Imprints in the Snow
Rating: G
Prompt: #026 - Parents
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: The Next Doctor
Characters: Jackson Lake, the Doctor (10)
Summary: Years after the Cybermen came to London, the Doctor comes back for a visit.
Note: Most of this was written between five and nine in the morning. Go figure.
After a while the memories had started to fade.
It was better that way. It was good, as it should be. Jackson Lake knew who he was, and who he had to be to take care of his son and Rosita. He couldn’t let himself get distracted by the memory of a personality never his own.
But not so different either, was it? He had not received a copy of the Doctor’s very self, merely of the things these creatures, the Cybermen, knew of him. And his empty, shattered mind had absorbed it willingly and to a result capable of fooling even the man himself, for a while. And Jackson, even knowing who he was and had to be, couldn’t deny that he had enjoyed being the Doctor. Perhaps, he sometimes marvelled, this was the man he could have been had he been of another time and place, not a child of this restrictive society.
But then, wasn’t the Doctor a child of a restrictive society himself? He had hinted at such things, during the dinner they shared on Christmas, years ago. And he had escaped. Perhaps Jackson was simply scared of paying the price.
He had responsibilities, however. Responsibilities that offered a reason to stop considering an escape every time the inability to do so became painful. It would be selfish to even wish he could.
So he lived on and made his life a good one, like the Doctor wanted him to. And he tried to believe it when reason told him it was good that he could no longer remember as clearly how it had felt to live the life of someone else.
In his memory the Doctor spoke of things being better this way or that, and of broken hearts.
Jackson still cursed the Cybermen when visiting the resting place of his wife. He felt bitterness at the thought of them (in summer more than in winter) and knew they were the worst that ever happened to him. And still he could not regret, outside the graveyard, the way they had changed him and his view of the world.
The Cybermen… He used to know so much about them. Now he only knew they brought the Doctor in his life, and that they killed his wife. The memories weren’t his and he did not steal, so he knew this loss of knowledge was right and good. The Doctor knew so many things that were of no use to him now. He tried not to mourn the loss of the only connection he had to this amazing, incredible man who had come into his life so devastatingly and in the end so ultimately left it.
In the first weeks after the Doctor had faded away in his blue box (In his TARDIS. Jackson still liked the sound of that.), before his memories faded as well, Jackson dreamed of him every night. Often he woke up drenched in sweat, feeling lonely and lost and could still taste the ashes. In his dreams he always knew why the air smelled of burning flesh, but the knowledge retreated the moment he opened his eyes. In the years that followed the dreams came less often, but when they did they were as vivid as before. In his dreams he still was the Doctor and wished he wasn’t.
When he woke up, in his dark bedroom with the half-empty bed, he only felt the loss.
-
There was an odd kind of comfort in the grey light of winter. Jackson left home earlier than he had to, walking to university instead of taking the carriage. He often did it these days, needing the time alone with his thoughts. Mostly he thought about the latest books he’d read, but little of it had to do with the lessons he was going to give. It was just thoughts, something to fill his head.
Christmas was approaching, and he wasn’t unhappy. Wasn’t unhappy. He would be, soon. For a day. The next day, life would go on. It always did. He had lived with the pain long enough to know that and had, by now, learned to accept it.
This night he had been dreaming of the Doctor again. No, that wasn’t right - he had had the Doctor’s dreams, and it still felt like stealing. Especially now, when the dream had been one of the good ones. They were rare, rarer even that the ones that made him look out of the window expecting to see the sky on fire, but left him with as little memory. He only knew that it had been good, and left him feeling peaceful and content. It was a peacefulness he wished for the Doctor, for he knew the Time Lord needed it more - Jackson felt like taking it from him.
It was a silly thought. He put it aside. While walking through the snow-covered streets of London he was almost happy.
Eventually he heard the sound. Far away, like coming from out of a dream itself, familiar and comforting. Jackson stopped and listened but it was already gone, drowned out by the noise of the waking city. So he walked on, put it down to his imagination, and it was a mile before he became aware that he had never heard the sound before.
A remnant of his dream, then. That was how he knew it. Pleased with this explanation and forbidding himself to be exited, he walked on. And somehow he finally felt it was Christmas. For the first time in far too many years he felt the excitement, though he tried not to, he had felt as a child, waiting for the moment he would get his present while attempting not to show inappropriate eagerness.
