Title: "Invincible Summer"
Author:
fannishliss Prompt: Blue Skies prompt #19
Fandom: Doctor Who
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Ten (mentions some of Ten's companions)
Rating & Warnings: G
Spoliers: through the 2009 specials
Word Count: 373 (ficlet)
Summary: "Somewhere deep inside me a wildfire burns, invincible summer, consuming the winter that's frozen me."
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. (Albert Camus)
~*?*~
Space is big - really big, as every one knows - but the fact of the matter is, it's really cold.
Sure, it's hot sometimes. Supernovae. Galaxies pouring out of mega black holes. Light so thick and heavy it cuts lead like butter. But supernovae are dim as fireflies. Galaxies are mere specks of dust.
The coldness of space is just like its bigness: vast, ever expanding, energy pouring out into a thirsty emptiness that drinks it all in and never gives back.
Winter, on a planet, is a cyclical turning away from a sun. Still, axial tilt means summer on the other side of the world. Winter, for the universe, is death: the leakage of all heat and life into the entropic void, from which there is no return.
Winter was when my best friend looked up at me in horror, tearstained, begging, no, no, no! as I stripped away all the amazing things she'd become. Winter was the only woman I've ever loved kissing another man with all the passion I'd turned aside.
Where is the mega black hole, insatiable, sucking all these things back into its maw, bringing everything down at last to one inevitable, merciful end? Will it look like the blackness in the eyes of my dear mad brother, dying again and again, aching to pull me down with him?
I want to believe in summer, like the butterfly believes, winging its way south, laying its eggs before dying. I want to believe like the oak believes, dropping its acorns as the worm gnaws away at its roots.
Somewhere, two born fighters make peace with one another, each seeing a side of the other no one else has seen. Somewhere, a woman crowned in copper marries a prince and doesn't miss a thing. Somewhere, a man missing a heart gives everything he has to a woman who fills up the one he has left.
Somewhere deep inside me a wildfire burns, invincible summer, consuming the winter that's frozen me. Out of the ashes a new me rises, springing forth into the big, cold universe.
The star in my belly is about to go nova. I'll never know whoever it is I'm becoming: butterfly or phoenix, angel or fool.