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memories_of_mePersonal Information
Name: Chicklet
Age: Adult
Personal Journal: Chicklet
Email / AIM / MSN / Plurk: Plurk: ChickletLARP
Current Character(s): Gabriel Agreste/Papillon, Guru Clef
Character Information
Character Name: Born Ashildr, spends the vast majority of her very vast life simply as Me. Lady Me, Mayor Me, but in the end, she is always just... Me.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Character History:
:: slays the Or dragon, gives you both, hopes that is okay::
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashildr
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Ashildr
She was born to a Norse village as Ashildr who had a very minor gift for premonition, a larger capacity for guilt and self blame and a huge imagination.
ASHILDR: I had a dream you'd all died. It was so real, I thought I'd made it happen.
NOLLARR: Well, if it ever does, I'm sure you'll a find some way to blame yourself.
But when she sees the Doctor for the first time, there is a connection between them, a knowing. They lock eyes and as he is forced to keep walking, he turns back to stare at her, and she keeps staring at him.
CLARA: You all right? Do you know her?
DOCTOR: Never seen her before in my life.
CLARA: Okay, so, why are you staring?
DOCTOR: I don't know. Nothing, probably. Too much time travel, it happens.
CLARA: What happens?
DOCTOR: People talk about premonition as if it's something strange. It's not. It's just remembering in the wrong direction.
The Doctor pretends to be Odin, gets interrupted by someone doing a better job at pretending to be Odin. The second false God's troops start culling, harvesting the best warriors. Clara gets Ashildr to use the broken sonic glasses to undo her chains, but the harvesters catch sight of alien tech and kidnap the girls too.
The males that were taken were all killed and distilled into a brew for the fake Odin. Clara starts talking, and almost gets them to leave, but Ashildr, horrified at what has been done to people she knew and loved, whom she grew up with... pretty much declares war upon the alien abductors. Whoops. All of their best warriors were just sipped down by the leader.
They get sent back to prepare.
EINARR: Where are the others?
ASHILDR: I'm sorry, Father.
CLARA: They're coming here tomorrow, ten of them, to kill everybody in the village.
EINARR: Ashildr, is this true?
ASHILDR: It's my fault.
EINARR: Not every misfortune that befalls this village is down to you. (to the Doctor) She thinks she brings us bad luck.
While the Doctor trains the adult men who are left, Ashildr, desperate to be of help but considered incapable of it due to age and gender practices on her own against a fake fake Odin. A puppet she constructed.
DOCTOR: What's that? Is that a puppet? Oh, I love puppets!
ASHILDR: I make puppets sometimes, when I'm
DOCTOR: Frightened?
ASHILDR: When the raiding parties go out, I make up stories about their battles.
DOCTOR: Because if you make up the right story, then you think it will keep them safe and they'll all come home. That's okay. You're not the first person to ever have done that.
The Doctor tries again to convince her to run away. She gives a moving speech about how even though she is strange, she is accepted there. That running away wouldn't be life, leaving that village would be death itself. (She winds up doing exactly that later, and forgetting the village as an indicator of how far off the rails her life has gone)
Listening to the life around him, while Ashildr clings to her father, the Doctor starts for formulate the plan that will save them all, and Ashildr is the key to it. Her... and a bucket full of eels.
When the troops arrive to kill them all, the village is having a party, which quickly turns bad for the invaders. Using an electromagnet made of wire, anvils, and electric eels, the Doctor procures an enemy helmet which he tinkers with, then pushes Ashildr into wearing.
"Tell them a story, they'll never forget."
Focusing her imagination through the helmet, she sends a vision of a serpent monster to all the invaders, until all but the leader vanishes in fear. She breaks her concentration on the Doctor's command, revealing the serpent to be the skeleton of a catapult like puppet she was building and the sound of a horn being blown by another villager.
The ploy worked, the village was saved with no lives lost on either side. Except one. Ashildr. While they celebrated, her father went to bring her to the festivities, but she was unresponsive. He got the hemet off and caught her as she slid out of the chair. Clara checked her, no pulse.
She had poured so much of her will and imagination into the construct that she killed herself with the force of her determination to save them all, wired to alien tech.
CLARA: Heart failure, yeah?
DOCTOR: Yeah. I plugged her into the machine. Used her up like a battery.
The villagers had her laid out, and were mourning her and all who died in the cull. The Doctor rushed in on their grief, and saved her. He reworked a medical kit from the enemy helmet, and brought her back from death. He put the chip like kit on her forehead and it vanished into her skull.
DOCTOR: It's repairing her. It will never stop repairing her, if it works.
When she started to stir, he tried to leave before she could wake up fully leaving a "Second dose" with her father. When her father insisted she'd want to see him, the Doctor assured the man... she would.
EINARR: Wait, no. She'll want to see you when she wakes.
DOCTOR: Oh, no. Well, she'll, she'll see me often enough once she understands.
She manages to awaken enough to thank him, and he tells her not to. Not yet. And then... he leaves.
(The following was said out of ear shot, but is crucial to understanding the character, and what has happened between this and the next time she meets the Doctor:
DOCTOR: It won't stop, the repair kit I put inside Ashildr, not ever. It'll just keep fixing her.
CLARA: Well, good.
DOCTOR: I'm not sure, but it's entirely possible she has lost the ability to die.
CLARA: The ability?
DOCTOR: Oh, dying is an ability, believe me. Barring accidents, she may now be functionally immortal.
CLARA: If the repair kit never stops working, then why did you give her two?
DOCTOR: Immortality isn't living forever. That's not what it feels like. Immortality is everybody else dying. She might meet someone she can't bear to lose.)
They meet again 800 years later, in 1651, and yes she is functionally immortal now. And a lot has happened since. She's been tried as a witch more times than she could count, she founded a leper colony, she posed as a boy to join the army more than once, she bore three babies and lost them to the black death, she was a medieval queen and faked her own death to escape paperwork and backgammon.
Thing of it is, she can't remember most of it. As far as she is concerned, Ashildr died when she could no longer remember her. "All that is left, is Me." And so she calls herself, Lady Me. She has an expensive manse, she doubles as a male thief called the Knightmare, consorts with aliens.... and keeps all of her life in journals that she reads every now and again. Some pages stained with tears, others ripped out and shoved aside because they are too sad to read.
DOCTOR: Oh, Ashildr, I'm sorry.
ASHILDR: Who's Ashildr?
DOCTOR: You are. That's your name. Ashildr, daughter of Einarr. Chuckles. I used to call him Chuckles. Do you remember?
ASHILDR: Yes. I think I remember the village.
DOCTOR: You loved that village.
ASHILDR: If you say so.
DOCTOR: Anyone in that village would have died for you.
ASHILDR: Well, they're all dead now, and here I am. So, I guess it all worked out.
DOCTOR: Ashildr.
ASHILDR: That's not my name. I don't even remember that name.
DOCTOR: Well, what, what, what do you call yourself?
ASHILDR: Me.
DOCTOR: Yes, you. There's nobody else here.
ASHILDR: No. I call myself Me. All the other names I chose died with whoever knew me. Me is who I am now. No one's mother, daughter, wife. My own companion. Singular. Unattached. Alone.
She has done so many things in her 800 years. She helped end the 100 years war. She ruled a country. She did good things and bad. She mastered many skills including the bow, and the ability to change her voice.
DOCTOR: You're immortal, not indestructible. You can be hurt, killed even.
ASHILDR: Ten thousand hours is all it takes to master any skill. Over over a hundred thousand hours and you're the best there's ever been. I don't need to be indestructible, I'm superb. You should have seen me. I could shoot six arrows a minute. I got so close to the enemy, I penetrated armour.
DOCTOR: How many people have you killed?
ASHILDR: You'll have to check my diaries.
DOCTOR: You can't remember?
ASHILDR: For what it's worth, I've saved many lives too. I cured an entire village of scarlet fever once, almost got drowned as a witch for my troubles. Fortunately, I'm really good at holding my breath. Ungrateful peasants.
DOCTOR: The Black Death, 1348. I meant to warn you.
ASHILDR: I got sick, but I got better.
DOCTOR: Of course, your immune system is learning too. There's another bout coming. And a big fire that tears through London.
ASHILDR: Excellent. Maybe I start it.
DOCTOR: No, that was the Terileptils. Surgeon, scientist, inventor, composer, it's a fantastic CV.
ASHILDR: You should try my journals. I read them myself now and then. Drink pomace wine, have a little Me time.
DOCTOR: You don't seem the nostalgic type.
ASHILDR: It's not nostalgia, it's curiosity. I can't remember most of it. That's the trouble with an infinite life and a normal sized memory.
DOCTOR: It can't have been easy, outliving the people you love.
ASHILDR: According to my journals, hell.
DOCTOR: Sorry.
ASHILDR: You'll have to remind me, what's sorrow like? It all just runs out, Doctor. I'm just what's left.
***
DOCTOR: I read your journals. Why are there pages missing?
ASHILDR: When things get really bad, I tear the memories out.
DOCTOR: What could be worse than losing your children?
ASHILDR: I keep that entry to remind me not to have any more.
(She pokes a fire burning in a grate.)
DOCTOR: I've left you alone too long. I had no idea how much you'd suffered. But I remember the person you used to be. She's still in there. I can help you find her.
ASHILDR: Spare me your pity, I'm fine.
DOCTOR: I think this is just another mask that you wear to protect you from the pain.
ASHILDR: I think the alternative frightens you, that this is who I've become.
DOCTOR: This is no way to live your life, de-sensitised to the world.
ASHILDR: So you intend to fix me? Make me feel again, then run away?
