•deck•the•halls•

• THE DOCTOR LEARNS THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS •

~•~


Christmas Eve. 2009.

The Doctor loved Christmas! Back when he was a wee Time Lord, the first place he ever landed was London on Christmas Eve. He promised himself he'd never miss another Christmas ever, but that promise went into the same pile as "Lose weight" and "Regenerate a better hairline" and "Stop leaving companions in other universes". But the Doctor had never quite gotten the hang of New Years'. (He once spent several hours commiserating on the similarity between the confusing nature of New Years and Thursdays with one Arthur Dent, who will sadly not be appearing in this piece of narrative. -editor)

But! Through all his travels in space and time, he still hadn't quite figured out what Christmas was for exactly. Except as a yearly excuse for turkey, too much wine, and plum pudding (all of which the Doctor approved of). This year, though, as he strode the streets on this wonderful Christmas Eve, the Doctor decided he would figure out exactly what Christmas was all about.

This may or may not have included use of a intergalactic manipulative detector and a full pack of radio stellar isotopian crystals. Oh, and a cup of hot chocolate. In a festively-coloured cup.

There was a lovely light snow, and the Doctor grinned madly at the stars. Christmas. This year, he was going to figure out what it was all about.


~•~

OOC: Open thread, feel free to tag in as if your character is a passerby or as if your character is a long-standing companion! I'll be working on this thread up until the New Year, most likely! Everyone from any verse (or no verse!) is welcome, just let me know if you'd prefer it from a community or specific universe! And, for this thread, threadhopping is totally welcome!

Happy Holidays, everyone! &hearts

FOR THE DRABBLE MEME.

• I'll sink Manhattan
Right under the sea
I'll find the sweetest spot to watch
As it goes away

You were so happy
With the things that you said
Like, "He's my lower half," you laughed
But you're going to cry

A river of tiny tears flow from your crocodile eyes
Too late to apologize, I say, as flood waters rise… •

He only just makes it to the top of the building by the time the tides reach them. Everything on this part of America has collapsed except this one building. It's funny, but once upon a time he stood at this peak, looking over a very different Manhattan, and succeeded in saving the world.

Now, all he's done is fail.

He tries to pump the heart of the woman next to him. One, two, three. Nothing. And again. One, two, three. He's too little to hold enough oxygen in his lungs to breathe life into her. He's too helpless to save her. Drowned, like the rest of the people in this city.

Harriet Jones. Former PM.

The apologies that he speaks now mean nothing. He didn't know. He didn't know this would happen, but it did and it's too late. He scrambles back, his little legs pushing him towards the building's spire quickly, but not quickly enough. He feels hot tears start to run down his face. He's failed. Failed, failed, failed.

A year ago, he wouldn't have cried like this. He's been trapped as a little boy for too long, now. And the one time, the one time he tried to escape, his captor drowned a city to bring him back. Drowned a city full of people. Good people. People like Wilfred Mott and Leo Jones and Harriet Jones, former PM.

The present PM's helicopter is lowering towards the Empire State building, the black machine mirrored against the sparkling, still water. The Doctor watches the shiny shoes of the Master, stepping around the spire until he faces him. He doesn't even acknowledge Harriet Jones, former PM. He only barely acknowledges the crying little boy in front of him.

"Oh, don't be stupid," he snaps. "I didn't do this because of you, you idiot."

He nudges the Doctor's arm with his shiny shoe, but the Doctor can't react, now. All he can do is cry like the child the Master has told him he is.

The Master crouches in front of him, his expression almost pitying, like a father having to tell his son that Father Christmas isn't real. "This is where the resistance was holding a very big meeting," he says, all patronizing and stern. "You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, sonny. But it's a very good job that Daddy Master has come to pick you up, isn't that right?"

"I hate you." It's one of the most immature things he's managed to say, but right now he means it with every fiber of his diminutive being. He hates the Master, he hates everything that's happened. He hates that his running shoes don't fit and he hates the miniature suit he's wearing and he hates, hates, hates what's become of the planet he loves.

The Master looks amused. It's infuriating. "It's always the fate of a father to watch his son hate him until he realizes he's right."

