Happy Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day to you all! To celebrate this great occasion, I present to you this little story, a fanfic that isn't quite a fanfic, but still, in my personal opinion, fits here. May not be the best thing I've ever written, but this piece is very personal and important to me, so I love it all the same. I can only hope that it will be enjoyable to others as well.
To all companions at heart.
I own nothing.
This is it
This is how it starts.
You watch it, and you fall in love.
It happens, no matter what your initial reason for watching it was. It might have been all the rage, or maybe you wanted to know what everyone was talking about; maybe it was by mistake, or there was nothing else on. Oh, I don't know, maybe you just wanted to see a little more of that famous Harkness grin: no matter the reason, you will fall.
And it doesn't matter how much you've watched, either: sitting faithfully through every episode, or just following Christopher, David and Matt, or catching a bit here and there. Doesn't matter. Love.
This is how it goes.
The whole world is different now, adventure could hide behind every corner, your eyes keep scanning for the blue box in the crowd. You learn the whooshing and whirring and clicks and clacks by heart, in case you hear it before you see it. You keep your bags packed, all ready, under your bed, in case you'll have to leave in a hurry. You try to guess where you two would go first, and rehearse pronouncing Raxacoricofallapatorius. Just in case. And by night, you'll be in front of the screen, watching your favourite clips, again and again, all the while dreaming of how amazing it will be when it's your turn to see the stars.
It's not real, some people might say. It's just a TV show, it's not real. And you look at them, oh you little people with your little faith. Of course you know it's a TV show, but who says it's not real? You just wait, wait and see. When he comes for me, you'll see. You'll see.
But he never comes.
This is how it ends.
It ends with you taking a pair of socks from your backpack. The world's hardly gonna end if I leave with my bag lacking a pair of socks, right? The world's always ending. Then you take out your jumper, when it gets cold. And then your sneakers. And then the towel. You keep taking, and taking, and taking, until there's nothing left but the bag itself, and soon it will be stashed to the closet as well.
Life goes on.
It was stupid, you think. It was stupid from the beginning, of course he's not real. How childish of me to think he'd come. Stars and adventure. Stupid.
You still love it, but you no longer wait. You still watch it, but you no longer feel. It ends. Life goes on.
And then, one day, when you're waiting for a taxi, a car stops by and a stranger asks if you need a lift. Or you're walking down the street, and you see a little shop, a perfect little shop, with a note 'Recruiting' on its window. Or you're driving on the road, and see this path that leads to the forest, and you wonder where it ends. And then the world seems to stop, as a thought pops up in your head: a random question. You don't exactly know where it came from, but it seems very important. It whirls in your head, teasing your brain:
What would he do?
And suddenly it all comes rushing back to you, the times when you wrapped yourself in the extremely long scarf your Mum had made for you while your friend, after losing a game of Rock-paper-scissors, had to put an old bucket to his head and yell 'Exterminate!'. When you lay on the lawn, the grass still wet from dew, and stared up towards the sky, planning the route, tracing it with your fingers, almost touching the stars. When you went to the costume party at the office in a beige suit and a celery stalk on your lapel and no one knew who you were supposed to be except that quiet, cute girl in the corner. When you and your sister tried to focus on the story instead of discussing how sexy he was in that leather jacket. When you cried yourself to sleep after he had, just before regenerating, said 'I don't want to go', looking so sad... Each memory comes back, each one just as precious as the other, and then you're stepping in the stranger's car, opening the shop door, pulling over and stopping the engine. You're not completely in control anymore: your heart is, its beat so hard there might as well be two of them, and the words repeat in your head, over and over again. This is what he would do.
This is it.
This is what it was about, all along. It was never about sitting in front of the screen watching the show, or waiting for things to come your way. This is it, what it meant all along, going out there, making stuff happen, taking chances, loving, living, being that brilliant, stupid, fantastic human he so admired, having an adventure of your own.
You sit in the car, and ask the stranger to take you anywhere. You walk in to the shop, take out your mobile and call your boss to tell you're quitting. You leave your car and run up the forest path, laughing at your own madness. And if the stranger's car is blue, or if the shop is bigger from the inside, or if the wind that plays in the treetops makes weird whooshing sounds, you don't notice because you're too busy being excited, scared to death and utterly, utterly happy.
And maybe, just maybe, somewhere and somewhen, he looks at you go.
And he smiles.
~Fin~
Hope you liked it, feel free to review!