Fic: Lucy Drabbles|| Fandoms: Doctor Who, Sarah Jane Adventures
I'm struggling a little with making changes to the plot of my Lucy/Tish fic since I got my notes back from my beta at, er... the start of February. (I should really get on that.)
I wrote three Lucy drabbles--a couple of UNIT ones and a crossover with Sarah Jane Adventures. They're a little all over the place because I'm experimenting with her characterization. Opinions welcome.
Edit: Thanks to torn_eledhwen for Britpick of the last drabble. I made a couple of changes due to her advice. ;)
Crossposted: dwfiction, who_otp and dw_femslash / sarahjane_fic (only the last one.)
***
Title: A Narrow Escape
Pairings: Lucy/Harry Sullivan
Rating: G
"I say, old girl. How did you manage to hypnotize those blokes back there? Jolly handy talent, I'll give you that. If it weren't for you, I'd say we'd have been done for!"
"I-I didn't," Mrs. Saxon stammered quietly.
"Well it sure looked like that to me, old thing. But then what can I say, I was shot at the time. Could have been hallucinating, I suppose."
"Yes," Mrs. Saxon agreed. "You were shot. It was dark. We got away."
***
Title: Certainly Not A Romance
Pairings: Lucy/The Valeyard, Lucy/Master, Jo/Three
Rating: PG-13
Summary: I decided that Jo's scientist husband died and she went back to UNIT. Also, she kept her maiden name because Professor Clifford Jones is a hippie modern like that. Er. Could use work. :P
"Oh! This is just--you let us go, right now!"
"Not yet, my pretties!" The short, bug-eyed little man slavered, and pranced about the younger woman and her supervisor as they struggled against their bonds. "The Valeyard wanted fresh female humans to experiment upon, and you are exactly that!"
"You won't get away with this!" The older woman barked. "My assistant and I are both members of an internationally recognized organization that specializes in the discovery of and communication with alien life on this planet. They both know we came out here and they should come looking for us eventually!"
"No," Lucy interrupted tonelessly.
"I--Saxon, what are you saying? Of course the Brigadier will send reinforcements, the moment we neglect to report in!"
"Yes," Lucy agreed quietly. "But listen."
"I do not hear--"
"Listen," Lucy said again. And closed her eyes. "The everpresent hum of engines. Can you hear them, Miss Grant? The engines?" Her eyes had a strangely unfocused look to them when they opened again. "We're in space."
"The human lady is correct," The creature with protuberant ocular organs agreed. But even he flinched when Lucy turned her dreamy smile on him.
***
"You're a Time Lord," the younger (still natural) blonde said in a sing-song voice, and the Valeyard had the oddest sense of déjà-vu. Miss Grant he already knew, and it was regrettable, but after weighing the pros and cons of going back to find some humans that weren't from UNIT to experiment upon, he figured he just wouldn't say anything.
But the young lady, she was making him think differently. For one thing, she wasn't afraid. Most women who were about to be cut up should probably display something approaching fear. Instead, she seemed to be--yes, she *was* releasing pheromones into the air, which if he wasn't mistaken meant that if the UNIT recruitment office had been doing their job correctly this one shouldn't have passed her psych screening.
"I married a Time Lord once. My Harry. Is this the part with the needle? I like that best. The way it goes into the skin."
The Valeyard looked into her eyes and stepped back with a sigh. Those pheromones, coupled with the way she seemed to be turned on by the prospect of torture was the exact opposite of how he needed the subject to react for the purposes of this particular experiment, were signs that he was in over his head with this one. To make matters more mortifying, now that the woman was bleeding a little he realized (with considerable chagrin) exactly where he'd seen her before. "I apologize, Mrs. Saxon, but this just isn't working out."
The Doctor's twelfth-or-thirteenth incarnation put his equipment down and rubbed his eyes. He wanted a Companion that couldn't die, but maybe he was just fooling himself. Jo--though recently widowed--was far past her prime and the last thing he wanted to do was travel with Koschei's flipping wife for all of eternity.
