Relativeprompts, May Song Prompt
The good old days, the honest man;
The restless heart, the Promised Land
A subtle kiss that no one sees;
A broken wrist and a big trapeze
They're sitting outside in the grass, Mike and Ianto. You lean against the TARDIS doors and just watch them, pleased at how quickly the pair of them fell in together like they'd been friends all along. Ianto is, of course, sitting upright, back straight, in a dress shirt and waistcoat, though the suit jacket has been doffed and the cuffs rolled up in deference to the sunny spring day. Mike is sprawled on his back, propped up on his elbows. You catch a glimpse of a glass soda bottle in his hand, and you're immediately transported, carried back on a drift of memory.
You were different then, taller, darker, colder. Life was much simpler, confined to a much smaller scale. You were a prisoner on this planet, weighted with the knowledge that you would never leave. He was the good-natured boy you sought to mold into a suitable heir, the boy you mistakenly believed you could easily manipulate, but who would wind up changing you in the end.
He confounded you at times, with the most random things. Such as the bottled soda. Coca-Cola. There were vending machines all over your office building. He could have a can for fifty cents. And yet every day he walked four blocks down to a newsstand, and returned with a glass bottle of the very same.
You pointed out the machines, thinking you were being helpful. He shook his head and insisted what he purchased in the bottle was not the same as what was sold out of the machines. Coca-Cola from Mexico. Real sugar and not corn syrup. He paid two dollars a bottle--four times what the vending machines demanded--and walked four blocks down and four blocks back.
Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola. You loathed the stuff. It confounded you that the boy went so far out of his way for it. It amused him that you were so confounded.
Three hours after that conversation, you came back to your desk and found the bottle, emptied of Coca-Cola and refilled with water and a daisy, perched on the corner of your desk. You suspected Michael (you still called him that back then, though you knew he loathed it, and he let you get away with it) was teasing you--he did that, at times, gently mocking something you didn't comprehend as a means of getting you to loosen up. He was having a mild joke at your expense, with this bottle, and for once, you actually laughed.
It didn't exactly settle into a routine, or become a forecastable pattern, but the bottles started reappearing on your desk on something approaching a regular basis. He'd drink the Coca-Cola with the real sugar, rinse the bottle, and then stick a single flower in it--whatever the woman with the cart halfway between the newsstand and your building had that day that he could purchase a single stem of. Carnations, daisies, crysanthemums, gerberas, irises. A handful of times, roses, white or yellow ones, never red.
You grew to look forward to their appearances. They quietly began to have meaning for you. They made you smile. At times they did so when nothing else could manage it. He never explicitly let on that he knew, but he did.
One day, everything went wrong. You were so frustrated at difficult sales calls and failed experiments and missing shipments and inept lab techs that you thought you might punch out the next person to bring you a bit of bad news. You stormed past Michael's workstation. He was gulping down a bottle of Coca-Cola so fast it was as if he were dying of thirst and the concoction would save him. You realised later, when the bottle appeared on your desk, with a pair of lilies this time, that he was hurrying to do that for you, and for the first time, your hearts broke at the gesture.
You were awful to him, at times, and yet he kept leaving you his bottles. Kept leaving you those little tokens of his affection, only you were too guarded and broken and disdainful a woman to see them for what they were.
And then everything changed. The universe was ending. And even in its immminent demise, its horizons broadened for you. And for him, at your insistence. You brought him with you, gave him a chance to touch the stars.
You changed. You became the woman you are now, and though things were strange for a while, you've survived, the two of you.
Only, there's no more office. No more desk. No more daily trips to the newsstand. No more bottles and flowers, not since you stopped being her and started being you.
It's funny, you think, edging away from the door as the boys noisily make their way back inside, the odd little things you miss sometimes. And then the thought's gone in the maelstrom of comings and goings. Nyssa's synthesising holoenzymes in the laboratory and needs more polymerase gel. Ianto wants to tidy the kitchen, and has evicted Tegan in the process, leaving the Doctor to referee. Mike's moving furniture between rooms--you've no idea why but no one else seems perturbed so you let that one go. Turlough breezes past, sketchbook in hand, jauntily waving at you before he steps out the door. Tegan and Ianto--apparently having made up--are off to the shops. The Doctor hurries past with a roll of cellotape and swears up and down he's not doing wiring repairs with it. Mike and Nyssa are are now having a deep discussion over some text or other in the library. Turlough comes back in, and after favouring his rather good sketches with approving smiles, you send him to, erm, help the Doctor remember what he said about the cellotape.
Eventually you find yourself alone in the console room, which is blessedly quiet, and you let out the breath you'd been holding and lean against the console, relieved. Days like this, you think, you could almost miss your old life, with its predictability, and quiet.
A splash of colour catches your eye, and you look up. And see a bottle perched up on the top of the console. A glass Coca-Cola bottle, emptied of its contents, refilled with water and a rose cut from one of the bushes outside Josh's house.
A minute or two later, Mike steps in from the corridor, and frets at finding you crying alone in the console room. He enfolds you in his arms, and it occurs to you that he hasn't changed. He still loves you. He still wants to try to show you. You don't have to miss that part of your old life because it's survived, just as the two of you have.
And you know, as you tilt your face up for a grateful kiss, that while all the changes seem like utter chaos at times, without them you wouldn't be who you are now. You wouldn't have this chance to appreciate bottles with flowers stuck in them, to appreciate the man who leaves them for you in return for your smiles.
You hold him close, and you thank Rassilon with every fibre of your being that you changed.
