Echoes
Rating: G
Prompt: #027 - Children
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Human Nature/The Family of Blood
Characters: The Doctor/John Smith
Summary: "It's just a story."
Word Count: 184
These are the children that never lived.
They learn to walk in the meadow behind the house. They play in grass under the watchful eyes of their parents. They grow up safe and free. They are loved.
Their mother cares for their scratches when they fall, cooks their favourite food on their birthdays, sings them to sleep at night. Their father chases away the monsters under their beds and teaches them how to build a kite, and every evening he tells them another fairytale - he knows so many.
“Will the Daleks come to get us when we sleep?” his little daughter asks, frightened, and he strokes her hair and smiles softly.
“It’s just a story,” he says.
They make it through two wars and his children live to marry and have children of their own. He holds his tiny grandson in his arms and wouldn’t trade the moment for the world.
They care for each other. His children never know loneliness, or fear, or loss. They are happy. But they never lived.
They’re just a story he wishes he could forget.
January 10, 2008
Prompt: #027 - Children
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Human Nature/The Family of Blood
Characters: The Doctor/John Smith
Summary: "It's just a story."
Word Count: 184
These are the children that never lived.
They learn to walk in the meadow behind the house. They play in grass under the watchful eyes of their parents. They grow up safe and free. They are loved.
Their mother cares for their scratches when they fall, cooks their favourite food on their birthdays, sings them to sleep at night. Their father chases away the monsters under their beds and teaches them how to build a kite, and every evening he tells them another fairytale - he knows so many.
“Will the Daleks come to get us when we sleep?” his little daughter asks, frightened, and he strokes her hair and smiles softly.
“It’s just a story,” he says.
They make it through two wars and his children live to marry and have children of their own. He holds his tiny grandson in his arms and wouldn’t trade the moment for the world.
They care for each other. His children never know loneliness, or fear, or loss. They are happy. But they never lived.
They’re just a story he wishes he could forget.
January 10, 2008