posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stunt_muppet at 02:28pm on 01/05/2008 under doctor who, fic posts, fic posts: gen, the memory always lies
stunt_muppet at 02:28pm on 01/05/2008 under doctor who, fic posts, fic posts: gen, the memory always liesHaving only 15 icon spaces is a bit of a pain.
Anyway, after much revision, handwringing, and last-minute changes in direction, I give you Chapter 1 of Memory. Comments, criticisms, and suggestions are greatly appreciated. Also, there's an A/N at the end, just so you know.
Title: The Memory Always Lies
Chapter 1: In Which Miss Shaw Contemplates Certainty
Fandom: Doctor Who (Classic Series)
Characters: Third Doctor, Liz Shaw, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Sergeant Benton. No pairings.
Spoilers: Through Season 7 of Classic Who and Season 3 of New Who.
Rating: PG
Words: 2,862 (for this chapter)
Summary: The Doctor must use the Chameleon Arch to avoid an imminent threat, leaving Liz, Benton, and the Brig with a mess and a mystery on their hands.
Beta: The excellentkayliemalinza. *hugs*
A/N: Takes place sometime between The Ambassadors of Death and Inferno, after the TARDIS console has been removed. Uses TV canon rather than book canon with regards to the Chameleon Arch. Further A/Ns at the end of the text, on account of spoilers.
******
******
Cross-posted to![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dwfiction, venusianaikido, and legsofscience; also on Teaspoon. Thanks for reading!
[ETA] Is it bad that I'm having a massive geekout over being linked to inwho_daily? Because I so am. Even though I've got no reason to. I mean, dude. I'm in a newsletter!
Anyway, after much revision, handwringing, and last-minute changes in direction, I give you Chapter 1 of Memory. Comments, criticisms, and suggestions are greatly appreciated. Also, there's an A/N at the end, just so you know.
Title: The Memory Always Lies
Chapter 1: In Which Miss Shaw Contemplates Certainty
Fandom: Doctor Who (Classic Series)
Characters: Third Doctor, Liz Shaw, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Sergeant Benton. No pairings.
Spoilers: Through Season 7 of Classic Who and Season 3 of New Who.
Rating: PG
Words: 2,862 (for this chapter)
Summary: The Doctor must use the Chameleon Arch to avoid an imminent threat, leaving Liz, Benton, and the Brig with a mess and a mystery on their hands.
Beta: The excellent
kayliemalinza. *hugs*A/N: Takes place sometime between The Ambassadors of Death and Inferno, after the TARDIS console has been removed. Uses TV canon rather than book canon with regards to the Chameleon Arch. Further A/Ns at the end of the text, on account of spoilers.
******
It was going to be, Liz reflected as she hung up her coat, another peculiar day.
Strange, how she had already adjusted the baseline between normal and not-normal, how fast she’d incorporated it all. She even dealt with the TARDIS fairly gracefully (if she did say so herself) when the Doctor asked her to help him remove the console. She had learned to cope with a suddenly deeper and wider and fuller cosmos than she’d ever known; what was a little impossible physics to top it all off?
And yet this most recent development, right on the heels of her introduction to dimensional transcendence, managed to uniquely unsettle.
Someone knocked three times, precisely, on the laboratory door.
“Come in, Corporal.” She didn’t look up; she didn’t have to. The Brigadier sent him down every so often, if his section had no pressing assignments that morning, and he would greet her the same way whether she said hello to him or not.
“Morning, Miss Shaw!” And just like every morning, his voice was far too cheery.
“Good morning, Corporal.” Liz had been trying to look at his face as little as possible. On a conscious level, she knew she had little reason to avoid him; he was just like any other errand boy that Lethbridge-Stewart sent her way when he needed something. She had made quite certain of that.
But certainty, it turned out, could be a funny thing. It was easy to be certain when, say, a two-and-a-half-meter sentient reptilian was breathing on your face, because then you had two options: your senses were deceiving you or the reptile-thing was real. But when you heard that familiar voice speaking the entirely wrong words, and that familiar face wearing the entirely wrong smile….
She could not dispel the suspicion that it was all some colossal joke at her expense, that any moment he was going to laugh, clap her on the shoulder, and chide her for being so easily taken in. “I take it the Brigadier has paperwork for me?”
“Just the follow-up on yesterday’s specimens, miss.” He stood beside her now, a few file folders tucked under one arm. Back straight, uniform neat. And smiling, of course, however faintly. “Something about an…” He opened one folder, browsed through the papers inside. “…Amnexis IV deep-space monitor, whatever that happens to be?”
“That’s the one.” Liz removed the files from his open hands before he could read any further. “Let him know I’ve got them. I should have them ready by this afternoon.”
“Right away, Miss Shaw.” He turned sharply on heel and walked away. She thought she could hear him beginning to whistle.
