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eloriekamTitle: Whispers from a Black Hole: If
Author:eloriekam/![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eloriekam
Rating: All Ages
Characters: Ten, Face of Boe
Disclaimer: Not mine. I think the Doctor is okay with this arrangement.
Word Count: ~500
Summary: Boe speaks the impossible, what he wants and doesn't want, fears and loves.
Author's Note: No, the dialogue is not fully reproduced. Part of an idea originated in this fic. I think I actually wrote this third (and finished it second, not sure?), but it made a little more sense to post it second. Not that anything about Who is required to make sense!
"The Face of Boe will speak his final secret to a traveller..."
"Not yet," he interrupted Hame (still rude and not ginger). He thought back to when she'd first mentioned the legend to him, so young and bright this body had been. Now... he wasn't ready to lose again.
Martha didn't understand.
He was starting to see, and he wasn't sure he wanted to.
"I am the last of my kind," Boe breathed, "as you are the last of yours, Doctor."
"Don't go," he urged, pleaded.
"Know this, Time Lord..."
"...meet again, Doctor... for the third time, for the last time..."
"That... that is, that is textbook enigmatic." Covering his reaction. Seeing time around Boe was... different. He'd seen a darkened room, shattered glass, just for a moment.
He was in that room now. The shattered glass, it was all there.
"You are..."
No, no, no. He was about to lose another friend, now. No. Just... no.
Orange sky hazed with devastation's fruit.
Blood in red grass.
He breathed in and out, his TARDIS cupping him warm, even though he heard her low wail.
Mountains charred, fields below flooded.
He cupped the Moment, to make it happen.
Silent, beyond silence.
He could not stop the Face of Boe from finishing his sentence. He needed to know, fixed or not.
"...not alone."
"Killer of his own kind!"
This was impossible.
But what if... he had not sought to live beyond the end, either.
He undammed the silence, just a hairsbreadth.
The Face of Boe's compassion immediately washed at him. "Sorry, old friend," came the whisper.
What if....?
Only a Time Lord could have explained to another Time Lord what he did. Silence, uncapped, seemed to circle, taunting him. That part of his brain that had contained all the whispered chatting natterings of other Time Lords, former strength now inverted. He sought out that chance, scrolling through time fold after time line after time envelope after universe, spiraling and glowing and traceable and haunted and haunting.
Spark. Forevermore. Facing. Laughter.
He couldn't doubt the Face of Boe.
Nor could he believe.
Boe ghosted over him, and then went out. So complex, near to infinite, and he'd ended. The last of his kind.
He frowned, searching again. Questing... that unique feel and touch of another of his kind. He didn't want to be the last. He just was.
Sometimes, he didn't want to be at all. But as long as Martha was there, as long as there was someone, he would try.
"Find someone..."
What if, what if... who would have lived? Who would have been off Gallifrey, or been able to leave? Who would have had the skill?
Yet... he thought of why he'd held the Moment, why the Time War had ended as it did.
Was it better to be the last, than to have that again?
He took a breath and walled up the unbearable quiet again.
He might see another Time Lord once more. The Face of Boe had been all but impossible, but he wasn't wrong.
Yet.
The Doctor retreated into silence, to what things are, always.
Author:
eloriekam/eloriekamRating: All Ages
Characters: Ten, Face of Boe
Disclaimer: Not mine. I think the Doctor is okay with this arrangement.
Word Count: ~500
Summary: Boe speaks the impossible, what he wants and doesn't want, fears and loves.
Author's Note: No, the dialogue is not fully reproduced. Part of an idea originated in this fic. I think I actually wrote this third (and finished it second, not sure?), but it made a little more sense to post it second. Not that anything about Who is required to make sense!
"The Face of Boe will speak his final secret to a traveller..."
"Not yet," he interrupted Hame (still rude and not ginger). He thought back to when she'd first mentioned the legend to him, so young and bright this body had been. Now... he wasn't ready to lose again.
Martha didn't understand.
He was starting to see, and he wasn't sure he wanted to.
"I am the last of my kind," Boe breathed, "as you are the last of yours, Doctor."
"Don't go," he urged, pleaded.
"Know this, Time Lord..."
"...meet again, Doctor... for the third time, for the last time..."
"That... that is, that is textbook enigmatic." Covering his reaction. Seeing time around Boe was... different. He'd seen a darkened room, shattered glass, just for a moment.
He was in that room now. The shattered glass, it was all there.
"You are..."
No, no, no. He was about to lose another friend, now. No. Just... no.
Orange sky hazed with devastation's fruit.
Blood in red grass.
He breathed in and out, his TARDIS cupping him warm, even though he heard her low wail.
Mountains charred, fields below flooded.
He cupped the Moment, to make it happen.
Silent, beyond silence.
He could not stop the Face of Boe from finishing his sentence. He needed to know, fixed or not.
"...not alone."
"Killer of his own kind!"
This was impossible.
But what if... he had not sought to live beyond the end, either.
He undammed the silence, just a hairsbreadth.
The Face of Boe's compassion immediately washed at him. "Sorry, old friend," came the whisper.
What if....?
Only a Time Lord could have explained to another Time Lord what he did. Silence, uncapped, seemed to circle, taunting him. That part of his brain that had contained all the whispered chatting natterings of other Time Lords, former strength now inverted. He sought out that chance, scrolling through time fold after time line after time envelope after universe, spiraling and glowing and traceable and haunted and haunting.
Spark. Forevermore. Facing. Laughter.
He couldn't doubt the Face of Boe.
Nor could he believe.
Boe ghosted over him, and then went out. So complex, near to infinite, and he'd ended. The last of his kind.
He frowned, searching again. Questing... that unique feel and touch of another of his kind. He didn't want to be the last. He just was.
Sometimes, he didn't want to be at all. But as long as Martha was there, as long as there was someone, he would try.
"Find someone..."
What if, what if... who would have lived? Who would have been off Gallifrey, or been able to leave? Who would have had the skill?
Yet... he thought of why he'd held the Moment, why the Time War had ended as it did.
Was it better to be the last, than to have that again?
He took a breath and walled up the unbearable quiet again.
He might see another Time Lord once more. The Face of Boe had been all but impossible, but he wasn't wrong.
Yet.
The Doctor retreated into silence, to what things are, always.
