks in the floor. I wondered how the hell it had got there.

Of course, then I was plummeting through one of the cracks that opened up at my feet, so there wasn’t much else I could do except fall.

I only remember bits of my plummet, so it’s hard to describe now. But it was like being on a pitch black water slide that you fully expected to die at the end of. Something had struck the lights on my helmet almost immediately so I couldn’t see a darn thing, but my stomach twisted and turned, which told me I was being tossed to and fro. Then I remember a tiny bit of light approaching fast, and an impact. Then nothing.

Nothing until I was blinking awake in a dimly lit cave, and there was a woman peering down at me.

“What size shoe do you take?” she asked.

I stared at the fractured image of her through the cracked glass of my helmet. She had short yellow hair, a long pale blue coat, and a t shirt with a rainbow stripe across it. She waited expectantly for me to answer.

“I’m Ellie Tyson, Chief Engineer at Cameron Base One,” I said, unsure what else but name and rank was appropriate in this conversation.

“I’m the Doctor,” the woman replied. “I just knock about space, really. You alright?”

She helped me to my feet and out of my OxySuit. I was bumped and bruised, and the jumpsuit I wore beneath the suit was a bit scuffed, but I was otherwise okay and able to survey my surroundings. The cave was not spacious. There were small tea light candles dotted about, and a steady drip of water coming from the breach in the ceiling that I must have fallen through.

“Right! Welcome, welcome,” said the Doctor. “Let me show you around. I’d say this is the living area over here.” She gestured to the left side of the cave, where a fireplace had been drawn on the uneven rock wall. “But to be honest, it’s a bit of a studio apartment situation.”

“How long have you been here?” I asked, eyeing the crudely illustrated roaring fire and wondering if this was the sign of stir craziness.

“About a week. Been surviving on rations.” She held up a box of dried raisins. “And a few bits I had in my coat pockets to keep me busy.” On the floor of the cave, there was the aforementioned candles, a pack of crayons, a pair of knitting needles and some wool, and a tourist pamphlet for the Blue Man Group. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any food in that big clunky diving suit?”

I shook my head no. The only thing in the utility belt section of the suit was some bandages, medical tape, and a flare. None of which struck me as particularly edible.

“No hope of escape?” I asked, fearing the answer.

“Well, not until now.” She started walking to the mouth of the cave. “Come on, then.”

I followed. There were no candles in the long, narrow passageway she crept down, but the Doctor had a metallic remote thingy that was giving off an orange glow, and she rooted around her pockets until she found a small torch she could toss to me.

“So full disclosure,” said the Doctor, “I got knocked silly on the way down. Consequently, I was half unconscious for like the first 3 days, but as soon as I was able to, I did a bit of exploring. Didn’t get very far. There’s a massive wall just up ahead that proved to be a big fat dead end for me.”

I frowned. “So why are we bothering?”

The Doctor waved a hand impatiently. “You’ll see in a min. Anyway, I knew someone else was bound to fall down the same hole I did, it being next to a massive human science-y base thing.”

The word ‘human’ got caught on some filters in my head, but I moved past it. “Nobody else knows. They sent me out to see why we were having air pressure problems.”

“Exactly, so I knew it was only a matter of time till I had a mate. That reminds me, what size shoe did you say you took?”

“I didn’t, and we have much bigger problems. If the ground up there is this unstable, the whole crew of Cameron Base One could be in real danger.”

The Doctor pulled a face. “I’m working on that! Give us a chance.”

“Except you’re not working on it – you’ve been down here a week and you’re no closer to escaping. Now I’m stuck down here too. The whole base could collapse any second and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“You literally just told me the only passageway leads to a dead end!”

“No,” the Doctor corrected. “I said it was a dead end for me.” We came to the huge wall she’d spoken off. It was about twice our height, but it did not reach the roof of the cave passage. There was a sizeable space at the top of the wall, and beyond that some source of light could be seen blinking on and off from out of view. In the torchlight, the Doctor grinned with great satisfaction. “See? All I needed was someone to give me a boost. I’ll go first and pull you up after. Don’t worry, I’m dead nimble in this body.”

