Doctor Who: In Tears [Ten]
Title: “In Tears”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG (copious amounts of angst)
Summary: 10 mini-drabbles focused on the Tenth Doctor final days. [SPOILERS up to and including The End of Time. Part One and Torchwood: Children of Earth]
Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. And RTD is a bloody genius.
A/N: I started writing this after The Waters of Mars were released, but somehow got to finish it only now. I’m afraid to watch the last episode. T_T
IN TEARS
He has robbed Death of two final heartbeats, and now she will take the last ones of his two hearts.
* * *
The laws of Time will obey me… A Time Lord Victorious! Once he has said it, he freezes on the inside, and in that cover of ice he can see the other’s reflection, laughing madly at him.
* * *
When he sees him, laughing, ragged, it almost feels like betrayal and it hurts more than his refusal to regenerate did; how many times does he have to come back to haunt him?
* * *
The scarlet lining of Saxon’s coat as he paces along the airstrip mocks the Doctor, reminding him of their earlier clashes, those marvelous times as “best enemies” when things were so simple, when there were others he could have turned to, when Time Lords were something to run from instead of a dream turned to ash and singed out of Time.
* * *
First that freaky beard, then the wife, now the bleached hair; the Master has always employed the most extravagant methods to attract the Doctor’s attention. Compared to that, the whole I’ve-just-come-back-from-the-dead-[again]-to-do-more-evil thing is just comic relief.
* * *
When Adelaide pulls the trigger, she does not miss; for all he knows, shooting him in both his hearts would hurt much less than letting him hear her die so soon after he’d saved her. Could have at least waited for him to depart. She owed him that much.
* * *
He does not always remember the men he used to be fondly. And so he wonders: if the new one takes his place, if this “death” is but a minor one yet again, will anyone remember him the way he is now, with his bristling hair and his ingenious smile and his converse shoes and his Allons-y! - or will there even be anyone left to remember? He misses his old selves sometimes even if he does not particularly like them anymore; but most of them had sense enough not to care about such things.
* * *
He can hear them. An alien sound in the Master’s mind that does not belong there. Beyond healing, beyond extraction. For a minute he wonders if he simply shares the Master’s madness.
* * *
He could comfort Jack, tell him he did what he had to do to save the Earth; but no amount of words would revoke all the deaths that Jack had brought about or mend the hearts he had broken. He should have been born a Time Lord; then again, double the hearts, double the heartache.
* * *
If he cries now in front of Wilf, it is like accepting that the fight is lost. He is the last one, the final memory the universe has of his extinct race. And he will not go down in tears.
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG (copious amounts of angst)
Summary: 10 mini-drabbles focused on the Tenth Doctor final days. [SPOILERS up to and including The End of Time. Part One and Torchwood: Children of Earth]
Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. And RTD is a bloody genius.
A/N: I started writing this after The Waters of Mars were released, but somehow got to finish it only now. I’m afraid to watch the last episode. T_T
IN TEARS
He has robbed Death of two final heartbeats, and now she will take the last ones of his two hearts.
* * *
The laws of Time will obey me… A Time Lord Victorious! Once he has said it, he freezes on the inside, and in that cover of ice he can see the other’s reflection, laughing madly at him.
* * *
When he sees him, laughing, ragged, it almost feels like betrayal and it hurts more than his refusal to regenerate did; how many times does he have to come back to haunt him?
* * *
The scarlet lining of Saxon’s coat as he paces along the airstrip mocks the Doctor, reminding him of their earlier clashes, those marvelous times as “best enemies” when things were so simple, when there were others he could have turned to, when Time Lords were something to run from instead of a dream turned to ash and singed out of Time.
* * *
First that freaky beard, then the wife, now the bleached hair; the Master has always employed the most extravagant methods to attract the Doctor’s attention. Compared to that, the whole I’ve-just-come-back-from-the-dead-[again]-to-do-more-evil thing is just comic relief.
* * *
When Adelaide pulls the trigger, she does not miss; for all he knows, shooting him in both his hearts would hurt much less than letting him hear her die so soon after he’d saved her. Could have at least waited for him to depart. She owed him that much.
* * *
He does not always remember the men he used to be fondly. And so he wonders: if the new one takes his place, if this “death” is but a minor one yet again, will anyone remember him the way he is now, with his bristling hair and his ingenious smile and his converse shoes and his Allons-y! - or will there even be anyone left to remember? He misses his old selves sometimes even if he does not particularly like them anymore; but most of them had sense enough not to care about such things.
* * *
He can hear them. An alien sound in the Master’s mind that does not belong there. Beyond healing, beyond extraction. For a minute he wonders if he simply shares the Master’s madness.
* * *
He could comfort Jack, tell him he did what he had to do to save the Earth; but no amount of words would revoke all the deaths that Jack had brought about or mend the hearts he had broken. He should have been born a Time Lord; then again, double the hearts, double the heartache.
* * *
If he cries now in front of Wilf, it is like accepting that the fight is lost. He is the last one, the final memory the universe has of his extinct race. And he will not go down in tears.