The Water is Wide
Sep. 28th, 2011 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timelord1Okay, I try to post here first. Then we see what happens. This is my debut story for TTU, so I'm a little nervous. I might have gotten a tad hamfisted with the writing. I don't know. Anyway, this is as much to test whether or not I can post cuts on my own journal as it is for y'all to tell me if I should try again before posting to TTU. Thank you for your time.
<--this was the prompt picture
The TARDIS had materialized in a rocky gorge under a pale purple sky. The Doctor was standing outside, watching a ringed moon rise fat and pus-yellow over the lip of the gorge. He wrinkled his nose at the pungent abundance of ozone in the air and felt his lips drying out. He licked them, and the bit of exposed tongue he’d used to wet his lips felt dry when he brought it back into his mouth, deepening the concentrated sneer on his face.
“This is decidedly not the leisure planet of Suthka,” he said. He could taste vinegar.
“Why is it your aim seems to get worse when we’re going somewhere just for fun?” Rose asked, poking her head out the doors to look after him. She recoiled at once, frowning. “What’s wrong with the air?”
“Could be one of a couple of things. Grab some water and a bag of saline, just in case. I just have to see.” He squinted at the sky, hands in his pockets. “I hate planets that look like sets from the original Star Trek. Everything always looked like Nevada. I mean, there are a lot of planets in the galaxy, you’d think at some point in that first series they would have landed on one that wasn’t mainly rocks and sage plants. That, or snow. Probably could only afford two sets back then. Let’s have a look…” he trailed off and walked towards the walls of the gorge, still looking up.
The pressure in the air was incredible; he could feel the weight of the atmosphere pushing on his cells. More than that, he could feel a raw tingle in his bottom lip as it dried out even more. A few more minutes and the skin would split. It wouldn’t do to let Rose be out in this for long. He’d just climb to the top of the gorge and see what he could see, then get them going on their way to Suthka.
He started up the side of the gorge and was not at all surprised when the rocks under his feet began to crumble into sand. He reckoned the sage plants would probably disintegrate on contact as well. It was a slow and careful climb to the top of the gorge, and when Rose started up, he guided her to the most stable points among the rocks, grabbing her wrists and lifting her like a toddler to stand beside him when she got close enough to grab.
She knocked the dust off herself and off of him as well. “I always forget how strong you are,” she said. Her face was red and her lips were already chapped.
“Drink,” he said, taking one of the packs of water from her and tearing the cap off. “Keep drinking, as long as we’re out here. Which won’t be long; I just want to see if this is what I think it is.”
“What d’you think it is?” she asked after swallowing a mouthful of water.
“Sarci Sunis,” he answered, putting on his glasses to scan the horizon. Nothing but more rocks and more sage plants. There was a second moon, rosy in color and smaller than the yellow one with the rings, just beginning to rise. “If it is, I want you to see it. I’ve only ever seen one my whole life, they’re so rare.” He turned in a circle and suddenly stopped, a grin spreading over his face.
“It is,” he whispered. He took Rose by the shoulders and turned her, pointing to a massive swath of darkness moving towards them across the sky. “Look there, see that? That, Rose Tyler, is a Sarci Sunis.”
“Which is what?” she asked, taking another drink. “Some kind of storm?”
He nodded. “A temporal storm. It’s a little pocket of time, like a worm-hole. They move from planet to planet, creating unstable, short-duration rifts in time and space. While it’s on the surface of this planet right now, it’s also on the surface of another planet, probably in another time. Even another universe. The energy it takes to maintain the bridge is astronomical, and it can’t sustain it for very long. One of the side effects is that it sucks all the moisture out of the planet and gathers it around itself, like an ocean in the sky. All the water that exists on this planet is up there, swirling around the Sarci Sunis.”
Rose made a thoughtful noise, drawing the Doctor’s attention back to her. “All the water I brought with us is up there now, too,” she said, showing him the empty water packs. The saline bag was dry as well, the plastic shriveled and collapsed on itself. The skin on her face was starting to dry out and chap as badly as her lips.
“We’re not staying,” he said, taking her hand to lead her away. She stayed where she stood, watching the storm approach.
