#also sorry for writing the word ''dalek'' so many times | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

higheldertala · 2 years

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revolution of the daleks salt commentary

guess how many times they say the word dalek in this episode? (answer at the bottom)

funny how ch*bnall delegated the daleks as the holiday special villians and yet he still can’t get the ratings

this isn’t a specific ch*bnall problem, but i cannae stand the daleks sorry to be a fake fan :/ please can we put them away, seriously what more is there to say?

i hate how this episode was marketed as the doctor being out of the action and therefore the companions would be saving the day… but this is a ch*bnall episode so of course that didn’t happened. anyway on with the episode.

we don’t need to rip off star wars do we now? like why is this needed? nothing about this episode is based off or parodying star wars. you could just have a ‘previously’ or a ‘two years ago’ caption. thanks for reminding me how shit resolution was tho.

also to answer the question about whether i give a fuck about what happened to the reconnaissance dalek two years ago… no i don’t. tough shit for me i guess cause there’s 70 minutes of this :/

why is the text orange? choices were made here.

character work is when you have a side character say ‘i have a family’ then die.

also yeah this woman poisoning this guy is very contrived, like how would this woman know this guy would stop at this specific spot? also who does she work for? i assume robertson, but how does he know about the dalek and the transit? also when this guy goes missing when transporting an alien death machine wouldn’t that raise some alarm bells? god were only two minutes in and the plot is already falling apart, that must be a record.

you know how i complain about things happening off screen and the characters just saying the thing that happened offscreen, well for once i would actually prefer it they had done this this time instead of spending 10 whole minutes of this of characters i don’t give a shit about.

yay more social commentary being spelt out right in front of you(!)

also on my daleks are overused point, like it’s annoying how people just forget about the daleks in universe. not a ch*bnall specific problem but annoying nonetheless.

i’m sorry but it’s crazy that no one checked these dalek drones for secret guns they had.

i can’t believe how long the start of this goes on for without showing any of the main characters, but what’s pacing lol. a whole 8 minutes in til we see the doctor.

aside from the writing cliche of putting a character in prison when you don’t know what to do with them, this lasts all of a few minutes, god it’s pointless.

‘you can’t eat the cage. believe me, i’ve tried’ this is the funniest bit in the episode. even more funny the subtitles say ‘SIGHS’ from the pting.

these prison scenes are so dull. i presume that’s the point, but there’s so much more you could do with this concept.

on broadcast i thought the doctor was gonna recall a serial from classic who which would have been a much better decision. choices were made when ch*bnall decided to quote jk terfling.

first lense flare of the episode.

‘she was barely in here for a couple of minutes and yet she coded the entry lock to our dna’ and the point of this dialogue was….?

follow her? where? also she’s presumed dead. also going back to the timeless children, why the fuck would they let ko sharmus go out on his own and not one of them go out for the doctor. again no fucking loyalty but i digress.

also i wish at any point we were shown that yaz is the most desperate to travel and/or wants to be with the doctor.

‘what if she needs us?’ she doesn’t, you literally don’t do anything.

‘how many times has she saved us?’ i repeat myself from last episode, but like once lol.

how do they find robertson? is he conviently in sheffield? did they travel? i suppose it doesn’t matter and i don’t have the energy to care.

‘so we’re going to have to find another way’ so you mean sit around and wait for the doctor to come back. actually laughable that this is all the fam can achieve (nothing) without the doctor’s presence.

‘this is hard innit?’ YOU HAVE BEEN COMPANIONS FOR TWO SEASONS. literally the worst companions ever, please leave.

so with jack saving the doctor from prison, am i wrong in saying that the fam have never saved the doctor from any situation? lol. im pretty sure every companion has had at least one instance of saving the doctor during their tenure. or like at least 90%.

the prison scenes literally take up 5 minutes of screen time.

how does this tech guy know how to do successful alien cloning? like nah sorry im gonna need a bit more for this one.

lol another ‘i have a family then dies’ side character, does chibnall not know how to write any other way?

‘you don’t have a room, you’ve never had a room’ im sorry does she think jack slept on the fucking floor? i don’t believe this for a second, why does she say this???

i love how jack’s entire reaction to learning that the doctor went against his warning and gave ashad the cyberium is the single word: ‘what?’ and then this is never mentioned again during the entire episode.

‘i fixed it. eventually. just about. sort of’ no you didn’t, the cyber wars still happened and decimated the human population that ain’t fixing it :/

i guess it’s in character, but for the doctor to be really closed off even to an old friend like jack is so weird. like she doesn’t even mention running into the master or anything.

not my point, but ive seen someone make the point of that jack has also had memories taken from them from the time agency, essentially identical to the doctor’s situation and that this is literally never brought up in the episode.

honestly crazy that ch*bnall wrote for jack for two seasons and still he is reduced to background furniture. i swear he writes bad on purpose.

‘i was in prison for being me’ chr*s ch*bnall wrote this with his own two hands im crying.

more lense flares! also why is the camera at an angle. ive made a post about this, but the directing is so bad this episode and like most other episodes this era.

‘i was in space jail!’ she sure is Quirky™️ isn’t she?

yaz shoving the doctor is very funny. honestly where is that suppose to have come from.

i love the delivery of ‘10 months’ as super serious when so many other companions have waited years to see the doctor again, honestly it makes the fam come across as so wet.

chr*s ch*bnall literally wrote ‘oops’ (said by jack) as a response to that.

also the sad music as if someone’s died.

god this scene is awkward.

how did possessed leo get to osaka? did he just walk past customs with a squid on his back?

‘she’s good. yeah we all are’ …..um no comment.

‘yeah they killed me once, long time ago, no big deal…i can be killed but i come back to life pretty quick,’ why does he tell them this like that? it feels so unnatural.

‘partially her fault’ how is it partially the doctor’s fault? it’s a stretch to say that at the least.

‘partially a friend of hers on earth called rose but she’s trapped in a parallel universe now’ literally all of this is unprompted, why does he need to tell the fam any of this, especially since it would be a sensitive topic for the doctor surely? but hey it wouldn’t be a ch*bnall episode without our constant exposition dumps.

‘i saw the way you shoved her’ i hope ch*bnall never picks up a pen again.

i’m sorry i know this is Emotional Scene™️ and whatever but i don’t care about yaz as a character. none of this is earnt in any way, shape or form. i need the set up if you want me to satisfied with the payoff.

‘we lost each other’ either this is intentional from jack to soften it for yaz or chris ch*bnall doesn’t actually remember jack’s story. the doctor knowingly abandoned jack and jack knew this. yeah sure at the time jack didn’t know this and they moved past this but still weird choice.

also this is stupid because yaz does fuck all in two seasons so what the fuck is she missing. also rose’s speech in parting of the ways is 1000x better, here yaz is like ‘i miss it cant tell you why tho’ :/

‘the joy is worth the pain’ i guess this is a nice poetic line but this is my salt commentary so im gonna bitch about it :/ i think the conversion is a lot bigger then this and it’s a lot more complicated. like jack knows first hand what travelling with the doctor did to a.) himself and b.) to both rose and martha, was travelling ‘worth’ all the trauma they both suffered? idk saying ‘be happy even thought it might hurt’ is definitely one perspective i guess… idk where i was going with this. i think martha’s conversation with donna (and sarah jane’s to rose) is a lot more realistic. also yaz is like 21 here, i would of hoped jack would have had a more mature take on this situation, more than just ‘be lucky you’re going to be traumatised’.

‘are you feeling insecure? cos you seem to need a lot of praise’ literally no idea where ch*bnall pulled this line out of his ass from because im pretty sure insecurity has never been a key trait of jack’s. starting to think the chris ch*bnall who wrote torchwood was an entirely different person (aka i want to know how much of ch*bnall’s torchwood scripts were edited).

i hate the green lightning :/ why do they love doing this?

why the fuck are we letting robertson into the tardis??

‘this is about daleks. please stop using that word’ i second this motion. you know what im gonna count how many times they say dalek in this episode.

wait did they really put daleks on downing street cause that would be pretty funny. or aren’t tv shows allowed to film on downing street i don’t know.

‘you do love a beanie’ i know she’s suppose to be Socially Awkward™️ but god… the dialogue is always so awkward, i have never believed the doctor and fam as friends, let alone companions of two seasons.

‘four minutes til osaka’ it’s so funny ch*bnall takes time to signpost that we taking a four minute break from the plot to talk about feelings.

it’s quite funny tho because has the doctor and ryan ever had a one-to-one scene before?? honestly don’t think they have (correct me if im wrong). lol ch*bnall will never convince me these people are companions and not background furniture.

the awkwardness of this conversation makes it look like the doctor is in physical pain at having to make small talk to her so-called ‘friend’.

ch*bnall literally wrote ‘and how does that make you feel’ with his own two hands. i honestly don’t understand what people get out of defending this era.

‘if i’m not who i thought i was, then who am i?’ hey chibnall we did this last episode remember? you wrote it so you should.

‘you’re the doctor, same as before, same as always. right same doctor same ryan nothing’s changed’ weird how she’s perfectly okay with this advice from the fugitive doctor, but not with ryan.

nice advice/ consoling from ryan but again this is never earnt between the characters so ehh.

omg just thought ryan should had just said in response ‘i should say a reassuring thing now shouldn’t i? i’m still a bit socially awkward’.

‘thank you ryan for being my friend. thank you for being mine’ ….footage not found.

‘did you really have to bring him?’ again i second this motion.

this lighting has plot purpose but it’s still ugly as fuck.

‘you're feeding cloned dalek creatures liquidised humans’ this era never gets any less patronising to its viewers. also disappointing that doctor who veteran j*** b******** would accept such shit dialogue (or such basic characterisation for that matter).

‘there's something else that's bugging me’ umm… the quality of writing?

‘thanks yaz! missed you yaz!’ god this dialogue is so forced.

and now the dalek lights are red in case you didn’t know they’re now evil(!)

glad to see even jack now immediately backs down from conflict against the doctor. we hate it here.

this plan bad, as im sure you all know.

if they keep on saying the word dalek istg.

‘your bodies are too slow for daleks’ this is one of weirdest lines of dalek dialogue i’ve ever heard.

the extreme close up of the dalek, something something directing bad you know the drill.

‘yeah i can’t be spotted by the daleks!’ proceeds to park right in front of them.

‘maybe i can make a claim on insurance’, okay so that was a funny joke i admit.

bad guy of the episode goes to side with the bad guys, pretends to be shocked.

one of my favourite pieces of physical comedy is when the daleks rotate their heads to look at each other. i’m sure this probably isn’t even intentionally funny, i just find it hilarious and sassy of them.

‘you never forget your first death’ and jack is so hung up on this because…?

so is jack just carrying an abundance of bombs on his person or…?

‘no alien ship is safe from us two bad boys’ oh graham 😂

aw graham got left hanging, he didn’t deserve that 😔

if the daleks can locate the tardis now how come they didn’t before?

‘im captain jack harkness and im immortal’ imagine being happy with writing this dialogue, imagine being happy performing this dialogue. i have to ask. also why is ch*bnall obsessed with mentioning jack’s immortality when it bares no purpose to the plot. like yes ch*bnall i do remember jack is immortal you don’t need to keep telling me.

also like jack risks getting any one of them shot because he has to make Quippy Line™️???

ch*bnall loves solving the day by making the villian extremely dumb.

jack saying goodbye through ADR… hmm i want to know the tea.

i don’t know why the doctor frames ryan wanting to leave as ‘missed my time with you’ when ryan literally just gave his reasoning as it is because he has grown as a person and now know what he wants to do with life.

i mean ryan leaving does have its arc throughout the series so im not gonna say it’s not there but also im gonna not applaud a fish for swimming so.

‘she needs you’ there’s only so many times i can make the same joke… and im gonna keep making it, no she’s doesn’t lol (im sorry😅).

i will say that graham’s exit isn’t as good. not that that it’s unjustified, it’s perfectly fine but yeah less of an independent choice and more just following ryan.

nice leaving gift of psychic paper, just don’t tell them that others got a k9 😂

‘i could always use the tardis to go back arrive an hour after you guys, change the timeline. then we'd have more time together’ why is this doctor so bothered about companions leaving to this degree, she never even looked at them twice when they were on board. also the doctor has never reacted like this to any other companions and it’s not like the fam are that special lol.

also i noticed in the credits there’s a ch*bnall side character named after me lol. i think i’ll stick to my welsh biker girl thanks x

concluding thoughts: this episode definitely has some (2) nice emotional scenes in insolation, but 22 episodes in to start putting actual emotional development is just too little too late. jack ends up being almost a caricature of himself featuring all his Greatest Hits™️ of lines and quirks. nothing new is added to his character which is a shame. honestly the depth of emotion in torchwood s3 and s4 is so profound that seeing jack reduced to the gimmick of quirky sidekick is insulting to longtime viewers. aside from the start the doctor and jack barely interact which is also frustrating. the prison cliffhanger/ scenes are extremely pointless and add nothing to the plot or character as usual. the fam are the fam. not a big fan of dalek stories nowadays so i don’t really care much about it.

they say the word dalek(s) 91 times in this episode.

#series 12 salt rewatch #this is late because i didn’t want to do it ✌️#and we are done with s12 yayyyy!!! 🎉#dw commentary

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clean-bands-dirty-stories · 4 years

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Breathe ~ Doctor (part 1)

A/n: So I had a FANTASTIC idea and had to write it. The first part is all of the experience with 9 in one part. I so hope you enjoy this introduction, and allow it to take you on a journey with me that I have been having far too much fun exploring.

Word Count: 11,000+

MASTERLIST

Rose Tyler had three people in her life that were a constant.

Her mother, first of all. The woman might be a little annoying from time to time, gossiping and being pushy and demanding and wasting money on parties and dramatics. She was a good woman though, with a large heart. She had, after all, raised Rose by herself and the girl had come out brilliantly.

Then there was Mickey. Mickey was Rose's boyfriend. He was... cool, I guess. There was definitely more to him than others cared to dig for. Even he himself didn't know his full potential, and it put a stopper on him quite a bit. He was fine enough, and obviously cared for Rose, but he tended to be a bit... distracted, and oblivious. Desperate, maybe.

Y/n sure didn't approve of him, but as Rose's best friend he had long since learned to accept the man. Y/n was very good at filling in the spaces where Mickey lacked. He was attentive and listened to Rose talk for hours. That was perhaps the biggest reason he didn't like Mickey too much. Rose complained a lot. Y/n fancied himself an artist. He and Rose had met when he'd tried to do street art to get some attention, but it was more hussle than it was worth. The best thing that came out of it was his friendship with Rose.

There was something odd about Y/n, Rose was sure. The man was usually very open and honest - unless it came to any and all talk about relationships. Rose had long since stopped asking, but others hadn't. Every time his love life was brought up, he clammed shut and got very bitey. No one was sure why, but it happened every time without fail. His reaction didn't get any more or less violent, either. No one could wear him out or get him to snap. He just got tense and irritable until you stopped talking, and then the mood was usually ruined the rest of the day.

It was a silver lining, though. Otherwise Y/n was extremely pleasant and had no problems talking about other peoples' relationships or love lives. Y/n never encouraged Rose to be single or to dump Mickey - as long as everyone was happy, you could talk about anything in your life without any back lash. Rose got along and they didn't talk about it and that was that.

Then the Doctor happened.

Rose and Y/n didn't lie to each other. They'd formed a friendship on if you didn't want something known, you didn't mention it until you were ready to talk about it with a level head. No matter what, they didn't lie. They just kept their mouths shut. So when the Doctor entered Rose Tyler's life and her mom took up the phones like usual and Mickey ran off to the bar to watch the game, Rose pulled Y/n into her room and told him everything.

"No," Y/n mumbled. It wasn't that he didn't believe her. Rose Tyler wasn't insane, and they didn't lie to each other. He knew that, logically, if she said it, it was true. That didn't stop the fact that his mind rejected what she was telling him.

"Yes!" Rose gushed, nodding eagerly. "He's got this weird screw driver, except it's got no head, just a little light at the end. And mannequins - they moved. He's the one that blew up my job."

Y/n allowed him a second to process that before responding. Rose stayed silent as well, waiting for him to speak again before she said more. "And he said his name was what?"

"The Doctor. Sounds like a mad man, huh?"

A sort of amused snort came from Y/n then. "No shit." He shook his head. "Hold on, I need air." They began to walk out when the doggy door suddenly blew in. Y/n and Rose both jumped, before Rose yelled something at her mom about not nailing the flap shut like she said she would. But when Y/n kneeled down, he picked up nails off of the ground, holding them up for Rose to see. "I think she actually did, Rosey."

The two locked eyes and then both gazes shot to the flap as it suddenly moved again. Rose went to stick her head down there but Y/n wasn't having any of that. He nudged her with his foot, grabbing the bat by the door he had insisted the Tyler's kept at the ready. Two women living alone needed some way to protect themselves. Not necessarily a man - no woman NEEDED a man, even Y/n knew that - but something. Now it came in handy as he hefted, swinging the door open as Rose scrambled to her feet behind him.

A man stood there. He wore a leather jacket and had an odd expression on his face. "Hello," Y/n greeted, unsure.

"Hello," the man responded back. He lifted a long, odd object and pressed a button, running the object down Y/n's body as if... scanning him.

It clicked in Y/n's brain far too quickly. The thing glowed at the end that was pointed at Y/n, and it made a buzzing noise. The man was weird and smiled too wide. Even the leather jacket was there. "You're the Doctor."

The Doctor's smile grew. "Normally I have to introduce myself. It's usually a bad sign when someone knows my name, but you're not made of plastic so I can't imagine what I'd have to be worried about. Are you made of plastic by chance?"

"No," Y/n answered calmly. He was processing Rose's story at hyper speed now. It only made sense that a man like this would be attached to a world where plastic came alive and tried to kill you. The night seemed bright around him. There was something odd about his presence, like seeing cartoon and live action mixing between characters and background. The Doctor didn't belong here, and it was obvious in every move he made.

The Doctor nodded. "Suppose I'll be on my way then."

"You will not," Rose spoke up, grabbing the man's arm around Y/n and pulling all of them. "I have questions and this time you WILL answer them."

That simple action changed the lives of Rose Tyler, the Doctor, and everyone they cared about so much that none of them would ever be able to go back. Honestly though, none of them would have it any other way. Except maybe Jackie.

"Doctor?" Y/n turned to the other man, who hummed without looking over. The Doctor's eyes were trained on the end of the world. As were Rose's. Y/n couldn't keep looking. Something had stuck in his head. Something that made him even more sick than the sight of an empty planet being consumed in a universe that had long since been done with it. "The woman before. She said something about your planet. Something about you being impossible."

The Doctor got a very dark look on his face then. "I suppose I am rather impossible." He shrugged, obviously trying to keep it light.

Unfortunately, Y/n's curiosity was insatiable. It was something the Doctor had come to appreciate about him. Until now, maybe. "Well, I'm the last of my kind." He paused but when Y/n's expression grew only more earnest, he shared more. There was something about Y/n that pulled at the Time Lord. Made him want to talk. Talk about things other than just science and time and language and culture and history and such. Something that made the Doctor want to talk about himself. "A very long time ago, there was a war. A war between my people, and those knows as the Daleks." He paused, getting rather somber. "We won...” he swallowed. There was an unspoken, at a cost.

Y/n found himself with more questions, but felt none of them appropriate to ask. "I'm so sorry." Rose turned then to see Y/n take the Doctor's hand. Y/n had always been affectionate, but only with people he was rather attached to. With strangers, Y/n was usually quiet and reserved. Until he was sure someone could handle his prying questions and blunt honesty that so often got him in trouble if he didn't check himself around the right people.

Perhaps it was the fact that the Doctor was a lot like that as well that Y/n had taken to him so quickly. Whether it was that or something else, Rose was glad the two men were getting along. She was also glad there was someone smarter than Y/n in the room. The boy had asked so many questions and gotten so many answers that he had quite a bit of knowledge more than normal people. He was no genius like the Doctor, nor was he hyper intelligent or anything. But he could outmatch Rose and Mickey, and they often went to him when they needed something spelled or math done that they couldn't mentally do quick enough.

Rose suddenly saw something else though. Past the similarity and the comfort and the peace the men found in each other. The Doctor looked back to Earth, and Y/n continued to look at the Doctor. It was subtle, and it wouldn't have been noticed if Rose wasn't already looking. But she had. Y/n finally looked away fully, but there was a look in his eyes that Rose had never seen before.

What was that about?

"What was that?" Rose demanded when the left the room, parting from the Doctor.

Y/n seemed taken aback. "What was what?"

Rose wasn't sure how to describe it. An odd look? A weird new air about him? There was something different when Y/n looked at the Doctor and Rose couldn't understand it. "With you and the Doctor?" She tried to clarify.

That only seemed to confuse Y/n more. "What are you talking about? Holding hands? I do that with you and Mickey all the time, and I'm not even Mickey's biggest fan."

Rose rolled her eyes so hard that Y/n almost laughed. "You looked... different."

Y/n was quiet a long time. Rose almost thought he wasn't going to say anything. That she had found something he wasn't ready to share. But then he did speak, even if it was soft. "He's different, the Doctor. Not just because he's alien, though... perhaps that is it." He sighed. "He's lonely. He's so lonely, Rose. Can't you see it? In the way he empathizes with loss and grief. The way he looks when you mention his name or his planet or the TARDIS or your family. When he was watching you watching Earth die, like he could see... something else. He told me something. Something that makes me think... he might have watched his own world be destroyed, like we did today. But it wasn't empty, and his species hadn't spread out and integrated and evolved. They just died, and left him all alone."

For a second, it was quiet. "You see it, don't you?"

A nod was all Y/n gave at first. He didn't need to say anything, but he did anyway. "He looked the way I did when I got the news back then. When I found out. He gets that exact look."

Suddenly Rose looked very sad indeed. "Well. Now you both have someone, eh?"

A small smile tugged at Y/n's lips. "Yeah, here's to that at least."

"Y/N!"

The man turned at his name, only to be tackled by the shorter blonde that had become known as his best friend. "Rose," Y/n whispered, clinging to her. "God I thought you were dead for sure. I - what happened? I lost you guys and then..." He looked sick. "There was so much light and-"

"We're all okay," the Doctor reassured. "That's what matters."

Y/n turned on the older man. "Now you listen here. That's NOT all that matters. Because she damn well could have not been and I wasn't there to protect her. Or you! What would I have done if either of you had died and I was up here sitting on my thumbs like an idiot?"

The Doctor was taken aback by Y/n's outburst. When the man turned and stormed off, Rose was the one to step up and explain. "I'm sorry, Doctor. He's rather protective of those he cares about." She bit her lip, giving the Doctor the impression there was more she wanted to say. He waited for her to speak, and after a while she did. "When he was young, Y/n saw something terrible. His childhood wasn't normal. I mean, you think life is pretty rough on most of us, but Y/n's had it worst than most."

"What happened?" The Doctor asked quietly.

Rose sighed. "His parents had always been pretty distant, but they were mostly good. They did what they needed to do and let him free when he wanted to be. But, well, they were.. angry. The fought a lot, and it didn't help that his dad was a fan of alcohol. His mum... well she was a fan of lots of things other than that, none of them good for you. One day, she came home high. She wanted something... I can't remember what. His parents fought over it until... his mum pulled a little too hard. His dad slipped and knocked his head really hard on the floor. He died. His mom panicked and..." Rose swallowed. And no further words had to be said about it. "Y/n was on the couch the entire time watching. He ran. Was on the streets for a long time doing lots of things. Working as best he could while keeping his head down until he turned eighteen and was free of the system. Found us right after that. He watched his parents destroy themselves and spent a long time alone after that because he couldn't stop the fighting." She scoffed. "His words of course. Not his fault people fight. He was only twelve."

The Doctor seemed to be thinking about something. Something that didn't seem to be sitting right with him. "Does he have any other family?"

"Loads. He used to have a very big family. No brothers or sisters, but lots of aunts and uncles and cousins and the such."

"What happened to them?" The Doctor looked at Rose, as if searching her mind for something he desperately needed.

Rose stalled a few seconds. "A lot of the same, really. Not so much murder, but... well, his parents got their habits from their families, and between that and regular life? Not as many are as strong or as resourceful as Y/n. They ran off or got addicted to something or..." She shrugged. "He lost all of them at some point."

The Doctor nodded. "I see. Well, this is settled. Let's go somewhere more fun." His tone changed but the mood didn't. Rose let it drop though. Y/n didn't mind Rose answering questions like this for people he was comfortable with. He actually preferred it, so that wasn't her worry. The Doctor had drawn a silent line though. She didn't know what it was blocking her from, but she decided to let the whole topic drop just in case.

