flashfics, part three: Doctor Who
Flashfics from the slush pile! Unbetaed raw text, most of which ends abruptly, just so you're warned. And none of it's probably exactly what anyone here was looking for...
Title: Staying Power
Fandom: Doctor Who (AU)
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Pairing: Ten/Mickey
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously, BBC, RTD, etc.
Summary: From a request by
prof_pangaea: it was rose who stayed in the alt!verse after RotC/AoS, and mickey who kept travelling with the doctor. 474 words.
-----
It had only become obvious to the Doctor that Rose Tyler's boyfriend was more than the usual oblivious human when he'd managed to follow along with a plan, then do some pretty effective IT business, saving the world and jolly old England. What hadn't been obvious was Rose's determination to stay. She was bound and determined to fix the brokenness of that world, and he couldn't help but commend her for that.
At the same time, he had not eagerly awaited the moment when he had to explain it to Jackie. There had been a lot of EXCUSE ME and CAN'T EVER GO BACK? and she had been about to slap him, hard, deservedly so this time, before Mickey had caught her wrist gently, and held her when she bawled.
The Doctor was terrible at that, but maybe Jackie had seen something in his eyes that explained it. These losses always stung, but the complete inability to fix it, to change things, this time it reminded him far too much of what he had done, and he hated himself for letting her go, even if it would have been worse any other way.
He put Sarah Jane in touch with Jackie, perhaps to start a cadre of consciousness hell-raising. It was all he could do.
Meanwhile, he still had Mickey Smith on his hands, and hell, a bit of travel would do the young man some good, wouldn't it? A reward, the intergalactic equivalent of a Grand Tour. Maybe he'd learn something.
Maybe the Doctor realised that being alone right then was a very bad idea.
“Rose didn't understand her,” Mickey said simply, one night on Telus after they'd successfully evaded some rather angry giant ants. Those jaws stung like hell. “Madame, Reinette. Until the end, they talked. That's why she stayed. She...saw who you were then. What you meant. That you'd leave her behind if it meant people didn't die.”
Mickey was looking at his hands, clearly wasn't able to look him in the eye, but he kept talking like he was sure he was going to feel the wrath of god eventually. “You fuck people up, Doctor. You change them and then they're never satisfied. You run off on some adventure and get caught up in it, but they're caught up in you. Rose, she wanted her own terms.”
It was fair criticism, and the Doctor inhaled hard, dealing with it and putting it to one side in a moment. “What about you?”
He reached over and drew Mickey's chin up with a finger. Dark eyes met dark eyes, startled. “Me?”
“Yeah, why do you stay?”
After a moment, Mickey grinned. “'Cause being fucked up's better than anything else going.”
It wasn't the whole answer, but the Doctor rarely dealt in those. Mickey was learning.
Title: beach read.
Fandom: Doctor Who (Dune)
Rating: PG (language)
Pairing: gen. Maybe Ten/Martha or Ten/Rose if you squint real hard.
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously, BBC, RTD, etc. Quotes/paraphrases from Dune belong to the Herbert estate.
Summary: From a request bythe_10thdoctor: The Doctor wonders why Rose never asked him about his home planet once in all the time they were together. The Dune bits are my own doing. 508 words.
-----
The Doctor is reading. Science fiction, because he's like that, meta without guile about futures and pasts and aliens, and because he intends to get through all of the Hugo winners sometime this century. Most of them are pretty laughable even by the standards of himself, the undisputed king of Weird Shite Happened Today. Either the science is completely appalling, or the social mores are completely implausible, too close to human standards to actually be alien.
That doesn't mean the books are without merit.
No one on Gallifrey ever really understood human literature. The Doctor is at least trying, taking the good and bad and ugly and finding art, 'insignificant species on a backwater planet' or not.
He reads it on a Tuesday night in Iskilia, Martha having crashed from exhaustion and the Doctor himself isn't far behind her. The humidity's a bitch, and after running for hours from lava flow, he too isn't in the mood to do much of anything 'productive', save tackle what, in anyone else, might be called a bucket list of sorts. He has no intention of dying, but it would behoove him to accomplish some personal goals. Martha Jones does that to a person, he's finding--sets a task and heads towards it with limited tolerance for meandering. Except after bolting from sentient molten rock, apparently.
Right, the book.
