oncoming_storms : Lost
Title: Among Ruins and Ghosts
Part: 1/3
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: Possibly some disturbing imagery; also, 'S' for Seven/Ace 'shippiness. Uh, without being cloying, I hope? This chapter only hints at it, however. And sorry for not having the drabbles done yet; I am starting a new job...*looks at clock* today, so am a little scattered at the moment. I hope to have them done in the next day or two. And now I should probably get to bed. Enjoy!
Prompt: OS Prompt 47.2 Lost
The Doctor lived within corners of hours, the sharp edges of time that could only be felt by the rare beings doomed to brush eternity with the hush of lonely steps skipping across holes between stars. There were innumerable events, emotions, occurrences that he had tucked inside his capacious head; burdens he bore, memories he relived, people he struggled to keep in the focus of his mind's eye, warm as the untouchable edges of a blue flame. If they chilled and dimmed, they would be lost to him, mere flashes in the mercurial synapses of his brain.
Quietly, he gathered people to him as a river reaches for stones, ever in need of companionship. If his days were too frequently spent in solitude, he would be left with the torturous silence of his own mind. The Doctor wondered if a paucity of life would in turn make it easy to forget the memories he had collected so preciously in his long years.
Life beget persistence, and loneliness harbored loss.
It had been long years since he had clung to one being so fervently, though. Knowing that Ace was so willing to die for him, and what he represented, had fostered an inordinate amount of reflection, even for him.
The conclusion he'd ultimately reached was that Ace was no longer a mere companion, or even just his best friend.
Ace was the equilibrium which enabled his steady, eternal walk across the universe's spine. It was a frightening conclusion to reach, and one he was struggling to come to terms with.
"What're you doin', Professor?" Her voice cut incisively through his thoughts.
The Doctor set his cup of tea down and stood from the table. "A bit too much sugar this time, I think."
Ace rolled her eyes from the doorway. "You looked like you were thinking about something."
"And there was, of course, the regrettable fact that I had no scones to indulge in with my tea," he added, replacing his hat as he moved past her to the console room.
Despite the fact that he hadn't answered her question, Ace followed him, watching as he set the coordinates, and waited for him to refocus on her.
"All right, where are we going?" She finally asked, catching his eyes as they turned up from the console.
"Let me have my secrets for now," the Doctor finally spoke, his voice oddly subdued, and unnerving.
Ace stood upright, looking mildly indignant, but kept her mouth shut. Yeah, like you don't have plenty of secrets already.
The Doctor had turned inward once more, ruminating on the planet he was taking them to, and for what purpose. If he was going to tentatively begin accepting that Ace was so vital to his own existence, he had to assure himself that relying on her presence was not going to be a decision he would come to regret.
If there was anything he could lose her over, as a result of decisions he had made, it would be this. And he had no desire to forestall the inevitable, whatever end might come.
*
Dense grey clouds of fog proliferated in the air as they stepped out of the TARDIS. An eerie, verdant glow consumed the distant horizon, and Ace instinctively scanned their surroundings, to be certain there was no imminent danger. In such a darkness, she didn't trust that nothing sinister was awaiting them.
"What is this place?"
The Doctor had left his hat behind, and until he stood beside her, she had trouble seeing him at all.
"Officially, its only designation is a series of numbers and letters with no real meaning, or accepted pronunciation. But when I first arrived here, and observed the atmosphere, I took to calling it Niflheim."
"Isn't that..." The meaning was on the tip of her tongue. "...mythology."
"Norse mythology, to be exact," the Doctor supplied. "The land of mist."
He strode forward, his umbrella swinging back and forth as he walked. In his spare hand, he was carrying an old-fashioned lantern, lighting the path before them. She hadn't thought to question him about it.
"Come along, Ace," came his concise, commanding voice.
She followed him promptly, sparing another glance at the mist smothering the landscape like a shroud, as though the planet itself was at the point of death. After some time, the Doctor led her towards the mouth of a cave, still abstaining from offering an explanation.
"What's that latin word--means you're in a bad way, you're about to die," she called ahead to the Doctor.
"In extremis," he turned his head to reply, a faint smile crossing his face. "You're getting ahead of yourself, Ace."
"Ha-ha, funny," she rolled her eyes. "It's just the planet, the stuff out there, it all seems...dead. It's not so bad in here, but I can't see much anyway."
When they were shoulder to shoulder, the Doctor pressed his forefinger to the underside of Ace's wrist.
"When it's time to see, Ace, you might feel otherwise."
