assorted Dr Who shortfics
it's been at least a week since I posted these ficlets over at Whoiverse1000, so I feel I can repost them to my own lj now. (the delay in reposting, was more to help get the replies as well as the fics each up to 1,000)
no actual slash, mind you. (not even the Ace & Rani is slash)
and Alice Guppy is the brunette back in Victorian-era Torchwood. the one who flirted with Jack.
Rani/10th Doctor:
He hadn’t heard from her - nor of her - since the Time War. And now, here at Near Enough, the Doctor sees why that is so.
The space station was aptly named: in safe orbit the first stars in all the universe, stars that were only three years old right now. Well, three years after they started burning. Not the neighborhood of the Big Bang - no way to see anything, not that early.
The Rani had manned this station alone during the Time War - defending the dawn of the universe from the Daleks. One woman - one o so glorious woman! against uncounted armadas.
She’d won - we all did, insofar as much as was possible, considering the stakes and the combatants - but the dying Dalek fleet on the edge of this solar system (empty, this early on, without anything local heavier than - not now) had lashed out in its last moment of conciousness… rupturing the station.
The Rani was mummified. The Doctor looked at her, ran one spacesuited hand along the contours of her face, never touching, always a centimeter from her toughened skin. Skin that, in life, was so alive. Not since the ages before the Gallifreyans became the Time Lords has there been a mummy of their species.
“We disagreed from time to time,” he says, not sure why, but it feels right that he do so, “but show me somebody I’ve never disagreed with, and I’ll wager I’ve never met him.” It tugs at his hearts, being so close, and yet so distant. The Rani is borderline dead: finish the job, and she’d regenerate, coming fully to life.
He can’t feel her, can’t sense her presence…but doesn’t dare wake her, can’t bring himself to unleash her upon the universe. If not for recent memories of the Master with the Toclafane, he would. He’d bring her back.
So, not feeling her, he aches.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alice Guppy/9th Doctor:
When she had been a little girl, growing up brotherless, her father had entertained her quirks regarding the reading of natural philosophy, procuring for her a copy of Mr. C.Darwin's book on barnacles. Alice had loved it, had soaked up all the knowledge in that text about the bizarre creatures that did headstands & glued themselves in place, forever upside-down & unable to live any other way.
When she'd grown up, she joined Torchwood, rather enjoying the 'if its alien, its ours,' always treasuring her discoveries in how novel'ly-foreign -- and how sadly tediously familiar -- aliens could be.
Then He fell through a hole in time. Not the Rift, but by a different means. And, obliged though she was, Alice couldn't bring herself to turn him in, to turn him over.
When he spoke, when he was coherent, he spoke of a War throughout and throughin Time itself. Through his recovery - his physical recovery at least - he clung to her. Did whatever she asked; let her lead, let her be submissive, he didn't care so long as she didn't leave him alone. He needed, and she was there.
Alice felt flattered, having never been needed before. Called upon, yes, but never needed.
And, one day, when she returned home from Torchwood, he was gone...having left a gift, a sizeable token of his esteem, for her. "Thank you" he said.
Alice thought, God save Queen Victoria. And God help my Doctor.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ace & Rani:
Time Lords were telepathic, usually only mildly. The human capacity for telepathy tended to begin and end at identifying psychic paper as such.
The Doctor had left Ace here, as Rani's ward; had warned the Rani that if anything happened to his Companion, the Daleks' fate would be mild compared to Rani's.
So Ace stayed in the labs, as did the Rani, working at all hours of - well, there was no day or night, not here, on a world tidally-locked to its red dwarf sun.
But on those rare moments when both women sleep - usually on opposite ends of the facility so they don't kill one another, regardless of the Doctor's orders - their minds touch.
It's why the Rani permits Ace to try her hand at refining the chemicals that will end up in the next walking weapon that her lab will supply for the Time War...based on chemical-squirting beetles of Earth, fittingly. The Daleks shall puzzle over this, no doubt, which amused Rani, and was why she permitted Ace these liberties.
