Fic: "Rebirth"
Oct. 30th, 2008 01:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
watch_is_me'Verse: Personal canon, I think. A bit of self-retconning.
Words: 1,163
Prompts: Lessee. Well, now that I know more about canon and am over my initial Mad Enthusiasm of New Musedom (well, a bit, at least), I've pondered going back and smoothing out my muse's AU backstory. Particularly the way he gets out of the watch, making it something less violent and potentially OOC and less complicated. What with everyone kind of mourning the upcoming loss of Ten, I thought I'd write...the opposite of loss. In a way. Also, I owe a lot to reading![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
brigadiertardis's characterization of the TARDIS, in this fic. So shout-out there!
So, what's needed to read this? In my AU, the Doctor had no companions when he used the Chameleon Arch to hide from the Family of Blood. He left his human half in 1913, to live and die normally, and threw his Time Lord watch half out into space and time, locked away in the TARDIS. This is how he became himself again, after.
She was patient. She had always been patient, with him. Patient when he left, patient as he had his adventures, as he met and brought back and left and lost his many friends; patient as he made a mess of her circuits and a mess of her rooms; patient as he remade himself, over and over again. Patient as she learned the quirks and needs of each of his new faces, each of his personalities, the little things that would never be the same again and the great beautiful certainties that always held steady, that made him her Doctor, her partner, her family, her symbiote, her self.
Home, his humans said, is where your heart is—and hers was with him and his with hers, a fourth heart beating along with their shared three. They lived within each other and were each other, and she was always patient, because he was her and she was him, but now…
Now she had waited for so long, and she was losing her mind. Had lost it, when he locked himself away from her.
It pulsed there, so close, suffocating in the watch lying on her console. She felt the flutter of his memories, his being, the psychosomatic phantom-beat of his hearts against its thin metal shell. He was there, imprisoned, languishing, like a moth trapped by a child, hidden away and forgotten.
She couldn’t let him hurt. She couldn’t let him panic, beating himself into madness against the walls of that little circle of time, the loop of his own past, with no future to distract him, no new world or time or friend to run to. No new body waiting on the other side of danger and death and tragedy, no new man to become and wonder at.
This had been his plan, a sacrifice he had made, and she knew she was not intended to interfere. The others had always saved him, before, when he needed saving—his quick, vital, short-lived friends. He expected her to help and aid, but not step in and save him from himself, not directly, passionately, as they always had.
But he did not always do what was expected of him, and neither did she.
It took time. Long years ticking over. The golden fire at her heart drawing, thought by thought, memory by memory, spark by hot, burning, living spark, his self, his essence out of the watch. Like attracting like, the slow magnetism of her need for him, her need to help him. It took care. She could not let him get lost in herself, his two hearts in her one, the blazing furnace of it; could not let the Vortex she half-existed in rip him away even as she gathered him in.
Finally, the day came when the watch was only a watch, and he was her and she was him, more than they had ever been, and she treasured it, him within her, of her, fully, totally—knowing she must give it up. That she must let him go, to save him, as she had always let him go.
It took more time. He fought her, though he did not know it, his memories, all of the bright particles of his self darting off, exploring, trying to find places within her to be, to match, to marvel at. She sorted them out of herself, again and again, and tried to find the order of them. Was there any? Had there ever been order, to her Doctor? She fit him with himself, wove him together from all that they had shared together and all that the two of them were and remembered.
He needed shape again, and she constructed one, slowly, from the atoms of the air and the energy of her core and from his lingering presence, the marks of his hands on her console, his feet in her halls, the traces he had left behind as he had piloted her through the stars.
At first, he wavered. She, his ghost in the machine, watched him, the new ghost, her ghost. He appeared and disappeared, in one body, another body, the old and the young, walking and reading and thinking, replaying old snatches of habit and loops of routine.
She tried harder. She went into him, the essence that she held within herself, and took his full measure. Disoriented and afraid, lest she hurt or break, do irreparable damage, displace him with herself, she looked from the inside out, felt out his remembered corners, his boundaries, his form and dimensions. She threaded back out, carefully, so carefully, and used the new knowledge to strengthen her ghost. Here, she told it, here is what you are and were. Listen. This is the form you took. Take this form again.
Please. I need you.
One day, it looked up from its phantom pacing, and his self within her stirred for the first time. “...What is it? Old girl…? Where…?” And then its eyes faded, and it receded, became past and potential again.
But he had been there. She was close.
So close.
It drained her, as nothing had before, the last few days. He was almost whole, and she had to hold him together, feed the physical body that was almost there, almost right, and it required so much energy and attention to maintain—and to keep it quiet, in one spot, none of the memory-ritual-rewalking that it reverted to, left on its own, the nervous movement that was a reflex-reflection of his whole self’s restlessness. It took so much delicacy, too, to filter his essential self from hers for the final time, cross and recross and connect the threads of that wild, golden haywire being, warp and weft and over and under, tying them into the body she had struggled so hard to recreate, untangling her own essence from his, pulling away, pushing him out, forward, into reembodiment and independence and wholeness.
Until she was separate from him, bereft, as she disconnected the last few strands of her own golden heart and set his two finally, truly, beating again.
But then his mind flared to life and caught hers—his eyes snapped into focus, the eyes that she had made for him, from his memories and hers, and they were dark and right and full of him, and he ran his hands across the face that was his and hers (her creation, all of him), and the mark on his arm, that she had not known, not been certain, if she should remove (because she could, nothing compelled her to renew that brand, but it was part of who he was, and she had reset it in him, on him, believing it to be right)—and they were apart but whole again.
Her Doctor.
Free of the watch and free of her walls. Free to run out into the worlds again, to leave her waiting.
Her wayward, wandering heart.
Her home.
She would always be patient.
