birthday fic, part 1
Oct. 15th, 2008 01:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseSince I got kind of caught up on other projects and work and stuff, I'm going to be doing the birthday fics I wrote for people in batches, it seems. Here's the first handful - the rest will be posted at intervals between now and Halloween, I expect.
So! In no particular order...
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vega_ofthe_lyre requested Eight/Romana based on poem called "Since Feeling is First," and I just have to include the poem, because I absolutely adore it.
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
-- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
- e. e. cummings
* * *
“Do you remember when we met?” the Doctor never asks Romana.
And she will never smile, and answer, “How could I forget?”
* * *
Gallifrey is in winter, now, with a sunrise frosted like a peach rising up over the Citadel, and the Doctor pushes the drapes open around Romana’s red-draped bed to watch the first sunlight settle on her face. They’ve been up all night, talking and making love and remembering, reacquainting themselves with each other’s changed bodies. He’s slimmer now, he thinks, taking a moment to regard himself in the light as well - less muscular, but at least he’s regained the height that he’d been missing in his last incarnation. He’s not sure how Romana feels about it, but he always feels slightly odd when he doesn’t tower over her. There’s so much energy in her, so much power and confidence, that especially now, when she’s ripe with it and practically oozing poise as president, he feels as though he needs that slight edge just to keep up with her.
He never felt like that before, he realizes. It’s new to this incarnation. But that’s the beauty of their relationship, again - it’s never the same frome one regeneration to the next, but it’s always there.
Romana, for her part, reigns in bed much as she does in the council chamber. She sprawls, languid, on the covers, unconcerned with covering herself, unashamed under his gaze. What could they possibly have to hide from each other, after all these years? And yet there is still a mystery in her eyes, something she doesn’t quite give away. She watches him, and smiles with some secret, half fond mockery, half matured infatuation.
“Come away with me again,” he challenges, sitting up on his elbow and taking her chin in his fingers.
“We only just got back!” Romana frowns. “I’m the president, you know, and I have responsibilities...”
“Responsibilities.” He dismisses them with a wave of his hand. “You’re young, Romana! You need to have adventures, you need to get out in the universe - there’s so much there that you haven’t seen! That I haven’t seen! We can see them together!”
“Some other time, perhaps...”
“No, no, no - now! Get dressed, come on! Right now!” He laughs and pushes her up so he can bounce off the couch they’ve been reclining on and pull her, naked, to her feet. His hair is standing on end, and he’s grinning so widely that his cheeks ache with it. His hearts are pounding in his ears, now, run, now, while you still have her, while she’s still yours!
“What’s so important that it can’t wait until tomorrow, Doctor?” she laughs.
“Everything!” He catches her hands and spins her, anti-clockwise to wind back all the years, and then catches her in another kiss, so abruptly she falls into his arms, and lets herself be light and small again.
“Everything?” she asks when even respiratory bypasses demand that they part for a moment.
“Everything, Romana.” Because he can’t say ‘you.’
“Well, we can’t go everywhere,” Romana tells him. Always sensible.
He tries not to sound like a disappointed child when he says, “We could...” If her expression is any indication, he fails - she looks both sad, and slightly annoyed, as though she suspects that he is manipulating her, trying to pull her away. “But I’d settle for Belize,” he relents. “Or Tokyo. Or Epsilon Prime, have you been there? I never took you there, did I? would have remembered that, I think - they’ve got purple sunsets and black sand.”
“It sounds lovely.” She’s not laughing anymore, but her eyes are shining in that black-hole way, the way that drags him in unresisting and makes it impossible for him to look away from her. She’s thinking about it. She’s thinking about it, and she always gives in once she starts thinking, because deep down, he knows that she loves every minute of it.
She’s not quite ready to give up yet, though. “We’ve already done this, Doctor,” she tells him firmly. “Why should we do it again?”
“Because it will be different this time. I’m different, you’re different... And because there’s no one better for traveling with than you.”
It’s as close, he thinks, as he can ever come to saying ‘I love you.’
“Just one more trip. That’s all. Just this once, and then we have to come back,” she tells him. It’s her ‘I love you, too.’ He knows that. It’s all he’s ever wanted from her.
She slips her hand into his as they walk to the Tardis, and he glances sideways at her, catches her glancing sideways at him, and they both grin, together. He squeezes her fingers in his, and Gallifrey is gone. It’s Paris in the springtime, their springtime. There are cherry blossoms and red wine in her cheeks and on her lips, and he is once again the bohemian poet who taught her how to travel so long ago. There will be no talk of standing still, or of walking away, or of remembering. Not today.
Today, they run hand-in-hand.
* * *
zinjadu requested to know why Scully likes answering the door on Halloween. While I'm on this, I really do hope that I wasn't making up the fact that Scully likes movies like "Poltergeist." I could swear that comes from canon, but I couldn't for the life of me remember when or where.
When the doorbell rings for the first time, at six forty-five, Scully is ready. She opens the door to a cheery burst of little voices shouting “Trick or treat!” all in the same sing-song tone.
“All right, trick or treat!” Scully holds out the big bowl of candy she’d had waiting by the door. “Now, let’s see, what have we got here... a fairy?” A little girl in a pink tutu, purple tights, and nylon wings stretched over a frame made, unless Scully is mistaken, out of a pair of coat hangers, nods enthuasiastically and takes two Butterfingers. “Annnd... a baseball player?”
“I’m Alex Rodriguez,” the boy tells her solemnly, pointing to his jersey.
“Of course,” she agrees. The boy takes a Snickers and an Almond Joy out of the bowl. “And last... Well, you’ve got to be a werewolf.”
The second boy - almost a teenager, she guesses, although it’s hard to say under all the brown makeup and fake fur, makes some sort of affirmative noise and takes a pair of Kit-Kat bars from the bowl.