Perhaps it was what Y/n had said about him and the Doctor being the same.

She hoped they weren't too similar. It was bad enough knowing Y/n's story, she couldn't bare another like it.

Y/n had been staring at the building that had just gone up in flames for a very long time now. Rose and the Doctor had been celebrating, but Y/n sat there quietly, on the pavement, staring at the building like he was waiting for it to undo the carnage that had been caused moments ago.

"So what's on your mind?" The Doctor had plopped down next to Y/n, smile small. He'd gotten used to Y/n's mellow mood. The boy wasn't hyper like the Doctor. He didn't get off on exploration. What drove Y/n, it seemed, was saving people. And a life like this took its tole on people who wanted to save everyone. People like Y/n. So, the Doctor had learned to check in every once in a while. Every time he did, he was never disappointed. Even when Y/n seemed to be hurting, he was never negative about it. He could accept a success. The things he did think though put the Doctor on a path that had him mulling for days. In a good way. He and Y/n got into a lot of very stimulating debates this exact way.

Today wasn't about debates for Y/n.

"I know they were going to destroy the world and stuff. I'm not sad they're dead. We won and they've been stopped and all of humanity and Earth has been saved. That's great. The way we did it was rather impressive too." He chuckled, but there was obviously more he was thinking.

"But?" The Doctor prompted.

Y/n shrugged. "Wiping out an entire family. I mean, their species isn't normally like that, are they?"

"No," The Doctor answered slowly.

A bitter sweet smile rested on Y/n's lips then. "Do you think they were raised to be like that, or is blood thirst genetic?" It was a sarcastic question, so the Doctor didn't answer. There was a moment of quiet before Y/n shook his head and sighed. "Doctor, would you prefer I didn't travel with you?"

That was not the thing the Doctor had been expecting Y/n to say next. "Why would you ever think I didn't want you along with us?"

Another moment where Y/n struggled with how to form his thoughts and feelings into words passed before the boy finally figured it out. "I like this life. I really do. I like being around you and Rose and watching you guys have your fun. But sometimes I feel like... a bit of a downer."

The Doctor chuckled. "Honestly Y/n, you're the first person in a very long who sees the truth to things. As much as we cling to our victories, you're real about them. You handle everything with complete understanding, even with your limited knowledge. You have empathy even for beings who would have killed you without even remembering your face. You have pity for monsters and you feel for species the rest of your kind would rather kill than have a civil conversation with. Rose is fun and she matches my energy and I appreciate that. But you ask the questions I've been waiting for someone to ask for centuries. Your kindness is quite refreshing. You get it."

Y/n smiled. "So you want me along?"

"I will always want you along, Y/n. As long as I can have you along," The Doctor answered without hesitation. "You're no downer, I promise."

It was that moment that something changed for Y/n. Rose saw this too, but not in the moment the two men shared now, but after. Y/n and the Doctor had unlocked something in each other in that conversation. A kind of connection where even as everyone cheered, all the pair had to do was look at each other to know that in all the sweetness around them, the other understood the slight bitterness they felt as well. As much as they wanted to end evil, they also both felt the loss of any soul they couldn't save. Taking a moment to mourn with each other seemed a relief for both of them.

It was something Rose couldn't feel. She saw things pretty straight forward. Bad people needed to have an end to them. And she wasn't wrong, but the compassion that had come to Y/n and Doctor after having their families and lives taken from them and living far too long by themselves, they had a unique ability to give a moment of silence even for enemies who were twisted by things out of their control. Who couldn't be shown the light.

They bonded over it so much that Rose felt herself being left behind.

Y/n and Rose still told each other lots and cuddled when either needed comfort. The Doctor and Rose still had lots of fun and laughed at each others jokes and had that same sense of humor that came only from adjusting to and enjoying the life they both lead. They were all friends. But Y/n and the Doctor had something else. Just a little something more. Just enough that Rose saw the change and began to think that there might be something major she didn't know about the man who called himself her best friend.

"Something's off."

Rose and the Doctor looked over at Y/n, whose eyes were slowly and carefully scanning their surroundings with narrowed eyes, as if searching for proof that his hunch was solid. "What is it?" Rose asked gently, moving closer so they didn't have to talk around the people in the crowd they had been moving through before Y/n had stopped dead.

The dynamic between the trio had very early on become clear. The Doctor was the brain, coming up with the plans. Rose was the second in command. She was stuck to the Doctor's side and they worked in tandem, being unbroken and often sliding along the same wave length. Y/n was the heart. When Rose and the Doctor got stuck on a mind path, or got distracted, or veered a little too right of what was right, Y/n was the one to shake things up to give them a new perspective, or to help either of them if they needed it. Y/n was a comfort and a friend. He was also very intuitive. Where the Doctor sought things out, and Rose seemed to stumble on information she found, information seemed to find Y/n. He just had a good gut guiding him.

So when he said something was up, at this point, he was never questioned by his companions.

"Earlier one of the girls said that people are chosen to go up to the higher floors. That there's a prize. They go up and something happens and then they never come back."

The Doctor nodded. "I was thinking about that too."

Y/n shook his head. "Did you notice that it's incredibly hot in here? I mean, why? It's obviously not ideal - it makes the people here uncomfortable. It's slight discomfort, but still. Why keep a bunch of people in a super heated room? What's on level 500, air conditioning?"

It was made to be a joke, but the comment seemed to spark something in the Doctor. "You know what, that's an excellent point." He stood straighter. "Fun's over. Where's that friend of yours, Rose?"

The blonde looked around. "He was... just behind us."

"Grand," Y/n grumbled sarcastically.

The Doctor chuckled a few times. "Took the words right out of my mouth." As he said it he looked over at Y/n, his eyes flickering to Y/n's lips. He looked away quickly and Y/n missed the moment altogether. The two continued cracking jokes toward Rose about the man both of them had been increasingly annoyed with, but Rose wasn't responding.

Because she had seen where the Doctor's eyes had landed, and her mind was working a million miles an hour to put this together. It's not that the concept of men liking men was foreign to her, just rare. One that wasn't her first thought for sure. But as Y/n and the Doctor got closer and closer on a very emotionally intimate level, Rose was noticing the building tiny moments that wouldn't mean anything alone but meant everything put together.

She smiled to herself. Rose Tyler had a plan, and not just about Satellite Five.

"You wanna talk?" Y/n offered quietly.

"Do you?" Rose shot back.

Y/n wasn't sure what to do with that. "I always want to talk with you, Rose."

The blonde jerked her body to turn and face Y/n, a determined look on her face. "You know Y/n, how about this. An exchange of honesties. For every truth you tell me, I will tell you one in return. And your truth has to equal mine, so if you want something meaningful then you have to give something like that first."

Y/n paused and then nodded. "Sounds good. Do you want me to start?”

"No, actually," Rose decided. Y/n motioned for her to go ahead, so she did. "Watching my dad die was not great, but I'm glad he wasn't alone after all. It was kind of... a relief, actually. Some closure. I got to say goodbye. I got to hold his hand." She offered a weak smile. "Now your turn."

Unsure of what Rose was aiming for, Y/n thought for a second for something he hadn't told her recently that could be as profound and unexpected as that. "This whole life of ours gives me purpose. I feel like I matter, which is something I haven't really felt until now. I know I had people who cared about me and worried about me and expected me home every night, but I always craved to make a difference and finally having that has been like a dream come true. Even though I get a little melancholic... all the time, it's just because I get stuck in my own head a lot and think too much. I actually really like what we do."

Rose nodded. Even though it had been a tad mild compared to hers, it was less what he had said and more the fact that he'd said it. Y/n struggled to communicate positive emotions, often overthinking the negative ones and voicing those because he needed second opinions and insight. Acknowledging positive things didn’t require a second opinion or input, just a congratulations, and since when did he get that just for traveling with the Doctor and finding purpose without looking like some sort of arrogant dick? It might not have been as profound as Rose's truth, but it was equally meaningful.

"I love Mickey and my mum of course, but I don't think I'll be ever to leave this life and be okay with it. I think that I might end up breaking up with Mickey because he deserves better and that thought terrifies me."

Y/n pursed his lips. "Can I just-"

"No comforting or additional thought. We can discuss later. Right now, truth. State it."

"Okay," Y/n sighed. "Uh, relationships in general terrify me." It sort of slipped out and both of them hesitated. Y/n never talked about this sort of stuff. It was the only thing he never talked about, even with Rose. She expected him to clam up but after a second, he just kept going. "I'm scared of falling in love and having my heart broken. I know some things are worth it, and people glorify love so much and I crave it, I really do, but... I've lost so much. I don't think I'd be able to handle it if I really fell for someone and then had to lose them. I'd rather make friends and family than that nonsense. It would hurt to lose them, but in a different way, and there would still be the thought that you would always be that person's friend or family if you get separated or part ways or whatever. Like we'll always be each other's friend, I think. Even if we got to a point where we couldn't be friends anymore. If I left this life behind, or one of us died or-" He sighed. "But when you break up with someone, they move on. They date other people, and do intimate things with them. They love and connect in just as intimate ways as you used to, and eventually they forget you and replace you. I couldn't handle that. I won't."

Rose let out the breath she'd been holding. She'd been too scared to breath, in case it shattered the moment she'd been waiting to happen for years now. "I understand." She took his hand. "Have you... ever been in love before?"

Y/n shook his head. "Not yet." He paused and Rose felt the weight of those words. Not yet. She could imagine Y/n clinging to his heart as the Doctor got closer and closer, his smile ever wide and his charm ever sparkling.

Rose's shoulders sagged a bit. "What will you do if it ever happens?"

"Ignore it." The words were too quick and solid. They came across as desperate. Insistent. In that moment one thing was clearer than anything else in the world. If Y/n wasn't in love with the Doctor already, he would be soon. He was falling hard, and he was falling fast, and when he landed it was going to hurt. They were suddenly both terrified about it.

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" The words were hysterical. Y/n's hands shook and his eyes were wide and his skin shone with sweat. His hair was messier than usual and his clothes were disheveled, like he'd rolled down a long hill or gotten in a fight or something.

The horror of what was happening in that moment settled over Rose and the Doctor in a truly terrible way. It was in the ringing in their ears and the horrible, bitter taste that was suddenly in their mouths. "Y/n-" the Doctor began.

"No," the man answered in a very final tone. One that let them know there was no room for question or doubt. He had been touched by the child. He had been infected, and he refused to infect any of the others.

A new friend, Jack Harkness, jogged over at the commotion. "What's happening over here?"

"Doesn't matter," Y/n answered solidly. "We need to move on."

Rose let out a sound that neared a choked sob, except she wasn't crying. She just looked to be in pain. "You- you can't! Y/n-"

Y/n took a few deep breaths. He had made the mistake. In his idiocy, he had gotten between the kid and Rose, and now he was here. The child was far back and they'd had time to get away, but Y/n had touched him and that meant only one thing. "Rose, we don't have time for this." He was near breaking down, and he begged her to see that. He couldn't spend the time before he died losing it. He had to help as much as he could. He had to make a difference. He had to-

"You know, you don't have to do anything, Y/n." Y/n and the Doctor looked at each other. His lips were parted and his eyes were desperate. He wanted to help but... he didn't know how. "You can stop. We would understand. You - you probably don't have much time left." His face crumbled, like he finally understood the meaning behind what he was saying. "You don't have to come. Spend it doing something else. Get yourself some food maybe. There's bound to be something in the TARDIS. Pick a bed, and stay there. We'll keep you comfortable after... after this."

A soft chuckle came from Y/n then. "You know, I'm going to die." The group got deathly quiet. "Maybe that's not true. I'll be alive. I'll be something worse than dead. I'll be brain dead. Forever." He shook his head, his breathing becoming shallow. "But right now, I'm still me. And I want to do something before I stop being me, Doctor. I want to do all I can. I want to do everything, but all we have time for is making sure whatever is happening to me never happens to anyone else ever again, okay? Can I spend my last moment with you?" He was looking right at the Doctor. Not at Rose, which would have made sense as they were practically siblings with the way they acted toward each other. Not even Jack, who had been having fun flirting with everyone - especially because Y/n wasn't anywhere near as hard to get as Rose or the Doctor. Y/n looked at the Doctor, and begged to die by his side, and Jack and Rose looked at each other because the need that Y/n had to steal all the time he had left to spend with the Doctor of all people... it said something Y/n was not ready to find the actual words for.

"Of course you can," the Doctor whispered.

And he did. Y/n was there as they reached the not-bomb that was actually some sort of alien ambulance. He was there when they saved Nancy and gathered the troops. And when it came time, he left too.

"Nancy, take Rose to where you cut the gate. And take this!" He tossed his sonic screwdriver at Rose and she caught it.

"I ought to go as well," Y/n spoke up.

The Doctor looked confused by that. "No I need you here. I promised you'd-"

"Doctor," Y/n interrupted. He took a shaky breath. "I can feel it coming. Soon I'm going to be one of them. Mindless, and coming after you, and you won't be able to stop me. I will kill all of you. Make you just like them." His face darkened. "Like us." He shook his head and Rose and the Doctor looked at each other, trying to find the answer in each other that neither of them had. Y/n steeled himself. "So this is goodbye."

The Doctor stood there for a few seconds. Too many seconds. He was trying to say something, but didn't seem to be able to. "Y/n?" The man answered to his name, and the men locked eyes. "Do you remember the first time we ever set out, and you told me... you told me that Rose was the most important person to you? You joked that no one would ever be that important to you, except someone who would be... special." He let air out of his nose. "You were special to me. More special than most people."

Y/n smiled, fighting tears. "You are special to me too, Doctor." He looked away. "I'm sorry our journey ended so early. I think... I think it could have been special, too."

Then there was nothing else to say, so he left with Rose and Nancy, the three of them booking it to the fence. Y/n stepped through and watched as Nancy and Rose fixed the metal so he wouldn't be able to get back in.

"Did you mean it?" Rose asked, looking at her best friend for what could very well be the last time. "That I was important to you? And that the Doctor was special enough to be just as important?"

The silence stretched for too long. Rose wasn't sure if it was painful to talk with that thing pushing its way up Y/n's throat, or if it was his human fear that kept his lips sealed, but Y/n didn't say anything for a very long time. The fence was sealed and the women stood before he finally spoke. "Do you think differently of me?" He rushed to add, "I know it's obvious. I saw the way you look between us like you expect us to lose our minds and make out right there. I see the way you and Jack looked at each other before too. Like you were watching a romance movie that had a sad ending. One you didn't expect, or think fair. I'm not as subtle as I like to think I am."

Rose scoffed. "You think I think differently of you because you're in love with the Doctor? Why? Because he's an alien?" She narrowed her eyes. "Or because he's a man?" Y/n looked away. "Y/n, you're my best friend. After all we've been through with the Doctor, you're practically my brother. I have been waiting ages now for you to admit your feelings for him. I didn't know until we started traveling, but it doesn't change the fact that you're there for me more than anyone else. You protect me and care about me. Your heart is bigger than all of the universes put together, and you bleed gold - I swear to god. You and the Doctor... you give him something I don't think anyone ever could. You understand something I can't wrap my head around. The way you mourn even the worst of us, because you see potential. The way you can do that, but still stop evil and remove yourself from harm because as much as you pity people who destroy themselves and others, you also won't tolerate their destruction. You're one of the most amazing men I've ever met, and don't think I'm just saying that because you were my first boyfriend.” It was a reference to When they’d first met; Y/n had pretended to be Rise’s boyfriend to get a creep to go away.

Both of them laughed at that, tears falling down their faces. "I remember that." Y/n slipped his hands in his pockets and the mood dropped again. "In another world, Rose, I wouldn't have ever left your side. I really do love you. And even if I am feeling... things, for the Doctor." His eyebrows came together. "You were always my first priority. I just know that he cares about you, too. He has your back, but someone needs to have his. Someone who really understands. And... you get distracted sometimes. But that's okay, because you always have my back, so we watch each other like that." His voice broke as he continued, "Had." Y/n and Rose locked eyes. "You watch him for me, alright? You two..." He laughed again. "I know you two are like me and him. I know he'll never admit it in a million years, but you two. It's subtle and quiet and innocent, but I can see it. I see it in the way he says your name, and the way you trust him. If you don't end up happy because of me I'll come back from the dead just to kick your asses."

Tears fell harder down Rose's face as she laughed again. "You're an idiot."

"Your idiot," Y/n replied without missing a beat.

Rose's expression fell. "How am I supposed to go on these journeys without you? Go back home and face my mum, who needs you around because you're the only one who'll listen to her gossip without giving her an ear load in return? Who will tell Mickey off now that I'm so different and we-" She choked on her words. "You can't go, Y/n."

"I don't want to..." His vision blurred and the pain that had been rising steadily came in full force now. Y/n leaned against the fence, bending at the middle a little bit as his other hand rose so his fingers could wrap around his throat. "I'm sorry, Rose. I- I-" He began sobbing, but stopped as it made the pain worse. "I'm- m-" He shook his head. He didn't want to hear himself say it... Then the thought occurred to him that the people might be trapped in their heads. Conscious and aware, but out of control. Would he see the face of every person he condemned to live like him? Would he sit there and see them and have to touch them anyway? Every single person until... until what? They didn't die. He wouldn't die. He would turn person after person until they were all brain dead and trapped just like him. "Rose."

"I'm here," she whispered, her voice haunted. "I'm right here, Y/n."

Y/n closed his eyes. "Run. Please - PLEASE don't see me like this. Don't see me- m- mummy-" The word forced itself out of his mouth and he whimpered, flinching upon hearing it. Rose made a sound that was half groan and half whine. This was hurting her. "Rose, Ru-" And then he looked up and locked eyes with the girl who had become his sister, and he thought of her and the Doctor before everything went black.

When he woke up again, he was somewhere new. He expected to see himself marching toward his friends, condemning them to death. He expected to see someone else about to be wrapped in his deadly clutches perhaps. But all he saw, instead, was a lot of lights and people and a blue beam with something large and cylinder in it. He saw his hands next. He reached them up to touch his face and they answered him. His face was skin. It was smooth and a little warm. There was no leather or metal. He wasn't wearing a gas mask.

"Y/N!" He turned in time to be rammed into by a smaller blonde. Her hair went into his face and he felt both panic and relief.

"You- you can't touch me. Rose what have you done?" He demanded rather harshly.

She shook her head, her body shaking as she sobbed. "You're cured, Y/n. You're all better. The Doctor - he figured it out. A brilliant man, he is. Truly brilliant."

Allowing himself a moment to process that, Y/n stayed quiet and just hugged Rose for a second. Once it did settle, though, he needed to know something. "Is the Doctor okay?"

"I'm perfectly fine." Rose and Y/n parted, turning their gazes to land on the Doctor himself. The man was grinning, his eyes light up with joy.

Y/n grinned back. "Guess you're not getting rid of me that easily, Doctor."

"Wouldn't have it any other way," the Doctor replied. He slipped his screwdriver in his pocket. "On we go, then. There's one more thing we have to do before we can celebrate." And just like that, Y/n was okay and not dead and they were all together. Things had been said that they were ignoring for now, because none of them could acknowledge them. Not yet. Right now, they had more important things.

At least that's how they reasoned it. Easier that way. Much, much easier.

"I'm sorry, we'd be sending you to your death?" Y/n demanded.

"Yes," the Slitheen responded.

The Doctor turned to face the man who looked about ready to blow a circuit. "Y/n, I know how you feel. Trust me, I do. We all do. But-"

"No buts!" Y/n argued. "She just wants to be free! Her whole family was killed and she had to run away or die with them. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to run, knowing everyone you care about would be gone? Being helpless to save them, because you messed with the wrong planet? Because you do what you always did. What you were TAUGHT to do?"

That seemed to hit a chord with the Doctor. "It doesn't matter, Y/n. It doesn't!" The Doctor shot again when Y/n went to argue. "She would have killed everyone here without a second thought. What are we supposed to do? She almost destroyed this entire planet for a bit of money, and then AGAIN just to get off of it and go somewhere else. Every single life on Earth, GONE, because she wanted a lift somewhere else."

Y/n looked away. "I can't do this one with you, then. I- I know it's necessary. I know you have to do it. I can't sit by and let you though, so I'm going to leave." He turned on Margaret then. "If you hurt him, I will destroy you, do you understand me? These people are MY family, and if you hurt them I will hunt you down and I tie you up and stick a needle in you and I will pump your body full of vinegar - do I make myself clear?"

Margaret looked scared... and a little impressed. "Yes sir." She looked to the Doctor as Y/n walked away. "You found your soulmate, eh?"

The Doctor didn't answer as far as Y/n knew. It was a relief to know that even if the Doctor had responded, Y/n hadn't been there to hear it.

He did manage to stay away a very long time. He only came back when the Earth under his feet began to crack and the lights went crazy and the sky began to glow and everything began to shake. He couldn't stay at home when things were going to wrong. When Rose and the Doctor and Jack could be dying. So Y/n raced back to the TARDIS, reaching it just as everything began to calm down. He pushed open those doors, praying that it wasn't the calm before the storm and the world was about to end.

When he opened the doors, he saw something he wasn't expecting. Te Doctor stood, Rose and Jack on either side of him, an egg in his hand. "What's that?"

Grinning, the Doctor hefted the thing as Y/n entered the TARDIS, closing the doors behind him. "This is Margaret." When Y/n was rightfully confused, the Doctor explained. He recounted the nights' adventures up until Margaret had looked into the heart of the TARDIS and had reverted to what she was now. "She told me..." The Doctor looked at Y/n with a soft look in his eyes. "She told me to tell you thank you. Before she died."

Y/n smiled to himself. "Well, she's welcome." Then he turned away. "Now, let's get her home shall we?"

"You want us to face those things with guns? There are six of us."

"Actually," The Doctor piped up. "Rose, Y/n, can you help me strip these wires? The faster we do it the sooner I can get this done."

"Uh, sure," Rose agreed, heading over to where the Doctor was crouched.

"Four of us," the woman corrected herself. Y/n hadn't caught her name yet. He made a mental note to do so when they gunned down the Daleks together later. Because he had seen something in the Doctor when he asked for help. Something that made Y/n suspicious.

"Five actually." Everyone looked at Y/n in surprise. "If we're arguing our need for time, Rose can help here and I can help keep those things from getting here for as long as possible. Maybe-" He stopped himself. "Maybe I can take down enough to make them not a threat at all." It was a joke that fell short, but one that made everyone offer at least a small smile. The Doctor went to argue, and that's when Y/n got serious. "I can't stay up here and strip wires when people are dying, Doctor. I won't."

The Doctor seemed to have pain in his eyes. "I can't stop you, can I?" He was begging Y/n. Desperately pleading for him to stay there. To do as the Doctor wanted him to.

This time, Y/n wasn't going to though. His arm was still bleeding and his other leg had a limp from his game. Y/n had looked death in the face twice now and avoided it. He figured he was on borrowed time anyway. Even if that wasn't true, Jack had saved Y/n's life. He had been the one to find Y/n and pull him out of that game right before he died. If they were all going to die anyway - or, at least, most of them - he would be by Jack's side to repay that debt. "You can't."

Once again, the Doctor and Y/n exchanged a look they both believed would be the last they shared. Ever since Y/n had been turned into one of the empty people when they met Jack, the Doctor had been significantly more protective of Y/n. Y/n was a man though and had been staying firm when he made his mind up, no matter how much the Doctor tried.

"Not at all?" The Doctor tried again.

Y/n smiled. "You know, Doctor. I've been pretty obedient until recently. I didn't stray too far or wander off, because I chose to stay behind and let you know where Rose had gone and that she was okay. Or that she wasn't. I did what you wanted me to. And then I died, and I realized that there is more important thing to life than sitting back and letting you take control just because you know more than I do. This is my choice, and I'm making it."

After a second, the Doctor nodded and Y/n took off with Jack and the others, headed to face the Daleks with a bunch of guns.

Y/n did help some. He watched each and every person on the Station die, and he ended up pressed against a wall with Jack at his side and Daleks charging the pair without hesitation. He had lost. But he had helped, even if it wasn't nearly enough to make a difference.

"Go ahead and warn the Doctor they're coming," Jack ordered. He spoke again before Y/n could argue. "I'll hold them off. I know you don't want to, but the Doctor needs warning, and I... I don't want see you die. Not again."

Pain flared in Y/n's chest then. "You're a good man, Jack."

"Thanks, but we don't have time for one of your goodbye speeches." Jack scoffed at himself. "You know, I did always want one though."

Y/n laughed, tears in his eyes. Why did he always end up here? "How about I give you a kiss on the cheek and you can return it later? I can give you that goodbye speech another day, when we have time."

