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Aug. 27th, 2007 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyoftimeIt’s like the woods from a storybook, she decides, only more. The green is greener than green, the brown of the trees richer than brown, the water wetter than water itself. The triplet of suns in the sky are much too bright; she shuts them out and gently rubs the back of her head, where a headache is gathering in intensity and blood colours her hair. The creek a few feet away is loud and simultaneously soothing and painful. As she lets sound and smell wash over here, she understands, finally, what’s so very wrong and different. There is no Time.
Everywhere else she feels it, sometimes lazily drifting alongside her, sometimes rushing her on with adrenaline and excitement, sometimes relentlessly pulling her with it from one painful moment to the next. Here, it simply isn’t. Here, it is now, content to be now forever, and every now before and after besides. She opens her eyes with the shock of this realization, and, yes, if she stares at that tree closely enough, she can truly see it; a seed, a sapling, a mighty tree towering over the rest of the forest, an old stump withered and dying.
She turns away hurriedly, head splitting from the strain of seeing the tree’s life all at once, and instead watches the creek. “Doctor,” a voice sounds in the rush of water over stones.
“Who?” she answers cautiously.
“Listen to me, Doctor,” says the voice in the gentle roll of thunder from a storm far away. “Eternity. Darkness. Remember.”
She frowns. “What about it?”
"Do you realize you’re talking to yourself?" Another voice, new and completely familiar in a comforting way. She turns to it and finds a blue-eyed youth in a cricketer’s outfit, hands in his trouser pockets. He watches her with concerned puzzlement.
She finds she hasn’t anything to answer him with, and feels absurdly like Alice just fallen into Wonderland; Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time; which, she supposes, would make him, whoever he is, the White Rabbit. This comparison strikes her as funny, and she covers a giggle with her hand.
“I’m the Doctor,” he introduces himself. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where we are.” It’s a sentence, really, but it lilts upwards into a question, one with no answer. When she doesn’t speak, he appears disappointed. “Of course not.” He quirks his head at her. “Is there a joke I haven’t gotten yet?”
“You’re late,” she says and tries not to giggle again (very undignified and unlike her, she feels), and when her hand comes away from her mouth, it’s stained with the blood from her head.
The Doctor crosses the distance to her, feet making a soft crunching sound against leaves and grass and dirt in which someone whispers to her to watch him closely, and he has a look at her hand and then her head. “Perhaps if you sat down a moment, miss..?”
She reaches deep past the headache for the name that sounds right, and is slightly puzzled by the answer. “Theta Sigma.” It feels very old and unused on her tongue, but she is completely certain it is hers.
He smiles warmly and helps her sit down on a patch of mossy rock. “An uncommon name.”
“It’s mine,” she tells him with conviction. “You’re wearing celery,” she adds.
“Yes, I am,” he affirms.
“Good for your teeth.” He smiles again, this time amused, asks her how many fingers she sees. Three, and he gives a nod of approval and helps her up.
“I think it would be best if we went to my TARDIS.” Just that one word, TARDIS, and her mind suddenly races with memories; a blue police box, so much bigger on the inside, the Time Vortex, E = mc3, ‘hold on’ and faster, faster, faster, something shoving her and the TARDIS away, far and far and far and past Time and Space and the Void until
There is a crack of flesh on flesh as he slaps her, and for a moment while she stares at him, his eyes are wide with panic and anger and a malignant, overwhelming sense of darkness. It disappears in a flicker of now to now, replaced by the gentle concern again. “I’m very sorry,” (he sounds strange and distant and not at all himself, just for that moment) “you appeared to be having a fit.” She touches her cheek, stinging from the blow, and is led through the forest with its realer-than-real trees to the TARDIS.
“Hello, old girl,” they say at the same time, she affectionate and he strangely anticipatory. He sweeps his arm out gallantly to let her enter the green-lit console room first. The Doctor follows her, carefully shutting the door on the forest outside, and she notices a jar sitting on the console, painted black and shining strangely. “What’s that?”
“An old friend of mine.” His rests his hand on the jar with that strange malignant look in his eyes again, and she almost turns away from him. “I was just about to drop him off home. Would you care to do the honours?”
She touches the back of her head, still bleeding sluggishly, and frowns. “But my head-“
“Plenty of time for that later.” His smile becomes fake, fixed in place. “The co-ordinates are already set, Theta, and it is time he be sent where he belongs.”
An odd way of phrasing it, she thinks, but her hands fly over the console’s controls, skillful and gentle as an old lover. There is a slight thrill to it, the TARDIS doing what it was born to do, time and space slipping away until they reach their destination. She places a hand on the black jar; his hesitates possessively, then draws back. “Where does this friend of yours live?”
He opens the doors with a grand sweep, and she is transfixed by the heart of nothing beyond them, the Void, the Howling. He leans towards her with an almost frightening intensity. “Throw him to his fate, Doctor.” Her eyes widen as he speaks the title, her title, and suddenly she knows, beyond the shadow of doubt, who he is.
She unscrews the lid of the jar, releasing the white light within that fills the room, overflows her senses and penetrates her shut eyelids with a wonderful, horrible agony.
Someone screams; it isn’t her.
The light lessens, and a hand is pressed to her head. The pain eases out slowly. She opens her eyes to the white figure released from his prison.
“It is not over,” says the White Guardian. “He will return.”
“That’s what you said last time,” the Doctor answers quietly.
