I'm trying not to sleep

[bossily]

Who: Clara & anyone! (totally open)
Where: Around the mansion
When: The week after the shadow event
Rating: TBA
Summary: When you have a terrible shadow event, it's time to stay busy to forget about it
The Story: Clara is beyond humiliated.

She's lost a great deal of her pride, she's fractured almost every single relationship she's formed in her time here, and she's at a loss as to what she needs to do to make herself feel better. So the best solution in her mind is simply not to think about it and stay busy. She can't act like any of the things her shadow said never happened, of course, but she doesn't have to linger on it. There's too much hurt there for her, and it's best to just build up some walls on the inside and close it off and away. And sleep? Forget about it, there's way too much time to have thoughts loiter on everything that went wrong, or have pesky dreams slip in, and that's definitely not something she wants to have happen.

On Tuesday, she has plans with both Luke and Owen, and despite not being up to her usual spirited nature she's grateful for the chance to interact with the both of them without shadows present.

On Wednesday, she thinks she has self-defense lessons but also spends a good portion of the day sprawled out in the sun at the beach. She's not usually a beach dweller and she doesn't usually sunbathe, but she thinks it's the perfect place to read through some Jules Verne. Journey to the Center of the Earth was a childhood favorite, and it makes her feel safe and nostalgic so she's grateful that the library has a copy on hand just waiting for her.

On Thursday, she spends her time out in the gardens, working on both drawing and painting. Her lessons with Whale have left her eager to continue practicing, working on a drawing of white roses which she has every intention of painting red by the end of the day. If someone happens across her, she's more than likely to grab hold of them and convince them to pose for her so she can attempt a more complicated subject.

Friday finds Clara holed up in the library, a stack of books on space piled up around her. She's sitting cross legged on the floor, and the pile of books towers above her, constantly wobbling as if they're about to topple at any given second. There's fiction, non-fiction, and even some picture books at her side. She started the day out reading for research but now has an old, worn copy of The Little Prince in hand. It brings back memories of her mother, and those are always good to hold onto when she's having a difficult time.

The rest of the weekend is spent either at the swimming pool or her room. The pool she's never really used before, so it's nice to just float around and stare up at nothing in particular. It's a funny feeling, just aimlessly floating, doing nothing for hours on end. She almost feels guilty for it, but it's a nice break from being cooped up in the library. When she's in her room she's working on painting her walls, trying to complete constellations for the night sky she's painted across every single wall. She's not much of an artist, but this has given her something to do in her time here, and the project is almost complete. There's even a little TARDIS painted right up above her bed.

Comments

FRIDAY

[strangeboy]

D'Artagnan's been feeling much the same, and though his conversation with Aramis on Wednesday helped a bit, he's still been avoiding Clara like the plague. He finds the easiest way to do that is by keeping busy, and burying himself in things and places she doesn't tend to go. The problem being, of course, that she goes almost everywhere that he does, and they live on the same floor. So that isn't helpful. He's found solace in the library for the past few days, though, so that's where he finds himself on Friday, walking through the stacks to a section that, hopefully, has cookbooks.

That is, of course, when he spots Clara's table at the end of his row, and the book in her hand. It's not one from his time, but it's one he recognizes, and that he's read since being here. In French, of course, because it's more fun that way. He sighs, scratches the back of his head and then makes his way slowly down the row.

"Language is the source of miscommunication," he says, quoting an all-too relevant piece of it at her. "I suppose I should apologize."

[bossily]

She's surprised to see him, and even more shocked that he's actually speaking to her. So she peers up at him over the book with wide eyes, trying to sort out his motivation for doing this. But then again, it's an apology, does there have to be a motivation for that? When she smiles, it's something cautious and guarded, and it doesn't quite reach her eyes.

"You didn't do anything wrong." She eventually insists, glancing back down at her book briefly before closing it and sitting it down on her lap.

"You've read this?" Pleased by that fact, there's slight warmth to her smile now, and a soft chuckle to accompany it. "I should be the one apologizing, I think. My shadow wasn't exactly easy to deal with." And she is sorry that he had to deal with it at all, especially in the way that he had.

[strangeboy]

Back to square one, then. D'Artagnan's figured as much. He doesn't really have a motivation, other than he feels like a jerk and he'd like that feeling to go away sometime soon. He takes a seat in the chair across from her, pushing some books to the side.

"I did enough," he says, begin generally vague about it all. Seems appropriate. "No one's shadow was easy to deal with. Did you encounter Buckingham's?" He shudders with the memories. Too many mental images. Too many crude jokes. On the plus side, he'll probably laugh every time he sees Buckingham from now on.