“’s all right, I want to see it.” She gave his hand a little tug to draw him near. “How often do you get to see an ocean in the sky?”
“Twice in nine hundred years,” he answered. “The moment it becomes dangerous for you to be out any longer, we’re going back to the TARDIS.”
She scoffed, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow. “Don’t let me slow you down.”
They held hands and watched the storm as it neared them. Rose flinched when the first of the water was directly overhead, and within moments the purple of the planet’s sky was blotted out by waves of rippling water that mirrored everything on the planet’s surface, including the two of them. It was so low to the ground the Doctor reached out and touched it, smiling at Rose as he showed her his damp hand. She reached up and pulled down a handful of water and flicked it at him, laughing.
“The wormhole will be at the eye of the storm,” the Doctor said over the sound of the surging water. “When it passes over us we’ll be able to see another world.”
“Wonder where it’ll come out,” Rose said, still looking up.
Their wait was not long. The Doctor’s hearts began to speed up when he saw the reddish glow lighting the ripples from beneath the surface. Don’t torture yourself – you know that would be impossible. As the eye neared, he grabbed Rose’s hand and squeezed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It can’t be,” he breathed, straining to see the eye before it arrived. “It’s gone – Time Locked. I…” he looked at Rose.
“It looks like Gallifrey,” he said, his throat so tight he could barely utter the words.
“What? Up there?” Rose asked, looking up. The eye was nearly overhead and the blazing red light from the other side of the water made everything on the planet’s surface glow like it was on fire. “I thought you said it was gone.”
“It is,” the Doctor replied, loosening his tie as he kept his eyes on the storm. “This little pocket might just have found a way around the Time Lock.” He slipped out of his jacket and let it fall into the dust. He knew it couldn’t possibly be, and yet, as the eye moved into position above them, he saw the silver trees that dotted the landscape of Wild Endeavour. The blazing red-orange sky glinted off the glass dome of the Citadel, clear as daylight through the shimmering ripples. He let out a little sob as he tore off his shirt.
“Come with me, Rose,” he said, then threw out his arms and dove up into the water, swimming towards home.
Rose watched his trainers slip under the surface of the airborne ocean even as she yelled for him to stop. The storm was moving fast, and she had to make a decision before the eye moved away from where she could reach it. She was not the greatest swimmer in the world, but she couldn’t let the Doctor leave her behind. She took off her sweatshirt and shoes, took a few deep breaths before drawing a big one in and holding it, and jumped up into the water.
She pried her eyes open enough to see if she could spot the Doctor, and found him some distance ahead, kicking as hard as he could for the red sky of Gallifrey. If it was Gallifrey. She was terrified that it was like that mirror in Harry Potter that showed you whatever you wanted to see. What if the storm was tricking him, pulling him in so it could drown them both? She kicked and pawed at the water, trying to close the distance between them. There were fish and plants in the water, floating around her like they were as confused as she was to be swimming in the air instead of where they belonged.
The further she swam, the more pressure she felt building behind her eardrums, until her whole head was full of painful buzzing. What if it was like the ocean on earth and she got the bends from being too far down (up?) without a mask or whatever. Her pace was slowing, her limbs weakening as she clenched her jaw to hold on to the last bit of air. She had to reach the Doctor, but he was leaving her behind. She had time for one last thought before she blacked out and water began to fill her lungs. Please look back.
Gallifrey. Home. It was getting bigger by the second. He thrashed against the water, tearing through it as fast as he could. The muscles in his legs were burning and his respiratory bypass had kicked in some time ago, holding air in reserve so he didn’t drown. He had to get there, break through the surface before the wormhole collapsed and he fell back to the other planet’s surface with the water.
It was springtime. The silver trees were just coming into their splendor, their leaves blazing in the light of the dual suns. He didn’t care what era it was, so long as he could breathe the air and feel the russet grass beneath his feet. He was perhaps thirty feet away from the surface. Even if he was trapped there forever, at least he would be trapped at home. With Rose. He would take her to the Citadel, show her the Panopticon and every haunt and hallway he used to frequent when he could still walk on its glorious surface. He’d show her the Academy and the grove of trees he used to sit under as a boy while he studied his lessons. They would travel every inch together. Make a home there. He looked back to make sure she was still behind him and saw her floating motionless twenty meters below him.
