He's Fire And Ice And Rage

"The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work it out themselves, they would never bother. They would just find what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought." --Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

"How can you stand this?"

There are many moments in history where the Doctor can't do anything. He's mentioned them to Donna in the past; the big wars, the big disasters and revolutions, and one particular day in 1963 in a junkyard. She very stubbornly didn't understand his words until Pompeii, until she had to see exactly what he goes through every time they land somewhere he can't touch. Now, she's still stubborn about it, but she relents after a time, more understanding.

There are also cultural things he can't touch, great cruelties he can't change. Slaves and executions and horrible genocide. He avoids these places on purpose and the TARDIS never accidently lands them there. Those places are too big, too tempting. He can't interfere, he's no god. It's better to stay away.

(  Sometimes, though, sometimes they land in places where he wishes, with every fiber of his being, that he could change something. Cut for disturbing imagery. )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,480

FOR THE DRABBLE MEME.

• You sure know what you're doin'
Holdin' me this way
And I'll go where you lead me
Anywhere you say
You've got me where you want me
So Darlin' please be kind
Before you take it all
And I make that final fall
You've got to keep in mind

(That) I'm a new fool at an old game
A kid out of school tryin' to find my way
But I don't know the rules, (so) teach me how to play
I'm just a new fool at an old game.... •

She reminds you, in many ways, of yourself.

It's in the way she dances, in the way she holds herself. She's older in her heart than she is on the outside, just like you do. She tosses her long, ginger hair back and laughs at something one of her girlfriends says, but it's all show.

She reminds you of someone you used to know. Someone who left you. Maybe that's why you tilt your wide-brimmed hat back and head over to the table. Sure, she's tall and curvy and ginger, not short, petite, and blonde, but she's got the same grin. The same fire in her eyes.

"I beg your pardon, ladies," you say, and they all look a little surprised at your appearance and grin. You turn to the ginger woman. "Would you dance with me?"

She looks to the girls like this is some big joke, but takes your hand without a question to you. You take her to the dance floor.

The song is slow and unfamiliar, but you dance to it anyway. She gives you an odd look.

She smiles at you as she puts a hand to your shoulder, but her expression, while flattered, is unimpressed. You're not her type, you figure. Too eccentric, maybe a bit too old. "No offense, mate, but I don’t think I'd be dancing with you right now if I didn't have two pints in me already." The honesty is refreshing, you think. You know (if you do say so yourself) that you're charming, but having someone tell you that you're only charming when they're a little drunk feels more genuine than all the fake laughs in the world.

She'd do that, you think. Even before she was blonde, even back when she was regal and brunette, she'd always tell you how things were.

"Well, that's all right," you say. "I'm not entirely sure I'd be dancing with you if I wasn't in the same predicament." And if you weren't missing the one that only too recently had gotten away.

You smile widely, though, and it's mostly fake, and her expression changes. It isn't the same smile from before, it's almost awed, like she can't figure you out.

"You've got such an interesting smile, though," she says. "It's like I---Like I know your smile, like I've seen it before."

"Oh, I used to have a friend who told me I was many men, and that was why my ego was so inflated."

"Sounds like a brilliant girl, that one." Her smile changes again, and you're surprised by how much one woman can say with that simple turn of the lips. Now, she's empathic. She understands. "Let her get away, did you?"

"Quite presumptuous of you," you say.

"Yeah, well, I know that smile of yours when you talk about her. You all right?"

"I'm always all right." It's something you've only just decided has to be true about yourself. You have to always be all right. Even when your companion is unemotionally standing by the food table and you're grieving for a love you've lost. You have to.

"Is that the kind of all right that's really, really not all right?" she asks.

You smile again, and this time it is almost entirely genuine. It's strange, to dance with someone who truly understands. And, even though you have never met her before, you feel like you have always known this woman.

Time is like that.

She picks a piece of lint off of your long scarf, and even though the song changes to something more upbeat, she doesn't pull away from your arms.

"Come on, Smiler," she says. "Let's have one more dance to make it really all right, eh?"

Muse: The Doctor (Four)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 622

The rooms stretch out along the hallways of the TARDIS. The ever-fluxuating ship occasionally brings them forward or pushes them further back, giving him space if he needs it.

But they're always there. Untouched, pristine. They haven't been altered or entered since their occupant left. Should he pass a room, he knows that within there won't be dust on the mantle with Jo's perfumes, or a fiber moved from where Turlough would toss his schoolboy tie across the bed. He knows they're there. He just never enters. He never looks.

"It's like you're collecting them," she says, running her hand across a marker sign that says MICKEY'S ROOM, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.

"What?" he asks. He's seen the door to the room so often he can almost walk by it without remembering.

