He's Fire And Ice And Rage

It has been an absolutely mad day.

The Doctor stands there, finally having found the crystal shard of Mandubas II and destroyed it, saved Rose from the evil forces of Getrishak, and kept Mickey generally out of trouble. The three of them stand now at their long-sought destination: The hidden UNIT watering hole outside of London.

This was, of course, where they had originally intended to go, before the forces of Getrishak stepped in the way, their commandeered vehicle was commandeered by UNIT, and Rose’s brain was nearly suffocated by an evil telepathic force.

“Not as impressive as I thought it’d be,” Rose says, letting out a little exhausted sigh as she looks around the tiny pub, adorned with black-and-white photographs of UNIT personnel, with a few old-fashioned pistols and alien artifacts framed up as well.

“Oi,” the Doctor says, looking over to her. “When I worked for UNIT, this was the prime place to go after work. We used to have the entire group here! Me, Liz, Benton, Yates---“

“Doesn’t look like it’s such a hot spot now,” Mickey says, wiping the entrails off of his face. It’s true. The entire pub is empty, save for a tired looking bartender, who has long since learned not to be impressed with anything the old scientific advisor might pull while here.

“That’s because everyone’s gone on a 24-hour workday schedule,” a booming voice says from behind them. “Leaves very little time for recreation.”

The trio turns around. Behind them stands an older man, probably in his late seventies, dressed smartly in an old UNIT uniform. It doesn’t fit him like it used to, but he’s still quite formidable. An old soldier, back in his old stomping grounds.

“That’s him!” Mickey says. “That’s the bloke who took the car!”

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” the man says, handing over a set of keys. “But this young man was stealing a UNIT vehicle during a UNIT crisis. We had no choice but to take it back in order to carry our people out.”

“You pointed a gun at me!” Mickey squeaks.

The Doctor, unaffected by Mickey’s squeaking, takes the keys. “Brigadier,” he says. “You recognize me, then?” He breaks into a huge, toothy grin.

“Of course,” the Brigadier says. “Who else could it be?”

Fair point.

“You know this guy?” Rose asks, leaning into the Doctor’s shoulder.

“Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart,” the Doctor says.

“The Doctor was our scientific advisor,” the Brigadier says. “And the moment old Arty back there saw you’d arrived, they called me. In case of disaster.”

“I can’t imagine why,” the Doctor says, and by the tone of his voice, it’s apparent he really doesn’t.

“But I’m getting too old for this, Doctor,” the Brigadier says. “I think it’s about time I left this life for the new generation. Including that doctor you sent over to us.”

“What doctor?” the Doctor asks.

The Brigadier, perhaps unwittingly being pulled by the fabric of time, doesn’t answer, he merely turns to head towards the door.

“Where will you go?” Rose asks.

“Nevermind that!” Mickey says, flailing. “He pulled a gun on me!”

The Brigadier smiles, then pulls out a pair of sunglasses, which he smoothly slips on.

He grins. “Deal with it.”

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 538
For Nicholas Courtney, who was the most badass companion ever. He deserves his own meme.

"I didn't know you painted."

The Doctor, who was not presently painting, looked up from the book he'd been reading. Yes, by all accounts Twilight was a worthless novel, but the war of the Team Jacobs versus the Team Edwards was a huge part of the mid 21st century Earth culture, and he figured it was really about time he gave a read to figure out what that nonsense was all about. The only thing the Doctor had worked out was that Earth women made no sense and Charlie really needed his own series.

"I…do?" he asked.

Rose stepped from the back room, producing a piece of canvas with a hillside and a castle painted to it. It was incomplete, and it took the Doctor a few moments to register that it was, in fact, something he had done during one of the many "time to find myself" periods of his sixth life. It was the same time in his life that he'd learned how to knit, draw, paint, do ceramics, and play the vuvuzula. It was also the period in his life where he suffered the most thwacks on the head with a vuvuzula wielded by Evelyn Smythe.

"Ah, yes," he said, slipping off his glasses. "Yeah, that's one of mine. How did you know? I'd have taken it for a Rembrant. Or a Van Gogh. Well, not really impressionistic enough for a Van Gogh, I suppose."

"You didn't clean the brushes, but they have your name on them," Rose explained. "Where is this?"

"Outside of France," he said. "Early 5th century. It was my favorite place to take tea, so I started painting there."

( Why haven't you finished? )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,294
for roseoflegend

No matter what the history books say about Elizabeth I, they have it all wrong.

They write about her cleverness, about her valor, about all of the things she sacrificed and all the lives she saved and all of the terrible things she's done, they don't get it quite right.

( The Doctor knows this because the Doctor knows Elizabeth I. )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom:Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,708

“It’s a bit weird, you know,” he says. He’s utterly sloshed at this point. He’s got the metabolism of a hummingbird, so he shouldn’t be too surprised that the moment he actually decides he wants to get drunk, it doesn’t take a good deal to get there. In fact, it has taken less than the number of bills in his pocket to get there. Whatever number that is, it’s a good number.

