(no subject)
Thread of Love, Doctor/Rose, rated PG
All Doctors are hers. Some just don't know it yet.
As he approached the place where he sensed Susan's presence, the Doctor realized he should have included, "Don't talk to strangers" in his list of instructions prior to their parting. 3,019 words
A/N: Includes multiple Doctors, and references multiple pictures taken from past challenges.
Thread of Love
The Doctor hoped he hadn't made a mistake, leaving Susan on her own in a strange city, but he had tasks to accomplish that she did not need to know about. It was difficult to flee the home of one's birth, more difficult still to commit several varieties of larceny and theft to ensure success. Most difficult of all, however, was keeping the sheer volume of crimes committed out of the awareness of an innocent young girl.
He wasn't going to think about any of it, he really wasn't, but neither was he going to allow his grandchild to become party to his sins. Therefore, he had left her in a popular tourist location with instructions to blend in and be careful.
As he approached the place where he sensed Susan's presence, the Doctor realized he should have included, "Don't talk to strangers" in his list of instructions prior to their parting. There she sat, at a table in front of a small street cafe and there, sitting directly across from Susan, her face hidden from view, was a blonde dressed so correctly for the early twenty-first century they were visiting, that she could only be human.
The Doctor frowned and hurried to step somewhat closer, hoping to overhear their conversation without allowing either of them to be aware of his presence. Something would have to be done if the stranger had learned too much from Susan's innocent chatter. He had no idea, yet, what he would eventually be forced to do, but he knew he had to protect their secret at nearly any cost.
"...s'not half daft. S'like it escaped from the Sixities, you'd never..." The blonde prodded at the magazine spread out in front of Susan, taking up most of the table between them,
"Oh, it's precious!" Susan exclaimed. "I can't wait to see it in person."
The Doctor knew then that's he'd better hurry. She'd made a mistake, implying time travel, and they were definitely in for it. He was old, though, and away from Gallifrey's medicinal and thereputic tinkering. He was starting to feel every microsecond of his age. More to the point, he was starting to slow for every microsecond of his age.
The blonde didn't gasp and rush off to alert the authorities. While the Doctor moved toward them as if he was dragging his five hundred years as a chain attached to his shoes, she simply sat back with a shrug. "You're kidding," the Doctor heard.
"Well, of course it's meant to be humor," said Susan, and she sounded relieved. "I just wish I could see what it was really like."
"Your grandfather's gonna hate it, I hope you know that," the blonde asserted.
Now, the Doctor had to move. He had no idea what was going on here, but he knew he needed to intervene immediately.
Susan smiled beatifically at her strange new friend. "Oh, do you know... Grandfather!"
Susan had finally spotted him coming toward them and she stood to wave, her dark hair glinting hints of red in the light, her dark eyes shining with joy just to see him. It was wonderful to have someone depending on him, needing him, someone to show and share and teach. Someday, he knew Susan would have no use for him any more, but until then, she was delighted just to look at him, and it made him feel like he was doing the right thing.
He held out an imperious hand, beckoning Susan toward him so that he and the blonde were safely out of each other's reach. He didn't know what she was up to, didn't even know what she was at all. He just knew, somehow, that she was too appealing to be anything but avoided. "Come Susan," he ordered, just like he would back home. "We have much to do today and there's very little time for idle chatter."
Susan stood and the blonde stood with her. "See, I told you," the blonde said to Susan, and handed over her magazine. "It was wonderful to meet you at last," she added.
Susan looked startled, and the blonde walked around the table to push the other girl's chair back into place. Once this was done, she looked up, standing side by side with Susan, and met the Doctor's eyes at last. He was completely arrested by her, the shape of her face, the smile that seemed to brighten everything around it, the bright amber glint of sunlight on her dark, dark eyes. He couldn't stop staring, and it wasn't until Susan made an impatient gesture that he realized. Then, he did a double take for their expressions, his mysterious grandchild's and this strangely familiar human enigma's, were nearly perfect matches. Susan had this woman's eyes: it was impossible.
"Gotta run," the blonde said. She touched Susan's hand briefly, then darted to the Doctor, hummingbird fast and just as flickering. Her kiss on his cheek was brief and dazzling. "Love you," the woman added, and the Doctor touched his hand to the cheek she'd just kissed.