Liz shook her head as the door shut behind him. A few more days; that would be all she needed to re-adjust her frame of reference. But a peculiar few days they’d be.
---
One Month and Three Days Ago
The police found the thing about a month ago, or so the reports said. She suspected some slight exaggeration on the Police Department’s part – their discovery looked far too fresh to be that old – but it took some time to work its way to UNIT.
It had been found underneath a dock, crumpled like a doll into the most unnatural of positions. Its spindly limbs were pale and bloodless; its eye sockets were empty.
Aside from the eyes, it seemed a fairly ordinary dead body. But then the city coroner examined it and found it still had a pulse – no other vital signs, and it was completely unresponsive to any stimulus, but a pulse nonetheless. After that, it wasn’t long before the thing was shunted over to UNIT, specifically to the laboratories.
And it also wasn’t long before the Doctor pulled aside the shroud, stared at the body for a bit, and said “Oh.”
---
Today
For all the Doctor’s worry, the cosmos seemed relatively quiet – the samples on her desk these past few weeks had been, for the most part, space debris. Discarded probes, bits that looked like they had once been part of an exoskeleton, that sort of thing. Apparently, no one could be bothered to muster up an invasion force.
A lazy day in space. She had a bit of a chuckle in spite of herself.
The only absolutely mandatory order of business for the day was checking the reading from the transmitter she’d placed on that body again, and while she understood the necessity of doing so, the transmitter had recorded no motion as of yet. Again, the Doctor’s concern and hurry seemed to be for naught; they really could have taken a little time to dispose of the thing at the beginning, and they wouldn’t have had to go to any of this trouble in the first place.
But no matter. What was done was done, and the important thing was that she had the lab to herself for perhaps two, three more weeks, and she was going to make the most of it while it lasted.
Someone knocked on the door again – and again, three times precisely.
“What is it, Corporal?” What could he possibly need now? He was on duty; shouldn’t the Brigadier be keeping him busy?
“Sorry to disturb you again, Miss Shaw.” He only peeked through the door this time. “But the Brigadier said he needed to speak to you when you had a moment.”
“Tell him I’m right in the middle of something, Smith. I’ll be with him shortly.”
“No trouble, miss.” The door shut; she’d never looked up during the whole conversation.
She waited for a moment, just to make sure that he wasn’t coming right back in, before she went to check on the transmitter. Not that he’d recognize it, but you never could tell; he might feel the need to ask what she was doing, and she hadn’t yet come up with a suitable lie.
---
One Month, Two-and-a-half Days Ago
It took a few tries to get the Doctor to explain himself; one look at the body set him searching the TARDIS console for something, and he couldn’t be bothered to answer questions then.
He relented when she flatly refused to cut the auxiliary power until she knew what she was helping him do. Evidently in no mood to argue, he began a distracted monologue.
“They don’t have a name for themselves as a species,” The Doctor explained, rummaging around in every panel the TARDIS console possessed. “I heard about them on Delta Two; they called them the Vadiil.” He opened what appeared to be a cabinet door and disappeared momentarily into the base of the console. “Roughly translates to ‘other-men’.”
“And?” Liz asked, kneeling down so she could see under the console. “What about them? Why the panic?”
“No home world. No sense of identity as a species. The body is merely a shell to support the intelligence. Ability to separate its intelligence from its body, form a sort of free-floating, seeing, hearing mind. And I am not panicking, Liz.”
“A free-floating mind, Doctor?”
“Well, yes. It takes a few variable somatic cells with it, of course, to propel itself and observe the outside world – that’s why the eyes are gone. They’re not really eyes; they’re a portable observation unit.” He shut the cabinet door and shook his head. “No good. It must still be inside the TARDIS.”
“But how are the neural cells able to continue functioning without an energy source? And what exactly are you looking for, Doctor?”
But she’d lost him by then. He retrieved the TARDIS key from inside his pocket, seemed to realize something, then put it back. “Help me disconnect these cables. I’m going to need to wire them back inside.”
“I thought everything you needed for transport was on the console.”
“Oh, it’s not transport I’m looking for, Liz. No, I’m going to have to redirect the power back into the main structure. The console isn’t the only useful thing in the TARDIS.”
“Well, tell me what you need, then, Doctor. I can’t help you if I don’t know what you’re doing.”
“There is a device back inside,” he replied, his hands busy with the power cables, “called the Chameleon Arch.”
---
Today
“Does it really make you that uncomfortable, Brigadier?”
He only glanced up at her before going back to whatever he was reading. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss Shaw.”
“The idea of me alone in the lab? Only you keep sending Corporal Smith to come check up on me.” She found that she gave the name a note of sarcasm without even intending to; such was its obvious falsehood. “I assure you, if I’m in need of assistance from any of the fine upstanding men of this organization, I shall not hesitate to send for them myself.”
