Little Drummer Boy
AN: Set during the Time War. Written for the Koschei!Master I roleplay.
...
He was hiding.
It probably didn't mean much – they would be able to find him if they truly put their minds to it – but the thought was there. Hunched in a corner, a mound of black fabric and hair, with the idle, passing hope born out of insanity that if, for just a while, he hid, then the rest of the world would fade away, ignore him, not be able to reach him.
All it did was to make him more sensitive to the drumming, which was loud, too loud, louder than he'd ever heard it before in his life. But at some point, he'd started to hum, although he couldn't tell quite when he'd stopped just drumming and moved on to humming, drumming in time to the simple song.
It was to this that he was found, after some time had passed.
She cleared her throat, but he didn't notice her.
"Sir?" Still nothing. She came a little closer, and raised her voice. There was something about her commander that put people on edge, especially when he did the drumming thing, but he had to be roused out of whatever mood he was in. "Sir!"
Dark eyes snapped open, slick black hair falling away from a round but somewhat sallow face, and he was stood like a cat – or some sort of viper.
He didn't move any further. She had her pride, but she was thankful that he didn't move any further. His eyes, however, narrowed.
"Don't do that again."
"...Sir?" Hesitant, this time.
"If you do that again," he said, enunciating unnecessarily for her benefit, "then you will die."
"But-" she paled. She was on his side. She said so. He barked out a humourless laugh.
"Since when did that ever mean anything to me recently? A word to the wise. Never. Do that again."
She didn't flinch – didn't dare to. Instead, she watched him.
"Sir?"
"Yes?"
He wasn't the sort who learned names. Attaching a name to someone meant that they were more than just a statistic. And attaching a name to a face in order to remember whose it was, was damn useless with the way things were.
"Are you all right, sir?"
"Interesting question. What makes you ask now, rather than any of the other countless times you could have?" he asked, sounding darkly amused at something.
She thought about that. It was, after all, a good question. During the time in which they neither of them spoke, he started drumming again. Except that it wasn't exactly the same rhythm as normal – there was something else, thrown in. It wasn't just war drums, it was a tune.
"You were humming. It isn't some new type of madness about you that we should know about, is it?"
He looked at her, long and hard, as though she were being looked through, weighed, measured and found unimportant. The thought reassured her, for some reason.
And then, he started to hum, albeit not so much like a madman as before. It was more or less in tune with the drumming still constantly playing itself out in the background of her hearing, where she'd grown so used to the sound being.
"It's a song," he said abruptly. "Human one. What they'd call a Christmas Carol. Do you even know what that is?"
He drew her up on a blank, and she had to admit that she didn't.
"Earth version of Otherstide. But with more fantasy and less history." He twitched, and looked off in another direction, as though he'd sensed something or someone coming. "It occurred to me that time now. December, Earth, Sol Three, Mutter's Spiral. And completely oblivious."
She shrugged. For all that she wouldn't have traded being a Time Lord for anything anyone could give her, the Time War made her wish that she, too, could be oblivious, just like the lesser races.
"They're only human. It's not like they can help it. And if they could, who would that help?"
The drums stopped, his hand frozen in the spot where it was still hovering in mid-air.
Had she said something to cause this reaction? Was it something good, or bad? Unlike last time, she didn't try to snap him out of it. He might not have any working weapons, or he might be armed to the teeth in those pockets of his. But one thing you knew if you were under him, was that if he told you that you were going to die, then your death was more than just a possibility.
He left, without a word, but hardly silently. He was singing, to the tune he'd been humming, and drumming.
She stared after him, eyes wide and fear trembling through her.
She'd never mentioned the Could-Have-Been King, that was rumoured about in the ranks, or the Nightmare Child, a name that had been bantered about in heresy and fear.
She didn't know anything other than the War, in truth. And the Time Lord in charge of her, with his drums and now with his song, terrified her even more now than he had ever done before.
...
AN: Inspired on the way home from a food festival in the ExCel centre, in which I tried Whisky and Gin for the first time (among other things) and it was very cold. And dark by the time we left.
Credit goes to the player of LJ Ghost!Master ofdrumsthesound, who gave me ideas when I read what they thought about the Time War travesties.