“Happy Halloween!” they all chorus as they herd down the hallway to the next door. Scully echoes them, remembering a distinguished gentleman with electric blue eyes. Werewolf. Or something, anyway.
The next troupe of kids has an Elvis - Mulder would approve, she thinks wryly - as well as a “Bratz,” whatever that is, and a medieval maiden with plastic barettes peeking out from her velveteen cloak. After that comes a genie, a pumpkin, a green-skinned witch, and then a trio of vampires. Scully puts on her best cheery-adult voice, and tries not to think too much about sunflower seeds, graveyards, and coffee and pizza laced with sedatives.
Later on there’s a ghost (of course), and the usual array of Disney characters, Jedi knights, gypsy fortune-tellers, and zombies. Just as she’s beginning to think it’s too late for any more kids to show up and starting to consider turning in the TV to see if there are any good, cheesy scary movies on, there’s another knock at the door. This time there’s a slightly bashful looking father standing in the background, a little girl dressed as a princess, and...
“You must be a space alien.”
“Yeah!” enthuses a little voice from inside the plastic mask. “The lady next door thought I was a lizard-guy or something!”
Scully winks at the father. “Well, of course I know what an alien looks like. Doesn’t everybody?”
The little “grey,” as Mulder would no doubt have insisted on calling him, took two Jolly Ranchers and the last Butterfinger, while his sister took two packets of Skittles.
“Thanks for humoring him,” the father tells her as the kids skip off down the hall.
“I’m used to it,” Scully tells him. “Happy Halloween.”
She shuts the door, and locks it, and then sits down on the sofa with the bowl of leftover candy on her lap. No more aliens, vampires, ghosts, or demons tonight. Just a marathon of the old Hammer Dracula movies, a glass of wine, and the last three Almond Joy bars.
“I just wish every night was this easy.”
* * *
snakewhissperer requested Jack and Martha in the Year That Wasn't - which ended up being an exciting prompt to write, since technically they didn't spend much time together during that year. But something happened in Torchwood S2 that completely saved me on this one... so I hope you don't mind spoilers for the end of Torchwood S2 in this one. ;)
The sun was just starting to set behind the tree-lined hill when Jack reached his goal. There weren’t likely to be any Toclafane this far out of the city, he thought, but he hid himself carefully nonetheless - he couldn’t take the chance of drawing attention to himself. Not for his own sake - the worst that would happen to him was a lot of pain and a little inconvenience as his body reset itself in perverse mimicry of a VR action game. But for her. So he huddled in the trees, waiting, until he saw her climb over the crest of the hill.
“Martha Jones.” Jack stepped out of the shadows and held his arms wide so she could see him.
The tired, slim figure clad all in black lifted her head cautiously, and then her stern look broke into a brilliant grin. “Oh, my God - Jack!”
When he’d first been awakened, he’d intended to avoid her. Or at least avoid being seen by her, certainly. He really had. Then again, him and the best intentions always did seem to part company just as soon as he saw a pretty face, and just now there was no face in all the universe prettier than Martha Jones’, lit up with shock and joy as she threw herself at him, hugging him tightly around the waist.
“Jack, what are you doing here? How did you get away?”
For a minute his mouth almost kicked in before his brain, and he half-formed an explanation about how John convinced Grey to just bury him rather than killing him outright, and how the lone old man who comprised Torchwood Two, up in Scotland, had slipped down to Cardiff in the first weeks of the Master’s reign of terror and let him out of the freezer where Torchwood had stored him until his time signature wasn’t asynchronous anymore... when he realized that of course Martha was thinking of the other him. The him she’d seen only about six months before, up on the Valiant. The one who was, even then, probably either being killed by the Master (again) or doing his best to comfort Martha’s family.
“I got away,” he told her simply. “Just for a little while. I’ll have to go back... can’t leave the Doctor and your family all alone for long. But for now... I’m on an errand.”
Martha laughed. “We’re in the middle of the Appalachians, Jack. What kind of errand could you possibly be on?”
“There’s still a few remnants of Torchwood scattered around the globe,” Jack said - again, the truth, as much as he could allow her to know. “I’m helping them wherever I can. Anyway, I heard you were out here. I thought I’d... just stop in and check on you. Make sure you’re getting by all right. Are you? You look...”
“Like Hell?”
It was true, of course. Martha looked exhausted - dark circles under her eyes, her skin almost dusty-looking with the pallor of poor sleep, little food, and constant worry. She was usually so scrupulously neat that it was a shock to Jack to see her with her hair unkempt and, her face and clothes unwashed, her nails ragged and dirty... But she was still Martha, and therefore despite all of that - all the horror he knows she’s been going through, all the horror they will talk about it over beer and pizza a year from now, cozy in his office in Cardiff - she was still beautiful, and amazing.
“You look like you need a break,” Jack finished gently.
“You know a good resort that’s still open?” Martha joked, and then sobered suddenly, her eyes going distant. “I passed through Hawaii a while ago, Jack, and... it’s nothing but an open grave. He’s using the volcanos for something, I don’t know what, but the people...”
“Shhhh.” Jack pulled her against his chest. He remembered how she’d cried when she told him that story later, in Cardiff. That story and all the others, some of which this Martha hasn’t even lived through yet. Stop now, he wanted to tell her - Let me finish. I’ll do the rest for you, he can’t do any worse than everything I’ve already seen. It won’t hurt me like it will you...
But that’s impossible, of course. Despite the Master’s paradox machine, Jack can’t take the risk of trying to spare her and, in doing so, failing and destroying the world. Martha will succeed - Jack knew that even if she didn’t. And even though all that happens after will hurt her, she’ll survive, and stay the same, lively, lovely Martha. The amazing Martha Jones... who, just then, was nuzzling his neck, and whose cheek was wet against his shoulder. “Hey...”
