(no subject)
..it's still 2009 in Honolulu.... XD;
This is terribly late, and I can't apologize enough. My life went ding, and there was stuff, but here's half of the story I owe eclecticmuse for Summer Sixathon '09. I don't know how they get this far out of hand, honest; it was only supposed to be 500 words!
Fandom: Doctor Who (5th, 6th, Peri)
Genre: G; humor, some angst
Written for: eclecticmuse
Summary: There's nothing quite like meeting a long-lost companion when she's still traveling with your previous self. Especially when it involves chasing chickens.
Title:
Founding Feathers
"It's coming from just over that ridge," the Doctor didn't say.
Instead, he stalked up the slope with the solitary, self-righteous air of a man on a mission more important than anything else in the vicinity, darting suspicious glances at the sunlit trees and kicking up seeding grass with his yellow-striped ankles. Solitary: that was the killer. There was little point pontificating to a landscape that would never talk back.
Glancing down at the locator in his hand, he let out an irritated sigh, then clamped his lips together stubbornly. He'd hardly spoken a word in three days. Peri would have taken the opportunity to make some remark; it was vexing that she wasn't here to accuse him of sulking, so he could prove her wrong. It was vexing, altogether, how the entire universe had conspired to put her beyond his reach, and he certainly wasn't about to pretend he owed it a monologue.
The tracker whined, and he frowned at it, then stumbled back as a lanky bird burst out of the bushes at his feet. Chikkerie, his mind supplied, a remote descendant of Gallus gallus domesticus, bred by this subset of humanity for meat, sport, and insulating feathers; fortunately hunting season wouldn't be for another month or so, judging by the flavor of the wind. The cackling fowl sprinted over the ridge, heedless of the immediate hazards of higher temporal mechanics, but the Doctor shifted his attention back to the readouts.
If he didn't know better, he would have sworn the Neiref was moving. How could it be moving, unless something was carrying it? Unless someone had found it -- and if someone discovered its secrets, turned it to vile uses, bent time itself to their pitiful whim, then--
"Aaaaah!"
Really, now. What were the chances of stepping on someone's foot out in a wilderness like this?
Straightening his coat, the Doctor steadied himself, pretended he had not just sprung backwards by almost a yard, and prepared to verbally shred the idiot who had been hiding among the gorsebushes and was now scrambling to stand upright on an ankle that was hopefully not twisted beyond repair.
Instead, he said, "Peri."
What were the chances.
.o0o.
Her ankle was fine; that was easy to see, from the weight she was putting on it as she stomped towards him. At her shout, a fair-haired man had scrambled out of another clump of shrubbery, holding a locator identical to the Doctor's. Rather literally identical, actually. The Doctor shoved his own one into his pocket, to avoid a reality-altering paradox, thinking briefly that it was a shame he and his former self couldn't share at least a few other superficial characteristics.
"Why don't you watch where you're going?" Peri complained, and he retorted, "Watch where I'm going? Why don't you watch where you choose to indulge in an afternoon siesta?" and for a moment, it was too familiar to bear. His other self bustled up then, with an expression changing from vague surprise to vague dismay, and I was too much like that the Doctor thought, and the light-haired man could be seen to muse is this what I will become.
Peri was staring at his blue greatcoat, its deep hue muddied by yesterday's incident at Twer Vexithea. He half expected her to snipe, "At least you've toned it down a little," but of course she didn't remember the other one.
"If you've quite finished taking me in," he said sharply.
Peri's lip curled, and she looked from Doctor to Doctor. "Do you know each other?"
"Yes," said the Doctor.
"No," said the other Doctor.
They looked angrily at each other and growled "In a fashion," and "Not really," at the same time, and the Doctor snorted, and his previous self huffed, and Peri glowered at them both, clearly feeling left out of the joke.
"He was just going," said Peri's Doctor through his teeth.
"Indeed I was not." With a glare at his counterpart, the Doctor stepped in front, completely blocking him off. "Miss Brown, I take it? Your charming companion has told me all about you. Or will -- your future, of course, my past, these things are bound to happen once in a while."