Ace has other thoughts in her sleep, other reasons why the Rani tolerates her. Doctor! which runs through the Rani's own thoughts; they both know the Doctor, both feel for him, both have measures of feelings for him.
Shared feelings, both before and after their minds touch at a physical distance.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jack Harkness/Suzie Costello:
In hindsight, Jack wonders if it was his fault.
Suzie had taken to Torchwood with all the eagerness and - glee? yes, maybe that was the right word. Or it'll have the right meaning in a century and a half. 'Course, it has slightly sexual overtones by that time, but then again... Then again, given what Suzie was to him, that was right, proper, and fitting.
She'd known he had healing properties, had jokingly called him her Florida Fountains...(after the reputed site of the fountains of eternal youth, Jack'd learned when he'd tried finding out why she'd said that). Jack could heal himself, she knew that: he laughed at paper cuts.
Never anything as obvious as a bullet going into his brainpan and healing up in less than five minutes. Obviously. Granted.
But the signs were there.
So he stood at her grave at regular intervals, wondering where they'd - ? - where he'd - probably more accurate - gone wrong.
Sometimes, Jack thought, the way to have avoided this whole mess, would have been to not get involved with Suzie. But he knew he couldn't have done that.
Not even to save Time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ace/Master (Simm):
She was blonde now.
She was doing a favor for a friend when she re-met the Master: Ace was teaching. Seeing some guy coming in and sitting down halfway through her lecture, she did the only reasonable thing.
She called on him. “You there! Why don’t you tell us what’ll happen in a Big Crunch scenario.”
“Very well,” he replied, crisp and smooth. “If such an event were to occur, everything in the universe would slam into each other with all possible force, until there remains only a single pinprick of matter and energy. A pity it’ll never happen.”
“What makes you so sure?” one University student asked.
But Ace didn’t need to hear his answer. She could see it on his face: absolute certainty. This here was no tragic philosopher, and she’d lay odds that he wasn’t from UNIT. That left… a time traveler. “I’d like a word with you after class,” she told him. If he was the Doctor in some new regeneration, she had some choice words for him. More than a few, in fact. Just up and vanishing like that! Leaving her all alone.
He’d been right behind her, just two steps. Then he was gone, and without even a sound from the TARDIS those yards away at the time.
After the class ended for the day, this man came down to the teacher’s desk Ace was using. “Yes?” the Master asked.
“What’s your name?” Ace wanted to know.
“John Smith,” pulling out his wallet and showing his psychic paper badge. “Lately, Harold Saxon, Ministry of Defense.”
‘John Smith.’ That’s one of his pseudonyms. “Professor?”
“Oh I’m afraid my teaching days are long behind me.” Though I do believe there’s still a lesson for the Doctor.
“Sorry, you reminded me of a f- of somebody I used to know.”
“No worries then. What was his name - I might know him.”
“The Doctor.”
Saxon made a big show of astonishment. “As it happens, I do know the Doctor. He - oh, I really shouldn’t say.”
“Really shouldn’t say what?”
Looking contrite and awkward, “The Doctor may have fallen in the Time War.”
Time War? Anything to do with his vanishing on me?
“I was there, at the end of the universe, and that was the last I saw of him.” Shaking his head as it to clear out the cobwebs, “Seeing as I’ve got a TARDIS, would you care to come with me? We can look for him.”
“Sure!”
That was before Ace saw the end of time, in all its stark and horrid barrenness. It touched her mind, touched her in a way neither Fenric nor the Destroyer had been capable of.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ace/9th Doctor:
"Something's wrong," Ace said, breaking from their huddle - cuddle - and darting off to recalibrate and put her own special touch on the explosives. Even high-and-mighty wars like this one, occassionally descended into shoving matches whose outcomes were determined by things going 'boom.'
She'd wanted to help. Wanted to help him.