“It’s just so good to see you, Jack. I’ve been so lonely... I mean, I meet people everywhere, but it’s not the same. They expect me to be some kind of hero, someone who can solve all their problems, and I’m... just so tired.”
“I know. Come on - I saw a little nook in the rocks back here, it looked like a good spot for a little camping. I’ve got some food, too,” he offers. “You look like you haven’t eaten in days.”
“Haven’t, really,” she admits, trying to shrug it off with a smile. “There was this family... little kids. They were starving. They’re not useful at that age, so they don’t get rations in the work camps. He doesn’t mean to be here long enough to need the little ones.”
“So you gave up your supplies. Martha...”
“They needed it, okay? What good does it do if I can defeat the Master, if everybody’s dead by the time I do it?” Her eyes were hot, her lips trembling. “Enough people have died already. Anyway, a healthy adult can live two weeks without food...”
“Not and have enough strength to walk all over the world,” Jack scolded gently, and tugged her down into the spot he’d found - really only a gash in the rocks, but it’s big enough for the two of them to sit if they huddle close, and there’s a rock face to keep the wind off them, and a big old pine tree that provides both cover from patrols and shelter if it rains. It smells good, too, Jack thought - clean and rich, and the dry needles underneath insulate them from the rocks.
“It’s not four-star dining,” Jack warned as he pulls out a handful of protein bars. “But it’s the best I could find. Take them all,” he added. “They’re light to carry, and they’ll keep you going for a bit.”
“You have to eat, too, Jack.”
“What, and ruin my figure?” He tried a grin on her, and was relieved when she returned it and shook her head.
They ate in silence - probably a good change of pace for Martha, after months of telling her story to every person she met, Jack thought - and shared a few sips from a bottle of water Jack retrieved from his bag. Then Jack laid back against the trunk of the old pine tree, and scooted Martha closer to him, pulling her in so she leaned on him rather than the tree.
“Not going to put your arm to sleep, am I?” Martha mumbled.
“Nah. You’re too light.” He kissed her hair tenderly.
“’Kay,” she murmured, and snuggled in closer. “I’m glad you’re here, Jack.”
“Me, too.”
“Even if you shouldn’t be.”
Jack tensed. “What do you mean? Torchwood needs me...”
“That’s not why you’re here, Jack. There’s no Torchwood in America. Even if you all had agents here before the Master, there aren’t any left here now... I’m in touch with the resistance everywhere I go, remember?”
“I just wanted to check in on you...”
“And you wouldn’t ever leave the Doctor, Jack. I know you better than that.” She tilted her head back so she could meet his eyes, and smiled. “Don’t worry. I know you’re from another time.” She tapped the temporal manipulator on his wrist. “Came back to see me one last time, I expect, huh? It’s okay. Didn’t really figure I’d get out of all this alive, anyway, I suppose.”
“You’re not--”
Martha raised her hand to stop him. “Don’t. Just... just don’t, okay? I don’t want to know. I’ve still got to do all this, right, and... it’s better just not to know, that’s all.”
“You’re not going to die, Martha.”
Her smile was wan, but still affectionate. “Okay. Sure. Either way, though, Jack - it’s okay. You’re here, right, so I know it’s got to work out somehow, I guess. Just... don’t tell me anymore.”
“I haven’t told you anything,” Jack protested weakly.
“’Course not. ‘Cause that’d be breaking the timeline.”
Oh, the Doctor’s gonna kill me for this one, if he ever finds out... “Martha?”
“What, now, Jack?”
He sat up a bit so he could look her straight in the eyes, without crooking his neck, and took both her hands in his. “You know I love the Doctor, right?”
“Deaf and blind things living at the bottom of the ocean know you love the Doctor, Jack. You’re not exactly subtle.”
“Yeah. I know.” Jack grinned at her. He couldn’t help it. “So you know I mean this as well as possible when I say that as much as I love him, I hate what he’s put you through in the last year. 1919, 1969, Shakespeare’s London, the whole bit. All of it. Every time he’s hurt you, or ignored you, or taken you for granted--”
“We haven’t talked about--”
“It doesn’t matter.” He hushed her with a finger across her soft lips. “Just listen, and trust me. You’re better than that. All of it, you’re better than all of that. You’re so brilliant. And you’re going to save the world, Martha Jones. I promise you.”
“Wish I could believe you, Jack. I do.” Martha shook her head, and snuggled her face into the collar of his coat and sighed. “And I know I have to, but... it’s so much. Too much.”
“It’s not.” Jack kissed her forehead. “Nothing’s too much for you.”
* * *
A looooooooong time ago,paranoidangel42 requested the first time Harry Sullivan proposed marriage to Sarah Jane Smith... and I forgot. So here it is, now! I'm sorry if it's a bit bittersweet - I wanted something happy, but the writing took me somewhere slightly else. :/
Trust the Doctor, Harry Sullivan thought, to disappear just when they needed him most. They’d hardly stepped away from the Tardis before he wandered off somewhere, and soon after that he and Sarah Jane had met a troupe of tall, very stern-looking reptilian fellows carrying very nasty-looking laser weapons, and been taken captive. They’d herded the two Humans through a labyrinth of tunnels, and then taken Sarah into some other room, presumably for questioning. Harry’d lost track of time a bit while he waited alone in his cell, but he was sure more than an hour had passed. At last the doors swung open and admitted three of the lizard-men, dragging an unconscious Sarah Jane between them into the cell next to Harry’s.
“Sarah!!”
The lizards shouted something at him, and one of them lifted a weapon. Sarah dropped to the ground, clutching her head woozily.
