stunt_muppet

What? It's a ficbucket; it's a catch-all place where all the commentfic I write for a single challenge will be posted. They'll all be tossed in here as they're written until I run out of space. Hence, bucket. Shut up, that's what I'm calling it.

In this case, this is the ficbucket for the whoniverse1000 challenge; various commentfics of varying ships and varying lengths will be put up here as I post them in the main thread, for the sake of organization.

Watch this space for more, and while you're here, go contribute some fic to whoniverse1000; every little bit helps, and if there's nothing you like in the requests, you can feel free to write any ship that hasn't been written yet! /pimp

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Title: Staying
Ship: Third Doctor/Jo Grant
Rating: PG/All Ages
Words: 672
A/N: Post-The Green Death; spoilers as such.

---

When he gets back to UNIT HQ from Llanfairfach, the first thing the Doctor does is take the TARDIS twenty years into the future – just to make sure.

Jo isn't easy to locate, but he finds her eventually. Or rather, she finds him; he is checking Dinas Powys when she waves to him from the opposite side of the street. He barely has time to greet her before she dashes across the road and hugs him, saying "Doctor, it's so good to see you again!"

They go back to her house, on the edges of town; she makes tea and biscuits "for old times' sake". He notices that there's no one else at home.

As their tea cools on the kitchen table she tells him about everything that's happened to her in twenty years: the expeditions to the Amazon (wonderful, just wonderful, they were just so full of life, and Doctor, you wouldn't believe what happened that time their canoe got stuck in the middle of the river), the degree in botany (even without those A-levels), the activist life (rewarding, for the most part, and the mines did close eventually), the divorce (amicable; she still worked with Cliff sometimes), the start of her own career. She smiles and chatters just like she used to, like it really has been just a few hours since he bid her goodbye.

The Doctor is used to nonlinear time; he is used to events happening before their causes, and to watching the birth and death of worlds all in a single relative minute. But she has spent so much time living with him in his shifting chronology that to suddenly skip ahead of her feels somehow like abandoning her.

She asks him how things have been for him since he left; she seems puzzled when he says it's been only hours. "You could have just come back the next day," she says. "Why wait all this time?"

"I had to make sure you'd be all right, Jo." He places one hand on her cheek, and smiles to lighten the mood. "I can't trust just anyone with you, you know."

She laughs, but her face falls, just a little, as she rests her hand on his. "I didn't leave you just for him, Doctor. If that's what you're so worried about."

"Oh?"

Jo looks down at the table, and her smile is a bit fainter now. "All those adventures, and all those places we went - and I wouldn't trade them for anything, Doctor, believe me. It's just that...we never went back."

"What do you mean? Was there somewhere you wanted to go back to, something else you wanted to see? We could still do it."

"No, no, that's not it. I mean, we never went back anywhere. We never stayed. We never made sure that everything really would be all right. And, well, that's what I've been doing here. The past twenty years, I've been staying." She looks back up at him, and he's suddenly and sharply aware of all those unseen years between them. "You said you couldn't trust anyone with me. D'you trust me with me?"

Staying. Not abandoned. Not left behind. "Yes. Yes, I rather think I do."

They spend the rest of the day reminiscing about the Axons and Daleks and Sea Devils and Draconia and Peladon (he really should go back and check that one, he thinks); it's near midnight before she checks the time and mentions all the work she's got to do in the morning. They both step outside to say their goodbyes and she kisses him, just once, as they stand in the night air.

"Do come back and visit anytime," she says. "And I do mean anytime, Doctor; I'd like to remember you being here at least once before I shut this door."

"I'll make it my first stop, Jo."

"Goodbye, then! 'Till the next time - or the last time - or something!"

And the Doctor walks off, back to his TARDIS, to let the present take its course.

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Title: You Really Should Have Specified
Ship: Third Doctor/Liz Shaw/Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Rating: PG-13/Teen
Words: 364
A/N: I'm...probably not going to post this in the comm unless of course the Season 7 OT3 doesn't make an appearance in the next week or so; in fact, I'm probably going to hell just for writing it. And besides, I really ought to be writing a Doctor other than Three, just for variety's sake. But this rather demanded to be written, so...here it is. *hides face in shame*

---

"You realize this is entirely your own fault, Brigadier," the Doctor protested, retrieving his jacket. "I did warn you this would be dangerous."

"Dangerous?" The Brigadier sputtered. "I hardly think dangerous covers it. Do you have any idea what my superiors would think of this? We could have been -"

"I'd say it's a good thing they weren't here, then," Liz snapped, looking none too pleased herself as she straightened her skirt. "Now stop shouting; someone will hear you!"