The clash between worlds, that he knows well, and the dreams of water and green in the desert, though the desert is hard to picture while sitting on tropical Iskilian beaches. He thinks of the wastelands on Gallifrey, and finds that easier to understand...and perhaps that's why he's thinking of it when the girl asks the hero to tell her of his homeworld, filled with plants and water and light, a world she can never understand.
The Doctor, or at least this version of him, has an unfortunate tendency to compare himself to stories, to allegorise his own life into an existing framework. And so he tries to frame how he could tell his story, how he has told his story before. How Martha sat with him in the city and listened. How Rose never asked about the silver trees and the storms. A thousand hints over time, and she never did say much of anything.
They played too many cautious games, he realises, and that was probably why it fell apart. She dared to pick at his wounds only as far as he would lash out, and never went further, even though in everything else she was so daring. And he? He should never be without checks and balances. Donna Noble had made that perfectly clear.
In all, it was probably for the better of the multiverse.
For a moment, he sets the book aside, lost in reverie. But that he can shake off, and does. Besides, he wants to see if the sandworm eats people before the rest of the tale is done...and he is not disappointed.
O you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers.
Title: Fifth House
Fandom: Doctor Who/Star Trek: TNG
Rating: PG-13 (language, vague stab at sex)
Pairing: Jack/Troi
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously, BBC, RTD, Paramount, handwavey no profit.
Summary: From a request byjoanne_c: Het crossover with Jack and Troi. An episode from those missing two years, or, Jack gets an empath whammy. 590 words.
-----
Jack hadn't intended to land on a ship like this, but Jack didn't intend a whole lot lately. Sure, he'd been ostensibly chasing after the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, but he didn't think it would be in transport on a ship like this. The Federation was a royal pain in the ass, and not in the good way--they were a whole lot of self-righteous stuck-up wankers who thought their shit didn't smell.
Give Jack a Klingon. At least they knew how to live.
But after the surprise of getting dumped on Enterprise wore off, Jack was fairly sure that he could adapt; a uniform and a few strategically placed nanites, and he was totally supposed to be there, Lieutenant Harkness in Stellar Cartography with a charming smile and a solid knowledge base. Blend in but not perfectly, disappear but not entirely. Shag a few people after a few late night talks in Ten-Forward (but not too many, the bartender almost seemed to look right through him, and it creeped Jack out).
It took two fucking months to find the goddamn Chalice in the first place--the ship was not that big, but the thing didn't stand out, didn't emit anything, was just basically clay, and Jack had no idea why the hell the Agency wanted it in the first place. It wasn't really his place to ask.
Which was why it was actually beneficial that he ended up in counseling in the first place, or he might have taken two more months to figure it out. But Ensign Klai got his stupid ass killed on shore leave, and so everyone in Cartography was sent to Counselor Troi in orderly shifts...
And that was when Jack realized who had the thing; there were a few other Betazoids on the ship, but Deanna was different, he knew that on sight. Aristocratic. A little research proved him right, once he had managed to get his empathic modifiers working so he didn't have to be the best actor in the universe around the woman. He knew better than to actually hit on her too much, the chain of command would smack him if he did, but he knew she liked his smile, could almost feel her fingers against his jaw. In fact, he could almost swear that he wasn't playing her, that she was playing him for hot fudge sundaes and his vague resemblance to a guy she'd known when she was younger. Like she knew his motives.
He had to get that fucking cup...vase...thing--when he finally saw the inside of her quarters he was drastically disappointed that it was a damned pot with mold inside, probably a biohazard—and get out. He refused to make this more bleeding complicated than it was, especially since That Guy was apparently the first officer, and didn't like him on principle.
One thing about empaths, even with modifier genes: it's terribly hard to fool them into thinking your attention's on them when it's elsewhere in the room. Which was how Jack ended up in bed with a phaser pointed at his cock and not much hope of recourse but to spill.
It turned out Deanna, actually, didn't give a shit about the Sacred Chalice. Her culture, yeah, but the actual object had been a thorn in her side for her whole life...and while she loved her mother, playing a trick on her was always welcome. All Jack had to do was swear he'd bring it back.
He did, and he wasn't sure why, but that was another story.
Title: Intersection
Fandom: Doctor Who/Star Trek: TNG
Rating: PG (language)
Pairing: gen
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously, BBC, RTD, Paramount, handwavey no profit.
Summary: From a request byladyvivien: Any of the Enterprise D crew interacting and snarking with the Doctor. Oooh, maybe even Q... Another Q science project gone somewhat horribly wrong. 492 words.
