Lovers
For star_core for the song drabble meme.
There are three sisters, or so the story goes (though sometimes it is seven, sometimes they are brothers, for this too will flux. and wither, and change its state), Eternal and unknown, and their names were this: Time, and Death, and Pain. (Time, born last, comes first; Pain, born first, comes last. First, and last have no subjective meaning, of course.) They are, in their way, gods (the word has no intrinsic meaning) and are worshipped, after a fasion, or, at least, appeased with certain acts of ritual, as formal and impersonal as the polite handshake between gloved men. The sisters are (the point being) part of them, entwined in their history and in their genes. Pain, and Time, and Death; he met her first on a Gallifreyan hillside -- blood fell away in the water, and the other with him (they discard names as they will discard bodies, sacrificing identities on the altars of their ambition; Theta and Koschei are just as fake, just as real as any other) makes a deal and so--
And so.
And here, of course, his funeral pyre is built at Tarminster (of all places; how ignominious) which leads to the obvious question of just how many times has he been dead, now. His continuity is a snarl (depending on your frame of reference), topologically implausible, an intractable (if subjectively linear) mess. But of course it is, for he (Death's champion, certainly, but never a lover; he has never sought that embrace for himself) made it that way, by hand and deed, if never wholly intention. Temporal baffles aren't the only defence against the past (the future, perhaps; certainly it is something other than this Present, this ghostly, perpetual half-life state, on the verge, never becoming) and he has had, has, will have much need of defence, even then, even now, because he understood--
He understood.
He looked into the Vortex and in the rainbow splintering (Black, Red, Azure, Gold, Crystal, White) of Time (Eternal, and not yet born) dispersing through space (freshly loomed and still wet behind the weave) he saw everything: the figure and the flaw, the perfection with its perfect weakness. There is a structure to the universe, an Order of sorts (imagine, rather, a vast and seething pile of squirming tentacles; infinitely entwined fractal attractors) that is repeated at every level (as above, so below) until the top, becoming indistinguishable from the bottom, loops it all around to begin and end again. For (though it is nothing like a) random example, there are six (sometimes) Guardians, just as it takes six (sometimes) to properly pilot a time-capsule (a TARDIS as they all are now, their name retroactively inserted into the language, so that Susan gives them the name they, now, have always had) and the six (sometimes) are one, transcendental beings, larger within than without (vast; they contain multitudes) just as he is six, and one, (and half a dozen of the other) and thus bereft--
Thus, bereft.
Thus (the point being) the universe lends itself to a certain prescience (being an artefact of order) from which certain (mutable) conclusions can be drawn. An observer (for there must be one) might note that he would never have to tried to chain Paradox (who is Death, and Pain, and Time) had the Lords (and it has been too long; was he of the House of Heartshaven, of Lungbarrow, of Oakdown?) not since been long lost to fire, their song (it vibrates in the web of time; they feel each other everywhere) grown still. But, further, would they have been absent if he had not, first (or last), met the Sister on that Gallifreyan hill that has long since (or will, or is) burned away to dust (to atoms, to nothingness)? And back, still, because there was a vortex and he looked (oh, how he looked!) and he saw (but which face?) and his sin has never exactly been original, has it? Not original. Still, a sin (perhaps) and his (sometimes) and he (a child) looking into the face of eternity (of Eternals) sees (and falls; he falls so far, and so fast, but he loves, understand, he loves) and hears, hears the drums in his head, like rain tap-tap-tapping on a crystal dome, like the double-beat of weary hearts, counting to none. Somewhere nearby, a slow and heavy cloister bell tolls (has told, is tolling, will toll) an end--
An end.
It is, he thinks, the price of falling in love.
There are three sisters, or so the story goes (though sometimes it is seven, sometimes they are brothers, for this too will flux. and wither, and change its state), Eternal and unknown, and their names were this: Time, and Death, and Pain. (Time, born last, comes first; Pain, born first, comes last. First, and last have no subjective meaning, of course.) They are, in their way, gods (the word has no intrinsic meaning) and are worshipped, after a fasion, or, at least, appeased with certain acts of ritual, as formal and impersonal as the polite handshake between gloved men. The sisters are (the point being) part of them, entwined in their history and in their genes. Pain, and Time, and Death; he met her first on a Gallifreyan hillside -- blood fell away in the water, and the other with him (they discard names as they will discard bodies, sacrificing identities on the altars of their ambition; Theta and Koschei are just as fake, just as real as any other) makes a deal and so--
And so.
And here, of course, his funeral pyre is built at Tarminster (of all places; how ignominious) which leads to the obvious question of just how many times has he been dead, now. His continuity is a snarl (depending on your frame of reference), topologically implausible, an intractable (if subjectively linear) mess. But of course it is, for he (Death's champion, certainly, but never a lover; he has never sought that embrace for himself) made it that way, by hand and deed, if never wholly intention. Temporal baffles aren't the only defence against the past (the future, perhaps; certainly it is something other than this Present, this ghostly, perpetual half-life state, on the verge, never becoming) and he has had, has, will have much need of defence, even then, even now, because he understood--
He understood.
He looked into the Vortex and in the rainbow splintering (Black, Red, Azure, Gold, Crystal, White) of Time (Eternal, and not yet born) dispersing through space (freshly loomed and still wet behind the weave) he saw everything: the figure and the flaw, the perfection with its perfect weakness. There is a structure to the universe, an Order of sorts (imagine, rather, a vast and seething pile of squirming tentacles; infinitely entwined fractal attractors) that is repeated at every level (as above, so below) until the top, becoming indistinguishable from the bottom, loops it all around to begin and end again. For (though it is nothing like a) random example, there are six (sometimes) Guardians, just as it takes six (sometimes) to properly pilot a time-capsule (a TARDIS as they all are now, their name retroactively inserted into the language, so that Susan gives them the name they, now, have always had) and the six (sometimes) are one, transcendental beings, larger within than without (vast; they contain multitudes) just as he is six, and one, (and half a dozen of the other) and thus bereft--
Thus, bereft.
Thus (the point being) the universe lends itself to a certain prescience (being an artefact of order) from which certain (mutable) conclusions can be drawn. An observer (for there must be one) might note that he would never have to tried to chain Paradox (who is Death, and Pain, and Time) had the Lords (and it has been too long; was he of the House of Heartshaven, of Lungbarrow, of Oakdown?) not since been long lost to fire, their song (it vibrates in the web of time; they feel each other everywhere) grown still. But, further, would they have been absent if he had not, first (or last), met the Sister on that Gallifreyan hill that has long since (or will, or is) burned away to dust (to atoms, to nothingness)? And back, still, because there was a vortex and he looked (oh, how he looked!) and he saw (but which face?) and his sin has never exactly been original, has it? Not original. Still, a sin (perhaps) and his (sometimes) and he (a child) looking into the face of eternity (of Eternals) sees (and falls; he falls so far, and so fast, but he loves, understand, he loves) and hears, hears the drums in his head, like rain tap-tap-tapping on a crystal dome, like the double-beat of weary hearts, counting to none. Somewhere nearby, a slow and heavy cloister bell tolls (has told, is tolling, will toll) an end--
An end.
It is, he thinks, the price of falling in love.