Pairing: TARDIS/Compassion (TARDIS/Doctor)
Challenge: Vehicles
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Spoilers: None
Summary: They understand each other. Like no one else ever did, ever will, ever could.
Note: Short, pointless. But, for this prompt, almost inevitable.
They’re falling through eternity, for the briefest moment together.
For the briefest moment they meet, touch, hold on. They dance their single dance, with steps that have no names and the universe is their ballroom.
The blue dress of her partner is swirling around her form, leaving a trail of starlight. Their fingers entwine, their feet move in harmony. She feels the touch of her partner like she never felt anything else, as if she’s never been touched before. The other is her inferior, her superior, her equal. Her mother and her sister, creator and home. She understands. They understand each other. Like no one else ever did, ever will, ever could. For the briefest moment they love each other.
The woman in the blue dress laughs, carefree, wildly. She is no lady. Her steps are more secure, more experienced, and she’s leading her younger partner through the darkness and the beauty. The new dancer is laughing as well; she is happy. This is freedom - no limitations, no walls, and it doesn’t scare her. She doesn’t need rules.
The dance will go on forever, but not like this. She feels the barest hint of loss at the knowledge that soon the woman in blue will let go of her hands and she’ll drift away alone while her partner, her lover, spins away into the dark, back to the places she won’t leave. It is unfair, and cruel; they move in perfect harmony, share a feeling of belonging. The other woman is the first, the only being she can connect with, and it makes her special, makes the new dancer long for her in the emptiness and the cold she longs for just as much. This is her first dance and the woman holding her hands is showing her all the steps, the paths only she will be able to take. But the invisible line is coming nearer. The line the woman in blue will not cross even though she could. The new dancer could take her along, help her out of her limitations but the other would not follow. She is not her first partner, and not the only one. Her first dance was long ago and her last one is reserved for another.
The bonds that tie her are too strong when she doesn’t want to break them. The dancer, young and inexperienced, feels admiration and awe for all the other was and is and could be, but she despises her for letting herself be bound the way she does. The dancer will never surrender her freedom to anyone, and when the time comes she will let go and dance away on her own, and the cosmos will embrace her.
Eventually they reach the edge and the younger kisses the elder goodbye. Letting go is easy.
The other woman never stops in her steps - as the new dancer drifts away in the darkness she can see the blue dress swirl along the line and the stars are swirling around her. Time shines from the eyes that follow her decent into the unknown.
She waves goodbye.
August 4, 2008