-----
“It's Thursday,” said the Doctor, hands on his hips, glaring at the bloke in the uniform that had just shown up in the midst of a scintillating conversation between himself and the starship captain. “You can't be omnipotent on Thursday, that defies the Telanna Protocol, volume five, section three.”
The (allegedly) omnipotent being made a noise that even in the kindest definition would be labeled 'sceptical'. Possibly 'bitch please', if one were being particularly uncouth. “Like the Q Continuum gives a shit about mortal legal crap.”
“You did this,” said the captain. While he was stating the obvious (a common human trait), the Doctor was pretty sure he didn't want to not be on this guy's side, mere mortal human or not. “Q, you brought him here, ripped a...a transdimensional rift...in the side of Cargo Bay Three! Send him back!”
“Well,” the Doctor murmured, “at least once I get some of that Romulan ale, lovely stuff, that...Romulans do know how to party when they put their minds to it.” No one paid much attention to him, though at least the guns were pointing at the Q bloke now. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and started to admire the room. Could use a bit of colour, really, military or not. The TARDIS did stand out.
“It's not that simple, mon capitaine,” Q explained, like he was talking to a particularly petulant child. “He and his ship have been displaced, replaced by equal mass from this part of the multiverse. The switch has to be instant or the rift tears further—most of this ship going with it. Not exactly a snap, understood?”
The Frenchman, Picard, looked like he was about to shit bricks. “You insist you're all-powerful, but you can't keep from bloody fucking up and ripping My Ship to shreds, not to mention dumping in cross-universal visitors...”
“Y'know,” the Doctor commented, gesturing up at an area of the cargo bay above all of their heads. “That's really not aesthetically very pleasing, nor structurally sound. Sorta like the whole male pattern baldness thing, mate,” he added, to Q. “Either go all the way or not at all. For someone what could look like anyone at all...and I mean, I'd personally rather be ginger...”
No one was listening. They appeared to be staring at the substantial chunk of tritanium bulkhead that was no longer there.
“Now, if you asked me, which you didn't, I'd say that's the displaced bit. Not that I wouldn't like to stick about, but there's probably someone with a large surprise in her back garden somewhere in Leeds.”
No one said anything.
“Did hear you have a lovely bar here, keep's a mate from way back,” the Doctor added. “Mind if we get a drink before I head home? I think a celebration might just be in order. To brave new worlds, yeah?”
Title: Staying Power
Fandom: Doctor Who (AU)
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Pairing: Ten/Mickey
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously, BBC, RTD, etc.
Summary: From a request by
prof_pangaea: it was rose who stayed in the alt!verse after RotC/AoS, and mickey who kept travelling with the doctor. 474 words.-----
It had only become obvious to the Doctor that Rose Tyler's boyfriend was more than the usual oblivious human when he'd managed to follow along with a plan, then do some pretty effective IT business, saving the world and jolly old England. What hadn't been obvious was Rose's determination to stay. She was bound and determined to fix the brokenness of that world, and he couldn't help but commend her for that.
At the same time, he had not eagerly awaited the moment when he had to explain it to Jackie. There had been a lot of EXCUSE ME and CAN'T EVER GO BACK? and she had been about to slap him, hard, deservedly so this time, before Mickey had caught her wrist gently, and held her when she bawled.
The Doctor was terrible at that, but maybe Jackie had seen something in his eyes that explained it. These losses always stung, but the complete inability to fix it, to change things, this time it reminded him far too much of what he had done, and he hated himself for letting her go, even if it would have been worse any other way.
He put Sarah Jane in touch with Jackie, perhaps to start a cadre of consciousness hell-raising. It was all he could do.
Meanwhile, he still had Mickey Smith on his hands, and hell, a bit of travel would do the young man some good, wouldn't it? A reward, the intergalactic equivalent of a Grand Tour. Maybe he'd learn something.
Maybe the Doctor realised that being alone right then was a very bad idea.
“Rose didn't understand her,” Mickey said simply, one night on Telus after they'd successfully evaded some rather angry giant ants. Those jaws stung like hell. “Madame, Reinette. Until the end, they talked. That's why she stayed. She...saw who you were then. What you meant. That you'd leave her behind if it meant people didn't die.”
Mickey was looking at his hands, clearly wasn't able to look him in the eye, but he kept talking like he was sure he was going to feel the wrath of god eventually. “You fuck people up, Doctor. You change them and then they're never satisfied. You run off on some adventure and get caught up in it, but they're caught up in you. Rose, she wanted her own terms.”