"All these rooms. All your companions," she says. "Martha says we're like stray dogs. Is it like that?"

He shrugs and aims for flippancy. "Well, you all could use a bath."

"Oi," she snaps. "You know what I mean, Spaceman. My mum used to collect these little ceramic houses. They all looked the same to me and Gramps, but she kept collecting new ones."

He sighs. "This…has a point?"

"Yeah, because after a while, she collected so many they stopped mattering. She couldn't tell the difference anymore." She looks back at him. "These doors are all the same, but they're a little different," she says, unaffected by his attitude. "How are any one of these rooms different. Any of us that different to you?"

"It's not the same," he says. He puts his hand on a white door. Behind it, he knows the room was long-ago jettisoned to keep his memories at bay. "You're not my collection. I don't keep you around to look at you and let you collect dust."

"Then why do you keep us around?" she asks.

He considers the answer for a moment. He wants to answer Because I want to! in an irritated tone and storm off. For Rose, that answer would've been enough. For Martha, that answer would've been an answer in itself and she'd have picked and analyzed it to no end. For her, that would've probably resulted in some form of a slap.

So, for her, he takes his time answering. Considers what she means. Considers the long hallway of companion rooms that are collected along this walkway. It's not the rooms that matter, he thinks. The rooms, they're there for sleeping and collecting personal things. They're not important.

"Because someone once told me I need someone," he says, turning back to her. "To show the universe to. To stop me."

She smiles. It's a small, thin smile, one that better fits her age than the boisterous attitude she often gives him. She's very wise in her own way. She's grown so much since she started traveling with him.

"And the rooms?" she asks. "Why keep them, when they leave?" There's no we in her voice. She never wants to leave, ever. He's perfectly all right with that. He never wants her to go.

He looks back at the rooms, each untouched and private, even long after his companions have gone. Each one kept as though they'd just walked away. Why collect them? Why keep them for so long?

"Because," he says. "One day, they might come back."

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 559

The Doctor has always had a superior olfactory system.

Always.

It was one of those things that came with his genetic structure, he supposed. Keen, perfectly-honed senses of a Gallifreyan and the imagination of a human needed to piece out what smells blended with another to mean what.

It was very useful, at times. Discerning what oil was used in which explosive and thus which needs to be diffused first. Sorting out what poison was in which cream puff before obnoxiously popping the un-poisoned one in his mouth. Memorizing the sweet, fragrant smell of the Detrassi Sunflower and then reproducing it to break a password on the sensory-adept computers of Alganqua 7.

It was also a curse, as well. Like should the TARDIS decide to land on the dung planets of Santoir 4 or the onion-worshipping centers of Retrrioo. It was also absolutely terrible when he was forced to take the number 55 bus.

( The worst was how hard it made forgetting. )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Partner(s): Rose Tyler (canon), Jack Harkness (canon), Martha Jones (canon), Donna Noble (canon)
Word Count: 1,292

"What do you think?"

He thinks about the vortex, the spiral spire of a billion lightyears of movement. He thinks about the vast array of stars, infinity twisting out through the cosmos. All of those planets he's seen and never seen---brilliant crystal endings, beginnings, worlds with rooms that go on forever, infinite possibilities through a mirror. He thinks about all of this.

He knows about all of this.

So when, in a tiny shop on Mall Planet in the late 67th century, he's asked which color of dress Donna should get, it's little wonder that all she gets in reply is a snort.

"Donna, they're both completely impractical," he says, crossing his arms.

"Yeah, but they're gonna be what I’m wearin', Spaceman, so help me pick one out."

"The one you have on now is fine."

"Is it better than the blue? Did you even look at the blue? What about the red, should I try it on again?"

"If I beg you not to, will you listen?"

"The blue one," says the voice behind him. Their not-son, born-from-a-hand, and shouldn’t-be-there, the half-human Doctor, has been trying on a variety of trainers in different colors because, apparently, fashion has passed on from Donna to him.

( 'See, someone cares about what I wear.' )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 791
For galeforcehero who wanted: "I want to read The Adventures Of The Doctor And Donna And Their Unintentional Offspring Handy, with no emo or serious business involved." here.

"Don't make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up." - Thomas J. Watson

Majenta Pryce does not sleep.

It's part of her species' genetic makeup (or so he figures), so she never feels tired, not beyond her usual self-indulgent laziness. It's actually quite fun, for the most part. There's no need to stop in the middle of a series of adventures for eight hours of companion-rest time and there's no worry about making camp in the middle of an alien forest. She's even gone so far as to pull her bed out of her bedroom on the TARDIS and replace it with a lounger for when she sits up to watch the late-night soaps on ITV (The Intergalactic Television Viewer).

