#kindledbyheart

[drthetasigma14]

‘ i once got lost on an escalator, so i’m not exactly christopher columbus. ’ (kindledbyheart ;)

“Two things. One: Chris couldn’t navigate his way out of a wet paper bag if you gave him scissors.”

“Two: was it that one in Harrods? That’s a tricky one, I don’t blame you.”

@kindledbyheart

[drthetasigma14]

" I really do appreciate everything you've done for me Doctor, " Her tone is - withholding - near pensive as gloved fingers fiddle with the hem of her shirt. But her gaze is right. It's fixed on him. Perhaps she's sad. Perhaps - " But I don't think I remember telling you about Dover, or my family. Not properly... How did you - " - she's angry.

Oh, he might’ve known this question would come up. Sooner or later.

If there’s one question he’s asked as often as “Doctor Who?” it’s— “how did you know that?”

Only in this case— in this case it’s someone’s life. Someone’s miraculous, impossible—

—back from the dead—

—life.

"It’s—" he attempts, licks his lips, tries again— "it’s not very often, in my experience, that one faces events that force them to completely reinvent how they look at The Universe. I fought The Devil, once, I still made it out of there with my atheism intact."

"But then two blokes from Kansas show me that magic is real and they’ve got a friend who’s an honest-to-Whomever angel of the allegedly-blessed Lord."

"But then timestreams start melting together like choc ices in the sun and paradoxes start existing side by side."

"And then— and then there’s you. A temporal anomaly that’s so much more than temporal. I thought at first— I had this— I had this friend, you met her once— she scattered herself throughout history and I wondered if maybe you were her, an echo of her, a her that she’d left behind for me to find, like her name— but no. It’s something bigger than that.” 

"No traveler’s supposed to come back from the bourn of The Undiscovered Country, Joan, that’s what death means, I once chatted with Queen Victoria about that very subject— we’re not supposed to know what’s next. Physical resurrections like— like Claire or Win or Mae or Ky— that’s different— you just stepped back out of Death like you’d left the kettle on, body and soul.”

"It changes everything, a notion like that. A person like that.”

"So I had to go back and look. I had to— look you up, peer at your life— try and find out what made you tick when you should have tocked. I had to be very careful to not para too many doxes, especially this one moment in June 1807— honestly— I’ve wound up with more questions than answers but—”

"Whatever it is. Whatever it means. I know that you— behind your eyes, behind that face— there’s a keen mind kindled by a kind heart. There’s a good soul, which is another thing I can’t believe I believe in.”

"I tried— to solve your mystery. And I failed."

"But I know all I need to know."

"You’re a friend, Joan. I needed to know that. I needed to. And now I do."

"Please. Please understand that.”

[whoiisms]

［ ❄ ❛  rosxtta, kindledbyheart, raxcity, atlaxlinguist & xnerdqueen found christmas ❜］

             ❛ whoa ! that was so cool !                     can you do that again ? ❜

[drthetasigma14]

(( Joan!mun: YAY I'M GLAD YOU LIKE IT THANK YOU ...I always meant to do a tie-in scene at the end of "The Potter!verse" where Ross would wake up and meet Pythagoras, but never did. Now that this is here, I'm bringing that concept back. As for what comes next?

Amyla: I DON'T KNOW

Actually, I do, but I'm not sure how long it's going to take. First, I need to tag everyone who was involved in The Drabblocalypse and The Potter!verse, and see if they want in on this too. The ones that say "yes," and the ones that already have, I then talk things over with and see where they want their character to end up, what they hope to accomplish, potential endgames, that sort of thing. Then I dust off some of my older, unused blogs, and away we go! ))

[drthetasigma14]

I Told You That Story So I Could Tell You This One: "Drank Coffee and Talked for an Hour." (A Prelude to "The Waste Lands.")

October, 2014.

Butte, Montana, USA. 

