"Wine-coloured Thoughts"---Doctor Who, PG-13, (angst, Four/Romana)
So why was Four all somber in season 18?
The Doctor's dreams are dark of late, and he decides he needs a change.
Maniacal laughter chills him through the warmth of his scarf, his coat, his grin. His tunnel vision won't let him see where he is. All in his peripheral vision blurs. The only thing he can see clearly is the white figure before him, and even that is a shimmering, ephemeral thing, deforming all around him like a fish-eye lens.
The laughter grows louder and more mocking each second, from a soft chuckle to an outright guffaw, and though he's never heard that voice before, he's certain it belongs to someone he knows. If he could only make the connection---
But the thing that's at the back of his mind is as murky as everything else. Only that laughter is constant and strong, and the gleaming spectre in front of him, rushing to fill his field of vision.
Another voice, now, and this one he recognises: his own.
"It's the end..."
With a muffled groan he jerks himself awake. His breath hitches and slows, his hearts pounding down to a more agreeable rhythm. The same dream for a week now. He doesn't like the decidedly final thoughts it gives him. He knows he's only on his third regeneration, but his life affords all sorts of opportunities to draw his last breath. That phantom may as well have been a shrouded skeleton, holding a scythe, or some other such mythical nonsense, for what it portends.
He isn't ready to die. He doubts he ever will be. He can't wrap even his mighty brain around the idea. To just stop? To cease? How many other synonyms can he come up with to convey it---to sleep and never wake up, to DIE---total oblivion, to never see another galaxy-rise, smell another blytheria blossom, taste another gumblejack---to no longer puzzle, plot, cogitate, conceive...
But neither does he want to exhaust all life can offer him...neither does he want to wait around for the bitter end, as the universal engine winds down, as the stars unhinge themselves, floating in the worthless wasteland of hopelessly dilute positronium signifying the end of time. When all change ceases...
He thinks of another shrouded, skeletal figure, wasting away, clinging to life by sheer force of will. Will he be so frightened at the end that he becomes a desperate ruin like the Master, struggling at all costs to delay the inevitable? Or will he be able to finally let go?
Matted curls loose and damp with sweat, he turns his head and his nose meets a fall of sweet-smelling blond hair. Once again he considers wakening Romana, and once again he decides against it. He's grown quite fond of this new incarnation...wellll, goes without saying, doesn't it? Fond is not the word to convey what he means....he admires her. Striking out on her own like this, quite content to be who and where she is and no longer bound by that stuffy parochial lot back home. He's quite certain she made the change...not for him, so much as because of him. Maybe, he suspects, because she's found something to admire herself.
Anyway, she doesn't need to be bothered with this. If he can't deal with a few bad dreams, then what kind of example is he? The universe, with all its wonders and terrors, is still virgin territory for someone of her age and upbringing. He needs to be looking after her, not the other way round.
Perhaps...
Perhaps he needs a change himself.
He edges himself quietly out of bed, clad in the nightshirt he borrowed from UNIT last time he regenerated, and tiptoes out of Romana's room and down the hall. A sartorial sojourn has always been good for him.
The wardrobe yawns cavernously beyond the 16th door down on the right. Idly he thumbs through the racks, looking for something that strikes his fancy.
Oh, there's certainly nothing wrong with what he's been wearing. It just feels a little too relaxed, now, too bohemian. He needs something a little hardier. Something a little less busy. Moodier, perhaps, like his thoughts of late. Wine-coloured thoughts, he called them, in his personal lexicon.
And suddenly his hands find it, as if by accident: a nice plum-coloured greatcoat and knee-length trousers...mm, not bad. Go nice with my boots. There was even a hat somewhere about that would match, he's fairly certain. I'll need a bit more...
