Apr 1
# Writer's corner .ᐟ Minors Do Not Interact!
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# Writer's corner .ᐟ Minors Do Not Interact!
── dividers
reblogs are appreciated. thank you, Alaska.
uurggrhrghmmghrgh...... starving vampires......
FADED — varrichawke.
Words: 1,413. Characters: Varric Tethras x Hawke — Tamar. Rating: General.
Every time Varric caught a whiff of the Fade, he thought of her.
His Hawke is no —
His Hawke was no mage. She wielded a pair of well-kept daggers and a keen wit rather than the arcane, even though her blood was so steeped in magic that her existence as a non-mage boggled the mind. No Circle of Magi could cage her — not in Ferelden, not in the Marches, not anywhere. She was meant to be seen, meant to be heard, meant to be touched and tasted and smelled.
And his Hawke smelled of the rosemary in her soap and the musk and citron in her perfume, of the powder she wore on her skin, of the sachet of flowers and herbs she stored amongst her clothes. She smelled of the vanilla-kissed cream Elegant recommended for her cracked elbows, the same cream that she could scarcely afford when she was barely out of twenty and new to Kirkwall.
No one could separate Tamar from her scents.
READ THE REST ON AO3.
from the beginning the man had his hand hidden
Rating: Explicit Relationships: Fushiguro Toji/Gojo Satoru, Gojo Satoru/Nanami Kento (mentioned frequently) Additional Tags: Post-Shibuya Incident Arc, POV Gojo Satoru, altered mental states, dubious consent, anal sex, rimming, coming untouched, spit as lube, asphyxiation, choking, top Fushiguro Toji, bottom Gojo Satoru, background time travel, age gap haunts the sex scene despite no longer existing, nanami does not appear yet sorry he just also haunts the sex scene Word Count: 17.3K (chapter 1/2)
The sex scene that was missing from do what you are doing to do, and I will tell about it because Toji was in Shibuya murder mode, plus way too much insight into Gojo's questionable coping methods.
fandom: house of the dragon. rating: explicit. (for later.) relationships: aegon x oc. length: 6,305. chapters available: 2.
Pressing the rim of her cup to her lips, Alyse took a long sip before settling both her drink and her hands down flat on the table. The carved rivulets of ivy that rose from the wood pressed against her wrists.
“Exactly how many sheep will your dragon need to eat comfortably for a month?”
“Exactly?” the prince echoed. In the glow of the fireplace, the lilac in his eyes paled to a strange half-orange. “I don’t know the exact number. A lot.”
Aemond rolled his eye.
“The number doesn’t matter.” Lord Bryor’s voice echoed well up into the curved ceiling of the hall. While he did not speak sharply to the prince or his daughter, there was an underlying current in his words that left Alyse taking another deep mouthful of the hippocras. Frustration was never fruitless with her father, and the fruit it bore was never sweet. “Trust that we will accommodate you and your dragon no matter the personal cost.”
A smile bloomed Aegon’s face at her father’s reassurance. His cheeks pressed up into his tired-looking eyes, already pink from the contents of his nearly empty cup. “Of course, of course. We, ah… appreciate your welcome.”
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Trick or Treat? 🦇
Treat! Here’s my current draft of the first chapter of Forces Reloaded!
Tails' eyes narrow up at the doctor, floating overhead in his Egg Mobile. He quickly ushers the small group of civilians still in the square behind him, readying his weapon. He had just finished building it, a clever little EMP device that he hoped would be able to take out Eggman's badniks, without messing up any of his own tech. It'd be fun to try it out.
"So stoic and silent today, Tails?" Eggman mocks, tilting his Egg Mobile forward to lean out of it, a grin spreading across his face as if he were the one with the upper hand here. "Perhaps you're too scared to fight me all by yourself, without your precious Sonic to save you!"
"Really?" Tails sighs, fiddling with a few buttons on his device. "That's the best you can come up with? I think your head's stuck a few years in the past. I'm not four anymore."
"Like a few years of experience will make you any superior to me, boy."
"You keep telling yourself that." Tails glances back up at Eggman, and he has to keep himself from smiling as he goes through the same predictable motions. Step One: The twitch of the mustache, an easy signal blatantly showcasing his annoyance, as he leans back in his seat. Tails can't see his eyes beneath his glasses, but he knows they flick down to his console, just for a second. Step Two: Eggman presses a few buttons, then pulls a lever. The badniks all turn to Tails and Sonic- no, just Tails this time- their glowing eyes burning just a tad bit brighter. Step Three: Eggman heads upwards, getting himself out of the way of the fight. All that's left is Step Four: One last taunt from their side, Eggman will yell a war cry, and the battle can finally begin.
"You know, you wanna call me a coward for 'hiding behind Sonic', you really oughta look at yourself in the mirror."
"Rgh! Crush him!" Eggman screams, and the badniks spring to life. Tails leaps out of the way just as they attack, slapping the device onto the back of a Moto Bug's head.
3...
He jumps out of the way again, flying upwards over a pair of Buzz Bombers trying to dive bomb him.
2...
A quick chain of spindashes has three Crabmeats down for the count, shrapnel scattered on the stone floor of the courtyard.
1...
Tails freezes, flying upwards to survey the battlefield. He has to dive away to evade a lazer shot from another Buzz Bomber, but he gets a good look at all the badniks below. Moto Bugs, Buzz Bombers, Crabmeats, he even sees a few Spikes. His brow furrows in confusion. These are cannon fodder, the most basic badniks Eggman has. Why on Mobius would he be using such basic badniks, unless...
Tails gasps, only being snapped out of his realization by his EMP blast going off, sending a shockwave through the courtyard. He can barely brace himself in midair, the force sending him back a few feet as the badniks crumple to the floor. Even Eggman's Egg Mobile wavers in midair a moment, making him grab at the edges, panicked.
"Oh come on! You weren't supposed to defeat them all that quickly!" Eggman sputters, leaning out to survey the damage.
"That quickly? So you were planning on having me defeat them!"
"Rgh! Not you! You were supposed to call for backup!"
Tails' eyes narrow, flying over to land on the outside of the Egg Mobile "What's that supposed to mean? What are you planning?"
Eggman yelps, flattening himself against the back of his seat. "Eugh, nothing at all! I was just insulting you, that's all! Y-you're too, um, weak to defeat them all on your own!"
"This is a trap for Sonic, isn't it?"
Eggman frowns, grumbling wordlessly. Reaching out, he taps a button on his console, right by Tails' foot. He recognizes it, though its one he rarely uses. A communicator.
"Infinite, change of plans," Tails smirks, a little thrill shooting through him at successfully catching Eggman before he could even pull off his trap. "Get the fox."
Tails' smug pride is quickly replaced with ice-cold fear, slamming into his stomach like a rock. Or like the blast of energy that knocks him off of Eggman, straight to the stone floor below. His vision spins, barely able to make out the two blurry figures floating overhead. One was Eggman, obviously, he'd known that silhouette for years, but the other... He squints at the smaller, black shape, watching it slowly come into focus. A Mobian, definitely, or at least Mobian-shaped. The body looked strangely organic, at least by Eggman standards, but the face was all metal. Could it be an android, like the Shadow Replicas?
Tails glances down to his Miles Electric. He reaches for it, only for a horrifyingly familiar air shoe to come stomping down on his arm, holding him in place. "Wh- Shadow, what are you-?" No, no, there was no way, it must be an android too- But he furrows his brow, bearing his teeth in a snarl that Tails knows the androids' metal shells would never be able to replicate.
Something is very, very wrong.
The metal of Shadow's shoe digs painfully into his arm as he struggles beneath it, trying desperately to break out from his hold. Usually he can't stop his brain from analyzing, surveying the situation to get himself the most favorable outcome, but right now all his mind can focus on is panic. Shadow hasn't activated the jets, thank Gaia for that, but he can still feel the heat against his fur, an obvious threat. Tears prick at his eyes as the metal digs in harder, bringing an almost burning pain to his arm as he pulls, frantic to get away, to get out.
And all at once it stops, and Tails snatches his arm back with a gasp, cradling it close to himself.
"Shadow, have you lost your mind?!"
Tails' head snaps up at Sonic's voice, looking over to see the two hedgehogs furiously beating on each other. Shadow doesn't respond, not even a grunt, just focused on blocking Sonic's hits. "What's gotten into you, man? Snap out of it!" Sonic dodges a blow, only for another strike to come from behind. Tails blinks in shock, rubbing his arm. Metal Sonic was not there a second ago. He's seen Metal rush in from out of nowhere before, but this was different. There was no movement to this, no trail of his jet showing where he came in from. He just... appeared.
Tails goes for the Miles Electric again, pulling up the scanner as fast as his fingers can move. He barely notices the rumble below his knees as he lifts it up, watching the battle through the screen.
That can't be right.
