Chapter Text
It was the sound of a little girl crying that did it.
Quiver at her back, a woman unseen stalked the aisles of the supermarket and unsheathed an arrow. Above the shelves, sharp hazel eyes tracked their target. The world around her slowed when she nocked the arrow. The midnight-blue bow was comfortable in her hands; an extension of herself. A fifth limb.
Walking parallel to a young man in his twenties, she drew back the bowstring with powerful arms. A woman was headed his way. Just as young. Twice as pretty. Neither of them watched where they were walking — their eyes on the shelves instead of ahead. Leather jacket creaking with the movement, the huntress stepped out from behind the pastry aisle and locked the man square in her sights. Serendipity. She liked the serendipitous ones, although in reality, no such thing existed. Fates were decided long in advance. Mortals so loved to entertain that notion of free will they clung to, though — and who was going to be the one to break the truth of it to them? Not her.
Collision in three.
She took a breath.
Two.
Tightened her grip on the handle.
One.
A child's piercing scream sounded clear as a bell throughout the shop the moment she released the bow. Horrified, she watched the arrow wobble as it sailed through the air. It pierced straight through the heart of a tin of beans, missing the mark by endless inches. Shoulders slammed into one another. A feeble apology was made. No second glances. No doubling back to ask for a number. A whole future — a whole intertwined timeline — erased. The archer closed her eyes, exasperated. The heavens would rain down on her for that one.
That child's scream had become a whimper. Curious as to the perpetrator of her misfire, she rounded the next corner. Two young girls were in the confectionary aisle. The older of the pair was on the floor and the youngest (her sister, presumably), was standing over her. It was the girl on the floor who was crying. Red-eyed, she shot to her feet and lunged for her sister while their weary mother deserted her shopping cart and tried to pull them apart.
"Yaz! Stop pulling your sister's hair! Sonya! Stop that!"
Invisible, the archer crouched by the bickering siblings. They hit out their hands aimlessly, thrashing wildly, screaming at one another much to their mother's obvious mortification. The archer placed her hands on their shoulders. Her palms glowed soft orange and that light pulsed once through the veins of both the young girls. Instantly, they calmed. Sniffling, the youngest — Yaz — wiped a tear from her face with her sleeve. Sonya ducked her head.
"There!" their mother sighed. "Now say you're sorry. Both of you."
"Sorry," they each mumbled half-heartedly.
Shaking her head, their mother took them both by their hands and led them away with threats of an early bedtime. The archer rose to her feet and watched them go with a frown. Something was off.
Without fail, whenever the archer touched a person, their hearts unfurled like a map beneath her touch. Maps to their past, present, future loves. Their connections, relationships; heartaches and heartbreaks and heart hopes. Indeed, when she'd placed her hand on Sonya's shoulder, her multiple possible futures were stretched out before her and the Doctor could follow them all the way to the end of her life. But Yaz—
When she touched Yaz, there was nothing.
In the years that followed that fateful encounter, Yaz became the archer's personal mystery to solve. At least, that's how it started.
As Sheffield's resident Cupid, her work kept her endlessly busy, but she didn't sleep. This solitary perk (or burden, depending on one's perspective) granted her the occasional respite from maintaining the hearts, fates, and futures of all under her domain and she dedicated those scarce moments to Yasmin Khan and her family.
The archer would check in on the young enigma every now and again, forever wondering if that day might be the day her heart finally opened for her. If she might as last solve the puzzle.
The child was one great big burning question mark emblazoned onto her mind. Never before had she touched someone and seen nothing; felt nothing. It frightened her. For the life of her, she couldn't figure out what it might mean. Even those who were not disposed towards romantic love had heart maps; paths leading to people they would love in other ways. Why not Yaz?
So, from afar, the archer watched this young girl grow up before her eyes and time after time she'd try again to get a read on her. Time and time again, she would fail. Three years went by as such.
During this time, she became a fly on the wall of the Khan family home. An unseen guest at family dinners. A silent audience to their scraps both petty and severe. A pacifying hand at a shaking shoulder. The archer didn't have a home, but that flat was starting to feel like the closest thing. When she wasn't working, she was usually there.