His companion reaches over and pours him another. His fingers are long and thin like the Doctor’s, but his nails are nibbled off at the ends, not meticulously and vainly trimmed and manicured the way the Doctor kept his own nails. He finds his companion's nails to be utterly disgusting. Destroying something as natural as nail growth? Why would you? It doesn’t make much sense to him sober, which means it makes absolutely no sense to him whatsoever now.

The alcohol burns when he takes the shot. It burns, but it feels good, in a way. It feels like he’s drinking to stay alive. Drinking seemed like a fantastic idea after he left Adelaide’s home. After he raced away from the horror he’d committed back in 2059. Really, after that, going to a bar and ordering up a number that is not as big as the number of bills in his pockets is a fantastic idea. Presently, this number includes some rancid whisky from some ungodly year in the 77th century.

“Ungodly!” he declares, because he’s at the point in his intoxication where it makes sense to blurt out about his internal monologue. “Did you know, that the Earth Atheism law is passed next year? All religions---pfffft. Non-existent. Completely! Well, for the most part. I never really understood the whole Valiant Child religion, did you---? Do you even know what I’m talking about?”

“I do, actually,” his companion says, coolly. His companion hasn’t actually had anything to drink, which is really unsporting of him. He already looks younger, more well-kempt, and snazzier than the Doctor does. He shouldn’t be showing off sobriety in the face of the Doctor’s intoxication, too.

“Course you do, don’t you? You know everything.” The Doctor slurs the word as he says it, and extends his hand out across the table as he speaks, knocking over a series of shot glasses he’d stacked up moments earlier. His companion reaches over and resets them. His movements are strange and bird-like, and he’s nothing like the Doctor is. He’s so nice that it’s downright disgusting, and it makes the Doctor feel like he’s done something terribly wrong.

He’s also young. More than young, he’s just so energetic, bouncing about in his seat with a youthful energy the Doctor hasn’t felt in centuries. And that bowtie. Who would think a bowtie was fashionable, and yet his companion wears it with flair. And the hair and the eyebrows---well, they’re not much for eyebrows, are they?---and the bright blue eyes. He’s stupidly pretty. It’s annoying to the nth degree, actually. But everything his companion does is annoying to the nth degree.

“I could look that pretty if I wanted,” the Doctor says, pathetically. He leans his cheek against the cool metal table. “I was told by River that I’m a pretty boy. Pretty! Me!”

His companion reaches over and pulls the Doctor’s tie up from where it’s drooped over his left eye. At some point between drink 23 and drink 35, he decided that wearing his tie on his head was actually the best way to show off the design. His companion didn’t deter him then, and even now he looks particularly amused.

“I’m sure she did say that,” his companion says. “It sounds like something she would say.”

The Doctor hates him. He hates his coolness, he hates his shy smiles and subdued nature. It makes the Doctor look positively boorish in comparison. Maybe that’s what his companion wants; maybe he’s just being this way in order to upset him in his miserable, drunken state. If that’s the plan, it’s working.

“But she adores you, doesn’t she?” the Doctor exclaims, sitting up. “Everyone adores you! No one’ll even remember me! I’ll just…vanish into the ether of time.”

“Bit dramatic, wouldn’t you say?” his companion asks.

“That’s who I am! I’m dramatic! I own dramatic. I make dramatic look brilliant and then I wear it until it’s out of style. And when I’m upset, I make big---“ he searches for the word and comes up with nothing. The alcohol has wiped his brain clean. “Big…speak-y---“

“Shouty,” his companion supplies. He pours the Doctor another shot. “You do shouty quite well.”

“Shouty!” the Doctor says, and he bursts into hysterical laughter. “I do shouty! I do shouty and angry and mean, and you’re all cool and collected!”

His companion, cool and collected as ever, nods.

“I hate you,” the Doctor declares. “I hate everything I become.”

All subdued and silly and polite and happy, all bowties and floppy hair that doesn’t at all stick up in interesting directions. All rolled-up trousers and silly looks and quiet rambling and long-term romances and things that aren’t the way the Doctor is at all. Not the way he is now. He can’t fathom not making shouty speeches at monsters or running madly away (or towards) a girl. His companion probably doesn’t even have a mole between his shoulderblades.

His companion smiles, and the expression strikes the Doctor as being almost nostalgic. “Of course you do.” He reaches over and pats the Doctor on the back. For someone who looks as young as he does, the action comes off as rather patronizing. Of course, age is only a number, and Time Lords only look young on the outside. The Doctor can see what River said before. His companion is so old.

“I don’t want to go,” the Doctor says. He means it, too. He’s got so much life left in him, so much time left to help the universe and make amends for the terrible things he’s done. But somehow, stopping off at this bar and running into this man…it all makes sense now. He’s almost out of time, now. Almost about to be replaced, removed, regenerated.

“I know,” his companion says. “I remember.”