He glances back to the fight, watching the situation with his own eyes. There it was, Sonic fighting against Shadow and Metal. But when he looks back to the screen... there's nothing. Sonic stands in the center of the courtyard, delivering and receiving blows from absolutely nothing. He fiddles with the scanner, trying to pick up something, anything, that could explain just what the heck is going on.
Then he sees it. A faint outline, some sort of energy, floating in the spots where Shadow and Metal stand. The screen is slowly beginning to fill with the stuff, coating everything in an off-putting red. If he could just see where it was coming from- There! Like strings on a puppet, leading from the pair battling Sonic to... Of course. Tails smacks himself in the head, immediately regretting the action as pain pangs though his forearm. Where else would it be coming from but the floating figure, the first newcomer to enter the area? Tails redirects the camera, moving to face the figure directly. It's watching the fight alongside Eggman, but the moment Tails focuses the scanner on it, its head snaps to the side. Suddenly the screen is filled with nothing but its singular, unblinking eye.
Tails moves the Miles Electric away to look back at the pair, only to yelp in shock when he sees the dark figure only inches from his face. He stumbles back, landing with a splash in the thin layer of water below.
Wait...
Water?
Tails looks down to confirm that yes, the courtyard is slowly beginning to fill up with water, though he can't see a source. Dread whirls in his stomach the same way the water begins to circle around the three fighting in the center, becoming faster and faster until it's a violent whirlpool. Sonic freezes, panic dawning on his face as he realizes what's happening.
"Sonic!" Tails screams, pushing past the figure to run to his brother. Sonic can only reach out a hand- out for him or out to stop him, Tails can't tell- before Tails is sent rocketing back, his head colliding with the stone wall behind him. He can hear Sonic shout something, but it's too distant to hear. Tails reaches out, his fingers numb, but he just keeps getting farther...
and farther...
and farther...
Tails wakes up with a snap, flinching as the light of the setting sun floods into his eyes like a spotlight. His head spins, and he topples over just as soon as he pushes himself up to his feet. He blinks slowly, his head foggy and the taste of iron tinging his mouth. The Miles Electric lies beside him, shattered into pieces. He doesn't remember it breaking. Water drips off of it, making the exposed wires spark and hiss, and Tails scooches himself away from it with a heavy sigh. He can always make another one, he supposes. Just needs some supplies to do it, maybe he can send Sonic into the market to get-
Sonic.
Tails sits up, all the panic flooding back into him as the fuzziness flees from his brain.
Sonic was gone.
He can feel his heart hammering in his ribcage, slamming violently against his bones as he gasps out frantic breaths. Eggman- A trap- Water- It had all happened so fast, and Tails just sat there, useless- He gasps a choking breath, as if he'd been the one with his lungs full of water, not Sonic, floating limp and lifeless in the middle of the square- If Tails had just done something, helped him, just got up and moved-
A sob wracks through him, sending him down to his hands and knees. The stones are still damp, and his sobs echo through the empty courtyard.
He's alone.
For the first time in four years - half of his entire life - Miles "Tails" Prower is completely alone.
THE LONELY ORNAMENTS. an eleanor aquino one-shot. c. the twelfth doctor’s era.
─ when eleanor and the doctor travel to 1961 seattle to find a trio of christmas ornaments that causes amnesia and eventual death in its owners, eleanor finds herself losing her memory.
“SO, WHERE TO?”
It always began like this. A simple inquiry, a lingering look, a promise of adventure. The routine came to exist in the TARDIS long ago and had gone through very few changes since Eleanor first met the Doctor. Sometimes the Doctor had somewhere he wanted to take her; other times they would let the TARDIS choose a random destination. But most often, the Doctor asked Eleanor where she wanted to go. Usually she had an answer—oh, she wanted to visit somewhere on Earth in the past, or she wanted to check out the future, or she wanted to see a planet and asked him to choose one they hadn’t been to together before. Other times, the box came out.
The box was a small wooden thing, an old recipe box Eleanor found and refurbished into something new. The first time she’d shown it to the Doctor, back when he was all floppy hair and bow ties, he’d looked at it like she was presenting him with a Cyberman's head. It didn’t look the way then that it did now; now it was a lovely deep blue rather than a dull wooden color, a nice wink to the reason why she’d made it in the first place, and she had painted some pink tulips on it to make it her own. But the true interest of the box was what was inside.
“I had an idea.” Eleanor was purposefully vague about it, arms behind her back as her fingertips softly tapped against the painted wood of the box and she lightly rocked back and forth on her heels.
The Doctor looked across the console at her. It wasn’t the first time she’d pulled this trick. His eyes narrowed. “You have the box, don’t you?” His hunch was confirmed with a mild shrug, one that tried to seem nonchalant, but her burgeoning smile gave away her excitement. Her smile was one he had never quite been able to deny. “All right. Choose one and we’ll go.”
Eleanor took one large step toward him and held out the open box. Her smile took over her face. “Pick a card, any card.”
It wasn’t the first time she had pulled this trick either. This one wasn’t one she did often, because she knew that artifacts tended to exhaust him and she had her suspicions it was because artifacts were the one thing she knew more about than him. He knew the universe—the Shadow Proclamation and galactic law, the customs of planets she couldn’t have imagined, the names of nebulae and galaxies and stars that were all but unpronounceable on her tongue. She knew artifacts—how they were created, how to handle them, how to find them. And the Warehouse had too many reports of artifacts delivered by an anonymous individual(s) throughout its entire history for it not to be the work of two time travelers in a blue police box. This little wooden box in her hands, it contained information on every single one of those artifacts.
“Only because I know it will make you happy,” the Doctor said, which of course delighted her, as he reached across to pluck a card from the box at random. He handed the card over without taking a moment to look at it and in exchange took the box from her hands to set it out of the way on the console.
Eleanor glanced at the front and back of the card—the front with any pertinent info she had previously copied down, the back with a photograph of the artifact where it was stored in the Warehouse in her present-day—and began reading, “The lonely ornaments. Delivered to Rebecca St. Clair at Warehouse 13 on Christmas Day 1961 by an anonymous sender. Snagged in Seattle Christmas Eve of that year.”
The Doctor flicked a switch on the console. “Christmas Eve, 1961; Seattle, Washington, United States.”
In an instant the TARDIS was in flight. The familiar wheezing ‘vworp!’ tone that accompanied it sounded throughout the room; in the years that had passed since she first heard it she had come to regard it as a something of a bell welcoming her home. Sometimes, in the times when he would drop her off at the Warehouse for a day or a week or a month to catch up with her friends, she swore she heard it while she was sleeping. There was something to be said about wishful dreaming. Her wishes always seemed to come true when he was there.
The TARDIS made a soft landing within half a minute, and within the next thirty seconds Eleanor had pulled on her coat (which had previously been left hanging on one of the railings) and grabbed her bag (or more accurately, the Doctor grabbed it from its near-permanent spot by one of the bookshelves above and waited to give it to her until she had joined him at the door), and when she was at the door, he opened it for her and she ducked underneath his arm to go out. All in the same fashion they had done a million times before. A routine set in stone, indeed.
“It causes amnesia in the owner, and twelve days after it starts, the owner dies out of the blue. Just…drops dead. The autopsy never finds anything, but the official cause of death is a heart attack. Rumors about the ornaments go back to the Gilded Age, all across the United States. It had been on the Warehouse’s want list since then. At least ten people were said to have died because of it.”
“Including at least one person in Seattle.”
The Doctor made sure to lock the TARDIS after he, too, had stepped onto the streets of 1961 Seattle. He had landed them at the corner of a busy intersection, but not one person gave them a second glance. It was one thing that Eleanor’s two lives, her life at the Warehouse and her life in the TARDIS, had in common—people always missed the obvious even when it was right in front of their eyes. Artifacts or a blue police box appearing out of nowhere, they just didn’t notice until it affected them directly.
Eleanor looked closer at the second image she had glued onto the card all those years ago. “Part of a funeral program was in the package left for Rebecca. Gregory Brown,” she read the decedent’s name, but she was hardly able to make it out and had to squint even more to see the details of the service. “The funeral was on Christmas Eve. Today. We should start there.”
So the pair of them went on their way, after Eleanor had the idea to pick up a tourist map of the city. By her estimation, the funeral home was a fifteen minute walk from where they had landed. Their clothes wouldn’t stand out at the place; he wore black on a daily basis already and her coat was hiding the bright floral pattern of her sweater. It was a little chilly outside, a little rainy, but overall not a horrible day to be out. Of course, it was Christmas Eve, and on a dreary Christmas Eve like this one would rather be inside drinking hot cocoa and listening to Christmas records, but there was something charming about the last-minute chaos and the overheard, rushed wishes of happy holidays.
When they passed a tall Christmas tree all decorated for the season, the Doctor remarked, “Christmas and I don’t particularly get along.”
Eleanor’s brows furrowed. “I think most days and you don’t particularly get along.”
“Every Christmas I visit, bad things tend to happen.”
