Title: Leave and Resonate
Rating: PG
Warnings: mild profanity; blanket spoilers for Doctor Who episodes 3x08 and 3x09 (10th Doctor series)
Summary: He could hear two heartbeats.
Notes: Just something that popped up while I was watching the latter episode. Written on a whim and in present tense. CUDDLESSSSSSSS. Sorry if I made John and the Doc woobies; John was sort of a woobie anyway, and besides, IT'S SAD AND IT'S A REUNION OF SOOOULS. Used more The Trapeze Swinger by Iron & Wine lyrics derp. IT'S SUCH A SAD SONG TO WRITE SAD FIC TO OKAY.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A fleeting chance to see a trapeze swing as high as any savior
It is quiet now.
There are no bombs. There is no screaming. There are no voices. She is not there. They are gone. It is quiet now, and the bleak darkness lit up by deceiving white light is blank. It is empty, and it is a void. It is not nearly as cold, but he knows that is a false security. This is emptiness; this is nothingness; this is between here and there. It is limbo and purgatory. It is the meeting of minds.
In the light of this never ending world of eternal and mortal, he hears something. It is sudden, familiar. In the reaches of his mind, he knows that despite this silence, it has always been there. Quietly ticking like a watch tucked into a pocket. Only now can he hear this noise, and it is the sound of a heartbeat. Steady, slow, natural rhythm; one pump after another.
The pumps are echoed. It is an uneven balance. They bounce awkwardly off one another. Not in proper unison. It scares him, because in this void he has been floating in for years and seconds, he is no longer alone. The second heartbeat is the same, but it does not beat the same. It is human in sound, but not human in nature.
"Is this what death is like?" he asks and opens his eyes. He wishes almost instantaneously he did not. Wishes he had remained in a mock slumber. Wish he had only been curious by the heartbeat. Not frightened of it enough that he simply had to open his eyes. The exhaustive stare widens, his pupils dilate and consume the brown irises and all it once, he remembers the moments and millennia that happened before he "died".
There were bombs. There was screaming. There were voices. She was there.
"Oh, God-!" he breaths and chokes on his voice. The rest of his cry comes out as a whimper. He curls forward until he's nearly fetal, hands at his head, fingers pushed through hair and against scalp. There is a pounding and it is coming from the two heartbeats that refuse to beat as one. His eyes screw shut until the darkness and stars that race past burst into specks of white light that sting. They remind him of the explosions. They remind him of the pale sorrow on her face.
Tears track down his face. Even in death, you can cry. They're warm, just like this void that is a void even if it is warm. He is sobbing, unabashedly, crying out his heart's suffering and misery. It beats faster, nearly subduing the sound of the second heart. He bawls and blubbers and he has no shame, for no one is here to judge him. No one is here at all.
That's a lie. He knows it. He hates that he knows it.
"I'm sorry - "
" - Shut up - "
"I'm so sorry - "
" - Shut up shut up shut up!" he wails and spittle flies from his lips. His teeth are bared, eyes snapping open. There is fire in them. There is fire in the way his heart races and thunders. The air shivers. The void trembles. The second heart softens. He glares at the man above him. The man that wears his face. The man that dares to call himself the first, and now, the last. He is him, not the other way around.
Everything about him is alien despite the reflection so much like his own. The sadness in his eyes is something he had never seen before. These eyes saw more death than a thousand lifetimes should endure. These eyes witnessed the birth of galaxies and the collapsing of worlds. These eyes that held pity for billions that slipped through his fingers were now holding him, him alone. This sorrow, this genuine apology, is all his own. He will keep it and hold it until two heartbeats fall to one.
"You're not sorry!" he snarls. "You're not sorry at all! You're a selfish egomaniac and you wouldn't understand!" He feels his chest tighten around him. He feels his breathing become erratic. "You can claim to be so selfless, saving all those lives, helping all those people, but you-you-are nothing but a lonely, hollow husk of a man! No, not a man!" It is insulting to compare the two. "What angel of mercy are you to drag those down in the mud? You claim to love them, but you cling to them, and you drain them off their lives and you bleed them dry and then they are left just like you! So many of them, so many, Martha's only one of many, Rose - ! Because you are so lonely, the only one left behind, that they are the closest to kin you'll find. Empty them, turn them to shreds and find in them you and then you won't be alone. Not anymore!"
His eyes are blurred by the first film of tears. He doesn't want to cry. He refuses to. The monster that wears his face did not deserve his tears. Yet he is not responding with aggression or defense; he's not confessing to nor disagreeing with the accusations. The face of the second heartbeat that feels so weak is still looking at him with all the pain in the world. Every I'm so sorry pooled into one, and he can feel it. He can truly feel that this man wants redemption, but knows he will never get it.
"Don't look at me like that!" he screams. He pushes the pain away. "You're pitying me! If you should pity anyone, pity yourself!" His heartbeat is drowning any other noise in his head. "Stop looking at me like that!" He shoves and pushes and the man is just taking it, taking it all like he deserves it all. "You bloody demon! You monster! You don't understand what I'm going through! You can never compare!"
"I know."