"I told you specifically: the pheromones of the adult Angynosis can have unpredictable mind-altering effects on humanoids, even if the specimen is dead. I told you to stay out of the lab. I told you to wear a face mask."

"Not that it did us much good."

"It was a basic safety precaution, Liz. And it would have been sufficient under normal circumstances. Like if this oblivious twit hadn't started shooting at it."

"Considering that it would have impaled you if I hadn't, you ought to be thanking me, Doctor. And has anyone seen my hat?"

"Post-mortem muscle spasms are completely normal in this species, I'll have you know. Especially during dissection. My, Liz, you haven't half got fingernails, have you," he added, rubbing at the raw skin on his shoulders.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, I'm sure." What might have been either panic or rage had finally crept into her voice. "Both of you stop arguing and get out of here, before we all get arrested."

The Brigadier visibly bit back a shout and made a last attempt at looking dignified - which was somewhat spoiled when he had to retrieve his UNIT beret from atop an unlit Bunsen burner. "The next time you bring in something with...pheromones, you'll do your work on it outside. Or at least somewhere extraordinarily well-ventilated."

"So we can undress and degrade ourselves in public? You’re too generous, Brigadier," Liz retorted, but he had already shut the door behind him. Turning back to her equipment, she pushed a wayward lock of hair back into her ponytail and began gathering up the scalpels and pins.

"You missed a button, Doctor," she said flatly, and walked off to the sink.

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Title: than are dreamt of in your philosophy
Ship: Ninth Doctor/Adric
Rating: PG/All Ages
Words: 687
A/N: Spoilers up to Logopolis (Classic Series) and Dalek (New Series). Contains gratuitous Hamlet quotations, just for good measure.

---

It was one of his last assignments, right before the end. In a suicidal effort the Daleks had snapped shut the last CVE, damning the universe to its long-overdue heat death. He had been sent to open it again, and in the process he'd ended up on the other side.

The fluxes in timespace wrought by the war echoed even here, in the depths of E-space, and he crash-landed somewhere familiar before he'd ever been there at all.

I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

He wouldn't have known anything about when he had landed if he hadn't seen a yet more familiar face through the TARDIS scanner. Unruly hair, curious eyes, clothes he had not yet grown into. All without the ever-present badge for mathematical excellence.

The Doctor opened the door to him, glad for the companionship, glad for a respite from the grim phantasmagoria unfolding in N-space. "Well, don't just sit there, then," he said. "Get in here and help me. You know a thing or two about maths, don't you?"

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

"But how does it work?" Adric asked, staring at its impossible interior - I saw a blue box, he'd said all those lifetimes ago, and hadn't there been just a hint of recognition in his voice, hadn't he adjusted to it rather too well?

"Dimensionally transcendental," he replied, bent over the console. "Inside and outside exist in separate dimensions. What do you know about coordinate gyrostabilisers?"

He was as eager to please as ever, was Adric, setting straight to work on systems that he didn't - couldn't - fully understand yet. And he never stopped asking questions, most of which the Doctor couldn't answer. Wouldn't want to fool around too much with causality, after all. But he could tell him stories.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

"Tiny little universe, this." The necessary repairs had long since been made; they sat alone, just outside the doors, as the quiet of dawn disappeared. "Nothin' more than a sink for another universe's entropy, and look at it now. Whole species, whole solar systems, don&'t even know they're just a dumping ground for someone else. And y'know what? The people who made it that way? They wouldn't hurt a soul." He laughed. "There's so much more out there. Least there used to be. Not so sure anymore."

"Tell me more," Adric asks him. "Tell me what else there is."

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England; of them I have much to tell thee.

The time came, finally, when he could delay no longer, when the call to war could no longer be resisted.

"Take me with you,” Adric pleaded, as the Doctor prepared to take off again. "I don't want to stay here. Let me travel with you. I won't be trouble. I can do repairs, help you fly. Please."

I could, the Doctor thought, in spite of himself. Time was already turbulent; how much more damage could he possibly do by taking him along, by saving yet one more person from dying for him? Let him spare lives, at least, if he must end them too.

The ears are senseless that should give us hearing, to tell him his commandment is fulfill'd - that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

Temporary solutions. Pallitives. Not worth it. Think about the bigger picture. He'd heard the words so many times, repeated them over and over again as he watched another planet burn to cinders. You may save a few people, a few planets, but what will you lose in exchange?

So he shook his head, said "Not this time, Adric. But I'll be back, not too long from now. You can come along then. Even if I don't say so. Only don't mention it to me; you know how it is, all this coming and going, I might be a bit confused."

With that he shut the doors, and let the TARDIS disappear.

