Quintuple Drabble. Doctor Who. The Leal.
Aug. 14th, 2007 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eponymous_roseTitle: The Leal
Word Count: 500-word quintuple drabble.
Spoilers: "The Parting of the Ways" fill-in-the-blanks, with spoilers for "Father's Day" and "Genesis of the Daleks".
Rating: G
Characters: The Controller, Jackie, Captain Jack, the Doctor, and Rose.
Author's Note: This is a quick little thing born of pure insanity and a sort of mutual dare withrosa_acicularis forged in the hope of destroying the very fabric of space and time. The poem was selected at random from www.plagiarist.com and the drabbles were written around it based on what the stolen tiny time-travelling robots tell me to write. Yes. Perfectly sane, in other words.
The Leal
The friends I made have slipped and strayed,
And who’s the one that cares?
A trifling lot and best forgot –
And that’s my tale, and theirs.
Then if my friendships break and bend,
There’s little need to cry
The while I know that every foe
Is faithful till I die.
-“The Leal”, Dorothy Parker
1. For I have brought your destruction
Numbers cannot die.
She is cold, alive, blind, alone. Her heart beats one hundred twenty-six times per minute. It takes her three point seven seconds to lift her head and begin to stand. The air is seven and a half degrees colder here.
She was five years old when they took her, when they installed her, when they gave her the numbers that would enslave her, that would destroy her and save her.
She thinks of the Doctor and there is a light in the darkness; he is one man. One, alone in the universe. Just one.
Numbers cannot die.
2. He was full of mad ideas
This isn’t how it was supposed to end.
Jackie remembers the car, the church, the impossible girl clutching at a dying hand. Her harsh words – and his – echo in the dark when it’s so easy to forget not to mourn him. They weren’t right for each other; never were.
But they could have been.
Rose knows. She knows about the sports drinks and the daft schemes and the way they fought. Jackie hates and loves the Doctor for that.
The doors slam shut; the time machine takes her daughter to her death.
This isn’t how it was supposed to end.
3. I kinda figured that
He’s a coward; always has been.
He’s become an expert at setting his alarm for Volcano Day, ducking out long before the last possible moment; after all, this particular Captain doesn’t need to go down with his ship.
He’s got no more ammunition, but that’s what the Doctor’s been trying to tell him all along. It would be so easy to run, to be next to the Doctor when the end comes so he wouldn’t have to die alone. To offer that small comfort.
The Daleks approach, and for once he doesn’t run away.
He’s a coward; always has been.
4. Maybe it’s time
Heroism has a lot to do with perspective.
Two wires, life and death and so much more, in his hands. Have I the right?
If he’s learned anything from these stupid apes, it’s that history repeats itself.
He’s killed the Daleks, he’s destroyed Gallifrey once, twice, a million times. And it’s happening again: salvation from destruction. Light from darkness.
But the Time Lords are gone, and time is seeping away unchecked, eddying and blurring indiscriminately. There is no history to repeat.
He calls himself coward and, eyes closed, waits for the end.
Heroism has a lot to do with perspective.
5. Everything must come to dust
The universe is a cold, forbidding place.
Rose breathes eternity, feels time running down her cheeks, mixing with tears and mascara. Her Doctor, alone and terrified. Protected.
Life and death wing their way dizzily across the unspooled glory of her mind, and he’s pleading with her to stop. Something intimate and wonderful and unnameable is happening, but his hand on hers is thunder.
And for an instant, just a brief moment, she’s standing with a new man, watching a new sunset over a new world. He smiles at her, squeezes her hand.
“The universe,” she breathes, “is a fantastic place.”
Word Count: 500-word quintuple drabble.
Spoilers: "The Parting of the Ways" fill-in-the-blanks, with spoilers for "Father's Day" and "Genesis of the Daleks".
Rating: G
Characters: The Controller, Jackie, Captain Jack, the Doctor, and Rose.
Author's Note: This is a quick little thing born of pure insanity and a sort of mutual dare with
rosa_acicularis forged in the hope of destroying the very fabric of space and time. The poem was selected at random from www.plagiarist.com and the drabbles were written around it based on what the stolen tiny time-travelling robots tell me to write. Yes. Perfectly sane, in other words.The Leal
The friends I made have slipped and strayed,
And who’s the one that cares?
A trifling lot and best forgot –
And that’s my tale, and theirs.
Then if my friendships break and bend,
There’s little need to cry
The while I know that every foe
Is faithful till I die.
-“The Leal”, Dorothy Parker
1. For I have brought your destruction
Numbers cannot die.
She is cold, alive, blind, alone. Her heart beats one hundred twenty-six times per minute. It takes her three point seven seconds to lift her head and begin to stand. The air is seven and a half degrees colder here.
She was five years old when they took her, when they installed her, when they gave her the numbers that would enslave her, that would destroy her and save her.
She thinks of the Doctor and there is a light in the darkness; he is one man. One, alone in the universe. Just one.
Numbers cannot die.
2. He was full of mad ideas
This isn’t how it was supposed to end.