The feeling stayed with him all day. When he came home in the early darkness and found the Doctor waiting by his door, he wasn’t surprised.
-
Jackson lit the candles, and their warm glow made the house homely and more lived in than it was. The Doctor had settled in the old armchair, waiting patiently and in silence as Jackson put away his books and put the kettle on. It didn’t take long.
Then they both sat in the small living room, in the light of candles, warm on the outside, and it didn’t feel awkward. For a long time they sat in silence, only the teacups making quiet, clinking noises when they were set back on the saucers. Long before bedtime it was pitch black outside.
Jackson turned his head and saw their reflections in the glass on the window.
“The house feels empty,” the Doctor said.
How perspective he was. Jackson wouldn’t have brought it up himself, he wouldn’t have known how.
“It is.”
There was only silence after that. The Doctor watched him unblinkingly but he didn’t ask. Perhaps he didn’t know what to say, perhaps he wanted to leave the words to Jackson.
“Frederick died of pneumonia four years ago. He was nine. Rosita didn’t stay.” It was so easy to say, now. Jackson fell silent, listening for the echo of the pain inside him, but there was nothing. Just the faint ache he always felt, so much part of himself he barely recognized it. Footsteps in the snow, already becoming invisible. Already almost gone.
It had only been four years. He had meant to be strong in front of the Doctor, but the lack of grief to hide shocked him. Soon there would be nothing left of them, and what, then, would be left of him?
All this time he had been bracing himself for the one day when the pain would be all consuming. Had he braced himself too well? Erased all grief from his heart? Had he killed all that remained of his son, his wife?
Had he ever really mourned their loss, or merely his own loneliness?
The room seemed too bright now. The light of the candles no longer was comforting. Instead it now was exposing, and Jackson felt like the Doctor could see right into his soul and see that he was empty. He imagined the Doctor able to smell his shame.
But when, before the end of the silence that was suffocating the room, he met the Doctor’s eyes, Jackson saw only sadness there. A sadness so deep it seemed to fall back on Jackson, as an echo of what he should feel. Perhaps, he thought, the Doctor was feeling the grief for him, along with his own.
“I cannot express,” the Time Lord said, in a voice that was even but very quiet, “how sorry I am.”
Jackson shook his head and tried to offer a smile, but it was a bad imitation and he let it go.
“There is no need. I do manage on my own.” His words did not lessen the pain and the sympathy in the Doctor’s face, and so Jackson told him, though he had not meant to, “The memory doesn’t hurt as much now. It all has faded. That is, I believe, a good thing. Although the grief is all I have left now.” Here his voice did catch a little, and he swallowed. He still felt nothing. It had to be, he decided, an automatic reaction of his body. The physical memory of heartache.
“Tell me, Doctor,” he asked when the Time Lord remained silent, “do you have children?”
The Doctor shifted his weight, giving up his comfortable pose. Had he gone too far, Jackson wondered. He had forgotten so much, but never the image of a burning world. If the Doctor had ever had children of his own they would be gone, and what could this question do but cause him even more pain?
But Jackson had to know just how well the Doctor understood.
“Yes,” the Doctor said. And then he added, “It’s not the same. My species does not reproduce the way your species does. There are no parents the way you understand it, no pregnancies - but yes, I did have children. And I loved them.”
Those last words told Jackson that, regardless of the differences, they were the same after all.
“You lost them,” he said, suddenly feeling the grief but not for himself. It was a poor substitute, yet better than the aching, shameful emptiness he’d felt before.
The Doctor leaned back again, and closed his eyes, but this time he did not look relaxed, nor did Jackson see sadness reflected on his face. Instead his features were frozen, for a moment, in deep, barely contained anger.
However, the Doctor’s voice remained calm.
“When they realised that they might lose the war, my people became desperate. They have…” He stopped there, and the anger left his face, and then he opened his eyes, looked at Jackson and said, “It doesn’t matter.”
It did matter. To the Doctor it did. It always would. But Jackson saw all the questions he couldn’t ever ask and remained silent. It felt impudent to have asked at all. What was his grief, his mourning his oh so small family, compared to the loss the Doctor was facing every day? Here he was, feeling sorry for himself in the face of a man who had lost his family, his home, all his people.
“Forgive me,” he heard himself speak though he had no sense of forming the words. “You must think me silly, and certainly I am, to feel my world has ended when I have only lost so little.”