Which is more or less what he wound up doing. They work together to steal an alien artifact, but she uses it to help another alien open a portal to another place, thinking to go with him, since the Doctor wont take her along. She can't stand earth any longer:
ASHILDR: You'll have to remind me, what's sorrow like? It all just runs out, Doctor. I'm just what's left. In fact, I've done all I can here. I look up to the sky and wonder what it's like out there. Please, take me with you. All these people here, they're like smoke, they blow away in a moment. You don't know what it's like.
DOCTOR: I do know what it's like.
ASHILDR: Then, however you fly, whatever ship you sail in, take me with you.
They spend most of the episode arguing, mostly him wanting her to not kill people (and mostly winning) and her wanting him to take her with him (and mostly losing.)
All episode he keeps asking what happened to her to close off her heart. She keeps pointing out that he is what happened to her. He keeps trying to make her feel, she responds by trying to make him hurt.
DOCTOR: I know you've suffered. Your children dying.
ASHILDR: They would have died anyway. Human life is fleeting. People are mayflies, breeding and dying, repeating the same mistakes. It's boring. And I'm stuck here, abandoned by the one man who should know what eternity feels like. Who should understand.
DOCTOR: I do, now, but
ASHILDR: You still won't take me with you. You gad about while I trudge through the centuries, day by day, hour by hour. Do you ever think or care what happens after you've flown away? I live in the world you leave behind, because you abandoned me to it.
DOCTOR: Why should I be responsible for you?
ASHILDR: You made me immortal.
DOCTOR: I saved your life. I didn't know that your heart would rust because I kept it beating. I didn't think your conscience would need renewing, that the well of human kindness would run dry. I just wanted to save a terrified young woman's life.
ASHILDR: You didn't save my life, Doctor. You trapped me inside it.
But he wont. so she partners with someone who says he will, Leandro. All it requires is the stolen jewel... and a single life. She uses the jewel to sacrifice a thief named Sam Swift to open the portal... but when the aliens coming through start killing innocents, the Doctor is finally able to convince her that she does still care, he reminds her how to care.
ASHILDR: No! Doctor, what have I done? What have I done to these people? Stop this! They are defenseless.
DOCTOR: Ashildr! He doesn't care.
ASHILDR: But I do. Oh, God, I do. I actually do. I, I care.
DOCTOR: It's awful, isn't it? It's infuriating. You think you don't care, then you fall off the wagon.
ASHILDR: Never mind about me. What are we going to do about them? We have to help them. They need you. They need us.
DOCTOR: Welcome back.
She uses her second immortality dose to save Sam. The alien artifact fights the alien medicine, and the outcome is a spent artifact, and a living but mortal Sam Swift. Probably.
ASHILDR: Is he immortal now?
DOCTOR: Do you want him to be?
ASHILDR: I don't think I want anyone to be.
DOCTOR: Well, probably not. Probably the power would have been drained by the whole opening and reversing the portal thingy. There'll be enough power to bring him back, but not enough power to keep him here, probably.
ASHILDR: Did you just make all of that up?
DOCTOR: Yeah. But it's hard to keep track of all this stuff. Keep an eye on him though. He might be around for a while. Or not. Who can say?
ASHILDR: You're still not going to take me with you, are you.
DOCTOR: People like us, we go on too long. We forget what matters. The last thing we need is each other. We need the mayflies. See, the mayflies, they know more than we do. They know how beautiful and precious life is because it's fleeting. Look how Sam Swift made every last moment count, right to the gallows. Look how glad he is to be alive. I looked into your eyes and I saw my worst fears. Weariness. Emptiness.
ASHILDR: That's why you can't travel with me. Our perspectives are too vast. Too far away.
DOCTOR: You're not the first, you know. I did travel with another immortal once. Captain Jack Harkness.
ASHILDR: Who?
DOCTOR: He'll get round to you eventually. Who told you about me? The man who comes for the battle and runs away from the fallout.
ASHILDR: Take your pick. You've had an impact on this world. You've made waves.
DOCTOR: Sometimes tidal waves.
ASHILDR: I'm flattered.
DOCTOR: Well, you should be. You're an extraordinary woman, Ashildr. But I think I'm going to have to keep an eye on you.
ASHILDR: No.
DOCTOR: No?
ASHILDR: Someone has to look out for the people you abandon. Who better than me? I'll be the patron saint of the Doctor's leftovers. While you're busy protecting this world, I'll get busy protecting it from you.
DOCTOR: So are we enemies now?
ASHILDR: Of course not. Enemies are never a problem. It's your friends you have to watch out for. And, my friend, I'll be watching out for you.
DOCTOR: Ashildr, I think I'm very glad I saved you.
ASHILDR: Oh, I think everyone will be.
And she keeps to that. He looses track of her in the 1800s, while she is using alien worms to create a psychic field to keep one particular street hidden. She turns that street into a sanctuary, any who wish to love in peace are free to do so, but the rules are strict and absolute. any crime - theft, assault, murder - is punishable by death. A quantum shade called the Raven. A countdown so you know it is coming, but that you cannot escape it. A public death so all can see how painful it is, so all will fear it. All will fear to face the Raven. And because all fear, all behave, and they all revere and honor Mayor Me, who keeps them safe.
But none know where she goes when she vanishes for a time, now and again. The fear of punishment is enough to keep them in line while she is gone, even when she is gone for decades.
She spends that time looking after the families of the Doctor's companions, abandoned and left behind, and the companions themselves after. (This is implied heavily, but never detailed in the show, so all of her interactions with any companion other than Clara is head canon and will be discussed with the other player as needed)
She makes certain he sees her again, in 2014 or 2015, making sure to be caught in the background of a picture of Clara that she knew he would see. Her way of saying that she is still there, still watching out for the world he keeps leaving behind.
But Me was threatened, not long after that. Or rather, the street she protected was. So she concocted a plan to bring the Doctor to her Street, fully confidant that he would stop the ones threatening her, keep her street safe, then fly off again.
One of Clara's friends has been marked by the Raven, marked for death. But he has no memory of the street, the Raven, or what has gone on. So he calls for help, he calls Clara and the Doctor. As Me planned.
When the Doctor finally put most of it together, and she had his Tardis key and had him in the teleport bracelet, she was finally free to explain.
ME: I made a deal to protect the street. They take you, I take the key so you can't be traced. I do as they tell me, and the street is safe.
Me is the only one who could stop the quantum shade, wearing it;'s symbol as a living tattoo about her neck. Her plan was simple, as soon as she had the Doctor in the bracelet, had his key, had his confession dial - whatever that was - she would remove the shade from Rigsy, and they could work together to stop whoever it was that threatened her and her people.
Infinite life, finite memory, she had forgotten how terribly brave Clara was, and how Clara's ability to try to think like the Doctor often landed her in hot water. She had promised Clara's protection on the Street, and had intended to keep that promise. Not only did she think that between her and the Doctor they could get out of this, not only did she intend that no one would be harmed that she cared about... Clara is one of her very few friends. While not immortal herself, Clara travels through time with the Doctor, so kept popping up in Me's life. But when Clara discovered that someone could take the death sentence, she cut Me out of the deal. Me couldn't stop the Raven.
The Doctor's threats when this was discovered meant little to Me. After all, she was watching all her plans to save everyone crumble in the worst possible ways. The only two friends she had in her long life.... One was going to die, and the other was going to spend what time he had left trying to stop that rather than to save himself. Me almost couldn't care then if he did kill her. She knew she deserved it.
ME: I had no idea she'd do something so stupid. I swear, I never meant for anyone to get hurt. Look, what were you thinking? Sacrificing yourself?
CLARA: I wasn't sacrificing anything. It was strategy. Backup plan, to buy us more time.
And then Clara said something to the Doctor that Resonated deeply with Me, with who she had been when the title was Lady, not Mayor.
CLARA: Maybe this is what I wanted. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is why I kept running. Maybe this is why I kept taking all those stupid risks. Kept pushing it.
Ashildr watched the Doctor vanish. Then, with nothing else, no other hope, she did what she had to do. What she did after her babies died. What she did after she had to leave her husband and returned to find him a delusional old man dying. What she had to do every single time she was left alone. She kept living. She returned Rigsy home, and it is heavily implied she left him his memories.
She protected the street. She looked after those the Doctor left behind. She watched the world spin and turn and burn and die.
She learned and survived, and followed every story about the Doctor she could, any hope and sign that the messes she was cleaning up were from the Doctor she knew, after Clara's death, any sign that he survived. But she stayed out of his way. His fury at her kept her back, even when she was relived he yet lived.
Because Clara didn't.
And then she heard the story, the one she hadn't realized she was waiting to hear. the Doctor had found a way to yank Clara from her body the very moment before she died. He would break time, to save her, and was trying to outfly her death.
And Me is clever, and Me is bright, and Me had a LOT of time to think about this, and consulting all her notes, she calculated where and - more importantly - when he was going. She gathered enough tech and waited, and then she created a small bubble, a pocket of reality at the very end of the universe.
They were the last immortals left. Even Captain Jack had told his final secret and died. Even the Master was gone. The last four beings in the universe. A Tardis, the Doctor, Me, and what was left of Clara.
DOCTOR: At the end of everything, we should expect the company of immortals, so I've been told.
ME: Even the other immortals are gone. It's just me.
DOCTOR: The one and only me. Finally, you earn the title, sitting here in a reality bubble at the end of Time itself. How are you sustaining it, by the way?
ME: Brilliantly. I've been watching the stars die. It was beautiful.
DOCTOR: No. It was sad.
ME: No, it was both. But that's not something you would understand, is it? You don't like endings. She died, Doctor. Clara died billions of years ago.
DOCTOR: You killed her.
ME: No.
DOCTOR: You let it happen.
ME: No, I didn't. Neither did you. She did. She died for who she was and who she loved. She fell where she stood. It was sad, and it was beautiful. And it is over. We have no right to change who she was.
