My Wit Is Dry For the Moment
15 pages of bullshit beautifully crafted essay later, I am now done with half of my masters degree.
Now, if they would kindly tell me where I am teaching for the year I would be a happy camper. Hopefully I don't start on...well, Friday.
And in honor of my finishing half of my masters degree, here is massively cracktastic prologue to multi-chaptered Doctor Who fic. I promise it will all start to make sense come the next (sane) chapter. Think of this as the teaser part of the episode before the opening credits that makes you go, "What?!?" ^_^
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. Nor do I own any of the plethora of phrases that I've collected like a magpie and reproduced here. I can't have them, they're not mine. If you're wondering where individual quotes come from, ask and you shall receive, source information is included in later chapters.
Spoilers: For the Series 2 Finale, "Doomsday." Spoilers for general parts of Season 3 in later parts (specifically, "Human Nature" and "Family of Blood."). Random allusions to the Second Doctor serial, "The Mind Robber," have also crept in. Other than that, it takes place a little bit before "Utopia" in Series 3.
Dedicated to milieva who I blame, and yatsuka who blames me. <3
Thanks to my lovely beta and Brit picker, lived_in_hope as, without her, I would be abysmally American and spelling things incorrectly. All mistakes left are my own. :)
A Room Without Windows
~ sciathan file ~
Prologue: Ghost Stories
Static. A stirring of an image. The sound of waves. The voice disturbs still emptiness.
My name is Rose Tyler and this is the story of Torchwood. The last story I'll ever tell. This is the story of how I died.
"No, no. Not this story. Please - And until my ghastly tale is told, the heart within me burns."
We followed the voice, across the water. Kept on driving hundreds and hundreds of miles. 'Cause he's calling.
The flat intonation continues.
"No! Do not listen! Such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn then on the shore of the wide world I stand alone, and think till love and fame to nothingness do sink, fair creature of an hour."
The voice still disrupts the silence.
Here I am at last.
"This story, not this story. I kept listening anyway. What for? Did I want him to turn and come back and talk me out of the way I felt? Well, he didn't. I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it - but no, no, that's not the case. Not the story, not this kind of story."
This story, this story.
And this is the story of how I died.
"Each summer the last summer. Each day the last day. Each minute the last minute. He has my dying voice - "
More images - swift, on fast wings. Incomprehensible.
"Who are you?"
He calls. He comes. The tale shifts and the darkness stirs.
I do not want the light. He glows. They all do. All of them here.
"I am the Great I Am - "
"I know you're the one doing this, and I just want to know who you are. These humans need what you have taken. Imagination is their life essence. Writing is their soul, they have so much further - "
Blurring. Like swimming towards a surface shimmering with oil and pastel.
"This, Doctor, this is a ghost story. And let me speak to th' yet unknowing world how these things came about…" Silence twisted around. "What haunts anyone is time and impermanence and you - The facts are there but time will tell I resume alas alas on on in short in fine on on abode of If solitude hath ever led thy steps to the wild ocean's echoing shore and thou hast lingered there. You…You have too much of both."
Stars burn out, the earth revolves, life all around is expunged and exuded. His voice lingers.
"You can't do this. But you also can't stop it."
He stays for a moment in the silence between stories. The void that connects them.
"Who are you?"
"I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water - No organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality."
"Right. No quibbling sanity here. Let's try again, shall we? Forget the question of precisely who you are for a moment - complicated stuff in the best of times - and we'll come back to why exactly you are doing this."
"It is a tale that wants telling because…with my crossbow - shot the albatross!" An effort, a struggle. "IT IS A TALE THAT WANTS TELLING!"
The darkness is still, the static does not shift for breath or life or humanity. He waits.
A new story. An old story. Your story. My story. It is unclear. Void and colours and time and memory running together in a sea of static.
"But if for awhile I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restored and sorrows end. here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide). This is the last story I'll tell."
She tries, rising out of the darkness, a hand towards the light - groping forward, slowly, slowly.
He stirs and hands are laid. She feels them on her stories, long and thin. And there is that story. In a place where flowers grow wild and we wait.
He reads the story. Her story.
"Words, words, words," he says.
The glow brightens.
And she is reading, too.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
The sound of waves. The sound of her voice. His voice. Ghost stories. Ghosts. Real ghosts.
***
A/N: It will make sense. Next stop, wherever the TARDIS drops us and obscure literary jokes.
