"The Apocalypse, With Sandwiches" - Doctor Who, for vega_ofthe_lyre
Title: The Apocalypse, With Sandwiches
Author: doyle_sb4 (last minute pinch hit)
Recipient: vega_ofthe_lyre
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005)
Characters: 10.5 (Handy)/Rose
Rating: G
Spoilers: Journey’s End
Warnings (if applicable): none
Prompt: ‘I'd love something with Handy (10.5) and Rose accidentally making the Pete's World go boom, but if you're not a shipper then I'd take anything gen with any of Ten's companions--just please keep it light and comedic and not drenched in emo?’
Summary: Aliens are turning the whole world into mindless happy drones. There’s a tiny chance this might be the Doctor’s fault. Slightly cracky.
“This is the way the world ends,” the Doctor said, enunciating as best he could with a spanner clamped between his teeth. “Not with a bang but a picnic.”
He got the feeling that Rose was neither listening or properly admiring the quite frankly genius improvements he was making to the Lumic Array. She was leaning over the ledge, peering into the distance as if she could see all the way across the city. In a way, she could. All right, the vision-googles she was wearing would have worked just as well if she was parked downstairs with a cup of tea and a bun, but he understood that instinct, that need to turn to where the trouble was.
“Jake’s got to Hyde Park,” she said. “There’s thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands. All just...”
He spat the spanner into his hand and strained to reach a crucial bolt. “Just enjoying themselves? Making new friends? Passing round cocktail sausages and home-made lemonade?”
“Yeah. I think they’ve taken over every ice cream van in London.” She tilted her head, reaching up to adjust her hat before he could warn her about it. He tweaked his own into place. The tinfoil crackled under his fingers. “The President - Harriet - she’s there. No bodyguards or anything. Just walking around, handing out sweets.”
The metal plate finally came loose, dropping to the rooftop with a clang. “Yes! Screwdriver, where’s the screwdriver...”
“Hold on, the police are putting up posters.”
“Screwdriver!”
“Oh, in your pocket.”
“It’s not in my...” It was. He cast a chagrined look at her back. “What was that about posters?”
“Did you find your screwdriver, then?”
“Are they big posters? Little posters? ‘Gather into groups and prepare to be invaded’ posters?”
“’Come along and sing along’,” she read. “’Centre of the park, three o’clock, everyone welcome.’ And now everybody’s taking their picnic stuff and heading for the centre. Jake says he’s getting out before they start into We Are the World.” She tapped the goggle controls. “There’s nobody in the streets. They’re all in the parks.”
“See if you can tune into a newsfeed. It’s the slider beneath the...”
“I know. Pulling it up now.” She turned to face him. Even with the world ending, the sight of her made him smile - huge black goggles covering half her face, blonde hair poking out beneath the silver triangle of the hat. She grinned back, and for the first time the tension that had been between them all day vanished. “Oh, shut up, you.”
“You can’t even see me, can you?”
“I know you,” she said. “Right - it’s the same all over the world. New Berlin, Nations of Canada, the USA, Constantinople... even places where it’s the middle of the night, people are going on fun runs and having barbeques and firework displays and doing karaoke. And they’re all getting together in parks and squares and big outdoor spaces in half an hour. Three o’clock, London time.”
The screwdriver felt sluggish in his hand. He’d have to remember to make a new one at the weekend, assuming he hadn’t joined most of the human race in dopey docility by then. “Everyone in the world celebrating at the same time,” he said. “Oh, that’s the Azdjaroth all over. They love a good fanfare. Say what you like about the Daleks, they don’t expect the races they conquer to line up and wave little flags.” One last impatient jiggle of the screwdriver, and the connections slid home. “Array’s finished.”
Rose pulled the goggles down around her neck, blinking in the sudden sunlight. “What, it’s ready to go?”
“A whole thirty minutes before the nick of time, for once.” He scrambled to his feet, getting out of range of the array. It was starting, very sedately, to spin. “It’ll beam the blocking frequency to the satellites, broadcast it all over the world. It’s the same one we used on the lion, and we’ll need to remember to get some tranquilizer darts or stick a notice on the lab door because that was not a happy... what?”
“Nothing.” She conjured up a smile from somewhere, but she wasn’t looking at him as if marvelling at his technical prowess and world-saving skills.