One night, she was perched on the roof of their complex, legs hanging over the edge of the building. No doubt soon, she'd have to move, but for right now she was taking a moment to enjoy the few bright stars in the sky; the fingernail moon and the breath of mist surrounding it. There was a rush of wind and a rustling of feathers. She looked to her side to find that she was no longer alone upon the roof.
"Hey, Bill," she greeted with a smile.
Bill was a Cupid from London — of which there were multiple, given the population. As such, Bill often found herself with more downtime. Downtime she would, every once in a while, dispense on flying visits to old friends sitting alone on distant rooftops.
"All right, Doctor?"
Bill's name wasn't actually Bill.
The Doctor's name wasn't actually the Doctor.
Cupids weren't afforded official, individual names but they had developed a habit of nicknaming one another when they became friendly enough. The Doctor, catalogued in the system as D-013, was only named as such because of her affinity for Doc Martens. One particular pair of Doc Martens: all black aside from the red hearts painted on the leather and the striking, rainbow-hued laces. She never took them off. Originally, people had called her Doctor M, until the latter half of the nickname fell away for misuse.
Bill's name derived from her catalogue code: B-11L.
"Slow night?" the Doctor wondered.
"Yeah, little bit." Bill pulled her knees up to her chest and gazed out at the city stretched below them. "This whole Netflix and chill palaver is really putting a spanner in the works for true love, init?"
"Ah, that's the modern age for you, Bill!" The Doctor gestured out at the brave new world they spoke of. "Everyone's falling in love over computer screens and blocks of text. Tellin' you, you wouldn't believe the amount of hearts I've had to shoot through an iPhone to get to."
"Not like the old days, is it?" mused Bill.
"Not much is."
The Doctor couldn't even remember how long she'd been walking the earth's shadows with a quiver of arrows slung over her back. Forever, maybe? Time was tricky to keep track of. Most Cupids just accepted that they had always been around and probably always would be. Easier not to question it.
Easier for some.
They spent so long watching the world change around them but never were they allowed to immerse themselves in that world; never were they allowed to be a part of it for more than one day a year. Day in and day out, the Doctor dosed people with love — sometimes so much it was fatal — and she never once got a taste of that sweet poison herself. Cupids weren't supposed to want these things, but the Doctor forever found herself wanting. Some nights it felt like want was all she ever did.
"How's your girl? Family made peace yet or is it still a war zone down there?" Bill asked.
The Doctor had told Bill about her interest in the Khans a while ago. It wasn't unusual for a Cupid to attach themselves to certain people; to certain families. It staved off the loneliness. And sometimes exacerbated it. When Cupids would meet up, they'd ask their friends about their families as if they were really their families. As if they actually belonged there.
“Nah, they're all right for now. Peace in that household is always pretty precarious, mind," the Doctor divulged fondly. "You've not heard anythin', I take it?"
She'd asked Bill — a decidedly more sociable Cupid — to send out a message through the grapevine. A name. Yasmin Khan. The girl who gave nothing away. Ordinary, as far as the Doctor could tell. A twelve year old girl who clashed with her family and got all right grades and never stepped too far out of line. The Doctor certainly couldn't see anything amiss, so she hoped the name might ring somebody's bell out there.
"Still nothing. Sorry, mate," Bill said apologetically, disheartening the Doctor though she'd come to expect such a response. "I did hear something else, though. Not sure you're gonna like it."
"Brill," sighed the Doctor. "Go on then, let's have it."
"Well, apparently someone else had a similar issue ages back. Not sure if you ever met that Scottish bird. You know, the ginger one? Think her name was..." Bill clicked her fingers as she tried to recall. "Oh - Pandora!"
Memories were fickle sometimes.
For beings who had lived so incomprehensibly long, it could become understandably difficult to disentangle distinct articles from the endless blur of time like a thick fog in their minds. Better, sometimes, to let the past lie. The Doctor shrugged.
