Warnings: No Spoilers, Eleventh-Era, Dark!fic
A/N: Written for who_contest's Prompt: Treasures, comprised of my usual dark, overly angsty, thinky horror. I have no idea where this one came from! And while it is spoiler free, there is a heavy salting of 'speculation' on future events (I guess you could say) - though it is all hypothetical and only vaguely brushed upon. Mostly unbeta'd and written in one go, so please forgive any mistakes and/or blatant 'whut?!'. As always, I apologize for any repetition, mispellings, sentence fails, grammatical oh-noes and general horridness. Unbeta'd fic is overly-dark/thinky and unbeta'd.
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!
He briefly caressed the satiny knot of his bowtie, not bothering to look in the full length mirror, knowing it was set perfectly. The tying and setting (and straightening) of the tie a long habit that had only been a century or two in the making. And here he thought he wouldn't have made it this far.
O-O-O
The stars. Pinpricks of light in the purple-black map of the universe. Uniform but in a disarray, dice thrown by children. They were the nerve cluster of the body of the cosmos, with no center to communicate to. Endless pathways made of lost signals and folded (and refolded) communications. Some were never found. Some were found immediately. Some were centuries old only yesterday, fading into the black.
O-O-O
He smoothed his hand down his jacket, the feel of it familiar but not. Another affection of this regeneration and one that was long habit in such a short span. He felt like he had been doing that forever. Maybe somewhere out there, he had. He ignored the flicker of motion in the mirror. It was just a trick of the light (corner of your eye). He could feel his jaw tighten and willed himself to relax.
The image couldn't become distorted by perception if you didn't look.
O-O-O
The stars. Treasures to dreamers and explorers alike. Within each star, a map to new worlds where X didn't always mark the spot, but gains and riches could be plumbed with every step, every breath, every dazzling wonder.
One man's trash was another man's treasure, but most men valued the same things. Money, riches, power, fame – all pivoted on the same axis and called to all species who dared sentience. No one species was immune, though many fancied they were. And only a handful of all the species in all the worlds that ever were (or could be), would ever find (and value) that one lone rose in the vast oilfields of gold.
The rose was important. There were many of them if you knew where to look. If the trash-picker/true treasure finder was lucky, he would see a field of roses where others only saw trinkets and useless bobs. And if one was selfish with those roses, if one never bothered to whisper of the treasure within those fragile hypothetical flowers, one could keep them for one's own. Because every sentient was a pirate at heart.
But not every pirate's heart was black.
O-O-O
His hair had gotten longer. Not that it mattered to him one whit. He supposed he should cut it, for keeping up appearances if nothing else. He had no one to keep up appearances for, but some habits were not as automatic and should be rigidly attended to, before you forgot what those habits were for. It wasn't like putting on braces, or tying a bowtie, or shrugging into a jacket –
Or laughing, or running, or thinking fast, or drifting slow in a Vortex
Some things had to be taught and reminded of. Some things weren't born of habit.
So a haircut was in order.
He didn't look to see if his reflection agreed.
O-O-O
Some treasures out in that far-flung stretch of stars – those pinpricks of dazzling brilliance in the universe – were physical. You could hold them in your hands and dream of the intangible things they could gain you. Some were intangible, but could bring the material about as slow or quick as you please. Some treasures were neither - and those treasures could be the best or the worst of them all. Untouchable dreams, incalculable nightmares...all woven of the imagination.
What made all of these treasures (for all their vast differences) relatively the same (whether they were that hypothetical rose or that frequently sought for gold) was the way they filled you up. They gave you something while taking little away. Emotional, physical, mental (and any other 'al' between), they left something, a lasting impression. They fueled your hopes, they guided your hand, they made you feel, think, react. They gave you something to hold onto.
Manifestations of dreams realized. Hopes overlapping like waves on a shore, where the treasures lay in little shells resting against other shells that had been ground to dust by memory.
They stayed with you.
O-O-O
He smoothed his trousers and checked the shine on his boots, frowning as he contemplated the stirs of dust his every move made. He should really have this room aired out more often.
He used to do that when he wore a smoking jacket that he never smoked in, his face a laughable reflection of age that had not fallen upon him as of yet. He was so much older and now wore the irony of youth. Some days that made him laugh, other days it made him despair.
He could outrun the centuries of his bones with the lie of his supposed youth.
All he did was run.
Except for the days he wore a jacket designed for smoking and lounging in – he never did smoke (or do much lounging) – but he never ran either. Nowhere to run to then.