He considered hucking them both out into deep space but then settled on giving them both mild amnesia and dropping them back home.
Lucy pouted all through the next day in the office. Jo called in sick.
***
Title: The Old Wives' Club
Pairings: Lucy/Master, Three and Four/Sarah Jane, hints of Lucy/Sarah Jane
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sarah Jane meets an unexpected person while doing coverage of the Bubble Shock trial.
Disclaimer: CIA appearance in a courtroom inspired by the Guild doing the same thing during Trial of the Monarch in Season 2 of The Venture Bros.
To herself at least, Sarah Jane Smith would readily admit she was a paranormal investigator first and a reporter second. That said, there were bills to pay and deadlines to meet, and the Bubble Shock hearings being held today would provide sufficient material for a follow-up piece to the original article she’d written at the start of the year.
It was lamentable that the gears of the legal system took this long to turn. The wait time for the soft drink company run by the Bane to procure their business license had been severely truncated-likely due to generous bribes-but the British Empire saw fit to place the remaining human representatives in holding for several months until the trial date. By which point all evidence had been tampered with-informers silenced, video footage altered, and chemical compositions rendered “inadmissible” due to “errors” during retroactive clinical testing.
But here she was now with her notepad and assortment of pens, ready to see if there was anything she could learn that she hadn’t discovered on her own--anything that wasn’t floating about on the internet already. She somehow doubted it, but you never knew.
It was quarter after ten in the morning and the rest of the spectators were beginning to filter in. Sarah scanned the room to see if any persons of significance were about, but she didn’t see anyone worth interviewing during the break-until her gaze settled on a shockingly familiar figure in black. It can’t be her, she told herself (but only after staring for a long moment.) No, it wouldn’t be her. The flaxen hair peeking out from the edges of that veil could belong to any face, and there would have been bodyguards, surely.
There was some talk about releasing Bubble Shock again following the trial, if it could be proven that the “contamination” was an isolated event. Sarah Jane did not feel this was appropriate, but it seemed that the only people who agreed with her were the people from Britvic, and that was only because the rival soft drink conglomerate Robinsons had purchased several shares in Bubble Shock before the poisoning fiasco.
Well, they wouldn’t silence her. She’d been there, and she’d say her piece because the public had a right to know, even if “temporary psychosis and short-term memory loss due to possible exposure to unidentified substances” was all the Better Business Bureau would admit to in their release.
Following the break for lunch, the woman in black relocated to the seat just behind her. At this distance, the resemblance was unmistakable. They sat in silence as the trial resumed. Sarah said nothing and kept her eyes trained forward, although she could swear she could feel the woman in black behind her, her mad gaze boring into her back. It was strange being stared at like that, like an itch she couldn’t scratch. So intensely was she attempting to focus on the words of the Prosecution and ignore the political personality mere inches away that Sarah nearly yelped as she felt the lace brush against the back of her neck, followed by hot air against her ear.
”This place is filled with Strangers,” the woman said dreamily. She sounded not quite awake.
Sarah Jane was at a loss as to what to say. Granted, there had been rumours about the deterioration of Lucy Saxon’s mental health following her husband’s death, and the tabloids had even published a few photos of supposed “suicide attempts,” but why the lady would be here and not in some mental hospital or charity benefit was beyond Sarah’s understanding. Still, she had to say something. “Well, this is a corporate hearing,” Sarah ad-libbed under her breath. “It stands to reason that many of these people have never met before.”
The woman in mourning actually giggled. ”Strangers are CIA operatives.”
“I beg your pardon?” Sarah-Jane said, subtly shifting the angle of the notepad in her lap. Forget the Bubble Shock article, she could do a personal piece on the late Prime Minister’s wife instead. She did consider herself above the usual paparazzi rubbish, but there wasn’t a writer out there who would pass up an exclusive like this. “American government agents, in Ealing?”
”Celestial Intervention,” the widow whispered back, more urgently this time. ”A freeze team. Harry told me about them. They’re here to take something out of time.”
