Dawn Before the Rest of the World, Ch. 1: A TARDIS-verse 2-shot set after A Dance With Death (4x18)
Title: Dawn Before the Rest of the World
W/C: ~4400, this chapter
Rating: T
Summary: "He is a fixed point. Steady and unwavering. But he's afraid, too. He's afraid, and so is she and that feels less and less like a reason not to dream."
Episodes: A TARDIS-verse set after "A Dance With Death" (4 x 18). References to Lucky Stiff as well (3 x15). See my bio for info on the TARDIS-verse. It's not a Dr. Who crossover or any kind of crossover.
A/N: This one has been scary to write. It's the last season 4 episode before 47 seconds and I can't make this series coexist with the next few episodes. But Brain insists on writing the last thing it can in Season 4, even though it gives us both a sad. This will have two chapters. I'm just about finished with the second and it should be up no later than tomorrow morning.
Yes: I am a dreamer.
For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight,
and his punishment is that he sees
the dawn before the rest of the world."
- Oscar Wilde
It's getting harder all the time.
The end of every day, especially. It's harder to remember when he helps her into her coat and she tries not to shiver. When he runs his fingers through her hair and shakes it loose from her collar, it's hard to remember why that's where it ends. Why she doesn't step closer still and he doesn't rest an arm over her shoulders. Why they don't shelter each other from the March wind while the last pink of the lengthening days fades from the sky.
It's harder at the end of every day to remember when the corner comes up all too soon why it is that he turns one way and she turns the other when it's not what either of them wants. When the same question is in his eyes every time, and she wants so badly to answer it. When 'Till tomorrow sounds like far too long from right now and Night is blank and unsatisfying on her tongue.
It's harder to remember why her apartment feels empty these days. Why she's restless and something close to lonely. Why she's not relieved when she drags herself through the door at the end of every day and there's no one there wanting anything from her. Why the weekends seem too long and why she watches the sluggish clock every Sunday night.
She has to remind herself why, and that's getting harder. It sounds less convincing every time she tells herself that she's not ready. That what she wants belongs to some future self. What they both want.
It's getting harder to explain to herself. When she looks up from her book or the cutting board to say something and he's not there. He's not right there across from her, and it just seems stupid. It seems stupid that he's not right there, busying his hands with a glass of wine or a book of his own propped up on his knee while he thinks about it. That he's not listening intently and answering back with a goofy smile or a wicked one or something unexpectedly serious.
It's getting harder to remember why she's alone and he's alone. Why it is they're not doing this.
But it's getting easier, too. Easier to let herself dream. To picture what it would be like to be together. To be with him in daylight. Easier to imagine what it would be like to have more than . . . this.
More than that, she corrects herself. She snatches her hand back before her fingers land on the phone. Before she's sliding and tapping and grinning when it buzzes back at her right away. Almost always right away.
They have that, and it's good. They have the middle of the night. The fast-asleep hum of city streets and the solidity of chipped diner tables. They have wandering conversations. They have the stories they tell each other and half admissions that inch them onward toward the future. They have stolen kisses and the promise of more when she's ready.
They have all of that, and she tells herself she's content. With the things she learns about him and the things she lets him see by streetlight and the buzz of neon. With the row of buttons lined up on her dresser like stepping stones. Like a path to him in daylight.
She tells herself that she's content with the memory of their fingers twining together and the ghost of his lips on hers. With the two of them on her doorstep and the demanding press of his body against hers. Minutes at a time that feel like hours. Like the future.
She tells herself she's content with it, and she is.
But it's getting easier to want more. Easier to dream.
It's getting easier to admit that Burke might be right. That the fear will never leave her entirely. That she can't wait for that. That she shouldn't make him. She shouldn't make either of them wait for that, when fear is normal and it's not the only thing. It's getting easier to believe that the fear isn't the biggest part of what she feels anymore. It hasn't been for a while.
