It's a Graves thing (soundofwings) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-11-27 20:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | death, doctor |
Who: Death and the Doctor
What: First meetings
Where: England
When: A Hundred Years Ago! (yes, really)
Warnings/Rating: Nope
The TARDIS materialized at the edge of a very bleak, black forest, wheezing gently against her brakes as the Doctor threw levers and yanked on switches with uncharacteristic silence. The Doctor knew just where he was, because despite his nonsensical flailing about, he had pinpoint accuracy if he wanted to go to a certain time or place. (When his lady ship cooperated, that is. She might look like a blue box, but she also had a soul of her own, and a mind wasn’t necessary to thwart the Doctor if the time machine decided he belonged in a certain place or time.) Shrugging heavily into his tweed suitcoat and adjusting his blue bowtie under his chin, the Doctor threw one last switch and pressed out of the front doors, his face set.
Tall and gangling, the Doctor stepped out onto a cold English moor. It was dusk, and an unyielding gray sky was the backdrop of a thickly green carpet of grass that covered the rolling countryside. In the distance, a lone scarecrow that was much more than that stared out over the panorama, guarding the things he had been so keen to destroy. As the doors slammed behind him, the Doctor looked out at this eternal symbol of his merciless vengeance for a long moment.
It was early summer 1914. Just beyond the hill was a school for boys abandoned for nearly a year now, and in the direction of town, there was a cottage that housed a woman the Doctor had left behind long ago, in a different life. He was not here to see that woman. He did not want to face kindness just then, and he hoped that she had moved on in the time since the departure of his former self. Perhaps to assist the war effort...
No, the Doctor was not here to see a friend; he was here to see yet another enemy, imprisoned at the same time as the unfortunate scarecrow. He needed a mirror to see her, and the visit was a test of his power against his own anger.
He set off across the moor, his leather ankle boots some proof against the wet grass, his hands in his trouser pockets, his broad boyish face grim. He felt old; he did hate feeling old.
It was Death's day off. 1914, and she was choosing to spend her day in England. At least for the moment. She had been awfully busy of late, and though she usually spent her day off among people, reminding herself of humanity, 1914 found her just tired enough to choose a moor over a city or town. And so she wandered.
The box was the first thing she saw that wasn't grass or forest or sky, an angle of blue in the otherwise grey and green. A policebox that didn't belong in this space, but more importantly, didn't belong in this time. She didn't travel to the past or to the future; her existence was very much in every single present moment and the coming and going of life in it. But she could still recognize the things that didn't belong. She had existed long enough to be able to know that.
Even on her day off, in her dress that was more suited to a ballroom than the open air, she passed through space with the same invisible ease she always did. There and gone in the same instant, but there was in fact where she wished to be for the moment. Walking next to the strange man with the out-of-time tweed and the cloud of lead on his shoulders. Her footsteps were visible first, cutting paths through the wet grass, but in the next moment she was there. There in her dress that was several years out of fashion, darker along the hem from the gathered moisture that the grass held, a heavy stripe near her feet. She should have been far too cold in what she wore, no shawl or coat over the thin fabric, but the chill didn't seem to bother her at all. It didn't stop her from trudging farther along the sloping ground, especially after she had heard that unfamiliar whir that had echoed in the air, announcing the presence of someone that most certainly did not belong there. She walked with that someone at her side, her hands clasped behind her back as she continued to trudge.
Besides being very old and very clever, the Doctor was also not human, and he was possessed of innumerable senses that humans could not conceive, much less have themselves. The Time Lords were one of the oldest races in the universe, and they were psychic, prophetic, sage and so technologically advanced that the Doctor tended to wave his arms about and just dismiss it as magic rather than explain. He knew someone was with him, but it was a growing realization, not a shocking one. The Doctor, after all, knew what death felt like, but in a cold moor in 1914 he didn’t expect such a being--one always assumed she had battlefields to occupy out on the front.