Jack paused, and then nodded. "I'd like that." So Y/n kissed him on the cheek and then ran when the Daleks turned the corner, feeling his heart drop when the tell tale sign of death hit Y/n's ears in the form of Jack's scream. They'd both known this was what was going to happen. Y/n would never get that kiss, and Jack would never get that speech, but it had been nice that they'd parted holding onto that impossibility. Y/n hoped it had been what Jack was thinking when he died.

Unfortunately, Y/n didn't have much time to lament about it. "Doctor!" He ran into the room, stopping in the doorway. Y/n knew about the delta wave, and he knew what was about to happen. He knew why the Doctor had wanted Y/n and Rose to stay. Y/n had gone though, and now he was going to die with the rest of them. He wouldn't have it any other way. First, he needed to say something though. "Doctor, last time I faced death, I said something that we never talked about again. But we've had even more time together now and after all the regret I had last time, I- I can't die again without telling you-"

"I know," the Doctor said, interrupting. "I hate death confessions. I always have. It's not fair, you know. Telling me something like that and then running off and dying before I can do anything about it."

Even now, the Doctor was making jokes. Dear lord. "I came back, though. And you didn't do anything about it." Y/n huffed in amusement. "You never would have, huh?"

The Doctor swallowed. "This would always been the end, Y/n. At the best, you would have gotten older. You would have moved on. I can't... I can't."

Y/n nodded. "I know. I understand. I really do, Doctor. And with Rose too - I can't imagine that ever getting settled. But I need you to know-" But Y/n didn't get to finish his sentence, because there was that horrible sound and Y/n's scream and then everything went black. Except this time, he wasn't unconscious.

He was dead. Y/n was dead. As dead as it gets.

Death and Y/n didn't see to get along though, because only a few minutes later Y/n was gasping back to life, scrambling on the floor. He was disoriented and confused, but he saw a bright light and heard distant but familiar voices. He crawled around to get a better view without the large silver things he couldn't quite focus his vision on just yet. What he saw was Rose Tyler and the Doctor and the TARDIS. The Doctor kissed Rose and a light, far brighter than Y/n had seen anything be, traveled between the two of them and Rose fell.

"Doctor?" Y/n croaked.

The Doctor turned in surprise to see Y/n on the floor. "You were dead."

Y/n shrugged, his head spinning. "I feel... sick now. Just sick." His eyes fell to Rose. "I- Is she dead?"

"No," the Doctor reassured. "We need to go though. Come along, will you? We have lots to talk about." Y/n nodded, wobbling to his feet and then into the TARDIS as the Doctor scooped Rose up and set her on the floor of the TARDIS. He began to pilot the ship and as it set a course for what Y/n assumed was London, the Doctor turned on Y/n. He looked a little shaken. The glowing seemed to be moving under his skin, shimmering. But now it didn't seem beautiful, as it had before. It seemed wrong. Definitely dangerous. "Explain yourself."

"I... don't know."

The Doctor looked at Rose. "Ah." He looked back. "It seems I'm the one who has explaining to do." Again he glowed and the Doctor teetered, wincing in pain. "A... lot of explaining, it seems."

Y/n, worried and very confused and a little terrified, nodded. "Get on with it then. We don't have all day."

"Well... I don't," The Doctor agreed. "But I will. Or... you will, with someone else."

Y/n's breathing got heavier. "Doctor-"

"Y/n," the Doctor interrupted, moving close and taking Y/n's face between his hands. "Beautiful, empathetic, caring, protective Y/n. You've gotten your goodbye speeches, let me have mine."

And then the Doctor kissed Y/n, just like he had Rose. Except there was no light or glow, just a kiss. When they parted, it was because the Doctor groaned in pain. A pain that seemed to be growing. "Doctor?" Y/n rushed, scrambling to help the man stand.

The Doctor didn't ever get to say he loved Y/n back, but that kiss had said enough. It didn't really matter though, because it was then that Rose woke up. Then that everything would change forever. Not too much, but plenty enough. The Doctor changed. Changed into someone more controlled and reserved. Someone who couldn't express emotions as well as he could before. Y/n had changed too, though he didn't know that yet. He had changed into someone the Doctor couldn't accept.

To say, things were about to get really fucking complicated.

"He says that the yellow girl and her companion have the blue box, so they are the only ones able to speak for this planet."

"You can't," Harriet Jones, now Prime Minister, insisted.

"Someone has to be the Doctor," Rose began.

Whatever she was going to say was cut off by Y/n stepping forward though. No one questioned it. This entire time, Y/n had been the one who had seemed to have any idea on what to do. He didn't have much more a grip than Rose did, but what he did have was just enough that everyone seemed to naturally be stepping back to give him the reigns in the Doctor's place. Y/n stepped up and faced an alien race he had no idea how to defeat with no fear on his face. Maybe it was that the man had died twice now, or that his friends were in danger and nothing made Y/n more hostile than facing down people who threatened his friends. Y/n was different than the boy that had agreed to come along on a journey of a life time to make sure Rose was safe. Not so different that he didn't have mercy, but different enough that he not only didn't tolerate people who were willing to harm others, but he was willing to destroy them for the greater good. To protect those who could not protect themselves. That didn't stop him from pitying wasted life, but it did stop him from hesitating.

"Why do you want to kill humans?" Y/n demanded. The Sycorax leader faced Y/n down, but Y/n didn't step back even a little bit. He said something to Y/n, and the agents by Harriet translated.

"He says humans are simple and meaningless. They need to be conquered. They-"

"Now you stop right there," Y/n interrupted. Everyone behind Y/n and everyone in the crowd seemed to react to that. The people in fear, and the crowd in anger. It seemed no one liked that Y/n had interrupted the alien leader that was perfectly capable of killing. But Y/n didn't care about that. He needed to think, and he needed time to do that, and he was absolutely not about to let this monster conquer his planet without fighting back. He didn't know much or think as fast as the Doctor, but he could figure it out. He could figure SOMETHING out. Because he had to. "This planet isn't filled with a bunch of idiots. We may have a few bad eggs. We may make choices that are so incredibly daft, but we're incredible as well. We learn and grow and continue without being stopped. We defy death, even. We defy logic and reason. We're harder to wipe out than a hoard of roaches. We stick around and fight back. You can try your hardest to pin us under your thumb, or kill us off when we refuse, but it'll never be over and even if you do win this battle. Even if you do take this planet now. We will come back in such force that you will wish you had never made the mistake of messing with us. And it may not be now. It may not be in a decade, or several, or even a century. But it will happen, as it always does. And when it does happen, you will fear us."

"You want to be big? Then I will show you how small you are." Too late they all realized the Sycorax had spoken in English. Too late, because he flicked his staff and like a whip, a coil of electricity shot out and attached to Y/n's chest. He screamed and fell to a knee and his friends screamed behind him, but when the electricity left, Y/n was... fine.

Chaos erupted from the crowd. Y/n stood slowly, even his friends behind him whispering in chatter that sounded... fearful. What had just happened?

"SILENCE!" The Sycorax screamed. The crowd begrudgingly went hush, but a small voice from behind Y/n spoke up still.

"You should be dead. I watched him kill them with that- that- staff. You should be dead."

"And I'm not," Y/n brought up rather pointlessly. He sounded far more calm than he meant to though, so there was that.

The Sycorax leader stumbled back in obvious fear. Y/n stood taller. "That's impossible."

"It should be," A voice that was growing familiar spoke up. The small crowd behind Y/n parted and there stood the new man who was the Doctor but also wasn't. That man strutted forward, an expression on his face that was sort of bitter sweet, but leaning more bitter. "It doesn't sit well with me either, if I'm honest."

"Took you long enough," Y/n mumbled under his breath.

"Better late than never," the man shot back. And that was when Y/n saw the Doctor. If a bit more rude and quicker to respond... still the Doctor.

Long story short, the Doctor handled things as he always did. After Y/n's show of immunity to the Sycorax's one hit kill staff, there wasn't much work to do. There was calling the bluff of what turned out to be blood control, which couldn't go as far as the Sycorax said it could. And then there was the sword fight that was brought about by some law or another, but also threatened to happen because if the Sycorax leader didn't agree, the Doctor would "release" Y/n on him. It ended with the Doctor victorious, and Sycorax ship sailing off as the humans left all returned to the ground with the TARDIS.

Then, as they were running away, Harriet Jones shot them down with a beam from a group she called Torchwood, and killed them while their backs were turned.

"HOW COULD YOU DO THAT?" Y/n roared, rushing to the smaller woman. Harriet was suddenly shaking, faced with a man who seemed to be repelling death like it was a light cold and he had work to get to. "They were running away!"

"They could come back," she insisted rather quietly.

"They couldn't," The Doctor argued, standing just behind Y/n, at his side. "The fight - it was agreed. I won, Earth is free from them."

Harriet scoffed. "He attacked you the second you turned your back, and his people will surely do the same." Y/n flared but Harriet seemed to find her courage then. "You weren't there, Doctor. And you will not always be there. Y/n did a very good job of taking your place, but he won't always be here either. One day we will be faced with an enemy we cannot take down with a simple sword fight, and you may not be there to help."

"I should have told them to run from the monster," The Doctor sneered. "I should have told them to run as far and as fast as they could, because the real monster was sitting there, waiting for the moment to strike."

Harriet solidified herself. "I was there when that staff killed two good men. Right in front of me, and I could do nothing to stop it. I won't be helpless ever again. I have people to protect."

There was quiet for a moment, and then the Doctor stepped in front of Y/n, who had been stunned by such stupidity and selfishness that he was struck dumb. "You know, humans are so simple. I can end you entire career without lifting a single finger. I could do it without much trouble. Without even lifting one finger, all your hard work. Gone."

"Stop it," Harriet demanded, that fear from before returning.

"Six words," the Doctor stated calmly.

"Stop," Harriet hissed, coming undone by his terrifying calm.

"Just six words." And then he moved... but not to Harriet. He moved to the last man left that seemed to work with Harriet, and he leaned close and whispered something in the man's ear. Then he leaned away and turned around and walked away, hands in his pockets and face empty of regret or emotion in general. Harriet panicked behind them, begging the Doctor and the man the Doctor had spoken to tell her something. Anything. But she never got her answer.

Not in the way she wanted.

When they were away from her, Y/n rounded on the Doctor. "I'm still alive, and she said I shouldn't be."

The Doctor sighed. "When Rose looked into the heart of the TARDIS, she... brought you back. Honestly, I knew, and I saw, but I was in shock and in pain because I was dying and I was too scared to leave you behind. Far, far more scared of losing you than I was of what you had become."

Y/n looked as if he'd been slapped. "What do you mean, what I've become? You don't want me anymore?"

"That's the thing isn't it?" The Doctor sighed. "Rose doesn't even know. She forgot everything. And you weren't alive to see it. To get back to me, to us, she looked into the heart of the TARDIS. Like when Margaret became an egg. She looked and she gained immeasurable power. Power over time and space, completely. Over life, even. All she had to do was set your existence through out all time and space, and you're alive. But she didn't know how to hone it, so now you'll... probably always be alive. You can't die, I'd reckon."

"At all?" Y/n squeaked.

The Doctor shrugged. "There's no knowing for sure unless we test it, but if back there means anything, I'd say that no, you can't die. I'd even bet you can't age."

Y/n let out a breath. "So I'll be this age, alive, forever?"

"I'd say so," the Doctor confirmed. There was a moment of silence. "I feel guilty."

"Why?" Y/n asked, looking up from where his eyes had dropped.

A soft sigh escaped the Doctor then. "I'm glad of it." Y/n rose a questioning eyebrow, and the Doctor continued. "I've never been able to be really with someone before. I knew they'd go eventually. They die or move on or grow too old for this life, or get torn up by the life style or they're stolen from me. You... you're different, though. Humans age and get old, but I regenerate. I mean, a relationship like that would be one sided. Eventually I'd be alone again. But you don't age, or die, and I'm sitting here in a predicament where I just so happen to be in love with you." He released a breath, as if the words had been weighing him down. "It's so much easier to say that knowing I may actually not lose you."

Slowly, a smile rose to Y/n's face. "Well, if you don't already know I love you too I might have to kick your ass right here and now."

The Doctor released a shaky sort of laugh. After a second, he looked away, his smile fading. "Y/n, there's something you need to know about me."

Y/n sucked in a breath and released it again sharply, his hands fidgeting. "What about?"

"I've had a lot of companions, and I have lost every single one. Rose and you aren't the first, even though you two are... different." He shook his head. "But I had something real before this life. I had a family. I was a father. A husband. I had a life. And it was all taken from me."

For a second, Y/n didn't seem to know what to say. But then he found it, and whispered very gently, "Doctor, I'm weird. I don't... I don't fall in love, really. It's unusual for me to do so. I've only ever fancied one person other than you. I've never taken much to romance and it's never seemed important to me. Like you, the first person I felt like this for... they understood this feeling too. Their father died in a war and mother in childbirth and they spent their whole life being passed from person to person and never having a family or a home. This isn't my first time, though I will say that it is my second. I do know one thing though. If you need time to work this out. If you need something I can't fill... What I mean to say is, I'm happy when you're happy. I'm not asking you to marry me, or start a family with me or whatever. I'm not asking for an immediate serious relationship. Just because we feel the way we do about each other doesn't mean we have to limit ourselves to those feelings. I know you've felt love like this many times, and I know that... you may feel it again in the future, or even now." He shrugged it away. "I know this is going to take time. But I want you to know that I'm not going anywhere. Ever, it seems. That you can count on. Everything else... As long as you come back to me at the end of the day, I don't care about everything else."

And then the Doctor did something splendid. He kissed Y/n. And Y/n did something even greater. He kissed back.

It was a great kiss. One of many. Because this journey? It had only just begun!

Male readers: @sheepfather

#dr who #ninth doctor #tenth doctor #dr who imagine #dr who x reader #dr who x male reader #ninth doctor imagine #ninth doctor x male reader #ninth doctor x reader #tenth doctor imagine #tenth doctor x reader #tenth doctor x male reader #male reader #dr who fanfic #dr who angst

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best-enemies · 3 years

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I have to write an actual review on Gallifrey TW4 for the podcast I’m in but I have a writer’s block, so here are some of my thoughts on the box because I need to yell about it somewhere and my friends are pissed that I keep yelling on twitter. Spoilers ahead!

Don’t expect anything coherent to come out of this post I’m just going to throw stuff in this post and if you get it you get it lol. It’s not like I have fully recovered from the blow anyway...

Deception is a great introdution to the box and probably one of the best Gallifrey audios. I hate it when the OT4 gets separated (and that it happens all the time!), and in this case it happens between Narvin and Leela. However, it’s always great to see Leela working on her own and interacting with other people. When she tried to save those people from the resistance, the way she dealt with the situation even when she felt lost because she couldn’t trust her senses - a tool Leela values a lot as a warrior and a hunter - was absolutely incredible and it reminded me (not that I could ever forget that) of how much I love and admire her.

Listening to them being inside the distortion field felt like a really bad trip

All I could think throughout the box and not just Deception is that Leela had a crush on Eris and man I can’t blame her at all not only he was a great guy he’s really good looking and I got a crush on him too akshdashdkjaks

I don’t think I say this enough, but I really like Livia. She’s not evil, she just makes a lot of bad choices and she has this problem of being too much on the fence, which is not the characteristic of a true leader. She was never one. But still, even if I don’t remember the content of the earlier audios she’s in I’ve always liked her. And I liked that she finally chose a side in the end. I mean, she did when she helped the resistance, and that was a good beginning.

Also can I interest you with my headcanon that she was Romana’s girlfriend at the Academy and they broke up? Lol Anyways, when she heard that Romana had “died” she was shocked and later on complimented her as a person and I kind of wish we saw more of them on good terms

Now, on Dissolution: I love Narvin. That’s pretty much it lol. Before starting Gallifrey my friend gave me a spoiler which was basically, “you’re gonna love Narvin”. Well, at first I really liked his voice - it was funny and cute and voices are an important thing to me. Of course, even if he seemed funny to me, unfortunately he was a total xenophobic asshole. He had convictions, he had layers which made him very interesting, but still, an asshole. Which makes me really proud to see how far he has come, how much he’s grown. When he joined Romana’s side I soon realized that my friend was right; Narvin had one of the best redemption arcs I’ve ever seen. He went from Romana’s political rival, if I could put it that way, to one of her most trusted allies and best friends. And he found out that he could still fight for and protect his home, but using the right tools, doing it the right way. Dissolution showed that contrast between the old Narvin and what he wanted and the new Narvin, and honestly? I could almost call this episode a moment of relief amongst the chaos. Narvin has become one of my favorite characters in the Whoniverse and one of my all time favorites as well.

Alright... now we get to Beyond *deep breaths*. So let’s start from the beginning, shall we? I spent months since listening to Unity living in a total hell not knowing if Romana was alive or not. I couldn’t believe that that was her ending, that she wouldn’t show up again for their last hurrah, and that my favorite companion ever was gone forever. But then, BF announced the cover, and the description for the episodes, and her name came up, and I could finally breath. My friend and I started theorizing that maybe Braxiatel had dematerialized the TARDIS around her and saved her in the last second - which is kind of what happened, I mean, the description said he wasn’t ready to give up on her! So they go to that place called Beyond, and shit happens. Those ravenous bitches were there eating people and shit. They even ate Narvin - I almost started crying in the middle of the bus, telling myself he wasn’t our Narvin, but he was a Narvin and it still hurt. I wanted to fight those ravenous myself. And not just that, Romana went through hell watching Leela die in front of her, and her reaction was really heartbreaking.

Aaand that kind of brings me to a point here, something that bothered me. Romana and Brax, as always, spent the audio bickering a little, but they had their moments as well. Like when Brax says that it’s good to see her smile again, when he says (sorry I don’t remember it word by word) something like, she couldn’t die and that she’s supposed to be the best of the Time Lords, when she calls him her friend, and when she asks with a soft voice if he’s coming back to Gallifrey. And it was sweet. Like, they have a lot of issues, but they also have good feelings towards each other. Despite everything they care about each other, and it shows. Which is why I got really confused about Romana’s reaction when Brax was eaten by the ravenous. I remember I even thought she wasn’t around when it happened, that he had left and was somewhere else (I have a little difficulty paying attention), but then my friend said she was. So I was like... wait, she saw her friend, whom she’s known for most of her life (and more than she can even remember) die in a truly horrible way and didn’t even react to that? I’m not blaming Romana, I think this is really out of character for her. She may have difficulty expressing her feelings but she would never, ever react so coldly to the death of a friend.

Now, on Brax’s death... I was really devastated. At first, as always I got confused and thought the older Brax was an older version of him, somehow. Even if he died, I was like, this is confusing, but it’s Brax? So I was weary, but still, I thought “well at least he’s safe now, on another universe in the Beyond”. But then my friend said “no, that’s an alternative Brax, the one we know is dead”. And that’s when I felt my stomach drop. IT HURT SO BAD. I’ll be honest and say I don’t know everything about Brax, or about the depth of his character, I’m still very early on the Benny audios and only have listened to him on Gally and a few audios here and there. People who have more knowledge on him say that the way he was written wasn’t really accurate, and that can be true, but I won’t get into that because I don’t know for myself. Still, Brax is one of the best and most interesting characters I’ve ever known. I loved him from the beginning. I got mad at him so many times during the series, felt as betrayed as Romana did, heard about a lot of dark shit he’s done, but still I could never hate him. I got a little bit too attached to him, which is why his death felt absurd and unnecessarily cruel. I don’t think for a moment that Brax deserved that, as I said I don’t know everything about him but something in my heart tells me that things could’ve gone another way. I knew he could die in the finale but not like this. And it’s a bit hard to put into words how much I hate the ending he got and how much I’ll miss him. I just hope he comes back, I mean, he always does, BF writers need to figure something out I don’t even care lol

I had to edit the post because my dumb ass forgot about one of my favorite and at the same time one of the most bittersweet moments of Beyond: Brax asking about the Doctor and saying leaving Gallifrey was a “family thing”. I love them and there isn’t enough stuff out there from the Lungbarrow siblings for me. He talks so fondly of the Doctor and now all I think about is that he never mentioned him in the series but thought of him on the last hours of his life... brb I’m gonna go cry in the bathroom

Oh god. Okay, Homecoming. I’ll start on a light note and say some stuff about Hot Rassilon: Richard Armitage nailed it. I’ve always liked him as an actor and I got thrilled when he was announced. His voice is like, the one I want to hear when I get my name called up in Heaven - or Hell, which is where I’m going - and his speeches were really powerful. Still, I wish they could’ve given him more to do. Of course, I understand that this is where they wanted to go with him - Hot Rassilon going batshit crazy and calling himself a god and coming up with some stupid fanfiction about the Time Lords becoming gods of everything, yada yada. I loved his interactions with the Dalek Emperor, the first thing I thought (besides the fact that it was really funny) was that it showed two despots with a god complex playing chess with the universe and discarding their people as garbage, fighting for their own personal power and not for the collective. Of course, I don’t expect the Daleks to care about each other - they want to spread throughout the galaxies and gain absolute power, not bring social well-being to their own. But that should apply to the Time Lord Society, and we see that Hot Rassilon doens’t give a flying fuck about that.

I feel like I should reinforce the fact that I actually hate Rassilon. I call him hot but I hate him. I can do both

Once again, I need to point out the emotional moments between the galligang. It all felt so off. As someone pointed out here (sorry, I saw the post but don’t recall who said it now): it’s a war and there’s little time for grief, however, it’s not like they’re just grieving the loss of a group of people they’re not familiar with. The galligang are the closest thing they have to a family with each other. They’ve been through all sorts of things together, created a deep bond and have crossed the universe to find each other. And then, that Dalek ship blows up, with Narvin still in it, and... nothing. Leela even asked Romana if they could’ve done something and she says if the bracelet thingy had been working he would’ve come back already. And that’s it. At first I didn’t even understand, I was like “wait, he was really still inside the ship? And it blew up?”, because once again, I couldn’t tell from the way they reacted, I was only sure when they had that exchange. And of course, I started sobbing, because my favorite character was dead. I guess the writers wanted to focus on the war and political aspects and shit but did they forget that Gallifrey was about these three specific people and that their relationship was the core of the series, not just the politics?

Okay, moving on. Leela and Romana once again end up on Gallifrey and run into Hot Rassilon. Did I mention I found him a bit scary? Well, I did mark me down as scared & horny.

Aaaaaand he decides to lock Romana up in a pocket universe. It surprised me, because I thought he would execute her. I find that he wanted to do that because Romana was the president who wanted to take Gallifrey into the future, to make it a prosperous and advanced society who left all their fears of the unknown and prejudices behind. And now he locked her up in the past. Get it? I don’t know, maybe that’s just me, but this was the first thing I thought. But I cannot even begin to tell you all how RELIEVED I am that she’s alive, and that there could be a possibility - even if a very tiny one - that she could escape. It’s Doctor Who, so everything is possible. EDIT: Now I’m sad because Leela will die after the end of the Time War and Romana will know about that, and all her friends are gone, and she believes the Doctor isn’t the man she once knew so she can’t rely on him, and she’s alone, and I’m FUMING because I’m still processing the whole thing and I hadn’t realized that. She’s totally alone and now I’m crying once again. I HATE IT HERE

As for Leela, I want to see what’s next for her. I haven’t gotten into the other Time War stuff yet, this is my first introduction to the actual thing, but I heard that she’s gonna fight alongside the War Doctor and might be on the War Doctor Begins boxset. But man listening to her and Romana having to depart like that broke my heart. And now I know that she’ll be protecting Gallifrey because of Romana, because Romana represents the best in Gallifrey.

*Phew* okay, that was a lot. I don’t even know if I covered everything, but I managed to make more sense than I thought I would at the beginning of this post. I don’t know man I’ve been crying for hours, went to sleep at 2am crying because of Narvin and Brax and woke up at 7am and my first thought was them, dying again... I don’t even know anymore, I guess I’ll either focus on uni and my job or curl up into a ball and cry for the rest of my life lolololol

Now I want to write a post with my theories on how the entire galligang is alive and in the epilogue in my head they have reunited and are all living together happily. Maybe it’ll be my next post.

#gallifrey spoilers

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saiilorstars · 3 years

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Falling in Temptation

Previous chapters • Sequel to Stars Dance • Fairy Tale Memoirs (Companion story)

Ch. 26: The God Complex

Fandom: Doctor Who // Pairing: 11th Doctor x OFC

Chapter summary: The travelers are stuck in a hotel hell-bent on showing them their worst fears. The Doctor's greatest fears shown to him is what finally pushes him to do something he should've done a long time ago.

Taglist: @ocfairygodmother @anotherunreadblog @maaaaarveeeeel @stareyedplanet @perfectlystiles

[If you’d like to be added to this specific OC’s stories/edits, send me a message!]