The brain filter picked up that last weird comment too, but I didn’t have time to question. I laced my fingers and let the Doctor put her dirty boots in the palm of my hands, whereupon I heaved her high enough for her to grab something to hold onto and pull herself, and then me after, up onto the raised ground.

Wiping the muck off of my knees, I stood up and looked at where we’d ascended to. The sight before me made no sense. For at the top of this ledge, in this cavern deep down in the Earth’s crust, were a large pair of steel doors with a blinking control panel next to it.

“Oh, brilliant!” said the Doctor. She rushed towards it, aimed her metallic torch thingy at it, and I was amazed to see the doors rumble and draw themselves open. There was a great cloud of dust as they parted.

“These doors must have been sat closed for a good amount of time, then,” I coughed, as I followed the Doctor through the doorway.

On the other side, the Doctor stood dead still. “A very long time,” she said.

If the sight of steel doors had shocked me, it was nothing compared to the room of cryogenically frozen lizard people I was looking at now.

In this laboratory the length of a football pitch, there were rows and rows of pods, half metallic, half rock formations, and each of them contained a bipedal, human-sized lizard. There was frost on the glass of the pods, and they were cold to my touch. The creatures inside had not stirred a bit during our entrance or my examining of their containers. Astonished, I turned to the Doctor, hoping to gain some comfort in a shared vibe of ‘not knowing what the hell was going on.’

So imagine my surprise when I found her gazing at the cyro-pods in delight. “This works out perfectly.”

Silurians, she called them. I dropped to a seated position, probably going into some form of shock, while she paced around the room and ranted about the civilisation that walked the Earth eons before humans evolved (“Eons,” she paused to grin at me. “Love that word. Eons!”). Apparently they saw an asteroid approaching, and evacuated deep underground, putting themselves in stasis until such time as the damage from any impact would have passed. She’d moved over to a raised console built into a slab of rock and had been tinkering with the controls for a good minute before she realise I still hadn’t spoken.

“Soz, that was probably a bit of an overload, wasn’t it? Which bit did I lose you on?”

“The lizards who ruled the earth before humans,” I said softly.

The Doctor’s nose scrunched up in confusion. “Really? That bit makes sense, if you think about it.”

“In what universe does a secret society of Lizards frozen beneath the Mariana Trench make sense?!”

“Well that’s where all those daft stories about the Illuminati come from. It’s just people stumbling across all the different Silurian hibernation chambers and letting their imagination run wild.”  

That did actually make a little bit of sense, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of saying so, so I just stayed silent.

“Anyway,” she said, turning back to the controls. “Cheer up, this means there’s probably a way out of here.” That got my attention. I leapt to my feet and came to her side, staring at the panel of strange, unlabelled controls. “The Silurians tunnelled all the way down here, and they were obviously planning to return at some point. So logic says there must be a way out. A lift, or a teleport, or something.” She gasped. “Could be a massive ladder!”

“I’m not climbing a ladder out of the Mariana Trench, Doctor.”

She looked about to respond, but then a shrill, angry bleeping noise erupted from the console. The Doctor stuck her tongue out thoughtfully, the pressed some other buttons, only to be greeted with the same angry bleeping noise. She then tried pointing her metallic object at the controls, but the bleeping noise sounded again. The Doctor glared at the console panel. “Well, now you’re just being difficult.”

“Doctor,” I said, pointing to a small indent in the bottom corner of the console, that looked something like a fingerprint scanner. “It must need, I dunno, authorisation or something.”

I should have noticed the Doctor’s falling expression as she stared at what I’d pointed out. “Oh,” she said, and I should have noticed it was without her usual pep. “That’s a blow.”