On to Chapter 1: Normality and Eccentricity
Now, if they would kindly tell me where I am teaching for the year I would be a happy camper. Hopefully I don't start on...well, Friday.
And in honor of my finishing half of my masters degree, here is massively cracktastic prologue to multi-chaptered Doctor Who fic. I promise it will all start to make sense come the next (sane) chapter. Think of this as the teaser part of the episode before the opening credits that makes you go, "What?!?" ^_^
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. Nor do I own any of the plethora of phrases that I've collected like a magpie and reproduced here. I can't have them, they're not mine. If you're wondering where individual quotes come from, ask and you shall receive, source information is included in later chapters.
Spoilers: For the Series 2 Finale, "Doomsday." Spoilers for general parts of Season 3 in later parts (specifically, "Human Nature" and "Family of Blood."). Random allusions to the Second Doctor serial, "The Mind Robber," have also crept in. Other than that, it takes place a little bit before "Utopia" in Series 3.
Dedicated to milieva who I blame, and yatsuka who blames me. <3
Thanks to my lovely beta and Brit picker, lived_in_hope as, without her, I would be abysmally American and spelling things incorrectly. All mistakes left are my own. :)
A Room Without Windows
~ sciathan file ~
Prologue: Ghost Stories
Static. A stirring of an image. The sound of waves. The voice disturbs still emptiness.
My name is Rose Tyler and this is the story of Torchwood. The last story I'll ever tell. This is the story of how I died.
"No, no. Not this story. Please - And until my ghastly tale is told, the heart within me burns."
We followed the voice, across the water. Kept on driving hundreds and hundreds of miles. 'Cause he's calling.
The flat intonation continues.
"No! Do not listen! Such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn then on the shore of the wide world I stand alone, and think till love and fame to nothingness do sink, fair creature of an hour."
The voice still disrupts the silence.
Here I am at last.
"This story, not this story. I kept listening anyway. What for? Did I want him to turn and come back and talk me out of the way I felt? Well, he didn't. I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it - but no, no, that's not the case. Not the story, not this kind of story."
This story, this story.
And this is the story of how I died.
"Each summer the last summer. Each day the last day. Each minute the last minute. He has my dying voice - "
More images - swift, on fast wings. Incomprehensible.
"Who are you?"
He calls. He comes. The tale shifts and the darkness stirs.
I do not want the light. He glows. They all do. All of them here.
"I am the Great I Am - "
"I know you're the one doing this, and I just want to know who you are. These humans need what you have taken. Imagination is their life essence. Writing is their soul, they have so much further - "
Blurring. Like swimming towards a surface shimmering with oil and pastel.
"This, Doctor, this is a ghost story. And let me speak to th' yet unknowing world how these things came about…" Silence twisted around. "What haunts anyone is time and impermanence and you - The facts are there but time will tell I resume alas alas on on in short in fine on on abode of If solitude hath ever led thy steps to the wild ocean's echoing shore and thou hast lingered there. You…You have too much of both."
Stars burn out, the earth revolves, life all around is expunged and exuded. His voice lingers.
"You can't do this. But you also can't stop it."
He stays for a moment in the silence between stories. The void that connects them.
"Who are you?"
"I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water - No organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality."
"Right. No quibbling sanity here. Let's try again, shall we? Forget the question of precisely who you are for a moment - complicated stuff in the best of times - and we'll come back to why exactly you are doing this."
"It is a tale that wants telling because…with my crossbow - shot the albatross!" An effort, a struggle. "IT IS A TALE THAT WANTS TELLING!"
The darkness is still, the static does not shift for breath or life or humanity. He waits.
A new story. An old story. Your story. My story. It is unclear. Void and colours and time and memory running together in a sea of static.
"But if for awhile I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restored and sorrows end. here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide). This is the last story I'll tell."
She tries, rising out of the darkness, a hand towards the light - groping forward, slowly, slowly.
He stirs and hands are laid. She feels them on her stories, long and thin. And there is that story. In a place where flowers grow wild and we wait.
He reads the story. Her story.
"Words, words, words," he says.
The glow brightens.
And she is reading, too.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
The sound of waves. The sound of her voice. His voice. Ghost stories. Ghosts. Real ghosts.
***
A/N: It will make sense. Next stop, wherever the TARDIS drops us and obscure literary jokes.
On to Chapter 1: Normality and Eccentricity