oncoming_storms Prompt 69
Susan didn’t dream of Gallifrey anymore. Not really. She dreamt instead of a planet with twin suns and shining silver trees, a haven of peace in a universe filled with wildness and uncertainty. She dreamt of a glittering citadel and a population of laughing, happy individuals.
Gallifrey certainly wasn’t like that. It had never been peaceful. Beautiful, perhaps, but laughter was as alien to Time Lords as any of the technology she’d encountered in Foreman’s junkyard.
Time Lord politics rippled constantly through the Capitol. Each fresh wave tarnished the walls and turned the elaborate robes of the High Council to rust and ruin. Her departure hadn’t changed that. Even her grandfather - who had been more influential that he’d wanted to be and more influential than the other Time Lords had ever expected - hadn’t changed that.
She smoothed out the creases while she slept. Sometimes she struggled to place the exact shade of orange for the sky, so she selected a brand new palette, brushing the horizon with hues that seemed right. It had been such a long time and her final memories were tinged with confusion and grief. She remembered her grandfather’s hand in hers and the dusty TARDIS bay. She hadn’t had the time to commit the landscape to memory. If she’d realised the truth about their trip - if she’d realised that they’d never return - then she would have spent an eternity drinking it in.
(An eternity would never have been enough.)
She raised the height of the mountains and diligently cleared the valley floors of weeds. The suns set much later in her memory, but she liked to make it earlier, so she could watch it with her head on her father’s shoulder and his strong arms around her waist. (He’d never had time for things like that. He'd been a high flyer, an ambitious CIA operative, a career man. Parenthood wasn’t important until it was too late.)
If only the real world could be that soft, that malleable.
She wanted to keep changing things. She wanted to keep moulding things to her own imagining.
She’d make her grandfather young and strong forever, a hero who couldn’t be touched by age or grief or loneliness.
She’d give David the life of a Time Lord - or herself the life of a human, perhaps - and they could build the sort of home they both deserved.
She’d return Barbara and Ian to their own time, but, at the same time, she’d make sure they could visit every day if they wanted to. Maybe she should grant them immortality as well?
She'd ...
She'd make the universe a much better place. She'd be a god.
She just wouldn't be Susan anymore.
Prompt: Alien
Word Count: 449
Gallifrey certainly wasn’t like that. It had never been peaceful. Beautiful, perhaps, but laughter was as alien to Time Lords as any of the technology she’d encountered in Foreman’s junkyard.
Time Lord politics rippled constantly through the Capitol. Each fresh wave tarnished the walls and turned the elaborate robes of the High Council to rust and ruin. Her departure hadn’t changed that. Even her grandfather - who had been more influential that he’d wanted to be and more influential than the other Time Lords had ever expected - hadn’t changed that.
She smoothed out the creases while she slept. Sometimes she struggled to place the exact shade of orange for the sky, so she selected a brand new palette, brushing the horizon with hues that seemed right. It had been such a long time and her final memories were tinged with confusion and grief. She remembered her grandfather’s hand in hers and the dusty TARDIS bay. She hadn’t had the time to commit the landscape to memory. If she’d realised the truth about their trip - if she’d realised that they’d never return - then she would have spent an eternity drinking it in.
(An eternity would never have been enough.)
She raised the height of the mountains and diligently cleared the valley floors of weeds. The suns set much later in her memory, but she liked to make it earlier, so she could watch it with her head on her father’s shoulder and his strong arms around her waist. (He’d never had time for things like that. He'd been a high flyer, an ambitious CIA operative, a career man. Parenthood wasn’t important until it was too late.)
If only the real world could be that soft, that malleable.
She wanted to keep changing things. She wanted to keep moulding things to her own imagining.
She’d make her grandfather young and strong forever, a hero who couldn’t be touched by age or grief or loneliness.
She’d give David the life of a Time Lord - or herself the life of a human, perhaps - and they could build the sort of home they both deserved.
She’d return Barbara and Ian to their own time, but, at the same time, she’d make sure they could visit every day if they wanted to. Maybe she should grant them immortality as well?
She'd ...
She'd make the universe a much better place. She'd be a god.
She just wouldn't be Susan anymore.
Prompt: Alien
Word Count: 449