Avengers fic - Another Day Like Today - Chapter 8
Title: Another Day Like Today
Fandom(s): Avengers MCU, Doctor Who
Characters: Steve Rogers, Eleventh Doctor, TARDIS
Pairings: None
Rating: Teen
Warnings: None I can think of
Spoilers:Any and all MCU movies through The Avengers (2012) are fair game, as is anything through Series 6 of NuWho (though there isn't much spoilery of the latter)
Chapters: 8 of 9
Series: Part One of Only Time
Word Count: 1711
Summary: Steve and the Doctor reach the TARDIS, and must free her in order to defeat the alien spacecraft poised in orbit over Manhattan.
Beta: cygna_hime -- Thank you! <3
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
The penthouse looked just as it had earlier that morning, when Ms. Potts had sent him up in the elevator to look for Stark. One of the big windows, to one side of the bar, was completely shattered, and part of the slate floor looked like someone had taken a jackhammer to it. Otherwise, the residence had suffered little damage in the previous day's battle. Plenty of sunlight streamed through the huge windows, and Steve briefly shaded his eyes to give them a chance to adjust to the brighter space. The Doctor brushed past him, darting for the door that let out onto the roof. As soon as he was no longer half-blinded by the daylight, Steve followed.
The torrent of crackling blue-white energy that streamed down from the sky was narrower than Steve had expected; rather than taking up half the roof, it was maybe a yard in diameter. Part of the beam clipped one corner of the blue police call-box, and the rest streamed down its side to penetrate the roof beneath. The Doctor was already standing beside the TARDIS, with one hand on its door. "She's still alive!" he cried as Steve approached. Relief cut through the undercurrent of worry in his voice. "Her power reserves are low, but they should be enough. Hurry!"
Steve nodded, adjusted the fit of his shield on his arm, and took a running start. Don't overshoot, Rogers, he told himself as he pushed himself off the concrete and into the air, it's a long way down. The top of the TARDIS was only about three feet across, slightly sloped, and had a light sticking up out of the center - but Steve had made more improbable leaps that week. His mind helpfully supplied the image of the Helicarrier's damaged turbine, and the feeling of dangling from a cable over thousands of feet of empty air. Yeah, let's not do that again. He dropped to one knee for stability, wrapping his free right hand around the light fixture jutting from the TARDIS's roof, and lifted his shield up into the energy beam.
The column of energy exerted a surprising amount of force on his shield - though oddly, he felt it pulling up, not pushing down. Static prickled at his skin and hair, and he had to squeeze his eyes mostly shut against the painful brightness, but the force of the beam wasn't enough to shift his arm out of position. Turning his forearm, he tilted the shield slightly, knowing that even a minute change in angle down here would dramatically affect where the beam reflected out in space. He spared a moment's thought for all the man-made satellites he'd been told were up in orbit now: communications, surveillance, global positioning. Hope I don't wing one of them, he thought, squinting up at the sky.
"Just a couple of degrees more to your right, Captain," he heard the Doctor call to him from below. He tipped his shield a little further to that side. "No, that's a bit too much; bring it back just a hair," came the next direction. Steve made the adjustment. "Yes! Good! Now hold it right there for a bit, give us a good long window to get into position." Steve nodded, then focused on keeping his muscles perfectly still, concentrating on the rhythm of his breathing. He wasn't sure exactly how much time had elapsed when the Doctor called to him again. "That should do it. Now, we're going to have to time this carefully, because we can't take off while the energy collector is draining the TARDIS's reserves. When I yell, you need to get inside fast. Got it?"
"I got it," Steve said, twisting his neck around to look down at the Doctor. "But shouldn't the alien ship have blown up already, if the plan works? I mean, we go back in time a couple of minutes, so shouldn't we be seeing the results of what we're about to do?"
The Doctor shook his head. "That's not how time works. You'd think it would, but it doesn't. Time isn't linear and deterministic that way; when viewed from outside the time stream, it's really more like a big ball of - never mind, I'll explain later. Get ready!" He slipped what looked like a perfectly normal key into the lock and ducked inside the TARDIS, leaving the door swinging open.
A moment later, the light knob Steve was gripping winked on, and some profoundly odd noises drifted out through the TARDIS door. Following them a second later came the Doctor's voice: "Now! Inside! Now!"