“Now, listen here - she’s hurt. I’m a doctor. You have to let me see her!”
The lizards made some sort of noise that sounded dismissive, and shut the glass door of Sarah cell, making for the door.
“No, get back here! You have to let me see her! Don’t you people have rules? She’s your prisoner, you can’t just--”
The door to the cellblock slammed shut behind the two lizard-men. Harry sighed, and turned his attention back to Sarah, who was curled up on the floor of her cell, her hands covering her head.
“Sarah? Sarah, can you hear me?”
“They’re trying to find something,” Sarah mumbled. “I tried to tell them we’re not from this system, but they wouldn’t listen...”
“Sarah, forget about that. You’re hurt.”
“I know,” she murmured vaguely. “My head hurts like the devil. Is it bad?”
“I can’t tell, old thing. They won’t let me into your cell. Can you lift your head up and look at me?”
She did so, squinting in the bright lights their captors had left on them. Her eyes looked like they were dilating normally, at least, but there was a huge, painful-looking gash on the side of her forehead, and a bruise welling up on the opposite jaw.
“Can you see all right?” he asked, for something to distract her. “How many fingers?”
“Oh, honestly, Harry--”
“Come on, how many? I need to know you haven’t got concussion, Sarah.”
“Three. And a thumb,” she added with a sneer.
“Well, if that’s how you were answering their questions I suppose I don’t have to ask why they gave you that lovely bruise, do I?”
Sarah tried to laugh, and ended up coughing. “Yes, well... lizards. Don’t have much of a sense of humor, do they?”
“I wouldn’t know, yet. I expect they’ll come back for me later.”
“Harry, I couldn’t even tell what they were asking. If I could have... I think I might have told them. No matter what it was, if they’d taken long enough...” She sounded like she was crying. Sarah Jane Smith, crying and admitting that she would have broken, if only she could have guessed what it was her interrogators wanted to know. Harry had never in all his life felt so helpless.
“Shhhhhh. Don’t worry about it, old thing,” Harry reassured her - stupidly, he knew. It had been hours since they’d seen the Doctor, and surely he would have come to get them by now, if he were able. “It’ll be all right, Sarah.” No response. She hadn’t even groused at him for calling her ‘old thing.’ Harry felt a hot pit of fear knot into his stomach and twist the nerves of his hands. “Sarah? Sarah?”
“I’m sorry, Harry...”
“Sarah, stay with me. The Doctor will be here any minute, he’ll get us out of here. You don’t want to be unconscious when he shows up, do you? You’re a light little thing, I’ll grant you, but you’ll still slow us down if you’re not awake for our escape. Sarah!”
“I’m just so tired, Harry. It hurts...”
“I know. I know it hurts, old thing.” Harry could hardly speak with the fear and frustration choking him. “Sarah? Sarah, listen to me, will you? We’re getting out of this. Sarah? Sarah! Something important, Sarah, that I’ve been meaning to ask you. It’s a stupid time, but if I can’t get my nerve up now I suppose I never will. If... When we get out, Sarah, I want to know if you’ll marry me.”
Sarah groaned. “Harry... If you think I’m dying, just say so...”
“You’re not dying, Sarah. And I’m quite serious about this, so I do expect an answer. You’re the most intelligent, beautiful, frustrating woman I’ve ever known, and I want to marry you. What do you say, old thing?”
“I say... you’re trying too hard, Harry...”
“Trying too hard at what?”
Harry jumped. The Doctor’s bushy, toothy head poked out of a service conduit of some kind, and then proceeded his large frame into the cellblock. “Doctor! Where’ve you been? Sarah’s been hurt, and--”
“Oh, here and there, here and there. They don’t make it easy to break into these prisons, you know,” the Doctor informed Harry with a brilliant grin. “And Sarah - what on earth has happened?”
“They questioned her. Tortured,” Harry added tightly, lest the Doctor somehow miss the bruises and welts all over his young friend’s exposed skin.
The Doctor’s eyes went somehow dark, then, and Harry suddenly felt a great deal more than usually aware of the fact that the Doctor, while rather a good friend and ally, if an unreliable one, was not a man to be trifled with. Particularly where Sarah Jane Smith was concerned. That, at least, he thought, we do have in common.
The Doctor got them both out of their cells and then handed Sarah over to Harry and ordered him, in a tight and terrible voice, to get her back to the Tardis and not come back. “Sarah has a key,” he told Harry firmly. “Wait inside the Tardis for me. Don’t leave, don’t wander, and don’t step outside until I’ve returned. Keep her safe.”
Military manners took over, and Harry nodded curtly and followed his orders. Sarah, for her part, didn’t wake until they were already back in the Tardis, and was too weak to even protest much when he told her that she mustn’t get up.
“I really thought... I was in for it, back there,” she told him with a faint smile. “You did, too, didn’t you?”
“Of course not. I knew the Doctor would come.”
“Then why... were you so worried?”
There was no answer for that, of course, so Harry just continued daubing antiseptic on her wounds.
“It was sweet of you, trying to distract me by asking me to marry you,” Sarah continued. “I knew you were just trying to keep me concentrating, though, of course. I really do appreciate it.”
Harry looked at her. Her eyes still drifted lazily, not quite open, and her voice was rough and hoarse. But she smiled fondly at him, with that friendly affection that he was just beginning to enjoy from her. They were friends. That was the best he could hope for, for now, he thought. And it was worth it - worth anything.
“Of course,” he said lightly. “Any time.”
So! In no particular order...
vega_ofthe_lyre requested Eight/Romana based on poem called "Since Feeling is First," and I just have to include the poem, because I absolutely adore it. since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
-- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
- e. e. cummings
* * *
“Do you remember when we met?” the Doctor never asks Romana.