It was fair criticism, and the Doctor inhaled hard, dealing with it and putting it to one side in a moment. “What about you?”
He reached over and drew Mickey's chin up with a finger. Dark eyes met dark eyes, startled. “Me?”
“Yeah, why do you stay?”
After a moment, Mickey grinned. “'Cause being fucked up's better than anything else going.”
It wasn't the whole answer, but the Doctor rarely dealt in those. Mickey was learning.
Title: beach read.
Fandom: Doctor Who (Dune)
Rating: PG (language)
Pairing: gen. Maybe Ten/Martha or Ten/Rose if you squint real hard.
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously, BBC, RTD, etc. Quotes/paraphrases from Dune belong to the Herbert estate.
Summary: From a request by
the_10thdoctor: The Doctor wonders why Rose never asked him about his home planet once in all the time they were together. The Dune bits are my own doing. 508 words.-----
The Doctor is reading. Science fiction, because he's like that, meta without guile about futures and pasts and aliens, and because he intends to get through all of the Hugo winners sometime this century. Most of them are pretty laughable even by the standards of himself, the undisputed king of Weird Shite Happened Today. Either the science is completely appalling, or the social mores are completely implausible, too close to human standards to actually be alien.
That doesn't mean the books are without merit.
No one on Gallifrey ever really understood human literature. The Doctor is at least trying, taking the good and bad and ugly and finding art, 'insignificant species on a backwater planet' or not.
He reads it on a Tuesday night in Iskilia, Martha having crashed from exhaustion and the Doctor himself isn't far behind her. The humidity's a bitch, and after running for hours from lava flow, he too isn't in the mood to do much of anything 'productive', save tackle what, in anyone else, might be called a bucket list of sorts. He has no intention of dying, but it would behoove him to accomplish some personal goals. Martha Jones does that to a person, he's finding--sets a task and heads towards it with limited tolerance for meandering. Except after bolting from sentient molten rock, apparently.
Right, the book.
The clash between worlds, that he knows well, and the dreams of water and green in the desert, though the desert is hard to picture while sitting on tropical Iskilian beaches. He thinks of the wastelands on Gallifrey, and finds that easier to understand...and perhaps that's why he's thinking of it when the girl asks the hero to tell her of his homeworld, filled with plants and water and light, a world she can never understand.
The Doctor, or at least this version of him, has an unfortunate tendency to compare himself to stories, to allegorise his own life into an existing framework. And so he tries to frame how he could tell his story, how he has told his story before. How Martha sat with him in the city and listened. How Rose never asked about the silver trees and the storms. A thousand hints over time, and she never did say much of anything.
They played too many cautious games, he realises, and that was probably why it fell apart. She dared to pick at his wounds only as far as he would lash out, and never went further, even though in everything else she was so daring. And he? He should never be without checks and balances. Donna Noble had made that perfectly clear.
In all, it was probably for the better of the multiverse.
For a moment, he sets the book aside, lost in reverie. But that he can shake off, and does. Besides, he wants to see if the sandworm eats people before the rest of the tale is done...and he is not disappointed.
O you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers.
Title: Fifth House
Fandom: Doctor Who/Star Trek: TNG
Rating: PG-13 (language, vague stab at sex)
Pairing: Jack/Troi
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously, BBC, RTD, Paramount, handwavey no profit.
Summary: From a request by
joanne_c: Het crossover with Jack and Troi. An episode from those missing two years, or, Jack gets an empath whammy. 590 words.-----
Jack hadn't intended to land on a ship like this, but Jack didn't intend a whole lot lately. Sure, he'd been ostensibly chasing after the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, but he didn't think it would be in transport on a ship like this. The Federation was a royal pain in the ass, and not in the good way--they were a whole lot of self-righteous stuck-up wankers who thought their shit didn't smell.
Give Jack a Klingon. At least they knew how to live.
But after the surprise of getting dumped on Enterprise wore off, Jack was fairly sure that he could adapt; a uniform and a few strategically placed nanites, and he was totally supposed to be there, Lieutenant Harkness in Stellar Cartography with a charming smile and a solid knowledge base. Blend in but not perfectly, disappear but not entirely. Shag a few people after a few late night talks in Ten-Forward (but not too many, the bartender almost seemed to look right through him, and it creeped Jack out).
It took two fucking months to find the goddamn Chalice in the first place--the ship was not that big, but the thing didn't stand out, didn't emit anything, was just basically clay, and Jack had no idea why the hell the Agency wanted it in the first place. It wasn't really his place to ask.