President Romana had wanted the War restricted as much as possible - if the Time Lords started letting the Gelph and others fight, who could know just what the Daleks would recruit or create for their side. But Romana had allowed her old friend to bring in one of his other friends.
She'd wanted to help, so he let her. Let her rejoin him, even though a Time War was no place for a plain normal human, let alone for the singularness that was Ace.
She had been there at the fall of Arcadia with him. She'd felt outright redundant watching it unfold and infold; but the Doctor knew that, if she hadn't been there, if he'd been alone, he would've gong mad...might "have gone Dark Side" as she put it, referring to a movie she'd seen just before he'd come back for her. Or was that another Companion's remark? the Doctor briefly wondered, last week's temporal memetic concussion space-mine still affecting him, a bit.
"Ace?" the Doctor asked. "ACE?"
"Moment, Doctor," not saying Professor - that was another Doctor; she knew they were the same, and she liked Nine...but she also liked him more than him. 'Nothing personal.'
Done. Heading back, to him.
She didn't get far enough fast enough.
Traditionally, Time Lords didn't say 'my heart(s) broke.'
Intellectually, the Doctor knew why humans had such phrases. Particularly now, as the not-very-distant-at-all sound of detonations rending material wrenched his hearts even in here.
His eyes burned with the fire of what was left unto him, even as the fires around him all extinguished.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Susan Foreman & Jagrafes:
She strode across the surface of the ice, her mind massaging the Jagrafes below, could feel his neuro-muscular system rippling back satisfaction at her kindness, her gesture, and at his own work well done. "Yes, you did good."
His kind were well-suited to high-level organization and sorting, managing whatever system they were placed in charge of & bringing even marginal systems to abundant - fruitition? was that the word David used? and shrugged it aside.
"Thank you," she told it. The Jagrafes was burrowed beneath the ice, but he could feel her psychic praise. She'd brought him here to re-order the sparse life in this ocean, which had been near-empty when she'd first arrived, five million years ago.
Far enough from the sun to host life, was also freezing cold. And the sun was about to die - ten million years was abnormally old for this sort of star. No chance of the native life developing star travel and escaping. "We have to find another solution," she said, and imparted that comment to her Jagrafes.
Idea. I possess an idea, he imparted back to her. They were nothing if not quick.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nyssa/Master (non-Ainley; AU)
This is an AU of _Keeper of Traken_...no Ainley!Master:
Nyssa was done her tending for the day, and was about to walk away from the statue, when -
“Clever girl.”
“Who said that?” she asked, looking all around, seeing nobody.
Answered the statue, “Walk around me,” she was instructed.
“Okay,” Nyssa said, and walked a circle around the statue. Found nobody there. “Now where are you?” standing before the object.
And before her very eyes, a man emerged from the statue. Or ‘emerge’ was a pale shadow of what he did - step through the solid-looking object, his edges shimmering until he was fully departed from it.
“You’re hurt!” Nyssa exclaimed, and wrapped her arms gingerly around him, walking him to a bed where he could be properly tended to.
He permitted the manhandling, but once they were got to a bed, he gripped her arms by the wrists. “And what of you?” the Master asked.
“What of me?” she asked, puzzled.
“What do you want?”
“I want for nothing.”
“Good. But I did not ask what you want for - I asked what you want.” A deliberate pause to ensure she understood, “I can read your mind, if need be. So can the Doctor.”
She gaped.
Not my intended reaction. Still… “Envy, in a small measure. And of the one who had tended me before your appointment.” Finding what he was looking for, the Master used it to guide him as he kissed Nyssa on a very sensitive spot of the Traken lady’s face - more hormonally-charged than the lips of a human.
Soon enough they had collapsed onto the bed, Nyssa never stopping her tending to him, though, not wanting him to be harmed.
“But what about -?” Nyssa started to ask, only to be shushed. “She’s tended your - to your -” ship? base? refugia?