When she had vanished from them, gone from sight far too quickly to have merely run away, the Doctor was startled out of his reverie by Susan slipping her hand inside his free one. "Who was that, Grandfather?" Susan asked.
He simply stared where she had been. "What an extraordinary creature."
**
The sky above the battlefield was as beautiful as the war was ugly, as clean as the war was filthy. The stars shone down, cool and fair and nonjudgmental, and the Doctor looked up at them as they travelled toward the next Zone. He knew now, knew already, that there was no easy way out of this.
It might very well be the last time he saw that sky, those stars, and there was nothing he could do about it. The comet had always been considered a portent of doom, but never had its blazing banner been more eloquent, or sure.
He approached one of the traveling soldiers who stood watching the stars. He couldn't know what she was thinking, as her hair whipped, as blue as the comet's tail, in the light night breeze, but he would bet almost anything (if he had anything) that she was missing her home.
"It'll be alright," he tried to assure her. His voice in this incarnation was larger than he was, deep and kind, neither of which he felt any more. "You'll see, soon this will all be a bad dream."
The blonde woman looked up at him, and her eyes were so dark, so unfathomable, that he felt dizzy for an instant, like they were part of the space above them, like he was about to fall. "You can do it, you know," she said.
The Doctor was taken aback, and tried to get closer to her, desperate to see her more clearly than just the darkness of her eyes and a blue comet's shadow on her face. She backed away just as quickly, stepping deeper into the shadows the more he tried to bring her into the light. "But..." he started.
"I just thought you should know," she said. "No matter what, I believe in you."
The Doctor forced a smile. "There, you see, thinking positively already."
The girl smiled back, and hers was real, so real the Doctor thought it might just part the next fog they came to. His hearts clenched, sad and soaring at once, in his chest.
"Whatever happens, I love you," she whispered.
The Doctor watched, thunderstruck, as the strange woman stepped off into the fog. She was gone, he was almost completely sure of it, before the mist ever enfolded her. When his group caught up to him, he was still staring, baffled, at the place she had once been.
**
There was a woman in a yellow dress watching him. The Doctor could tell, somehow, that she was watching him, even though he couldn't see her face at this angle. She was standing on a balcony, and the sun was waning right behind her head, blinding him as if she had a vivid halo.
He couldn't help his curiosity. He usually blended in: he'd been on earth for an interminable time, and was probably starting to go native. Humans rarely noticed aliens living among them, anyway, but for some reason, the woman in the dress seemed to have decided that the Doctor and his car were her subjects for the day. She had a blue camera - he could see it very clearly - and was snapping photos even as he glowered forbiddingly up at her.
All the same, he would have normally left her alone, assuming quite obviously that she liked the color yellow. But there was a taste of unease, a petal of something strange and wonderful pressed in between the pages that made this moment. He had to know. "I say," he called, cheerfully, "what are you up to up there, Miss?"
Her hand flickered up, probably brushing her hair out of her face, though he still couldn't see her. However, he did see something else. The hand that held the camera dropped to her side, and her realized her fingernails had all been painted the same sunny yellow as her dress.
She seemed to realize almost the instant he did, that he was seeing an anachronism, a give away that told him far too much about who she wasn't (an ordinary human) and where she'd not come from (anywhere around here). He dashed toward the building, as fast as he could, sonicing open the locks and pushing people out of his way. What he knew, and what this strange time traveler obviously did not, was that there was only one way out of here.
He ran all the way up the three flights of stairs, all the way to the balcony he'd seen her on. There was no way he could have missed the woman, no chance for her to be gone.
There was no one there. The balcony was completely, astoundingly empty. He tested out the screwdriver's newest setting, scanning for alien tech, and found nothing.
However, on a bench near the very edge of the guard rail, there was the blue camera. Sitting next to it was a single yellow rose. The Doctor, beyond confused now, picked it up and read the tiny card attached to it. All it said was, "I hope you know I love you."
**
He was floating through the Vortex, burning forever and not, living and dying, breathing and breathless. Every possible opposing sensation occurred, simultaneously, and the Doctor struggled to remember where he was, who he was, why he was doing this.
