#but when the doctor told donna “who would have thought? me with a family”

[microcroft]

going full pepe silvia mode on my theory that ruby sunday is the doctor and rose's daughter

[yannaryartside]

Why did Claire convince Carmy to drop HIS ideas for the menu?

So, did somebody else get upset when Carmy explained to Sydney that Claire made him realize "there are things I don't really care about...anymore" about the menu?

Like, wtf dude, this is YOUR menu, the whole point of your restaurant, why the fuck do you now think you don't care?

On Claire changing the menu

I think that Storer was really smart for not showing that scene, where Claire is comforting Carmy after his panic attack. Now, from what we can gather of the actual events, Carmy got a panic attack, then they talked about Donna driving a car through the wall of their house, and sometime before or after all that, they talked about the menu. A couple of things that, if they happened, could have been big red flags about Claire:

Why was Claire's solution to tell Carmy to forget about his original ideas for the menu? that is like "Oh honey does this cause your anxiety (you know, because you care about it) why don't you just drop it? Maybe then you will be happy" You have to treat the anxiety, not avoiding the things you care about because of it.

Did Claire dismiss Carmy's intentions on the menu, because it had to do with Syd? Like, did she actually recommended to drop it all because it would mean that Carmy and Sydney won't collaborate anymore? because Claire felt threatened? We all saw the way Claire looked at Syd.

Even if you could justify all this by "she was doing the best she knew to help him" I think the audience wouldn't have appreciated her talking Carmy into forgetting his vision for his own restaurant. That is the equivalent of Mary Jane telling Peter not to be Spiderman.

Now, and this is the really weird part, at this point Carmy is trying to make all the dishes his family made, but change them a little, recontextualize them. To make them "his own" and he told Claire about that, he part that is not clear is why he dropped the "thoughtful chaos menu" and just left the "chaos menu" My interpretation of this, again, is because thoughtful chaos can only be made by Carmy and Syd's collaboration. So Claire agreed with the things relating to the Berzatto traditions, but not, idk, Carmy's original vision for the restaurant, which may have not so much to do with her mother's recipes, and wanted to explore more to create something unique with Syd ideas too?

On Claire comforting Carmy.

Just a little last note. They had sex. Like, Claire and Carmy had sex after he got a panic attack, and the next morning he was still stressed as fuck. While just the memory of Sydney was able to calm him down from a huge panic attack (while he was thinking of Claire). Jejejeje.

Now...being serious. Idk if you think that offering sex for calming someone down is cute...I don't think it is. Even if they have already calmed down and you just want to "make their night better" or whatever.

Some people get really into sex while they get stressed, but a panic attack is more of an "I am dying' feeling, and it can depend on the person, Carmy is the kind who gets frustrated, exasperated, and violent while trying to handle his anxiety. So trying to make somebody not feel any of that that by asking them to be in the mood for fucking...Like "Oh, the trauma that you are trying to process right now honey, just don't feel it, but I want to fuck, and I know it can make you feel better" Personal opinion: gives me the ick, like 'Oh, my affection must be the answer to all your problems, my love is the only medicine you need" It all gets worse in my mind when I remember this woman is an emergency doctor, she is supposed to know some recommended procedures to help people with panic attacks, maybe she used them before they got into bed, but still, she can only presume that he is in a different head space just a few hours later, and you kinda look like and ashole if she offers and you say no.

I just don't like the idea of forcing mood changes on someone by offering them affection, especially sex. That can be really toxic for both parties.

[hey-there-22]

GALLIFREYAN IS THEIR LOVE LANGUAGE

Gallifreyan, the last language of the Time Lords, able to burn stars and rise up empires and topple gods. But it was never just that. It's the first language he ever spoke, the language of his childhood, the language he taught his children and granddaughter. It's the language that brings him home. But his home is long gone and when Gallifrey fell, the language was lost with it.

What had meant family became the reminder of his loneliness. But he never stopped using it. He used it as a reminder of what he had lost, as a reminder not to let anyone else have to make the decision he made that day.

Gallifreyan means so much to the Doctor... And all the companions have sensed that at some point.

Rose used to stare at Nine writing on sticky notes, delicate tracings of all she didn't know about him, perfect circles and lines that fascinated her. She never dared to ask, though. When Jack joined them, not knowing the Doctor was the last of his kind, he had no problem doing it.

"What are you writing?" He asked peering over his shoulder. "Oh, Doctor, do you have a secret code you use to look enigmatic?" Smiling as he said it. "Is it even a real language or are you just using it to impress us?" It had just been their normal banter, he hadn't meant to hurt him.

The Doctor had turned serious for a moment, trying to make clear that Gallifreyan wasn't banter material-

"It's the language of my people." He answered simply. "Now," he added, a smile on his face and changing his tone completely while pressing buttons in the TARDIS controls, "who wants to go to the beach?"

Jack was confused, wanting to ask, but Rose took his arm, signaling for him to let it go.

"You're finally taking me somewhere I can get a proper tan." Rose said smiling to the Doctor, letting go of Jack's arm.

Jack understood Rose and went back to his normal harmless quips.

"Only if he's able to land the TARDIS in a real beach without an emergency crisis going on this time."

The Doctor had seen the interaction between Jack and Rose and he silently thanked her for it. He decided at that moment that if Rose ever asked, he would answer. The image of him teaching her how to read Gallifreyan even crossed his mind for a brief second.

"Oh, Jack, I'm going to land this TARDIS in the most beautiful beach you've ever seen.

And he did.

They never talked again about Gallifreyan with the Doctor, but the beauty of the circles always Intrigued them. They used to joke about what they thought was written on the sticky notes when Doctor wasn't there and that led to them trying to figure out how to read it, which circles where words and which ones where letters, failing every time to decipher it.

Rose understood it when she was Bad Wolf but it all faded away too quickly for her to remember it afterwards. Then, Jack was left behind and Rose stopped trying to figure it out. Ten would have taught her, but she never asked. Tentoo taught her without her needing to say anything.

Jack never stopped trying to understand it. Using the Torchwood files they had about Gallifreyan just like Martha used UNIT's. Working together and knowing what some of the messages said they made some progress at recognizing patterns but not enough to translate other messages.

Donna didn't give Gallifreyan a long thought while she was travelling with the Doctor. Just a Martian language. Sometimes Wilfred finds her doodling perfectly organized circles and lines when she is distracted. He hates not being able to tell her about the Doctor when she gets angry at herself after realizing she is doodling nonsense again.

When Ten met River she told him his name in perfect Gallifreyan. He thought he should have had to really love and trust her not only to tell her his name but to teach her Gallifreyan to the point of speaking it daily, judging by the accent. What he didn't know was that River had born with the ability to talk Gallifreyan, she was, after all, the daughter of the TARDIS.

Jack and River came across each other a couple of times, forming a close friendship over the years. Their love for the Doctor made them create a special bond. At that point Jack had lost all hope in learning Gallifreyan; his adventures with the Doctor had happened centuries ago and understanding sticky notes around the TARDIS had no sense anymore. He had given up the thought of travelling with him again. When River offered to teach him anyway his face lit up with a smile.

Eleven hid his past inside himself, so when the TARDIS redecorated he made sure not to have Gallifreyan anywhere visible. Amy learnt about it when River used it to contact the Doctor but she was more interested in the adventure so she never thought to ask. That's what Eleven loved about her. (Because Army didn't ask, neither did Rory.)

When they got trapped by the angels in Manhattan, Amy's way to cope with loosing the Doctor was listening to the stories her daughter told her. She started to get interested in the little things she hadn't been able to appreciate with the adrenaline of the moment, trying to hold on to anything that reminded her of that moment of her life. When River understood it, she taught Amy to read and write Gallifreyan. Soon, the Pond's house started filling with messages: reminders and recipes written in a language only Amy, Rory and their two children could understand and a letter from Amy for only her Raggedy Man to read once he was ready.

When Eleven met Clara he fell for her, every time. He redecorated the TARDIS for her to ask about Gallifreyan, ready to share that part of his life with her. Clara was like Amy, though, always invested in the adventure, slowly falling for the Doctor. But when he changed, she changed too. Twelve eventually accepted Clara was never going to ask, so he started to write in English in the blackboards of the TARDIS for her to understand what he wrote but still leaving the Gallifreyan in the console's decoration. He adapted to her but he quietly hopped she would do the same one day.

Clara was forced to learn Gallifreyan in order to fly the TARDIS. Me taught her. She had learnt it many years before from her old friend, the Face of Boe.

The first time River spoke Gallifreyan in front of the Doctor was during their night in Darillium. She called him anidiot. She had gotten used to insulting people in Gallifreyan and switching languages was an instinct. River saw the Doctor cry for the first time that day. She hugged him in the floor while the Doctor told her about his kids and his marvelous granddaughter, all in the language of his people. At that moment she had thought that she had reminded him of everyone he had lost when she spoke Gallifreyan. Now, however, she understands the Doctor was thinking about how he was going to lose the only person he had left with whom he could speak it.

When the Doctor let Missy into the TARDIS with Bill, she made a comment about him having the names of his companions as decoration in the console. It took the Doctor a second to realize that Missy understood Gallifreyan, he had been guarding the vault for years and he had never spoken to Missy in their native language.

"We don't speak Gallifreyan." The Doctor mentioned once they were alone in the vault.

"Always so observant, Doctor" Missy rolled her eyes.

The only time he spoke Gallifreyan with Missy was when he was trying to convince her and the Master to stay and fight with him against the cybermen. The next time they saw each other, O spoke in Gallifreyan ("I did say the spy... master."), Thirteen didn't give him the privilege of answering in Gallifreyan.

In the year 2023 a giant graffiti of circles appears in London. It says "You are not alone". Yaz wrote it. She doesn't know Gallifreyan but she asked Jack to translate that sentence after one of her Companions Meetings.

The Doctor knows about the graffiti but she doesn't know who wrote it. She doesn't know that almost all her companions know Gallifreyan. She thinks it's something from her future, not realizing she has already Inspired so many people, not realizing that her companions can sense how much Gallifreyan means to her. Not realizing that Gallifreyan is their love language.

[obsessedwithstarwars]

Short Nocturn in Gotham prompt

I have an idea, and no brain space for it so here ya go. If anyone makes a story off this, please tag me!

This is a dp x dc crossover. And Anger Management because I’m obsessed with Jazz x Jason.

Jazz lives in Gotham, and works as a psychologist for Arkham. Things are going as normal as can be expected for Gotham and an Amity Parker. She’s only dealt with a few muggings and kept her head down because she’s Liminal! and doesn’t want to get the attention of a certain group of vigilantes.

What if Nocturn came to Gotham? (I don’t remember much of the episode so hopefully this tracks)

I would personally start it out trying to trick the reader. (Sorry, It’s fun!) A cute chapter or 2, where Jazz and Jason are together. So normal. Super accepting of each other. With so much fluff it hurts. But slowly, as the story goes on, more and more things seem off. Like déjà vu, like she’s done this before?? (Kind of similar to the vibe of that one Doctor Who episode where Donna Noble gets saved to the Library database. I can’t remember if it’s a 2 part episode? I think it’s called Silence in the Library??? I don’t know, and I’m not looking it up. If you see River Song’s first episode with David Tennant’s Doctor then you’ve got the right one. I think.) Jazz just slowly sees inconsistencies, and brushes them off at first. Hey, she deserves a chance to be happy, okay?! But as time goes on, there are just too many to ignore. She has a nagging feeling something’s not right and briefly wonders if it’s a ghost. But the only one that makes sense is Nocturn and he can’t be in Gotham right? Right??!

When she discovers Jason’s Red Hood, the revelation almost shocks her awake (total mistake on Nocturn’s part. He thought the vigilante thing would keep her asleep or deepen her sleep since it’s kinda normal for her with her brother). She does some quick thinking as she feels herself waking up, and yep, it’s definitely Nocturn, and decides she needs help stopping him. Makes a plan. Not a great one, but hey, it was last second. Literally.

Meanwhile Jason POV shows he’s struggling with believing it too. Thinks she’s too good to be true. (I don’t know anything about the DC universe. I’m going off of the fic Friendly Neighborhood Vigilante by @gilbirda Go check it out, it’s amazing!) And when she discovers he’s Red Hood, she does something ghostly (prolly eyes or strong stuff) and he’s like holy crap she’s a meta, and before he’s had a chance to process anything she says something like “Come find me when you wake up.” (gives me Edge of Tomorrow: Live. Die. Repeat. vibes which just feels fitting here) and shoots him in the chest right before shooting herself (non lethal bullets cause what if you can die in your dream?) and that shocks him awake.

She wakes up at her desk in Arkham to find out that all of Gotham is asleep. Thankfully this includes the villains. (But not for long!)

Does she call Danny or try to deal with it herself?

Is Danny the Ghost King?

Does Jason actually go or does Jazz have to find him?

She’s definitely questioning whether what she had with Jason was real. He does the same with her. Personally, I would keep Batman asleep for a lot of it but that’s because I know nothing about him aside from Wayne Family Adventures (which I’ve been told doesn’t count), the classic old show I watch when I’m sick, and a few episodes from Batman: The Brave and The Bold. Also Young Justice, but that was years ago. Before season 3.

If they have nightmares:

Would Jason’s nightmare be the Joker killing him?

Maybe Jazz’s nightmare is about Dan trying to kill her? Or coming back?

And that’s all I got. Maybe I’ll try to write something eventually, but right now my heart is heavy and my brain is fog. So if you have any ideas, go for it and tag me! I would love to know how you would change/finish it!

[starsfic]

"Ah, welcome home Ros-"

Fourteen's words as he saw who the girl was with. Her face was different, but he knew her anywhere.

"Oh! Susanne this is-"

"I know who he is." Susanne smiled. "Hello grandfather..."

Donna Noble was having a Good Day.

With the return of her memory and the Doctor living with her, she found herself making new friends, as well as connecting with old friends. Martha Smith-Jones was firmly in the latter category, equally delighted to speak to Donna again and the Doctor. The latter conversation Donna had avoided listening in on, only knowing that the Doctor had apologized to the other woman for his actions, and Martha had been coming over often ever since. Today, when their days off were the same, the two had gone out for lunch and some shopping.

“-and then, I told him to scram-” Donna laughed as she opened the door, coming to a stop. “Rose? What are you doing?” It looked like her daughter was hiding just outside the doorway to the dining room, her eyes wide. “What’s wrong?”

“Uh…” Rose stood up. “So, you know that woman in that shop in Dhabi buying my stuff?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, she called to tell me that she was going to be in London- her name’s Susanne, by the way-”

“Huh,” Martha’s brows were furrowing. “I feel like I’ve heard that name before.”

“She’s the Doctor’s granddaughter. Susan.”

Donna probably did not have the most mature reaction. To be fair, Martha also dropped the shopping and scrambled over to peek into the dining room. Inside, it was the picture of perfect civility. The Doctor and Susanne sat across from each other, sipping their tea. Susanne did not look anything like the Doctor- she was a pretty Arab woman, her dark hair piled into a low bun and wearing a Tardis blue sweater. But as Donna squinted, she realized that, no, actually- the Doctor and Susanne had similar dark eyes. Both were lined with exhaustion.

“You didn’t come back.” Donna focused on the words. “You never came back. I had to run into you to see you again, and that was years ago.” Susanne set her cup down with a clink. “You didn’t even come to tell me Gallifrey was gone.”

The Doctor nodded. “I did that. I’m sorry. I should have visited more, at least to tell you about the war. Or to see your children-” Susanne shook her head. “Oh, so you didn’t-” Susanne sighed, and the Doctor set his cup down. New grief was welling up. “Oh, my love, I am so sorry.”

“He died before my third regeneration,” Susanne admitted. “We talked about children, but he died before it happened.” No tears were coming up. Donna had a feeling that her tears had already been shed. “I spent a while trying to figure out how to get out of there. And you were nowhere to be found.”

The Doctor nodded. “I was. I am so sorry. I have no excuses for not trying harder to see you again. I would try to excuse myself by saying that I always thought of you, but that would be a hollow truth.” He picked up his cup and took a sip. “I should have tried harder to come and visit you. I didn’t try, and that hurt you. I’m sorry.”

