For In This Sleep
Rating: PG
Prompt: #080 - Why?
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: None
Characters: The Doctor (and Susan, Jamie, Jo, Sarah-Jane, Adric, Peri, Ace, Fitz, Jack and Romana. Only not.)
Summary: The Doctor dreams.
She’s standing in a ray of light falling through the ceiling: not illuminated, a dark silhouette bathed in sunshine. It seems as though she’s burning and she’s smaller than she was. A child; and he has never known her as a child, yet never accepted that she was a woman. Her eyes, large and innocent, are looking at him who isn’t there, as she says:
“How can you know I’m gone? You never came to find me.”
The Doctor wakes up.
He’s lying on a battlefield, bloodied and pale and long since gone. Centuries have feasted on his corpse yet he remains the same, a man that never stopped being a boy, and his shirt and boots and kilt are clean and his skin is unmarred and he opens his eyes and he says:
“I don’t know you.”
The Doctor wakes up.
She’s facing away from him, wearing boots and a ring on her finger. The air smells like planet Earth and the sun is already down though it’s not yet dark. And she turns and smiles at him and gives him a peck on the cheek but she doesn’t, keeps looking the other way and he can not hear her voice when she says:
“You were my hero.”
The Doctor wakes up.
She’s standing on a street in Aberdeen, deep lines in her face and grey in her hair. There is the shell of a robot dog beside her, long gone, eaten away by rain and wind and a world that moved on around them. Her eyes are clear while her skin withers away and turns to dust and he can not escape the gaze that blames him for the passage of time. And she says:
“I waited in this place for ages and ages but you never came.”
The Doctor wakes up.
He’s lying on his bed, reading a book in a room that belongs to a boy, his belongings scattered on the floor. He is young and he will never be anything else. He doesn’t look up and his voice is carefree and impassive when he says:
“I could have lived.”
The Doctor wakes up.
She’s wearing a blouse and lipstick, standing in the shallow water of a lake on a planet he can not name and there is not a single hair on her head. Her eyes, though, are the same and her voice is the same and she says:
“He could have lied. You’ll never know for you never came to make sure.”
The Doctor wakes up.
She’s looking over a landscape dominated by red grass, distant mountains, an orange sky. The innocence is gone from her eyes but they sparkle when she turns to him and she does not see the outlines of warships in front of the setting suns. She is a woman now but she’s still the girl he used to know and she says:
“You asked me to stay here, so I will.”
The Doctor wakes up.
He’s standing on a marketplace on Earth in the wrong year and he’s younger than he should be but older than he was. There’s a crumbled pack of cigarettes in his hand, taken from the pocket of the coat he doesn’t wear anymore and he looks self-assured and lost, and he says:
“Just promise you’ll come back, okay? I’ll be waiting.”
The Doctor wakes up.
He’s on the other side of a screen, his face full of confidence and faith. Willing to fight and to die for someone else. He’s more than he was and more than he will be, and he can not see the future and believes his own words to be true when he says:
“I never doubted you. Never will.”
The Doctor wakes up.
She’s coming inside the way she always does, through doors that remain open. Her hair is long and blonde and falls onto his stomach, his chest as she crawls over him, her fingers touching his cheek, trailing over his lips, searching, never finding. She doesn’t look the way she did when he last saw her, but this is the face he knew best and remembered when he mourned who she once was and couldn’t keep being. There’s curiosity in her eyes and impatience and not the slightest hint of anger and desperation. Then she smiles, like a child, and he can feel her breath on his face as she says:
“Why did you do it? And don’t dare telling me there was no other way and you had to. I’ll claw your eyes out if you do.”
But this is what he tells her as it is the only answer he can give. And she claws his eyes out and leaves him blind and alone in the darkness.
December 18, 2007