"Look, are you going to--"
"We're nearly there," his voice had a slight undertone of authority, indicating he expected to be obeyed. And though such an assumption would have ordinarily incited her to demand further explanation, she stifled protestation and focused on ruminating about what lay ahead.
The darkness itself was an aberration, comprised of mingling black and burnt orange hues, but the pervading chill was what caused Ace to shiver more than anything. The Doctor had not spoken since they'd entered the cave, simply holding the lantern with an oddly steady hand as they walked. Abruptly, he stopped, setting the lantern on the ground, and reached for his sonic screwdriver. He stepped back, pushing a different setting, illuminating the cave walls with a bright light.
Instantly, Ace stumbled backwards as she took in the sight.
These were not drawings, she knew.
The painted ghosts were vestiges of the people who had inhabited this cave, who had died here. They were contorted in agony, suggesting the deaths had been painful, if swift.
"What happened here?" Ace finally found her voice.
"A small tribe inhabited this cave. Some time ago, I was here on an unrelated matter. The tribal leader had begun experimenting on the children with different chemicals. I wasn't here long enough to ascertain his purpose, and the children continued to die. That is, until he acquired a new substance, which diverted his attention."
At that moment, the Doctor's eyes denoted his mental retreat to long ago.
"What was it?"
"It had the same effect that a hydrogen bomb would have, except it was far more insidious, and in liquid form. He seemed to believe that applying it to the walls of this cave would grow the rock. Ignorant, odious, and unyielding man. Once ingested, it destroyed a person from inside out. Caustic, melting their flesh..."
Ace hesitated. "If you knew...you knew what he thought it could do, and what it actually did. And you didn't tell him?"
The Doctor clasped his hands behind his back, walking closer to the wall where the imprints were so hauntingly etched.
"People always destroy themselves," came his infrequent, but memorable refrain.
Ace was silent, almost breathless with the weight of this revelation.
"What about...the children?"
His eyes flickered briefly with mourning as he turned away from the wall swallowed in death.
"He was disgusted with what he perceived to be their deficiencies. When I came here, many had died as a result of experimentation already," the Doctor paused, allowing a breath to be lost in their memory, "I was able to save the few that were left. The dead you see on these walls all endorsed the continued annihilation, Ace. And they all knew the possible dangers of the substance, yet they chose to implement it."
She had no desire to rest against any of the walls, so she knelt to the ground, drawing unfinished shapes in the dust.
"If they were bad people, if they were doin' awful things to kids...they deserved it," she muttered, smoothing away the moon in the dust with her thumb.
The Doctor stood above her, his face an eerie mask betraying no emotion.
"Some would condemn my refusal to intercede, to prevent what I knew would come."
At that, Ace stood up sharply, her eyes steely as she looked upon him. "Well, I'm not some and I'm not a baby who doesn't know how things work. I know how cruel the universe is, how cruel..." She paused. "How cruel we have to be, to fight it back. But what I wanna know, Doctor, is why you brought me here. Just to show me this? Did you think I'd run away?"
Not a muscle moved within his body as he listened to her.
"You should know everything I'm capable of, Ace, if we're to continue on."
"I think I know a lot, and I think whatever I don't know, I'll figure out eventually. You're just...testing me again," she almost sneered.
The Doctor's lips worked furiously together in silent anger, his chin tightening, and his shoulders raising slightly as he breathed through his nose.
"When you say it like that, you make it sound as though I frivolously thrust these crucibles upon you, heedless of your own needs, and happy just to play a game," he ground out.
"You do play games," Ace countered, though her voice was tight and even.
"With other people, when the situation calls for it, not with you!"
"Then what is this?" She crossed her arms.
The Doctor turned away sharply, his lower lip curling as his eyes blinked midnight and dawn rapidly. His breaths were blunt, harsh, until at last he looked at her once more. "If you see the darkness, Ace, would you embrace it, or run from it?"
Her eyes narrowed as she neared him. "Depends on where it's coming from."
"Or from whom," he murmured, lifting his eyes to hers, searching for an answer to a question he forced himself not to ask.
"From you?"
He said nothing as he watched her eyes for proof of what she was saying.
"Never gonna run from you, Professor," Ace affirmed.
"I had to be sure," he admitted quietly.
"But," she persisted, "I'm sick of you twistin' my mind around. If you wanna know these things, ask me. Haven't we been through enough that you can just talk to me?"
The Doctor tightened his fingers around his brolly, leaving the lantern behind. "It's time we were getting back to the TARDIS."
"There you go again," she muttered, storming on ahead of him. "I'm not a kid, I'm not a puppet. I'm an adult, and I bloody well deserve straight answers."
