rude_not_ginger | Christmas Open Thread

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Christmas Open Thread

•deck•the•halls•

• THE DOCTOR LEARNS THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS •

~•~

Christmas Eve. 2009.

The Doctor loved Christmas! Back when he was a wee Time Lord, the first place he ever landed was London on Christmas Eve. He promised himself he'd never miss another Christmas ever, but that promise went into the same pile as "Lose weight" and "Regenerate a better hairline" and "Stop leaving companions in other universes". But the Doctor had never quite gotten the hang of New Years'. (He once spent several hours commiserating on the similarity between the confusing nature of New Years and Thursdays with one Arthur Dent, who will sadly not be appearing in this piece of narrative. -editor)

But! Through all his travels in space and time, he still hadn't quite figured out what Christmas was for exactly. Except as a yearly excuse for turkey, too much wine, and plum pudding (all of which the Doctor approved of). This year, though, as he strode the streets on this wonderful Christmas Eve, the Doctor decided he would figure out exactly what Christmas was all about.

This may or may not have included use of a intergalactic manipulative detector and a full pack of radio stellar isotopian crystals. Oh, and a cup of hot chocolate. In a festively-coloured cup.

There was a lovely light snow, and the Doctor grinned madly at the stars. Christmas. This year, he was going to figure out what it was all about.

~•~

OOC: Open thread, feel free to tag in as if your character is a passerby or as if your character is a long-standing companion! I'll be working on this thread up until the New Year, most likely! Everyone from any verse (or no verse!) is welcome, just let me know if you'd prefer it from a community or specific universe! And, for this thread, threadhopping is totally welcome!

Happy Holidays, everyone! &hearts

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"Jo, don't!"

It was too late, though, and her hand went to the apparition. As she touched it, it changed from Donna to Jo's husband (only older, now, and the Doctor could smugly state that he had not aged as well as the Doctor had).

But it was more than that. He saw beams of light where the apparition pulled from Jo. Life energy? Psychic reserves? Whatever it was, it fueled the apparition to make it stronger.

OOC: Sounds good to me!

"Do you know about icebergs?" the Doctor asked, taking a step back. The ice below them was thinner here and it cracked beneath his feet.

"How much of them we see over the waterline?"

"Great! Now, hold these crystals here and keep them pointed outwards. We're trying to draw a corrolated subfusion biosector to the psychic energy and hopefully, if I can get this thing working, we can trace it."

He gave the small machine another thwack.

"Nah," the Doctor said. "Staying in one place? Could you imagine that? Imagine me? Living in a house? Me! In a house! Would never work out."

"Nah, they've got one in Florida, but it's kept pretty top secret hush-hush business I'm not supposed to know about," the Doctor said. But, of course, the New Years' drinks with Benton and Yates always ended with one of them telling him all about the supersecret things he wasn't supposed to know about.

The Doctor took Alan's hand enthusiastically. "Jackson. Like Maria Jackson, Sarah's friend?" He let out a laugh. "Oh, I've heard quite a bit about you two. Trouble on the planet, saving the universe from your kitchen and attic. That is brilliant."

He paused, and concern momentarily hit his face. "Odd, running into you without warning like this."

"Oh my god," she exclaimed, amazed by what she saw. "I had no idea these things could do anything like this!" Nor had she thought such a flimsy child's toy was capable of it either.

"So the creature's through there, is it? I wonder why it's here of all days..."

"Well, it just proves whoever's from here doesn't realize that either," the Doctor said. He gave Donna a smile. "You ever hear little kids saying they can see things through these? Well, they can. They just don't know it."

He reached down to take Donna's hand.

"Let's find out, shall we?"

"I had done, but I never believed them. I mean, they believe in things like the Bogeyman and the Tooth Fairy and neither of those are real," she said, thoroughly convinced that the idea was completely absurd.

"But I'm definitely not going to say no!" she said, smiling right back at him as she took his hand. "Have to help you figure out that meaning of Christmas still."

Thinking about it, Florida made sense, especially given the nature of the work UNIT seemed to be up to constantly. He'd ignored his own niggling curiosity, but had learned the hard way that he shouldn't have had Maria sitting right beside him when he hacked his way in.

It shouldn't have been that easy, all things considered.

"Maria is brilliant." The praise of his only child, especially coming from someone Sarah Jane held in such high regard, sent a shot of warm giddiness straight through his chest. "Mostly from Sarah Jane's attic, but Maria and I were together when we discovered Luke'd been nicked by Slitheen. Of course, I thought they were cannibals at first, and it was Chrissie's fault in the first place, but could've ended worse, I suppose."

The Sontaran affair, now, that was another matter entirely. He'd rather die than admit it to anyone, but after that, he had breathed a rather large (and silent) sigh of relief once they were on their flight to Washington.

"Well, not that odd." he remarked. "I'd think it'd be more unusual to land somewhere and not run into someone who didn't know who you are."

