Drabble-point-five: Balm of Hurt Minds
Okay... I'm actually supposed to be posting today's rec on Calufrax. I got a bit sidetracked here.
Title: Balm of Hurt Minds
Summary: Why the Doctor doesn't sleep.
Notes: Gen, 150 words. Third Doctor exile.
Sleep, the innocent sleep - sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care; the death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast. --William Shakespeare
He doesn't sleep.
“I'm a Time Lord,” he tells them. “I don't need to sleep.” It's true, for the most part: he doesn't need sleep as humans do, in measured doses every night. He can get by with the occasional booster shot when his naturally resilient system begins to run down.
“I'm too busy,” he tells himself. “There's no time to sleep.” It's true, usually. There are always alien invasions, mad scientists, or the Brigadier's paperwork to battle. And behind it all, burning, his consuming need to mend the TARDIS and escape.
But in the long middle-nights when the experiments are all running smoothly - when there's nothing to do but wait, and sleep is calling his name - he still doesn't sleep. He can't accept the human rhythm of day and night, because that would be an assimilation into their culture.
An admission that, just maybe... he won't be leaving.
Title: Balm of Hurt Minds
Summary: Why the Doctor doesn't sleep.
Notes: Gen, 150 words. Third Doctor exile.
Sleep, the innocent sleep - sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care; the death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast. --William Shakespeare
He doesn't sleep.
“I'm a Time Lord,” he tells them. “I don't need to sleep.” It's true, for the most part: he doesn't need sleep as humans do, in measured doses every night. He can get by with the occasional booster shot when his naturally resilient system begins to run down.
“I'm too busy,” he tells himself. “There's no time to sleep.” It's true, usually. There are always alien invasions, mad scientists, or the Brigadier's paperwork to battle. And behind it all, burning, his consuming need to mend the TARDIS and escape.
But in the long middle-nights when the experiments are all running smoothly - when there's nothing to do but wait, and sleep is calling his name - he still doesn't sleep. He can't accept the human rhythm of day and night, because that would be an assimilation into their culture.
An admission that, just maybe... he won't be leaving.