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eponymous_roseTitle: The Deepsky Atlas (4/?)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eponymous_rose
Word Count: 1618
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Adventure, Humour
Characters: Fourth Doctor, Harry Sullivan, Sarah Jane Smith
Summary: Our intrepid travellers make a valiant attempt to unravel the tangled threads of the time distortion. The Sculptor's Chisel remains his usual genial self.
Part One: Circinus
Part Two: Caelum
Part Three: Eridanus
THE DEEPSKY ATLAS
CHAPTER FOUR
Sarah stared deep into the thick blue liquid, shifting her mug to and fro and watching as hypnotic swirls of brilliant colour wended their way around the edges of the cup. Rather than the expected slosh-slosh, the sound had something of a ringing to it, a distant hum. Cautiously raising the cup to her lips, she took a quick sip.
It tasted, she decided, vaguely of elderberries.
Caelum was watching her with dark eyes, his serious mien prominent as ever, despite all the Doctor's continued and determined efforts to break his composure. He'd even remained calm at the news that their room had caved in, beyond a brief, somewhat anxious query as to Harry's well-being. Why Harry rated special treatment, Sarah wasn't entirely sure, but it was the closest she'd seen Caelum come to real feeling since they'd arrived.
Now, judging by Caelum's dour expression, it seemed as though everyone's life or death depended on how much she was enjoying her mug of unidentifiable liquid. "Oh, it's jolly good," Sarah said quickly. Caelum didn't so much relax as reduce the level of his glare by one-third, which Sarah took as a sign of hearty approval.
"I believe you have a few answers that we haven't thought to ask questions for yet," the Doctor said. He hadn't so much as glanced at the ceiling since they'd entered the kitchen, but Harry and Sarah had both been sneaking peeks upward on a regular basis, under the assumption that it never hurt to be sure.
"I expect I must," Caelum said, shifting his gaze to the Doctor, who grinned. "But my answers are of no value to you without the questions." Quite suddenly, he turned his eyes to Harry. "What questions do you wish to put to me?"
Harry, his mouth full of some sort of purple crumbly biscuit that Sarah hadn't yet worked up the courage to try, said: "Mrff?"
"I've got a question," the Doctor said, leaning back in his chair so that it tottered on its back legs. "What's been causing these terribly selective time eddies? I mean, you've got a well-supplied larder, despite being the only one about the place."
Caelum blinked slowly. "I don't know how to answer that question," he said. "I do not understand. I am the only one - I have always been the only one, and I will always be the only one. I will stand watch, in this fortress, for the return of Eridanus, the great river."
"While the world collapses around you," the Doctor added.
"The room will have reconstituted itself in our absence," Caelum said.
The Doctor jolted forward, and the legs of his chair struck the ground solidly; Sarah and Harry jumped at the noise. "What?"
Caelum gave a small shrug. "It is the way. From destruction comes rebirth. The food we eat here will reappear before long. I have scratched my name in these walls countless times, only to watch it disappear again and again."
"Doctor?" Sarah started to stand - the Doctor's face had gone suddenly pale - but he waved a hand in a gesture of reassurance.
"This is more serious than I thought," he said. "There seems to be a full-fledged time loop in place around this lighthouse."
Harry had been reaching for another biscuit, but paused with arm extended at the Doctor's tone of voice. "What do you mean?"
The Doctor was fishing in his pockets. "I mean, Harry, that we have no way of knowing how many times we've had this conversation! We could have gone through this day once already, eating biscuits and sipping drinks and discussing what to do next - we could have done this a thousand times before!" He pulled something from his pocket, and Sarah recognized, with a shock of dismay, the sonic screwdriver, still split neatly in half from their previous encounter with the robot in the desert. "Right," he said, and pocketed it again.
Sarah glanced over at Harry, who shrugged and snatched up the biscuit he'd been eyeing. She felt a bit of a chill at her own lack of panic: was this pragmatic reaction the result of the time loop, of some intrinsic familiarity with the situation - or just too much time spent travelling with the Doctor to worry about things outside their control?