There's anticipation mixed in with the stark, staring terror. There's eagerness and want and fizzing desire. A steadily building bedrock. Something she's been making all these months. Something they've been making together in the middle of the night. Something they've been building together for years.
And it's getting easier to believe that everyone wonders. Everyone is unsure. Every time they take that leap, everyone is afraid.
He's afraid.
She loses that sometimes. She loses sight of it when she feels like she's drowning in her own issues.
Sometimes it's easier to think of him last year. Of them last year. When he was cocky and petulant and pushing more than a little because he could. When, again and again, she stepped right up to him and them and everything and turned away every time because she had to. Because she could. She could tell herself that he wasn't serious. It wasn't real to him. Because there she was, safe on the other side of Josh and the fact that she owed it to him to try.
Sometimes it's easier to think about last year, and sometimes it's harder.
Because he was serious then and he's serious now. It was real then and it's real now. He was afraid then and he's afraid now.
He is a fixed point. Steady and unwavering.
But he's afraid, too. He's afraid, and so is she and that feels less and less like a reason not to dream.
He wishes the book were terrible. He kind of wishes that.
It's not good. Not yet, anyway, and that's the problem. Something whispers not yet every time he's ready to put it aside.
It's one of the problems. He suspects that he might be the other. That it's not the pages that are whispering, it's him and the things he wants to be true. The things he wants to be possible.
He thinks that if this had come up some other time, he'd have tossed it aside. Oh, he'd have taken a perfunctory stab at the first few chapters. He'd have dipped a bit into the middle and the end. He'd have come up with some politic way to let the woman down easy. Some way to be kind.
It's what he'd usually do, but it's not what he's doing.
It's getting on to the wee hours of the morning and he's still tackling it in order. He's flipping back and forth and making notes. He's trying to keep it afloat.
Because he only kind of wishes it were terrible. He only kind of wishes he could give it up as hopeless.
But he's kind of rooting for it, too.
He grinds the heels of his hands against his eyes and leans as far back as his chair will go. It's a mistake. He can see the whole desk from here. He can see the height of the piles. What he's gone through what there is left yet. The thing is epic and he's tired.
He's well and truly tired, but something won't let him push back from the desk entirely. Something has him shifting in the chair to ease feeling back into his butt. Something keeps his fingers turning the next page and the next. Something keeps his pen moving.
It's professional curiosity. It's partly that.
It's not bad and he kind of wishes it were. He's read bad before. He's read irredeemable. From aspiring acquaintances. From the one or two friends who don't retreat absolutely when things are professionally at their worst. From rivals in print.
In some ways, this is worse than bad, even accounting for the fact that it's not his thing at all.
The plot's been done, of course, and some of the dialogue is downright painful. The references are dated and the settings are unlikely. It's mannered and clunky and constantly breaks the Show, Don't Tell rule.
But even with all that there's something appealing about it. The heroine has a spark he likes and there's a kind of writing between the lines that works. There's some sympathetic chord she strikes-Oona and her would-be leading lady. Although Coriander? Really? That name has got to go.
He's read her reviews. He grew up to their constant recitation. The book has the stiff backbone and stodgy, imperious cadence that are the hallmarks of her smart, biting, rarely-off-the-mark criticism.
It's a textbook demonstration that literary talent does not necessarily translate from one medium to the next. She's a more than capable writer, and that's exactly what makes it almost worse than bad.
And it's part of what makes him root for it, too. He likes the idea of her pulling it off. Of someone brave enough to reach like this. To go after something new. Something old that they've wanted and wanted. To take exactly this kind of leap and stick the landing.
He wants it to work better than it does. He wants it to work as well as he thinks it could with the right help.
He doesn't want to be the right help. And he does. But he probably just isn't. It really isn't his thing . . .
He riffles a few pages ahead, hoping he can talk himself into bed at the next chapter break. God knows when that might be, though. He jots a note about pacing and act structure. He thumbs a few more desperate pages on and tries not to whimper.
