dreamer_easy | Laughed At By Time, Tricked by Circumstances (Reply)

This is the story I wrote for

outsdr as part of

help_japan. He asked me to write the Eighth Doctor's regeneration. So I did. :) With his kind permission, here 'tis.

Title: Laughed At By Time, Tricked by Circumstances
Characters/Pairing: Eighth Doctor
Rating: G
Spoilers: No, not really.

Laughed At By Time, Tricked by Circumstances

I'd stopped crying an hour ago, but when the man smiled at me, I almost started again, because when he grinned I thought what if there was a light like an amber traffic light coming from behind his teeth, and there was.

He shut his mouth and his eyes for a moment and made a sound. When he looked down at me again he didn't seem scary. 'Hello there,' he said, and his voice was quite soft. 'You mustn't be frightened.'

'I'm all by myself.'

'There you are,' he said, 'we're both in the same boat. Why don't you come along with me?'

His hair was shortish but hadn't been combed for a while, and he was growing a beard. He was wearing a blue coat buttoned up tight with big metal buttons. He looked like he had been born with sad eyes. He walked slowly and I followed him.

It was like nighttime, and none of the street lights were working, but we could see our way through the rubble and cars by the bluish light coming off the buildings and the ground. The whole city wasn't wrecked, just bits of it. I said, 'Where is everybody?'

'To tell you the truth,' he said, 'there isn't supposed to be anyone here. Not you. Not me. Nothing living at all, in fact. Still, here we are, no getting around it.'

He picked up a bit of concrete and showed me the blue glow all over it. 'That's what happened to the Arcadians. The whole population's been erased from time. Arguably, they're better off that way.' It was like he was talking to himself, not me. 'They didn't do anything to deserve it. The final front in a war for everything there's ever been or ever will be. All over now. All tidied up and locked away. There's just one loose end.'

'Where are we going?'

He squinted into the distance. 'We only need to go as far the edge of the city.' He gave a sort of laugh, then looked down at me. 'That's as far as I go. I only have to make it that far.'

'What for?'

'Nothing much. Just flip a switch.'

I said, 'Can you carry me?'

'Sorry?'

'I'm tired from walking. Can you carry me?'

'No,' he said, after a moment, 'I'm very much afraid I can't. Let's just sit down for a while, all right?'

We perched on a big piece of concrete. I dangled my legs over the edge and kicked. He bent over, breathing really hard, like he'd been running, even though we'd only been strolling along. I was shivery, so he took off his coat and put it on me. My arms only went halfway down the sleeves. The sky was black but there were no stars, only pieces of things, tumbling about. 'What's that?' I said, pointing.

'Part of a spaceship,' he said. 'Looks like the rear engine carapace of a battle cruiser.'

I moved my pointing finger. 'Are those shooting stars?'

He squinted. 'No,' he said, after a moment. 'It's a squadron of fighters burning up in the upper atmosphere.' I thought, what if they - 'Just empty ships,' he said. 'Nothing to worry about. They're not going to fall on us or anything.'

'Are you a soldier?'

'No.'

I wiggled my arms in the big loose sleeves. 'But this is a soldier's coat.'

'Time to get going again.' He stood up, slowly, like he was afraid he would fall down. I gave him back his coat, and he put it on again, but left it unbuttoned.

'What's your name?' I said.

' I used to be called the Doctor.'

'Aren't you going to ask me what my name is?'

'I know who you are.'

He shut his eyes again, and I thought, what if that yellow light started coming out again, and it did. 'Mmff,' he said. 'Not yet, not just yet.' He ground the heels of his palms into his eyes, like he had a headache, and when he took the hands away the light had stopped.

'Here we are, then,' he said wobblyly.

The city stopped, suddenly, right in the middle of streets and buildings, like a huge knife had cut through them. Stuff had fallen out of the chopped buildings, and trash was blowing down the street, but except for the little bit of mess at the edge, the plain that stretched away forever was nothing but wet grey dirt.

'It's around here somewhere,' said the Doctor. 'Help me look?' I nodded.

While we were wandering around in the mud he started talking to himself again. 'I don't even know which side thought of it. Not a drop of malice in it - only irrational, unpredictable fear. Hmm. Probably the Daleks. They've always seen imagination as something threatening. On the other hand, it could have been captured Time Lord ordnance. Yeah, immune to chronon radiation… if it managed to slip the Time Lock, there's almost nothing in the universe that could kill it.'

He pressed his palms into his eyes again, like they had got tired too, trying to see in just the faint blue light. 'I didn't see how it was going to end, on that day. Did any of us? Could we have? One hundred and fifty-three thousand, eight hundred and forty-one of them… bursting out of my head like startled birds from a thicket, calling out… all that data, explosively decompressing itself. All those Time Lord minds. Am I rambling?' Now he was hugging himself. 'Bit hard to focus. Takes a lot of concentration to not just come apart at the seams right now. Tell me if I start rambling. I called them back because the Daleks had become so powerful that only Gallifrey could stop them. Would I have opened up my skull like that if I'd known how it would end? Would it have been better to just stand to one side and do nothing? It is the Time Lord way, after all.' He shook himself. 'If everyone did that, nothing would ever get done. Whole world'd fall apart. There it is. Hear that?'

I looked where he was pointing. There was a big plastic turnip-shaped thing, as tall as a house, sticking out of the dead ground and beeping.

'It's a distress beacon,' he said. 'Right now it's the second-most dangerous thing on Arcadia.' He grinned like he had thought of something funny. 'I only rank number three. But if anyone answers this beacon, they're going to find what they think is a helpless, harmless orphan whose world has been destroyed. Someone whose worst fears have come true. They won't know that it's a living quantum sieve whose worst fears always come true.'

I thought, what if, what if -

He reached out a hand to me and roared, 'Don't think it!'

I thought, but what if we're not alone, what if somebody's looking at us? I saw the Doctor stop in his tracks, looking back and forth, back and forth. The air was alive with sounds and presences and he was trying to see what was coming to get us. What if there was a great big eyeball in the sky, watching us? And there was.

The Doctor ran for the beacon. The eyeball swooped down like a vulture. It was even bigger than a house. I screamed out loud. I saw the eyeball crash into the Doctor and the turnip shape, with a huge thumping splat, knocking them both flat to the ground, and I put my hands over my face and started crying again.

There wasn't any sound, just the wind blowing bits of paper around. 'Don't be scared,' I heard the Doctor say. 'It's gone again.' I peeked through my fingers. The Doctor was getting up out of the mud a few feet away from the turnip, which had been squashed and wasn't beeping any more. He was bending over, like he had a stomachache.

'No victory,' he gasped. 'No happy ending. All I could do was keep the damage to a minimum. It'll have to do.'

He took a couple of steps towards me, and the amber light started coming out of his whole face and leaking out of the sleeves of his coat, making his hair and his hands look like they were on fire.

I could see his grinning teeth through the burning colour. 'Here goes nothing.'

I turned around to run away, but he grabbed me, and hooked his burning fingers in my collar.

And I thought, but what if the light burns me up too, and it did.