Title: "Asteroid B-612"
Author: FF.N user ID: 381294
Rating: G
Disclaimer: This is a cross-over fiction, based upon Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince," and BBC's television series "Doctor Who." The characters are property of their respective authors; No profit is being made from this story.
Summary: In his inter-galactic travels, one day the Doctor comes upon a very small planet inhabited by a small prince, a rose, three volcanoes and a sheep… A Doctor Who & The Little Prince crossover
Author's Notes: This story features the Tenth Doctor, and takes place some time after the second series. My interpretation of the Little Prince is based upon the novel, and of the French musical adaptation- numerous quotes from text and lyrics are scattered throughout.
Dédicace: This story is dedicated to one of my very best friends, who is growing up, but is still familiar with their youth, especially in regards to imagination. To Emily Brzozowski, the biggest Doctor Who fan I know.
The Doctor had been traveling among the stars and planets of the universe for and through hundreds of years, when one day he came upon the planet known to the astronomers of Earth as Asteroid B-612. It was one of the very smallest planets he had ever been on, but it would be one of the most memorable.
It had been a random landing that brought him to the place. When the Doctor stepped outside the doors of the TARDIS, he gazed at the little landscape around him. He could feel the curve of the planet under his shoe. The ground was rocky but still was hospitable to tufts of grass, and as he saw in front of him, a single rose.
The Doctor knelt and smiled a little sadly, and reached out to touch the red petals, when it suddenly spoke.
"Ah! And who could you be?" she demanded.
"I'm the Doctor," he replied.
"A doctor?"
"The Doctor."
"Well," she huffed. "I am the rose. The only rose on this planet."
"That makes you certainly special now, doesn't it?"
"Oh indeed!"
"Because she is my rose, she is special," a little voice announced.
The Doctor looked up to see a child standing before him, a boy with golden hair. "Hello," he greeted. "Do you live on this planet?"
"I am the little prince, and I have my rose, three volcanoes- two are active and one is extinct, though with volcanoes one never knows- and a sheep." The little prince declared to his visitor.
"You have a sheep on this little place?" the Doctor asked.
The child looked past the Doctor, and his thin blond eyebrows furrowed in curiosity. "What is that?" He pointed to the TARDIS.
"That's the TARDIS, which stands for 'time and relative dimensions in space.' It's stuck looking like a police box, but it is actually what I travel in."
"It flies?" The prince asked. He remembered from a journey past another flying machine, though it looked nothing like the blue box a few feet away from him.
"Yes! Through time and space!" The Doctor grinned.
Then the little prince laughed, and it sounded like a hundred little bells. "Tell me what planet you are from!"
The Doctor smiled and took his hands out of his pockets as he turned, following the little prince inspecting his vehicle. "I am from the planet Gallifrey, located in the constellation Katerborous, at galactic coordinates ten-zero-eleven-zero-zero by zero-two from galactic zero centre. But I've been to many other places as well!"
The prince finished walking a circle around the TARDIS- a route that covered a large portion of his planet- and came again to stand in front of the Doctor. His orange scarf fluttered in the breeze. "I have traveled too! To seven planets other than my own, I have been."
"Have you now? And how did you get to them?"
"One day I took advantage of a passing flock of birds."
It was the Doctor's turn to chuckle. "A flock of birds?"
"To seven different planets they took me. On one of them I met a king, and another a conceited man. The others were home to a tippler, a businessman, a lamplighter, and a geographer."
"But that's only six populations."
"The seventh planet was Earth-"
"Earth!" The Doctor exclaimed. "Good old Gaia. I'm well acquainted with it, having spent quite a few years there. It is a curious place, and the men and women there are even more curious. To say the least."
"You met many people there?"
"Lots of them. There's millions of them, don't you know? A few of them I've come to know pretty well."
"When I was on Earth, I met briefly a desert flower, a rose garden, a railroad switchman, merchant, and a snake. But the most important meetings were with the fox, and the aviator." The little prince smiled brightest after he mentioned the last.