Clara listened in while the Doctor and Me spoke, while the Doctor tried to do what he did best. Talk until he found a solution. But Me wasn't going to let him turn things around on her, or wiggle out from under what needed to be done. Me isn't a companion. She doesn't put the Doctor and his feelings first. She cares about him, yes, but she doesn't sugar coat things, she pushes at him. She makes him admit things even the confession dial could not.
DOCTOR: Clara's my friend.
ME: I know. And you're willing to risk all of Time and Space because you miss her. One wonders what the pair of you will get up to next.
DOCTOR: Nothing. Nothing at all. I know I went too far. I get it. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
ME: And what would that be?
DOCTOR: I'm taking her back to Earth. Somewhere safe, somewhere out of the way. I'm going to wipe her memory of every last detail of me.
(If you hear Me's time and space line in David Bowie's voice, you are very much not alone, by the way.)
Me points out, and rightly so it is shown, that Clara might not want that. She watches as the Doctor is selfish enough not to care. She watches as the Doctor tries to get Clara to accept the memory wipe, even when she vehemently doesn't want it. She would rather die remembering him than live forgetting, quite literally, and he still tries to push her into accepting it. And Me watches this. Sees this. And like every time she brushes against the Doctor's life, this moment helps shape her. Billions of years old, and still impressionable. He can shape her. And... so can Clara.
But not always the way he wants or expects.
CLARA: What were you doing to me?
DOCTOR: I'm trying to keep you safe.
CLARA: Why? Nobody's ever safe. I've never asked you for that, ever. These have been the best years of my life, and they are mine. Tomorrow is promised to no one, Doctor, but I insist upon my past. I am entitled to that. It's mine.
And she hears what the Doctor thinks are his last words to Clara, after his memory is wiped of Clara rather than Clara's of him..
DOCTOR: Run like hell, because you always need to. Laugh at everything, because it's always funny.
CLARA: No. Stop it. You're saying goodbye. Don't say goodbye!
DOCTOR: Never be cruel and never be cowardly. And if you ever are, always make amends.
And Me watched him accept, at last, that he had gone too far, broken too many rules. That he did in fact need to be stopped.
Me and Clara took care of the rest together. They needed to be sure that he had forgotten. They used the Tardis to bring him, and his Tardis (not the one they were in) to Nevada, not far off Lake Silenceo, where she knew he both did and didn't die billions of years before in a fixed and unmovable point in time. (Though I had been sure it was Utah. This might be another Moffat plot hole, and ultimately matters little to Me.)
They disguised the stolen Tardis (again, not his) as the diner he had joined the Ponds and River at, after his "death" and let him wander until he found it. To be sure he had no clue who Clara was, she dressed as a waitress, spoke with him. From the control room, Me watched. She was the protector of all the Doctor left behind, and just this once the one left behind was him. Like Donna he had been made to forget, and like she had protected Donna, this once, she would protect him.
And she listened as he explained:
DOCTOR: When something goes missing, you can always recreate it by the hole it left. I know her name was Clara. I know we travelled together. I know that there was an Ice Warrior on a submarine and a mummy on the Orient Express. I know we sat together in the Cloisters and she told me something very important, but I have no idea what she said. Or what she looked like. Or how she talked. Or laughed. There's nothing there. Just nothing.
CLARA: Are you looking for her?
DOCTOR: I'm trying.
CLARA: She could be anyone, right? You don't know who you're looking for. I mean, she could be me, for all you know.
DOCTOR: There's one thing I know about her. Just one thing. If I met her again, I would absolutely know.
It was safe. He wouldn't easily remember, and by the time he did... it would be too late. Clara said goodbye, in a way that was perhaps too risky by Me's standards. But Me did understand it. When Clara returned to the control room, they took the Tardis away, without taking him, leaving him alone, outside... standing alongside his own Tardis, pained by Rigsy as a memorial to Clara.
Me and Clara flew off, Me trying to read the Gallifreyan writing in the Tardis pilot manual.
ASHILDR: I don't think I've got the Chameleon circuit working. The outer shell might be stuck as an American Diner.
CLARA: Awesome.
ASHILDR: Still no pulse?
CLARA: Time isn't healing. I am still frozen.
ASHILDR: You know what that means?
CLARA: It means my death is a fixed event. The universe depends on it happening.
ASHILDR: I'm sorry.
CLARA: Why? Why does everybody think I am so scared? We all face the raven in the end. That is the deal. If I go back to Gallifrey, they can put me back, right? On Trap Street, the moment they took me out?
ASHILDR: Of course.
CLARA: Mind you, seeing as I'm not actually ageing, there's a tiny little bit of wiggle room, isn't there?
ASHILDR: Wiggle room?
CLARA: Wiggle room. Yeah, you know, wiggle room. We could, er, you know, stop off on the way.
(Clara sets coordinates.)
ASHILDR: Where are we going?
CLARA: Gallifrey. Like I said, Gallifrey. The long way round.
Me's canon point is not long after, having brought Clara back to Face the Raven, before she can figure out what her own next step is.
Scripts referenced:
http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/35-5.html
http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/35-6.html
http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/35-10.html
http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/35-12.html
Character Personality:
As seen above, Me has changed many times over her long life. Living billions of years will do that to a person. She started out as a young girl with a guilty conscience and a very minor psychic gift. Her greatest strengths were her capacity to love and to imagine. She was brave - very much to a fault - and believed in the people around her when she ought not to, and blamed herself when things went wrong.
We see in a wordless montage that when she was saved, she was thrilled to be alive, drinking in the joy of the beauty of the world, but that as time moved on and she remained the same, she grew cold and distant and resentful. And eventually we come in on eyes that seem almost empty.
Because of Me's combo meal deal of infinite life span and finite memory, her personality shifts based on what she remembers when she has a new experience, so some things are drastically different - her priorities, how much she cares about preserving life, her mental and emotional state - while other things remain the same - She's blunt, clever, a bit witty, and she goes to extremes. Often. Perhaps even always.
When she cares, she cares a lot. When she doesn't, death is immaterial to her.
Somethings that she learns, some changes stay with her. As Ashildr, she carried guilt, which she seemed to have lost by the time she was Lady Me.
DOCTOR: Anyone in that village would have died for you.
ME: Well, they're all dead now, and here I am. So, I guess it all worked out.
But that guilt seems to be linked to her caring. She doesn't blame herself for everything anymore, but she does take the blame that makes sense to her. She just understands now that there is plenty of blame to go around, and that immortals should shoulder the brunt if it, because they should know better. She blames the Doctor for what she's become when she hates what she is, and she blames him and herself both for what she has done since.
Even when at the end of Woman Who Lived she has come to accept her long life, come to accept that she would stay behind, when the Doctor said he was glad he saved her... she never said she was as well. She said that everyone would be, which could taken and "everyone" exclusive, not inclusive. I don't think there has been a moment since her babies died that she wouldn't have been alright with her extended life being undone. Even with all the good she has done, she knows she has done much she can never atone for, things that the ones she should answer to... are all dead. They are mayflies, they are smoke, and living hurts too much.
But for all her bravery, she is never quite brave enough to take her own life.
From one of her journals: "Clutching toys as they sleep, never to wake up. My children. My screams. I could not save you, little ones. Such pain. And yet, still, still I am not brave enough to die, to let go of this wretched life. I will endure, but no more babies. I cannot, will not, suffer such heartbreak again. From now on, it's me against the world."
She isn't brave enough to die, but is never quite sure that she wants to go on living. Like Clara after Danny Pink died, this makes her a bit reckless. She tries things just because they are knew, and if it kills her, perhaps that's not the worst thing.
DOCTOR: He'll kill you.
ME: He'll have to be fast. And if he does, perhaps it's about time.
I feel, watching her in preparation to play her, watching the actress' face as she realizes she cannot save Clara, as she talks about how much Clara means to the Doctor... that losing Clara makes this more, not less true. Look at all the damage she's caused by living. By being herself. Who will suffer next? What will she destroy next.
That is something she had as Ashildr as well, just without the quasi-suicidal bent.
ASHILDR: I had a dream you'd all died. It was so real, I thought I'd made it happen.
NOLLARR: Well, if it ever does, I'm sure you'll a find some way to blame yourself.
CLARA: They're coming here tomorrow, ten of them, to kill everybody in the village.
EINARR: Ashildr, is this true?
ASHILDR: It's my fault.
EINARR: Not every misfortune that befalls this village is down to you.
Me seems frustrated and relieved in turns over her memory. She sees that she cannot grow properly, without learning from her past, that she is doomed to always make the same mistakes, because she cannot recall the lessons learned from them, save by reading her journals. But on the other side, some pages have been torn out, because some memories are too sad to bear. She leaves the entry about her dead children because that is one lesson she MUST remember, one mistake she cannot make again. No more babies. It hurts too much when they die.
She is blunt. She can be less so, and with some people she is. But not with the Doctor. She will say what he needs to hear, she won't ease or soften. Not with him. He's immortal, he made her immortal... but unlike her... he remembers. And he still refuses to learn. So she will make him see. She makes herself responsible for cleaning up his messes, and at times she would like him to kindly leave less for her to fix.
I also see some of her bluntness with me as a reproach on herself. Not all of it, but some of it is her guilt manifesting on to him. But even if she realizes that, it will not stop her. As long as she lives - and that may well be forever, she will be blunt with him. He is the only person that will always be there. Love her or hate her, there are moments where each other is all they have.
She does still spend her time with her journals and a little light drink. Not nostalgia, curiosity. She wants to understand who she had been. And later, once she has a mission - a cause - the journals are as much notes as histories, ways to track the Doctor, to figure out who needs her, where she needs to be, and what she needs to do. He is her friend, her punching bag, her mission, her raison d'etre. He is why she is yet alive, and what she has to live for. She neither loves not hates him - not really. She hurts him, and she helps him. But she also trusts him. To the very end of the universe, knowing he is furious with her and that she is only going to make him angrier... even then...she trusts him implicitly to find a way out of this mess.