"You're not my father, Master." But even the way he says the Master's name seems small. The Master seems to notice that, too, because his eyebrows crinkle together in distaste. He doesn't get the same high he once did from the Doctor saying his name. Things will change again, soon, and the Doctor doesn't want to think how.

The Master nods upwards, and soon the Doctor hears the clomp-clomp of very high heels. Lucy Saxon, a brand new split on her lip (unsurprising, considering she was the one who was supposed to be watching the Doctor when he escaped), comes rushing over, immediately scooping the tiny Time Lord into her arms.

He doesn't resist, instead going limp as she holds him. Her grip is a little too tight, and he knows she must blame him for the Master's treatment of her. Blame the Doctor for every bruise and every pain she's suffered. Blame him for the things that have happened to this once beautiful world.

As he looks over her shoulder at the drowned city, he can't help but agree with her.

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 676

FOR THE DRABBLE MEME.

• She thinks she's smart; she's just curious
She thinks she's alone
Doesn't even know someone's watching her
She's going to get in trouble now
Waving from the shore, never knew before
Doesn't understand
She's in trouble now

It's a new year
Careful what you pack
There's no going back
She's lost from the beginning
She's the new girl. •

"You're just young enough to think you're old enough to handle things like this on your own."

"TaHqeq."

"I suppose I deserve that."

He stands only a few feet away from her, though she hadn't noticed his arrival. She hadn't noticed anything, actually. Just the pain and the burning, and eventually everything in the room was still. Everything in the room, except her.

She cradles the lifeless form of the Klingon that was her husband. The whole station is dead, the monitors blink, telling her only three lifeforms remain. Her, the man in the brown coat, and his living machine.

"You lot, always mucking about with things you don't understand, time you don't understand. Even the Trill, thinking you're older than you are. Thinking you can---"

It's half a second before she's thrown him back, the blade he hadn't noticed she still carried up against his throat. His smug lecture from half a moment ago is silenced, and he takes in a shallow breath as the sharp blade nicks just below his adam's apple.

"BIHnuch! They said you were here, I told them you would help us," she growls. For a member of the Trill, a race the man in the brown coat traditionally thinks of as a very calm, intelligent, and wise-but-not-as-wise-as-the-Time-Lords, she is very primal in her grief and rage. "But you changed from the man I knew."

To her, this man with the sticking-up hair and brown coat is wrong. She longs for the one she knows, with the floppy dark hair and little ridiculous-looking bowtie. He sees her and wishes she was the shorter, stockier woman with the short dark hair that he knows.

But she doesn't know Ezri Dax yet. Just like he doesn't know his next life, and their timelines will never really match up. Time is like that.

"Can you fix this?" she demands. She takes a breath, because she's realized immediately that she asked the wrong question. "Will you fix this?"

The whole ship is dead, everyone but her, and all because Starfleet was meddling with time. Meddling with time in such a way that anyone who had never traveled via-the-Void as she has (will) would be ripped apart.

It was such a careless mistake. And they're all so small, aren't they? In the scope of the universe.

Her grip on his throat loosens, and he thinks, just for a moment, that she looks like she might cry. She doesn't, of course. She's not that sort of a person. It's something he admires (will admire) in her and her symbiont.

"Will you?" she asks, quietly.

He closes his eyes, and takes a breath. Time moves around them differently, changing the way she looks and the way she sees him. They are both very old and very young and very lonely and very guilty, all at the same time.

He answers, and time changes again.

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 483
I HOPE THIS MAKES SENSE I AM CONCERNED IT IS TOO CONVOLUTED.

You Had Me At Hello:

As the typist/writer/mun, tell us about what exact moment made you fall in writery love with your character (if they are a canon char) and realize you had to write them.

I've been a fan of Doctor Who since 1996, when my mother's online friend (from the alt.prisoner forum, OH 1996 ILU) from the UK, told her she should check it out. He'd always been a huge fan of the classic series, and he was psyched that his favorite Doctor, Sylv McCoy, would be in it. She turned it on over dinner, we enjoyed it, and watching Saturday night midnight Doctor Who became a ritual for the two of us until I went to college. I even wrote a little Doctor Who fanfiction when I was a kid, my first full-length DW novel written when I was 11. I look back on it now (because, oh yes, it is still on my harddrive) and cringe, but fanfiction is what got me interested in becoming a writer.

