Doctor Who double drabble: "Scarcity"

[kindkit]

Title: Scarcity
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Second Doctor (with implied Two/Jamie UST)
Rating: all ages
Warnings: None needed
Word count: 200
Notes: This riffs on the exceedingly slashy heartrending scene in "The Space Pirates" in which Two, Jamie, and Zoe are trapped in a wrecked space beacon and running out of air. Two and Jamie therefore take their usual clinginess to a whole new level.






This is the end. The Doctor's life will be a book that stops just pages into chapter two, and its last words will be "he failed." He’s failed them, Jamie and Zoe, lost them most of lifespans that, being human, were already too short.

"Lie down," he says. "Breathe slowly." He’s reserving the dregs of the last oxygen cylinder for them, pretending there's hope. Do they trust him still, or are they pretending too?

Even with extra oxygen, they'll die more quickly and easily than he. For some minutes he'll lie next to their corpses while his hearts struggle. He'll be conscious for most of it. If he's very unlucky, he'll regenerate once or twice before his body loses the capacity.

I want to go home, he thinks. I wish I'd never left. It's not true, but for an instant he believes it.

Are they thinking the same thing?

He lays his head in Jamie's lap. And that is perfectly simple after all, perfectly easy and right. Not even Zoe seems to find it odd.

Jamie touches his hair.

If only there had been a little more time. Time is as precious as oxygen, and now it has run out.

Comments

[senmut]

Oh heart wrenchingly simple and beautiful!

[kindkit]

Thank you!

[biichan]

Oh man, this is gorgeous. I envy your ability to do so much with so few words.

[kindkit]

Thank you! One of the things I love about drabbles is the way they discipline my writing. They force me to pare down the verbiage and focus on what's important in a scene.

[lilacsigil]

I like how clean this is, but even so, since it's the Doctor, there is room for a lie and a reversal.

[kindkit]

Thank you! The Doctor is always a bit, er, elusive, even in the sort of moment that supposedly concentrates the mind wonderfully.

[st_aurafina]

Oh. *cries* I think using fewer words makes you more ruthless. I don't know if that's a good thing or not!

But this is lovely.

[kindkit]

The ruthlessness is linked to the drabble form, I think. There's no room for complication, so if a drabble is to have any impact at all, it needs to push hard at a single idea.

I'm so glad you liked it, thanks!