#thasmin dancing...dancing thasmin....save me oh my god save me save me

[dreadfuldevotee]

I am having such a sane a normal reaction to this You Guys

[theclaravoyant]

Kiss of Life ~ [a Thasmin 11x08 insert]

AN ~ Y’all know that river scene could have been gayer. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t 500 variations of this floating around by now but I just have to throw my hat into the ring... Enjoy!

Angst with a happy ending. Thasmin. Contains mild 11x08 spoilers.

Read on AO3 (~2000wd)

Kiss of Life

I was right.

It didn’t come with as much joy as she’d been expecting. Her limbs were all but numb with a sick sense of dread; not for herself, but for Willa. For Graham, Ryan and Yaz who were pleading for her life right at this very moment. Who had put themselves in danger - possibly more danger than she had anticipated. There was so much going on here… Too much… What should she do? What could she do?

“DUNK HER NOW!”

The chair dropped, and the Doctor tried to look where she was going, but there was only the murky river rushing up to meet her. She just barely remembered to take a breath before it engulfed her, and she was forced below.

It was not as cold as she expected. That’s the first thing she noticed. Funny thing to notice, but there was a lot going on in her head and she’s still figuring out which bits of information might be useful or not. Air though, air will definitely be useful, and it doesn’t look like the lever is coming up any time soon. Hoping against hope that her companions hadn’t gotten in too much trouble, she started to map her way out of there.

The tree glows green. That’s interesting.

But still not air, and her hearts were racing, trying to warn her that she is in trouble, burning up her oxygen with every panicked pump.

Chains first. Problem solving later, the Doctor reminded herself. They were just chains, after all. Bits of metal and wood. Can’t be that hard. She’d escaped from them before - learnt from the best, didn’t she? - Now if only she could remember… Houdini’d always had this trick…

-

As Graham and Ryan argued and pleaded with increasing fervour - or, one might call it, desperation - Yaz stood on the bank with her heart in her throat, watching the unsteady water. She was not sure how deep the Doctor had gone, there wasn’t that much to see on the surface, but to her every ripple, every bubble, was a promise.

Unless it’s a plea for help.

No interference, she thought. With a life like that, the Doctor must have a plan. She lived on near-death experiences. She’d probably smiled before they’d got here.

“Sounds like fun,” she probably would have said. “I’ve never been drowned before.”

But Yaz knew she had blood, had hearts, had lungs. She couldn’t stay down there forever.

-

One arm was free. The Doctor had that much to say for herself, but there were a lot of chains and a lot of dirt in this water and her lungs were starting to ache and her mind raced with the possibilities. There was too much else to think about besides saving herself, like -

What if Willa had been doing a spell? Had conjured the mud somehow? What if witches were real, in some sense, after all?

Where the blazes is this middle lock? And why are these shoes so heavy?

What did King James have to do with any of this? Was it even the real King James? Had she met King James before? She couldn’t remember.

Why are these lungs so small? I get it! We’re dying! I’m working on it!

What mud monsters did she know about? It couldn’t be the Mud? Surely not. Menaxians, maybe?

Alright just going to have to lose that shoe. Can’t kick it off. How do we get it off? Where is it? WHERE IS IT? THIS IS TIME SENSITIVE. THIS IS WHY VELCRO WAS INVENTED.

SHUT UP LUNGS.

-

“Oh my God!” one of the villagers shouted in horror, and covered their mouth at the blasphemous shock. Yaz was just glad she was not the only one seeing it. The water, becoming more excitable. Ripples and bubbles, as if something was about to explode through to the surface.

Angry, half-drowned Doctor, rising from the depths with a vengeance? Now, that would be something to see.

Any second now.

Any second.

The crowd shuffled about uncomfortably. Yaz ran her eyes over all their faces, her doubt suddenly rushing back. Doubling. Because the Doctor wasn’t coming up yet, and Mistress Savage was smiling, and Ryan and Graham looked just as worried as Yaz felt. The pleas died on their lips. Ryan gestured helplessly at the lake. It wasn’t like he could go in and save her. Honestly he’d thought she’d have saved herself by now, but that didn’t look good.

“What’s that mean?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t know!” Graham replied. Snappy. Anxious. “I ain’t never seen anybody drown before, have I?”

That said enough. Let alone the face of the townsfolk around them.

And that smile. It was sickening.

“Right. That’s it.”

-

One more arm. Nothing else mattered but one more arm. Chains now. Problem solve later. The Doctor scolded herself. She’d waited too long, bitten off more than she could chew. Her head was starting to fill with nonsense, even more nonsense than usual, and that was saying something. Darkness clawed at her vision and she shook it away, her eyes burning in the turbid water as she kicked mess up and made it worse. Her body jerked like a fish thrown up and into a boat, suffocating, unable to understand why it could not breathe no matter how hard it tried. Survival instincts blared like an alarm and the Doctor begged herself to keep working at it. Furiously working at it. Didn’t her body understand that she couldn’t live without these few more seconds of pain? She just had to get one more thing. One more thing. Then she could breathe. Just get the chains off, head to the surface and breathe. Head to the surface and breathe. Head up. Up. Up.

…Which way is up?

The last thing the Doctor felt, was the weight of the chains slipping free.

