eponymous_rose

Title: To Be Running
Author:

eponymous_rose
Word Count: 835
Rating: G
Characters: Ace, Seventh Doctor
Spoilers: Set shortly after "Survival".
Author's Note: Supposed to be a drabble, wound up with delusions of grandeur. You know how it is.

Sometimes she wakes in the night, sees her own hands reaching for wind and claws and reckless freedom.

Sometimes she doesn't; tonight she sleeps on, lulled by the hum of the Ship all around her, and the dreams solidify, moving from vague glimpses, rushes of adrenaline, to hot sand beneath her feet.

The Professor is standing nearby, just leaning against a rock and looking at the sky, and she wants to follow his gaze but can't remember how, so she turns and begins to climb the sheer rock face behind her.

"Come down from there, Ace. You'll break your neck!" he snaps, and for a moment he sounds so much like her testy old granny that she wonders if this is the sort of dream that ends with penguins in with horn-rimmed glasses and tap-dancing metaphors.

And then she realises that the hands on the rock - her hands - have fur, and claws, and no, it's this kind of dream instead.

"Come down, Ace," he says, and she climbs on.

It gets harder past a point, and then easier again, and she remembers having to run in school, jogging around in circles and muttering new and fascinating obscenities at Millie, who'd come to school positively sloshed, faked sick, and sat on the sidelines, timing them all on a stopwatch with a big, smug grin.

And it isn't just the cycle of exhaustion and the determined progress of her climb that sparks the memory - Ace knows the anger, burning somewhere below, the fierce frustration at the knowledge that this is all orchestrated, and that somewhere, some good-looking girl who's utterly pissed is laughing the whole time.

After a few moments, she runs out of cliff face to climb, and so she climbs the sky instead.

"I knew you'd wind up here eventually," says the Professor, so far below that she imagines him as a spot, a speckle on the rolling Earth.

"I could've gone anywhere," she mutters, and her voice carries.

"You're like a cat, Ace," the Professor says. "If you call a cat, it'll only come running if it was heading in your direction anyway."

"That's right," breathes Ace, and her claws glint against the empty sky, "just a moggie, that's me." But a part of her wonders if that isn't the sort of thing cats tell themselves to feel different, to feel special.

"I can only take you so far" the Professor says, and suddenly his voice seems distant. "You're going the same way as me, and we've wound up on so many twists and turns that it could take some time for you to find your bearings, but when you do there's always-"

"A chance we'll part," she says. "Yeah, yeah. Classic rambling, the sort you get in any dream." Her voice starts echoing. "I thought my subconscious was a bit more original than this!"

"You're halfway to the moon," calls the Professor. "That's not half bad."

She glances up, sees the big crater at the bottom of the moon that sends lines shooting up through it, as though someone once took some massive spoon to a gigantic hard-boiled egg. "Yeah," she says. "Halfway there, anyway." Her arms are aching, now, and she knows she'll keep climbing until she can't go any further, until her claws scrabble for grip, and all that's left is the wind's vertiginous howling in her ears-

"It's worth it in the end, though," she says. "At least I tried."

"Better than most ever do," the Professor agrees. "You could always rest a minute."

Ace wants to argue that she'll fall if she stops climbing, and then she remembers that she's clinging to the air, to the sky, and that makes little enough sense that she'll gladly take his word on this one.

She releases her grip, and her traitorous mind thinks he's lied, thinks she's falling, but she's just lying back, and there are clouds that aren't puffy and dreamlike - they're wet and cold and like a miserable, rainy day-

And then she blinks up at the ceiling of her room, sees her own hands reaching for wind and claws and reckless freedom.

"Having trouble sleeping?" calls a voice, and she glances up to see the Professor standing in the doorway.

"Mmrph," she says, moves the pillows aside, and tries again. "A bit, yeah."

He's got two mugs of cocoa in his hands, and she doesn't think to ask him why. He hands one to her, and she makes a snide comment about the little marshmallows floating on top, and then they're both just silent, thinking.

"When I came in," says the Professor, and she's surprised because he's never the one to break their silences, "you were reaching." He smiles, and it's not with certainty or determination or victory. "What were you reaching for, Ace?"

She shrugs, stares into the mug at the dissolving marshmallows, and her hands seem too pale, too soft. "Somewhere to be running," she says.