His mind worked fretfully, processing her words and deciding what to do with them, even as he watched her move ahead of him, growing increasingly silent. At the moment, he decided not to allow himself to become too firmly anxious about what had transpired; soon, they would be back on the TARDIS, and could discuss things more rationally, and at greater depth.
Hooking his umbrella into his coat pocket, the Doctor folded his hands behind him, catching up to Ace. When he exited the mouth of the cave, he noticed Ace's head moving rapidly from side to side, scanning the pervasive mist, which was colored as the breath a cigar gives to the world.
"Where's the TARDIS?" Ace moved through the fog, speaking with a disconcerting calm; she sounded almost disconnected, resigned, and it unnerved him more immediately than his inability to locate his ship.
"We did walk a sizable distance, Ace, though it's entirely possible in this fog we could walk in circles and wind up precisely where we started."
"All right, then, what should we do?"
"There's a small cottage, quite closer than where I parked the TARDIS. The fogs dissipate by early morning, so we should have an easier time of it," he suggested.
"A cottage?" Ace chuckled and shook her head. "What're you playin' at now?"
He looked as bemused as he felt. "The last I knew, cottages were completely innocuous."
"Right, sure. 'Cept this whole thing was a set-up, so why wouldn't that be, too?" Ace studied him a moment, then capitulated. "Might as well, I'm knackered myself."
"Ah, good," the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver, illuminating the path before him so he could navigate more easily.
"You sure you don't wanna just make it back home?"
The Doctor gave his smile to the mist flirting with the skin of his neck, ever fond of her proclivity for designating his TARDIS as her home as well. "It will only get denser, and I can't recall every corruption in the landscape. I would quite prefer not having one of us take a pace to the left, only to plunge from a cliff."
"Yeah, I'd agree with you there, Professor," Ace sidled up to him. "Lead on, Jeeves."
The Doctor took her hand as he held the sonic screwdriver before him, disregarding his odd desire to study the curves in her palm with the pad of this thumb for the answer to a question his hearts had posited on the edge of a hopeless second, behind a trail of fledgling stars, long before he had ever been young.
He had never considered the answer might come in flesh, warm breaths, and something beautifully, tragically mortal. And he wasn't yet certain he wanted to live with that answer.
Muse: Seventh Doctor
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 2,034
Part: 1/3
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: Possibly some disturbing imagery; also, 'S' for Seven/Ace 'shippiness. Uh, without being cloying, I hope? This chapter only hints at it, however. And sorry for not having the drabbles done yet; I am starting a new job...*looks at clock* today, so am a little scattered at the moment. I hope to have them done in the next day or two. And now I should probably get to bed. Enjoy!
Prompt: OS Prompt 47.2 Lost
The Doctor lived within corners of hours, the sharp edges of time that could only be felt by the rare beings doomed to brush eternity with the hush of lonely steps skipping across holes between stars. There were innumerable events, emotions, occurrences that he had tucked inside his capacious head; burdens he bore, memories he relived, people he struggled to keep in the focus of his mind's eye, warm as the untouchable edges of a blue flame. If they chilled and dimmed, they would be lost to him, mere flashes in the mercurial synapses of his brain.
Quietly, he gathered people to him as a river reaches for stones, ever in need of companionship. If his days were too frequently spent in solitude, he would be left with the torturous silence of his own mind. The Doctor wondered if a paucity of life would in turn make it easy to forget the memories he had collected so preciously in his long years.
Life beget persistence, and loneliness harbored loss.
It had been long years since he had clung to one being so fervently, though. Knowing that Ace was so willing to die for him, and what he represented, had fostered an inordinate amount of reflection, even for him.
The conclusion he'd ultimately reached was that Ace was no longer a mere companion, or even just his best friend.
Ace was the equilibrium which enabled his steady, eternal walk across the universe's spine. It was a frightening conclusion to reach, and one he was struggling to come to terms with.
"What're you doin', Professor?" Her voice cut incisively through his thoughts.
The Doctor set his cup of tea down and stood from the table. "A bit too much sugar this time, I think."
Ace rolled her eyes from the doorway. "You looked like you were thinking about something."
"And there was, of course, the regrettable fact that I had no scones to indulge in with my tea," he added, replacing his hat as he moved past her to the console room.
Despite the fact that he hadn't answered her question, Ace followed him, watching as he set the coordinates, and waited for him to refocus on her.
"All right, where are we going?" She finally asked, catching his eyes as they turned up from the console.
"Let me have my secrets for now," the Doctor finally spoke, his voice oddly subdued, and unnerving.