-

Yaz ripped her jacket off her shoulders, and kicked her shoes off both her feet. She had a horrible feeling that she was already too late, but she’d had enough of being too late. She’d had enough of non-interference to last a lifetime.

“You can’t do that!” warned one of the villagers. “Do you want to be next?!”

“Yeah, I do,” Yaz replied vehemently. “If that’s what it takes.”

She looked around at the villagers, who had lost so many friends and family this way. A few of them looked like they might just say something, but then… Well. She had been hoping for more of a domino-effect, Spartacus type situation but she’d take what she could get.

One more voice, standing with her.

“Let her up!” King James commanded. “Let her up, I order you!”

Graham sagged with relief. Ryan beamed. But their relief only lasted a moment.

“The deed is done, sire!” Mistress Savage promised, raising her arms in delight.

When it finally rose, the chair was empty.

Yaz was painfully aware of the air that rattled into her lungs. How many breaths? How many more had the Doctor missed?

“Yaz!” Ryan called, pushing the rest of the way through the crowd. Momentarily distracted, Yaz looked at him, but he pointed her frantically back toward the river. “Yaz, there!”

That’s when she saw it. The tiniest waif of the Doctor’s shirt, its stripes bobbing into visibility. A head of loose blonde hair. A deadweight.

Her training kicked in. The last scraps of non-interference, of waiting for the Doctor to macgyver her way out, were gone. She ran to the edge of the water and in, and dragged the Doctor to the bank. Turned her over. Unconscious.

“Okay, okay,” Yaz whispered to herself. “CPR.”

She had a heart, right? Had lungs? CPR should work, right?

It was all Yaz had and there was nothing else for it but to hope Graham and Ryan could keep the increasingly panicked crowd and King James and Mistress Savage’s antics at bay. All that mattered right now was the Doctor.

She knitted her hands together, found the Doctor’s sternum, and pumped.

1… 2… 3… 4…

Harder, she reminded herself as she counted to ten. Hard enough to crack a rib if you have to.

Ribs. Hearts. Two hearts.

She moved further left. Ten more. To the right. Ten more.

Now it was time for the breaths.

She’d only done this part hypothetically before. She’d been on search-and-rescues before - real and constructed - but somehow she’d never ended up on the pointy end of real life CPR, and they didn’t make people kiss-of-life the dummy. Although, they had forced them to watch someone else do it until they all stopped giggling about it, because of course a roomful of young recruits would. It was not like kissing, they’d had it well impressed upon them. It was a necessary part of the process of saving someone’s life, and for every joke about how ugly the dummies were they were given 20 pushups to do. One of the guys had made some quip that Yaz would be sad to be missing out, because Rescue Annie was the only date she was ever going to get. He’d gotten several hoots, and 30.

And wow was she nervous.

Pinch the nose. Tilt back the chin. Here we go…

“No, wait,” Yaz whispered to herself, quite pleased at having remembered. “Check the airways first!”

Without pulling too much of a face, if she did say so herself, Yaz slipped two fingers into the Doctor’s mouth and felt around for her tongue. No obstructions, that she could find. Here goes again, then. Nose. Chin. Lips…

-

The Doctor spluttered and coughed, her whole body arching as it tried to expel the muddy death water from her lungs. Someone was touching her. She was on the ground. It was dry. There was air. Sweet, sweet, terribly rank-smelling air.

Apple-grass meadows next, she promised herself. But for now…

“I survived!” she exclaimed. “Love it when I do that!”

Some more coughing and spluttering. And there goes that river water, finally. Not her most graceful near-miss, but beggars could not be choosers with this sort of thing.

Then again… Yaz was right there, looking at her in all her drowned-weasel-looking glory, as if she were the most wondrous being in creation. It was not the worst of views to wake up to. The Doctor propped herself up on her arms.

“Sorry. That was a bit of a close one. Love a challenge, me.”

“Right, yeah,” Yaz agreed, a little breathlessly. A blush danced across her cheeks, and the Doctor found herself noticing. Another strange thing to notice, perhaps, but one never knew what information might be important. Like… that feeling… that touch… The Doctor brushed a finger against her lip, trying to remember what it must have been. She’d felt such a touch before, but not for a long time, and her finger was wrong, it was sandy and dry and it tasted coppery and bitter. This had tasted sweet. Like honey and green tea. Like.

“Yaz.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Did you just kiss me?”

“No!” Yaz scoffed. The blush deepened. “It was CPR. It was just CPR. Because of the-“

“Ohhh, the drowning yes, of course! -“

“-and the water-“

“-lungs-“

“-right-“

“-good-“

“-yep-“

“Hm.” The Doctor nodded. Cleared her throat. She could feel a warmth blossoming in her own cheeks, but surely that was just from the overwhelming stress her body had been put under. Or rage, she still had plenty of that, temporarily dormant in between all the survival and the not-kissing. And it was starting to kick back in - just in time.

“Ah. Doctor?” Graham called from up the hill. “Not to rush you or anythin’, but if you’re all sorted down there, we could use a hand?”

“As many hands as you’ve got, there, aye?” Ryan added, with a little more candor, if tinged with panic, in his voice.

“Right!” The Doctor repeated. “Coming!”

She swung herself to her feet and staggered. Still not quite enough oxygen, it was making her head spin, but there was something else wrong too… Something…

“Aw.” She screwed up her face as she looked down and realised what it must be. “I really liked that shoe!”