Doctor Who | Home Away From-
Jul. 8th, 2008 02:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eponymous_roseTitle: Home Away From-
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eponymous_rose
Word Count: 635
Rating: G
Characters: Third Doctor
Spoilers: Follows on The Silurians, a bit.
The Doctor had always rather suspected that humans did all their ridiculous running about because their time was so short, because they hadn't enough hours, because their minutes were lined like tins on a shelf, packed to bursting with their lives. Now, trapped among them, he'd gained a new appreciation of the inherent connections between time and space - it wasn't humanity's limited time so much as its planetary prison that constrained it, that forced people to run about like rats in a maze.
After the business with the Silurians, he made a point of taking a stroll down a quiet street every now and then, lingering to look at ordinary things, at daisies and alley cats and windowpanes, the Brigadier be damned. He ignored suggestions for meetings, ignored requests, ignored orders, and walked through the sun and the rain to any place of his choosing.
One morning, as the sun glinted off the hoods of cars and he'd stopped to admire a particularly remarkable bit of trelliswork, an elderly woman beckoned to him from her garden.
"I've some tea in here, sir, if you'd care to join me. It's more than I can finish all on my own."
And because he was rather inclined to make the Brigadier wait, because he'd been thinking about rats in mazes, he accepted, and took tea with a woman who had lived through two wars, had lost a brother and a husband and had a granddaughter who was studying to be an engineer at some prestigious university in America. She'd travelled to Europe, and briefly to Africa, and had been to Dublin only the week before to visit her nephew.
The Doctor had always considered himself to be something of a master storyteller. This morning, he listened.
When the tea had grown cold and the formidable pile of biscuits had long since lost ground to the crumbs on the tablecloth, and her voice had faded, she told him that he really must come again, that she had more stories to tell. He told her, with a strange sensation of freedom, that he'd return, that he'd hear them all.
As these things so often go, trapped in three of the four dimensions, time rather got away from him. He said his goodbyes to Liz Shaw, made peace with the Brigadier, met Jo Grant, but it wasn't until he'd regained his most constant companion, the TARDIS and Time herself, that he remembered the woman with the stories yet to tell.
"Won't be a moment," he told Jo, and slipped out of the TARDIS onto a familiar cobbled street, where a familiar old woman was pruning the creeping ivy on a familiar bit of trelliswork.
She recognised him in an instant, though he could tell that some time had passed since he'd seen her last, and he felt a moment of impotent rage at the notion that she should have even her final years torn away with such haste.
He asked her into the TARDIS for tea, promising her stories of his own, and new stories to fill the rest of her days.
She smiled at him, and shook her head, and even as he started to find ways around her objections, she took his hands in hers and called him Doctor and told him about the alien suns and the infinite stars they'd known.
"I've lived and lived again since I met you," she said. "We travelled, and it was wonderful, but I found love and loss and-" She waved the pruning shears. "-creeping ivy. It's all here, Doctor. It always has been. And it took a hundred alien planets to make me realise it."
"It's a prison," he said, reeling. "You can't possibly mean to stay here! Not when you've seen what's out there."
She smiled, fond and indulgent. "I hope, Doctor," she said, "that one day you might find your home."
Author:
eponymous_roseWord Count: 635
Rating: G
Characters: Third Doctor
Spoilers: Follows on The Silurians, a bit.
The Doctor had always rather suspected that humans did all their ridiculous running about because their time was so short, because they hadn't enough hours, because their minutes were lined like tins on a shelf, packed to bursting with their lives. Now, trapped among them, he'd gained a new appreciation of the inherent connections between time and space - it wasn't humanity's limited time so much as its planetary prison that constrained it, that forced people to run about like rats in a maze.
After the business with the Silurians, he made a point of taking a stroll down a quiet street every now and then, lingering to look at ordinary things, at daisies and alley cats and windowpanes, the Brigadier be damned. He ignored suggestions for meetings, ignored requests, ignored orders, and walked through the sun and the rain to any place of his choosing.
One morning, as the sun glinted off the hoods of cars and he'd stopped to admire a particularly remarkable bit of trelliswork, an elderly woman beckoned to him from her garden.
"I've some tea in here, sir, if you'd care to join me. It's more than I can finish all on my own."
And because he was rather inclined to make the Brigadier wait, because he'd been thinking about rats in mazes, he accepted, and took tea with a woman who had lived through two wars, had lost a brother and a husband and had a granddaughter who was studying to be an engineer at some prestigious university in America. She'd travelled to Europe, and briefly to Africa, and had been to Dublin only the week before to visit her nephew.
The Doctor had always considered himself to be something of a master storyteller. This morning, he listened.
When the tea had grown cold and the formidable pile of biscuits had long since lost ground to the crumbs on the tablecloth, and her voice had faded, she told him that he really must come again, that she had more stories to tell. He told her, with a strange sensation of freedom, that he'd return, that he'd hear them all.
As these things so often go, trapped in three of the four dimensions, time rather got away from him. He said his goodbyes to Liz Shaw, made peace with the Brigadier, met Jo Grant, but it wasn't until he'd regained his most constant companion, the TARDIS and Time herself, that he remembered the woman with the stories yet to tell.
"Won't be a moment," he told Jo, and slipped out of the TARDIS onto a familiar cobbled street, where a familiar old woman was pruning the creeping ivy on a familiar bit of trelliswork.
She recognised him in an instant, though he could tell that some time had passed since he'd seen her last, and he felt a moment of impotent rage at the notion that she should have even her final years torn away with such haste.
He asked her into the TARDIS for tea, promising her stories of his own, and new stories to fill the rest of her days.
She smiled at him, and shook her head, and even as he started to find ways around her objections, she took his hands in hers and called him Doctor and told him about the alien suns and the infinite stars they'd known.
"I've lived and lived again since I met you," she said. "We travelled, and it was wonderful, but I found love and loss and-" She waved the pruning shears. "-creeping ivy. It's all here, Doctor. It always has been. And it took a hundred alien planets to make me realise it."
"It's a prison," he said, reeling. "You can't possibly mean to stay here! Not when you've seen what's out there."
She smiled, fond and indulgent. "I hope, Doctor," she said, "that one day you might find your home."
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 09:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 12:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 02:02 pm (UTC)I'm hoping to get a couple of Third Doctor stories next week... *squishes Three*
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 05:56 pm (UTC)That was a clever idea!
no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-10 06:20 pm (UTC)