He's Fire And Ice And Rage

He was getting his reward.

Every muscle in his body hurt. He could feel his intestines very slowly, very unpleasantly, liquifying due to the radiation bombarded through his system. The TARDIS ached for him, trying to pull his pain and only deteriorating the coral that held her in place. She was killing herself for him.

"Just two more stops," he promised her, patting her side.

The next stop was France.

He stepped outside into the warm, spring air. There was a garden and birds in the trees and a warm sun up in the sky. It was the perfect sort of day. The sort of day he might've liked to just laze around and enjoy himself.

But he couldn't today. He couldn't waste one minute of his time left.

Where was she? The TARDIS homed in on the biosignal of the person he wanted to see, just one last time.

FOR THE DRABBLE MEME.

• dragged through the mire
and into the light
you did something selfish
but you did what was right

we started a fire
with the faintest of sparks
sprung from the friction
of two empty hearts

we swept out the ashes
and went on our way
from the deepest of red
to the lightest of gray. •

She keeps the sari wrapped tightly around her. It's her new corset and skirts. Tight and layered, she smoothes the fabric down with tanned hands. She has adapted to life in India. It's a good life, he thinks, the life she built for herself. If anyone could build so much from nothing, it's Reinette.

He asks her if she's happy here. He means with him, but he doesn't ask that.

It's been years. Twenty for him. Five for her. They grew up on opposite ends of the universe.

He was selfish. He forgot the time they spent together. Forgot all of it. All of it, in one split decision. He didn't want to remember the pain, which meant he would forget the joy. A split decision, to forget everything from the moment they arrived in San Francisco.

She chose to remember. He likes to think he'd have chosen the same, if he knew. He knows he wouldn't have.

He think she hates him a little for that. He knows he hates himself more than a little for it.

She tells him of course. Of course she is happy. He doesn't think she means with him.

He wonders what he was like, then. In the year he forgot. The year he gave up. Who was he when he was him? The him that he was, the one she still grieves for.

He saw a movie once, with their daughter. Petite Reinette, all spitfire and ambition, sat more patiently through the movie than her father did. It was a good movie, though. Random Harvest. A man who can not remember who he is falls in love, then forgets everything, and then falls in love with the same woman. She grieves for the man who didn't know who he was.

It's like that now, with Reinette. She cares for him, but she loved the man he forgot.

He reaches out to take her hand. She quietly, deftly moves back, tracing her hand along the opposite side of the console and remarking the differences in the ship. He never remembered her seeing it, but he doesn't question her memory.

Maybe she just needed to step aside.

He knows she wanted to move away.

He likes to think that if he knew it would be like this, the strangeness, the silent ache, that he'd have chosen the same as her, that he'd never have forgotten.

He knows he wouldn't have.

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 405
Based on RP in relativespace with ambitious_woman
MY LOVE FOR THIS VERSE WILL NEVER DIE.

There's a thin line between a real smile and a false one, and the time he's spent with Madame du Pompadour has given him a finely-tuned eye to tell the difference.

I.
It's at the very, very beginning. There's barely any time between their introduction and the moment where they must part. He's got to run off, he's got to stop disaster before it starts and she…she has to distract.

How should she distract? Well, she's too human to be of any interest…unless.

( 'This means nothing, he warns, firmly. 'Honestly, nothing.' )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,132

In case you weren't aware, it is entirely possible that the Doctor is the world's worst husband. Not only is he a mean, insufferable jerk, he also is exactly 41 days late for his one year anniversary.

So, he does not say anything, instead leaves lots of shiny, wrapped packages in the console room, with the hope that she might forgive him.

There is a note:

I've never been quite on time, but I never forget.
Happy Anniversary.
Je t'aime,
The Doctor.



( What is in the boxes... )

Assignment
Name: Rachel/rachelbeann
Request 1: Joan Redfern, post-John Smith. What was her life like, did she fall in love again, did she often think about the Doctor/John Smith?
Request 2: I would LOVE some good Milo/Cheen fic (Gridlock). Preferably post-ep.
Request 3: Quintus and/or Evelina after watching the destruction of Pompeii. How does it change them?
One thing you really don't want to receive: Uh...smut? :)

She will move on, of course.

A woman of her time, perhaps, but Joan is far from weak. Tears might run down her cheeks as she clutches to the words of a man that's now left her forever, but she's grieved before. She's felt the aching empty hollow feeling that settles to her chest like a cough that won't quit. She knows the way doing even the simplest things seem so hard because she's been exsanguinated of all of her blood, energy, and feeling. She knows how it eventually melts into a blanket of hurt that will always be there when she closes her eyes. She knows how one day she will forget what his hair felt like when she touched it. She will move on. She knows how it works now.

