Clara Oswald is going the long way round (alwaysbeenthere) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-01-06 17:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, clara oswald, d'artagnan |
Who: Clara Oswald and D’Artagnan
What: Random meetings
When: November sometime
Where: Random coffee shop
Warnings: Low
Status: Log | Complete
Clara was bored. And when Clara got bored, she usually went out to get tea and people watch. Or she would go to a coffee shop to work on grading sometimes if there was too much clutter going on. That was also a thing that happened, or just needing a break from it all. Today though, it was just being bored. And bored was much better than dwelling on dreams she could not change. Dwelling on the the constant loss of control life threw at her. Bored and people watching meant she was… okay perhaps not doing something with herself but she at least had the potential to meet people.
Tea in hand, the English teacher scanned the area for somewhere to sit. No open spots. But a vaguely familiar looking person. Well why not! Grinning, she made her way over to the table.
“Mind if I join you?” It seemed she was asking that a lot lately, or being asked it. But no matter. She was friendly and outgoing and meeting people face to face was always a brilliant way to spend an otherwise boring afternoon.
D’Artagnan had found himself growing a bit too content lately. He let himself stay home so often that he realized his friends had all but moved on and he was rubbish at keeping up with them. He was trying to change that now. He was married, but that didn’t mean he had to give up his friends. Athos didn’t want him to do that, but he was terribly comfortable. It was hard to do when he got into a social rut sometimes. He was alone before he met his friends who had become more like brothers these days, it was easy to fall back into that habit. So today he was out at a shop, taking a few notes on the recent series of dreams he’d encountered. He didn’t always care to share them lately the way they bothered Aramis. He cared about him and didn’t want him to worry about it.
He looked up when the voice approached, a familiar one that caused a touch of a smile to grace his lips “By all means.” He motioned to the chair on the opposite side. “Sorry, been here long? Usually I’m a bit more observant..” He reached for his coffee, a sweet abomination as Athos often called them, a mixture of white chocolate and hot chocolate and barely any coffee to still qualify as coffee.
“Brilliant.” Smile brightening, Clara took a seat before shaking her head at the question, “Not at all, you’re fine.” After all, she hadn’t been standing there long, just got there really. It was a happy circumstance that she had noticed D’Artagnan instead of going in search of somewhere to sit on her lonesome to do her people watching thing.
“How have you been, lately?” Curious and just wanting to catch up, really. So much better than dwelling.
D’Artagnan set the pen he’d been writing with down on the book and rested an arm over it idly. It seemed to be helping a bit to sort out the dreams, his had gotten rather complicated recently and Athos didn’t have this version. He knew he could talk to him, but it was a bit harder to do sometimes. Writing was easier. “All right, just a bit confused I suppose..” He trailed off as he leaned forward to get a bit more comfortable. “I thought I was done with the dreams for a while but apparently not.”
Clara could appreciate the notion that writing might be easier than talking sometimes. She tended to be very tactile in her relationships with her people, but she had found that she didn’t always talk about the dreams when they happened anymore. Not if she could help it. There were the ones where she’d wake up in a panic and Troy would push but otherwise…
It was hard though. The ones with Troy she could discuss with him now, though he’d been resistant to them at first which had been difficult. Now the ones with her dad where she knew he hadn’t had them yet because he most certainly would call after some of them.
“Yeah?” There were a lot of complications when there were new dreams, especially if you got used to not having them. “I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to a feeling of them being done. There was a good bit of time where I didn’t have them but I always felt there was more to the story. Yet very disorienting when they started up again.”
Taking a sip of her tea, the brunette contemplated her friend for a moment. “Confusing because you got used to the quiet, or confusing because it’s like what some people talk about, where they’re the same but different?”
