Fic: "War to End Wars," Part Deux
Oct. 21st, 2008 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
watch_is_me'Verse: Personal canon.
Words: 481.
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 two of a long story I've got drafted and am writing up this week, on how that life might have gone.
Part one is here.
More and more often, he woke, in the middle of the night, threw on his dressing gown, and retreated to his office. Some nights, she got up herself, went to the kitchen and made something warm to drink, brought it back to him where he sat scribbling at his desk, and sat nearby, sipping from her own mug, watching him write and sketch. Write and sketch, feverishly. Sometimes he'd tell her what he was trying to get down, what he'd seen in his most recent dreams, what he was working so hard to capture, to articulate, to get right. He'd pass sheets of loose paper over to her, appendices and alterations, let her read the vignettes he scrawled in the margins and the long pages of the narrative he couldn’t quite piece together from the fragments. He’d show her his drawings—monsters, landscapes, artifacts, people and places out of fairytales; complicated schematics for impossible devices; tangles of circles like medieval astronomical diagrams. He’d try to explain to her, tell her about his Doctor and the journeys he’d gone on that night—he, the Doctor, living while her John slept. He, the Doctor, bold and arrogant and vivid where her John paced and worried and stood at windows as though waiting for someone— her John, who never talked of his past, of home and family and childhood. Her John, whose eyes held such deep worry for the future.
One night, she asked him,
What about the Doctor’s family? Does he ever want children?
He thought before he answered.
she said,
if he could have children, what would the Doctor call them?
Family names?
The fear and the distance fell out of his eyes, then, replaced by stars. She would tell her daughter, later, that she had been a sparkle in her father’s eyes almost as much as in her mother’s.
He had been so surprised.
Part three is here.
Words: 481.
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 two of a long story I've got drafted and am writing up this week, on how that life might have gone.
More and more often, he woke, in the middle of the night, threw on his dressing gown, and retreated to his office. Some nights, she got up herself, went to the kitchen and made something warm to drink, brought it back to him where he sat scribbling at his desk, and sat nearby, sipping from her own mug, watching him write and sketch. Write and sketch, feverishly. Sometimes he'd tell her what he was trying to get down, what he'd seen in his most recent dreams, what he was working so hard to capture, to articulate, to get right. He'd pass sheets of loose paper over to her, appendices and alterations, let her read the vignettes he scrawled in the margins and the long pages of the narrative he couldn’t quite piece together from the fragments. He’d show her his drawings—monsters, landscapes, artifacts, people and places out of fairytales; complicated schematics for impossible devices; tangles of circles like medieval astronomical diagrams. He’d try to explain to her, tell her about his Doctor and the journeys he’d gone on that night—he, the Doctor, living while her John slept. He, the Doctor, bold and arrogant and vivid where her John paced and worried and stood at windows as though waiting for someone— her John, who never talked of his past, of home and family and childhood. Her John, whose eyes held such deep worry for the future.
One night, she asked him,
What about the Doctor’s family? Does he ever want children?
He thought before he answered.
Maybe,he said.
The Doctor had had a family once, but they were never in the dreams. Something was wrong, about the Doctor, for the Doctor. He could never have children. He was always alone.Well,
she said,
if he could have children, what would the Doctor call them?
Mm. Sarah Jane. Koschei, if it was a boy.Koschei?
Maybe not. Maybe…Alistair Gordon. That had a good sound, didn’t it?He looked at her, vulnerable, another of those odd wrongfooted moments of his, when he needed her to reassure him, to tell him that it was fine to pluck names out of the air like that, to say them as though they meant something deep and personal and long ago.
Family names?
No. Yes. Maybe. Whose family? His or the Doctor’s? …And why was she asking such peculiar questions?For all of his distraction and distance, he was a clever man. She gave him the short time he needed to search her face and find the reason.
Oh. OH. Really? No. Really? She was…? He was…?
The fear and the distance fell out of his eyes, then, replaced by stars. She would tell her daughter, later, that she had been a sparkle in her father’s eyes almost as much as in her mother’s.
He had been so surprised.