One might say she is an expert at grief.

There is scandal, of course. Rumors that he was the reason for the attacks and she won't deny them. If the Doctor is John Smith, then in a way they are. In a way, things would've been better if she'd never met John Smith. Sometimes she thinks that maybe she didn't. Maybe he never was (or maybe he still is and one of the Doctor's hearts still beats for her). Or maybe he was just an oasis in the desert of a country barely coping with its own hatred. Maybe she knew it wasn't water but she kept drinking anyway.

At night, she dreams that she sees them, all of them. The other women that have been left to grieve. When she learned of the Doctor, she knew she wasn't alone in her pain, but she never knew of the size of it all.

He was my protector and my Angel, the woman says, smoothing her skirts. She is regal and elegant and makes Joan feel impossibly plain.

I did not love him, she replies. She thinks for a moment, then asks: Would you have gone with him?

I would not hesitate, the elegant woman replies. Though her eyes are dark, and Joan knows she must have.

It doesn't take long for her to move from denial and depression to anger. She hates the Doctor, she tells the cat that curls up on her lap. He mewls in a way that says 'Human, get me some cream,' but she always misinterprets his words as agreeing with hers. The cat doesn't care about her misplaced anger, he only knows that when she plays certain records at night she drips wet from her eyes onto his fur and the cream doesn't go into his dish, and instead it is mixed with brandy. Eventually it is dumped down the drain because she doesn't drink and by this point if she tried to numb away her feelings it would make her hollower than the grief itself. But she always considers and he loses the cream for it.

White mixes in with the blonde of her hair and she studies to become a doctor. It's a silly idea, the other nurses tell her, but she knows that one day even colored women will become doctors. She can't hate Martha Jones for convincing her love to kill himself in order to bring the Doctor back. If the positions were reversed, or if Joan could hold herself like the young servant could, then she would've left Martha to the hollow grief. She can't hate Martha, instead she understands her and she hopes that the Doctor is everything Martha dreamed of.

This night, the woman before her is lean and tanned with beads braided in her hair. She smiles in a calm, loving way, though her eyes sparkle with mischief.

We shared cocoa and mutual adoration, she says. He was daft and mad, but he was blessed with youth in his heart. You must have seen it.

I did not love him, she replies. She thinks for a moment, then asks: Would you have gone with him?

To see the stars that were tattooed across his heart? I wish he had asked me. The woman longingly looks away, and Joan wonders if he is capable of as much longing.

She rides a boat with her sister's family and the cold English air bites at her face and she feels young. Her nephews dance around her and she thinks of the children she and John might have had. There is no anger, simply fondness. It is the first time she has thought of them like this, she thinks. Usually when she thinks of those children, of feeling a kick in her belly and holding a warm life that she's created with the man she loves, all she does is grieve. Her youngest nephew finds a dying bird on the deck and as it dies he says that he will imagine a friendship with the bird, that way it will live forever in his mind.

Ian is a fool sometimes, but she can't help but think it is something that John might have said. She is unsurprised to find that as he gets older he studies to become a teacher. She pours some cream in the cat's dish and tells him that if those watch-children had souls, one of them most certainly went into her nephew. The cat mewls in a way to say 'You're stroking my hair back the wrong way, stop it' but she misinterprets his words as agreeing with hers.

He has always been a fool, he's never seen what's before his eyes; that does not stop our affections. This woman is in a boating dress with a straw hat, but she sits with a presence of the like Joan has never experienced before

I did not love him, she replies. She thinks for a moment, then asks: Would you have gone with him?

I did, once, she says with no small hint of nostalgia. But what woman could compare to the stars? Certainly not I.

By the time that her cancer metasocizes, she is capable enough to diagnose herself. Her sister sits by her bed and feeds the cat and fetches her tea and plays her old records for her. The dance she danced with her husband at their wedding plays first and she feels his big hands on her arms. Then the waltz from the dance with John.

It is so foolish, to still grieve for a man whom she only spent weeks of her long life with. She has always been a simple woman, but he made her life seem like so much more. It is so difficult to explain.

You loved the man he could never be. It's a terrible way to live. Me? I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

She wonders if she is the only one who never considered 'yes' as an option. She unrepentantly hesitated, wished he'd never asked her, longed for the man who saw her as more than the stars, and missed it all for the simple life.

She wraps herself in a robe and it is soft and comfortable, with the little fuzzballs tied together with the foil-plastic wrap from her sister's cigarettes.

He loved you, he loved you so much that he was willing to become me again to save you. Feel.

Two hearts.

And is one of them his?

I think that both my hearts are mine.

He's wrong. One of them is hers. She gave it willingly to John Smith and she would never want it back.

The stars seem a long way away.