The problem is... he jumped ahead in the Tardis, threatening to tear apart time itself to save Calra Oswald. Me? She took the long way round. She got to the end of the universe, billions of years in the future a day, an hour... at a time.
Powers and Abilities:
ME: Ten thousand hours is all it takes to master any skill. Over over a hundred thousand hours and you're the best there's ever been. I don't need to be indestructible, I'm superb.
While her mind forgets the emotional lessons, her body remembers the physical ones. Muscle memory. She is one of the greatest archers to ever live, one of the greatest housebreakers. Other things she has learned, she doesn't quite realize she still holds on to. Billions and billions of years, from the early 800s to the end of the universe, honing whatever skill seems useful, or interesting, or different.
And that's something she can't bend back. Some of it she will regain rereading her journals when she regains them. Some will come back with practice - can't recall her father's name, can do quadratic equations. Let's hear it for the human brain, folks! But some of it comes with her. Because things like her archery and agility aren't magic. They're muscle memory and effort.
Ten thousand hours. A little over a year. Two when you add in time to sleep and eat. Two years of focused practice on a single skill to master it, and she has had billions. I am saying this now to basically cover my tail when the new season comes out and we see her do more amazing things, saying here and now that she can probably do them. She never says how she is maintaining the bubble of reality, nor how she got to Gallifrey to wait for him at the end of the universe. My personal theory is alien tech. She got her hands on it, and learned to use it. She may have been on Gallifrey for quite some time, probably was since she was able to read the language.
Beyond that... very minor psychic ability/premonition. She knows the Doctor is important the moment she sees him, and she knows most of her life until they meet that somehow the village is in terrible danger, and she will be at the root of it. And she both was and wasn't. When the Mire came they killed half the village, and Clara talked them into leaving, but Ashildr talked them back into staying, her pride and anger putting them all in danger.
But it was her imagination and creativity, and the Doctor's wit that saved them all.
Me is also, when she chooses to be, painfully determined. She died because she was so determined to keep her people safe that she poured all of herself into the image she painted for the Mire. She burned out her own heart like a battery to save them all.
She posed as a man in the 100 years war and became the best archer in the army, because she was determined to be. She waited billions of years for the Doctor at the end of the universe. She can be freaking stubborn when she wants to be, really.
Samples
Network:
[The camera turns on to show a young woman in a large arm chair, legs crossed, a chess set before her seemingly untouched. Her head cants slightly to the side, her brows lift, and she begins to speak.]
"This is the first time I have ever been so open as this, but here it is. I am, as you see me, Me. I am looking to trade services, with whomsoever might have the skills I need. I have my own mission while I am here, and I need assistance with it. I am also looking to learn new skills. In exchange, I am willing to teach the ones I know."
[She leaned back slightly, head righting itself.]
"But I know human nature. As much as you might wish to learn archery with a woman who can shoot six arrows a minute with enough force to pierce armor, you want to know first what my mission is. To know if you can trust me. Very well."
[She leaned forward slightly.]
"I need assistance keeping track of a man who calls himself the Doctor. He is younger here than he was when we met, and I ever so much older."
[She looks maybe 16 at oldest. Perhaps as much 19 from how she is dressed, but no more than that.]
"He knows I am doing this, and this message is public. I have nothing to hide, not from him, and not from you. He wishes to know less of what I know of his future, not more. But if you have any concerns, please. Feel free to contact him before you speak with me. He might warn you that I am not to be trusted. Fair enough, I might not be. I have my goals, and while I make no secret of them, they may not be your goals. But until our goals conflict, there is no reason we cannot help each other."
[She smiled slightly.] "Please, do not hesitate, if you ever have an issue with the Doctor, to contact... Me."
[With that she touched the remote inset into the chair, and cut the feed.]
Third Person:
A long breath in, and another one out. How long had she wanted to join the Doctor in the Tardis? 800 years. She remembered that, It was 800 years. More or less. She was pretty sure it was, anyway. From when he revived her from the dead, to when she realized she never could fly with him. What was it he had said? Their perspectives were too vast. Or... had she said it.
She needed her journals. But so far she had found only one of them here. But she had procured a blank book and was putting down what she knew as she thought of it.
The Doctor was here. But young. So very young. She knew him to the end of the universe, so many billions of years old. With bushy eyebrows and hair. Sadly, drawing was not one of her skills, but she wanted to capture his face. To remember it.
They had mentioned bending, and once things were settled, she very much intended to learn. Two years in the span of infinity. But she rarely spent those years when the Doctor was actually around. Where and when he was, she had a duty, a job. Or rather, she had work to do the moment he left. While he was on Earth, she prepared.
Except he wasn't on Earth now. And neither was she. She wasn't even aware of her hands moving as she found the wooden beam in the library she was in, inside the Tardis. 800 years she wanted to be here, and here she was. But she wasn't. It wasn't a ship, it wasn't an escape. She was still trapped in the same place. Perhaps not Earth, perhaps this world had more to offer to distract her for a time. But how many years before it mattered not that this wasn't Earth?
The hard stone in her hand dug into her palm as it dug into the wood. The difference was that this time, he was here with her. He was trapped as well. But...
He wasn't alone. He and Clara were her only friends, and he was here... but Clara wasn't. And the Doctor had other friends here. Ones who didn't like how she treated him. Well... Rose didn't.
Her hand slowed somewhat as her eyes closed.
Donna. Donna Nobel. She had been one of the mayflies. She vanished like smoke, died too soon. But Me had liked her, and her grandfather Wilf. She remembered liking them. And here Donna was, and she was Donna. But she didn't remember Me. Wouldn't. They hadn't met yet.
Her hand resumed motion.
The Doctor had never told her about the pain of time travel. He went off, gadding about while she plodded along, and always she had thought he had the better of it. When things got too boring, when it was too much of the same, he could run away, go somewhere new and different.
He never mentioned the pain of seeing people you loved, before they knew you. Ah, Donna. She supposed she could get to know Donna all over again. After all, she was Donna... but not. This was Donna before the Doctor wiped her memory. This was a Donna who remembered what it was like to have that brief spotlight, that moment when the Doctor saw you as important. And he didn't remember her either. Not really. Maybe she and Donna could bond over that. Me was most certainly not someone Donna had to hide things from.
River. Me's lips curved in a slight smile as her hand carved. She remembered a bit about River, tried to keep that memory fresh because she never knew when the woman would popup again. River, with all her rules about what not to tell the Doctor about his own future. She would be horrified at what Me had told him when they met here. That amused her a little.
She half wondered if she hadn't been so harsh for a reason. Not because of her pain, at seeing Clara die again, at losing one of her only two friends. But because of his.
Her hand slowed.
She knew herself well enough to know that when she was in danger she fought and struggled to survive, even as she wondered why. She knew she wasn't brave enough to kill herself, that she couldn't quite ever diminish that spark of hope that something might some day change for the better.
But she'd seen other worlds now, she'd been to the end of the universe, she'd done more than any human ever could dream to do. And still... Still she wondered what the point was. Her hand moved again, rounded shapes.
Maybe she had pushed for a reason. This was the Doctor in the days before he knew her. Saving her... was still in his future. She stopped, eyes still closed, and let her hand fall. Had she pushed so hard... in hopes that he would change his mind when he faced the choice again? That when he freed them all from this place - and he would, she knew that much - he would resume his timeline, look at her corpse and let her die?
It wasn't him, to leave her dead. He was a Doctor. And Clara was there, pushing at him, she was sure. But Clara... If she could make him realize how much he loved Clara, and what her hand was in Clara's death...
She would still have to face the Raven some day. But not then. The Time Lords would not have been able to use her to trap him, if she had been hundreds of years dead and gone. And when Clara did die? It wouldn't have been her fault.
Maybe... Maybe she wasn't brave enough to die, but maybe she could convince him that she wasn't meant to live. That when she had died, when she had given her life for a people she no longer remembered, that had been right. That had been the way things should be.
Maybe like Clara, she should have faced the Raven bravely, with honor, dying to protect those she loved.
She opened her eyes, finding them wet and stared, startled, at what her hand had carved. She couldn't remember when last she had made one of her puppets, but apparently her hands recalled what her mind had forgotten. And he stared at her protruding from an indentation in the wood.
Angry brows, curled hair, deep-set frown, and hollow wooden eyes that started at her reproachfully. As though he knew her thoughts and disapproved of them.
She had forgotten many things over her billions of years of life. But there were two people she had never forgotten, and never would. Clara Oswald, and the Doctor. And that look, she knew that look. That was his "no one is going to die today, not on my watch," look.
She sighed softly.
"Alright then. I'll let you win, this time, Doctor," she said softly to the carving, touching the face almost tenderly. "But no one wins forever, my friend. Not even you."
She dropped her hand and the stone, and walked away from that gaze, picking up the book she has been writing in. She looked back, but from this side the beam was just a beam. She couldn't see his expression anymore, couldn't see him any more.
Since this library was in the Tarids that wasn't a Tardis, but she was the only one here who knew that face, she wondered what the others would think, how they would react. Perhaps she would be there to see it. If so, she would certainly take notes.
She was leaving the room when a thought occurred to her. She walked back in, carefully avoiding the face, and stooped from the far side to look at the rock she had been carving with. Crude. Rough. Not something she found in this room.
Ten thousand hours to master any skill. But she forgot, again, that mastery starts with trying something a single time. Apparently... Well, maybe, anyway... Maybe she would be able to learn this bending thing after all. She tucked the stone into a pocket. A lesson and a memory.