When I started writing at theatrical_muse in 2005, I'd been interested in playing someone from the classic series. I hadn't yet seen the new series, convinced it would be crapping all over my childhood. I wrote for the Second Doctor for a while, but could never really find his voice. During that time, I discovered the new series was awesome and not suck at all, and decided I had to play someone from there, just to see if I could. Nine, I figured, because I had a wealth of classic Who knowledge I could put to use. But not Ten. Eww, no. He looked like a ferret and he wasn't Nine. (It wasn't until "Girl in the Fireplace" that I actually cared for Ten at all, actually.)

Then, after playing the Ninth Doctor (and totally loving it) at apharsites, I mentioned joining TM with him to write prompts. My friend, ibringlife said she'd prefer it if I picked up the Tenth Doctor. "Doomsday" had just aired and I had a new affection for the Tenth Doctor, so I decided, "Why not?" After all, if it didn't work out, I could always drop him after a few months, like I did with the Second Doctor. And, instead, he took off like a missile and was easy to write, fun, and interacted wonderfully with everyone who tagged him. He even interacts wonderfully with himself, so I've had some lovely Ten-chats-with-Ten threads in a few games.

And, it's been a few years, and I'm still loving it. &hearts

FOR THE DRABBLE MEME.

• It's my world, my love, my gun

well It's the end of the world
well It's the end of the world
well It's the end of the world
well It's the end of the world

No I’m all alone, kept the pain inside.
Wanna torch the world, cos I’m breathing fire.
Yes I’m all alone, kept the pain inside.
Wanna torch the world, cos I’m breathing fire.. •

Lucy isn't insane.

Not in the classical sense of the word. Not the madness her husband so willingly flaunts as he slides from room to room, surveying his kingdom. While she might dance to the beat of her own drums, they're not the same drums that pulsate through her husband's mind, they're not the drums of war and madness.

All the same, she's not all there. The Doctor can tell she's been broken in ways he knows he can't fix. It's the way she moves, the vacancy in her eyes. It's as if the deceptive and cruel woman he met months ago has left the building, and there's no one home to feel the things she's feeling.

There are always deep, penetrating bruises that she's not allowed to cover up with makeup. Marks of how much the Master loves her (because he really only hurts the ones he loves.) The Doctor has his own share of bruises, but his don't mark quite as artistically on his old skin as hers do.

She only comes to the bars of the Doctor's cage one. It's the night the Master breaks her wrist and shatters her collarbone, but that all happens after. Right now, right now she's slowly creeping towards it, as if she thinks the cameras pointed at the box in the center of the room somehow will miss her if she moves more slowly.

She touches the bars, but recoils immediately, as if expecting him to leap up from his wheelchair and attack. He doesn't move, and she becomes only the tiniest bit more relaxed. Her fingers curl around the bars and she leans, ever so slightly, to the left, bracing herself on the weight of the heavy bars.

"I'm going to kill him," she says. Her voice is calm, as though she were talking about the weather or the coldness of the bars.

He doesn't say anything at first. What can he say to her? He could tell her it's wrong to kill the Master, but it was wrong to kill one-tenth of the population and that didn't stop her. So, instead, he says, "Why?"

"I don't want him to hurt me anymore," she says, and he doesn't think she's just talking about the welt under her eye. She traces a long, red fingernail across the bar she's holding. "I'm going to shoot him in the heart."

"With what gun?" he demands, surprised by the force in his voice. She's telling him she wants to murder the person he's trying to save, of course there's going to be force there.

She smiles at it. "I'll find one. And I'll shoot."

"You better not miss," he warns her.

"I won't."

There's a click, and the Doctor knows the Master is coming. He can feel the other Time Lord's mind, buzzing with fury for Lucy's actions, and mild irritation for her words (after all, she can't hurt him). The Doctor would tell her to go, but where would she run to? Running would only mean more pain.

"Why did you tell me?" he asks.

