rainshaded (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rainshaded) wrote2007-06-01 01:04 pm
rainshaded) wrote2007-06-01 01:04 pm
dreams of fairytales and fantasies PG 1161 words
Title: dreams of fairytales and fantasies
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Martha, Susan, Romana, Leela, Ace.
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fraternizing challenge. The prompt was "He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it." Douglas Adams.
The title comes from the song "Sick and Tired" by Anastacia.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eyliena for beta-ing.
Spoilers for Gridlock and bits of Old Skool, mainly concerning those characters.
“You are not alone.”
Martha’s suggestion had been a perfectly reasonable one. If Rose had tried to explain it away in that way, he would probably have pretended to accept it, just to keep her happy.
Maybe that was what the Face of Boe had meant. He was not alone; he had someone to care about, someone to share his adventures with.
But he was still alone in a different way. His mind was silent; the comforting background hum of the Time Lords silenced forever. He had run from them; at times, he had hated them. But they were still his people, his kin.
And he would still have dreamed. He would still have allowed that seed of impossible hope that he had nurtured through two incarnations to put down a few delicate, tentative roots.
He was the last. He knew it. Gallifrey and the Time Lords were only myths, reverberating through time and space. Children on Ralady were told fairytales about the Lords of Time and their travelling machines, their TARDISes. He appeared quite a lot.
He was the Lonely God, the wanderer without a home. That fact had become the foundation of his existence; he had become used to carrying the pain and the guilt.
It was too good to be true; he couldn’t believe it. He shouldn’t believe it.
But the Doctor had fantasised about being wrong.
His bright, beautiful Susan had grown up so quickly, while he wasn’t looking. Sometime, she had decided that he was the one who needed looking after. Suddenly, she wasn’t a mischievous imp, but a young lady who needed her own life.
His parents never existed, his children never existed, but he survives. Maybe she had existed, somehow sheltered from the effects of the War, and made a life with David.
Maybe she now lives somewhere more tangible than in the memories of an old man and two unborn/young/old/dead humans, preserved only by the way all three spend their lives out of step with their own time.
“You’ll love this place, Martha. Mid twenty-fourth century, the Earth’s had a couple of centuries to recover, no wars for the last fifty years. Great advances in technology, and the pollution levels-” The Doctor trails off and stops dead.
“Doctor? Doctor, what is it?”
An elderly woman walks past and the Doctor reaches out to her.
“Susan? Surely it’s Susan?”
He came back for her.
Romanadvoratrelundar grew into Romana and the universe wasn’t big enough for the two of them. The time came when the pupil outgrew the teacher, when there was nothing else to say.
He wishes she’d kept running and not gone back to Gallifrey; wishes that she had survived.
He wishes she had been even more like him, not better and braver than he ever was.
He imagines all the ways she could have survived; imagines her trapped in some primitive era on some primitive planet, nursing the coral and counting the centuries or a perpetual wanderer amongst the stars, believing herself to be the last.
He tracks a time signal to Scotland, Earth, 1746. There’s been enough interference there already. He lands a little bit off, tracks the signal across miles of moorland to Torchwood House, and literally bumps into her in the doorway.
She slaps him.
“I’ll give you ‘Lonely God’!”
Sometimes, he thinks about his life. Sometimes, he wonders whether his entire life was leading up to the point where the Time Lords’ dying screams filled his head.
Leaving Gallifrey with Susan, kidnapping Ian and Barbara, that first fateful encounter against the Daleks- had he, all the while, been rushing towards the inevitable destruction or had it been simply the foundations? What if he had listened to Sarah and carried out his orders from the Time Lords?
There are a million universes inside the Doctor’s head; one where he was just another Time Lord; one where he allowed Ian and Barbara to leave and never developed a respect and eventually a fondness for humanity; one where he left the fluid link well alone; one where…
They multiply into infinity, for every action has consequences.
Every companion he dragged into the chaos lived a different life to what might have been, for better or for worse.