"Say, Doctor," she said, as a thought struck her. "You're a Time Lord."
"Am I?" the Doctor said, wide-eyed.
She ignored him and ploughed on with her theory. "And you've - well, you've always gone on about being particularly sensitive to distortions in time. Wouldn't you notice something like this?"
He frowned. "You know, Sarah, you're absolutely right. At the very least, I'd be a bit on the queasy side - time distortion doesn't agree with the digestive faculties at all." He raised a finger, the very picture of a schoolmaster coming to the point of his lecture. "That means that we're either in the first iteration of this particular loop, which is a bit of a tricky thing to define, or-" He frowned. "Caelum. How many years have you been here?"
"Six thousand, nine hundred and seventy-two," Caelum said.
"Ah." The Doctor was grinning. "And what race-?"
"I am of the Marshlaktil people."
"Ah!" The Doctor said again, and laughed.
"What is it, Doctor?" Harry demanded, but the Doctor just kept laughing. Sarah resisted the urge to bung her mug at him just to see if he'd notice.
The Doctor waved a hand, but his chuckles seemed to be dying down. "Caelum! How long do your people typically live?"
"I was a mere two hundred years old when I arrived here. A typical lifespan for a warrior is four thousand years," he said. "We typically die in combat, but if we are relegated to a life of peace, we can live to be over ten thousand years old."
The Doctor beamed. "There, you see?"
Sarah didn't. "What-"
"It's perfectly simple, Sarah." He seemed ready to go off in another fit of laughter, and Sarah recognized for the first time that it was relief, sheer relief that he was expressing. "The time loop must be constrained to the building and its nonliving contents - Caelum here has aged just like everything else. We're not trapped in a time loop - the lighthouse is, the very structure of it!" He snorted. "I should have known from the start - how else would Caelum have been aware of the repetition?" He frowned, and Sarah knew that he was off in his own little world again. "That still doesn't explain why everything seems to have sped up, why the lighthouse is the only thing standing, and why that robot sentry's still out there-"
"Hold up just a minute, then," Harry said. "What the devil are you doing here, if you're not trapped by- by that time loop?"
Caelum's eyes dropped in what Sarah realized was an expression of deference - just what had Harry been up to? "I have told you; I await the arrival of Eridanus," he said. "The Sculptor has made it known unto me that the river shall rise again. I must make ready."
"Ah," Harry said. "Well. Can't argue with that, can we?"
"We jolly well can!" Sarah protested, journalistic instinct springing to the fore. "That sounds like a load of bunk to me. Why are you staying here? What happened to everyone else? Who's this Sculptor, anyway?"
Caelum's eyes flashed, and suddenly he was right in front of Sarah, right up in front of her, and his sword had somehow found its way into his hand, and it did really look extremely sharp when he held it up to her nose like that-
"The Sculptor," he said, "is Setus, the true monster of the sea. When Eridanus returns, he will be present, to give me further orders. He will come. He must come."
"Oh?" Sarah said. Her voice was too high by half; behind Caelum, Harry was on his feet, advancing carefully, and she couldn't see the Doctor-
She kept expecting Caelum to wave the sword menacingly, like every other cliche she'd met, but he was all intent and purpose - the blade stayed neatly poised over the tip of her nose. If Harry jumped him now, she had no doubt that they'd all wind up killed.
"We shall not speak of this again," Caelum said, and his voice was low and dangerous.
"All right," Sarah squeaked.
And then, quite suddenly, the Doctor was at her side, gently pushing the tip of the blade away from her face. "She understands, Caelum," he said. "To question is her nature; she meant neither you nor the Sculptor any harm by it."
Caelum turned to look at him, and for a terrible moment Sarah thought he would attack the Doctor, but then his sword lowered and he bowed his head. Harry darted past him to stand by her side, which she found oddly reassuring.
