Something About Stars (7/20)
Title - Something About Stars (7/20)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - OCs
Spoilers - I've started to think I may reference events without thinking, so, to be safe: Through the specials.
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids, they're all mine.)
Summary - Four Time Lords and a Bad Wolf human, gallivanting through time and space. What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Notes - Huge thanks to Kristin and chicklet73 , who talked through plot points. Special thanks to Kristin for coming up with the title. And even more thanks to jlrpuck and c73, who so graciously beta'd.
The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
Prologue - Ch 1 - Ch 2 - Ch 3 - Ch 4 - Ch 5
Chapter Six
“I just don’t think it’s working,” Athena told Lim. “It’s not you, it’s me.” Athena had broken up with a lot of creatures throughout the universe. Athena knew her lines.
Lim looked stricken.
Athena leaned across the table and took his hand and felt genuine regret. Why, she wondered, did she keep dating the wrong men? Wrong male beings, to be technically correct. “I’m sorry, Lim,” she said, honestly. “I really am. I wish…I wish…I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Lim said, although he clearly felt differently.
“Thanks,” Athena told him. “For everything.” Even as she said it, she wondered exactly what she was thanking him for. She had paid even less attention to her relationship with Lim than she normally did, thanks to the time skips. Why was she so terrible at this dating business? Why did she keep losing interest in the men she dated? Maybe she was just too young, in Time Lord years? Too young for any sort of serious commitment.
The world rocked around her, and Athena closed her eyes in resignation. When she opened them and looked at her watch, it was 47 minutes in the future. She looked at Lim, who was still looking at her with wide, sad eyes and had not noticed at all that he had just lost 47 minutes of his life.
“It was my pleasure,” he said, replying to something she’d said 47 bloody minutes earlier. This was getting ridiculous, she thought.
She waited through her dizziness, which extended the silly conversation an awkward amount of time, and then said, abruptly, when the world stopped spinning and the nausea had faded a bit, “Well. See you around.”
Lim looked startled out of whatever thoughts he’d been thinking in the silence she’d let grow while she’d recovered, and then said, vaguely, “Yeah, yeah,” and watched her leave.
She walked back to her TARDIS and stood, resigned, in the control room. She looked at the console, and thought how whatever Dad and Brem had done hadn’t worked. Maybe nothing would work. Maybe she would be fighting her way through time skips through the rest of her very long life.
She didn’t want , just yet, to go tell her parents that. She considered, then decided to drop in on Matt again. Poor Matt had had to deal with her hysteria, she owed him a calmer visit and a sincere thank you. She paused on Thhhhhhhhhhhmyr to pick up some of the Thhhhhhhhhhhmyrian fudge she knew he loved, lost three hours and 12 minutes while walking back to the TARDIS, and then landed in New Orleans.
The living room was deserted when she opened her TARDIS door. “Matt?” she called, heading for his kitchen. “I’ve brought you some Thhhhhhhhhhhmyrian fudge! I’ll stick it in the fridge.” She did stick it in the fridge, noting, as she did so, that his fridge was unusually well-stocked. “Hmm,” she commented, closing the door. The apartment was still silent, so she murmured to herself, “I will just leave you a note, then,” scrawling on the pad he kept on his fridge, “Thank-you treat in the fridge. -A.” Then she turned away from the fridge and jumped a mile, because a woman was standing in the doorway of Matt’s kitchen, staring at her in shock.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Who am I?” retorted Athena. “Who the hell are you?”
“How did you get in here? And where did that…” Her eyes flickered into the living room, and Athena knew she was looking at the TARDIS. “Thing come from?” She looked back at her.
Athena stared, wondering where she was in Matt’s timeline, what she’d done wrong here. “What’s the date?” she asked.
The girl looked annoyed. “I think you need to leave,” she said, crossing her arms.
“Where’s Matt?” asked Athena. “Does he still live here?”
Whatever the girl had been about to reply was cut off by the sound of the door opening, and Athena knew immediately that she had not gotten the timelines wrong, that Matt still lived here, and that this unknown human creature was just wandering unattended around Matt’s apartment.
The unknown human creature began, “Matt-” and then Matt hurried to the doorway, clearly having spotted the TARDIS and guessed the situation.
He looked at her. “Athena,” he said, and then turned back to the human girl. “I can explain,” he said.
“Oh, can you?” The human girl looked unimpressed. “I came out of the bedroom, and she was in your kitchen. Does she have a key, Matt?”