“It did.” Susanne stared at her cup. “I’m less angry about you leaving me. You thought you were doing me a favor, but I am still hurt.” She paused. “I forgive you for not coming to see me, but I need some time to forgive you for just leaving me.” A smile lit up her face, and it was strikingly familiar. "I want to get to know you again, and your lovely family."

The Doctor let a similar smile form across his face.

“I can do that.” 

[the-mxster]

Tensimm+Donna incorrect quotes (pt7)

Pt 1 Pt 6

Doctor: I know you snuck out last night, Master.

Master in his head: Play dumb! 
Master: Who's the Master?

Master in his head: NOT THAT DUMB!!!

Donna: The Master just insisted the Doctor and I remember a code word in case we’re ever confronted by their clone or a cyborg doppelgänger and we’re not sure which is the real them and which is the imposter.

Donna: Some families have a fire escape plan, but not us.

Master: Happy birthday Doctor! I'm your gift!

Doctor, whispering to Donna: Did you get the receipt, or do I have to keep them?

Donna: Ooh, somebody has a crush

Master: Pfft, I don’t have a crush on the Doctor I just think they’re cool, it’s not like I stay up at night thinking about them.

*Later that night*

Master, very much awake: Uh oh.

Master: I feel like the Doctor is looking down on me.

Donna: That’s because they’re on the counter and you’re short.

Doctor to the Master: We smell of sweat and loss.

Doctor : How would you rate your pain?

Donna: 0/10. Would not recommend.

Doctor : Master, can you help me? All of my clothes keep disappearing for some reason.

Master, wearing a hoodie that's 5 times bigger than their size: Spooky.

Doctor : Baby vibes... hold gentle... like hamburger.

Master: Punt like football.

Donna: I can't take you seriously wearing that.

Master: Aw, you take me seriously at all?

Donna: Fair point.

Master: Is this about me?

Doctor : No.

Master: Then I've lost interest.

Doctor : The Ocean is a soup.

Donna:

Donna: Do elaborate.

Doctor : What are needed for something to be a soup?

Donna: Erm... Water, salt, some form of vegetation, and personally I prefer some meat in mine.

Doctor : *Tilts head*

Donna: The Ocean is a Soup.

Doctor : The Ocean is a Soup.

Donna: Do you need help getting up?

Doctor : Nah, I'm cool down here on the floor.

Doctor : Oh, fiddlesticks.

Donna: Look, I understand this is a tense situation, but let's watch the fucking language.

Doctor : Why aren’t you sleeping?

Master: I’m too busy plotting your murder to sleep, Doctor .

Doctor :

Master: ...The nightmares.

Doctor : *wrapping their arms around Master* Awwww, sweetie-

Doctor : Where are you going?

Master: To either get ice cream or commit a felony. I'll decide on the way.

Donna: Why are you late?

Doctor : A technical error occurred, causing an unexpectedly long bout of unconsciousness.

Donna: Overslept?

Doctor : Overslept.

Master: Donna, I need some advice.

Donna: You need advice from ME?

Master: Yeah, frightening, isn't it?

Doctor, about to leave the TARDIS: Don’t spend all day watching YouTube, okay?

Master: I FORGE MY OWN PATH!!

Doctor: Master, are you okay?!

Master : I told you to stop asking stupid questions!

Donna, shooing the Doctor away: Can you go be depressed over there? You’re bumming out my whole area.

Donna: If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're impressed.

Master: But you do know better.

Doctor, texting Donna: Text me when you’re home safely.

Donna: I’m home dangerously.

Doctor : Stop it.

Donna: I’m home lethally.

Doctor : Bro-

Master: No, no, hold up, rewind.

Master: My tongue was down in your throat just a second ago and now you're calling me bro??

Doctor : So I have made the decision to trust you.

Master: A horrible decision, really.

Donna: Which is correct, seven and five IS thirteen, or seven and five ARE thirteen?

Doctor : Neither.

Doctor : Because it's twelve.

Donna: My head hurts.

Master: That’s your brain trying to comprehend its own stupidity.

Master: What has the galaxy ever done for you?! Why would you wanna save it?!

Doctor : Cause I’m one of the idiots who lives in it!

Doctor: Swear words are illegal now. If you say one you'll be fined.

Donna: Heck.

Doctor: You're on thin fucking ice.

Doctor: Oh no-

Doctor : Master, you’re such a genius!

Master: Yes, I know.

Donna: My expectations were low but holy fuck.

Master: I don't dab. I stab.

Master: I thought you were going to give me a book recommendation or something.

Donna: *laughs* Book recommendation? I can’t read!

Master: Donna, I sense hostility.

Donna: Good, because I hate you.

Donna: *accidentally hits the Master with their car*

Master: You hit me with your car.

Donna: You hit my car with your body.

*While planning to break in somewhere*

Doctor: Hey, let's do "Get Help!"

Master: What?

Doctor: "Get Help."

Master: No.

Doctor: C'mon, you love it!

Master: I hate it.

Doctor: It's great! It works every time!

Master: It's humiliating.

Doctor: Do you have a better plan?

Master: No.

Doctor: We're doing it!

Master: We are not doing "Get Help!"

*A Minute Later*

Doctor, carrying Master: Get help! Please! They're dying! Help Them! *throws Master at guards, knocking them out*

Doctor: Ahh, classic!

Master: *gets up* I still hate it. It's humiliating.

Doctor, laughing: Not for me, it's not.

Doctor: Do you know a turtles only weakness?

Donna: No... well, their slowness.

Doctor: Their weaknesss is they can't roll over when they are on their backs.

Doctor: Now I have a plan.

Doctor: If I duct tape two turtles together, they'll be unstoppable.

Donna: Doctor, you know the Master better than anyone. I’m sure you’ll find the perfect gift.

Doctor: And you’re sure its not…

Donna: It’s not a tie.

Doctor: okay.

Doctor : There are 20 letters in the alphabet, right?

Master: Nope, there's 26.

Doctor : Ah, I must have forgotten U, R, A, Q, T.

Master: Aww, that's cute, but you're still missing one.

Doctor : You'll get the D later ;).

Master: Wow, Doctor , you want to hold my hand before marriage? How awfully lewd of you.

Doctor : We literally slept together yesterday.

Master: That's NOTHING compared to the lewdness of holding hands.

Doctor: I don't want to fight you!

Donna: I wouldn't want you to fight me either!

Master: It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s free: pouring river water in your socks!

Donna: Why would I do that?

Master: It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s free!

Doctor: Lol heads up if you try to make a candle with food coloring, the food coloring will just sink to the bottom of the glass, and when the flame eventually reaches the bottom all the food coloring will catch fire and become one giant tall flame that you cannot possibly blow out and the glass will start to crack and then you'll throw your tea on it in a panic and then the extremely hot food coloring will boil and sizzle horribly and then the glass will shatter. Please take my word on this lmfao

Master: What did you do?

Doctror: A MISTAKE

Master: *walks into the kitchen, ignoring everyone*

Doctor : Hey, Master, how was your day?

Master: *picks up an onion and bites into it, staring at Doctor * Hell.

Donna, watching this unfold: *whispers* Who hurt you?

Master: If you can’t beat them, dress better than them

Doctor : *looks at Donna*

Doctor : Baby girl. Baby.

Doctor : *looks at Master*

Doctor : Evil.

Donna: Master, what do you have?

Master: A KNIFE!

Donna: Okay, have fu-

Doctor : NO!

Master: You are, of course, wondering why it is I have brought you here tonight.

Doctor: Actually, Master, after all these years, I just sort of go with it.

Donna: I’m here for the cult stuff.

Master: How did you find us?

Donna: I saw your ad on craigslist.

Master: I’m not lazy, I just find it hard to put effort into things I’m not passionate about.

Donna: What are you passionate about?

Master: Sleeping

Master: I was born for politics. I have great hair and I love lying.

Donna: If it pleases the court I would like to say that my opponent is TALKING SHIT!

Master: ...

Doctor: Hopefully the Master has learned a lesson about respecting other people's feelings.

Master: Oh, shut up and die Doctor.

Master: 'Person of interest' is almost too flattering.

Master: Like, if the police were to pound on my door and go, 'A man has been murdered in your building and you are a person of interest,' I'd be like, 'Moi? Oh, do go on.'

Donna: It's called cauliflower, not ghost broccoli.

Master, eyes wide: I know what I saw.

Master: You wanna see how hardcore I am?

Master: *punches wall*

Master:

Master: Take me to the hospital.

Master: Just because I'm too short to reach the lowest self in the cabinet doesn't mean you shouldn't watch out for your kneecaps.

Donna: I’ve come to a point in my life where I need a stronger word than fuck

Doctor: Hey, are you okay?

Donna: Yeah.

Doctor: You don't look okay...

Donna: Then stop looking.

Donna: How many kids do you have?

Doctor: Biologically, emotionally, or legally?

Doctor: Date someone who will drag you outside at 3am to look at the stars.

Donna: If anyone, and I mean anyone, wakes me up at 3am to go look at the damn sky, they will be removed indefinitely from my life.

Donna: Do you have any skeletons in your closet?

Master: Literally or figuratively?

Donna: I have to specify?

Master: Okay okay stop asking me if I'm straight, gay, bi, whatever. I identify as a FUCKING THREAT.

Doctor: ...My man, Master just killed a goldfish.

Master: *licking their lips* Yup. Delicious.

Doctor: Please bring home PURIFIED water with NO minerals added for taste

Donna: We got spring water

Doctor: NO.

Master: with EXTRA minerals

Donna: it's like licking a stalagmite

Doctor: DON'T COME HOME.

Master: Mmmmm cave water

Donna: I've already sent good vibes your way… they’re coming. There’s nothing you can do to stop them.

Doctor: This is the most threatening way I’ve ever been cheered up.

Doctor: Donna, can I talk to you for a second?

Donna: Yeah, what’s up? Lemme guess. You and the Master are having problems and you want me to teach you how to kiss?

Doctor: What? No, stop that. I know how to kiss. I’ve read books.

Doctor: If Donna and I were drowning, who would you save?

Master: You two can swim…

Donna: It's a hypothetical question, Master! who would you save?

Master: my time and effort.

Donna: Do you think different paints have different tastes?

Master: They do.

Doctor: ...Why did you say that with such certainty?

Master: If you had to choose between the Doctor and all the money I have in my wallet, which would you choose?

Donna: That depends, how much money are we taking about?

Doctor: Donna!

Master: 63 cents.

Donna: I'll take the money.

Doctor: DONNA!!!

Doctor: I hardly slept last night
Donna: When you can’t sleep, it means someone is thinking about you. Someone who loves you.
Doctor: Who would be thinking about me at 3 a.m.?
Master: [gay panic]

Donna: Doctor, is that a hickey? 
Doctor: It’s just a mosquito bite. 
Master: *walks in the room*
Donna: How’s it going, mosquito.

Master: You're the love of my life and my best friend, I would do anything for you.

Doctor: I want you to eat three meals a day and have a decent sleep schedule.

Master: Absolutely not.

Doctor: Why do you let me win when we race up the stairs? You’re the faster one.
Master: Erm... it’s nice see your smile when you win!

*later*
Doctor: They're probably just staring at my ass, aren't they

Donna: Only just figuring that out now?

Donna: Man, I only ever see you awake, do you ever shut down or stop running?

Doctor: Oh, I’m always running

Doctor: The question is from what

Master: I actually have a black belt.

Donna: In what, karate?

Master: No, from Gucci.

Donna: I like your top, Master!
Doctor: I have a name, you know.
Master: *sighs* Why. Why are you like this.

Doctor *is wearing silk pants* How does this look?
Master: Like its slips on and off really easily.
Doctor: 
Master: No, I didn't mean it like that-
Donna: We know what you meant.

Doctor: You often use humor to deflect trauma

Master: Thank you

Doctor: I didn't say that was a good thing

Master: What I'm hearing is, you think I'm funny

Master: With great power comes great need to take a nap. Wake me up later.

Master: So that’s my plan.

Donna: Are you alright with constructive criticism? I don’t want to sound mean.

Master: No, go ahead, I want to hear it.

Donna: It fucking sucks.

Master: That’s not constructive criticism.

Doctor: Three words. Say them and I'm yours.

Master: Three words.

Doctor:

Doctor: I made tea.

Master: I don’t want tea.

Doctor: I didn’t make tea for you. This is my tea.

Master: Then why are you telling me?

Doctor: It’s a conversation starter.

Master: That’s a lousy conversation starter.

Doctor: Oh, is it? We are conversing. Checkmate.

Doctor, trying to cheer the group up: Things could be worse, you know!

Donna: How?

Doctor: How what?

Donna: How could they be worse?

Doctor: They couldn’t, I lied.

Donna: I'm 10 times funnier and sexier than you

Master: 10 times 0 is still 0 though

Donna: Jokes on you, I can't do math

Master: What’s up guys? I’m back.

Doctor: What the- you can’t be here. You’re dead. I literally saw you die.

Master: Death is a social construct.

Doctor: Am I going too far?

Master: No, no, no. You went too far about seven hours ago. Now you're going to prison.

Doctor: Don’t worry, I know exactly what I’m doing. Everything is going to be fine!

Donna: How can you still say that?

Doctor: Because sometimes, when things get tough, denial is all we have.

Master: Fool me once, I’m gonna kill you

Doctor: Not trying to brag or anything, but I can wake up without an alarm clock now simply due to my crippling and overwhelming anxiety, so...

Master, holding a python: Guys I impulsively bought a snake, what do I name him

Doctor: You did WHAT–

Donna: William Snakepeare

Doctor: Would you stab your best friend in the leg for 10 million gold?

Donna: You stab me, and then when my leg gets better, we buy a big-ass house.

Master: You can stab me too, then we'll have 20 million.

Donna: Good thinking.

Donna: You have to apologise to the Doctor

Master: Fine.

Master: 'Unfuck you' or whatever.

Doctor: Dandelions symbolise everything I want to be in life

Donna: Fluffy and dead with a gust of wind?

Doctor: Unapologetic. Hard to kill. Feral, filled with sunlight, bright, beautiful in a way that the conventional and controlling hate but cannot ever fully destroy. Stubborn. Happy. Bastardous. Friends with bees. Highly disapproving of lawns. Full of wishes that will be carried far after I die.

Master: edible

Donna: What did you do with the body?

Master: What didn’t I do with the body?

Donna:

Master: Okay, that sounded more sexual than I intended. I disposed of the corpse respectfully.

Donna: We need to get through this locked door. Doctor, give me your credit card.

Doctor: Here.

Donna, pocketing it: Thanks. Master, kick down the door.

Doctor: Sometimes I drink milk straight out of the container.

Master: The cow???

Doctor: What?

Donna: Master, W H Y?

Doctor: HELP! I TOLD DONNA I’D COOK DINNER TONIGHT BUT I CAN’T COOK!

Master, pouring milk directly into the cereal bag: And you thought I could help?

Donna: Are you sure this is the right direction?

Master: Certainly, I'm as sure as I am honest!

Doctor: In that case, we're definitely lost.

Store Worker: Would a Mr. Doctor please come to the front desk?

Doctor, arriving at the desk: Hello, is there a problem?

Store Worker: points to the Master and Donna

Store Worker: I believe they belong to you?

Master and Donna, simultaneously: We got lost :(

Doctor: I didn’t even bring you guys here with me-

Master: Schrödinger’s cat is overrated. If you wanna see something that’s both dead and alive you can talk to me any time of the day.

Donna: We're playing Scrabble. It's a nightmare.

Master: Scrabble? Scrabble's great.

