The Mildly Saucy Pejorative of Fatal Death
This was written for dbskyler's Doctor Who 50th anniversary ficathon. Skyler included a prompt for any fic based on The Curse of Fatal Death, with "Bonus points for lots of silly humor".
I'm sure my friends will be astonished to hear that I jumped all over that prompt like a manic kitten on crack (as opposed to crack on a manic kitten*). I think this is the first fic for that ficathon to be posted!
If you have never seen The Curse of Fatal Death, you really should watch it first. It will take you about 20 minutes. Unless you watch it more than once.
*Already did that.
The Mildly Saucy Pejorative of Fatal Death
“Hiding behind the sofa won’t be any use this time.” The Doctor’s tone was severe, but his eyes held a gentle twinkle.
Emma’s head popped up from behind of the Sofa of Unreasonable Comfort. “I’m not hiding!” she retorted. “I’m just trying to find the rest of my clothes! Why’d you have to fling them around like that?”
“When the situation calls for total abandon, it’s important to abandon totally.” He stretched out on the sofa, looking undeniably and trans-dimensionally smug. “Forget the clothes. If you’re cold, we’ll bump up the temperature in here a bit. The TARDIS can calibrate the internal temperature of any section to within three microkelvins. Now come back here.”
“It really was a splendid idea to put a sofa in the control room,” she said as she curled up against him. “I don’t know why we didn’t do it ages ago.”
“Too much of a temptation, my dear,” the Doctor sighed. “Had we but space enough, and time - ”
“We could get a bigger sofa.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He stood up, shrugged into a dressing gown, and began pacing around the control room. “We need to think. To make plans for our future.”
“Oh, I like the sound of that.” Emma sighed in turn. “It won’t be easy, you know.”
“Nothing is. You certainly weren’t.”
Emma threw a sofa cushion at him. The Doctor caught it easily and set it on the coffee table beside the coat rack on the far side of the central console.
“As soon as I announce my intention to retire, every one of my ancient foes will be lining up to take one last crack at me.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Every race of scaly, slimy, misguided, mistrustful, misanthropic, misogynistic, miskatonic monsters in the cosmos, from Axons to Zygons - Autons, Automatons, Automats and Automatics, Arcturans, Alfavans, Androgums - ”
“Androgums? I don’t think I’ve met those.”
“Psychotic gourmet chefs. A bit like Gordon Ramsey, with giant orange eyebrows. Where was I? Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Rutans, Exxons, Exxilons - ”
“Exxons?”
“A race composed entirely of sociopathic corporate entitities.”
“Are those the ones that look like walking oil slicks?”
“Exactly. They kill random cast members, consume whacking huge stacks of money and excrete every known waste substance. Silurians, Lexicons, and Panopticons - ”
“I thought the Panopticon was a place.”
“Actually, it’s a large van used for moving science fiction conventions from one city to another on Earth. Anyway. As I was saying, they’ll all be after me.” He fiddled with random knobs on the control console. The light in the console’s central column changed from lemon to raspberry. “Every evil entity, every xenophobic race of rubber-suited extras, every genocidal maniac will want to swoosh their big swishy black capes, wave their ray-guns and get in one final burst of insane maniacal laughter before closing time.”
“What about the good entities? Won’t they help?”
“Hard to say. They always seem to be off having tea or something whenever I run into difficulties.” The Doctor fiddled with another knob, and the lighting in the control room dimmed and flickered.
Emma made a face. “Doctor, you’re fiddling with the light switch again.”
“So I am. Sorry.” He turned the lights back up.
She got up from the sofa and began hunting for her clothes again. “There’s such a lot of things to do to get ready for a wedding. I don’t particularly want to waste time with all your old enemies dropping in whenever they like and trying to inflict gruesome revenges and things.”
“Certainly not. We could spend years just listening to the egocentric monologues.”
“You can say that again.”
“No, they’ll be the ones saying it again. And the Master will be first in line. It’s always been his style. First in war, last in peace, and always two spots over in the second row from the back when you need a volunteer.”
Emma gave up searching for her knickers, remembering that there were plenty of extra clothes in the wardrobe rooms, although the selection could be eccentric. She’d allowed an awkward gap to develop in their dialogue and couldn’t think of anything to say anyway, so she settled for Companion Stock Answer #2.
“What do we do, Doctor?”
“There is only one thing to do. It will require a plan, a cunning plan, a plan so cunning you could put chrono-whiskers on it and call it a time weasel.”
