Fic: Ashes and Memory
Title: Ashes and Memory
Author: mrssjw
Rating: PG
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing/Characters: The Doctor, Unnamed Companions
Length: Quickie (approx. 280 words)
Summary: The Doctor has always enjoyed poetry; indeed he has a poetic soul. But sometimes this is a bittersweet love.
Notes: I was randomly looking at some old poetry books I've got on my bookshelf, and I happened to glance across some of the text. The first excerpt jumped off the page at me, and it stuck in my brain as sounding like something the Doctor would read, gently masochistic as he is. Both poems are by Thomas Ashe. The first is "Yes and No"; the second an excerpt from "Marit".
Ashes and Memory
“If I could choose my paradise,
And please myself with choice of bliss,
Then I would have your soft blue eyes
And rosy little mouth to kiss!
Your lips, as smooth and tender, child,
As rose-leaves in a coppice wild.
If fate bade choose some sweet unrest,
To weave my troubled life a snare,
Then I would say “her maiden breast
And golden ripple of her hair;”
And weep amid those tresses, child,
Contented to be thus beguiled.”
The Doctor smiled as he read aloud, a soft, sadly tender smile. The TARDIS groaned emptily around him, but he was tucked away in a dream of his memories. He could almost just feel the warmth on his skin, the feelings of a hand wrapped tightly in his.
He’d loved each of them in their own way, and now they were all gone. Some by choice, others by force, but he was, as ever, alone in his world. Trapped in a vortex of never-ending life, where he wished he could as easily trap his emotions in a stasis of never-ending numbness. There was always the pain that followed to joys, and the sun shone too briefly on all accounts.
He carefully set down the tome of Victorian songs and poetry, and laid a hand on the console with a deep sigh.
“O sweet dream, wrought of a dear fore-thought,
Of a golden time to fall!
She seemed to sing, in her wandering,
Till doves in the elm-tops tall
Grew mute to hear; as her song rang clear
How love is the lord of all.”
He threw a switch, he turned a knob, and with a final breath, he flew away into the abyss.