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Title: Looking Good is Serious Business
Ship: Second Doctor/Polly Wright
Rating: PG/All Ages
Words: 458
A/N: First time writing the Second Doctor and Polly. We're just having all kinds of fun. :| Anyway, pretend that there's time for something to happen between The Macra Terror and The Faceless Ones; that's when this happens.

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"I'm just saying, Doctor, you don't have to look all rumpled all the time," Polly said, digging her way through an endless line of coats.

"I like looking rumpled," he protested. "I should hardly get anything done at all if I had to worry about keeping my clothes neat." He was beginning to regret showing her where the wardrobe was, because after the initial shock wore off she was completely undaunted by its size.

"The other you stopped a whole great gang of robots and a living computer in one day and he still looked perfectly nice."

"Did I now."

"That's what Ben told me. And he had on a frock coat that fit him right, too." She pulled a long red overcoat off of the rack, examined it critically, looked briefly at him, then shook her head and dove back into her search.

"This frock coat has survived world wars, I'll have you know. Can't say that about just any coat."

She laughed. "Too bad it looks it, then."

The Doctor gave her his best insulted scowl, which only made her laugh more. "Come on, Doctor. You looked just lovely when they got you cleaned up at the Colony!"

"They only cleaned us up so we’d be primed for hypnosis, Polly!"

"So you had to muss up your hair, did you? To keep them from taking over your mind?" She stopped giggling long enough to look at him, her gaze drifting upward. "You know, I think that might just be it."

"What might just be it?"

"Your hair! I'll just straighten it out; you'll look better in no time. Hold still..." From one of her pockets she suddenly brandished a comb.

"Oh no no no no." The Doctor backed away, only to find his back up against the coat rack. "Polly," he protested, holding up his hands as a last line of defense, "there is nothing wrong with my hair."

"Oh, stop squirming, Doctor. You know, you might not have known it, traveling in a TARDIS full of boys, but you really do look smashing when you pay a little attention to your appearance."

"Well, thank you, but -" he dodged as she raised the comb again. "- but I really don't think this is at all necessary -"

He tried to duck out of her reach once more, but at that Polly placed one hand firmly on his shoulder and (quite unexpectedly) kissed him. This had the unfortunate effect of immobilizing him for a moment or two while he tried to figure out what exactly she was doing.

And it was in that moment or two that Polly discreetly brought the comb to his head and began - impressively, considering her obstructed vision - to fix his hair.

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Title: Old Friends and Observers
Ship: Lucy Saxon/Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (via the Random Pairing Generator)
Rating: PG/All Ages
Words: ~1500
A/N: Late entry for the_randomiser. Also I fail at keeping comment-length, so my post on whoniverse1000 will be linked here. Or possibly I'll just edit this down a whole lot.

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Some things are worth forsaking a peaceful retirement for, even if it is your second or third attempt at such. The temporary decommissioning of the Valiant was one of them.

Nobody asked Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart to be there, but he was there all the same. For starters, he had a lengthy and emphatic speech prepared for Colonel Mace on taking suggestions from every jumped-up Ministry of Defense suit and tie who thought himself an engineer when he couldn’t even prove his qualifications, and how since UNIT wasn't beholden to the Ministry in the first place someone should have apprehended Saxon the second he deviated from the First Contact protocols.

But when he arrived, the preparations were already so far underway that nobody took much notice of him. A handful of soldiers evacuated the remaining personnel from the Valiant, holding them by the arms as they walked. Most were stone-faced, silent with shock; a few were babbling.

As he turned his attention to Colonel Mace, a blonde in a red dress - he vaguely recognized her as the Prime Minister's wife - was led out in handcuffs, staring vacantly into the hanger.

"Saxon's wife?" he asked Mace, after the formalities were out of the way. "What's she done, then?"

"The men on board tell us she shot the Prime Minister," he replied. "Of course, even those that have been debriefed haven't given us a coherent story yet. Keep babbling on about a year that never happened."

"You'll hear stranger stories, Colonel. If you haven't already."

The woman in the red dress looked their way and, for an instant, stopped her aimless walk. Wide eyes focused on him.

"Brigadier?" she asked, recognition in her voice. But before she could speak further, the soldiers led her away.

Nobody had called him Brigadier in years.

---

He was told, later that evening, that "the prisoner" had asked for him, and would speak to no one else. He hadn't known who they were talking about until they mentioned that she asked for him by the name Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

When he arrived in the visitor's room, she was already wearing a prisoner's clothes, but her stare had changed very little. She looked to him, he thought, as though someone had just slapped her in the face.