Emma stole a quick look at her Companion Cheat Codes. This type of remark apparently called for Stock Response #3: What is it, Doctor? She rolled her eyes instead.
“Rolling your eyes is Stock Response #37, Emma.”
“Oh. Damn.” Emma sighed. “All right, since there’s no getting out of it. What is it, Doctor?”
“It’s the stock response between number 36 and number 38.”
She flicked her fingers and sailed the Companion Cheat Code card at him, and he laughed and ducked.
“We must split the Time Stream. Our only hope is to provoke a sequence of events so ridiculous, so entirely and completely improbable, that it will force a fork into the Temporal Sunday roast - I mean, create a fork in the Temporal Road, causing our universe to divide, so that I shall be free to retire, and you and I can live out our lives of peace, companionable harmony, and vigorous horizontal mambos.”
Emma looked troubled. “What on earth - sorry - what in time and space could be any more improbable than most of what we’ve already done?”
The Doctor looked hurt. “I didn’t think most of those positions were all that outré . . . ”
“I’m not talking about, um, that!”
“Oh.”
“I mean everything else!”
He smiled slyly. “Oh, there are a few things I’ve never done. For example, I have never pointlessly explained my most important plans, in advance, in detail, to the archenemy most likely to try and stop me carrying them out.”
“Well of course not! That would be, well, completely idiotic! It’s the sort of thing the Master would do!”
“Exactly.”
Emma looked at him for a long, slow moment, as enlightenment dawned. She started to laugh, then checked herself. “What about the people on the other fork? I mean, the other alternate universe? What happens to them?”
“The Road More Taken?” The Doctor shook his head sadly. “Those poor sods are screwed.”
Emma took so long getting dressed that the Doctor began to worry. It was a long and convoluted trek to the wardrobe rooms; at one point, the entire suite had gotten lost, and his companions had been required to wear the same clothes for months on end. Not long ago, he and Emma had visited a planet whose sky was the exact shade of an Australian air hostess’ uniform, and the sight had made him shudder. He glanced up at the sound of Emma’s return, and shuddered again. “Oh, dear me, no.”
Emma looked contrite and pulled a what-am-I-supposed-to-do-now expression.
“We need to get you out of that ridiculous dress. You look like - ”
“A cheap streetwalker?”
“Worse. David Tennant in drag.” The Doctor paused, as if waiting for the sound of an unheard laugh track to ebb away. “And what the hell were you thinking, putting on high heels? We’re supposed to be exploring strange alien planets, full of all kinds of rough terrain. Slimy swamps! Quarries! Ventilation shafts! It was bad enough with K-9 and his bloody ball bearings and doorsills, without you wearing spike heels - ”
“It’s not my fault!” Emma complained, holding up a shiny black pump. “I was putting on my trainers, and this short woman in dungarees bustled up to me, said “Wardrobe!”, took them away, and handed me these shoes.” She examined one critically. “I say, they’re awfully sharp.”
“No, they’re not. They’re tawdry.”
“I wasn’t talking about fashion!” Emma retorted. She poked the point of the toe with a careful finger, and winced. “I mean they’re sharp. The heels are even worse.”
The Doctor studied the shoe thoughtfully. “You’re quite right. You could kill a Sontaran with those. And look absolutely fabulous doing it.” He handed the shoe back. “Might as well put them on, if you can wear them without breaking your neck. Most planets these days seem to be all corridors all the time anyway.” He sighed, deeply and dolefully. “Everything looks the same. Sometimes I swear the Big Crunch has already started.”
“The Big Crunch? Is that the opposite of the Big Bang?”
“Not exactly. Physicists used to believe that the Big Crunch would be caused by reversing the polarity of the Hubble Constant, but they’re wrong.”
“Then what’s causing it?”
“Budgetary implosion.”
“Oh.” Emma looked around, thoughtfully, at the TARDIS control room. Now that she thought about it, it was looking more and more like an inexpensive set every day. She shook her head. “Well, what about the Big Bang?”
The Doctor gave her a long, tender look and swept her into his arms. “Darling, I thought you’d never ask.”
~ fin ~
Update: Teaspoon rejected the story when I tried to post it there, because an in joke in the summary didn't meet their posting guidelines.
Apparently, once a story is rejected, it's gone from the interface -- so, although I've been told I can "resubmit after editing", this will require me to re-do all the work I just did -- so, forget it. I'll post it to my usual locations (ff.net, Ao3 and LJ). The Teaspoon posting interface is even uglier to use than ff.net (I hadn't thought that was possible), and I really don't have the energy for it.
