...I said I'd make an attempt at it. :D
Jun. 26th, 2008 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canonical_insanityTitle: Of Ex-zombies and Time Travellers.
Fandom: Doctor Who (technically it's also a Torchwood crossover, but they are in the same universe)
Characters: Owen Harper, Sixth Doctor, Peri Brown (no, it's not a threesome yet. Come back in another couple of chapters ^_^)
Word Count: 1312 words.
Rating: PG-13/12/T
Warnings: Implied character death, one mentioned use of hallucinogenics, a ridiculous amount of snark even for me...and spoilers up to 'Exit Wounds'. Peri's not quite used to Six yet, so some time during Season 22 -probably quite early on in the series.
The first thing that he noticed -besides the blinding light- was that he wasn't dead.
Not even close. His heart was beating -and he'd missed that the most over the past couple of months, no matter how many jokes Jack made about the fact that he couldn't have sex while he was dead- but he checked his pulse just to make sure. Normal. Despite being seemingly vaporised in a nuclear explosion, he had come out of it better than he went in.
"Tosh?" He wanted her to reply, wanted for it to be okay -because he remembered how hurt she was at his first death, and how sorry she had been at the probability of his second. But she didn't. She wasn't there. There wasn't even a radio crackle to tell him that there was anything on the other end of the line. As far as he knew, Cardiff was a big blistering hole in Wales.
If Wales still existed at this point, that was. Surely Jack would have survived, as he seemed to recover from absolutely everything, which made Owen’s job as resident Torchwood Doctor rather redundant. And where exactly was he, anyway?
The light dimmed, and he found that he was in a shiny metal room -which, if he hadn't been a veteran of Torchwood, he would have derided as looking like a set from a cheap science fiction movie- and there was a young woman -she was kind of cute, but he's dated better looking girls before- staring at him as if he was a ghost. And that wasn't a crap pun he could make anymore, since -as his own doctor- he had just given himself a reasonably clean bill of health, despite the probable radiation poisoning.
And that was when a man with the most brightly coloured coat Owen had ever seen -outside of that one acid trip he went on in medical school, which never went on his file- walked into the room.
"What are you doing in my TARDIS?"
Shit.
Even Owen -a member of the branch of Torchwood that the others had considered almost heretical because of Jack's deliberate refusal to even attempt their primary mission- had heard of the TARDIS. It was mostly used in relation to the Doctor, a time-travelling alien that allegedly could change its face.
According to Ianto, who had been a member of Torchwood One first, and had actually listened to the official mission briefings which Jack had refused to show to any of his team, whenever a massive alien-related incident occurred in Britain, the Doctor was usually either responsible or interfered unnecessarily in the solution to the problem. Showing up in his TARDIS -a time machine that looked like a 60's police box, for some reason- often with a human in tow and forcing people like UNIT to swallow his superiority complex.
Not that Owen was one to talk about superiority complexes, of course, but he didn't force it on that many people outside of the Torchwood Institute. The Doctor's ego -according to Ianto's files as well as Jack and Martha‘s recollections- extended to the whole world, if not the universe.
But the Doctor that Ianto had shown him from the files had looked young, with dark hair and wearing a suit, about as far from the blond middle-aged man that had spoken as you could possibly get. So Owen shrugged, deciding to go with the simplest solution -because he had better things to do than get into a shouting match with an alien that could probably kill him without blinking.
"I seem to have gotten lost. Do you think that you could give me a lift back to Cardiff?"
The Doctor shook his head.
"I'm not a taxi service for you humans to just hitchhike on, you know!"
The woman muttered something, to which he turned to her, irritated.
"What was that, Peri?!"
She smiled and winked at Owen.
"Nothing important, Doctor. I was just thinking how I needed someone else around the TARDIS. Not that you aren't good enough company, but if I had someone else around for protection, I might not get captured by random aliens as much and you might actually have some peace and quiet."
The Doctor considered the idea, while Peri smiled at Owen again.
"I suppose it wouldn't hurt. Providing you tell me who you are and where you come from. And put your pistol on the table, I don't approve of weapons."
"Except your coat, that is." Peri muttered and Owen tried not to laugh. The Doctor seemed not to have heard her, or had obviously deemed it below his notice.
"I'm Dr Owen Harper and up until recently I was the team medic for the Cardiff branch of the Torchwood Institute."
"Up until recently? What happened? Did you get fired?"
He gave Peri a quick smile in response -Toshiko's not here, so he might as well flirt a little, especially as she had persuaded the Doctor not to toss him out of the TARDIS mid-journey- and shrugged.
"Worse. I died and was brought back. Don't ask me how, Doctor, because we had no idea how that specific piece of alien technology worked. Anyway, I was alive, but I had no pulse and no heartbeat. And then I died again, got blasted by enough radiation to put Chernobyl to shame, there was a white light and I was suddenly here instead."
