fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2007-08-16 04:57 am
some_stars) wrote2007-08-16 04:57 am
teeny bit of fic what is bleak and sad
here is a very little bit of grim ficlet what i wrote! because uh--i love Time War fic with Eight and Fitz all in love and bonding and brothers in arms and so forth, i love it A LOT? but i am also contrary and stubborn and tend to poke things until they break. so here is some unpleasant melodrama! with some rather dodgy sci-fi around the edges.
He's walked through so many wars since meeting the Doctor. It shouldn't feel so strange to finally be fighting one. But it's the thought that comes to him every so often, every few days or weeks, hard to tell anymore--*I'm a soldier,* he thinks, and it shocks him every time. *There's a war on, and I'm in it.*
It's just so--banal, for a war across space and time, a struggle for the very fabric of reality, every timeline that ever was or will be hanging in the balance--so why does it look like all the others Fitz has wandered through, stumbled into, all the dirty ragged battles he's had a passing hand in? No one could feel so grand and epic while changing the dressings on someone's wound that's gone infected, while standing interminable unbroken watch outside a safehouse, while shaping weapon after weapon to his hands--now psychic attack rays, now laser cutters, now sonic blasts, now good old-fashioned bits of metal at high velocities--it might be a Time War but as far as Fitz can tell it's just another bloody *war* and one he can't run from, to boot.
"I never held a gun till I met you," he tells the Doctor once, wanting to be cruel. He's frightened, and time-sick, and the Doctor's ordered him confined to nursing duty until the last of his attacks clear up, which sounds very uplifting and Florence Nightengale-esque, but just means Fitz spends all day smelling blood and being even more useless than usual, trying to ignore the tickle of paradox in the back of his brain. So he tries to hurt the Doctor, and maybe he succeeds--Fitz hasn't been able to read him right anymore, ever since they came back to Gallifrey(ever since Gallifrey came back)--but the Doctor only looks at him, at his filthy stained clothes and twitching left arm (just a millisecond out of sync, who could have guessed what a difference a millisecond could make?) and his stupid, hungry face. And says his name.
He wonders sometimes what his name was, before the Doctor said it--said him, rather. Remembered him.
He wonders, when his arm is shaking and numb and the hospital's too loud to fall asleep, what will happen when the Doctor finally forgets him.
i might do more! or not! i find when i am depressed i want to write this kind of stuff, but that is also when it is most likely to come out shit, so WHO KNOWS. --wait, yes, I appear to be writing more *right now.* woot!
edit: updating as i go....
***
"I love you," Trix says on the last day, sounding almost like she's daring him to contradict her.
They're naked, knotted together in bed, and Fitz feels another stab of fondness-turned-grief, because there was never any question in either of their minds that they'd have one last good farewell shag, he's always loved that about Trix, no messing about or coy mind-games. Just a good hard come-on and lots of clear directions, and an apparent inability to get embarrassed about anything.
Christ, he's going to miss her. And he's shit, he's absolute shit, because even now he can't just *say* that. "Trix," he says instead, and strokes his fingers through her hair, slowly.
"If you're calling yourself an idiot in your head right now," she says, "you absolutely should be. That's exactly what you should be thinking right now."
Fitz can't help laughing. "Not good at dramatic goodbyes, are you?"
"Oh, *shut* up," Trix says, and holds on to him tighter, closing her eyes with a flicker of a smile. "Just--don't go until you have to."
"I won't," Fitz says. He waits until she starts to squirm away in her sleep, like she always does, and then he slides away.
***
It's the worst fucking thing Fitz has ever seen in his entire life. And he's seen a *whole lot* of worst things, but this is absolutely, no question, the top of the heap. He's already rehearsing the nightmares he's going to have featuring that voice, assuming he survives. Not that there's any reason to think he won't--the thing's chained up, eyestalk and death ray broken off (and oh, jesus, the mechanical screaming that wouldn't *end*--), wires running in and out of it every which way while the Time Lords' brightest young (well, relatively) Dalekologists examine it and probe it.
But it won't shut up, it won't quit jerking and rattling and--flexing its plunger, like some bizarre cartoon octopus sucker, in and out. There's no way to mistake its behavior for anything but pain.
"Don't feel sorry for it," the Doctor says, behind him. Quietly and matter-of-factly, as if those words belonged there.
Since they came back to Gallifrey (or the other way round), the Doctor's been getting his memory back.
The Dalek screams again, and the Time Lords murmur amongst themselves.
**
One day, all the TARDISes fell ill. Which, it turned out, looked much the same as "won't go anywhere or do flashing lights and funny noises or anything," except the door at the back of the console room wouldn't open and the Doctor couldn't be *in* the console room more than a minute without getting a migraine. It was the same for the other TARDISes as well, even the half-grown ones down in the nursery: none of the Time Lords could stand being inside long enough to figure out how to fix them.
"It's the quiet," the Doctor said, staggering back out after another useless attempt. "It's like, like--shaking hands with a corpse. Only you don't know, and you're expecting a person, and then you feel what you're touching, and it won't let go of you--" He grabbed Fitz's hand, squeezed it too tightly. It hurt, but Fitz didn't try to stop him.
"Is it contagious?" he asked. "I mean--the TARDISes that aren't here, on Gallifrey, will they be sick too?" They were all here, of course, all the renegades and runaways, the Doctor had introduced Fitz personally to some of his favorites. But--
"Oh, I'm sure she is," the Doctor said. "She must be. Oh." He looked up at Fitz. "I'd forgotten, of course."