Maybe I didn’t want to notice any of it. I was already looking around at which of the Silurians was closest. “So will we need to fully wake them up, or can we just sort of drag one over and then put it back?”

The Doctor turned to me. Her expression was grave. I turned my back on her and marched quickly over to one of the pods so I could pretend to be having a look. “And can it be any old one or does it need to be, like, a Boss or a President or a Mayor? I don’t know what the Silurian political hierarchy was like, was it like ours?”

“Ellie…” said the Doctor. “We can’t. The Silurians wouldn’t understand. They’d want to come back to the surface with us, and they can’t. The Earth isn’t ready for them yet.”

The trip back to the cave was awkward. I walked ahead, in silence. I heard the scuff of the Doctor’s boots behind me, and I felt her worried gaze on my back. And when we got back to the cave, I sat in the corner and didn’t look at her.

I was going to die down here. At Christmas. And everyone in that base above us had no idea they were walking and working on ground that could crumble awake at any second.

And worst of all, the only company I had, the person with which I was to perish, was a buffoon. At a certain point I had to break my sulk and look up at the Doctor, because I could sense her constantly moving and wondered how the hell she could be finding so much to do in a tiny little cave at the bottom of the planet.

Watching her, I still didn’t know. She was rummaging inside her coat pocket for a while, eventually fishing out old Quality Street sweet wrappers of red, green and gold. At one point, I heard her squeak with delight and drop down to examine something in the dirt and soil of the cave floor. When she began to draw more cave paintings and hum merrily to herself, I could take no more. I briefly considered digging the medical tape out of my suit and using it to seal her mouth shut.

“What on earth are you doing?” I asked instead.

She glanced at me over her shoulder. “I’m making the best of it!” she said, and moved aside so that I could see. Next to her 2D fireplace, she had scrawled a Christmas Tree on the wall, with scribbled baubles and doodled tinsel. And now she was humming White Christmas. “We might be stuck down here with no hope of escape. But it’s still Christmas.”

I stared in disbelief. “Are you for real? It is not Christmas.”

She did that nose-scrunch thing again. “I mean, it sort of is.”

“It is Christmas on a technicality!” I yelled. “It is Christmas only in the sense that the date is December 24th. Our current predicament, that being our impending death, takes precedent. And, for that matter, negates all circumstantial Christmas-ness.” I realised that tirade had come off oddly formal, so I added: “So stop being a dope, you big blonde-haired nutter.”

The Doctor, annoyingly, did not look hurt. Or offended. She just shook her head, like I didn’t understand. “That’s not how it works. It doesn’t matter what’s happening. Could be right in the middle of wartime, could be disease and pestilence sweeping the globe, you could be separated from everyone you love. The Titanic could be falling out of the sky! But if any of those things are happening in December, you get to press pause on them for a little bit, and be happy. Because it’s Christmas, and Christmas is magic like that.”

Nice speech. It didn’t work. “You’re a child,” I said, turning back around.

We didn’t talk again for a while. I sat and sat and sat, and at some point I lay down, and at another point I fell asleep.

Hours later, I awoke to a veritable Winter Wonderland.

The Doctor had been busy through the night. She had gone all around the cave, drawing holly and garlands all over the walls. Three tiny knitted stockings were stuck to the hand drawn fireplace. She had carefully placed the different sweet wrappers around the candles, creating a fairylight-like effect of flickering red, green and gold all around. And as I sat up, she was in front of me, beaming.

“Happy Christmas!” she bellowed, and thrust a folded piece of kitchen roll in my face. I took it from her delicately, realising that it was only obscuring something folded within. “Sorry, no wrapping paper. Best I could do.”

I did my best attempt at a smile, given the still pretty awful circumstances, and opened the gift. I had expected to find some random object standing in as a gift. After all, there was hardly a Henrick’s or Magpie Electricals to pop to down here. So when I opened the paper and found two carefully knitted socks, I took me a second to put the pieces together. Finally though, I looked up at her in wonder.