Jackie remembers the car, the church, the impossible girl clutching at a dying hand. Her harsh words – and his – echo in the dark when it’s so easy to forget not to mourn him. They weren’t right for each other; never were.
But they could have been.
Rose knows. She knows about the sports drinks and the daft schemes and the way they fought. Jackie hates and loves the Doctor for that.
The doors slam shut; the time machine takes her daughter to her death.
This isn’t how it was supposed to end.
3. I kinda figured that
He’s a coward; always has been.
He’s become an expert at setting his alarm for Volcano Day, ducking out long before the last possible moment; after all, this particular Captain doesn’t need to go down with his ship.
He’s got no more ammunition, but that’s what the Doctor’s been trying to tell him all along. It would be so easy to run, to be next to the Doctor when the end comes so he wouldn’t have to die alone. To offer that small comfort.
The Daleks approach, and for once he doesn’t run away.
He’s a coward; always has been.
4. Maybe it’s time
Heroism has a lot to do with perspective.
Two wires, life and death and so much more, in his hands. Have I the right?
If he’s learned anything from these stupid apes, it’s that history repeats itself.
He’s killed the Daleks, he’s destroyed Gallifrey once, twice, a million times. And it’s happening again: salvation from destruction. Light from darkness.
But the Time Lords are gone, and time is seeping away unchecked, eddying and blurring indiscriminately. There is no history to repeat.
He calls himself coward and, eyes closed, waits for the end.
Heroism has a lot to do with perspective.
5. Everything must come to dust
The universe is a cold, forbidding place.
Rose breathes eternity, feels time running down her cheeks, mixing with tears and mascara. Her Doctor, alone and terrified. Protected.
Life and death wing their way dizzily across the unspooled glory of her mind, and he’s pleading with her to stop. Something intimate and wonderful and unnameable is happening, but his hand on hers is thunder.
And for an instant, just a brief moment, she’s standing with a new man, watching a new sunset over a new world. He smiles at her, squeezes her hand.
“The universe,” she breathes, “is a fantastic place.”
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-15 05:27 am (UTC)Sorry. Ahem. Am now dignified and coherent commentator. Will even impose order upon thought:
1) Dorothy Parker rocks my socks. And, freakishly enough, as I also used www.plagarist.com for my inspiration, my part of this little exchange also used one of her poems. This is getting creepy.
2) These are beautiful. Jack and Jackie and oh, how much do I love the Classic Who and the Controller? And then those last two...god, it all builds so wonderfully to the sheer awesomeness that is Rose at the end and this:
Life and death wing their way dizzily across the unspooled glory of her mind, and he’s pleading with her to stop. Something intimate and wonderful and unnameable is happening, but his hand on hers is thunder.
Is hands down the very best description of my favorite DW scene EVER. The tiny, time-travelling robots approve. Oh yes, they do.
3) Er...you see, I'm on Pacific time, so technically I still have an hour and a half to finish my contribution to this insanity. Unfortunately, what was a drabble has mutated into something rather...longer. A lot longer. At the moment, about ten times longer.
Oops.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-15 05:38 am (UTC)1) This is getting extremely creepy. I choose to believe that it's the first warning sign of our unravelling space and time. *nodnod*
2) I am absolutely overjoyed to have gained approval from the tiny, time-travelling robots! :D
*hastily* And you, of course. Yes.
3) Oh, that's all right. I think I might be able to find it in my heart to forgive you. *does a discreet happy-dance*
I knew I'd turn this into something epic if I didn't impose a limit. Of course, I wasn't counting on actually working at work today, which killed my writing time dead and meant that I wasn't so much writing as doing a lot of brainstorming and then typing up the result in twenty minutes. I really want to do more with this poem, though! It's like a lovely Time War brainworm just waiting to do brainwormy things. :D
no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 05:23 am (UTC)Dear God, woman, what have we done?
*runs to work on fic which is now 3000 words and counting...*
no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 05:36 am (UTC)...is it a bad thing that your jam-like puddle analogy makes me crave a really, really big slice of toast? And then gets Josh's "...and a Wheat Thin the size of Lake Tahoe" line stuck in my head?
"What have we done?" What haven't we done?
*does the Hyperactive Dance of Fic Explosion, which I don't get to do often enough* Veddy, veddy excited to see this! :D
*runs to work on chapter four of WF so as not to feel lazy in comparison*
no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 07:38 am (UTC)Oh dear. Now I want Wheat Thins. Badly.
*thinks perhaps there might be a slightly stale box hidden in the cupboard*
Eee! More WF soon to be forthcoming is good news, yes? I would like much to read more in a future which is very near and so much like the present that it smells faintly of the past.
Umm...not quite sure what happened just then. Think my brain might be imploding.
I blame Dorothy Parker.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 04:48 pm (UTC)Brain implosion is a very good thing! Well, sort of. Less messy than explosion, anyway.
And more WF should be forthcoming shortlyish; just waiting on the beta for Chapter Three, and then the billions of edits I'll make once I realize just how silly the whole chapter is, and then I'll just have to finish off Chapter Four and send it away to be betaed.
Alas, I'm leaving for a week-long trip to the States tomorrow and I don't know if I'll have internet. *grumbles*