Swimming through the Vortex had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Then again, so had disco, and look what happened there.
He didn't know what was happening, didn't know if anything at all was happening, when suddenly he was not alone. Nor was he in the Vortex. There was a woman with him, a brightly glowing golden woman, made of a galaxy of stars, all trapped inside a mortal body. The Doctor couldn't breathe again, but this time, it wasn't because of the airlessness.
They were in his room on the TARDIS, or maybe it wasn't, maybe it wasn't a room at all. There was a bed, though, and the woman hovered above it, all night and shadow, light and magic. "Doctor," she intoned, and she sounded rather as if she was scolding him, "what were you thinking?"
He'd been in the presence of a Guardian before, but this rather, he thought, took the biscuit. "Er... I don't mean to bother you, your glitteryness, but could you... glitter somewhere else?"
"Doctor," she chided.
"Didn't think so," he said. He watched her and felt, somehow, as if she was also watching him. "Um... who are you?"
The woman laughed, the sound like joy set to music, and the Doctor would know because his people had perfected that sort of art ages ago. "Ah," he realized, "it's one of those."
The woman abruptly sobered. "You need to take better care of yourself," she said softly. "I do love you so much..."
The Doctor had absolutely no idea what to say. All he could do, really, was try to reach for her, and blink. When he blinked, he ended up coming to in a storage cupboard on board his TARDIS. Now that, that was completely strange.
**
The museum, the Doctor thought, felt exactly like his mood. A "modern" art exhibit (though what you called modern to a time traveler eluded him), was just what he needed to dim the cacophony of his thoughts.
When he'd been a younger man, he had honestly believed that he was doing good, that there was plenty of good in what he did. But that was a long time ago, before the body count was usually absolute, before he'd let a whole corner of the Universe get destroyed, before... before Adric.
Bitterly, he stared into one the vast black and white visuals, determined to ignore that the writing and weaving of the white shapes in the black was exactly what he felt like these days: the good was trying so hard it was smothering every bit as much of the light as the evil could manage, maybe even more.
It was pitch dark in the room, and he supposed that might be part of the artist's vision. Tegan and Nyssa had wandered off somewhere, probably to comfort each other like civilized emotional beings capable of expressing their grief and their fears.
He was alone, and it was starting to feel like a metaphor.
One of the shapes in the darkness stepped up next to him and, to the Doctor's ever-lasting shock, took his hand. He looked down, if only to chastise, but all he could see was the crown of a head that could be gold or white or even some other-worldly shade he was not familiar with.
"Look at it," she said, and her voice was more shocking than her touch. Somehow, it was familiar.
"What do you see?" he asked, because he thought he should. It was polite, if he was going to stand there clinging to her hand like a lost little boy.
"The end of the world," she said, softly. He froze. "I shouldn't," she added. "I blame it on the shape of the windows."
He was amazed because, somewhere within the ache he'd been feeling building to a scream inside him, something loosened. "Who are you?" he asked.
"Doesn't matter," she said, but it was a lie, and the Doctor knew that, even in the dark. He felt her shake her head against his shoulder. "What do you see?" she asked.
"A losing battle," he admitted.
"Aren't they all, though?" the girl wondered. She wasn't playing philosophy, she wasn't preaching. She genuinely wished to know.
"I don't know," the Doctor confessed.
The girl sighed and laid her head on his shoulder. "Me neither," she admitted.
After a long moment, the Doctor felt compelled to speak. "It's like... all that darkness. And the light is practically starting to help it, smothering itself, piling up... I don't know, it's just very painful to look at."
"And yet you can't help it," the girl answered. "God, don't I know." There was a smile in her voice when she continued. "The thing is, the dark can't ever win, right? The light's there, it's always there, it always will be. It may be alone, it may be tired and flickering and even a bit rained on, but the thing is, yeah? The thing is, the light grows. The dark can't create one more ounce of dark, no matter how how it tries. The light? It spreads forever."
The Doctor stared down at her. He wondered vaguely, or at least a part of him did, if it would be okay if he just decided to follow this girl for the rest of eternity. "You are..."
