oh, doctor who, why have you stolen my brain?
First off, recs: Resonance Structures by fahye is Doctor Who, Doctor/Master, and gorgeous. A game of chess, science and linguistics, and eternity at your fingertips. On a similar John Simms note, also go read Life on Earth by ariafic which is a Doctor Who/Life on Mars crossover which speaks to all the dark and joyful places of my brain-- Sam Tyler can hear the drumming.
I wrote drabbles:
origami unicorns firefly: river & jayne, post-serenity
the dawn of time part one part two battlestar galactica: kara & leoben, spoilers for the midseason 4 finale
slander shakespeare & the dark lady
pokerface death note, light & l, cardgames
You can still make requests, I'm working my way through them slowly, as inspiration strikes.
I wrote a juddery, rusty overgrown drabble of a Doctor Who fic that really only contains one idea.
SPOILERS UP TO THE S4 FINALE.
Perhaps it is because he is not as familiar as he would like with human mating rituals-- though, of course, he is one himself-- John Smith is surprised to discover Rose Tyler does not like the missionary position. They fuck every other way, and she is kind enough to wait until he is outside the room to burst into tears but John Smith is quite possibly the cleverest human being ever to exist and so, after an initial deduction and three weeks of testing under various conditions he comes to a logical conclusion. Rose Tyler does not like the missionary position because when he is pressed against her body she can hear, so loudly that she cannot ignore it, the obscene sound of one heart beating in his chest.
To Rose Tyler he is nothing more than an incredibly complex vibrator; his single beating heart which beats for her is a placeholder, he is the false idol to the deity that she (and he uses this word delicately and deliberately) worships. It is perhaps the most horrible thing he has ever had to endure. John Smith laughs, out loud, into the dark which steals sound: yes, he is a shadow of a God, clever enough to know just how painfully small he is, squished into this singular, aging body with nine hundred years of memories squeezing into every corner of his skull. With his mind he could unknit the fabric of the universe, but his hands can’t grasp the threads. And they will never hold hers, not ever. He gets to touch her and tell her he loves her and fuck her but really he only takes form in the negative spaces, his weight on her body is the weight of absence. Yes, tis really is the most horrible thing he has ever had to endure. John Smith, doppelganger, damaged goods, skewed reflection. Looking into Rose Tyler’s eyes and seeing all those judgements, all that love that channels right through him, focusing on a point that is constant and unmovable and most decidedly not him. The north star in their night sky together. The Doctor has given them each other out of kindness, but really, all that confirms is just how inhuman he really is.
*
Rose Tyler thinks that perhaps this is the most horrible thing she has ever had to endure. She has looked into the heart of the TARDIS and seen her own life disappear on the horizon of eternity, she has watched civilisations burn and laughed, she has granted eternal life like a child bestowing sticky kisses and broken down the walls between universes but this, this, every time he says, “I love you,” the walls of her heart grow thinner and she thinks she might just implode. Implode and take the universe with her. This stupid twilight zone universe run by resurrected fathers and filled with mocking facsimiles of the people she loves.
She wonders when she will stop thinking of this as an alternate universe.
“I love you, Rose Tyler.”
It’s the right voice when he says it, the right lips when you kiss them, but altogether the wrong man. Every time, Rose opens her eyes halfway through and sees the Doctor, disappearing at the edge of her vision, and every time she resists the urge to break the kiss & go running after him. Her Doctor.
“You’d think,” she says to Jackie, “with two hearts, he could spare one for me.”
Yes. One for Rose Tyler, one for the rest of the universe.
It’s perverse that it is his inhumanity that she loves, and that is exactly why he won’t ever love her back.
You’d think, with eternity filling his eyesockets, he could spare one human lifetime just for her.
*
Something about the still bruised, time-worn flesh of the universe around Bad Wolf Bay has halted the normal progress of seasons. Like a battle-site, nothing grows there. It is a constant winter. A preserved memory of the last time the TARDIS ripped through the membranes that separate one reality from the next. The same breeze, blowing and re-blowing, feeding into itself in loops and eddies that settle into figures of eight.
Rose Tyler has acquired the habit of borrowing a teleporter from Torchwood and going there, late at night, when she can’t sleep. She stands where the TARDIS was and tries to feel-- something-- pressed against the thinned skin of the universe, knowing that the Doctor is far too busy saving the world to stand on the other side and think of her. Jackie probably guesses when she sees her tired eyes, the woollen jumpers crumpled into her laundry basket in the height of summer, but she doesn’t say a word. Which is uncharacteristic for her and so Rose is pathetically, silently grateful.
She reaches for a teleporter and realises, with a start, that there is already one missing.
John Smith feels a prickle on the back of his neck and turns to see Rose Tyler materialising on this barren little patch of land. She is dressed for the weather. She has been here before. He isn’t even wearing his suit jacket.
“How long have you been coming here?”
“Since the beginning.”
They stand there for a bit, awkwardly, and then sit together, facing the sea. He drapes a hand casually around her shoulders. She leans into his touch.
“You-- don’t smile as much as he used to,” Rose says, carefully.
“I can if you want.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you, Rose Tyler.”
Her lower lip twists. “That’s just an echo you’re repeating. Even your name, John Smith. You‘re pretending to be a joke. It‘s your life and you‘re pretending to be-- someone else‘s stupid joke.”
“And who are you being?”
There is a long, slow, wind-filled pause, and the universe forks in two directions and Rose Tyler turns left.
“I am the Bad Wolf,” she says, laughing. “I create myself.”
