Egad, fic.
IT'S SNOWING AGAIN. Tiny flakes this time, drifting past the window and whitening the ground -- a quarter inch in the last half-hour alone. A real snowfall in November, folks!
It's been hard to write this month, but this little scene sprang almost full-formed from the consequences of something the Doctor said in the CIN special and what it would have meant to his previous incarnations -- which goes to show that a touch of oldskool can cure all ills.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Era: Seventh (spoilers for Time Crash and the Eighth Doctor movie)
Rating: PG for dark themes
Summary: A trip to Skaro brings a paradox to the forefront of the Doctor's mind.
Title:
Bequest
They didn't. They couldn't.
The Doctor's steps echoed on the black stone floor as he approached the slab. In the middle, under a harsh light, rested a metal casket: sealed, ornate, no bigger than a loaf of bread.
They'd showed him the footage. Efficient in their genocidal lunacy, securing a visual record of the Time Lord they had destroyed. He'd seen doctored recordings before. He didn't have to believe it.
He stooped to lift the small box. A frisson of strangeness shot across his fingers: a knowledge as noetic and distinct as the Rassilon Imprimature. For a wild moment the sands of Sarn flashed across his memory, the tiny man tumbling out of a box no bigger than this, scurrying across the floor to avoid Peri's heels.
The casket was cold under his hands. He could see the contents as clearly as though he had opened it to look.
Deeply, silently, his mind screamed.
Had he lied to himself all those years ago, that skinny stranger with the big hair who had prevented a Belgium-sized disaster by doing impossible things to his TARDIS controls? He bit down on the words, probing for a paradox, for any shift in the established facts that might have brought this moment to pass before its time; but there was no change, no break, no thread of temporal tampering to grasp and unravel.
Thwarted, he dug cruelly into his own mind. Once he might have shredded the memory with all the slit-eyed feline rage of his previous self, but his next stop would be the seat of his peoples' power, where flayed emotions would inevitably garner notice. Instead, he closed his eyes, throwing walls around the lie, sealing it off and burying it where not even another Time Lord could root it out.
Another day, another mental block. He didn't know why he even tried sometimes.
Finally composed, the casket held tightly against his chest, he turned away from the slab and stopped dead, his nose inches away from a Dalek eyestalk. Another Doctor might have reared back, snarled, or perhaps even tried to make the creature understand the meaning of this day. He merely stared into its blue mechanical eye, his face as still as stone, his heartbeats sounding far away.
"He -- was -- your -- enemy." The grating tone was hushed, perhaps in deference to the massive, echoing chamber, but he thought he detected an echo of gloating hate. It slid closer, the blue eye fixed, as though trying to stare into his soul. "Are... you... pleased?"
"I am many things," said the Doctor softly, "very few of which you would comprehend."
It was a small satisfaction when the Dalek finally withdrew to one side, joining the others ghosting from openings in the walls to flank him as he bore the casket back to his ship. Surrounded by the hushed hum of their mechanical casings, he walked with measured step, refusing to think, refusing to fear.
There will be chaos, he thought -- a scandal regardless of his testimony, a call to arms, a conflict inevitable since the first Dalek was fitted with a gun. We are the stormcrows of doom, toppling empires even unto the bitter end. You would be pleased.
His steps still echoed, tap-tap-tap, ticking against the floor like a clock or a bomb.
Walk with me, my old enemy. We're finally going home.
_____
It's been hard to write this month, but this little scene sprang almost full-formed from the consequences of something the Doctor said in the CIN special and what it would have meant to his previous incarnations -- which goes to show that a touch of oldskool can cure all ills.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Era: Seventh (spoilers for Time Crash and the Eighth Doctor movie)
Rating: PG for dark themes
Summary: A trip to Skaro brings a paradox to the forefront of the Doctor's mind.
Title:
Bequest
They didn't. They couldn't.
The Doctor's steps echoed on the black stone floor as he approached the slab. In the middle, under a harsh light, rested a metal casket: sealed, ornate, no bigger than a loaf of bread.
They'd showed him the footage. Efficient in their genocidal lunacy, securing a visual record of the Time Lord they had destroyed. He'd seen doctored recordings before. He didn't have to believe it.
He stooped to lift the small box. A frisson of strangeness shot across his fingers: a knowledge as noetic and distinct as the Rassilon Imprimature. For a wild moment the sands of Sarn flashed across his memory, the tiny man tumbling out of a box no bigger than this, scurrying across the floor to avoid Peri's heels.
The casket was cold under his hands. He could see the contents as clearly as though he had opened it to look.
Deeply, silently, his mind screamed.
Had he lied to himself all those years ago, that skinny stranger with the big hair who had prevented a Belgium-sized disaster by doing impossible things to his TARDIS controls? He bit down on the words, probing for a paradox, for any shift in the established facts that might have brought this moment to pass before its time; but there was no change, no break, no thread of temporal tampering to grasp and unravel.
Thwarted, he dug cruelly into his own mind. Once he might have shredded the memory with all the slit-eyed feline rage of his previous self, but his next stop would be the seat of his peoples' power, where flayed emotions would inevitably garner notice. Instead, he closed his eyes, throwing walls around the lie, sealing it off and burying it where not even another Time Lord could root it out.
Another day, another mental block. He didn't know why he even tried sometimes.
Finally composed, the casket held tightly against his chest, he turned away from the slab and stopped dead, his nose inches away from a Dalek eyestalk. Another Doctor might have reared back, snarled, or perhaps even tried to make the creature understand the meaning of this day. He merely stared into its blue mechanical eye, his face as still as stone, his heartbeats sounding far away.
"He -- was -- your -- enemy." The grating tone was hushed, perhaps in deference to the massive, echoing chamber, but he thought he detected an echo of gloating hate. It slid closer, the blue eye fixed, as though trying to stare into his soul. "Are... you... pleased?"
"I am many things," said the Doctor softly, "very few of which you would comprehend."
It was a small satisfaction when the Dalek finally withdrew to one side, joining the others ghosting from openings in the walls to flank him as he bore the casket back to his ship. Surrounded by the hushed hum of their mechanical casings, he walked with measured step, refusing to think, refusing to fear.
There will be chaos, he thought -- a scandal regardless of his testimony, a call to arms, a conflict inevitable since the first Dalek was fitted with a gun. We are the stormcrows of doom, toppling empires even unto the bitter end. You would be pleased.
His steps still echoed, tap-tap-tap, ticking against the floor like a clock or a bomb.
Walk with me, my old enemy. We're finally going home.
_____