watch_is_me (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
watch_is_me) wrote2008-10-25 09:45 pm
watch_is_me) wrote2008-10-25 09:45 pm
"War to End Wars," Part Vosem, or OMG The End
'Verse: Personal canon.
Words: 741.
Prompt: Just me.
In my personal alternate universe canon thingie, the Doctor never reclaimed his human half in the equivalent of the "Human Nature" eps. So John Smith got to live his own, entirely mortal life. This is part eight of a long story I've got drafted and am writing up this week, on how that life might have gone.
LOOK I FINISHED IT. IF YOU HAVE FEEDBACK OR READ ALL OF THIS OR ANYTHING, HELLO, I LOVE YOU FOREVER AND GIVE YOU KITTENS AND COOKIES. KITTEN COOKIES. *hyper!~~~~~~~*
Part one is here, part two here, part three here, part four here, part five here,, part six here, and part seven here.
Joan smiled at her husband as he sat poring over his manuscript, Alistair on his knee, grabbing after the pages. It was almost finished, he’d told her. Now, he should be modest, really he should, but it was quite an accomplishment, a fantastic storyline, it out-Wellsed Wells—amazing, to finally wrestle all of the snippets and impressions he’d collected into some semblance of order, a real, coherent tale, a hero’s journey. Wonderful, he told her at night, before they went to bed, it was wonderful, realizing that his dreams weren’t sacrosanct and that he could shape them, order them around, if he wanted to. Amend them and rework them and use them to write a novel, an actual novel, not some mad universal travelogue.
He’d always wanted to write a novel.
She came up behind him, and put a hand on his shoulder—her thin man, her scarecrow dreamer. Didn’t say anything, because she knew there was nothing to say. Now they both knew what it was like, to lose people to war. To grapple with the absence of a life that should have continued.
She felt him give in, relax, under her hand, something the old John would never have done.
She kept silent. She never told them how her soldier had gone to the war and come back changed. That he had left with that distance in his eyes and come back with it gone, wiped away. Left a veteran and returned whole—clear, present, and finally, truly part of her world, her universe, right beside her now, living along with her and with their children. That it was as though he had lived the war the wrong way ‘round, backwards in time, a warrior Merlin.
It’s about the Doctor, of course, your novel.
Words: 741.
Prompt: Just me.
In my personal alternate universe canon thingie, the Doctor never reclaimed his human half in the equivalent of the "Human Nature" eps. So John Smith got to live his own, entirely mortal life. This is part eight of a long story I've got drafted and am writing up this week, on how that life might have gone.
LOOK I FINISHED IT. IF YOU HAVE FEEDBACK OR READ ALL OF THIS OR ANYTHING, HELLO, I LOVE YOU FOREVER AND GIVE YOU KITTENS AND COOKIES. KITTEN COOKIES. *hyper!~~~~~~~*
Joan smiled at her husband as he sat poring over his manuscript, Alistair on his knee, grabbing after the pages. It was almost finished, he’d told her. Now, he should be modest, really he should, but it was quite an accomplishment, a fantastic storyline, it out-Wellsed Wells—amazing, to finally wrestle all of the snippets and impressions he’d collected into some semblance of order, a real, coherent tale, a hero’s journey. Wonderful, he told her at night, before they went to bed, it was wonderful, realizing that his dreams weren’t sacrosanct and that he could shape them, order them around, if he wanted to. Amend them and rework them and use them to write a novel, an actual novel, not some mad universal travelogue.
He’d always wanted to write a novel.
He’d dedicate it to Tim,he said.
She came up behind him, and put a hand on his shoulder—her thin man, her scarecrow dreamer. Didn’t say anything, because she knew there was nothing to say. Now they both knew what it was like, to lose people to war. To grapple with the absence of a life that should have continued.
I live, and so many young men die.We don’t choose. We can’t. ...I’m so very glad you lived.
I could have saved him. If I’d been there.No.
She felt him give in, relax, under her hand, something the old John would never have done.
No. No, you’re right. I’m no god.He turned to face her, smiling.
I’m John Smith, the dreamer. The writer.My writer.
Always your writer. Shall I do you a sonnet?She’d spoken with other women, others whose husbands, fiancés, brothers, sons, had come back from the war. They talked about how different their men were, now—how quiet and far-away, distant, lost, caught out of time and place, as though they were always seeing invisible sights, waiting for something or someone.
She kept silent. She never told them how her soldier had gone to the war and come back changed. That he had left with that distance in his eyes and come back with it gone, wiped away. Left a veteran and returned whole—clear, present, and finally, truly part of her world, her universe, right beside her now, living along with her and with their children. That it was as though he had lived the war the wrong way ‘round, backwards in time, a warrior Merlin.
It’s about the Doctor, of course, your novel.
Oh, not at all. Part of it. It’s not really his story.Tell me.
He’s at the beginning. He fights this terrible war, like this war, the Great War, except far worse. Far, far worse. It’s not even a war, so much as an event, happening everywhere and always, a perpetuity of war. When it ends, as much as it can ever really end, he’s won but he’s lost so much. And he thinks, that will be the last war. War will not happen again. That was the apex, the nadir. Nothing like that could ever happen again.But it does.
Yes. It does. He comes here, to Earth, and he loves it, in the whole universe, he loves our little planet best. Except the war follows him, the last throes of it, and he has to destroy the Earth and everything on it, to win the war. To finish it forever.Oh, John.
But that’s not the real story. That’s just the beginning. The story’s also about Earth. You see, there are these men and women, all throughout history, who know that war will come, like that, someday, a final war, and they prepare. They go to the stars, long, long before the Doctor’s war comes. And he never knows. He underestimates us. We save ourselves. From war. From the Doctor. We make our universe vast and beautiful, and we never die.I much prefer that ending. But, the Earth, everything on it dies, still? When your Doctor comes?
Yes. But the universe stays on. It’s whatever we make it, they make it, the explorers. Whatever we carry out with us and come home to.John...with all of that in your head, and the war…is this too small for you? Our life, here?
No. Never. Joan, you and Sarah and Alistair, it’s the widest universe that’s ever been.I'm glad. ...Have you decided on a title yet?
Oh, yes.What is it?
The Oncoming Storm.