Work Text:
When Ian Chesterton was younger, he loved science fiction. He devoured every magazine or novel he could get his hands on; relished the tales of impossible inventions, dystopian futures, bizarre aliens.
Eventually, his focus shifted from novels to textbooks, from magazines to research papers. Fiction had once fostered his own fascination with the workings of the world; through teaching, Ian strove to instill the same excitement in the students who shuffled reluctantly into his classroom each day.
He rarely has time anymore for science fiction, though it still holds a place in his heart and on his bookshelf. The teaching of real science is a full-time job.
But now…
Ian gazes at a sky of an unfamiliar color, above a planet some thousands of light-years and hundreds of time-years away from his own. He’s been to dystopian futures; befriended bizarre aliens. He travels in an impossible invention as a matter of course.
His life now is stranger than any of the stories he read when he was younger. Stranger than fiction, and infinitely so, for one simple reason: it’s real.
Ian smiles to himself. Maybe, when they finally get home, he’ll try his hand at some Sci-Fi of his own.