cross-posted transform challenge response
Jul. 5th, 2005 08:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chanter1944Shape Shifting
Author: Chanter
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairings: mildly Four/Sarah
Rating: G pretty sure
Summary: Sarah's POV, AU. Which one is truly transforming with time, anyway.
Dedicated to Leila, because she’s the one got me into this particular fandom to begin with. Yes,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tajnyj, this one's for you, since you converted me. :)
834 words, longest I’ve ever done for a challenge
Forget regeneration.
It’s the patchwork that catches my attention at first, the streamer, the impossible length of red and blue and orange and gold and the voice behind it, softer, more serious than those vivid colors, all depth, all theater, all song. There’s a faint impression of a ship behind him, surrounding, encased in crystal and too difficult for tiny eyes to read beyond vague outlines, too broad in spectrum for tiny ears to fathom, and with it a brush of feminine speech, equal, interacting, balancing him. There’s the tangible sense of an enemy, beyond reach, beyond reason, too advanced for even the words of a bird-legged linguist, inaudible but loudly readable by the weak empathy of toddlers--and it all lingers. But it’s the patchwork that I remember first, lit from the inside and glowing.
I remember.
And it’s the memories that intrigue me most, the flicker of blue reflected from the corner of a wonderful ship, the musical intensity of a half-forgotten baritone voice saying “Dalek,” the broken conversations that trigger fading chains of images. “Really…? And he… oh? Wait, I think maybe…” The imprint of summer nights and threadbare rugs and sitting with my nose pressed to crystal and wood, breathing in dark and humid air stolen from the hours one, two, forever past my bedtime. It’s the memories that intrigue me first.
I’m curious.
It’s the curiosity that sparks the daydreams, wheels for absence of wheels, land for absence of gravity, time for choice of time. Half-formed ideas and scattered fantasies bounce through my conscious mind, braided in with my braids, worn with my clothes, scented on my skin. It’s the curiosity that makes me dream.
I wish.
And it’s the wishes that leave me unprepared, the scribbled, half-finished splashes in the margins of notebooks, the ragtag conversations scrawled along the inside of desk drawers, the scenes played out mind in mind in mind, night after day after restless dawn, leaving me floored when one weary, color-dulled evening I turn around and he says “Hello!” and laughs, loud and long and what would be sinister to anyone else but for me echoes off the ceilings of auditorium walls not yet raised, crackles over long-ruined radio dials, draws me. It’s the wishes that desert me when he stands there, silhouetted against a faded sunset, and calls me Sarah Jane for the first time.
I’m captivated, when he calls me Sarah.
And I’m enchanted by him, with wilder, brighter shades than my blue and maroon former life could provide, with corridors that rearrange themselves, with where and when run together in the same breath--I’m enchanted with his world, worlds, a million wheres and whens, a thousand clicks and squeaks and fragments of history, names and places and day after day, and it’s worthwhile, even if dalek happens to be one of those names. Between one breath and the next, I’m enchanted.
I’m breathless.
When I stand beside him, equal, interacting, balancing him, when I am counterpoint melody to melody, harmony to baritone harmony, long hair similar and different--I am, then. When we duel together, two with hands laid over hands wielding the same fire staff, dance together in avoidance of the lethal steps of emotionless enemies, speak the same language and understand each other’s phrasing down to the last colloquial quirk, when I no longer sound American--I am, then. When he’s acting as my strength or I’m acting as his, when at the end of the day we’ve both drained our entwined reserves down to nothing and I can see through his quavering façade, when his hands are shaking and I have to lead him to his quarters or he reads the fragility in me and carries me to mine--I am, then. When I let him unbraid my hair, when I willingly hand him my hairbrush with it’s bristles meant for babies, when I don’t resist (and my own mother has heard me resist), when I shyly ask him if he’ll play with my hair--I am, then.
I’m breathless.
And when I pause for breath I realize it. In the silences between his words and mine over strong tea and temporal theory, in the suspended motion between one step and the next as our bare feet brush dew-drenched summer grass at midnight, in the mid stride hesitation as we leap in succession over a stone wall that simply invites climbing, in the frozen animation between awestruck and fiery shivers as we stare at my younger self from beneath a wooden porch railing while she stands gazing into the muggy, mosquito-y night, singing to no one in particular. “Goodbye butterfly, goodbye Tracy…” When I trip over something, or he runs into something, or we both stumble and collide and one of us catches the other and in the blink elapsed between the rhythms of three shared hearts I daringly blurt out “I adore.” I realize it then.
Regeneration? Blast regeneration.
I realize.
The transformation is in me.
I remember.
And if anyone wants to know where Sarah got childhood memories like those, ask me. I lived them... all but the one where the doctor walks up to her out of nowhere, since I *wish* but that's still a daydream.