Avalon was sitting on mushy, green grass with her journal and pen. There was a sun, or a fake sun, shining up above in the 'sky'. There was a very visible flower scent that flooded the area with every breeze. Avalon loved the room the TARDIS had made for her, it was very...fairy-tale like. But also, it was the perfect place to attempt to write. It had only recently come up and Avalon couldn't be more thankful for the TARDIS again. She truly made life easier. The new room had been Avalon's new sanctuary to keep on drafting.

Of course, it usually only worked when a certain Time Lord wasn't around...and that was soon to end in...3...2...1...

"Gotcha!" the Doctor cheered as he took Avalon by surprise with a hug from behind.

The ginger flinched and dropped her journal and pen. She turned her head to the side and frowned, "I'm gonna slap you one of these days."

"But not today," the Doctor smirked and pressed a kiss to her lips. Afterwards, he moved over and sat down beside her, "So what are we doing on this fine morning?"

"How would you know it's morning?" Avalon chuckled, "You live in a time machine."

"Clearly because Amy and Rory were going into the kitchen for breakfast, duh," the Doctor playfully rolled his eyes.

"Don't be a smart alec with me, it'll cost you," Avalon warned and closed her journal, "Now I don't feel like being irritated in my own sanctuary."

"I would never," the Doctor mocked an offended face, making her laugh.

"I'm sorry," Avalon chuckled and set her journal down on her side. "I know I lock myself up over this thing," she nodded to the journal, "My family always got so irritated with me for it."

"I'm not upset, I was just missing you," the Doctor put an arm around her shoulders, "You're doing what you love, how can I be mad at that?"

Avalon scoffed, "As if I'm doing the thing I love. I want to be a writer but c'mon," she sighed, "We all know it's not happening, I just kid myself with this journal."

"Oi, I gave you that journal, let's not downplay its importance," the Doctor made a face, "And, not to mention, Emmalina gave you your first one, because she believed in you."

Avalon quietly picked up her journal and stared at its cover, her mind drifting off to the past, "She thought I could become one of the greatest writers in history."

"Well, it's not too late," the Doctor shrugged, "You're only 23, perfect age to begin."

"You've gotten to know me a lot better than anyone else, so you know that I'm not a very good person..."

"Let's not get into that topic," the Doctor sighed, "Because I've already told you that it's all senseless."

"No, it's not..." Avalon said quietly.

The Doctor ignored her comment and gently moved her to sit on his lap, "Okay, while I think you are completely wrong about that, I don't see any reason why you can't become a true writer."

"It's scary," Avalon sighed, "Plus, my reputation isn't all that great on Earth. Colleges literally look at everything and I've been arrested several times and I've actually gone to a juvenile detention. That alone disqualifies me, or discourages the admission. You see? There's no hope. I'm doomed to be an amateur for the rest of my life."

"Now wait a minute," the Doctor had to stop her, "Earth isn't the only place you can get some education. You're not even from Earth! You can go anywhere in the galaxy, Ava. They would look at your talent, your ambition, determination..."

"And do you think I have any of that?"

"Of course I do! All that and more," the Doctor kissed her hair, "Just say the word and we'll go and get you to see one of the professors."

Avalon lightly smiled as she thought of something, "You know, River's a professor, in the future," she raised her head to look at him, "You think she would be willing to help? Give some pointers?"

The Doctor hadn't quite thought of that, but knew right there it wouldn't be a good idea. "Ava, to contact that River right now would be far too dangerous. She'd be from way into the future and would have too much foreknowledge."

"Right," Avalon sheepishly smiled, "Guess I'd be on my own, then."

"Never, you'd have all of us, especially me," the Doctor nodded.

"It would be kind of nice," Avalon said and sighed a few seconds later. "I don't know. It's all so...new, you know? I don't know what I want to do."

"There's no rush, Ava. Take some time to think of all of your options and when you decide on something, you let me know and I'll do my best to help you."

Avalon nodded. It sounded like a good plan. She didn't want to rush into anything, especially something as important as an actual career. "You're incredible, do you know that?" She rested her head against his shoulder and smiled as she felt his arm wrap around her. "You're the best thing that's happened to me in my entire life."

"Wow, feel special now," the Doctor smiled. "Who'd known that the snappiest little girl in that sleepover would grow up and steal my hearts?"

"Mm, I had big goals," Avalon joked, "And don't call me 'snappy'. I wasn't 'snappy'. I was just making sure you weren't going to hurt my sister. But if your feelings are still hurt I'm sure there's something I can do about it now..."

"And what would that be?" the Doctor raised an eyebrow as she shifted her body to face him. She had that sneaky smile he came to love early on.

"A little of this," Avalon pecked his lips. "And a lot of this," she kissed him again but deepened it, making it so that both of them were left without air and quite dazed.

~ 0 ~

The Doctor excitedly popped his head over a staircase railing, looking down at the many spirals of the stairs below. The rest of the travelers did the same but unlike him, they were nowhere near pleased with the sight.

"'Let's go to Ravan-Skala,' he says," Amy began with a huff, ""The people are 600 feet tall, you have to talk to them in hot air balloons and the Tourist Information Centre is made of one of their hats,' he says."

"And yet, there are no such hats," Avalon finished for her and raised her head to look at the Time Lord, "You have lied and badly."

"This is just awful," Rory went ahead and added.

The Doctor looked at the three with a scowl, "Amy, Beaky—"

"I would think real hard before you nickname me," Avalon pointed a warning finger at him.

"Princess," the Doctor flashed a smile, Avalon playfully rolling her eyes as a response, "Now this could be the most exciting thing I have ever seen!"

"You're kidding," Rory shook his head.

"How can you be excited about a rubbish hotel on a rubbish bit of Earth?" Amy crossed her arms and stared at the Doctor in disbelief.

"I'm not that surprised," Avalon remarked, "He gets excited about the stupidest things."

The Doctor rolled his eyes and ignored their little remarks, "Because, assembled Ponds..."

"And Reynolds," Avalon interjected with an amused smile.

"And Reynolds," the Doctor quietly added it. It was slips like those that could create such problems for him and everyone else and yet his mouth still had the ability to continue making the error. It was just too much fun calling her a Pond. "This is not Earth. This has just been made to look like Earth. The craftsmanship involved... Can you imagine?"

"Then where are we?" Avalon grew tired of the ole mystery. Unfortunately for her, the Doctor didn't seem to agree as he led them through the staircase, returning back to where the TARDIS was parked, "Hello, Doctor?" she called again, making a face as he deeply sniffed a plant.

"I don't know," he finally answered her and turned around, "Something must have yanked us off course. Look at the detail on that cheese plant!" he excitedly pointed at the plant.

"You want me to be excited over a...plant?" Avalon raised an eyebrow and walked up to him, slowly smiling of amusement, "You're so weird," she rested her hands on his chest and chuckled, "Remember when you ate grass?"

"And you told me to never kiss you," the Doctor decided to remind her rather smugly, "Look at us now."

"Shut up," Avalon remembered that moment quite clearly. She'd never have imagined the alien who tasted blue grass and just about anything else he found intriguing would actually steal her heart.

"Um, hello?" Rory called back to them, pulling them out of their moment, "Who would mock up an Earth hotel?"

"Colonists maybe, recreating a bit of home," the Doctor thought as he turned Avalon around and wrapped his arms around her waist, "Like when ex-pats open English pubs in Majorca. No, whoever did this, I am shaking his/her hand/tentacle."

"Seriously, you get excited over the stupidest things," Avalon sighed with resignation.

Rory moved over to a wall full of photographs of various species, soon calling the attention to Amy, "Have you seen these? Look at the labels underneath," he pointed to a photograph of a Sontaran, "Commander Halke, defeat," he then moved onto a human, "Tim Heath, having his photo taken. Lady Silver-Tear... Daleks."

Amy agreed there was something strange in that and decided to look for herself, "Paige Barnes, other people's socks. Tim Nelson, balloons. Novice Prin, sabrewolves. Royston Luke Gold, Plymouth. Lucy Hayward, that brutal gorilla," she glanced over to the Doctor, "Doctor, what does it mean?

"I don't know, let's find out," the Doctor took Avalon's hand and pointed for them to start moving.

They entered the reception room where they could hear a soft tune playing in the background due to some radio player at the reception desk. The Doctor tapped a bell on the desk and immediately three people jumped from around the corner, one of them, a woman, brandishing a chair leg at them.

"Blimey, that was quick," the Doctor jumped back.

"We surrender!" cried the alien of the three strangers.

"No, it's OK, we're not..." Rory grew tensed and came up with, "We're nice!"

"She threatened me with a chair leg," the Doctor suddenly noticed and looked at the others in disbelief.

"Who are you?" the woman with the chair leg demanded.

"We're back in reception," the third of the trio took notice of the new room.

"We surrender!" repeated the alien.

"Never been threatened with a chair leg before!" the Doctor was still stuck on that, "No, I tell a lie."

"Did you just say, 'It's OK, we're nice?'" Amy had suddenly realized that and had to find out the reason for it.

"EVERYONE SHUT THE HELL UP!" came the loud yell of Avalon who successfully managed to quiet everyone down, "Thank you," she breathed in relief and straightened herself up. "God, sometimes…"

"Their pupils are dilated," the woman took notice of the travelers' faces.

"What?" Avalon looked at her with suspicion and confusion.

"They're as surprised as we are," the woman continued, "Besides which, if it's a trick, it'll tell us something."

"Oh, you're good," the Doctor pointed, genuinely impressed, "Oh, she's good. Amy, with regret, you're fired."

Avalon looked at him with a scowl, "Excuse you?"

"I'm kidding," the Doctor waved her off but looked at the woman and mimed holding a phone to his ear, "We'll talk," he whispered.

"EXCUSE YOU?" Avalon raised an eyebrow at him, "There'll be no 'talks'," she frowned, "Not unless you're prepared to die."

The Doctor loved when Avalon got jealous but battling it out in front of strangers wasn't exactly his idea of having fun. He tugged her to him, through struggle as she was clearly upset, and looked at the others, "I take it from the pathological compulsion to surrender, you're from Tivoli," he settled on the alien of the strangers.

"Yes, the most invaded planet in the galaxy. Our anthem is called Glory To Insert Name Here."

Avalon stopped struggling against the Doctor to glance at the alien, "That's...sad," she informed then continued to fight, mumbling a few curse words here and there.

"You with the face, Howie, you said you were surprised to be back in reception," the Doctor pointed to the young man with them.

"The walls move, everything changes," Howie struggled to say as he looked around.

"You, clever one, what's he talking about?" the Doctor had looked back at the woman in scrubs, "And what's your name?"

"Oh yes, that's working well," Avalon muttered and practically swatted his hands off her, but to no avail.

"The corridors twist and stretch, rooms vanish and pop up somewhere else," the woman explained, "It's like the hotel's alive. And, um, Rita," she was noticing the odd looks she was getting from Avalon and frankly felt a bit nervous.

"Let me go," Avalon ordered the Doctor and finally pushed him off. She rolled her eyes and jumped over the reception desk to the radio station, "New rule, this stays off all night," she glanced back at the others, "It's giving me a headache. Now, then, what were you saying about the hotel?"

"It's huge, with, like, no way out," Howie finished for Rita.

"Have you tried the front door?" Rory had to ask since the 'easiest way out' always seemed the most ignored option during their travels.

"No, in two days it never occurred to us to try the front door," Rita sarcastically replied, "Thank God you're here!"

"Oi, don't be rude to my best friend," Avalon snapped at her as she jumped on the desk again, taking a comfortable seat on it with her legs dangling.

The Doctor had taken out his sonic to scan the door and opened it to find a white brick wall, confirming Howie's statement, "They're not doors, they're walls, walls that look like doors. Door-walls, if you like, or "dwalls", "woors" even, though you'd probably got it when you said, "They're not doors." I mean, the windows are..." he moved over to a pair of curtains and flung them to the sides, only to find more wall behind, "Right, big day if you're a fan of walls."

"It's not just that," Rita quietly said, Howie and Trivol both also getting quiet, "The rooms have...things in them."

"Things? Hello! What kind of things?" the Doctor was once again excited, "Interesting things? I love things, ask anyone."

"Stupid things," Avalon remarked as she inspected her nails, clearly trying to seem disinterested.

"Bad dreams," Rita answered the question with fear evident in her tone.

"Well, that killed the mood," the Doctor's excitement faded.

"There was never a mood here," Avalon looked at him with a scowl, reminding him this hadn't even been their choice of adventure in the first place.

"How did you get here?" the Doctor focused on the problem at hand.

"I don't know, I'd just started my shift," Rita shrugged, "I must have passed out, because suddenly I was here."

"I was blogging, next thing, this," Howie gestured to the room.

"Oh, I was at work, I'm in town planning," the alien went next, "We're lining all the highways with trees, so invading forces can march in the shade."

"Still very sad," Avalon whispered to him.

"Which is nice for them," the alien continued, ignoring the comment.

"Yeah... So what have we got?" the Doctor reviewed the information they'd just gotten, "People snatched from their lives and dropped into an endless, shifting maze that looks like a 1980s hotel with bad dreams in the bedrooms. Well, apart from anything else, that's just rude."

"Says the rudest alien I've ever met," Avalon hopped off the desk with a clean smirk, "Now then, can we please get out of here? This hotel is creeping me out..." the Doctor agreed and reached to take her hand but she put them behind her back and sharply looked at him, "Under probation," she announced and headed off.

The Doctor made a face and looked at Amy and Rory, "Dare I ask what that even means?"

"Em, no," Amy shook her head and went off after Avalon, motioning for the others to do the same.

"See when Ava went out on dates she designated them as 'under probation'...and then she never saw them again," Rory decided to inform the Time Lord and had to hide his teasing smirk. It wasn't often he got to do that and since the Doctor had practically done that to himself, Rory figured why not?

~ 0 ~

As the group was coming up the staircase, the Doctor explained the plan to them all, "We'll pop back to the TARDIS, I'll do a planet-wide diagnostic sweep, then we'll have a sing song..." he trailed off when they'd reached the space in which the TARDIS was supposed to be in.

"And the TARDIS is gone," Avalon sighed, not very surprised as well, "Cos you parked it here, didn't you?"

"What's a TARDIS?" Howie looked at the travelers with confusion.

"Our way out," Rory groaned and held his head in his hands, "And it's gone!"

And suddenly, the music Avalon had shut off in the reception room played soothingly over the speakers.

"Okay, this is bad," the Doctor declared, "At the moment, I don't know how bad, but certainly we're three buses, a long walk and eight quid in a taxi from good. Are there any more of you?" he looked at Rita for the answer.

"Joe, but he's tied up right now," Rita leaned on the rail of the stairs, her eyes drifting to the side.

"Doing what?" the Doctor asked her.

"No, I mean he's...tied up right now," Rita made a face as the group realized her words now.

~ 0 ~

And Rita's words were proven true when the group entered the dining room that contained Joe strapped to a chair at one of the tables, identical laughing dummies surrounding him at the other tables.

"This is beyond creepy," Avalon breathed as she looked from one dummy to another, feeling even worse when the dummies all stopped laughing to turn their heads to them. "Oh yeah, we're definitely in a scary movie."

The Doctor went straight for the tied man, determined to figure out what was going on, "Hello, I'm the Doctor."

The man didn't seem quite there as he made a response, "You're going to die here."

"Well, they certainly didn't mention that in the brochure. Is Joe there?" the Doctor reached for a chair, "Can I have a quick word?"

"Oh, it's still me, Doctor, but I've seen the light. I lived a blasphemous life, but he has forgiven my inconstancy, and soon...he shall feast."

"Well, you've been here two days," the Doctor reminded, "What's he waiting for?"

"We weren't ready. We were still raw."

"But now you're what? Cooked?" the Doctor raised an eyebrow, suddenly lost.

"If you like," Joe shrugged then smiled, "Soon you will be, too," he assured, "Be patient. First...find your room."

"My room..." the Doctor followed.

"There's a room here for everyone, Doctor. Even you."

"You said you'd seen the light now."

"Nothing else matters anymore. Only him. It's like these things. I used to hate them! They make me laugh now," Joe had a laugh with the dummies, "Gottle o' geer! Gottle o' geer! You should go. He'll be here soon."

The Doctor stood up with a fake smile and grabbed a hand dolley to put under Joe's chair, "I think you should come with me."

~ 0 ~

The group returned to the reception room where the music was once again playing in the background. The Doctor was looking at the four strangers with curiosity, "Why you four? That's what I don't understand. Aside from all the other things I don't understand," he mused while he shut the music off.

"What does it matter?" Gibbis shook his head, "Sooner or later, someone will come along and rescue us. Or enslave us."

Avalon stared at him in utter awe, "That's the spirit," she remarked sarcastically.

"Okay, look, first we find the TARDIS," the Doctor said then wagged a finger at all of them, "If you feel drawn to a particular room, do not go in, and make sure someone else can see you at all times."

"Joe said 'he' will feast. Is there something here with us?" Rita wondered nervously while looking at Joe who was still nowhere with them in mind-terms.

Joe laughed after the question had been asked and so the Doctor glanced at him, "Something to add, Joe?"

"Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head," the man started saying, "Chop, chop, chop, chop."

"Can we do something about him?" Howie put a hand on his head as he tried ignoring Joe's words.

'I'm all over it," Avalon raised a hand as she moved to the desk, hopping on it and reaching underneath to pull out black dutch tape, "Put it on," she chucked it to Howie then looked at Joe, "He's saying stupid stuff I'd rather not hear."

And so, after Joe was taped over the mouth, they all headed for the hallways in an attempt to find the TARDIS.

"Personally, I think you've got the right idea," Gibbis said to Joe as he pushed the man's chair, "Times like this, I think of my old school motto, "Resistance Is Exhausting."

"I've worked out where we are," Howie announced to Rory.

"Hmm?" Rory looked at him.

"Norway."

"Norway?"

"You see, the US government has entire cities hidden in the Norwegian mountains. Earth is on a collision course with this other planet, and this is where they're going to send all the rich people when it kicks off."

"Amazing," Rory blinked.

"It's all there on the internet."

"No, it's amazing you've come up with a theory even more insane than what's actually happening."

The group was stopped when an older man came out of a room in front of them, "Have you forgotten your PE kit again?" the teacher looked at the Doctor, "Right, that's it, you're doing it in your pants!"

The Doctor shook off the odd moment and turned to see Howie nearing a door, "Hey! Don't!" he ran, even the group shifting to try and stop Howie.

The door to the room was opened and allowed the others the sight of young women looking like they were at a party. They all looked over and started laughing when they saw Howie, "Oh, look, girls, it's H-H-H-Howie!"

"What's "loser" in K-K-K-Klingon?" one of the girls asked then laughed again.

Howie backed away from the door, "Shut the d-d...the-the door!" the Doctor did as told, "This is just some m-m-messed-up CIA stuff, I-I-I'm telling you."

"You're right," the Doctor agreed with him in an attempt to calm him, "Keep telling yourself that. It's a CIA thing, nothing more..." he looked at the others and nodded for them to keep moving.

They reached a hallway that was in rather odd conditions. The Doctor looked at one of the walls with light sconces and plaster scraped off. Avalon found a paper on the floor and bent down to get it.

"Guys?" Rory had taken a double look at a fire exit that stood big and proud several feet away from him.

However, the growl of the beast grabbed everyone's attention and made everyone save Rory gather around.

"OK, whatever that is, it's not real, yeah?" Avalon questioned the Doctor, though she wasn't very convinced herself.

"No, no, I'm sure it isn't," the Doctor took her hand yet still backed away with her, "But just in case, let's run away and hide anyway. In here," he reached for a room and flung the door open, motioning for the others to get in while Rita took herself and Joe into another room.

"You liar," Avalon snapped at the Doctor.

"What? I can't try and make my Ava feel better?" he raised an eyebrow at her.

She rolled her eyes, "Oh shut up," she looked around him to where Rory was, "Oi, Rory! C'mon!" Rory was trying to find the fire exit that had mysteriously disappeared on him, "Rory!"

"Ava, please, get inside," the Doctor tried pushing her into the room.

"No, not without Rory," Avalon struggled against him, "Please?"

The Doctor groaned and turned for Rory, "COME ON!" he shouted for the human frantically. When Rory finally started coming towards them, the Doctor got Avalon inside the room and a couple seconds he and Rory followed.

"Aiiee!" the Doctor nearly fell over when he saw two Weeping Angels statues in the room facing them.

"Don't...blink," Amy was staring dead hard at the Angels and practically forcing Howie to do the same since Gibbis was cowering inside a cupboard on the side of the room.

"They're gonna get us," Avalon breathed as the lights flickered and the Angels changed positions.

"Ava, get back," the Doctor grabbed her arm while Rory took Amy's, "Why haven't they gotten us yet?"

"Do you really think we should be questioning that?" Avalon would've given him a look if the Angels were taking up her attention, "Why not 'oh, how can we get out of this?'.

The Doctor moved in front of her as he went towards the statues. Nervously, he tried touching one only to realize they weren't even real Angels, "They're not real," he said to the others.

"What?" Amy frowned, still not taking her eyes off the statues.

"They should have got us by now," the Doctor turned to Amy, "Amy, look at me, focus on me. It's your bad dream, that's all."

"I don't even think they're for us," Rory finally realized as the lights flickered again but the statues remained in place.

Avalon made a face as she looked around, "But if it's not Amy, then who's the room for—" she didn't get to finish her question when Gibbis let out a sharp scream from the cupboard and shut the door, answering her question right there and then.

The Doctor heard the steps of the beast getting closer so he went for the door, confusing the others.

"Doctor, what are you doing?" Amy had to ask, wondering what kind of plan he was forming to save them.

"I'm sorry, I just have to see what it is. I just have to see," the Doctor apologized and peered through the peephole in the door, finding the shadow of the beast on the other side, "Oh, look at you... You are beautiful..." he gasped when the beast suddenly stood on the other side staring right at him, "Oh, dear..." he cautiously stepped back.

"It's on the other side, isn't it?" Avalon assumed with a sigh.

"That...may be a possibility," the Doctor slowly went for the door again.

"And looking back at it again would make things better, how exactly?" Avalon grew nervous as he stared through the peephole. That door was just a door and if the beast wanted to it could take it down, the Doctor being the first one to go down with it.

"I think it's going after Joe," the Doctor announced as the beast started heading off. Once he thought they were safe, he opened the door and peered out into the hall, seeing the body of Joe being dragged around the corner, "Leave him alone!" he called and went after.

"No, Doctor!" Avalon moved to follow when Rory yanked her back, "No, what are you doing? We have to go help!"

Rory shook his head and gripped her arm, "The Doctor can't split himself into three to save himself, you and Joe. Stay here, okay?"

Avalon huffed and looked back in the direction the Doctor had gone off in. Even if she wanted to make a run for it, the hotel would probably shift the hallways and mess with her. She would just get lost and cause havoc.

But she knew why Rory had stopped her in the first place, they all knew.

It seemed like the Doctor's paranoia concerning their safety being completely on him had not gone away. Avalon was the first and foremost one to feel the presence of his senseless guilt. She tried and tried to make him see that everyone was responsible for themselves, as well as the fact that they were all aware of the dangers that came with traveling, but nothing worked. In the end, she, Rory, and Amy just tried to be more careful during their trips in an attempt to help the Doctor a bit.

~ 0 ~

Joe's body had been placed on a small dais in the dining room and was being scanned by the sonic, meanwhile the rest of the group was a bit dispersed through the room trying to get over the happenings.

Amy and Rory sat at a table trying to forget everything but it was harder to do than they thought. They were quietly conversing but when Avalon joined them, they stopped.

"Okay listen up," she plopped down into the empty chair. "Remember how I told you about the Doctor and his guilt? Well, it's about to overflow. We need to be careful for his sake."

"We're doing our best, believe us," Rory sighed.

"I know, just...try a little harder?" Avalon shifted in the chair only to feel something funny in her pocket. She remembered she'd stuck the scrap of paper she'd found earlier into her pocket. "Oh, wait!"

"What?" Rory watched her pull out the paper.

"I found this earlier..." Avalon mumbled as she skimmed the writing. She jumped from her chair and hurried towards the Doctor, "Doctor, look at this. I found it in a corridor, I completely forgot I had it." The Doctor quickly took it out of her hands and just as he was about to read it, she surprised him with a kiss on his cheek. "It is not all on you," she said for his puzzled face. "Please try to remember that."

The Doctor smiled at her for a moment before turning his attention to the paper. As kind as her words were, he couldn't give himself the luxury of getting distracted with her sweet kisses. There was a beast roaming the hallways and she could be its next target. He needed to get them out of there fast.