“She is a tool,” the Master soothed her, whispering to her. “You are more.”
“Thank you,” she said.
-
{and my Morden muse finally shows up} :)
no actual slash, mind you. (not even the Ace & Rani is slash)
and Alice Guppy is the brunette back in Victorian-era Torchwood. the one who flirted with Jack.
Rani/10th Doctor:
He hadn’t heard from her - nor of her - since the Time War. And now, here at Near Enough, the Doctor sees why that is so.
The space station was aptly named: in safe orbit the first stars in all the universe, stars that were only three years old right now. Well, three years after they started burning. Not the neighborhood of the Big Bang - no way to see anything, not that early.
The Rani had manned this station alone during the Time War - defending the dawn of the universe from the Daleks. One woman - one o so glorious woman! against uncounted armadas.
She’d won - we all did, insofar as much as was possible, considering the stakes and the combatants - but the dying Dalek fleet on the edge of this solar system (empty, this early on, without anything local heavier than - not now) had lashed out in its last moment of conciousness… rupturing the station.
The Rani was mummified. The Doctor looked at her, ran one spacesuited hand along the contours of her face, never touching, always a centimeter from her toughened skin. Skin that, in life, was so alive. Not since the ages before the Gallifreyans became the Time Lords has there been a mummy of their species.
“We disagreed from time to time,” he says, not sure why, but it feels right that he do so, “but show me somebody I’ve never disagreed with, and I’ll wager I’ve never met him.” It tugs at his hearts, being so close, and yet so distant. The Rani is borderline dead: finish the job, and she’d regenerate, coming fully to life.
He can’t feel her, can’t sense her presence…but doesn’t dare wake her, can’t bring himself to unleash her upon the universe. If not for recent memories of the Master with the Toclafane, he would. He’d bring her back.
So, not feeling her, he aches.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alice Guppy/9th Doctor:
When she had been a little girl, growing up brotherless, her father had entertained her quirks regarding the reading of natural philosophy, procuring for her a copy of Mr. C.Darwin's book on barnacles. Alice had loved it, had soaked up all the knowledge in that text about the bizarre creatures that did headstands & glued themselves in place, forever upside-down & unable to live any other way.
When she'd grown up, she joined Torchwood, rather enjoying the 'if its alien, its ours,' always treasuring her discoveries in how novel'ly-foreign -- and how sadly tediously familiar -- aliens could be.
Then He fell through a hole in time. Not the Rift, but by a different means. And, obliged though she was, Alice couldn't bring herself to turn him in, to turn him over.
When he spoke, when he was coherent, he spoke of a War throughout and throughin Time itself. Through his recovery - his physical recovery at least - he clung to her. Did whatever she asked; let her lead, let her be submissive, he didn't care so long as she didn't leave him alone. He needed, and she was there.
Alice felt flattered, having never been needed before. Called upon, yes, but never needed.
And, one day, when she returned home from Torchwood, he was gone...having left a gift, a sizeable token of his esteem, for her. "Thank you" he said.
Alice thought, God save Queen Victoria. And God help my Doctor.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ace & Rani:
Time Lords were telepathic, usually only mildly. The human capacity for telepathy tended to begin and end at identifying psychic paper as such.
The Doctor had left Ace here, as Rani's ward; had warned the Rani that if anything happened to his Companion, the Daleks' fate would be mild compared to Rani's.
So Ace stayed in the labs, as did the Rani, working at all hours of - well, there was no day or night, not here, on a world tidally-locked to its red dwarf sun.
But on those rare moments when both women sleep - usually on opposite ends of the facility so they don't kill one another, regardless of the Doctor's orders - their minds touch.
It's why the Rani permits Ace to try her hand at refining the chemicals that will end up in the next walking weapon that her lab will supply for the Time War...based on chemical-squirting beetles of Earth, fittingly. The Daleks shall puzzle over this, no doubt, which amused Rani, and was why she permitted Ace these liberties.