Donna: Not when you're playing with the Doctor, it's not. They put words like "ephemeral" and I put "dog

[imliterallyjustablackgirl]

Claire '' of course I know the name'' 2/2

Nostalgia is good, but it isn't meant to stay, so that's why she left. They both felt let down by emotions that wouldn't have lasted because they never knew each other, despite the forced sense of familiarity that seems to be forced upon us. Think about it, she has been presented as a form of distraction. Ex: when people have like a life outside of work it's celebrated, but it's a poor attempt at normacy from a guy who isn't yet ready to be normal (doesn't exist but ok) ? A lot seems to forget that Carmen growing up WAS a neurospiceyyy, stuttering and quite alone guy. Everything Carmen does, screams, I want to know what if feels like, but our guy doesn't know H O W . Truthfully he was always showed what he should seek, told when to apologize from Donna who to like from Mikey, so him liking Claire right now when he has vowed to change the chemisty of the restaurant with his busniness partner slash girl who is also friend aka Syd, a lap that if it fail its on him, hell yeah my boy's gonna run towards the past. Even, with Claire his supposed girl who is a friend, didn't have quite the patience to understand that? So truly how much layers do you except your lover to have? One? like his crush for you was enough and you went'' ily,kissy face'' like, you know what, let's move on. The reality of it, it feels like his way of honoring what Mikey would have liked for him not what he wants.I saw someone say somewhere (Tiktok?) that from a viewing point we might not like Claire because of how fast paced the Bear is and chaotic and everything that is normal seems boring or flat, she is meant to show us the outside world of the Bear, outside of cooking. I could see some of that with the aspect that she is a ER doctor, which in the real world would be fast but in the Bear universe, she seems..cozy? Out there running errands, letting people biiiiiiiiiiiiippp, while she twirls her hair on the phone in the hall (jk), if you asked me, it's just feels a bore to have so many interesting characters and then, Claire? I love Carmen, but instead of viewing her as this breath of fresh air she is always shown us as another thing that piles up on Carm anxiety ( i.e: The break down in freezer and the panick attack.) You know when people talk about love right, because she said she loved him, and we see how uncomfy he gets, he gave her a fake number for crying out loud., most people would love for you to balance it out, right be happy about your relationship but because of how much been with her has monopolized his attention, as a partner I would h a t e to know I'm the reason I think when saw @bbythurs say if your partner was in an opening of a really important event for them wouldn't stand down? Like, even when Carm came to their table, it was quick, swiftly and thoughtful. Like a partner would have understood if he couldn't because of how busy it got, I even remember her looking a little bit around, so the girl got a grasp on how busy the resto is, u'kna, 'the 'opening' of their restaurant. Mostly, if like our common friend, Fak literally said it's not a good moment, when @bbythurs said it was pushy , I recall even a word about how it reflect his family dynamic, the lack of boundaries and what not. It feels like we are supposed to like her. You know, she gives a really good ''everyone'' liked her at school- popular-ish, but also, that type of people often stay the same in a weird way?Remember when I said everything changes but stay the same? It makes me wonder if things we are meant to see endearing about her are the same things that show us that Carmen might not know boundaries when it concern relationship because his family didn't show him how , so someone who would lack some wouldn't raise alarm to him, because he wouldn't be able to hear it (get it, like in that one episode) and now he is left in the cold, literally. I'm going to leave you all to Carmen opening up to his friend who is a girl, Sydney, done not in a mental breakdown but an attempt to not make his wife understand him

[chat-rouge-et-bleu]

OK so i finally got round to watching the new dw episode and i have feelings about it lol.

i thought it was fun and a cool idea and i liked how much it had clearly been made to feel like old dw. Tennant is a very good actor and i think he's an all round good guy so no issues there. and I think the way they explained Donna surviving remembering made sense, her daughter would conceivably have been passed down that knowledge, all is well there. i also think casting yasmin finney was a good choice, she's a fun actor and she's young and she's definitely gonna go on to have a good career if she plays her cards right, all power to her.

my issues comes with the way rose was presented in the episode, she's clearly canonically a young trans woman which i think is an awesome thing for such a massive and influential show like dw to do, but how does the BBC choose to make that absolutely explicitly clear? why let's deadname her almost immediately! how delightful! just in case the mentions of her being different and of Donna wanting to protect her because of it and the casting directors choosing to cast an out trans woman weren't enough (which they were) let's just have her be verbally harassed on the street in one shot to really drive it home. there was no real need for that other than to make clear to the audience that hadn't already realised that rose is trans that she is. it felt uncomfortable to watch and I didn't want to know her dead name, but now I do I guess.

I liked the pronoun discussion, it was a clever way to discuss the doctors pronouns and the idea of asking for someone's pronouns whilst still being true to the plot; these characters know nothing of the biology or sociology of the meeps species, they have no outward markers of gender and so do have to ask. it makes sense that rose (a trans teen) and the doctor (who was completely female presenting just a few episodes ago) would be sensitive to the fact that they need to refer to the meep and don't know how beat to do so. also the fact that the meep is then gendered correctly throughout, even when revealed to be evil, is good and is a fun way of presenting a series topic.

however the 'binary' part didn't make much sense to me and made me cringe. the doctor is comfortable being explicitly called male by Donna yet only half an hour ago was explaining how they use a mixture of pronouns and never stated were fully male. Rose and her family made no mention of her being non-binary, she's only ever referred to as she/her and as a daughter so it seems a little odd to have Donna then be so comfortable referring to her as something neither male nor female. if Rose is non-binary then ok but we haven't been told that and it seems to come from nowhere. as far as I was aware she was a trans woman, and to suddenly refer to her as non-binary or 'something else' felt odd and came across like misgendering.

she's 'finally herself' but what does this statement mean and how does remembering insane amounts of information about the universe make you suddenly sure of your trans identity? idk, that scene kind of ruined the rest of her story for me as it was confusing and just kind of cringey; a forced way to rehash Donna's story as some kind of trans allegory.

in conclusion, the actors are good, trans rep is good. idk why I need to know trans' characters dead names and I don't really want to. and how does Donna magically know her daughter is non-binary or why does she think telling the doctor is an ok thing to do before idk, talking to her daughter in private???

[academy13]

Just been thinking about this a bit (I left it in some tags but Tumblr ate some of the tags and anyways it's always nice to grow the idea more. And also always, always room for Sarah and the Doctor). So this is based on a quick bit of dialog left in some tags on a Doctor Who post

Dinner at the Noble house was always chaotic, as family dinners often were, but it was even more so when the Doctor was involved, even if it wasn't world-ending. Sarah Jane could appreciate the unique chaos perhaps better than most, and maybe that was why the Doctor, with his new old face, had been gravitating towards her all evening.

The bi-generation still didn't make sense, but then again nothing with the Doctor ever truly did. The way she'd seen him regenerate had been different than others, and she'd even seen a different Time Lord regenerate at that time too. The universe was very strange and she'd learned long ago that there was no way to know everything, sometimes things just didn't work out the way you thought they would. So here she was, in Donna Noble's kitchen, facing the Doctor with a face she hadn't thought she'd ever see again, as he looked at her with those expressive and sad eyes. Time travel was wonderful, but oh so complicated.

"I'm glad you could make it Sarah."

"A family dinner with you? I wouldn't miss it for the world." She smiles at him. "I told you, biggest family on Earth." He runs his hand through his hair, nodding. "Yeah, yeah you did..." "Took you a while to realize did it?" "You know me, thick about the silly things. Donna may have slapped me upside the head for forgetting that family is what you make of it. Tegan was not nearly as polite..." She laughs, the Australian has never been shy about expressing her opinions, and the shorter woman is also very territorial about family. She imagines that conversation was a bit one-sided until Tegan had blown off some steam... "It's because she cares, we all do. You and Tegan apparently show affection by bickering, Nyssa mentioned it." "Of course she did..." He sighs. "But I wouldn't trade it for the universe... and y'know, other me... we need a term for him because we're both the Doctor but you can't have us both running around because that would be super confusing, more than one of me in any time is already confusing, this is... have I mentioned how absolutely mad this is?"

"Several times. And once before breakfast."

"Yeah... anyway, he had a point in saying I should be in one place. Oh, I still jump around time and space, but I come back to here, to now. Home isn't just a place, its the people. This is home, and you're my people."

They share a long moment, before something crashes outside and the general noise that had been out there increases with the combined voices of Donna and Tegan increasing in volume. "I suppose we should go rescue everyone from the wrath of Donna and Tegan." "Yeah... but not just yet. I want another moment with my Sarah Jane." And he smiles at her in a way that has always made her melt. Of everything they have been to each other, in any universe, they have always been best friends first. And the chaos outside is perfectly normal, time travel or not.

[chocolatequeennk]

Forever Timeless, 14/23

Summary: Two months after the Dalek Crucible, the Doctor and Rose are getting used to having the biggest family on Earth. As they visit Leadworth in 1996, Victorian England, a mysterious desert planet, and Elizabethan England, those family and friends often help in unexpected ways. But no matter where they go or who they’re with, it’s always the Doctor in the TARDIS with Rose Tyler–just as it should be.

Ten x Rose, Donna x Lee

Betaed by @rudennotgingr, @pellaaearien, and @jabber-who-key

Tagging @doctorroseprompts 

Part 7 of Being to Timelessness

AO3 | FF.NET | TSP

Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Ch 7 | Ch 8 | Ch 9 | Ch 10 | Ch 11 | Ch 12 | Ch 13

Chapter 14: The More Things Change...

“I think you’ll like where we’ve landed,” the Doctor said as he swung his coat around and put it on. 

Rose smiled and took his hand. “Where are we? A dazzling alien city? Or maybe Earth in the far distant future?”

The Doctor squeezed her hand as they walked out of the TARDIS and closed the door. “It’s someplace you wanted to see once, but…” He gestured at the planet, then watched Rose. 

She turned slowly, and he could feel her trying to place it. “We’ve been here before,” she murmured. 

“It was raining,” he said, giving her a hint.

Rose swung around and stared at him, her eyes wide. “Pluvon?”

The Doctor nodded. “Do you remember why you wanted to see Pluvon?”

Rose shook her head. “Was that my idea? I guess I sort of remember that, but everything else kinda wiped the details from my mind.”

The Doctor flinched and tightened his hold on Rose’s hand for a moment. The memory of that “everything else” wasn’t one of his favourites—Pluvon had been the catalyst for possibly their worst fight ever, and certainly the worst since they’d bonded.

Despite himself, the Doctor felt his mood slip from contemplative to pensive as they crossed the bridge to enter the city. Rose was equally quiet, but he could tell her thoughts weren’t quite as melancholy as his.

“I think we needed that fight,” Rose said quietly as they strolled down a broad boulevard. 

The Doctor stopped and stared down at her. “What? Why?”

“We were playing it so safe, do you remember?” 

He nodded. 

“If we hadn’t been here for a monsoon… I don’t think I would have told you about how he taunted me. It just would have been there between us, like your fear of losing me, waiting to explode in our faces. We needed that fight,” she repeated. 

The Doctor shoved his hands into his coat pockets as he tried to find the flaw in Rose’s logic. Being here, he could fully remember his fear when he watched Rose dive into the raging river. The idea that they’d needed to be here…

But then… He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the TARDIS. He had very specifically set the coordinates for a sunny day. The TARDIS had steered them off course, which meant…

He took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair, then smiled at Rose. “Here we are, finally,” he said,  pointing at the imposing building ahead of them. 

Rose tilted her head back to look at it, then studied the elegant stone sign. “Oh! The art museum!” she exclaimed. 

“The Brindisi Gallery, as requested,” he confirmed. 

Rose’s wide smile was all the thanks he needed, and he laughed and followed her into the museum. 

Rose was enchanted by all the different kinds of art the museum had. There was a whole room devoted to water art, where coloured water was artfully arranged into pictures. The pictures were so ephemeral, moving and changing as the water flowed, but the artists always managed to create new magic after one painting disappeared. 

They wandered together through a gallery of installation art, walking in between the displays. She loved seeing the artwork from different angles, watching the meaning change as you studied an individual piece, as a set, or stepping back to view the whole.

It was the room of empathic art that sparked a question in Rose. She watched the painting in front of her redraw as it sensed what she was feeling. The bluish green hues of the painting echoed her curiosity, and the mauve streaks mirrored her hesitation.

“What is it, Rose?” 

She bit her lip, then asked without looking away from the stunning artwork. “Was there a special kind of art on Gallifrey?” 

The Doctor sucked in a breath. Rose’s contemplation had been obvious to him, but he hadn’t realised the direction her thoughts had taken her. But of course she’d wonder about Gallifreyan artwork, when surrounded by gallery after gallery of art from other planets.

“Yes.” 

He wanted to tell her, but it was always hard for him to start stories about Gallifrey.

Rose held his hand and led him to a nearby bench. “Tell me about it,” she requested softly.

The Doctor leaned back against the bench and wrapped his arm around Rose’s shoulders. “Well, remember—we were called Time Lords.”

He felt Rose consider the words, and then the spark of realisation. “Did you use time to make art somehow? But how?” 

He nodded. “Time Lord art—it was a slice of real time, a moment preserved in a three dimensional painting. It looked real enough to walk into.” He tilted his head, pondering for a moment. “Come to think of it, I don’t actually know that it wasn’t possible.” 

He abandoned that line of thinking to answer her second question. “They were made using something called a stasis cube—just a little box that you would use to telepathically capture that moment in time.”

“Makes sense,” Rose said. “You’re holding a moment in stasis, so calling it a stasis cube…” 

“Yeah.” 

The Doctor tried to remember the last time he’d seen a work of art rendered by a stasis cube so he could describe it for Rose, but the memory was hazy. The harder he tried to latch onto it, the more determined it was to slip away. 

Unaware of his struggle, Rose sighed and then stood up. “Come on then, Doctor. We’ve had a day at the museum. I think it’s time we visited the little shop.” 

“And maybe had chips for dinner,” he said knowingly. 

Rose shrugged. “I might have noticed there was a cafe selling chips down in the lobby, yeah. We’ve been here a while, surely it’s time to have a meal.” 

He laughed and stood up. “I suppose I can allow it, since your birthday is tomorrow.”

Rose blinked. “My birthday?” she parroted. 

It was the second time that day that he’d managed to surprise her, and he patted himself on the back. “How do you always lose track of your birthday, but manage to remember mine?”

They started down the broad marble staircase and reached the first landing before Rose spoke. “Birthdays… I never really cared about my birthday when I was a kid. It was just another day.” 

The Doctor waited, casting a sidelong glance at Rose when she paused. Her bottom lip was caught between her teeth and she swallowed before continuing.

“Mum tried to make it special, but she was always working or tired from working. And we didn’t have money for big parties or lots of presents, like I saw some of my schoolmates get.” 

The Doctor squeezed her hand when she paused this time. “Birthdays were a reminder of what you didn’t have.”

Rose nodded, then shook her head to dispel the melancholy memories. The Doctor had fallen quiet, and she leaned into him as they walked past the information booth in the gallery’s atrium.

“So I love that you always make a big deal of it, even if it always catches me by surprise. I never had that feeling before, the ‘oh, it’s my birthday so let’s do…’ like everyone else.” 

The Doctor tugged on his ear, his neck turning pink. Rose chuckled and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Truly, Doctor. I love it.” 

He hummed happily. “Well I love making a big deal of it, so that works out well for both of us.” He glanced at the little shop as they walked past it, but didn’t suggest stopping. “I thought you might want to visit your mum tomorrow.” 

 Rose brightened as they entered the cafe and got in line. “Definitely. I haven’t spent my birthday with her in years.” 

They ordered their food at the counter, then Rose found a seat while the Doctor waited for their baskets of the Pluvon version of fish and chips. The polished wood of the table reflected back the bright lights as she sent her mum a text. 

Jackie’s answer was quick in coming, which wasn’t a surprise. The answer itself was though, and Rose was still staring at her phone when the Doctor joined her. 

“What’s wrong?” 

She blinked and looked up at him. “Nothing. It’s just… she’s planning a party.” 

She couldn’t put into words why that left her unsettled, but the Doctor nodded. “Her life has changed just as much as yours. She probably wanted to have a party for you when you were a kid, and now she can.” 

Rose sprinkled vinegar on her food and started eating. “I guess,” she said. “Anyway, it’s only March there, which is why she hadn’t told us yet.” 

“Still keeping two timelines going,” the Doctor observed. “We haven’t synced with the Cardiff group yet.” 

Rose shook her head. “So when we jump ahead to my party tomorrow, it’ll be the first time we’ve been on the same day.” 

She turned the words over in her mind. There was something in them, something they’d talked about before…

The Doctor stared at Rose when she dropped a chip uneaten onto her plate. “Rose? What’s wrong? I know the chips are a little different, but—”

She took a deep breath and looked at him. “Timelines. We have to do time differently, now that we have human passengers.” 