"My name is Lucy Hayward and I'm the last one left. It took Luke first. It got him on his first day, almost as soon as we arrived. It's funny. You don't know what's going to be in your room until you see it, then you realize it could never have been anything else. I just saw mine. It was a gorilla from a book I'd read as a kid. My God, that thing used to terrify me. The gaps between my worships are getting shorter, like contractions. This is what happened to the others... and how lucky they were. It's all so clear now. I'm so happy. Praise him."

"Praise him," Howie said not a moment after the Doctor had finished reading out loud.

"What did you just say?" the Doctor looked at him with surprise.

"Nothing," Howie shrugged but it was obvious he was fighting against something, "Praise him!" he nearly shouted then clapped his hand over his mouth.

"This is what happened to Joe!" Gibbis said in alarm as he rushed away from Howie.

"God, it's going to come for me now," Howie panicked while the others spoke over one another, definitely not helping the case.

"You'll lead it right here," Gibbis accused in terror.

"I won't leave you, I promise, you have my word, "the Doctor assured Howie but the young man wasn't so sure.

"I don't want to get eaten!"

"Howie, calm down!" Amy tried her hand at it as well.

"He's going to lead it right here!" Gibbis kept saying in the background.

The Doctor had enough and so activated the sonic above his head creating a high pitched noise that made everyone stop, "Thank you!"

"Don't you see? He'll lead it right here!" Gibbis was the first one to speak again.

"What do you suggest?" Rita turned to him.

"Look, whatever it is out there, it's obviously chosen Howard as its next course. Now...tragic though that is, this is no time for sentiment. I'm saying, if it were to... find him," Gibbis 'delicately' said. "It may be satisfied and let the rest of us go." Everyone looked at him in horror. "All I want to do is go home and be conquered and oppressed, is that too much to ask?!"

"You're no longer allowed to speak," Avalon declared not a minute later.

"We stay together," the Doctor announced and walked up to Gibbis, "Your civilization is one of the oldest in the galaxy. Now I see why. Your cowardice isn't quaint, it's sly, aggressive. It's how that gene of gutlessness has survived while so many others have perished. Well, not today. No-one else dies today. Right?"

"Yes..." Gibbis mouthed.

"Brilliant," and the Doctor turned back and went for Howie, "Howie, any second, it's going to possess you again," he informed as he sat the man down at a table, "When it does, I'm going to ask you some questions. Please try to answer them."

"I hope my mum's all right, she's going to be w-worried..." Howie mumbled, slowly slipping into a change that was clear through his face.

The Doctor sat across him and put on an enthusiastic expression, "Howie, you're next, we're all dead jealous, so tell us...How do we get a piece of the action? Why isn't he possessing all of us?"

"You guys have got all these distractions," Howie tapped his head while smiling in a languid way, "All these obstacles. It'd be so much easier if you just let it go, you know, clear the path."

"You want it to find you?" Avalon realized with horror, "Why? Don't you understand what it's going to do to you?"

But Howie seemed even more excited at the thought of it, "Are you kidding? He's going to kill us all! How cool is that?!"

The Doctor quietly stood and led the others away from the table, "It's as I thought, it feeds on fear. Everything, the rooms, Lucy's note, even the pictures in reception, has been put here to frighten us. So we have to resist it. Do whatever you have to, cross your fingers, say a prayer, think of a basket of kittens, but do not give in to the fear."

"OK, but what are we actually going to do?" Amy asked him curiously.

"We're going to catch ourselves a monster," the Doctor announced with a genuine smile this time.

~ 0 ~

"Can't believe we're doing this," Avalon mumbled to Rory as they stood on guard of the beast.

They were standing outside the beauty parlor of the hotel, Rory with a mop in his hands. They were waiting to lock the beast inside the room where the Doctor was, something Avalon wasn't too pleased with. Once again, she hadn't been allowed to help him because it was "too dangerous" and "she might get hurt" and all the usual crap that had taken custom to being thrown at her. Apparently, locking a door was the only thing she could do without getting hurt.

"Is it really such a surprise?" Rory countered her remark with a small smirk.

"No, as well as the fact that I'm playing guard again," Avalon rolled her eyes, "The Doctor's getting crazy with this protectiveness," she huffed.

"He's trying to keep you safe, Ava. Appreciate it."

"I do but there's a fine line and I don't want him to actually lose his mind trying to protect me, you and Amy. He's too hard on himself."

Rory could agree on that but what was he supposed to do? The Doctor was the Doctor. He long ago made his choice how to act and think. There was no changing his mind after a near thousand years of living.

"Rory, he's in!" they heard Amy's shout from the other side.

Quickly, Rory blocked the door behind them with the mop. Together, he and Avalon stayed near in case there was something else needed to be done.

"He shouldn't be there on his own," Avalon mumbled as they waited.

"Now who's overprotective?" Rory teased and nudged her side, earning a mock glare.

Avalon groaned. She hated when he made sense.

"I'm here!" Howie's voice filled the hallway, "Bring me death!"

"How did he get out?" Avalon then smacked her head, "Stupid question!" she scolded herself, "Remind me, WHY why did we leave Gibbis with him in the first place?"

"That..." Rory looked to the side, "...is a very good question."

"Mhm," Avalon groaned and went back to the door, "We have to make sure this..."

"No, no, no, no!" she managed to hear the Doctor through the other, "Ava, Rory, watch out!"

The glass of the door shattered and sent Avalon and Rory down to the floor. They missed the beast getting the mop out of the door handles to get out. A couple seconds later came the Doctor with Amy and Rita.

"Ava!" he helped Avalon sit up while Amy helped Rory, "Are you okay?"

Avalon groaned as she put a hand on her head, "Does this mean I can't even be a guard, then?"

The Doctor was slightly amused as he helped her up, "You're meant to be my princess," he pecked her lips once he made sure she was alright, "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some saving to do..." He ran off after the beast to save Howie.

"What happened?" Rory looked back at the parlor where they could see basically everything shattered.

"I think we should be asking why Howie's out in the first place," Avalon shook her head, "I swear that alien is going to hear me."

"Okay, let's just go find the Doctor," Amy turned around and moved to walk. She only made it a couple steps down when she stopped and looked at a room, room 7, and instantly felt the urge to go inside.

"Amy..." Avalon was watching her curiously. Amy didn't listen and turned the knob of the door and peered inside, "Amy!" Avalon rushed down and slammed the door shut then yanked Amy back, "You shouldn't have done that. What did you see?"

"Nothing," Amy slowly got back to normal, "Nothing...I don't know, it was weird."

"C'mon," Rita called from the other side of the hallway.

Avalon sharply looked at Amy and grabbed her arm to get back with the others. They found the Doctor kneeling by Howie's body, instantly knowing the man was dead.

From around the corner, Gibbis showed himself, meekly speaking, "He got free. He overpowered me," the Doctor ignored him as he strode back to the others, "It might leave us alone now. Maybe now we'll be safe. Wait!"

~ 0 ~

The Doctor stood in front of the wall pictures they'd looked at earlier, specifically Howie's. Rory came to join him and immediately the Doctor had to wonder, "Have you found your room yet?"

"No, no," Rory shook his head, "And neither has Ava. I have to wonder, though, is that good or bad?"

"I believe the phrase went 'Avalon Reynolds does not get afraid'," the Doctor smiled, "Maybe she got that from you."

"I used to be afraid," Rory shrugged, "But then...after all the time I spent with you in the TARDIS, what was left to be scared of?"

The Doctor sharply looked at him, "You said that in the past tense."

Rory was silent for a few seconds until a sigh slipped through. "My family. River's out there, in prison, and we have Avalon here but...she's already gotten so hurt. My biggest fear now is what could happen to my family."

The Doctor swallowed hard. That could directly be linked to him. "I'm trying to keep everyone safe…"

"I know," Rory turned to him. "But it's like Avalon said, not everything is on you. Sometimes things happen and no one can prevent them."

The Doctor could only nod but to believe him right now was a difficult task. He instead moved away from the wall to go meet the others. On his way, he met Rita halfway there. "Rita! Brilliant! How are you? Not panicking, are you?" But he didn't wait to hear the answer when he continued, "Good, good. Because I am literally an otter's toenail away from getting us out of here."

"Why?" Rita finally managed a word in.

"Excellent question," the Doctor acknowledged but instead went around her, "Excellent question," he remarked but stopped once he realized he had no idea what she meant, "Why what?"

"Why is it up to you to save us? That's quite a God complex you have there."

The Doctor looked down to where Avalon and Amy were downstairs, "I brought them here," he said quietly, "They'd say it was their choice, but offer a child a suitcase full of sweets and they'll take it. Offer someone all of time and space and they'll take that, too. Which is why you shouldn't. Which is why grown-ups were invented."

"All of time and space, eh?" Rita called as the Time Lord continued his way down.

"Oh, yeah," he glanced back, "And when we get out of this, I'll show you, too."

Rita laughed, "I don't know what you're talking about. But I have a feeling you just did it again."

The Doctor nodded then noticed a security camera up on the corner, " Right down to the smallest detail. Got you, Mr Minotaur..." he dashed down the stairs and made note to head to the cameras' room.

Avalon was hurrying down the stairs with Amy and Rory, all trying to locate a missing Rita, when suddenly Avalon stopped in a hallway. She didn't know why but...something stopped her. She took a few steps forwards, ignoring Amy's and Rory's call back at the staircase to follow them. They'd continued on without her.

Suddenly, all the doors on both sides of her faded so that only one door stood out. Number 51. Her feet moved and before she even registered what she was doing, her hand found the doorknob and pushed the door open.

The room was a bright white with a medical bed and the standard IV pumps: a hospital room. Avalon saw a woman's back as she sat on the bed holding an infant in her arms. There was a nurse waiting for the woman on the side.

"What will you name her, ma'am?" the nurse inquired.

"Don't care," the mother answered rather coldly.

It certainly took the nurse by surprise. "Excuse me?"

Avalon could see the mother's head rising to meet the nurse. "I said I don't care. She's a nuisance. I don't want her here, I don't need her, so if you could just..." The mother held the infant out for the nurse.

"Ma'am, this is really unusual," the nurse was flabbergasted. "Are you sure you don't want to think about naming-"

"I don't care!" the mother snapped. "I don't want her! Take her! Put her up for adoption or something!"

"But I-I don't...ma'am if this is really what you want, we need a name-"

The mother groaned. "You want a name? Fine! Go with, uh, Avalon! There! You got a name, now take her away!"

Avalon watched as the nurse pulled the pink blanket from the infant's face to reveal a soft tuft of orange hair. Her breath hitched. That was her?

"TAKE HER!" The mother yelled at the nurse, making the woman jump in her spot. "God! Not even her father wanted her and I am not going to be stuck with her! GO!"

The nurse jumped one more time before rushing out of the room...right past Avalon.

"That can't be me..." She said as if she was trying to convince herself.

At the sound of her voice, the mother looked back and though Avalon met her gaze, she couldn't say that she remembered the woman at all. But she knew the look of hatred when she saw one.

The mother's face contorted with utter loathing. "Don't tell me it's you! God! What the hell do I have to do to get away from you? Haven't you taken the hint already?"

Tears pooled in Avalon's eyes as the woman kept shouting at her to leave the room. "You can't...you can't hate me..."

The mother barked a sardonic laugh. "I do! because you were a nuisance from the start! From the moment that I knew you existed! I knew you that you were going to be a waste of space and I decided that I didn't need that in my life. You could be someone else's burden!"

"But I'm your daughter," Avalon barely choked the words out. She felt like she couldn't breathe and suddenly she really wished she could have a hug from that woman. Her mother.

"You're a waste in the world," the mother snapped. "You were born to cause trouble. I had the right idea to get out before you hurt me. Tell me, have you hurt anyone in your life?"

Avalon blinked once and suddenly she was no longer in a hospital room. There was a breeze and sand and water...and a gunshot. An astronaut had fired at the Doctor until he was dead on the ground.

"NO!" Avalon screamed at the top of her lungs and ran forwards.

'Have you hurt anyone in your life?' The wicked mother repeated over and over. 'Have you hurt anyone in your life?'

The astronaut pulled off its helmet just as Avalon came to a stop beside the Doctor's body. It was her. It was a straight, emotionless her who turned away and disappeared.

"I didn't mean to, I wouldn't..." Avalon hands went back and forth while she decided whether or not to touch him. "I wouldn't hurt you, I wouldn't hurt you..."

She just couldn't, not him, never him.

~ 0 ~

In the dining room once again, the remaining group sat in a dispersed manner contemplating their next move, all in the meanwhile the Doctor was finishing up a rather big tantrum. To say he was unhappy would be the understatement of the year. Three people were dead and the next one could be anyone and so far he had nothing to save them. This was becoming a running theme for him and his good streak of luck could end at any moment. This time could be the time he loses someone, Amy, Rory, or Avalon. It always happens, at some point something has to happen.

Avalon cleared her throat, pushing aside her own turmoil at the moment to focus on the big picture. She didn't want him to find out about her room. "I may be temperamental but even I know throwing things isn't going to help," she said quietly. The Doctor gave a small nod and took her extended hand, "So why don't we review, instead?" she offered and looked around, "We know the beast preys on people's fear and possesses them."

"But Rita wasn't afraid, she was brave and calm," the Doctor said in pure frustration, "Maybe it's something to do with the people, some connection between the four of you that'll tell me how to fight it."

"Yes. You keep saying that, but you never do. And while we wait, people keep dying," Gibbis remarked in irritation, "And we'll be next!"

"Look, he'll work it out, he always does," Amy spoke up, "Just let him riff and move anything expensive out of his way."

"Oh, nice, Amy, support the tantrums," Avalon threw her a mock-scolding face.

"We support yours," Amy countered with a small smirk.

"Hey!"

While the two gingers went back and forth, something had sparked inside the Doctor's head, something of Amy's, "Oh, no. Oh, no, no..." he started repeating.

Avalon looked at him, worried, "What? What is it?"

"It's not fear. It's faith. Not just religious faith, faith in something," he got to thinking and even pacing, "Howard believed in conspiracies, external forces controlling the world. Joe had dice cufflinks and a chain with a horseshoe. He was a gambler. Gamblers believe in luck, an intangible force that helps them win or lose. Gibbis rejected personal autonomy and is waiting for the next batch of invaders to tell him what to do. They all believe there's something guiding them, about to save them. That's what it replaces. Every time someone was confronted with their most primal fear, they fell back on their most fundamental faith," he sat on a barstool and rubbed his face as he realized, "And all this time, I've been telling you to dig deep. Find the thing that keeps you brave. I made you expose your faith. Show them what they needed."

"But why us? Why are we here?" Rory frowned in confusion.

"It doesn't want you. That's why it kept showing you a way out. You're not religious or superstitious, so there's no faith for you to fall back on."

"Me?" Amy was next to frown, disliking what had just been said, "Why me? Why not her?" she glanced at Avalon.

"It seeks out the strongest faith," the Doctor explained but Avalon interrupted him with the revelation that she had seen her own room as well. It seemed like hiding it wouldn't be happening anymore.

"I saw it," she whispered, eyes downcast. "It was there...number 51."

"Oh Ava," the Doctor immediately came to her and wrapped her up in his arms. She wanted him to hold her as tight as possible. "I'm so, so sorry," he whispered to her. He wouldn't ask what she saw just as he hoped that she would never ask what he saw in his own room.

"Okay but if Avalon saw a room too...how do you know it didn't bring us here because of her?" Amy had to ask just for the sake of clarity. She would much rather have the beast come for her instead of Avalon.

"Because I don't have a strong faith system," Avalon said. "I don't believe in hope very much. I'm like you, Amy, in that I know my Fairy Tale Man will always try to save me but I also know that he's not always able to do everything. That would just be unrealistic." She leaned her head against the Doctor's chest. He tries his best, though."

"I will always try," he whispered to her.

"Okay, so...what's going on with me then?" Amy questioned, swallowing hard now that she was next on the list of the hunted. "

"It's your faith in me," the Doctor sighed and looked at Amy who was staring at him in horror, "That's what brought us here."

"But why do they lose their faith before they die and start worshipping..."it"?" Rory inquired.

"It needs to convert the faith into a form 'it' can consume. Faith is an energy, the specific emotional energy the creature needs to live. Which is why at the end of her note, Lucy said..."

"Praise him," Amy said, and finished.

"Exactly," the Doctor nodded and for a moment no one realized what...

"Did she just...?" Avalon's eyes widened.

"No. Oh, please, no," Rory stood up from his chair and moved to Amy, and already they could hear the beast coming for her.

~ 0 ~

Now the group ran as fast as they could down the hallways, away from the beast who wasn't that far away. Amy suddenly stopped and turned to face the beast.

"Amy?" the Doctor had noticed and looked back.

"What the hell are you doing?" Avalon hissed, "Get over here now!"

"He is beautiful," Amy hadn't heard a word as she gazed upon the beast getting closer.

"Leave her! Just leave her!" Gibbis nearly begged as he backtracked.

The Doctor and Rory hurried over to Amy and dragged her away. They ran into a room that happened to be Amy's. Inside was her younger self sitting on her suitcase as she waited and watched the window, simulating the night she had waited for the Doctor.

"Boy does that bring back memories," Avalon blinked. To think, she had scolded Amy for being so naive for waiting for an alien that they would probably never see again. Now look where they were?

Amy knelt to the floor with her hands on her head, "Doctor, it's happening. It's changing me, it's changing my thoughts."

The Doctor looked around the room in desperation, Avalon and Rory were trying to keep the door shut and Gibbis was cowering once more. He had to do something, and that something would cost him. Slowly, he knelt beside Amy, "I can't save you from this, there's nothing I can do to stop this."

She looked at him in confusion, "What?"

"I stole your childhood and now I've led you by the hand to your death. But the worst thing is, I knew. I knew this would happen. This is what always happens."

"It's in!" Avalon cried as the beast swung open the door of the room.

"Forget your faith in me," the Doctor insisted to Amy, flinching as the beast growled at the doorway, "I took you with me because I was vain, because I wanted to be adored. Look at you. Glorious Pond. The girl who waited for me. I'm not a hero. I really am just a mad man in a box. And it's time we saw each other as we really are," he kissed Amy's forehead and smiled at her, "Amy Williams. It's time to stop waiting," he stood up and watched the beast stumble back into the hall.

As the beast fell to the floor, the lights began flickering, the room changing into a darker one with just a control panel and the TARDIS.

The Doctor moved over to the beast and knelt down by it, "I severed the food supply. Sacrificing their faith in me. I gave you the space to die. Shhh, shhh."

"What is this place?" Avalon looked around in awe.

"The real location we've been in this whole time," the Doctor looked around as well, "A ship, a prison ship."

"And what is it, a minotaur?" Amy looked at the beast, "Or an alien? Or an alien minotaur? That's not a question I thought I'd be asking this morning."

"It's both, actually," the Doctor walked to the control panel and checked the screen for any information, "Yeah. Here we go. Distant cousin of the Nimon. They descend on planets and set themselves up as Gods to be worshipped. Which is fine, until the inhabitants get all secular and advanced enough to build bonkers prisons.

"Correction. Prisons in space," Rory pointed to the porthole he and Gibbis were looking through.

"Where are the guards?" Avalon asked.

"No need for any. It's all automated," the Doctor gestured to the controls, "It drifts through space, snatching people with belief systems and converts their faith into food for the creature."

"It didn't want just me," Amy decided to point out, "So, you must believe in some god or someone, or they'd have shown you the door, too. So, what do Time Lords pray to?"

But of course, the Doctor had acted as if the question had not been asked, "According to the in-flight recorder, the program developed glitches. It got stuck on the same setting, the fears from the people before us weren't tidied away."

Avalon turned to the beast as it growled, "It's still alive...but what's it saying?"

The Doctor listened in as he moved closer to the beat again, "An ancient creature, drenched in the blood of the innocent, drifting in space through an endless, shifting maze. For such a creature, death would be a gift," he knelt down and put a hand on the beast, "Then accept it. And sleep well," he stood up and started his way back to the TARDIS with the others when the beast growled again.

"I wasn't talking about myself."

That alone was the making of a big decision.

~ 0 ~

Later that same day, Avalon was rummaging through her room frantically. It wasn't until there was a knock on her door that she finally halted, "Come in!" she gave the shout and continued her search.

The Doctor stepped inside and watched her for a moment, "What...are you doing?"

"I can't find my journal!" she sighed in irritation as she slammed shut a drawer from her vanity desk, "The thing's gone! Disappeared!" she rubbed the side of her head, "You wouldn't have happened to see it, did you?" her tone was full of hope.

"Now that you mention it, yeah, I think so. In the console room," the Doctor held a hand for her, "Want to come and search there?"

"Yes," she nodded and took his hand, "I don't understand, I know I left it in my room. I put it on my desk on the first drawer. How could it get into the console?"

"You probably just forgot," the Doctor shrugged, "No big deal."

Avalon scoffed, "This coming from the man who loses it completely when his screwdriver isn't in his pocket."

"Oi, it's valuable!"

"Well, so is my journal," Avalon concluded. As soon as they entered the console room Avalon started searching frantically again, missing the sad stare the Doctor was giving her all the meanwhile, "I don't see it, are you sure you saw it around here?"

"Uh, yeah, silver book," the Doctor nodded, "Definitely in here..."

Avalon made a face and sighed as she continued looking around. She was getting agitated that her journal wasn't showing up. She couldn't just lose it!

"Ava," the Doctor recognized her angry face and he definitely didn't want for her to be angry now. He slowly moved around the console for the ginger, "Ava?"

"Hm, what?" she muttered while looking.

"Don't be upset, please."

"How can I not be!?" Avalon growled as she stopped the search, "You gave me that journal, you spent time on it for me...and I lose it? No! I have to find it, I'll find it, I promise."

The Doctor smiled and put a hand under her chin, "Don't worry so much."

"How can I not? Not only is it my prized possession but it's also a sentimental gift from you," she said quietly, "I don't want you to think that I'm careless about it."

The Doctor had to laugh at that one, "You? Careless about your journal? Ava, I could never think that. If there is one thing you care for it's that journal. Sometimes I think you care more for it than your own life!"

"It's special..." Avalon mumbled with a small pout on her face for being laughed at.

"But none more special than you," the Doctor gave her a peck on the lips, "And, just a note, you are very special."

"Shut up," she blushed lightly.

"Why? I'm saying the truth," the Doctor put an arm around her waist and brought her up against him, "Ava doesn't like hearing praises about herself?" he chuckled as she blushed even deeper.

He was going to miss that.

"You just love messing with me, don't you?" Avalon groaned.

"Don't you do the same to me?"

"Yes...but it's cute when I do it," Avalon innocently shrugged, "And besides, usually when I do it you get one of these," she kissed him, "So everyone wins."

"Everybody wins?" the Doctor raised an eyebrow, "Just like that?" Avalon nodded with a clean smile on her face, making him chuckle again, "You're so adorable. I..." he slowly wrapped his other arm around her as well and leaned closer to her.

"You what?" she asked in anticipation.

The Doctor raised a hand to rest on her cheek and gazed at her for a minute, taking note of all her features to remember them perfectly when she was...

"Doctor?" Avalon asked again, "You what?"

But the Doctor didn't answer as instead he chose to kiss her. Satisfied with the alternative, Avalon fell into the kiss. Gently, the Doctor turned her around and leaned her on the console, deepening the kiss. Avalon had never felt a kiss like that and if she hadn't been so into it she would've questioned it.

"Where did that come from?" she finally took a breath after they'd pulled away. "And how can I get that to happen again?"

The Doctor laughed lightly. "You have no idea the power you have over me." He rested his forehead against hers, bringing up a finger to stroke over her cheek. "You're my princess, my Ava. I love you."

Avalon smiled. "I love you too, Fairy Tale Man."

They both heard footsteps coming from the corridors and looked in time to see Amy and Rory walking out.

"Ah, glad you're both here," the Doctor straightened up and took Avalon's hand, "I have a surprise for you two," he looked at the human pair.

"You do?" Amy raised an eyebrow, confused. She thought with the trip earlier all he would want to do was stay inside the TARDIS.

"You'll like it," he assured as he turned for the console and started setting in coordinations, gripping Avalon's hand tighter than ever as he knew what was coming.

~ 0 ~

The group stepped out into a sunny, calm, Earth, street. There were colorful townhouses in a row across them with a park on the other side.

"Don't tell me. This isn't Earth, that isn't a real house," Amy nodded to one of the houses they were approaching, "And inside lives a goblin, who feeds on indecision."

"Good one," Avalon laughed.

"Nope. Real Earth, real house," the Doctor tossed Amy a set of keys, "Real door keys!"