More rummaging produces a lovely marbled shawl-collar waistcoat in subtle ambers, blues, and reds that glints like labradorite when it catches the light. That'll do to be getting on with, he muses, and hefts the garments newly-purloined onto a chair next to the mirror. Then his eyes catch sight of a creamy, bat-wing-collared shirt with slightly outsized sleeves. Nice and loose, good for arm movement. Hm...yes. The lower collar sports characters that Terrans would recognise as question-marks. Elsewhere they'd been known to stand for various phonemes or glottal stops. Hm. Don't know that I care for those. Welllll, I can always tuck them out of sight, hm?
He shrugs the lot on, and goggles at himself in the mirror. Not bad, not bad at all. Sets the whole frame off very well. Oh dear. The scarf will never do now, not with this. He adores that scarf.
Have to pay another visit to a certain witty little knitter he knows. He's lost many a scarf over the centuries, and she's always willing to dash him off another.
"Bonjour, madame! Tout est bien? D'accord, tiens---J'ai besoin d'une autre..."*
And a mighty scarf it is, too...every time he visits, she makes it longer. "Perhaps it will take you longer to lose this time," she teases.
Romana finds him at the controls, determined, grim, but at ease.
"Had a makeover, did we?"
"Oh, you might say that, yes."
"Why the change?"
"Cleanse the palate once in a while, does you good. I thought it might as well be my turn---do you like it?"
"Mm, quite nice. Sets off that grey in your hair.
He snaps his head around in that shocked and wounded manner of his. "Gr---? Grey in my hair? Nonsense! Dunno what you're talking about, grey in my ha--there's no grey in my hair..." He saunters to the mirror in the console room, as if to prove her wrong. "Mm. Quite nice. Sets off the grey in my hair."
Romana allows herself one of her smug smiles behind his back, then pokes her head over his shoulder, the two of them framed in the mirror.
"Any idea where the randomiser has decided to land us?"
"None of that nonsense this time. I've decided it's time for a holiday. Hm, haha, you should enjoy this...perfect spot. Brighton. We can take in the opening of the Pavilion. Shall we put on your sea-legs, K-9?"
"Master. This unit has perfectly sufficient drive system. Legs not required."
The Doctor grins that old grin. It makes a nice change, and it will stave off the cold.
For a while.
* "Hello, Mrs.! Everything peachy? OK, hey, I need another one..."
The Doctor's dreams are dark of late, and he decides he needs a change.
Maniacal laughter chills him through the warmth of his scarf, his coat, his grin. His tunnel vision won't let him see where he is. All in his peripheral vision blurs. The only thing he can see clearly is the white figure before him, and even that is a shimmering, ephemeral thing, deforming all around him like a fish-eye lens.
The laughter grows louder and more mocking each second, from a soft chuckle to an outright guffaw, and though he's never heard that voice before, he's certain it belongs to someone he knows. If he could only make the connection---
But the thing that's at the back of his mind is as murky as everything else. Only that laughter is constant and strong, and the gleaming spectre in front of him, rushing to fill his field of vision.
Another voice, now, and this one he recognises: his own.
"It's the end..."
With a muffled groan he jerks himself awake. His breath hitches and slows, his hearts pounding down to a more agreeable rhythm. The same dream for a week now. He doesn't like the decidedly final thoughts it gives him. He knows he's only on his third regeneration, but his life affords all sorts of opportunities to draw his last breath. That phantom may as well have been a shrouded skeleton, holding a scythe, or some other such mythical nonsense, for what it portends.
He isn't ready to die. He doubts he ever will be. He can't wrap even his mighty brain around the idea. To just stop? To cease? How many other synonyms can he come up with to convey it---to sleep and never wake up, to DIE---total oblivion, to never see another galaxy-rise, smell another blytheria blossom, taste another gumblejack---to no longer puzzle, plot, cogitate, conceive...
But neither does he want to exhaust all life can offer him...neither does he want to wait around for the bitter end, as the universal engine winds down, as the stars unhinge themselves, floating in the worthless wasteland of hopelessly dilute positronium signifying the end of time. When all change ceases...
He thinks of another shrouded, skeletal figure, wasting away, clinging to life by sheer force of will. Will he be so frightened at the end that he becomes a desperate ruin like the Master, struggling at all costs to delay the inevitable? Or will he be able to finally let go?