"What makes them stand out from the rest?"
"They tamed me; we tamed each other."
"Were you all wild things beforehand?"
"To tame is to establish ties, the fox told me. To tame one another is to need each other, and to be unique in all the world to one another." The prince turned around. "I believe my rose was the first one to tame me." He knelt down before his flower.
"Ah!" she sniffed indignantly. "You haven't forgotten me! I thought you would leave with this doctor in his blue box." She glanced sidelong to see the Doctor looking at her, and she primped her petals.
"One is responsible for what one tames," the prince assured the rose, patting the soil around her green stem.
"Certainly!" the rose shook her petals. After having both persons admire her for a few more moments, she said, "It is about suppertime, I think."
The prince retrieved the watering can and showered the rose with water. She shivered, but was refreshed. The droplets sparkled on her in the dusky light like jewels. "Ah! If you will pardon me, I am now ready to sleep. My glass globe? Before I get a chill…"
The glass globe was not a foot away. Her gardener picked it up. "Goodnight," he said, placing it over her.
"Goodnight," the Doctor waved.
"Goodnight!" she yawned, and was then enclosed and safe from the drafts.
The prince stood up next to the Doctor. "She is quite capricious. But she is my rose." And before the Doctor could make a comment, he continued. "My own supper is ready."
The two walked to the other hemisphere, where it was further into night. Here the Doctor saw one of the prince's volcanoes, which barely came up to the boy's knees. Resting above the summit on a little wire stand was a skillet, holding several slices of browned bread.
"Isn't that clever!" the Doctor commented.
The prince removed the toasted bread from the pan, and handed one piece to the Doctor. They shared this meal, also having a drink from the watering can. The Doctor quipped that they could be considered exotic plants themselves, to which the prince laughed, covering his mouth as he chewed.
The Doctor looked back at the rose in her glass globe, growing vibrant and tall. The quiet of space settled in, and his mind wandered in its great expanses.
"I had a rose once," he announced. Then quietly, "Rose. I had Rose."
"You had a flower too?" The prince asked, brushing a few crumbs from his lips.
"She was a girl from Earth, and she used to travel with me," the Doctor pressed his lips together. "But then I lost her."
"You don't know where she is?" The prince's voice was very quiet.
"She's in another, very separate world. One that I can't go to." The Doctor paced around the planet, turning over a few pebbles, but carefully avoiding the flowers. They were smaller and far simpler than the rose, with only one ring of petals.
"When I had to leave Earth, I had to leave the Aviator. I was very sad and frightened to do it. But one must always have to go. He had to fly away too, for the desert was not his home." The little prince bowed his head.
The Doctor frowned that the child should have such a sadness. He placed a hand on his shoulder. "But you could catch another bunch of geese or sparrows and make another visit, couldn't you?"
"I am responsible for my planet, for my volcanoes and rose. And now for my sheep. The Aviator understood this, and we had each other as friends, if only for a few days…"
"I understand," the Doctor said.
The prince sniffed and lifted his chin. "Come," he announced. "Let us watch a sunset." And he made a few purposeful steps. "You can have my chair," the prince offered as they came upon the object.
"Thank you," the Doctor said. He squatted down to sit on the petite furniture. It creaked under his weight, but held fine.
Beside him, from the small shadow of the extinct volcano stepped an even smaller sheep, just a lamb. With its head down, it nibbled on the tufts of vegetation poking up from the ground.
"Ah, there is the aforementioned sheep," the Doctor nodded.
The little prince gathered the sheep into his arms and took a seat on the tiny mountain.
"The Aviator drew it for me, right inside its little box," the prince explained, looking off into the far distance. "It eats the baobabs, but not my rose. It is a good sheep." He let out a heavy sigh, and then hugged his animal close, pressing his cheek to the white wool. The Doctor leaned over, and could hear the quiet weeping of the child, at the memory of his terrestrial friend.
"I'm sorry," the Doctor whispered.
