He's Fire And Ice And Rage

Follows this.

During their time apart, the Doctor didn't dream. Dreaming wasn't common for Time Lords in general, but while Jack was away or in his extended coma, there was no accidental glimpse into the human part of the Doctor's psyche.

Now, he dreamed. Twisting storms and violent rainclouds and a ship that was coming apart. Somewhere he heard Martha calling for him, telling him they had to turn back. They had to turn back, there was too much damage in this section of water. The sentence itself didn't make sense, but to his dream-self it explained a lot of things that were wrong.

A spitfire shot above them through the storm, heading deeper in. The Doctor never dreamed of spitfires. He knew them, but not well enough to have such a beautifully detailed image in front of him. In the dream, he saw it as a sign.

We have to find him, the Doctor responded. He's in the storm.

But everyone was here, on the ship. Mickey, Martha, Donna, Rose, Wilf, they were all there. And the Doctor was steering them into danger and---

He blinked. He was awake in Jack's arms. How long had he been asleep? A few short hours, he imagined. How many more hours did Jack need?

FOR THE DRABBLE MEME.

• Pretty things, so what if I like pretty things
Pretty lies, so what if I like pretty lies
From where you are, to where I am now
I need these pretty things, around the planets of our phase
Everything's a sign of my astrology
From where you are, to where I am now
Is its own galaxy. •

The Doctor taps his foot impatiently, but that only makes Martha smile. It's good, him waiting for her for once. And, besides, it's not like she does this sort of thing all the time.

"We'll be late," he says, irritably.

"I'm just fixing up my hair," she tells him.

"You've been trying on clothes for a half hour, Martha! We need to get going!"

She sticks her head out of the door, half of her hair up in curlers, the other half out and fluffed. "I've seen how long you spend on your hair, mister," she says. "You're not allowed to start talking about how much I like dressing up or not."

She goes back in and continues to work on her hair. "Besides, just because I work as a doctor and like running about with you, I'm still a girl. I still like pretty things!"

"I noticed," he replies, still grumpy.

Martha sighs and pulls out the rest of the curlers. Her hair is in a perfect 60's bob, just right for the party the Doctor wants to go to. She straightens the skirt she's found in the wardrobe room and buttons up the jacket. The outfit is a little loose on her hips and shoulders, but she looks damn good, if she does say so herself.

Not that he'll notice, of course.

She steps out and gives a little spin. "What do you think?"

He actually starts at her appearance, and she thinks, just for a moment, that he's impressed. That somehow he really likes the pink skirt and jean jacket combination on her with the slightly-too-loose pink high heels, and he's seeing her for the first time.

But his expression settles quickly, and he's all masks again. She's done something wrong, but she hasn't the faintest idea what. It's so frustrating with him. She thinks she's done something right, but it's never right. Never what she expects.

"It's fine," he says, and he turns away.

And no, no, he didn't see her again. But she'll lie to herself, just for a little while, because it keeps her from turning around and going back home. She has 1960 to see. She can't miss that because she's hurting.

Muse: Martha Jones
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 369

[the sounds of pandemonium. Everyone is talking at once, echoing off of the dull hum of the TARDIS console room]

DOCTOR: Right, everyone, calm down, please.

[more noise, they're all clearly upset]

DOCTOR: I mean it, guys---

[they're not listening]

DOCTOR: [whistles loudly]

[immediate silence]

DOCTOR: ( That's better. Now, I'm sorry to have to do this to you all, but I had to bring you out of your timelines for a very important reason. )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,237
Based on some rumors that an audio companion will travel with Eleven! Yay audios!

And like that, she's gone, off to live her own life without you.

From this.

Day One is here. Day Two is here. Day Three is here.


