![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve11Somebody better write angsty Eleven-inna-box-with-imminent-exploding-TARDIS fic or I'm going to have to do it myself!
Oh, fine. Okay.
Spoilers for "The Pandorica Opens", ~500 words, unbetaed, as-is, speculative for "The Big Bang" though not necessarily spoiler-informed, but those who've seen fewer spoilers than me and who don't want to know thing one might want to skip it.
Limited in time and space
-------------------------
The Doctor pleads with his enemies. It won't work--he knows it won't--but he's at their mercy and they all know it. It's the only thing left to do, and he has to do something because the TARDIS is screaming inside his head now now please you must listen to me now you must come back now--like the worst unscratchable itch in the world that suddenly sears to a burn across his mind--now now NOW LISTEN TO ME!
Oh, his beautiful ship.
They scream the same words as the walls sweep away the outside world with the clang of advanced technology masquerading as stone. He grits his teeth, eyes shut tight and fingers curling into immobile fists as the TARDIS thrashes for a foothold inside his head.
A brief echo emerges from the maelstrom. I'm sorry, my love.
He tries to hold onto it, to anchor them both, but he can't. Something is filling each of her infinite spaces with infinite space. It's an aleph-null expansion at light speed and there's no hope of containing it. Temporal pressure builds across their psychic link. He can't stop screaming long enough to think, there's no need for a prison, she's tearing us both apart--
Then he's suddenly alone, gasping for air in pitch blackness. He blinks at blank space, listening to the muted hum of psychic inhibitor initialization, already fading. His empty head aches and rebels at the thought of computing how much of himself he's just lost along with the link to his TARDIS. Naturally, this prison is jamming any and all communications. She could still be alive, at least for another few seconds. Minutes, maybe.
The Pandorica settles. The psychic dampeners finish their descent like invisible sailcloth sent streaming down the walls. The last locks rumble into place. There is nothing to see, nothing to feel.
He slows his heartsbeat by a factor of ten. He initiates respiratory bypass. The air is dense and smothering, and there are no echoes. There is nothing to hear.
If he were inclined to panic, there would never be a better time.
Time. Time, time, time. He needs time.
And if this is the right kind of fairy tale, the kind where the builders always overlook something poetic when building inescapable prisons, then . . .
There. At the corner of his temporal eye, a foul, faint light, growing sickly brighter beyond the Pandorica's impenetrable walls. And another. And another. Surrounding this box are thousands of cracks in the skin of the universe. And, as close as they are to the meta-event, almost any of them will lead away from the Silence. Toward hope.
The Doctor slows his body rhythms to one one-thousandth pace. He draws a breath for the centuries and cocoons local temporal fields tight around himself in as close to perpetual stasis as he dares.
Then he spins a set of likelihoods, coaxing the cracks forward, daring them to open beneath his prison until he is again a madman in a box, tumbling through time.
Oh, fine. Okay.
Spoilers for "The Pandorica Opens", ~500 words, unbetaed, as-is, speculative for "The Big Bang" though not necessarily spoiler-informed, but those who've seen fewer spoilers than me and who don't want to know thing one might want to skip it.
Limited in time and space
-------------------------
The Doctor pleads with his enemies. It won't work--he knows it won't--but he's at their mercy and they all know it. It's the only thing left to do, and he has to do something because the TARDIS is screaming inside his head now now please you must listen to me now you must come back now--like the worst unscratchable itch in the world that suddenly sears to a burn across his mind--now now NOW LISTEN TO ME!
Oh, his beautiful ship.
They scream the same words as the walls sweep away the outside world with the clang of advanced technology masquerading as stone. He grits his teeth, eyes shut tight and fingers curling into immobile fists as the TARDIS thrashes for a foothold inside his head.
A brief echo emerges from the maelstrom. I'm sorry, my love.
He tries to hold onto it, to anchor them both, but he can't. Something is filling each of her infinite spaces with infinite space. It's an aleph-null expansion at light speed and there's no hope of containing it. Temporal pressure builds across their psychic link. He can't stop screaming long enough to think, there's no need for a prison, she's tearing us both apart--
Then he's suddenly alone, gasping for air in pitch blackness. He blinks at blank space, listening to the muted hum of psychic inhibitor initialization, already fading. His empty head aches and rebels at the thought of computing how much of himself he's just lost along with the link to his TARDIS. Naturally, this prison is jamming any and all communications. She could still be alive, at least for another few seconds. Minutes, maybe.
The Pandorica settles. The psychic dampeners finish their descent like invisible sailcloth sent streaming down the walls. The last locks rumble into place. There is nothing to see, nothing to feel.
He slows his heartsbeat by a factor of ten. He initiates respiratory bypass. The air is dense and smothering, and there are no echoes. There is nothing to hear.
If he were inclined to panic, there would never be a better time.
Time. Time, time, time. He needs time.
And if this is the right kind of fairy tale, the kind where the builders always overlook something poetic when building inescapable prisons, then . . .
There. At the corner of his temporal eye, a foul, faint light, growing sickly brighter beyond the Pandorica's impenetrable walls. And another. And another. Surrounding this box are thousands of cracks in the skin of the universe. And, as close as they are to the meta-event, almost any of them will lead away from the Silence. Toward hope.
The Doctor slows his body rhythms to one one-thousandth pace. He draws a breath for the centuries and cocoons local temporal fields tight around himself in as close to perpetual stasis as he dares.
Then he spins a set of likelihoods, coaxing the cracks forward, daring them to open beneath his prison until he is again a madman in a box, tumbling through time.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-06-22 06:56 am (UTC)OMG, WHY ISN'T IT SATURDAY YET?
Wait, no, I don't want it to be. Because then it will be over, and I'm not ready. Why must the season only be 13 episodes? Not enough, says I.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-22 09:39 am (UTC)Wait, no, I don't want it to be. Because then it will be over, and I'm not ready.
I cannot think this far ahead. It needs to be Saturday NOW! Yes, as a child I also used to eat all of my Halloween candy in one night too.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-22 09:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-22 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-22 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-23 09:24 pm (UTC)And the TARDIS! The screaming!
no subject
Date: 2010-06-24 01:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-30 01:38 pm (UTC)Favorite line: Something is filling each of her infinite spaces with infinite space. OH TARDIS. ;; Ow, ow, ow. ;;
*yeah, psychiclinkedDoctorAndTARDIS is where it's at~*
no subject
Date: 2010-06-30 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-03 05:50 am (UTC)And I still love it.
This story pulls you into the darkest, worst dark ever. Then, just when everything seems lost, you get the unlikeliest hope and that beautiful last line.
Just like the episode to follow it really.