Words: 1,163
Prompts: Lessee. Well, now that I know more about canon and am over my initial Mad Enthusiasm of New Musedom (well, a bit, at least), I've pondered going back and smoothing out my muse's AU backstory. Particularly the way he gets out of the watch, making it something less violent and potentially OOC and less complicated. What with everyone kind of mourning the upcoming loss of Ten, I thought I'd write...the opposite of loss. In a way. Also, I owe a lot to reading
brigadiertardis's characterization of the TARDIS, in this fic. So shout-out there!So, what's needed to read this? In my AU, the Doctor had no companions when he used the Chameleon Arch to hide from the Family of Blood. He left his human half in 1913, to live and die normally, and threw his Time Lord watch half out into space and time, locked away in the TARDIS. This is how he became himself again, after.
She was patient. She had always been patient, with him. Patient when he left, patient as he had his adventures, as he met and brought back and left and lost his many friends; patient as he made a mess of her circuits and a mess of her rooms; patient as he remade himself, over and over again. Patient as she learned the quirks and needs of each of his new faces, each of his personalities, the little things that would never be the same again and the great beautiful certainties that always held steady, that made him her Doctor, her partner, her family, her symbiote, her self.
Home, his humans said, is where your heart is—and hers was with him and his with hers, a fourth heart beating along with their shared three. They lived within each other and were each other, and she was always patient, because he was her and she was him, but now…
Now she had waited for so long, and she was losing her mind. Had lost it, when he locked himself away from her.
It pulsed there, so close, suffocating in the watch lying on her console. She felt the flutter of his memories, his being, the psychosomatic phantom-beat of his hearts against its thin metal shell. He was there, imprisoned, languishing, like a moth trapped by a child, hidden away and forgotten.
She couldn’t let him hurt. She couldn’t let him panic, beating himself into madness against the walls of that little circle of time, the loop of his own past, with no future to distract him, no new world or time or friend to run to. No new body waiting on the other side of danger and death and tragedy, no new man to become and wonder at.
This had been his plan, a sacrifice he had made, and she knew she was not intended to interfere. The others had always saved him, before, when he needed saving—his quick, vital, short-lived friends. He expected her to help and aid, but not step in and save him from himself, not directly, passionately, as they always had.
But he did not always do what was expected of him, and neither did she.
It took time. Long years ticking over. The golden fire at her heart drawing, thought by thought, memory by memory, spark by hot, burning, living spark, his self, his essence out of the watch. Like attracting like, the slow magnetism of her need for him, her need to help him. It took care. She could not let him get lost in herself, his two hearts in her one, the blazing furnace of it; could not let the Vortex she half-existed in rip him away even as she gathered him in.
Finally, the day came when the watch was only a watch, and he was her and she was him, more than they had ever been, and she treasured it, him within her, of her, fully, totally—knowing she must give it up. That she must let him go, to save him, as she had always let him go.
It took more time. He fought her, though he did not know it, his memories, all of the bright particles of his self darting off, exploring, trying to find places within her to be, to match, to marvel at. She sorted them out of herself, again and again, and tried to find the order of them. Was there any? Had there ever been order, to her Doctor? She fit him with himself, wove him together from all that they had shared together and all that the two of them were and remembered.
He needed shape again, and she constructed one, slowly, from the atoms of the air and the energy of her core and from his lingering presence, the marks of his hands on her console, his feet in her halls, the traces he had left behind as he had piloted her through the stars.
At first, he wavered. She, his ghost in the machine, watched him, the new ghost, her ghost. He appeared and disappeared, in one body, another body, the old and the young, walking and reading and thinking, replaying old snatches of habit and loops of routine.
She tried harder. She went into him, the essence that she held within herself, and took his full measure. Disoriented and afraid, lest she hurt or break, do irreparable damage, displace him with herself, she looked from the inside out, felt out his remembered corners, his boundaries, his form and dimensions. She threaded back out, carefully, so carefully, and used the new knowledge to strengthen her ghost. Here, she told it, here is what you are and were. Listen. This is the form you took. Take this form again.
Please. I need you.
One day, it looked up from its phantom pacing, and his self within her stirred for the first time. “...What is it? Old girl…? Where…?” And then its eyes faded, and it receded, became past and potential again.
But he had been there. She was close.
So close.
It drained her, as nothing had before, the last few days. He was almost whole, and she had to hold him together, feed the physical body that was almost there, almost right, and it required so much energy and attention to maintain—and to keep it quiet, in one spot, none of the memory-ritual-rewalking that it reverted to, left on its own, the nervous movement that was a reflex-reflection of his whole self’s restlessness. It took so much delicacy, too, to filter his essential self from hers for the final time, cross and recross and connect the threads of that wild, golden haywire being, warp and weft and over and under, tying them into the body she had struggled so hard to recreate, untangling her own essence from his, pulling away, pushing him out, forward, into reembodiment and independence and wholeness.
Until she was separate from him, bereft, as she disconnected the last few strands of her own golden heart and set his two finally, truly, beating again.
But then his mind flared to life and caught hers—his eyes snapped into focus, the eyes that she had made for him, from his memories and hers, and they were dark and right and full of him, and he ran his hands across the face that was his and hers (her creation, all of him), and the mark on his arm, that she had not known, not been certain, if she should remove (because she could, nothing compelled her to renew that brand, but it was part of who he was, and she had reset it in him, on him, believing it to be right)—and they were apart but whole again.
Her Doctor.
Free of the watch and free of her walls. Free to run out into the worlds again, to leave her waiting.
Her wayward, wandering heart.
Her home.
She would always be patient.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 05:44 am (UTC)This was really something. Thank you for writing it.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 05:51 am (UTC)You're welcome :D ...I wanted to write something kinda affirmative. It's been a downer evening in Who-land .-.