Gift Horse
Rating: G
Prompt: #097 - Writer's Choice: Deal
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Set during The Doctor's Daughter
Characters: Jenny, Celestis
Summary: Ideas can't die, but they can be forgotten.
Note: Jenny's revival at the end of The Doctor's Daughter always struck me as odd: It clearly wasn't a regeneration and the explanation that the terraforming powers of the source saved her doesn't make much sense to me. Here's another explanation, using the Celestis from the Eighth Doctor Novels, which hardly anyone will know. (They were a group of Time Lords who escaped into conceptual space to be save from the existence-negating consequences of losing a time war. They sometimes make deals with people that always end with them becoming their mindless slaves.)
The girl is dying. Almost dead. They can see the life fade from here eyes and think, with amusement, what a waste it is. There is so much potential here, so many possibilities unlived. They hate her for what she is and envy her for what she could be, simply by where she came from.
The last one is holding her, pain already etched into his features. She has only just left and nothing around them moves as the moment is removed from time and stretched out. The one, brief moment between dying and being dead.
There’s only her and them, the fading girl letting go of a life that hasn’t lasted a day and the ideas of men. She could live, they know, and almost laugh because she doesn’t. One more second and she might find out. Regenerate, get a new life, stay with her ‘father’ (at this point one of them does laugh, it’s just so silly) and make him happy, and live the free, unconcerned life they have turned their backs on so long ago. They don’t want any of this to happen. For they don’t regret what they are but they can’t not despise her for being something else. For being at all. They are but ideas now, and smaller in number than they ever were before. Ideas can’t die they’d thought, but they can be forgotten and it’s the same. Only one now knows they ever existed, and that one thinks they’re gone. He hasn’t spared a thought for them in ages, has never mentioned them to anyone else or even considered doing so. It’s as infuriating as it is fatal. They hate him (but then they did before).
This girl doesn’t know about them either, but that they can change. It’s good even, that she didn’t know before, that no one ever told her to beware, just like no one ever told her about the lives she has to spare. It’s good, because they want her. Her genes make her perfect.
So they catch her the moment before the process of regeneration can begin and offer her a deal. She can live, is she so wishes. She can go back.
And so can they.
Not yet. Not now. For now she can go and live her life, and one day, perhaps (they tell her), they might require her service for a while. Her cooperation, as they call it. It’s not a bad price to pay for her life, and because she’s young and naïve, she accepts.
Her wounds heal, and she takes her first breath just after his presence has disappeared. Opens her eyes to see this new world she so much wanted to see. Leaves and lives and fails to see the deal that brought her back as anything but lucky.
Soon, much too soon she stops thinking about it completely as she’s trying to keep up with universe that’s dancing around her.
The Celestis linger in the space between realities and wait.
December 27, 2008
Prompt: #097 - Writer's Choice: Deal
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Set during The Doctor's Daughter
Characters: Jenny, Celestis
Summary: Ideas can't die, but they can be forgotten.
Note: Jenny's revival at the end of The Doctor's Daughter always struck me as odd: It clearly wasn't a regeneration and the explanation that the terraforming powers of the source saved her doesn't make much sense to me. Here's another explanation, using the Celestis from the Eighth Doctor Novels, which hardly anyone will know. (They were a group of Time Lords who escaped into conceptual space to be save from the existence-negating consequences of losing a time war. They sometimes make deals with people that always end with them becoming their mindless slaves.)
The girl is dying. Almost dead. They can see the life fade from here eyes and think, with amusement, what a waste it is. There is so much potential here, so many possibilities unlived. They hate her for what she is and envy her for what she could be, simply by where she came from.
The last one is holding her, pain already etched into his features. She has only just left and nothing around them moves as the moment is removed from time and stretched out. The one, brief moment between dying and being dead.
There’s only her and them, the fading girl letting go of a life that hasn’t lasted a day and the ideas of men. She could live, they know, and almost laugh because she doesn’t. One more second and she might find out. Regenerate, get a new life, stay with her ‘father’ (at this point one of them does laugh, it’s just so silly) and make him happy, and live the free, unconcerned life they have turned their backs on so long ago. They don’t want any of this to happen. For they don’t regret what they are but they can’t not despise her for being something else. For being at all. They are but ideas now, and smaller in number than they ever were before. Ideas can’t die they’d thought, but they can be forgotten and it’s the same. Only one now knows they ever existed, and that one thinks they’re gone. He hasn’t spared a thought for them in ages, has never mentioned them to anyone else or even considered doing so. It’s as infuriating as it is fatal. They hate him (but then they did before).
This girl doesn’t know about them either, but that they can change. It’s good even, that she didn’t know before, that no one ever told her to beware, just like no one ever told her about the lives she has to spare. It’s good, because they want her. Her genes make her perfect.
So they catch her the moment before the process of regeneration can begin and offer her a deal. She can live, is she so wishes. She can go back.
And so can they.
Not yet. Not now. For now she can go and live her life, and one day, perhaps (they tell her), they might require her service for a while. Her cooperation, as they call it. It’s not a bad price to pay for her life, and because she’s young and naïve, she accepts.
Her wounds heal, and she takes her first breath just after his presence has disappeared. Opens her eyes to see this new world she so much wanted to see. Leaves and lives and fails to see the deal that brought her back as anything but lucky.
Soon, much too soon she stops thinking about it completely as she’s trying to keep up with universe that’s dancing around her.
The Celestis linger in the space between realities and wait.
December 27, 2008