FIC: Love Me (Love Me Not)
And then after all that, I wrote a Thing. I honestly don't know if it's a good Thing, but in the clear light of, um, three in the afternoon, I can say I don't hate it. Which makes a nice change.
Title: Love Me (Love Me Not)
Fandom: Doctor Who (Eight's Big Finish Adventures)
Characters and/or pairings: Charley Pollard, Eighth Doctor
Rating: G
Word count: 962
Contains: Angst (or more than is usual for me), pretentiousness
Disclaimer: Charley and Eight belong to Big Finish, not me.
A/N: Set at some point between Seasons of Fear and Neverland, although it doesn't contain any spoilers.
Charley found the Doctor in his shirtsleeves at the TARDIS console, digging through a bewildering array of wires and looking quite the mad inventor. She had meant to stride into the room and put the question to him in a forthright fashion, but now she found herself unaccountably hesitant, much to her disgust. The heroes in her books never hesitated - that was for minor characters, and to be a minor character in her own life was intolerable. She cleared her throat.
The Doctor looked up. “Charley! I thought you’d still be asleep this time next week! Have you had breakfast yet? I thought we could visit Paris - there’s a wonderful bakery in Montmartre that would be just the thing.”
“And no matter when we visit, the bread will be fresh.” Charley smiled in spite of herself.
“Exactly! If the old girl’s in a good mood, we might even be able to drop in on Oscar Wilde while we’re there. I have missed Oscar...”
“I imagine he’ll want the contents of his wardrobe back. But Doctor, could we, um, would you mind doing all that... tomorrow?”
The Doctor, who’d been cramming wires back into the console in a mad rush of enthusiasm for his plans, stopped. “Of course not,” he said slowly. “But why? There’s no time like the present when you live in a time machine. Or should that be, there’s no time but the present?”
“I just wanted to ask you about something.” Charley realised she was fiddling with the sleeve of her jumper and forced herself to stop. “If you’re sure you don’t mind, that is.”
Now the Doctor was looking positively worried. “I hope you can ask me anything, Charley. You’re not...” A delicate pause. “You’re not unhappy here, are you?”
That was enough to surprise a laugh out of her. “In the TARDIS? Visiting the most wonderful places in the universe? No, Doctor, I’m not unhappy. Occasionally bewildered, perhaps, and scared out my wits half the time, but not unhappy. No, um, it’s a bit more... It’s...” Deep breath. “How do you know when you’re in love with someone?”
Now it was the Doctor’s turn to laugh, but he smothered it immediately. “I’m sorry, Charley, I’m sure it’s not funny to you. But you must remember better than I do. What about Alex?”
Charley bit her lip. She’d given serious consideration to the subject of Alex already, and she still wasn’t satisfied with her answer. “He was nice, I suppose, but I don’t think I was in love with him.”
“You stowed away on an airship to meet him. That looks an awful lot like love to me.”
“But I’d have done that anyway, or something similar. Alex was just an excuse. I think I was in love with the idea of him, and with being the sort of girl who’d Risk It All For Love, but that’s not really the same. Is it?”
“No, I don’t think it is.” The Doctor sighed. “The trouble is, people have such different ideas about what love is. To take an example from your culture, you’ve got people who hold up Romeo and Juliet as the pinnacle of true love, and others who say that all the play demonstrates is the foolishness of adolescent lust. Not that adult lust is any less foolish, of course. Taking a brief detour to the other side of the galaxy for a moment, the Graktan don’t even have a word for love - they say all the relevant emotions are covered by ideas like fondness and protection and the mating instinct.”
“That’s quite sad,” Charley said without thinking.
“Is it? They’re happy enough in their way, just as humans are happy in theirs.”
“What about Time Lords?” Again, the words came without conscious thought.
The Doctor’s face twisted, and Charley wished she’d never spoken. “Gallifreyan has words for love the human imagination couldn’t begin to encompass. No offence to your species, Charley, but you do live such linear lives compared to us. You don’t need words for love-for-who-he’s-yet-to-be or love-for-him-in-another-timeline. And even between two Time Lords living a reasonably linear life, the forms of love change between regenerations. You could marry your best friend and find, two bodies down the line, that now all your love can do is destroy.” He shook his head and fell silent.
Charley studied her hands. The Doctor’s words bounced through her mind like pebbles over water, but as they sank in, they began to make an unsettling kind of sense.
Eventually, the Doctor said, “To return to your original question, I’m not sure there’s a precise formula. I suppose if you love someone, you want to be with them and you want them to be happy, no matter the cost to yourself.”
“No, Doctor, that’s loving someone. Being in love with someone is much less pleasant.” She was surprised at how hard and remote her voice sounded.
The Doctor looked taken aback. “It sounds to me as though you’ve found your answer.”
“Yes.” She straightened her back and offered a crooked smile. “Though I could wish the answer had been different.” She would save any tears for the privacy of her room. Heroes didn’t cry, just as they didn’t hesitate. “Thank you, Doctor.” And if her purposeful stride was verging on a run, what of it?
The Doctor’s voice at her back: “Charley. Whatever you’re feeling, is it really so terrible?”
She came to a halt in front of the door to the corridor but didn’t turn. “Sometimes it’s the most wonderful thing in the universe,” she said softly.
