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.”