He doesn't invent the hero to his story. No, nothing so mundane. The hero, instead, invents himself and slices a path, as in the way of Athena, out of his creator's brain. And the hero stands there, in a metaphorical sense of course, fully-formed and ready to interfere in the universe's problems. It's a bit overwhelming, come to think of it, having a fully-formed hero suddenly there. But the hero was to take care of the stories. The stories which had already been partially written and had kept the writer, who was only a mere history teacher at a boy's school, awake.

The stories are borne out of an ongoing feeling of déjà-vu.

It begins while he is grading papers during his second week at term. He reads over a passageway in a paper about the Massacre at St. Bartholomew's Eve and knows, without question, that it is not right. There was another influence, he's sure. Someone else pushed the Marshal of France to his action, though for all of his attempts to find such information, it eludes him. It was not in his lesson and it is not in their textbooks but he knows it is not right.

Feeling as though he can not continue with this subject, he drops a passing grade to the paper and instead pulls another period of history for class.

Ancient Rome. Rome was not built in a day and neither was it destroyed so easily. There is a more serious story to this, and he knows it. Of fire and hatred and something to do with a harp.

Elizabethan England. The painting of Shakespeare is also wrong. He knows the painting is a poor interpretation, though he has no idea why he could possibly think that. It's the tightness of the hair, the curve of the nose. The man in the painting does not look at all like William Shakespeare. But he has never met William Shakespeare, he has no reason to think that. Also, he feels (with no small amount of disgust and alarm) that the Bard was, in fact, not merely heterosexual. If he were another man, he decided, he would feel flattered to be flirted with by the Bard. But he is not another man, and such a train of thought is nothing but silly.

He reads the sonnets to Shakespeare's Dark Lady, and his eyes drift over to his servant. While he does not find her pleasing to the eye, he knows that long ago, the Bard wrote his poems for someone just like Martha.

Classic literature. And then there's the biography of Jane Austen. He immediately thinks that she's a fantastic dancer, but there's no reason to believe she was any such thing. Matron Redfern laughs when he says such a thing. Soft paws, steel claws. It's a phrase that he knows applies to Miss Austen and the Matron alike.

French history. While speaking of aristocrats, he finds himself bitingly defending the rather infamous Madame du Pompadour. Professor Moffatt asks him to head back to his study, to cool down a bit.

"Don't let's get too emotional, John. It's not as though you actually knew the woman."

After class, he sits in his study and stares at the picture. He's certain he knows her, but he can't figure out how. The dark printed pages don't seem to capture the way his mind's eye sees the woman, the woman he feels like he should know. The woman sitting with her face profile to him, the dark smudges in the textbook representing her hair sliding down her shoulders in tumbling waves. He finds his fingers curl as if he knows what it's like to feel those strands, to have them slide against his skin. Involuntarily, he shudders.

He is not an experienced man, but he feels as if there was seduction, once. Perhaps in a dream, perhaps in a long-ago memory. And the seduction was---well, it was nothing that a proper English gentleman would like to think about.

And, as in the way of things one does not want to think of, his dreams take on a decidedly more romantic tone. He dreams of dancing, of the tarantella with a Roman woman in long, red robes. He dreams of a blonde woman with impossibly ancient eyes, holding his hand as they gallivanted through France and taking his breath away. He dreams of a different hero pressing a kiss to his mouth and telling him he'd 'see you in hell' and the thrill rather than the horror at the kiss with another man. He dreams of the gold-painted skin of Cleopatra through scandalously revealing dresses; Cleopatra who purred in his ear and told him to call her 'Cleo'. He dreams of a girl on a beach, the sun in her tear-stained eyes.

The dreams wake him up, of course, and he feels sweaty and uncomfortable and just a little foul for them. He does not sleep afterwards, instead he stares at the wooden ceiling and considers his own self-imposed chastity. If he were another man, such impure thoughts would make sense.

If he were another man.