"Yeah, I know," she said, deprecatingly. "Got that off a website or something," she admitted.
His breath caught in his throat, then his chest, and then it started to tickle, and the next thing the Doctor knew, he was laughing. It wasn't loud, it wasn't much, but it was laughter, real, mending, healing laughter. "You're amazing," he said, voice filled with awe.
"Pretty amazing, yeah," she said, and stood on her toes, peering up at him.
The room was too dark to see her features clearly, but he knew an invitation when he saw one. "I shouldn't," he murmured.
"Me neither," the girl said. Her lips remained pursed and inviting.
"I'm ever so much older than you," he said.
"Ya think?" she quipped.
He couldn't help grinning again. Enthusiasm filled him. "You're very persuasive," he said.
"Doctor?" she murmured, soft and low.
"Hum?" he said, leaning close, watching her mouth.
"Shut up and kiss me."
He was not one to argue with... who was he kidding, he was usually the first in line. But, just this once, it was dark, and he was standing in the light anyway. He bent his head and kissed her, kissed her like she was forever.
She tasted like stars and time, like moonlight and rain and human hormones. He didn't know who she was, couldn't have guessed if he had to do, but for this single moment, at least, she tasted like and felt like and was his. When he broke the kiss, their lips lingered, just breathing in the other's air, hands locked together, bodies close enough to share warmth.
"I love you so very much," she whispered across his kiss damp smile. "So much." Then, she released him, her hand lingering only long enough to brush his cheek. She stepped back, eyes never leaving his, then back and back again.
Before long, she was gone, but the solace she left him remained. The knot slipped, the cut stopped bleeding, something gave. It was going to hurt. It was allowed to hurt. But the light stayed on.
**
A/N: These events occur prior to "An Unearthly Child", "War Games", just prior to "The Three Doctors", during "Shada" - the original, not the radio edit, and following the events of "Earthshock". The pictures were selected from a variety of then_theres_us past challenges, with my thanks! I'm not completely happy with one of these vignettes and may change it, as well as finishing the series. This is NOT to be assumed to be ALH verse, despite the note about Susan. That's just something that's uncanny is all.
All Doctors are hers. Some just don't know it yet.
As he approached the place where he sensed Susan's presence, the Doctor realized he should have included, "Don't talk to strangers" in his list of instructions prior to their parting. 3,019 words
A/N: Includes multiple Doctors, and references multiple pictures taken from past challenges.
Thread of Love
The Doctor hoped he hadn't made a mistake, leaving Susan on her own in a strange city, but he had tasks to accomplish that she did not need to know about. It was difficult to flee the home of one's birth, more difficult still to commit several varieties of larceny and theft to ensure success. Most difficult of all, however, was keeping the sheer volume of crimes committed out of the awareness of an innocent young girl.
He wasn't going to think about any of it, he really wasn't, but neither was he going to allow his grandchild to become party to his sins. Therefore, he had left her in a popular tourist location with instructions to blend in and be careful.
As he approached the place where he sensed Susan's presence, the Doctor realized he should have included, "Don't talk to strangers" in his list of instructions prior to their parting. There she sat, at a table in front of a small street cafe and there, sitting directly across from Susan, her face hidden from view, was a blonde dressed so correctly for the early twenty-first century they were visiting, that she could only be human.
The Doctor frowned and hurried to step somewhat closer, hoping to overhear their conversation without allowing either of them to be aware of his presence. Something would have to be done if the stranger had learned too much from Susan's innocent chatter. He had no idea, yet, what he would eventually be forced to do, but he knew he had to protect their secret at nearly any cost.
"...s'not half daft. S'like it escaped from the Sixities, you'd never..." The blonde prodded at the magazine spread out in front of Susan, taking up most of the table between them,
"Oh, it's precious!" Susan exclaimed. "I can't wait to see it in person."
The Doctor knew then that's he'd better hurry. She'd made a mistake, implying time travel, and they were definitely in for it. He was old, though, and away from Gallifrey's medicinal and thereputic tinkering. He was starting to feel every microsecond of his age. More to the point, he was starting to slow for every microsecond of his age.