“What do you mean, do time differently?”

“Do you remember our plan before? Back before Canary Wharf, we talked and decided that we’d let longer go between visits on our end than on Mum’s, so I could stretch out the years we had together.” 

The Doctor nodded. He remembered, and he’d been planning to do the same thing.

“We can’t,” she said, without him saying it out loud. “Not when we have human companions all the time.” 

“What do you…” He stopped and stared up at the ceiling. “Oh, I see. Their families would actually lose time with them, wouldn’t they?”

Rose nodded. “It wouldn’t be fair to Wilf, or for Martha’s family. We’ll have to take the slow path, even if we can travel through all of time and space.” 

For the second time that day, the Doctor’s mind worked furiously as he tried to find a way around Rose’s logic. She would lose Jackie eventually, but he was determined to give them as much time as possible. 

“Oh! But that’s only when we have humans on board!” he said finally. “I agree that if we’ve got Donna and Lee or Mickey and Martha with us, we’ll have to try to drop them off so approximately the same amount of time has passed on Earth as it did for us. But if it’s just the two of us, or maybe the two of us and Jenny, we can jump around all we want.” 

He leaned forward and looked Rose in the eye. “We can still give you decades or even centuries with Jackie, Rose. I promise.” 

She stared at him for a moment, then she picked up the chip and ate it with relish. 

oOoOo

Jackie was already running out of the house when Rose opened the TARDIS doors. “Oh, you two!” she hollered. “Six weeks without a word! You complained about Jenny. How do you think we felt?” 

Rose sighed. She should have known this would be the trade-off to syncing their timeline to her mum’s. “Come on, let’s go inside. We can tell you everything we’ve been up to.” Her mum huffed, but let go of her and led the way back into the house. 

They’d barely gotten through the front door before Jackie turned and held up her hand. “I don’t want to hear about any adventures you’ve been having on the planet Martoc,” she said harshly. “I heard all about that one planet you went to, where Jenny had to come rescue you. That’s enough adventures for me, ta.” 

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Where in the bloody hell have you been? I haven’t heard from you for weeks!” 

“Mum, just leave it all right?” Rose said. “It’s my birthday. I promise, I’ll explain it all to you. Just later.” 

Rose saw the mutinous look in her mother’s eye and braced herself, but Pete stepped into the entryway and rested his hand on Jackie’s shoulder. “Come on, Jacks. You’ve been planning this party for weeks. Let’s enjoy it.” 

Some of the tension left Jackie’s body, and she nodded. 

Jenny met them as they entered the living room. “Hi Dad, hi Mum!” she said, giving them each a hug. “I figured you’d be right on time for this.” 

Behind them, Jackie hmphed, but Rose ignored it. It’s just going to be one of those days, she thought, letting out a sigh. 

A miniature blond cyclone whirled into them next. “Rose, Rose! Look at what I got!” 

Rose bent down to peer at the toy dinosaur Tony held up. “Oh wow, Tony! Is that a triceratops?” she asked, purposely getting it wrong.

“Nooooo! It’s a stegosaurus!” He shook his head at Rose. “Triceratops have three horns, Rosie.”

Rose managed not to smile. “Oh, that’s right. We need to have you with us the next time we see dinosaurs. It’ll take a real expert to tell them all apart.” 

“And maybe he’ll come back for his tenth birthday?” Jackie muttered.

Rose winced; she’d opened herself up for that one. 

“I’ll have you know I can tell apart all the dinosaurs,” the Doctor said. 

“Are you jealous of a four-year-old, Spaceman?” 

Rose looked past the people crowding in the middle of the room and smiled at Donna. “He always has to be best at everything,” she confided. 

Donna rolled her eyes. “That sounds like him. Come on, the table is set and I think the cook is ready to serve dinner.” 

Rose stopped at the entry to the dining room and counted the chairs. “Who’s not coming?” she asked, when she only counted ten chairs along with one child’s seat. 

Pete helped Tony into his chair and pushed it in. “Mickey and Martha were called away on a mission for UNIT this morning,” he told her. “They said to apologise for them, and promise they’ll get in touch with you as soon as they can.” 

The Doctor was fairly certain that Rose was too far into the room to hear Jackie’s next comment, but he picked it up. 

“Too bad they didn’t have their own fancy time travelling dealie, so they could just pop back and join us.”

He and Pete exchanged a glance, and the Doctor shook his head. Rose was still intent on ignoring Jackie, and he wouldn’t ruin her birthday party for her. 

But I might have to talk to Jackie later…

By the end of dinner, Rose was barely holding onto her temper. Her mum’s comments had been relentless, and it didn’t matter how much everyone else tried to redirect the conversation—she always managed to find a way to bring it up again.

She took a deep breath and carefully set her knife down on her mostly empty plate. Then she turned to Pete. “So Pete, Jenny told us last week that you had a bit of an adventure recently with the Rift.”

“Oh, at least someone is capable of making regular calls to their parents,” Jackie interjected. “Mind, I suppose I should be glad it wasn’t a year this time.” 

“Mum, would you give it a rest!” Rose finally burst out. She saw the nanny sneak in and take Tony out of the room, and she flushed for a moment, thinking about what he might have heard if he’d stayed. 

“I will not!” Jackie exclaimed. “First Pete and Jenny come home and say they had to rescue you off some planet or something because you managed to get stranded without the TARDIS. And where are your rescue buttons, I’d like to know. You texted me a few weeks later to ask if you could visit for your birthday, and that’s the last I heard from you!”

Rose took a deep breath and tried to take hold of her temper. “That was just yesterday for us,” she said, her voice tight. “We’ve been running a bit ahead, and I wanted to spend my birthday with you—my actual birthday, in our timeline.” 

Jackie sniffed, looking slightly mollified. “I wish I understood all your zooming around through time and space,” she muttered. “But I’m happy you wanted to spend your birthday with us.”

Then her jaw set, and she wagged her finger at Rose and the Doctor. “Now, I want the two of you to listen to me. I understand why you skipped time this time, but in the future, I expect you to keep yourselves linear to Cardiff time. I don’t want to wonder what kind of nonsense you’re getting yourselves into.”

Rose pushed back from the table and stood up. “You are never gonna get it, are you? We do go zooming around through time and space. That’s our life—it’s my life now, and it has been for eight years. I won’t tie myself to any one timeline just because it makes you feel better!”

She spun around and stalked out of the house, slamming the door behind her as she left. The TARDIS hummed in welcome, and Rose went home without a second thought.

Jack, Donna, and Lee all exchanged glances, then pushed back from the table and left the dining room.

The Doctor leaned on the table and stared at his mother-in-law. “Was there a reason you thought you had to ruin Rose’s birthday?” 

Jackie crossed her arms over her chest. “I didn’t ruin it,” she countered. “It was already ruined before you got here. How come you can’t stay in our timeline?”

The Doctor hesitated; on one hand, this was mostly Rose’s story to share. On the other, he knew she’d already told Jackie once, so this was really just reminding her of what she’d forgotten in the last five years of her life. 

Oh, and isn’t it ironic that the amount of time she was in Pete’s World wasn’t equal to the amount of time that passed here?

But Jackie wasn’t done. “You can’t understand what it’s like, Doctor—watching your only kid slip into her own world, literally a different world with different time.” Jackie sniffed. “I just want some part of Rose to hold onto.”

The Doctor sighed and set his cup down. “Jackie, Rose hasn’t slipped away. She is doing everything she can to keep this part of her life with you going. But you have to be willing to make some allowances for the changes in her own life.”

Jackie scowled. “Changes like flying around through time and space, you mean,” she said, her voice flat.

The Doctor pressed his lips together and counted to ten. When he thought he could talk without snapping at her, he tried explaining, one more time. 

“Do you remember what Rose told you, before Canary Wharf?”

Jackie’s forehead furrowed as she tried to remember. Finally, she shook her head. “That was a long time ago.” 

“Rose…” The Doctor took a deep breath, then pushed it all out in one long sentence, so she wouldn’t be able to argue. “Rose’s lifespan is a lot longer than a human’s. She’s going to outlive you by several years—far more than people normally do—so she wants to stretch out her time with you as much as possible so it doesn’t happen so quickly for her.” 

He waited for Jackie’s response. She was quiet for so long that he felt like he was in some kind of alternate reality. He hadn’t known it was possible for Jackie Tyler to be quiet for this long.

“Do you mean…” Her voice was sad and quiet. “You mean she’s gonna live for decades after I’m gone?”

The Doctor nodded. “I’ve lost people I love, and it hurts, Jackie. It hurts to outlive the most important people in your life. I can’t protect Rose from that completely, but I would like to be able to at least give her a little bit longer with you.” He stared into her eyes. “If you’ll let me.” 

Jackie’s jaw trembled and she wiped a tear from her eye. “Yeah. Yeah… I’ll talk to her tomorrow, tell her I understand.”

The Doctor looked over his shoulder, in the direction of the TARDIS. “I’ll let her know you want to apologise,” he said. Pete shook his head behind Jackie, and the Doctor held back the second part of his thought—he couldn’t promise Rose would be willing to listen.

“I think I’d better go back to the TARDIS now. I’ll let you know what our plans are for breakfast.” 

Rose’s anger had been simmering hotter and hotter as dinner went on, but the wave of fury the Doctor got when he pushed open the TARDIS door still took him by surprise. He sucked in a breath, then resolutely set out to find her.

He found Rose in her studio, mixing paints together aggressively. “You didn’t need to do that,” she said.

The Doctor watched her warily. “Would you rather I hadn’t?” 

The thought honestly hadn’t occurred to him. He’d wanted Jackie to understand, for his own sake as much as for Rose’s. Well, almost as much. Well, at least partly for his own sake.

Rose looked up at him, an eyebrow raised. “Really, for your own sake?” she said sarcastically.

The Doctor shrugged. “Well, it is annoying listening to her complain about my driving all the time. And it would be nice if she just… understood.”

Rose snorted and folded some pink into the colour she was creating. “Never gonna happen, Doctor,” she said. “You have to want to understand first.” 

She glared up at him. “And I don’t need you to explain me to my own mother.”  

The Doctor blinked; he had never thought of it like that. “Rose…” 

“I don’t need you to protect me, either, or try to make everything better for me. I can take care of myself.” 

The Doctor felt like he’d traveled back in time to the aftermath of their first visit to Pluvon, and Rose’s fears about being seen as weak. 

“I know you can,” he said, keeping his voice even. “And if you had still been in the room, I would have let you keep leading the conversation. But you left—I don’t blame you at all, for the record—and she sat there making ridiculous demands and lobbing accusations at us. You know as well as I do that if I’d just let her keep going, she would have been even more irrational in the morning.” 

Rose rubbed her hands over her face, getting a streak of forest green on her nose. “I know,” she mumbled. “I know. I’m sorry.” 

The Doctor relaxed slightly when her anger faded to frustration. Taking a chance, he smiled at her and pointed to his nose. “You’ve got something just there,” he teased.

Rose finally smiled. “Occupational hazard,” she said as she reached for a towel. 

She wiped at her face and looked at him, and he shook his head. “I think you’re going to need a mirror to get it all,” he told her. “Why don’t you get cleaned up and I’ll get some treats together for us?” 

Rose nodded and put her towel down, then tilted her head. “What are we doing for the rest of the evening?” 

He stepped back from the door to let her by. “You decide, and I’ll trust the TARDIS to take me where I need to be.” 

The lights in the corridor flashed, and Rose patted the wall. Thanks, Dear.

When she saw her reflection in the mirror, she started laughing. The small smear of paint she’d felt earlier had only been spread around when she’d tried to wipe it off. Instead of just being a daub on her nose, now it was brushed up her cheekbone like blush.

How did you keep from laughing when you saw this? she asked the Doctor as she carefully wiped it off her face. 

It took all the restraint I’ve learned in my long life.

Rose mentally stuck her tongue out at him, and the laughter that came back over the bond swept away the last of her poor mood. Her mother was who she was, and that would probably never change. 

But with the Doctor’s presence warm in her mind, she remembered something else that wouldn’t change—how much she loved him. 

“A much better thing to focus on,” she murmured as she finished cleaning up. 

oOoOo

The next morning, Rose almost stayed in the TARDIS for breakfast, but she refused to hide from her own mother. “Let me go over first,” she requested when the Doctor started getting ready along with her. “I want to clear some things up, just the two of us.” 

He nodded, and the obvious faith in her ability gave her a little bit more confidence as she walked across the garden to the kitchen door. 

She hesitated for a moment, not sure if she should knock or just go in. Before she could make up her mind, the door opened for her. 

“Morning, sweetheart.” 

Rose studied her mum for a moment. Pink dressing gown, slippers, her hair pulled back in a messy bun… The clothes might have been nicer than anything they’d had on the Estate, but otherwise it was an image straight from her childhood. Nothing changes, she thought, feeling a hint of amusement at the thought today.

“Morning, Mum,” she said. 

“Did the Doctor talk to you last night?” 

Rose blinked. He hadn’t needed to tell her the gist of their conversation, because his intent—to explain, to smooth things over—had been evident over the bond. 

Maybe I should have asked what they actually talked about.

“No.” Rose didn’t add that she’d been too upset to listen to any of the details. 

“Oh.” Jackie picked at her cuticles. “Well… He told us that you’re gonna outlive all of us by a long time.” 

Rose raised an eyebrow. “I told you that years ago,” she reminded her mother. 

“I forgot, or didn’t really understand, I guess. It’s been a long time since Canary Wharf, Rose.” 

Rose doubted she would have remembered the conversation the next day. As she’d pointed out to the Doctor the night before, you have to want to understand in order to be able to grasp concepts. The same was true with remembering them. 

Still, this was the most conciliatory her mother had ever appeared, and she didn’t want to ruin it. “I guess.” 

“So, I guess the time travelling thing is a good thing, sort of. If it means you—I—” Jackie shrugged helplessly. 

“I thought so,” Rose said noncommittally. “But you wanted us to promise that we’d keep our timeline synced with yours, I thought.” 

“That was before I understood.”

Rose still felt like there were things her mother refused to grasp about her life. Yes, the “time travelling thing” did have some side benefits, like getting to stretch out the amount of time she had left with her human family and friends. But it was also an integral part of her life. She wasn’t the Rose Jackie remembered, and she didn’t live the life they’d shared. 

For a moment, she considered pushing the issue. There was so much more than just little benefits to traveling in time. But again, she caught the uncertainty on Jackie’s face and realised this truly was the most contrite she’d ever been. 

“Thanks, Mum. I promise, we’ll stay in touch as much as possible. This time it just wasn’t, since we had to skip those weeks in your timeline in order to get us synced up.” 

Jackie smiled. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

Rose hugged her, then moved over to the counter and filled the kettle. “Now come on, fill me in on everything I’ve missed.” 

oOoOo

After breakfast and one final promise to pick Jenny up in two weeks when her internship ended, the Doctor and Rose walked hand in hand back to the TARDIS. The Doctor tossed his coat over a strut, then spun around the console, adjusting controls in rapid succession. 

“Where are we off to, then?” Rose asked. 

He looked at her across the console, his nearly giddy grin stretching across his face. “That, Rose Tyler, is a surprise. But I think you should go change while I get us to our destination.” 

Rose raised an eyebrow, but she nodded and walked down the corridor to their room. As expected, there was an outfit lying out on the bed for her. She put on the shorts and t-shirt, then grabbed a lightweight jacket before returning to the console room. 

“Well?” She held her arms out and twirled in a circle. “Am I ready for your secret adventure?” 

“Absolutely.” He grabbed his coat, then jogged up the ramp and waited at the door.

The Doctor’s quiet anticipation echoed over the bond and quickened Rose’s steps. He smiled down at her when she reached him, then pushed the door open.

Rose squinted into the night, trying to place where they were. The fresh tang of salt wafted into the TARDIS on a warm breeze. She’d just started going over a list of all the beaches they’d been to when she noticed the sand, sparkling and glowing in the moonlight.

“Welcome back to Ekbrilon, love.” The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS and spread his coat out like a blanket. 