And she will never smile, and answer, “How could I forget?”
* * *
Gallifrey is in winter, now, with a sunrise frosted like a peach rising up over the Citadel, and the Doctor pushes the drapes open around Romana’s red-draped bed to watch the first sunlight settle on her face. They’ve been up all night, talking and making love and remembering, reacquainting themselves with each other’s changed bodies. He’s slimmer now, he thinks, taking a moment to regard himself in the light as well - less muscular, but at least he’s regained the height that he’d been missing in his last incarnation. He’s not sure how Romana feels about it, but he always feels slightly odd when he doesn’t tower over her. There’s so much energy in her, so much power and confidence, that especially now, when she’s ripe with it and practically oozing poise as president, he feels as though he needs that slight edge just to keep up with her.
He never felt like that before, he realizes. It’s new to this incarnation. But that’s the beauty of their relationship, again - it’s never the same frome one regeneration to the next, but it’s always there.
Romana, for her part, reigns in bed much as she does in the council chamber. She sprawls, languid, on the covers, unconcerned with covering herself, unashamed under his gaze. What could they possibly have to hide from each other, after all these years? And yet there is still a mystery in her eyes, something she doesn’t quite give away. She watches him, and smiles with some secret, half fond mockery, half matured infatuation.
“Come away with me again,” he challenges, sitting up on his elbow and taking her chin in his fingers.
“We only just got back!” Romana frowns. “I’m the president, you know, and I have responsibilities...”
“Responsibilities.” He dismisses them with a wave of his hand. “You’re young, Romana! You need to have adventures, you need to get out in the universe - there’s so much there that you haven’t seen! That I haven’t seen! We can see them together!”
“Some other time, perhaps...”
“No, no, no - now! Get dressed, come on! Right now!” He laughs and pushes her up so he can bounce off the couch they’ve been reclining on and pull her, naked, to her feet. His hair is standing on end, and he’s grinning so widely that his cheeks ache with it. His hearts are pounding in his ears, now, run, now, while you still have her, while she’s still yours!
“What’s so important that it can’t wait until tomorrow, Doctor?” she laughs.
“Everything!” He catches her hands and spins her, anti-clockwise to wind back all the years, and then catches her in another kiss, so abruptly she falls into his arms, and lets herself be light and small again.
“Everything?” she asks when even respiratory bypasses demand that they part for a moment.
“Everything, Romana.” Because he can’t say ‘you.’
“Well, we can’t go everywhere,” Romana tells him. Always sensible.
He tries not to sound like a disappointed child when he says, “We could...” If her expression is any indication, he fails - she looks both sad, and slightly annoyed, as though she suspects that he is manipulating her, trying to pull her away. “But I’d settle for Belize,” he relents. “Or Tokyo. Or Epsilon Prime, have you been there? I never took you there, did I? would have remembered that, I think - they’ve got purple sunsets and black sand.”
“It sounds lovely.” She’s not laughing anymore, but her eyes are shining in that black-hole way, the way that drags him in unresisting and makes it impossible for him to look away from her. She’s thinking about it. She’s thinking about it, and she always gives in once she starts thinking, because deep down, he knows that she loves every minute of it.
She’s not quite ready to give up yet, though. “We’ve already done this, Doctor,” she tells him firmly. “Why should we do it again?”
“Because it will be different this time. I’m different, you’re different... And because there’s no one better for traveling with than you.”
It’s as close, he thinks, as he can ever come to saying ‘I love you.’
“Just one more trip. That’s all. Just this once, and then we have to come back,” she tells him. It’s her ‘I love you, too.’ He knows that. It’s all he’s ever wanted from her.
She slips her hand into his as they walk to the Tardis, and he glances sideways at her, catches her glancing sideways at him, and they both grin, together. He squeezes her fingers in his, and Gallifrey is gone. It’s Paris in the springtime, their springtime. There are cherry blossoms and red wine in her cheeks and on her lips, and he is once again the bohemian poet who taught her how to travel so long ago. There will be no talk of standing still, or of walking away, or of remembering. Not today.
Today, they run hand-in-hand.
* * *
zinjadu requested to know why Scully likes answering the door on Halloween. While I'm on this, I really do hope that I wasn't making up the fact that Scully likes movies like "Poltergeist." I could swear that comes from canon, but I couldn't for the life of me remember when or where. When the doorbell rings for the first time, at six forty-five, Scully is ready. She opens the door to a cheery burst of little voices shouting “Trick or treat!” all in the same sing-song tone.
“All right, trick or treat!” Scully holds out the big bowl of candy she’d had waiting by the door. “Now, let’s see, what have we got here... a fairy?” A little girl in a pink tutu, purple tights, and nylon wings stretched over a frame made, unless Scully is mistaken, out of a pair of coat hangers, nods enthuasiastically and takes two Butterfingers. “Annnd... a baseball player?”
“I’m Alex Rodriguez,” the boy tells her solemnly, pointing to his jersey.
“Of course,” she agrees. The boy takes a Snickers and an Almond Joy out of the bowl. “And last... Well, you’ve got to be a werewolf.”
The second boy - almost a teenager, she guesses, although it’s hard to say under all the brown makeup and fake fur, makes some sort of affirmative noise and takes a pair of Kit-Kat bars from the bowl.
“Happy Halloween!” they all chorus as they herd down the hallway to the next door. Scully echoes them, remembering a distinguished gentleman with electric blue eyes. Werewolf. Or something, anyway.
The next troupe of kids has an Elvis - Mulder would approve, she thinks wryly - as well as a “Bratz,” whatever that is, and a medieval maiden with plastic barettes peeking out from her velveteen cloak. After that comes a genie, a pumpkin, a green-skinned witch, and then a trio of vampires. Scully puts on her best cheery-adult voice, and tries not to think too much about sunflower seeds, graveyards, and coffee and pizza laced with sedatives.