A Maybe.
Name: Chicklet
Age: Adult
Personal Journal: Chicklet
Email / AIM / MSN / Plurk: Plurk: ChickletLARP
Current Character(s): Gabriel Agreste/Papillon, Guru Clef
Character Information
Character Name: Born Ashildr, spends the vast majority of her very vast life simply as Me. Lady Me, Mayor Me, but in the end, she is always just... Me.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Character History:
:: slays the Or dragon, gives you both, hopes that is okay::
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashildr
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Ashildr
She was born to a Norse village as Ashildr who had a very minor gift for premonition, a larger capacity for guilt and self blame and a huge imagination.
ASHILDR: I had a dream you'd all died. It was so real, I thought I'd made it happen.
NOLLARR: Well, if it ever does, I'm sure you'll a find some way to blame yourself.
But when she sees the Doctor for the first time, there is a connection between them, a knowing. They lock eyes and as he is forced to keep walking, he turns back to stare at her, and she keeps staring at him.
CLARA: You all right? Do you know her?
DOCTOR: Never seen her before in my life.
CLARA: Okay, so, why are you staring?
DOCTOR: I don't know. Nothing, probably. Too much time travel, it happens.
CLARA: What happens?
DOCTOR: People talk about premonition as if it's something strange. It's not. It's just remembering in the wrong direction.
The Doctor pretends to be Odin, gets interrupted by someone doing a better job at pretending to be Odin. The second false God's troops start culling, harvesting the best warriors. Clara gets Ashildr to use the broken sonic glasses to undo her chains, but the harvesters catch sight of alien tech and kidnap the girls too.
The males that were taken were all killed and distilled into a brew for the fake Odin. Clara starts talking, and almost gets them to leave, but Ashildr, horrified at what has been done to people she knew and loved, whom she grew up with... pretty much declares war upon the alien abductors. Whoops. All of their best warriors were just sipped down by the leader.
They get sent back to prepare.
EINARR: Where are the others?
ASHILDR: I'm sorry, Father.
CLARA: They're coming here tomorrow, ten of them, to kill everybody in the village.
EINARR: Ashildr, is this true?
ASHILDR: It's my fault.
EINARR: Not every misfortune that befalls this village is down to you. (to the Doctor) She thinks she brings us bad luck.
While the Doctor trains the adult men who are left, Ashildr, desperate to be of help but considered incapable of it due to age and gender practices on her own against a fake fake Odin. A puppet she constructed.
DOCTOR: What's that? Is that a puppet? Oh, I love puppets!
ASHILDR: I make puppets sometimes, when I'm
DOCTOR: Frightened?
ASHILDR: When the raiding parties go out, I make up stories about their battles.
DOCTOR: Because if you make up the right story, then you think it will keep them safe and they'll all come home. That's okay. You're not the first person to ever have done that.
The Doctor tries again to convince her to run away. She gives a moving speech about how even though she is strange, she is accepted there. That running away wouldn't be life, leaving that village would be death itself. (She winds up doing exactly that later, and forgetting the village as an indicator of how far off the rails her life has gone)
Listening to the life around him, while Ashildr clings to her father, the Doctor starts for formulate the plan that will save them all, and Ashildr is the key to it. Her... and a bucket full of eels.
When the troops arrive to kill them all, the village is having a party, which quickly turns bad for the invaders. Using an electromagnet made of wire, anvils, and electric eels, the Doctor procures an enemy helmet which he tinkers with, then pushes Ashildr into wearing.
"Tell them a story, they'll never forget."
Focusing her imagination through the helmet, she sends a vision of a serpent monster to all the invaders, until all but the leader vanishes in fear. She breaks her concentration on the Doctor's command, revealing the serpent to be the skeleton of a catapult like puppet she was building and the sound of a horn being blown by another villager.
The ploy worked, the village was saved with no lives lost on either side. Except one. Ashildr. While they celebrated, her father went to bring her to the festivities, but she was unresponsive. He got the hemet off and caught her as she slid out of the chair. Clara checked her, no pulse.
She had poured so much of her will and imagination into the construct that she killed herself with the force of her determination to save them all, wired to alien tech.
CLARA: Heart failure, yeah?
DOCTOR: Yeah. I plugged her into the machine. Used her up like a battery.
The villagers had her laid out, and were mourning her and all who died in the cull. The Doctor rushed in on their grief, and saved her. He reworked a medical kit from the enemy helmet, and brought her back from death. He put the chip like kit on her forehead and it vanished into her skull.
DOCTOR: It's repairing her. It will never stop repairing her, if it works.
When she started to stir, he tried to leave before she could wake up fully leaving a "Second dose" with her father. When her father insisted she'd want to see him, the Doctor assured the man... she would.
EINARR: Wait, no. She'll want to see you when she wakes.
DOCTOR: Oh, no. Well, she'll, she'll see me often enough once she understands.
She manages to awaken enough to thank him, and he tells her not to. Not yet. And then... he leaves.
(The following was said out of ear shot, but is crucial to understanding the character, and what has happened between this and the next time she meets the Doctor:
DOCTOR: It won't stop, the repair kit I put inside Ashildr, not ever. It'll just keep fixing her.
CLARA: Well, good.
DOCTOR: I'm not sure, but it's entirely possible she has lost the ability to die.
CLARA: The ability?
DOCTOR: Oh, dying is an ability, believe me. Barring accidents, she may now be functionally immortal.
CLARA: If the repair kit never stops working, then why did you give her two?
DOCTOR: Immortality isn't living forever. That's not what it feels like. Immortality is everybody else dying. She might meet someone she can't bear to lose.)
They meet again 800 years later, in 1651, and yes she is functionally immortal now. And a lot has happened since. She's been tried as a witch more times than she could count, she founded a leper colony, she posed as a boy to join the army more than once, she bore three babies and lost them to the black death, she was a medieval queen and faked her own death to escape paperwork and backgammon.
Thing of it is, she can't remember most of it. As far as she is concerned, Ashildr died when she could no longer remember her. "All that is left, is Me." And so she calls herself, Lady Me. She has an expensive manse, she doubles as a male thief called the Knightmare, consorts with aliens.... and keeps all of her life in journals that she reads every now and again. Some pages stained with tears, others ripped out and shoved aside because they are too sad to read.
DOCTOR: Oh, Ashildr, I'm sorry.
ASHILDR: Who's Ashildr?
DOCTOR: You are. That's your name. Ashildr, daughter of Einarr. Chuckles. I used to call him Chuckles. Do you remember?
ASHILDR: Yes. I think I remember the village.
DOCTOR: You loved that village.
ASHILDR: If you say so.
DOCTOR: Anyone in that village would have died for you.
ASHILDR: Well, they're all dead now, and here I am. So, I guess it all worked out.
DOCTOR: Ashildr.
ASHILDR: That's not my name. I don't even remember that name.
DOCTOR: Well, what, what, what do you call yourself?
ASHILDR: Me.
DOCTOR: Yes, you. There's nobody else here.
ASHILDR: No. I call myself Me. All the other names I chose died with whoever knew me. Me is who I am now. No one's mother, daughter, wife. My own companion. Singular. Unattached. Alone.
She has done so many things in her 800 years. She helped end the 100 years war. She ruled a country. She did good things and bad. She mastered many skills including the bow, and the ability to change her voice.
DOCTOR: You're immortal, not indestructible. You can be hurt, killed even.
ASHILDR: Ten thousand hours is all it takes to master any skill. Over over a hundred thousand hours and you're the best there's ever been. I don't need to be indestructible, I'm superb. You should have seen me. I could shoot six arrows a minute. I got so close to the enemy, I penetrated armour.
DOCTOR: How many people have you killed?
ASHILDR: You'll have to check my diaries.
DOCTOR: You can't remember?
ASHILDR: For what it's worth, I've saved many lives too. I cured an entire village of scarlet fever once, almost got drowned as a witch for my troubles. Fortunately, I'm really good at holding my breath. Ungrateful peasants.
DOCTOR: The Black Death, 1348. I meant to warn you.
ASHILDR: I got sick, but I got better.
DOCTOR: Of course, your immune system is learning too. There's another bout coming. And a big fire that tears through London.
ASHILDR: Excellent. Maybe I start it.
DOCTOR: No, that was the Terileptils. Surgeon, scientist, inventor, composer, it's a fantastic CV.
ASHILDR: You should try my journals. I read them myself now and then. Drink pomace wine, have a little Me time.
DOCTOR: You don't seem the nostalgic type.
ASHILDR: It's not nostalgia, it's curiosity. I can't remember most of it. That's the trouble with an infinite life and a normal sized memory.
DOCTOR: It can't have been easy, outliving the people you love.
ASHILDR: According to my journals, hell.
DOCTOR: Sorry.
ASHILDR: You'll have to remind me, what's sorrow like? It all just runs out, Doctor. I'm just what's left.
***
DOCTOR: I read your journals. Why are there pages missing?
ASHILDR: When things get really bad, I tear the memories out.
DOCTOR: What could be worse than losing your children?
ASHILDR: I keep that entry to remind me not to have any more.
(She pokes a fire burning in a grate.)
DOCTOR: I've left you alone too long. I had no idea how much you'd suffered. But I remember the person you used to be. She's still in there. I can help you find her.
ASHILDR: Spare me your pity, I'm fine.
DOCTOR: I think this is just another mask that you wear to protect you from the pain.
ASHILDR: I think the alternative frightens you, that this is who I've become.
DOCTOR: This is no way to live your life, de-sensitised to the world.
ASHILDR: So you intend to fix me? Make me feel again, then run away?