“But Jackson.” The Doctor shook his head, a new pain etched into his fine features, and he looked at Jackson as if he truly thought him a fool. “Your world has ended. You have lost everything.”
And when the moment he heard the words Jackson realised that it was true, the grief was there again, like it had never left him, and he had to look down into his lap.
“It doesn’t matter how many you’ve lost,” the Doctor told him. “Only what they meant to you. This entire city could have gone along with Frederick, leaving only you. Thousands dead, and you would only have felt the loss of your son. Your grief is no less than mine.”
It amazed Jackson how the Doctor could say these words in a voice that didn’t break. He must have been living with his pain so long that it had truly become a part of him.
“But I can find someone else to love.” Even speaking the words felt sacrilegious, but it had been long enough for him to know it was true. “There is a world of humans left. What is left for you?”
The Doctor smiled. Jackson didn’t look up and couldn’t see him, but he knew. “A world of humans. And countless other worlds of countless other people.”
“There is no one with you now.” It wasn’t a question.
“No. There isn’t.”
“Because you cannot bear losing another.”
The Doctor sighed. It sounded defeated.
“One day I will have to,” he said. “I can’t be alone all the time, no matter how much I want to be. I’d just stop. One day I’ll get there again. I have to.”
If he didn’t, he would lose himself as well. Jackson could see this with a clarity he had never possessed when he had believed himself to be the Doctor. He was talking to a man who was one step from the edge and hadn’t yet decided in which direction to go.
And he also realised that he had to make the same decision for himself, eventually.
“Doctor,” he said, his mouth once again speaking without the consent of his mind. “Take me with you, when you leave. There is nothing but shadows in this place. But out there, there are so many possibilities.” The Doctor said nothing. He just looked at Jackson, something in his eyes that was either hope or heartbreak. Jackson reached out and took his hand. Cool, slender fingers that had done so much, and touched so many.
“I am willing to find someone else. I want to go on. How about you?”
The Doctor didn’t speak but regarded him with his dark, sad eyes, for a very long time.
-
When at the first sign of dawn the blue box vanished to leave but an imprint in the snow, the house was left empty.
February 2, 2009
Prompt: #026 - Parents
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: The Next Doctor
Characters: Jackson Lake, the Doctor (10)
Summary: Years after the Cybermen came to London, the Doctor comes back for a visit.
Note: Most of this was written between five and nine in the morning. Go figure.
After a while the memories had started to fade.
It was better that way. It was good, as it should be. Jackson Lake knew who he was, and who he had to be to take care of his son and Rosita. He couldn’t let himself get distracted by the memory of a personality never his own.
But not so different either, was it? He had not received a copy of the Doctor’s very self, merely of the things these creatures, the Cybermen, knew of him. And his empty, shattered mind had absorbed it willingly and to a result capable of fooling even the man himself, for a while. And Jackson, even knowing who he was and had to be, couldn’t deny that he had enjoyed being the Doctor. Perhaps, he sometimes marvelled, this was the man he could have been had he been of another time and place, not a child of this restrictive society.
But then, wasn’t the Doctor a child of a restrictive society himself? He had hinted at such things, during the dinner they shared on Christmas, years ago. And he had escaped. Perhaps Jackson was simply scared of paying the price.
He had responsibilities, however. Responsibilities that offered a reason to stop considering an escape every time the inability to do so became painful. It would be selfish to even wish he could.
So he lived on and made his life a good one, like the Doctor wanted him to. And he tried to believe it when reason told him it was good that he could no longer remember as clearly how it had felt to live the life of someone else.
In his memory the Doctor spoke of things being better this way or that, and of broken hearts.
Jackson still cursed the Cybermen when visiting the resting place of his wife. He felt bitterness at the thought of them (in summer more than in winter) and knew they were the worst that ever happened to him. And still he could not regret, outside the graveyard, the way they had changed him and his view of the world.
The Cybermen… He used to know so much about them. Now he only knew they brought the Doctor in his life, and that they killed his wife. The memories weren’t his and he did not steal, so he knew this loss of knowledge was right and good. The Doctor knew so many things that were of no use to him now. He tried not to mourn the loss of the only connection he had to this amazing, incredible man who had come into his life so devastatingly and in the end so ultimately left it.