Rose shook her head in wonder and sat down with him. “This is perfect,” she whispered. The quiet, the solitude… The peacefulness was exactly what she needed after the last sixteen hours. The soft light spilling out of the console room added to the shimmer in the air.

The Doctor hummed and wrapped an arm around her waist, encouraging her to lean back into him. “And this is an untouched stretch of beach,” he told her. “No tourists, no marine biologists, no fishermen. Just you and me.” 

He shifted slightly, then held something out in front of her. “I haven’t gotten to give you your gift yet.” 

Rose took the gift, then turned to look at him. “You didn’t need to give me anything,” she protested. “I thought the trip back to Pluvon was my gift.” 

The Doctor scoffed, rolling his eyes and gently poking her in the ribs. “I believe we established earlier this week that I enjoy making a big deal out of your birthday. So go on, open it!” 

Rose slid her finger under the seam of the paper and carefully peeled back the wrapping paper, revealing a wooden box. Something about it tickled her memory, and she waited for it to surface.

“You gave me a box like this before,” she said, trying to put her finger on it. “Or…” The answer came to her. “First I saw it in your coat pocket, and then later you gave it to me.” 

The box was a little larger than the box that had held her wedding ring, but it was unmistakably of the same design.

“And as I believe I asked you that time, are you going to actually open it?”

Rose tapped her finger against her chin. “I dunno. It’s an awfully nice box. Maybe that’s the gift.”

He rolled his eyes, and just like last time, he took the box from her and opened it himself. Rose’s smirk disappeared when he carefully pulled out a small work of stained glass.

She took it from him and held it up in the faint light. “Is that…” She touched the centre of the pane gently, unable to say anything else.

The Doctor’s finger joined hers, tracing over the figure of the artist standing in front of an easel. “It reminded me of you.” After another moment of silence, he added, “I thought you could hang it in the library, where the firelight would shine through it.” 

Rose picked up the box and carefully placed the glass ornament inside. Then she moved closer to the Doctor, wrapping her arms tight around him. 

“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears. After the debacle with her mother, it was such a relief to be with someone who knew her so well.

The Doctor sighed and pressed a kiss to her forehead. No matter what, I will always know you and love you.

[doctorslove]

Having the Blues

Hey anon!! I love this request so much I had a lot of fun with it and I hope you enjoy it!!!! <3 I love me some ten fluff.

Also I added Wilfred to the story along with Donna because I love him and I'm very soft for his relationship with the Doctor.

Summary: You need to go back home for a few days and the Doctor gets sad without you. No matter how much he denies it, Donna and Wilfred are not oblivious to his love for you and will do their best to get the two of you together.

Angst with a fluffy ending and the Doctor being crazy about you 😌

Tenth Doctor x Reader

The reader uses she/her pronouns

Words: 1946

“Feeling blue, Spaceman?” Donna asked with a teasing tone.

The Doctor lifted his head to meet her gaze. “Hmm?”

“She leaves for just a couple of days and look at him,” she said as if she was talking to an invisible audience.

He glared at her and she smiled.

One of Donna’s favorite pastimes was making fun of the Doctor for his crush on you. She had not managed to get him to admit it yet but he really didn’t have to. It was so obvious that he was in love with you that she was genuinely surprised how someone as clever as you hadn’t noticed.

His love for you was everywhere. It was behind every longing look he’d give you, thinking that no one would notice; behind every kiss he’d leave on your forehead after a long day; behind every hug, and every smile, and every worried expression he’d wear when you were upset.

Donna knew because of course she did. The Doctor was her best friend; she knew what was going on in his hearts. But exactly because he was her best friend it also pained her seeing him this melancholic.

She had seen the look on his face when you’d said you had to go back to Earth for a few days to see your family and friends. His reaction was supportive but she could tell that his smile was sad. He’d miss you. This dumbo! The two of you would become a couple by the end of this week if she had any say in the matter. And she’d do the best she could.

“I was thinking of visiting gramps tonight. How about you come with me? So you feel a little less lonely.”

“I’m not lonely, Donna,” he replied with a flat tone.

“Sure. So are you coming or not?”

He gave her a long stare, remaining quiet.

“Fine.”

--

“Is everything okay, Doctor?”

Wilfred’s voice made him realize he was not paying attention to the conversation they were having. Visiting Donna’s grandpa with her was not helping him escape his thoughts about you like she had promised him.

“What?” he asked playing with his ear, still processing Wilfred’s words. “Yeah, why?”

“You’ve been talking much less than usual. I’m a bit worried about you to be honest.”

“Why does everyone think I’m not okay? I’m perfectly fine!” he snapped.

“Ohhh…” Wilfred said lifting his eyebrows, turning his head towards Donna who already had a knowing look on her face. “Seems like you were right.”

“Told ya.”

“Wait, right about what?” the Doctor asked looking all confused.

“About you being in love with that friend of yours, Y/N.”

“I’m…Wha-....Who…That’s n-… Donna!”

“Oh come on, Doctor, it’s just the three of us here. You can say it,” she replied to his nonsense.

“I can’t believe you two gossip about my personal life when I’m not around,” he complained after a long pause.

“What else are we supposed to do?” Donna said, returning to the table the other two were sitting at, serving them some tea.

Wilfred laughed but he reached out his hand to hold the Doctor’s. “Why are you torturing yourself over this? Why don’t you just tell her?”

“It’s not that simple,” he replied. It was obvious by his voice how much the subject hurt him. The thought of never getting to have you completely his made his chest tighten.

“Why not?”

The Doctor exhaled by his nose; a failed attempt for a laugh. “Why not... You know who I am. What I am.”

Donna and Wilfred were silent, looking serious this time.

“But all of that doesn’t matter anyway. She only sees me as a friend.”

“Now that’s not true!” Donna exclaimed.

“Yeah it is.”

“You can’t know that. Not until you tell her.”

“Can we stop talking about this? You were supposed to be cheering me up.”

“Oh Doctor…” Wilfred squeezed his hand even tighter. “You might be much older than me but I still see you as a son. And as a dad I would tell you to go get the girl you love. When you find love you keep it. You never let it go.”

The Doctor’s hearts were breaking while listening to him.

“I know you can’t have forever with her,” he continued, “and I know that it hurts and I’m so sorry, but letting the time you do have with her slip away would be a huge mistake.”

“And what if she doesn’t feel the same? What if I tell her and I end up losing her? Losing her even earlier.”

“Then that’s a risk you’ll have to take.”

Donna smiled sadly at her friend. She had a plan for the following day.

--

You heard your doorbell ring. You stood up from your desk quickly and ran to see who it was only to find Donna standing at your door.

“Donna, what are you doing here? Did something happen? Is the Doctor okay?”

“Whoa whoa, relax, nothing happened,” she smiled trying to calm you down. “I just wanted to see you.”

You exhaled with relief. “Sorry. I just didn’t expect to see you here. Come in.”

While you were leading both of you to the living room, many thoughts came to your mind. Was everything really okay or did she want to tell you something bad and was just trying to bring it up carefully?

“I’m a bit worried,” you vocalized your worries. “You knew I’m coming back tonight, what’s so important you wanna tell me that couldn’t wait?”

“I just wanted us to be alone. Without the Doctor.”

“Oh…” you said, intrigued, settling next to her on the couch. “What is it?”

“Well I…I’m gonna be forward about it.”

“Okay…”

She took a deep breath.

“Do you have feelings for the Doctor?”

You were not expecting that question. You blushed and turned your gaze down to your lap.

“I knew it!” she shouted with pure happiness.

“Donna!”

“You two are such idiots, I don’t know what I'm gonna do with you. If you didn’t have me, I swear…”

You were staring at her, looking absolutely lost.

She smiled softly at you. “You’re in love with him, right?”

There was no point in denying it, the secret was out already. You nodded yes.

“Well you’re in luck because this dumbass of a spaceman is head over heels in love with you.”

“He is?” you asked, feeling your heart melt.

“Oh like crazy!”

At no other time in your life had you ever felt this many butterflies fill your chest and stomach. You could not believe that your best friend, your love, who you thought would never see you the way you saw him, was in love with you. In love. The Doctor loved you.

You let out a dreamy sigh. “He…he loves me. Donna he loves me,” you giggled covering your mouth with both of your hands.

“I know!” she said, joining your laughter and taking you in her arms.

--

Oh you were going to give him the biggest kiss in the world.

Donna stayed for a long time and told you all about the Doctor’s feelings for you and how worried he was that you didn’t love him back. It broke your heart to think of him being sad because of you. This would end tonight.

She didn’t join you back to the TARDIS. You both thought it would be better if it was just you and the Doctor there to talk freely about your feelings.

You thanked her for everything though and gave her the biggest hug you could along with the promise that you’d bake for her her favorite cookies.

Before you knew it you were standing in front of the TARDIS.

--

“She’ll love this one,” the Doctor whispered to himself, writing down on a piece of paper, adding the name of a planet he wanted to visit with you on a list along with others. This planet’s land was your favorite color. He could just imagine your beautiful smile when you’d see it for the first time.

Maybe then…Maybe that would be a good time to talk to you. A romantic place for a romantic talk. Hopefully.

“Doctor?”

He heard your sweet voice and ran to the door.

“You’re back!” He gave you his largest smile and took you in his arms, lifting you from the floor, and giving you a little spin. “Oh I missed you!”

“I missed you too, Doctor. So much.”

You nuzzled your face against his neck. You really had missed him. And now you were back; back to your home; to your comfort; to him.

After a long moment of trying to get enough of each other, you let go. His arms were still lingering around you and the stare the two of you shared was starting to fill with tension.

Your breathing was fast, looking into his eyes. He was handsome. So handsome you couldn’t think of anything else sometimes.

He grabbed your hand, breaking the tension. “Come on,” he said with excitement, leading you to the console. “See what I made while you were away.”

It was a list of places he wanted to visit with you. He started explaining what each of them was. Every single one of them had a reason to be added there. And every reason was related to you or your interests. On one of them, for example, grew a pretty flower that you had seen that one time in one of his books and had mentioned you wanted to see in person; another planet's name sounded like yours.

God he was so sweet. You had never thought you’d meet someone who'd care for you like he did; especially someone as lovely as him.

“Doctor?” you interrupted him.

“Yeah?” He turned to look at you with a soft expression.

You couldn’t resist the urge to kiss him. So you didn’t.

You placed a hand on his cheek and brought your lips together. You felt him tremble against you but a few seconds later he wrapped his arms around you and brought you impossibly close.

The Doctor let out a little moan while deepening the kiss. Oh yeah he would be the end of you.

This was by far the happiest moment of your life.

You kissed, and kissed, and kissed for a very long moment until you had to stop to get some oxygen back to your system.

You stayed close though, your bodies touching just like your foreheads did.

“I love you,” you said sounding breathless.

He smiled.

You promised to yourself that you were gonna kiss that smile all night long.

“Oh Y/N…I love you too. I love you.”

The two of you laughed overwhelmed by joy and the Doctor brought your head to his chest, holding you close.

“Did Donna have something to do with this sudden expression of feelings?” he asked.

“She absolutely did.”

He chuckled. “I knew she was up to something, she was acting so sneaky all day.”

You looked up to him. “I’m glad she did.”

“Me too, darling.”

He left a little kiss on the tip of your nose. You gave a bright smile to the love of your life.

“Can you say it again?” he asked, cupping your cheek with his palm.

“Say what again?” You acted naive even though you already knew what he meant.

“That you love me,” he mumbled shyly.

“I love you,” you responded with your entire heart.

He grinned at you. “Again.”

“I love you,” you repeated. “I lov-”

You didn’t have the chance to finish your sentence as the Doctor grabbed your face and kissed you again.

[hellion-writes]

Surprise Conversations

Pairing: 10th Doctor x reader (intended as platonic)

Pronouns used: They/them (gender neutral reader)

Summary: When life isn’t great for you, a strange man talks to you when you’re at your lowest. 

Word count: 2,345 (edited)

Warnings: Intrusive thoughts, mentions of self harm, suicidal thoughts/tendencies, self deprecation

(A/N): Wrote this as a sort of vent/comfort within the span of 3ish hours and it’s currently 6:30 in the morning. This takes place sometime between Martha and Donna. Enjoy and ignore the awful title and writing pls

    ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆　　 ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆　　 ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

It was always behind you, looming over your shoulder and breathing down your neck with saccharine addled air. You breathed in that oxygen against your will; sometimes that was the only way you could get through the day. Other times, it was the thing that ruined your perfect day. 

It whispered in your ear whenever you made a mistake, no matter how small. It only started yelling whenever you started to decline, escalating to screaming when you were at your worst. You could swear that your eardrums were tattered beyond belief and that you could hear the remnants of the voice in the back of your mind whenever it wasn’t there, but you just chalked it up to the pains of growing up and becoming an adult. 

You listened to it sometimes. You listened to it when it told you that you were a failure for getting anything besides a perfect score on a test. You listened to it when it told you that you were incapable of love when you and your childhood best friend started to drift apart. You listened to it when it told you that slashing at your skin with the razor blade you had unscrewed from a handheld pencil sharpener would solve your problems. And for the most part, you felt as if it was best that you listened to it. 

There were times that you ignored it, though; this was usually whenever it’s ideas were too drastic for the situation. It called for you to jump when you came across ledges and bridges. It beckoned you towards the knife block and commanded you to stick them all in your abdomen. It wants you to jump onto the rails whenever you are boarding a train. 

Ignoring it was hard, but doable when you didn’t have anything to stress out about. A couple of cuts and you’d be good to go for the day. It would be silent. 

That was until things started to pile up. Bill due dates were getting closer and closer, friends were increasingly leaving, your debts were growing larger and larger, and your family was basically nonexistent in helping you with your problems. So you decided to finally give in and listen to everything the voice told you to do. 

You found yourself at your favorite part of the city you lived in: the bridge overlooking the ocean. It had a perfect view of the moon and it’s beams glistening on the ever moving waves. It gave you some comfort that things would continue after you would be at your end. It was beautiful and you’d be damned if you didn’t at least have something to see before you died. 

You were sitting on the ledge, feeling the salty sea breeze raise the goosebumps on your skin. Your grip on the metal bars was tight, almost as steely as the beam itself. Your feet dangled over the abyss limply. 

“Hey.” A voice broke through the quiet, making you jump out of your skin and almost lose your grip on the bars. “Sorry,” they awkwardly coughed. A figure came to a seated position next to you, dragging your eyes off from the waves below. 

The first thing you registered about him was the gravity-defying hair slightly being shifted by the breeze. In the back of your mind, you wondered how much gel he had to use to get it to stick up like that. The second thing you noticed was the way he looked at you. His eyes were expressive, probably more so than the average person. They were a deep brown color, the pupil almost blending in with his iris. 

“So, I assume you aren’t out here for a little stroll?” He glanced at you out of the corner of his eyes and gave you a sliver of a smile. You shook your head and returned to looking over at the ocean. He sat with you in silence for a moment before he spoke up, “what’s your name?” 

“Why do you need to know?” 

“I like meeting new people,” he shrugged. “If it makes it easier, I’ll tell you mine: I’m the Doctor.” 

“Doctor who?” You asked skeptically.

“Just the Doctor,” he grinned widely. 

“Well Doctor, it’s strange that you’re making small talk with someone sitting on the ledge.” 

“Like I said, I like meeting new people… Nice day outside, isn’t it? Or should I say night?”

“Yeah,” you hummed quietly. Silence enveloped you both once more, only the sounds of each other’s breathing and the occasional shuffle being heard whenever one of you moved. It was starting to unnerve you, so you decided that telling him your name wasn’t going to do any harm. “(Y/n).”

“What?” He asked quietly.

“(Y/n). That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” you sighed out the last phrase. Normally, you would’ve said it with a large grin and happiness exuding from your every feature but you just felt numb. 

“(Y/n),” he said slowly, as if getting a feel for your name, “that’s a lovely name. It suits you, you know. Nice to meet you,” he stuck a hand out towards you and gave you a smile that almost melted the numbness that froze you. You stared at it for a moment before slowly moving to grasp his hand in yours and give it a firm little shake.

“Likewise,” you mumbled. He jumped slightly when your cold skin met his warm hand, looking at you in alarm. 