He wondered if that was when the Anger had taken over, taken root. It had settled into his soul and grown over time. A habit and affection that never changed with his face, just how it was displayed, how it was channeled.
Okay, sometimes that habit bled through as well.
His reflection frowned to itself, but he had learned to ignore that a long time ago. Reflections did not always speak the truth.
O-O-O
Rare was the item, or idea, or person, or dream that did not fill the empty spaces of the pirate's heart. Rare indeed, was the treasure that took something away with each one collected. Though for those who found them, they would tell you they were the best treasures to be had. To share with your treasure, have it become a part of you, even as it subtracted from you was the reason some unfolded the Map of the stars, those pinpricks of light that guided you to the nerve center that was never to be found.
The endless chase was sometimes thought to be the point, but that was only the journey.
The communications that fell between were thought to be the ultimate treasure, but often they were just the clues.
Sometimes, it turned out the treasure was beside you the whole time. You just had to know where to look. The map would never show you, the light would never illuminate it and the lost signals detracted from the glory of what was in front of you the whole time.
You had to know how to give, even while you were taking away.
O-O-O
He was ready, though he was not. He was never as ready as he assumed he was. And his assumptions were often proven incorrect. But he was as close to ready as he could get, though he knew (deep down) that he would never be ready. Not like this.
He had become his own worst habit. He had become his own peddler of broken hopes, of crumbled daydreams and he knew if he looked up, (don't blink) he would see the youth for the blatant falsehood it was.
He would see the lie.
The truth always evaded him. Even when it was standing right there. His ignorance, his arrogance had always been the first things to blind him. They were the lie that masked the truth.
He supposed that this in itself was also habit. And now he was too old to learn new tricks. Much less change habits born of several lifetimes.
That thought was not as tiring as it should have been.
His reflection begged to disagree.
O-O-O
There are so many treasures out in the universe. From the well-traveled by-lanes that zipped silvery-bright and neatly-tangled from one place to the next (those clustered clutters of the living), to the quiet reaches where nothing ventured, (sleepy caches of space waiting for the right explorer to lay claim to every potential hidden within). So much to be found, to be lost and rediscovered. So much richness and beauty unclaimed –from the average gold hunter, to the one seeking those hypothetical roses lost amid the trash of the other man's treasure.
So much unclaimed.
So much found and rediscovered.
But what of the lost?
O-O-O
The door was blue.
There were a lot of blue doors in his life. Most of them had Home behind it. Most of them were paths to the never-were and might-have-been where he ran forever from the dreams that overwhelmed him in his sketchy and oft-avoided slumbers. He ran from his nightmares.
Most of them had time enough and besides to catch up.
His eyes, his face, his fresh shorn hair shone back at him from the polished glass panels of the door that led to a Home that wasn't his. It belonged to one of his treasures, one of his hypothetical roses found (and almost overlooked) during his travels through the detritus of the Universe.
This one was found, brought to him, made for (and against) him. Made (and loved through lifetimes) by other treasures he had found waiting (14 years and 2000) within his very first hypothetical rose found in the forgotten trash of a museum long-dead and centuries past.
He avoided the gaze of this reflection (just as he had the other) and thought about pirates and treasure maps and nerve-endings that were pinpricks in the purple-black reaches he sailed in.
His reflection looked away as well, maybe it also was thinking of pirates. Of things stolen. Or things returned. Of things lost and found again.
Of roses plucked from the oily black wastelands and how sometimes (every time) they couldn't be put back. How very fragile and how very hypothetical they all very much were.
Their blooms the brightest gift of all.
O-O-O
Piracy and honesty. Flip sides of a coin.
Everyone was in search of something.
For some it was the promise of the mundane.
For some it was the promise of the stars.
For some it was Towers that Sang.
For one it was all of these things and none of them.
Every life, every dream, every hope lost and found is a Fairytale.
All Fairytales have a beginning, a middle and an end (though not always in that order).
Some are never told. Some are merely whispered.
All of them are treasures, too often overlooked.
Treasures to be found beside you (inside you, reflected, lost and found again), never seen until they were gone.
Some of those lost treasures never get recovered.
Some should never be found to begin with – torn from their hiding places to crumble to dust with the passage of time.
X didn't always mark the spot.
Sometimes, it was just a clue.
Sometimes it was the scribbling of erasure, of echoes lost in the black.
Even pirates could miss the mark.
O-O-O
He rang the bell of a blue door that wasn't his and wasn't theirs and hoped there would be no answer. Soon (too soon) there would be Towers Singing and shenanigans that led to nightmares to be run from. There were nightmares enough surrounding the treasures of his soul.
