Fic: Rebarbative
rebarbative \ree-BAR-buh-tiv\, adjective:
Serving or tending to irritate or repel.
Title: It's good to be a lunatic
Spoilers: Mild ones for Tooth & Claw
Characters: Ten, Rose
Rating: None
Summary: A very wise man once said, “It’s good to be a lunatic,” and no matter what Rose was thinking, the Doctor wasn’t singing along with The Blockheads.
Not betaed, as always thankful for corrections
---
A very wise man once said, “It’s good to be a lunatic,” and no matter what Rose was thinking, the Doctor wasn’t singing along with The Blockheads.
The sentence uttered with approval was more of a faint memory of another life, another war (when had they become so many?) in a time so long ago he had almost forgotten which body he had been wearing then.
“It’s good to be a lunatic,” that wise man had said to the Doctor, took his ox and donkey to plough his fields and sow salt instead of seeds. He could be a very convincing madman if he wanted to.
It might seem like the coward’s way out of being drafted for the Trojan War, but it had been a valid try to stay with wife and son and home and alive and happy. Trying to avoid a fate long prepared for him.
A very wise man indeed.
In the end, he failed; revealed his sanity to save his son and the tale of Odysseus, son of Laertes, would prevail for millennia. For all the wrong reasons of course.
The moral of this story? Even a wise man chooses to be insane sometimes.
The old habits of pretending indifference towards the important things, flinging a rudeness out here and there, saving the day when no one expected it; it was like slipping back into a pair of really old shoes. Pity he couldn’t find his recorder or at least his scarf.
There were definite advantages to being insane.
His feet running around the console almost by themselves, his eyes (yet again) flitting over Rose’s curves in a way they really shouldn’t and his body reacting to her in a way it absolutely shouldn’t… There had been laws ag-
Who cared? Lunatic.
Who needed to see Caesar crossing the Rubicon or the Battle of Trafalgar, who needed to push boxes at the Boston Tea Party? Who needed to interfere? History was old enough to take care of itself. It would do without a certified Meddler. Just this once, death wouldn’t follow him.
Lunatics survived. Lunatics didn’t get involved, they ran. And their companions survived.
The TARDIS and its new, perfectly safe sightseeing tour through the universe. Now that sounded insane.
Rose leaned against him, the green light of the console giving her smile an otherworldly glow, her hand tapping his arm in time with the far too loud music. She was young; she’d adjust, no matter what he did. But it seemed like she loved him as Insane Punk already.
Only two lifetimes back he would’ve torn out his (rather splendid) locks over this ‘noise’, begging for some Puccini instead. True, a small part inside his brain still did crave some decent Puccini, but he didn’t care for the surviving tastes of a man who had been able to push a tiny mauve button to end a war and two species in the process.
He shoved the feeling of darkness aside, hammered onto the console in perfect synch with the Blockhead’s rhythm sticks.
It’s good to be a lunatic. C'est si bon, mm? Ist es nicht?
1979, in all its glory, with all its human (rather puny) dangers and problems: China invading Vietnam? Other side of the globe and really not his problem. Margaret Thatcher? That would sort itself out.
Only thing that mattered (Skylab… that poor, poor cow, he was still so sorry) had been taken care of by a younger, more sane version of himself already. Meddler.
It couldn’t last forever. But he could make it last a lifetime. Her human lifetime to be precise.
Sooner or later he’d find himself between Scylla and Charybdis, that place between a rock and a hard place the universe insisted throwing him into.
For now they’d party like it was 1979.
But destiny doesn’t change its course. Not even for a lunatic.
Serving or tending to irritate or repel.
Title: It's good to be a lunatic
Spoilers: Mild ones for Tooth & Claw
Characters: Ten, Rose
Rating: None
Summary: A very wise man once said, “It’s good to be a lunatic,” and no matter what Rose was thinking, the Doctor wasn’t singing along with The Blockheads.
Not betaed, as always thankful for corrections
---
A very wise man once said, “It’s good to be a lunatic,” and no matter what Rose was thinking, the Doctor wasn’t singing along with The Blockheads.
The sentence uttered with approval was more of a faint memory of another life, another war (when had they become so many?) in a time so long ago he had almost forgotten which body he had been wearing then.
“It’s good to be a lunatic,” that wise man had said to the Doctor, took his ox and donkey to plough his fields and sow salt instead of seeds. He could be a very convincing madman if he wanted to.
It might seem like the coward’s way out of being drafted for the Trojan War, but it had been a valid try to stay with wife and son and home and alive and happy. Trying to avoid a fate long prepared for him.
A very wise man indeed.
In the end, he failed; revealed his sanity to save his son and the tale of Odysseus, son of Laertes, would prevail for millennia. For all the wrong reasons of course.
The moral of this story? Even a wise man chooses to be insane sometimes.
The old habits of pretending indifference towards the important things, flinging a rudeness out here and there, saving the day when no one expected it; it was like slipping back into a pair of really old shoes. Pity he couldn’t find his recorder or at least his scarf.
There were definite advantages to being insane.
His feet running around the console almost by themselves, his eyes (yet again) flitting over Rose’s curves in a way they really shouldn’t and his body reacting to her in a way it absolutely shouldn’t… There had been laws ag-
Who cared? Lunatic.
Who needed to see Caesar crossing the Rubicon or the Battle of Trafalgar, who needed to push boxes at the Boston Tea Party? Who needed to interfere? History was old enough to take care of itself. It would do without a certified Meddler. Just this once, death wouldn’t follow him.
Lunatics survived. Lunatics didn’t get involved, they ran. And their companions survived.
The TARDIS and its new, perfectly safe sightseeing tour through the universe. Now that sounded insane.
Rose leaned against him, the green light of the console giving her smile an otherworldly glow, her hand tapping his arm in time with the far too loud music. She was young; she’d adjust, no matter what he did. But it seemed like she loved him as Insane Punk already.
Only two lifetimes back he would’ve torn out his (rather splendid) locks over this ‘noise’, begging for some Puccini instead. True, a small part inside his brain still did crave some decent Puccini, but he didn’t care for the surviving tastes of a man who had been able to push a tiny mauve button to end a war and two species in the process.
He shoved the feeling of darkness aside, hammered onto the console in perfect synch with the Blockhead’s rhythm sticks.
It’s good to be a lunatic. C'est si bon, mm? Ist es nicht?
1979, in all its glory, with all its human (rather puny) dangers and problems: China invading Vietnam? Other side of the globe and really not his problem. Margaret Thatcher? That would sort itself out.
Only thing that mattered (Skylab… that poor, poor cow, he was still so sorry) had been taken care of by a younger, more sane version of himself already. Meddler.
It couldn’t last forever. But he could make it last a lifetime. Her human lifetime to be precise.
Sooner or later he’d find himself between Scylla and Charybdis, that place between a rock and a hard place the universe insisted throwing him into.
For now they’d party like it was 1979.
But destiny doesn’t change its course. Not even for a lunatic.