#prose::

[butterflygardcn]

starter for @theidealiist

Fitz took a left turn.

Not for any particular reason, mind; he had just figured that it had been a while since he'd turned left and so had decided to give it a try instead. Not that he could get any more lost than he already was - at this point, any wrong turn would surely double up on itself and become right. That's just elementary maths, innit.

Fitz sighed. He's beginning to regret not asking the Doctor for a map before he left.

Wait, no, scratch that, he's beginning to regret having not asked the Doctor to just pause and to take a breather for one bloody moment so that you can actually tell us what the hell's going on for once?

He hadn't done that, naturally. He never does. Wouldn't have helped, anyway - prying info out of the Doc was as painful as pulling teeth with only medieval torture implements during an earthquake. Anji complained about his reticence all the time, but Fitz was only really bothered when he knew the Doctor was putting himself into danger.

Needless to say, at this point in time Fitz was really quite bothered indeed.

He looked down at the scrap of paper the Doctor had urgently shoved in his fist. His spidery, nearly incomprehensible scrawl - 'wow, you've even got the handwriting of a Doctor ' he liked to joke - jotted out an address. Which would be all well and good, really, if Fitz had a single clue as to where the bloody street was. He's starting to think it didn't exist. Maybe the Doctor got the time wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.

When he looked up, there was blue. A rich, royal blue, the most gorgeous shade of sapphire, the loveliest of all ultramarine. It was a hue he could wax poetic on for hours. It meant safety. It meant a warm shower and a soft bed. It meant home.

Fitz had made it back to the TARDIS. "Oh, thank Christ," he muttered, pulling the key off his neck and sticking it in the lock. It seemed stiffer than usual, he had to jerk his wrist a few times to get it to turn. And when he opened the door, the hinges seemed to groan a bit louder.

"Doctor," he called as he walked in, "I couldn't find the address you gave me. You positive we got the time right? We did have a bit of a rough landing-"

He fell suddenly quiet, stunned into silence by the tableau before him.

[golden-letters]

bitch this is all you’re gonna get. this life, this face, this body. you better not ‘maybe in another universe’ your way out of everything. sit your ass down and face this. go make tea and have a picnic and read a goddamn book. kiss your loved ones, send that damn text, and hug your siblings. this is all you’re gonna get.

[fatimazainab]

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

[perfeqt]

Someone somewhere is searching for you in every person they meet.

Unknown

[shisasan]

From February 16 to 17, 1913 Letters to Felice by Franz Kafka First published : 1973

[m00wd]

Sometimes you need to sleep, sleep a lot. Not to escape, but to rest your soul from your feelings. Because everything, absolutely everything devours you. Completely.

—Brain

[poemwav]

– Jamie Oliveira | from "Erosion"

[scriptastra]

[bebs-art-gallery]

© pet_foolery

[caruccio]

You know how to love someone, but you don't know how to believe that someone loves you, and that is your tragedy.

[butterflygardcn]

HELPED

After three years, the Doctor stopped counting.

Each micro, nano, picosecond ticked past without him tallying it, each moment flowing languidly, lazily, slowly, slowly, slowly past. Like water lethargically circling the drain of the communal showers. They all went unnoticed, because if the Doctor kept noticing them, he thinks he'd go mad.

Well, more mad than he already is.

Three years stuck in one building. Hundreds of futile escape attempts. Hundreds of snapped and worn-through crayons, colored wax caked on the white walls of his room. All the pigment meshing, melding, swirling incomprehensibly together. A pitiful simulacrum of the Vortex he so desperately misses.

The Vortex he'll never see again.

Because he's never getting out.

The fact sunk like a bag of rocks in his chest, sat like a stone in his stomach. It brought his hope down with it, and it had suffocated, drowned, was now pallid and bloated and quite dead. Never getting out.

He still concocts half-baked escape plans, just because he has not much else to do to stave away the boredom, just because he doesn't want Akalu to know he's given up. Even though the Doctor knows that he knows he has.

He's sitting on his cot, legs drawn up to his chest. His head propped on his knees. Denim grates at his chin, and his gaze is vacant. He's thinking of all the places he's seen. All the places he'll never see again: Times Square, New Mars, Viridia, Betelgeuse V, Ancient Rome, the Bubble Gardens of Lemurn.

Worst of all, though, are all the people he'll never see again. Grace, Carolyn, Jo, Alistair, Adrienne, Susan.

Sam.

She was still out there, somewhere, and he'll never ever find her.

Somehow, the notion that she'd find him had never crossed his mind.

Suddenly, she's in front of him, filling his vision, vibrant and fantastic and wonderful and alive.

The Doctor inhales sharply, like a nearly-drowned man breaching the surface. He felt the recycled air tickle his tongue and throat, and it tasted as fresh and clean as the air in the primordial jungles of Antarctica.

He seized her in a great hug, latching onto her like a barnacle, before he's given a phone and spilling instructions to some fellow on the other end of the line for how to activate the TARDIS' homing circuits, before snapping the mobile shut and - oh, that's right!

"Sam, Sam," he elatedly exclaimed as he reached under the blankets to pull out the threadbare teddy bear he'd gotten her as a gift, three years ago. One of the eyes had been detached after the Doctor spent an entire day picking at it.

Finally, finally, finally, he had the opportunity to give it to her.

"This is for you."

[wordx]

[thoughtcascades]

idk how to flirt but i can make things awkward if you're into that

[lucidloving]

@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

[mournfulroses]

Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius, from The Selected Works; “Memoirs of Martynov,”