“No, she-”
“Then how did she get in here?”
“I’m an alien,” answered Athena, calmly. “I travel in my magical gray box through space and time.” She looked at Matt, expression hard. “And I was bringing you Thhhhhhhhhhhmyrian fudge to thank you, but now I think you don’t deserve any.” She swung open the refrigerator and grabbed her bundle of fudge.
“Athena,” he said.
“Oh, no, no need, Matthew. I understand everything perfectly clearly, don’t worry.” She stepped through the doorway, between him and the human, with a little sniff that she hoped sounded superior.
“I can explain everything, I swear,” she heard him say to the human, and then she heard him say, “Athena.”
She launched into a run, to beat him to her TARDIS, throwing herself inside and shutting the door quickly.
He pounded on it. “Open the door!” he shouted through it.
According to her father, the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn’t get through a TARDIS door. She’d never put that to the test but she sincerely hoped it was true.
And then, as she was walking away, she heard the unmistakable snick of a key from outside turning open the lock, and the door opened and Matt stepped through.
She frowned. “I forgot you had that key.” It had been her father’s idea, years ago, that, if they were going to involve Matt in their lives as much as they had, he needed a key to every TARDIS in existence, so that he would never be denied safety if he was in need of it. She stomped over to him and held out her hand. “Give that back to me.”
He ignored her, closing the door. “Brem didn’t tell you?”
“Brem didn’t tell me what?”
“About Kelly?”
“Kelly? Is her name Kelly? Oh, Matt, honestly?”
He frowned. “She’s my girlfriend.”
“Why should Brem have told me about your girlfriend? Isn’t that your job?”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “Yes. Possibly. But you weren’t exactly in a good place the last time you were here to-”
“I was in a good place! I was in an excellent place! I am always in an excellent place!”
He paused. “Right. Anyway, the thing is that, you can’t really drop by unannounced anymore, you can’t-”
“Drop by unannounced? Drop by unannounced? Oh, don’t worry, Matt, I will not be dropping by any way anymore.”
“You have,” he snapped, “absolutely zero right to be angry at me right now.”
“I have every right to be angry! I went to your kitchen to leave you a nice gift-” She shook the bag of fudge-“and instead I had to talk to a human girl named Kelly.”
“You have a different boyfriend every week.”
“Exactly! Exactly! As a matter of fact, I just broke up with one.”
“Don’t worry, Theenie, I’m sure you’ll have another one before the sound of this TARDIS de-materializing entirely fades from my living room.”
“Don’t call me ‘Theenie.’ You don’t get to call me ‘Theenie’ anymore. As a matter of fact…” She dropped the bag of fudge and reached past him, opened the door, and walked, primly, out into his living room and over to his entertainment center. The human girl named Kelly watched her, mouth gaping open, clearly too astonished to speak. “I,” Athena announced to Matt, “am taking back all of my DVDs.” She pulled them off the shelf, piling them in her arms and turning back to him.
He was leaning against the doorjamb of her open TARDIS door, watching her, looking completely unamused. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I? You won’t think so when you never get to find out how Lifestyles of Single F’yns’uhousn’houg in the Big City ends.” She paused as she drew even to him and looked him in the eye. “And let me tell you, it’s spectacular.” She walked past him into the TARDIS.
He slammed the door behind her. “Fine,” he retorted. “Then I am going to delete Gossip Girl from my DVR.”
“Do it. As you may have noticed, I have a time machine, so I already know how it ends. I only watched it with you because I thought you liked watching it with me. But it’s fine.” She turned away from him and dumped her armful of DVDs-which weren’t really all DVDs, but an assortment of many different future technologies-onto the captain’s chair. “You can watch it with Kelly now.” He was silent for so long that she thought he’d actually left the TARDIS without her knowing. She turned to him. “What? Nothing to say?”
He was watching her, and there was something in his deep hazel eyes. Something that was not anger. Something else that made her breath stumble inside of her.
“Athena,” he said, softly. “I don’t have centuries. I have decades. I have…I have decades.”
She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what she could say. She watched him turn away from her, reach for her TARDIS door. “I can’t come back, Matt,” she said, suddenly, knowing it with a certainty at that moment.
“Yeah,” he said, without looking at her, and then stepped through the door and shut it behind him.
She stood, for a long moment, in her control room, hearing the sound of her own harsh breaths off the coral struts. Then she spun herself out into the Vortex.