The beige Lincoln Continental trundled into a Biggerson's parking lot, and the dark-haired figure in the beige trench coat lurched out of the shotgun position and steadied himself on the roof of the car. "Wait here, Hannah. I'll try not to be long."

Hannah pursed her lips, hands still on the steering wheel. "Castiel, is this further delay strictly necessary? We have another further eight hours to reach North Dakota, and we have already been delayed a great deal by repairs to this vehicle."

"Yes," Castiel nodded. "Yes, this is a delay. And yes, it is strictly necessary. I need to confer with a friend."

Hannah frowned visibly. "Another of your 'good men?'"

"He is," Castiel declared. "Though you would probably think of him as another of my 'bad influences.'"

He slammed the car door and limped across the lot towards the entrance.

As he went, Hannah watched him go for a moment, and then turned her attention to a tall blue wooden box parked across the street near a couple of pay phones. It did not belong. It did not seem natural.

Hannah frowned at this, too, but the blue box did not seem bothered in the least by Hannah's disapproval.

Castiel shuffled up to a table at which a bespectacled, blue-suited gentleman sat eating a plate of French fries with a fork. A man who also did not seem natural, a man who also did not belong.

"Doctor," he rumbled.

"Castiel," The Doctor smirked at him, "love the new motor. Matches your coat."

Castiel sat heavily in a chair across the table, and frowned at The Time Lord. "I like my car."

"M'not saying it's a bad thing," The Doctor promised, finishing his mouthful and stabbing another chip for consumption, "why d'you think I wear a blue suit?"

Glancing around, the angel's frown deepened. "Biggerson's. It had to be Biggerson's."

The Doctor slowed his chewing, furrowed his brow, took off his glasses. "You asked for a meeting place between The Pacific Northwest and North Dakota. Should I have gone with Red Robin? Lovely bottomless chips, there, but this place has this brilliant poutine, chips and gravy--"

Castiel harrumphed. "Biggerson's has been known to be a wretched hive of scum and villainy."

And now The Doctor put down his fork. "Hold on, sorry, that's Star Wars. How are you quoting Star Wars? Come to that, right now you look like you feel just as bad as I did the day we met."

"It is--" Castiel gestured helplessly. "Complicated. A long story."

The Doctor tilted his head, his dark eyes focusing beyond Castiel for a moment. "You better hope it's not too long. Because-- Cas-- your timeline's fraying. Last time I saw you it was reaching on forever, now it looks like someone's taken a hacksaw to it."

"I've lost my grace," Castiel shook his head. "And in self-defense slew another angel and absorbed his grace. It is-- not compatible. It is failing."

The Doctor sat back in his chair, horrified. "You're dying."

"Yes," Castiel affirmed, grimly but unafraid. 

Running his tongue around his teeth, The Doctor weighed this new knowledge-- he'd killed before-- to save lives, to save multiple lives, to save worlds-- but to save himself-- it wasn't the same.

But for all his falls from, well, grace-- Castiel was still one of the very few of that angelic lot The Doctor would give tuppence for. Dani, Winter/Mae, sometimes Gabriel--

"What can I do to help?" The Doctor demanded. "Your-- grace-- would any of it have been left behind when you-- tapped the energy of my neuropsychic net, my 'soul?' You could-- reabsorb that?"

"And have you die in my place?" Castiel glared at him.

The Doctor met that glare with a sad, aching gaze. "I've lived a good long ol' life, much longer than I've a right to. And I'm still in no hurry to leave. But the reason I was dying when we met was because I sacrificed my life for a friend. And there's no reason I can't do that again."

"No," Castiel dismissed, sharply. "Doctor. No. I have already made my decision: no-one else is going to die to save me. No angels, and not you. I am not going to undo one of the few redeeming acts of my recent years so that I can avoid the consequences of my actions. No 'cheat codes,' not this time."

The Doctor nudged a fry around his plate with his fork, and didn't look at Cas for a moment. "It's always about consequences with you, ennit?"

