#you just know that by this point they'd be Mr. and Mrs. Oswald even if it just started due to a misunderstanding

[nehswritesstuffs]

Whouffaldi AU: Where Clara is an older school teacher nearing retirement. Her and 12 are still just as in love except that they both are silver haired now

1149words; idk about you, but the idea that these two could just keep going is a bit mindblowing just because it would require a lot of people to either ignore the fact that Twelve looks exactly the same or accept it; now I wish the middle-aged married couple that had been in my middle school was this cute

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

The class filled as a couple dozen smallish humans rushed into the room, not wanting to be late. They all grinned as they sat down; it wasn’t their teacher sitting down at the desk, but the interim caretaker who had been there so long they surmised that “interim” was more of a joke than anything. He was sitting with his feet up on the corner of the desk, in a spot that was carefully chosen to not be covered in papers, and sunglasses sat high on the bridge of his nose.

“What’s all this, then?” he asked, motioning towards the room. “I didn’t think you all came in here for another few hours.”

“It’s time for class,” a boy in the front said.

“You must be all hell-bent on learning,” he replied. The caretaker took his feet off the desk and stood, moving so that he could sit on the front of the desk while looking out over the students. He moved his sunglasses to his brow and grinned. “What do you want to learn about today?” A tiny hand in the back shot up and he pointed towards the owner.

“Mum told me that you and Mrs. Oswald took care of her when the world got covered in plants! Was that true?”

“Mostly—there were some other involved, but yes, it was mostly us.”

“Is it true that you know the Vice-President of the United States?!”

“One of the women who is running for President, yes,” answered a voice. The caretaker and the students all glanced towards the door and saw the actual teacher—Mrs. Clara Oswald, a legend in the East End school—walk in, a stack of papers in her arms and amusement on her face. “She sat in this very room, even.”

As the children grew starry-eyed, the two adults pecked their lips together. Clara set the papers down on a table and walked over towards the whiteboard, pulling back some of her greying hair behind her ear.

“Now,” she started, “who is going to prove to me that they actually did the reading assignment? Show of hands?” All the students raised a hand. “Good; now, let’s start off strong. Tell me why Anne was in love with Diana. Anyone?” A tiny hand shot up and she pointed to it.

“Diana was the first person her age who she really connected with,” the hand’s owner claimed. “Before, she was always taking care of younger kids, but when she got to be with Diana, she instead had a friend, and she had to figure out what that was.”

“Did it feel like that when you and Mr.Oswald first started talking?” another student asked. Clara chuckled and shook her head.

“No, it felt very different,” she said. “We were both younger back then—brown hair, a knack for trouble, a bit too much flirt in our step—and it took a very insistent matchmaker for it to happen.”

“I almost lost her,” he claimed, “because I thought she was merely the only mystery worth solving. Turns out, there was nothing to solve, and before I knew it, we were the Doctor and Clara, here at Coal Hill, making sure generations of Shoreditchers don’t end up with pudding for brains.”

“I thought Mrs. Oswald said you didn’t have a doctorate,” a student snickered.

“It’s just not valid in England,” he bristled. The tweens all snickered as the caretaker began to pout.

“My auntie is still called ‘Doctor’,” a student towards the back offered, “and she went to school in Aberdeen. Just because you went to school in Scotland shouldn’t mean anything.”

“That is quite enough, class,” Mrs. Oswald chided gently, effectively ending the conversation. “Now let’s allow Doctor Oswald to get going on his own work. There is plenty he needs to do before the final bell.” She gave the caretaker a another quick peck on the lips and a pat on the shoulder. “I’ll see you after school.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. The caretaker made a comically-rude gesture to the children before leaving the room—now erupted into giggles—after which he was almost immediately confronted by the headmaster in the corridor.

“I’ve been trying to find you for nearly an hour,” the headmaster frowned. “There’s a toilet in two-west that’s acting up again.”

“That sounds like a terrible state,” the caretaker said. “I’ll see if I can get to it.”

“...by the end of the day,” the headmaster insisted. The caretaker shrugged and walked away, not confirming whether that would be the case or not.

In the end, the toilet fixed itself (“I’ve told him to just wait a moment”), there was a sweep of the grounds for unsanctioned extraterrestrial life (the Trion Twins in Fifth Form were exempt; they were Lethbridge-Stewart’s problem), and there was even a rewiring of the outdoor floodlights accomplished before the final bell rung for the day. Tweens, teens, and adults alike all left the building with varying levels of excitement and weariness, with eventually only Mrs. Oswald and the caretaker in the campus. She stepped into his office once she was all done with her marking for the afternoon to find him perched on a stool while he finished the soldering of a circuit board for the automatic overnight sweeping system.