Steve dropped his shield arm and threw himself backwards, grabbing onto the edge of the TARDIS roof with his right hand. He used the force of his momentum to swing himself through the open door, landing in a sprawl on the floor inside. The door snapped shut of its own accord behind him. Steve pushed himself to all fours and looked around.
The room was both enormous and bizarre. It reminded him of something out of H. G. Wells - futuristic in a way that was entirely different from the sleek lines and polished chrome of the future he lived in now. What Steve guessed was the main console was a giant wheel of buttons, levers, switches, and more esoteric controls that hinted at functions that were less than obvious. Most impressively, the room was significantly larger than the police call-box he'd just been standing on top of.
"It's... bigger than I expected," he observed mildly.
The Doctor grinned down at him from the main console, where he piloting the TARDIS - or so Steve assumed; the man was darting around spinning dials and pulling levers in what appeared to be an entirely haphazard fashion. "I know! Isn't it smashing?" He peered into a small monitor, and made some adjustments to something outside of Steve's line of vision. "I'm calculating the optimal position for reflecting the energy collector's discharge at the Ketaros ship without putting the TARDIS in the direct path of the beam," he told Steve. "Your turn will be up shortly."
Steve glanced at the door, hefting his shield. "So how exactly is this gonna work?"
"The TARDIS projects a bubble of atmosphere around herself when the door is open," the Doctor explained. "You'll be able to lean out and catch the energy stream as it passes by. Though you may want to fasten yourself to something."
Steve nodded and moved into position. He found several narrow exposed pipes to one side of the door, and clipped one of his uniform straps to them. Giving it a tug, he decided it was secure, then turned back toward the Doctor. "You'll let me know when we're in position?"
"Nope," the Doctor replied, still grinning, "she will."
Sure enough, the door swung open by itself a few seconds later. A few feet away, the now-familiar energy beam shot past, and beyond it to his left, Steve could see the alien ship. This far into space, there was no frame of reference to make an accurate estimate of its size, but he could tell that it significantly dwarfed the Helicarrier. The TARDIS was slightly above the other ship, and Steve could readily identify his target: a large cylinder that jutted above the otherwise relatively uniform surface of the ship.
It was an unsettling feeling, leaning out of the shelter of a spacecraft and into the void. He grasped the door-frame tightly with his right hand, and kept his right foot firmly planted on the floor inside the TARDIS. The strap that tethered him stretched taut as he leaned out as far as he could reach. He brought his shield up into the path of the beam, twisting his arm around until the redirected shaft of light struck the Ketaros ship. Small movements of his muscles focused the ray on the storage capacitor; when he had the target painted, he held steady.
Almost immediately there was a reaction from the ship. Lights across its surface died and flared back to life in rapid succession. Tremors, tiny at first but rapidly increasing in intensity, rocked the alien craft. "What if they shut off the beam?" he shouted over his shoulder.
"Then they will have given up on Earth, and can go bother someone else," the Doctor replied. "They have the chance to surrender and leave peacefully, if they're smart enough to take it."
That seemed unlikely, from where Steve was standing. He could see the storage capacitor starting to glow an angry orange-red, and the Ketaros spaceship shuddered violently. His final warning was seeing the huge cylinder crumple in on itself; he pulled himself back into the safety of the TARDIS just as an enormous flash of light burst across his vision. The door slammed shut behind him.
Sound didn't carry across the vacuum of space, but the shock wave of the blast rocked the TARDIS, and only the strap tethering him to the pipe enabled him to keep his feet under him. The Doctor clung to the console, barely managing to keep from being tossed about the chamber. When the ship settled, the Doctor punched a couple of keys on a control panel and looked into one of the screens. "The Ketaros ship has been destroyed, and none of the debris is large enough to make it through the atmosphere," he declared.
Steve slumped against the wall, relief washing over him. He was never one for celebrating the deaths of his enemies, but many more people would have died on Earth if the Ketaros hadn't been stopped. Even counting only the number of people currently relying on artificial life support, the casualties would have been... He shook his head. It didn't matter; they were safe now. "We should head back," he said wearily. "Fury and the others will want to know what happened."
A wry smile broke across the Doctor's face. "In a moment, they'll be more interested in knowing how the TARDIS was able to materialize inside their top secret headquarters."
Whether it was the post-battle release of tension, or the mental image of the expression on Fury's face, Steve wasn't sure, but it was a good three minutes before he could stop laughing.