“You’re freezing,” he said before shrugging off his trench coat and laying it across your shoulders. An instant warmth enveloped you, making you unconsciously lean into the warmth. He was warm, incredibly warm. When your nose brushed against the collar, you caught a slight whiff of cologne and… something that you couldn’t place your finger on. Maybe apples or grass? Or a mixture of the two, you didn’t ponder on it. The Doctor was warm and he smelled good. 

“Well being cold is the least of my worries right now, Doc,” a small chuckle left you. You gestured at the water below you wordlessly. It was then that you noticed his slightly beaten up off white converse shoes. “Nice shoes by the way. Not my definition of dress shoes, but at least you aren’t running around barefoot. I respect it.” 

“Thanks,” he grinned, wiggling his feet in the air slightly, “they’re my lucky pair, haven’t failed me yet.”

“You know, you could use a magic eraser or something to get those dirt stains off from them.”

“Why would I do that? These stains are memories,” he pointed to a slightly purple spot. “This is when R- an old friend accidentally ran into trouble with some nasty things.” He pointed to a small grass stain, “this is when I was running with Martha.” 

He had a fond smile on his face as he started to tell you stories about his adventures with his friends. There was Martha, the brilliant doctor (also a doctor, interesting) that almost matched his intelligence. Then there was Sarah Jane, a gifted journalist with a knack for discovering and defending the truth. K-9. Romanas I and II. Peri. Grace. Susan. Kamelion. It was as if this man had lived several lifetimes. 

“It sounds like someone’s lived quite the life,” you mused when the conversation fizzled out. 

“I have,” he nodded, an almost hidden wistfulness in his tone. “Now what about you? I feel like I’ve been hogging the conversation.”

“No, you’re fine; I liked hearing about your friends. As for me, well my life’s just not important.”

“Not important,” he scoffed. “Impossible. I’ve never met anybody who’s life wasn’t important. Everybody has a story, what’s yours?” 

You were silent for a moment before you took a deep breath. What’s one more hour of conversation? It wasn’t like you had any time constraints. You diverged into sharing some aspects of your life, just the small things that wouldn’t normally make any normal person bat an eye at. 

But the Doctor wasn’t a normal person.

You didn’t mean that in a negative way, no far from it. He actually was invested in what you had to say, not just politely nodding along. He asked you questions about what you were talking about, subtly pushing you to elaborate further. Soon enough you both were laughing like you were old friends catching up with each other. If anybody drove past you both, they probably would have thought you both were insane. 

“You actually did that?” He asked incredulously through his snickering. 

“Yes, I was a gullible kid. Not my fault that I’d do anything for a quarter and a cool looking rock,” you smiled and leaned your head against the metal bar behind you. “Everyone thought I was going to become a geologist when I got older with how much I’d hoard rocks in my room like there was no tomorrow. Made Mum cross with me for bringing dirty things into the house, but she never found the stash I had in the basement. I actually think that they’re still there, hidden in a box collecting dust.” You sighed and tightened your grip on the bars, “there’s no appeal in rocks when you grow up and see that the little sparkles and colors in them are just… imperfections that should be ignored.” 

“The little imperfections I see in rocks,” he began, pinching a small bit of loose concrete between his pointer finger and thumb and brought it up to his face to examine it. “Are the things I refuse to ignore. They’re charming and separate it from being just a hunk of slate you find in a rock garden.”

“I feel like that’s some sort of analogy.” 

“That… wasn’t what I was intending, but I do suppose that it could be one.” He turned to squint at you, placing the rock back onto the ledge next to his thigh. You squinted back at him, wondering what was going through his head. A smile ghosted across his face before he laughed to himself. 

“What?” You asked him.

“Nothing,” he chuckled, “it’s just that we’ve talked all night.” He jutted his chin towards the sun rising over the horizon casting oranges and pinks onto the water in place of the moonlight that resided there previously. 

“We have,” you said in surprise. The sun’s rays warmed you slightly, but you didn’t want to move away from the shelter of the trench coat. It gave you a strange sense of comfort. You both watched the sun rise out of the ocean and take its place high in the sky. Traffic started to bustle as people started their morning commute to work, some craning their necks in their cars as they drove by to look at you and the Doctor. None stopped to talk to you. 

“Say, (N/n),” he started.

“(N/n)?” You asked as the corners of your lips quirked upwards. The nickname made you feel warm inside, it felt nice. 

“Yes, (N/n); I think it suits you well. Anyways (N/n), if you were to choose a time and place in all of time and space, where would you like to visit the most?” 

“Anywhere? Like, even on a planet trillions of light years from Earth?” You asked him, watching him nod curtly. “Yes, but there are some rules. You can’t interact with your past self or change a point that was destined to happen. Wars, deaths, births, things like that.”

“Ah, so the general movie rules of time travel?” He grumbled to himself (something along the lines of ‘those are wildly inaccurate’) before he nodded once more. 

After a bit of contemplation, you supplied him with your answer. A spark in his eye appeared, similar to the spark he got when he talked about his friends but slightly different. He slowly got up and stretched his lanky limbs out, cracks coming from the joints and small groans leaving him whenever the stretch was apparently good. 

He looked down at you and, with a grin, extended his hand to you. “(Y/n), would you like to come with me? See that place you wanted to see?” 

You found yourself staring at his hand for the second time that night. Thoughts of stranger danger circulated through your mind before you realized that if he wanted to harm you in any way, he would have done it by now. He wouldn’t have talked to you for hours on end, making you feel like you had a small sliver of yourself back again. 

Why not? One little detour couldn’t hurt; you had a good feeling about going along with him. 

You grabbed his hand and allowed him to pull you up to a standing position. He gave you a small lift so that you could hop over the barrier before he catapulted his body over it. With an arm wrapped around your shoulders, he led you away from the bridge. You both got strange looks from the people driving past, but you managed to ignore it when you burrowed yourself deeper into the trench coat and he brought you closer to him. He led you to an old navy blue police box, much to your confusion. 

“Well, Mx…”

“(L/n),” you supplied.

“Well, Mx. (L/n), welcome to the TARDIS.” 

One trip turned to two. Then three. Then four. Then several more. It became normal to come home from work to see the man waiting for you comfortably in your small apartment, brightening up whenever you walked through the door and asking you excitedly about what you had in mind for your next adventure. 

Soon enough, the voice became something that would only come to you on your bad days, becoming largely dormant in your mind. Whenever you had a bad day, you finally had someone to confide in. Someone that wouldn’t judge you, someone that wouldn’t tell you that you were being overly dramatic. 

The Doctor was different from the normal person; he was the Doctor and you wouldn’t want to have it any other way. 

[multifandomfanficss]

Perfect

Doctor x Reader (Platonic!Jack x Reader)

Prompt: When on an adventure with the Doctor and Jack the reader is attacked by an alien called a Psyfon, a race with psychic abilities who feed off of emotions. The reader gets stuck in their perfect dream realm and the Doctor has to save them before they die in there.

Warnings: Dead family members.

A/N: Pretty much any Doctor can be used, but I mostly thought of 10 and 11 while writing it. The aliens were inspired by the Djinn from Supernatural. I was also inspired by Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest a little bit so if you’re a fan of the main series you should totally check that out. Also please let me know if I made an error in pronouns. I tried to make the reader gender neutral so everyone could relate. 

You had been traveling with the Doctor for a while now and had run into Jack not long after you met him. When you first met Jack, an old friend of the Doctor’s, you didn’t believe him when he said he had known the Doctor for over a century. Judging by his earthly appearance and his age there was no way this could be true, but after watching him die you quickly learned of his immortality. 

You met the Doctor when he saved you from the Cybermen. Sadly he couldn’t save your family from such a terrible fate, but he got you out just in time. Ever since then they had been your biggest fear. Jack and the Doctor had lived for so long they both knew what it was like to lose the people they cared for most...nobody knew better than the Doctor. They helped you get through the pain that came after such a big loss. The Doctor would often hear crying coming from your room during your early nights on the TARDIS when he sat up late in the console room and he would be at your side in seconds to comfort you. He was always there for you no matter what. You wouldn’t have gotten to this point without him. By now the nightmares had gone away, mostly, and the scars had stopped bleeding, but they were still there. They would always be there. This history was a part of you forever, your history, and you were just lucky enough to have the Doctor in it. If you’re being completely honest with yourself you had grown a little bit of a crush on the Doctor. I mean who wouldn’t? He’s the Doctor. You loved him, but you would never tell him. You were happy living with his ignorance. Life was better in the bliss of your friendship. 

It had been just a normal adventure with your two best friends, Jack and the Doctor, but then again nothing was ever really normal with them. You were separated from your boys as your ran down a long dark corridor. Your shoes slapped against the cold, hard pavement as you rounded the corner. When you looked behind you there seemed to be nothing chasing you anymore. You stopped to catch your breath. 

The three of you had been investigating a series of psychic attacks that were leaving people brain dead and full of a strange blue goo. You weren’t sure what kind of alien could do such a thing, but you knew you had to find out. 

“(Y/N)?!” I hear Jack yell in a hushed tone. His voice echos throughout the empty building. You turn to look for him when you start to hear ringing in your ears and a giant pounding in your head. You feel your eyes close as your body hits the ground. 

THIRD PERSON POV

Jack stood next to (Y/N)’s body with his gun aimed at the monster while the Doctor crouched down to check their pulse. 

“You better hope they’re still alive!” Jack said as he shoved his big gun in the monster’s face. Usually the Doctor would object to pointing guns at people, but he was so worried about (Y/N) he didn’t have time to care about Jack’s manners. 

“What did you do to them?!” The Doctor asks standing up to look at the alien. They were from a species called Psyfons, a group of aliens who feed off the emotions of other people. 

“Don’t worry, they’re only sleeping,” the alien slurred. 

“For now,” they added. Jack hit the alien with the butt of his gun and knocked them out. The Doctor gave him a disapproving look.

“You should be happy. Knocking them out was the least I could do” Jack joked. The Doctor rolled his eyes and dropped down to (Y/N)‘s body again. Jack joined him this time. They were sweating. He placed his hand over their forehead.

“They’re burning up” Jack stated the obvious. 

“Yes, I know I-I I have to do-do this thing-“ The Doctor starts stuttering. 

“Then do it!” Jack cuts him. 

“But I can’t! I swore I’d never do it again! Not since-“ He started to get a little choked up.

“Since what?!” Jack questioned. 

“Not since Donna” The Doctor finished sadly. Jack put a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. 

“It’s the only way to save them” Jack told him.

“It was the only way to save her too” The Doctor says sadly.

“Maybe it’ll be different this time” Jack suggests.

“We don’t know that” The Doctor says coldly as he puts his hands to (Y/N)’s head and enter’s their mind. 

(Y/N)’S POV

You wake up laying in the grass in front of your old house. You hear the sound of birds and the sun is just a little too bright for comfort, but it’s home. You take a deep breath of the fresh air. You smile, but you’re confused. You look over to see the Doctor standing in the TARDIS door. Jack is nowhere to be seen. 

“Where’s Jack?” You ask. 

“Oh, popped off to see his friends at Torchwood, I suppose” The Doctor tells you. You nod as you look back to your house. 

“And we’re home because...” You wonder.

“The Psyfon knocked you out. I figured this would be a nice, safe place to rest for a while” He reminds you. 

“And I couldn’t just rest in the TARDIS?” You ask.

“I thought this would be a nice surprise” He says. 

“What year is it?” You ask. You doubt he would be able to bring you to a time period where your family is alive, but it never hurts to ask. 

“2021” He answers.

“So they’re not here” you say sadly.

“Who’s not here?” He asks.

“My family” You say becoming more sad, but more confused by the second. How could he just forget like that? You know he’s lived for a long time, but surely he wouldn’t forget something this important to you. Would he? He gives you a confused look.

“Doctor, my family is d-“ You’re cut off by the sound of a door opening. 

“You didn’t tell us you were coming!” You hear a voice say. You stop dead in your tracks and you go white. It can’t be. 

“Mom?” You say as you turn around to see her. You run to her and engulf her in a giant hug. 

“Woah, what’s that for?” Your mother asks delighted, as you practically knock her down. 

“I just missed you. That’s all” You say as you try to hold back your tears. 

“Where is everybody?” You ask, as it suddenly dawns on you that your family is alive. 

“Your father went to go pick up your brother and sister from school” She informs you. The Doctor comes up behind you and takes your hand. He squeezes it, giving you a big smile. He is an impossible man, but you never knew he could do something like this for you. 

“Why don’t you two come in? It’s almost time for tea” Your mother invites you in. You gladly accept, of course. You watch your mother go into the kitchen as you pull the Doctor aside into the living room and hug him tightly. 

“Thank you” You tell him. That’s when you start to let go of a few tears. 

“I figured it was time to go home” He says happily. The hug lingers a little longer than usual. He just holds you. Then he places a quick kiss to your cheek, just missing your lips. Your face goes red. This is completely out of character for your relationship with the Doctor. Sure you had always wanted to be something more, but he didn’t need to know that. You didn’t want your relationship with him to change. You figure it’s best to just dance around the subject. You pull away and clear your throat. 

“So, um...how did you do it?” You ask.

“Do what?” He asks looking lovingly into your eyes. 

“Bring my family back?” You ask with a slight chuckle.

“I didn’t” He says simply. That’s when your head begins to ring again. 

“Let me in, (Y/N). That’s it.” You hear the Doctor’s voice, but his lips aren’t moving. Suddenly there is a light and the Doctor shifts uncomfortably. He cracks his neck and stretches out his arms. 

“Good thing there was a body here for me to jump into or else that could have been disastrous” He comments. You give him a confused look. 

“Oh, yes! I’m sorry (Y/N), but none of this is real” He says plainly. 

“What?” You ask. This all certainly looks and feels real. The sound of a kettle whistle comes from the kitchen. The Doctor sniffs the air. 

“Is that tea?” He asks. 

“Tea’s ready!” Your mom calls from the kitchen. 

“Doctor, you need to tell me what’s going on right now” You demand. He looks into the kitchen and makes a face.

“The Psyfon. It put you in a dream state so it could feed off your energy and emotions. You’re dying in the real world. Turning to goo” He held out the last word as he made a face of disgust and interest. He gave you a sad look as he started to put the pieces together, of where you were and who you were with. You started to feel your legs give out from underneath you. The Doctor guided you to a chair. 

“I want to stay” You say numbly. 

“(Y/N), none of this is real” He starts.

“I don’t care. I want to stay” You repeat. 

“You’ll die in here” He begins. 

“Time works differently in dreams. I could easily spend my whole life here-“ You try to rationalize it.

“You’ll never see me again” The Doctor tries. 

“There’s a version of you here-“ You try, but are cut off again. He crouches down to your level and takes hold of your hands. 

“(Y/N), none of this is real. It will never be real. Your pain balances out your beauty. There wouldn’t be one without the other and that’s what makes you human and you are SO human. This is all in your head. You will be alone in here forever. Please just come home with me. There are people there who will miss you. Come back with me, back to the TARDIS, please!” He results to begging as a last ditch effort. 

“How can I go back when everything is so perfect here? I’m perfect here. I’m not a mess. I can just be me” You start to cry. 

“You’re always perfect to me and that little bit of mess makes you human. It doesn’t lessen your beauty or your creativity or your kindness. It just adds to who you are as a person” He says, wiping away a tear.

“Please. Come home with me” He begs. You nod in response as he gives your hands a squeeze. He gives you a sad smile. You stand together and you hear the doorbell ring. 

“That must be your father. He forgot his keys again” Your mother laughs as she walks to the door. The door opens and the Doctor pushes himself in front of your as three Cybermen crash through the door. 

“DELETE” One yells, as it kills your mother. 

“NO” You scream, as the Doctor tries to keep you from running towards her.

“She isn’t real! Come on!” He yells over the sound of pounding Cybermen feet as he pulls you out the back way to the garden.

“Where’s the TARDIS?” He asks. 

“It’s on the other side of the house!” You say as you pull him around the building. You lay your eyes on the beautiful blue box as the Doctor shoves his key inside. 

“YOU WILL BE UPGRADED” The Cybermen shout. Once unlocked, you push your way through the doors to find a hollow Police Box. 

