Written for 31 days on Livejournal.
Title: Recurring Sentiments
Day/Theme: August 14 - and we lie: 'I'll never leave you'.
Series: Doctor Who
Characters: Numerous Companions, The Doctor
Rating: G
Living in the TARDIS is like a dream, and who hasn't wanted a good dream to last forever?
When we travel with the Doctor, everything changes. All the worries, the cares and tugs of the reality we left behind are neatly packed away to make room for the wonder.
Those hidden parts of ourselves know that the dream must end someday, but we can never let ourselves listen. It would break our hearts to listen.
And so, to ourselves and to him, we lie: "I'll never leave you."
But he knows better. He's lived too long, met too many of us. There are dozens upon dozens of empty rooms in the TARDIS – lived in, slept in, abandoned. Where did all those people go?
It hardly bears thinking about, so we don't. There's always too much going on, so much excitement. Time can pass surprisingly swift when you live in a time machine.
Sooner or later, we begin pick our own rooms in the network of corridors, ignoring the deserted ones.
We stay, secure in the knowledge that he is our mysterious man, our friend, our Doctor.
Except – things change. It could be an emergency. Maybe we finally find a place that suits us, far off in the stars. A few of us get tired of the constant danger. Sometimes, we just want to go home.
And so we leave, generally cheerful, often sad. Usually we are spouting apologies, trying to stave off the guilt of leaving an old man alone. He lets us go, of course. How could he not? He loves us, but he is old and alone while we are young and many.
Living in the TARDIS is like a dream.
Really, that should have been our first clue.
Dreams never last.