"Well?" He asked, folding his arms. "You wanted to speak to me?" For a few minutes, she didn't reply, only looked at him. Her gaze shifted ever so slightly, her brow barely furrowed with concentration.

"Ninety-eight percent," she said at last, in a soft voice barely audible above the background noise.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Harry, when I asked about the Archangel network, he said it was only ninety-eight, ninety-nine percent effective. Some people would still know." She smiled. "I thought he was joking at first, but...you must have been one of the two percent, mustn't you?"

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, miss." He shook his head. "I really don’t see how I can be of any help to you; strictly speaking I -"

"You knew him." She cut him off.

"Who? The Prime Minister? Not personally, no, why -"

"That's not who I mean, Brigadier."

She fell silent, and he was about to question her further when an old idea, long since dismissed, raised its head again.

But hadn't he suspected? Hadn't he known that something wasn't right about Harold Saxon? The way everyone seemed so fond of him, when no one had heard his name even a year before? The way he worked his way up, into every committee and every ministry? The way no one could quite tell you just what it was he stood for? At the time he hadn't thought anything specific - a bad feeling was all it was, a suspicion. But nobody else had raised the alarm, and nobody (he had to admit it) was taking orders from him anymore. He'd had nothing concrete, and so ignored what seemed to be a groundless suspicion accordingly.

But now that she'd mentioned it, there was someone who hadn't seen him since his days as head of UNIT. Someone who, presumably, could change his face as the Doctor could. They were the same species, after all.

"I wouldn't say I knew him," he replied. It surprised him how easy the idea was to accept, the laconic mastermind he knew reincarnated as a politician who smiled too much - but there was a certain resemblance, that casual calm in the televised speeches he gave. "We encountered each other from time to time."

"He knew you," she said, the placid smile still in place. "He tracked you down personally, I remember. Called you 'Brigadier'. And when he came for you, you told him you'd known, right from the beginning."

The general consensus among the staff seemed to be that Lucy Saxon was quite insane, even leaving aside pulling a gun on her husband. And a few moments ago, he might have thought the same, dismissed her story as raving. But now...

He'd heard stranger stories. "And when did this happen?"

"A few months from now," she replied, turning her gaze away.

She told him about everything - the capture of the Doctor, the paradox, the Toclafane, the year that the Master reigned over the Earth, the year that never happened.

"You were one of the first to resist - really resist, I mean, not just start one of the riots. You gathered up what was left of the military, planned in secret for months." She giggled. "It surprised him, you know, that you managed to hide from him for that long. But he found you eventually."

"So much for my retirement, I suppose," he remarked as he sat down across from her. Reflexive sarcasm - typical stress reaction. The Doctor had lectured him about it once, whereupon he'd pointed out that the Doctor did exactly the same thing.

"Most of the troops, he just let the Toclafane and his own soldiers take care of. But you survived the first strike. So he came after you."

"You were there with him?"

She shook her head. "No. But he had a microphone on him. He wanted us to hear." She blinked, impassive. "Do you want to know what happened then?"

It never happened; it was all undone. "Go ahead."

She reached across the table and with her tiny white hands picked up one of his, examining it as though it were strange and new. "He tried to make you come back to the Valiant with him, to see 'your old friend the Doctor' again - that's what he called him. You wouldn't go. He had to sedate you eventually. I think he was planning to torture you - he did that to a lot of people."

He smiled humorlessly. "Not exactly the end I'd have chosen."

"Oh, he didn't manage it." Her voice was as calm as when she'd first addressed him; she read him his death like a bedtime story. "I don't know exactly what happened. I think one of the guards shot you in the end, to stop you struggling. You died fighting, if it's any consolation."

It wasn't. Not that he needed consoling, of course, since it all never happened anyway, and here he was alive and well. Besides, wasn't that in keeping with the uniform he used to wear? To die defending Queen and country, or world, or whatever was left of it?

It was the months that bothered him, still. She'd said he'd died in the first few months of the year that never existed. He'd died and it had all just kept on going. Nothing stopped. Nothing changed.

He could not, for a moment, think of anything to say; it was Lucy that broke the silence again. "I felt sorry for you," she said, focused still on the back of his hand. "Funny, isn't it? All those people in the beginning - there must have been millions and they were nothing at all. But you were the first one I ever felt sorry for."

Another quiet, stretching on for ages; she stopped staring at his hand and looked down at the table instead. "I can't have been the first one he brought on board," he said, finally, though he'd never been one for morbid curiosity. Better than just sitting here.

"No. There were two, three others before you. I think...I don't remember them as well. They were women. Somewhere in their fourties, fifties. One of them..." Her brow furrowed again, and she turned to look at him. "What was he like?" She asked suddenly. "When you knew him? Tell me what he was like."