Her expression is pained, then. Like she expected him to understand, but he doesn't. She reaches her arm through the bars to touch the side of his face. Her skin is warm and surprisingly soft. She's quite the human, Lucy Saxon is.

"Because you won't let me," she says. "And I have to do this."

She has to do it, because she's always stood up for herself, in life. It's why the Master chose her, it's why she went through what she did with him. But she still loves him. She loves him, and she doesn't want to do what she knows she has to.

There's a smack and suddenly Lucy is thrown to the side, cradling her wrist. The Master doesn't even look at the Doctor, he just hits. And hits. And hits.

The punches start to sound like drumbeats. One beat after the other. And the Doctor can't stop them.

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 565

FOR THE DRABBLE MEME.

• Everything that you fear is calling you and drawing near

I searched my world but I can't find you
You're standing there but I can't touch you
Try to talk but the words are just not there
I can feel a sense of danger
You stare at me like I'm a stranger
Paralyzed and you don't seem to care
The demons in my dreams. •

"It's you."

He's been waiting for Rose to come out of this shop for flipping hours now. He's almost pleasantly surprised to find a league of cybermats underneath the stairs at the shopping mall. And now that that's sorted out, he's back, waiting at the door with a smile on his face, waiting for Rose to reemerge.

He turns around at the voice, though. It's an American, someone he doesn't recognize. She's small and blonde and by all accounts very pretty, but she's not someone he recognizes.

"Oh my god," she says. "It's you."

"Hello," he says, warily.

She runs towards him, stopping only a few feet from where he is. Her grin is huge and seems to split her face in two. He likes her grin, he decides in that moment. He generally does like pretty blonde women with wide grins, but he thinks he likes hers an awful lot.

"Who are you?" he asks.

Her face falls, and she looks so utterly surprised. "You've never---You've never not known me."

He hates this sort of reaction. It means that, at some point in the past, he's met her. But her past is his future and that's just too much wibbly-wobby timey-wimey for him to deal with at the moment.

He looks back into the store, where Rose is finally getting ready to leave, then back to the girl. He had planned on ice cream and a semi-romantic-but-this-really-isn't-romantic-at-all walk across the 43rd century boardwalk upstairs, not a chat with someone from his future.

"Sorry. Time's always a bit confusing for me," he says. "I'm a time traveler---"

"I know that," she says, and she sounds very put out that he thinks he has to explain himself. "I've just---"

She bites her bottom lip, and then extends her hand.

"I'm Claire," she says.

Her eyes are wide and brown and, unlike the rest of her, aren't young in the slightest. She's very old, he can tell just from her eyes. And she feels…wrong. Not wrong like Jack, the skin-crawlingly wrong Jack he ran away from back on Satellite Five, is wrong, but she's different.

He gives her hand a shake. Her fingers are warm, and he can feel time rippling around them. She's very different, but he doesn't really understand how. "I'm the Doctor---"

"I know," she says. She glances behind him, and he can only assume Rose has reappeared. He starts to back away, but Claire holds his hand firmly for one more moment.

"I never said thank you," she says. "But. Thank you."

And with that, she turns and runs away. He hears the clomp-clomp of her high heels against the holographic flooring, and watches her turn a corner and run.

"Who was she, then?" Rose asks. "Friend of yours?"

He nods. "Just not yet."

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 470

FOR THE DRABBLE MEME.

• dragged through the mire
and into the light
you did something selfish
but you did what was right

we started a fire
with the faintest of sparks
sprung from the friction
of two empty hearts

we swept out the ashes
and went on our way
from the deepest of red
to the lightest of gray. •

She keeps the sari wrapped tightly around her. It's her new corset and skirts. Tight and layered, she smoothes the fabric down with tanned hands. She has adapted to life in India. It's a good life, he thinks, the life she built for herself. If anyone could build so much from nothing, it's Reinette.

He asks her if she's happy here. He means with him, but he doesn't ask that.

It's been years. Twenty for him. Five for her. They grew up on opposite ends of the universe.

He was selfish. He forgot the time they spent together. Forgot all of it. All of it, in one split decision. He didn't want to remember the pain, which meant he would forget the joy. A split decision, to forget everything from the moment they arrived in San Francisco.