“Hello,” he said, with a lilt to his tongue that always accompanied an inquisitive tilt of his head and an honest delight in every new thing he came across. (Not that this being was new, he could tell that, but the phenomenon was, anyway.) “Funny thing, didn’t see you there.” He was still walking, his hands still ensconced in his pockets, eyes ahead. His senses were elsewhere, examining the strange feeling that was her presence. “But then...” He slowly turned his head, gently, allowing his eyes to adjust in just the right manner. “I suppose I wasn’t looking the proper... way.” He got her in view with a little bit of work, and his fine pale brows jumped in exaggerated (but natural, for him) surprise when he got a good look at her. “Well look at you! How do you do.” She could have been something monstrous, something capable of laying waste to the entire universe and he probably would have addressed her in just the same way. He gave a little skip with his heels so he could rotate around and face her entirely, the cuffs of his trousers much too high off his ankles and his hands now visible, twisting around into each other with obvious excitement.
There may have been battlefields to occupy, people all around the world that were ready to take her hand and move on, but it wasn’t the day for that. Births and deaths paused while she spent her time away, and if her time happened to be spent on this moor, with a man who was more than just a man, then that was her own prerogative. Even had it been a normal day, she still would have been able to take the time, be everywhere she was needed while also walking with him.
“Hello,” she replied with a smile, expression bright and open as she regarded him with the same inquisitive sort of gaze that he had turned on her, and she was suddenly more there than she had been a moment before, easier to see. He was a strange sort, one whose type didn’t normally didn’t belong there under her care, but in her moments of study, she learned him. All of him that was there for her to learn, from his first breath to that moment. The next sound that slipped from her lips was his name. Not ‘The Doctor’, not ‘John Smith’, but a soft sound in Gallifreyan. One that said yes, I know you. She gave another smile and extended her hand toward him, back up and fingers loose, and proper for the time period. She didn’t introduce herself; she didn’t need to. She could, in fact, be considered monstrous by some. And were the situation right, she would take the entire universe in one single, unforgiving moment. She might. Someday. If it was time.
But that didn’t mean that she couldn’t be polite, and even cheerful when provided the opportunity. She watched his feet with that lingering smile before returning her eyes to his face. “You’re awfully alone at the moment.” She didn’t clarify whether she meant his lack of companion, or his singular existence as the last of his kind. Either was true, and it would be a measure of his mind and mood to see which he replied to.
Some of the strain went out of the corners of his eyes as he eased into his typical sight and she settled more firmly into reality. He was not for a moment fooled by her attire, which by his estimation was at least four years out of date, nor by her charming female appearance. That is not to say that he knew who and what she was, no, not quite, but he knew there was something cosmic about her, being something of a cosmic force himself. There were few beings in the universe responsible for so many deaths--and for so many lives, at the same time. He was such a diminutive creature to have so much power, most of it in his knowledge and in his ingenuity, hidden away behind bright eyes and ridiculous limbs.
His fingers stopped twisting when she said his name, a sound the universe had not heard for a millennia, and was never meant to hear again. Only such a being as she would have been able to say it, so keen, so correct and kind at the same time. He knew what she was--not how, but what--in that instant. All the childish laughter went out of his face in a lightning strike moment. “Not many people know that name,” he said, low, his soft lashes wide as he gently tipped his head to one side in a manner that his enemies had come to fear.
Her smile did not appease his grim expression. “Call me the Doctor. I chose the name, and I think you can bloody well use it. If you don’t mind all that much.” His voice escalated to anger and then softened into polite pitch with alarming speed. He did not reply at all to the inquiry about his loneliness, which said something in and of itself.
She did not fear him, wide expression and angry voice or not. Ages old he may have been, lives of other written across his own, but he was a child to her, as all living things were. It did not mean she would treat him as such though, and she nodded with the same care she showed to many who had met her. “Doctor,” she repeated with a nod, though the tone she had laced through his name remained. “I don’t mind at all,” she continued, and reached a hand out in search of an arm. “Walk with me? We can be friends on a stroll. Or you can talk if you’d like. Tell me how exactly twisty time brings you here.” Because though she tended to be everywhere, she was not everywhen, her own moments were relatively linear, and she could clearly tell that his were not. She looked at him again, smile still around the corners of her lips, but eyes gone more serious, the reflection of one that had seen a great deal in her time. “Or whatever else you might want to talk about.”
