(no subject)
Comm: Bad Company Muses
Prompt: Deprivation
Verse: A Damned Kind
He is in a world with no sky.
Scarlet sunlight barely filters through thick smog, casting shallow light over crumbling buildings and splintered streets.
This city was built from the mountains, and slowly but surely, the ravaged planet takes it back.
It is like this across the world.
It is as it is meant to be.
"You could change it, you know." A murmur in his ear, deceptively soft, his voice cloaked too in his precious velvet. "You could change it all."
He had chosen this planet, blamed the TARDIS for their late arrival as they wandered through grim scene after grim scene; dead-eyed urchins stained with blood, desperate strays gnawing on their own flesh, tiny corpses abandoned in the grime.
Now, they stand away, apart, as they have since returning from paradise; outside of Time.
"All of these forsaken children." A broad term, for a Time Lord. "You saved yours, after all."
Erimem. Adric. Sara. Katarina. (They could have done so much and now they can.)
He could feel time twist near to breaking each time, hear it screeching inside his head, and ignored it so that he could see their smiles again.
This, though, this is an entire planet. (Where the people used to laugh and the smoke used to sing.)
It is dangerous, he says, and he hasn't the right. (Didn't he say that once, and regret it a life later?)
There is always a price. (Who decides if the cost is too high? How does one weigh life against life?)
"Noble Doctor, always sacrificing to the Web of Time. Do you suppose they would understand?"
Of course they wouldn't, and he wants to say that isn't the point, but that isn't true anymore.
He doesn't know if this makes him weaker or stronger.
He sees another child fall and be forgotten (he had wide ocher eyes in a narrow face, with hair the colour of ash and skin the colour of moons, and he spoke in chimes).
He is tired of watching.
The Master smiles.
Prompt: Deprivation
Verse: A Damned Kind
He is in a world with no sky.
Scarlet sunlight barely filters through thick smog, casting shallow light over crumbling buildings and splintered streets.
This city was built from the mountains, and slowly but surely, the ravaged planet takes it back.
It is like this across the world.
It is as it is meant to be.
"You could change it, you know." A murmur in his ear, deceptively soft, his voice cloaked too in his precious velvet. "You could change it all."
He had chosen this planet, blamed the TARDIS for their late arrival as they wandered through grim scene after grim scene; dead-eyed urchins stained with blood, desperate strays gnawing on their own flesh, tiny corpses abandoned in the grime.
Now, they stand away, apart, as they have since returning from paradise; outside of Time.
"All of these forsaken children." A broad term, for a Time Lord. "You saved yours, after all."
Erimem. Adric. Sara. Katarina. (They could have done so much and now they can.)
He could feel time twist near to breaking each time, hear it screeching inside his head, and ignored it so that he could see their smiles again.
This, though, this is an entire planet. (Where the people used to laugh and the smoke used to sing.)
It is dangerous, he says, and he hasn't the right. (Didn't he say that once, and regret it a life later?)
There is always a price. (Who decides if the cost is too high? How does one weigh life against life?)
"Noble Doctor, always sacrificing to the Web of Time. Do you suppose they would understand?"
Of course they wouldn't, and he wants to say that isn't the point, but that isn't true anymore.
He doesn't know if this makes him weaker or stronger.
He sees another child fall and be forgotten (he had wide ocher eyes in a narrow face, with hair the colour of ash and skin the colour of moons, and he spoke in chimes).
He is tired of watching.
The Master smiles.