Update 2: Thanks to dbskyler's wonderful support and advice, and some sleep, I'm doing much better and will try Teaspoon again.
I'm sure my friends will be astonished to hear that I jumped all over that prompt like a manic kitten on crack (as opposed to crack on a manic kitten*). I think this is the first fic for that ficathon to be posted!
If you have never seen The Curse of Fatal Death, you really should watch it first. It will take you about 20 minutes. Unless you watch it more than once.
*Already did that.
The Mildly Saucy Pejorative of Fatal Death
“Hiding behind the sofa won’t be any use this time.” The Doctor’s tone was severe, but his eyes held a gentle twinkle.
Emma’s head popped up from behind of the Sofa of Unreasonable Comfort. “I’m not hiding!” she retorted. “I’m just trying to find the rest of my clothes! Why’d you have to fling them around like that?”
“When the situation calls for total abandon, it’s important to abandon totally.” He stretched out on the sofa, looking undeniably and trans-dimensionally smug. “Forget the clothes. If you’re cold, we’ll bump up the temperature in here a bit. The TARDIS can calibrate the internal temperature of any section to within three microkelvins. Now come back here.”
“It really was a splendid idea to put a sofa in the control room,” she said as she curled up against him. “I don’t know why we didn’t do it ages ago.”
“Too much of a temptation, my dear,” the Doctor sighed. “Had we but space enough, and time - ”
“We could get a bigger sofa.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He stood up, shrugged into a dressing gown, and began pacing around the control room. “We need to think. To make plans for our future.”
“Oh, I like the sound of that.” Emma sighed in turn. “It won’t be easy, you know.”
“Nothing is. You certainly weren’t.”
Emma threw a sofa cushion at him. The Doctor caught it easily and set it on the coffee table beside the coat rack on the far side of the central console.
“As soon as I announce my intention to retire, every one of my ancient foes will be lining up to take one last crack at me.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Every race of scaly, slimy, misguided, mistrustful, misanthropic, misogynistic, miskatonic monsters in the cosmos, from Axons to Zygons - Autons, Automatons, Automats and Automatics, Arcturans, Alfavans, Androgums - ”
“Androgums? I don’t think I’ve met those.”
“Psychotic gourmet chefs. A bit like Gordon Ramsey, with giant orange eyebrows. Where was I? Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Rutans, Exxons, Exxilons - ”
“Exxons?”
“A race composed entirely of sociopathic corporate entitities.”
“Are those the ones that look like walking oil slicks?”
“Exactly. They kill random cast members, consume whacking huge stacks of money and excrete every known waste substance. Silurians, Lexicons, and Panopticons - ”
“I thought the Panopticon was a place.”
“Actually, it’s a large van used for moving science fiction conventions from one city to another on Earth. Anyway. As I was saying, they’ll all be after me.” He fiddled with random knobs on the control console. The light in the console’s central column changed from lemon to raspberry. “Every evil entity, every xenophobic race of rubber-suited extras, every genocidal maniac will want to swoosh their big swishy black capes, wave their ray-guns and get in one final burst of insane maniacal laughter before closing time.”
“What about the good entities? Won’t they help?”
“Hard to say. They always seem to be off having tea or something whenever I run into difficulties.” The Doctor fiddled with another knob, and the lighting in the control room dimmed and flickered.
Emma made a face. “Doctor, you’re fiddling with the light switch again.”
“So I am. Sorry.” He turned the lights back up.
She got up from the sofa and began hunting for her clothes again. “There’s such a lot of things to do to get ready for a wedding. I don’t particularly want to waste time with all your old enemies dropping in whenever they like and trying to inflict gruesome revenges and things.”
“Certainly not. We could spend years just listening to the egocentric monologues.”
“You can say that again.”
“No, they’ll be the ones saying it again. And the Master will be first in line. It’s always been his style. First in war, last in peace, and always two spots over in the second row from the back when you need a volunteer.”
Emma gave up searching for her knickers, remembering that there were plenty of extra clothes in the wardrobe rooms, although the selection could be eccentric. She’d allowed an awkward gap to develop in their dialogue and couldn’t think of anything to say anyway, so she settled for Companion Stock Answer #2.
“What do we do, Doctor?”
“There is only one thing to do. It will require a plan, a cunning plan, a plan so cunning you could put chrono-whiskers on it and call it a time weasel.”
Emma stole a quick look at her Companion Cheat Codes. This type of remark apparently called for Stock Response #3: What is it, Doctor? She rolled her eyes instead.