“I finished one version once before, and now have moved onto a second..but it’s been so long that I think I got used to the idea that I might not get anymore, so basically all of the above…” He made a face at the secondary version of his dreams. While they seemed to go fair for him, his friends often got the shaft, and that for D’Artagnan was just as bad. He’d rather share in some of that than let them suffer on his behalf. He didn’t like the idea of anyone suffering because of his missions.
“Athos doesn’t have this version either...it’s..” He attempted to figure out a way to describe it without going into obnoxious detail. “Just confusing..” Was all he could come up with, and he picked up the pen again to fidget with it. “Aramis said it wasn’t going to get better either. I’d reached a point with the last set where I was barely able to function, I’d rather not get there again.” He’d basically been riding on no sleep until the previous dreams seemed to come to a sense of finality.
Clara nodded. She could definitely understand that. It was complicated when people didn’t have the same version. Or the whole complicated mess of the Doctor. And feelings. Those were also awkward. And things Clara most certainly didn’t like to think about, them or Danny just because it then made her think about Samuel and well… she was moving on with her life.
“I don’t know how much you know about Time Lords,” She had no idea on if Rose had mentioned anything to him about them or the dreams, “But given two cousins, plus my dad, are the same man? It’s weird in the way that I can’t talk to Troy about things the Doctor does now because it’s not him anymore.” Shrugging, she sighed, “So.. not the same because it’s still the same world, but I get the different versions bit of people.”
Not to mention how upsetting they could be, the avoiding sleeping.
“I definitely agree though, if you can avoid from getting to that point again that you were at without sleeping, do. It’s not healthy and I’ve found that avoiding the dreams just makes it harder to deal with them.” Even when she didn’t like what seemed to be coming, Clara had learned with the Oswin set that she just couldn’t avoid the dreams because then she was even more out of sorts. Though anything with her echo selves had that effect on her since she wasn’t really her in them.
“Rose mentioned a fair bit, about them and the TARDIS box that’s actually a girl?” He didn’t really get that part, but whatever. When he’d seen a picture of it it just looked like a phone box. He didn’t see any girl near by or in it, but to be fair he hadn’t seen it in person either “That is sort of what I’m dealing with also, different versions, though we all had the same at first. It only got more complicated from there.” He made a face before picking up his coffee and shaking his head some. “I didn’t mean to just bombard you with all this stuff.” That was an awkward thing to do. Why hadn’t he started out with something normal to say? His brain was too full of abnormal to think of anything normal.
“Yeah. It wore on Athos. All he did was worry about me, I don’t want him to have to do that again.” He sighed as he rested his cheek on his hand propped against the table. His eyes were starting to get a little blurry from writing and bad lighting “What are you up to? Just caffeinating?”
“Yeah. It’s weird. Not quite sure about that, but he talks to the TARDIS and wants to make sure she likes you.” Really unsettling. Clara had gotten used to it in the dreams, and apparently the TARDIS finally seemed to be okay with her in them. But it was still really weird when you stopped to think about it. “Sounds that way.” As he then apologised, Clara smiled and shook her head. “No need to apologise. We live in a really strange place and, well, I live with an alien. I think strange and weird and dream things is more normal to me than the weather.”
What did that even say about their lives?
“People who love you will always worry. But I get what you mean.” There were reasons Clara had never mentioned Samuel to anyone or the trouble with her dreams. She didn’t want them to worry given all three of them were extremely protective of her. It made sense, or more so now. Troy putting her under his protection. Her dad with his ‘duty of care’. That was how they put it in the dreams, anyway. “Basically. I was bored and decided I wanted to do some people watching for a bit.”
“Well, wanna join me? You can do that here?” He motioned to the window seat he always liked to grab if it was open. He tended to do the same thing just to get out of the house. He needed to do that a bit more, he was getting content again with staying in and becoming a bit of a hermit and it wasn’t like him.
“Sure, sounds brill.” Grinning to D’Artagnan, Clara picked up her tea to take a sip. It was a comfortable silence, just two friends people watching. Pretty good way to spend the day if you asked her.