“Is this why you kept asking for my shoe size?”

The Doctor grinned. “Got it in the end. Took a tape measure to your footprint.” She pointed at what I’d seen her messing with on the floor the previous night, an indentation in the mucky ground from my shoe.

That broke my Scrooge-ness. I could continue to be a misery no longer. I thanked the Doctor genuinely, pulled on my new socks, and allowed her to lead me around the cave and tell me in great detail how she had thrown together every single makeshift Christmas decoration. We played snap and charades, and then gathered around the illustrated roaring fireplace to tell ghost stories (the Doctor’s were better than mine).

“I wish I had a gift for you,” I lamented after our Christmas Dinner of raisins and half a Wham bar. The socks really were quite cosy.

The Doctor waved a hand and tried not to look bothered. “No worries. It’s not the getting at this time of year, it’s the giving. That’s what my Mam used to say.” She paused though, then added “But also, if you happened to pack a toothbrush in that suit, I’ll love you forever. It’s been a week.”

A thought struck me. I stood up and wandered over to my discarded OxySuit, and reached into the utility belt. “No toothbrush, sorry. But in the spirit of the season, I gift you the one thing in my possession and pray it brings you happiness and good fortune.” I produced the small roll of medical tape, and tossed it to her.

She did not catch it. She did not even make an attempt. The Doctor had gone dead still since the moment she saw me pull the tape out of the suit. The roll bounced off her tummy and then fell lamely to the floor. Here, she stared at it, eyes wide.

“Doctor?”

When she looked up, there was the biggest smile on her face. “Ellie Tyson, this might be the most important Christmas gift I’ve ever been given.” Then she rushed across the distance and flung her arms around me. “Do you even realise what you’ve done? You’ve saved our lives, you daft little human.”

I had no chance to question her further. The second she let me out of her death-clutch hug, she snatched up the roll of tape and went sprinting out of the cave. I followed her through the narrow passage as best I could, but she was faster than you’d think, and by the time I reached the wall at the end, she was bouncing up and down impatiently. “Come on, come on, come on,” she begged, and I quickly boosted her up onto the ledge and let her heave me up after her.

Back in the Silurian chamber, the Doctor rushed over to the nearest cryogenic pod and started messing with the controls.

“But you said we couldn’t wake them up!” I shouted.

“No time to explain,” she shouted back. “Try and find some sort of powder or talc, any type will do.”

As she pointed her metallic thingy at the pod, I searched all over until I found what was probably the lizard equivalent of baby powder in what was probably the lizard equivalent of a medicine cabinet. I came back to the Doctor to find one of the pod doors open. The Silurian was still completely unmoving, and the air coming from the pod was predictably ice cold.

“What are we doing?” I asked, handing her the bottle.

“Spy stuff,” was her reply. And then, teeth chattering from the cold, I watched her crouch down to be able to coat one of the Silurian’s finger tips in the powder. Then, taking my Christmas gift, she pressed the scale-covered finger into a piece of tape and applied pressure. “That should do it,” she said, and stood up straight again.

“Do what?” I said. Except, no. That wasn’t my voice who had said that. And it wasn’t the Doctor’s either.

It was the Silurian. He was blinking awake, groggy like he’d overslept. “What are we doing?” he asked, then squinted at what was surely a blurry sight of two strangers in front of him. “Who are you?”

“Nobody,” the Doctor squeaked, pressing a complicated sequence of buttons on the panel next to the pod. “We’re nobody. Go back to sleep. We’re just… ghosts. We’re the Ghosts of Christmas Yet To Come.”

The Silurian frowned. “…what’s Christmas?”

“Shush,” said the Doctor, and she quickly closed the door and zapped the controls with her metallic remote, and the Silurian was asleep again.

