![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
FIC: Some Old Tragedy [10th Doctor]
Title: Some Old Tragedy
Prompt: "some old tragedy" - Doctor Who mini prompt table
Fandom: Doctor Who -- Tenth Doctor, references to Rose, Martha and Donna
Rating: G
Words: 495
Summary: He wonders how they would remember him.
Author's Note: Once I saw this prompt, there was no other way I could possibly write this. It's a little vague and floaty, but it felt like the right way to write it; the Doctor drenched in his own ruminations didn't feel right written any other way.
This is actually my first Doctor Who fic ever...! Perhaps not my best entrance into the written world of a fandom, but I just had to write it.
~◦☆◦~
No one sees the story, not at first. The face is deceptive—that is his most terribly misleading aspect, surely. So chipper and young-looking, untouched and fresh: something in the crooked manner of the smile suggests boyish temerity, something in the voice suggests playacting, false but lighthearted and merry. An invitation to play along. A beautiful lead seeking only a willing partner.
No one sees the story, because that is in his eyes, surely. Eyes never change. That is the important thing, he thinks, but if no one notices, would anyone remember?
He wonders how they would remember him. The man who regrets. He would remember enough for the lot of them, that is for sure. Yet that tactic always limits him to one pair of eyes; no matter how they change in color and shape: they always see the same.
When he had worn a different face, he had tried so desperately to bind his own wounds with a kindness turned-outward: he would bathe himself in the warm light of smiles, of joy that he couldn't quite understand but wanted to understand. That would have been enough. But when he attempted the vocation of fulfilling wishes (consultation, advice, but ultimate compliance) what did he reveal instead? Death? The fundamental illness of life? Something else—?
(And wearing this face now, where did that lead her, dear one? Somewhere else? An ill life? Death—? Surely she remembers him now. She has a lasting living reminder. An echo of a distant tragedy.)
He does not want to be remembered that way. Perhaps—perhaps it would be better if he parted with her earlier, before she could truly understand him, before she could see just how deeply his misery runs. Turned-outward, like kindness. Before she could mistake her own horror for love.
Perhaps it would be better if he were not remembered at all.
Oh, I've met someone like that. But who? She would never, never remember. Vaguely she would feel something like nostalgia, a longing for the empty places where memories belong rather than the memories themselves. No recollection of what created those empty places—who created them—a hollow feeling just like that person, and that is all she would know.
A tragedy fresh and all at once, impossibly old as well. A too-painful story constantly evolving, adding new pages as they are simultaneously ripped out—burned. A force that swirls and boils, tearing through time, though lives, leaving no visible wake: that wake, that emptiness, exists within the person himself.
But no one ever sees that, do they? No, they see a beautiful face, chipper and fresh and young-looking, with the cocky smile and lovably juvenile attitude. Something that is always a spark of charm, never a warning, as it surely should be.
You've never met anyone like that. What you’re thinking of is—surely just some old tragedy.
Perhaps, he thinks, it would be better if he were not remembered at all.
~◦☆◦~
Prompt: "some old tragedy" - Doctor Who mini prompt table
Fandom: Doctor Who -- Tenth Doctor, references to Rose, Martha and Donna
Rating: G
Words: 495
Summary: He wonders how they would remember him.
Author's Note: Once I saw this prompt, there was no other way I could possibly write this. It's a little vague and floaty, but it felt like the right way to write it; the Doctor drenched in his own ruminations didn't feel right written any other way.
This is actually my first Doctor Who fic ever...! Perhaps not my best entrance into the written world of a fandom, but I just had to write it.
~◦☆◦~
No one sees the story, not at first. The face is deceptive—that is his most terribly misleading aspect, surely. So chipper and young-looking, untouched and fresh: something in the crooked manner of the smile suggests boyish temerity, something in the voice suggests playacting, false but lighthearted and merry. An invitation to play along. A beautiful lead seeking only a willing partner.
No one sees the story, because that is in his eyes, surely. Eyes never change. That is the important thing, he thinks, but if no one notices, would anyone remember?
He wonders how they would remember him. The man who regrets. He would remember enough for the lot of them, that is for sure. Yet that tactic always limits him to one pair of eyes; no matter how they change in color and shape: they always see the same.
When he had worn a different face, he had tried so desperately to bind his own wounds with a kindness turned-outward: he would bathe himself in the warm light of smiles, of joy that he couldn't quite understand but wanted to understand. That would have been enough. But when he attempted the vocation of fulfilling wishes (consultation, advice, but ultimate compliance) what did he reveal instead? Death? The fundamental illness of life? Something else—?
(And wearing this face now, where did that lead her, dear one? Somewhere else? An ill life? Death—? Surely she remembers him now. She has a lasting living reminder. An echo of a distant tragedy.)
He does not want to be remembered that way. Perhaps—perhaps it would be better if he parted with her earlier, before she could truly understand him, before she could see just how deeply his misery runs. Turned-outward, like kindness. Before she could mistake her own horror for love.
Perhaps it would be better if he were not remembered at all.
Oh, I've met someone like that. But who? She would never, never remember. Vaguely she would feel something like nostalgia, a longing for the empty places where memories belong rather than the memories themselves. No recollection of what created those empty places—who created them—a hollow feeling just like that person, and that is all she would know.
A tragedy fresh and all at once, impossibly old as well. A too-painful story constantly evolving, adding new pages as they are simultaneously ripped out—burned. A force that swirls and boils, tearing through time, though lives, leaving no visible wake: that wake, that emptiness, exists within the person himself.
But no one ever sees that, do they? No, they see a beautiful face, chipper and fresh and young-looking, with the cocky smile and lovably juvenile attitude. Something that is always a spark of charm, never a warning, as it surely should be.
You've never met anyone like that. What you’re thinking of is—surely just some old tragedy.
Perhaps, he thinks, it would be better if he were not remembered at all.
~◦☆◦~