The blonde didn't gasp and rush off to alert the authorities. While the Doctor moved toward them as if he was dragging his five hundred years as a chain attached to his shoes, she simply sat back with a shrug. "You're kidding," the Doctor heard.
"Well, of course it's meant to be humor," said Susan, and she sounded relieved. "I just wish I could see what it was really like."
"Your grandfather's gonna hate it, I hope you know that," the blonde asserted.
Now, the Doctor had to move. He had no idea what was going on here, but he knew he needed to intervene immediately.
Susan smiled beatifically at her strange new friend. "Oh, do you know... Grandfather!"
Susan had finally spotted him coming toward them and she stood to wave, her dark hair glinting hints of red in the light, her dark eyes shining with joy just to see him. It was wonderful to have someone depending on him, needing him, someone to show and share and teach. Someday, he knew Susan would have no use for him any more, but until then, she was delighted just to look at him, and it made him feel like he was doing the right thing.
He held out an imperious hand, beckoning Susan toward him so that he and the blonde were safely out of each other's reach. He didn't know what she was up to, didn't even know what she was at all. He just knew, somehow, that she was too appealing to be anything but avoided. "Come Susan," he ordered, just like he would back home. "We have much to do today and there's very little time for idle chatter."
Susan stood and the blonde stood with her. "See, I told you," the blonde said to Susan, and handed over her magazine. "It was wonderful to meet you at last," she added.
Susan looked startled, and the blonde walked around the table to push the other girl's chair back into place. Once this was done, she looked up, standing side by side with Susan, and met the Doctor's eyes at last. He was completely arrested by her, the shape of her face, the smile that seemed to brighten everything around it, the bright amber glint of sunlight on her dark, dark eyes. He couldn't stop staring, and it wasn't until Susan made an impatient gesture that he realized. Then, he did a double take for their expressions, his mysterious grandchild's and this strangely familiar human enigma's, were nearly perfect matches. Susan had this woman's eyes: it was impossible.
"Gotta run," the blonde said. She touched Susan's hand briefly, then darted to the Doctor, hummingbird fast and just as flickering. Her kiss on his cheek was brief and dazzling. "Love you," the woman added, and the Doctor touched his hand to the cheek she'd just kissed.
When she had vanished from them, gone from sight far too quickly to have merely run away, the Doctor was startled out of his reverie by Susan slipping her hand inside his free one. "Who was that, Grandfather?" Susan asked.
He simply stared where she had been. "What an extraordinary creature."
**
The sky above the battlefield was as beautiful as the war was ugly, as clean as the war was filthy. The stars shone down, cool and fair and nonjudgmental, and the Doctor looked up at them as they travelled toward the next Zone. He knew now, knew already, that there was no easy way out of this.
It might very well be the last time he saw that sky, those stars, and there was nothing he could do about it. The comet had always been considered a portent of doom, but never had its blazing banner been more eloquent, or sure.
He approached one of the traveling soldiers who stood watching the stars. He couldn't know what she was thinking, as her hair whipped, as blue as the comet's tail, in the light night breeze, but he would bet almost anything (if he had anything) that she was missing her home.
"It'll be alright," he tried to assure her. His voice in this incarnation was larger than he was, deep and kind, neither of which he felt any more. "You'll see, soon this will all be a bad dream."
The blonde woman looked up at him, and her eyes were so dark, so unfathomable, that he felt dizzy for an instant, like they were part of the space above them, like he was about to fall. "You can do it, you know," she said.
The Doctor was taken aback, and tried to get closer to her, desperate to see her more clearly than just the darkness of her eyes and a blue comet's shadow on her face. She backed away just as quickly, stepping deeper into the shadows the more he tried to bring her into the light. "But..." he started.
"I just thought you should know," she said. "No matter what, I believe in you."
The Doctor forced a smile. "There, you see, thinking positively already."
The girl smiled back, and hers was real, so real the Doctor thought it might just part the next fog they came to. His hearts clenched, sad and soaring at once, in his chest.
"Whatever happens, I love you," she whispered.
The Doctor watched, thunderstruck, as the strange woman stepped off into the fog. She was gone, he was almost completely sure of it, before the mist ever enfolded her. When his group caught up to him, he was still staring, baffled, at the place she had once been.
