Inspired by Neil Gaiman's short story Harlequin Valentine.
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The Joker and the Thief
by The Valiant Child
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I said the joker is a wanted man
He makes his way all across the land
I see him sifting through the sand
So I'll tell you all the story
About the joker and the thief in the night
Can you see the joker flying over
As she's standing in the field of clover
Watching out everyday
I wonder what would happen if he took her away
~Wolfmother, Joker & the Thief
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On a warm March night, in a year as insignificant as 2005, he steals away a pink girl with time woven in her skin and a nest of stars tucked away in her yellow hair. Her eyes hold disbelief as she spins around his little blue box, and wonder as she twirls in its big insides. Her fingers trace the corals on the walls and the lights in the console.
She's a dreamer, this creature with a single, sorry heart and touch so warm. Even confined in the painted walls of her flat and the glass windows and sleek, tiled floors of her sad, sad job, she dreamed of bigger things than the small existence that she was tied to. He's a dreamer too; so he had to cut her loose and lead her away to wrap her timelines around his. It's selfish, he knows but there's this silence in his head that burns away with the heat of a dead planet and its dead people and he feels like being selfish this once.
He met her in a dismal basement with living plastic surrounding them and after he took her hand and pulled her away, he couldn't for all the regenerations in him get the tingle of her warmth away from his veins. It stayed like an unrelenting spark, like diluted liquid fire, tingling up and down his hand, teasing, testing. Giggling away at his inability to forget a pair of large, scared eyes that had dreamed countless dreams, of the stars in her hair and the time in her skin.
So, he dropped by the next day with a plastic arm in his hand, rattling away at the cat flap on her door. Her flat was ugly and small, he decided immediately, and her mother absolutely silly. But the glimmer of her stars was pretty and her eyes looked better when she was demanding instead of scared. He decided to let her feel the turn of the Earth and smiled as he left a cool tingle running along her veins.
Like electricity and ice.
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They run around the universe, through the past and along the future, talking with them laughter and chaos while the stars in her hair shimmer in the firelight of haunted houses where brave girls burn away demons who were once angels. He smiles to himself because she doesn't know that he's a demon too, wrapped in leather and sarcasm, and he's charming her away with him to damnation.
She smiles at him, as warmly as the sun and his returning smile is all sin and shadows.
I'm so glad I met you.
Me too.
He wonders if she'll still be so glad when she knows how many planets he is a wanted man in, how man civilisations he has destroyed, how many lives he has ruined..when she knows of the Time War and his part in it.
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Her timelines give a shudder sometimes, as if they know what he's up to and they're trying to shake him off. But he's a Lord of Time, the Lord of Time and a shudder will never be good enough to get away.
His little blue box that's fantastically big has some things to say about the pink girl too. Not all of them are nice, but the old girl's not always nice, even to him. Yet, she gives the pink creature her best room, good food and doesn't even try to befuddle the human with her ever changing corridors with its twisting turns. And sometimes, she dons a human skin from her future and visits the pink girl when she sleeps.
He likes to listen into their conversation sometimes. The pink girl is ever fascinated by his fantastic blue box, even in her mad human casing and his blue box is ever curious why this pink thing has so many stars in her hair. It's something to be reckoned with when his blue box doesn't know something.
They sit on a swing of smoke and dreams, eating ice cream that is but memories, when the pink one asks his blue box about the sand in her dress. His box shakes some grains off her blue-green clothes and grins madly. Knowingly. "They're time," she answers.
The pink girl closes her eyes and smiles softly, knowingly. "They sing," she says.
He takes them away to a planet several thousand light years away from her tiny home, where the grass is red like his planet once was, and when she takes his hand, the stars in her hair shimmer in the moonlight and the wind blows some sand away from her clothes.
He thinks he'd like to take her to the frozen beach of Women Wept with its icy waves and cold colder than his skin.
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"It's beautiful," she laughs as she runs towards the solid waves. Her single, sorry heart is the only warm thing around.
That night, she drinks tea with steaming curls of memories as she and his blue box sit on their swings in her dreams. The pink human hums away an old pop song while his blue box sips away at her tea.
"What is Bad Wolf?" the pink girl asks all of a sudden.
His blue box closes her eyes as she sways back and forth. "It's a message."
"About?"
His blue box grins and fades away like a cat who knows too much.
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On a cold night, in the midst of a war, the pink human steals away a Captain and has the audacity to tuck it away inside his ship. It doesn't help his cause that his ship takes an instant liking to the Captain who isn't really a Captain at all.
He grumbles, mumbles and keeps silent about the tendrils of envy that churn in his stomach, slowly slithering up and winding around his hearts. The Captain isn't so bad really, but he makes sure to glower away anyway. And each time he feels a shiver in her timelines, even the barest one, he clutches them so close to his own, that if timelines could bruise, hers would be as blue as his box now.
His blue box, he notices, strolls about the pink girl's dream more and more often now. They talk endlessly, about everything from him to the Captain to the weather to what her mother might be doing back on Earth. He notices that his precious pink girl says Earth, not home. And every day she never fails to ask about the Bad Wolf but always fails to get an answer. He's asked his blue box too and he too received only silence. It's frustrating to say the least but he knows a thing or two about time and some things are best left alone, especially if his box thinks it so.
A few days before he decides that they should go to Kyoto, he notices that the stars in his pink girl's hair shine brighter these days and his blue box stares at them with that knowing smile of hers.
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Wrapped in a nest of constellations, her hair is like spun gold and the time etched in her skin is dipped in eternity. She's time itself in all her glory. She's the Bad Wolf, she creates herself. She takes the words and she scatters them. A message to lead herself here, to protect him from the false god and to bring her friend back to life.
Which is something so very wrong.
And rightfully so, her head starts to hurt. She can see everything—all that is, all that was, all that ever could be and her little human head can't quite take it. She burns like Gallifrey did and he knows that he's about to lose her as her timeline gives the biggest shudder and just like that he finds that he's giving himself away to this girl that he stole on a warm March night in an utterly insignificant year.
He leans down and presses his cool lips to her burning ones and she leans in immediately as he takes away the power boiling inside her. If he's lucky, she'll only be left with some blurry images and a song at the back of her mind.
But oh, had he only known that this girl that he stole was a thief too. He should have seen it before. She's always stealing things: smiles from his lips, words from his mouth, the chill from his skin and the hearts of pretty things as well as the ones from old, broken bones. He should have known that she wouldn't be able to resist stealing the siren song of time. And just as he's about to take away the last drop of the vortex away from her, she grabs him by the lapels of his jacket, kisses him hard and dizzyingly and explodes into a million golden stars.
He drops to the ground, dumbstruck and horrified even as the vortex energy inside him starts burning away this old, battered body of his. Somewhere in his terribly big head he thinks he'd like to be younger this time, something his pink human might like. But then, his pink human isn't his anymore and she's nothing but light and stars now. If she's anyone's, it's the Universe's and her own.
He feels the haunt of a tingle on his lips. Maybe it's the regeneration starting, maybe it's her kiss, but it's like a mischievous spark, like diluted liquid fire and as he too explodes in light and gold, he remembers a howl and a feral smile.
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A year later in a cold March night, in an insignificant planet far, far away from his home, he catches a glimpse of pink and yellow among the crowded streets of London, England, Earth. And that night, his blue box flutters away to haunt a starry thief (with time in her skin and drops of the universe in her hair) in the dreams that she now lives in.
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A/N: I have a vague sort of idea for another chapter of this but I'm not quite sure if I should write it. Thoughts?