"Anyway, this was way back during the Roman Empire. Remember that? Men in skirts! What a wicked age for fashion," Bill recalled sincerely. At the Doctor's raised brow, she pressed on. "Uh, but yeah, apparently she sent a similar message out along the vine. Came across some centurion without a pulse."
Pulse was the term used amongst Cupids to refer to a person's interweaving futures, their heart maps, their infinite possible loves, the song in their souls that none were attune to except a higher being.
"No one knew what it meant back then either. Only, a short while later, old ginger-locks dropped off the map. Never to be heard from again," Bill said in a hushed tone, like a kid telling horror stories around a campfire. "If you ask the higher ups about her, it's like she never even existed. Someone else is in her town, now. I know we get rotated every once in a while, but — she just vanished, apparently."
"Come on, get off it." The Doctor waved a dismissive hand. "The rumour mill's bad enough without two millennia's worth of Chinese whispers folded into the mix."
Bill shrugged. "I remember her, though. Didn't until somebody brought her up, but I do now. And I checked for you, 'cos I'm a great friend like that. It's true, Doctor. She's gone. Not even a code in the system."
"We don't just disappear, Bill," refuted the Doctor.
"So, where'd she go?"
Bill's story got to the Doctor.
The more she thought about it, the more she realised that yes, she did remember a fiery redhead named Pandora. She'd presided over a small Scottish village back during the days of the Roman Empire. The Doctor thought they might have been friends once. Who could say? Remembering was tough. But never had she heard of such an instance, wherein a Cupid had simply disappeared without a trace. It worried her.
While the Doctor had grown fond of the family, and still had not gotten to the bottom of the mystery that was Yasmin Khan, she made the call to leave them behind. They weren't her family, anyway. Could never be.
So the Doctor let them be. She returned to the shadows, the streets, the dingy corners of heaving bars and sweaty nightclubs.
Untethered.
Homeless.
Time marched on like an arrow and so did she. For five years, she marched. Sometime during that fifth year, she found herself marching the halls of a high school, out through a set of doors which opened up to the track and the field beyond.
Two high school sweethearts flirted behind an outbuilding, smoking an illicit joint and laughing way too loudly at what was unlikely to have been very funny. The Doctor saw their pulses swim in the air around them — abuzz, magnetised. Theirs, the Doctor knew, was to be what she called a figure-eight love. Their whole lives, they'd be chasing one another back and forth. Always in love, but never quite at the right time.
Waiting until the boy had his back to her, the Doctor shot her arrow clean through his heart, where it passed through him straight into the girls' own chest. She passed him the toke with a shy smile. Ah, young love.
"Good luck," muttered the Doctor. Fifteen years old. They had no idea what was coming.
The Doctor was about to make herself scarce when she spotted her - and she knew it was her right away, despite how much time had changed her. Yasmin Khan. Taller, different hair, shirt and blazer. But it was her. The Doctor was confronted with the inexplicable urge to rush over, to ask about her family, to catch up as if they were old friends. She didn't. Obviously.
Yaz was hurrying across the yard and even at a distance the Doctor could see it was not eagerness motivating her but something else. In the background, in the very direction from which Yaz was rushing, the Doctor saw a girl. The girl was laughing. Cruelly so.
Pit in her stomach, the Doctor followed Yaz all the way to the girls' bathroom. Yaz locked herself away inside a stall and the Doctor hovered by the sinks, wondering what she was even still doing there when — sobbing. Muffled, like she had a hand over her mouth, like she was trying so hard to choke it back. The Doctor felt her heart make a nest out of her throat.
For three years she'd watched over this girl; tried in whatever small ways to protect her from harm and done all she could to salve her small hurts. And now here she was in the world without the Doctor's protection. Crying alone in a bathroom stall.
When Yaz finally emerged, she stared at herself in the mirror, holding wet paper towels to her eyes to ease the swelling beneath them. The Doctor, lifelong studier of human behaviour, knew the look on her face well. Self-loathing. Desolation. Hopelessness. This was not an uncommon affliction amongst teenagers; nor was it the Doctor's problem. But it was Yaz.