"The house probably wouldn't be standing for very long," she smirked just a bit.

She tugged a bit again at the scarf she wore - which may or may not look just a whee bit familiar to the Doctor as it is really big on her - before looking up at him. "Do you think Adric would have liked it here?"

The Doctor grinned back to her. His best friend, giving up her Christmas to go running around invisible doors with him. Maybe this was the sort of thing Christmas was all about. Just being with the people you loved.

"I'm so glad I met you, Donna Noble," he said.

And with that, he took a step through the hidden door.

"Maybe." Marco tip toed to try and see. "Elaborate, please?" He bit his inner lip, curiosity tickling his mind at the strongest.

That sudden admission caught her off-guard slightly, but she quickly recovered and gave his hand a squeeze as well as bumping his shoulder with her own. She couldn't think of anybody else she'd rather spend her Christmas with, especially if it meant avoiding a day where her mother would lecture her about one thing or another.

"You too, Spaceman," she replied softly before she followed him in.

Mwahahaha- and so Brigitta's evil plan comes to fruition!

...Well, if she ever thought ahead enough to ever have a evil plan0 but anyway! She laughs as he hops over and then grins with glee as he returns- taking the skates with a fair amount of happiness.

...Which leads to doubt fairly quickly; and then a grudging kind of acceptance "over my shoes?"

When she touched the unreal Cliff's shoulder he looked up at her and smiled. He looked better already, he thought, smiling back at him. "Are you alright?" she asked.

He didn't say anything in return and she wondered if he couldn't. But he raised an arm and put a hand on her cheek. It felt different from when Cliff did that, though, because this Cliff's hand made her cheek feel very cold - colder than the air made it.

"What can I do to help?" she asked. Around them a transparent image of Jo's home in South America appeared. She could still see the London street behind it.

"Not very much?" she guessed.

Random factoids about icebergs somehow don't come in handy much, in space.

Lucy did as she was told and awkwardly snaked her hands in to keep the indicated crystals in the proper place. She had absolutely no idea what his technobabble meant and she didn't ask. More than likely "psychic energy" was a fancy term for "Christmas cheer". The idea that you could track such a thing struck her as faintly ludicrous and again she thought the Doctor silly for even trying.

But she was subject to his whims so there was no point in grousing overlong about it. She watched as he whacked the gadget and tried to keep the crystals steady.

"A thousand years old, and you've got a lot to learn about humanity."

The dog whined, and Dorothy kneeled down and unclipped the leash from his collar. He bounded off into the snow, jumping and rolling around in the fluffy whiteness.

"It's not about 'psychic energies'. It's just the time of year when people appreciate the things they're blessed with." She stands, dusting snow off her knees. "Showing love to people we care about is what Christmas is all about."

Wilf spotted the familiar sight of the Doctor in the distance, and hurried over to him. He was wrapped up warm against the cold, as usual. "Snow in London this time of year means it's going to be a cold winter," he said, puffing slightly as he fell in step beside the Doctor.

Late gatecrasher, I know...

The Master's lips curled in distaste as he took the crystals, barely keeping his footing on the slick ground and scowled. "Shall I do anything else for you? Hold your coat, perhaps?"

He rolled his eyes at him. "You are far too easy to wind up."

[ooc: GUESS WHAT I GOT FIXED!!!]

"At least it's real snow this year," the Doctor said, giving Wilf a smile as he approached. He should've been surprised to see him, he supposed, but time never worked the same way for Donna and her family as it did for the others the Doctor knew.

And it was a relief, having someone there with him.

"Big family plans for tomorrow?"

"Nah," the Doctor said. "You'd be surprised at the number of people who don't notice I'm around when I am. And the small number of people I end up running into more than once."

It was strange. Sarah had spoken very highly of Maria, much in the way he imagined she might if she had a daughter of her own, and briefly glazed over Alan (now that the Doctor thought about it, it was sort of in the same way she glazed over talking about Harry with the Doctor while they traveled together---he'd have to ask her at some point about that). But the Jacksons were special, to the universe.

"Still! Got a wide-range psychic defluxuative recoil key that could certainly use a second hand," the Doctor said, offering over the crystals to Alan.

"Oh, he liked Earth well enough," the Doctor said. "Always enjoyed eating nibbles at parties. He'd probably love a good Christmas turkey."

Talk about Adric always made the Doctor sad. Such an unnecessary death of such a beloved companion. Too quick, no chance to stop it, to pull him back, to save him.

The silence that had fallen lasted for a minute between them. Snow falling and memories coming back just didn't sit well with the ex-Lady President.

"Well, this is your holiday. Is there something you want to be doing?"

A distraction is always best at times like these.

"There," the Doctor said, beaming as the machine finally started churning out interesting information. He scrunched his eyebrows together and looked directly upwards, towards the sky.

"I think we have a problem."

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Christmas Open Thread

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I Knoooooooow ;;- four and an half hours for a fifteen minute journey, grah.

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