Two Doctor Who pieces: drabble and 300-word ficlet

[shinodabear.livejournal.com]

One drabble and a ficlet
Fandom: Doctor Who [No spoilers]
Rating: PG
Pairing: Doctor (Ten)/Jack & Doctor/Master
Disclaimer: BBC and all related folks are the owners of these figments of our imaginations.
WARNING: Character death in second ficlet.


Child of the Vortex

He doesn’t question why Jack has stopped the flirting banter, the lecherous looks, or the wandering hands. It’s obvious: Jack has changed. Utterly. Completely. Forever. He has become a Child of the Vortex, fashioned by the very essence of Time and Space, rendered a Fact, beautiful and horrible.

They are friends. They are family. They are never lovers. A Child of the Vortex and the Champion of Time. Father and son. Brothers in arms. They stop just short of the romantic line (the Doctor far before Jack had realized the boundary.) It is enough. It will have to be enough.



Cradle

There is a child gathered in a heap on the ground. He lies there unmoving. His breathing is shallow. His face is turned away. A black-clothed figure approaches him, bending down and inspecting his face. Carefully, he brushes the child’s hair away from his eyes. Gently, he takes him into his arms. Soothing hums come from his throat as he tries his best to rouse the prone body. He prods gently at the sides of the child’s face. He presses against his eyes. He covers the wound on the child’s stomach. Eyes shut, the dark figure breathes calmly, feeling the blood rush against his hand, flow through his palm. The child is dying.

The child is not a child, though he is. His blond hair, long and unruly, is really a short, spiked dark brown. His clouded blue eyes are the same dark shade as his hair. He is not small, but rather tall. There is little fat on his cheeks, little fat anywhere. The child is just an image. It is an illusion of the planet, of the poison. The wound, though. The wound is real. The figure cradling the not-child knows this. He knows all of this.

One last time, he touches the child’s cheek, soft and rough at the same time, and whispers, “Go on then. Regenerate.”

The child who, in his mind, in the illusion is called Theta, smiles. The Doctor smiles, too, the best he can, attempting to reach up to the sympathetic face above him. He begins to burn, like home, like Gallifrey, like the arms he is lying in. He burns, and accepts that, once more he was fantastic. When he wakes, he will be just as brilliant.

Perhaps, he will still be held. Perhaps always sounds most promising inside of an illusion.