And so followed that old familiar instinct she hadn't realised she still housed — the one that urged her to mend Yaz's pain and help this poor girl who she had so callously abandoned all those years ago (not that Yaz would ever have even noticed her presence, never mind her absence).
The Doctor felt a building pressure at her back, a brief second of agony, and then an untold relief. She stretched her technicolour wings, forged from pure light and feather, and breathed a deep sigh with her head tilted skyward. Some Cupids liked to have their wings on display at all times. Some liked to feel like they were just another human in and amongst the crowd. For the Doctor, it varied from day to day.
Presently, she plucked one of the luminous feathers from her wings, wincing only a little when it detached. Kaleidoscopic in her palm, the feather pulsed with all the colours of the universe. Delicately, she tucked the feather into Yaz's hair. To bring her lightness of heart.
To ease the burden.
The second she did so, Yaz caught her own eye in the reflection of the mirror. The Doctor watched her visibly steel herself. With a deep intake of breath and a long exhale, Yaz braced herself and then turned on her heels, making for the door with her head held high.
"Go get 'em, champ."
The Doctor couldn't help, after that, but keep an eye on her young conundrum.
Not so much as before — she didn't frequent Yaz's flat; didn't want to grow too attached to her family again - but just enough to keep tabs. Mostly, she'd swing by the high school when she felt like checking in. It didn't take long for the Doctor to surmise the apparent source of Yaz's strife.
One Izzy Flint.
She had taken Izzy's pulse on day one. Unsurprisingly, hers was a weak one. Queen Bee was destined to settle in life. No great flame. No epic love. Mundanity was to be her lot. The Doctor tried to convince herself that such a fate was punishment enough for her crimes against Yasmin Khan. She reminded herself that she was not supposed to intervene in the everyday affairs of mortals; that it was beneath her. And yet—
And yet almost every day she watched this miniature tyrant make life hell on earth for Yaz and after a few months of helplessly observing this, interceding became impossible to resist. So one day she didn't bother.
It happened during drama class.
By some stroke of substitute teacher genius, Yaz and Izzy had been paired up to to read out a scene from Romeo and Juliet in front of their peers. It wasn't hard for the Doctor to read the subsequent vibe in the room during this performance. The sniggering. The poking fun. Yaz's unfettered humiliation as she had to be the Romeo to her bully's Juliet. To the teacher's apparent ignorance, Izzy read all of her lines with no small measure of sarcasm.
The Doctor's fury felt white hot beneath her skin.
She didn't meddle. Ever. For one thing, she never typically cared enough to do so. For another, it was absolutely against every rule in the book. But Yaz's suffering was something she couldn't abide.
Part-way through the performance, the Doctor unsheathed an arrow at the back of the classroom. Just as Yaz pressed on through some painful monologue about star-crossed love, the Doctor shot an arrow through Izzy Flint's heart. Smug, she watched Izzy falter, stammer over her next line, peer up at Yaz as if really seeing her for the first time. When the scene was over, Izzy hurried back to her seat without further remark. She was silent for the remainder of the lesson.
Izzy's pulse changed, then.
It thrummed harder. Spanned further. Her future shifted. Probably, the Doctor had just done them both a favour. Izzy's love for Yaz would fade — she'd made sure to aim just a little left of centre - but it wouldn't leave her unchanged. To love someone so good scarcely did.
A flash like thunder. A blinding light flooding the room. The Doctor shielded her eyes with her hand and winced; impaired vision adjusting just enough to make out the wall opening up like a door. Reality fissured and the class continued on as normal. Why wouldn't they? These events were not taking place on their plane. A lone silhouette appeared in the doorway. As the light partially dulled, the Doctor dropped her hand and regarded her visitor.
Sharp jawline, wickedly sculpted brows, black umbrella swinging in her hand. Her tailored pantsuit shimmered with colours not of this world. The woman approached, heels echoing on linoleum, and came to a stop right before the Doctor. She sighed melodramatically.
