The Little Things (Or The One Where Erica Writes A Prompt Response That Magically Makes Her Sad Even Though She Knew Where It Was Going)
Your muse has just helped the Doctor save the world, and he’s offered your muse (and your muse’s friend, if you so choose) a ride in the TARDIS. Where do you go? When? What kind of trouble ensues?
Must include at least one of the following: anecdote about previous companions, TARDIS malfunction, accidental landing, Weeping Angels, Daleks, Cybermen, Silence, or Headless Monks, and/or a trip into the depths of the TARDIS where you find something you are not supposed to.
It was different. Running in and out of the Doctor’s big blue box while trying to save London from a Dalek invasion was one thing, a necessary thing. But here I was, leaning against a wall, staring at him as he went on and on about the wonders of the universe, being offered a place on the great blue beauty. I, me, the girl everyone in America knew as Chrysalis, the Avengers’ sometimes ally sometimes enemy, was being told that I could go wherever I wanted to go with a man as strange and wonderful as any I’d ever met, including Bruce Banner.
“So?”
He was a hyperactive puppy, brown hair spiked up and fluffed, brown eyes filled with excitement, a bit of stubble around the jawline. He wore a pinstripe suit and converse, with a brown overcoat about his shoulders, but he looked like he was running from something and that didn’t surprise me in the slightest because this looked like a man used to running. It was okay; I spent most of my life running too.
“One trip?” I asked.
“One trip.”
“No Daleks?”
“No promises.”
“Will you even be able to get my home alive?”
His eyes darkened, and I watched him look away, and I knew the answer.
“Let’s go then,” I said softly, stepping toward him. “It’s been a while since I tempted fate.”
His smile brightened again, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes, and I wondered how many others there had been before me, how many he had lost, and I felt a stab of pity for him. He was the last of his kind (even before he told me, I knew that—it’s in the eyes and the posture), and companionship had to be hard to come by. He opened the door, stepping inside as if he expected me to follow, and I did, but not before I turned to look around.
The Avengers were leaving, flying away, and Bruce would be waiting for me when he got back to the tower. He would want to know why I’d malfunctioned, and he knew that I knew that he would want to know, and, of all the Avengers, Bruce was the only person whose wants and needs I catered to.
“When we get back, can you drop me in New York three hours from now?” I asked, shutting the door behind me.
“Sure.”
I moved to the console as if I’d been doing it for my whole life, and leaned against it, looking at him.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked me, and I had to pause for a moment.
All of time and space laid out before me. I didn’t have to even stay in the Milky Way Galaxy. I could go wherever I wanted. It was like taking a recovering alcoholic to a wine tasting; I wanted everything and nothing. But, since it was a hop, skip, and jump trip, I decided to stay with Earth.
And then, it hit me.
“Paris,” I said softly. “Paris, 1945.”
The Doctor didn’t question it; he just nodded, and started doing whatever voodoo he did to make the police box do its thing. It gave me time to think, time to consider how best to explain this to the Doctor. Because Steve Rogers swore on his own life that I was the exact reincarnation down to the millimeter of a girl he’d met in Paris, a girl he’d shared drinks with just two days before Bucky died. That girl had told him things that hadn’t made sense until later, in my voice, and now I knew why.
It had been me, even though it was a full forty years before I was even born.
“I met Steve Rogers there,” I whispered, and he looked up at me.
“We can’t-“
“No, you don’t… I wasn’t born until 1985, but Steve swears up and down that I look just like a girl he met in a bar in Paris two days before his best friend died. He and that girl talked for hours about things that didn’t make any sense until Bucky died, and then she went to dance with Bucky. Steve said that his best friend swore to that girl that he would come back and marry her, and she just smiled and shook her head, saying no you won’t, so Bucky asked to prove it. He said he’d never seen his friend so happy about a girl before.”
“You think…”
“It can’t hurt to look. It could be entertaining to have a doppelganger in 1945,” I joked, but my heart was in my throat.
“Well, if you’re planning on going dancing, you’ll have to change out of those clothes,” he told me, a lazy grin on his face. He gave me directions to the wardrobe; incredibly long directions that I had trouble keeping up with, and sent me off before I could even think to ask for them again.
I got lost twice, but when I finally got there, I had to stop and stare.
It was a whole room filled with clothes, but the dress I was looking for was right in front of me, as if the TARDIS knew I needed it and had had it waiting for me. It was black, with silver trim, fitted but not whorish, class and beautiful. It took me a moment to recover, and then I was busy putting it on, so when the Doctor came back to check on me, I didn’t even realize he was there until he dropped the sonic screwdriver.
I made some kind of noise, a kind of strangled exhale, and watched a thousand emotions flicker through his eyes, the one that stood out the most being pain.
“Who was she?” I asked.
“What?”
“The last girl you looked at like you’re looking at me right now. Who was she?”
“Rose… Erm… Rose Tyler.”
“And what happened to Ms. Rose Tyler?” I continued, turning to the mirror to fix my hair, and to give him a little privacy in case the story hurt.
“She… I lost her once, and gave her up the second time,” he said softly.
“You must have loved her, to let her go.”
“Of course I did. How could you not love Rose Tyler?” he laughed, and I had the sense to stay turned around while he wiped the tears from his eyes. “Always flouncing about, yellow and pink, getting herself in all kinds of beautiful trouble. She was clever too, so clever. She built her own way back to me, after I lost her. Didn’t dare take no for an answer. Never did, really. Kept doing all kinds of things she wasn’t supposed to do just because she wasn’t supposed to do them.”