In the first weeks after the Doctor had faded away in his blue box (In his TARDIS. Jackson still liked the sound of that.), before his memories faded as well, Jackson dreamed of him every night. Often he woke up drenched in sweat, feeling lonely and lost and could still taste the ashes. In his dreams he always knew why the air smelled of burning flesh, but the knowledge retreated the moment he opened his eyes. In the years that followed the dreams came less often, but when they did they were as vivid as before. In his dreams he still was the Doctor and wished he wasn’t.
When he woke up, in his dark bedroom with the half-empty bed, he only felt the loss.
-
There was an odd kind of comfort in the grey light of winter. Jackson left home earlier than he had to, walking to university instead of taking the carriage. He often did it these days, needing the time alone with his thoughts. Mostly he thought about the latest books he’d read, but little of it had to do with the lessons he was going to give. It was just thoughts, something to fill his head.
Christmas was approaching, and he wasn’t unhappy. Wasn’t unhappy. He would be, soon. For a day. The next day, life would go on. It always did. He had lived with the pain long enough to know that and had, by now, learned to accept it.
This night he had been dreaming of the Doctor again. No, that wasn’t right - he had had the Doctor’s dreams, and it still felt like stealing. Especially now, when the dream had been one of the good ones. They were rare, rarer even that the ones that made him look out of the window expecting to see the sky on fire, but left him with as little memory. He only knew that it had been good, and left him feeling peaceful and content. It was a peacefulness he wished for the Doctor, for he knew the Time Lord needed it more - Jackson felt like taking it from him.
It was a silly thought. He put it aside. While walking through the snow-covered streets of London he was almost happy.
Eventually he heard the sound. Far away, like coming from out of a dream itself, familiar and comforting. Jackson stopped and listened but it was already gone, drowned out by the noise of the waking city. So he walked on, put it down to his imagination, and it was a mile before he became aware that he had never heard the sound before.
A remnant of his dream, then. That was how he knew it. Pleased with this explanation and forbidding himself to be exited, he walked on. And somehow he finally felt it was Christmas. For the first time in far too many years he felt the excitement, though he tried not to, he had felt as a child, waiting for the moment he would get his present while attempting not to show inappropriate eagerness.
The feeling stayed with him all day. When he came home in the early darkness and found the Doctor waiting by his door, he wasn’t surprised.
-
Jackson lit the candles, and their warm glow made the house homely and more lived in than it was. The Doctor had settled in the old armchair, waiting patiently and in silence as Jackson put away his books and put the kettle on. It didn’t take long.
Then they both sat in the small living room, in the light of candles, warm on the outside, and it didn’t feel awkward. For a long time they sat in silence, only the teacups making quiet, clinking noises when they were set back on the saucers. Long before bedtime it was pitch black outside.
Jackson turned his head and saw their reflections in the glass on the window.
“The house feels empty,” the Doctor said.
How perspective he was. Jackson wouldn’t have brought it up himself, he wouldn’t have known how.
“It is.”
There was only silence after that. The Doctor watched him unblinkingly but he didn’t ask. Perhaps he didn’t know what to say, perhaps he wanted to leave the words to Jackson.
“Frederick died of pneumonia four years ago. He was nine. Rosita didn’t stay.” It was so easy to say, now. Jackson fell silent, listening for the echo of the pain inside him, but there was nothing. Just the faint ache he always felt, so much part of himself he barely recognized it. Footsteps in the snow, already becoming invisible. Already almost gone.
It had only been four years. He had meant to be strong in front of the Doctor, but the lack of grief to hide shocked him. Soon there would be nothing left of them, and what, then, would be left of him?
All this time he had been bracing himself for the one day when the pain would be all consuming. Had he braced himself too well? Erased all grief from his heart? Had he killed all that remained of his son, his wife?
Had he ever really mourned their loss, or merely his own loneliness?
The room seemed too bright now. The light of the candles no longer was comforting. Instead it now was exposing, and Jackson felt like the Doctor could see right into his soul and see that he was empty. He imagined the Doctor able to smell his shame.
But when, before the end of the silence that was suffocating the room, he met the Doctor’s eyes, Jackson saw only sadness there. A sadness so deep it seemed to fall back on Jackson, as an echo of what he should feel. Perhaps, he thought, the Doctor was feeling the grief for him, along with his own.
“I cannot express,” the Time Lord said, in a voice that was even but very quiet, “how sorry I am.”