“It just seems that way,” Eleanor reasoned. To be fair to him, she had been with him on a few of these bad Christmases he spoke of and it did seem like it became a pattern at some point, but also, trouble following him on nearly every adventure was a pattern of its own. She could probably count on both hands the number of trips they had been on where they entered the TARDIS at the end of it unscathed. “It’s like how the odds of dying on your birthday are higher than any other day. It’s a notable day, you’re just more likely to remember things.”
The Doctor shook his head. “That’s not it.”
“I mean, I nearly die every Tuesday. I don’t have a vendetta against Tuesdays.”
“You nearly die every day of the week.”
“My point exactly.”
Eleanor kept walking forward even when the Doctor came to a brief stop in the middle of the pavement to look at her, first with furrowed brows and a frown (she really was too casual about her many near-death experiences, and on at least one occasion an actual death experience, sometimes, and the thought of her dying was one he refused to consider). Then when she realized he had stopped she turned back around and gestured for him to come on, and he did so after a few seconds with a hidden smile meant only for her. His Eleanor.
“Everyone’s getting some last minute Christmas shopping done,” Eleanor observed as yet another hurried group of shoppers brushed past them.
It was the third such group to have done so since they arrived, bustling about the city like they were on fire with arms full of shopping bags. One woman with two children under the age of ten in tow had nearly knocked Eleanor into a busy street in her haste less than five minutes after their arrival; fortunately the Doctor had grabbed her and prevented her from adding yet another near-death experience to her ever-expanding list. After that incident, he made sure that she was on the inside of the pavement and he was closest to the streets.
“Except for them,” the Doctor said, and Eleanor looked away from the windows of a shop closing for the day to follow his gaze just down the street.
It was a sorrowful affair and one that nearly suited the day’s weather though not the date. Mourners dressed in black, not a single dash of color among them, were filing into a building made of brick with their heads hanging low. Many of them were young, younger than Eleanor was. The sign outside the building verified what she believed—this was the funeral home where Gregory Brown, the latest victim of the lonely ornaments, was receiving his final goodbyes.
“A funeral on Christmas Eve,” she remarked as they crossed the street. “It doesn’t seem right.”
“Death doesn’t wait to be right.”
If death waited to be right, it would never be.
The funeral home displayed a small sign with the deceased’s name at the open door to greet the bereaved and assure that they were here at the right place and time. There was a decorated Christmas tree in the corner and just feet away from the door was a small table with an open book and a cup full of pens that people were stopping at. The juxtaposition of holiday cheer and bleak mourning was jarring. A little horrifying, really.
A man dressed in a dark blue suit with a name tag that identified him as the funeral home’s director nodded solemnly at them. “Hello. Were you friends with the deceased?” he inquired, and to avoid any questions they let him believe his assumption was correct. “I’m sorry for your loss. Please take a moment to sign the condolences book. The service will begin soon.”
With a gesture to the table, the funeral director said nothing else and merely repeated himself to the next person to walk in the door like it was rehearsed. It must have been a horrible job, dealing with grief all day. Especially on a day like today. How does someone do all that and not be driven mad by it all?
“Do I put my real name?” Eleanor asked the Doctor quietly. The last thing she wanted was to have her name and signature recorded in the sixties when she wouldn’t even be born for another nearly thirty years. The proper solution might have been to not sign it at all, but it wasn’t worth drawing attention to themselves for being the only ones not to sign the book.
“Just put down Smith as your surname,” the Doctor said, and so with a pen from the cup on the table she signed her name as Eleanor Smith rather than Eleanor Aquino. She offered the pen to the Doctor, who signed the name John Smith right below hers and stuck the pen back in the cup for the next signer to use.
Eleanor spotted a stack of funeral programs that appeared identical to the one she’d taken a photo of at the Warehouse, but these were fully intact whereas the one in the photo that had led them here was torn with only Gregory Brown’s name and the details of the service legible. The program got back to Rebecca somehow, so she took one from the top to make sure it did. It was simple, only a single page with a photograph of Gregory Brown; the date, time, and location of the service and the wake afterwards; the name of his only surviving family member, an older brother by the name of Stephen; and the dates of his birth and death. Born 1937, dead 1961. Less than a week ago.
“He was twenty-four,” Eleanor murmured after doing the math in her head. He hadn’t even lived a quarter of a century. That’s why so many of the funeral attendees were so young. They were his friends, his age. “That’s too young.”
The Doctor looked down at her and asked a simple question. “Are you okay?” He knew better than most how often the unfortunate crept up on her, how young she herself had been in her worst times. He probably knew the best.
“I just don’t like funerals. Especially when they’re for people younger than me.”
Wouldn’t he have felt the same, and wouldn’t he have felt it even stronger than she? He was two thousand years old. Not a day passed that he didn’t meet someone younger than him and so many of those people he had watched die. Too many goodbyes. Too many funerals. But she was still here. Against all odds, she still stood by his side, still took his hand when he was at his darkest and still looked at him like the sun peeking through storm clouds.
“They won’t be here, the baubles,” the Doctor said after a moment. He was right. There was no reason for the lonely ornaments to be present at the funeral, so assuming no one had started to pack up his things, they would still be at Gregory’s home. There was just one little hitch in this theory. “Everyone will be distracted, they won’t even notice anything is missing.”
“We don’t know where he lives,” Eleanor pointed out.
The Doctor conceded to that fact momentarily, but then he properly noticed the program in her hand and snatched it from her. Yes, a question yet to be answered, Eleanor realized—why was Rebecca sent the program in addition to the artifact itself? Why had it been included in the package? The Doctor seemed hot on the trail of an answer, gaze darting from mourner to mourner until it fell on a man at the front of the room who stood by the closed coffin. The man receiving condolences from every person who had walked in. Gregory Brown’s only living relative.
“Excuse me!” the Doctor exclaimed, moving through the crowd to get to him. Eleanor hurried to follow, offering awkward smiles and quiet ‘excuse me’s to the people she brushed past. There went the low-profile she hoped they would keep. But would it really be an adventure if the Doctor didn’t draw unnecessary attention to himself? “You’re Gregory’s brother, aren’t you? Stephen?”
Stephen Brown couldn’t have been more than three years older than the man in the casket. He stood tall and relatively composed even with his brother’s coffin only steps away, but there was something lost in his eyes, like he was experiencing all five stages of grief all at once. But more than any of that, he looked…confused. He had looked confused when receiving condolences and he looked even more confused now that they were in front of them. It didn’t seem entirely because no one knew who they were. But Eleanor couldn’t put her finger on it.
“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize you,” said Stephen with a wary onceover of them. Eleanor couldn’t very well blame him. He was probably racking his brain trying to figure out why a Scottish man who appeared to be in his fifties and a Cuban woman in her thirties were at his brother’s funeral in Seattle. “Were you friends with Greg?”
“I’m the Doctor, this is the lovely Eleanor,” he said. Eleanor usually aimed to keep a serious demeanor on these parts of adventures, the questioning of witnesses or people otherwise involved in whatever strange thing was going on, in an effort to come across as professional (which she often did not), but every time he introduced her in that way she couldn’t help but smile. Given the setting, she tried to bite it back. It was inappropriate to smile like that so near a dead body. The Doctor drew the psychic paper from his pocket and flashed it for a brief moment. “We’re from the coroner's office.”
“The coroner’s office?” Stephen repeated, squinting at the paper. It was a good cover and the psychic paper certainly gave them credibility (really was a miracle to have around!). It got them into places they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to and answered enough questions about who they were and why they were asking questions in the first place. “What’s this about?”
It was Eleanor who spoke this time. She was able to come up with a believable excuse as to their presence in a matter of seconds, though it did come out a little stilted as she thought it up and said it aloud. “Uh, we just want to tie up some loose ends. Unfortunately our office has misplaced the paperwork with his address. Do you mind giving it to us? We just want to make this as easy as we can for you at this time. Losing someone is grief enough without legal technicalities getting in the way.”
Stephen exhaled heavily and nodded his head. “Yeah. Do you have a pad of paper?”
Eleanor reached into her bag and withdrew a pen and some paper. Stephen scribbled down the address. His hand was shaking. It didn’t escape either of their notices, but all they did was exchange a glance. Stephen handed the paper back to her, but once it was between her fingers he took it back. Part of the paper tore in her hand.
“Wait,” he mumbled, holding the paper close to his face and squinting at it. Bad eyesight? Or something more? He shook his head and gave it to her, and this time he didn’t take it back. “Yeah, that’s right. Sorry, the grief is wreaking havoc on my brain. Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten how to be a person.”
Stephen pocketed the pen in his outside suit pocket like it belonged to him, like it was something second-nature and a genuine accident. It didn’t look as if there was any ill intent to steal her pen.
Eleanor said, “Um, that’s my pen.”