“Your mum and Tony’ll be fine,” he said. “Even if Jackie didn’t listen about the tinfoil, and to be honest she did seem to think I was winding her up, they won’t come to any harm. At worst they’ll have a nice day in the park.”
Rose nodded. “Right.”
“Right, then.”
“And these Azdjaroth, they’ll just turn around and go?”
“Plenty of other worlds. No need to risk their skins taking over a world that can block their mind-control when they could just find some planet that won’t fight back.”
“Right,” she said again, and the edge in her voice confused him, made him want to reach out for her and step away all at once. “It’s weird they found us in the first place, really.”
“The universe is a weird place,” he said, seeing suddenly where this was going and not liking it one bit. “I mean, there’s every chance that it might be coincidence and not, you know...”
“...down to you sending messages to aliens,” she finished for him, folding her arms, and he always found it fascinating how someone so much littler than he was could just shrink him like that, with a look.
“I blocked the signal’s origins,” he said. “I quadruple-blocked them. I didn’t knowingly put this world in danger, Rose, I promise you.”
“You could’ve told us you were trying to make contact.”
“You know what Pete’s like. Risk assessments, status updates, projections for the next financial year...”
“You could have told me.”
He was about to point out that building a transplanetary communications system was beyond the capabilities of every single person on the planet who wasn’t part-Time Lord and that there wasn’t a thing she could have done except share the months of frustration when there hadn’t been so much as a crackle of response. Some spark of a thought - call it human intuition, or his inner Donna - made him shut up.
“It was never a serious go at finding aliens,” he said instead. “I mean, I could, if I wanted to, I could put that together in ten minutes, but the things it’d lead straight to Earth’s door... this, though. This was something else. Shouting into the darkness. Reminding myself there’s a great big universe out there, still.”
“I know,” Rose said quietly. “I miss it too.”
He did reach out for her then, folded his arm around her shoulders, dropped his chin onto the top of her hat.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Just warn us next time, yeah?”
“Will do.”
“Leave a note on the fridge or something.”
“If there’s a next time.”
“If the lion hasn’t eaten the fridge.”
The array was chugging around at full throttle now. With any luck, picnickers all over London - all over the planet - were starting to find the world was less brilliant than they’d thought.
For the moment, the Doctor was inclined to disagree.
Author: doyle_sb4 (last minute pinch hit)
Recipient: vega_ofthe_lyre
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005)
Characters: 10.5 (Handy)/Rose
Rating: G
Spoilers: Journey’s End
Warnings (if applicable): none
Prompt: ‘I'd love something with Handy (10.5) and Rose accidentally making the Pete's World go boom, but if you're not a shipper then I'd take anything gen with any of Ten's companions--just please keep it light and comedic and not drenched in emo?’
Summary: Aliens are turning the whole world into mindless happy drones. There’s a tiny chance this might be the Doctor’s fault. Slightly cracky.
“This is the way the world ends,” the Doctor said, enunciating as best he could with a spanner clamped between his teeth. “Not with a bang but a picnic.”
He got the feeling that Rose was neither listening or properly admiring the quite frankly genius improvements he was making to the Lumic Array. She was leaning over the ledge, peering into the distance as if she could see all the way across the city. In a way, she could. All right, the vision-googles she was wearing would have worked just as well if she was parked downstairs with a cup of tea and a bun, but he understood that instinct, that need to turn to where the trouble was.
“Jake’s got to Hyde Park,” she said. “There’s thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands. All just...”
He spat the spanner into his hand and strained to reach a crucial bolt. “Just enjoying themselves? Making new friends? Passing round cocktail sausages and home-made lemonade?”
“Yeah. I think they’ve taken over every ice cream van in London.” She tilted her head, reaching up to adjust her hat before he could warn her about it. He tweaked his own into place. The tinfoil crackled under his fingers. “The President - Harriet - she’s there. No bodyguards or anything. Just walking around, handing out sweets.”
The metal plate finally came loose, dropping to the rooftop with a clang. “Yes! Screwdriver, where’s the screwdriver...”
“Hold on, the police are putting up posters.”
“Screwdriver!”
“Oh, in your pocket.”
“It’s not in my...” It was. He cast a chagrined look at her back. “What was that about posters?”
“Did you find your screwdriver, then?”
“Are they big posters? Little posters? ‘Gather into groups and prepare to be invaded’ posters?”