**
There was a woman in a yellow dress watching him. The Doctor could tell, somehow, that she was watching him, even though he couldn't see her face at this angle. She was standing on a balcony, and the sun was waning right behind her head, blinding him as if she had a vivid halo.
He couldn't help his curiosity. He usually blended in: he'd been on earth for an interminable time, and was probably starting to go native. Humans rarely noticed aliens living among them, anyway, but for some reason, the woman in the dress seemed to have decided that the Doctor and his car were her subjects for the day. She had a blue camera - he could see it very clearly - and was snapping photos even as he glowered forbiddingly up at her.
All the same, he would have normally left her alone, assuming quite obviously that she liked the color yellow. But there was a taste of unease, a petal of something strange and wonderful pressed in between the pages that made this moment. He had to know. "I say," he called, cheerfully, "what are you up to up there, Miss?"
Her hand flickered up, probably brushing her hair out of her face, though he still couldn't see her. However, he did see something else. The hand that held the camera dropped to her side, and her realized her fingernails had all been painted the same sunny yellow as her dress.
She seemed to realize almost the instant he did, that he was seeing an anachronism, a give away that told him far too much about who she wasn't (an ordinary human) and where she'd not come from (anywhere around here). He dashed toward the building, as fast as he could, sonicing open the locks and pushing people out of his way. What he knew, and what this strange time traveler obviously did not, was that there was only one way out of here.
He ran all the way up the three flights of stairs, all the way to the balcony he'd seen her on. There was no way he could have missed the woman, no chance for her to be gone.
There was no one there. The balcony was completely, astoundingly empty. He tested out the screwdriver's newest setting, scanning for alien tech, and found nothing.
However, on a bench near the very edge of the guard rail, there was the blue camera. Sitting next to it was a single yellow rose. The Doctor, beyond confused now, picked it up and read the tiny card attached to it. All it said was, "I hope you know I love you."
**
He was floating through the Vortex, burning forever and not, living and dying, breathing and breathless. Every possible opposing sensation occurred, simultaneously, and the Doctor struggled to remember where he was, who he was, why he was doing this.
Swimming through the Vortex had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Then again, so had disco, and look what happened there.
He didn't know what was happening, didn't know if anything at all was happening, when suddenly he was not alone. Nor was he in the Vortex. There was a woman with him, a brightly glowing golden woman, made of a galaxy of stars, all trapped inside a mortal body. The Doctor couldn't breathe again, but this time, it wasn't because of the airlessness.
They were in his room on the TARDIS, or maybe it wasn't, maybe it wasn't a room at all. There was a bed, though, and the woman hovered above it, all night and shadow, light and magic. "Doctor," she intoned, and she sounded rather as if she was scolding him, "what were you thinking?"
He'd been in the presence of a Guardian before, but this rather, he thought, took the biscuit. "Er... I don't mean to bother you, your glitteryness, but could you... glitter somewhere else?"
"Doctor," she chided.
"Didn't think so," he said. He watched her and felt, somehow, as if she was also watching him. "Um... who are you?"
The woman laughed, the sound like joy set to music, and the Doctor would know because his people had perfected that sort of art ages ago. "Ah," he realized, "it's one of those."
The woman abruptly sobered. "You need to take better care of yourself," she said softly. "I do love you so much..."
The Doctor had absolutely no idea what to say. All he could do, really, was try to reach for her, and blink. When he blinked, he ended up coming to in a storage cupboard on board his TARDIS. Now that, that was completely strange.
**
The museum, the Doctor thought, felt exactly like his mood. A "modern" art exhibit (though what you called modern to a time traveler eluded him), was just what he needed to dim the cacophony of his thoughts.
When he'd been a younger man, he had honestly believed that he was doing good, that there was plenty of good in what he did. But that was a long time ago, before the body count was usually absolute, before he'd let a whole corner of the Universe get destroyed, before... before Adric.
Bitterly, he stared into one the vast black and white visuals, determined to ignore that the writing and weaving of the white shapes in the black was exactly what he felt like these days: the good was trying so hard it was smothering every bit as much of the light as the evil could manage, maybe even more.