Thirty feet away. Her eyes were closed, her body bent in a limp arc as it moved with the drifting of the water. I can feel the sunlight – my lost sunlight – please open your eyes. There had been those that had traveled with him; good friends, with whom he’d shared at least as many struggles and adventures as he had with Rose, that he would have left to drown so he could breathe the air of Gallifrey once more. Perhaps all of them.
But not her.
He closed his eyes to receive one last caress of sunlight before turning to swim back down to Rose. As fast as he’d swam towards Gallifrey he swam faster back to her. He reached her and smashed his lips against hers to force the last of his reserve air down into her lungs. She choked with a spasm and ejected the water that was drowning her down his airway, her fingers digging into his skin as she regained consciousness.
He didn’t have enough reserve to take them both to Gallifrey. He had no choice but to kick furiously towards the surface of the wrong planet. He looked back and saw his beautiful sky fading into nothing as the wormhole began to collapse.
They broke through the surface of the water and hit the ground with a hard bounce and a cloud of dust. Rose vomited the water from her stomach, coughing and gagging, clutching handfuls of him as he sat watching the red glow fade from the other side of the sea. He patted her back with a distracted hand as he watched the last glimpse of Gallifrey die. The moment it disappeared, the Sarci Sunis collapsed and the water fell from the sky, soaking them and the rest of the planet in a deluge.
When Rose had recovered enough to sit up, she looked around at the surroundings before turning to the Doctor.
“This isn’t Gallifrey,” she said.
“No,” he answered, putting his arms around her to hold her against him. He rested his face against her soaking hair and closed his eyes. “No, it’s not.”
Rose held him just as tightly. “But that was Gallifrey? Up there? Your home.”
“It was Gallifrey,” he whispered, not letting her go.
But I am home.
<--this was the prompt pictureThe TARDIS had materialized in a rocky gorge under a pale purple sky. The Doctor was standing outside, watching a ringed moon rise fat and pus-yellow over the lip of the gorge. He wrinkled his nose at the pungent abundance of ozone in the air and felt his lips drying out. He licked them, and the bit of exposed tongue he’d used to wet his lips felt dry when he brought it back into his mouth, deepening the concentrated sneer on his face.
“This is decidedly not the leisure planet of Suthka,” he said. He could taste vinegar.
“Why is it your aim seems to get worse when we’re going somewhere just for fun?” Rose asked, poking her head out the doors to look after him. She recoiled at once, frowning. “What’s wrong with the air?”
“Could be one of a couple of things. Grab some water and a bag of saline, just in case. I just have to see.” He squinted at the sky, hands in his pockets. “I hate planets that look like sets from the original Star Trek. Everything always looked like Nevada. I mean, there are a lot of planets in the galaxy, you’d think at some point in that first series they would have landed on one that wasn’t mainly rocks and sage plants. That, or snow. Probably could only afford two sets back then. Let’s have a look…” he trailed off and walked towards the walls of the gorge, still looking up.
The pressure in the air was incredible; he could feel the weight of the atmosphere pushing on his cells. More than that, he could feel a raw tingle in his bottom lip as it dried out even more. A few more minutes and the skin would split. It wouldn’t do to let Rose be out in this for long. He’d just climb to the top of the gorge and see what he could see, then get them going on their way to Suthka.
He started up the side of the gorge and was not at all surprised when the rocks under his feet began to crumble into sand. He reckoned the sage plants would probably disintegrate on contact as well. It was a slow and careful climb to the top of the gorge, and when Rose started up, he guided her to the most stable points among the rocks, grabbing her wrists and lifting her like a toddler to stand beside him when she got close enough to grab.
She knocked the dust off herself and off of him as well. “I always forget how strong you are,” she said. Her face was red and her lips were already chapped.
“Drink,” he said, taking one of the packs of water from her and tearing the cap off. “Keep drinking, as long as we’re out here. Which won’t be long; I just want to see if this is what I think it is.”
“What d’you think it is?” she asked after swallowing a mouthful of water.
