003 ☆ Voice ☆ Both Courts

[parallels]

Clara Oswald here.

So...

[There's a lengthy pause as if she really doesn't want to be doing this post but feels compelled to for some reason. Or perhaps she just has no idea how to start.]

So this is Draubwurld's chance to play advice columnist. About-

[There's another painful silence. Or space for a long suffering sigh.]

Relationships.

[Another pause and then suddenly she bursts into speech, going to quickly that it's a little frightening that someone's mouth can move that fast.]

I'm mean I can't be the only one, can I? Had someone back home and then ended up here. Or back here, technically, for me. And now you've got to figure out what's to be done about it. Can't stand around the station hoping your mobile will finally, someday, send them a text message back. The one that you meant to reply to before you showed up here.

If we're trapped here for years and age slowly, it's not quite going to work to just pop back in when the war is over. "Hey, sorry, got kidnapped by fairies 65 years ago, sorry about that, yeah I'd love to go to the cinema like you said in your text". And all the while, they've wondering why you went missing all those years ago.

[And there it is, the sigh.]

Do you just... remain loyal even if it means they might have forgotten you when you return? Or moved on? Or do you call it a wash and start thinking of this place as a new life.

Either way, feels like a bit of losing game, no matter what you do. Suppose that's part of war. But war doesn't usually last centuries. For humans like me, anyway.

[Then she realizes something she probably should have said way back from the start.]

Sorry. For the too much information. And the personal questions. And personal answers if-and-or-when they are given.

Thanks.

Comments

[parallels]

...No.

When I came here it was before I met him. I was with... together not dating, but I was with another friend. The magic carpet one. [It's a funny expression but she's rolling with it. Always a sucker for literary references.] Then one day I passed out and lived out a few more years of my life back home. That's where the boyfriend comes in. And then I pop back here. While in the middle of trying to manage boyfriend who hates her magic carpet friend and her magic carpet friend who hates the boyfriend.

[Her putting her face in her hands is almost audible.]

[manipulative]

[ katherine narrows her eyes as she listens. despite being a piss poor friend, throwing them all under the bus in order to save her own hide, she's actually a very good listener — and a decent friend when she wants to be (or when she no longer performs beneath the facade of katherine, rendering herself back to katerina who hoped too much and loved too much and gained too little). ]

[ it's useless to point her finger when clara oswald cannot see her, but she does so anyway, brows still pinched as she takes to task of unravelling this particular web. ] I got the last part. Boyfriend and Aladdin dislike one another.

The first part I missed. You were before you met him — the man who would become your boyfriend. [ she says it slowly, glancing to the side, before she narrows her eyes at her locket. ] Is this a Single White Female scenario? [ because, truthfully, she can give you some very good tips on how to pretend to be the boyfriend's girl. ]

[parallels]

Is this... what? You know what, never mind, I'm just going to preemptively say no.

[That film came out in 1992! It's beyond her time and Clara doesn't care much for films. And it honestly sounds like it's a terrible scenario that she doesn't want to be associated with!]

I was friends [Important emphasis on that. Never mind all the flirting that they did. And the confessed mistake of acting like her boyfriend.] with Aladdin before the boyfriend. And I came here before I met the boyfriend. Then suddenly I sleep and have all these memories of meeting him and being with him back home. And then Aladdin decides to show up here. Boyfriend, still at home.

[manipulative]

[ katherine hums, a hm as she tries to piece this all together. she was here before the boyfriend, she fell asleep and woke up suddenly recalling moments she hadn't been in possession of before she fell into a very deep sleep? apart from sending her friends to their deaths in 1864, it sounds like desiccation without the actual desiccation part. ]

[ considering what elijah told her of her future — a future she doubts will ever come about now that she's here — she can only glean one thing from this. ]

Does Aladdin wish to be your boyfriend?

[parallels]

...

No. I mean, I don't think so. It's not really on the table.

He. He doesn't quite think in those terms. But our relationship is quite complicated.

[So complicated that she ends up stumbling over words. It makes her frown. The Doctor is a massive part of her life but she can't quite figure out exactly where he fits in. Maybe that's part of the problem, her life with him would always be separate from the rest of her life.]

[manipulative]

[ she cocks her eyebrow. he doesn't think in those terms. the only way a relationship can be complicated, in katherine's opinion, is sex is involved — of the good or poor variety, someone is a doppelganger, another merely cannot take a hint, or it's riddled with drama a five-hundred year old vampire would find mundane. ]

Complicated enough to harm your relationship with the boyfriend. [ she sighs as she begins, ] Unless there's jealousy involved, enjoy your time with Aladdin. You never know — Boyfriend may appear to whisk you away on his magic carpet ride. [ as hers had, ever so briefly, before he had been thieved from her by his own loyalties and the drabwurld. losing elijah twice within the same breath has been a hard hit for a woman made of steel. ]

Life is short. Stop worrying — it causes wrinkles.