He sighed, affixed his signature to the bottom of the document on his desk, and looked up at her. “I thought you might be interested in how he was doing, considering.”
“I trust Benton to take care of him. He isn’t exactly in a high-risk situation at the moment, anyway.”
“That’s the problem,” He said, hands clasped in front of him. “If we have to mobilize, I won’t be able to keep him out of action. I’ll have no good reason to.”
“You really think it’s necessary to shelter him? Mr. Smith seems quite able to take care of himself.”
“All the same, I’d rather not take any unnecessary risks with him. But,” he rose from his chair, “that’s not why I called you here.”
“Oh?”
“Benton has informed me that – oh, that must be him.” There was a knock at his office door. “I’ll let him explain it. Come in, Benton!”
---
One Month, Two-and-a-quarter Days Ago
The Doctor explained to them, as he disappeared into and out of the TARDIS, that the Vadiil could take over the brains of sentient beings. Some, in the past, had taken over another organism permanently, abandoning their shambly bodies. And, being unable to travel timespace on their own, any given Vadiil would likely leap at the chance to inhabit a Time Lord’s body and hijack his TARDIS.
The fact that neither said TARDIS nor its pilot functioned properly apparently did not factor into this. But he ignored Liz when she tried to raise the point, and it appeared to be lost on the Brigadier and Benton (whose presence the Doctor had specifically requested; to what purpose, she wasn’t sure).
Normally, he would be able to navigate around the flighty Vadiil, jumping ahead of them by a few weeks until the creature became bored with waiting and went off to search for another body. There were obvious problems with that plan, so he had arrived at a Plan B: use the Chameleon Arch to become a human being, stay that way for about six or seven weeks, and hope the alien wandered off in the meanwhile. Even if it did find him, he’d be as useless to them as any human being.
It lacked something as far as plans went, Liz considered, especially since the human Doctor would have no idea who he was and the Doctor they knew would be stored in some sort of fobwatch device. Which they, of course, had to take care of until the human him came looking for it again; when he did, it would mean that sufficient time had passed and he could safely come out of hiding.
It was not the best plan he’d ever come up with.
Lethbridge-Stewart, for his part, appeared to agree with her, voicing his objections whenever he could get a word in.
“I don’t see why any of this is even necessary, Doctor.” He protested, as the Doctor adjusted the power couplings. “Are you quite sure there’s no other way to get rid of this thing?”
The Doctor looked up from his work for a moment. “My dear fellow, you relinquished that opportunity the moment you hauled its body into your headquarters. The consciousness will return to its body before long, and then there’ll be no way to avoid it.”
“Well, couldn’t we just dispose of the body? Leave it somewhere else?
“Disposing of its body will only make it desperate for another.” Apparently satisfied with his most recent mechanical fiddling, he opened the TARDIS door. “Besides, we simply haven’t that kind of time. It could return to its body while you’re busy carting it away. Benton?”
“Yes sir?”
“The human me will most likely be,” He paused, pretending to try to disguise the distaste in his voice, “UNIT personnel. Kindly make sure I don’t do anything stupid while I’m indisposed.” With that, he shut the door; there was a ‘click’ as the lock slid back into place.
The three of them simply stood there at first, not sure what to make of the sudden end to the Doctor’s explanations. After a few moments the grind of old machinery and a noise like a buzzsaw leaked out from behind the old police box’s door.
An hour or so passed; the Brigadier and Benton eventually tired of waiting and went back to work, so she was the only one to greet the slightly dazed man in a UNIT uniform who walked out of the TARDIS. He looked a bit different – his face was more youthful, his hair paling blond instead of gray – but he was the Doctor. Or, at least, he had been.
It took some time after that for the details to emerge, but emerge they did. His name was Corporal John T. Smith, born in Weybridge on March 14, 1935 (that explained the face, at least) to a Mr. James and Mrs. Ada Smith. He was an Army man, seconded to UNIT, and an engineer or mechanic of some sort before his enlistment (he gave details, enumerated and precise; she didn’t bother to remember them).
He was pleasant. He was polite. He smiled. He made the occasional, abortive attempt to straighten out his hair. He followed his orders promptly, tended to whistle when he was bored, and pursed his lips a bit when he was concentrating. He called people “sir” and called her “Miss Shaw” – never “Liz” – and tended not to use words like “preposterous” or “incompetent”.
And he was human. Purely, guilelessly, verifiably human. One pulse. She’d checked.
---
Today
“Well?” She asked, after Benton had been given the at-ease command.
“He’s started to bring up the watch, Miss Shaw.” Benton replied.
“And he’s wondering where it is?”