[bossily]

Clara tenses up at the mention of that particular shadow, and looks entirely freaked out. "I did run into his shadow, yes." Remembering the shadow gives her a chill and she wrinkles up her nose, shaking her head. She's glad the shadows are gone, because no, she doesn't want a repeat performance of anyone's she ran into. Especially her own.

"I'm glad the actual duke is decent to be around and kind. And not out to get me to...ride him." That last part is said in a whisper, her hand brought up to muffle the words.

She realizes then that D'Artagnan also just shuddered, so she's very curious if the same thing might have happened to him too. She can't bring herself to ask, though, she's afraid she'll dissolve into a fit of laughter right in front of his face.

Thursday

[jolting]

Whale probably fared better than most with that whole Shadow nonsense. Only because he managed to tie his up so it only blurted out his secrets a little. And none to Clara, so he wasn't too concerned with seeing her face-to-face later. He suspected he would find her in the gardens eventually, and he did.

"Hard at work, I see," he commented. "May I see what you're doing?"

[bossily]

His voice is familiar to her now, so she doesn't have to glance behind her to know it's him. She finishes up the detail of a rose and nods, stepping aside so he can see her canvas that's set up on an easel. The longer she stays here, the more supplies she ends up with from her closet, it seems.

"I still have a bit to go before finishing. But it's not bad as it is."

A pause, and she frowns critically in the direction of her work.

"Is it?"

[jolting]

"You've been practicing." That was not praise, exactly. It was just an observation without any sort of feeling. His eyes flickered between the rose and her sketch. "An excellent likeness." That one sounded more like praise, but still without feeling.

The trouble of having no heart.

Tuesday night

[doctorweevil]

Owen is actually a little amazed that things with Clara haven't been completely ruined by now - not just because he's the sort of person who inherently fucks up everything (his shadow got that much right, at least), but also because of the whole shadow debacle, which is an entirely new and exciting Wonderland-induced brand of clusterfuckery that he's come to loathe.

Except that, somehow, the shadows actually did make them open up to each other - all right, there was quite a lot of being an idiot prick on his part, but that's fairly typical for Owen, but at least they communicated. He's still not sure how he feels about Clara, and she's not sure how she feels about him, and in a weird sort of way, it works really well. Or well enough, anyway.

He knocks on her door, a bouquet of flowers in one hand.

[bossily]

She's ready when he shows up, wearing an almost exact copy of the red little dress she showed up in Wonderland in. It reminds her of home, which puts her in a better mood, and she desperately wants to be in a decent mood for things with Owen. It's not fair for him to have to put up with a bit of moping and melancholy because she's going through a hard time. So there's a slight smile on her face when she swings open her door, which promptly turns into something genuine at the sight of the flowers in his hand.

"I'm not usually a flower type of girl, but you might make a believer out of me yet." She laughs, taking the flowers from him and motioning for him to come inside.

She lets him linger around her space, unsure if he's seen her room before. It's quite the sight, she knows, what with every wall painted up like the night sky. There's various little antique knick knacks all around her room now, littering her bedside table and the desk over across the room. There's globes and maps of all sorts of planets on that desk, with pinpoints stuck in everywhere. She hops over organized stacks of books to get to her closet, in which she pops in and comes right back out with a vase. All but one of the flowers are dropped inside and placed atop her bedside table. That one is tucked gently into her hair, since it goes so perfectly with her dress. All that being done, she finally spins around to face him.

"So! Breakfast after dark?"

[doctorweevil]

"I wasn't sure," he admits, shrugging helplessly, "but I didn't want to come empty-handed, either." He isn't really a flower sort of bloke, actually, but Owen's trying to be more, well, normal about this. Or as normal as you can get when you're a man who's died twice going on not-quite-serious dates involving magically produced breakfast with a girl who travels through time and space in a weird pocket dimension that's straight out of a storybook.

(Normal is, he thinks, vastly overrated.)

Owen studies Clara's room for a long moment, hands shoved in his jeans pockets. It's a lot more personal than his (though most rooms would be), and being in it is almost intimate in a way that Clara doesn't usually allow, from what he's seen. "Breakfast," he confirms with a smile and a nod. "Lucky guess, with the flowers. They match your dress."

Friday

[oncefairytale]

Amy managed to escape the event mostly intact. While her ego was bruised and she was a little worse for the wear, she didn't have too many run ins with others around. As such, her spirits weren't dismal for once. After a few days' recovery, she is back to exploring the mansion.

One of the first places she always checks is the library- when it's on her floor- and Friday is no different. She's always amazed by how many books the library houses. She wonders how many of them she's read. Not enough, according to her literature professors, but she doesn't care. She only wanted to know about space and Rome when she was a girl.