Catherine Endicott
RS
Word Count: 1208
The restless heart, the Promised Land
A subtle kiss that no one sees;
A broken wrist and a big trapeze
They're sitting outside in the grass, Mike and Ianto. You lean against the TARDIS doors and just watch them, pleased at how quickly the pair of them fell in together like they'd been friends all along. Ianto is, of course, sitting upright, back straight, in a dress shirt and waistcoat, though the suit jacket has been doffed and the cuffs rolled up in deference to the sunny spring day. Mike is sprawled on his back, propped up on his elbows. You catch a glimpse of a glass soda bottle in his hand, and you're immediately transported, carried back on a drift of memory.
You were different then, taller, darker, colder. Life was much simpler, confined to a much smaller scale. You were a prisoner on this planet, weighted with the knowledge that you would never leave. He was the good-natured boy you sought to mold into a suitable heir, the boy you mistakenly believed you could easily manipulate, but who would wind up changing you in the end.
He confounded you at times, with the most random things. Such as the bottled soda. Coca-Cola. There were vending machines all over your office building. He could have a can for fifty cents. And yet every day he walked four blocks down to a newsstand, and returned with a glass bottle of the very same.
You pointed out the machines, thinking you were being helpful. He shook his head and insisted what he purchased in the bottle was not the same as what was sold out of the machines. Coca-Cola from Mexico. Real sugar and not corn syrup. He paid two dollars a bottle--four times what the vending machines demanded--and walked four blocks down and four blocks back.
Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola. You loathed the stuff. It confounded you that the boy went so far out of his way for it. It amused him that you were so confounded.
Three hours after that conversation, you came back to your desk and found the bottle, emptied of Coca-Cola and refilled with water and a daisy, perched on the corner of your desk. You suspected Michael (you still called him that back then, though you knew he loathed it, and he let you get away with it) was teasing you--he did that, at times, gently mocking something you didn't comprehend as a means of getting you to loosen up. He was having a mild joke at your expense, with this bottle, and for once, you actually laughed.
It didn't exactly settle into a routine, or become a forecastable pattern, but the bottles started reappearing on your desk on something approaching a regular basis. He'd drink the Coca-Cola with the real sugar, rinse the bottle, and then stick a single flower in it--whatever the woman with the cart halfway between the newsstand and your building had that day that he could purchase a single stem of. Carnations, daisies, crysanthemums, gerberas, irises. A handful of times, roses, white or yellow ones, never red.
You grew to look forward to their appearances. They quietly began to have meaning for you. They made you smile. At times they did so when nothing else could manage it. He never explicitly let on that he knew, but he did.
One day, everything went wrong. You were so frustrated at difficult sales calls and failed experiments and missing shipments and inept lab techs that you thought you might punch out the next person to bring you a bit of bad news. You stormed past Michael's workstation. He was gulping down a bottle of Coca-Cola so fast it was as if he were dying of thirst and the concoction would save him. You realised later, when the bottle appeared on your desk, with a pair of lilies this time, that he was hurrying to do that for you, and for the first time, your hearts broke at the gesture.
You were awful to him, at times, and yet he kept leaving you his bottles. Kept leaving you those little tokens of his affection, only you were too guarded and broken and disdainful a woman to see them for what they were.
And then everything changed. The universe was ending. And even in its immminent demise, its horizons broadened for you. And for him, at your insistence. You brought him with you, gave him a chance to touch the stars.
You changed. You became the woman you are now, and though things were strange for a while, you've survived, the two of you.
Only, there's no more office. No more desk. No more daily trips to the newsstand. No more bottles and flowers, not since you stopped being her and started being you.
It's funny, you think, edging away from the door as the boys noisily make their way back inside, the odd little things you miss sometimes. And then the thought's gone in the maelstrom of comings and goings. Nyssa's synthesising holoenzymes in the laboratory and needs more polymerase gel. Ianto wants to tidy the kitchen, and has evicted Tegan in the process, leaving the Doctor to referee. Mike's moving furniture between rooms--you've no idea why but no one else seems perturbed so you let that one go. Turlough breezes past, sketchbook in hand, jauntily waving at you before he steps out the door. Tegan and Ianto--apparently having made up--are off to the shops. The Doctor hurries past with a roll of cellotape and swears up and down he's not doing wiring repairs with it. Mike and Nyssa are are now having a deep discussion over some text or other in the library. Turlough comes back in, and after favouring his rather good sketches with approving smiles, you send him to, erm, help the Doctor remember what he said about the cellotape.
Eventually you find yourself alone in the console room, which is blessedly quiet, and you let out the breath you'd been holding and lean against the console, relieved. Days like this, you think, you could almost miss your old life, with its predictability, and quiet.
A splash of colour catches your eye, and you look up. And see a bottle perched up on the top of the console. A glass Coca-Cola bottle, emptied of its contents, refilled with water and a rose cut from one of the bushes outside Josh's house.
A minute or two later, Mike steps in from the corridor, and frets at finding you crying alone in the console room. He enfolds you in his arms, and it occurs to you that he hasn't changed. He still loves you. He still wants to try to show you. You don't have to miss that part of your old life because it's survived, just as the two of you have.
And you know, as you tilt your face up for a grateful kiss, that while all the changes seem like utter chaos at times, without them you wouldn't be who you are now. You wouldn't have this chance to appreciate bottles with flowers stuck in them, to appreciate the man who leaves them for you in return for your smiles.
You hold him close, and you thank Rassilon with every fibre of your being that you changed.
Catherine Endicott
RS
Word Count: 1208