Talk about a cold opening...
Eram quod es, eris quod sum
by: randomhouses
Writers: gami and suninos
"I was what you are,
you will be what I am."
-Grave inscription
Click image for sources used
He ran. The cold steel pounded against the soles of his boots, ringing out one metallic thump after another, the dirge of the hammer striking a nail into a coffin lid, the moan of the bells rocking back and forth in a distant clock tower. Everyone was dead. Everyone, through all the universe and all of time.
What is the price? she’d asked him. Is it worth it? And even now, with burning tears streaming down his face, he didn’t know. He’d been given the choice between an eternity of slavery and an eternity that never was, and he couldn’t decide. How could anyone? How could he choose for every innumerable soul through all of existence, for people he’d never known, faces he’d never seen? Even worse, how did he choose for the ones forever seared into his memory?
Ianto Jones ran, not for his life but because he could think of nothing else to do. Because the void was coming, and it would take him like it’d taken the Doctor and Tosh and Cameron and Foreman. Like it’d taken all of them. Like it’d taken Jack, his immortal Jack whom he’d sent to his death.
The darkness spread, the echoes of screams surrounded him. All the choices, all the lies, all the hatred. And though he knew it was false, he could not forget the moments he’d spent before those burning eyes in that chamber of glittering, mocking emerald towers. For a few seconds, with all of history laid bare before him, the futility of life had been so obvious…
…and that was the point.
The eyes, so focused on themselves, had never looked outward.
He’d been so scared, but that was the whole point.
Ianto stopped running. He turned and faced the nothingness. He looked it in the eye, and he laughed at it.
“You can take it all away, but I still remember. Right now, I remember everything. And it happened. All of it happened. All of history, it came around once, and it can come again and doesn’t that make you angry? Doesn’t that make you feel small? You can wipe everything from existence, but all you’ll do is kill yourself too, and somewhere out there, sometime, somehow, another universe will blossom, and life will come into being once more, and things will survive.”
And that was all that mattered. You were born, and you lived, and you died, and everything in between was trivial, a brief, flickering match in the night, but it was real, and that made all the difference. It was all that mattered, and the thought didn’t scare him anymore. He laughed, and he ran, but this time, he knew where he was going. His feet moved with purpose, and nothing would stop him. He was going to find House.
To Prologue: Sex (with Owen) Kills
by: randomhouses
Writers: gami and suninos
"I was what you are,
you will be what I am."
-Grave inscription
Click image for sources used
He ran. The cold steel pounded against the soles of his boots, ringing out one metallic thump after another, the dirge of the hammer striking a nail into a coffin lid, the moan of the bells rocking back and forth in a distant clock tower. Everyone was dead. Everyone, through all the universe and all of time.
What is the price? she’d asked him. Is it worth it? And even now, with burning tears streaming down his face, he didn’t know. He’d been given the choice between an eternity of slavery and an eternity that never was, and he couldn’t decide. How could anyone? How could he choose for every innumerable soul through all of existence, for people he’d never known, faces he’d never seen? Even worse, how did he choose for the ones forever seared into his memory?
Ianto Jones ran, not for his life but because he could think of nothing else to do. Because the void was coming, and it would take him like it’d taken the Doctor and Tosh and Cameron and Foreman. Like it’d taken all of them. Like it’d taken Jack, his immortal Jack whom he’d sent to his death.
The darkness spread, the echoes of screams surrounded him. All the choices, all the lies, all the hatred. And though he knew it was false, he could not forget the moments he’d spent before those burning eyes in that chamber of glittering, mocking emerald towers. For a few seconds, with all of history laid bare before him, the futility of life had been so obvious…
…and that was the point.
The eyes, so focused on themselves, had never looked outward.
He’d been so scared, but that was the whole point.
Ianto stopped running. He turned and faced the nothingness. He looked it in the eye, and he laughed at it.
“You can take it all away, but I still remember. Right now, I remember everything. And it happened. All of it happened. All of history, it came around once, and it can come again and doesn’t that make you angry? Doesn’t that make you feel small? You can wipe everything from existence, but all you’ll do is kill yourself too, and somewhere out there, sometime, somehow, another universe will blossom, and life will come into being once more, and things will survive.”
And that was all that mattered. You were born, and you lived, and you died, and everything in between was trivial, a brief, flickering match in the night, but it was real, and that made all the difference. It was all that mattered, and the thought didn’t scare him anymore. He laughed, and he ran, but this time, he knew where he was going. His feet moved with purpose, and nothing would stop him. He was going to find House.
To Prologue: Sex (with Owen) Kills