"You're not serious?" Amy looked between him and the keys.

"The car too?" Rory was hypnotized with the bright red car in front of them, "But that's my favorite car! How did you know that was my favorite car?"

The Doctor rolled his eyes as he reminded Rory, "You showed me a picture of it once and said, 'That's my favorite car'," he tossed Rory the car keys.

"Wait a minute..." Avalon was slowly putting pieces together, at least in regards to Amy and Rory, "...you're doing this be-" but the Doctor placed a finger over her lips.

"We'll talk," he gave a smile, a fake one, "Can I have a word with Amy, first?"

"Okay..." Avalon whispered and nodded. The Doctor gave her a small kiss and turned her for the house that now belonged to her grandparents.

"I'll go with her, there's a tone to celebrate," Rory happily said but stopped beside the Doctor before actually leaving, "Now, Amy's probably going to we can't accept this because it's too extravagant and we'll always feel a crippling sense of obligation," he looked over his shoulder to Amy, "It's a risk I'm willing to take!" he laughed and went after Avalon inside the house.

Amy leaned against the bonnet of the car and patted the spot beside her, "Hey," she called to the Time Lord, "So... You're leaving, aren't you?"

"You haven't seen the last of me," he assured, "Bad Penny is my middle name! Seriously, the looks I get when I fill in a form..."

"Why now?"

"Because you're still breathing," the Doctor quietly said, falling serious.

"Well, I think this is about the washing-up, personally," Amy remarked, making them both laugh a little, sadly. She stood off the car and glanced back at the house, "And Avalon? What happens to her?"

"Amy, you know the Silence is still out there. I can't...I can't keep acting...I can't keep pretending like I don't know what's coming," he swallowed hard.

Amy studied his expression, waiting for him to say more, but she soon understood what he was struggling to say...and it broke her heart. "Oh my God, you know." The Doctor avoided her gaze but his silence was answer enough. "You know about Lake Silencio."

"Knowing what's coming...I cannot and will not have Avalon around for that. I'm her Fairy Tale Man and I would rather die than put her in danger. If the Silence wants me, then let them have me but they will not touch her. Never again."

"I understand, I do, and I'm very grateful you're thinking about her safety but leaving her behind on Earth...don't you think that's just as dangerous?"

"No, I'll have eyes on her. I'll give Jack and Martha a call, I'll be in touch with a slightly older River Song. I'm keeping Avalon safe until...until I figure out how to defeat the Silence. Either Kovarian dies, or I will." The Doctor straightened himself up, standing by his words, and reached inside his jacket to pull out Avalon's silver journal. He had taken it from her room to avoid having to explain to her why she needed to bring it out of the TARDIS right now. He brushed a hand over the cover. 'A.H.R.' was still shining brightly as the day he carved it. Avalon Harmony Reynolds. Beautiful name for a beautiful girl who deserved to live out her days in peace.

He held the journal out to Amy, willing her to take it. "Tell her she can be anything she wants to be. She's the impossible girl, after all. Been doing the impossible ever since she was born."

Amy took the journal from him and nodded. "You don't want to say goodbye to her?"

"If I see her again, I won't be able to leave," he confessed with a heavy sigh. "I love her too much and that's my weakness. If she asks me to stay, I'm going to stay." And he couldn't do that to her. His room had shown him the consequences if he continued to ignore the future. He would die before he had to hold Avalon's dead body in his arms.

"She's going to continue asking so many questions..." Amy said sadly, choosing to understand his motives as the best option for all of them.

"Answer them. Answer everything she wants to know, even about River."

Amy suspected that wouldn't happen anytime soon. Avalon had no interest in learning about her biological mother. "Listen, if you bump into River, whichever version you meet, you tell her to stop by because her daughter's going to need her."

"Will do," the Doctor promised and gave her a quick hug.

"Look after yourself, please," Amy said, watching him backtrack to the TARDIS. He opened the door, glancing back at Amy who already had tears in her eyes, "Bye," she waved.

The Doctor waved back and entered the TARDIS, soon de-materializing. Of course, that happened right about the time Avalon and Rory had stepped out of the brand new house.

Avalon, who'd been carrying glasses in her hands, dropped them to the ground and hurried down the steps as she saw the blue box disappearing, "What happened!? Where's he going!?" She ran up to Amy.

"He's saving us," Amy said quietly and held her journal out.

Avalon swallowed the lump that'd formed in her throat. "No…" If he had left that then it meant he'd left all of them for good. "No, Amy, don't...don't give me that…"

"I'm sorry," Amy tried giving her the journal but Avalon threw it to the side, as hard as her strength allowed.

"He can't just leave me! He can't...the Silence wants him!" Avalon yelled with tears in her eyes. "He can't be on his own!"

"Ava…" Rory wanted to touch her but she backed away from them.

"You don't get it!? Kovarian wants him to be alone! He's going to do something stupid and I'm...I'm stuck here!"

"He's trying to save us all," Amy stepped towards her.

Avalon directed a rather furious glare on her. "How could you let him go like that!? I told you! I...I need to find him!" She clapped a hand over the watch on her wrist. "I love him, he can't just do this!"

"Avalon-"

"NO!" Avalon screamed. "Don't...I have to find him! He doesn't know - he doesn't know that I could still be the astronaut! That's what was in my room! I'm the astronaut and I kill him! The Silence can't have him! I'll drown myself first before I ever put on that astronaut suit!"

"Avalon, please calm down!" Rory wanted to catch her but she was backtracking further from them, completely hysterical.

"Leave me alone!" She turned away and ran off. She had to go find the Doctor before the Silence found him first.

#ocappreciation #doctor who #11th doctor #fd: doctor who #dw #11th doctor fics #11th doctor imagines #doctor who imagine #dw imagine #dw fics #oc: Avalon Reynolds #fic: falling in temptation

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malicerewatchesdoctorwho · 4 years

Text

The Evil of the Daleks - Episode Four (New Version)

Written by – David Whitaker Director – Derek Martinus Producer – Innes Lloyd

Episode Four

("How many people should die, so my daughter shall live?" - Waterfield to Maxtible, feeling guilty about the deaths that are happening around him.)

Likes

- Haha first words to appear as what is happening in the scene were Kemel pulled Jamie into a bear hug. Yes, Jamie, hug the poor man who has been abused by his handler. Hug him back, he needs the love.

- Jamie finding a sword and immediately arming himself. Yes, good thinking.

- Jamie, not wanting to see Kemel falling to his death from the roof, helps him back up to safety. This is a guy who two seconds ago was trying to kill him. Jamie, you are a good one. Never stop being you.

- Kemel saving Jamie's life in return. And a friendship is born.

- I feel so sorry for poor Waterfield. He's trying so hard and doesn't see any way out of his current situation, but boy will he try, preferably while holding onto his morals.

- Waterfield ready to confess to what has happened to the police as soon as he has Victoria. Seriously, this guy is kind and has morals and they are being trampled all over by not only the Daleks, but Maxtible too, who doesn't give a shit about anything but his experiments.

- Jamie not giving a shit that Kemel can't talk, because he sees Kemel as a good man and that's all that matters. Yes, Jamie, yes. This is the right attitude to have.

- Kemel proving he isn't stupid by being able to write and understand English, something that Maxtible said he was very simple in just last episode. Funny how he doesn't have any problems understanding a damn thing Jamie says, or answering him back in non verbal ways. Communication is a beautiful thing.

- Waterfield understanding that he is partially to blame for the murders by keeping silent. He's an accomplice and is obstructing justice. A crime.

- Maxtible getting beat up by a Dalek for talking back to it. Hahaha, yes.

Dislikes

- It took an absurdly long time for Kemel to recover from Jamie pushing him to the floor. Just...this guy is super strong and buff. Why did it take him so long to recover? Oh yeah, so Jamie could get to the next room without having to fight him.

- Yeah, I want Maxtible to die. I really don't like him.

- Can I have Maxtible as a person on here again? No reason other than he is a despicable human being and I don't like him and that point is so important it just needed to be said twice.

- ...Umm, was it Terrall or Maxtible that started saying "You will obey!" to the other? I wasn't clear on that.

- Wait...how do you get a huge metal ball inside a light and still have the light work? Am I misunderstanding something here?

- How did the Daleks get Victoria into that room? Seriously, how? As far as I see, there isn't even any stairs for her to climb up, let alone the Daleks going with her because they can't fly yet. Just...what.

- Who dared hurt Mollie?! Was that Terrall?! Ruth was saying about the two of them running off together, so I guess it was Terrall, who is her fiancé.

- Maxtible working with the Daleks voluntarily because they promised to give him the secrets of transmutation and turning metal into gold. Okay, my dude. You're insane, but okay.

Awesome

- The music. Just...it's on point in this story.

- The machines the Doctor is using for the human factor for the Daleks. I don't know, it makes weird noises, but I just really like the look of it, when we get clear pictures of it. Reminds me a bit of some controls in Star Trek TOS.

- I like the balcony/landing set of where Victoria was kept, even if it makes no sense from the outside.

Shitty

- It's missing

- Bad recons. Why?

- It gets really confusing to understand what is happening if there are no words telling us, because this episode, outside the music is really quiet. Seriously, except for the repeat of the last few seconds of the third episode with Jamie's "Hello, who are you" barely anything is said until well into 5 minutes in.

In Conclusion

Apart from the rather long list of dislikes, I actually really enjoyed this episode. I like Kemel and Jamie basically saying fuck it, let's be friends. I like how pissed off Victoria is of doing the same thing over and over again and yelling at the Daleks for it. I like the Doctor explaining emotions and why Jamie and Kemel act the way they do.

I love Waterfield's morality shining through and that as soon as the mess is over he plans on turning himself in for the murders that have been committed, because he doesn't like not being held accountable since it is partially on him they are dead. And he gets that and is willing to go to jail for it.

And yeah, if it wasn't very obvious by now, I really don't like Maxtible. I don't remember not liking him this much the first time. Wow. Also, I read my old version posts after posting the new and...did I seriously believe that I liked the so called mystery of Terrall for the last episode? Past me, you suck and have terrible taste.

Terrall and Ruth are basically there to have other characters be there. The show could go on just as well if neither of them existed.

Looking forward to watching next episode again.

Body count - 0. Though part of the episode is all about hiding Toby's body and how characters feel about it, which I am oddly fine with. So Toby and his deadness is a big part of the plot in this episode.

#Classic Doctor Who #doctor who #the evil of the daleks #episode four #epic rewatch #Second Doctor #Jamie McCrimmon #Victoria Waterfield #daleks

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timeagainreviews · 5 years

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Thoughts leading up to series 12

Happy holidays, friends! I know, I know. It's been a while. I would love to sit here and say I have been away doing important things, but really I've been hibernating. The results of that awful election, mixed with the holidays had left me feeling a bit lethargic as of late. That being said, I had a nice Christmas. Being an immigrant, I don't see my family on holidays. My boyfriend and I spent the day piecing together a Babylon 5 jigsaw puzzle. I made my pal Gerry a celery for his 5th Doctor cosplay and he gifted me a replica of the Li H'sen Chang poster from "The Talons of Weng-Chiang." It was a very Doctor Who Christmas! Sadly, there was no Doctor Who Christmas episode!

Alas, it hardly matters, as new Doctor Who is mere days away! As I did last year, you can expect weekly coverage for each new episode. I'm looking forward to getting back into the groove of consistent writing. Usually, the fandom is more abuzz when the show is actually airing, so please remember to check in with this blog, as I will be watching along with the rest of you!

If you recall, prior to series eleven, I made a list talking about some of my hopes and expectations for the new TARDIS team and the new production team. Seeing as series twelve is just days away from premiering, I thought I might do it again. Let's get to it, shall we?

The Thirteenth Doctor

Seeing Jodie Whittaker back in the TARDIS for another round of adventures has me massively excited. One of the downsides to Christopher Eccleston's run is that we never really got to see him develop the role of the Ninth Doctor. I'm hoping we'll get to see more aspects of her character. Seeing as I don't expect her to regenerate any time soon, there's still much of her personality left to explore. We've met the friendly adorkable Doctor, now let's see her bend a little.

One of my primary complaints about Jodie Whittaker's portrayal as the Doctor was that I didn't think she got scary. While I love her bravery, running headlong into danger, I would like to see a shade or two of her dark side. Up to this point, she's been too friendly to be scary. I know I'm not the only person with this complaint, so it will be interesting to see what a year of hiatus and refocusing will do for her. Honestly, I hope they don't change her too much, as she's pretty great. I'd just like to see them flesh her out a bit.

Other than her personality, I'm also hoping to see some costume variations. The trailer for the new season does give us Jodie in a bow tie, which I am all for. I've also seen a picture where her trousers are black. I'm hoping they continue to tweak her costume here and there, as watching the Doctor's costume evolve over time has always been one of my favourite things about the show.

Chris Chibnall's return

Was there anyone from series eleven that drew more ire than Chris Chibnall? Sure you got the people who hated Jodie solely because she was a woman, but on the level of legitimate concerns, Chibnall was up there. I myself threw a bit of mud in his direction, and I don't feel as though it was without good cause. The general management of the show seemed a bit aimless, despite many promising elements.

Something about the way series eleven was received gave the BBC pause to reevaluate the show's trajectory, and I have a distinct feeling that Chibnall was at the heart of a lot of it. From his lack of a season-long story arc, to the villains being a bit shit, to an overly dour tone, his first year as showrunner left something to be desired. The fact that we didn't even get a single webisode during this gap year shows me that they're still not 100% sure what to do with Doctor Who.

However, having said this, Chibnall's core TARDIS team is one of the most exciting aspects of series twelve. I can't wait to see more from this great line up of characters. And if the exciting trailer for this new series is anything to go off, we're in for quite a ride. Chibnall's most recent endeavour as showrunner was last year's "Resolution," a much-needed bit of classic Who villainy in the form of a Dalek. I was left feeling optimistic that Chibnall was capable of delivering solid storytelling. And that's the operative word- optimistic. As long as he doesn't get needlessly gritty, I'm cautiously optimistic that this year-long hiatus has yielded positive results.

The Companions

Like many other viewers, my chief complaint about the companions has to be Yaz. She really got shafted on the level of character development last year. When you have someone as talented as Mandip Gill, it's a shame to waste her. I know the fandom was quite vocal about this fact, so I fully expect to see the show give her more time in the spotlight. I don't know anyone who disliked her character, which is a good sign that the fandom wants more of her.

Ryan and Graham were two characters that I felt got a great bit of character development. The moment when Ryan finally calls Graham "granddad," was a truly exciting moment for two characters we had grown to love. The logical next step, at least in my mind, is to test the boundaries of this new relationship. I'd really love to see Graham meet a new love interest. Introducing someone into Graham's life would make Ryan have to broaden his definition of family even further. It might also be a catalyst for his own personal growth.

I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't also see one or more of the companions depart from the TARDIS. My gut says it would be Graham, but I wouldn't be surprised if all three of them left at the end of the series. As much as I love the current companions, I would love to see what energy a new companion or two might do for Jodie's Doctor.

The Villains

Prior to series eleven, I was feeling very optimistic for new Doctor Who. That is until I read an article where Chris Chibnall announced there would be no returning villains. Other than the announcement that Chibnall would be showrunner, nothing had made me more concerned for the show's future than "no returning villains." It's not that returning villains are a must for Doctor Who. It's actually a rather brave thing to attempt. The reason it's brave is that if you're going to leave out classic baddies, you've got to justify your decision by crafting new classics. And I'm sorry, but some Slipknot dude with teeth in his face is not classic.

From what I've seen of the trailer and promotional stills, we're looking at at least three returning creatures from the Whoniverse. We've all seen the picture of Jodie staring down the Judoon. If I am completely honest, those have left me with the least amount of hype, as they weren't ever even full-on villains. I've always found the Judoon slightly hokey, so I could take or leave them. The plus side is that there is still plenty of room to develop them as a species. Are there non-Shadow Proclamation Judoon? Are there evil factions? I'm curious if nothing else.

Another familiar face is the Cybermen. While I feel like both the RTD and Moffat eras used the Cybermen ad nauseam, they're still a classic baddie with a solid track record. It appears they'll have something to do with the finale and that "timeless child," storyline I'm uninterested in, so fine, sure, ok. The real alien species I'm excited for is the Racnoss! Much like the Judoon, the Racnoss are also underdeveloped. I wasn't a big fan of them the first time around, which is why I'm excited for more. I'm curious to see what depth can be found in these campy arachnids. If nothing else, the makeup is fun.

The Guest Actors

Series eleven treated us to a surprisingly tender performance from Lee Mack in "Kerblam!" We got a decent turn by Mark Addy, working with not a lot to go off as the underwritten Paltraki. But without a doubt, the best performance came in the form of Alan Cumming's King James. Not only was he as hilarious as he was loathsome, but he also elevated what could have been a more straightforward performance, by finding that sweet spot of camp and contemptible.

That being said, with actors like Stephen Fry, Lenny Henry, and classic Doctor Who alum Robert Glenister joining the show, I'm hopeful we'll get at least one memorable performance out of the lot. I've not followed many of the ins and outs of the storylines, so I have no idea who anyone is playing other than Goran Višnjić as Nikola Tesla. That being said, the addition of Tesla to the series seems an obvious fit. He was an eccentric man who was a bit weird about his pet bird. I expect his story to be one of the stranger ones we'll enjoy this year, or at least, it had better be.

The BBC's involvement

I'm hoping that in this last year, the BBC weren't just reevaluating Chris Chibnall's direction for the show, but their own involvement as well. They got rid of Bake Off and Formula One, Top Gear's audience followed Clarkson over to Amazon. All that's left are partisan news coverage, QI, Countryfile, and Doctor Who. Oh and I guess "His Dark Materials," but I don't know anyone who's talking about that show. As I said earlier, it's been a year of nothing from Doctor Who as a series. Other than comics and a less than perfect VR game, we've gotten nothing from the Thirteenth Doctor and the fam. Not even a novel or webisode to tide us over. How hard would it have been, while filming series twelve, to shoot a quick little skit on the TARDIS set? The Moffat era did this a lot, and it was always nice to see a little bit of Doctor Who while waiting for more episodes.

As the last vestige of the BBC's once-great television empire, you would think they might start to give a shit about Doctor Who. I know it's a crazy concept, but perhaps shelving one of your best shows for a year wasn't the best option. It would be nice to see them put more money and effort into the show. It would be a welcome sight to see them also put more money into the budget for things like merchandise or extended universe media. We've got three books for the current Doctor and that was last year. David Tennant had over thirty novels, while Matt Smith's Doctor appeared in over 15, and Capaldi only appeared in nine. Do you remember the last time we got a Character Options figure that wasn't a repaint of another figure? The most recent one we got was Harry Sullivan, and I'm pretty sure the only new element to that figure was his head. I've seen previews of the new companion figurines, and they're great, but I want more.

Perhaps I sound a bit spoiled. Many shows never expand beyond their allotted episodes, but this is Doctor Who, a show with a broader reach than your telly. It seemed last year that they were finally giving the show its dues. There were billboards of Jodie's face everywhere. The hype was palpable. Now, it's just four days from series twelve, and I've not even seen a bus ad for the new show. A woman I see out on dog walks was surprised when I told her the show was returning on the first of January. She had no idea. This is the Doctor Who audience that they're failing, not people like me who count the days like an advent calendar. The BBC needs to decide once in for all if they're going to give Doctor Who the respect it deserves, or sell it someone who will.

And that's it for now, friends. I hope you're all just as excited as I am to be back in the blue box. If all goes as planned, I should have a new review up the day after each episode. I'm optimistic that I'll have some great things to say!

#doctor who #series 12 #Jodie Whittaker #Thirteenth Doctor #chris chibnall #dalek #cybermen #yazmin khan #Ryan Sinclair #Graham O'Brien #mandip gill #tosin cole #Bradley Walsh #bbc #stephen fry #racnoss #judoon

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aristidetwain · 4 years

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The Author’s Dossier: “Remembrance of the Judicator”

@doctornolonger and @rassilon-imprimatur have both used their Tumblr blogs to write fun and informative “spotter’s guides” to the miscellaneous references in their licensed Faction Paradox stories. And, though they are of course further removed from Who than the further adventures of everyone’s favorite time-traveling goth cult, the adventures of Lady Aesculapius are indubitably another spinoff existing on the edges of the extended Whoniverse, no matter what a certain Wiki maintains. Besides which, I thought, “this looks fun”.

So while there may not be as much to say here as there might in future entries (fingers crossed on the existence thereof!), here is, without further ado, the official author’s guide to Remembrance of the Judicator, my short story from the Forgotten Heroines of the 10,000 Dawns 2020 April Fools’ Day event, available for free here. Obviously, this detail-attentive reread will spoil what little there is to be spoiled in this tale, so you should probably read it first if you haven’t already.

Enjoy!

REMEMBRANCE of the JUDICATOR

We kick things off with a classic “Phrase of the Creature” sort of title. The Phrase even begins with the letter “R”! This isn’t anything new ([1], [2], [3]) to the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids series, but I’d be lying if I said that classic Doctor Who’s famous use of such titles wasn’t on my mind when I chose this one; in fact, one of Who’s most famous “Phrase of the Creature” titles used “Remembrance” as its Phrase.

And you know what? Much as we might all admire 1988′s Remembrance of the Daleks, I think my plot justifies the use of the term “Remembrance” far better than Ben Aaronovitch’s. What are the Daleks remembering, exactly? Or is it that some other party is remembering them? If so, who and why?

So I hope you’re happy with finally having a “Remembrance of the X” story where what the X remembers actually plays a big part in the plot. Because to do this, I gave up on “Prisoner of the Jud…icator”.

“So on the bright side,” began Ashlyn Oswin, straining against her bonds, “we're not back with the talking cats.”

Starting ruthlessly in medias res: now there’s a trick that comes more from Duck comics than from Who. 1950′s and 1960′s stories, be they by Carl Barks or Vic Lockman, had a tendency to open with splash panels of the main characters in a ridiculous predicament and trying at half-hearted banter despite the situation, which would then spark a flashback to how they’d gotten there in the first place. Not that I employed a flashback.

Because who has time for flashbacks when you can instead reference a delightful bit of Ashlyn Oswin’s official James Wylder-sanctioned story? In fact, that Ashlyn spent some time in a dimension of talking cats was one of the things in her condensed character bio that came with the submission guidelines for the Forgotten Heroines Takeover event. The story, if anyone’s wondering, is The Days the Cats Spoke, from 2015.

When Ashlyn says “we” aren’t back with the talking cats, is she just referencing that story and using a rhetorical “we”? Or did the Forgotten Heroines run into the same talking cats again at some point between Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot and the opening of this story? You decide!

“Everybody wants to be a c...” Miranda began to hum sarcastically. “Hush, you can't sing that here,” barked a guard.

It would be wrong to characterize Disney’s The Aristocats (1970) as a guilty pleasure of mine, in that actually, I wear my Aristocat fandom proudly. The Disney movies of the 1970′s are, I find, generally very underrated. They made up for the lack of showy big-budget effects with stellar character animation, great voice performances — and the earwormiest of earwormy tunes!

Pictured below: me, setting out to write this story.

Anyway…

“No copyrighted music, are we clear?” “If you think I give a damn about that sort of thing, you have another thing coming,” the mysterious traveller in all of narrative space only known as the Tourist retorted, trying to take a daring stance.

The Collective of the Retconning Crocodiles’ policies regarding recognizable songs turns out to be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who’s tried to upload a YouTube video lately. And significance the Tourist’s flippancy at the idea of caring in the slightest about copyright is, of course, immediately made obvious by a slight twist on that classic “mysterious traveller in all of Time and Space known only as the Doctor” line from the Doctor Who Target novelisations, and not-so-recently made hip again by Missy in World Enough and Time (2017).

In other words, as a first draft of Lady Aesc, the Tourist belongs to the same long tradition of riffs and remixes of the Doctor Who formula, divergent stories which are very much their own characters and their own stories, but who are also very conscious of being just different enough from old Theta Sigma that the BBC won’t mind. Copyright, to her, isn’t some scary taboo to be bandied about by scaly bullies, it’s an ongoing game of cat and mouse.

Could... specimens of... of whatever species she was... drown like regular people? Clearly they could trip like anyone else. Or get chained up by sentient crocodiles like anyone else. The real question was, could you drown in a Time Sewer?

Just what is the Tourist, aside from a lovable grimdark prat? “Not a Time Lord”, say any lawyers worth their salt; as much a Time Lord as I can get away with making her, I suspect is more like what the younger James Wylder who made her up originally envisioned. Just like Aesc herself, the finished version of the 10k Dawns riff on the aesthetics of the Great Houses, namely the Firmament, would end up striking a perfect balance of the new and the familiar.