Later on there’s a ghost (of course), and the usual array of Disney characters, Jedi knights, gypsy fortune-tellers, and zombies. Just as she’s beginning to think it’s too late for any more kids to show up and starting to consider turning in the TV to see if there are any good, cheesy scary movies on, there’s another knock at the door. This time there’s a slightly bashful looking father standing in the background, a little girl dressed as a princess, and...
“You must be a space alien.”
“Yeah!” enthuses a little voice from inside the plastic mask. “The lady next door thought I was a lizard-guy or something!”
Scully winks at the father. “Well, of course I know what an alien looks like. Doesn’t everybody?”
The little “grey,” as Mulder would no doubt have insisted on calling him, took two Jolly Ranchers and the last Butterfinger, while his sister took two packets of Skittles.
“Thanks for humoring him,” the father tells her as the kids skip off down the hall.
“I’m used to it,” Scully tells him. “Happy Halloween.”
She shuts the door, and locks it, and then sits down on the sofa with the bowl of leftover candy on her lap. No more aliens, vampires, ghosts, or demons tonight. Just a marathon of the old Hammer Dracula movies, a glass of wine, and the last three Almond Joy bars.
“I just wish every night was this easy.”
* * *
snakewhissperer requested Jack and Martha in the Year That Wasn't - which ended up being an exciting prompt to write, since technically they didn't spend much time together during that year. But something happened in Torchwood S2 that completely saved me on this one... so I hope you don't mind spoilers for the end of Torchwood S2 in this one. ;)The sun was just starting to set behind the tree-lined hill when Jack reached his goal. There weren’t likely to be any Toclafane this far out of the city, he thought, but he hid himself carefully nonetheless - he couldn’t take the chance of drawing attention to himself. Not for his own sake - the worst that would happen to him was a lot of pain and a little inconvenience as his body reset itself in perverse mimicry of a VR action game. But for her. So he huddled in the trees, waiting, until he saw her climb over the crest of the hill.
“Martha Jones.” Jack stepped out of the shadows and held his arms wide so she could see him.
The tired, slim figure clad all in black lifted her head cautiously, and then her stern look broke into a brilliant grin. “Oh, my God - Jack!”
When he’d first been awakened, he’d intended to avoid her. Or at least avoid being seen by her, certainly. He really had. Then again, him and the best intentions always did seem to part company just as soon as he saw a pretty face, and just now there was no face in all the universe prettier than Martha Jones’, lit up with shock and joy as she threw herself at him, hugging him tightly around the waist.
“Jack, what are you doing here? How did you get away?”
For a minute his mouth almost kicked in before his brain, and he half-formed an explanation about how John convinced Grey to just bury him rather than killing him outright, and how the lone old man who comprised Torchwood Two, up in Scotland, had slipped down to Cardiff in the first weeks of the Master’s reign of terror and let him out of the freezer where Torchwood had stored him until his time signature wasn’t asynchronous anymore... when he realized that of course Martha was thinking of the other him. The him she’d seen only about six months before, up on the Valiant. The one who was, even then, probably either being killed by the Master (again) or doing his best to comfort Martha’s family.
“I got away,” he told her simply. “Just for a little while. I’ll have to go back... can’t leave the Doctor and your family all alone for long. But for now... I’m on an errand.”
Martha laughed. “We’re in the middle of the Appalachians, Jack. What kind of errand could you possibly be on?”
“There’s still a few remnants of Torchwood scattered around the globe,” Jack said - again, the truth, as much as he could allow her to know. “I’m helping them wherever I can. Anyway, I heard you were out here. I thought I’d... just stop in and check on you. Make sure you’re getting by all right. Are you? You look...”
“Like Hell?”
It was true, of course. Martha looked exhausted - dark circles under her eyes, her skin almost dusty-looking with the pallor of poor sleep, little food, and constant worry. She was usually so scrupulously neat that it was a shock to Jack to see her with her hair unkempt and, her face and clothes unwashed, her nails ragged and dirty... But she was still Martha, and therefore despite all of that - all the horror he knows she’s been going through, all the horror they will talk about it over beer and pizza a year from now, cozy in his office in Cardiff - she was still beautiful, and amazing.
“You look like you need a break,” Jack finished gently.
“You know a good resort that’s still open?” Martha joked, and then sobered suddenly, her eyes going distant. “I passed through Hawaii a while ago, Jack, and... it’s nothing but an open grave. He’s using the volcanos for something, I don’t know what, but the people...”
“Shhhh.” Jack pulled her against his chest. He remembered how she’d cried when she told him that story later, in Cardiff. That story and all the others, some of which this Martha hasn’t even lived through yet. Stop now, he wanted to tell her - Let me finish. I’ll do the rest for you, he can’t do any worse than everything I’ve already seen. It won’t hurt me like it will you...
But that’s impossible, of course. Despite the Master’s paradox machine, Jack can’t take the risk of trying to spare her and, in doing so, failing and destroying the world. Martha will succeed - Jack knew that even if she didn’t. And even though all that happens after will hurt her, she’ll survive, and stay the same, lively, lovely Martha. The amazing Martha Jones... who, just then, was nuzzling his neck, and whose cheek was wet against his shoulder. “Hey...”
“It’s just so good to see you, Jack. I’ve been so lonely... I mean, I meet people everywhere, but it’s not the same. They expect me to be some kind of hero, someone who can solve all their problems, and I’m... just so tired.”
“I know. Come on - I saw a little nook in the rocks back here, it looked like a good spot for a little camping. I’ve got some food, too,” he offers. “You look like you haven’t eaten in days.”