Next Chapter
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - OCs
Spoilers - I've started to think I may reference events without thinking, so, to be safe: Through the specials.
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids, they're all mine.)
Summary - Four Time Lords and a Bad Wolf human, gallivanting through time and space. What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Notes - Huge thanks to Kristin and chicklet73 , who talked through plot points. Special thanks to Kristin for coming up with the title. And even more thanks to jlrpuck and c73, who so graciously beta'd.
The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
Prologue - Ch 1 - Ch 2 - Ch 3 - Ch 4 - Ch 5
Chapter Six
“I just don’t think it’s working,” Athena told Lim. “It’s not you, it’s me.” Athena had broken up with a lot of creatures throughout the universe. Athena knew her lines.
Lim looked stricken.
Athena leaned across the table and took his hand and felt genuine regret. Why, she wondered, did she keep dating the wrong men? Wrong male beings, to be technically correct. “I’m sorry, Lim,” she said, honestly. “I really am. I wish…I wish…I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Lim said, although he clearly felt differently.
“Thanks,” Athena told him. “For everything.” Even as she said it, she wondered exactly what she was thanking him for. She had paid even less attention to her relationship with Lim than she normally did, thanks to the time skips. Why was she so terrible at this dating business? Why did she keep losing interest in the men she dated? Maybe she was just too young, in Time Lord years? Too young for any sort of serious commitment.
The world rocked around her, and Athena closed her eyes in resignation. When she opened them and looked at her watch, it was 47 minutes in the future. She looked at Lim, who was still looking at her with wide, sad eyes and had not noticed at all that he had just lost 47 minutes of his life.
“It was my pleasure,” he said, replying to something she’d said 47 bloody minutes earlier. This was getting ridiculous, she thought.
She waited through her dizziness, which extended the silly conversation an awkward amount of time, and then said, abruptly, when the world stopped spinning and the nausea had faded a bit, “Well. See you around.”
Lim looked startled out of whatever thoughts he’d been thinking in the silence she’d let grow while she’d recovered, and then said, vaguely, “Yeah, yeah,” and watched her leave.
She walked back to her TARDIS and stood, resigned, in the control room. She looked at the console, and thought how whatever Dad and Brem had done hadn’t worked. Maybe nothing would work. Maybe she would be fighting her way through time skips through the rest of her very long life.
She didn’t want , just yet, to go tell her parents that. She considered, then decided to drop in on Matt again. Poor Matt had had to deal with her hysteria, she owed him a calmer visit and a sincere thank you. She paused on Thhhhhhhhhhhmyr to pick up some of the Thhhhhhhhhhhmyrian fudge she knew he loved, lost three hours and 12 minutes while walking back to the TARDIS, and then landed in New Orleans.
The living room was deserted when she opened her TARDIS door. “Matt?” she called, heading for his kitchen. “I’ve brought you some Thhhhhhhhhhhmyrian fudge! I’ll stick it in the fridge.” She did stick it in the fridge, noting, as she did so, that his fridge was unusually well-stocked. “Hmm,” she commented, closing the door. The apartment was still silent, so she murmured to herself, “I will just leave you a note, then,” scrawling on the pad he kept on his fridge, “Thank-you treat in the fridge. -A.” Then she turned away from the fridge and jumped a mile, because a woman was standing in the doorway of Matt’s kitchen, staring at her in shock.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Who am I?” retorted Athena. “Who the hell are you?”
“How did you get in here? And where did that…” Her eyes flickered into the living room, and Athena knew she was looking at the TARDIS. “Thing come from?” She looked back at her.
Athena stared, wondering where she was in Matt’s timeline, what she’d done wrong here. “What’s the date?” she asked.
The girl looked annoyed. “I think you need to leave,” she said, crossing her arms.
“Where’s Matt?” asked Athena. “Does he still live here?”
Whatever the girl had been about to reply was cut off by the sound of the door opening, and Athena knew immediately that she had not gotten the timelines wrong, that Matt still lived here, and that this unknown human creature was just wandering unattended around Matt’s apartment.
The unknown human creature began, “Matt-” and then Matt hurried to the doorway, clearly having spotted the TARDIS and guessed the situation.
He looked at her. “Athena,” he said, and then turned back to the human girl. “I can explain,” he said.
“Oh, can you?” The human girl looked unimpressed. “I came out of the bedroom, and she was in your kitchen. Does she have a key, Matt?”