“Why is this happening?!” You cry. The Doctor places his hands on your shoulders. 

“The dream is turning into a nightmare to try to keep you here. (Y/N), come on. You have to think. What’s keeping you here?” He asks.

“My family is dead!” You cry.

“Yes, something else” He tries to think. You look at his thinking face. His beautiful thinking face and it strikes you. 

“I’m in love with you” You blurt out.

“What?!” He looks back at you with a confused look. 

“The version of you here. I think he felt the same way” You give him an embarrassed look. He lets go of a big breath. 

“Well...” He starts as he tilts his head. 

“I suppose if admitting the way I feel gets us out of here then the real me doesn’t feel very different” He finishes quickly. 

“Wait, what?!” You respond. He gives you his classic Doctor smile before the Cybermen fade. Everything fades. The world goes black. 

You wake up crying with a pounding headache in your bed in the TARDIS. The Doctor rushes in just like old times. 

“It’s okay. I’m here” The Doctor tells you as he sits on your bed and wraps his arms around you. 

“I just had the most insane dream” You start to tell him. 

“Well...” His voice fades. 

“Doctor, was that real?” You ask him. He pulls back to look at you. 

“In a sense, yes” He goes on to explain the effects the Psyfon had on you and how he went into your mind to save you. He explains how you were unconscious when you came out of the dream state and that he brought you back to your room on the TARDIS to rest.

“Where’s Jack?” You ask.

“He’s bringing the Psyfon to the Shadow Proclamation for me where they will be tried for their psychological attacks. They won’t hurt anyone anymore” He promises. After you’ve calmed down somewhat he gets up to leave the room. 

“You should get some rest” He says opening the door. 

“Wait! Doctor, do you think maybe you could stay with me? Just until I fall asleep?” You ask. 

“Of course” He responds as he awkwardly climbs into your bed and wraps his arms around you. You almost forget about your confessions until he kisses you on the cheek. 

“Goodnight, (Y/N)” He says sweetly.

“Goodnight, Doctor” You say as you drift off to sleep to the sound of his dual heartbeats. 

[awindylife-writes]

S4e7 Silence in the Library Part 2

Relationships: 10th Doctor x reader, River x reader (platonic), River x Doctor (platonic), Donna x reader (platonic), Donna x Doctor (platonic)

Summary: rewrite of S4e7 Silence in the library and S4e8 Forest of the dead. No romantic Doctor x River, l'm sorry. The Doctor, Donna and you find yourselves in the biggest library in the universe. You meet a woman called River Song, and then the shadows turn against you.

Warning: mentions of death, people are eaten by the shadows, River dies

"It's a carnivourus swarm, you can't reason with it!" River yelled at the Doctor.

"Five minutes!" Of course he wanted to talk to Vashta Nerada. What were you expecting?

"Y/N, you come with me," she ordered then. If there was one thing she could do, then by god she would keep you safe.

"Other Dave, stay with the Doctor, pull him out when he's too stupid to live. The rest of you, follow me!"

~

"You know, l keep wishing you were here. That you and the Doctor were here." River was kneeling with you by the circular trap door. The room was, for the time being, clear of shadows.

"But we are. River, l'm here," you assured her.

She opened her mouth, and then stopped. She looked at the floor and started again. "You know when you see a photograph of someone you know, but it's from years before you knew them. And it's like... like they're not finished, they're- they're not done yet." She took a deep breath.

"Well..." This is where she met your eyes. She looked broken. "Yes, the Doctor is here. You are here, you came when l called like you always do."

River sighed and you knew that what was coming would break you too. "But not my Y/N.You're not mine," she admitted, shaking her head. Tears welled up in your eyes. "And he's not my Doctor."

She went on, because she had to. If she stopped, you didn't know what would happen to the two of you. "I've seen whole armies turn and run away, and he'd just swagger off, back to his TARDIS and open the doors with a snap of his fingers." She snapped hers now.

"Y/N Y/S," she called you, "with the Doctor, in the TARDIS. Next stop everywhere," she whispered to you close.

"Spoilers," the Doctor's hollow voice rang out, echoing in the room. You and River whirled around.

He started descending the stairs. "Nobody can open a TARDIS by snapping their fingers." He jumped the railing, "Doesn't work like that."

He walked by you, but River's calm voice stopped him. "It does for the Doctor."

"I am the Doctor," he told her with sudden anger in his voice.

She just nodded sadly, "Yeah, someday."

~

"Lux will manage without me. You can't." River surged past you and nocked the Doctor out with a quick blow to the head. She looked at you and you knew she was ready. She brought her fists up for a second time.

"River," you begged.

"I have to," she told you with tears in her voice.

"River, you know his name," you begged her to understand. "He needs you." He doesn't need me. At least not as much as you.

"Oh. Oh no," she started shaking her head, eyes wide. She had known this was going to be a problem. "Oh no, no-no-no-no." She couldn't stop her head from shaking, all of her was just going No.

She rubbed her face with her hand then looked at the ceiling for a second to collect herself. Her gaze came back to you. "Right, Y/N, listen. We don't have a lot of time, so - he needs you more." She went on before you could object. "And even if he didn't," her blue eyes went soft, "l love you too much to let you die."

You didn't know what to do. This wasn't what you had expected, so you just stood there for a second.

She brought her hand up and softly caressed your cheek, now so much closer than before. "You're staying," she told you, almost like an order. "And l'm not." Her voice was final and her eyes- loving and utterly fond, shattered and strong eyes and how were you going to let her go?

"River l-" Before you said anything else her eyes were back to how they had been - determined.

"Either you let me tie you up or l'm knocking you out," she told you, the hardness in her eyes reflected in her voice. "And l know you, so don't think you'll win that fight." She was tense, shoulders rigid and arms up, as if waiting for you to attack.

You would never, and you knew her enough to know she was right. The whole truth of this situation came crashing down on you.

"Let me stay," you asked, voice certain but throat tight. "Tie me up, but let me stay with you." Hot tears welled up in your eyes and blurred your vision.

"Hands," she commanded, and you brought them up at once. She hurriedly chained you to the pipe in the wall, then did the same with the unconscious Doctor.

~

"You wouldn't have a chance and neither do l!" River's desparate voice rang out.

Your tears had dried and you refused to shed any more.

"River please, no," the Doctor begged.

"Funny thing is, this means you've always known how l was going to die. All the time we've been together you both knew l was coming here." Her voice trembled.

"The last time l saw you two, the real you, the future you, you showed up on my doorstep, all dressed up." She smiled and nodded to herself. "You took me to Derillium, to see the Singing Towers. Oh, what a night that was. The towers sang, and you both cried. You wouldn't tell me why, but l suppose you knew it was time. My time, time to come to the library. He even gave me his screwdriver," she nodded at the Doctor and smiled sadly. "That should've been a clue."

"River-" you began, trembling. This can't be happening no please nonono-

"There is nothing you can do," she told you gently.

The Doctor was still struggling, tugging desparately on his handcuffs no matter what pain it caused him. "Let me do this!" he begged in tears.

"If you die here it'll mean l never met you!" she answered with just as much desparation.

"Time can be rewritten!"

"Not those times, not one line, don't you dare!" There was something final in her voice. You took the Doctor's hand and he pulled you closer. He put his free arm around you and held you tightly.

"It's okay, its okay, it's not over for you two," she told you, voice oh so gentle. "You'll see me again.You've got all of that to come,"  she whispered, but the words echoed in your mind. "You, and me, time and space," she sighed. "You watch us run."  There was such strength in her then you could only watch in awe. Then a single tear appeared in the corner of her eye.

"River, you know my name." The Doctor had to stop after such a sentence. "You whispered my name in my ear. There's only one reason l could ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time l could." Trembles wracked his body, his hair waving in the air.

"Husssh now," she whispered to him and smiled. "Spoilers." Her tear was now glistening on her cheek.

"And you're wrong," she told you, her blue eyes suddenly holding yours. River knew who you thought she was, but the Doctor could tell someone his name if they were family, it was broader than just romantic love. That would have been an awful way to live.

"Just remember, you're wrong."

What? "Three." You could suddenly hear the countdown. "Two. One."

"RIVER!" you screamed her name with everything you had as she connected the handles. Your vision went white.

The Doctor pressed you into his chest. He had turned around to shield you from the flare.

When it passed, he held you to him as you both sobbed.

~

"Why! Why would l give her my screwdriver, why would l do that?!? Thing is, future me used to think about it. All those years to think of a way to save her! What he did was give her a screwdriver! Why would l do that!?!?" The Doctor held the thing in question up, staring at it like a madman.

You were grinning. Hope really was like the sun.

He took off the lid, and there they were. The green lights in a row - River's life. You could fly.

"Oh," the Doctor breathed.

"Oh."

"Oh!"

"Look at that! I'm very good!"

"What-" Donna started.

"Saved her," you told her and tugged on the Doctor's arm.

You ran.

~

In the end, you stood in front of the TARDIS, side by side with the Doctor. He looked at you, similing so wide it reached his brown eyes.

You smiled back and brought your hand up in sync with his.

Two snaps were heard as one, and the TARDIS door opened.

[unpopularwiththepopulace]

Don’t I Get a Dream for Myself ? – Bernadette Peters and the 'Gypsy' Saga

Gypsy. It’s perhaps the most daunting of all of the projects related to Bernadette Peters to try to grapple with and discuss. It’s also perhaps the most significant.

For someone notoriously guarded of her privacy and personal life, careful with her words, and selective of the questions she answers, the narrative around this show provides some of the most meaningful insights it is possible to derive in relation to Bernadette herself. The show’s ability to do this is unique, through the way it eerily parallels her own life and spans a large range in time from both Bernadette Peters the Broadway Legend, right back to where it all began with Bernadette Lazzara, the young Italian girl put into showbusiness by her mother.

The most logical place to start is at the very beginning – it is a very good place to start, after all.

(Though no one tell Gypsy this, if the fierce two-way battle with The Sound of Music at the 1960 Tony Awards is anything to be remembered. Anyway, I digress…)

Gypsy: A Musical Fable with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and book by Arthur Laurents, burst into the world and onto the New York stage in May of 1959. After closing on Broadway in March 1961, Ethel Merman as the world’s original Mama Rose herself led the first national tour off almost immediately around the country. Just a few months later, a second national touring company was formed, starring Mitzi Green and then Mary McCarty as Rose, to cover more cities than the original. It is here that Bernadette comes in.

A 13-year-old Bernadette Peters found herself part of this show in her “first professional” on-the-road production, travelling across the country with her older sister, “Donna (who was also in the show), and their mother (who wasn’t)”.

The tour played through cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, New Haven, Baltimore and Las Vegas before closing in Ohio in 1962. Somewhat uncannily, its September 1961 opening night in Detroit’s Schubert Theatre even returns matters full circle to the 2003 revival and New York’s own Schubert Theatre.

Indeed this bus-and-truck tour was somewhat of a turning point for Bernadette. She’d later remember, “I mostly thought of performing as a hobby until I went on the road with Gypsy”.

But while this production seminally marked a notable moment for the young actress as well as the point where her long and consequential involvement with Gypsy begins, it’s important to recognise she was very much not yet the star of the show and then only a small part of a larger whole.

Bernadette was with the troupe as a member of the ensemble. She took on different positions in the company through the period of nearly a year that the show ran for, including billing as ‘Thelma’ (one of the Hollywood Blondes), ‘Hawaiian Girl’, and additional understudy credits for Agnes and Dainty June.

The above photo shows Bernadette (left) with another member of the ensemble (Sharon McCartin) backstage at the Chicago Opera House as one of the stops along the tour. Her comment on the stage of the Chicago theatre – “I’d never seen anything so big in my life!” – undeniably conveys how her experiences were new and appreciably daunting.

Along the tour, she assumed centre-stage once or twice as the understudy for Dainty June, but playing the young star was not her main role. Unlike what more dominant memory of the story seems to purport.

Main credits of June went instead to Susie Martin – a name and a tale of truth-bending that’s now well-known from Bernadette’s concert anecdotes. While performing her solo shows as an adult and singing from Gypsy, Bernadette has often been known to take a moment to penitently atone for historical indiscretions of identity theft or erasure where her mother long ago conveniently left out the “understudy” descriptive when putting down Dainty June on her resumé, in an effort to add weight to the teenager’s list of credits.

Whatever happened to Susie Martin? – many have wondered. Well, she soon left the theatre. But not before appearing in two more regional productions of Gypsy and a 1963 Off-Broadway revival of Best Foot Forward with Liza Minnelli and Christopher Walken.

Bernadette too went on to other regional productions of Gypsy. She spent the summer of 1962 in various summer stock stagings with The Kenley Players, like in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and this time she did indeed get to play June.

Above shows photos from different programmes for these productions. While some may have featured odd forms of photo editing, they at least also bring to attention Rose here being played by none other than Betty Hutton.

The two women couldn’t have been in more different positions when they coalesced in these rough-around-the-edges, small-scale productions. A young Bernadette was broaching summer stock in starting to take on bigger roles in the ascendency to her bright and long career. Meanwhile, Betty found herself there while navigating the descent that followed her sharp but fickle rise to Hollywood fame in the ‘40s and early ‘50s. Top billing Monday, Tuesday you really are touring in stock after all.

While details aren’t plentiful for these productions, it was recounted Betty apparently struggled in performing the role. And understandably so. Following the recent traumatic death of her mother in a house fire, and the birth of her third child shortly before the shows began, it’s not hard to see why her mind might have been elsewhere. Still, she was apparently impressed enough by the younger actress who turned in one of the show’s “creditable performances” to make comment that she would’ve liked Bernadette to play her if a movie were made about her life.

Bernadette might not have done this exactly, but she did go on to revitalise Betty’s best-known movie role, when stepping into Annie Oakley’s shoes in the 1999 Annie Get Your Gun revival. With Bernadette’s first Ethel Merman show under her belt, the ball was soon rolling on her second.

The 2003 production of Gypsy was imminently beckoning as her next successive Broadway musical and it was Arthur Laurents who lit the match to spark Bernadette’s involvement. Laurents, as the show’s original librettist, drove the revival by saying he “didn’t want to see the same Rose” he’d seen before. Going back to June Havoc’s description of her mother as “small” and a “mankiller”, and Arthur’s take that Bernadette sung the part “with more nuance for the lyrics and the character than the others”, the choice of Bernadette was justified. Moreover, “Laurents – whose idea it was to hire her – [said] going against type is exactly the point,” and Sam Mendes, as director, qualified “the tradition of battle axes in that role has been explored”.

So Bernadette also had her own baseline of innate physical similarity to the original Rose Hovick, in addition to her own first-hand memories of the women she’d acted alongside as Rose in her youth to bring into her characterisation of the infamous stage mother.

But there was a third factor beyond those as well to be considered in the personal material she had access to draw from for her characterisation. Namely, her own real life stage mother.

Marguerite Lazzara did share traits with the character of Rose. She too helped herself to silverware from restaurants, and put her daughters in showbusiness for the vicarious thrill. Marguerite had “always wanted to become an actress herself”, but had long been denied her desire by her own mother, who likened actresses to being as “close to a whore as you could be without, you know, getting on your back”.

In that case, to “escape a housewife’s dreary fate in Ozone Park”, Marguerite channelled her latent dream through her pair of young daughters instead, shepherding them out along the road. Thus was produced a trio of the two children ushered around the theatre circuit by the driven mother, forming an undeniable parallelism and a mirror image of both Bernadette’s reality and Gypsy’s core itself. Bernadette didn’t see some of these familial parallels at the time when she was a child, considering “maybe I didn’t want to see” – “didn’t want to see a mother doing that to her daughter”.

It was coming back to the show as an adult that helped Bernadette resolve who her mother was and some of the motivations that had propelled her when Bernadette was still a child. She realised, “I think she thought she was going to die very young”, as her own father died young. So “she was rushing around to get as much of her life as she could in there”.

When she herself returned to the production in playing Rose, Bernadette conceded to sometimes bringing elements of her mother and her driven energy into her portrayal, and admitted too she looked “like her a lot in the role”. You can assess any familial resemblances for yourself, from the images below that show a young Marguerite next to Bernadette in costume as Rose, and then with the pair backstage in 1961 in a dressing room on the tour.

