Fic: He Said/He Said; Written with rude_not_ginger
The writer of rude_not_ginger and I got to talking, and she mentioned a prompt from writers_muses: And what are stories, but different ways with which we tell the truth?
We decided to write the same series of events from our own Doctor's point of view. This is Nine's version.
Subject insists that he is the Doctor. However, the other man with him insists that he, too, is the Doctor. Retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is in consultation with Brigadier Bambera. The following tape recording is Subject's recitation of the facts leading up to his arrest. Subject takes responsibility for the explosion at -
Oi! I take no responsibility for any such thing. That was the other me. He tripped the - what? The beginning? Fine.
We were having a drink in celebration of Otherstide which, before you interrupt me, is a holiday you're not familiar with. Well, you are human, aren't you? Thought as much. Do you know about Otherstide? No. Shocking.
We were having a drink in celebration of Otherstide, just having a chat. About politics. I kept trying to get him to pay attention, but trying to get him to pay attention's a bit like trying to explain Otherstide to a human. Pointless.
“You think the Americans are bad now, wait 'til 3452!”
“I know. Fantastic, really. New New New American primaries and their Old Old Old mudslinging. Remember Giancarlo Adams Jefferson Kennedy the fiftieth?” Now there was a great American.
My other self - I'll call him Weasel 'cause I hear that's used sometimes, and it fits - Weasel snorted appreciatively. At least I think it was appreciation. Sometimes it's hard to tell if he's snorting appreciatively or if he's just trying to find out what he sounds like when he snorts. He does that, you know. Makes stupid sounds and says stupid things and licks things just to see what peoples' reactions are. Women swoon. Men, too. Mostly humans.
What? Oh, fine. Just then, I noticed a funny bloke in a trench coat run by. He was obviously an alien, which Weasel would have noticed, if he hadn't been busy staring at himself reflected in a spoon.
I was halfway out the door before he realized, and of course as soon as he did he had to be the first out. I shoved him back - the idiot was going to get us both stuck in the door frame like one of those bad cartoons you lot watch - and got outside just in time to see the alien make a getaway.
I was annoyed. Wouldn't you be if your future self's ego caused us to lose track of an alien? And to top it, he said: “Always trench coats. What is it with trench coats and aliens?”
The idiot wears a trench coat! At that point I must have muttered something about never wanting to regenerate - I was certainly thinking it - because he looked at me like I'd just drowned a puppy. I rolled my eyes and told him to stop talking about alien fashion and just run.
If there's one thing I can do - and there's more than one, but it's your species' phrase - it's run, no matter what body I'm unlucky (him) or lucky (me) enough to be in. He ran flat out, which I'm sure is easy to do when you're wearing canvas trainers, but I wear more sensible shoes and don't fancy killing my lung capacity before we even catch up to the alien, so I just jogged behind him.
He was so busy catching his breath from that stupid sprint, that he didn't even recognize where we were. “Hey,” I told him, poking him to get him to actually pay attention, “I think we've been here before.”
I was hoping he'd figure it out on his own. He's older than me, and his mind's obviously going. See what I have to look forward to? Eventually he got it, and realized we were at the Brig's house.
The real question was what that creature was doing there.
“The real question,” he said a minute too late to be helpful, “is what is that creature doing here? Can't have smelled out the Brigadier.”
I had to admit he might have been onto something, so I started sniffing around. Yes, literally. Look, that idiot licks things, I don't think sniffing's so strange. You know, I licked things when I was my seventh self, too. I think that was the Rani's fault. She's why I regenerated, you know. Can't blame her for Weasel. Wish I could.
I didn't smell the Brig. “He's not here. Maybe something he's keeping around the house? Some sort of alien tech that'd fetch a nice... I wonder if it's Jack.”
Jack's this bloke I travel with from time to time, but he's got a shady past. Con man. Sold useless junk for more than it was worth, got himself into a lot of trouble, and I bailed him out. Think he's involved with - oh, never mind. I'll tell you in thirty years. Twenty-first century, all that.
“Doesn't look like Jack,” Weasel responded, as if I'd never seen Jack before. “Slimmer shoulders. And he's living in Cardiff now. Wouldn't be living there if he knew his previously-con-man-self visited this area. Too close a range, he wouldn't risk the paradox.”
