Timeless
Title: Timeless
Rating: teen [suggestive situations]
Characters: Emma Louise Cowell, PC Andy, Tosh
Advisories: AU
Disclaimer: if they'd meant to do this, they already would have
Summary: And to wake in the wee hours in a strange place, lost in time as well as space...
Note: T minus one week to the unveiling of this writer's 2009 tw_bigbang fic, so Muse has decided to take a short break from her other duties to prepare this deleted scene as a teaser...
**********
She supposed it hardly mattered whether this strange bed was in a hostel dormitory or on a new friend's sofa, really. Not when she'd woken up this morning in 1953 and now laid herself down to try to sleep in the year of our lord two thousand and six. Emma shifted herself again and squeezed her eyes shut against all the dim lights gleaming round the corners of the room, curious devices like the one that showed pictures right at home insisting upon the hour in shades of dull red and blue and green. Four in the morning was four in the morning whatever year you might find yourself in, when you couldn't sleep for knowing that you would never see home again.
There was that sound again, the sound that had woken her from what light rest she'd managed; the sound of someone creeping about in a darkened room trying not to waken a guest. Emma sighed and gave up the pretence of sleep, sitting up on the sofa: "It's all right, I wasn't really -- Constable Davidson?"
He was carrying his shoes in one hand, for all that that had been helping his attempts at stealth. "Erm. Sorry. Didn't mean to, I was just..."
"I thought... I thought you'd gone."
He had the strangest look on his face, as if she'd caught him out at something that he wasn't sure if he should be ashamed of. "Never quite got round to it, yeah."
She wasn't stupid. She was eighteen, but she wasn't stupid, and she'd already seen a bit. "You mean, you and Miss Sato, you were... having relations. Like a man and his -- but you're not married."
"Things have changed in the last half century," Miss Sato said from behind him, light spilling out from her bedroom doorway. Constable Davidson was blushing quite prettily. "Even in your day it wasn't exactly... unheard of."
"Which I reckon Owen has already discovered," the constable added with a look to Miss Sato that made her duck her head with a little giggle. What, did they mean that Miss Holmes and Doctor Harper would have... Oh, my. (Not that Miss Holmes hadn't seemed a bit... well, not quite the proper lady, but really.) Emma had been beginning to reckon that the constable was courting Miss Sato, but to become intimate with someone you'd just met --
"I should be off," Constable Davidson said, and sat down to put on his shoes properly. "Work in a few."
"Always work in a few," Miss Sato said with a sigh, and ran a fond hand through the constable's hair before going back into her bedroom and closing the door.
In the sudden return of dimness Emma could only see vague shapes, eyes slowly adjusting once more to the never-quite-dark of this mad bright future. "You are going to marry her."
Constable Davidson worked his other shoe on and stood himself up. "You sound like my Mam," he said, and then got the queerest look: "Well, I suppose you could be my Mam, couldn't you. If you'd -- Well."
And that was another thought to lay herself down with once he'd gone, counting the years skipped over and slowly realising that she could have known Constable Davidson's Mam or someone just like her on the yesterday that now lay far beyond that veil of years, a schoolmate or a little sister or one of the cousins she'd been travelling to Dublin to help Uncle Finn with whilst Auntie Nora was ill. Her friends had grown, and had children, and those children were now men courting the young ladies of their generation, on and on down through time as it had always been. She supposed she'd have to get on with finding someone to court her, if she could get past that idea that she'd be old enough to be her husband's mother. Maybe even his Gran.
(Or maybe she could do as Miss Holmes seemed to have done, and try to have the milk for free herself? She'd have to ask Miss Sato her apparently learned advice, when morning properly came...)
Rating: teen [suggestive situations]
Characters: Emma Louise Cowell, PC Andy, Tosh
Advisories: AU
Disclaimer: if they'd meant to do this, they already would have
Summary: And to wake in the wee hours in a strange place, lost in time as well as space...
Note: T minus one week to the unveiling of this writer's 2009 tw_bigbang fic, so Muse has decided to take a short break from her other duties to prepare this deleted scene as a teaser...
**********
She supposed it hardly mattered whether this strange bed was in a hostel dormitory or on a new friend's sofa, really. Not when she'd woken up this morning in 1953 and now laid herself down to try to sleep in the year of our lord two thousand and six. Emma shifted herself again and squeezed her eyes shut against all the dim lights gleaming round the corners of the room, curious devices like the one that showed pictures right at home insisting upon the hour in shades of dull red and blue and green. Four in the morning was four in the morning whatever year you might find yourself in, when you couldn't sleep for knowing that you would never see home again.
There was that sound again, the sound that had woken her from what light rest she'd managed; the sound of someone creeping about in a darkened room trying not to waken a guest. Emma sighed and gave up the pretence of sleep, sitting up on the sofa: "It's all right, I wasn't really -- Constable Davidson?"
He was carrying his shoes in one hand, for all that that had been helping his attempts at stealth. "Erm. Sorry. Didn't mean to, I was just..."
"I thought... I thought you'd gone."
He had the strangest look on his face, as if she'd caught him out at something that he wasn't sure if he should be ashamed of. "Never quite got round to it, yeah."
She wasn't stupid. She was eighteen, but she wasn't stupid, and she'd already seen a bit. "You mean, you and Miss Sato, you were... having relations. Like a man and his -- but you're not married."
"Things have changed in the last half century," Miss Sato said from behind him, light spilling out from her bedroom doorway. Constable Davidson was blushing quite prettily. "Even in your day it wasn't exactly... unheard of."
"Which I reckon Owen has already discovered," the constable added with a look to Miss Sato that made her duck her head with a little giggle. What, did they mean that Miss Holmes and Doctor Harper would have... Oh, my. (Not that Miss Holmes hadn't seemed a bit... well, not quite the proper lady, but really.) Emma had been beginning to reckon that the constable was courting Miss Sato, but to become intimate with someone you'd just met --
"I should be off," Constable Davidson said, and sat down to put on his shoes properly. "Work in a few."
"Always work in a few," Miss Sato said with a sigh, and ran a fond hand through the constable's hair before going back into her bedroom and closing the door.
In the sudden return of dimness Emma could only see vague shapes, eyes slowly adjusting once more to the never-quite-dark of this mad bright future. "You are going to marry her."
Constable Davidson worked his other shoe on and stood himself up. "You sound like my Mam," he said, and then got the queerest look: "Well, I suppose you could be my Mam, couldn't you. If you'd -- Well."
And that was another thought to lay herself down with once he'd gone, counting the years skipped over and slowly realising that she could have known Constable Davidson's Mam or someone just like her on the yesterday that now lay far beyond that veil of years, a schoolmate or a little sister or one of the cousins she'd been travelling to Dublin to help Uncle Finn with whilst Auntie Nora was ill. Her friends had grown, and had children, and those children were now men courting the young ladies of their generation, on and on down through time as it had always been. She supposed she'd have to get on with finding someone to court her, if she could get past that idea that she'd be old enough to be her husband's mother. Maybe even his Gran.
(Or maybe she could do as Miss Holmes seemed to have done, and try to have the milk for free herself? She'd have to ask Miss Sato her apparently learned advice, when morning properly came...)