Sarah Jane looked about, and suddenly noticed there were a number of men in the courtroom’s audience who seemed strangely dressed for this decade. Many of them were wearing sunglasses, and a few were cupping a hand to the side of their head as if communicating through an earpiece. As she took this in, the Widow Saxon announced she was going to the loo. Sarah followed her.
As they exited through the heavy double-doors, Sarah nearly ran headfirst into a number of suspicious looking men in dark black robes with high collars, amassed just outside. Sarah’s feet slowed of their own accord as she found herself staring, open-mouthed. All she could think was that it was impossible. But Mrs. Saxon pulled on her hand, and then her arm, and next thing Sarah knew she was staggering into the ladies’.
“Get down on the floor! Hold your breath!” The other woman hissed, a hand pressing into the small of Sarah Jane’s back. Suddenly it seemed that the Ophelia business was all an act.
Sarah numbly obeyed. A strange mist seemed to fill the air, and there were several shouts in a language both alien and familiar, followed by a knock on the door. Sarah wanted to laugh. Who knocked on the door to the women's lavatory?
“The CIA appreciates your lack of interference, Mrs. Lungbarrow. Mrs. Oakdown.”
“How long?” the Widow Saxon called, her voice surprisingly strong. Her hand was still at Sarah’s back, pressing her into the cold tiles.
“Exactly two minutes.”
At one minute fourty-five seconds, they returned to their seats. Sarah tried not to stare, but it was difficult not to notice when everyone in a room of a hundred odd people were frozen in time but you.
”Closed loop time pockets,” the younger woman said, side-stepping a fellow audience member who had his arms behind his head and one leg crossed over the other, caught in mid-stretch. ”It is all right for the rest of them,” --she indicated with a sweep of her hand--- “but we have different energy on us. Harry thought they might still be about. It is fortunate I was here. We both made our decision quite young. Now that we’re older and our men are gone, shouldn’t mean we have to be punished for it.”
Sarah opened her mouth to ask exactly what the Widow Saxon meant by that remark, but the courtroom exploded back into life again and her questions were soon forgotten.
Several key witnesses were missing.
I wrote three Lucy drabbles--a couple of UNIT ones and a crossover with Sarah Jane Adventures. They're a little all over the place because I'm experimenting with her characterization. Opinions welcome.
Edit: Thanks to torn_eledhwen for Britpick of the last drabble. I made a couple of changes due to her advice. ;)
Crossposted: dwfiction, who_otp and dw_femslash / sarahjane_fic (only the last one.)
***
Title: A Narrow Escape
Pairings: Lucy/Harry Sullivan
Rating: G
"I say, old girl. How did you manage to hypnotize those blokes back there? Jolly handy talent, I'll give you that. If it weren't for you, I'd say we'd have been done for!"
"I-I didn't," Mrs. Saxon stammered quietly.
"Well it sure looked like that to me, old thing. But then what can I say, I was shot at the time. Could have been hallucinating, I suppose."
"Yes," Mrs. Saxon agreed. "You were shot. It was dark. We got away."
***
Title: Certainly Not A Romance
Pairings: Lucy/The Valeyard, Lucy/Master, Jo/Three
Rating: PG-13
Summary: I decided that Jo's scientist husband died and she went back to UNIT. Also, she kept her maiden name because Professor Clifford Jones is a hippie modern like that. Er. Could use work. :P
"Oh! This is just--you let us go, right now!"
"Not yet, my pretties!" The short, bug-eyed little man slavered, and pranced about the younger woman and her supervisor as they struggled against their bonds. "The Valeyard wanted fresh female humans to experiment upon, and you are exactly that!"
"You won't get away with this!" The older woman barked. "My assistant and I are both members of an internationally recognized organization that specializes in the discovery of and communication with alien life on this planet. They both know we came out here and they should come looking for us eventually!"
"No," Lucy interrupted tonelessly.
"I--Saxon, what are you saying? Of course the Brigadier will send reinforcements, the moment we neglect to report in!"