"Someone's been a very bad Cupid," the woman proclaimed with a pout.
"Missy?"
The Mistress was one of the superiors; a Love Lord (and a notorious one at that). Everybody knew she wasn't to be trifled with, and that usually if you were seeing her, you'd done something very wrong indeed. The Doctor, offending bow still at hand, did her best to mask her blatant guilt.
Missy turned to the side and gestured at the hole in the fabric of reality. "Step into my office, dear."
Missy's office was not so much an office as it was an unbound region of space and time. The Doctor knew they must be somewhere in the Crystal Citadel because that's where the Lords dwelled, and yet she couldn't say which plane of existence — which dimension or universe — the citadel resided in. Only that all Cupids were forged here; wings bestowed upon them and destines decided by the vortex.
The room had a hazy quality to it, as if it weren't entirely real. Certainly, it didn't feel as solid as earth. Light spilled over the bookshelves lining the walls, the dark wood of the furniture, every exposed inch of their skin. The source of the light was unknown and yet it painted everything orange and gold.
The Mistress (she'd earned the nickname because she was the Love Lord of infidelity and affairs), eased herself onto the throne behind her grand desk. "Sit," she commanded.
The Doctor chose to stand.
Missy arched a brow. "Very well. Oh, it has been a while since we've had such a wayward little Cupid," she purred, bordering on amused. "I'm a tad excited. Aren't you?"
"What am I doing here?" demanded the Doctor. "It's been centuries since you lot asked to see me."
"Well, dear, it's been centuries since we've needed to. But we upstairs have noticed a few... irregularities in your behaviour these past few years." Missy's perfectly manicured fingernails drummed the surface of her desk. "Haven't quite had our finger on all the right pulses, have we?”
"Dunno what you mean," the Doctor denied with a shrug.
"Hm." The curl of Missy's lip was nothing short of glacial. "Let's see."
Missy opened up a huge leather book sitting in the centre of her desk, embossed on the cover with the Doctor's catalogue code and the volume number. She parted the book to her desired page straight away and perched a pair of glasses on her nose that the Doctor reckoned were only for show.
"First hiccup was about seven years ago — should still be fresh as a daisy. Supermarket blunder. An arrow that never quite made it home. Pity." Missy's eyes cut sharply towards the Doctor. "Theirs was to be a grand love."
"Ah, we all miss every now an' again, don't we? Nature of the job. Win some, lose some." The Doctor was perhaps laying her faux-casual tone on a little too thick, but her nerves betrayed her when she plucked absently at her bowstring. "Why bring this up now? Why not pull me on it when it happened?"
"Well, as you said, sometimes a Cupid misses the mark. It's undesirable, but forgivable. If it happens once." Book at hand, Missy got to her feet and flipped through the pages as she rounded the desk towards where the Doctor stood. "In the years since this encounter, however, there have been one or two instances wherein you've scarcely made your appointments by the skin of your teeth. Hovering, as it were, at a tiny little flat belonging to Najia and Hakeem Khan. I did my homework on them. They're nobodies. Care to shed some light?"
An unprecedented anger bloomed in the Doctor's chest when Missy referred to Yaz's parents as nobodies. She held her tongue. "It's not them, it's their daughter. Yasmin Khan. Do your homework on her, too?"
Missy smiled darkly but said nothing.
"I ran into her years ago and — it's the weirdest thing. She doesn't have a pulse. No fate map. Nothing." At that, Missy's stony exterior fractured for a millionth of a second before mending itself right before the Doctor's eyes. "I've never come across anythin' like it. None of the others I've spoken to know what to make of it, either. Thought if I just monitored her—”
"Monitoring the humans is not your job, D-013. Your job is clean cut. You're a Cupid, for heaven's sake. Take a pulse, shoot an arrow, move on." Missy slammed the book shut and deposited it onto the desk behind her. "If there's no pulse - well, there's no job. One less heart to worry about, if you ask me. We can't go fretting about every poor little mortal we stumble across. There simply isn't world enough and time, dear."