He looked at her with furrowed brows as she pointed to the pen. He realized then what he had done and shook his head like he was clearing his mind or mentally chastising himself and returned the pen to her. “Sorry. It’s a nice pen.”
The pen had cost less than five American dollars and looked like it. Eleanor just nodded slowly and turned away, stepping to the side to allow the mourners behind her a chance to speak with him. The Doctor was the one following her out this time. They were able to escape the attention of the funeral director still at the front of the building by simply walking past when he was greeting another mourner in the same way he had with them. No one gave them a second look as they stepped out onto the street.
Eleanor took out her map of the city again and unfolded it, holding the paper with Gregory Brown’s address at the corner to compare street names and locate where they were at now and where they were meant to go. Her conclusion this time around was similar to the last one. Gregory’s home, an apartment building, wasn’t far from the funeral home. It was close enough to walk just like before.
So they walked. As before, he walked along the street and she kept to the inside of the sidewalk. For a short time it was in silence, but it was indeed a comfortable silence that only two who cared so deeply for one another would be able to stand.
Eleanor and the Doctor had known each other for quite some time by this day. Ask either just how long it had been and you would receive two different answers, for there were many years in his life he had spent without seeing her at all yet for her the longest he had been out of her life was a mere few months. But she had known this man beside her through three of the faces he had worn and he had known her through the times her sunshine turned to rain.
“I know that grief isn’t an easy subject for you.”
His remark nearly came out of the blue and broke the easy quiet between them. She had, of course, felt his glances toward her before he spoke, but by the fifth time she noticed she mistakenly believed that he would keep whatever he was thinking of to himself as he often did. This had been brought on by what she said to Stephen Brown, hadn’t it?
Her simple, noncommittal reply was, “Is it for anyone?”
“Eleanor.”
Her name was all he said. He had no need to say anything else. Any question he had, anything he ever had to say, was perfectly conveyed through how he said her name. In this instance, the question was: do you need to talk?
“I’m fine, Doctor,” Eleanor assured him as the pair stopped in the middle of the walkway. Last-minute shoppers continued around them. His regenerations were all different in face, in voice, even in personality, but the three she knew had one specific thing in common, and that was that he was always half a foot taller than her. She was always looking up at him and he was always looking down at her. Now was no different. “Let’s just snag this artifact before one of those bad things you obsess about on Christmas happens.”
The Doctor frowned. “Now you believe me.”
Gregory Brown’s apartment building was in sight within another five minutes walking. The building was equipped with a buzzing system for security purposes so that anyone who wanted in had to be buzzed up by a building’s occupant for the door to unlock. Though this obstacle would have been easily bypassed with the help of the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, when they approached someone was coming out of the building in such a rush (muttering something about a Christmas chicken) that they didn’t check to see the door lock behind them, so Eleanor and the Doctor were able to enter the building as if they lived there. The apartment itself was on the third floor and was locked as expected, but Eleanor had a non-sonic solution to that she had been eager to try out.
“Hold this,” Eleanor said, placing her bag in the Doctor’s arms. He made no protest. She unzipped the bag—a somewhat heavy leather thing that always had inside it whatever she needed at that moment (don’t ask how or even point it out; remarking on it jinxes the bag’s effects) that was a relatively new addition to her travels in the TARDIS—and began to rifle through it.
When she pulled out an old key that certainly wouldn’t fit in the lock, the Doctor questioned, “And what is that?”
“It’s the original skeleton key. Well, one of them. It opens any lock—on Earth, at least,” she conceded as an afterthought, having not tested the key on another planet. This was her first time using it at all, actually. She was wary trying it out, but when the edge of the key touched the lock it morphed and molded until it fit inside perfectly and something clicked. She smiled triumphant and pushed the door open. “I bet it even opens doors made of wood.” The teasing comment was met with a weary glance from the Doctor. Eleanor wasn’t fazed. “One of these days you’ll have to explain to me why the sonic doesn’t do wood.”
(Of course, he’d have to have the answer to that question himself in order to tell her.)
The place itself was a little bit of a mess. Most of it was clearly the consequences of a young man living alone, like the dishes piled up in the sink or the overflowing trash bin, but some of the drawers were open and there were pillows sprawled all around the floor and a framed photograph of a king cobra on the wall was crooked. It could have been just the normal state of the place, yes, but more likely in Gregory’s last days he felt as if he was losing his mind—which he was, really—and this was just the inevitable conclusion of the tornado sweeping through his mind and leaving destruction in its wake. The only thing that appeared not to have been touched was the Christmas tree beside the window. It was fully decorated for the season, shiny bulbs all over it, but the lights were off. It made it look dull. But clearly nobody had begun to clear out his things, which meant the ornaments were still here. An easy snag.
“I don’t suppose that card you made includes a photograph of these ‘lonely ornaments.’”
“That would make it easy,” Eleanor remarked, and in return the Doctor just threw her a plain look. She tilted her head and took her bag back from him. “Of course I took a photograph. Who do you think I am?”
Eleanor set the bag down on a nearby chair, which itself was covered with clothes and pillows and what looked like at least two different brands of discarded chocolate bar wrappers, and searched through it again. She found the purple neutralizing gloves relatively easy—wearing them would prevent any of the artifact’s effects from, well, taking effect—and gave him a pair, keeping another pair for herself. Then she found the card she had made, glanced from the photograph of the ornaments in the Warehouse’s Aisle of Noel to the tree, and decided to prop it up in the branches for easy reference. Then the search began. This was the boring part, though. So conversation was made.
“How would Gregory have gotten this artifact?” the Doctor inquired, snapping the cuff of one of the gloves against his inner wrist. Always with the dramatics.
“I don’t know,” Eleanor answered truthfully, though she had thought up a few theories. How did artifacts usually wind up in the possession of the average person? “If the rumors are all over the country, clearly they travel. And they don’t usually stay in a place long enough to affect more than one person. Ten people confirmed dead because of them over the last eighty years. It must have been in an attic or a back room or something for a while.”
“Where was the first death?”
“Maryland, I think. No one realized he was gone until January. Christmas was the estimated time of death.”
“He died forgotten,” the Doctor murmured, voice low. Eleanor looked at him from across the tree. His face was partially obscured by some of the branches. “And alone.”
“That’s why current owners forget,” Eleanor realized softly. The twelve days it took for the artifact to claim a life—it must have taken twelve days for the very first victim’s body to be discovered. Even now, she didn’t know his name. She hadn’t thought to write it down on the card, nor any of the other victims aside from the one whose home they stood in. He was still forgotten to the world. How awful.
The Doctor met her gaze, and for a moment there was nothing but that. A wordless conversation, feelings conveyed through a simple lasting look that often became another part of their routine. It was said that a picture was worth a thousand words. A glance between them was worth even more than that.
Eleanor quietly cleared her throat and turned back to the tree, consulting the photograph again. The lonely ornaments were visually of a very common variety, red bulbs with gold embellishments in various styles. One was a simple trim like a garland; another was snowflakes; the final were stars. However, most of the ornaments on Gregory’s tree were of that same color scheme, which made locating the exact ones they were looking for all the more difficult.
The back of the tree, the side that faced the wall, was undecorated aside from the garland tossed around it lazily. It did considerably narrow their search area, which she considered a plus, though it didn’t necessarily make the search easier. A few times Eleanor thought she had found one, only to be disappointed when she realized it didn’t match any of the three bulbs in the picture.
It turned out to be the Doctor who located the first ornament, the one with snowflakes all over it. He announced the find with a simple statement, and Eleanor retrieved one of the foil neutralizing pouches (the gloves prevented the effects, but the bag lined with the Warehouse’s special artifact neutralizer would negate the effects entirely, which would decidedly end it) for it to go in.
“Okay, put it in,” Eleanor told him, opening the bag wide enough for it. The Doctor carefully pulled the snowflake bulb off the tree and dropped it into the bag, and out of instinct both turned away to avoid the glare of the inevitable sparks which accompanied the neutralization of an artifact. But there were no sparks, absolutely no sign that the artifact had been neutralized. It was unusual, to say the least, but not unheard of.
The Doctor straightened. “Well, that was disappointing.”
“It could be a paired artifact. It won’t neutralize until we put all three ornaments in together,” Eleanor suggested with a frown, and proceeded to make what would be the very poor decision to double-check that this ornament did indeed match the one in the photo just in case. She reached into the bag to pull it back out, but the hook of the ornament must have been sticking up at a funny angle because before she knew it something was stabbing her palm and she was hissing in pain, pulling her hand back out as if something had bit her.
“What happened?”
“The hook caught my glove,” she told him, and he immediately reached forward to take her hand and examine it. The glove had torn. There was a small dot of blood on her palm where the artifact had jabbed her. That was never good. “We need to find the other two ornaments.”
The Doctor glanced back at the tree. “That’s the only one here.”
“Are you sure?”
“The other two aren’t here.”
“They have to be here somewhere.”
“Where else would Christmas baubles be but on the tree?”