She spots a piles of books in the distance and approaches quietly. She comes to the other side and sees Clara with book. "Get tired of all the big words?" she asks, gesturing to the larger tomes wobbling behind her.

[bossily]

It's been a bit of time since she's seen Amy last, so Clara is pleased to see she's still around. She offers her friend a smile and a light shrug of her shoulders, holding up the children's book she's casually reading. "Something like that." She scoots over to make room for Amy on the floor, surrounded by all the books.

"Having a bit of a rough time, so I thought I'd read something that reminds me of home."

It's a simple fix, for her. Her mother promised all those years ago that she'd always find Clara, and it's something that she believes in entirely to this day, even long after she passed away. "How're you holding up? Survive your shadow just fine?"

[oncefairytale]

Amy frowns slightly. Sounds like someone wasn't as lucky as she had been with her shadow. She sits cross-legged next to Clara and pulls a book into her lap to play with. "Things weren't so bad for me. I learned how to walk really fast these last few days. If she stuck around much longer we were going to start having problems. I'm not sure how much longer I could have outran her."

She glances over at Clara again, noticing the subdued attitude. "I take it you didn't get so lucky?"

TUESDAY MORNING

[alwaysnext]

Luke has two uncomfortable discussions on Tuesday, and this is the one he's dreading the most. With an entire morning where the only self-hatred he experiences is metaphorical, he can obsess over every wrong move he made this weekend. One of the things that bothers him most is technically the encounter that went the best. The one that ended without any dark secrets revealed, or his shadow throwing around horrible insults about murder. His conversation with Clara.

Without his defensiveness bubbling over, the guilt starts kicking in. He rarely sees eye to eye with her opinions, but that's a normal part of friendship. You can't learn from someone who sees the world exactly like you. This went beyond mild disagreement and headed straight into unacceptable. All Clara did was show she was caring and insecure. It's hardly new or appalling knowledge. It's his behaviour that was at fault. He was dismissive of her problems and wrapped up in his own head, and he yelled at her. After his conviction that it was them, not their shadows, who revealed their true natures, it's galling.

So rather early on in the day, he raps a short tune on her door. He promised her gingerbread, which is pretty time intensive. They need an early start if he's ever going to see Martha, and she keeps her appointment for her 'something'.

[bossily]

All things considered, Clara thinks that her conversation with Luke was one of the only decent ones of the shadow event. So when he arrives at her door (she recognizes it's him by his knock - that, and she's expecting him), she swings it open with a smile on her face. She doesn't bother saying hello, just grabs him by the wrist and drags him inside. She's been working on painting her room, and is excited to show him that she's painted a constellation from their world on one of her walls. She worked hard to make it exact, something that she knows Luke will appreciate. She tugs him over to stand before the wall and just stands there next to him, waiting for him to see it.

"Orion." She explains, just in case he has trouble picking it out.

"Thought there was enough fantasy around here. Some realism ought to straighten things out just fine."

[alwaysnext]

She doesn't need to explain. He gets it right away, though he takes a second to concentrate and absorb the full effect. The rest of her room is pretty, but good art should either be awesome or scientifically accurate, and this is well on its way to being both. He uses his thumb to pick out the line from Mintaka to Rigel, before grinning in approval.

'That's so cool. Exactly how da Vinci would've done it,' he decides, ticking a finger at her. He approves of da Vinci. The man drew some really rubbish portraits, but his engineering was fantastic.

That last statement has him puzzled. He agrees with it, but there's a difference between general, universal frustration, or if she has a specific incident in mind. So he tries to ask about it without actually asking. 'This what you've spent the weekend doing? Holed up in here, drawing constellations?'

Thursday Night - for Ianto

[bossily]

Clara's furious after her run in with Doctor Whale. She's not sure how to handle the anger she feels toward him, but she thinks that maybe Owen will be able to help her sort out her thoughts. And if not, he's definitely someone who can handle her vague ranting, since she did promise Whale she wouldn't reveal his secret to anyone. So she knocks at his door the second she arrives, and her heated state makes her not wait for him to answer and instead just barge right into his room.

"Oh, you would not in a million years guess what just happened."

And...that is definitely not Owen she is complaining to, so she stands there a bit dumbstruck as she tries to figure out something witty to say. Having nothing on the tip of her tongue, she crosses her arms over her chest and sighs. This day is turning out to be quite something.