The other Doctor had shouldered his way ahead. "An exaggeration. As it transpires, this gentleman is almost as qualified in chronopathic circuitry as I am--"
"Excuse me--"
"--so we'd best be off and leave him to it. Come along, Peri--"
"Now just a moment," protested Peri. "You're telling me we came all this way and you're just going to leave the thing to him? He knows who we are -- how did he know--?"
"In point of fact--"
"In point of fact," the Doctor interjected, "I am simply passing through. Another voyager in the temporal ocean, much like yourselves."
"Nothing at all like ourselves," grumbled Peri's Doctor.
"What's your name?" challenged Peri.
The Doctor didn't bat an eye. "John Smith."
Peri sent a sidelong glance at her companion. "That's the same name as--"
"Oh, we all use that name." Ostentatiously retrieving his locator, the Doctor twisted the dial, making a show of becoming more interested in it than them. Just over that ridge, the Neiref was, and getting further away every moment. "You wouldn't believe how common it is. Saves a tremendous amount of time and trouble."
"Then who are you really?" she asked
"I'm as much John Smith as I am anyone else."
"Doesn't that mean not at all?"
He glanced up sharply, and Peri shivered a bit, the way she'd used to do when he looked at her like that. Drat the girl. She always managed to half-conceptualize things that should have been utterly beyond her tiny little Earth mind, and then adding insult to injury by failing to follow them through to their conclusion.
"I assume you're on the trail of the Neiref, just as I am," he said. It was odd, this feeling of detachment. Almost as though if he tried, he could really believe that the girl before him was a complete stranger: that they had never really met, and never parted at all.
"That," said Peri's Doctor, rubbing the back of his neck, "is a bit of a long story."
.o0o.
"Summer," Peri had told him once, "should be long and lazy, full of bright, beautiful days and lounging around in the sun, but in reality it just drags out and you get sunburn and sand under your clothes and then go home and half the time can't remember what you'd been doing." And it was funny, he thought, how that was almost exactly the way he thought about Time.
They'd gone fishing that day, and various other things had happened, leaving him with a double memory of Sontarans and Seville, and Peri, and Jamie McCrimmon, and a headache because his other self's memories had remained locked in his mind until they'd caught up with his future. It happened so often now. He could see it in his own face. After a stretch of frenzied action he'd wake to find nothing left but impressions, placeholders for memories that would tap gently at the doors of his mind in quiet times like this.
"It's what?!"
"Tangled around a chikkerie's leg, yes, aren't you listening?"
And that was another thing. He hadn't remembered his meek, bland former self as having any sort of a temper.
"We've been trying to corner it for hours," said the other Doctor, mopping his brow. His hands were scratched, and there were bits of heather stuck to his coat. Peri, her face flushed and skin stained with reddish dirt, looked even more disreputable. "They're only half-tame, you know; it lets us get close, but not close enough to catch the chain."
"Well, at least none of the natives got ahold of it." That was something, anyway. The damage an untrained psyche could do with that thing in its grasp -- to say nothing of the damage to the psyche itself -- didn't bear contemplating. "In that case, what's holding you back?"
"Well." Peri folded her arms. "If you'll listen a minute, there's some kind of riot going on down in the village--"
The noise was rather audible, come to that. The Doctor shot a flat glance at his former self. "I suppose you started it."
"As if you would've done better--"
"Hey!"
They both stopped dead. What a pair of lungs that girl had.
"Look, we just barely got away. It'd be hard enough for us to stay undercover and still catch that bird thing." She looked again at the Doctor, her eyes reflecting disbelief at... well, he decided to believe it was the sheer scope of him that so amazed her. "With three of us, it'd be impossible."
Her Doctor's brow creased. "That won't do at all. We can't just hang about waiting for the chain to come loose. The damage that an untrained psyche could accomplish with that thing doesn't bear thinking about."
"Well then," said the Doctor -- the Doctor, this washed-out chap was only a pale imitation of his full potentiality -- "well then," he said, straightening his vest, "we appear to have a feathered rout on our hands." And he strode down into the copse without looking back, and Peri and the other Doctor had to scramble after him.
"You should take your coat off! You'll ruin it!" Peri shouted at his back.
Confounded woman. Always worried about the wrong things.
_____
[There may be a Part II. In fact, I'm almost sure of it. *eyedart* Impressions of the Fifth Doctor herein are a product of the Sixth Doctor's state of mind and will be addressed later in the story.]