“I like that,” he says, and laughs with her, and they look at the horizon, where for the first time in months, the sun is rising.
*
*
Well, I'm glad that's out of my system.
Link me to joyous things, my friends.
I wrote drabbles:
origami unicorns firefly: river & jayne, post-serenity
the dawn of time part one part two battlestar galactica: kara & leoben, spoilers for the midseason 4 finale
slander shakespeare & the dark lady
pokerface death note, light & l, cardgames
You can still make requests, I'm working my way through them slowly, as inspiration strikes.
I wrote a juddery, rusty overgrown drabble of a Doctor Who fic that really only contains one idea.
SPOILERS UP TO THE S4 FINALE.
Perhaps it is because he is not as familiar as he would like with human mating rituals-- though, of course, he is one himself-- John Smith is surprised to discover Rose Tyler does not like the missionary position. They fuck every other way, and she is kind enough to wait until he is outside the room to burst into tears but John Smith is quite possibly the cleverest human being ever to exist and so, after an initial deduction and three weeks of testing under various conditions he comes to a logical conclusion. Rose Tyler does not like the missionary position because when he is pressed against her body she can hear, so loudly that she cannot ignore it, the obscene sound of one heart beating in his chest.
To Rose Tyler he is nothing more than an incredibly complex vibrator; his single beating heart which beats for her is a placeholder, he is the false idol to the deity that she (and he uses this word delicately and deliberately) worships. It is perhaps the most horrible thing he has ever had to endure. John Smith laughs, out loud, into the dark which steals sound: yes, he is a shadow of a God, clever enough to know just how painfully small he is, squished into this singular, aging body with nine hundred years of memories squeezing into every corner of his skull. With his mind he could unknit the fabric of the universe, but his hands can’t grasp the threads. And they will never hold hers, not ever. He gets to touch her and tell her he loves her and fuck her but really he only takes form in the negative spaces, his weight on her body is the weight of absence. Yes, tis really is the most horrible thing he has ever had to endure. John Smith, doppelganger, damaged goods, skewed reflection. Looking into Rose Tyler’s eyes and seeing all those judgements, all that love that channels right through him, focusing on a point that is constant and unmovable and most decidedly not him. The north star in their night sky together. The Doctor has given them each other out of kindness, but really, all that confirms is just how inhuman he really is.
*
Rose Tyler thinks that perhaps this is the most horrible thing she has ever had to endure. She has looked into the heart of the TARDIS and seen her own life disappear on the horizon of eternity, she has watched civilisations burn and laughed, she has granted eternal life like a child bestowing sticky kisses and broken down the walls between universes but this, this, every time he says, “I love you,” the walls of her heart grow thinner and she thinks she might just implode. Implode and take the universe with her. This stupid twilight zone universe run by resurrected fathers and filled with mocking facsimiles of the people she loves.
She wonders when she will stop thinking of this as an alternate universe.
“I love you, Rose Tyler.”
It’s the right voice when he says it, the right lips when you kiss them, but altogether the wrong man. Every time, Rose opens her eyes halfway through and sees the Doctor, disappearing at the edge of her vision, and every time she resists the urge to break the kiss & go running after him. Her Doctor.
“You’d think,” she says to Jackie, “with two hearts, he could spare one for me.”
Yes. One for Rose Tyler, one for the rest of the universe.
It’s perverse that it is his inhumanity that she loves, and that is exactly why he won’t ever love her back.
You’d think, with eternity filling his eyesockets, he could spare one human lifetime just for her.
*
Something about the still bruised, time-worn flesh of the universe around Bad Wolf Bay has halted the normal progress of seasons. Like a battle-site, nothing grows there. It is a constant winter. A preserved memory of the last time the TARDIS ripped through the membranes that separate one reality from the next. The same breeze, blowing and re-blowing, feeding into itself in loops and eddies that settle into figures of eight.
Rose Tyler has acquired the habit of borrowing a teleporter from Torchwood and going there, late at night, when she can’t sleep. She stands where the TARDIS was and tries to feel-- something-- pressed against the thinned skin of the universe, knowing that the Doctor is far too busy saving the world to stand on the other side and think of her. Jackie probably guesses when she sees her tired eyes, the woollen jumpers crumpled into her laundry basket in the height of summer, but she doesn’t say a word. Which is uncharacteristic for her and so Rose is pathetically, silently grateful.
She reaches for a teleporter and realises, with a start, that there is already one missing.
John Smith feels a prickle on the back of his neck and turns to see Rose Tyler materialising on this barren little patch of land. She is dressed for the weather. She has been here before. He isn’t even wearing his suit jacket.
“How long have you been coming here?”
“Since the beginning.”
They stand there for a bit, awkwardly, and then sit together, facing the sea. He drapes a hand casually around her shoulders. She leans into his touch.
“You-- don’t smile as much as he used to,” Rose says, carefully.
“I can if you want.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you, Rose Tyler.”
Her lower lip twists. “That’s just an echo you’re repeating. Even your name, John Smith. You‘re pretending to be a joke. It‘s your life and you‘re pretending to be-- someone else‘s stupid joke.”
“And who are you being?”
There is a long, slow, wind-filled pause, and the universe forks in two directions and Rose Tyler turns left.
“I am the Bad Wolf,” she says, laughing. “I create myself.”
“I like that,” he says, and laughs with her, and they look at the horizon, where for the first time in months, the sun is rising.
*
*
Well, I'm glad that's out of my system.
Link me to joyous things, my friends.