“What about con-man Jack?” There was that memory again. How quickly Weasel forgets.
He rolled his eyes, I think to catch his reflection in one of those big blue glass balls people keep in gardens. “I said he wouldn't be -”
“No, I mean Jack before we knew Jack.. When he was a con man.” I heard somewhere that repetition was the best way to get children to remember things. “Remember? Tried to sell us a Chula warship? Blitz? Rose's unfortunate t-shirt?” It grew on me. Hm? Oh, Union Jack. On a t-shirt, yeah. I tried to tell her, Yates, but she's stubborn.
Hm? Oh, well Weasel started rambling on about Jack again. It's like he doesn't remember anything about being me. It's a disgrace, really, considering how memorable I am.
“Yes I know,” he said, “I'm older than you but I'm far from senile.” Yeah, right. “He wouldn't risk living in Cardiff if he knew his younger and more irresponsible self was here.” Here? We're in Cardiff? The Brig retired to Cardiff? I don't remember it being Cardiff last time I was there. Here. I'll have to find Ace and ask her.
Weasel had finished saying whatever he was saying. Or not. I didn't really care. “We're in Cardiff? Fantastic.” What? No, Yates, I don't really like Cardiff or think it's fantastic. Bad things happen here. I'd rather land in a quarry.
My future self put his face in his palm, I think to check his breath, and then mumbled something about how I was confusing him.
“How am I confusing you? You said Jack's younger self is in Cardiff! You're the confusing one. It's not like - oh, sod it.” We could've stayed in the bushes all day sniffing our own breaths, but by then the alien could've been gone with whatever he'd gone there to get and then we'd have wasted a perfectly good Otherstide chase. Again.
He caught up to me and started rolling around like, well, a weasel. I had no idea what he was doing. He was shouting something about a plan and having one, but his mouth was half full of grass - from his last roll - and it couldn't have been that important anyway. “So they took public transportation,” I shrugged. “Are you coming?”
We finally got to the window to see the alien. Weasel had leaves sticking out of his hair and looked almost as ridiculous as the alien. Purple skin, ginger hair... probably something from the Xuesonian galaxy. What? No, the alien. The other alien. Not Weasel. Yes, they both looked ridiculous. But at least Weasel didn't clash.
I said as much. You'd think he could've taken the compliment, but no. “You see,” he muttered, “alien fashion sense.” Idiot.
The alien rustled through some shelves and then went down to the basement. Weasel decided to wander in and follow him. Didn't even make a plan! “Who's the brazen idiot now?” I hissed. We're slightly telepathic, you know. Have you talked to him yet? He thought I was being an idiot while he was rolling around in the bushes trying to get to the house. Go ahead and ask him about that.
He turned around to shush me, which was when I saw the alien behind him, wandering across our line of vision. I say our, but I mean mine, because Weasel was so concerned with not being called an idiot that he almost blew our cover. I tried to get him to turn around, waving my hands a bit to point him in the right direction, but he just ignored me. Ignored. Me. Unbelievable idiot.
Have you ever seen the Brig's basement? It was pretty standard. Had one of Bessie's old tires, an eight track stereo, a sofa covered in dust, that sort of thing. Lots of gardening books. There was a large safe in the back, with a touch pad on it. Definitely not technology from this era. There was no sign of the monster, who could've been hiding behind anything in that place.
Weasel got a bit excited - shocking, I know - and practically fell down the stairs in his hurry to get to the safe. Of course, self-obsessed idiot that he is, he bounded right into a trip wire. Fantastic.
Rassilon only knows what the Brig keeps in his basement, because as soon as Weasel had his ridiculous trainers on the concrete, a self-destruct warning sounded. It was loud, as those things are, and it brought the alien out of his hiding space, which was behind the largest pile of gardening books. How many different ways can you garden? Never been my thing.
Weasel was distracted by the flashing lights of the alarm, so I told him to keep the alien away while I worked on defusing the bomb. I know what you're thinking, Yates, and you're right. It was a risk to leave Weasel in charge of not distracting me. I figured he might be able to handle it. After all, he's me so he's pretty brilliant.