But in the meantime, the Tourist’s crew can get confused about whether or not she has a respiratory bypass system, albeit not in so many words.

I had mentioned some time ago, via in-character blog comments, that the Crocodiles get about through, and reside in, repellant Time Sewers. A take-off on that whole “alligators in the sewers of New York” thing, don’t you know? But this was the first time I took my readers into them and elaborated at any length on how they work.

The Tourist and her merry crew had stepped out in search of the fluid leak that was so rudely interrupting their lackadaisical rampage through the slice of omniversal reality known as the 10,000 Dawns, and been immediately set upon by—

Wait, liquid from the Sewers clogs up the Black Pyramid’s systems, and their response is to go out to look for a leak? Well, I’m sorry. But then, how else could I work in a reference to the reason that a certain rip-off of the Tourist had for stepping out of his own Ship back in Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)?

If Pathway had been here, there might have been some hope. Things seemed to get suddenly more serious when Pathway was around. Possibly because of the katana. But, alack, Pathway was not here, being busy following a probable wild-goose-chase for a Numbered connection in Dawn 789.

In James Wylder’s Prototype, another story in the Forgotten Heroines Takeover which ran before mine, but which I hadn’t read when I submitted Remembrance of the Judicator, we see Pathway squaring off against one of the Numbered whose designation is… 789. Here’s the scary thing: I swear this is a coincidence. Dawn 789 was just supposed to be a random Dawn and I had no idea quite what the “Numbered connection” really was.

(Or did Wylder add that detail to his draft in reference to my story, even though his story happens first and was released first? Who knows!)

“You've kept us alive, so clearly we're valuable to you.” “You're not talking to a Centro stooge, you know,” Ashlyn muttered with a glare in Shona's direction, which was rather impressive as they were tied back-to-back. “Maybe these guys aren't even capitalists.” “I should say not!” grunted the Crocodile, waving its spear closer to them. “We are in fact a Collective! The Collective of the Retconning Crocodiles!”

Shona, like many other characters in the 10,000 Dawns series, has spent a significant of time fighting against the tyranny of various versions of Centro Systems, a world-spanning megacorporation who, in a lot of the Dawns, acts as a world government for whom capitalism isn’t just an economic system, but an actual political philosophy.

The Crocs aren’t meant to be actual communists, of course — in their case, Collective is to be taken in the more sci-fi-oriented, “Hive” sense of the word. But the joke was too good to pass up. And anyway, whatever they are, they’re not capitalists either, even if they do try to make people sign contracts.

“Oh? Isn't this part of the 10,000 Dawns?” Miranda asked with a disappointed pout. “We were rather heading for the 10,000 Dawns here.” “Yeah, we had a whole thing going,” Ashlyn concurred.

The “heading for the 10,000 Dawns” made more sense back when I imagined that this would be the crew’s first adventure after escaping the draft universes, rather than the last before the finale.

Still, it all worked out: my story ran immediately after Alex Wakeford’s Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot, where some enemies whose tech has more than a little in common with the Crocodiles’ accidentally sent Ashlyn to a certain battlefield in what was clearly the bona fide Doctor Who universe. And of course, White Canvas (2018) established (if it still needed establishing) that this world isn’t part of the 10,000 Dawns, though it has had contact with them.

So maybe, just maybe, Miranda is actually talking about their having been on their way back to the Dawns from Earth-5556…

“I'm only a humble guard,” the Retconning Crocodile answered, “I'm sure I wouldn't know.”

Wholly meaningless reference to a beloved bit of Doctor Who dialogue? Or a hint that however the Time Sewers work, it’s similar to how Gallifrey in the Stasis Cube worked? Who knows! …Not me.

“Ugh! I know!” she cut it off moodily. “But don't say it in front of them!” She gestured at Shona and Ashlyn. “Miranda's like me, but they — they don't understand metafiction the way I do.”

Take it away, The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob:

“Behind those shades and that too-cool-for-school attitudes, you're just another intruder.” “I am far more than just another intruder,” answered the woman with the pyramid. “I'm the Tourist.”

The only direct allusion to Remembrance of the Daleks in this story, title aside.

(“You’re just another Time Lord!” “I am far more than just another Time Lord.”)

“Even if I had ever been human,” the Tourist answered through clenched teeth, “which by the way isn't admission one way or another—my method of travel would have turned me into something... more than human, one way or another, by now. Also, shut up, didn't you hear the reptiles?”

When Doctor Who decided to retcon, in 1969, that the Doctor was from an alien civilization that only coincidentally resembled humanity, perhaps the most intriguing piece of canon that was lost was the suggestion in The Evil of the Daleks (1966) that it was the Doctor’s travels through Time and Space which had made him “more than human”. At the end of the day, that is where the EDAs’ concept of biodata got started, too, I think.

“A little chaos between friends is a wonderful thing,” the Tourist boasted.

Not only is the Tourist a bit of a Doctor clone, she’s an unwieldily sturm-&-drang, “darker and edgier” Doctor clone. Sound familiar? Yep, the Tourist thus finds herself (nearly) quoting Sacha Dhawan’s Spy Master from Spyfall (2020).

“Not in the eyes of the Firmament it isn't,” the Head Crocodile boomed, thumping his staff against the marble floor for emphasis, and the four realized that it had retconned itself into having held a staff all along, just so it could do that. “Don't you see? They'll never allow your wanton interference to stand. Before day's end, I expect they'll press a massive Reset Button on the entire thing. The entire thing.”

I think it was the idea of Lupan Evezan (@drleevezan), in The Frost King’s Treasure (2019), that the Crocodiles would have technological gizmos at their disposal which have the names of, and the ability to effect, various popular tropes. A literal Red Herring which briefly makes anyone who looks at it think it’s a major clue in whatever mystery they’re trying to solve, that sort of thing. Case in point…

(Do the Firmament also call it a Reset Button, or were the Crocodiles just phrasing it in a way that would make sense to them? I’m not the person to ask.)

“Hold on, you're just quoting the Judicator's introduction paragraph in the original 10,000 Dawns webnovel, aren't you?” the Tourist interrupted, unimpressed.

And they are, too.

“No!” cried the Head Crocodile as all the other members of the Collective collapsed back into him.

See what I meant about the sci-fi sense of Collective? The Crocodiles are plural, but they aren’t really a set of actual individuals, or at least not all of the time. Someday I’ll write a story explaining this in more detail.

“To come to its conclusions,” the Tourist explained, talking down to Shona slightly (to her displeasure), “the Judicator draws from a sense of morality and from every record it can find of every law ever passed in history. So, if someone were to, say, go back in time and spam all legal records with an overwhelming number of new laws, stating that we specifically have to be let go under all circumstances — well — its hands would be tied, wouldn't it?”

This is an obvious, twofold loophole that jumped out to me when I first read 10,000 Dawns: feeding every legal system ever into a computer wouldn’t really get you the perfect jurist, would it? It’d first risk getting a blubbering wreck who can’t deal with the mountain of contradictions between the laws of 11th century China and mid-19th century Holland; and even if you get past that, it’s liable to be polluted with a bunch of useless, anachronistic laws. Nonsense like laws against being ugly in public would take up unnecessary but uncrunchable space in its databanks.

Still, I suppose the “but also it has to act moral” element mostly rights the logic. Our heroines are only able to exploit the loophole here because they have limitless time travel and because, as the heroines, they’re assumed to be in the right opposite the Crocodiles and thus favored by the Judicator.

“Ugh, enough soul-searching!” Miranda suddenly declared, and sprayed a portal onto the nearest wall. “I don't know how long it is before day's done. But in the meantime, let's have some adventures.”

#The Author's Dossier

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sophieakatz · 5 years

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Thursday Thoughts: What Exactly Does A Spoiler Spoil?

When I first started watching Doctor Who, I did my best to “avoid spoilers” – I didn’t want to know what would happen, for fear that it would lessen my enjoyment of the show. And there certainly were a lot of spoilers to avoid, given that I was playing catch-up on a show that had begun many years before I got around to it.

Since I was mostly watching episodes on Netflix, I rarely saw the “next time” trailer for episodes. But then one day I stuck past the credits, and – dun dun dun – there were DALEKS in the next episode! Okay, good to know.

I then began to watch the episode. But for a long time, there were no Daleks. Not only that, the appearance of the Daleks – at the very end of the episode – was set up like a big, dramatic reveal. The characters were shocked, presumably the viewer was also supposed to be shocked, but I… was not shocked. The “next time” trailer spoiled the ending of the episode for me!

However, I was very surprised to discover that I did not mind at all.

The episode had still been entertaining. I loved watching the Doctor and the rest of the cast react to the events around them and try to figure out what was going on in their usual clever, funny ways. I loved the beautiful space scenes and the intriguing moral quandaries that the setting evoked. I also loved the foreshadowing. Throughout the episode, bits and pieces supporting the twist at the end were sent our way – a laser noise here, a glimpse of an eyestalk there, the mention of beings who “fear the Doctor.”

Perhaps if I had not watched the “next time” trailer, I would have put the pieces together and felt clever for figuring out that the Daleks were around before the show explicitly told me. It’s impossible for me to know if that would have been my experience. What I do know is that I really enjoyed the episode knowing full well that the Daleks were there and using that knowledge to see and appreciate how the show set up their arrival.

This experience changed my opinion on spoilers. Knowing what happens at the end of a story doesn’t necessarily ruin the experience of that story. In a good story, the joy is in the journey as much as the destination.

Having learned this about stories, in subsequent years I’ve never been really bothered about having something in a new movie, book, or TV show spoiled for me. Even if I know what will happen, I still get to see how and why it happens.

So while I was perhaps a little annoyed when I came down the stairs and overheard my mother and sister commenting on [major spoiler from the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince] before I had read it, or when I heard one of my camp counselors asking another camper if [major spoiler from the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows] had happened yet before I had read it, I didn’t feel that either spoiler “ruined” my enjoyment of either book.

I also felt no need to tell anyone in either of these cases that I had overheard them (in fact, when my mother and sister read this blog post, it will be the first time they hear of this – and to them I say, sorry, and I love you!). I told no one at the time because I knew perfectly well how much other people do care about spoilers and whether they “spoil” another person’s reading/viewing experiences.

In the weeks preceding the release of Avengers: Endgame, the internet was full of people declaring that “Thanos Demands Your Silence.” There was even a sign on the breakroom door at work declaring it a “spoiler-free zone” until several weeks after the movie hit theaters. We also learned a lot about the spoiler-free nature of the film set itself. Tom Holland at one point did not know what character he was supposed to be fighting because the directors were concerned about spoilers getting out.

(And while I’m more a behind-the-scenes gal than an actress, I’m pretty sure that in order to give your best performance, you kind of need to know who and what your character should be reacting to. But that’s a whole nother article.)

(There’s also a whole nother article in talking about the importance of spoilers as far as triggers are concerned, and how it’s often easier to enjoy a work if you know that an awful thing happens in it in advance rather than if you are shocked by it in the moment, but this post is already going to be over a thousand words long.)

So it would be silly of me to say that spoilers don’t matter, because to a lot of people, they do matter. When I’m telling someone about a book or movie I just enjoyed, I always ask first if they mind hearing spoilers. If they mind, then I won’t spoil. Respecting people’s boundaries is part of being a good human.

Which brings me to a boundary that I have as a writer, which complicates my relationship with spoilers: I don’t like to tell people what’s going to happen next in my works. If they ask, I will nearly always refuse.

I have two main reasons for this.

First, sometimes I myself don’t know exactly what is going to happen next. I am what some on the internet call a “plantser” – neither a completely predetermined “planner” nor a completely making-it-up-as-I-go “pantser” (as in “flying by the seat of my pants”). It’s fitting that this portmanteau of “planner” and “pantser” includes the word “plant,” because that word describes my writing process well. I plant seeds, nurture them, and see how they grow. I can expect that if I plant watermelon seeds, I will end up with watermelons. However, how big will the fruits be? How sweet, or how sour? Will other, unexpected plants appear among the melons along the way? If so, are they weeds to pull up, or new plants worth keeping in the ecosystem? I am open to these changes. So if I were to tell someone, “My garden will only contain watermelons, and they will grow right here, and be so big,” and then I discovered some very interesting weeds that improved the garden’s overall quality, then I would be an unintentional liar. I’m better off not giving spoilers for what I do not know will happen.

Second, even if the planner in me takes over and I do know what will happen in this story, I don’t want to create extratextual expectations for the reader. I believe that if I’m doing my job right, what happens next in my story should feel inevitable. The characters should make decisions based on who they have shown themselves to be so far, and what has happened to them so far. That’s how real people work – we aren’t the random result of dice rolls; we are people with thoughts, emotions, and experiences. What happens next in my story should feel right not because it’s what I explicitly told you would happen, but because it’s what the previous parts of the story were clearly leading to. As a result, I am much more a fan of foreshadowing than I am of spoilers, and I love when people correctly predict the future events of my stories. If the only reason why you like the ending I wrote is because it’s what I, the writer, told you would happen, then I haven’t done my job as a writer. And if the only reason why you enjoy the story I wrote is because you had no idea what would happen next, then again, I have not done my job as a writer.

If you can tell what will happen next in a story, then the story has a kind of cohesion that stories which operate entirely in the realm of “shock factor” do not. I know that a lot of people disagree with me about this, but if knowing what happens next “spoils” the experience of a story for you, then it’s a bad story. The best stories are the ones that withstand the test of time, which means that we love to tell them over and over again even though we know how they will end. This means that spoilers do not actually “spoil” a story.

Nevertheless – as a writer, I still want to know if you would have enjoyed my story, and if you would have wanted to read it more than once, if you had come to it with no preconceived notions about how it would go. Once I’ve “spoiled” the ending, I can never know that. A spoiler does not necessarily “spoil” the experience of a story, but it does spoil a little bit of a writer’s pride.

#spoilers #writing #storytelling #literary analysis #thanosdemandsyoursilence #thursday thoughts #nonfiction #writblr

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lodessa · 6 years

Text

Recently, I rewatched Nine’s season of Doctor Who with my sister and her boyfriend, who had somehow never watched any Who before despite her being my sister and him being a giant nerd (I mean that in the most loving way).

It was great. It was great for so many reasons, but one of them was that it was great to get to experience their watching it for the first time. Listening to and watching their reactions, feeling the energy of the room... It made me think of when I first watched it with no expectations or knowledge of what would follow. To watch him go from “I can see why they got rid of him” (*boo hiss*) to “This show is just so incredibly good”. To enjoy their initial reactions to everything about Jack (and OMG the moment where the makeover robots dematerialize his clothes and my sister’s boyfriend goes “the moment we’ve been waiting for” and my sister is like “speak for yourself” pauses for a moment and then laughs and is like “no, it’s true”). I love it.

But also... I just really love Nine and his season, how it’s both so sad and so cheerful. You really FEEL the Time War and Nine’s guilt and the way he’s negotiating with his identity and it ties into his decision making from the pilot to the finale and everywhere in between. While the Daleks rise to fight him, truly, Nine’s greatest struggle is with himself and the Daleks work plot-wise because they press on that regret, that decision. What was his sacrifice worth if they survived? In fighting them does he become them? But for all this reputation for brooding... he mostly doesn’t. Nine is more connected to the life around him than his successors. There’s a reason we think of him and we think of “fantastic” as his signature word. He wasn’t ever going to leave Rose stranded in 1987 and those two ordinary people are the most important thing in the universe. There’s such a depth to Eccleston’s performance. He feels real and not like a “character”.

But also Rose’s plotline here is so good and important. Because the Doctor thinks the Bad Wolf messages are for him, but they aren’t. They aren’t some destiny that Rose has either, she’s not “chosen” or “fated”... no one is calling to her but herself. There’s nothing more important than the ordinary. She leaves herself those messages because she DECIDES to do this reckless, crazy, brave thing. And it’s not because she’s suicidal or making a sacrifice (she has no idea how dangerous what she does is really), and it’s not even that “can’t live without him” thing. Rose doesn’t give up; because, he wouldn’t and she believes in the ethos of the show. Rose isn’t special but that’s what makes her special and that’s what the show and fandom lost after this moment in time. I can hardly stand to see her name anywhere, even all these years later; because, fandom lost its damed mind, but rewatching makes me remember that I did feel differently while watching the show.

And just narratively... it all ties together so well. Every episode matters and those that are the most tangential don’t seem wasted (I’d forgotten how good the Dickens episode actually is and that one with her dad... not a dry eye in the house.) How is it that we’ve gone backwards in show writing since 2005... like people looked at the shorter HBO and UK seasons which had better pacing and unity and took away from that not the more unified writing but just... shorter seasons?

Anyway, anyone who skips Nine is a misinformed fool and I feel sorry for them.

#doctor who #ninth doctor #rose tyler #jack harkness

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paigenotblank · 5 years

Text

The Age of the Wolf (7/9)

Rating: Mature overall, this chapter is teen

Pairing: Eighth Doctor x Rose Tyler; Eleventh x Rose; Ten x Rose

Written for @doctorroseprompts and Eight x Rose August. Prompt: Dimension hopping!Rose meets Eight / What if Rose was with Eight or met Eight during the Time War? 50th Anniversary Re-Write/Fix-It

Read it on Tumblr: Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7 / Chapter 8 / Chapter 9

AO3 TSP

The Doctor set aside his copy of Advanced Quantum Mechanics, removed his glasses, and rubbed at his temples. He was having trouble concentrating, a feeling of unease had been plaguing him for hours.

For a moment he was surprised and disoriented by the silence around him. It was eerie, like the calm before a storm. Dread sat like lead in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t want to think of the last time he felt a storm sitting on the horizon, back when he’d lost…

He jumped to his feet and paced in front of the time rotor. I’m forgetting something important. What is it? He tugged on his hair in a move more reminiscent of his tenth self and stopped abruptly. Maybe he should jump ahead so he didn’t have to wait any longer. But it had been too long since he’d last seen Clara. He needed a distraction right now and an adventure with a dear friend sounded like just the thing to do it.

He looked at his watch and was startled to realize school was almost out. But...I...I never lose track of time.

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS and leaned up against the door with his arms crossed. He watched as students at the Coal Hill Secondary School began pouring out of the doors, eager to meet up with friends or to get to jobs or just go home and watch telly.

A small smile pulled at his lips as he remembered another young girl who had gone to this very school so, so long ago. He could remember her clutching a stack of books to her chest and dancing to the pop music of the era as she made her way back to TARDIS. She’d chatter to him about her day and the silly ideas that were prevalent among the humans of that time. She’d say, ‘Grandfather, can you believe that they treat the fourth dimension as if it’s a joke and they’ve never even heard of the fifth dimension! Why it’s just so primitive. Oh, but I do love it here!’

Thoughts of Susan were not as painful as they once were, now only causing a small twinge in the regions of his hearts. He wasn’t sure if that was better or not.

He let out a sigh and felt a tap on his shoulder. “Hello, Doctor.”

Shaking aside his maudlin thoughts, he grinned brightly. “Clara!” The Doctor opened the door for her to proceed him inside. “Fancy a trip to ancient Mesopotamia followed by future Mars?”

“Will there be cocktails?”

“On the Moon.”

Clara pretended to think it over. “The Moon'll do.”

Both of them burst out laughing. Clara removed her coat and tossed it over the railing before turning back to the Doctor.

He gave her a big hug. “How's the new job? Teach anything good?”

Laughly, she pulled away from their embrace. “No. Learn anything?”

He shook his head. “Not a thing.”

The TARDIS jerked and alarms began to ring.

Clara grabbed hold of the console. “What's happening?”

“What? We're taking off, but...the engines aren't going.”

The Doctor ran down the ramp and pulled open the front door. He swayed and leaned back inside when he saw that the TARDIS was being flown over East London toward the city center. With a grimace, he reached out the door and pulled open the phone cubby. Shaking his head, he dialed his U.N.I.T. contact.

“Hello? Kate Stewart’s phone.”

“I want to talk to Kate, right now.”

“Erm, hold on.”

The Doctor stood tapping his foot to the sound of wind, running, and gasping breaths.

“Excuse me, Ma’am. Ma’am!”

There was a murmured conversation, before a familiar voice came through. “Doctor, hello. We found the TARDIS near a junkyard. I’m having it brought in.”

“No kidding.”

“Where are you?”

The Doctor held up the phone so that the sound of the helicopter was unmistakable.

“Oh, my god! Oh, Doctor! I’m so sorry. We had no idea you were still in there.”

“Next time, will it kill you to knock?”

The helicopter changed direction and the Doctor tumbled out the door dropping the phone. He managed to grab hold of the threshold just in time.

“Doctor!” Clara ran over to help him.

The Doctor dangled from the TARDIS at it flew over the cityscape toward the Tower of London. When the TARDIS was close enough to the ground, he hopped down and approached Kate Stewart.

“Doctor, as Chief Scientific Officer, may I extend the official apologies of U.N.I.T.”

“Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, a word to the wise, as I'm sure your father would have told you, I don't like being picked up.”

Clara walked up behind him. “That probably sounded better in his head. And besides, I know for a fact-”

The Doctor glared at Clara and she left that thought unfinished.

“I'm acting on instructions direct from the throne. Sealed orders from her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the First. Her credentials are inside.” The Doctor was about to break the seal on the missive, when Kate stopped him. “No.” She pointed to the National Gallery. “Inside.”

The Doctor nodded and as he passed Kate’s assistant did a double take. The young woman was dressed in a lab coat, but it was her striped scarf that caught his attention. It was reminiscent of the one he’d fancied in his fourth body. “Are you the one who answered the phone earlier?”

The young woman flushed and looked as if she’d forgotten how to breathe. After the moment stretched to become almost uncomfortable, she nodded.

“Nice to meet you...do you have a name?”

Her eyes widened and she peeped, “Yes.”

“Good, I’ve always wanted to meet someone called ‘Yes.’”

“No.”

“No?”

She looked bemused. “Name’s Osgood, sir.”

“Oh...Brilliant! Nice scarf.”

Osgood took a wheezing breath. As Kate passed she reminded her, “Inhaler.”

The Doctor and Clara walked into the National Gallery followed by Kate and Osgood. “So Elizabeth the First? You knew her?”

“Hmmm? May have met her a time or two.”

“A time or two? And she’s sending you love letters? Does-”

The Doctor’s ears turned red. “Oi, ’s not a love letter!”

They arrived at a covered painting, and Kate nodded for it to be revealed. “Elizabeth's credentials, Doctor.“

When the sheet fell away, Clara gasped. “But, how is it doing that? How is that possible?”

The Doctor’s face fell and he whispered, “No More.”

“That's the title.”

The Doctor sighed. “I know the title.”

“Also known as, ‘Gallifrey Falls.’”

The Doctor spun to confront Kate. “This painting doesn't belong here, not in this time or place.”

Clara moved closer to the painting. “Obviously.” She reached out as if to touch it. “An oil painting in 3D?”

“It’s Time Lord art. Bigger on the inside. A slice of real time, frozen...It's the fall of Arcadia, Gallifrey's second city.”

Clara spun toward the Doctor. “What? Seriously?”

The Doctor was lost to his memories for a moment. Clara approached him and touched his arm. “You okay?”

“He was there.”

“Who was?”

“Me. The other me. The one I don't talk about.”

Clara tilted her head. “I don't understand.”

“I've had many faces, many lives. You know that. But there's one life I've tried very hard to not think about. The Doctor who fought in the Time War. Only, now I can’t quite... I think...it all feels hazy.” The Doctor walked closer to the painting and sighed. “The last day of the Time War. The war to end all wars between my people and the Daleks. That was the day he did it. The day I did it. The day he killed them all and silenced the universe.” The Doctor turned angrily to Kate. “Why today? I’ve had this...this...feeling all day. And some of my memories are fuzzy. I remember or I’m almost remembering. Why bring me that message today?”

“It came with written instructions in which Elizabeth told us when to deliver it and where to find the painting and its significance. I believe it’s better explained in the letter.”

The Doctor had done his best to lock away the memories of the War, if only to be able to sleep on occasion. But now he couldn’t shake that persistent feeling of forgetting something important. Something about today, something about his past. What is it? What does it have to do with Queen Elizabeth I and why this painting?

Clara brought him back to himself with her question to Kate. “But the Time War's over. Why bring us here to look at a painting?”

“The painting only serves as Elizabeth's credentials, proof that the letter is from her. It's not why you're here.”

The Doctor turned the letter over a few times before breaking the seal and unfolding the message. Dearest Doctor, I hope the painting known as “Gallifrey Falls” will serve as proof that it is your queen, Elizabeth, who writes to you now. You will recall that you pledged yourself to the safety of my kingdom. In this capacity, I have appointed you as curator of the Under Gallery, where deadly danger to England is locked away. Should any disturbance occur within its walls, it is my wish that you be summoned. Godspeed.