Ace has other thoughts in her sleep, other reasons why the Rani tolerates her. Doctor! which runs through the Rani's own thoughts; they both know the Doctor, both feel for him, both have measures of feelings for him.
Shared feelings, both before and after their minds touch at a physical distance.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jack Harkness/Suzie Costello:
In hindsight, Jack wonders if it was his fault.
Suzie had taken to Torchwood with all the eagerness and - glee? yes, maybe that was the right word. Or it'll have the right meaning in a century and a half. 'Course, it has slightly sexual overtones by that time, but then again... Then again, given what Suzie was to him, that was right, proper, and fitting.
She'd known he had healing properties, had jokingly called him her Florida Fountains...(after the reputed site of the fountains of eternal youth, Jack'd learned when he'd tried finding out why she'd said that). Jack could heal himself, she knew that: he laughed at paper cuts.
Never anything as obvious as a bullet going into his brainpan and healing up in less than five minutes. Obviously. Granted.
But the signs were there.
So he stood at her grave at regular intervals, wondering where they'd - ? - where he'd - probably more accurate - gone wrong.
Sometimes, Jack thought, the way to have avoided this whole mess, would have been to not get involved with Suzie. But he knew he couldn't have done that.
Not even to save Time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ace/Master (Simm):
She was blonde now.
She was doing a favor for a friend when she re-met the Master: Ace was teaching. Seeing some guy coming in and sitting down halfway through her lecture, she did the only reasonable thing.
She called on him. “You there! Why don’t you tell us what’ll happen in a Big Crunch scenario.”
“Very well,” he replied, crisp and smooth. “If such an event were to occur, everything in the universe would slam into each other with all possible force, until there remains only a single pinprick of matter and energy. A pity it’ll never happen.”
“What makes you so sure?” one University student asked.
But Ace didn’t need to hear his answer. She could see it on his face: absolute certainty. This here was no tragic philosopher, and she’d lay odds that he wasn’t from UNIT. That left… a time traveler. “I’d like a word with you after class,” she told him. If he was the Doctor in some new regeneration, she had some choice words for him. More than a few, in fact. Just up and vanishing like that! Leaving her all alone.
He’d been right behind her, just two steps. Then he was gone, and without even a sound from the TARDIS those yards away at the time.
After the class ended for the day, this man came down to the teacher’s desk Ace was using. “Yes?” the Master asked.
“What’s your name?” Ace wanted to know.
“John Smith,” pulling out his wallet and showing his psychic paper badge. “Lately, Harold Saxon, Ministry of Defense.”
‘John Smith.’ That’s one of his pseudonyms. “Professor?”
“Oh I’m afraid my teaching days are long behind me.” Though I do believe there’s still a lesson for the Doctor.
“Sorry, you reminded me of a f- of somebody I used to know.”
“No worries then. What was his name - I might know him.”
“The Doctor.”
Saxon made a big show of astonishment. “As it happens, I do know the Doctor. He - oh, I really shouldn’t say.”
“Really shouldn’t say what?”
Looking contrite and awkward, “The Doctor may have fallen in the Time War.”
Time War? Anything to do with his vanishing on me?
“I was there, at the end of the universe, and that was the last I saw of him.” Shaking his head as it to clear out the cobwebs, “Seeing as I’ve got a TARDIS, would you care to come with me? We can look for him.”
“Sure!”
That was before Ace saw the end of time, in all its stark and horrid barrenness. It touched her mind, touched her in a way neither Fenric nor the Destroyer had been capable of.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ace/9th Doctor:
"Something's wrong," Ace said, breaking from their huddle - cuddle - and darting off to recalibrate and put her own special touch on the explosives. Even high-and-mighty wars like this one, occassionally descended into shoving matches whose outcomes were determined by things going 'boom.'
She'd wanted to help. Wanted to help him.
President Romana had wanted the War restricted as much as possible - if the Time Lords started letting the Gelph and others fight, who could know just what the Daleks would recruit or create for their side. But Romana had allowed her old friend to bring in one of his other friends.