The question caught him by surprise; since his most recent retirement, he'd managed to avoid much reminiscence about the old days, even after Saxon began showing up everywhere. And he'd been rather getting used to the everyday.

He could, at the moment, use a breath of fresh air, and another look back out at that everyday. Nice to know it was there, anyway.

"Perhaps some other time, Mrs. Saxon," he said, rising. "Looks to me like your visiting hours are almost up."

She looked up at the guard outside her door. "We have a while longer," she said flatly, without elaboration; she didn't stop him as he got up to leave.

"Do come back sometime," She called after him, but it was a statement, not a plea. "It's lovely having someone to talk to."

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Title: All Manner of Surprises
Ship: Third Doctor/Delgado!Master
Rating: PG/Not-Quite-All-Ages. For implications.
Words: 451
A/N: Um...I'm not sure what the Doctor and the Master are doing together. Call it a Claws of Axos AU where they're traveling together, if it really bothers you. But without the Earth getting destroyed, because that puts a rather grim tone on the whole proceedings. Er.

Inspired by, but not a response to, a prompt at the anonymous kinkmeme at sizeofthatthing.

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"I only mean, Doctor, that this comes as something of a surprise," the Master said, watching the Doctor's hands. "I would think grooming me would be beneath your dignity."

"Leaving that beard the way it was would be beneath my dignity." The Doctor didn't break his gaze; the simple single blade of the razor flicked against the Master's cheek, delicate. "You looked absolutely appalling. One of us had to do something about it. Up." The pressure of his fingertips under the Master's chin was enough to get his point across, and the Master raised his head accordingly. He adjusted his grip on the razor and inspected him with a criticism falsely cool; the metal's slow stroke began again.

"Some might call it subservient," the Master continued.

"Would they?" The Doctor smiled - he couldn't see him, but he knew he was smiling. "Seems to me I'm the one holding a very sharp blade up to your throat."

"Excellent point." It was a simple observation, not meant to threaten or alarm. "And yet the fact remains that you are still performing a menial task for me. Knives notwithstanding, of course."

"Of course." The Doctor didn't respond for a moment, focusing on his task instead, but as he made his way along his chin, to the edge of his jaw, he noted with a casual air: "You could say that I'm abasing myself, doing something for you that you'd do yourself. But -"

And suddenly the blade of the razor pressed harder into the Master's skin - not deep enough to draw blood, not yet, but enough for him to feel its edge and know what it could do with just the slightest bit more force. "- aren't you still counting on me not being careless?"

Their eyes met, and in the still, perfect curve of the blade the Master could almost feel his temptation. Not the temptation to wound, no - the Doctor was never so direct. But if his hand just slipped, if he only pricked his skin and left the smallest, most impermanent mark...

For all that the Doctor pretended to be above such crude gestures of power, the possibility had obviously not escaped him.

Carefully, the Master raised his hand, and let his fingers rest along the blade, urging it on its inevitable course.

But the Doctor only smiled again, and withdrew the razor, wiping it clean as if nothing had happened. And the both of them laughed, quietly; with relief, with satisfaction, perhaps with both.

"Does this mean you'll let me cut your hair?" The Master asked, as the Doctor went back to work.

"No. Why would I do a thing like that?"

"You've let it get terribly unruly, Doctor."



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Title: Castaways
Ship: Jack Harkness/K-9 Mark II
Rating: PG/All Ages
Words: 212
A/N: Post-ep for "The Parting of the Ways". Requested by nentari on a long-ago meme. Also, crack.

---

"You stuck out here too, huh?"

"Affirmative."

Jack leaned back against the wall and surveyed his surroundings. He’d checked floor after floor until they all looked the same; there wasn’t a single human left alive on the Game Station. He’d been just about to start looking for escape pods when the robot dog came crashing through the window.

It was right about then that the whole immortal thing started to set in. Waking up after getting sucked into space would do that to you. (Note for future reference: You have about fifteen seconds to get back before you die again. It had been an interesting half-hour.)

"So," he cast about for something to say. "What’s a...robot dog like you doing in a place like this?"

The robot clicked and whirred; the tiny processors that passed for ears spun with what seemed to be effort. "Insufficient data," it pronounced at last. "Most recent readings indicate spacetime fluctuations in proximity to CVE. Hypothesis: Unstable coordinates caused interference in this unit’s flight pattern."

Careening off through space and time. Not so different from him, really.

He was glad for the company, anyway. And he’d certainly held decent conversations (among other things) with less articulate robots.

"You got a name?"

"My designation is K-9 Mark Two."



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