The White Guardian disappears, the suggestion of a smile on his lips. The Doctor gingerly touches her hand to her head one more time, pleased to find it is better, and sets new coordinates for Earth.
Community:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse
Prompt: 193 - Write a ficlet inspired by the following image: Forest & Creek
Word Count: 1,152
Everywhere else she feels it, sometimes lazily drifting alongside her, sometimes rushing her on with adrenaline and excitement, sometimes relentlessly pulling her with it from one painful moment to the next. Here, it simply isn’t. Here, it is now, content to be now forever, and every now before and after besides. She opens her eyes with the shock of this realization, and, yes, if she stares at that tree closely enough, she can truly see it; a seed, a sapling, a mighty tree towering over the rest of the forest, an old stump withered and dying.
She turns away hurriedly, head splitting from the strain of seeing the tree’s life all at once, and instead watches the creek. “Doctor,” a voice sounds in the rush of water over stones.
“Who?” she answers cautiously.
“Listen to me, Doctor,” says the voice in the gentle roll of thunder from a storm far away. “Eternity. Darkness. Remember.”
She frowns. “What about it?”
"Do you realize you’re talking to yourself?" Another voice, new and completely familiar in a comforting way. She turns to it and finds a blue-eyed youth in a cricketer’s outfit, hands in his trouser pockets. He watches her with concerned puzzlement.
She finds she hasn’t anything to answer him with, and feels absurdly like Alice just fallen into Wonderland; Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time; which, she supposes, would make him, whoever he is, the White Rabbit. This comparison strikes her as funny, and she covers a giggle with her hand.
“I’m the Doctor,” he introduces himself. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where we are.” It’s a sentence, really, but it lilts upwards into a question, one with no answer. When she doesn’t speak, he appears disappointed. “Of course not.” He quirks his head at her. “Is there a joke I haven’t gotten yet?”
“You’re late,” she says and tries not to giggle again (very undignified and unlike her, she feels), and when her hand comes away from her mouth, it’s stained with the blood from her head.
The Doctor crosses the distance to her, feet making a soft crunching sound against leaves and grass and dirt in which someone whispers to her to watch him closely, and he has a look at her hand and then her head. “Perhaps if you sat down a moment, miss..?”
She reaches deep past the headache for the name that sounds right, and is slightly puzzled by the answer. “Theta Sigma.” It feels very old and unused on her tongue, but she is completely certain it is hers.
He smiles warmly and helps her sit down on a patch of mossy rock. “An uncommon name.”
“It’s mine,” she tells him with conviction. “You’re wearing celery,” she adds.
“Yes, I am,” he affirms.
“Good for your teeth.” He smiles again, this time amused, asks her how many fingers she sees. Three, and he gives a nod of approval and helps her up.
“I think it would be best if we went to my TARDIS.” Just that one word, TARDIS, and her mind suddenly races with memories; a blue police box, so much bigger on the inside, the Time Vortex, E = mc3, ‘hold on’ and faster, faster, faster, something shoving her and the TARDIS away, far and far and far and past Time and Space and the Void until
There is a crack of flesh on flesh as he slaps her, and for a moment while she stares at him, his eyes are wide with panic and anger and a malignant, overwhelming sense of darkness. It disappears in a flicker of now to now, replaced by the gentle concern again. “I’m very sorry,” (he sounds strange and distant and not at all himself, just for that moment) “you appeared to be having a fit.” She touches her cheek, stinging from the blow, and is led through the forest with its realer-than-real trees to the TARDIS.
“Hello, old girl,” they say at the same time, she affectionate and he strangely anticipatory. He sweeps his arm out gallantly to let her enter the green-lit console room first. The Doctor follows her, carefully shutting the door on the forest outside, and she notices a jar sitting on the console, painted black and shining strangely. “What’s that?”
“An old friend of mine.” His rests his hand on the jar with that strange malignant look in his eyes again, and she almost turns away from him. “I was just about to drop him off home. Would you care to do the honours?”
She touches the back of her head, still bleeding sluggishly, and frowns. “But my head-“
“Plenty of time for that later.” His smile becomes fake, fixed in place. “The co-ordinates are already set, Theta, and it is time he be sent where he belongs.”
An odd way of phrasing it, she thinks, but her hands fly over the console’s controls, skillful and gentle as an old lover. There is a slight thrill to it, the TARDIS doing what it was born to do, time and space slipping away until they reach their destination. She places a hand on the black jar; his hesitates possessively, then draws back. “Where does this friend of yours live?”
He opens the doors with a grand sweep, and she is transfixed by the heart of nothing beyond them, the Void, the Howling. He leans towards her with an almost frightening intensity. “Throw him to his fate, Doctor.” Her eyes widen as he speaks the title, her title, and suddenly she knows, beyond the shadow of doubt, who he is.
She unscrews the lid of the jar, releasing the white light within that fills the room, overflows her senses and penetrates her shut eyelids with a wonderful, horrible agony.
Someone screams; it isn’t her.
The light lessens, and a hand is pressed to her head. The pain eases out slowly. She opens her eyes to the white figure released from his prison.
“It is not over,” says the White Guardian. “He will return.”
“That’s what you said last time,” the Doctor answers quietly.
The White Guardian disappears, the suggestion of a smile on his lips. The Doctor gingerly touches her hand to her head one more time, pleased to find it is better, and sets new coordinates for Earth.
Community:
theatrical_musePrompt: 193 - Write a ficlet inspired by the following image: Forest & Creek
Word Count: 1,152