"They do appear to be a running theme," Castiel agreed. And then continued: "But I did not come here to talk about my consequences."

Arching an eyebrow, The Doctor glanced back up at the angel. "Oh no?"

Castiel didn't smile as he replied: "I have felt a disturbance in The Force."

The Doctor snorted. "Oh, that is so weird, you'll be quoting Mary Poppins next--"

Castiel shot The Doctor a look, and The Doctor paused, momentarily chagrined. "Right, sorry. Do go on."

"When I woke up this morning," Castiel explained, "a little girl asked me what I dreamed about. I told her I did not dream. But that was a lie, both to spare her worry and to spare myself the complications of exposition that she would not understand."

Pressing his lips together and frowning, The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned back in his chair. "A prophecy?"

"So it would seem," Castiel shook his head. "I dreamed of a place between life and death-- neither Heaven nor Hell nor Purgatory-- though it resembled a Heaven. A place of silvered-glass lakes and a far green country and a swift sunrise-- and of beautiful music, rolling lovely music permeating every facet. Does this mean anything to you?"

The Doctor jutted his lower jaw, ran a hand through the spikes of his hair-- Joan-- "I might've-- heard of it."

Castiel leaned forward in his chair, and poked the tabletop hard with a fingertip. "I dreamed of a darkness in that unsullied place, leaking forth like an oil slick across the face of Creation. And in that darkness I saw you drowning. If you value your life, Doctor, and I know you do, you must discover what this means."

The Doctor looked-- panicked-- light-years away from the man who was offering to die for Castiel only moments ago-- looked ready to run-- there emerged in the place between his hearts the same strangled feeling he got when he'd been told he will knock four times.

"Castiel--" The Doctor began a muddled, broken-heartsed reply-- 

--but then a great wave of sensation rolled over the two celestial beings, a real disturbance in The Force--

--something coming through, something not supposed to be here--

*********

--out in the parking lot, Hannah stood and stared at a brown-haired young man in a black hoodie and faded jeans as he lay sprawled, breathing haggard, on the asphalt of the parking lot. Above them, the rainbow-tinged, thunder-crackling hole in the sky he'd fallen through irised shut again, as though it had never been.

"Tommy," wheezed the boy, "Tommy Decker, is he here? Have I found him? That's his ridiculous contraption over there--"

Hannah squinted at the human child. "I do not know that name. But you do not belong in this world--"

He tried to sit up and cried out, clutching his side, falling back. "You have to find Decker, I'm dying, spent too long in The Time Vortex-- fell sideways-- I've seen things--"

The Doctor came sprinting up, Castiel struggling to catch up behind him. "What's this? Who is he, where'd he come from?"

"Decker," the boy smiled a grim grimace, laughed brokenly. "You got old again. But always with that same suit."

And then The Doctor really looked at him. He was a boy, a human boy, but he-- he looked like a young Harold Saxon-- like The Master had when he'd used the name Harold Saxon-- but Harold Saxon had never been a boy, and The Doctor had never used the "T.S. Decker" alias around Saxon. "Impossible. How did you get back out of The Time Lock, was it The Untempered Schism? Are you fobwatched again?"

Professor Yana had told a story of being found as a baby-- The Chameleon Arch could fiddle with your age-- 

"That makes no sense," the boy coughed. "Don't understand a word. Time Lock? Fobwatch? Decker, just-- shut your gob and listen-- he's coming back. Nial Ross, The Basilisk-- he's coming back-- I've seen it in The Vortex-- and he's not alone. He's got a new, powerful friend."

The Doctor had no idea who this teenaged Harold Saxon was talking about-- a language barrier with a deadlock seal-- but he couldn't ignore a dying lad's words: "Who? Who's his friend?"

Boy Saxon wrapped his arms around his stomach and spasmed, groaning, "hrrrrraaah."

It was now that Castiel limped up. "Hannah, can-- can you heal him?"