There's dialogue and more dialogue and yet more dialogue. Endless passages full of preachy relationship exposition. It's almost enough to talk him into bed right then and there, but the chapter ends on something else. Something he's drawn to.
It's just a short paragraph. Two hundred words or so of description. It tugs his gaze and his hand moves to cover everything around it. To block out everything except this different piece.
At first he thinks it's like nothing else he's read so far. That it stands alone. His pen is poised to mark, and he welcomes the heavy feeling of relief that there's something-finally something-he can praise. Something concrete and promising he can point out for her to build on. Something kind that will fulfill his promise and make all of this someone else's problem.
He reads it over again. The language has an unusual, clumsy kind of elegance to it. It's filled with short, effortless phrases that light up the page. That's exactly it. There's a kind of light, even though the scene is set in a claustrophobic stock room.
The heroine hums to herself and gradually realizes she's hearing distant music. It draws her through the empty aisles to the store's plate glass windows overlooking the street. Her voice rings out on the song's final phrase. The street musician lowers his horn and tips his hat to her. It's a moment through a rain-spattered window and it's lovely.
He reads it over again and suddenly he's scrabbling back through the chapters. Through he pages he's already slogged through. His pen is busy. He finds more and more. That's the best of them so far, but the moment isn't alone. He finds a sentence here. A bit of dialogue there. Things that altogether aren't just good, they're . . . transcendent. Dreams that lift up from the page and twine around him.
Exactly that. The book is her dream and when she's not thinking so hard-when she's not hell bent on crafting-she lends its light to her heroine. The grace of want. The perfect image of the mind's eye in the moment before speech.
He buzzes with the realization. The thread is there. The thing that's had him rooting for this all along and there's a thrumming sense of accomplishment in having found it. In scouring the pages again and teasing it out: The dream. It's her dream and he wants her to have it.
Someone should.
The thought brings him back down to earth with a thump.
He caps his pen. He neatens the edges of two epic stacks and squares his notepad at right angles to them both.
He tips back in the desk chair and laces his fingers together over his eyes.
Someone should.
She goes through the motions of the evening. She eats something and forgets what it was. She sets the few housekeeping things that have gotten away from her to rights. She starts sorting the mail, but the sheer number of things that need tossing depresses her, and she feels restless.
Not exactly restless. Wasteful. Ungrateful.
Her mind is on the case.
It's on him, too.
It's always on him, but the case is making a run at her sideways and her mind is on it. On opportunities gained and lost. A life squandered and another made from the terrible ruins.
She hates Lynchberg with disquieting vehemence. She hates that it wasn't even about covering his own ass. It wasn't about regret or fear or salvaging his own sorry life. It was about taking hers. Stealing Odette's life from Barbara, and it's twisted, but that's how she sees it: Stealing.
She hates Odette, too. She wasn't using it. That life. That privilege and all those opportunities. She wasn't using it, and Kate hates her for that. She hates the way she gathered disposable people around her. Barbara and Lynchberg, too.
She hates that Odette's story was the one that had five million people tuning in every week. She hates that it was all a lie. That there was no turnaround. No chance for redemption, whether she'd have taken it or not.
She hates that it was never about Barbara and her dream. That without Odette-without that improbable string of coincidence and tragedy-Barbara would probably still be working in a strip club. She'd still be on-again-off again with Jason or some loser like him. She'd still be alive and not a single step closer to her dream. Not without the life that Odette wasn't using anyway.
It nags at her. It has her mother on her mind, too, and she's tired. There's some lesson in it all that she's not quite up to learning yet. Not right now. But it nags at her.
She feels restless.
She's not Odette. She's not Barbara. But her scar pulls and aches and she's lonely or as good as. She feels like she might as well be. She wonders if there's someone else out there who'd make better use of her life. Someone braver and less broken. Someone who doesn't complicate what looks pretty simple in the middle of the night. Someone who would reach for all the things she thinks she could probably have. She knows she could have.