If he were this other man, then there would be no need for chastity. No need to hold back. He could hold Madame du Pompadour in his arms and know that she was as intelligent and as brilliant as he was. And Shakespeare would be worth sparring with, and there would be history to preserve for France's Huguenots, and---

Of course, he's not another man. He's just a simple history teacher. He knows that puberty and sexual attraction hits young men between the ages of 13-17 but he does not recollect any woman ever catching his eye prior to Matron Redfern. And for her he'd rather complete a long, complicated courtship.

But someone has to live these stories, these impossible stories.

And so, the history teacher invents the Doctor.

It is a good name, it's an official name. It's a title the history teacher knows he is incapable of actually possessing, though one he has often longed for. He decides that the Doctor will not actually possess the title either but he will brandish it and people, being such as they are, will accept him for who he says he is.

The first time the history teacher says the name it is to his servant, Martha, who looks at him with such a look of absolute horror he is afraid he's said something that in insulting to her culture. But Martha, being as she is, forgives and perhaps forgets because she never mentions the Doctor to him again. Whenever he talks of it, that horror returns to her face, though not nearly in the extremity of the first time John presented it. It is as though he is speaking of a very precious glass egg and if Martha speaks too loudly of it, she will shatter the egg and be dismissed immediately.

It is no matter. The stories write themselves and the history teacher finds delight and release in writing them. Adventures and history and lovers and danger. All of the things that he will never experience.

But the Doctor can experience them. The history teacher finds himself wondering what it would be like to be the Doctor, but decides that it is not something he truly wishes to experience. And then he packs his books and readies himself to teach a class on the ancient Highlanders, though the lesson does not seem to have all of the interesting facts he is quite certain he knows.

He pushes those thoughts away. There will be time for adventures, time for the Doctor later. But for now, John Smith must live his life in the only way that a proper English gentleman can.

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,300
Special thanks to galeforcehero for the beta and telling me that Cleo was in fact Greek!

Title: Birth of Destruction 2/3
Characters/Pairings: The Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones, Barbara Wright, Original Characters, some Ten/Martha undertones
Rating: PG
Word Count: Part Two: 4,873
Summary: While trapped in 1969, the Doctor finds employment at the local hospital and gets a lot more than he bargained for.
Disclaimer: The Beeb owns Doctor Who. Coincidentally, the Beeb also owns my soul.
Author's Note: Special thanks to handysparehand for the beta! Written for the whack_a_muse prompt: "096 - Sleeping Beauty."
Part One is here.

+~+

Mr. Moore's office was impossibly easy to break into. Not just because the Doctor had thought to bring his sonic screwdriver with him on this little job expedition, but also because of the location, tucked away in a side pocket of the hospital. He gave it a wave over the lock and turned the knob with a loud click.

( 'What is that?' Malika asked with a sharp whisper. )

"If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can't stop you, you become something else entirely." - Henri Ducard, Batman Begins

"It doesn't look that far in the future," Martha says, looking around at the way people are dressed and the cars that drive by. Well, the cars that stand at a complete halt, actually. Considering the sheer number of people huddled around them in the biting cold.

The Doctor isn't all that cold. He's survived much worse (he lived in Wales for a time during the 70's), so this might as well be spring instead of late January, he says. They sit on top of the Lincoln Memorial, legs dangling over the edge as they look through binoculars to the procession taking place quite a distance away. Not an inch of ground is visible between them and the event, the entire area---Mall, the Doctor corrects Martha---is swarmed with people.

"The estimate is around two million people," the Doctor says, popping a chip into his mouth.

"Really? Two million people?"

"Historical event. People have flown in from all over the world to witness it."

"And we've gone eighty five light years from Tanezea."

"I told you it was just around the corner."

"And you won't tell me when this is?"

"Of course not. Spoilers."

"Yeah, spoilers, right." She looks back through the binoculars. "Won't the secret service worry about a great big blue box up there?"

The Doctor shakes his head. "I've got a cloaking device on us and the TARDIS, so we've got…well, relatively the best seats in the house."