Jackson shook his head and tried to offer a smile, but it was a bad imitation and he let it go.
“There is no need. I do manage on my own.” His words did not lessen the pain and the sympathy in the Doctor’s face, and so Jackson told him, though he had not meant to, “The memory doesn’t hurt as much now. It all has faded. That is, I believe, a good thing. Although the grief is all I have left now.” Here his voice did catch a little, and he swallowed. He still felt nothing. It had to be, he decided, an automatic reaction of his body. The physical memory of heartache.
“Tell me, Doctor,” he asked when the Time Lord remained silent, “do you have children?”
The Doctor shifted his weight, giving up his comfortable pose. Had he gone too far, Jackson wondered. He had forgotten so much, but never the image of a burning world. If the Doctor had ever had children of his own they would be gone, and what could this question do but cause him even more pain?
But Jackson had to know just how well the Doctor understood.
“Yes,” the Doctor said. And then he added, “It’s not the same. My species does not reproduce the way your species does. There are no parents the way you understand it, no pregnancies - but yes, I did have children. And I loved them.”
Those last words told Jackson that, regardless of the differences, they were the same after all.
“You lost them,” he said, suddenly feeling the grief but not for himself. It was a poor substitute, yet better than the aching, shameful emptiness he’d felt before.
The Doctor leaned back again, and closed his eyes, but this time he did not look relaxed, nor did Jackson see sadness reflected on his face. Instead his features were frozen, for a moment, in deep, barely contained anger.
However, the Doctor’s voice remained calm.
“When they realised that they might lose the war, my people became desperate. They have…” He stopped there, and the anger left his face, and then he opened his eyes, looked at Jackson and said, “It doesn’t matter.”
It did matter. To the Doctor it did. It always would. But Jackson saw all the questions he couldn’t ever ask and remained silent. It felt impudent to have asked at all. What was his grief, his mourning his oh so small family, compared to the loss the Doctor was facing every day? Here he was, feeling sorry for himself in the face of a man who had lost his family, his home, all his people.
“Forgive me,” he heard himself speak though he had no sense of forming the words. “You must think me silly, and certainly I am, to feel my world has ended when I have only lost so little.”
“But Jackson.” The Doctor shook his head, a new pain etched into his fine features, and he looked at Jackson as if he truly thought him a fool. “Your world has ended. You have lost everything.”
And when the moment he heard the words Jackson realised that it was true, the grief was there again, like it had never left him, and he had to look down into his lap.
“It doesn’t matter how many you’ve lost,” the Doctor told him. “Only what they meant to you. This entire city could have gone along with Frederick, leaving only you. Thousands dead, and you would only have felt the loss of your son. Your grief is no less than mine.”
It amazed Jackson how the Doctor could say these words in a voice that didn’t break. He must have been living with his pain so long that it had truly become a part of him.
“But I can find someone else to love.” Even speaking the words felt sacrilegious, but it had been long enough for him to know it was true. “There is a world of humans left. What is left for you?”
The Doctor smiled. Jackson didn’t look up and couldn’t see him, but he knew. “A world of humans. And countless other worlds of countless other people.”
“There is no one with you now.” It wasn’t a question.
“No. There isn’t.”
“Because you cannot bear losing another.”
The Doctor sighed. It sounded defeated.
“One day I will have to,” he said. “I can’t be alone all the time, no matter how much I want to be. I’d just stop. One day I’ll get there again. I have to.”
If he didn’t, he would lose himself as well. Jackson could see this with a clarity he had never possessed when he had believed himself to be the Doctor. He was talking to a man who was one step from the edge and hadn’t yet decided in which direction to go.
And he also realised that he had to make the same decision for himself, eventually.
“Doctor,” he said, his mouth once again speaking without the consent of his mind. “Take me with you, when you leave. There is nothing but shadows in this place. But out there, there are so many possibilities.” The Doctor said nothing. He just looked at Jackson, something in his eyes that was either hope or heartbreak. Jackson reached out and took his hand. Cool, slender fingers that had done so much, and touched so many.
“I am willing to find someone else. I want to go on. How about you?”
The Doctor didn’t speak but regarded him with his dark, sad eyes, for a very long time.
-
When at the first sign of dawn the blue box vanished to leave but an imprint in the snow, the house was left empty.
February 2, 2009