It would explain why it had taken so long to find the one, there being only one of the lonely ornaments on his tree. There went her assumption of an easy snag. It tracked, though; artifact snagging usually ended up being an elaborate scavenger hunt. But it begged the question—
“If they’re not here, then where are they?”
“Someone must have taken them.”
“Who steals ornaments from a dead man’s Christmas tree?”
“Let’s go back to the funeral and find out, shall we?”
Eleanor’s frown deepened hearing his suggestion, and she checked the time on the wall clock and tried to recall the times she had read on the funeral program. “The service is over. The wake’s starting,” she said, but the Doctor merely raised a brow at her as he pulled off his gloves and headed toward the door. “Oh, we’re about to crash a wake.”
Something was hazy.
It was like Eleanor had gotten a bump on her head, but she couldn’t recall what had happened to give her that bump. Her head was pounding for no reason and her thoughts were all cloudy and it was getting difficult to stay focused on what they were doing. If—if she were honest, she couldn’t quite recall much of anything the past few minutes. Maybe more than a few? Couldn’t quite recall the past hour, really. She knew she was standing in the home of a dead man’s brother and she knew that they were at a wake uninvited, and she knew that the fact that her feet were hurting meant she had done a fair amount of walking today, but other than that?
“Um, what are we looking for?”
“Someone who was in his home after he died.”
“Right,” Eleanor murmured with a small nod, feeling entirely stupid that she had even had to ask. Wasn’t she the whole reason they were here in the first place? Her friend, what was his—oh, the Doctor (why had it taken her a moment to remember his name?). The Doctor had yet to fully lift his close eye on her (did he always look at her like that or was this new? It felt new) but he had taken a pause from watching her warily to scan the room full of mourners. “Who would that be?”
“Friends. Family.” The Doctor’s ever-observant gaze came to a stop on a vaguely familiar man by a snacks table who looked perpetually befuddled. Oh, the dead man’s brother, wasn’t it? Stanley? Steve? Stephen! At the precise moment Eleanor remembered his name, and she was for some reason both quite proud of herself and ashamed it had once again taken so long, the Doctor made a quick and long stride across the room to approach the brother with no warning, and she hurried to catch up with him. “Hello. Remember us?”
Stephen showed no recognition of either of them. “No. Sorry. Have we met?”
“Ah, memory issues. Perfect,” the Doctor remarked to her, perhaps just a bit too pleased to hear it. Eleanor glanced up at him, he was half a foot taller than her, but said nothing. “This is your home, yes? Where’s your Christmas tree?”
“What?”
“Never mind. We’ll find it.”
With that, the Doctor promptly but gently took Eleanor’s arm and led her out of the room in search of the house’s Christmas tree. At least Eleanor was able to remember what one of those looked like, but her pounding head got even worse when she struggled to remember why he was so interested in the Christmas tree. It seemed like something she should have remembered and it was on the tip of her tongue—oh, why was he so pleased to hear about there being memory issues?—and it was killing her that all she was coming up with in her mind was a blank screen. There were no words, only the blurry image of a evergreen tree decorated all in lights and red and green and gold. The funniest thing about it all was that she smelled some sort of confection like fudge that she couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, and it gave her the most oddly dreadful feeling. She didn’t think she liked the smell of fudge.
Even in his seemingly-eternal confusion, Stephen seemed to have a few more questions for them and made to follow them through his own house like a baby duck would, earning inquiring glances from those they passed by in such a hurry. He was quick on his feet and right behind them, nearly running into their backs when the Doctor spotted the tree they were searching for in the den, but questioned immediately, “Who are you?”
Eleanor’s brows furrowed. “Sorry, do you smell fudge?”
The subtle cautious look the Doctor gave her, the same he’d been giving her since the last Christmas tree they were standing around, went unnoticed as Stephen agreed, “You know, I do smell fudge.” (A note: no one knew why, but the smell of fudge when there wasn’t any signified that an artifact was at play.) “But who are you people? Did you know—did you know…” Stephen trailed off, eyes screwed shut. He shook his head. “Sorry, I…I can’t remember why I’m here.”
The Doctor faced him and said very seriously, “It’s your brother’s wake. And to honor him, you’ve stolen two of these Christmas bulbs from his home. Now you’re suffering from the same thing that killed him unless we stop it first.” He said not a word more on the subject and faced the tree again, and then he added to Eleanor, “Let me see the card again.”
Eleanor wished she had known what he meant. “What?”
“The card, with the photo. It’s in your bag,” the Doctor reminded her, voice low and gentle. Oh. Oh, right, the—the card with the photo. In her bag. She exhaled shakily and nodded, reaching into the bag in her hands to find it. There was an index card with a photograph of Christmas ornaments like the ones on the tree laying on the very top, easy to find. If only everything else felt as easy. She took the card and offered it to him, but he asked her instead, “Are you okay?”
How familiar that question sounded. “I feel like you ask me that a lot.”
The Doctor kept his gaze upon her for another long moment, as if he were seeing through her and seeing everything she was, and then he took the card from her. He held the card in one hand and with the other pulled a single purple glove from his pocket, and after a moment of scanning the tree he found what he was looking for, a red bulb with a gold garland-like trim, and used the glove to pull it off—notably avoiding touching anywhere the hook. Her headache worsened when she saw it.
“Here’s the second. None of the others here match the last one in the photo,” he said, reaching into her still-open bag for another, much much smaller one made of foil that had something spherical already in it. He turned back to the brother, who was holding a hand to his temple as if he’d been afflicted with a headache the same as she had. “You. Where’s the third one? Is there another tree around here, maybe?”
“No, it’s just that one,” he answered, but wore a frown the whole time. “I think.”
“Where’s the third bulb you took from your brother’s tree? This is a set of three. He only had one, you have another. There’s one missing. Where is it?”
Stephen shook his head helplessly again, and it became clear even to her that this line of questioning was going to lead them nowhere. The Doctor was visibly frustrated and opened the bag he’d taken from her to drop the bulb in, and inside it thudded against something else. She didn’t know why she had expected for something to happen when he did that. A sudden image of indoor fireworks had entered her mind and she couldn’t shake it. She also couldn’t shake the feeling that something was horribly, horribly wrong with her.
“Isn’t that the ornament Gregory gave you?” a new voice inquired. The three of them turned at the same moment to see that another young man was approaching them, he couldn't have been that much younger than her, with a wine glass in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. “Why are you taking it? Who are you?”
The Doctor merely raised a brow at his words. “Gregory gave it to him?”
“It was a pair. He bought them at a pawn shop earlier this month. He showed it to me,” the funeral guest explained, though he was clearly wary about it. She closed her eyes and raised a hand to her temple, willing her headache to go away. “He said he thought it represented the two of them growing up with just each other. He gave the other to Stephen a few days before he died. He didn’t seem like himself the last time I saw him.”
“There wasn’t a third?”
“No, just two.”
“Where’s this shop?”
“It was by his place. I don’t know the name.”
“Fantastic. The third is there,” her friend muttered to her, looking down at her expectantly like he thought she would have anything to say in return. But she had nothing to say, nothing she thought she could have said or should have said. She didn’t know he was looking at her until he said the name. “Eleanor.”
The way he said the name, it was like he was asking a question, another are you okay? or perhaps a what’s wrong? But she had a question of her own. She met his eyes and shook her head and said regretfully, because she knew more than anything else that this was a question she knew she should have already had the answer to, “Sorry, um, who’s Eleanor?”
His demeanor changed entirely. “Come with me.”
He took her hand in his and led her all the way through the house again. He didn’t have to drag her, she did indeed go with him willingly because there was something about him that felt safe and trustworthy. At the speed he was walking she did stumble once or twice, but he held onto her hand so tightly that she didn’t fall and if she had it would have been straight into his arms. Eleanor…what a familiar name…it was hers, wasn’t it? Eleanor. Eleanor. Eleanor. Who’s Eleanor? She was Eleanor.
Eleanor trailed slightly behind him on the way out. She thought it was a consequence of their height difference. It didn’t feel like it was the first time they were in this position, because she was used to it. How strange that she felt so used to it when she couldn’t remember a time when they had done this before. When she couldn’t remember what she had even had for breakfast this morning.
Her friend pulled them both to a stop once they were outside the house and spun around, pulling something from his pocket that looked like some kind of mutated screwdriver. She was certain screwdrivers weren’t supposed to make the buzzing sound that it did when he pointed it at her, and if they were it wasn’t supposed to sound so oddly…peaceful. He only pointed it for a few seconds, and then he looked at it directly as if it would have some kind of information to tell him.
“What’s that?”
He didn’t answer the question. “It’s in your bloodstream.”
“What’s in my bloodstream?”
“It must have happened when the hook pricked you,” he said. Her hand suddenly stung. When she looked, there was a bandage on her palm. How had that gotten there? “You’re losing your memory. I noticed it earlier. It’s taking effect faster than it should be, you should have had more time. If it’s happening this quickly, you might have less than a day. Maybe just a few hours. We’ll have to find the third bulb and neutralize it.”