She chose to remember. He likes to think he'd have chosen the same, if he knew. He knows he wouldn't have.

He think she hates him a little for that. He knows he hates himself more than a little for it.

She tells him of course. Of course she is happy. He doesn't think she means with him.

He wonders what he was like, then. In the year he forgot. The year he gave up. Who was he when he was him? The him that he was, the one she still grieves for.

He saw a movie once, with their daughter. Petite Reinette, all spitfire and ambition, sat more patiently through the movie than her father did. It was a good movie, though. Random Harvest. A man who can not remember who he is falls in love, then forgets everything, and then falls in love with the same woman. She grieves for the man who didn't know who he was.

It's like that now, with Reinette. She cares for him, but she loved the man he forgot.

He reaches out to take her hand. She quietly, deftly moves back, tracing her hand along the opposite side of the console and remarking the differences in the ship. He never remembered her seeing it, but he doesn't question her memory.

Maybe she just needed to step aside.

He knows she wanted to move away.

He likes to think that if he knew it would be like this, the strangeness, the silent ache, that he'd have chosen the same as her, that he'd never have forgotten.

He knows he wouldn't have.

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 405
Based on RP in relativespace with ambitious_woman
MY LOVE FOR THIS VERSE WILL NEVER DIE.

FOR THE DRABBLE MEME.

• I miss you, you hurt me
You left with a smile
Mistaken, your sadness
Was hiding inside
Now all that's left
Are the pieces to find
The mystery you kept
The soul behind a guise

Where are you
I need you
Don't leave me here on my own
Speak to me
Be near me
I can't survive unless I know you're with me. •

Rose thinks it will be hardest when she's standing there, saying goodbye, but it isn't.

Oh, it's hard. It's very hard. She begs him to stay, to come back. She needs him, and maybe she didn't realize it before, maybe that's why she pushed him away so often. But please. Please don't go.

Or maybe it's please go, with us, don’t stay.

But he says he has to.

And who is she to argue? It's not as if he has anything waiting for him back at home. Her mother'll be heartbroken, but she's gotten over far worse. Oh, it'll be hard telling her, and telling his stupid estranged mother, too, but this goodbye should be the hardest.

It isn't.

Rose thinks it will be hardest when the TARDIS takes off, but it isn't.

She hides in her bedroom and slams her eyes shut, trying to block out the hum of the walls and the whirring sensation when she knows they've finally taken off. Taken off and left him behind. Her oldest friend, first lover, favorite cook---why did he have to go? Doesn't he get it?

The Doctor, he gets it. He knows she can be sassy and mean and self-centered but he doesn't care. He doesn't need to be shown love and affection, so why does she have to for him? Can't he get it, too?

But it's too late, and the TARDIS is gone, leaving him behind. That should be it, she thinks. That should be the hardest moment.

It isn't.

Rose thinks it will be hardest when he tries to comfort her, but it isn't.

He's gone, and she didn't realize how important he was until he left. Maybe she didn't get it, didn't realize how much she loved him, or how much he loved her. But now, now that she has no way to say she'll go back to him later, now she wishes he was here, now.

"Maybe it isn't about you," the Doctor says, leaning against the door, watching her cry silently. He sighs. "My first mate, he ran off when we were young. Well, I ran off, but when I came back he was gone. It hurts, but it isn't about---"

"Take me home."

He hops off from where he's leaning, looking at her sadly. "Home?"

"Not forever," she corrects, immediately. "Just to tell my Mum. She needs to know."

He nods, and heads to the console room.

They never discuss it again. She thinks that should be the hardest it will be.

It isn't.

Rose thinks it will be hardest when she has to tell her mother, but it isn't.

Her mum doesn't cry, and that's hard. She just sits there, her brow creasing up in worry, but she doesn't sob, she doesn't even tear up.

"Is he going to be happy, you think?"

Rose can't answer, but the Doctor speaks up. "He will," he says, with all of the confidence of a man who knows time.

"And he'll be safe?" Rose's mum asks. Her voice cracks, just slightly, under the weight of how much she's had to lose, but she still doesn't cry.

The Doctor doesn't answer, because he doesn't know. It's worse, somehow.