He examined her face, and detected something genuine in it, something she did not have to present to him. He acknowledged the choice with a very slow relaxation of his features. The Doctor was very quick to anger, and though his expressions were mercurial, he had a depth of feeling that did not go away easily. He might smile at her now, but the act of speaking his name was not so quickly forgotten, whatever he put on his face. He liked that she was not afraid of him; he liked the form she had chosen, and he liked that she could be earnest in some things. Old, old beings, the ineffable, they did not often stoop to honesty.
He brightened on a dime, turning a face that glowed temporarily down into hers. He took her small hand into his cool chapped ones and wrapped it into the crook of his elbow. "On a stroll, then. Do you have a great many friends? What a nice thing, to have friends. I used to have friends in the neighborhood. I have one named Winston who is just starting to get cracking this year." It was easy to see why being a companion could be such a wondrous and inescapable thing. He could talk about everything as if it was new, walk with Death in a cool morning, and kick his steps up like a child even when there was little to laugh at.
She laughed softly when he took her hand, a bit of her sister’s delight sneaking through in the moment. Her touch was no different than anyone else’s, didn’t cause a chill or a shiver, but sat light and warm on his arm. She knew the anger still hidden behind his clown’s face, but that was not hers to address, and even if she had the ability to travel back and forth as he did, she would not take back her naming of him.
His swift shifts in topic reminded her again of her youngest sister, and she actually peered around the grass to see if she was hiding there. Not seeing her, she returned her attention to the Doctor. “Some,” she finally replied. “Not that many. I have siblings though.”
He took them on a path across the moor, but eventually they stepped down on to a country lane bordered by leafy green trees and sweet lilac that wasn’t quite managing bloom. The gray day seemed a bit darker down here, the lane was yet deserted and obviously not in a great deal of use in this direction. Weeds brushed their shoes as they passed. Eventually the dark shadow of a manor house loomed ahead. “And what are these siblings of yours like? Same sense of fashion, I wonder?” He gave her a cheeky sideways glance enhanced by a devilish dimple and the lurking expectation of more knowledge in the back of his clear hazel eyes.
The scenery didn't much concern her, and she followed along the lane where he led. Her steps were measured and steady, an overabundance of time was no reason to rush. Her eyes took in the house, a passing curiosity as to why they were there showed in her expression, though she didn't voice it. She laughed at his questions and shook her head. "Hardly. We're not a one of us alike. I don't believe my older brother has changed in the entire time he has existed, though my younger siblings more than make up for it." Her feelings for them obviously lived somewhere between fondness and annoyance, though heavy on the former, for the most part. "Though I'd say only about half of us have any real interest in fashion at all. Four of the seven, perhaps." She let that information slip out with an easy smile, but no more than that.
The weed-choked path curved up a hill, and the Doctor took the incline in lanky good grace, assisting her like a gentleman in the early part of the journey but somewhat forgetting his intent as the purpose of his journey grew nearer. He increased his pace, somehow in a hurry to finish this now that he was so close, and rush off somewhere else as soon as may be. “Have I met any of your siblings?” he asked as they stepped out into a graveled courtyard long empty. Several of the manor windows had been broken by storm and village boy, and the emptiness stared out at them from shattered sockets. “You’re old, and I find that old things have heard of me.” He gave her a close-lipped smile that was frank ego without pride. Gently he disengaged his arm from hers and examined the heavy front doors, which were locked and barred.
While she accepted his aid to begin, she was more than able to make her own way up the hill, and when his help disappeared she easily kept up with him. She didn’t know why he was so fascinated with the house, though she could probably figure it out if she were to turn her thoughts to the problem. She didn’t though, knowing that things would reveal themselves in time. For good or for bad, she followed the unusual not-man on his quest.
“Perhaps not directly, though everyone has encountered them in some way. ...We’re aspects, personified.” It was perhaps a strange way to describe their family, but it was perhaps a strange way that the Doctor would understand. “Not nearly so solid as yourself. But even so... you’re new to me.” It was said with an angle of surprise, like she didn’t often encounter something new. She studied him studying the doors and waited for his purpose to reveal itself.