“Haven’t, really,” she admits, trying to shrug it off with a smile. “There was this family... little kids. They were starving. They’re not useful at that age, so they don’t get rations in the work camps. He doesn’t mean to be here long enough to need the little ones.”
“So you gave up your supplies. Martha...”
“They needed it, okay? What good does it do if I can defeat the Master, if everybody’s dead by the time I do it?” Her eyes were hot, her lips trembling. “Enough people have died already. Anyway, a healthy adult can live two weeks without food...”
“Not and have enough strength to walk all over the world,” Jack scolded gently, and tugged her down into the spot he’d found - really only a gash in the rocks, but it’s big enough for the two of them to sit if they huddle close, and there’s a rock face to keep the wind off them, and a big old pine tree that provides both cover from patrols and shelter if it rains. It smells good, too, Jack thought - clean and rich, and the dry needles underneath insulate them from the rocks.
“It’s not four-star dining,” Jack warned as he pulls out a handful of protein bars. “But it’s the best I could find. Take them all,” he added. “They’re light to carry, and they’ll keep you going for a bit.”
“You have to eat, too, Jack.”
“What, and ruin my figure?” He tried a grin on her, and was relieved when she returned it and shook her head.
They ate in silence - probably a good change of pace for Martha, after months of telling her story to every person she met, Jack thought - and shared a few sips from a bottle of water Jack retrieved from his bag. Then Jack laid back against the trunk of the old pine tree, and scooted Martha closer to him, pulling her in so she leaned on him rather than the tree.
“Not going to put your arm to sleep, am I?” Martha mumbled.
“Nah. You’re too light.” He kissed her hair tenderly.
“’Kay,” she murmured, and snuggled in closer. “I’m glad you’re here, Jack.”
“Me, too.”
“Even if you shouldn’t be.”
Jack tensed. “What do you mean? Torchwood needs me...”
“That’s not why you’re here, Jack. There’s no Torchwood in America. Even if you all had agents here before the Master, there aren’t any left here now... I’m in touch with the resistance everywhere I go, remember?”
“I just wanted to check in on you...”
“And you wouldn’t ever leave the Doctor, Jack. I know you better than that.” She tilted her head back so she could meet his eyes, and smiled. “Don’t worry. I know you’re from another time.” She tapped the temporal manipulator on his wrist. “Came back to see me one last time, I expect, huh? It’s okay. Didn’t really figure I’d get out of all this alive, anyway, I suppose.”
“You’re not--”
Martha raised her hand to stop him. “Don’t. Just... just don’t, okay? I don’t want to know. I’ve still got to do all this, right, and... it’s better just not to know, that’s all.”
“You’re not going to die, Martha.”
Her smile was wan, but still affectionate. “Okay. Sure. Either way, though, Jack - it’s okay. You’re here, right, so I know it’s got to work out somehow, I guess. Just... don’t tell me anymore.”
“I haven’t told you anything,” Jack protested weakly.
“’Course not. ‘Cause that’d be breaking the timeline.”
Oh, the Doctor’s gonna kill me for this one, if he ever finds out... “Martha?”
“What, now, Jack?”
He sat up a bit so he could look her straight in the eyes, without crooking his neck, and took both her hands in his. “You know I love the Doctor, right?”
“Deaf and blind things living at the bottom of the ocean know you love the Doctor, Jack. You’re not exactly subtle.”
“Yeah. I know.” Jack grinned at her. He couldn’t help it. “So you know I mean this as well as possible when I say that as much as I love him, I hate what he’s put you through in the last year. 1919, 1969, Shakespeare’s London, the whole bit. All of it. Every time he’s hurt you, or ignored you, or taken you for granted--”
“We haven’t talked about--”
“It doesn’t matter.” He hushed her with a finger across her soft lips. “Just listen, and trust me. You’re better than that. All of it, you’re better than all of that. You’re so brilliant. And you’re going to save the world, Martha Jones. I promise you.”
“Wish I could believe you, Jack. I do.” Martha shook her head, and snuggled her face into the collar of his coat and sighed. “And I know I have to, but... it’s so much. Too much.”
“It’s not.” Jack kissed her forehead. “Nothing’s too much for you.”
* * *
A looooooooong time ago,
paranoidangel42 requested the first time Harry Sullivan proposed marriage to Sarah Jane Smith... and I forgot. So here it is, now! I'm sorry if it's a bit bittersweet - I wanted something happy, but the writing took me somewhere slightly else. :/Trust the Doctor, Harry Sullivan thought, to disappear just when they needed him most. They’d hardly stepped away from the Tardis before he wandered off somewhere, and soon after that he and Sarah Jane had met a troupe of tall, very stern-looking reptilian fellows carrying very nasty-looking laser weapons, and been taken captive. They’d herded the two Humans through a labyrinth of tunnels, and then taken Sarah into some other room, presumably for questioning. Harry’d lost track of time a bit while he waited alone in his cell, but he was sure more than an hour had passed. At last the doors swung open and admitted three of the lizard-men, dragging an unconscious Sarah Jane between them into the cell next to Harry’s.
“Sarah!!”
The lizards shouted something at him, and one of them lifted a weapon. Sarah dropped to the ground, clutching her head woozily.
“Now, listen here - she’s hurt. I’m a doctor. You have to let me see her!”
The lizards made some sort of noise that sounded dismissive, and shut the glass door of Sarah cell, making for the door.
“No, get back here! You have to let me see her! Don’t you people have rules? She’s your prisoner, you can’t just--”
The door to the cellblock slammed shut behind the two lizard-men. Harry sighed, and turned his attention back to Sarah, who was curled up on the floor of her cell, her hands covering her head.
“Sarah? Sarah, can you hear me?”