Which is more or less what he wound up doing. They work together to steal an alien artifact, but she uses it to help another alien open a portal to another place, thinking to go with him, since the Doctor wont take her along. She can't stand earth any longer:
ASHILDR: You'll have to remind me, what's sorrow like? It all just runs out, Doctor. I'm just what's left. In fact, I've done all I can here. I look up to the sky and wonder what it's like out there. Please, take me with you. All these people here, they're like smoke, they blow away in a moment. You don't know what it's like.
DOCTOR: I do know what it's like.
ASHILDR: Then, however you fly, whatever ship you sail in, take me with you.
They spend most of the episode arguing, mostly him wanting her to not kill people (and mostly winning) and her wanting him to take her with him (and mostly losing.)
All episode he keeps asking what happened to her to close off her heart. She keeps pointing out that he is what happened to her. He keeps trying to make her feel, she responds by trying to make him hurt.
DOCTOR: I know you've suffered. Your children dying.
ASHILDR: They would have died anyway. Human life is fleeting. People are mayflies, breeding and dying, repeating the same mistakes. It's boring. And I'm stuck here, abandoned by the one man who should know what eternity feels like. Who should understand.
DOCTOR: I do, now, but
ASHILDR: You still won't take me with you. You gad about while I trudge through the centuries, day by day, hour by hour. Do you ever think or care what happens after you've flown away? I live in the world you leave behind, because you abandoned me to it.
DOCTOR: Why should I be responsible for you?
ASHILDR: You made me immortal.
DOCTOR: I saved your life. I didn't know that your heart would rust because I kept it beating. I didn't think your conscience would need renewing, that the well of human kindness would run dry. I just wanted to save a terrified young woman's life.
ASHILDR: You didn't save my life, Doctor. You trapped me inside it.
But he wont. so she partners with someone who says he will, Leandro. All it requires is the stolen jewel... and a single life. She uses the jewel to sacrifice a thief named Sam Swift to open the portal... but when the aliens coming through start killing innocents, the Doctor is finally able to convince her that she does still care, he reminds her how to care.
ASHILDR: No! Doctor, what have I done? What have I done to these people? Stop this! They are defenseless.
DOCTOR: Ashildr! He doesn't care.
ASHILDR: But I do. Oh, God, I do. I actually do. I, I care.
DOCTOR: It's awful, isn't it? It's infuriating. You think you don't care, then you fall off the wagon.
ASHILDR: Never mind about me. What are we going to do about them? We have to help them. They need you. They need us.
DOCTOR: Welcome back.
She uses her second immortality dose to save Sam. The alien artifact fights the alien medicine, and the outcome is a spent artifact, and a living but mortal Sam Swift. Probably.
ASHILDR: Is he immortal now?
DOCTOR: Do you want him to be?
ASHILDR: I don't think I want anyone to be.
DOCTOR: Well, probably not. Probably the power would have been drained by the whole opening and reversing the portal thingy. There'll be enough power to bring him back, but not enough power to keep him here, probably.
ASHILDR: Did you just make all of that up?
DOCTOR: Yeah. But it's hard to keep track of all this stuff. Keep an eye on him though. He might be around for a while. Or not. Who can say?
ASHILDR: You're still not going to take me with you, are you.
DOCTOR: People like us, we go on too long. We forget what matters. The last thing we need is each other. We need the mayflies. See, the mayflies, they know more than we do. They know how beautiful and precious life is because it's fleeting. Look how Sam Swift made every last moment count, right to the gallows. Look how glad he is to be alive. I looked into your eyes and I saw my worst fears. Weariness. Emptiness.
ASHILDR: That's why you can't travel with me. Our perspectives are too vast. Too far away.
DOCTOR: You're not the first, you know. I did travel with another immortal once. Captain Jack Harkness.
ASHILDR: Who?
DOCTOR: He'll get round to you eventually. Who told you about me? The man who comes for the battle and runs away from the fallout.
ASHILDR: Take your pick. You've had an impact on this world. You've made waves.
DOCTOR: Sometimes tidal waves.
ASHILDR: I'm flattered.
DOCTOR: Well, you should be. You're an extraordinary woman, Ashildr. But I think I'm going to have to keep an eye on you.
ASHILDR: No.
DOCTOR: No?
ASHILDR: Someone has to look out for the people you abandon. Who better than me? I'll be the patron saint of the Doctor's leftovers. While you're busy protecting this world, I'll get busy protecting it from you.
DOCTOR: So are we enemies now?
ASHILDR: Of course not. Enemies are never a problem. It's your friends you have to watch out for. And, my friend, I'll be watching out for you.
DOCTOR: Ashildr, I think I'm very glad I saved you.
ASHILDR: Oh, I think everyone will be.
And she keeps to that. He looses track of her in the 1800s, while she is using alien worms to create a psychic field to keep one particular street hidden. She turns that street into a sanctuary, any who wish to love in peace are free to do so, but the rules are strict and absolute. any crime - theft, assault, murder - is punishable by death. A quantum shade called the Raven. A countdown so you know it is coming, but that you cannot escape it. A public death so all can see how painful it is, so all will fear it. All will fear to face the Raven. And because all fear, all behave, and they all revere and honor Mayor Me, who keeps them safe.
But none know where she goes when she vanishes for a time, now and again. The fear of punishment is enough to keep them in line while she is gone, even when she is gone for decades.
She spends that time looking after the families of the Doctor's companions, abandoned and left behind, and the companions themselves after. (This is implied heavily, but never detailed in the show, so all of her interactions with any companion other than Clara is head canon and will be discussed with the other player as needed)
She makes certain he sees her again, in 2014 or 2015, making sure to be caught in the background of a picture of Clara that she knew he would see. Her way of saying that she is still there, still watching out for the world he keeps leaving behind.
But Me was threatened, not long after that. Or rather, the street she protected was. So she concocted a plan to bring the Doctor to her Street, fully confidant that he would stop the ones threatening her, keep her street safe, then fly off again.
One of Clara's friends has been marked by the Raven, marked for death. But he has no memory of the street, the Raven, or what has gone on. So he calls for help, he calls Clara and the Doctor. As Me planned.
When the Doctor finally put most of it together, and she had his Tardis key and had him in the teleport bracelet, she was finally free to explain.
ME: I made a deal to protect the street. They take you, I take the key so you can't be traced. I do as they tell me, and the street is safe.
Me is the only one who could stop the quantum shade, wearing it;'s symbol as a living tattoo about her neck. Her plan was simple, as soon as she had the Doctor in the bracelet, had his key, had his confession dial - whatever that was - she would remove the shade from Rigsy, and they could work together to stop whoever it was that threatened her and her people.
Infinite life, finite memory, she had forgotten how terribly brave Clara was, and how Clara's ability to try to think like the Doctor often landed her in hot water. She had promised Clara's protection on the Street, and had intended to keep that promise. Not only did she think that between her and the Doctor they could get out of this, not only did she intend that no one would be harmed that she cared about... Clara is one of her very few friends. While not immortal herself, Clara travels through time with the Doctor, so kept popping up in Me's life. But when Clara discovered that someone could take the death sentence, she cut Me out of the deal. Me couldn't stop the Raven.
The Doctor's threats when this was discovered meant little to Me. After all, she was watching all her plans to save everyone crumble in the worst possible ways. The only two friends she had in her long life.... One was going to die, and the other was going to spend what time he had left trying to stop that rather than to save himself. Me almost couldn't care then if he did kill her. She knew she deserved it.
ME: I had no idea she'd do something so stupid. I swear, I never meant for anyone to get hurt. Look, what were you thinking? Sacrificing yourself?
CLARA: I wasn't sacrificing anything. It was strategy. Backup plan, to buy us more time.
And then Clara said something to the Doctor that Resonated deeply with Me, with who she had been when the title was Lady, not Mayor.
CLARA: Maybe this is what I wanted. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is why I kept running. Maybe this is why I kept taking all those stupid risks. Kept pushing it.
Ashildr watched the Doctor vanish. Then, with nothing else, no other hope, she did what she had to do. What she did after her babies died. What she did after she had to leave her husband and returned to find him a delusional old man dying. What she had to do every single time she was left alone. She kept living. She returned Rigsy home, and it is heavily implied she left him his memories.
She protected the street. She looked after those the Doctor left behind. She watched the world spin and turn and burn and die.
She learned and survived, and followed every story about the Doctor she could, any hope and sign that the messes she was cleaning up were from the Doctor she knew, after Clara's death, any sign that he survived. But she stayed out of his way. His fury at her kept her back, even when she was relived he yet lived.
Because Clara didn't.
And then she heard the story, the one she hadn't realized she was waiting to hear. the Doctor had found a way to yank Clara from her body the very moment before she died. He would break time, to save her, and was trying to outfly her death.
And Me is clever, and Me is bright, and Me had a LOT of time to think about this, and consulting all her notes, she calculated where and - more importantly - when he was going. She gathered enough tech and waited, and then she created a small bubble, a pocket of reality at the very end of the universe.
They were the last immortals left. Even Captain Jack had told his final secret and died. Even the Master was gone. The last four beings in the universe. A Tardis, the Doctor, Me, and what was left of Clara.
DOCTOR: At the end of everything, we should expect the company of immortals, so I've been told.
ME: Even the other immortals are gone. It's just me.
DOCTOR: The one and only me. Finally, you earn the title, sitting here in a reality bubble at the end of Time itself. How are you sustaining it, by the way?
ME: Brilliantly. I've been watching the stars die. It was beautiful.
DOCTOR: No. It was sad.
ME: No, it was both. But that's not something you would understand, is it? You don't like endings. She died, Doctor. Clara died billions of years ago.
DOCTOR: You killed her.
ME: No.
DOCTOR: You let it happen.
ME: No, I didn't. Neither did you. She did. She died for who she was and who she loved. She fell where she stood. It was sad, and it was beautiful. And it is over. We have no right to change who she was.