Ace stood upright, looking mildly indignant, but kept her mouth shut. Yeah, like you don't have plenty of secrets already.
The Doctor had turned inward once more, ruminating on the planet he was taking them to, and for what purpose. If he was going to tentatively begin accepting that Ace was so vital to his own existence, he had to assure himself that relying on her presence was not going to be a decision he would come to regret.
If there was anything he could lose her over, as a result of decisions he had made, it would be this. And he had no desire to forestall the inevitable, whatever end might come.
*
Dense grey clouds of fog proliferated in the air as they stepped out of the TARDIS. An eerie, verdant glow consumed the distant horizon, and Ace instinctively scanned their surroundings, to be certain there was no imminent danger. In such a darkness, she didn't trust that nothing sinister was awaiting them.
"What is this place?"
The Doctor had left his hat behind, and until he stood beside her, she had trouble seeing him at all.
"Officially, its only designation is a series of numbers and letters with no real meaning, or accepted pronunciation. But when I first arrived here, and observed the atmosphere, I took to calling it Niflheim."
"Isn't that..." The meaning was on the tip of her tongue. "...mythology."
"Norse mythology, to be exact," the Doctor supplied. "The land of mist."
He strode forward, his umbrella swinging back and forth as he walked. In his spare hand, he was carrying an old-fashioned lantern, lighting the path before them. She hadn't thought to question him about it.
"Come along, Ace," came his concise, commanding voice.
She followed him promptly, sparing another glance at the mist smothering the landscape like a shroud, as though the planet itself was at the point of death. After some time, the Doctor led her towards the mouth of a cave, still abstaining from offering an explanation.
"What's that latin word--means you're in a bad way, you're about to die," she called ahead to the Doctor.
"In extremis," he turned his head to reply, a faint smile crossing his face. "You're getting ahead of yourself, Ace."
"Ha-ha, funny," she rolled her eyes. "It's just the planet, the stuff out there, it all seems...dead. It's not so bad in here, but I can't see much anyway."
When they were shoulder to shoulder, the Doctor pressed his forefinger to the underside of Ace's wrist.
"When it's time to see, Ace, you might feel otherwise."
"Look, are you going to--"
"We're nearly there," his voice had a slight undertone of authority, indicating he expected to be obeyed. And though such an assumption would have ordinarily incited her to demand further explanation, she stifled protestation and focused on ruminating about what lay ahead.
The darkness itself was an aberration, comprised of mingling black and burnt orange hues, but the pervading chill was what caused Ace to shiver more than anything. The Doctor had not spoken since they'd entered the cave, simply holding the lantern with an oddly steady hand as they walked. Abruptly, he stopped, setting the lantern on the ground, and reached for his sonic screwdriver. He stepped back, pushing a different setting, illuminating the cave walls with a bright light.
Instantly, Ace stumbled backwards as she took in the sight.
These were not drawings, she knew.
The painted ghosts were vestiges of the people who had inhabited this cave, who had died here. They were contorted in agony, suggesting the deaths had been painful, if swift.
"What happened here?" Ace finally found her voice.
"A small tribe inhabited this cave. Some time ago, I was here on an unrelated matter. The tribal leader had begun experimenting on the children with different chemicals. I wasn't here long enough to ascertain his purpose, and the children continued to die. That is, until he acquired a new substance, which diverted his attention."
At that moment, the Doctor's eyes denoted his mental retreat to long ago.
"What was it?"
"It had the same effect that a hydrogen bomb would have, except it was far more insidious, and in liquid form. He seemed to believe that applying it to the walls of this cave would grow the rock. Ignorant, odious, and unyielding man. Once ingested, it destroyed a person from inside out. Caustic, melting their flesh..."
Ace hesitated. "If you knew...you knew what he thought it could do, and what it actually did. And you didn't tell him?"
The Doctor clasped his hands behind his back, walking closer to the wall where the imprints were so hauntingly etched.
"People always destroy themselves," came his infrequent, but memorable refrain.
Ace was silent, almost breathless with the weight of this revelation.
"What about...the children?"
His eyes flickered briefly with mourning as he turned away from the wall swallowed in death.
"He was disgusted with what he perceived to be their deficiencies. When I came here, many had died as a result of experimentation already," the Doctor paused, allowing a breath to be lost in their memory, "I was able to save the few that were left. The dead you see on these walls all endorsed the continued annihilation, Ace. And they all knew the possible dangers of the substance, yet they chose to implement it."
She had no desire to rest against any of the walls, so she knelt to the ground, drawing unfinished shapes in the dust.