Fandom(s): Avengers MCU, Doctor Who
Characters: Steve Rogers, Eleventh Doctor, TARDIS
Pairings: None
Rating: Teen
Warnings: None I can think of
Spoilers:Any and all MCU movies through The Avengers (2012) are fair game, as is anything through Series 6 of NuWho (though there isn't much spoilery of the latter)
Chapters: 8 of 9
Series: Part One of Only Time
Word Count: 1711
Summary: Steve and the Doctor reach the TARDIS, and must free her in order to defeat the alien spacecraft poised in orbit over Manhattan.
Beta: cygna_hime -- Thank you! <3
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
The penthouse looked just as it had earlier that morning, when Ms. Potts had sent him up in the elevator to look for Stark. One of the big windows, to one side of the bar, was completely shattered, and part of the slate floor looked like someone had taken a jackhammer to it. Otherwise, the residence had suffered little damage in the previous day's battle. Plenty of sunlight streamed through the huge windows, and Steve briefly shaded his eyes to give them a chance to adjust to the brighter space. The Doctor brushed past him, darting for the door that let out onto the roof. As soon as he was no longer half-blinded by the daylight, Steve followed.
The torrent of crackling blue-white energy that streamed down from the sky was narrower than Steve had expected; rather than taking up half the roof, it was maybe a yard in diameter. Part of the beam clipped one corner of the blue police call-box, and the rest streamed down its side to penetrate the roof beneath. The Doctor was already standing beside the TARDIS, with one hand on its door. "She's still alive!" he cried as Steve approached. Relief cut through the undercurrent of worry in his voice. "Her power reserves are low, but they should be enough. Hurry!"
Steve nodded, adjusted the fit of his shield on his arm, and took a running start. Don't overshoot, Rogers, he told himself as he pushed himself off the concrete and into the air, it's a long way down. The top of the TARDIS was only about three feet across, slightly sloped, and had a light sticking up out of the center - but Steve had made more improbable leaps that week. His mind helpfully supplied the image of the Helicarrier's damaged turbine, and the feeling of dangling from a cable over thousands of feet of empty air. Yeah, let's not do that again. He dropped to one knee for stability, wrapping his free right hand around the light fixture jutting from the TARDIS's roof, and lifted his shield up into the energy beam.
The column of energy exerted a surprising amount of force on his shield - though oddly, he felt it pulling up, not pushing down. Static prickled at his skin and hair, and he had to squeeze his eyes mostly shut against the painful brightness, but the force of the beam wasn't enough to shift his arm out of position. Turning his forearm, he tilted the shield slightly, knowing that even a minute change in angle down here would dramatically affect where the beam reflected out in space. He spared a moment's thought for all the man-made satellites he'd been told were up in orbit now: communications, surveillance, global positioning. Hope I don't wing one of them, he thought, squinting up at the sky.
"Just a couple of degrees more to your right, Captain," he heard the Doctor call to him from below. He tipped his shield a little further to that side. "No, that's a bit too much; bring it back just a hair," came the next direction. Steve made the adjustment. "Yes! Good! Now hold it right there for a bit, give us a good long window to get into position." Steve nodded, then focused on keeping his muscles perfectly still, concentrating on the rhythm of his breathing. He wasn't sure exactly how much time had elapsed when the Doctor called to him again. "That should do it. Now, we're going to have to time this carefully, because we can't take off while the energy collector is draining the TARDIS's reserves. When I yell, you need to get inside fast. Got it?"
"I got it," Steve said, twisting his neck around to look down at the Doctor. "But shouldn't the alien ship have blown up already, if the plan works? I mean, we go back in time a couple of minutes, so shouldn't we be seeing the results of what we're about to do?"
The Doctor shook his head. "That's not how time works. You'd think it would, but it doesn't. Time isn't linear and deterministic that way; when viewed from outside the time stream, it's really more like a big ball of - never mind, I'll explain later. Get ready!" He slipped what looked like a perfectly normal key into the lock and ducked inside the TARDIS, leaving the door swinging open.
A moment later, the light knob Steve was gripping winked on, and some profoundly odd noises drifted out through the TARDIS door. Following them a second later came the Doctor's voice: "Now! Inside! Now!"
