The Place I Was Before (the Here Again remix)
For rude_not_ginger for the song drabble meme. Post Journey's End
He blames the Doctor, of course.
Brand new world, brand new life -- again! -- and what does it come down to? Same shit, different day, vaguely similar universe.
As in, he nips out for chips and runs into a Torchwood team from Sliding Albion attempting to abduct time-sensitives in order to correct their own shredding genomes. As in, he goes to the park with the lads for a bit of a kick around and discovers an abandoned Yterian dragonbear crying mournfully and attempting to eat their ball. As in, he gets a sweet flat for a ridiculously cheap rent and then realises this is because his neighbour is actually a Phaedonian Warpsmith with a bathroom full of eighty-third century thought-transmitters.
(Not that Mickey turns it in, because, come on, four-fifty a month with utilities included?!)
Thing is, the Doctor showed him that there's a better way of living your life. That you don't just let things happen. It's why he ends up back in Torchwood for a bit, why he ends up working for the Copper Foundation. Doing the right thing turns out to be a bit of an addiction, and he reckons he understands all those fundamentalist fanatics a bit more now, although that just makes him feel worse.
Lots of things do. The dreams -- Jake, poor, dead, bastard Jake, gelled hair crackling like frost under Mickey's hand, eyes wide and empty. Rose, sometimes, streaked mascara or, worse, fresh clean and soap-scented and arching against him, because some things you don't get over, even if you get past them. All those whispers of long ago and far away.
(Sometimes, even when he's awake, he thinks he hears the Cloister Bell ringing.)
Travelling with the Doctor, it sits on you like ... like a deep sun-burn, or mould, or something apt and metaphorical that he can't quite think of, because this has never been his thing. Mickey's not the speech guy, he's the hands and guns and cars guy. Except he's something more now, steeped in artron energy and void stuff and Doctor only knows what else.
Artron energy boosts the immune system. He doesn't really get sick now. It's not perfect, nothing ever is, but it's good enough that when he gets randomly teleported to a jungle island for three weeks, he can drink the water without puking. It's good enough that when the forty-second century Movellan freighter crashes into twenty-first century London, he can stay on his feet long enough to slap a fix on the chronowarp drive and shunt the whole thing into interstitial space where it can explode harmlessly. It's good enough that, when Rigellan fever sweeps London, he gets to stand in Mayfair Hospital and watch his friends die while his own temperature barely rises a degree.
(He tries to imagine that Gallifrey, burning, might have been something like this, but he can't lie to himself; at least, not that much.)
Martha comes down from Scotland with Tom, and Gwen and Rhys and little Ioan come over from Cardiff and Sarah Jane drops by, and Luke and Clyde take Ioan so they can all get very drunk on wine and forty-year old Scotch and insult those left absent, Jack and the fucking Doctor. They're not friends, not really, but they were all, at one time or another, caught in each others' orbits, and now they circle endlessly in some complicated, slighly awkward system. Mickey thinks it's not so bad as all that; it's companionship.
And so here he is again. New life, same as the old life. Like all of them, in their own ways, he is, in his, Mickey Smith: defender of Earths. It seems there's no getting away from that, even on those occasions when he really is trying, not just saying he is. It's a strange world he's part of. It was, even before his eyes were opened to it. It always will be, all of it, the glory and the horror and the brilliantly mundane. And it really isn't as bad as all that.
But he still blames the Doctor.
He blames the Doctor, of course.
Brand new world, brand new life -- again! -- and what does it come down to? Same shit, different day, vaguely similar universe.
As in, he nips out for chips and runs into a Torchwood team from Sliding Albion attempting to abduct time-sensitives in order to correct their own shredding genomes. As in, he goes to the park with the lads for a bit of a kick around and discovers an abandoned Yterian dragonbear crying mournfully and attempting to eat their ball. As in, he gets a sweet flat for a ridiculously cheap rent and then realises this is because his neighbour is actually a Phaedonian Warpsmith with a bathroom full of eighty-third century thought-transmitters.
(Not that Mickey turns it in, because, come on, four-fifty a month with utilities included?!)
Thing is, the Doctor showed him that there's a better way of living your life. That you don't just let things happen. It's why he ends up back in Torchwood for a bit, why he ends up working for the Copper Foundation. Doing the right thing turns out to be a bit of an addiction, and he reckons he understands all those fundamentalist fanatics a bit more now, although that just makes him feel worse.
Lots of things do. The dreams -- Jake, poor, dead, bastard Jake, gelled hair crackling like frost under Mickey's hand, eyes wide and empty. Rose, sometimes, streaked mascara or, worse, fresh clean and soap-scented and arching against him, because some things you don't get over, even if you get past them. All those whispers of long ago and far away.
(Sometimes, even when he's awake, he thinks he hears the Cloister Bell ringing.)
Travelling with the Doctor, it sits on you like ... like a deep sun-burn, or mould, or something apt and metaphorical that he can't quite think of, because this has never been his thing. Mickey's not the speech guy, he's the hands and guns and cars guy. Except he's something more now, steeped in artron energy and void stuff and Doctor only knows what else.
Artron energy boosts the immune system. He doesn't really get sick now. It's not perfect, nothing ever is, but it's good enough that when he gets randomly teleported to a jungle island for three weeks, he can drink the water without puking. It's good enough that when the forty-second century Movellan freighter crashes into twenty-first century London, he can stay on his feet long enough to slap a fix on the chronowarp drive and shunt the whole thing into interstitial space where it can explode harmlessly. It's good enough that, when Rigellan fever sweeps London, he gets to stand in Mayfair Hospital and watch his friends die while his own temperature barely rises a degree.
(He tries to imagine that Gallifrey, burning, might have been something like this, but he can't lie to himself; at least, not that much.)
Martha comes down from Scotland with Tom, and Gwen and Rhys and little Ioan come over from Cardiff and Sarah Jane drops by, and Luke and Clyde take Ioan so they can all get very drunk on wine and forty-year old Scotch and insult those left absent, Jack and the fucking Doctor. They're not friends, not really, but they were all, at one time or another, caught in each others' orbits, and now they circle endlessly in some complicated, slighly awkward system. Mickey thinks it's not so bad as all that; it's companionship.
And so here he is again. New life, same as the old life. Like all of them, in their own ways, he is, in his, Mickey Smith: defender of Earths. It seems there's no getting away from that, even on those occasions when he really is trying, not just saying he is. It's a strange world he's part of. It was, even before his eyes were opened to it. It always will be, all of it, the glory and the horror and the brilliantly mundane. And it really isn't as bad as all that.
But he still blames the Doctor.