Marguerite was ambitious. From her own personal position and with the restrictions imposed upon her, it was ambition that materialised through her children. Irrevocably, she altered them. She placed Bernadette on TV as a very young child (“I was four when my mother put me in the business”); changed her daughter’s surname (“She told me my real name was too long for the marquees,” or really – “too Italian”); doctored her resumé (“Somehow the word ‘understudy’ vanished. ‘No one will know,’ said Marguerite”); and lightened her hair (“She’d say, ‘Oh, I’m just putting a little conditioner on it.’ But slowly my hair got blonder and blonder!”). All in the hope of giving her child a more favourable chance at the life she’d always wanted for herself.

On paper, a classic stage mother. “When I was a kid, she fulfilled herself through me,” Bernadette would say. “She put me into show business so she could get a taste of the life herself.”

But it’s important to consider Bernadette often qualifies that her mother wasn’t as brutal as Rose, nor was she herself as traumatised as June.

Bernadette didn’t begrudge her mother for her choices – at least by the time she was an adult, she’d rationalised them, explaining “naturally it was more exciting [for her] to go on the road with me than staying home and keeping house”.

As a child, Bernadette hadn’t necessarily wanted to be on stage, but there was a sense of ambivalence – not resentful belligerence – as she “didn’t care one way or the other” when she found herself there.

Like June, Bernadette may have been entered into and coaxed around a path she hadn’t voluntarily chosen. But unlike June, Bernadette had a deal with her mother that “she had only to say the word”, and she could leave.

Most crucially, she never did.

But that’s not to say Bernadette was enamoured with acting from the beginning.

She seemed to feel ‘outside’ of that world and those in it. And others saw it too.

It was in 1961 in Gypsy that Bernadette first met Marvin Laird – her long-time accompanist, conductor and arranger. The way he put it, he “noticed this one young girl, very close with her mother” who, during breaks, “didn’t mix much with the other girls”.

Beneath the effervescent stage persona, there’s a quieter and more reserved reality, and a sense of separation and solitary division.

When asked by Jesse Green in 2003 for the extensive profile in The New York Times if she thought her experiences on the road in Gypsy were good for her at that age, she gives a curious, somewhat abstract, predominantly dark, potentially macabre, response. He wrote:

She doesn’t answer at first but seems to scan an image bank just behind her eyes for something to lock onto. Eventually she comes out with a seeming non sequitur. “I didn’t know how to swim. I remember, in Las Vegas, I fell in, once, and they thought I was flailing, but I felt like: ‘It’s pretty down here!’ I might have been dying and I was thinking: ‘Look at the pretty color!’ And suddenly my fear of water was gone, and I could have stayed in forever.” After a while, I realize she’s answered my question. Then she dismisses the image: “But I had to get my hair dry for the show that day, so up I came.”

I’m still not entirely sure I know what she’s trying to convey here. My interpretation of this anecdote changes as I have re-visited and re-examined it on multiple occasions at different time points. It’s arguably multiply polysemic.

Was she simply swept up in a moment of childlike distraction, lost in the temporary respite alone away from the usual noise and clamour? Was she indicating comprehension that her feelings and perspectives came secondary to any practical necessities and inevitable responsibilities? Was she using the water to depict a muffling and fishbowl-like detachment from others her age who got to live more ‘ordinary’ lives in the ‘normal’ world above that she felt separate from? Was she referencing the pretty colours she saw as a metaphor for show business and how she became bewitched by them even despite potential dangers? Was she trying to legitimately drown herself, or at least exhibiting an ambivalence again as to whether she lived or died, because of what the highly pressurised demands on her felt like?

The underlying sentiment through her response in answer to Green’s primary question was that, in essence – no. Being a child actor was not “over all, a good experience for a youngster”.

Acting might have been something she fell in love with over time, but not all at once, not right from the beginning, and not without noting its perils.

It was a matter of accidental circumstance that landed Bernadette in the show business world to begin with at such a young age in the first place – “I just found myself here,” she would offer.

Her mother, who was “always crazy about the stage”, “insisted” that her sister, Donna take lessons in singing, dancing and acting.

A further point of interest to note is that, although it was Bernadette with her new surname who would grow up to be the famous actress, look to the cast lists from the 1961 touring production of Gypsy that featured both sisters in the company (see photo below) and you’ll find no ‘Lazzara’ in sight. Donna too, appearing under the novel moniker of “Donna Forbes”, had also already become stagified (nay, ethnically neutralised?) by her mother. As such it is clearly demonstrated that Marguerite’s intention at that point was to make stars of both her daughters. Correspondingly so, when her sister returned from her performance lessons some years before, “Donna would come home and teach me what she had learned,” Bernadette remembered. She may have gotten her “training second hand”, but the key element was that she got it.

For Bernadette, it was a short jump from emulating magpied tricks from her sister as well as routines from Golden Age Busby Berkeley musicals on the ‘Million Dollar Movie’ in front of the TV screen, to her mother getting her on the other side of the screen and actually performing on TV itself – belting out Sophie Tucker impressions aged five for all the nation to see.

The photos below show Bernadette in performative situations at a young age (look for criss-crossed laces in the second for identification).

“At first, as a toddler, Bernadette enjoyed performing; it came naturally, a form of play that people inexplicably liked to watch.” It was “just a hobby” and she “wanted to do it”.

But while she may not have detested it, she didn’t entirely comprehend what was going on either. “I didn’t even know I was on TV,” she said. “I didn’t know that those big gadgets pointed at me were cameras and that they had anything to do with what people saw on the television set.”

When she started gaining more of an awareness of how “such play [was being] co-opted for commercial purposes”, she grew less enthralled. “She didn’t care for the bizarre children, accompanied by desperate mothers, she began to see at auditions: ‘They spent their whole time smiling for no reason, you know?’”

Being a child who had become sentient of being a child performer began to grow wearisome and grating to the young girl who had her equity card, a professional (and strange, new) stage name, and an increasingly long list of expectations by the time she was nine. There’s a keen sense she did not enjoy being in such a position: “I wouldn’t want to be a child again. When you’re a child, you have thoughts, but nobody listens to you. Nobody has any respect for you”.

Gypsy did indeed mark a turning point for Bernadette as mentioned above – but not just in the way that seems obvious. Looking back at it now, it does appear the monumental turning point at which she started appearing in significant and reputable productions, beginning what would be the foundation to her ‘professional’ career. However it was also the turning point after which she nearly quit the business altogether.

When she returned from performing in Gypsy, Bernadette felt like she’d had enough. One way of putting it was that she “then retired from the business to attend high school”, wanting to have some semblance of a normal scholastic experience “without the interruptions”. But whatever dissatisfaction she was feeling as an early adolescent on stage, she didn’t resolve at school – going as far as saying that while at Quintano’s School for Young Professionals, “she was in pain”.

“When you’re a teenager you’re too aware of yourself,” she recalled. Being a teen and trying to come to terms with of the expectation of the ‘60s that “you are supposed to look like Twiggy, and you don’t, you feel everything is wrong about you”. Everything “was all about tall, skinny, no chest…[and] hair straight”. Little Bernadette with her “mass of [curly] hair and distracting bosom”, as Alex Witchel put it, was never going to fit that mould. “That was not me,” she stated. “At all.”

Her self-consciousness grew to the point that it became overwhelming and asphyxiating. “I was trying desperately to blend in and be normal, but that doesn’t allow creativity to come out,” Bernadette said. “I knew I was acting terrible. The words were sticking in my mouth and all I could think about was how I looked”. It was hard enough just to look at herself (“I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror”), let alone to have other people gawk at her on stage. So she stopped trying. She “didn’t work much from age 13 to 17” in the slightest. Bernadette would later reflect in 1981 in an atypically open and vulnerable interview, “I was very insecure. Insecurity is poison. It’s like wearing chains”.

It was a combination of factors that helped her overcome these feelings of such toxic and weighty burden to draw her back into the public world of performing and the stage. “The two people who helped her most, she says, were David LeGrant, her first acting teacher, and her vocal coach, Jim Gregory.” Jim helped with “[opening] a whole creative world for [her] with singing”; and it was David who’d give her the now infamous and often (mis)quoted line about individuality and being yourself.

Having these kinds of lessons, she reasoned, was “really a wonderful emotional outlet for a kid of 17”. The process of it all was beneficial for her therapeutically – “you have a lot of emotions at that time in your life, and it was great to go to an acting class and use them up”. And Bernadette felt freer on stage than she did out on her own in the ‘real world’, saying “[up there] I don’t have to worry about what I’m doing or saying because I’m doing and saying what I’m supposed to be doing and saying”.

Finally then and with considerable bolstering and support, she grew comfortable with the notion of being visible on stage and in public, and realised she was never going to blend in as part of the chorus so it was simply better to let go of such a futile pursuit.

David LeGrant’s guiding advice to Bernadette (“You’ve got to be original, because if you’re like everyone else, what do they need you for?”) wasn’t just a trite aphorism. For her, it was a life raft. It was the key mental framing device that allowed her to comprehend for the first time that she might actually have intrinsic value as herself. And that it was imperative she let herself use it.

She had always stuck out, yes, but she had to learn how to want to be seen – talking of it as a conscious “choice” she had to make when realising she did “have something to offer”.

Thus soon after Bernadette graduated, she stepped back into productions like in summer stock and then Off-Broadway as she made her debut at that next theatrical level at 18. It wasn’t long before she was discovered in what’s seen as her big break in the unexpected smash hit, Dames at Sea. And so Bernadette Peters, the actress, was back. And she was back with impact and force.

Besides, as she’s also said, she couldn’t do anything else – “if I ever had to do something else to earn a living, I’d be at a total loss”. An aptitude test as a teenager told her so apparently, when she “got minus zero in everything except Theater Arts”. So that was that. Her answer for what she would’ve done if she’d never found acting is both paradoxically exultant and macabre – “I don’t know, probably shot myself!”

Flippant? Maybe. Trivial? No.

Acting is thus undoubtedly related highly to Bernadette’s sense of purpose and self-worth. This is what makes it even more apparent that a show with such personal and historical connections for her, as in Gypsy, was going to be so consequential and impactful to be a part of again as an adult and perform on a public stage.

She’s called inhabiting the role of Rose in the 2003 revival many things: “deeply personal”, “life changing”, “like going through therapy” – to name a few.

In interviews regarding Gypsy and playing the main character, when asked what she had learnt, Bernadette would frequently say something like, “It taught me a lot”. Pressed further about specifics, her answers often hem close to vague platitudes as she maintains her normal tendency of endeavouring to keep her privacy close to her chest.

On one occasion, she actually elaborated somewhat on what she’d learnt, giving a fuller answer than the question is normally afforded anyhow. Beyond all it revealed to her about her mother, she extended to admitting “my capacity for love and my capacity for anger” as aspects in her that the show had permanently altered. Moreover, Rose to her was undoubtedly the “most rewarding and fulfilling acting experience” she had ever had.

But while such deep, personal and emotional depths and memories were being stirred up beneath the surface in private, she was getting vilified in public singularly and repeatedly by New York Post columnist, Michael Riedel.

Even before she’d set foot on stage, Riedel set forth in motion early in the 2003 season a campaign of vocal and opinionated defamation against Bernadette as Rose that she was miscast, insufficiently talented, and would be incapable of executing the role.

Too small, too delicate, too weak, too many curves (and too much knowledge of how to use them). Not bold enough, not loud enough – not Merman enough. Chatter and speculative dissent begun to grow in and around the Broadway theatres.

For such a prestigious and historic musical theatre role, it was always going to be hard to erase the large shadow of an original Merman mould. Ethel was woven into the very fabric of the show, with the rights to Gypsy Rose Lee’s memoirs being obtained at her behest in the first place, and the idiosyncrasies of her voice having been written into the songs themselves by their very authors.

To step out from such a domineering legacy would be a marked challenge at the best of times. Let alone when battling a respiratory infection.

Matters of public perception were certainly not helped when Bernadette then got ill as the show started its preview period and she started missing early performances.

Nor did it help with critical perception that the Tony voting period coincided so synchronously with Gypsy’s first opening months – giving Bernadette no time to recover, find her feet, and settle more healthily into the show for the rest of the run before the all important decisions were made by that omnipotent committee.

The tale of her illness is actually undercut by a more innocent and unsuspecting origin than you’d expect from all the drama and trouble it engendered. Bernadette decided nearing the show’s opening to treat herself to a manicure. In the salon, she was next to a woman very close to her with a frightful sounding cough. Who could’ve known then that this anonymous and inconspicuous lady through a fateful cause-and-event chain would go on to play such a part in what is among the biggest and most enduring Tony Awards “She was robbed!” discourses? Or even more broadly – in also arguably playing a hand in the closure and financial failure of an $8.5 million Broadway show after its disappointing performance at the Tony Awards that ominously “[spelled] trouble at the box office” and led to its premature demise?

Bernadette did not win the Best Actress in a Musical Tony that night on June 6th 2004. The award went instead (not un-controversially) to newcomer Marissa Jaret Winokur for Hairspray.

She did however give one of the most indelibly resonant and frequently re-referenced solo performances at the awards show just before she lost – defying detractors to comprehend how she could be unworthy of the accolade with a rendition of ‘Rose’s Turn’ that has apocryphally earned one of the longest standing ovations seen after such a performance even to date.

Even further and even more apocryphally, she reportedly did so while still under the weather as legend as circulated by musical theatre fans goes – performing “against doctor’s orders” with stories that have her being “afflicted with anything from a 103-degree fever, to pneumonia, to a collapsed lung”.

Seeing then as unfortunately there is no Tony Award speech to draw on here, matter shall be retrieved fittingly from that which she gave just a few years earlier in 1999 for her first win and previous Ethel Merman role in Annie Get Your Gun to wrap all of this together.

As has been illustrated, there are many arguably scary or alarming aspects in Bernadette’s Gypsy narrative. There’s undeniably much darkness and an ardent clamouring for meaning and self-realisation along the road that tracks her journey parallel to the show. But unlike Rose’s hopeless decries of “Why did I do it?” and “What did it get me?”, there was a point for Bernadette.

As her emotional tribute in 1999 went: “I want to thank my mother, who 48 years ago put me in showbusiness. And I want to finally, officially, say to her – thank you. For giving me this wonderful experience and this journey.”

Whatever all of this was, maybe it was worth it after all.

[randomfandomimagine]

trish!! congrats on your milestone, cariño!! could i please request donna noble (doctor who) with trope 11 "I hate everyone but you" - familial (siblings)? thank you! <3

Character: Donna Noble

Fandom: Doctor Who

Prompts: I hate everyone but you

Relationship: Familial

Words: 292

REQUESTS FOR DRABBLE PROMPTS ARE NOW CLOSED

Donna was the closest thing you had to a sister, to a mother, to a cool aunt. That was the only reason why you let her take you along with her during their wacky travels. Even as you internally were in awe with the amazing places you saw and the interesting people you met, you sulked the entire time.

You didn’t like The Doctor, bossing everyone around and thinking he was better than anyone. Or at least that’s what you led everyone to believe, because he was slowly growing on you. He did try, smiling at you every time your gazes met and always asking for your opinion so you didn’t feel left out.

“Come on now, Y/N...” Donna tiredly told you, tugging at your arm. “Smile for once, will you?”

“No” You scowled instead, tightly crossing your arms over your chest.

“You can’t trick me, I know you’re having fun” She insisted, smiling wide in the hopes that she would infect you with the gesture. It was working. “Maybe The Doctor believes you, but I don’t”

“You don’t know everything, Donna” You whined, and she openly laughed at your tone.

“Come on, make an effort” She insisted, now tugging at your hand until she was holding it. “When we get back, I’ll get you ice cream”

“I’m not a child!” You complained, but seeing her smirk you realized you had fallen in her trap.

“Oh, you’re not?” Donna sarcastically replied. “I thought you were, based on your behavior”

You couldn’t fight the smile that had suddenly taken over your lips. It never ceased to amaze you how Donna always managed to make you smile, how she knew you better than everyone and was the only person to understand you so well.

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