"If they were bad people, if they were doin' awful things to kids...they deserved it," she muttered, smoothing away the moon in the dust with her thumb.
The Doctor stood above her, his face an eerie mask betraying no emotion.
"Some would condemn my refusal to intercede, to prevent what I knew would come."
At that, Ace stood up sharply, her eyes steely as she looked upon him. "Well, I'm not some and I'm not a baby who doesn't know how things work. I know how cruel the universe is, how cruel..." She paused. "How cruel we have to be, to fight it back. But what I wanna know, Doctor, is why you brought me here. Just to show me this? Did you think I'd run away?"
Not a muscle moved within his body as he listened to her.
"You should know everything I'm capable of, Ace, if we're to continue on."
"I think I know a lot, and I think whatever I don't know, I'll figure out eventually. You're just...testing me again," she almost sneered.
The Doctor's lips worked furiously together in silent anger, his chin tightening, and his shoulders raising slightly as he breathed through his nose.
"When you say it like that, you make it sound as though I frivolously thrust these crucibles upon you, heedless of your own needs, and happy just to play a game," he ground out.
"You do play games," Ace countered, though her voice was tight and even.
"With other people, when the situation calls for it, not with you!"
"Then what is this?" She crossed her arms.
The Doctor turned away sharply, his lower lip curling as his eyes blinked midnight and dawn rapidly. His breaths were blunt, harsh, until at last he looked at her once more. "If you see the darkness, Ace, would you embrace it, or run from it?"
Her eyes narrowed as she neared him. "Depends on where it's coming from."
"Or from whom," he murmured, lifting his eyes to hers, searching for an answer to a question he forced himself not to ask.
"From you?"
He said nothing as he watched her eyes for proof of what she was saying.
"Never gonna run from you, Professor," Ace affirmed.
"I had to be sure," he admitted quietly.
"But," she persisted, "I'm sick of you twistin' my mind around. If you wanna know these things, ask me. Haven't we been through enough that you can just talk to me?"
The Doctor tightened his fingers around his brolly, leaving the lantern behind. "It's time we were getting back to the TARDIS."
"There you go again," she muttered, storming on ahead of him. "I'm not a kid, I'm not a puppet. I'm an adult, and I bloody well deserve straight answers."
His mind worked fretfully, processing her words and deciding what to do with them, even as he watched her move ahead of him, growing increasingly silent. At the moment, he decided not to allow himself to become too firmly anxious about what had transpired; soon, they would be back on the TARDIS, and could discuss things more rationally, and at greater depth.
Hooking his umbrella into his coat pocket, the Doctor folded his hands behind him, catching up to Ace. When he exited the mouth of the cave, he noticed Ace's head moving rapidly from side to side, scanning the pervasive mist, which was colored as the breath a cigar gives to the world.
"Where's the TARDIS?" Ace moved through the fog, speaking with a disconcerting calm; she sounded almost disconnected, resigned, and it unnerved him more immediately than his inability to locate his ship.
"We did walk a sizable distance, Ace, though it's entirely possible in this fog we could walk in circles and wind up precisely where we started."
"All right, then, what should we do?"
"There's a small cottage, quite closer than where I parked the TARDIS. The fogs dissipate by early morning, so we should have an easier time of it," he suggested.
"A cottage?" Ace chuckled and shook her head. "What're you playin' at now?"
He looked as bemused as he felt. "The last I knew, cottages were completely innocuous."
"Right, sure. 'Cept this whole thing was a set-up, so why wouldn't that be, too?" Ace studied him a moment, then capitulated. "Might as well, I'm knackered myself."
"Ah, good," the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver, illuminating the path before him so he could navigate more easily.
"You sure you don't wanna just make it back home?"
The Doctor gave his smile to the mist flirting with the skin of his neck, ever fond of her proclivity for designating his TARDIS as her home as well. "It will only get denser, and I can't recall every corruption in the landscape. I would quite prefer not having one of us take a pace to the left, only to plunge from a cliff."
"Yeah, I'd agree with you there, Professor," Ace sidled up to him. "Lead on, Jeeves."
The Doctor took her hand as he held the sonic screwdriver before him, disregarding his odd desire to study the curves in her palm with the pad of this thumb for the answer to a question his hearts had posited on the edge of a hopeless second, behind a trail of fledgling stars, long before he had ever been young.
He had never considered the answer might come in flesh, warm breaths, and something beautifully, tragically mortal. And he wasn't yet certain he wanted to live with that answer.
Muse: Seventh Doctor
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 2,034