"My apologies," Caelum said, in the same dead voice. "The Sculptor has warned me of enemies who would make me question his purpose." He straightened. "I shall refresh your drink," he said, and, taking Sarah's mug from her shaking hands, he promptly stalked out of the kitchen.
Sarah shivered, and felt Harry's hand on her shoulder. "What was that?" Harry said.
The Doctor ran a hand through his hair. "Well," he said, "it was either a particularly nasty bit of religious fanaticism, or-"
"Or?" Sarah asked.
"Or we should really keep in mind that, time loop or no, Caelum's just spent the last seven thousand years living alone in a lighthouse." The Doctor stuffed his hands in his pockets and sighed. "He's utterly insane."
Author:
eponymous_roseWord Count: 1618
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Adventure, Humour
Characters: Fourth Doctor, Harry Sullivan, Sarah Jane Smith
Summary: Our intrepid travellers make a valiant attempt to unravel the tangled threads of the time distortion. The Sculptor's Chisel remains his usual genial self.
Part One: Circinus
Part Two: Caelum
Part Three: Eridanus
THE DEEPSKY ATLAS
CHAPTER FOUR
Sarah stared deep into the thick blue liquid, shifting her mug to and fro and watching as hypnotic swirls of brilliant colour wended their way around the edges of the cup. Rather than the expected slosh-slosh, the sound had something of a ringing to it, a distant hum. Cautiously raising the cup to her lips, she took a quick sip.
It tasted, she decided, vaguely of elderberries.
Caelum was watching her with dark eyes, his serious mien prominent as ever, despite all the Doctor's continued and determined efforts to break his composure. He'd even remained calm at the news that their room had caved in, beyond a brief, somewhat anxious query as to Harry's well-being. Why Harry rated special treatment, Sarah wasn't entirely sure, but it was the closest she'd seen Caelum come to real feeling since they'd arrived.
Now, judging by Caelum's dour expression, it seemed as though everyone's life or death depended on how much she was enjoying her mug of unidentifiable liquid. "Oh, it's jolly good," Sarah said quickly. Caelum didn't so much relax as reduce the level of his glare by one-third, which Sarah took as a sign of hearty approval.
"I believe you have a few answers that we haven't thought to ask questions for yet," the Doctor said. He hadn't so much as glanced at the ceiling since they'd entered the kitchen, but Harry and Sarah had both been sneaking peeks upward on a regular basis, under the assumption that it never hurt to be sure.
"I expect I must," Caelum said, shifting his gaze to the Doctor, who grinned. "But my answers are of no value to you without the questions." Quite suddenly, he turned his eyes to Harry. "What questions do you wish to put to me?"
Harry, his mouth full of some sort of purple crumbly biscuit that Sarah hadn't yet worked up the courage to try, said: "Mrff?"
"I've got a question," the Doctor said, leaning back in his chair so that it tottered on its back legs. "What's been causing these terribly selective time eddies? I mean, you've got a well-supplied larder, despite being the only one about the place."
Caelum blinked slowly. "I don't know how to answer that question," he said. "I do not understand. I am the only one - I have always been the only one, and I will always be the only one. I will stand watch, in this fortress, for the return of Eridanus, the great river."
"While the world collapses around you," the Doctor added.
"The room will have reconstituted itself in our absence," Caelum said.
The Doctor jolted forward, and the legs of his chair struck the ground solidly; Sarah and Harry jumped at the noise. "What?"
Caelum gave a small shrug. "It is the way. From destruction comes rebirth. The food we eat here will reappear before long. I have scratched my name in these walls countless times, only to watch it disappear again and again."
"Doctor?" Sarah started to stand - the Doctor's face had gone suddenly pale - but he waved a hand in a gesture of reassurance.
"This is more serious than I thought," he said. "There seems to be a full-fledged time loop in place around this lighthouse."
