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storypaint ([personal profile] storypaint) wrote2014-12-02 08:53 pm

[Doctor Who] all visible mysteries (Vastra/Jenny)

Title: all visible mysteries
Fandom: Doctor Who
Length: 478 words
Prompt: Written for [community profile] trickortreatex for NancyBrown.
Pairing: Madame Vastra/Jenny
Other: Also archived on AO3.

Excerpt: She liked being a bad girl. It was way more interesting than being a maid had been, even when Vastra forgot sometimes that she could make her own tea.

Jenny had never been a good girl. That's what her mother would say, with a fond laugh, when she burned her fingers on the stove or ran too fast and tripped over her own feet. "My little nosy girl," she said, picking her daughter up and brushing her off. Jenny didn't remember her very much.

After her mother died, her father left her with his sister, who told Jenny that she was a bad girl with much more conviction in her icy tone. She taught Jenny to cook and clean, how to walk carefully in your master's house and anticipate his needs. She wasn't very good at this. She always wanted to know why instead of jumping to obey. After the second employer fired her, her aunt said, "I did my best, but you're hopeless," and moved to Brighton. She didn't take Jenny with her.

Jenny dreamed about her childhood from time to time, the loss of her family, the fight to survive, her aches and pains and freezing fingers. She'd been with Madame Vastra and happy for years now, but the past still lingered. Strax would tell her that she really needed to murder some enemies, but she preferred Vastra's response. She could be herself, bad or not, with Vastra. A little worry about the way society might see their relationship was nothing compared to the murders they solved and the aliens they met. She liked being a bad girl. It was way more interesting than being a maid had been, even when Vastra forgot sometimes that she could make her own tea.

Her wife woke her with a cool kiss on her forehead, whispering quietly, "You were twitching in your sleep again, my little mouse."

Vastra didn't always sleep with Jenny at night during the summer, preferring to lay out in the garden during the day and bask, but she was here with Jenny now in the depths of midwinter. She'd stolen all the covers, which was probably what had prompted Jenny's dreaming. She was cold. It wasn't the cold of a little match girl with no shoes on her feet, but it didn't take much to bring the memories back.

Vastra was always a bit cool to the touch, but Jenny curled into her anyway. She knew the right way to do it by now, the way they fit together perfectly. She looked up at Vastra in the dimness, knowing Vastra could see better in the dark than she could, and twitched her nose. Vastra laughed.

"Don't make me want to eat you," Vastra said lazily, re-tucking the covers around them both. She rested a comforting hand at the small of Jenny's spine, underneath the fabric of her shift.

"Heat thief," she whispered back, listening to Vastra's heart beat slowly, and it was to that steady sound that she drifted off again to dreamless sleep.