#deli11k

A/N: so i was planning to participate in @delicrieux 's 11k challenge but i got so distracted and sidetracked, and here we are. i'm not particularly proud of this; i was really just playing around with a thought i had the other day and rolled with it. it's based off one of the prompts in the challenge but since i'm late, and didn't really enter? - i also didn't get to read over the challenge rules as thoroughly as i should have and mostly just glazed over to the prompts tbh - i'm not sure how it works now. but, delicrieux is one if my fav writers and i really wanted to do something for the challenge somehow. so yeah. sorry to delicrieux for being a tardy bum

She said it under breath, pulling herself to her feet.

It was one of those do or die times; the sort where you were down to the wire and options were thin, and well, you were probably beat up as shit. Which she was. People who leaned toward the good side tended to feel like they were always losing before they won. But, that was getting ahead of herself. She didn't know if they were going to win. More things than herself were bloody right now and she couldn't see a lot of ways where they could gain an upper hand on this climb. It was more like a freefall at this point. But that was her thing: looking for ways out when it seemed like there was no space to even breathe. She's been able to do it since she realized there was no going back either.

And there never was with the Doctor.

"we always have to fuck with the big guys, don't we?" she smirked, past possible broken ribs and ugly bruises and blood, and just an all around, no good day.

She's had worse. Probably.

She liked to call herself the biggest adrenaline junkie the Doctor ever picked up, and he liked to call her his enabler. And, little bit wackier than your average jaded citizen.

On this particular meander through space-time, they met some self proclaimed juggernaut with a mightier than thy complex and an end game of wiping out half the solar system. No way would the Doctor ever let that thought even breach the metaphorical waves of reality. So, they snuck abroad his ship with their typical thwarting mindset. They didn't think he would be docking on a planet faster than they could reevaluate their plan, and they didn't think they would be in the knee deep shit that was ending up right in the juggernaut's military base. It was a good and bad thing. Good because they could sabotage quite a lot. Bad because there were a lot of innocent lives they had to consider being held captive.

Very bad, no good.

A lot of different chain reactions led to this moment. A collection of choices made when the two put their brain together and a few of those times when the Doctor had an epiphanic brainstorm she managed to keep up with the details of. Everything was still insanely brutal on them of course. Jaunts like these naturally were when you stumbled on some evil space brute that wanted to squash you under his little finger.

The Doctor called her name, "Get back. We're not going to win this with you rushing in-"

"Isn't that what I'm good at though? Leaping into things? Making decisions even you can't really guess?" she looked him dead in the eye and quickly realized what was going to happen in the next few moments.

He uttered her name again, more insistently and worried.

She put on her best smirk and faced the juggernaut they'd been chasing and giving a heck of a ride to. He also did a number on them, she had to admit. Killing some of those they got to know and wanted to save. There were always casualties in this kind of things but,

she never did forgive herself or the person who caused it.

She wouldn't now either if she just let this happen. If she let the Doctor die.

His new, new, new plan was to use the surge of energy from a regeneration as a method of detonating the reactor in the juggernaut's ship. Which was spewing off heat and radiation as it tried to enter cool down mode. They had lost the pilfered explosives they were carrying around and there wasn't much else that could be done. They were banged up anyway and he figured he'd lived with this face long enough.

She wasn't having that plan though and she certainly wasn't about to have his blood on her hands to boot.

She eyed the belt of grenades slung across the juggernaut's waist and tensed up, getting ready to bolt.

"I'm sorry Doc." she sighed honestly. A while into this, the two of them discovered this guy was after more than senseless destruction; he was a hired gun by another person interested in smudging out the Doctor.

If the juggernaut ever ran into the Time Lord, he was to make killing him one of his priorities. She wasn't about to allow him to succeed.

She sprinted forward, thinking about all the daring adventures she's had, the things she's felt, people she's met, thing's she'd seen. The warmth she's experienced for making a real difference- the kind you couldn't on a place like earth. All because of him. The Doctor. She could never find the right words to a thank you for all that. There just wasn't any possible way. What was there to say to someone who's heard that same thing over and over from thousands upon thousands of people, and sometimes, none at all.

He deserved the universe, and she was sorry she couldn't do more than this.

"Come 'ere shithead!" she danced out the way of the alien's massive arm arching toward her as she got close, making a grab at the explosives on his hip.

She grasped one, clicking a dial and activating it. The alien bellowed at her and one of his meaty hands snatched her up by the scruff of her shirt to hold her in front of him.

"You pest! As filthy as that pathetic Time Lord." he seethed through big teeth and curled lips that exposed his sable gums.

She wildly grinned with burning eyes and a bloody nose.

"The only pathetic one here is you." she growled spitefully.

The hulking alien brought back a fist but then heard the steady beeping coming from his hip. He dropped her in fear to inspect his belt. He’d never saw it coming. 

She grunted on the floor where she scrabbled back onto her feet. With a mighty cry, she hurried to ram into his legs and topple him into the reactor. The alien's back hit the glass with a wobbly thud and she cast a look at the Doctor who was being dragged away by the civilians who sided with them. She smiled.

"You and me."

She got past the look on his face by knowing he'd get out of this alive.

She felt the swelling heat behind her and looked at the belligerent reactor. The gold glow inside of it reminded her of the TARDIS' heart.

She closed her eyes and thought of it. How much like home it and the Doctor felt in quiet, stolen moments.

At least that was comforting enough before everything went:

boom.