Part II is here!
This is terribly late, and I can't apologize enough. My life went ding, and there was stuff, but here's half of the story I owe eclecticmuse for Summer Sixathon '09. I don't know how they get this far out of hand, honest; it was only supposed to be 500 words!
Fandom: Doctor Who (5th, 6th, Peri)
Genre: G; humor, some angst
Written for: eclecticmuse
Summary: There's nothing quite like meeting a long-lost companion when she's still traveling with your previous self. Especially when it involves chasing chickens.
Title:
Founding Feathers
"It's coming from just over that ridge," the Doctor didn't say.
Instead, he stalked up the slope with the solitary, self-righteous air of a man on a mission more important than anything else in the vicinity, darting suspicious glances at the sunlit trees and kicking up seeding grass with his yellow-striped ankles. Solitary: that was the killer. There was little point pontificating to a landscape that would never talk back.
Glancing down at the locator in his hand, he let out an irritated sigh, then clamped his lips together stubbornly. He'd hardly spoken a word in three days. Peri would have taken the opportunity to make some remark; it was vexing that she wasn't here to accuse him of sulking, so he could prove her wrong. It was vexing, altogether, how the entire universe had conspired to put her beyond his reach, and he certainly wasn't about to pretend he owed it a monologue.
The tracker whined, and he frowned at it, then stumbled back as a lanky bird burst out of the bushes at his feet. Chikkerie, his mind supplied, a remote descendant of Gallus gallus domesticus, bred by this subset of humanity for meat, sport, and insulating feathers; fortunately hunting season wouldn't be for another month or so, judging by the flavor of the wind. The cackling fowl sprinted over the ridge, heedless of the immediate hazards of higher temporal mechanics, but the Doctor shifted his attention back to the readouts.
If he didn't know better, he would have sworn the Neiref was moving. How could it be moving, unless something was carrying it? Unless someone had found it -- and if someone discovered its secrets, turned it to vile uses, bent time itself to their pitiful whim, then--
"Aaaaah!"
Really, now. What were the chances of stepping on someone's foot out in a wilderness like this?
Straightening his coat, the Doctor steadied himself, pretended he had not just sprung backwards by almost a yard, and prepared to verbally shred the idiot who had been hiding among the gorsebushes and was now scrambling to stand upright on an ankle that was hopefully not twisted beyond repair.
Instead, he said, "Peri."
What were the chances.
.o0o.
Her ankle was fine; that was easy to see, from the weight she was putting on it as she stomped towards him. At her shout, a fair-haired man had scrambled out of another clump of shrubbery, holding a locator identical to the Doctor's. Rather literally identical, actually. The Doctor shoved his own one into his pocket, to avoid a reality-altering paradox, thinking briefly that it was a shame he and his former self couldn't share at least a few other superficial characteristics.
"Why don't you watch where you're going?" Peri complained, and he retorted, "Watch where I'm going? Why don't you watch where you choose to indulge in an afternoon siesta?" and for a moment, it was too familiar to bear. His other self bustled up then, with an expression changing from vague surprise to vague dismay, and I was too much like that the Doctor thought, and the light-haired man could be seen to muse is this what I will become.
Peri was staring at his blue greatcoat, its deep hue muddied by yesterday's incident at Twer Vexithea. He half expected her to snipe, "At least you've toned it down a little," but of course she didn't remember the other one.
"If you've quite finished taking me in," he said sharply.
Peri's lip curled, and she looked from Doctor to Doctor. "Do you know each other?"
"Yes," said the Doctor.
"No," said the other Doctor.
They looked angrily at each other and growled "In a fashion," and "Not really," at the same time, and the Doctor snorted, and his previous self huffed, and Peri glowered at them both, clearly feeling left out of the joke.
"He was just going," said Peri's Doctor through his teeth.
"Indeed I was not." With a glare at his counterpart, the Doctor stepped in front, completely blocking him off. "Miss Brown, I take it? Your charming companion has told me all about you. Or will -- your future, of course, my past, these things are bound to happen once in a while."
The other Doctor had shouldered his way ahead. "An exaggeration. As it transpires, this gentleman is almost as qualified in chronopathic circuitry as I am--"
"Excuse me--"
"--so we'd best be off and leave him to it. Come along, Peri--"
"Now just a moment," protested Peri. "You're telling me we came all this way and you're just going to leave the thing to him? He knows who we are -- how did he know--?"