Matted curls loose and damp with sweat, he turns his head and his nose meets a fall of sweet-smelling blond hair. Once again he considers wakening Romana, and once again he decides against it. He's grown quite fond of this new incarnation...wellll, goes without saying, doesn't it? Fond is not the word to convey what he means....he admires her. Striking out on her own like this, quite content to be who and where she is and no longer bound by that stuffy parochial lot back home. He's quite certain she made the change...not for him, so much as because of him. Maybe, he suspects, because she's found something to admire herself.
Anyway, she doesn't need to be bothered with this. If he can't deal with a few bad dreams, then what kind of example is he? The universe, with all its wonders and terrors, is still virgin territory for someone of her age and upbringing. He needs to be looking after her, not the other way round.
Perhaps...
Perhaps he needs a change himself.
He edges himself quietly out of bed, clad in the nightshirt he borrowed from UNIT last time he regenerated, and tiptoes out of Romana's room and down the hall. A sartorial sojourn has always been good for him.
The wardrobe yawns cavernously beyond the 16th door down on the right. Idly he thumbs through the racks, looking for something that strikes his fancy.
Oh, there's certainly nothing wrong with what he's been wearing. It just feels a little too relaxed, now, too bohemian. He needs something a little hardier. Something a little less busy. Moodier, perhaps, like his thoughts of late. Wine-coloured thoughts, he called them, in his personal lexicon.
And suddenly his hands find it, as if by accident: a nice plum-coloured greatcoat and knee-length trousers...mm, not bad. Go nice with my boots. There was even a hat somewhere about that would match, he's fairly certain. I'll need a bit more...
More rummaging produces a lovely marbled shawl-collar waistcoat in subtle ambers, blues, and reds that glints like labradorite when it catches the light. That'll do to be getting on with, he muses, and hefts the garments newly-purloined onto a chair next to the mirror. Then his eyes catch sight of a creamy, bat-wing-collared shirt with slightly outsized sleeves. Nice and loose, good for arm movement. Hm...yes. The lower collar sports characters that Terrans would recognise as question-marks. Elsewhere they'd been known to stand for various phonemes or glottal stops. Hm. Don't know that I care for those. Welllll, I can always tuck them out of sight, hm?
He shrugs the lot on, and goggles at himself in the mirror. Not bad, not bad at all. Sets the whole frame off very well. Oh dear. The scarf will never do now, not with this. He adores that scarf.
Have to pay another visit to a certain witty little knitter he knows. He's lost many a scarf over the centuries, and she's always willing to dash him off another.
"Bonjour, madame! Tout est bien? D'accord, tiens---J'ai besoin d'une autre..."*
And a mighty scarf it is, too...every time he visits, she makes it longer. "Perhaps it will take you longer to lose this time," she teases.
Romana finds him at the controls, determined, grim, but at ease.
"Had a makeover, did we?"
"Oh, you might say that, yes."
"Why the change?"
"Cleanse the palate once in a while, does you good. I thought it might as well be my turn---do you like it?"
"Mm, quite nice. Sets off that grey in your hair.
He snaps his head around in that shocked and wounded manner of his. "Gr---? Grey in my hair? Nonsense! Dunno what you're talking about, grey in my ha--there's no grey in my hair..." He saunters to the mirror in the console room, as if to prove her wrong. "Mm. Quite nice. Sets off the grey in my hair."
Romana allows herself one of her smug smiles behind his back, then pokes her head over his shoulder, the two of them framed in the mirror.
"Any idea where the randomiser has decided to land us?"
"None of that nonsense this time. I've decided it's time for a holiday. Hm, haha, you should enjoy this...perfect spot. Brighton. We can take in the opening of the Pavilion. Shall we put on your sea-legs, K-9?"
"Master. This unit has perfectly sufficient drive system. Legs not required."
The Doctor grins that old grin. It makes a nice change, and it will stave off the cold.
For a while.
* "Hello, Mrs.! Everything peachy? OK, hey, I need another one..."