She'd wanted to help, so he let her. Let her rejoin him, even though a Time War was no place for a plain normal human, let alone for the singularness that was Ace.
She had been there at the fall of Arcadia with him. She'd felt outright redundant watching it unfold and infold; but the Doctor knew that, if she hadn't been there, if he'd been alone, he would've gong mad...might "have gone Dark Side" as she put it, referring to a movie she'd seen just before he'd come back for her. Or was that another Companion's remark? the Doctor briefly wondered, last week's temporal memetic concussion space-mine still affecting him, a bit.
"Ace?" the Doctor asked. "ACE?"
"Moment, Doctor," not saying Professor - that was another Doctor; she knew they were the same, and she liked Nine...but she also liked him more than him. 'Nothing personal.'
Done. Heading back, to him.
She didn't get far enough fast enough.
Traditionally, Time Lords didn't say 'my heart(s) broke.'
Intellectually, the Doctor knew why humans had such phrases. Particularly now, as the not-very-distant-at-all sound of detonations rending material wrenched his hearts even in here.
His eyes burned with the fire of what was left unto him, even as the fires around him all extinguished.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Susan Foreman & Jagrafes:
She strode across the surface of the ice, her mind massaging the Jagrafes below, could feel his neuro-muscular system rippling back satisfaction at her kindness, her gesture, and at his own work well done. "Yes, you did good."
His kind were well-suited to high-level organization and sorting, managing whatever system they were placed in charge of & bringing even marginal systems to abundant - fruitition? was that the word David used? and shrugged it aside.
"Thank you," she told it. The Jagrafes was burrowed beneath the ice, but he could feel her psychic praise. She'd brought him here to re-order the sparse life in this ocean, which had been near-empty when she'd first arrived, five million years ago.
Far enough from the sun to host life, was also freezing cold. And the sun was about to die - ten million years was abnormally old for this sort of star. No chance of the native life developing star travel and escaping. "We have to find another solution," she said, and imparted that comment to her Jagrafes.
Idea. I possess an idea, he imparted back to her. They were nothing if not quick.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nyssa/Master (non-Ainley; AU)
This is an AU of _Keeper of Traken_...no Ainley!Master:
Nyssa was done her tending for the day, and was about to walk away from the statue, when -
“Clever girl.”
“Who said that?” she asked, looking all around, seeing nobody.
Answered the statue, “Walk around me,” she was instructed.
“Okay,” Nyssa said, and walked a circle around the statue. Found nobody there. “Now where are you?” standing before the object.
And before her very eyes, a man emerged from the statue. Or ‘emerge’ was a pale shadow of what he did - step through the solid-looking object, his edges shimmering until he was fully departed from it.
“You’re hurt!” Nyssa exclaimed, and wrapped her arms gingerly around him, walking him to a bed where he could be properly tended to.
He permitted the manhandling, but once they were got to a bed, he gripped her arms by the wrists. “And what of you?” the Master asked.
“What of me?” she asked, puzzled.
“What do you want?”
“I want for nothing.”
“Good. But I did not ask what you want for - I asked what you want.” A deliberate pause to ensure she understood, “I can read your mind, if need be. So can the Doctor.”
She gaped.
Not my intended reaction. Still… “Envy, in a small measure. And of the one who had tended me before your appointment.” Finding what he was looking for, the Master used it to guide him as he kissed Nyssa on a very sensitive spot of the Traken lady’s face - more hormonally-charged than the lips of a human.
Soon enough they had collapsed onto the bed, Nyssa never stopping her tending to him, though, not wanting him to be harmed.
“But what about -?” Nyssa started to ask, only to be shushed. “She’s tended your - to your -” ship? base? refugia?
“She is a tool,” the Master soothed her, whispering to her. “You are more.”
“Thank you,” she said.
-
{and my Morden muse finally shows up} :)