Clara listened in while the Doctor and Me spoke, while the Doctor tried to do what he did best. Talk until he found a solution. But Me wasn't going to let him turn things around on her, or wiggle out from under what needed to be done. Me isn't a companion. She doesn't put the Doctor and his feelings first. She cares about him, yes, but she doesn't sugar coat things, she pushes at him. She makes him admit things even the confession dial could not.
DOCTOR: Clara's my friend.
ME: I know. And you're willing to risk all of Time and Space because you miss her. One wonders what the pair of you will get up to next.
DOCTOR: Nothing. Nothing at all. I know I went too far. I get it. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
ME: And what would that be?
DOCTOR: I'm taking her back to Earth. Somewhere safe, somewhere out of the way. I'm going to wipe her memory of every last detail of me.
(If you hear Me's time and space line in David Bowie's voice, you are very much not alone, by the way.)
Me points out, and rightly so it is shown, that Clara might not want that. She watches as the Doctor is selfish enough not to care. She watches as the Doctor tries to get Clara to accept the memory wipe, even when she vehemently doesn't want it. She would rather die remembering him than live forgetting, quite literally, and he still tries to push her into accepting it. And Me watches this. Sees this. And like every time she brushes against the Doctor's life, this moment helps shape her. Billions of years old, and still impressionable. He can shape her. And... so can Clara.
But not always the way he wants or expects.
CLARA: What were you doing to me?
DOCTOR: I'm trying to keep you safe.
CLARA: Why? Nobody's ever safe. I've never asked you for that, ever. These have been the best years of my life, and they are mine. Tomorrow is promised to no one, Doctor, but I insist upon my past. I am entitled to that. It's mine.
And she hears what the Doctor thinks are his last words to Clara, after his memory is wiped of Clara rather than Clara's of him..
DOCTOR: Run like hell, because you always need to. Laugh at everything, because it's always funny.
CLARA: No. Stop it. You're saying goodbye. Don't say goodbye!
DOCTOR: Never be cruel and never be cowardly. And if you ever are, always make amends.
And Me watched him accept, at last, that he had gone too far, broken too many rules. That he did in fact need to be stopped.
Me and Clara took care of the rest together. They needed to be sure that he had forgotten. They used the Tardis to bring him, and his Tardis (not the one they were in) to Nevada, not far off Lake Silenceo, where she knew he both did and didn't die billions of years before in a fixed and unmovable point in time. (Though I had been sure it was Utah. This might be another Moffat plot hole, and ultimately matters little to Me.)
They disguised the stolen Tardis (again, not his) as the diner he had joined the Ponds and River at, after his "death" and let him wander until he found it. To be sure he had no clue who Clara was, she dressed as a waitress, spoke with him. From the control room, Me watched. She was the protector of all the Doctor left behind, and just this once the one left behind was him. Like Donna he had been made to forget, and like she had protected Donna, this once, she would protect him.
And she listened as he explained:
DOCTOR: When something goes missing, you can always recreate it by the hole it left. I know her name was Clara. I know we travelled together. I know that there was an Ice Warrior on a submarine and a mummy on the Orient Express. I know we sat together in the Cloisters and she told me something very important, but I have no idea what she said. Or what she looked like. Or how she talked. Or laughed. There's nothing there. Just nothing.
CLARA: Are you looking for her?
DOCTOR: I'm trying.
CLARA: She could be anyone, right? You don't know who you're looking for. I mean, she could be me, for all you know.
DOCTOR: There's one thing I know about her. Just one thing. If I met her again, I would absolutely know.
It was safe. He wouldn't easily remember, and by the time he did... it would be too late. Clara said goodbye, in a way that was perhaps too risky by Me's standards. But Me did understand it. When Clara returned to the control room, they took the Tardis away, without taking him, leaving him alone, outside... standing alongside his own Tardis, pained by Rigsy as a memorial to Clara.
Me and Clara flew off, Me trying to read the Gallifreyan writing in the Tardis pilot manual.
ASHILDR: I don't think I've got the Chameleon circuit working. The outer shell might be stuck as an American Diner.
CLARA: Awesome.
ASHILDR: Still no pulse?
CLARA: Time isn't healing. I am still frozen.
ASHILDR: You know what that means?
CLARA: It means my death is a fixed event. The universe depends on it happening.
ASHILDR: I'm sorry.
CLARA: Why? Why does everybody think I am so scared? We all face the raven in the end. That is the deal. If I go back to Gallifrey, they can put me back, right? On Trap Street, the moment they took me out?
ASHILDR: Of course.
CLARA: Mind you, seeing as I'm not actually ageing, there's a tiny little bit of wiggle room, isn't there?
ASHILDR: Wiggle room?
CLARA: Wiggle room. Yeah, you know, wiggle room. We could, er, you know, stop off on the way.
(Clara sets coordinates.)
ASHILDR: Where are we going?
CLARA: Gallifrey. Like I said, Gallifrey. The long way round.
Me's canon point is not long after, having brought Clara back to Face the Raven, before she can figure out what her own next step is.
Scripts referenced:
http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/35-5.html
http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/35-6.html
http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/35-10.html
http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/35-12.html
Character Personality:
As seen above, Me has changed many times over her long life. Living billions of years will do that to a person. She started out as a young girl with a guilty conscience and a very minor psychic gift. Her greatest strengths were her capacity to love and to imagine. She was brave - very much to a fault - and believed in the people around her when she ought not to, and blamed herself when things went wrong.
We see in a wordless montage that when she was saved, she was thrilled to be alive, drinking in the joy of the beauty of the world, but that as time moved on and she remained the same, she grew cold and distant and resentful. And eventually we come in on eyes that seem almost empty.
Because of Me's combo meal deal of infinite life span and finite memory, her personality shifts based on what she remembers when she has a new experience, so some things are drastically different - her priorities, how much she cares about preserving life, her mental and emotional state - while other things remain the same - She's blunt, clever, a bit witty, and she goes to extremes. Often. Perhaps even always.
When she cares, she cares a lot. When she doesn't, death is immaterial to her.
Somethings that she learns, some changes stay with her. As Ashildr, she carried guilt, which she seemed to have lost by the time she was Lady Me.
DOCTOR: Anyone in that village would have died for you.
ME: Well, they're all dead now, and here I am. So, I guess it all worked out.
But that guilt seems to be linked to her caring. She doesn't blame herself for everything anymore, but she does take the blame that makes sense to her. She just understands now that there is plenty of blame to go around, and that immortals should shoulder the brunt if it, because they should know better. She blames the Doctor for what she's become when she hates what she is, and she blames him and herself both for what she has done since.
Even when at the end of Woman Who Lived she has come to accept her long life, come to accept that she would stay behind, when the Doctor said he was glad he saved her... she never said she was as well. She said that everyone would be, which could taken and "everyone" exclusive, not inclusive. I don't think there has been a moment since her babies died that she wouldn't have been alright with her extended life being undone. Even with all the good she has done, she knows she has done much she can never atone for, things that the ones she should answer to... are all dead. They are mayflies, they are smoke, and living hurts too much.
But for all her bravery, she is never quite brave enough to take her own life.
From one of her journals: "Clutching toys as they sleep, never to wake up. My children. My screams. I could not save you, little ones. Such pain. And yet, still, still I am not brave enough to die, to let go of this wretched life. I will endure, but no more babies. I cannot, will not, suffer such heartbreak again. From now on, it's me against the world."
She isn't brave enough to die, but is never quite sure that she wants to go on living. Like Clara after Danny Pink died, this makes her a bit reckless. She tries things just because they are knew, and if it kills her, perhaps that's not the worst thing.
DOCTOR: He'll kill you.
ME: He'll have to be fast. And if he does, perhaps it's about time.
I feel, watching her in preparation to play her, watching the actress' face as she realizes she cannot save Clara, as she talks about how much Clara means to the Doctor... that losing Clara makes this more, not less true. Look at all the damage she's caused by living. By being herself. Who will suffer next? What will she destroy next.
That is something she had as Ashildr as well, just without the quasi-suicidal bent.
ASHILDR: I had a dream you'd all died. It was so real, I thought I'd made it happen.
NOLLARR: Well, if it ever does, I'm sure you'll a find some way to blame yourself.
CLARA: They're coming here tomorrow, ten of them, to kill everybody in the village.
EINARR: Ashildr, is this true?
ASHILDR: It's my fault.
EINARR: Not every misfortune that befalls this village is down to you.
Me seems frustrated and relieved in turns over her memory. She sees that she cannot grow properly, without learning from her past, that she is doomed to always make the same mistakes, because she cannot recall the lessons learned from them, save by reading her journals. But on the other side, some pages have been torn out, because some memories are too sad to bear. She leaves the entry about her dead children because that is one lesson she MUST remember, one mistake she cannot make again. No more babies. It hurts too much when they die.
She is blunt. She can be less so, and with some people she is. But not with the Doctor. She will say what he needs to hear, she won't ease or soften. Not with him. He's immortal, he made her immortal... but unlike her... he remembers. And he still refuses to learn. So she will make him see. She makes herself responsible for cleaning up his messes, and at times she would like him to kindly leave less for her to fix.
I also see some of her bluntness with me as a reproach on herself. Not all of it, but some of it is her guilt manifesting on to him. But even if she realizes that, it will not stop her. As long as she lives - and that may well be forever, she will be blunt with him. He is the only person that will always be there. Love her or hate her, there are moments where each other is all they have.
She does still spend her time with her journals and a little light drink. Not nostalgia, curiosity. She wants to understand who she had been. And later, once she has a mission - a cause - the journals are as much notes as histories, ways to track the Doctor, to figure out who needs her, where she needs to be, and what she needs to do. He is her friend, her punching bag, her mission, her raison d'etre. He is why she is yet alive, and what she has to live for. She neither loves not hates him - not really. She hurts him, and she helps him. But she also trusts him. To the very end of the universe, knowing he is furious with her and that she is only going to make him angrier... even then...she trusts him implicitly to find a way out of this mess.
