Title: Contemplation in a Cup of Tea
Genre: Gen
Characters/Pairing: Eleven, TARDIS (mentions of OCs)
Wordcount: 490
Warnings: Angst, Dark!fic (mildly), Spoilers up through 'A Good Man Goes to War'
A/N: Written for who_contest's picture prompt (tea in a porcelain cup). Only mildly dark (*gasp!*) but more than a little thinky. Sorry about that - Eleventy does that to me! Tis un'beta'd (to an extent) to get it in on time. For all its faults, I do hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer(s): I do not own the scrumptious Doctor or his lovely companions. That honor goes to the BBC and (for now) the fantastic S. Moffat. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about...
After the initial euphoria had worn off, all he had was...tea.
Sexy had her Rotor in motion, set to take him where he needed to go (whether he wanted to or not) and all was right with the universe.
Or it soon would be.
There was the minor fact that he had just abandoned them (if you wanted to get technical and when didn't he?) so that wasn't good. And there was the fact that River was probably telling them right nowthat she was their daughter.
It would be a shock, it would be enraging to hold what you thought was your infant daughter only to find she had been snatched away under your nose; then confronted with a much older version less than half an hour later.
Shocking and enraging was probably putting it mildly.
Good thing he was off then to fix it - or attempt to anyhow.
Still didn't mean he had friends to come home to.
Home.
He frowned down at the tranquil liquid in his cup, wondering what was missing - what was wrong with it.
There were a lot of things wrong right now. Tea should be the least of his worries, but -
Friends.
Home.
His hand shook and he splashed the damnable tea all over his hand, surprised that it was lukewarm instead of hot.
Too much time spent in contemplation of a cup of perfectly harmless, ordinary tea, then.
Too much Time.
When there never seemed to be enough of it to go around.
He frowned harder at the cup (as if that would give him a measure of control) and tried to not feel the weight of his years.
The TARDIS was Home. She was his friend - though most likely, it was only because she had grown so used to him. But she couldn't share a cup of tea with him, or have a conversation, or share an adventure (not like a companion-companion) or run-
The TARDIS hummed at the edges of his mind, distressed by the melancholy turn of his thoughts as he contemplated the loneliness around him embodied solely in one, lukewarm cup of tea.
He tried to shrug it off, to recapture the joy of solving the mystery of River (and finding Amy and Rory's daughter in one swoop) but it was hard to do. He was old, he was tired and he was alone.
But now he'd finally figured out what was wrong with the tea; besides the less being hot and more being cold.
It was free of anything extra - it was just...tea.
And with that thought, he added in sugar and milk (less the way Rory and Amy liked it, and more the way he drank it when he was merely 700) and tried to not think how the cloudy swirl inside the cup was a mirror in which to drown in.
It was after all, merely a cup of tea.