And she thinks that will be the hardest, the hardest ever.

It isn't.

It's hardest when he grieves.

It only happens once. Two weeks after they've left, and they've packed up from the place that couldn't possibly have had the real Satan living inside of it, and they're all smiles and excitement.

"And let me tell you," he says. "Mickey the Idiot will be really impressed when I tell him that---"

And that's when he remembers. The smile on his face vanishes.

Mickey the Idiot is gone. He's gone, and they've told everyone who knew him that he's dead. For all they know, he could be.

Without a word, he turns and leaves the console room. He doesn't say where he's going, and she doesn't think to ask him. She just watches him go, wondering what it's like when a Time Lord misses someone.

She wonders what Mickey would think, knowing he's missed.

She doesn't cry this time, she just sits in the console room, lonely.

That's when it's the worst.

Muse: Rose Tyler
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count:
I DID NOT DO THE PAIRING YOU WANTED BUT I INCLUDED HIM AS A CHARACTER! <3<3

FOR THE DRABBLE MEME.

• Is it bright where you are
Have the people changed
Does it make you happy you're so strange
And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame
You can watch the world devoured in it's pain
Strange •


The sky was burning. Quite literally, on fire.

The Doctor stood, hands in his pockets, watching it. Watching it, watching the mutants run across the surface, trying desperately to work out where to go, what they could possibly do now. There was no chance. Not anymore

"Aren't you going to do something?" Lorna asked. She was covered in ash and debris, but still managed to look, somehow, lovely. Lovely and full of frustration, of determination. She was always the never-say-die type, though. She'd gotten piles of metal she'd been trying to fashion them into some sort of a protective barrier. Something to save the children left on this world.

"I'm up there," he said, nodding up to the firey sky. "On a platform with a girl who looks oh, so much like you. We thought it was a party. They told us the whole world was empty."

"They would say that," she said. "But we have to---"

"There isn't time."

The Doctor wanted to believe his favorite species grew up over the centuries, that they learned to stop hating, to stop fearing others. It wasn't true, of course. Even this far into the future, they still feared mutants, still took the ones they considered the most dangerous and left them on a world ready to be consumed by fire. The Doctor just got caught in the crossfire.

"You've been like this since you arrived," Lorna snapped. "Moping about! I'm not stopping! And I'm not going to let you just stand there!"

"No," he said. "Really. There's nothing I can do. Nothing any of us can do."

"What about the TARDIS?" Lorna demanded. "Can't you---"

"She's gone," he said, his voice resigned. "On the cruiser that left."

"But we can't give up," she said, stepping up to the edge of the debris with him. Her voice cracked as she spoke and the sound hurt the Doctor's hearts. "Why do you want to give up, now? After we've done so much? After we've come so far."

He tilted his head to the side to look over at her. She didn't really look like Rose, the more he saw her. It wasn't just the shining green hair or the fact that she never wore the heavy makeup Rose always did. There was also something distinctly different about her. The Doctor might've liked to have known her better. Known more about her. This mutant hero who didn't want to give up.

It was too late, now.

"Thank you," he said.

Lorna shook her head. "For what?"

"When I came back here, I didn't want to live," he said. "Done too much, seen too much."

"So?"

He reached out and took her hand, curling his fingers around hers. He could already feel the heat from the barrier lowering. The sounds of screams began to fill his ears. The world was ending. The world was ending right here, as he held Lorna Dane's hand.

He smiled, then. Small, thin, but genuine. "You made me want to live."

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 485

FOR THE DRABBLE MEME.

• I'm not even angry.
I'm being so sincere right now.
Even though you broke my heart.
And killed me.
And tore me to pieces.
And threw every piece into a fire.
As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you!

Now these points of data make a beautiful line.
And we're out of beta.
We're releasing on time.
So I'm GLaD I got burned.
Think of all the things we learned
for the people who are still alive. •

"If you throw the piece down here, I'll be able to throw it in!" the Doctor called up to Jim, who had decided, in the Doctor's opinion, that suicide was a fantastic idea. It was the only explanation for his reckless use of the portal gun.

( Cut for spoilers to Portal. )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 728