"Yes," Lucy agreed quietly. "But listen."
"I do not hear--"
"Listen," Lucy said again. And closed her eyes. "The everpresent hum of engines. Can you hear them, Miss Grant? The engines?" Her eyes had a strangely unfocused look to them when they opened again. "We're in space."
"The human lady is correct," The creature with protuberant ocular organs agreed. But even he flinched when Lucy turned her dreamy smile on him.
***
"You're a Time Lord," the younger (still natural) blonde said in a sing-song voice, and the Valeyard had the oddest sense of déjà-vu. Miss Grant he already knew, and it was regrettable, but after weighing the pros and cons of going back to find some humans that weren't from UNIT to experiment upon, he figured he just wouldn't say anything.
But the young lady, she was making him think differently. For one thing, she wasn't afraid. Most women who were about to be cut up should probably display something approaching fear. Instead, she seemed to be--yes, she *was* releasing pheromones into the air, which if he wasn't mistaken meant that if the UNIT recruitment office had been doing their job correctly this one shouldn't have passed her psych screening.
"I married a Time Lord once. My Harry. Is this the part with the needle? I like that best. The way it goes into the skin."
The Valeyard looked into her eyes and stepped back with a sigh. Those pheromones, coupled with the way she seemed to be turned on by the prospect of torture was the exact opposite of how he needed the subject to react for the purposes of this particular experiment, were signs that he was in over his head with this one. To make matters more mortifying, now that the woman was bleeding a little he realized (with considerable chagrin) exactly where he'd seen her before. "I apologize, Mrs. Saxon, but this just isn't working out."
The Doctor's twelfth-or-thirteenth incarnation put his equipment down and rubbed his eyes. He wanted a Companion that couldn't die, but maybe he was just fooling himself. Jo--though recently widowed--was far past her prime and the last thing he wanted to do was travel with Koschei's flipping wife for all of eternity.
He considered hucking them both out into deep space but then settled on giving them both mild amnesia and dropping them back home.
Lucy pouted all through the next day in the office. Jo called in sick.
***
Title: The Old Wives' Club
Pairings: Lucy/Master, Three and Four/Sarah Jane, hints of Lucy/Sarah Jane
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sarah Jane meets an unexpected person while doing coverage of the Bubble Shock trial.
Disclaimer: CIA appearance in a courtroom inspired by the Guild doing the same thing during Trial of the Monarch in Season 2 of The Venture Bros.
To herself at least, Sarah Jane Smith would readily admit she was a paranormal investigator first and a reporter second. That said, there were bills to pay and deadlines to meet, and the Bubble Shock hearings being held today would provide sufficient material for a follow-up piece to the original article she’d written at the start of the year.
It was lamentable that the gears of the legal system took this long to turn. The wait time for the soft drink company run by the Bane to procure their business license had been severely truncated-likely due to generous bribes-but the British Empire saw fit to place the remaining human representatives in holding for several months until the trial date. By which point all evidence had been tampered with-informers silenced, video footage altered, and chemical compositions rendered “inadmissible” due to “errors” during retroactive clinical testing.
But here she was now with her notepad and assortment of pens, ready to see if there was anything she could learn that she hadn’t discovered on her own--anything that wasn’t floating about on the internet already. She somehow doubted it, but you never knew.
It was quarter after ten in the morning and the rest of the spectators were beginning to filter in. Sarah scanned the room to see if any persons of significance were about, but she didn’t see anyone worth interviewing during the break-until her gaze settled on a shockingly familiar figure in black. It can’t be her, she told herself (but only after staring for a long moment.) No, it wouldn’t be her. The flaxen hair peeking out from the edges of that veil could belong to any face, and there would have been bodyguards, surely.
There was some talk about releasing Bubble Shock again following the trial, if it could be proven that the “contamination” was an isolated event. Sarah Jane did not feel this was appropriate, but it seemed that the only people who agreed with her were the people from Britvic, and that was only because the rival soft drink conglomerate Robinsons had purchased several shares in Bubble Shock before the poisoning fiasco.