"I cannot," Hannah admitted, though it sound as though she was unsure why this unknown human was worth the expenditure of energy. "He has been written and rewritten by the power of an archangel and then damaged by exposure to Time and The Void, far beyond my poor power to add or detract."

"Master," The Doctor sank to one knee beside the boy, clutching at his hand, agony spearing through his eyes, did he really have to watch him die again? "Master. Tell me. Who's the Basilisk's new friend?"

"M'not the master," Saxon wheezed. "M'just Harry. Harry Saxon. The Basilisk was my Master-- and he-- he-- he's joined forces with-- I don't know him-- a being called--"

Saxon drew a haggard breath. "--Pythagoras."

The Doctor shot to his feet and staggered back a few steps, hand in his hair and eyes as round as cartwheels. "No. No."

The Leader of The Knell. Who'd almost unmade Reality and cost The Doctor's Daughter a life-- they never had found each other again. But he was dead. The Doctor had watched the being's eyes wink out after he'd been drained of power and restrained and then murdered by Algernon's laser screwdriver.

Saxon's eyes never left the staggering, reeling, Doctor, even as every breath, every syllable became a struggle: "Decker. Tommy. You have to find it. It's the only thing that can stop him-- both of them-- you have to find The Left Hand of God."

And then his eyes sank closed. And he just-- stopped.

The Doctor and the angels didn't have time to mourn him.

Because-- they could see it--

Hannah's wings were broken, and Castiel's graverobbed grace was failing him-- but they understood the tapestry of Creation and so, it turned out, did The Last of The Time Lords--

The Universe shuddered. The Universe sobbed.

And it started to change.

"Doctor!" Castiel roared, shielding his eyes against the horror of it even as he staggered and Hannah caught him. "Doctor! Time's natural fluidity-- it's being-- perverted--"

The Angel of The Lord wasn't wrong--  The Infinite Temporal Flux, now unregulated in the absence of The aforementioned Time Lords-- was being stamped into a single, static shape-- history was being forced and mangled and skewed into an abomination of itself-- no oscillation-- set in stone--

The Doctor clutched at his skull and growlhowled through clenched teeth as the damage to the timestream fed back into his powerful Time Lord senses-- 

--and it wasn't just The Infinite Temporal Flux--

--this Universe possessed a phenomenon called The Multiversal Bleed Effect, which allowed other parallel worlds to slip in and out of it seamlessly. He'd met multiple versions of the same person in the same timeline, drastically different, and yet unaffected by such principles as Blinovitch-- other Time Lords from other timelines, multiple Claires Bennet-- but now, now, the havoc being wreaked upon The Universe was such that all The Multiversal Bleed was being reversed. 

And he knew why, by instinct: because the powers causing this wanted this to be their history, no-one else's, wanted to stamp out anyone that might change it back. And the Doctor knew, by instinct: he would need those outsiders' help.

Hannah flickered, and she looked horrified at her hands for a moment, like Marty McFly staring through his vanishing hand as he was being erased from existence at The Enchantment Under the Sea--

--and then she was gone, and Castiel fell to his knees beside The Doctor as Hannah was no longer there to hold him up. 

"Ahh!" he cried out. "Doctor I can-- I can see that-- that my counterpart in this new history-- has died-- powerless-- I cannot maintain my existence--"

The Doctor could see history, too, rewriting before his eyes.

CROATOAN PANDEMIC REACHES AUSTRALIA.

PRESIDENT PALIN DEFENDS BOMBING OF HOUSTON.

HERE THERE BE MONSTERS.

"--Doctor--"

But Castiel never finished his sentence.

He was just gone, and with him the fragment of grace that was maintaining the spell that was delaying The Doctor's regeneration-- the old excruciating burning came rushing back in to join the migraine agony of Time being butchered--

Trembling with the pain and the effort, The Doctor dragged his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, held it vertically in front of him, extended the tip.

"I'm sorry," he breathed, gazing at The TARDIS across the way, "I'm so sorry."