The problem is... he jumped ahead in the Tardis, threatening to tear apart time itself to save Calra Oswald. Me? She took the long way round. She got to the end of the universe, billions of years in the future a day, an hour... at a time.
Powers and Abilities:
ME: Ten thousand hours is all it takes to master any skill. Over over a hundred thousand hours and you're the best there's ever been. I don't need to be indestructible, I'm superb.
While her mind forgets the emotional lessons, her body remembers the physical ones. Muscle memory. She is one of the greatest archers to ever live, one of the greatest housebreakers. Other things she has learned, she doesn't quite realize she still holds on to. Billions and billions of years, from the early 800s to the end of the universe, honing whatever skill seems useful, or interesting, or different.
And that's something she can't bend back. Some of it she will regain rereading her journals when she regains them. Some will come back with practice - can't recall her father's name, can do quadratic equations. Let's hear it for the human brain, folks! But some of it comes with her. Because things like her archery and agility aren't magic. They're muscle memory and effort.
Ten thousand hours. A little over a year. Two when you add in time to sleep and eat. Two years of focused practice on a single skill to master it, and she has had billions. I am saying this now to basically cover my tail when the new season comes out and we see her do more amazing things, saying here and now that she can probably do them. She never says how she is maintaining the bubble of reality, nor how she got to Gallifrey to wait for him at the end of the universe. My personal theory is alien tech. She got her hands on it, and learned to use it. She may have been on Gallifrey for quite some time, probably was since she was able to read the language.
Beyond that... very minor psychic ability/premonition. She knows the Doctor is important the moment she sees him, and she knows most of her life until they meet that somehow the village is in terrible danger, and she will be at the root of it. And she both was and wasn't. When the Mire came they killed half the village, and Clara talked them into leaving, but Ashildr talked them back into staying, her pride and anger putting them all in danger.
But it was her imagination and creativity, and the Doctor's wit that saved them all.
Me is also, when she chooses to be, painfully determined. She died because she was so determined to keep her people safe that she poured all of herself into the image she painted for the Mire. She burned out her own heart like a battery to save them all.
She posed as a man in the 100 years war and became the best archer in the army, because she was determined to be. She waited billions of years for the Doctor at the end of the universe. She can be freaking stubborn when she wants to be, really.
Samples
Network:
[The camera turns on to show a young woman in a large arm chair, legs crossed, a chess set before her seemingly untouched. Her head cants slightly to the side, her brows lift, and she begins to speak.]
"This is the first time I have ever been so open as this, but here it is. I am, as you see me, Me. I am looking to trade services, with whomsoever might have the skills I need. I have my own mission while I am here, and I need assistance with it. I am also looking to learn new skills. In exchange, I am willing to teach the ones I know."
[She leaned back slightly, head righting itself.]
"But I know human nature. As much as you might wish to learn archery with a woman who can shoot six arrows a minute with enough force to pierce armor, you want to know first what my mission is. To know if you can trust me. Very well."
[She leaned forward slightly.]
"I need assistance keeping track of a man who calls himself the Doctor. He is younger here than he was when we met, and I ever so much older."
[She looks maybe 16 at oldest. Perhaps as much 19 from how she is dressed, but no more than that.]
"He knows I am doing this, and this message is public. I have nothing to hide, not from him, and not from you. He wishes to know less of what I know of his future, not more. But if you have any concerns, please. Feel free to contact him before you speak with me. He might warn you that I am not to be trusted. Fair enough, I might not be. I have my goals, and while I make no secret of them, they may not be your goals. But until our goals conflict, there is no reason we cannot help each other."
[She smiled slightly.] "Please, do not hesitate, if you ever have an issue with the Doctor, to contact... Me."
[With that she touched the remote inset into the chair, and cut the feed.]
Third Person:
A long breath in, and another one out. How long had she wanted to join the Doctor in the Tardis? 800 years. She remembered that, It was 800 years. More or less. She was pretty sure it was, anyway. From when he revived her from the dead, to when she realized she never could fly with him. What was it he had said? Their perspectives were too vast. Or... had she said it.
She needed her journals. But so far she had found only one of them here. But she had procured a blank book and was putting down what she knew as she thought of it.
The Doctor was here. But young. So very young. She knew him to the end of the universe, so many billions of years old. With bushy eyebrows and hair. Sadly, drawing was not one of her skills, but she wanted to capture his face. To remember it.
They had mentioned bending, and once things were settled, she very much intended to learn. Two years in the span of infinity. But she rarely spent those years when the Doctor was actually around. Where and when he was, she had a duty, a job. Or rather, she had work to do the moment he left. While he was on Earth, she prepared.
Except he wasn't on Earth now. And neither was she. She wasn't even aware of her hands moving as she found the wooden beam in the library she was in, inside the Tardis. 800 years she wanted to be here, and here she was. But she wasn't. It wasn't a ship, it wasn't an escape. She was still trapped in the same place. Perhaps not Earth, perhaps this world had more to offer to distract her for a time. But how many years before it mattered not that this wasn't Earth?
The hard stone in her hand dug into her palm as it dug into the wood. The difference was that this time, he was here with her. He was trapped as well. But...
He wasn't alone. He and Clara were her only friends, and he was here... but Clara wasn't. And the Doctor had other friends here. Ones who didn't like how she treated him. Well... Rose didn't.
Her hand slowed somewhat as her eyes closed.
Donna. Donna Nobel. She had been one of the mayflies. She vanished like smoke, died too soon. But Me had liked her, and her grandfather Wilf. She remembered liking them. And here Donna was, and she was Donna. But she didn't remember Me. Wouldn't. They hadn't met yet.
Her hand resumed motion.
The Doctor had never told her about the pain of time travel. He went off, gadding about while she plodded along, and always she had thought he had the better of it. When things got too boring, when it was too much of the same, he could run away, go somewhere new and different.
He never mentioned the pain of seeing people you loved, before they knew you. Ah, Donna. She supposed she could get to know Donna all over again. After all, she was Donna... but not. This was Donna before the Doctor wiped her memory. This was a Donna who remembered what it was like to have that brief spotlight, that moment when the Doctor saw you as important. And he didn't remember her either. Not really. Maybe she and Donna could bond over that. Me was most certainly not someone Donna had to hide things from.
River. Me's lips curved in a slight smile as her hand carved. She remembered a bit about River, tried to keep that memory fresh because she never knew when the woman would popup again. River, with all her rules about what not to tell the Doctor about his own future. She would be horrified at what Me had told him when they met here. That amused her a little.
She half wondered if she hadn't been so harsh for a reason. Not because of her pain, at seeing Clara die again, at losing one of her only two friends. But because of his.
Her hand slowed.
She knew herself well enough to know that when she was in danger she fought and struggled to survive, even as she wondered why. She knew she wasn't brave enough to kill herself, that she couldn't quite ever diminish that spark of hope that something might some day change for the better.
But she'd seen other worlds now, she'd been to the end of the universe, she'd done more than any human ever could dream to do. And still... Still she wondered what the point was. Her hand moved again, rounded shapes.
Maybe she had pushed for a reason. This was the Doctor in the days before he knew her. Saving her... was still in his future. She stopped, eyes still closed, and let her hand fall. Had she pushed so hard... in hopes that he would change his mind when he faced the choice again? That when he freed them all from this place - and he would, she knew that much - he would resume his timeline, look at her corpse and let her die?
It wasn't him, to leave her dead. He was a Doctor. And Clara was there, pushing at him, she was sure. But Clara... If she could make him realize how much he loved Clara, and what her hand was in Clara's death...
She would still have to face the Raven some day. But not then. The Time Lords would not have been able to use her to trap him, if she had been hundreds of years dead and gone. And when Clara did die? It wouldn't have been her fault.
Maybe... Maybe she wasn't brave enough to die, but maybe she could convince him that she wasn't meant to live. That when she had died, when she had given her life for a people she no longer remembered, that had been right. That had been the way things should be.
Maybe like Clara, she should have faced the Raven bravely, with honor, dying to protect those she loved.
She opened her eyes, finding them wet and stared, startled, at what her hand had carved. She couldn't remember when last she had made one of her puppets, but apparently her hands recalled what her mind had forgotten. And he stared at her protruding from an indentation in the wood.
Angry brows, curled hair, deep-set frown, and hollow wooden eyes that started at her reproachfully. As though he knew her thoughts and disapproved of them.
She had forgotten many things over her billions of years of life. But there were two people she had never forgotten, and never would. Clara Oswald, and the Doctor. And that look, she knew that look. That was his "no one is going to die today, not on my watch," look.
She sighed softly.
"Alright then. I'll let you win, this time, Doctor," she said softly to the carving, touching the face almost tenderly. "But no one wins forever, my friend. Not even you."
She dropped her hand and the stone, and walked away from that gaze, picking up the book she has been writing in. She looked back, but from this side the beam was just a beam. She couldn't see his expression anymore, couldn't see him any more.
Since this library was in the Tarids that wasn't a Tardis, but she was the only one here who knew that face, she wondered what the others would think, how they would react. Perhaps she would be there to see it. If so, she would certainly take notes.
She was leaving the room when a thought occurred to her. She walked back in, carefully avoiding the face, and stooped from the far side to look at the rock she had been carving with. Crude. Rough. Not something she found in this room.
Ten thousand hours to master any skill. But she forgot, again, that mastery starts with trying something a single time. Apparently... Well, maybe, anyway... Maybe she would be able to learn this bending thing after all. She tucked the stone into a pocket. A lesson and a memory.
A Maybe.
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