#dalek beta

[legendofthephoenixsblog]

My personal ranking of named Daleks from the TV show and Big Finish. These are the Daleks that I have gotten to know from watching or listening to the stories they are a part of.

I've scored Dalek Sec's human hybrid form lower than I wanted mainly because we didn't get to see a lot of him.

[aidaran-alha]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Fifteenth Doctor/Rogue (Doctor Who) Characters: Rogue (Doctor Who) Additional Tags: Angst, Light Angst, Character Study, Hurt No Comfort, Introspection, no beta we die like daleks, lonely Summary:

What's left once you've waited for an eternity? ------ He started the slow process of building himself a more durable home, finally accepting he’d be there for a long time. Had he been someone with the head on the skies, like the Doctor, he would have convinced himself it was pretty pointless, as he’d be rescued soon, before finding out what winter was on that planet.

But Rogue had never been that kind of person.

[inastarlesssky]

You know what?

I'm going to just do it. I wanted to write an Allonswin and looked everywhere for a beta, couldn't find one and then despaired and threw the idea away.

But I really want to write them, even if it's just that one stupid scene that won't leave me alone (Ten being the one to rescue her from the Dalek Asylum).

I'm going to write it myself.

But not right now, else @tina-mairin-goldstein will come after me because I promised I wouldn't pick up any more WIPs until I finish one. Right, my friend? XD

[interestingturnofthetables]

Ain’t no way the 2nd Doctor just named these (nice?) Daleks Alpha, Beta, & Omega 😭

The way that has aged is just so

[boywhoswaiting]

Sibling just finished evil of the daleks and literally all they cared about was Alpha, Beta and Omega

[girl-hwat]

oh god, my heart breaks for Alpha, Beta, and Omega dalek

[wadbot]

ENERGIA.WAD: Energia 1.01 MAP11 (-488, -1360, 0) Author: Dimensionality Date: 1997-06-21 Description: 20 maps on Skaro. Single player or Coop to steal the Daleks' new Time Disruptor; Deathmatch: Prevent your opponents from getting the Time Disruptor -- the last map is a race to the finish This version does NOT require DeHackEd. If I remembered to include the DeH, be warned it's a VERY early beta... testing suggestions welcome, but note the date... this should be superceeded pretty soon, as if anyone out there still plays with Doom II... Caveat: whilst I prominently label this as 1.01. not all the probs in 1.0 are fixed. 8-\

[veraynes-blog]

Hi! 28, 41 and 49? 👀

28. Does anyone read your fics before you post them? If so, who?

No, I've never worked with a beta before, and none of my irl friends are into fandom so there's no point sharing fics with them. (Boyfriend did recently stumble on my tumblr and AO3 though, which gave me conniptions ngl. 😐)

I think that's why I'm always so chatty in comments and asks! You guys are my only fandom interaction, I need the engagement in my enclosure! 😅

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

Okay, I don't think this is a style of writing I'll ever be able to successfully imitate, but I think it's absolutely stunning - Salinity (And Other Measurements of Brackish Water) by drawlight. It's a Good Omens fic with just beautiful, delicate, stream-of-consciousness prose that make my heart ache in the best way. All drawlight's works are similarly gorgeous, but that was the one I first came across and which stuck with me ever since. 💕

49. What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it!

I'm currently continuing work on my John Smith/Simm!Master AU. It's up to 16k now! 😁 I can't decide what part would be best to share, so here's a few lines I thought were cool about the Master encountering John's Book of Impossible Things:

The Master opened the first page of the notebook, blinking as he was met with a few messy sketches. They weren't particularly coherent, so he flipped to the next page. More sketches, a few scrawled sentences. Among outlines of shapes that didn't quite make sense, the Master thought he recognised roughly placed star constellations, notes of what might have been coordinates. He kept going, moving through the book. With each page, the drawn images became bolder, more detailed. Here a landscape that very clearly depicted nowhere on Earth. Here a dalek's detailed metal shell. Here a botched diagram of the Acteon Galaxy. A mathematic equation that trailed off into nonsense, with the lower half of the page obliterated by a furious scribble and spilled ink. It was an ugly collection, the Master decided. Knowledge butchered on every page. A Time Lord's vast experience reduced to childish scrawl.