The Doctor folded the note and slipped it into his pocket. “What happened?”

“Easier to show you.”

Kate and Osgood led the Doctor and Clara to the entrance of the Under Gallery. Clara looked up to see a painting of Queen Elizabeth the First and a stoic Doctor in his Tenth form. She smirked and was about to comment on the ruffled collar when she noticed his face. The words died on her tongue at the tension on his face. He caught her looking and forced a big smile.

The Doctor, resplendent in pinstripes, was laid out next to a young Queen Elizabeth on a pile of cushions with a feast spread around them. He popped a grape in his mouth and then fed one to her.

“Tell me, Doctor, why I'm wasting my time on you. I have wars to plan.”

“You have a picnic to eat.”

“You could help me.”

“I am helping.” The Doctor waggled his eyebrows before biting into a crisp apple.

“Not the picnic. You have a stomach for war.” She caressed his cheek. “These eyes have seen conflict, it's as clear as day.”

The Doctor sighed. “Oh, you’ve no idea.” He then jumped up in a swirl of excitement. “Up on your feet. Up, up.”

The Queen was taken aback. “How dare you? I’m the Queen of England.”

“I'm not English.” The Doctor fell to one knee. “Elizabeth, will you marry me?”

“Oh, my dear sweet love. Of course I will.”

“Ah, gotcha!”

“My love?”

“The real Elizabeth would never have accepted my marriage proposal. But then the real Elizabeth isn't a shape-shifting alien from outer space. And…” The Doctor holds up a cobbled together machine that made a chiming noise. “...ding.”

“What's that?”

The Doctor looked at her as if she’d dribbled on her bodice. “It's a machine that goes ‘ding.’ Made it myself. Lights up in the presence of shape-shifter DNA. Oooh. Also it can microwave frozen dinners from up to twenty feet and download comics from the future. I never know when to stop.”

“My love, I do not understand.”

“I'm not your love, and yes you do. You're a Zygon.”

“A Zygon?”

“Oh, stop it. It's over. A Zygon, yes. Big red rubbery thing covered in suckers. Think the real Queen of England would just decide to share her throne with any old handsome bloke in a tight suit, just ‘cos he's got amazing hair and a nice horse?” The Doctor looked over his shoulder at the horse. “Oh.”

Standing where the horse had been just moments ago was a Zygon.

He held out his hand to the Queen. “It was the horse. I'm going to be King. Run!”

“What's happening?”

“We're being attacked by a shape-shifting alien from outer space, formerly disguised as my horse.”

The Doctor led her into an old ruin.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m gonna need a new horse. Quick, I'll hold it off. You run. Your people need you.”

“And I need you alive for our wedding day.” Elizabeth kissed him before running off.

The Doctor ruffled his hair. “Oh, good work, Doctor. Nice one. The Virgin Queen? So much for history. You’ve really stepped in it this time.”

The Doctor took off in another direction following the dinging of his Zygon finder. At the sound of a feminine scream, the Doctor turned and ran into a small clearing.

“Elizabeth!”

The Queen was laying on the ground and the Doctor helped her stand. Another Elizabeth walked into the clearing.

“Step away from her, Doctor. That's not me. That's the creature.”

“How is that possible? She's me. Doctor, she's me!”

The Doctor pointed his machine at both women as they bickered. He slapped the side of it, before shaking it.

“It's not working.”

“One might surmise that the creature would learn quickly to protect itself from any simple means of detection.”

“Clearly you understand the creature better than I. But then, you have the advantage.”

Just when the Doctor was ready to throttle both women, history be damned, a swirling portal appeared above him.

“Back, both of you. Now! That's a time fissure. A tear in the fabric of reality.”

Kate walked through the hidden doorway behind the painting of Elizabeth and the Doctor into an antechamber. “Welcome to the Under Gallery. This is where the Royal Family keeps all art deemed too dangerous for public consumption.”

The Doctor paused and scooped up a handful of sand from the floor. “Stone dust.”

Kate tilted her head. “Is it important?”

“In twelve hundred years I've never stepped in anything that wasn't.” The Doctor spun to face Osgood. “ Oi! Are you sciency?”

“Oh, erm, well, erm, yes.”

“Good. I want this stone dust analyzed. And I want a report in triplicate, with lots of graphs and diagrams and complicated sums on my desk, tomorrow morning, ASAP, pronto…” He turned to Kate. “Do I have a desk?”

Kate shook her head. “No.”

The Doctor turned back to Osgood. “And I want a desk.”

“Get a team. Analyze the stone dust,” Kate instructed before she continued on toward the larger gallery.

The Doctor and Clara followed behind, and the Doctor noticed a fez in a display case. He looked around and slid the fez out, popping it on his head.

Clara rolled her eyes. “Someday, you could just walk past a fez.”

“Never gonna happen.”

They entered a long, open room lined with Gallifreyan 3D art along the wall. Glass covered much of the floor.

Kate gestured to the debris. “This is why we called you in.”

“Interesting.”

Clara leaned down to inspect the floor. “The broken glass?”

“No, where it's broken from. Look at the shatter pattern. The glass on all these paintings has been broken from the inside.”

“As you can see, all the paintings are landscapes. No figures of any kind.”

Clara walked back over to the others. “So?”

“There used to be.” Kate handed them a tablet with photos of the original paintings on it.

Clara looked up in surprise. “Something's got out the paintings?”

“Lots of somethings. Dangerous somethings.”

“This whole place has been searched. There's nothing here that shouldn't be, and nothing's got out.”

A swirling of air began to coalesce above them.

“Oh, no, not now.”

“Doctor, what is it?”

“Not now. I'm busy.”

“Is it to do with the paintings?”

“No, no. This is different. I remember this. Almost remember.” He removed the fez from his head and looked from it to the time fissure. “Oh! Of course. This is where I come in.”

He threw the fez into the vortex before running and leaping into it himself. “Geronimo!”

“Doctor!” Clara moved to follow the Doctor.

Kate held her back. “Wait.”

The Doctor in pinstripes stood between the two versions of Elizabeth and the time fissure, his arms wide in a protective gesture. “Anything could happen.”

All three watched as a fez fell from the swirling vortex.

He tugged his ear. “For instance...a fez.” The Doctor picked up the fez and placed it on his head, just as the other Doctor came crashing down.

“Oof.”

“Who is this man?” One of the Elizabeths asked the Doctor.

He watched the other man curiously. “That's just what I was wondering.”

The older Doctor inspected his younger self. “Oh, that is skinny. That is proper skinny. I've never seen it from the outside. It's like a special effect. Oi!” He knocked the fez from his counterpart’s head. “Ha! Matchstick man.”

The younger Doctor looked like he’d been forced to eat a pear, realization coloring his features. “Oh, you're not…”

Both men took out their respective sonic screwdrivers and compared them. The older Doctor’s was bigger with add-ons missing from the previous model.

The younger Doctor asked with a lift of his eyebrow, “Compensating?”

“For what?”

“Regeneration. It's a lottery.”

The older Doctor narrowed his eyes and huffed. “Oh, he's cool. Isn't he cool? I'm the Doctor and I'm all cool. Oops, I'm wearing sandshoes.”

The younger Doctor hissed at his older self, “What are you doing here? I'm busy.”

“Oh, busy? I see. Is that what we're calling it, eh? Eh?” The older Doctor leaned down, picked up the fez, and put it on his head. With a flourish, he spun around and bowed to the two Elizabeths. “Hello, ladies.”

“Don't start.”

“You should talk.”

“One of them is a Zygon.”

“Eww…” The older Doctor put up his hands. “I'm not judging you. Who am I kidding? Yes, I am.”

Another time fissure appeared. Both Doctors reached into their pockets and put on their respective glasses.

The older Doctor glanced over his shoulder. “Your Majesties. Probably a good time to run.”

Both women asked simultaneously, “But what about the creature?”

The younger Doctor instructed, “Elizabeth, whichever one of you is the real one, turn and run in the opposite direction to the other one.”

“Of course, my love.”

The other Elizabeth said, “Stay alive, my love. I am not done with you yet,” before kissing him and running off.

“Thanks. Lovely.”

“I understand. Live for me, my darling. We shall be together again.” Then the remaining Elizabeth kissed him and ran off in the other direction.

The Doctor wiped his mouth and nervously met his counterpart’s eyes. “Well, won't that be nice?”

“One of those was a Zygon.”

“Yeah.”

“Big red rubbery thing covered in suckers.”

“Yeah. And a surprisingly good kisser.”

“Venom sacs in the tongue.”

“Yeah, I'm getting the point, thank you.”

“Nice.”

From the time fissure, the Doctors heard Clara calling out, “Doctor, is that you?”

“Ah, hello, Clara. Can you hear me?”

“Yeah, it's me. We can hear you. Where are you?”

The older Doctor looked to his younger self. “Where are we?”

“England, 1562.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Myself.”

“Can you come back through?”

“Physical passage may not be possible in both directions. It’s...Ah! Hang on.” The Doctor removed the fez from his head and threw it into the whirling eddy. “Fez incoming!”

After a pause, Clara asked, “Was something supposed to happen?”

The younger Doctor scratched the back of his neck. “If not there, where did it go?”

The Doctor and Rose entered an empty barn that had been a part of his childhood homestead. He put the sack down and gingerly removed a box with exposed gears and brass inlay. He turned it over in his hands a few times. “How...how do you work? Hmmm. Why is there never a big, red button?”

Rose rolled her eyes. “You and your big, red buttons.”

Both froze when they heard a rustling at the door. The Doctor made his way over and peeked outside. “Hello? Is somebody there?” Shaking his head, he closed the door. “It was nothing.”

A wolf’s howl could be heard in the distance. “Did you hear that? It sounded like a wolf.”

“Couldn’t have been. There are no wolves on Gallifrey.”

“But did you hear that?”

He whooshed out a breath and nodded. “Yeah.”

Rose walked over to the innocuous looking box, and crouched down in front of it. She reached out to examine it.

“Don't touch it!”

She pulled her hand back. “Why not?”

“Because it's the most dangerous weapon in the universe, and we don’t know how it works.”

“You touched it an’ it was fine.” Rose reached for it once again and the moment she placed her hand on it, the box began to emit a noise, like gears shifting into place, and her eyes began to glow gold.

“It's activating. Watch out.”

He knelt and tried to take the box from her hands, but when he touched it, it burned him.

“Ow!” He shook his hand.

“What's wrong?” Rose asked with a tilt of her head.

“The interface is hot.”

“Well, I do my best. Still after a century of marriage it’s nice to hear.”

The Doctor was only half paying attention while he continued to inspect the device. “There's definitely a power source inside…” He suddenly turned to Rose. “Wait, did you just say you're the interface?”

Her eyes faded back to amber. “Bad Wolf. When I touched it, it got inside my head. I can hear it talking to me. I...I know how to use it.”

The Doctor ran one hand over his face and he sat back on his heels.

Rose laid a hand on his thigh. “What’s wrong?”

“It...it just hit me that this is happening...not in the future or as a theoretical option, but right now.”

Rose took his hand and was hit with a telepathic onslaught of the Doctor’s emotions. His shields only failed like that when he was close to his breaking point. She did her best to send back waves of calm and love.

He pulled back from her touch. “How can you love me? Knowing that I’d kill them all, Daleks and Time Lords alike?” He looked at his hands as if they were already covered in blood.

“I’ve seen what you’ve seen. The suffering. Every moment in time and space is burning. It must end, and there’s only one way.”

“But when you first met me, you were innocent to all that.”

“I’ve always seen you. Not what you were forced to do, but who you are...the brave man who had to make the impossible choice. The man who saved the universe at the biggest personal cost to himself.”

“I don’t know how I’m expected to survive this.”

Rose opened her mouth to answer, but then tilted her head as if listening. Tears pooled in her eyes. “I...oh, god. It’s your punishment.” Her eyes glowed and her voice took on an ethereal quality, “Nothing is without consequence, Time Lord. If you do this, if you kill them all, then that is the consequence. You live. You carry the burden of being the last of your kind, of carrying on, of remembering…” Rose dropped the box and sagged as she returned to herself. She crawled over to where the Doctor sat staring at the ground and embraced him. “I’m sorry, love. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m a monster for even considering this.”

Rose picked up the box and closed her eyes. A time fissure rippled open above them.

“Rose! What are you doing?”

“I’m opening a window on your future, to the man today will make of you. The choice is still yours.”

A fez dropped out of the portal and rolled to a stop at Rose’s feet.

“Er, okay, I wasn’t expecting that.”

The Doctor looked at the swirling gateway. “Ready?”

She slipped the box into her pocket and nodded.

Rassilon walked past two Time Lords, both of whom had their hands covering their faces, to address the rest of the Council. “The vote is taken. Only two went against, and as a monument to their shame, the dissenters will stand like the Weeping Angels of old. The vanguard stands prepared, as the children of Gallifrey return to the universe. To Earth.”

Rassilon raised his staff and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

As the Doctor and Rose jump through the time fissure into the Doctor’s future, Gallifrey was pulled across the universe.

The pinstriped Doctor gestured between himself and his older self. “Okay, you used to be me, you've done all this before. What happens next?”

“I don't remember.”

“How can you forget this?”

“Hey, hang on. It's not my fault. You're obviously not paying enough attention...Oh! Try reversing the polarity!”

Both Doctors pulled out their sonics and pointed them at the time fissure.

The older Doctor scratched his head. “It's not working.”

“We're both reversing the polarity.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“There's two of us. I'm reversing it, you're reversing it back again. We're confusing the polarity.”

As they argued, their predecessor walked out from the the whirling portal. “Anyone lose a fez?”

“You! How can you be here? More to the point, why are you here?”

“Hello. I'm looking for the Doctor.”

The pinstriped Doctor mumbled, “Well, you've certainly come to the right place.”

“Good. Who are you boys? Oh, of course. Are you both companions?” The wartime Doctor smiled fondly. “Rose and her pretty boys...”

“Rose?” The pinstriped Doctor’s jaw dropped.

“...They seem to get younger all the time.”

“Oi!”

The oldest Doctor turned to the man at his side. “Well, he’s not wrong.” He gestured between the three of them.

“You too?” The pinstriped wearing Doctor gaped at the bowtie wearing Doctor. “How can you even joke about that?”

“Right.” The youngest Doctor interrupted the squabble before they could really get into it. “Could you point me in the general direction of the Doctor?”

Both of the older Doctors pulled out their sonic screwdrivers. The youngest Doctor looked from one to the other. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Really.”

“You’re me? Both of you?”

“Yep.”

“Even that one?” The Doctor pointed to the one in the bowtie.

The Doctor in question replied with an affronted squeak, “Yes!”

“You're my future selves?”

Both other men yelled, “Yes!”

The younger Doctor scanned the glade. “Then where’s Rose?”

“That’s the second time…How do you know Rose?”

The bowtie wearing Doctor narrowed his eyes. “You shouldn’t know Rose.”

The Doctor shifted to the side, and Rose hesitantly walked out of the time fissure. She walked up to the Doctor she’d spent the last century with and gripped his hand. She waved at the others. “Hello.”

The Doctor in pinstripes dropped his sonic and stared wide-eyed at her. The wartime Doctor glanced worriedly back and forth between his wife and his future self. “Looks like you've seen a ghost.”

Rose bit her lip until she noticed the oldest Doctor, the one she’d yet to meet, smiling warmly at her. His eyes dropped to her ring finger and she could see his curiosity was piqued, but his demeanor was that of easy affection. That more than anything had her releasing the pent up breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding.

As nonchalantly as possible, she slipped her wedding band from her finger and tucked it into a pocket. The oldest Doctor smirked, causing her to blush, but the pinstriped Doctor hadn’t seemed to notice. He was staring at her as if he wasn’t quite sure she was real, eyes wide, freckles stark on his pale face, and swaying like a stiff wind could knock him over.

She gave him a small smile and he swallowed hard. She couldn’t bear to see him hurting, and her eyes slid over to the oldest of the Doctors.

Good Lord, there’s three of ‘em! As if he knew what she was thinking, the bowtie wearing Doctor grinned widely, eyes crinkling, which sent a swoop through her belly. She squeezed her Doctor’s hand and braced herself in preparation of properly introducing herself to this unknown Doctor, when several horsemen rode into the clearing.

Bentham, a nobleman and the apparent leader of the troop of men, dismounted from his horse. “Encircle them,” he ordered his men. “Which of you is the Doctor? The Queen of England is bewitched. I would have the Doctor's head.”

The youngest Doctor blew out a breath. “Well, this has all the makings of your lucky day.”

Bentham noticed the time fissure and moved closer to the quartet. “What is that?”

The pinstriped wearing Doctor picked his sonic off the ground and moved with the other two to step between the nobleman and Rose. The oldest Doctor raised his sonic as well.

“What are you pointing them for? They're screwdrivers! What are you going to do, assemble a cabinet at them?”

Bentham raised his voice and asked again, “That thing, what witchcraft is it?”

The oldest Doctor tucked his sonic into his breast pocket and stepped forward. “Ah, yes. Now that you mention it, that is witchcraft. Yes, yes, yes. Witchy witchcraft. Hello? Hello in there. Excuse me. Hello! Am I talking to the wicked witch of the well?”

A feminine voice could be heard coming from the swirling vortex. “He means you.”

“Why am I the witch?”

“Clara? Hello? Clara, hi, hello. Hello. Would you mind telling these prattling mortals to get themselves begone?”

They could almost hear her rolling her eyes. “What he said.”

“Yes, tiny bit more color.”

“Right. Prattling mortals, off you pop, or I'll turn you all into frogs.”

“Oooh, frogs. Nice. You heard her.”

“Doctor, what's going on?”

“It's a timey-wimey thing.”

The youngest Doctor looked at Rose. “Timey what? Timey-wimey?”

The pinstriped Doctor rubbed the back of his neck. “I've no idea where he picks that stuff up.”

Rose, knew that tell, and pressed her lips together to stop the laugh that wanted to bubble forth. She fluttered her lashes at him and asked, “Oh, really?”

Before he could reply, and with a dramatic swirl of skirts, Queen Elizabeth entered the clearing sending all the soldiers to their knees. She looked at the standing foursome. “You don't seem to be kneeling. How tremendously brave of you.”

Rose’s pinstriped Doctor asked, “Which one are you? What happened to the other one?”

“Indisposed. Long live the Queen.”

The soldiers chanted, “Long live the Queen!”

“Arrest these four. Take them to the Tower.”

“That is not the Queen of England, that's an alien duplicate.”

The oldest Doctor bumped Rose’s shoulder. “And you can take it from him, ‘cos he's really checked.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Venom sacs in the tongue.”

The pinstriped Doctor saw the hurt on Rose’s face. “Seriously, stop it. Rose, I...”

Rose shook her head and wiped at her eyes. “Don’t.”

The oldest Doctor turned to Rose. “I’m sorry, I forgot how much-”

“Stop it! Both of you. I don’t want to talk about it.” She made her way back to the youngest Doctor and rested her head on his shoulder. He glanced in surprise at the other two trying to figure out what had just happened.

The oldest Doctor ran his hands through his hair and walked over to the Queen. “Hang on. The Tower? Did you say the Tower?” She nodded. “Ah, yes, brilliant. Love the Tower. Breakfast at eight, please. Will there be Wi-Fi?”

The youngest Doctor glared. “Are you capable of speaking without flapping your hands about?”

“Yes. No. I demand to be incarcerated in the Tower immediately with my co-conspirators Sandshoes, Velvet, and....” His voice softened, “Rose.”

“Velvet? I haven’t worn velvet in ages!”

“They're not sandshoes.”

The youngest Doctor looked down at the other man’s feet. “Yes, they are.”

“Silence! The Tower is not to be taken lightly. Very few emerge again.”

The Master stood in a room full of men identical to himself and hit his head. “We listen. All of us, across the world, just listen.” All of them stopped what they were doing and listened. “Concentrate. Find the signal. There! The sound is tangible. Someone could only have designed this. But who?”

A Master copy turns to the original. “The sound. It's coming from above.”

“It's coming from the sky!” The Master looks out a nearby window and sees a star falling to Earth. “There! Find it. Get out there and find it!”

“Yes, sir.”

Kate smiled at Clara. “Dear God, that man's clever. Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“My office, otherwise known as the Tower of London.”

In a field, two Land Rovers pulled up to a smoldering crater. A uniformed Master copy slid to the bottom and found the diamond previously taken from Rassilon’s staff. The soldier pressed a button on him com-link and said, “It's a diamond, sir. Oh, the most impossible diamond. You won't believe this. It’s a White Point Star.”

The pinstriped Doctor was sitting on a silent space ship with Donna’s grandfather, Wilf, and two green spiked Vinvocci. There was a heaviness in the air around the four of them. Suddenly a radio crackled to life and the Master’s voice blared out, “A star fell from the sky. Don't you want to know where from? Because now it makes sense, Doctor. The whole of my life. My destiny. The star was a diamond. And the diamond is a White Point Star. And I have worked all night to sanctify that gift. Now the star is mine. I can increase the signal and use it as a lifeline. Do you get it now? Do you see? Keep watching, Doctor. This should be spectacular. Over and out.”

An eerie quiet fell over the room, while the Doctor sat thinking. Wilf was the first to break the silence. “What's he on about? What's he doing? Doctor, what does that mean?”

The Doctor jumped up from his seat and began examining the controls of the ship. “A White Point Star is only found on one planet. Gallifrey. Which means it's the Time Lords. The Time Lords are returning.”

“Well, I mean, that's good, isn't it? I mean, that's your people...But I thought...you said your people were dead. Past tense.”

The Doctor pulled out his sonic and began mending frayed wires. “Inside the Time War. And the whole War was Time Locked. Like, sealed inside a bubble. It's not a bubble but just think of a bubble. Nothing can get in or get out of the Time Lock. Don't you see? Nothing can get in or get out, except something that was already there.”

Wilf looked confused, but then his eyes lit with a thought. “The signal. From since he was a kid.”

The Doctor nodded and moved onto another part of the control panel. “If they can follow the signal, they can escape before they die. And who knows what will try to follow.”

“But you’ll still have your people back. I've heard you talk about them like they're wonderful.”

“That's how I choose to remember them, the Time Lords of old. But then they went to war. An endless war, and it changed them right to the core. You've seen my enemies, Wilf. The Time Lords are more dangerous than any of them.” The Doctor flipped a large switch and powered up the ship. “England. Naismith Mansion. Allons-y.”

The Master stood in a large atrium, arms outstretched. “We have contact. They are coming. Closer! And closer! And closer!”

A bright white light filled the space, and when it dimmed the Lord President, his Chancellery Guards, and the two dissenters, faces covered, stood before the Master.

The sound of shattering of glass was the only precursor to the Doctor falling through the glass ceiling into the space between the Master and the other Time Lords. Cut up and bleeding, he held an old revolver in his hand.

Rassilon smirking took two steps toward the struggling Doctor. “My Lord Doctor. My Lord Master. We are gathered for the end.”

The Doctor pushed to his knees. “Listen to me. You can't…”

“It is a fitting paradox that our salvation comes at the hands of our most infamous child.”

The Doctor shook his head. “Oh, he's not saving you. Don't you realise what he's doing?”

The Master glared at the Doctor. “Hey, no, hey! That's mine. Hush. Look around you. I've transplanted myself into every single human being. But who wants a mongrel little species like them, because now I can transplant myself into every single Time Lord. Oh, yes, Mister President, sir, standing there all noble and resplendent and decrepit. Think how much better you're going to look as me.”

Rassilon raised the fist wearing his metal gauntlet. It pulsed blue with energy. All the Master copies around the room began to shake their heads.

“No, no, don't. No, no, stop it! No, no, no, don't!”

When all the humans had regained their original forms, Rassilon addressed them. “On your knees, mankind.”

All of the people look confused and scared, but soon dropped to their knees.

“No, that's fine, that's good, because you said, ‘salvation.’ I still saved you. Don't forget that.”

Rassilon raised his staff. “The approach begins.”

“Approach of what?”

The Doctor looked in disgust at the Master. “Something is returning. Don't you ever listen? That was the prophecy. Not someone, something.”

“What is it?”

“They're not just bringing back the species. It's Gallifrey. Right here, right now.”

A large, orange planet pulsed into existence alongside the Earth, blocking out the sun and darkening the streets.

The Master turned to Rassilon. “But, I did this. I get the credit. I'm on your side.”

#eight x rose #eleven x rose #ten x rose #50th re-write/fix it #queen elizabeth #clara oswald #kate lethbridge-stewart #petronella osgood #zygons #the master (simm)#rassilon

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