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D_M Prompt 10
Oct. 2nd, 2006 09:45 pmEvery once in a while, since coming to the Nexus, the Doctors would share a space without arguing or worrying whether the fabric of spacetime was going to come apart at the seams. It was a strangely congenial gathering, all ten of them congregating in one TARDIS, sitting down for a few hours' conversation and some tea. It happened sporadically and never for very long, which was probably for the best. None of them can be kept in one place for very long, after all, not for any reason.
They gathered in their eighth incarnation's TARDIS this time, taking advantage of the Victorian library feel of the console room, as none of them could be too long separated from the heart any TARDIS' operation. Despite the state of temporal grace that insured nothing incendiary happened, so to speak, a fire crackled in a grate. Nobody dissected how that was done. It was a fire. You don't wonder what kind of dimensional bubble makes it possible, you just enjoy it.
Ten people sat in squashy chairs upholstered with dark velvet, cups of tea in their hands. Possibly biscuits nearby. A record-player somewhere filled the room with a quiet music that no-one seemed to pay much attention to.
After a while, the fair-haired fellow in the cricketing garb spoke up. "I'd found a corner of the twentieth century on Earth to watch not long ago. I watched the whole microchip revolution. So much shorter than it was for other races."
"That reminds me...." the little one with the bowlcut mused after a moment, "I always meant to return to the French Revolution. "I don't think any of us ever did, did we?"
The others shook their heads. Too busy saving the Universe, mending Time and Space, defending the innocent and banishing burnt toast.
"That was a time, though, wasn't it?" he continued reminiscently. "The human spirit shining through black clouds of gunpowder...."
"Humans. I remember Paris, 1913. Le Sacre du Printemps premiered at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees," the Scottish one murmured from his slightly shadowed corner. Then he grinned--a beautiful, seven-year-old grin that wouldn't be called "innocent" by a blind man. "It was a glorious riot. The dancers could barely hear the music for the shouting. I beat old Igor's rhythm line out for them--" He tapped a short, driving tattoo against the floor with the tip of his ever-present umbrella. "Told him next time, maybe he ought to write something a little simpler if he expects this to happen again." This earnt him grins from his two following incarnations and a chuckle from the tenth.
"I remember that," he said, pulling off his reading glasses. "I remember ..." a thought hit him. "Kill Devil Hill, seventeenth December, 1903!" His wide eyes lit up. "Oh, that was a day! Cold and windy, completely overcast...Orville and Wilbur's engine made such a racket--but a mere sixty or so years later, humans would be in space! Brilliant!" He waved his arm, the glasses still in his hand. Always speaking italics, that one. But his enthusiasm was infectious. His floppy-haired eighth self grinned a similar grin, putting his teacup down on the console where it would probably leave a ring--oh well, always time to get that later. "Do you remember Spencer Silver?" This earned a snerk, as apparently his wild-haired conterpart did. The eighth continued. "He never did beleive me when I told him that adhesive he thought was so useless would be found in every office across the planet in another twelve years." He shook his head, still smiling. "They just don't want to know, sometimes."
"No, they don't," a quiet voice interjected. "For better or worse, they don't listen. They don't want to hear the future." Their ninth counterpart was, if at all possible, more shadowed than their seventh, perched near the record player. He regarded his hands for a moment as he sat hunched, leather-clad elbows resting on his knees. "I was there in 1945, you know. I tried to stop them flying that bomb out on the Enola Gay. The Little Boy, they called it, that bomb. Ironic. I tried to tell them how many would die and how they would die. There was no point, though, was there? And there's no point in ever going back there."
"But that's precisely why we continue to try elsewhere, young man," said their first incarnation, the youngest-who-was-oldest, possibly the most optimistic of all of them.
The others looked at him for a moment, looked into his eyes, into the memories that some of them might have forgotten. He was right, after all. He'd set them on this path centuries ago and it was a path none of them could ever see wavering from. Not for a moment.
((ETA: concrit, pleeeeaaaase? I haven't done much writing recently.))
They gathered in their eighth incarnation's TARDIS this time, taking advantage of the Victorian library feel of the console room, as none of them could be too long separated from the heart any TARDIS' operation. Despite the state of temporal grace that insured nothing incendiary happened, so to speak, a fire crackled in a grate. Nobody dissected how that was done. It was a fire. You don't wonder what kind of dimensional bubble makes it possible, you just enjoy it.
Ten people sat in squashy chairs upholstered with dark velvet, cups of tea in their hands. Possibly biscuits nearby. A record-player somewhere filled the room with a quiet music that no-one seemed to pay much attention to.
After a while, the fair-haired fellow in the cricketing garb spoke up. "I'd found a corner of the twentieth century on Earth to watch not long ago. I watched the whole microchip revolution. So much shorter than it was for other races."
"That reminds me...." the little one with the bowlcut mused after a moment, "I always meant to return to the French Revolution. "I don't think any of us ever did, did we?"
The others shook their heads. Too busy saving the Universe, mending Time and Space, defending the innocent and banishing burnt toast.
"That was a time, though, wasn't it?" he continued reminiscently. "The human spirit shining through black clouds of gunpowder...."
"Humans. I remember Paris, 1913. Le Sacre du Printemps premiered at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees," the Scottish one murmured from his slightly shadowed corner. Then he grinned--a beautiful, seven-year-old grin that wouldn't be called "innocent" by a blind man. "It was a glorious riot. The dancers could barely hear the music for the shouting. I beat old Igor's rhythm line out for them--" He tapped a short, driving tattoo against the floor with the tip of his ever-present umbrella. "Told him next time, maybe he ought to write something a little simpler if he expects this to happen again." This earnt him grins from his two following incarnations and a chuckle from the tenth.
"I remember that," he said, pulling off his reading glasses. "I remember ..." a thought hit him. "Kill Devil Hill, seventeenth December, 1903!" His wide eyes lit up. "Oh, that was a day! Cold and windy, completely overcast...Orville and Wilbur's engine made such a racket--but a mere sixty or so years later, humans would be in space! Brilliant!" He waved his arm, the glasses still in his hand. Always speaking italics, that one. But his enthusiasm was infectious. His floppy-haired eighth self grinned a similar grin, putting his teacup down on the console where it would probably leave a ring--oh well, always time to get that later. "Do you remember Spencer Silver?" This earned a snerk, as apparently his wild-haired conterpart did. The eighth continued. "He never did beleive me when I told him that adhesive he thought was so useless would be found in every office across the planet in another twelve years." He shook his head, still smiling. "They just don't want to know, sometimes."
"No, they don't," a quiet voice interjected. "For better or worse, they don't listen. They don't want to hear the future." Their ninth counterpart was, if at all possible, more shadowed than their seventh, perched near the record player. He regarded his hands for a moment as he sat hunched, leather-clad elbows resting on his knees. "I was there in 1945, you know. I tried to stop them flying that bomb out on the Enola Gay. The Little Boy, they called it, that bomb. Ironic. I tried to tell them how many would die and how they would die. There was no point, though, was there? And there's no point in ever going back there."
"But that's precisely why we continue to try elsewhere, young man," said their first incarnation, the youngest-who-was-oldest, possibly the most optimistic of all of them.
The others looked at him for a moment, looked into his eyes, into the memories that some of them might have forgotten. He was right, after all. He'd set them on this path centuries ago and it was a path none of them could ever see wavering from. Not for a moment.
((ETA: concrit, pleeeeaaaase? I haven't done much writing recently.))