“They’re trying to find something,” Sarah mumbled. “I tried to tell them we’re not from this system, but they wouldn’t listen...”
“Sarah, forget about that. You’re hurt.”
“I know,” she murmured vaguely. “My head hurts like the devil. Is it bad?”
“I can’t tell, old thing. They won’t let me into your cell. Can you lift your head up and look at me?”
She did so, squinting in the bright lights their captors had left on them. Her eyes looked like they were dilating normally, at least, but there was a huge, painful-looking gash on the side of her forehead, and a bruise welling up on the opposite jaw.
“Can you see all right?” he asked, for something to distract her. “How many fingers?”
“Oh, honestly, Harry--”
“Come on, how many? I need to know you haven’t got concussion, Sarah.”
“Three. And a thumb,” she added with a sneer.
“Well, if that’s how you were answering their questions I suppose I don’t have to ask why they gave you that lovely bruise, do I?”
Sarah tried to laugh, and ended up coughing. “Yes, well... lizards. Don’t have much of a sense of humor, do they?”
“I wouldn’t know, yet. I expect they’ll come back for me later.”
“Harry, I couldn’t even tell what they were asking. If I could have... I think I might have told them. No matter what it was, if they’d taken long enough...” She sounded like she was crying. Sarah Jane Smith, crying and admitting that she would have broken, if only she could have guessed what it was her interrogators wanted to know. Harry had never in all his life felt so helpless.
“Shhhhhh. Don’t worry about it, old thing,” Harry reassured her - stupidly, he knew. It had been hours since they’d seen the Doctor, and surely he would have come to get them by now, if he were able. “It’ll be all right, Sarah.” No response. She hadn’t even groused at him for calling her ‘old thing.’ Harry felt a hot pit of fear knot into his stomach and twist the nerves of his hands. “Sarah? Sarah?”
“I’m sorry, Harry...”
“Sarah, stay with me. The Doctor will be here any minute, he’ll get us out of here. You don’t want to be unconscious when he shows up, do you? You’re a light little thing, I’ll grant you, but you’ll still slow us down if you’re not awake for our escape. Sarah!”
“I’m just so tired, Harry. It hurts...”
“I know. I know it hurts, old thing.” Harry could hardly speak with the fear and frustration choking him. “Sarah? Sarah, listen to me, will you? We’re getting out of this. Sarah? Sarah! Something important, Sarah, that I’ve been meaning to ask you. It’s a stupid time, but if I can’t get my nerve up now I suppose I never will. If... When we get out, Sarah, I want to know if you’ll marry me.”
Sarah groaned. “Harry... If you think I’m dying, just say so...”
“You’re not dying, Sarah. And I’m quite serious about this, so I do expect an answer. You’re the most intelligent, beautiful, frustrating woman I’ve ever known, and I want to marry you. What do you say, old thing?”
“I say... you’re trying too hard, Harry...”
“Trying too hard at what?”
Harry jumped. The Doctor’s bushy, toothy head poked out of a service conduit of some kind, and then proceeded his large frame into the cellblock. “Doctor! Where’ve you been? Sarah’s been hurt, and--”
“Oh, here and there, here and there. They don’t make it easy to break into these prisons, you know,” the Doctor informed Harry with a brilliant grin. “And Sarah - what on earth has happened?”
“They questioned her. Tortured,” Harry added tightly, lest the Doctor somehow miss the bruises and welts all over his young friend’s exposed skin.
The Doctor’s eyes went somehow dark, then, and Harry suddenly felt a great deal more than usually aware of the fact that the Doctor, while rather a good friend and ally, if an unreliable one, was not a man to be trifled with. Particularly where Sarah Jane Smith was concerned. That, at least, he thought, we do have in common.
The Doctor got them both out of their cells and then handed Sarah over to Harry and ordered him, in a tight and terrible voice, to get her back to the Tardis and not come back. “Sarah has a key,” he told Harry firmly. “Wait inside the Tardis for me. Don’t leave, don’t wander, and don’t step outside until I’ve returned. Keep her safe.”
Military manners took over, and Harry nodded curtly and followed his orders. Sarah, for her part, didn’t wake until they were already back in the Tardis, and was too weak to even protest much when he told her that she mustn’t get up.
“I really thought... I was in for it, back there,” she told him with a faint smile. “You did, too, didn’t you?”
“Of course not. I knew the Doctor would come.”
“Then why... were you so worried?”
There was no answer for that, of course, so Harry just continued daubing antiseptic on her wounds.
“It was sweet of you, trying to distract me by asking me to marry you,” Sarah continued. “I knew you were just trying to keep me concentrating, though, of course. I really do appreciate it.”
Harry looked at her. Her eyes still drifted lazily, not quite open, and her voice was rough and hoarse. But she smiled fondly at him, with that friendly affection that he was just beginning to enjoy from her. They were friends. That was the best he could hope for, for now, he thought. And it was worth it - worth anything.
“Of course,” he said lightly. “Any time.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2008-10-15 09:47 pm (UTC)XD Nice~
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Date: 2008-10-16 08:42 pm (UTC)Glad you liked it!
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Date: 2008-10-15 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-16 08:43 pm (UTC)I'm glad you liked it!
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Date: 2008-10-15 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-16 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-16 01:01 am (UTC)and Harry and Sarah has just the right note too. I wonder how many times he has proposed?
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Date: 2008-10-16 08:48 pm (UTC)Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed both of them!
(As for how many times Harry's proposed, my own personal canon has the number at thirteen, as of the end of last season of SJA. ...Not that I'm at all filling in bits with them between episodes of SJA, and certainly not as though that's the primary reason I watch the show.......)
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Date: 2008-10-16 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-16 08:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-17 01:42 am (UTC)