Author: Chanter
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairings: mildly Four/Sarah
Rating: G pretty sure
Summary: Sarah's POV, AU. Which one is truly transforming with time, anyway.
Dedicated to Leila, because she’s the one got me into this particular fandom to begin with. Yes,
tajnyj, this one's for you, since you converted me. :) 834 words, longest I’ve ever done for a challenge
Forget regeneration.
It’s the patchwork that catches my attention at first, the streamer, the impossible length of red and blue and orange and gold and the voice behind it, softer, more serious than those vivid colors, all depth, all theater, all song. There’s a faint impression of a ship behind him, surrounding, encased in crystal and too difficult for tiny eyes to read beyond vague outlines, too broad in spectrum for tiny ears to fathom, and with it a brush of feminine speech, equal, interacting, balancing him. There’s the tangible sense of an enemy, beyond reach, beyond reason, too advanced for even the words of a bird-legged linguist, inaudible but loudly readable by the weak empathy of toddlers--and it all lingers. But it’s the patchwork that I remember first, lit from the inside and glowing.
I remember.
And it’s the memories that intrigue me most, the flicker of blue reflected from the corner of a wonderful ship, the musical intensity of a half-forgotten baritone voice saying “Dalek,” the broken conversations that trigger fading chains of images. “Really…? And he… oh? Wait, I think maybe…” The imprint of summer nights and threadbare rugs and sitting with my nose pressed to crystal and wood, breathing in dark and humid air stolen from the hours one, two, forever past my bedtime. It’s the memories that intrigue me first.
I’m curious.
It’s the curiosity that sparks the daydreams, wheels for absence of wheels, land for absence of gravity, time for choice of time. Half-formed ideas and scattered fantasies bounce through my conscious mind, braided in with my braids, worn with my clothes, scented on my skin. It’s the curiosity that makes me dream.
I wish.
And it’s the wishes that leave me unprepared, the scribbled, half-finished splashes in the margins of notebooks, the ragtag conversations scrawled along the inside of desk drawers, the scenes played out mind in mind in mind, night after day after restless dawn, leaving me floored when one weary, color-dulled evening I turn around and he says “Hello!” and laughs, loud and long and what would be sinister to anyone else but for me echoes off the ceilings of auditorium walls not yet raised, crackles over long-ruined radio dials, draws me. It’s the wishes that desert me when he stands there, silhouetted against a faded sunset, and calls me Sarah Jane for the first time.
I’m captivated, when he calls me Sarah.
And I’m enchanted by him, with wilder, brighter shades than my blue and maroon former life could provide, with corridors that rearrange themselves, with where and when run together in the same breath--I’m enchanted with his world, worlds, a million wheres and whens, a thousand clicks and squeaks and fragments of history, names and places and day after day, and it’s worthwhile, even if dalek happens to be one of those names. Between one breath and the next, I’m enchanted.
I’m breathless.
When I stand beside him, equal, interacting, balancing him, when I am counterpoint melody to melody, harmony to baritone harmony, long hair similar and different--I am, then. When we duel together, two with hands laid over hands wielding the same fire staff, dance together in avoidance of the lethal steps of emotionless enemies, speak the same language and understand each other’s phrasing down to the last colloquial quirk, when I no longer sound American--I am, then. When he’s acting as my strength or I’m acting as his, when at the end of the day we’ve both drained our entwined reserves down to nothing and I can see through his quavering façade, when his hands are shaking and I have to lead him to his quarters or he reads the fragility in me and carries me to mine--I am, then. When I let him unbraid my hair, when I willingly hand him my hairbrush with it’s bristles meant for babies, when I don’t resist (and my own mother has heard me resist), when I shyly ask him if he’ll play with my hair--I am, then.
I’m breathless.
And when I pause for breath I realize it. In the silences between his words and mine over strong tea and temporal theory, in the suspended motion between one step and the next as our bare feet brush dew-drenched summer grass at midnight, in the mid stride hesitation as we leap in succession over a stone wall that simply invites climbing, in the frozen animation between awestruck and fiery shivers as we stare at my younger self from beneath a wooden porch railing while she stands gazing into the muggy, mosquito-y night, singing to no one in particular. “Goodbye butterfly, goodbye Tracy…” When I trip over something, or he runs into something, or we both stumble and collide and one of us catches the other and in the blink elapsed between the rhythms of three shared hearts I daringly blurt out “I adore.” I realize it then.
Regeneration? Blast regeneration.
I realize.
The transformation is in me.
I remember.
And if anyone wants to know where Sarah got childhood memories like those, ask me. I lived them... all but the one where the doctor walks up to her out of nowhere, since I *wish* but that's still a daydream.
