“You’re wet, and fierce, and beautiful, and I have never loved you more.”
The Doctor is panting softly, which says a lot for someone of a species that’s built to avoid running out of breath. Her eyes are a perfect synthesis between annoyance and adoration, part of her wishing to throttle him for enjoying the uncomfortable happenings of wet cloth against skin without knowing specifics and part of her wishing to laugh until her respiratory bypass kicks in.
“I’ll ‘ave you know wot I jus’ went through was… it was… They called me Satan’s acolyte! I didn’t joost- I didn’t joost fall into the water accidentally, they- they… An’ all cos I’m a- a… Oh I tell ya wot, the human race needs t’sort out this whole gender inferiority business cos it’s gonna end up bloody killin’ me.”
She stops speaking with a grunt.
Three seconds pass, her fingers twitch at her sides. She needs a nap, warm, dry clothing, an entire sleeve of biscuits and, if the Master knows what’s good for him, a fair helping of plaudits and adulation. Shoulders slumping, she gives in to that gorgeous look on her beloved’s face and the first hint of a smile appears. Rays of sunlight breaking through the dark.
The misadventure isn’t over yet, but her Koschei gives her hope.
She moves closer, her arms lift to circle his shoulders and before any protestation can be had she’s hugging him tightly to her soaking-wet-self. Forehead pressing against his pulses-point just beneath his earlobe there’s no hiding it- this adventure’s taken it out of her, for many reasons, and she isn’t even done sorting it yet.
“Thank you, Hearts… I love you, too,more than there are stars in the cosmos, I joost-… Thank you.”
Her mouth closes and remains closed, but her mind, interwoven with his own, crimson and cerulean now a perfect and deep violet, is speaking volumes. She’s nervous, and that almost never happens.
Can you help me?
He steps toward her without her ever having to audibly speak the request. Her sheepishness and her flush are expression enough, to the soul who’s known her since they were seven years old. Koschei guides his Theta by the small of her waterlogged back, straight into the bathroom. He strips her down and takes a warm dry fluffy towel and dries her, roughening up the dry volume of her hair. He pauses to kiss her on that ever-worrisome crease between her eyebrows, and to speak:
“Darling, that all depends upon how you define ‘Satan.’ Is it the fallen angel of Abrahamic lore? Or is it the scapegoat, the spectre of a backwards society too fearful of what it fails to understand? Oh my love. Don’t you know how easy it is to weaponize xenophobia?”
He tucks her hair behind her jeweled ear, and kisses the lobe, and tugs his teeth on the little silver chain.
“Don’t take it to hearts. You’re brilliant. Annoyingly so. Kick ‘em in the nuts. Even the royal nuts. It’s the bitch’s prerogative. Okay, maybe I’ll do it, in that case.”
He trots out and hastens back with a dry rainbow shirt–maroon this time, of course–and trousers.
“Coat didn’t get wet, did it? I’d imagine not. Just so you’re aware, I’m actually full of homicidal wrath, and if you’d like me to poison the water source into which you were flung, and the soil along with it, so that the extra-terrestrial parasites within all die, I know you’re into the ‘high road’ and all that golly fluff, but sometimes a moral shortcut is in order. Oh, what, you think I’ve not done research while stuck in this box? Even I in my unstable regenerative state can reach my hand across the TARDIS threshold and collect a soil sample. That pipette’s been banging like a bongo with the mud particulates I collected. Lemme guess, anything interred in that stuff isn’t exactly restive.”
Icarus 