“What happens if we don’t find it?”
“You die.”
“Oh, that’s reassuring.” Eleanor’s response to his blunt answer—he seemed like someone who gave blunt answers more often than not—came out like she was out of breath, and her heart had started to pick up its beat. It was a horrifying thought. Dying without her memories, without knowing who she was. Who he was. “No, wait, I don’t—I don’t even know—”
“Eleanor…” Her name on his tongue trailed off as he stepped toward her. He looked at her like he was trying to keep himself collected, but his voice betrayed his concern. He sounded like he already knew what she was going to say. “Do you know who I am?”
“Um…I—I know that you’re someone important to me. I can’t remember your name or why.”
She didn’t know someone could have as much pain in their eyes as he did when she said that. It was like his heart (hearts, plural, something in the back of her mind corrected) had been broken by something so simple. How could she not remember his name? She knew she trusted this man before her implicitly, trusted him with her life, and yet she had no idea what they had gone through for this trust to be so strong that she still felt it even now.
He stared at her for a very long moment. The look on him, the sadness in the way he looked at her, made her own heart break. He nodded his head. “I’m the Doctor,” he introduced himself, a subtle ache to his words. When she asked doctor who, he continued, “Just the Doctor. You and I have been…friends,” there was a pause before the word like he wasn’t sure if it was the right one to use, “for a very long time. We travel together. And I’m going to make sure you remember all of this. I need you to trust me.”
“I trust you,” Eleanor said immediately. Doctor, Doctor, Doctor. What a wonderful name. What a wonderful man. She wished she remembered why, hoped he would keep his promise. “I don’t know why, but I trust you.”
The Doctor reached for her hand again. He was far softer this time. “Don’t let go.”
“I won’t,” Eleanor promised.
Eleanor kept repeating his name over and over again in her mind, desperate not to forget it again. Doctor, Doctor, Doctor. He had yet to let go of her hand on the walk through the city, kept her close to his side even though she knew somehow that she could lose her recollection of the past half hour and she still wouldn’t leave him. Doctor, Doctor, Doctor. They kept looking at each other throughout it all, occasionally catching each other’s eye at the same moment, and every time they did she was struck by how much care and love and worry he seemed to hold for her. Doctor, Doctor, Doctor.
The Doctor was patient with her and all her questions. He explained as much to her as she could understand in her state and she wasn’t quite sure she heard it all right, but she understood that something was wrong with her and that he knew how to fix it, and that therefore, they were on a little holiday scavenger hunt. He had been surprised when she called it a scavenger hunt. She surmised it was a phrase she used before, back when she had her head on straight.
The scavenger hunt led them to a pawn shop where the ornaments that were apparently doing this to her were sold. It was the only such shop within half a mile of the first victim’s home (the one with the funeral), therefore it was the only possibility for where he had gotten the ornaments from. The shop was empty save for one person, a man behind the counter who looked like he was closing up for the day.
“Hello. I’m the Doctor, this is Eleanor. Isn’t she lovely?” the Doctor said as if introducing her in that way was second-nature. She blinked in surprise, but had not a second to dwell on it when he let go of her hand to draw a leather wallet from his pocket and flash it at the man behind the counter. When she looked, it was a some sort of investigator identification paper. How strange. “We need to discuss some recent purchases that have taken place here.”
The owner squinted at the paper. “There’s nothing illegal going on here.”
“Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?” The Doctor absentmindedly ran his fingers over the shade of a dusty lamp. “You sold a pair of Christmas bulbs to Gregory Brown two weeks ago. It was a set of three. I need the third one.”
“For what?”
“Official reasons.”
“It’s Christmas. We’ve sold more than a few ornaments.”
“I’m looking for the one that you didn’t sell to Gregory Brown.” The Doctor reached into the bag Eleanor was carrying and took out a small card with writing and photographs on it, facing the side with the photo toward the owner. “Look. It was a set of three. You sold these two. Where’s the third one?”
The owner looked closely at the card, squinting even more, and nodded. “I remember. He only wanted two.”
“Good, good. And the third one is still here?”
“No. Sold it three days ago.”
The Doctor’s frustration upon hearing that was palpable, and Eleanor would admit she felt a strong annoyance bubbling in her chest. As if this couldn’t have gotten any worse, the final ornament was even further out of their reach than before. Her description of this being an elaborate scavenger hunt sounded more and more accurate with each second that passed.
“To whom?” the Doctor asked, astonishingly managing to relatively keep his cool despite it all. Eleanor was a little impressed, admittedly. She didn’t know if she would have done the same if her head was right.
“Can’t tell you that,” the owner said, which appeared to be precisely the wrong thing to say at the moment. Eleanor watched in real-time, in a matter of milliseconds, the Doctor’s calm completely vanish. It came in the blink of an eye. “It’s shop policy. Can’t break it.”
The Doctor stepped closer. Perhaps fortunately, the glass counter still separated them from the pawn shop owner, who simply stared like this wasn’t the first time he’d been in a situation like this. “Listen to me. A woman’s life is at stake—”
The owner looked doubtful. “Over Christmas ornaments?”
“Yes. I need to know who bought the final ornament and where I can find them because their life is in danger, too. More importantly, she is going to die,” he gestured to her, voice growing gruffer, “and I won’t lose her.”
Eleanor did not know what it was about the way he said it, but it gave her the feeling that even if she remembered who they were to each other she still would have been so struck as she was now hearing it. He didn’t seem like someone who would often be so forthcoming about his feelings. He seemed so reserved, sometimes like he was afraid of losing something, and now she knew what it was. Her. He was afraid he would lose her.
But this way of information gathering clearly was not getting them anywhere. The owner was firm in his ways and was not going to give up the name of the person who bought the final ornament, and though Eleanor couldn’t quite tell what the Doctor was thinking, she decided to take the initiative herself. She went around the corner and lightly nudged the owner out of the way to look in the box he had been organizing when they came in. She was relieved to see that they were receipts from the shop. Now she just had to find the right one.
The owner looked back and forth between them. “What are you doing? What is she doing?”
“Eleanor…” the Doctor began carefully.
The receipts were ordered by descending date. “Um, what’s today’s date?”
“Christmas Eve,” the Doctor answered her question, and the owner threw his hands in the air incredulously and started mumbling something that was unintelligible but sounded vaguely like a long string of curses. “Twenty-fourth of December.”
“So three days ago, that’s the twenty-first of December, isn’t it?” Eleanor flipped through the receipts, trying to ignore the owner’s continued insulting mumbles. There were no receipts for the twenty-fourth, today, but there were ones for the twenty-third, twenty-second, and twenty-first. Only a handful from that day. Only one mentioned an ornament sale. She handed that receipt across the counter to the Doctor. “Here you go.”
“You can’t do that,” the owner scoffed.
“Well, I—I think I just have.”
“Hey, lady—”
The owner grabbed hold of her upper arm before she could turn away. For a reason she did not know, Eleanor found herself frozen on the spot. She stilled as if she were a statue. Her heart stopped for a moment, and then quickened its pace again. Her breath caught in her throat. She didn’t try to escape his grip. Why didn’t she try to get out of his grip?
When the Doctor spoke, there was a warning hidden in his words. “Let go of her.”
“She just stole from me.”
“No, I just stole from you.” The Doctor didn’t waste another breath before reaching forward to grab the box of shop receipts off the counter, and then he turned it upside down and emptied it all over the floor. The owner’s grip on her arm loosened entirely. Eleanor stumbled away from him, somehow managing to make it back around the counter. “Oh, that’s a mess. You should clean that up.”
Before Eleanor realized it, the Doctor was holding her hand in his again and pulling her toward the door and out of the shop, back onto the rainy streets of, what was it, Seattle? The owner yelled after them, something about reporting them to their supervisors, whoever he believed those to be. Eleanor wasn’t sure he’d get very far with that.
“I know where the third bulb is,” the Doctor said to her. “We’ll take the TARDIS.”
Eleanor stared after him. “The what?”
The rain kept coming down, down, down. Her head was pounding, screaming at her remember, remember, remember! And yet with each distant thunderclap and each flash of lightning as the holiday storm picked up, it was getting harder and harder to remember…to remember anything. Couldn’t remember what her friend’s name was now no matter how hard she tried. Couldn't remember what city they were in or why they were here or where they were going in a storm like this. Couldn’t remember how old she was or where she was from or what she was called. There was just nothing, except for one thing: her trust and faith in him. She still had that. And she wanted so desperately to know why, more than she thought she had ever wanted to know anything.
“Why have you stopped? The TARDIS is this way.”
“Am I going to die?”
Her question looked to have caught him unawares. He stood about three feet in front of her, having doubled back when she let go of his hand just moments ago, but after a moment of staring at her with a fallen face he took another step forward to close it to just one foot. Even when she found the intensity of his gaze too much and had to look away from him, he didn’t look anywhere else but her.