He could hear her alarm-- her protest-- in his mind-- and it wrenched his hearts-- but then she seemed to hesitate-- seemed to hesitate--

--the words in his head were unmistakable. Do it.

He thumbed the sonic. There came a whistle and a glow.

Sparks and smoke filled The Console Room-- the lights turned a bloody, ruddy, red-- The TARDIS wept from the pain-- The Cloister Bell clonged over and over and over--

--and she reconfigured inside, reconfigured from memory, to a memory-- a memory of a Year That Never Was--

--The TARDIS became a Paradox Machine, and the power of that Machine fought against the mangling of history, enabling a few-- a precious few-- refugees from other worlds to maintain their place in this world despite the forced suturing of Multiversal Bleed.

The Doctor forced a paradox to keep allies in this new and terrible end of the world.

And as downtown Butte, Montana crumbled around him and The TARDIS, The Doctor slumped to the ground.

He no longer had the strength to fight.

He no longer had the strength to stand. 

The end was coming.

"'I,'" he shuddered, groaned, talked to himself, "'could not speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing.'"

The End was coming.

[drthetasigma14]

Drabblocalypse/Potter!verse: "Lilacs Out of The Dead Land." (A Prelude to "The Waste Lands.")

?

The first thing Nial "The Basilisk" Ross felt was cold. 

The next thing he felt was surprise, because he didn't expect to be feeling anything at all. There had been the thunder and the pain of The Time Vortex, the background cacophony of The Universe corkscrewing around him as that idiot traitor boy Harold Saxon tackled him out into oblivion--

--he had glimpsed all of history spread out before him, overwhelming, like gazing into The Face of God--

--and then he'd felt himself coming apart, molecule by molecule.

And it had been over.

And yet...?

He opened his eyes, and sat up, bloodstained red-and-gold robes still wrapped around him. He glanced down at his left arm--

It was still gone-- though the stump had healed shut --and with it the gauntlet that had given him much of his power. Unlike his namesake reptile, he did not possess the ability to regenerate lost extremities.

Decker. Saxon. Williams. 

They had cost him much. And now--

--now he was far from home, places untold, without so much as a wand--

--though this place was lovely, lightly frosted--

--and was-- was that music?

Ross frowned, clambering to his feet.

The music seemed to come from everywhere and yet nowhere. Reluctantly, he admitted the music had a certain-- profound elegance to it, though in his quest to fulfill Voldemort's legacy he'd rarely made time for such fanciful pursuits.

His first order of business was to find out where he was. He could work from there to see how he'd come here, and therefore how he'd survived The Time Vortex.

"You didn't," came a voice, from nowhere, and he whirled.

A young man-- pale white as though sun-deprived, with blue eyes-- a translucent, distorted skull that seemed to show hints of the brain within-- instead of a hairline he had shapes like vestigial tentacles scrawled across his skin in a rim around his head. The young man wore black, at the bottom of a nearby tree--

--although--

--Ross realized, upon further scrutiny, that while the boy looked young, Ross could not immediately pinpoint his age.

"And no," the ageless youth shook his head, "I cannot read your thoughts. But I know what you are thinking-- having wondered it myself, only moments or an eternity ago, even as I observed your arrival here. But yes. You died."

Ross squinted at him. "Your assertion seems dubious. I seem-- intact. Or at the very least, unchanged. I perished in The Time Vortex-- I should have disintegrated. And yet I am-- contiguous."

"Yes," the stranger replied. "Such a curious phenomenon this plane is. But so convenient. Because from here-- from here we will stage as violent a coup as The Multiverse has ever known. We will make our enemies suffer even as we bring about our ultimate goals."

The Basilisk shook his head. "I fail to see how, unless your power is vast-- my own power is stunted at best. I no longer have a soul bonded with Eternity, or a stele capable of unleashing holy writ to terrifying effect."