She feels wasteful.
The night crawls by. It's not exactly early, but she's not ready to face the fact that she probably won't sleep tonight.
She has a dozen things she could do, even at this time of night. There's laundry and emails she should have returned or done something about a long time ago. Things for Burke and this week's session that she'll put off until the last minute like she always does.
She drifts around the apartment, picking things up and putting them back until she finds herself with her guitar in her hands. She sinks down on the edge of the chaise, and it feels right. It feels right until she grabs a chord and brushes her thumb down the strings.
It's out of tune and worse. She hasn't touched it in months, and the strings' coating crumbles and flakes under her touch. She'd change them, but the tuning machines will barely turn either way and she's afraid what the sudden shift in tension will do to the neck.
She feels the strong curve of the bowed body hard against her thighs and it's all a sudden weight in her lap. It feels like yet another thing she's wasted and she's mournful, all out of proportion to a predictably out-of-tune guitar.
She bends over it. She folds herself around it in an awkward embrace and the scent of the wood takes her. She feels the cool smoothness of the solid top and she's overrun by memory.
She wasn't supposed to buy it. She certainly couldn't afford it, especially given that she'd driven her mother so close to crazy around that time that her parents had decided she could take on the bulk of her own expenses. She can't even remember why then or why this guitar-she didn't know a damned thing and she'd overpaid terribly for it-only that she had to have it.
She runs the backs of her fingernails across the strings near the bridge. She gets perverse pleasure from the dissonant plinking and the vibration of the body under her cheek. It reminds her of Madison.
She remembers then. The two of them sneaking off to some secret show with lousy fake ids that no one looked twice at. She can't remember the band-can't even remember what kind of music-only the pumped up, alive feeling. The bass thumping in her chest for hours afterward and the feeling that no one who hadn't been there could possibly get it. They'd agreed that night. She and Maddie. They had to play. They were going to be rockstars.
She remembers learning her first three chords and the eternity it took to move from one to the other. She remembers dead strings under numb, clumsy fingers. The impossibility of doing anything else and still strumming in time. She remembers trying to teach Maddie to sing harmony. Play the bass. Shake a tambourine. Do anything. But she was absolutely hopeless.
She plinks the strings again and laughs. They probably should have thought of it. That Maddie was hopeless at anything musical and she wasn't more than a few steps away.
"Probably should've thought of that," she says aloud. She sets the guitar gently back on its stand and traces the outline of the headstock with a fingertip. "You never do when you're dreaming."
The word lances through her. The sound of it in her ears and the feel of it on her tongue.
Her mind isn't on the case anymore. It's not on Odette or Barbara. It's not on Maddie or the Kate that might have been.
She didn't ask. He did.
She replays the scene in her mind. The slight hesitation and the casual tone. Fake casual. Not even good fake casual, now that she thinks about it.
She sees him reaching up. Reaching past her for a photo and the board shaking as he grounded his hand against it. She hears the slight hesitation and sees the nervous worry in his sidelong glance. Worry that she'd snap. That she'd shut him down and draw back again. Again.
He asked, and it's stupid, but she's grateful. It warms her from the ground up that he asked.
No one ever does. She's been this one thing for so long. She's only let the world see this one thing. A ruthless arrow arcing from her mother's murder to the moment that she ends it. That she finds justice for her.
No one in a long time has wondered what she might have been-who she might have been-if it weren't for her mother's murder. Not even her, and she feels the smile she shared with him spreading over her face again. She feels sore, tired dreams shifting inside her. Creaking and dusty, but stirring. Stirring.
He asked and she wants to ask him. Now. She wants to know.
She looks at the clock and it's late. It's just the right time.
She wants to ask.
She flops over the arm of the couch and grabs for her phone.
Time Out.