“No,” he said. She wished she believed him. “You’re not going to die.”
“Are you sure? Because you’re walking fast and—and you’re talking fast and you—you—you keep looking at me like…like you’re making sure I’m still here,” she stammered out. He was still looking at her like that now. It broke her heart and she didn’t know why. “I—I don’t know who you are. I don’t know why I trust you. I can’t…I can’t remember my own name. I don’t even know who I am!”
Her voice wavered and shook and broke and finally the composure and sense of togetherness she had been trying to keep despite it all shattered. Every last memory she tried to cling to faded away, every single name she tried so hard to remember vanished. She was unable to keep her sobs at bay anymore. Oh, she was so lonely. Had she ever been this lonely before? Had anyone?
She sat down on the rainy curb and buried her face in her hands to muffle her cries, hardly able to stand looking at his heartache anymore when her own was drowning her. His was only killing her faster. Another thunderclap boomed. The storm was getting closer. He waited a moment. Then he sat beside her on the curb, a mere few inches from her, but he did not say anything at first. She felt his eyes on her just as she had for as long as she could remember of that day. Did he always look at her like this?
“Your name is Eleanor Graziella Aquino Huerta,” he spoke after a minute had passed. It had been a minute of quiet, of sobs, of rain. She did not look at him. His tone was heavy. “Your mother was Spanish-born, but she immigrated with her family to Cuba when she was an infant. She was a teacher. Your father was Italian. He was a historian. He named you for Eleanor of Aquitaine. You didn’t have a good childhood. No child should go through the things you did. But you survived.
“You speak four languages. You’ve never told me which one the TARDIS translates into for you. Your favorite color is pink, your favorite flowers are tulips. You love art. Particularly the impressionist movement. We met Vincent van Gogh once, you were struck speechless so many times I almost forgot what your voice sounds like.” He almost laughed there. Almost. But she heard the smile in his voice. “Your favorite painting is Monet’s Water Lilies, any of them, all of them. You say it calms you just to look at them.”
Eleanor lowered her hands from her face but still didn’t turn to him. She was still crying. It was just silently this time, quiet tears that mixed together with the falling rain coming down her face and turning her red. Oh, it was so cold. But he was so warm. His voice, his words, his face.
“You have grief. Oh, you have grief inside you that could drown galaxies. But the love in your heart, the light that shines in your eyes even in your darkest times—it could birth stars,” he said, taking her hands in his. And she looked at him now, properly looked at him through her tears, and she swore the stars he spoke of were in his eyes. “Create entire worlds.” He held their hands close to his chest. His final words carried in them hesitance, like he had never said such a thing to her so directly before, and faith that nothing could prove him wrong at the very same time. “Bring me back to life with just a glance.”
Her mouth quivered. “Who am I to you that you can say all those things like that? Who are you to me?”
“I’m the Doctor. Your Doctor,” he said simply, as if it explained everything. It did. Doctor, Doctor, Doctor. Her Doctor. His grip on her tightened. “And you…are my Eleanor. And you, Eleanor Aquino, are not going to die. I’m going to save you.”
The determined, almost mischievous, glint to the Doctor’s eye didn’t disappear (something told her that it never really did) as he abruptly pulled her up from the curb. A surprised yelp fell out of Eleanor’s mouth but she didn’t protest his actions, and instead allowed him to take her to wherever they were heading in the first place. She still couldn’t remember where exactly that was, but she knew that after everything he had just said it was somewhere safe.
“Where are we going?”
“To the TARDIS,” the Doctor said, which did absolutely nothing to answer her question. She threw him a confused, incredulous look, but trusted that the answer would soon become obvious. Another two minutes and it did, because they came to an intersection where there was some sort of strange blue box that said police on it and he went straight towards it. He snapped his fingers once, and the door opened despite him being a solid six feet away from it. He had let go of her hand and was halfway in the box when he turned back to her. “Come on.”
Eleanor laughed nervously. “Um, I don’t think we’ll both fit in there.”
The Doctor extended his hand. “Do you still trust me?”
Eleanor did not hesitate to take his hand.
He pulled her inside the box with him, but let go of her after he had closed the door back and left her standing at the door. The very act made her furrow her brows and she turned to ask him where he was going in such a small space, but her words died the moment she saw the interior of the box. The place was massive, far, far greater in size than the exterior could have ever suggested. It didn’t even look as if this was the true extent of it, because she saw at least two other doorways from where she stood and when she stepped further in she saw another. There was no end in sight. The box, what she had seen out on the street, it can’t have been more than ten feet tall and maybe five feet on each side but the inside was—oh, she didn’t even have the words for it. Well, she had a few words.
“It’s bigger on the inside,” Eleanor breathed in awe.
“I’d enjoy that if it were anyone but you.” The Doctor had gone to some sort of console thing in the middle of the room and Eleanor slowly made her way to him, spinning around in an attempt to fully take in the place. It was wonderful, just pure wonder. Endless wonder. “Right, let’s find that third bauble.”
The Doctor pulled one of the levers and in an instant some sort of oddly familiar ‘vworp!’ noise sounded throughout the room. The very sound startled her enough that she stumbled and she grabbed hold of the edge of the console to stay standing. The sound lasted for a few seconds, at least ten but maybe as much as thirty. Then everything settled and he made his way toward the door, beckoning her to follow.
She wasn’t sure what she expected to see when she stepped out of the box. Maybe the street corner they’d entered it on, but then what was the point of the box? Regardless of whatever may have been on the list, she was certain that a random suburban kitchen was not on it at all. Yet that’s precisely what she laid eyes upon when she followed him out. How…?
“We’ve moved,” Eleanor realized. She couldn’t fathom it. “Have we moved?”
“Yes, we have,” the Doctor said. He didn’t explain what had happened beyond that. She looked at him hoping he might say more, but he wasn’t looking at her at all. Oh. They had somehow gotten to a family’s kitchen. There was a child, no more than three years old, playing with a wooden snake toy on the floor and the child’s mother and father were previously occupied cooking together. All three were staring at the pair as if they had two heads. “Hello. Would you mind directing us to your Christmas tree?”
“Who are you?” said the father, while the mother tightened her grip on the knife in her hand. Eleanor stepped slightly behind the Doctor. “I’m calling the police.”
“No need for that.” The Doctor once again drew the leather wallet from his pocket and showed it to them, all the while holding his arm out to push Eleanor even further behind him. He was trying to protect her from the mother’s knife should she come at them. “Just need to take a look at your tree and we’ll be on our way.”
“Christmas tree inspectors?” the mother read with a scoff. “That’s not even real.”
“Of course it’s real, I’ve got identification,” the Doctor said dismissively, pocketing the wallet again. Had the very same paper not before said investigator? Curiouser and curiouser was he. Eleanor looked around the kitchen and saw the reflection of twinkling lights in a framed photograph in the next room. Some sort of soft, dreadful humming caught her ears. Something peaceful at first, but the longer she listened the more it drove her mad, like the sound of nails on a chalkboard. Completely oblivious of her distraction, he added to the child, “We’re from the North Pole.”
That sound, that horrible sound, she couldn’t help but follow it. It grew louder and louder as she stepped through the doorway in search of the source, and with each fall of her foot the weaker she felt. Like her legs would give out at any moment, like her heart was pounding so quickly she couldn’t hear her own thoughts, like it was getting harder to catch her breath. The awful hum came from the decorated tree in the corner of the room, wrapped presents gathered all around it. It smelled like pine and fudge and cinnamon. A tree indoors, how funny was that.
He followed her. “Eleanor?”
“It’s humming. The tree is humming,” she murmured. “Why is the tree humming?”
“It’s not the tree.”
She looked at him. A stranger to her. Lightning flashed. “Who are you?”
No sooner had the words left her mouth did she fall.
The bag in her hands dropped to the floor. If he had not caught her in his arms, she would have hit the ground too and might have hit her head bad on the way down. But he did catch her, and he did keep saying the name Eleanor as he carried her over to the couch and laid her down, and he did brush her hair out of her face as she kept gasping for breath.
Oh, the pain—the pain was excruciating! It was as if her heart was being torn from her chest and she was being stabbed and smothered and drowned all at once. Burned alive and buried alive and bleeding out, and yet there was no blood or injury or anything other than the awful, torturous feeling inside her. This was death. How was death so familiar?
Everything around her was a blur. She could just barely make out his figure before her, looking down at her, but in a blink he had left her side and gone to the peculiar tree. He pulled one of the ornaments, something red with gold embellishments like stars on it, off the branch it had been on. Pine needles scattered on the carpet. He knelt beside the bag she had dropped and unzipped it. He pulled out a foil bag, opened it up, and dropped the ornament into it.