"In point of fact--"
"In point of fact," the Doctor interjected, "I am simply passing through. Another voyager in the temporal ocean, much like yourselves."
"Nothing at all like ourselves," grumbled Peri's Doctor.
"What's your name?" challenged Peri.
The Doctor didn't bat an eye. "John Smith."
Peri sent a sidelong glance at her companion. "That's the same name as--"
"Oh, we all use that name." Ostentatiously retrieving his locator, the Doctor twisted the dial, making a show of becoming more interested in it than them. Just over that ridge, the Neiref was, and getting further away every moment. "You wouldn't believe how common it is. Saves a tremendous amount of time and trouble."
"Then who are you really?" she asked
"I'm as much John Smith as I am anyone else."
"Doesn't that mean not at all?"
He glanced up sharply, and Peri shivered a bit, the way she'd used to do when he looked at her like that. Drat the girl. She always managed to half-conceptualize things that should have been utterly beyond her tiny little Earth mind, and then adding insult to injury by failing to follow them through to their conclusion.
"I assume you're on the trail of the Neiref, just as I am," he said. It was odd, this feeling of detachment. Almost as though if he tried, he could really believe that the girl before him was a complete stranger: that they had never really met, and never parted at all.
"That," said Peri's Doctor, rubbing the back of his neck, "is a bit of a long story."
.o0o.
"Summer," Peri had told him once, "should be long and lazy, full of bright, beautiful days and lounging around in the sun, but in reality it just drags out and you get sunburn and sand under your clothes and then go home and half the time can't remember what you'd been doing." And it was funny, he thought, how that was almost exactly the way he thought about Time.
They'd gone fishing that day, and various other things had happened, leaving him with a double memory of Sontarans and Seville, and Peri, and Jamie McCrimmon, and a headache because his other self's memories had remained locked in his mind until they'd caught up with his future. It happened so often now. He could see it in his own face. After a stretch of frenzied action he'd wake to find nothing left but impressions, placeholders for memories that would tap gently at the doors of his mind in quiet times like this.
"It's what?!"
"Tangled around a chikkerie's leg, yes, aren't you listening?"
And that was another thing. He hadn't remembered his meek, bland former self as having any sort of a temper.
"We've been trying to corner it for hours," said the other Doctor, mopping his brow. His hands were scratched, and there were bits of heather stuck to his coat. Peri, her face flushed and skin stained with reddish dirt, looked even more disreputable. "They're only half-tame, you know; it lets us get close, but not close enough to catch the chain."
"Well, at least none of the natives got ahold of it." That was something, anyway. The damage an untrained psyche could do with that thing in its grasp -- to say nothing of the damage to the psyche itself -- didn't bear contemplating. "In that case, what's holding you back?"
"Well." Peri folded her arms. "If you'll listen a minute, there's some kind of riot going on down in the village--"
The noise was rather audible, come to that. The Doctor shot a flat glance at his former self. "I suppose you started it."
"As if you would've done better--"
"Hey!"
They both stopped dead. What a pair of lungs that girl had.
"Look, we just barely got away. It'd be hard enough for us to stay undercover and still catch that bird thing." She looked again at the Doctor, her eyes reflecting disbelief at... well, he decided to believe it was the sheer scope of him that so amazed her. "With three of us, it'd be impossible."
Her Doctor's brow creased. "That won't do at all. We can't just hang about waiting for the chain to come loose. The damage that an untrained psyche could accomplish with that thing doesn't bear thinking about."
"Well then," said the Doctor -- the Doctor, this washed-out chap was only a pale imitation of his full potentiality -- "well then," he said, straightening his vest, "we appear to have a feathered rout on our hands." And he strode down into the copse without looking back, and Peri and the other Doctor had to scramble after him.
"You should take your coat off! You'll ruin it!" Peri shouted at his back.
Confounded woman. Always worried about the wrong things.
_____
[There may be a Part II. In fact, I'm almost sure of it. *eyedart* Impressions of the Fifth Doctor herein are a product of the Sixth Doctor's state of mind and will be addressed later in the story.]
Part II is here!