“Adrian told me you were avoiding him today,” she tutted. He shrugged at that.

“He was being annoying.”

“He’s the headmaster, Doctor,” she scolded. “Part of his job is to make sure that the rest of us do our jobs. That’s what we do here, you know.”

“He should know by now that I’m not exactly your run-of-the-mill caretaker.”

“Considering you haven’t aged a day since first stepping though the doors, I think he’s figured it out by now.” She hugged him from behind and leaned against his back as he continued his work. “When I said that I wanted to have a normal life too, I didn’t think you’d stick around all this time.”

“What’s three years?”

“Doctor, it’s been thirty,” Clara reminded him. He put down the soldering pen and shifted in his seat so he could turn around, a grin on his face.

“Thirty? It can’t be.”

“It has, you rascal,” she laughed. Her arms draped around his neck and his hands rested on her waist. “We’ve been doing this for over thirty years. How can you not tell?”

“Not tell what?”

“That it’s been thirty years.”

“How can I ever tell if time’s passed if you look the same as when we started travelling together?” he openly pondered. She chuckled slightly before leaning in to kiss him, both of them holding on by the other’s silver hair.

“Doctor…?” she breathed against his mouth.

“Yes, Clara…?” He stared at her as she snapped her fingers, the TARDIS materializing in the middle of the room for them.

“Let’s go see some planets.”

“Whatever the lady wants.”

[vivo-morior-iterum-vivo]

Isabella caught a lot of frak from the Gotham fandom. I understand why, but I do feel it led to her being an unfairly underrated character. She remains one of the few characters where I really felt the writers failed the show. In short she was an icebox girl and I was highly disappointed in that, but let's take a moment to reflect on some of the badassery she managed to accomplish in her short time on Gotham.

First off as much as many fans hated it, Isabella remains on of the few people to pass Edward Nygma's standards of intelligence. I think the reason a lot of people don't think much of her is because they think of her in terms if her relation with Ed, which I'll touch on, but really the reason I loved Isabella and the reason I felt it was such a waste to kill her off so easily was because of her relationship with Oswald.

Consider Oswald at this point. He's taken down Salvador, Carmine, Fish, and Galavan. So he's already well proven himself a manipulative tactician (Putting it nicely). He doesn't immediately resort to murder, he starts by trying to scare her off.

Her response to this is she reads up on Ed and decides to still go on a date with him. Now, there's a few ways this could have gone. She could have tried to rationalize Ed's actions and decide he was not at fault or she could have foolishly decided that somehow she would be the exception to the rule, but no she admits that she's afraid he's going to kill her and decides she'd rather risk that than continue to live a life of mediocrity.

"You're not scared of me?"

"Of course I am! Can you feel how fast my hearts beating?"

This is a woman who, while she may not be looking to actually commit crimes, is all for diving head first into Ed's life of crime. She wanted an adventure and I'm a little sad we didn't get to see her go on one.

This next scene though is by far my favorite Isabella scene and really it's what's makes me so sad we didn't get to see more of her. The scene where she steps up to Oswald's threats.

Oswald of course being ever resourceful and manipulative, convinces Ed that he should break it off with Isabella and furthermore that Oswald should be the one to deliver the message. This scene is a beaut for a few reasons.

Point one, when Oswald tells her Ed's breaking it off and why, you can see the wheels turning in Isabella's mind and you just know she's thinking through every story she's read and and referencing them as she draws her conclusion. No, it was the glasses, he doesn't hate me he's scared!

Point two, she's one of the few character's that sees straight through Oswald's facade and she doesn't know him! Jim Gordon has trouble deciphering what's true and what's fake with Oswald and think of how well the two know one another, also Ed was completely fooled until Barbara wised him up. (Though I'll give him a bit more of a pass because he was an emotional trainwreck at the time.)

"He loves me and I love him. Do you know how rare that is Mr. Mayor?

...Of course you do, because you love him too. I'm not even jealous."

This is the line that makes me love Isabella. Her life has been books and she just realized she gets to be in a love triangle. She's excited!

Which leads us to point three, Oswald drops his facade and she matches him blow for blow in venom and spit.

We were robbed from that fight! Oswald took her out of the game way too easy! But can you imagine if they'd kept her?

When I watched her death scene I was screaming at her to tuck and roll. Just picture it:

Her realizing the brakes are cut. She panics for a moment, but then remembers a similar story and flings herself from the car. Tumbling across the pavement she rolls to a stop at the side of tracks as the train rushes past her smashing the car.

She gets back up. Sillouetted in the darkness we see her rise bloody, hair in tatters, dress torn, but then you see her eyes and you know it's on Oswald Cobblepot.

The game is on!

I haven’t seen a ‘farewell Gotham’ post about Isabella

anyone wanna hit me up?