"They're just… flights of fancy, as I said." John watched self-consciously as the Master paged through the book. "Dreams I have, or-or waking dreams, sometimes. Silly, really."

The written sections were becoming longer, less like hasty notes in the margin and more like samples of prose, or perhaps the diary entries the Master had first supposed. I dreamed, each one began, like some desperate disclaimer. The Master ran his finger over the words, feeling where they'd been pressed too harshly into the paper.

"Just stories," John repeated faintly.

Thanks for asking! 🥰

[landscaping-your-mind]

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Category: Gen

Fandom: Doctor Who (2005)

Relationship: Minor or Background Relationship(s)

Characters: Ninth Doctor (Doctor Who), Henry van Statten

Additional Tags: Whumptober, Whumptober 2023, Ninth Doctor (Doctor Who) Whump, Medical Torture, Vivisection, Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Episode: s01e06 Dalek, Hurt No Comfort, Minor Ninth Doctor & Rose Tyler, Title is from a line in the dalek novelisation, which you should all read right now, Mentioned Rose Tyler, Spoilers for Episode: s04e17-18 The End of Time, Captivity, Non-consensual surgery, No beta we die like ten

Words: 807

Chapters: 1/1

Summary:

The Doctor sends the TARDIS and Rose back to her time, and Henry van Statten has a unique alien specimen all to himself. --- “You’re going to die, van Statten,” he says. “You’re going to die because you won’t listen.” “And what do you think will happen to you, Doctor?” The Doctor doesn’t answer --- Written for Whumptober 2023, day 11. Prompts used are captivity and “No one will find you.”

Warnings:

Captivity

Non-consensual surgery

Restraints

Torture

Vivisection

 

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Work Header

Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Category:

Gen

Fandom:

Doctor Who (2005)

Relationship:

Minor or Background Relationship(s)

Characters:

Ninth Doctor (Doctor Who)

Henry van Statten

Additional Tags:

Whumptober

Whumptober 2023

Ninth Doctor (Doctor Who) Whump

Medical Torture

Vivisection

Torture

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Canon Divergence - Episode: s01e06 Dalek

Hurt No Comfort

Minor Ninth Doctor & Rose Tyler

Title is from a line in the dalek novelisation

which you should all read right now

Mentioned Rose Tyler

Spoilers for Episode: s04e17-18 The End of Time

Captivity

Non-consensual surgery

No beta we die like ten

Language: English Series: ← Previous Work Part 11 of Whumptober 2023, ← Previous Work Part 2 of Season 1 Episode 6 Dalek Collections: Whumptober 2023 Stats: Published:2023-10-11Words:807Chapters:1/1Comments:2Kudos:4Hits:26

Alien Dissection

NebbyAxolotl

Summary:

The Doctor sends the TARDIS and Rose back to her time, and Henry van Statten has a unique alien specimen all to himself. Written for Whumptober 2023, day 11. Prompts used are captivity and “No one will find you.”

Notes:

For bloopdydooooo.

Written 10 Oct. 2023. Content warnings in the end notes. Anyway yeahhh babyyy i’m writing the same fic but Again because I like making 9 suffer. I’ve written half the fics in the vivisection tag in this fandom. Brian you need to get on that.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

“With your… girl gone, no one will find you, Doctor.”

The Doctor looks up at van Statten, it’s hard to look anywhere but up, in the position that he’s in. “That’s why I did it.”

“Not the best of decisions,” van Statten responds, amicably.

“That thing you’ve got there.” Van Statten sighs, the Doctor continues regardless. “It’s a monster. It’ll kill everything.”