"I know how to do my job," the Doctor simmered. "I can keep an eye on her and still—”
"When you say 'keep an eye', you do of course mean piercing her high school bully's heart with an arrow not meant for her? Tell me, did you read Isobel Flint's pulse?" inquired Missy, nose inches from the Doctor's, stormy eyes inescapable.
The Doctor flexed the muscles in her jaw.
"Well?"
"Yes," she replied through gritted teeth.
"Ah, excellent. So you haven't completely forgotten how to do your job." Missy threw her hands up as if thankful for the small victory. "And before you used her for target practice, did Miss Flint's pulse give any indication of leaning towards Yasmin Khan? Any at all? Had she the slightest sliver of affection for the girl?"
"No."
"No." Missy slammed the tip of her umbrella down on the floor so hard the Doctor felt the room tremble. "So why on earth did you bloody well shoot her? Do I really need to go back to basics and explain how meddling with the fate of one is meddling with the fate of all? Have you really regressed so far? You used to be one of our best and now look at you! Your heart's bleeding all over the place. I cannot stand a bleeding heart. Hence why our arrows spill not a drop."
The Doctor gripped her bow with white knuckles. "Not sure what y'expect me to do. I shot her. It's done. Y'know I can't take it back now."
"Quite right. The damage has been done. We up here are going to have to closely monitor the situation now; make sure it doesn't interfere with any of the major fates in place." Missy perched on the edge of her desk and shook her head. "Thank you very much for that extra paperwork, by the way. I do so appreciate carpel tunnel. And as for you, madame."
The Doctor awaited her sentencing with her head held high. Would they imprison her for this? Would they do worse? She thought of Pandora's disappearance and wondered — not for the first time — if a Cupid could be killed. Surely, what could be created could be destroyed. And would that really be so bad? She'd lived - how long? Forever? So much of it alone. An eternity half forgotten, for the most part spent simply distracting herself from her own miseries and forbidden dreams through whatever means possible. Would it be so bad for it all to come to an end?
Would it be so bad to rest?
Apparently, Missy had no intentions of being so solicitous. "Stay away from Yasmin Khan."
The Doctor blinked; frowned. "But she's—”
"If she hasn't a pulse, it's probably just a teensy error on our part," claimed Missy.
"You don't make errors," the Doctor rebutted.
"Not often. Once in a millennium, perhaps." Missy held a finger to her lips. "Shh. Don't tell."
"So you'll fix it?"
"Cross my heart," promised Missy with all the sincerity of a wolf among sheep. "Don't you worry your pretty little head. We'll sort it all out on our end. All you have to do — and it's really very simple — is never go near that girl again. Okay, dear?"
"But—”
"I'm not actually asking." Missy pointed the sharp tip of her umbrella at the Doctor's chest. "You're not to see her again. Not to watch over her. Not to meddle. We're not guardian angels — heaven forbid. Those idiots are far too sentimental. They think us soft but we both know that love is a brutal game, don't we? Of course, if you wanted to put in for a transfer, I'm sure we could review your case in a few centuries. You know how backlogged these waiting lists can get."
It was all the Doctor could do not to roll her eyes. "I don't want a transfer."
"Great! So then just keep on doing your job. One day, young Miss Khan will be nought more than a memory. And then — not even that."
Missy spoke like it was a good thing — something to rejoice over — and yet the Doctor couldn't help but feel dampened. Yaz's family had been a comfort for her and the idea that she might have been helping somebody, that she might have been making a difference outside of enforcing the set paths drawn up by some higher deity, had been a nice feeling. One she was about to lose for good. Even when she'd kept her distance before, at least she knew she always had the option to return.
Still, it wasn't wise to defy a Lord. "Fine," she yielded. "I'll leave her alone."
"Excellent. Now, off you pop!" Missy clapped her hands and the wall tore open with an almighty sound like a building collapsing. "With a spot of luck, you and I won't meet again for centuries."
With a spot of luck, thought the Doctor as she retreated into the blinding light, we'll never meet again.