Harry had been reaching for another biscuit, but paused with arm extended at the Doctor's tone of voice. "What do you mean?"
The Doctor was fishing in his pockets. "I mean, Harry, that we have no way of knowing how many times we've had this conversation! We could have gone through this day once already, eating biscuits and sipping drinks and discussing what to do next - we could have done this a thousand times before!" He pulled something from his pocket, and Sarah recognized, with a shock of dismay, the sonic screwdriver, still split neatly in half from their previous encounter with the robot in the desert. "Right," he said, and pocketed it again.
Sarah glanced over at Harry, who shrugged and snatched up the biscuit he'd been eyeing. She felt a bit of a chill at her own lack of panic: was this pragmatic reaction the result of the time loop, of some intrinsic familiarity with the situation - or just too much time spent travelling with the Doctor to worry about things outside their control?
"Say, Doctor," she said, as a thought struck her. "You're a Time Lord."
"Am I?" the Doctor said, wide-eyed.
She ignored him and ploughed on with her theory. "And you've - well, you've always gone on about being particularly sensitive to distortions in time. Wouldn't you notice something like this?"
He frowned. "You know, Sarah, you're absolutely right. At the very least, I'd be a bit on the queasy side - time distortion doesn't agree with the digestive faculties at all." He raised a finger, the very picture of a schoolmaster coming to the point of his lecture. "That means that we're either in the first iteration of this particular loop, which is a bit of a tricky thing to define, or-" He frowned. "Caelum. How many years have you been here?"
"Six thousand, nine hundred and seventy-two," Caelum said.
"Ah." The Doctor was grinning. "And what race-?"
"I am of the Marshlaktil people."
"Ah!" The Doctor said again, and laughed.
"What is it, Doctor?" Harry demanded, but the Doctor just kept laughing. Sarah resisted the urge to bung her mug at him just to see if he'd notice.
The Doctor waved a hand, but his chuckles seemed to be dying down. "Caelum! How long do your people typically live?"
"I was a mere two hundred years old when I arrived here. A typical lifespan for a warrior is four thousand years," he said. "We typically die in combat, but if we are relegated to a life of peace, we can live to be over ten thousand years old."
The Doctor beamed. "There, you see?"
Sarah didn't. "What-"
"It's perfectly simple, Sarah." He seemed ready to go off in another fit of laughter, and Sarah recognized for the first time that it was relief, sheer relief that he was expressing. "The time loop must be constrained to the building and its nonliving contents - Caelum here has aged just like everything else. We're not trapped in a time loop - the lighthouse is, the very structure of it!" He snorted. "I should have known from the start - how else would Caelum have been aware of the repetition?" He frowned, and Sarah knew that he was off in his own little world again. "That still doesn't explain why everything seems to have sped up, why the lighthouse is the only thing standing, and why that robot sentry's still out there-"
"Hold up just a minute, then," Harry said. "What the devil are you doing here, if you're not trapped by- by that time loop?"
Caelum's eyes dropped in what Sarah realized was an expression of deference - just what had Harry been up to? "I have told you; I await the arrival of Eridanus," he said. "The Sculptor has made it known unto me that the river shall rise again. I must make ready."
"Ah," Harry said. "Well. Can't argue with that, can we?"
"We jolly well can!" Sarah protested, journalistic instinct springing to the fore. "That sounds like a load of bunk to me. Why are you staying here? What happened to everyone else? Who's this Sculptor, anyway?"
Caelum's eyes flashed, and suddenly he was right in front of Sarah, right up in front of her, and his sword had somehow found its way into his hand, and it did really look extremely sharp when he held it up to her nose like that-
"The Sculptor," he said, "is Setus, the true monster of the sea. When Eridanus returns, he will be present, to give me further orders. He will come. He must come."