“Not exactly. Mentioning it is more what he’s doing. I think he thinks he’s lost it.” There was a sort of logic, she had to admit, to Smith serving under Benton; at least that way, someone who knew him could keep an eye on him, and would know what to do if he started chattering on about fobwatches. Still, it seemed peculiar that everyone else in the section had managed not to notice the shocking resemblance between the Doctor and Corporal Smith. Liz currently had three theories about that: the TARDIS had created some kind of perception filter; the Doctor was as yet not so familiar outside the scientific wing as to be immediately recognizable; or he just looked that much different when he wasn’t in his frills and opera cape. She favored the first theory. “I didn’t ask for it back since he hasn’t started to look for it yet, but I thought you should know about it anyway.”
“How long do you think it’ll be?”
“No way to tell, I’m afraid. But he only mentioned it once, just before we got off shift. I haven’t heard him talk about it today at all. I figure he’s got a good bit of time left.”
“No news from your side, Liz?” The Brigadier spoke up. “I thought by now you’d have us some sort of timeline.”
“Not really.” She looked innocently in his direction. “I can’t know for certain that the Vadiil’s moved on unless the body starts registering motion again, and it’s done nothing. I could check it, if that would make you feel better, but I doubt the Doctor’s entirely clear yet.”
The Brigadier gave a strained smile and looked down at the floor for a moment. “Checking it might be a good idea. I’ll send two men with you; let me know if anything’s changed since your last observation.” He took a key out of his pocket and headed back to his desk. “Dismissed, Sergeant Benton.”
Liz was just about to turn and leave as well, but behind her she heard the rustle of paper, and a muttered “Wait a minute.”
“Something wrong?” She peered over her shoulder.
“I had the watch in here.” He rummaged through the contents of his desk drawer. “I’m absolutely certain I did.”
“You didn’t lose it?”
“Of course I didn’t lose it!” He protested as she strode over. “I haven’t opened this drawer even once since I left the watch in it.”
“Did you look in the back?”
“I’m looking in the back.” As he responded, he reached back to the furthest corners of the desk drawer, shuffled under papers and key rings.
Sure enough, no watch.
******
End Chapter 1
A/N: While the new series has the Chameleon Arch transforming the Doctor into a human duplicate of his Time Lord self, I aged human!Three down a bit, even though it's never states that the Arch can do this. I figured that the Arch must already change a Time Lord's physical age lest it create a 900-year-old human, so knocking a few years off said Time Lord's appearance wouldn't be too far out of the range of its probable capabilities. Smith's only a Corporal; a Corporal in his late forties would look a bit strange, even coming out of the Army. And if the Arch can give him a history and a personality to suit his situation, shouldn't it give him an age to suit his situation as well?
Also, Benton will have much more of a role in the coming chapters, I promise. :)
Sure enough, no watch.
******
End Chapter 1
A/N: While the new series has the Chameleon Arch transforming the Doctor into a human duplicate of his Time Lord self, I aged human!Three down a bit, even though it's never states that the Arch can do this. I figured that the Arch must already change a Time Lord's physical age lest it create a 900-year-old human, so knocking a few years off said Time Lord's appearance wouldn't be too far out of the range of its probable capabilities. Smith's only a Corporal; a Corporal in his late forties would look a bit strange, even coming out of the Army. And if the Arch can give him a history and a personality to suit his situation, shouldn't it give him an age to suit his situation as well?
Also, Benton will have much more of a role in the coming chapters, I promise. :)
Cross-posted to
dwfiction, venusianaikido, and legsofscience; also on Teaspoon. Thanks for reading! [ETA] Is it bad that I'm having a massive geekout over being linked to in
who_daily? Because I so am. Even though I've got no reason to. I mean, dude. I'm in a newsletter!
accomplished
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Kidding!
Seriously though, it is as awesome as I knew it was going to be the last time I saw it. The slight changes were very slick, fit perfectly with the rest of the tone and diction. A+!
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Oh, I'm glad the changes went okay. Thank you so much for all your hard beta-ing work; you've no idea what a help it was!
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I really like the nice sense of irony you've created throughout, without being too obvious about it.
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Stealth!irony is the best kind!
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especilly if there's a variant of Three/Benton subtext to be had...There's ever enough good Three fic about the place. :)
Also, I think I came across one of your earlier entries where you discussed the possiblities offered by girl!Doctors and Masters?
I grinned my head off. :D
Please, please, please write something with girl!Three one day!
Please? :)
*gives you puppy dog eyes*
Marvellous fic - look forward to reading more! :D
Erya. :)
(Oh, by the way, do you mind if I friend you? Your entries are highly entertaining, you seem like a lovely person, and I'd hate to miss a fic post. :) )
Thank you,
Erya. :)
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And the concept of girl!Three and girl!Master amuses me greatly, so I'll probably end up writing them both one of these days, even if it's just quick crack!fic.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
(And go ahead! I'm always happy to find new friends. :D)
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