Loyal, noble Leela was never one to run from a fight, never one to abandon what she saw as her duty. After Andred’s death, she refused to leave Romana’s side; refused to leave her ‘undefended’. They never managed to convince her it wasn’t her fault; she thought that if she had stayed he would have lived. She never showed when she was hurt and never showed fear. But the Daleks couldn’t be defeated with her beloved Janus thorns.
He hopes that maybe, just maybe, Romana saved her life; sent her away against her will, exiled her to relative safety.
“I’ve found someone you should meet,” Sarah says.
Leela looks horribly out of place in Sarah’s house, dressed haphazardly in twenty-first century fashions. The buttons on her blouse are done up wrongly.
She says nothing. She doesn’t need to ask after the Time Lords or their President. She doesn’t need him to tell her that they lost.
She simply gazes at him, just a little girl lost. She’s always been strong, but it’s left to him to break the silence.
Her real name was Dorothy but Ace suited her much better. She was ace. She was the ace hidden up his sleeve. He watched her grow from the vulnerable child hidden behind a front to a confident young woman; he saw her outgrow him.
Ace left Time’s Champion and became Time’s Vigilante; one more companion caught up in the destruction.
But they both saw that tapestry; that motorbike could have taken her to Paris. It could have taken her anywhere. It might have taken her somewhere safe.
“You should be more careful,” he scolds her gently, letting the dermal regenerator do its work.
She looks slightly uncomfortable but he tries to attribute that to the slight itching of the new skin, tries to pretend that she knows him again.
“You don’t live very long if you’re not careful.”
“You don’t live very long anyway,” he replies and means it. The human body is so fragile and can so easily betray the strength of the soul inside.
The gash on her leg heals completely, leaving only slightly pink skin to show where it had been.
“There you go, good as new,” the Doctor beams, slipping the dermal regenerator back into his dimensionally transcendental pockets.
She pulls her trouser leg down and bounds to her feet.
“Thanks for that!”
“No problem,” the Doctor smiles. “If you ever need to find a man who carries a dermal regenerator around again, look me up.”
Ace laughs. “I might take you up on that sometime.”
He waves as she walks off into the jungle. A few minutes later he hears the sound of a motorbike.
“I’m here to see Mr Saxon,” the Doctor announces.
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Martha, Susan, Romana, Leela, Ace.
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for the
fraternizing challenge. The prompt was "He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it." Douglas Adams.The title comes from the song "Sick and Tired" by Anastacia.
Thanks to
eyliena for beta-ing.Spoilers for Gridlock and bits of Old Skool, mainly concerning those characters.
“You are not alone.”
Martha’s suggestion had been a perfectly reasonable one. If Rose had tried to explain it away in that way, he would probably have pretended to accept it, just to keep her happy.
Maybe that was what the Face of Boe had meant. He was not alone; he had someone to care about, someone to share his adventures with.
But he was still alone in a different way. His mind was silent; the comforting background hum of the Time Lords silenced forever. He had run from them; at times, he had hated them. But they were still his people, his kin.
And he would still have dreamed. He would still have allowed that seed of impossible hope that he had nurtured through two incarnations to put down a few delicate, tentative roots.
He was the last. He knew it. Gallifrey and the Time Lords were only myths, reverberating through time and space. Children on Ralady were told fairytales about the Lords of Time and their travelling machines, their TARDISes. He appeared quite a lot.
He was the Lonely God, the wanderer without a home. That fact had become the foundation of his existence; he had become used to carrying the pain and the guilt.
It was too good to be true; he couldn’t believe it. He shouldn’t believe it.
But the Doctor had fantasised about being wrong.
His bright, beautiful Susan had grown up so quickly, while he wasn’t looking. Sometime, she had decided that he was the one who needed looking after. Suddenly, she wasn’t a mischievous imp, but a young lady who needed her own life.
His parents never existed, his children never existed, but he survives. Maybe she had existed, somehow sheltered from the effects of the War, and made a life with David.
Maybe she now lives somewhere more tangible than in the memories of an old man and two unborn/young/old/dead humans, preserved only by the way all three spend their lives out of step with their own time.