I turned around finally, and gave him a smile.
“Yup, you seem like the type to be a sucker for a blonde,” I joked.
He laughed, glad I wasn’t pressing further, and held up a pair of shoes. “I think these will do you just fine.”
The Doctor was at the bar, nursing ginger ale like it was hard liquor and watching me from the corner of his eye while I waited for Steve to separate from his friends. Eventually, he came to the bar, and ordered for the table, and that was my cue.
“Pink Lady, s’il vous plait,” I asked across the bar, exercising French muscles I hadn’t used since high school to make it sound better than Steve’s please.
He said you sounded natural, so sound natural.
As the bartender turned away, I looked at him, and he looked at me, and it was like I knew what to say, even though it had been years since Steve and I talked about this night.
“It wouldn’t be your fault, you know,” I said softly.
He leaned a little harder on the bar, a smile on his face, and indulged me. “What wouldn’t be?”
“If your friend back there died. He’d follow you even if you told him to stay behind, would die for you in a heartbeat,” I answered, accepting my drink from the bartender without looking away.
“And what does a little girl like you know about dying?”
“A lot more than you’d think.”
We talked for hours, about everything and nothing, like we’d known each other all our lives. It was the same dynamic Steve and I shared in the tower, when I was there, and I knew why now. Why he glossed over things like I already knew about them; he thought I did. My face was so similar because of who I was, and I wished that I had known sooner because Steve Rogers deserved a friend above all else in the world after losing so many.
“And then, after that, Erskine pulled me aside and he said-“
Steve stopped, looking up at Bucky, and smiled softly. “Bucky, this is Cassie. Cassie, this is my friend Bucky.”
He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, and, if I had known that he was going to be so beautiful I never would have come back because it hurt knowing that I would have to let this man walk to his death.
“Dance with me,” he said softly.
I raised an eyebrow playfully. “That’s no way to ask a woman to dance.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
“Then I’m not dancing.”
“Please?” he offered.
“Better,” I replied, taking his hand.
-*-
“As soon as this war is over, I’m gonna marry you,” Bucky promised me, his voice soft, as he kissed my nose, my throat, and finally my lips.
Early morning light began to fill the street, and I could see the Doctor leaning against the side of a building in the alley across the street. His face was drawn, reserved, and I knew what he was thinking. But I had always been hard, had always been strong, and this wouldn’t change now.
“No,” I replied, kissing him back. “You won’t. But it’s a nice gesture.”
“I will. You wait and see. Once we win, I’ll meet you under the Eiffel Tower, and we’ll get married,” he insisted. “Promise me you’ll be there.”
“If I can,” I answered, knowing he wouldn’t be there.
He kissed me again, and then followed Steve to their transport. I crossed the street, and followed the Doctor back to the TARDIS.
“Can I ask another favor of you?” I asked, shutting the doors behind me.
“Anything.”
“Take me to May.”
While he warmed the TARDIS up, I went back to the wardrobe room, and changed clothes. As she began to shake and rock, moving through time, I slid to the floor, my head in my hands, and wept. I could have married Bucky. He was exactly the kind of guy I would have easily been able to keep entertained. And I wouldn’t have been unhappy with him. But he died. I knew he died. I had talked to Steve.
I still stood beneath the Eiffel Tower on V-Day. And when the celebration was over, when everyone had gone home and the Doctor was calling for me, telling me he’d take me home, I laid a rose there. Just one, for the times we could have had.
“Take me home,” I whispered, stepping into the TARDIS.
He took me back to New York, at the foot of the Avengers Tower. He hugged me tight, and told me he’d never seen anyone more brave or noble. I wished him the best of luck, told him I’d see him around even thought I knew I wouldn’t, and watched him go.
I could have traveled with him forever. He offered it to me, if I wanted it. But I understood, now, what I’d been putting Bruce through for years. So, I stormed into the tower, and climbed to the top, each step both harder and easier than the last. I moved up, and up, and up, until finally I reached the door to their main space, the place I knew Bruce would be.
“JARVIS,” I whispered. “Let me in.”
“Of course, Ms. Green. Is there anything you require?”
“What day is it?”
“It is the fifth of November, ma’am. The Avengers have only been back for an hour, and I believe Dr. Banner is in the lab.”
I smiled to myself. It wasn’t bad, only an hour off from when I’d asked to be taken back. I stepped across the threshold and into the kitchen in silence. I would have to talk to Steve later, to tell him at least in part what had happened, but I needed Bruce, for the first time in forever. It wasn’t something I was used to, needing another person.
I crept carefully through the rooms, until I came to the glass walled lab. Bruce was hunched over a light table, looking at something in the microscope when I opened the door and slipped inside. He looked up when I started making my way toward him, and turned when I was about half way to him. I closed the distance faster than I ever had, and leaned up, pressing my lips to his.
He kissed back for but a moment before he pushed me down.
“What brought this on?”
“I… Just… I… I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I’m sorry for what I’ve been doing all these years. I didn’t… I couldn’t…”
“You’ve never needed anybody, Cassie. That’s a normal thing for you. I expected nothing less.”
“No. I do need someone. I need you,” I whispered. “And I will always need you. I just didn’t realize it.”
And I hadn’t. Not until I understood what it was like to know I’d never see someone again.