Fic: Le Chat (1/1)
Title: Le Chat
Rating: PG
Pairing: Ten/Donna, Ten/Christina
Word Count: 621
Summary: When you’ve lived as long as he has, lifetimes can often seem as short as days. Spoilers for Doctor Who 4.15 - Planet of the Dead.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: Just a bit of a drabble that went awry, really. I felt rather strange wanting to write something like this - originally, it was just Ten/Christina, but I apparently cannot abandon my beloved Donna. Not that I’d want to, of course ;)
Le Chat
When you’ve lived as long as he has, lifetimes can often seem as short as days - mere specks in the chaos of eternity; meaningless, futile, barely even there.
“We could’ve been so good together!”
She hovers next to him, and he can’t help but smile back at her - she’s charming, and strong, and gorgeous and smart and funny and brilliant; she’s everything any of them have ever been, and he knows that he’s useless alone. But his hearts twinge at the thought of the losses, the inevitable ends that they all come to - trapped, broken, dead, in every way that matters - and he cannot bring himself to endure it all over again. He’s seen it enough.
They were stronger than him, in that. They always had been.
He watches Christina, for just the briefest of instants, and suddenly her eyes are no longer her own; they’re softer, more dangerous, but more loving, more giving - they’re beautiful where hers are alluring, sensual where the ones before him are calculating; they’re determined, heartfelt where her Ladyship’s are plated steel.
They belong to someone else.
“Christina,” he bellows, the night wind catching his words and toying with them, bending them around the breeze, “we were!”
And it’s the truth, but it’s not whole. They were a perfect match, but he’s lived long enough to know the guises of perfection, and to know that they are nothing more than fantasy; the gilded cat that replaces a golden chalice. And this woman, this woman is a cat; she shines, and she dazzles - she’s limber and lithe and quick on her feet, and she’s an eye-catcher, a wild romp for just an instant, and she’s lovely, she’s lovely, and in his way he loves her, loves them all...
But there are chalices in his heart that have yet to melt, have yet to mold themselves to a world in which they don’t truly belong to him anymore. And where he’s given up on most of them - reluctantly, at times; relievedly at others - there’s one that’s still hot as embers and bright as flames that takes his chest and scorches it every time he catches so much as a glimpse of ginger hair, or hears her voice upon the zephyrs of eve, a figment of his dreams; his own cup of gold - a goblet, a goddess - that he left behind in Chiswick.
She takes off in that ramshackle bus, all ripped and torn, to fly as close as she’ll ever get to the stars, and he feels sorry, not for the first time, that he only has but two hearts, because he never seems to have enough to give, never enough for all of them - and certainly not enough for himself.
Perhaps that’s why he’s so fascinated by mankind: they never run out of room for the deepest compassion, the most honest of loves, and they do it all with only half of his capacity. It’s miraculous, really, that they don’t waste away under the weight of it, the hurt of it; he wishes that he knew their secret.
The silhouette of the vehicle against a sky lit with stars is haunting, foreboding, and his pulses quicken as the memory floods him - her face sad, scared but so fair, so steady as they tell him that his song will soon break, soon scatter into dust. He misses her, his Earth-girl. Everything within him misses her.
When you’ve lost as much as he has, a single day can seem a lifetime.
Rating: PG
Pairing: Ten/Donna, Ten/Christina
Word Count: 621
Summary: When you’ve lived as long as he has, lifetimes can often seem as short as days. Spoilers for Doctor Who 4.15 - Planet of the Dead.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: Just a bit of a drabble that went awry, really. I felt rather strange wanting to write something like this - originally, it was just Ten/Christina, but I apparently cannot abandon my beloved Donna. Not that I’d want to, of course ;)
Le Chat
When you’ve lived as long as he has, lifetimes can often seem as short as days - mere specks in the chaos of eternity; meaningless, futile, barely even there.
“We could’ve been so good together!”
She hovers next to him, and he can’t help but smile back at her - she’s charming, and strong, and gorgeous and smart and funny and brilliant; she’s everything any of them have ever been, and he knows that he’s useless alone. But his hearts twinge at the thought of the losses, the inevitable ends that they all come to - trapped, broken, dead, in every way that matters - and he cannot bring himself to endure it all over again. He’s seen it enough.
They were stronger than him, in that. They always had been.
He watches Christina, for just the briefest of instants, and suddenly her eyes are no longer her own; they’re softer, more dangerous, but more loving, more giving - they’re beautiful where hers are alluring, sensual where the ones before him are calculating; they’re determined, heartfelt where her Ladyship’s are plated steel.
They belong to someone else.
“Christina,” he bellows, the night wind catching his words and toying with them, bending them around the breeze, “we were!”
And it’s the truth, but it’s not whole. They were a perfect match, but he’s lived long enough to know the guises of perfection, and to know that they are nothing more than fantasy; the gilded cat that replaces a golden chalice. And this woman, this woman is a cat; she shines, and she dazzles - she’s limber and lithe and quick on her feet, and she’s an eye-catcher, a wild romp for just an instant, and she’s lovely, she’s lovely, and in his way he loves her, loves them all...
But there are chalices in his heart that have yet to melt, have yet to mold themselves to a world in which they don’t truly belong to him anymore. And where he’s given up on most of them - reluctantly, at times; relievedly at others - there’s one that’s still hot as embers and bright as flames that takes his chest and scorches it every time he catches so much as a glimpse of ginger hair, or hears her voice upon the zephyrs of eve, a figment of his dreams; his own cup of gold - a goblet, a goddess - that he left behind in Chiswick.
She takes off in that ramshackle bus, all ripped and torn, to fly as close as she’ll ever get to the stars, and he feels sorry, not for the first time, that he only has but two hearts, because he never seems to have enough to give, never enough for all of them - and certainly not enough for himself.
Perhaps that’s why he’s so fascinated by mankind: they never run out of room for the deepest compassion, the most honest of loves, and they do it all with only half of his capacity. It’s miraculous, really, that they don’t waste away under the weight of it, the hurt of it; he wishes that he knew their secret.
The silhouette of the vehicle against a sky lit with stars is haunting, foreboding, and his pulses quicken as the memory floods him - her face sad, scared but so fair, so steady as they tell him that his song will soon break, soon scatter into dust. He misses her, his Earth-girl. Everything within him misses her.
When you’ve lost as much as he has, a single day can seem a lifetime.