The Doctor pressed the borrowed fingerprint on the tape into the scanner on the console and it worked perfectly. We were directed to an area at the back of the chamber, where a steel compartment took us back to the surface with frightening speed. We emerged into sparkling daylight, finding ourselves on an island in the Philippines. Well, there are worse places to spend Christmas Day. The Doctor helped me find a phone, which I used to contact central command, who in turn got in touch with Cameron Base One and ordered a speedy evacuation. The Doctor made friends with an old man who had a submarine, and he said he would take her down to retrieve her Blue Box after he’d had his Christmas dinner.

While we waited for the old man to finish his afters, the Doctor and I sat on a beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I thought it to be the bluest blue I’d ever seen, but the Doctor said she’d seen blue-er.

“It’s going to be mental down there,” I said, thinking of Cameron Base One. “Everyone loading stuff into boxes, shutting down all the experiments. Must be chaos.”

The Doctor smiled, looking out at the point where, miles and miles below the water, there was a whole base of people packing up and heading home. “It won’t be that bad,” she said. “It will still be Christmas. They’ll make the best of it.”

[fallout4reactsblog]

not the danse feels anon but may i 🅱️lease have some danse feels with a chem addict sole 💖

I love all of my anons and I dub you 💖 Danse anon!

Every time he sees them do this, he swears he’s going to rob them blind in the middle of the night. It’s not malicious, he promises himself that, it’s for their own good. If the chems just weren’t there, maybe they wouldn’t have the problem. Maybe they could get clean.

Danse wasn’t a thief, though, so he never did. It would be a betrayal of sole’s trust to steal from them, so he settled for berating them every chance he got, trying to convince them the chems would ruin them, trying to make them see that they were wrong and he was right in this regard.

At the moment, he was beginning to wish he’d actually stolen their stuff.

He’d warned them before the fight even began that they weren’t going to be able to fight with their brain clouded with drugs. They’d laughed and waved him off as always, letting the X-Cell settle into their system, putting away the bottle and focusing in on the fight.

When they’d actually gotten into combat with the raiders, he’d known something was wrong. Their aim was sloppy, movements slow, decisions reckless and ill-advised. He’d let it be, though, because he was being shot at, and he’d planned to lecture them later on nearly getting themselves killed because of their addiction.

And then they’d gone down.

One minute, they were at his back, firing wide shots into the maze that was the raider camp, and the next they were on the ground, twitching, a bit of foam beginning to collect at the corner of their pale lips. Danse didn’t need Knight-Captain Cade’s professional opinion to know that something was wrong. Their eyes rolled loosely in their head, and all he could do was wish they’d listened.

Now, here he was, raiders all around, no backup, none coming. Fusion cells practically flew from his hand to his gun as he empty round after round into the incoming hoard. Bullets pinged off his armor and hit the ground at his feet, settling into the grass. Instinctively, he shifted to cover sole’s prone form, trying to protect them from harm.

When the last raider dropped, he did as well, sinking to his knees beside sole, pulling a Stimpack from their bag. He jabbed it sharply into their skin before he scooped them into his arms, dropping a signal grenade to get a Vertibird. He needed to get them to Cade, and he needed to do it now.

It seemed to take hours for them to arrive, and that gave him plenty of time to lament the decisions that had led him here. He should have started carrying Addictol the first moment he saw them taking chems. He should have forced them to give up their habit. He should have reported them to Cade or Maxson. But, no, he’d let his fondness for them cloud his judgement, and now they might both pay the price for it.

When the familiar sound of a Vertibird cut through the air, he could have cried from relief. He didn’t even bother to let it fully land, simply hauled them both up into the still-hovering ship.

“Prydwen, ASAP,” he snapped. “Fly like there’s a Deathclaw chasing you.”

The pilot nodded and, true to command, they were on the Prydwen in minutes. Danse thanked his lucky stars they weren’t far from the airport when sole had gone down. The entire ride, he was careful to monitor their breathing, counting the breaths and convincing the copilot to take their pulse to make sure everything was alright. The heartbeat was slow, and according to the copilot, faint. He’d have bounced his foot with nerves if he could have.

