Ruined Cities Just, and Spaces
Rating: PG
Prompt: #016 - Red
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Utopia, The Sound of Drums
Characters: Simm!Master, the TARDIS
Summary: Before the Doctor and his friends show up the Master takes some time to think and wonder.
Note: I made a list of all the prompts from the table (I was very bored), then marked the ones I already did a story for. Since I accidentially marked 'Red' instead of 'Blue' I had to write something for that prompt as well, naturally.
The title is taken from a poem and doesn't make much sense.
The Master has felt the TARDIS struggle and squirm as he pressed her into a new form, recreated her, rebuild her in his image. Now dim red light fills her, and in her humming there is a shadow of insanity. He dances to her sweet little hymn of chaos and madness, hops around in the console room, in her bloody glow, and then he stops to let his hand run over her panels, the way he has so often done it, and wonders how it’s been, for her. Not the change he brought over her but the war, sensing the loss of every other TARIDS out there, one after another, sensing the planet she was bound to blink out of existence. Did she experience the emptiness the way he has, for a moment, when he came back to himself - a short illusion of falling through space with nothing to ever catch her? Does she cling (like him) to the only thing she’s got left?
He can’t tell. The sentience of the time capsules was never something to be fully understood by the Time Lords. But he knows she should have perished with her planet. Connected to the Eye of Harmony as she was it should have swallowed her as well. The Master might never find out how she survived, but he imagines that her bond to her pilot was simply stronger than her bond to Gallifrey, allowing her to survive through him, for him. He imagines her sharing his pain when the end came, feeling him shatter, imagines him dragging her down with him, and he wonders if it’s because of this that breaking her was so easy. He hums along with her song and wonders if the insanity‘s been already there.
When he ran from the war he knew it was lost. He expected the Daleks to occupy Gallifrey, kill or enslave all of the Time Lords and swarm across the universe, exterminating one species after another. He hid in the form of a human, degrading himself, in a time so long after the existence of Skaro that he expected to be safe from them, that by then they would have ceased to exist. And they have.
Coming back to a cosmos that was empty has been a surprise, a shock. For a moment he’s been drowning in the silence but he adjusted quickly, concentrating on the one he could still feel. (The only one he’s ever needed. Had he awoken to the echo of all Time Lords that ever lived save this one he would have fallen.) He was there, drawn to him across space and time, greeting the Master with a new face and a new pain and a new need. And now the Master is standing in the red light of all that is left and can not wait to greet him when he returns, to show him his gift. (All for him.)
Gallifrey is gone and so are the Time Lords. The Master doesn’t know what happened but the fact that one of them survived, only one, is intriguing. And the TARDIS, bound and linked and entwined with her pilot, hums her broken melody of madness, telling him a story.
The irony makes him laugh.
December 29, 2007
Prompt: #016 - Red
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Utopia, The Sound of Drums
Characters: Simm!Master, the TARDIS
Summary: Before the Doctor and his friends show up the Master takes some time to think and wonder.
Note: I made a list of all the prompts from the table (I was very bored), then marked the ones I already did a story for. Since I accidentially marked 'Red' instead of 'Blue' I had to write something for that prompt as well, naturally.
The title is taken from a poem and doesn't make much sense.
The Master has felt the TARDIS struggle and squirm as he pressed her into a new form, recreated her, rebuild her in his image. Now dim red light fills her, and in her humming there is a shadow of insanity. He dances to her sweet little hymn of chaos and madness, hops around in the console room, in her bloody glow, and then he stops to let his hand run over her panels, the way he has so often done it, and wonders how it’s been, for her. Not the change he brought over her but the war, sensing the loss of every other TARIDS out there, one after another, sensing the planet she was bound to blink out of existence. Did she experience the emptiness the way he has, for a moment, when he came back to himself - a short illusion of falling through space with nothing to ever catch her? Does she cling (like him) to the only thing she’s got left?
He can’t tell. The sentience of the time capsules was never something to be fully understood by the Time Lords. But he knows she should have perished with her planet. Connected to the Eye of Harmony as she was it should have swallowed her as well. The Master might never find out how she survived, but he imagines that her bond to her pilot was simply stronger than her bond to Gallifrey, allowing her to survive through him, for him. He imagines her sharing his pain when the end came, feeling him shatter, imagines him dragging her down with him, and he wonders if it’s because of this that breaking her was so easy. He hums along with her song and wonders if the insanity‘s been already there.
When he ran from the war he knew it was lost. He expected the Daleks to occupy Gallifrey, kill or enslave all of the Time Lords and swarm across the universe, exterminating one species after another. He hid in the form of a human, degrading himself, in a time so long after the existence of Skaro that he expected to be safe from them, that by then they would have ceased to exist. And they have.
Coming back to a cosmos that was empty has been a surprise, a shock. For a moment he’s been drowning in the silence but he adjusted quickly, concentrating on the one he could still feel. (The only one he’s ever needed. Had he awoken to the echo of all Time Lords that ever lived save this one he would have fallen.) He was there, drawn to him across space and time, greeting the Master with a new face and a new pain and a new need. And now the Master is standing in the red light of all that is left and can not wait to greet him when he returns, to show him his gift. (All for him.)
Gallifrey is gone and so are the Time Lords. The Master doesn’t know what happened but the fact that one of them survived, only one, is intriguing. And the TARDIS, bound and linked and entwined with her pilot, hums her broken melody of madness, telling him a story.
The irony makes him laugh.
December 29, 2007