The sheer force of grief that hit him in a moment was bizarre, and surely displaced from some other more painful wound he was repressing, wasn't that how these things worked? But Fitz found he couldn't speak, not even just to say her name.
**
He's walked through so many wars since meeting the Doctor. It shouldn't feel so strange to finally be fighting one. But it's the thought that comes to him every so often, every few days or weeks, hard to tell anymore--*I'm a soldier,* he thinks, and it shocks him every time. *There's a war on, and I'm in it.*
It's just so--banal, for a war across space and time, a struggle for the very fabric of reality, every timeline that ever was or will be hanging in the balance--so why does it look like all the others Fitz has wandered through, stumbled into, all the dirty ragged battles he's had a passing hand in? No one could feel so grand and epic while changing the dressings on someone's wound that's gone infected, while standing interminable unbroken watch outside a safehouse, while shaping weapon after weapon to his hands--now psychic attack rays, now laser cutters, now sonic blasts, now good old-fashioned bits of metal at high velocities--it might be a Time War but as far as Fitz can tell it's just another bloody *war* and one he can't run from, to boot.
"I never held a gun till I met you," he tells the Doctor once, wanting to be cruel. He's frightened, and time-sick, and the Doctor's ordered him confined to nursing duty until the last of his attacks clear up, which sounds very uplifting and Florence Nightengale-esque, but just means Fitz spends all day smelling blood and being even more useless than usual, trying to ignore the tickle of paradox in the back of his brain. So he tries to hurt the Doctor, and maybe he succeeds--Fitz hasn't been able to read him right anymore, ever since they came back to Gallifrey(ever since Gallifrey came back)--but the Doctor only looks at him, at his filthy stained clothes and twitching left arm (just a millisecond out of sync, who could have guessed what a difference a millisecond could make?) and his stupid, hungry face. And says his name.
He wonders sometimes what his name was, before the Doctor said it--said him, rather. Remembered him.
He wonders, when his arm is shaking and numb and the hospital's too loud to fall asleep, what will happen when the Doctor finally forgets him.
i might do more! or not! i find when i am depressed i want to write this kind of stuff, but that is also when it is most likely to come out shit, so WHO KNOWS. --wait, yes, I appear to be writing more *right now.* woot!
edit: updating as i go....
***
"I love you," Trix says on the last day, sounding almost like she's daring him to contradict her.
They're naked, knotted together in bed, and Fitz feels another stab of fondness-turned-grief, because there was never any question in either of their minds that they'd have one last good farewell shag, he's always loved that about Trix, no messing about or coy mind-games. Just a good hard come-on and lots of clear directions, and an apparent inability to get embarrassed about anything.
Christ, he's going to miss her. And he's shit, he's absolute shit, because even now he can't just *say* that. "Trix," he says instead, and strokes his fingers through her hair, slowly.
"If you're calling yourself an idiot in your head right now," she says, "you absolutely should be. That's exactly what you should be thinking right now."
Fitz can't help laughing. "Not good at dramatic goodbyes, are you?"
"Oh, *shut* up," Trix says, and holds on to him tighter, closing her eyes with a flicker of a smile. "Just--don't go until you have to."
"I won't," Fitz says. He waits until she starts to squirm away in her sleep, like she always does, and then he slides away.
***
It's the worst fucking thing Fitz has ever seen in his entire life. And he's seen a *whole lot* of worst things, but this is absolutely, no question, the top of the heap. He's already rehearsing the nightmares he's going to have featuring that voice, assuming he survives. Not that there's any reason to think he won't--the thing's chained up, eyestalk and death ray broken off (and oh, jesus, the mechanical screaming that wouldn't *end*--), wires running in and out of it every which way while the Time Lords' brightest young (well, relatively) Dalekologists examine it and probe it.
But it won't shut up, it won't quit jerking and rattling and--flexing its plunger, like some bizarre cartoon octopus sucker, in and out. There's no way to mistake its behavior for anything but pain.
"Don't feel sorry for it," the Doctor says, behind him. Quietly and matter-of-factly, as if those words belonged there.
Since they came back to Gallifrey (or the other way round), the Doctor's been getting his memory back.
The Dalek screams again, and the Time Lords murmur amongst themselves.
**
One day, all the TARDISes fell ill. Which, it turned out, looked much the same as "won't go anywhere or do flashing lights and funny noises or anything," except the door at the back of the console room wouldn't open and the Doctor couldn't be *in* the console room more than a minute without getting a migraine. It was the same for the other TARDISes as well, even the half-grown ones down in the nursery: none of the Time Lords could stand being inside long enough to figure out how to fix them.
"It's the quiet," the Doctor said, staggering back out after another useless attempt. "It's like, like--shaking hands with a corpse. Only you don't know, and you're expecting a person, and then you feel what you're touching, and it won't let go of you--" He grabbed Fitz's hand, squeezed it too tightly. It hurt, but Fitz didn't try to stop him.
"Is it contagious?" he asked. "I mean--the TARDISes that aren't here, on Gallifrey, will they be sick too?" They were all here, of course, all the renegades and runaways, the Doctor had introduced Fitz personally to some of his favorites. But--
"Oh, I'm sure she is," the Doctor said. "She must be. Oh." He looked up at Fitz. "I'd forgotten, of course."
The sheer force of grief that hit him in a moment was bizarre, and surely displaced from some other more painful wound he was repressing, wasn't that how these things worked? But Fitz found he couldn't speak, not even just to say her name.
**