Steve dropped his shield arm and threw himself backwards, grabbing onto the edge of the TARDIS roof with his right hand. He used the force of his momentum to swing himself through the open door, landing in a sprawl on the floor inside. The door snapped shut of its own accord behind him. Steve pushed himself to all fours and looked around.
The room was both enormous and bizarre. It reminded him of something out of H. G. Wells - futuristic in a way that was entirely different from the sleek lines and polished chrome of the future he lived in now. What Steve guessed was the main console was a giant wheel of buttons, levers, switches, and more esoteric controls that hinted at functions that were less than obvious. Most impressively, the room was significantly larger than the police call-box he'd just been standing on top of.
"It's... bigger than I expected," he observed mildly.
The Doctor grinned down at him from the main console, where he piloting the TARDIS - or so Steve assumed; the man was darting around spinning dials and pulling levers in what appeared to be an entirely haphazard fashion. "I know! Isn't it smashing?" He peered into a small monitor, and made some adjustments to something outside of Steve's line of vision. "I'm calculating the optimal position for reflecting the energy collector's discharge at the Ketaros ship without putting the TARDIS in the direct path of the beam," he told Steve. "Your turn will be up shortly."
Steve glanced at the door, hefting his shield. "So how exactly is this gonna work?"
"The TARDIS projects a bubble of atmosphere around herself when the door is open," the Doctor explained. "You'll be able to lean out and catch the energy stream as it passes by. Though you may want to fasten yourself to something."
Steve nodded and moved into position. He found several narrow exposed pipes to one side of the door, and clipped one of his uniform straps to them. Giving it a tug, he decided it was secure, then turned back toward the Doctor. "You'll let me know when we're in position?"
"Nope," the Doctor replied, still grinning, "she will."
Sure enough, the door swung open by itself a few seconds later. A few feet away, the now-familiar energy beam shot past, and beyond it to his left, Steve could see the alien ship. This far into space, there was no frame of reference to make an accurate estimate of its size, but he could tell that it significantly dwarfed the Helicarrier. The TARDIS was slightly above the other ship, and Steve could readily identify his target: a large cylinder that jutted above the otherwise relatively uniform surface of the ship.
It was an unsettling feeling, leaning out of the shelter of a spacecraft and into the void. He grasped the door-frame tightly with his right hand, and kept his right foot firmly planted on the floor inside the TARDIS. The strap that tethered him stretched taut as he leaned out as far as he could reach. He brought his shield up into the path of the beam, twisting his arm around until the redirected shaft of light struck the Ketaros ship. Small movements of his muscles focused the ray on the storage capacitor; when he had the target painted, he held steady.
Almost immediately there was a reaction from the ship. Lights across its surface died and flared back to life in rapid succession. Tremors, tiny at first but rapidly increasing in intensity, rocked the alien craft. "What if they shut off the beam?" he shouted over his shoulder.
"Then they will have given up on Earth, and can go bother someone else," the Doctor replied. "They have the chance to surrender and leave peacefully, if they're smart enough to take it."
That seemed unlikely, from where Steve was standing. He could see the storage capacitor starting to glow an angry orange-red, and the Ketaros spaceship shuddered violently. His final warning was seeing the huge cylinder crumple in on itself; he pulled himself back into the safety of the TARDIS just as an enormous flash of light burst across his vision. The door slammed shut behind him.
Sound didn't carry across the vacuum of space, but the shock wave of the blast rocked the TARDIS, and only the strap tethering him to the pipe enabled him to keep his feet under him. The Doctor clung to the console, barely managing to keep from being tossed about the chamber. When the ship settled, the Doctor punched a couple of keys on a control panel and looked into one of the screens. "The Ketaros ship has been destroyed, and none of the debris is large enough to make it through the atmosphere," he declared.
Steve slumped against the wall, relief washing over him. He was never one for celebrating the deaths of his enemies, but many more people would have died on Earth if the Ketaros hadn't been stopped. Even counting only the number of people currently relying on artificial life support, the casualties would have been... He shook his head. It didn't matter; they were safe now. "We should head back," he said wearily. "Fury and the others will want to know what happened."
A wry smile broke across the Doctor's face. "In a moment, they'll be more interested in knowing how the TARDIS was able to materialize inside their top secret headquarters."
Whether it was the post-battle release of tension, or the mental image of the expression on Fury's face, Steve wasn't sure, but it was a good three minutes before he could stop laughing.