I was wrong, though, and I barely had a chance to lift my sonic screwdriver - I want that back, by the way - before he zapped the alien with a fire extinguisher. To understand why that's stupid, you'd have to be me. And he is, so I expected more from him. He was so excited at his assumed genius that he started yelling. By then the countdown was in its final ten seconds, and we needed to run. Fast. “RUN!”
Sometimes it pays to be loud. Sometimes I regenerate into intelligent men. Okay, just once so far. Hopefully one day I'll get to be intelligent - like me - and ginger. That'd be nice. Certainly isn't my tenth self. He isn't either one of those. Weasel actually asked me why we had to run, and tried to go check the numbers on the countdown, but I grabbed his arm.
“But we can fix it!”
“There isn't any time!”
He tried to argue with me some more, but it was already at three. Three isn't good. It's better than two or one, and much better than zero, but not as good as say, four. Or a defused self-destruct. Weasel finally got the picture and started to run, and we made it out onto the lawn just as the whole thing went up.
It was loud and violent. I've got sensitive ears, which are immensely useful for someone like myself, so they were ringing fantastically. Weasel was halfway towards the Brig's car. I think he wanted to steal it. In fact, he did want to steal it, and had it open and hot wired by the time I got there.
“Right-o! Allons-y, Self!”
“What was that? French?” Since when do I speak French? “What?”
“Don't you have a universal translator? What are you, our sixth self? Come on.”
Speaking of past selves, the last time I drove a car was when I was my seventh self, and that's closer to me than it is to him. There was no way I was letting him drive. “You can't drive!”
He insisted on being stubborn about it, and even pouted, telling me that he'd taken some course with some Chris bloke. Meanwhile, the alien was getting farther and farther away. I refused to give in, though, because if I died I'd become him. Rassilon knows who'd he become.
“Fine. I'll drive.”
His eyes nearly popped out of his head - a bit like this - and he started yelling about the last time I drove which, like I mentioned, was my seventh self. “Please. It's like riding a bike. Besides, Ace and I survived.”
He finally gave in, but started muttering about young people. Young people! I'm nine hundred and seventy two! He told you what? Nine hundred and three? Well, he's an idiot and a liar, then. I'm not a day past eight hundred and forty. Yes, I know what I just said. Never mind my age, Yates, I'm trying to tell you something important!
I heard what he said, of course, and he made some remark about my ears. Low blow, that. It's not as though I prance around making fun of his hair. Ridiculous, though, isn't it? No, his hair. Not my ears. Shuttup, Yates, I'm almost finished.
I started off on the trail of the alien, driving like a pro, and he decided to be as helpful as usual my shouting commands at me. “TURN LEFT TURN LEFT.”
I turned right. I thought Weasel's head would explode, but I explained to him that I'd just been in Cardiff, and my memory of the roads was much fresher. He started screaming about how Cardiff makes people worse drivers. “Obviously. Look at you!”
“Well,” I tried to talk over his screeching, but it was tough work. “It was Cardiff in 2344, after they went over to the American way of driving.”
I think he said something about hating apple pie, but I couldn't pay much attention because some idiot human driver honked as he swerved towards us and passed within centimeters of our vehicle. Where'd you people learn to drive? Cardiff?
“We're never going to catch up with him,” Weasel whined, “What's he got? Super-speed of some sort? Can't find that sort of thing this side of the galaxy...”
He had a point - don't tell him I said that - and a good one at that. Always nice to see species from the outer arms coming to visit Earth. “Fantastic, isn't it?”
“WATCH IT!” I think he meant the road, since he was flinging his arms in that general direction.
Arm flinging is very distracting. “STOP DISTRACING ME.”
“I'm not distracting you! Look at the road! Look at the building!” His arms were moving so fast I could barely keep up. “BUILDING!”
That was the point you might remember, when we crashed into the building. Did you see Weasel fly out of the car? That's why you should always buckle your seatbelt, Yates.
After he rolled around the floor like a baby, I tried to explain to the Brigadier what Weasel had done, but you arrested us.
So you see, Yates? Not my fault.
Even if you don't believe me, you can always ask my other self. I'm sure he'll tell you the exact same thing.
Word Count: Approximately 2555.