“So you send your only mode of escape away. Wise.”

The Doctor wishes he could move, could do anything but lie there, because he’s well aware of how his current situation undercuts his point. “That Dalek, if it escapes—“

“Which it won’t,” interrupts van Statten.

“Which is could. If it escapes — when it escapes — it’ll kill its way out of your museum ,” he spits the last word, he’s shaking, he can feel it. “And it’ll kill everyone on Earth.”

“I think you’ll find that humans are better at handling threats than your species was.”

The Doctor laughs, because how wrong can you get. His species stood a chance against the Daleks, that’s more than any other ones could say.

(His species would’ve killed the universe just as much as the Daleks would’ve, and he can’t think about that, he’s told himself he’d never think about that again.)

“You’re going to die, van Statten,” he says. “You’re going to die because you won’t listen.”

“And what do you think will happen to you, Doctor?”

The Doctor doesn’t answer him, and van Statten leaves.

---

The Doctor likes to think that humans tend towards goodness. It’s not that that’s a lie , per se, but it’s not entirely the truth.

See, humans are good when they can see something as the same as them. It’s that sense of kinship, it’s what a lot of species that reach space have in common. It’s also what makes them so dangerous, both to their own species and to others.

It’s not all humans who fear the unknown, but it’s enough to make it so when faced with something different, humans will fear it or assume superiority, often both. And when faced with something they need to distance themselves from, when faced with something they want to hurt, they’ll try their best to see their victim as not a person at all.

This is a long winded way to say that he’s afraid. Afraid of what the scientists — or he assumes they’re scientists — in the room mean, what they’re going to do to him, why haven’t they told him, is that a scalpel?

He’s almost glad Rose is gone. She can’t see this.

“Sedate him,” van Statten says.

“It doesn’t work,” he responds, and he hates it, hates how broken his voice sounds.

“What?” van Statten asks, coming properly into view.

“Anaesthetic,” the Doctor replies. “It doesn’t work.”

The Doctor knows it’s not going to stop him, but at least the Doctor won’t have to deal with what’s about to happen to him with a tube stuck down his throat.

Van Statten makes a gesture to someone and the table where he’s lying is made completely horizontal. Then someone straps his arms — stretched out to either side — legs, even head down. They’re strong, the restraints. What are they planning on doing to him?

“Open him up,” van Statten says, and he can’t help it, his hearts start to race.

The person with the scalpel doesn’t meet his eyes. There’s a pause before it happens, and then they finally make a cut and the Doctor would be writhing in pain if he weren’t strapped down so thoroughly. Instead he screams, wordless.

Through the haze of pain he hears van Statten murmur, “That’s amazing,” and then he’s screaming again, because they’re doing something , and he can’t hear above his own screams.

The Doctor can’t see, can’t see anything but the ceiling and occasional glimpses of van Statten and the scientists who are doing this to him. He’s straining so much against the restraints that he’ll have bruises, provided he lives, because this hurts so much he’s going to die, he’s just going to die.

There’s a pause. The Doctor’s screams peter off into cries, and he hates himself for it, because he can’t even breathe, can’t even get himself to wheeze out that the Dalek is dangerous.

“That’s fascinating ,” van Statten says, and then there’s the pain again, and the Doctor needs to get away, get away from him, but he’s held fast and helpless and all he can do is scream again.

---

They’ve closed the Doctor up, but they haven’t unrestrained him, not even slightly. Haven’t even moved him. He doesn’t want to think about what that means for him.

He doesn’t want to think about a lot of things, least of all that he’s just another oddity in van Statten’s museum, and that his only hope of rescue is in London in 2005.

[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.

[ao3feed-doctorxrose]

Pink in the Night

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/C3M0yEs

by kcchameleon

The scene we all wanted to see if that bloody Dalek hadn't rudely interrupted Rose and the Doctor's reunion in Stolen Earth.