The only time it bothers the Doctor is when he needs to rest. The few hours he needs a week used to seem like nothing, but now that he's the only TARDIS traveler who needs sleep, he finds that time before he falls into trance more worrying than anything. What is Majenta up to while he sleeps? Is she behaving herself? Is she toying with the console? Sometimes, he stays up as long as he thinks he can, before collapsing wherever he was out of exhaustion for a few hours.

It's not that he doesn't trust her---well, no. The term "as far as he could throw her" might apply to the Doctor and Majenta if the Doctor wasn't absolutely certain Majenta would knock him out cold before he managed to even try to throw her anywhere. Majenta's not a willing companion, and she's not even a companion he's certain he wants around most days. And while he's sleeping…she could be up to anything.

And, after she kicked down her bedroom door when he tried to lock her in that first time, he's learned that he has no choice but to trust her while she's on board.

It's early. He blinks and finds he's fallen asleep at the edge of his bed in a somewhat awkward position that's left his neck a little sore. He straightens, rubs the back of his neck, and tries to remember where he was when he went out.

Working on the console? No, no, talking to Majenta. Her instructing him where they'd go next while he insisted that her ordering the TARDIS about would do no good. He then said something along the lines of "I'm tired," to which she replied, "Then get to your bedroom, because I'm just leaving you on the floor if you fall asleep on it again. Lazy Time Lords."

And, apparently he made it to his bedroom and she went off to do whatever it was she did while he slept. This must be what it's like for his human companions, he thinks. They're never certain what the Doctor's up to while they sleep.

He starts towards the console room because, really, wherever she's ended up she'll go back there. The TARDIS is deep, but there's only one way out.

"---no regretting stuff, all right? I chose this---"

The Doctor can hear the recording playing in the console room and the slow walk turns into a run. ( Of all the bloody things that ridiculous woman could've gotten into… )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,734 not including dialogue from Comic #399 "Time of My Life"

"I don't understand!"

She circles the TARDIS in confusion, her blue eyes wide and stunned. She steps inside, then out, then circles 'round it, then back in. She touches the coral walls and then hops out and runs her hands along the wooden outside.

"It's---"

"Bigger on the inside?" Donna, Martha, and the Doctor all reply with fond grins. Her excitement and confusion is something the Doctor's come to expect out of new companions. He will never admit it, of course, but he's actually quite glad she is excited. It wouldn't be any fun if she wasn't.

"Transdimensional interface," he calls out to his daughter.

She runs her hand along the door. "Transdimensional interface." She repeats the words with the same awed voice one hears in children talking about magic.

"We're never going to leave Messaline," Martha says with a sigh, crossing her arms. She starts, then digs for her phone in her pocket. "I should text Tom, he'll be worried, calling my flat and I'm not there." She turns and walks deeper into the TARDIS, the only thing on her mind the man waiting for her back home.

( The Doctor leans against the console, watching Jenny run around and Donna leans against his shoulder. )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 5,735
This would never have been written without the inspiration and considerable help of the amazing morethananecho

Just for fun, write your muse making a deal with the Devil. What kind of deal would they make? What do they gain and what do they lose in the bargain? Can they ultimately get out of it by outwitting the Lord of the Underworld? Let your imagination run wild!

The Doctor has met the Devil before. A few times, actually. He gets around, and so does the Devil, so their paths were bound to cross more than once. He's seen him in many places and many aspects. The Beast, Fenric…they're all the same creature in the end, the Doctor figures.

Of course, today the aspect is not nearly so obvious. No glowing yellow eyes on a sullen scientist's face, no black marks on white skin and red eyes. No, today Fenric is simply a girl. A thin, blonde girl. A thin, blonde girl in military greens.

( Jenny, actually. Today, Fenric looks like Jenny. )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 2,237

It's your birthday, how do you want to spend it?

&

You find yourself receiving a letter that had been misdirected or lost in the mail for several years. Who is it from and what does it say? Show us the affect it has on your muse.

The Doctor has a PO Box.

It's on the planet of Postal in the galaxy of Sanheim. Originally an Earth colony for off-world packages, it's become an intergalactic meeting ground and communications center. A rather rowdy place full of travelers looking for a place to send souveniers home, drifters looking for somewhere to pretend they belong, and smugglers looking for letters from their mother. It's dirty, smelly, overcrowded, and the Doctor can't decide if he likes it here or not.

He likes the woman at the door. Well, she's technically an android, but she always remembers his name and smiles sweetly. He likes the bustle and motion of the place, he likes the shops and the variety of life that push and wander past him.

( He doesn't like how lost everyone looks. Cut for spoilers to 4.13 'Journey's End'. )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,057

It's all a game to him.

This sick, twisted, disgusting idea is all a bloody game.

