A Sky Rotting Like Leaves
Rating: G
Prompt: #064 - Fall
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: None
Characters: Third Doctor
Summary: The Doctor's third life is nearing its end.
Word count: 304
The leaves have turned yellow, orange, red. Like morning, afternoon and evening on Gallifrey. The Doctor looks at them and thinks of home. The place he came from, the place he grew up. The place he may, by the will of some, never return to.
He looks at the leaves and feels old, as if like these leaves he has reached his prime and is facing his end. It happens to him sometimes, feeling like this, and now it happens more often than before. He knows what it means with the instinct their ancestors have left in his people. His time is ending soon. Like these leaves fall off and turn into a colourful carpet and then to earth, he will become something else, with a different face but made of the same molecules.
It is still an end of something, but this moment, watching the leaves fall in silence, he is not afraid.
He thinks of the Master instead, who has also fallen and become something else, of Koschei’s bright smile and the phone cord wrapping around his throat. He thinks of the final moment of glory before something ordinary turns to dust. He thinks of his people, and the last blinding light before time will forget them, the bright colours of the leaves like the breath of something to come.
He is a Time Lord, and no matter how often he changes, this will always remain his nature. In moments like this, when he can feel his own end approach and is not afraid, time shares something with him of the places he can only reach going the long way. The impressions never last and he never cares while they do.
Instead he thinks up names for the colours that have none; names that will never be known to anyone but him.
November 30, 2009
Prompt: #064 - Fall
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: None
Characters: Third Doctor
Summary: The Doctor's third life is nearing its end.
Word count: 304
The leaves have turned yellow, orange, red. Like morning, afternoon and evening on Gallifrey. The Doctor looks at them and thinks of home. The place he came from, the place he grew up. The place he may, by the will of some, never return to.
He looks at the leaves and feels old, as if like these leaves he has reached his prime and is facing his end. It happens to him sometimes, feeling like this, and now it happens more often than before. He knows what it means with the instinct their ancestors have left in his people. His time is ending soon. Like these leaves fall off and turn into a colourful carpet and then to earth, he will become something else, with a different face but made of the same molecules.
It is still an end of something, but this moment, watching the leaves fall in silence, he is not afraid.
He thinks of the Master instead, who has also fallen and become something else, of Koschei’s bright smile and the phone cord wrapping around his throat. He thinks of the final moment of glory before something ordinary turns to dust. He thinks of his people, and the last blinding light before time will forget them, the bright colours of the leaves like the breath of something to come.
He is a Time Lord, and no matter how often he changes, this will always remain his nature. In moments like this, when he can feel his own end approach and is not afraid, time shares something with him of the places he can only reach going the long way. The impressions never last and he never cares while they do.
Instead he thinks up names for the colours that have none; names that will never be known to anyone but him.
November 30, 2009