The prince sat up, rubbing his green sleeve across his eyes. "Look at the sunset," he said, clearing his throat. "One loves the sunset, when one is sad."
"Yes, I suppose one does," the Doctor murmured, looking into the brilliant show of light and dark shades of amber, gold, violet and indigo spreading across the horizon of the small planet. It faded into darkest blue quicker than a sunset of Earth, and pondering this evoked the lovely, but slightly saddening memories that were from that planet.
"Look!" The prince exclaimed, and pointed out to the sky, which was now the black velvet of midnight, but illuminated with countless of stars. "When I looked at the stars on Earth, they were beautiful because of a flower that lived on one of them. But now I am with my rose, and when I look at the night sky here, they are millions of springs of fresh water that sing! I hear the rusty pulley of the well singing, just as it did when my aviator and I drank from it." He put his hand on the Doctor's shoulder. "Your Rose is among the universe too, so see how beautiful it is!"
"She is not in this universe, she is in another dimension," the Doctor replied somberly.
"But the stars must shine there as well."
"They are not the same stars."
The little prince shook his head at the grown-up. "I do not know what stars my pilot sees at night when he opens his window. But when he does see the stars, and in them he has five hundred million little bells. Do you understand?"
The Doctor sighed; the heavy weight on his mind wore his patience for this child's hope thin.
Then the prince spoke again, his voice gentle, but serious. "The fox told me this secret, and I will share it with you: What is essential is invisible to the eye; one sees best with the heart."
After a moment, the Doctor turned and said, "I have two hearts."
"Do you?" He could not contain his amazement.
"Yes little sir." The Doctor pulled the lapels of his brown overcoat aside and touched two points on his shirt. "They're right there."
The little prince got up from his volcano and knelt next to the larger person. He put his small hands over the Doctor's hearts, one over each, and he closed his eyes and felt the beat of the muscles.
"You should be able to see the essential very well then." He smiled slightly, getting to his feet. "Just pay no attention to your eyes." He laughed and brushed the corner of the Doctor's eye with his thumb, causing him to wink.
The Doctor smiled at his company. Then he frowned. "I'm afraid if I saw with my heart, or hearts rather," he added with a shrug, "all the time, I would be constantly reminded all the people I miss."
"But it is very sad to forget a friend."
"It is. But I promise you, I won't forget them." He folded his hands on his legs, stretched out in front of him. He leaned his head back as he stared up at the constellations, all so familiar. "And I won't forget you, little prince. Never ever."
Then they sat in silence, watching the firmament pass over their heads. After some time, a new dawn was arriving. This was when the prince spoke again. "Will you have to go soon as well?"
The Doctor sat up from his recline and leaned forward on his knees. "Yes, I'm afraid so."
"Do you have a planet you are responsible for?"
"I feel I have many planets I am responsible for."
The prince stood up, with his sheep asleep in his arms. He went over to a small box that sat on the ground and placed the sheep inside it. "Then you must return to them. And I would like to see how your ship flies," he said.
The Doctor stood as well, shrugging. "Well, you don't exactly see it fly, it more or less disappears…" He followed the prince back to the TARDIS.
The prince stood beside the doors. "My rose will be quite indignant that you did not stay and admire her more."
"But tell her that I think she is a very beautiful rose."
"She will agree," the prince laughed.
The Doctor smiled at the lovely sound. He knew the million little bells the Aviator heard when he saw the stars was the prince's laugh.
"If you please," the prince started. "If you meet my Aviator, tell him he drew me a very good sheep."
"I certainly will." The Doctor stepped inside the TARDIS. "Goodbye, little prince."
"Goodbye, Doctor."
When the door closed, the prince stood back beside his rose. He watched in delight as the light on the roof of the police box glowed, reminding him of the loyal lamplighter he had once visited. Then the entire thing faded and vanished. And the view the TARDIS had once obscured, the prince could see the Earth in its own orbit. He raised his hand above his head and waved, smiling.