“Rolling your eyes is Stock Response #37, Emma.”
“Oh. Damn.” Emma sighed. “All right, since there’s no getting out of it. What is it, Doctor?”
“It’s the stock response between number 36 and number 38.”
She flicked her fingers and sailed the Companion Cheat Code card at him, and he laughed and ducked.
“We must split the Time Stream. Our only hope is to provoke a sequence of events so ridiculous, so entirely and completely improbable, that it will force a fork into the Temporal Sunday roast - I mean, create a fork in the Temporal Road, causing our universe to divide, so that I shall be free to retire, and you and I can live out our lives of peace, companionable harmony, and vigorous horizontal mambos.”
Emma looked troubled. “What on earth - sorry - what in time and space could be any more improbable than most of what we’ve already done?”
The Doctor looked hurt. “I didn’t think most of those positions were all that outré . . . ”
“I’m not talking about, um, that!”
“Oh.”
“I mean everything else!”
He smiled slyly. “Oh, there are a few things I’ve never done. For example, I have never pointlessly explained my most important plans, in advance, in detail, to the archenemy most likely to try and stop me carrying them out.”
“Well of course not! That would be, well, completely idiotic! It’s the sort of thing the Master would do!”
“Exactly.”
Emma looked at him for a long, slow moment, as enlightenment dawned. She started to laugh, then checked herself. “What about the people on the other fork? I mean, the other alternate universe? What happens to them?”
“The Road More Taken?” The Doctor shook his head sadly. “Those poor sods are screwed.”
Emma took so long getting dressed that the Doctor began to worry. It was a long and convoluted trek to the wardrobe rooms; at one point, the entire suite had gotten lost, and his companions had been required to wear the same clothes for months on end. Not long ago, he and Emma had visited a planet whose sky was the exact shade of an Australian air hostess’ uniform, and the sight had made him shudder. He glanced up at the sound of Emma’s return, and shuddered again. “Oh, dear me, no.”
Emma looked contrite and pulled a what-am-I-supposed-to-do-now expression.
“We need to get you out of that ridiculous dress. You look like - ”
“A cheap streetwalker?”
“Worse. David Tennant in drag.” The Doctor paused, as if waiting for the sound of an unheard laugh track to ebb away. “And what the hell were you thinking, putting on high heels? We’re supposed to be exploring strange alien planets, full of all kinds of rough terrain. Slimy swamps! Quarries! Ventilation shafts! It was bad enough with K-9 and his bloody ball bearings and doorsills, without you wearing spike heels - ”
“It’s not my fault!” Emma complained, holding up a shiny black pump. “I was putting on my trainers, and this short woman in dungarees bustled up to me, said “Wardrobe!”, took them away, and handed me these shoes.” She examined one critically. “I say, they’re awfully sharp.”
“No, they’re not. They’re tawdry.”
“I wasn’t talking about fashion!” Emma retorted. She poked the point of the toe with a careful finger, and winced. “I mean they’re sharp. The heels are even worse.”
The Doctor studied the shoe thoughtfully. “You’re quite right. You could kill a Sontaran with those. And look absolutely fabulous doing it.” He handed the shoe back. “Might as well put them on, if you can wear them without breaking your neck. Most planets these days seem to be all corridors all the time anyway.” He sighed, deeply and dolefully. “Everything looks the same. Sometimes I swear the Big Crunch has already started.”
“The Big Crunch? Is that the opposite of the Big Bang?”
“Not exactly. Physicists used to believe that the Big Crunch would be caused by reversing the polarity of the Hubble Constant, but they’re wrong.”
“Then what’s causing it?”
“Budgetary implosion.”
“Oh.” Emma looked around, thoughtfully, at the TARDIS control room. Now that she thought about it, it was looking more and more like an inexpensive set every day. She shook her head. “Well, what about the Big Bang?”
The Doctor gave her a long, tender look and swept her into his arms. “Darling, I thought you’d never ask.”
~ fin ~
Update: Teaspoon rejected the story when I tried to post it there, because an in joke in the summary didn't meet their posting guidelines.
Apparently, once a story is rejected, it's gone from the interface -- so, although I've been told I can "resubmit after editing", this will require me to re-do all the work I just did -- so, forget it. I'll post it to my usual locations (ff.net, Ao3 and LJ). The Teaspoon posting interface is even uglier to use than ff.net (I hadn't thought that was possible), and I really don't have the energy for it.
Update 2: Thanks to dbskyler's wonderful support and advice, and some sleep, I'm doing much better and will try Teaspoon again.