Piracy always came to a nasty end.
But he forgot that with each discovery of that perfect treasure, that rare and dusky jewel, that dream unfounded –
That hypothetical rose.
The doorknob turned.
His reflection looked startled.
He didn't look away.
O-O-O
Sometimes, treasures filled you up. Found that hole inside and made a home, renewing and reshaping dreams: whether they were the mundane treasures of the physical, the hopes of the heart or the tangible realization of an idea.
They filled you up to overflowing, blinding you with their very reality. This happened so rarely – so very rarely - out there in the nerve-cluster of stars. Most treasures were never found, be they hypothetical or mundane, reality or fantasy.
Most were never realized as they traveled with you, within you – as they stood beside you. Most beings who dared sentience overlooked the treasures that surrounded them, as they dreamed of treasures that were never to be.
Though there are those who get more than their fair share.
Is it happenstance? Do they know where to look? Or do they gather them without being able to truly see them for what they are? Their reality too blinding to be understood.
Piracy can become a habit.
Some habits are done without thought. Some have to be learned and relearned again. Some are neither and yet both at the same time.
Much like treasures that take away as they fill you up. Waves on a shifting shore. Giving as they roll in, but more often taking that shore back to the depths to lie with the other treasures long forgotten, never found or never dreamed of.
Many hidden depths.
Not enough pirates to explore them all.
But too many who overlooked the hypothetical in search of the unknowable.
O-O-O
He turned away from the blue door that held no answer and his reflection turned with him, mirroring the back of a being who dared sentience and searched for (too often finding) those hypothetical roses that were forgotten, found and lost, never dreamed of. He found more than his fair share. Most of the time, he knew where to look. But more often, he was too busy looking to see what was beside him.
He was a pirate and all of his treasures, all of his roses (real and hypothetical) were crumbling under the reaches of time. They were merely shells on a shore – and the tide was always (inevitably) washing in. They always took away, even as they filled him up.
They were what chased him in nightmares and danced away from the reach of his dreams.
He turned away from the door of no answer and wondered when the Towers would Sing. He turned away from the blue door that meant home, even as it was not his home and thought of the treasures he plumbed from the far reaches – and wondered if he took more than he gave.
He was too grateful (selfish, greedy old man) that the door was locked against him, as the treasures that he had called friends were no longer there to stand beside him and dazzle him with their reality. The treasure that lay beyond that blue door was already gone, even as the Towers had not yet Sung.
He had lost too many roses and the weight of those losses were hardly hypothetical – though it was always inevitable.
His reflection didn't disagree.
It didn't frown or look away, as (like all of his treasured roses of Now) it was not there. Only his shadow as it stretched before him on a cracked and tired pavement that marked years it hadn't yet lived. Folded reflections and parallels and lies within truths.
He was a pirate. X didn't mark the spot, it erased it. And now he was being emptied by all his treasures of the heart.
He was a habit he couldn't break, one reflexively learned over lifetimes, until it became as automatic as the tying of a bow. His shadow ran from him and told more truth than his reflection, while his reflection told lies that it didn't bother to believe anymore.
His only solace was to look beside him for his treasures, until he remembered they were lost. And the ache of empty space couldn't fill the widening hole that he couldn't run from, that he couldn't will away.
His shadow raced ahead, a reverse reflection that showed nothing at all.
O-O-O
Some treasures (treasures of the heart) can be found (like hypothetical roses) everywhere, if you only know where to look.
Some treasures are lost to time, never to be discovered.
Some are snatched up, polished and coveted forever.
Some are found then lost then found again.
Dreams made tangible reality, in a reality that scorned the beauty of dreams.
Some are just lost.
Even dreams will never find them again, those roses the trash of the other man's treasure. Those dark places between the pinpricks of light swallowing their reality and emptying the spaces where they were.
O-O-O
He briefly caressed the satiny knot of his bowtie, not bothering to look in the full length mirror, knowing it was set perfectly. The tying and setting (and straightening) of the tie a long habit that had only been a century or two in the making. And here he thought he wouldn't have made it this far.
(Not every pirate's heart is black.)
The image couldn't become distorted by perception if you didn't look.
(But every heart holds a pirate.)
O-O-O
That hypothetical rose. (Those unmarked treasures.)
The doorknob turned. (Sometimes X did marked the spot.)
His reflection looked startled. (They fill the empty spaces.)
O-O-O
He didn't look away.