As soon as he could, he leapt off the Vertibird, carrying sole up into the upper levels of the Prydwen and practically sprinting to Cade’s office. The medical officer looked up as Danse barreled in the door, face darkening.

“Chems,” he panted out, laying sole’s body on a nearby cot. “X-Cell I think. I gave them a Stimpack but I wasn’t sure what to do. They went down mid-fight.”

Cade just patted him. “Step outside. I’ll call you in when I’m done here.”

Danse’s heart was screaming to stay, but he did what he was told and stepped out. The crowds he’d run through eyed him strangely as he made his way over to his power armor frame, but he paid them no mind, simply settled his armor where it belonged and dragged over a stool. Within an instant, Ingram was crouched by his side.

“What happened?” She handed him a socket wrench before he could even ask, and he nodded his thanks.

“I’m not sure.” Danse wasn’t the type to lie, but damn did he have a soft spot for sole, and spreading rumors around the Prydwen wasn’t his style. He’d have lied to Cade if he hadn’t known that it would only hurt them. “They went down in the middle of battle and looked ill, so I brought them to Cade as quickly as I could.”

“Got any ideas?” She handed him a dirty rag so he could clean a rusting pin. “That’s gonna need replacing, by the way.”

“I’m hoping to get another week or two out of it.” He put some cleaner on the rag and started cleaning. “No ideas. I wish I did.”

Silence settled over them. Danse knew that Ingram had other matters to be attending to, but his heart was racing a mile a minute, and his head was whirling with the thought that sole was going to die, and it would be his fault, so he appreciated the company.

“You’re worried about them.” Ingram wasn’t asking, but he nodded anyway. 

“Of course. I sponsored them. If anything were to happen to them, it would be my responsibility.”

He tried to say it casually, but the grip he held on the rag and bolt, tight enough to make his knuckles white, betrayed him. Because that was the truth, wasn’t it? If something happened to them, it would be his fault. He’d been right there beside them the whole time, but he didn’t stop them, he just kept pretending everything would be fine, and now it wasn’t, and sole would probably die, and-

“No one else believes that, you know.”

His head snapped to Ingram, who handing him the canister of rust remover casually as she continued. “If they were still a scribe, sure, that’d be different. But they’re all grown up, Danse. You don’t have to take care of them. They can take care of themself.”

“I was right there the whole time, Ingram.” He took the can and put a little more on his rag.

“And if they weren’t ready to go into the field, they should have told you.”

He knew that Ingram was making sense, but his mind insisted on running circles around the idea that he’d doomed them, he’d killed them, he hadn’t been good enough. His throat was tight, and his foot nervously bounced against the ground.

“I’ve got work to do.” She patted him on the shoulder and pushed herself up to standing. “Try not to worry too much. Sole will be fine.”

He hummed noncommittally in response, feigning an intense interest in the now-far-less-rusted pin in his hand. She moved away, footsteps loud on the metal deck, and when she was out of his line of sight he let his head collide with the side of his armor’s leg. 

It was cold against his skin, and he closed his eyes tightly as if he could ward off the images that flooded his mind. Sole, collapsing to the ground. Sole, twitching in the grass. Sole, foam trickling from between their lips. He thought he might scream, and his fingers curled into his thighs, tight enough to badly hurt, probably tight enough to bruise.

“Sir?”

He bolted up, practically slamming into the field scribe that had gotten his attention. She stumbled back, eyes widening.

“Apologies,” he mumbled, wiping off his hands. “You caught me off-guard. What can I do for you, Scribe?”

“Knight-Captain Cade wanted to see you, sir.” She jerked a thumb back toward the medical bay.

“Thank you. I’ll see to that.”

She nodded and turned away, and after waiting for an appropriate beat, he walked toward the medical bay as casually as he could manage. His heart was running a mile a minute, but he did his best to remain outwardly calm.