He did not immediately respond to any of that. It was the Doctor’s way to appear to forget, to move on to new problems, to distract with firefly brightness as he twisted his head up and around the deeply scarred wood. He could smell the abandonment on it, knew its age from when it was a sapling to its stout and carved state bound in iron and guarding the courtyard. He remembered this place as he remembered his previous lives, clearly, but without the reality of tasting the moment. His leather bootsoles scraped on the gravel as he dropped into pushup position and glued the side of his face to the flat underside of the wooden doors, peering through the crack.
A second later he jumped up and took his sonic screwdriver from out of his breast pocket. The silver device managed the length of a contemporary screwdriver without resembling one in the slightest, and he peered at an unreadable display before pointing it at the door and pushing a button that made it glow and emit a specific screeching sound. Nothing happened, so he peered at it again, adjusting settings, before pointing and glowing. This happened several times, and he began talking as he tried to find the setting for locks rusted to this degree at this temperature, height, matter density, air pressure and gravitational pull. “This used to be a school for boys. I came to stay for a bit. Taught history.” He gave her a mischievous smirk. “I was brilliant. Bit boring, but brilliant.”
She watched him still with a rather amused expression on her face, noting the technology (different from other worlds she’d touched, but not all that unusual, she supposed). His fiddlings and futzings were a source of entertainment for several moments, and then he was speaking again. “I remember the school. I’m certain history was quite the subject with you teaching,” she replied. She watched his tests some more, one eyebrow inching upward as he continued to have difficulty with (she assumed, at least) opening the door.
The next moment, she pushed back the lock from the inside and slowly opened it, taking care to not hit the Doctor with its heavy weight. She peered out at him, mischief around her eyes. “Is that what you needed?”
The Doctor, who had been mid-adjustment with his screwdriver, whirled back to face the place she had been only a split second before, then whirled back to face the door. His arms were slow to catch up, and the movement ended up looking much like a puppet getting twisted on his strings. He ducked his head down against his shoulders in disappointment that he wasn’t able to properly show off that time and then straightened up with a general’s offended aplomb. “I was just about to get it,” he insisted, sticking his chin out at her as he stalked past. This little display didn’t even come close to his anger before, a child’s minor temper tantrum in the sweet shop. He did it mostly to entertain himself.
He progressed across an abandoned courtyard, moving with confidence and familiarity and hesitating only once at the kitchen door. He pressed five fingers on it, but it was locked. This time he got the right setting the first time, and the door clicked forgivingly and admitted them both to a dusty servants’ quarters that smelled of musty bread. He gave her a triumphant look and then prowled through the kitchen to the main hallway, giving sharp, bird-like movements of his head as he looked in either direction and poked his head through every room. He was looking for something in particular, it was clear, and wasn’t quite sure where it might be. “I wasn’t teaching proper history, you know. War of the Roses and political nonsense.” He said the word with a great deal of disdain.
Death actually laughed at the doctor’s response to her opening the door, a sound that was surprisingly light and glad for someone whose existence included the things that hers did. She took real joy in small things like the expression on someone’s face. “I know you were. I’ll let you get the next one though.” She patted his arm with one slim hand as he passed by her and into the building, and then turned to follow him.
Sometimes she was solidly behind him, and sometimes she faded slightly, but always reappeared when he slowed to stop to study something. She knew he was searching, could see it in his expression, but knew that it would reveal itself in time. She let him talk, content to follow the rise and fall of his voice, especially when he really got going about something. She perched on a chair that was in the hallway he was speeding along, watching him grow closer as he grumbled about politics. “And what would you rather have been teaching?” she asked with a smirk.
“The part where people lived it. The part where it’s fun,” he answered, distracted. He paused as he reached her chair, not used to being the one falling behind. He didn’t resent her for it, he just gave her a curious look, one that saw too many things to explain in one lifetime. When he transferred his gaze, it was as deliberate as a blow.