“No, she-”
“Then how did she get in here?”
“I’m an alien,” answered Athena, calmly. “I travel in my magical gray box through space and time.” She looked at Matt, expression hard. “And I was bringing you Thhhhhhhhhhhmyrian fudge to thank you, but now I think you don’t deserve any.” She swung open the refrigerator and grabbed her bundle of fudge.
“Athena,” he said.
“Oh, no, no need, Matthew. I understand everything perfectly clearly, don’t worry.” She stepped through the doorway, between him and the human, with a little sniff that she hoped sounded superior.
“I can explain everything, I swear,” she heard him say to the human, and then she heard him say, “Athena.”
She launched into a run, to beat him to her TARDIS, throwing herself inside and shutting the door quickly.
He pounded on it. “Open the door!” he shouted through it.
According to her father, the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn’t get through a TARDIS door. She’d never put that to the test but she sincerely hoped it was true.
And then, as she was walking away, she heard the unmistakable snick of a key from outside turning open the lock, and the door opened and Matt stepped through.
She frowned. “I forgot you had that key.” It had been her father’s idea, years ago, that, if they were going to involve Matt in their lives as much as they had, he needed a key to every TARDIS in existence, so that he would never be denied safety if he was in need of it. She stomped over to him and held out her hand. “Give that back to me.”
He ignored her, closing the door. “Brem didn’t tell you?”
“Brem didn’t tell me what?”
“About Kelly?”
“Kelly? Is her name Kelly? Oh, Matt, honestly?”
He frowned. “She’s my girlfriend.”
“Why should Brem have told me about your girlfriend? Isn’t that your job?”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “Yes. Possibly. But you weren’t exactly in a good place the last time you were here to-”
“I was in a good place! I was in an excellent place! I am always in an excellent place!”
He paused. “Right. Anyway, the thing is that, you can’t really drop by unannounced anymore, you can’t-”
“Drop by unannounced? Drop by unannounced? Oh, don’t worry, Matt, I will not be dropping by any way anymore.”
“You have,” he snapped, “absolutely zero right to be angry at me right now.”
“I have every right to be angry! I went to your kitchen to leave you a nice gift-” She shook the bag of fudge-“and instead I had to talk to a human girl named Kelly.”
“You have a different boyfriend every week.”
“Exactly! Exactly! As a matter of fact, I just broke up with one.”
“Don’t worry, Theenie, I’m sure you’ll have another one before the sound of this TARDIS de-materializing entirely fades from my living room.”
“Don’t call me ‘Theenie.’ You don’t get to call me ‘Theenie’ anymore. As a matter of fact…” She dropped the bag of fudge and reached past him, opened the door, and walked, primly, out into his living room and over to his entertainment center. The human girl named Kelly watched her, mouth gaping open, clearly too astonished to speak. “I,” Athena announced to Matt, “am taking back all of my DVDs.” She pulled them off the shelf, piling them in her arms and turning back to him.
He was leaning against the doorjamb of her open TARDIS door, watching her, looking completely unamused. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I? You won’t think so when you never get to find out how Lifestyles of Single F’yns’uhousn’houg in the Big City ends.” She paused as she drew even to him and looked him in the eye. “And let me tell you, it’s spectacular.” She walked past him into the TARDIS.
He slammed the door behind her. “Fine,” he retorted. “Then I am going to delete Gossip Girl from my DVR.”
“Do it. As you may have noticed, I have a time machine, so I already know how it ends. I only watched it with you because I thought you liked watching it with me. But it’s fine.” She turned away from him and dumped her armful of DVDs-which weren’t really all DVDs, but an assortment of many different future technologies-onto the captain’s chair. “You can watch it with Kelly now.” He was silent for so long that she thought he’d actually left the TARDIS without her knowing. She turned to him. “What? Nothing to say?”
He was watching her, and there was something in his deep hazel eyes. Something that was not anger. Something else that made her breath stumble inside of her.
“Athena,” he said, softly. “I don’t have centuries. I have decades. I have…I have decades.”
She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what she could say. She watched him turn away from her, reach for her TARDIS door. “I can’t come back, Matt,” she said, suddenly, knowing it with a certainty at that moment.
“Yeah,” he said, without looking at her, and then stepped through the door and shut it behind him.
She stood, for a long moment, in her control room, hearing the sound of her own harsh breaths off the coral struts. Then she spun herself out into the Vortex.
Next Chapter