Cade was waiting for him at the door, and beckoned him inside. The bay was empty, save for sole, whose cot was tucked into a corner.

“Good news,” Cade said. “We got them patched up. Looks like a bad batch of chems got them. We went ahead and treated them with Addictol just in case.”

“Thank you, Cade.”

“Danse…” Cade sighed and folded his arms. “You know protocol dictates that I report this.”

He felt like he’d been stabbed, knowing the punishment sole was about to face, but he nodded anyway. “I’m aware. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything else.”

Cade nodded and glanced back toward the bed. “I’m not going to, though. I trust you to handle this.” He turned back toward him. “Don’t make me regret that.”

Danse tried not to grin, he really did, but he felt the barest hint of a smile peek out anyway. “I won’t. Thank you, Cade.”

“Right. I’m gonna go ahead and take my lunch break, conveniently, just as your trainee is about to wake up. I’ll be back in an hour. Hold down the fort for me.”

Just like that, Cade was gone, and he was left alone.

Slowly, he made his way over to sole’s bedside and pulled up a chair. They looked peaceful, relaxed into the mattress, blankets tucked up around their chest. Their lips were parted slightly, and he was glad to see that color had returned to their once-all-too-pale skin. For the first time in a while, they looked truly healthy.

Slowly, their lips twisted into a grimace, and a groan escaped them, hands coming up to rub at their eyes. They blinked once, twice, then darted around the room.

“Welcome to the medical bay, soldier.”

Their face turned toward him, and they blinked again before managing, “What happened?”

“I told you those chems would get you into trouble.” He retrieved a can of water and handed it to them to help their obviously dry throat. “You took a bad batch, and it very nearly cost you your life.”

“How’d I get here?” They popped the tab on the can and took a sip, then another as they realized how thirsty they were.

“I brought you.” God, it was hard to not betray his relief, to not crush them to his chest and cry because they were safe, they were healthy, things were going to be fine. “I called for a Vertibird when things were safe.”

“The raiders?”

“Dead.”

“And… you?”

He sighed. “I made it out alright. My armor served me well, yet again.”

They lapsed into silence. Sole fidgeted with the can in their hands and took another sip. He tried to keep his face neutral.

“So how much trouble am I in?” they finally asked.

“Luckily for you, Knight-Captain Cade has left your punishment to me.”

“Is that good?”

“No.” He leaned back in his chair. “No, it is not.”

“Listen, Danse, I’m… I’m sorry.” They couldn’t meet his eyes. “You were right. I wasn’t there when you needed me, because of the chems. I’m gonna get clean, okay?”

He didn’t know what it was in their voice that made him do it, but he quietly whispered, “You scared me, sole.”

“I know.”

Once he’d started, he couldn’t stop. “I thought you were going to die. If I’d lost you, to chems no less, I would never have been able to forgive myself.” He glanced up at them. “Surely you realize that I’m fond of you.”

“Of course. And I like you, too, I just-” they scrubbed a hand over their face. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You weren’t.” His words were sharp enough to cut, and they flinched. “You weren’t thinking, and you weren’t listening, either.”

“I’m sorry, Danse. It won’t happen again. What more do you want?”

“I want-” He stopped himself just short of letting the rest spill out.

“What do you want?” They repeated, and this time he couldn’t hold it in.

“I want you to be safe. I want to be able to know that you’re happy and healthy and taking care of yourself. I can’t keep you out of the field, but I’ll be damned if I ever want to see you hurt. I want to protect you, sole, but I can’t if you won’t protect yourself.”

They said nothing for a second, simply stared at him with wide, watery eyes, and then they leaned forward to hug him. He pulled them close, breathing them in, reassuring himself that everything was okay, that they were here, that they were alive. Tears, which had been building since they first went down, finally rolled down his cheeks.

“I’ll protect us,” they whispered. “You and me. Both of us. I promise.”

He held them tight and promised to do the same.