"Couldn't an alien race do that, too? All these people in one place is like a target---"

"Are you really planning on worrying this whole time? This is history, Martha. Enjoy it." He sniffs. "Besides, UNIT is watching overhead for any alien threats."

"What's UNIT?"

"Just watch."

Martha sighs and looks back through the binoculars. She can't see very well, but she's got a fairly good idea of what's going on. The speaker systems in this time are a lot better than when the Doctor took her to see Martin Luther King Jr's speech last week.

"Everyone seems so excited to see him elected," Martha says, looking down at the people waving American flags. "Haven't seen anybody so excited since the election back home. But that's going to be a landslide victory."

The Doctor nods. "This was a landslide for them, too. By popular vote, of course. The voting system in America makes even less sense than the Zygon voting system and you have to take eighteen years of political studies to even be able to discuss politics on Zygon."

Martha nods. "It's a real change for America."

"Britain's next to break the racial boundaries. We'll drop off a few years in the future after lunch, watch that."

"You've been on a real political kick lately," Martha raises an eyebrow.

"What do you mean?" the Doctor asks.

Martha snorts. "1776, the first session of Parliament, Martin Luther King Jr., the first woman Prime Minister, the first woman President, now this?"

"I thought it'd be educational."

"It is! I just don't know why the interest."

The Doctor looks away, then back into his binoculars. "Call it a feeling."

"What sort of a feeling?"

"Just watch!"

Martha watches for a moment, then turns back to him. "Is this the beginning of a golden age? I know you love golden ages for us little humans."

"Hardly," the Doctor says, offhandedly. "Things get far worse for the world before they get better."

"But they do get better?"

"Are you going to watch or would you rather I just get you a history book?"

Martha makes a face. "I thought you liked books."

"I like being part of history even more."

The crowd roars with excitement as the President-elect steps up to the podium to be sworn in. Martha can't properly see his face from the distance, but she squints through the binoculars. She can see a tall, slim man put his hand on the bible, while a woman in a gold dress looks over his shoulder.

And he's sworn in. The 44th President of the United States (though the Doctor reaches over and covers Martha's ears before she can get his name). Race is mentioned more than a few times by those announcing him and swearing him in.

Her mother wouldn't believe it if she told her.

Then, the speech. Martha's never even seen this politician before, much less heard him speak. But considering the incredible problems going on in America in this time period, the new President has a lot to say and he does it all in only a few words. It's surprisingly quite moving. She watches as emotion ripples through the crowd and she can feel how people react when he talks. It's more than just knowing what's said, it's smelling the cold air and feeling the crowd and being there. Right there, right in the middle of history.

"It's good, isn't it?" the Doctor asks as Martha watches.

Martha grins. "Yeah. Better than any history book."

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 773
Note: The mun is a DC citizen and is feeling fairly patriotic.
Also, thanks to marthajonesmd for randomly mentioning wanting Martha at the inauguration and thus inspiring this. You'd better write one, too!

It's hot.

Broiling.

His suit is like an oven, his hands feel like they're being cooked as he holds onto the side of the airlock, his hair is matted and wet from sweat and the sun is baking down on him. They're so close to the sun, now.

But his blood just ran cold.

He can see it. See the sun, see it swirl and move and twist. Bright red coronal loops and white prominent arches move against an ocean of orange and yellow. Streaks of amber against the darkened embers of red and the brilliant light all swirling and moving and screaming. The sun is writhing in pain. Pain because it isn't just a sun. It's a creature.

"It's alive."

He sees it reaching, reaching out for the ship. Reaching out for him. He steps backwards into the airlock. It's alive and aggressive. His eyes burn from the sunlight, from how bright it is. Brighter than any typical gaseous sun. He turns away and shuts the door. Gravity restores itself and he feels the woosh as air follows it. Safe now. Well, hardly safe now, but all the same. Inside now. Now he can burn with the rest of them when the ship collapses.

( Burn With Me. )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,072