The bag sparked. It was like fireworks, small white flashes of electricity with no true origin or explanation. Some invisible force hit her in the chest when she noticed the sparks and in an instant the emptiness of her mind was replaced with a multitude of thoughts, of memories, of people. Doctor. TARDIS. Warehouse. Artifact. Eleanor. Eleanor. Eleanor!
Eleanor shot upright on the couch with a gasp, throwing a hand over her chest as if it would help her coughing and trying to regain her breath. Her legs didn’t feel quite up to standing yet, but it didn’t matter. Because she remembered—she remembered all of it! His name, who he was to her, who she was to him, and best of all, she knew her name. Eleanor Graziella Aquino Huerta—undoubtedly a mouthful of a name but it was hers.
“Eleanor?” The Doctor came back to her side. “Eleanor. Do you know who I am?”
“You’re the Doctor,” Eleanor answered lightly, still too weak to raise her voice any higher. The Doctor grinned. She’d never been so happy to see that smile. After all the aching she had seen in him during her troubles today, it was the most beautiful thing she thought she had ever seen. “I could never forget you.”
“How do you feel?”
“A little lightheaded. But alive.”
“I told you I’d save you.”
“You always do.”
Eleanor and the Doctor smiled at one another even while the storm continued on outside. There may have been nothing but clouds out there, but there was nothing but the sun here between them. She raised her hand to the side of his face and rubbed her thumb across his cheek, but before she could speak someone cleared their throat. Oh. Right. They were in some random family’s home on Christmas Eve. They should probably get back to the TARDIS and get out of here before the family actually did call the authorities on them or an ambulance for her after what they had just witnessed. Besides, they had an artifact to deliver.
At dawn on Christmas Day, 1961, in a bed and breakfast in an unincorporated little town in South Dakota, Rebecca St. Clair of Warehouse 13 woke to find a Christmas gift on her nightstand. It was neatly wrapped in festive paper befitting the holiday season and had a bow tied perfectly around it, and tucked underneath the bow was an envelope bearing her name. Inside that envelope was a letter written in a hand she was all too familiar with. This was far from the first letter she had received in this handwriting.
Dear Rebecca,
Feliz Navidad! Buon Natale! Merry Christmas! We found an artifact for you in Seattle yesterday. Enclosed are a set of three Christmas ornaments (“the lonely ornaments” if you will). They’ve been on the Warehouse’s want list for a few decades. The ornaments cause amnesia in the owners and twelve days after it begins, the owners die suddenly with no sign as to why. But well, I suppose you and I both know why, don’t we? Wishing you and Jack and the rest of the Warehouse a happy holiday and strength for the year ahead.
Love, E
(P.S — watch out for the hooks)
“Looks like our mysterious E has struck again,” Rebecca told Jack when she met him in the hallway that morning, holding the open gift in her arms. He was her partner in every sense of the word—her colleague, her best friend, her lover. Before Rebecca joined the Warehouse, it was he who had received letters and artifacts from E. When she joined the team, they all went to her instead. “I found this on my nightstand when I woke up. I don’t know how they got it there without me noticing.”
Jack took the letter when she offered it to him. “The lonely ornaments,” he read with raised brows. “Aisle of Noel artifact. ‘Tis the season, huh?”
“I should bring it over to the Warehouse so it can be put away.”
“It can wait a few hours, Rebecca. It’s Christmas. Who knows, we might just find ourselves under the mistletoe,” he suggested boldly, though in a hushed voice. No one knew about their relationship but them—except somehow for this anonymous E, who had alluded to it in two previous letters accompanying artifacts they had delivered since their relationship changed in August.
Rebecca bit the inside of her cheek, unable to resist such a proposal. “All right,” she agreed, putting the letter and the gift box with the artifact back in her room for now. “I just wish I knew who this E was. It’s not just one person, they’ve been delivering artifacts to the Warehouse for as long as the Warehouse has existed. That’s two thousand years, Jack. Someone’s been keeping the tradition going.”
It was snowing. The flakes were falling softly from the white sky, turning the quaint little bed and breakfast Eleanor and the Doctor were looking at from down the street into its own perfect winter wonderland. It was straight out of a snow globe, the way the lights twinkled on the snow and how through the frosted windows one could see the agents who occupied the house were opening presents on this enchanting Christmas morning. Everything that had happened in Seattle yesterday (well, more like just an hour ago for the two of them) seemed a distant memory now. But at least it was one Eleanor remembered.
“I have a question,” Eleanor spoke, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders even tighter around her as the snow kept falling around them. They were both leaning against the TARDIS, which was already covered in snow despite how little time it had actually been sitting there, to observe the aftermath of their trip and take a moment to breathe before moving on. “How did we know the artifact was in Seattle?”
“It was on the card,” the Doctor said.
“But why was it on the card? We knew it was Seattle because it was on the card, Rebecca knew it was snagged in Seattle because we left it for her, but how did we know it was in Seattle in the first place? Who knew first? Is time just a—a circle?”
“No, time is—” the Doctor began, but stopped short before he said anything else. Eleanor pressed her lips together and raised her brows at him, willing him to continue. Yes, she did indeed have an ulterior motive to her convoluted question, and he knew exactly what it was. “You just want me to say it.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m not saying it.”
“Please? For me.”
Her smile was one he had never quite been able to deny. He looked at her, pursed his lips, and said reluctantly, “Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey.” It was much to her happiness (and her happiness was always a priority of his) and her small, burgeoning smile broke out into a wide grin, and she laughed. His previous disinclination vanished almost immediately. “Did you enjoy that?”
She nodded vigorously. “Very much, thank you. And…thank you for saving me.”
“I won’t let any harm come to you. Ever.”
It was an empty vow, and they both knew that. If he could help it, of course he would never allow her to be hurt. He would do everything he could to protect her from even the smallest injury. But sometimes, he did not have a say in what the universe wanted to do to her. Sometimes he couldn’t stop her from being hurt. Sometimes he couldn’t save her. But he had saved her today, and today was all that mattered.
Eleanor leaned her head against his shoulder and adjusted the blanket again, watching pensively as the distant forms of Rebecca and Jack met underneath the mistletoe for a secret, romantic embrace. In six months Jack Secord would be dead. It was the only thing she hated about this mission she had undertaken, finding all these artifacts throughout history and delivering them safely to the Warehouse. She knew how all their stories ended. These two, they would never see their one-year anniversary together. They had no idea how short their time truly was.
While she was watching Jack and Rebecca, the Doctor was watching her. She was sad and wistful and she was thinking of lost time and memories that would never be made. Without saying a word, he pulled a single pink tulip from his pocket and held it in front of her. It was a fresh flower, as if it had just been plucked out of the ground.
Her sentimental smile brightened. “It’s December. Where did you get this from?”
“I have to keep a few secrets from you,” the Doctor said. Eleanor took the tulip from him, twirling it around between her fingers. Its perfume was sweet and strong. It was beautiful. He was wonderful. He had turned back around to face the bed and breakfast again, but he was watching her out of the corner of his eye. “Do you remember what happened?”
“Do I remember what happened when I was losing my memory?” Eleanor asked him, making sure it sounded as contradictory out loud as it had in her head. It made no sense, really, but at the very same time it was precisely what had happened. “I do. It’s lonely, not knowing who you are. Knowing that there are things you should know but the place in your head where it’s supposed to be is just empty. But those things you said, it kept me grounded. Even when I didn’t remember who you were, I knew you would keep me safe.”
Eleanor remembered every word he had said to her when she broke down on the curb. How he knew so much about her and so much of that she hadn’t even told him. He had observed her and made those conclusions on his own. He’d noticed how often she wore pink. He’d noticed that her bedroom at the present-day bed and breakfast always had tulips in it, whether they were fresh in the spring or made of fabric the rest of the year. He’d noticed that her own art, every painting and portrait she made, imitated the impressionists with broken light and quick brushstrokes and looked like she had painted from her dreams.
You have grief. Oh, you have grief inside you that could drown galaxies. But the love in your heart, the light that shines in your eyes even in your darkest times—it could birth stars. Create entire worlds. Bring me back to life with just a glance.
No one saw her quite like he did.
“Feliz Navidad, Doctor.”
“Feliz Navidad, Eleanor.”
It was getting far too cold to stay out here any longer. Conditions were rapidly worsening; this light snowstorm would be a blizzard in no time. The Doctor opened the door for her and Eleanor ducked underneath his arm to go inside. The TARDIS hummed as they entered. It was a much lovelier sound than the humming from the ornaments before they were neutralized in Seattle. It was like home.
“So, where to?” the Doctor asked.
“Somewhere quiet,” Eleanor answered.
“It’s been a while since we’ve been to Asgard.”
“It has.”
The Doctor looked across the console at her with a wicked glint to his eye and Eleanor’s face broke out into a wide grin as the TARDIS took flight through space and time. It always began like this. A simple inquiry, a lingering look, a promise of adventure. On to the next one, and onto every adventure after that.