"Without advanced apparatus, my own powers are limited," the stranger admitted, "to a kind of evolved osmic projection by which I can gradually travel through time, and perceptions of musica universalis. But by these I know that you are more than you believe yourself to be. I can see the betrayal that brought your downfall-- and I can see your death in The Vortex, railing against your unfinished legacy."

The stranger grinned a slow, slow darksome grin. "You died in The Time Vortex, my friend. What greater bond with Eternity can a being have? You are only just begun in power. Come with me, and we will both enjoy the fruits and the glory of that power."

He offered a pale pale hand to Nial Ross.

"Together we will tear down the pillars of Reality."

Ross put his right hand in the stranger's, fires stoking in his own belly at the realization that Decker had failed to cripple him after all.

"And we will," Ross replied, "wipe even the memory of our enemies from the surface of the worlds."

"The Beginning," the stranger agreed, "of The End."

[guardianofthetheater-blog]

melon, lilac + peach <3 <3 <3

melon - my first impression of you

Extremely intimidated. You wrote beautifully and it was hard for me to believe that someone wanted to actually RP with Reader as much as you did. I didn't expect anyone to want to RP with him when I first started and you just blew me away. 

lilac - why / how i started following you

You were one of the first followers on Reader's account. A lot of whoever I had there was followed on Siren as well. 

peach - what i like most about your blog

Your writing, I have to say that is something I'm most drawn to. It's lovely to read and I adore it.

[drthetasigma14]

♛

♛:Sharing a dessert

The look on her face was priceless, and he burst out laughing.

"These drinks are dangerous!" she protested, after she’d chewed the tapioca pearl that had just rocketed up the overlarge straw, and after she’d swallowed warily. "Maybe the 19th Century didn’t have all these nice vaccines and antibiotics, but at least our beverages weren’t trying to kill us."

Joan squinted suspiciously at the mouth of the straw, far more suspiciously than she’d examined any of the funfair’s wild rides. (The rides, of course, were cogs and wheels and principles of engineering, nothing to be afraid of there, but this stuff was like putting time-bombs in your chamomile.) “A person could choke to death drinking this. So much for your marvelous 21st Century.”

The Doctor chortled unrepentantly and took a sip from his own boba tea. “Oh, now, c’mon. You just have to drink it carefully, is all. One sip at a time. And— ah— actually, this one’s from The 20th Century. 1980’s. Taiwan.”

Joan harrumphed. “Ah, yes, The 1980’s. Practically a second Renaissance, I’ve read.”

“Well,” The Doctor conceded, nodding and absently stirring the tapioca pearls in his tea with his straw, “it certainly wasn’t perfect. But this is good! There’s a version on Shan Shen which they make all frothy, it’s brilliant stuff— I’d’ve taken you to try it but that planet has a bit of a bug problem.”

"I’m not really scared of bugs," Joan pointed out. "It’s lightning I don’t like."

"I’m no fan of that myself," The Doctor chuckled faintly, having been struck by it quite enough for one lifetime. "But all the same, even a beekeeper doesn’t run around kicking wasps’ nests."

Joan ran her tongue around her teeth. Sipped her tea again— jumped a little bit when the next pearl materialized in her mouth— but less than she had the first time. “Okay. It’s growing on me.”

The Doctor beamed. “Oh, next time you should try the chocolate version, it’s brilliant. I’ve been hoping for a blackcurrant one, maybe someday.” And then he reached for her hand. “C’mon, there’s another stall over here, they’ve got this cup that lets you make anything into a frozen smoothie—”

Joan slipped her gloved hand in amongst his outstretched fingers, and marveled that a being with such heightened senses would never once flinch from the feeling of bone inside her glove.

His high-wattage smile didn’t dim in the slightest, however— he just tugged on her arm. “This way, this way, marvels of the present day— next we should try you on candy-floss, have you tried candy-floss, that was 19th Century, just barely, you’ll feel right at home—”

She smiled wryly to herself, and looked at her hand in his, and thought to herself: maybe I already do.