“Sarci Sunis,” he answered, putting on his glasses to scan the horizon. Nothing but more rocks and more sage plants. There was a second moon, rosy in color and smaller than the yellow one with the rings, just beginning to rise. “If it is, I want you to see it. I’ve only ever seen one my whole life, they’re so rare.” He turned in a circle and suddenly stopped, a grin spreading over his face.
“It is,” he whispered. He took Rose by the shoulders and turned her, pointing to a massive swath of darkness moving towards them across the sky. “Look there, see that? That, Rose Tyler, is a Sarci Sunis.”
“Which is what?” she asked, taking another drink. “Some kind of storm?”
He nodded. “A temporal storm. It’s a little pocket of time, like a worm-hole. They move from planet to planet, creating unstable, short-duration rifts in time and space. While it’s on the surface of this planet right now, it’s also on the surface of another planet, probably in another time. Even another universe. The energy it takes to maintain the bridge is astronomical, and it can’t sustain it for very long. One of the side effects is that it sucks all the moisture out of the planet and gathers it around itself, like an ocean in the sky. All the water that exists on this planet is up there, swirling around the Sarci Sunis.”
Rose made a thoughtful noise, drawing the Doctor’s attention back to her. “All the water I brought with us is up there now, too,” she said, showing him the empty water packs. The saline bag was dry as well, the plastic shriveled and collapsed on itself. The skin on her face was starting to dry out and chap as badly as her lips.
“We’re not staying,” he said, taking her hand to lead her away. She stayed where she stood, watching the storm approach.
“’s all right, I want to see it.” She gave his hand a little tug to draw him near. “How often do you get to see an ocean in the sky?”
“Twice in nine hundred years,” he answered. “The moment it becomes dangerous for you to be out any longer, we’re going back to the TARDIS.”
She scoffed, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow. “Don’t let me slow you down.”
They held hands and watched the storm as it neared them. Rose flinched when the first of the water was directly overhead, and within moments the purple of the planet’s sky was blotted out by waves of rippling water that mirrored everything on the planet’s surface, including the two of them. It was so low to the ground the Doctor reached out and touched it, smiling at Rose as he showed her his damp hand. She reached up and pulled down a handful of water and flicked it at him, laughing.
“The wormhole will be at the eye of the storm,” the Doctor said over the sound of the surging water. “When it passes over us we’ll be able to see another world.”
“Wonder where it’ll come out,” Rose said, still looking up.
Their wait was not long. The Doctor’s hearts began to speed up when he saw the reddish glow lighting the ripples from beneath the surface. Don’t torture yourself – you know that would be impossible. As the eye neared, he grabbed Rose’s hand and squeezed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It can’t be,” he breathed, straining to see the eye before it arrived. “It’s gone – Time Locked. I…” he looked at Rose.
“It looks like Gallifrey,” he said, his throat so tight he could barely utter the words.
“What? Up there?” Rose asked, looking up. The eye was nearly overhead and the blazing red light from the other side of the water made everything on the planet’s surface glow like it was on fire. “I thought you said it was gone.”
“It is,” the Doctor replied, loosening his tie as he kept his eyes on the storm. “This little pocket might just have found a way around the Time Lock.” He slipped out of his jacket and let it fall into the dust. He knew it couldn’t possibly be, and yet, as the eye moved into position above them, he saw the silver trees that dotted the landscape of Wild Endeavour. The blazing red-orange sky glinted off the glass dome of the Citadel, clear as daylight through the shimmering ripples. He let out a little sob as he tore off his shirt.
“Come with me, Rose,” he said, then threw out his arms and dove up into the water, swimming towards home.
Rose watched his trainers slip under the surface of the airborne ocean even as she yelled for him to stop. The storm was moving fast, and she had to make a decision before the eye moved away from where she could reach it. She was not the greatest swimmer in the world, but she couldn’t let the Doctor leave her behind. She took off her sweatshirt and shoes, took a few deep breaths before drawing a big one in and holding it, and jumped up into the water.
She pried her eyes open enough to see if she could spot the Doctor, and found him some distance ahead, kicking as hard as he could for the red sky of Gallifrey. If it was Gallifrey. She was terrified that it was like that mirror in Harry Potter that showed you whatever you wanted to see. What if the storm was tricking him, pulling him in so it could drown them both? She kicked and pawed at the water, trying to close the distance between them. There were fish and plants in the water, floating around her like they were as confused as she was to be swimming in the air instead of where they belonged.