Well, they wouldn’t silence her. She’d been there, and she’d say her piece because the public had a right to know, even if “temporary psychosis and short-term memory loss due to possible exposure to unidentified substances” was all the Better Business Bureau would admit to in their release.
Following the break for lunch, the woman in black relocated to the seat just behind her. At this distance, the resemblance was unmistakable. They sat in silence as the trial resumed. Sarah said nothing and kept her eyes trained forward, although she could swear she could feel the woman in black behind her, her mad gaze boring into her back. It was strange being stared at like that, like an itch she couldn’t scratch. So intensely was she attempting to focus on the words of the Prosecution and ignore the political personality mere inches away that Sarah nearly yelped as she felt the lace brush against the back of her neck, followed by hot air against her ear.
”This place is filled with Strangers,” the woman said dreamily. She sounded not quite awake.
Sarah Jane was at a loss as to what to say. Granted, there had been rumours about the deterioration of Lucy Saxon’s mental health following her husband’s death, and the tabloids had even published a few photos of supposed “suicide attempts,” but why the lady would be here and not in some mental hospital or charity benefit was beyond Sarah’s understanding. Still, she had to say something. “Well, this is a corporate hearing,” Sarah ad-libbed under her breath. “It stands to reason that many of these people have never met before.”
The woman in mourning actually giggled. ”Strangers are CIA operatives.”
“I beg your pardon?” Sarah-Jane said, subtly shifting the angle of the notepad in her lap. Forget the Bubble Shock article, she could do a personal piece on the late Prime Minister’s wife instead. She did consider herself above the usual paparazzi rubbish, but there wasn’t a writer out there who would pass up an exclusive like this. “American government agents, in Ealing?”
”Celestial Intervention,” the widow whispered back, more urgently this time. ”A freeze team. Harry told me about them. They’re here to take something out of time.”
Sarah Jane looked about, and suddenly noticed there were a number of men in the courtroom’s audience who seemed strangely dressed for this decade. Many of them were wearing sunglasses, and a few were cupping a hand to the side of their head as if communicating through an earpiece. As she took this in, the Widow Saxon announced she was going to the loo. Sarah followed her.
As they exited through the heavy double-doors, Sarah nearly ran headfirst into a number of suspicious looking men in dark black robes with high collars, amassed just outside. Sarah’s feet slowed of their own accord as she found herself staring, open-mouthed. All she could think was that it was impossible. But Mrs. Saxon pulled on her hand, and then her arm, and next thing Sarah knew she was staggering into the ladies’.
“Get down on the floor! Hold your breath!” The other woman hissed, a hand pressing into the small of Sarah Jane’s back. Suddenly it seemed that the Ophelia business was all an act.
Sarah numbly obeyed. A strange mist seemed to fill the air, and there were several shouts in a language both alien and familiar, followed by a knock on the door. Sarah wanted to laugh. Who knocked on the door to the women's lavatory?
“The CIA appreciates your lack of interference, Mrs. Lungbarrow. Mrs. Oakdown.”
“How long?” the Widow Saxon called, her voice surprisingly strong. Her hand was still at Sarah’s back, pressing her into the cold tiles.
“Exactly two minutes.”
At one minute fourty-five seconds, they returned to their seats. Sarah tried not to stare, but it was difficult not to notice when everyone in a room of a hundred odd people were frozen in time but you.
”Closed loop time pockets,” the younger woman said, side-stepping a fellow audience member who had his arms behind his head and one leg crossed over the other, caught in mid-stretch. ”It is all right for the rest of them,” --she indicated with a sweep of her hand--- “but we have different energy on us. Harry thought they might still be about. It is fortunate I was here. We both made our decision quite young. Now that we’re older and our men are gone, shouldn’t mean we have to be punished for it.”
Sarah opened her mouth to ask exactly what the Widow Saxon meant by that remark, but the courtroom exploded back into life again and her questions were soon forgotten.
Several key witnesses were missing.