It's like glass shattering around him. It's like the worlds this man has seen falling apart, only now these worlds are in his mind. Collapsing around him and taking down the fires. His heartbeat freezes in time, something that has no concept inside this void. And it hits him like a thousand lives-he counts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten-crying out from the darkness and grabbing him and he sees now that he doesn't understand.
He searches the eyes of the Doctor. The eyes of a fallen god. And he sees not one thing as beautiful as her. As the life he has lived. As a simple English countryman teaching the future generation of the tiny, tiny human race. He doesn't see the sheer beauty of waking late and hurrying to get ready because you and your best mates stayed out too late last night having a few pints to celebrate your very human birthday and you recall every detail, every laugh at your silly little jokes, every side glance the bar maid across the room made at you, every minute you stood outside awkwardly striking a conversation with her, every split second of her shyly brushing hair behind her ear and counting the freckles on her face and every blink-of-an-eye that is everyday, ordinary, mundane living in those pathetic eyes. He sees not of that in the Doctor's galaxies of rebirth and ruin; all the stars of millions of planets and none where his best mates told him he was drinking too much and to go talk to the pretty lady and the clumsy invite to grab a bite tomorrow with her as you watch her go and smile and think you're the luckiest man on this backwards planet.
The Doctor has lived so many lives. He's still a child. In this world, he is a great god, a destroyer, a creator. But so small, so infantile, this man who does not understand a world that is quiet and humble and boring. And in that instant he realizes the Doctor is so much sadder than he could ever be. He's lived many lives, but he'll never live the one he had. The Doctor remembers the details, but they aren't his own. He'll hold the memories, but they're not his.
He drops his head forward. Shame twists in his chest. "Oh, God, I'm sorry," he whispers, his bottom lip trembling. Fresh tears run along his face, his eyes a pale red. "I'm so sorry," he's the one apologizing now, his voice shaking and he howls out for the both of them. For the life he has to say goodbye to, and the life the Doctor never had.
Arms thread around him. Wrap around his back. He's pulled into the Doctor's embrace, flush to his chest. He holds him tightly. All the while, sobs wreck through him as he cries into his hands, for the both of them. For the man he was and the man who will never be. Soft assuring whispers match the fingers threading through his hair, the Doctor resting his chin to the top of his head. Soft lullaby whispers he's probably sung to the unfortunate dead he could not save, died because of him. He rocks what he was but wasn't; what he can never be. He rocks him like a small child and listens to him scream and cry and apologize over and over and over.
All of him feels weak and tired and floating. The beating of their irregular hearts draws him out of the numbness. He can't cry anymore. The sickness is drifting. He's still shaking. The arms keep him anchored to the Doctor, the fingers petting his hair. He feels soft pressure as his head is pushed to rest gently against his chest. He can hear a heartbeat everywhere, but not inside the body. And for a while, he lets the Doctor hold and stroke him, lull him gently.
"I don't want to go," he says suddenly, and tension builds between his eyes. He stops himself from crying again. "I don't want to go I want to be with her I want to be human I don't want to disappear."
"No one ever disappears. No one ever vanishes."
"That's not true."
"Death does not always mean the end."
He feels tired. Very tired. The warmth around him grows. He leans into the body embracing him. Eyes fall lidded. "We become memories," he whispers. It is bittersweet.
"We become so much more."
"I'm scared."
"I am too."
"If this is not the end, then what is it?"
The smile he is being given makes his heart swell. "It's another chapter." The arms loosen and he feels lonely, so cold and lonely. Warm hands touch his face and the Doctor, he can see his smile perfectly now. All its radiant, jaded glory. "You can live forever. Here. But it is your choice. If you choose to hurt, or heal. To remember, or to forget. I won't leave you. She won't leave you."
He swallows. "... All. All of it. I want all of it. The happiness, the sadness." He closes his eyes. "I was human. I want to be human. I want their pain and their pleasure. I want her in my arms, and I want her tears as she lets me go."
Lips are pressed to his forehead. "Then live forever," the Doctor whispers around his caress. "Oh, live it all!"
He laughs at the enthusiasm in the Doctor's voice. He opens his eyes again. He nods.
"Steady," the Doctor whispers. He steadies. "Relax," the Doctor says. He relaxes. "Breathe," the Doctor whispers. He breathes.
His heartbeat falls back, evens itself, until for a moment in time, the two heartbeats beat in complete unison. He does not open his eyes as he listens to the sharp hiss, the choked sob. Then he lets his heart slow. Faint. Fade. Fall apart. Nothing. Scattered now. Gone. Not gone. Shards now. Memories now. Good. Bad. Warm. Cold. Living forever here.
One heart has fallen silent. The other beats for two.
He opens his eyes. He hears the bombs. He hears the cries. He hears a voice. He hears her. He looks down at her. She is frightened, she is crying.
The Doctor smiles sadly. He tells Joan that John Smith is not dead. He's not dead because he remembers what John has given him, him and his memories, and he feels his sorrow not as two people, but one man rejoined.
You turn from me
And said 'The trapeze act was wonderful
But never meant to last'
END