He's up and down. Tired, but not sleepy. Bored and lonely and looking for something, but he just can't face any more of the book right now. He's glad enough that he's kept his promise and he gives up on it.
He gives up on the book. For the moment, anyway.
He has something to give to Oona. A kindness for his mother to take to her, and he's glad about that.
He's tired and feeling sorry for himself, but he's absently glad to be able to do it. Able to string dream to dream and help them along, even if they belong to someone else.
Even if it's the middle of the night and his own dreams feel improbable and far away, he's glad.
He thinks about his mother and smiles. He thinks about her school. The studio. Her dream. He likes her for it.
He loves her, obviously. In their strange, combative way, they love each other, and he knows he's lucky. It didn't take knowing Kate to realize that. Thunderstorms in the living room and all, he's lucky to have her. To have the chance to like her, too, and he does.
He likes her dream. He likes what it says about her.
He grew up with her frustrations. Her vanities and foibles. Endless preening over leads and despair when they wanted her for a supporting role, however meaty. The soaring heights of glowing reviews and the black depths of anything from lukewarm on down. He grew up with that, and however much he's always loved her, none of it was easy to like.
Oona was wrong, though. His mother is good at what she does. She always has been, though it hasn't always been easy to admit it. She's talented and works hard and he's seen her do great things. He's seen her transform herself. Transform a room full of people and make them believe impossible things.
She's always good. She's often great, and the school isn't some kind of late-in-life scrabbling for relevance. It's not his mother on the sinking ship of her own career. It's not her clinging to something and not going gently into that good night. Or it's more than that, anyway. More than just that.
It's a dream. It reaches back into her past and pulls something forward. Something good that didn't didn't just rise up new in an instant.
He knows he's lucky. He's watched her work. With her students. With contractors and designers, and he knows it's a dream she's had for a long time. Maybe always. Passing on her gift. Shaping and shepherding. And, yes, bullying, too. It's a Martha Rodgers dream, after all. There's a certain amount of wedging her own approaches into the next generation and relishing the chance to reminisce to a captive audience. But it's a dream just the same and he likes her for it.
He likes the long, winding thread through her life. Her first love and possibility rising up from that in unexpected ways. He likes the path of the notion from him to Kate to his mother and back to her again. The way dreams wander among them and make him feel closer to her. To both of them.
He's sorry for Chet. For his life cut short. He wonders about the hard mercy of the man's end coming when it did. He wonders if Chet would've fought for his dream if it hadn't. If he'd have fought for her and for them and what might have happened.
He wonders if it's better this way. Not just for his mother, but for Chet, too.
He doesn't like that thought at all. He hates it, but he can't ignore the possibility. That it might have been kinder for him to die with hope in his heart. That everything Chet felt would never have been enough. That it couldn't have kept his dream alive and it was kinder for him to die not knowing. Kinder that his mother never had to deliver that final blow.
It's hard. It's hard for him to think of good coming from bad like that. But it seems to. Over and over again, it seems to.
Kate was right about that. About dreams that crack and break someone wide open. About possibilities hiding in the wreckage. That it's not all bad.
It should be comforting. It should be something he likes. Hope for the hopeless. Possibility in the darkest hour.
But it depresses him. Right now, it depresses him. And it makes him angry.
It makes him angry because it it's not the only way. It might be true. It might not be all bad. To let go one dream and grab on to another might not be all bad. But it's not the only way. It shouldn't be the only way.
He's up and down. Glad about his mother and aching for broken dreams.
He's on the descent when he hears it. On a definite downslide when the chime startles him utterly. When it breaks him open wide in the best way. A complete surprise like that.
He topples one of his own piles. He mutters an apology to it as he drags his hands over the desk in search of the phone.
He comes up with it, grinning like an idiot. Grinning like he always does. It feels good. The tug of gladness against the downward slide.
He sends the message back. He doesn't have to look. Time Out.