"Oh?" Sarah said. Her voice was too high by half; behind Caelum, Harry was on his feet, advancing carefully, and she couldn't see the Doctor-
She kept expecting Caelum to wave the sword menacingly, like every other cliche she'd met, but he was all intent and purpose - the blade stayed neatly poised over the tip of her nose. If Harry jumped him now, she had no doubt that they'd all wind up killed.
"We shall not speak of this again," Caelum said, and his voice was low and dangerous.
"All right," Sarah squeaked.
And then, quite suddenly, the Doctor was at her side, gently pushing the tip of the blade away from her face. "She understands, Caelum," he said. "To question is her nature; she meant neither you nor the Sculptor any harm by it."
Caelum turned to look at him, and for a terrible moment Sarah thought he would attack the Doctor, but then his sword lowered and he bowed his head. Harry darted past him to stand by her side, which she found oddly reassuring.
"My apologies," Caelum said, in the same dead voice. "The Sculptor has warned me of enemies who would make me question his purpose." He straightened. "I shall refresh your drink," he said, and, taking Sarah's mug from her shaking hands, he promptly stalked out of the kitchen.
Sarah shivered, and felt Harry's hand on her shoulder. "What was that?" Harry said.
The Doctor ran a hand through his hair. "Well," he said, "it was either a particularly nasty bit of religious fanaticism, or-"
"Or?" Sarah asked.
"Or we should really keep in mind that, time loop or no, Caelum's just spent the last seven thousand years living alone in a lighthouse." The Doctor stuffed his hands in his pockets and sighed. "He's utterly insane."
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 07:22 am (UTC)Okay, I've been trying to control myself, but this was just too much.
Ohmygod, Harry Sullivan FOR THE WIN.
He's always been one of my very favorite characters, but you just knock him out of the park. I mean...yes, that is what I mean, despite the awkward baseball metaphor. If I could think of an awkward cricket metaphor, I would use that instead, but c'est la vie.
This story is delightful in all manner of ways.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 11:48 pm (UTC)Thanks so much - I may or may not have started this fic with the sole intention of indulging my Harry-love. *beams* He is made of awesome and all things win. Glad you're enjoying the fic!
no subject
Date: 2008-02-17 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 11:40 am (UTC)Wow, things are really coming along! I suppose the next question is how to unravel the time loop? Can't wait for the next bit!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 11:51 pm (UTC)I suppose the next question is how to unravel the time loop?
That is a mighty good question, isn't it?
I mean. Um. Obviously I know how this will end! Yes. *shifty eyes*
(This is so my stress-free we'll-see-how-it-pans-out planning-what-planning fic.)
Can't wait for the next bit!
Me either! ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 01:08 pm (UTC)"Am I?" the Doctor said, wide-eyed.
Awesome. That is so Four.
Great story! I look forward to the next chapter!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 03:07 pm (UTC)Ahaha, I can completely picture Harry like that. ^^ Gotta love Harry.
"Say, Doctor," she said, as a thought struck her. "You're a Time Lord."
"Am I?" the Doctor said, wide-eyed.
Haha, that reminded me of the 'Doctor, it's good to see you.' 'Is it?' moment in Revenge of the Cybermen. x)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 11:55 pm (UTC)Ooh, I haven't seen Revenge of the Cybermen in ages. Thanks for reminding me, incidentally! :D
I actually had a huge amount of trouble with that line (the fact that I started this chapter at eleven pm and wanted to post by midnight didn't help much) - I knew Sarah was going to ask the obvious question, and the obvious response was sarcastic in nature. But, hey! Four's just the one to respond with a sarcastic phrase in a totally sincere and wide-eyed sort of way. Good to know I'm not completely pulling it out of thin air, though - must watch Revenge of the Cybermen again! :D
Thanks for commenting!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 11:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 11:36 pm (UTC)You're not only getting Four just *so* - thirds on "Am I?" and I loved when he intervened between Caelum and Sarah, but Sarah and Harry as well. Kudos.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 11:58 pm (UTC)