Finally, in one of the long abandoned dorm rooms, the Doctor found what he was looking for. He withdrew his head from the frame and pushed all the way into the room, which boasted iron bedframes gone to rust and forgotten boys’ forbidden treasures under the floorboards. He sobered visibly as he stepped in, affecting a hush on the dusty quiet--even through the aggressive creaking of the old foundations as a fierce wind wuthered off the moor. He rounded a corner and crossed the room to stand in front of a grim full-length mirror. It was the only one unbroken in the whole place, and the Doctor didn’t keep such mirrors in the TARDIS. He stood in front of it and waited for the one he’d trapped there to appear, staring in the meantime at his own clownish face and wind-tinged cheeks. He sobered even more at the sight.
“Are you here for me?” he asked Death, abruptly, in a soft voice that was unafraid. “It seems like a job, even for someone like you. If you’re here for the girl you’re going to have an even worse time with that.” He wasn’t talking about the girl in the mirror, he was talking about the one in his head. The Doctor wasn’t fond of Sunny, but that didn’t mean he was going to send her out like a goat on Saturnalia.
“So teach the part that’s fun,” she replied, but let the topic drop after that, able to tell that his attention had moved on to his search. She stood in front of the mirror as well, but behind him, her reflection solidly human in appearance for that moment, and partially hidden behind his own. She didn’t usually take the time to look at herself, and she lifted a pale hand to smooth down hair that had been lifted by the wind across the moor, smelling of damp grass and heather. She was curious what they were waiting for, but she simply stood. She had time.
Her eyebrows rose at his questions, and after a moment she shook her head. “I’m here for no one, Doctor. Not today.” She suddenly understood why they were in front of the mirror, found that part of his life that corresponded to this place in his memories and what made him him. She also knew about the girl in his head, and gave a little shake of her own. It didn’t quite make sense to her, not then, nearly a hundred years before she would find herself with her own partner, so to speak. She didn’t understand, but she accepted it, and vowed to herself not to take the man that wasn’t alone in his own mind. Instead, she returned her attention to the mirror and tilted her head in thought. “This is quite a piece of work,” she said of it, her tone betraying nothing more of what she thought about a girl trapped in the glass.
The Doctor didn’t elaborate on the man he had been as the teacher in the school on the moor. It seemed unnecessary, a dark reminder instead of a memorable greeting card, and though he didn’t put it away--he was here, after all, irrevocably here--he didn’t like lingering on it with her standing there watching him think it. He could feel her there, a psychic, deep awareness, altogether different from the way he felt Sunny or any other being. He had felt that presence ten times, and he knew it well. His expression soured.
“They are a short-lived race. In that time they caused a lot of pain and suffering so they might live forever. I gave them what they wanted.” He stared into the mirror, and the little girl (that wasn’t really a little girl at all) he’d trapped within stared back. He didn’t say anything to her, nor she to him. He just stood there and looked at her, and it was a kind thing, to let her experience being seen. He stared for a while longer and then turned away to look once more at Death. “There’s something wrong about you being here and not everywhere,” he said, unkindly.
She didn’t reply to his personal justification for putting the girl in the glass - she wasn’t there to judge him. She’d seen much worse in her time (even within her own family), and likely would again. Instead, she waited until he turned to face her again, expression frank and open even in the face of his unkind scolding. “And who says I am not everywhere? Even on my day off.” She turned again, crossing the room to sit perched on one of the rusty bedframes, the bloody red crumbles of metal doing nothing to stain her dress as they should have. Once she sat, she pulled her feet up, an entirely impolite and unladylike position, and rested her chin on her knees as she looked at him. “I told you that I’m here for no one today, and take that as you will. I’ve had a handful of days off in the time you’ve been alive, and I plan to continue to do so even after you’ve gone.”
“In some place, in some time, I am gone. But it isn’t this one. There are very few places that haven’t seen me, or will see me. It is a good thing to remember.” It was not really a threat, but it could be, depending on how much you liked the Doctor, and how much he liked you. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind when it came to this girl-shaped thing. The Doctor spread his mouth into a thin expression that was meant to approximate a smile, but simply emphasized the irony of his existence. The Doctor appreciated irony, and he was constantly pointing it out to the people around him, not wanting them to miss it. He was tempted to do so here, but after taking a breath he decided she must already know, so he shrugged and walked back out of the room, and then out of the building. There was someone he needed to see.