It's not often that they take a shuttle down to Earth. Not after the last time, where the Doctor broke his own wrist to wriggle out of his handcuffs and run through the crowd, trying to make it to safety. Make it to the resistance, make it to Martha, make it to anyone.

He actually got a few blocks before he realized that by leaving the Master behind he was only dooming him. And, really, no matter how much he hated what the Master was doing to Earth, he couldn't just leave him to die. He went back on his own accord. Martha would probably be disgusted.

And so his youthful body (which the Master had "privileged" him with after a few months of good behavior) is gone again and he is an old, brittle man. It is easier this way. He is made to be helpless instead of willingly remaining so. It becomes routine.

So, when he wakes up to a strong back and wrinkle-free hands in the attic of a building he knows isn't on the Valiant, he's disoriented. He gets to his feet and looks around. The attic is expansive, probably covering the entire length of the house. Well, mansion. Wherever he is. The walls are lined with torture devices that would've been scarier a few months ago, and at the other end of the attic is an iron maiden.

His lips twitch into a smirk and he wonders, briefly, if it might be the Master's TARDIS again. Of course, if the Master had a TARDIS he wouldn't' feel his own crying out in compressed agony from holding up a paradox.

But it's all a game to him.

As the Doctor approaches, he sees attached to the maiden is an led clock display.

01:45

01:44

01:43

"It took you very nearly ten minutes to wake up, did you know that?"

The Doctor nearly leaps out of his skin at the sudden blaring from an old-fashioned intercom. The Master sounds positively delighted and that only sends a frightened chill up the Doctor's spine.

"Would've been easier to wake up if you hadn't drugged me with----" the Doctor tastes the inside of his mouth, considering the genetic makeup of its staleness. "Hmmm…what is it? Tastes like…"

"Siralanomode," the Master replies cheerily, and the intercom crackles.

The Doctor takes another step towards the maiden. On the top of its head is fixed a small intercom speaker. "Siralanomode affects the memory," he says.

"Oh, there's very little about today you want to remember, Doctor."

01:00

00:59

00: 58

"You know, I had a fun run-in with a rebellion group just outside of London," the Master says. "They were all huddled together in a video store, planning ways to get to the Valiant and stop me!"

He laughs. It doesn't seem very funny to the Doctor, but he imagines he hasn't gotten to the punchline just yet.

"They were all so very disappointed that the infamous Doctor whom Harriet Jones begged to save them on Christmas Day didn't show up. I had to wonder if you knew any of them, considering how virulently they called for you."

00:45

00:44

00:43

The Master orders the slaughter of thousands a day. The Doctor wishes he wasn't feeling numb to it. Wishes he wasn't inwardly reminding himself over and over that they were all savable. Once Martha...oh, but it all rested on Martha.

As if he can read his mind, the Master says, "Pity Martha Jones wasn't there. No idea where she is, do you, Doctor? I need you to tell me what you whispered in her ear."

The Doctor shakes his head and takes another step towards the maiden.

"I only have one thing to say to you."

The Master doesn't reply, just the crackling of the intercom.

00:20

00:19

00:18

"What's that counting down to?" the Doctor snaps. Suddenly, approaching the maiden seems like a bad idea he should've stopped a long time ago.

"Oh! Noticed that, did you? Lovely little things; got them wired all over this house. Oh, but you'll learn that soon enough."

"Why, what have you got planned? What are you doing?"

"Well, I did tell you ten minutes ago. Let's see if you can remember. Work past the drug."

00:05

00:04

00:03

"You're not going to kill me," the Doctor says, because the Master can't kill him any more than the Doctor could kill the Master. But, as the counter goes down, he's just not sure.

The reply is amused. "Of course not."

00:02

00:01

00:00

From within the maiden, there's a sharp crunch and the sound of a muffled scream. The Doctor's eyebrows knit together in confusion. Oh, no. No, it can't be. Oh, but it probably is and the Master could only be watching to see what he's going to do next.

His hearts beat faster, much too fast for the old man he's been all these weeks. Curiosity takes over. He moves another step towards the maiden and peers inside.

He recoils instantly, grief and terror shooting through his veins. He cries out and turns away, emptying bile onto the floor before he can stop himself. The siralanomode keeps him from controlling his emotions but doesn't block out what he just saw.

The Master does what any good sadist would do: He laughs.

"One of the rebels! Let me see what we've got here. Donna Noble. Lovely name, very royal, don't you think? Love the little setup I made, I'm so proud of it. You know, all you had to do was unclasp that lock and she would've been free. Pity the rest of them aren't quite so easy."

He recovers just enough to look up at the intercom atop the maiden again. The rest of them?

He doesn't have to say it, of course, the timer tells him what's next.

10:00

09:59

09:58

"Go on, Doctor! Find them fast! Run for their lives!"

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,004