[torchwoodteaboy]

Ianto hasn't been dealing very well with the fact that he's dead and he's stuck in Wonderland for the rest of as long as he's got left in whatever sort of stasis this is, so he's been doing a lot of hanging around anything familiar that he can cling to. And in this case, that would be Owen. Owen, who's been surprisingly understanding lately. Especially given the fact that Ianto's been sticking to Owen's own room more often than not.

He's sitting in a chair, dressed down at least in the sense that his jacket and tie are off, reading a book that he managed to scrounge up and is just barely holding his attention when she bursts in. It's obvious to both of them that Ianto isn't the person she was anticipating finding in Owen's room. Awkwardly he puts his book aside and stands. "I, uh," he says. "Owen's at the clinic."

[bossily]

"Owen's at the clinic," She repeats, looking more and more confused as the seconds tick by. "He's at the clinic, and you're in his room. Why is that, exactly?"

It's entirely baffling, to have Ianto be in Owen's room. She knows that they work together, but that's not really a reason why they're sharing living space. Of course, she jumps to conclusions and assumes that maybe a bit more than just work goes on between the two men, and that leaves her with her nose wrinkled and a knot in between her eyebrows as she attempts to figure out if it's the truth.

Wednesday

[throughthedark]

It was the boats that had drawn Giles back to the beach. He'd arrived here in them, or at least he'd woken up in them. And while he's not much of a sailor...well, it's a possibility, right? Maybe there's something hidden there, out on the ocean.

He would have passed right by Clara if not for the book. The title catches his eye, and he backtracks a bit, just enough to get a second look at it.

Despite himself, Giles smiles wryly. Jules Verne. God, when was the last time he read anything for fun?

"Sorry to interrupt, but...did you get that out of the library?"

[bossily]

She's surprised when she's interrupted, by a young boy no less, but smiles and nods in response to his question. "Have you not been there yet? Oh, it's just brilliant. Rows and rows of books." Hers is gently closed, and set aside in her lap so she can get a good look at him.

She doesn't recall ever seeing him before, and he looks to be close to Artie in age. So she feels an instant need to at least be helpful, and try and figure out if he's looking for a conversation or books in specific.

"It's on the second floor, usually. Sometimes the third. Maybe half and half, I'm not too positive. The important thing to remember is there's books on just about anything there. I've gone through a few dozen since I've been here."

[throughthedark]

"I'm surprised to see anything from home." He has visited the library, but only just the once. It wasn't much of a visit, since his shadow wouldn't shut up. So he doesn't say as much, because it's nice that Clara is being helpful. "I wonder how it's all wound up here. Still, it's a relief to hear that there's some variety. I'd get terribly bored otherwise." Or, if not bored, than definitely just out of sorts. Reading, and research in general, has always been a major part of his life.

"Shame about the door. Seems...needlessly complicated, that."

Thursday

[freetobe]

"I underestimated your penchant for the visual arts."

Castiel has been standing behind Clara, watching her progress for a while, completly invisible and undetectable. It's something of a habit of his, and no matter how hard people try to break him of it, Castiel keeps doing it. Humanity is too fascinating to watch, to study, to observe, and his concept of privacy too non-existant.

A long time ago, he was rooting for Neanderthals due to their superior poetry. But humans seem to have developed a more profound relationship to visual arts since he watched them stack dried dung in an attempt to build the tower of Babel, or smear paint on cave walls for that matter.

[bossily]

Clara recognizes the voice, and she's grinning long before she turns around to face Castiel. She makes sure to finish some of the roses, giving a few finishing touches here and there, and pencils are set aside on the easel, giving her room to spin about.

"You estimated my penchant for the visual arts? You could've just asked." It's a tease, something lighthearted and ridiculous and not at all creeped out. She knows he's an angel and he's a bit off when it comes to doing things the human way. She doesn't hold it against him.

She steps aside so he can get a better look at her work, if he really wants to. "It's nothing special. Not yet, anyway. I've got someone giving me lessons, though. Don't think I'm entirely hopeless at it."

[freetobe]

"Humanity's penchant for the visual arts. It was an all-encompassing you." Castiel looks more puzzled by the tease than anything. Such teasing usually flies right over his head and disappears into the sky. He can't even wave goodbye, because most of the time he's not aware of something being a tease, simply puzzled why the humans never understand him.

The joys of talking to the most socially awkward angel of the garrison.

"Not entirely, no." Castiel steps closer to inspect her work, face unreadable. "There's a certain beauty in enthusiasm and passion that can overshadow the lack of technique."

Castiel glances at Clara, then. His face seems impassive, if not for the slight crinkle around his eyes. His mouth may be firm, but that's as big a smile as one could get from him about most things - he's 'messing' with her, as humans would say.