She steps to a window and stares outward to the horizon, where the Doctor's stars meet John's winter countryside. That's the world she straddles now, the dark horizon in the middle.

It is not a place for moving on, but it is what she has.

Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,279

You're angry. So angry. Vicious, mind-splitting anger the kind that boils and bubbles and makes your skin crackle and hiss when you move.

The Master. It's so easy to blame him.
Why not blame him? He's caused you so much pain.
Pain ache ache friendship means nothing---

The buzz in your head is awful. It pulsates like soda candy on a pair of drums. Beat. Fizzle. Beat. Fizzle. Your feet are cold on the wet grass as you search for him.

Suburbia. That's where you meet him. Right in the middle of all these homes, but it's night so that somehow makes it better.

Somewhere nearby someone is cooking something with mint and peppers. Your stomach growls in a most irritating fashion and you wonder if eating something might not calm you, make the fizz-drumbeat go away. Reinette always does say that you're far too crotchety when you don't eat. Maybe you should go home. Sit down. Have a cup of tea. Put away the gun and just think about what you're doing.

No, no, fuck that.

Reinette never listens to you. Not then, and not now as you drag her to see who you really are. What you know. You know how things are going to turn out. You see things she can't possibly imagine. You know how things are and how much they will hurt if you don't take care of it now. How things are, were, will be. You know. He's evil. You have to…you have---

And there he is. A twisted grin that suited another man better. A sneer. His tooth gleams like a wolf's. Which makes you the hunter, you suppose. You should have a better gun. This one won't stop shaking in your hands.

You're supposed to be braver than this.

But what bravery is found in a gun?

You can't think. Can't think. Fizz drum angry furious you know what's evil and you have no choice, you must eradicate it from the universe like the Daleks like the twisted and corrupt Time Lords and he's there right there and you can do it. You can do it.

Finger meets trigger, as these things end up inevitably.



The

night

is

impossibly

quiet

for

a

long

moment.

Bang.
Bang.
Bang.

She drops. The victim of a ricocheted bullet. The drumbeats silence like the police cut the electric from your fizzly club. Someone's pumped Freon into your veins and warm red wet is pouring from her shoulder.

She's too weak. This is…she's too weak.

The enemy calls for an ambulance. Some part of him cares. Or doesn't want to get shot. Whichever it is, you can't focus because all of the anger. The wrath. The rage it's all gone.

And she's bleeding. She's dying. She's dying because you were too angry to control yourself.

Coward or killer, Doctor?
Coward or killer, Doctor?
Coward or killer, Doctor?

She asks what happened. You tell her it was the gun, it was the gun. How easily you pour your guilt into the weapon that has somehow dropped onto the grass. It wasn't the gun and you amend your reply. It was me. I shot you.

Her expression is unreadable. Your stomach coils tight like a twisted neon light, coiled and burning in your belly.

Her words are contrite.

"Of course."

But then she always did have a knack for seeing things you don't. Of knowing how things were (you should never have left) how things are (you're too angry, just calm down) and how things will be (you'll regret this)---

You silently swear that wrath will never be your vice, not ever again. Not after this.

But from the sneer on her face, she knows what you're thinking and doesn't believe you.

But why should she?

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)(AU)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 606
Based on RP with ambitious_woman and crispymaster

It was probably not entirely safe to be up on this roof. He didn't know how strong the planking was, but...well, it couldn't have been that bad. These places would stay up until at least the 21st century. He lay on his back against the hard paneling of the roof and looked up at the stars.

It was all right, looking at them from the window, but tonight he needed to just lay and stargaze. At first he lay on the wet grass outside but it wasn't enough. A ladder, left behind by a worker earlier in the day, became his route to the rooftop. He'd left a note for Reinette, of course. Didn't need her worrying about him.

It hurt, thinking that his human companion had to worry about him. He'd only been there a little over a month, and he was already becoming a fixture in this life of Reinette's. Another responsibility. He never wanted to be a burden to her. Never ever.

He sighed and stared up at Orion. It used to be a guiding star, now it was just a blaring example of what he didn't have anymore.

The Doctor grinned madly at the screen in front of him. Perfect landing, right on the mark. That was so rare it was a cause for a celebration in and of itself.

Celebration, of course, was the reason why he'd picked the place they landed. A celebration somewhere he had never been before, so it would be a treat to both him and his companion.

Reinette's health was doing significantly better than he'd originally expected it to, and that meant celebration. Right, so it was a rather flimsy excuse for a celebration, but the Doctor did so love to celebrate. In this case, it was a celebration somewhere her health might not have allowed her before: somewhere cold. He tugged on a shorter version of his fourth self's scarf and his jacket as he waited for his companion to join him.

"Right, make sure your shoes have decent traction!" he called over to her.