Directly defying her gut, the Doctor obeyed Missy's instructions.
She didn't trust that woman as far as she could throw her, but in all likelihood she'd been right. A mistake had been made somewhere. A mistake that would be rectified. The Doctor had seen an enigma in Yaz because that's what she'd wanted. Something to distract her from the grim, lonely truth of her own existence. She didn't know of any other Cupids that so despised the nature of their being, but then she didn't suppose any of them would confess to it if they did. Not unless they wanted a visit from Missy.
So, that day, the Doctor walked out of Yaz's high school and never looked back. She pushed Yaz and her warm family and their cosy flat far from her mind. All they were to her was a bitter reminder of that which she coveted but would never be privy to anyway. She was doing herself a favour by leaving them behind.
From there on out, she became the perfect angel of love. No more misfires. No more tardiness. No distractions. She didn't involve herself in the individual dramas of the humans; only took their pulses and shot her arrows.
A further four years passed that way.
It was Valentine's Day.
February 14th was a day eagerly anticipated by all Cupids across the globe. It was the one day of the year when they weren't on the clock; when they became visible to the naked mortal eye and could mingle with whomever and do whatever they pleased.
It was custom that she, Bill, and a handful of other Cupids from their cluster would meet up. They'd drink and dance and engage in those very human rituals they pretended not to envy them for.
Valentine's Day was the day the Cupids allowed the humans to live and love without pulling any invisible bowstrings on their behalf. It was a day for them to choose; a day for them to potentially manufacture their own destinies. Sometimes, a person's fate would change drastically on Valentine's Day — for better or for worse. But it was their design. Their own choice to make. Zero Cupid intervention.
There was always a shit tonne of work to do the following day, but that was a problem for then. February 14th was dedicated solely to indulging in whims and getting merry.
It was the Doctor's turn to host her cluster at Sheffield. Sheffield was notoriously great for students, which made it an interesting venue for ancient angels of love, but then this was their one night to go wild. Mostly, they didn't care where they ended up.
Before the others arrived, she and Bill spent the day in the town centre. They ordered food just to talk to the cashiers and bought clothes just for the novelty of trying them on in the dressing room — though the Doctor never actually deviated from her one outfit: rainbow striped T-shirt, high waisted jeans, Doc Martens.
She also habitually sported a black leather jacket which matched said Docs (hearts hand-painted onto the fabric and a rainbow sheen to the buttons). A Cupid could change their clothes on a notion; could adopt a different outfit for every day of the year if they so pleased. The Doctor didn't think she'd changed hers since the 80's.
Later that day, she and Bill headed to the bar. It was bustling. Valentine's Day had fallen on a Friday this year. As host, it was tradition for the Doctor to get the first round of shots in, and so began the night. It usually always went down the same way.
For a while, they'd all catch up with one another and remark at how desperately they'd been needing this day off and how much they missed one another. Sometimes, they'd talk about work — about how particularly tragic a fate they'd sealed was, or about how they'd pierced the heart of some A-lister. Usually, however, they tried to steer clear of shop talk. Inevitably, once all the catching up was through with, all the Cupids ever wanted to do was mingle with the humans. Have a taste of their life.
Be seen, heard, touched.
Bill was right in there, as usual, making a beeline for the first pretty woman who gave her the eyes. Usually, the Doctor would go to a club. She liked the noise and the press of bodies; the heaving crowd like a current she couldn't swim against. She liked that the alcohol and the drugs actually worked; liked that she was finally able to make herself feel something. Occasionally, she'd fall into bed with somebody and sometimes it was worth it and sometimes she'd rather have had another pill. This time was different.
The night was still young when, just as the Doctor turned away from the bar with a drink in hand, somebody slammed right into her and spilled the contents of her glass right down the front of her shirt.
"Shit, sorry!" came a distantly familiar voice.
When wide, dark eyes found her own, the Doctor forgot to notice the beer staining her clothes. She forgot to notice the glass falling from her hand and shattering on the ground.
Yasmin Khan was looking her right in the eyes.