“You’ll love this place, Martha. Mid twenty-fourth century, the Earth’s had a couple of centuries to recover, no wars for the last fifty years. Great advances in technology, and the pollution levels-” The Doctor trails off and stops dead.
“Doctor? Doctor, what is it?”
An elderly woman walks past and the Doctor reaches out to her.
“Susan? Surely it’s Susan?”
He came back for her.
Romanadvoratrelundar grew into Romana and the universe wasn’t big enough for the two of them. The time came when the pupil outgrew the teacher, when there was nothing else to say.
He wishes she’d kept running and not gone back to Gallifrey; wishes that she had survived.
He wishes she had been even more like him, not better and braver than he ever was.
He imagines all the ways she could have survived; imagines her trapped in some primitive era on some primitive planet, nursing the coral and counting the centuries or a perpetual wanderer amongst the stars, believing herself to be the last.
He tracks a time signal to Scotland, Earth, 1746. There’s been enough interference there already. He lands a little bit off, tracks the signal across miles of moorland to Torchwood House, and literally bumps into her in the doorway.
She slaps him.
“I’ll give you ‘Lonely God’!”
Sometimes, he thinks about his life. Sometimes, he wonders whether his entire life was leading up to the point where the Time Lords’ dying screams filled his head.
Leaving Gallifrey with Susan, kidnapping Ian and Barbara, that first fateful encounter against the Daleks- had he, all the while, been rushing towards the inevitable destruction or had it been simply the foundations? What if he had listened to Sarah and carried out his orders from the Time Lords?
There are a million universes inside the Doctor’s head; one where he was just another Time Lord; one where he allowed Ian and Barbara to leave and never developed a respect and eventually a fondness for humanity; one where he left the fluid link well alone; one where…
They multiply into infinity, for every action has consequences.
Every companion he dragged into the chaos lived a different life to what might have been, for better or for worse.
Loyal, noble Leela was never one to run from a fight, never one to abandon what she saw as her duty. After Andred’s death, she refused to leave Romana’s side; refused to leave her ‘undefended’. They never managed to convince her it wasn’t her fault; she thought that if she had stayed he would have lived. She never showed when she was hurt and never showed fear. But the Daleks couldn’t be defeated with her beloved Janus thorns.
He hopes that maybe, just maybe, Romana saved her life; sent her away against her will, exiled her to relative safety.
“I’ve found someone you should meet,” Sarah says.
Leela looks horribly out of place in Sarah’s house, dressed haphazardly in twenty-first century fashions. The buttons on her blouse are done up wrongly.
She says nothing. She doesn’t need to ask after the Time Lords or their President. She doesn’t need him to tell her that they lost.
She simply gazes at him, just a little girl lost. She’s always been strong, but it’s left to him to break the silence.
Her real name was Dorothy but Ace suited her much better. She was ace. She was the ace hidden up his sleeve. He watched her grow from the vulnerable child hidden behind a front to a confident young woman; he saw her outgrow him.
Ace left Time’s Champion and became Time’s Vigilante; one more companion caught up in the destruction.
But they both saw that tapestry; that motorbike could have taken her to Paris. It could have taken her anywhere. It might have taken her somewhere safe.
“You should be more careful,” he scolds her gently, letting the dermal regenerator do its work.
She looks slightly uncomfortable but he tries to attribute that to the slight itching of the new skin, tries to pretend that she knows him again.
“You don’t live very long if you’re not careful.”
“You don’t live very long anyway,” he replies and means it. The human body is so fragile and can so easily betray the strength of the soul inside.
The gash on her leg heals completely, leaving only slightly pink skin to show where it had been.
“There you go, good as new,” the Doctor beams, slipping the dermal regenerator back into his dimensionally transcendental pockets.
She pulls her trouser leg down and bounds to her feet.
“Thanks for that!”
“No problem,” the Doctor smiles. “If you ever need to find a man who carries a dermal regenerator around again, look me up.”
Ace laughs. “I might take you up on that sometime.”
He waves as she walks off into the jungle. A few minutes later he hears the sound of a motorbike.
“I’m here to see Mr Saxon,” the Doctor announces.