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,045

My future incarnation (aka: The Skinny One):

I wish I could say you were doing quite well, but it's clear to me that at some point during our travels, you've gone a bit awry. History, being one of my personal best subjects, is something you appear to be lacking in. You've bounded about the universe so often you've forgotten exactly why we follow the rules that we do, haven't you? That business on Mars, that poor woman. Perhaps the concept of consequences has long since abandoned my senses, though I never did expect myself to go so utterly senile.

So, since clearly you're confused, let me sort you out:

Stop it. Stop this and stop it now. Look at the timelines. Look at your life. Think about the things that you're doing! Think about the things you're destroying through your cruelty and carelessness! We're better than that, aren't we?

What you're doing is wrong, and you know it. Leave history alone, my boy, leave time alone, and do what's right. I don't care how long you've been exiled or what sort of a god you think you are, but you mustn't touch history.

Not one line.

-D

Muse: The Doctor (One)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 196

For best_served_hot's first lines meme.


I watch him as he struggles to regain his feet and viciously kick him back down, my foot landing square in the middle of his chest.

( Cut for spoilers to 4.18 'The End of Time, Part Two'. )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten / Valeyard)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 604

Crushed

and

The Psychiatrist: Women. You get to talk about women.
Thomas Crown: Oh, I enjoy women.
The Psychiatrist: Enjoyment isn't intimacy.
Thomas Crown: And intimacy isn't necessarily enjoyment.
The Psychiatrist: How would you know? Has it occurred to you that you have a problem with trust?
Thomas Crown: I trust myself implicitly.
The Psychiatrist: But can other people trust you?
Thomas Crown: Oh, you mean society at large?
The Psychiatrist: I mean women, Mr.Crown.
Thomas Crown: Yes, a woman could trust me.
The Psychiatrist: Good. Under what extraordinary circumstances would you allow that to happen?
Thomas Crown: A woman could trust me as long as her interests didn't run too contrary to my own.
- The Thomas Crown Affair

+~

He loved her, once.

He remembers the emotion, even if he no longer possesses the ability to feel the emotion. He remembers long nights and deep sadness and companionship and other ridiculous sensations such as those and he remembers her warmth. He remembers her comfort.

It's funny, but even as he walks down the darkened street towards her (where he left her oh, so long ago), he feels a strange pang. A longing for the comforts of home. Were he the sort to indulge in such ridiculousness, he might even term it as homesickness. But he is not that sort of a man.

( He hasn't been that sort of a man in a very, very long time. Cut for sexual innuendo, non-consent, disturbing imagery, and character death. )

Muse: The Doctor (The Valeyard)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,604
Partner: The TARDIS (canon)
written for the evil brigadiertardis, special thanks to salvagestime for the beta!

"We'll be late," the Doctor called through the bedroom door. He gave it a rap and got a disgruntled grunt of affirmation in reply.

River Song was not one who often spent time dressing up. More often than not, the Doctor would arrive on her world for a visit and find her still in the dusty clothes she'd been at the architectural dig in, leaning over some artifact and incorrectly guessing what it was. He often said it was "endearing", if a little dirty.

But tonight, no, tonight was a special night. Tonight, River emerged from the bedroom in a floor-length dark red opera dress with her hair piled on the top of her head.

"Are you sure this counts as an anniversary?" she asked. She stepped forward and straightened the tie on his new suit.

On the best of days, the Doctor was not a romantic. On the worst of days he would wax on about how very much he hated the idea of domesticity and with romance came the domestics. But sometimes, on very special occasions, he would do something like this.

"Well, we're hardly on the same timeline, are we?" he replied.

"That's never made you want to celebrate an anniversary before," she said, crossing her arms.

"And when was the last time I took you to dinner? Besides, you'll love it. Berrillum food is unlike any other world. Slices of light cut into pasta and sprinkled with Vercasian sugars." He smiled widely and, as it often did whenever he visited while he was older, it didn't quite reach his eyes.

River nodded, and then passed him to put a note on the plate of hot tea and lemon biscuits she'd left for her usual Saturday visitor. Jenny, the Doctor's daughter, had visited often, occasionally making River's home her port of call. The Doctor hadn't mustered up the courage to speak to her. Not yet. But he would. River would convince him, someday, and they'd be a proper family, him and Jenny.

Out with your Dad for dinner. It's our anniversary, apparently. I'll bring you something back from Berillium. -R She placed the note delicately next to the ceramic teapot and picked up her handbag and journal before heading towards the TARDIS.

"If our anniversary only comes when I finish a journal," she said, "Then it's not quite our anniversary. I've got a page left."

"You can put tonight into it," he said. For a moment, the Doctor looked unbelievably sad. Sadder than she'd ever seen him. "Dinner and the Singing Towers. It'll be perfect."

"Perfect?" she asked, curious but not wanting to pry. "Willing to bet your life on that?"

He smiled then, small and tight. "Always."

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 451