It was pitch dark in the room, and he supposed that might be part of the artist's vision. Tegan and Nyssa had wandered off somewhere, probably to comfort each other like civilized emotional beings capable of expressing their grief and their fears.
He was alone, and it was starting to feel like a metaphor.
One of the shapes in the darkness stepped up next to him and, to the Doctor's ever-lasting shock, took his hand. He looked down, if only to chastise, but all he could see was the crown of a head that could be gold or white or even some other-worldly shade he was not familiar with.
"Look at it," she said, and her voice was more shocking than her touch. Somehow, it was familiar.
"What do you see?" he asked, because he thought he should. It was polite, if he was going to stand there clinging to her hand like a lost little boy.
"The end of the world," she said, softly. He froze. "I shouldn't," she added. "I blame it on the shape of the windows."
He was amazed because, somewhere within the ache he'd been feeling building to a scream inside him, something loosened. "Who are you?" he asked.
"Doesn't matter," she said, but it was a lie, and the Doctor knew that, even in the dark. He felt her shake her head against his shoulder. "What do you see?" she asked.
"A losing battle," he admitted.
"Aren't they all, though?" the girl wondered. She wasn't playing philosophy, she wasn't preaching. She genuinely wished to know.
"I don't know," the Doctor confessed.
The girl sighed and laid her head on his shoulder. "Me neither," she admitted.
After a long moment, the Doctor felt compelled to speak. "It's like... all that darkness. And the light is practically starting to help it, smothering itself, piling up... I don't know, it's just very painful to look at."
"And yet you can't help it," the girl answered. "God, don't I know." There was a smile in her voice when she continued. "The thing is, the dark can't ever win, right? The light's there, it's always there, it always will be. It may be alone, it may be tired and flickering and even a bit rained on, but the thing is, yeah? The thing is, the light grows. The dark can't create one more ounce of dark, no matter how how it tries. The light? It spreads forever."
The Doctor stared down at her. He wondered vaguely, or at least a part of him did, if it would be okay if he just decided to follow this girl for the rest of eternity. "You are..."
"Yeah, I know," she said, deprecatingly. "Got that off a website or something," she admitted.
His breath caught in his throat, then his chest, and then it started to tickle, and the next thing the Doctor knew, he was laughing. It wasn't loud, it wasn't much, but it was laughter, real, mending, healing laughter. "You're amazing," he said, voice filled with awe.
"Pretty amazing, yeah," she said, and stood on her toes, peering up at him.
The room was too dark to see her features clearly, but he knew an invitation when he saw one. "I shouldn't," he murmured.
"Me neither," the girl said. Her lips remained pursed and inviting.
"I'm ever so much older than you," he said.
"Ya think?" she quipped.
He couldn't help grinning again. Enthusiasm filled him. "You're very persuasive," he said.
"Doctor?" she murmured, soft and low.
"Hum?" he said, leaning close, watching her mouth.
"Shut up and kiss me."
He was not one to argue with... who was he kidding, he was usually the first in line. But, just this once, it was dark, and he was standing in the light anyway. He bent his head and kissed her, kissed her like she was forever.
She tasted like stars and time, like moonlight and rain and human hormones. He didn't know who she was, couldn't have guessed if he had to do, but for this single moment, at least, she tasted like and felt like and was his. When he broke the kiss, their lips lingered, just breathing in the other's air, hands locked together, bodies close enough to share warmth.
"I love you so very much," she whispered across his kiss damp smile. "So much." Then, she released him, her hand lingering only long enough to brush his cheek. She stepped back, eyes never leaving his, then back and back again.
Before long, she was gone, but the solace she left him remained. The knot slipped, the cut stopped bleeding, something gave. It was going to hurt. It was allowed to hurt. But the light stayed on.
**
A/N: These events occur prior to "An Unearthly Child", "War Games", just prior to "The Three Doctors", during "Shada" - the original, not the radio edit, and following the events of "Earthshock". The pictures were selected from a variety of then_theres_us past challenges, with my thanks! I'm not completely happy with one of these vignettes and may change it, as well as finishing the series. This is NOT to be assumed to be ALH verse, despite the note about Susan. That's just something that's uncanny is all.