Words: 2472, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: F/M

Characters: Tenth Doctor (Doctor Who), Rose Tyler, Donna Noble, The Doctor (Doctor Who)

Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler

Additional Tags: Reunions, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler Reunion, The Doctor/Rose Tyler Reunion, The Doctor Loves Rose Tyler, POV Tenth Doctor, Fluff, Feelings Realization, Love Confessions, First Kiss, First Real Kiss, Rewrite, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, slight AU, unbetaed, no beta we die like jack (but then we come back ;) ), Giving into feelings, Sweet, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Song: Pink in the Night (Mitski), I Wrote This While Listening to Mitski's Music, Inspired by a Mitski Song

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/C3M0yEs

[pennamesmith]

What if I told you there’s a classic Doctor Who episode where the Doctor creates three friendly Daleks with the capacity to love and names them Alpha, Beta, and Omega.

[nvzwho]

i will absolutely never understand how a character can exist for 40 years and barely exist or be defined when theyre seemingly crucial to a main character's whole thing.

Exactly! Like the fundamental problem with Ace is that she's not a reliable narrator - she exaggerates and evades and is incredibly resistant to accepting fault even when she's talking to someone directly. And then you have this Definitive Relationship for her which... we only ever hear about from Ace and, rarely, other characters. Here's what we know for sure about Audrey:

She lost her father as a baby during WWII.

She was running with the mods by the 1960's (when she was 20), rebelling against her mother and going by the name 'Alex'. This is revealed in a story that has NOTHING to do with Ace (this is a story focused on Susan, which I've mentioned) and is still the only direct characterization we get from Audrey. Ever. During this period she had a boyfriend named Franko, who was taken over by the Daleks.

She married Ace's father (Harry McShane) relatively early, went back to going by Audrey, and had Ace at 27. Around this time she met the Seventh Doctor, who was using the opportunity to apologize to an infant Ace for... well, the usual.

She cried for days after getting the news of her mother's death. This made a strong enough impression on a toddler Ace that she remembered it for decades.

She cheated on Ace's father with his best friend around the time of her second pregnancy (which also lines up with her grieving the death of her mother, so...), and after her son was born, Harry left Audrey and took his son with. Not legal custody, straight up kidnapping. Ace did not find out about her brother's existence until 1997.

Her next romance (depending on if you count the NVAs as canon) was with someone who previously fell in love with Ace during an adventure. No, I don't know how it's not supposed to be weird being the rebound after your daughter.

At some point, Audrey dies of cancer. Ace only found out about this thanks to being at the Time Lord academy and getting the warning 'don't do anything about it'.

And that's it. That's Audrey's complete history. Her only onscreen appearance is as a baby, her only audio appearances are fleeting - related to the NVA story or as a hallucination, except for the Shoreditch Intervention, which again, has her interacting with Susan rather than Ace or the Doctor. Everything is is stuff that Ace tells us and... well, Ace exaggerates and simplifies, often in the direction of absolving herself of culpability. Without actually having an interaction with Audrey as she was during Ace's life or afterwards, there's no way to actually gauge if she's an awful person or just one who's fucked up and perpetuating a broken family cycle. I'm inclined to the latter given that our one bit of solid characterization puts her as the Beta Version of Ace.

[crinosg]

You might think its overkill to use a batallion of heavily armed beta version Daleks as your Mall security, but again recall this is the Reagan years. If anything these things are a soft touch.

[swimmingcreatortyrant]

Based on "Doctor Who" meme

[thetardisisnotourdivision]

I was watching Evil of the Daleks and I got to the bit where Jamie and the Doctor are arguing in episode 5 and honestly? I don't ship them exactly (like I do but I don't at the same time) but that was textbook couple argument. The Doctor goes to put his arm round Jamie and he says "Don't touch me"? Classic. The "You and me, we're finished"? Absolutely spot on. Absolutely textbook angsty otp argument in fanfic. Idk if this is like funny to you lot but I laughed so hard when I first heard.