justprompts; A Universe Without Rules
If there were no rules, what do you think would happen?
The Master offers him a choice. A chance to make changes. It’s more flexible, this time around. The Doctor doesn’t need to rule. He needs only to act.
He feels paralyzed.
To take action is to make a choice. The Doctor makes decisions everyday that effect the lives of others. Sometimes it’s whether or not a planet will live or die. Sometimes it’s the life of one person. Each choice, however, is governed by rules that he didn’t even make. He can see time and he can see so many possibilities, spread out through the fabric of the universe. He knows, just knows, what he can or can't do.
The Master says they’ll change the rules. They’ll break the rules. They’ll make new rules to fix the universe.
And it’s a very sick universe. The Doctor can hear the silence in his mind and feel the emptiness left behind in the Time War’s wake. He can see the cracks and feel the slipping of previously fixed points. The Earth undergoes a thousand different ends in the blink of an eye and each one feels just as possible, just as right, and even the end of the universe shifts and changes and rebounds through the waves of time. Nothing feels certain, everything is fluid and moving.
If they act now, they really could rewrite the universe. The fixed points would change, because even those events aren’t immune anymore. It could be their’s. They could fix it. Change it. Make it better. Gallifrey, the stars, the time in their blood. Everything is on their side and nothing is there to stop them.
Just one action. One combined desire. One wish.
The Doctor once stood with Martha in front of an old wishing well. They were tired. His body ached. Martha’s tea time holiday had turned into a disaster. But they stood together next to the wishing well. Martha had asked him to make a wish. Just one wish.
"Go on," she’d said, "there must be something."
“Nah. I can never think of what to wish for. Well, no, I can, actually: lots of things. Too many things. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
It’s too complicated. Too much power for a man who couldn’t even make one wish. He can hardly pin his desires down from day to day. Who is he to rewrite the universe? To try to pick what is right for so many?
“Why do you bother living at all if that's how you think? You have to take action.”
But that is what he does. The Doctor, a man of change. The man who makes people better. The renegade who always breaks the rules. The one who makes choices.
A universe without Gallifrey, with ever-changing rules, assuming they even exist anymore. A chaotic universe of a thousand ends and a thousand more beginnings.
The Master asks him to make a wish. To break the rules one more time.
But the Doctor stands at the well and doesn’t know where to start.
OOC; Centered quote taken from an RP with savagestime, which spawned this little prompt. Quotes in italics from the spin-off novel Wishing Well.
The Master offers him a choice. A chance to make changes. It’s more flexible, this time around. The Doctor doesn’t need to rule. He needs only to act.
He feels paralyzed.
To take action is to make a choice. The Doctor makes decisions everyday that effect the lives of others. Sometimes it’s whether or not a planet will live or die. Sometimes it’s the life of one person. Each choice, however, is governed by rules that he didn’t even make. He can see time and he can see so many possibilities, spread out through the fabric of the universe. He knows, just knows, what he can or can't do.
The Master says they’ll change the rules. They’ll break the rules. They’ll make new rules to fix the universe.
And it’s a very sick universe. The Doctor can hear the silence in his mind and feel the emptiness left behind in the Time War’s wake. He can see the cracks and feel the slipping of previously fixed points. The Earth undergoes a thousand different ends in the blink of an eye and each one feels just as possible, just as right, and even the end of the universe shifts and changes and rebounds through the waves of time. Nothing feels certain, everything is fluid and moving.
If they act now, they really could rewrite the universe. The fixed points would change, because even those events aren’t immune anymore. It could be their’s. They could fix it. Change it. Make it better. Gallifrey, the stars, the time in their blood. Everything is on their side and nothing is there to stop them.
Just one action. One combined desire. One wish.
The Doctor once stood with Martha in front of an old wishing well. They were tired. His body ached. Martha’s tea time holiday had turned into a disaster. But they stood together next to the wishing well. Martha had asked him to make a wish. Just one wish.
"Go on," she’d said, "there must be something."
“Nah. I can never think of what to wish for. Well, no, I can, actually: lots of things. Too many things. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
It’s too complicated. Too much power for a man who couldn’t even make one wish. He can hardly pin his desires down from day to day. Who is he to rewrite the universe? To try to pick what is right for so many?
“Why do you bother living at all if that's how you think? You have to take action.”
But that is what he does. The Doctor, a man of change. The man who makes people better. The renegade who always breaks the rules. The one who makes choices.
A universe without Gallifrey, with ever-changing rules, assuming they even exist anymore. A chaotic universe of a thousand ends and a thousand more beginnings.
The Master asks him to make a wish. To break the rules one more time.
But the Doctor stands at the well and doesn’t know where to start.
OOC; Centered quote taken from an RP with savagestime, which spawned this little prompt. Quotes in italics from the spin-off novel Wishing Well.