The further she swam, the more pressure she felt building behind her eardrums, until her whole head was full of painful buzzing. What if it was like the ocean on earth and she got the bends from being too far down (up?) without a mask or whatever. Her pace was slowing, her limbs weakening as she clenched her jaw to hold on to the last bit of air. She had to reach the Doctor, but he was leaving her behind. She had time for one last thought before she blacked out and water began to fill her lungs. Please look back.
Gallifrey. Home. It was getting bigger by the second. He thrashed against the water, tearing through it as fast as he could. The muscles in his legs were burning and his respiratory bypass had kicked in some time ago, holding air in reserve so he didn’t drown. He had to get there, break through the surface before the wormhole collapsed and he fell back to the other planet’s surface with the water.
It was springtime. The silver trees were just coming into their splendor, their leaves blazing in the light of the dual suns. He didn’t care what era it was, so long as he could breathe the air and feel the russet grass beneath his feet. He was perhaps thirty feet away from the surface. Even if he was trapped there forever, at least he would be trapped at home. With Rose. He would take her to the Citadel, show her the Panopticon and every haunt and hallway he used to frequent when he could still walk on its glorious surface. He’d show her the Academy and the grove of trees he used to sit under as a boy while he studied his lessons. They would travel every inch together. Make a home there. He looked back to make sure she was still behind him and saw her floating motionless twenty meters below him.
Thirty feet away. Her eyes were closed, her body bent in a limp arc as it moved with the drifting of the water. I can feel the sunlight – my lost sunlight – please open your eyes. There had been those that had traveled with him; good friends, with whom he’d shared at least as many struggles and adventures as he had with Rose, that he would have left to drown so he could breathe the air of Gallifrey once more. Perhaps all of them.
But not her.
He closed his eyes to receive one last caress of sunlight before turning to swim back down to Rose. As fast as he’d swam towards Gallifrey he swam faster back to her. He reached her and smashed his lips against hers to force the last of his reserve air down into her lungs. She choked with a spasm and ejected the water that was drowning her down his airway, her fingers digging into his skin as she regained consciousness.
He didn’t have enough reserve to take them both to Gallifrey. He had no choice but to kick furiously towards the surface of the wrong planet. He looked back and saw his beautiful sky fading into nothing as the wormhole began to collapse.
They broke through the surface of the water and hit the ground with a hard bounce and a cloud of dust. Rose vomited the water from her stomach, coughing and gagging, clutching handfuls of him as he sat watching the red glow fade from the other side of the sea. He patted her back with a distracted hand as he watched the last glimpse of Gallifrey die. The moment it disappeared, the Sarci Sunis collapsed and the water fell from the sky, soaking them and the rest of the planet in a deluge.
When Rose had recovered enough to sit up, she looked around at the surroundings before turning to the Doctor.
“This isn’t Gallifrey,” she said.
“No,” he answered, putting his arms around her to hold her against him. He rested his face against her soaking hair and closed his eyes. “No, it’s not.”
Rose held him just as tightly. “But that was Gallifrey? Up there? Your home.”
“It was Gallifrey,” he whispered, not letting her go.
But I am home.
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Date: 2011-09-28 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-28 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-28 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-28 09:03 pm (UTC)<--- can't remember HTML well enough to code things.
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Date: 2011-09-28 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-28 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-09-28 09:36 pm (UTC)Oh gorgeous! Love what you took from the photo, too. You did a beautiful job!
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Date: 2011-09-28 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-09-29 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-29 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-30 06:34 am (UTC)*Sobs*
You have broken my heart only to mend it again...thank you.
*SQUISHES YOU CLOSE*
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Date: 2011-09-30 12:49 pm (UTC)Thank you!!!! I'm glad you liked it and I could both break your heart AND mend it. :)
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Date: 2011-10-03 03:02 am (UTC)That was so sad, so beautiful, and seriously the best use of the prompt that I can possibly imagine.
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Date: 2011-10-03 03:50 am (UTC)