There were no more sounds from behind her. She stepped through the door and felt the TARDIS stretch out ahead.
Title: Love Me (Love Me Not)
Fandom: Doctor Who (Eight's Big Finish Adventures)
Characters and/or pairings: Charley Pollard, Eighth Doctor
Rating: G
Word count: 962
Contains: Angst (or more than is usual for me), pretentiousness
Disclaimer: Charley and Eight belong to Big Finish, not me.
A/N: Set at some point between Seasons of Fear and Neverland, although it doesn't contain any spoilers.
Charley found the Doctor in his shirtsleeves at the TARDIS console, digging through a bewildering array of wires and looking quite the mad inventor. She had meant to stride into the room and put the question to him in a forthright fashion, but now she found herself unaccountably hesitant, much to her disgust. The heroes in her books never hesitated - that was for minor characters, and to be a minor character in her own life was intolerable. She cleared her throat.
The Doctor looked up. “Charley! I thought you’d still be asleep this time next week! Have you had breakfast yet? I thought we could visit Paris - there’s a wonderful bakery in Montmartre that would be just the thing.”
“And no matter when we visit, the bread will be fresh.” Charley smiled in spite of herself.
“Exactly! If the old girl’s in a good mood, we might even be able to drop in on Oscar Wilde while we’re there. I have missed Oscar...”
“I imagine he’ll want the contents of his wardrobe back. But Doctor, could we, um, would you mind doing all that... tomorrow?”
The Doctor, who’d been cramming wires back into the console in a mad rush of enthusiasm for his plans, stopped. “Of course not,” he said slowly. “But why? There’s no time like the present when you live in a time machine. Or should that be, there’s no time but the present?”
“I just wanted to ask you about something.” Charley realised she was fiddling with the sleeve of her jumper and forced herself to stop. “If you’re sure you don’t mind, that is.”
Now the Doctor was looking positively worried. “I hope you can ask me anything, Charley. You’re not...” A delicate pause. “You’re not unhappy here, are you?”
That was enough to surprise a laugh out of her. “In the TARDIS? Visiting the most wonderful places in the universe? No, Doctor, I’m not unhappy. Occasionally bewildered, perhaps, and scared out my wits half the time, but not unhappy. No, um, it’s a bit more... It’s...” Deep breath. “How do you know when you’re in love with someone?”
Now it was the Doctor’s turn to laugh, but he smothered it immediately. “I’m sorry, Charley, I’m sure it’s not funny to you. But you must remember better than I do. What about Alex?”
Charley bit her lip. She’d given serious consideration to the subject of Alex already, and she still wasn’t satisfied with her answer. “He was nice, I suppose, but I don’t think I was in love with him.”
“You stowed away on an airship to meet him. That looks an awful lot like love to me.”
“But I’d have done that anyway, or something similar. Alex was just an excuse. I think I was in love with the idea of him, and with being the sort of girl who’d Risk It All For Love, but that’s not really the same. Is it?”
“No, I don’t think it is.” The Doctor sighed. “The trouble is, people have such different ideas about what love is. To take an example from your culture, you’ve got people who hold up Romeo and Juliet as the pinnacle of true love, and others who say that all the play demonstrates is the foolishness of adolescent lust. Not that adult lust is any less foolish, of course. Taking a brief detour to the other side of the galaxy for a moment, the Graktan don’t even have a word for love - they say all the relevant emotions are covered by ideas like fondness and protection and the mating instinct.”
“That’s quite sad,” Charley said without thinking.
“Is it? They’re happy enough in their way, just as humans are happy in theirs.”
“What about Time Lords?” Again, the words came without conscious thought.
The Doctor’s face twisted, and Charley wished she’d never spoken. “Gallifreyan has words for love the human imagination couldn’t begin to encompass. No offence to your species, Charley, but you do live such linear lives compared to us. You don’t need words for love-for-who-he’s-yet-to-be or love-for-him-in-another-timeline. And even between two Time Lords living a reasonably linear life, the forms of love change between regenerations. You could marry your best friend and find, two bodies down the line, that now all your love can do is destroy.” He shook his head and fell silent.
Charley studied her hands. The Doctor’s words bounced through her mind like pebbles over water, but as they sank in, they began to make an unsettling kind of sense.
Eventually, the Doctor said, “To return to your original question, I’m not sure there’s a precise formula. I suppose if you love someone, you want to be with them and you want them to be happy, no matter the cost to yourself.”
“No, Doctor, that’s loving someone. Being in love with someone is much less pleasant.” She was surprised at how hard and remote her voice sounded.
The Doctor looked taken aback. “It sounds to me as though you’ve found your answer.”
“Yes.” She straightened her back and offered a crooked smile. “Though I could wish the answer had been different.” She would save any tears for the privacy of her room. Heroes didn’t cry, just as they didn’t hesitate. “Thank you, Doctor.” And if her purposeful stride was verging on a run, what of it?
The Doctor’s voice at her back: “Charley. Whatever you’re feeling, is it really so terrible?”
She came to a halt in front of the door to the corridor but didn’t turn. “Sometimes it’s the most wonderful thing in the universe,” she said softly.
There were no more sounds from behind her. She stepped through the door and felt the TARDIS stretch out ahead.