“’Come along and sing along’,” she read. “’Centre of the park, three o’clock, everyone welcome.’ And now everybody’s taking their picnic stuff and heading for the centre. Jake says he’s getting out before they start into We Are the World.” She tapped the goggle controls. “There’s nobody in the streets. They’re all in the parks.”
“See if you can tune into a newsfeed. It’s the slider beneath the...”
“I know. Pulling it up now.” She turned to face him. Even with the world ending, the sight of her made him smile - huge black goggles covering half her face, blonde hair poking out beneath the silver triangle of the hat. She grinned back, and for the first time the tension that had been between them all day vanished. “Oh, shut up, you.”
“You can’t even see me, can you?”
“I know you,” she said. “Right - it’s the same all over the world. New Berlin, Nations of Canada, the USA, Constantinople... even places where it’s the middle of the night, people are going on fun runs and having barbeques and firework displays and doing karaoke. And they’re all getting together in parks and squares and big outdoor spaces in half an hour. Three o’clock, London time.”
The screwdriver felt sluggish in his hand. He’d have to remember to make a new one at the weekend, assuming he hadn’t joined most of the human race in dopey docility by then. “Everyone in the world celebrating at the same time,” he said. “Oh, that’s the Azdjaroth all over. They love a good fanfare. Say what you like about the Daleks, they don’t expect the races they conquer to line up and wave little flags.” One last impatient jiggle of the screwdriver, and the connections slid home. “Array’s finished.”
Rose pulled the goggles down around her neck, blinking in the sudden sunlight. “What, it’s ready to go?”
“A whole thirty minutes before the nick of time, for once.” He scrambled to his feet, getting out of range of the array. It was starting, very sedately, to spin. “It’ll beam the blocking frequency to the satellites, broadcast it all over the world. It’s the same one we used on the lion, and we’ll need to remember to get some tranquilizer darts or stick a notice on the lab door because that was not a happy... what?”
“Nothing.” She conjured up a smile from somewhere, but she wasn’t looking at him as if marvelling at his technical prowess and world-saving skills.
“Your mum and Tony’ll be fine,” he said. “Even if Jackie didn’t listen about the tinfoil, and to be honest she did seem to think I was winding her up, they won’t come to any harm. At worst they’ll have a nice day in the park.”
Rose nodded. “Right.”
“Right, then.”
“And these Azdjaroth, they’ll just turn around and go?”
“Plenty of other worlds. No need to risk their skins taking over a world that can block their mind-control when they could just find some planet that won’t fight back.”
“Right,” she said again, and the edge in her voice confused him, made him want to reach out for her and step away all at once. “It’s weird they found us in the first place, really.”
“The universe is a weird place,” he said, seeing suddenly where this was going and not liking it one bit. “I mean, there’s every chance that it might be coincidence and not, you know...”
“...down to you sending messages to aliens,” she finished for him, folding her arms, and he always found it fascinating how someone so much littler than he was could just shrink him like that, with a look.
“I blocked the signal’s origins,” he said. “I quadruple-blocked them. I didn’t knowingly put this world in danger, Rose, I promise you.”
“You could’ve told us you were trying to make contact.”
“You know what Pete’s like. Risk assessments, status updates, projections for the next financial year...”
“You could have told me.”
He was about to point out that building a transplanetary communications system was beyond the capabilities of every single person on the planet who wasn’t part-Time Lord and that there wasn’t a thing she could have done except share the months of frustration when there hadn’t been so much as a crackle of response. Some spark of a thought - call it human intuition, or his inner Donna - made him shut up.
“It was never a serious go at finding aliens,” he said instead. “I mean, I could, if I wanted to, I could put that together in ten minutes, but the things it’d lead straight to Earth’s door... this, though. This was something else. Shouting into the darkness. Reminding myself there’s a great big universe out there, still.”
“I know,” Rose said quietly. “I miss it too.”
He did reach out for her then, folded his arm around her shoulders, dropped his chin onto the top of her hat.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Just warn us next time, yeah?”
“Will do.”
“Leave a note on the fridge or something.”
“If there’s a next time.”
“If the lion hasn’t eaten the fridge.”
The array was chugging around at full throttle now. With any luck, picnickers all over London - all over the planet - were starting to find the world was less brilliant than they’d thought.
For the moment, the Doctor was inclined to disagree.