for fandom_muses: Steps Taken Forward But Sleepwalking Back Again
Companion to this prompt by
savagestime
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Pink Floyd - High Hopes
It’s a story told in reverse, and you think that might be the way all stories are told. All the stories you know are told backwards. All your history happened before you were born. Everything you are happened before you took your first breath. You are a story in reverse, so why shouldn’t everything be that way. We are the makers of our own worlds and our own realities, and it only makes sense that the universe should follow the order of your mind.
All stories are memories and all memories have come and gone, so it must be the truth, it must all be backwards. Or maybe it’s all the same moment happening over and over again. Like cartoons where the background loops on top of itself as the characters do whatever they find themselves doing at the moment. Everything now will happen again and has happened before and it’s all the same backwards and forwards and it all happens every second of every day of every lifetime.
The story is a palindrome, backwards and forwards it’s all the same.
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni.
We enter the circle at night and are consume by fire.
You’re the moth, and he’s the flame. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Or maybe it’s both. Backwards and forwards it’s all the same story, the only difference is the spacing between letters and thoughts and syllables and breaths and the way a length of fabric on a robe drapes too far over his hands and most likely doesn’t drape at all correctly over your frame anymore.
Pieces of fabric, his and His and yours and His and his once again. Backwards and forwards you are enveloped in the fabric, in him, in some moment you are not even part of. Something happens something passes. Trapped and released and you will be trapped again. Or maybe he’s the one trapped, you’re not sure. You can’t imagine that’s the truth, though.
You’re glad you gave him the robes, and once you were glad you stole them from him, and maybe one day you’ll steal them again. Once the robes were his, then yours, and now they are his again. You’re glad he has them because they fit him well. You like the way they look on him. Once you hated the way they looked, but before that, before when it was all new, you think you liked how ridiculous it all was, how important and large and perfect he looked when you were just boys. You wonder if that memory is right, or perhaps it belongs to Donna and some other boy and you just transposed a face for a face and one love for another. The memory feels right though, and the sensation feels right, and you know those scarlet and orange robes were once his, so the memory must belong to him, too.
Even if the memory isn’t him, you assign it to him and it will always be his. Once those robes were new to you, and it’s all new again. He fills them so well, and you don’t know if you could fill them at all anymore. You’re almost certain a proper Doctor could fill them perfectly, and the idea hurts. This isn’t about that Doctor or his Doctor, not right now. This is about him, the one who shoves you against bars, the one who makes a masochist out of you, because you’ve convinced yourself that every new way he finds to hurt you might mean he loves you. He’s the only thing that exists in this moment, the one who is wearing the robes that sat in your TARDIS wardrobe for centuries upon centuries untouched and unloved. But these were always his robes, so it’s fitting he’s the one wearing them now. He wants these robes and you want him. Once upon a time, you think, you wanted the robes and he wanted you. Or maybe it’s your mind trying to tell the story backwards instead of forwards, or maybe it is the same story.
You watch him fuss with his sleeves. His hands get lost in the fabric. You would get lost in those robes, too, if you were the one wearing them. You think he thinks the robes are too large and too long. You were always taller. You wonder if he remembers that, if he counts inches and centimeters and stretches of limbs and ridiculous things of that nature. You wonder if he still thinks you’re taller. Inch for inch and centimeter for centimeter and limb for limb, you technically still stand higher. It’s only technically though. In reality he towers over you in ever way that counts, and units of measure like inches and centimeters and limbs are meaningless in the grand scheme of things. They are the most frivolous of measurements, and you wonder if he still measures things that way.
He thinks you’re taller and you think he’s taller but you think he thinks you’re taller still. It all loops around, back on itself and the pattern continues over and over and over again.
He leaves you pressed up against a bar in a place that shouldn’t be, which seems fitting because you shouldn’t be, and in the world where you came from he shouldn’t be either. You both shouldn’t be, and in his world you never will be, and in your world he will never be as he is right now.
You’re pressed against that bar because you say the wrong thing or the right thing or nothing, you don’t know why. You say something and he tells you you’re broken and amputated and wrong. You think he’s right, but you’re used to those sort of words from him. It doesn’t make it hurt any less. It doesn’t make you love him any less either. It’s strange the ways love hits you, sometimes it takes something breaking to realize it is there to begin with. He breaks your heart, and once upon a time you think you broke his hearts, too. Sometime in between he broke yours again and you broke his again, and over and over the story is told, backwards and forwards it’s all the same.
You’re pressed against the bar, because that’s the way the story goes, it’s always the way the story goes. He pushes you and you push him and he pushes you again and again and again. The robes were once his and then yours and now his again. They will always be his and they will sometimes be yours, but it will always begin and end with him.
The story in reverse begins in a bar with stars all around and it ends on a planet with red grass and purple skies and twin suns and hermits on hills telling stories that scare children. But that’s not entirely your story, not anymore. It fractured somewhere and now it ends in so many places. It ends on a beach and it ends on a TARDIS being dropped to her death and it ends in Chiswick somewhere in a fairly nice home in a fairly nice neighborhood with a mother who can be too cold and a father who can be too quiet and a grandfather who loves the stars. It’s always the stars, and you think that might be where it always begins and ends for the most part.
You want the story to begin with him though, just for now. Just while he’s wearing those robes and you think you might be in love with him and you wonder if he could possibly be in love with you. You wonder where his story starts and ends. You wonder whether you fit into the story at all.
You wonder if all stories are told in reverse and out of order and in some strange jumble, or if you’re the only one who sees the universe that way. You wonder what he would see if he could look into your mind and see the way you tell stories, the way things unfold backwards and never forwards and the way something always falls out of order.
You wonder if he all ready knows. The way he looks at you now, it's as if something has dawned on him. It's as if he’s just learned to count backwards - the way counting is meant to work - instead of counting from one to infinity.
And as soon as you see it, it's gone again. One less number left to count. One more thing to add to the endless circle of what has happened, and is happening, and will happen again. Everything comes back on itself. All stories read the same from front to back.
It's a story told in reverse, and the only way to tell it is by counting backwards until you run out of numbers completely and finally reach zero. You can't help but wish that you still knew the wrong way to count. You wish you still believed in counting to infinity.
ooc: written for
savagestime and based on RP in
realityshifted