Which was why it was actually beneficial that he ended up in counseling in the first place, or he might have taken two more months to figure it out. But Ensign Klai got his stupid ass killed on shore leave, and so everyone in Cartography was sent to Counselor Troi in orderly shifts...
And that was when Jack realized who had the thing; there were a few other Betazoids on the ship, but Deanna was different, he knew that on sight. Aristocratic. A little research proved him right, once he had managed to get his empathic modifiers working so he didn't have to be the best actor in the universe around the woman. He knew better than to actually hit on her too much, the chain of command would smack him if he did, but he knew she liked his smile, could almost feel her fingers against his jaw. In fact, he could almost swear that he wasn't playing her, that she was playing him for hot fudge sundaes and his vague resemblance to a guy she'd known when she was younger. Like she knew his motives.
He had to get that fucking cup...vase...thing--when he finally saw the inside of her quarters he was drastically disappointed that it was a damned pot with mold inside, probably a biohazard—and get out. He refused to make this more bleeding complicated than it was, especially since That Guy was apparently the first officer, and didn't like him on principle.
One thing about empaths, even with modifier genes: it's terribly hard to fool them into thinking your attention's on them when it's elsewhere in the room. Which was how Jack ended up in bed with a phaser pointed at his cock and not much hope of recourse but to spill.
It turned out Deanna, actually, didn't give a shit about the Sacred Chalice. Her culture, yeah, but the actual object had been a thorn in her side for her whole life...and while she loved her mother, playing a trick on her was always welcome. All Jack had to do was swear he'd bring it back.
He did, and he wasn't sure why, but that was another story.
Title: Intersection
Fandom: Doctor Who/Star Trek: TNG
Rating: PG (language)
Pairing: gen
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously, BBC, RTD, Paramount, handwavey no profit.
Summary: From a request by
ladyvivien: Any of the Enterprise D crew interacting and snarking with the Doctor. Oooh, maybe even Q... Another Q science project gone somewhat horribly wrong. 492 words.-----
“It's Thursday,” said the Doctor, hands on his hips, glaring at the bloke in the uniform that had just shown up in the midst of a scintillating conversation between himself and the starship captain. “You can't be omnipotent on Thursday, that defies the Telanna Protocol, volume five, section three.”
The (allegedly) omnipotent being made a noise that even in the kindest definition would be labeled 'sceptical'. Possibly 'bitch please', if one were being particularly uncouth. “Like the Q Continuum gives a shit about mortal legal crap.”
“You did this,” said the captain. While he was stating the obvious (a common human trait), the Doctor was pretty sure he didn't want to not be on this guy's side, mere mortal human or not. “Q, you brought him here, ripped a...a transdimensional rift...in the side of Cargo Bay Three! Send him back!”
“Well,” the Doctor murmured, “at least once I get some of that Romulan ale, lovely stuff, that...Romulans do know how to party when they put their minds to it.” No one paid much attention to him, though at least the guns were pointing at the Q bloke now. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and started to admire the room. Could use a bit of colour, really, military or not. The TARDIS did stand out.
“It's not that simple, mon capitaine,” Q explained, like he was talking to a particularly petulant child. “He and his ship have been displaced, replaced by equal mass from this part of the multiverse. The switch has to be instant or the rift tears further—most of this ship going with it. Not exactly a snap, understood?”
The Frenchman, Picard, looked like he was about to shit bricks. “You insist you're all-powerful, but you can't keep from bloody fucking up and ripping My Ship to shreds, not to mention dumping in cross-universal visitors...”
“Y'know,” the Doctor commented, gesturing up at an area of the cargo bay above all of their heads. “That's really not aesthetically very pleasing, nor structurally sound. Sorta like the whole male pattern baldness thing, mate,” he added, to Q. “Either go all the way or not at all. For someone what could look like anyone at all...and I mean, I'd personally rather be ginger...”
No one was listening. They appeared to be staring at the substantial chunk of tritanium bulkhead that was no longer there.
“Now, if you asked me, which you didn't, I'd say that's the displaced bit. Not that I wouldn't like to stick about, but there's probably someone with a large surprise in her back garden somewhere in Leeds.”
No one said anything.
“Did hear you have a lovely bar here, keep's a mate from way back,” the Doctor added. “Mind if we get a drink before I head home? I think a celebration might just be in order. To brave new worlds, yeah?”