Fic: Memes (002: Middles)

[enitharmonwept]

Title: 002: Middles
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Donna Noble, Duplicate Tenth, River Song
Rating: G
Table character: The Adherents of the Repeated Meme

A/N: Written for the doctorwho_100. Prompt table located here. Thanks to T. S. Eliot ("The Hollow Men") and W. B. Yeats ("The Second Coming") for writing such memorable lines.


Between the desire

She is glowing, radiant, power, life, and time. He remembers why he fell in love with this life of his, and for a brief moment he tastes it; he makes himself the center, and the center cannot hold.

And the spasm

This is the way the world ends.

Between the potency

She is kneeling, center stage, where they’ve both placed her in this war of theirs. As she speaks and laughs, he feels the love she’s sent swelling from the planet, and they call his name; he makes himself the center, and the center cannot hold.

And the existence

This is the way the world ends.

Between the essence

They could have been with him, those two, not forever, but long enough to help him heal. As he seals them off into their alternate realities, he sees how literal his middles have become; he made himself the center, and the center cannot hold.

And the descent

This is the way the world ends.

He is chained to a pipe. From the floor he watches her ending, which is his beginning. She makes herself the center and the center cannot hold.

Falls the Shadow

∞

Lazarus had it wrong.

Lazarus had it right.

“No,” he thought. “Lazarus had it.”

Not with a bang but with a whimper.