"What year was it in your reality? And who are the Torchwood Institute? I've never heard of them, and I'm sure that I would have if they were important enough to be allowed to handle non-human equipment."
"2009. And...wait, you've really never heard of us? So if I mention the Battle of Canary Wharf, it won't mean anything to you? Queen Victoria and the lycanthrope? Captain Jack Harkness?" At each, the Doctor shook his head.
"I have never heard of any of them. Except Queen Victoria, obviously, but as far as I'm aware, she was never attacked by any lycanthropic organism. But that's only to be expected, of course, I rarely travel to the early 21st century. I prefer the 1960's. All of those colours."
Seeing Owen's confused look, the Doctor continued, "However, this does not mean that there was not a Timelord there, or even that a Doctor did not make an appearance. This is the thing about time-travellers, you see. You could be referring to a version of me far into my future. In which case, you must be very careful about answering any questions that I ask you, and I must be equally careful in what questions I ask. In fact, I should not indulge my curiosity with you at all; therefore if I forget myself and ask you a question, you must remember not to tell me. Peri, if you would make yourself useful by showing your new friend to a room before he dies of old age."
Once she had led him out of the main engine room and down a long corridor, Peri shook her head.
"Honestly, I wonder why I'm still here sometimes. The old Doctor was nothing like this. Then he had to go and die, leaving me with his unstable replacement. It's...well, never mind. So, Owen, how do you know about the Doctor if you've never travelled with him before?"
She did look interested, and it wasn't like he was actually stupid enough to attempt to kill or capture the Doctor under these circumstances, so he told her as much as he could about the Torchwood Institute, leaving out as many of the details as possible. He did not want to cause a time paradox. He didn't tell her about his team, apart from mentioning that Jack had been a companion of another Doctor. Or was it that he would be a companion?
Time-travel was starting to give him a headache.
Fandom: Doctor Who (technically it's also a Torchwood crossover, but they are in the same universe)
Characters: Owen Harper, Sixth Doctor, Peri Brown (no, it's not a threesome yet. Come back in another couple of chapters ^_^)
Word Count: 1312 words.
Rating: PG-13/12/T
Warnings: Implied character death, one mentioned use of hallucinogenics, a ridiculous amount of snark even for me...and spoilers up to 'Exit Wounds'. Peri's not quite used to Six yet, so some time during Season 22 -probably quite early on in the series.
The first thing that he noticed -besides the blinding light- was that he wasn't dead.
Not even close. His heart was beating -and he'd missed that the most over the past couple of months, no matter how many jokes Jack made about the fact that he couldn't have sex while he was dead- but he checked his pulse just to make sure. Normal. Despite being seemingly vaporised in a nuclear explosion, he had come out of it better than he went in.
"Tosh?" He wanted her to reply, wanted for it to be okay -because he remembered how hurt she was at his first death, and how sorry she had been at the probability of his second. But she didn't. She wasn't there. There wasn't even a radio crackle to tell him that there was anything on the other end of the line. As far as he knew, Cardiff was a big blistering hole in Wales.
If Wales still existed at this point, that was. Surely Jack would have survived, as he seemed to recover from absolutely everything, which made Owen’s job as resident Torchwood Doctor rather redundant. And where exactly was he, anyway?
The light dimmed, and he found that he was in a shiny metal room -which, if he hadn't been a veteran of Torchwood, he would have derided as looking like a set from a cheap science fiction movie- and there was a young woman -she was kind of cute, but he's dated better looking girls before- staring at him as if he was a ghost. And that wasn't a crap pun he could make anymore, since -as his own doctor- he had just given himself a reasonably clean bill of health, despite the probable radiation poisoning.
And that was when a man with the most brightly coloured coat Owen had ever seen -outside of that one acid trip he went on in medical school, which never went on his file- walked into the room.
"What are you doing in my TARDIS?"
Shit.
Even Owen -a member of the branch of Torchwood that the others had considered almost heretical because of Jack's deliberate refusal to even attempt their primary mission- had heard of the TARDIS. It was mostly used in relation to the Doctor, a time-travelling alien that allegedly could change its face.
According to Ianto, who had been a member of Torchwood One first, and had actually listened to the official mission briefings which Jack had refused to show to any of his team, whenever a massive alien-related incident occurred in Britain, the Doctor was usually either responsible or interfered unnecessarily in the solution to the problem. Showing up in his TARDIS -a time machine that looked like a 60's police box, for some reason- often with a human in tow and forcing people like UNIT to swallow his superiority complex.
Not that Owen was one to talk about superiority complexes, of course, but he didn't force it on that many people outside of the Torchwood Institute. The Doctor's ego -according to Ianto's files as well as Jack and Martha‘s recollections- extended to the whole world, if not the universe.
But the Doctor that Ianto had shown him from the files had looked young, with dark hair and wearing a suit, about as far from the blond middle-aged man that had spoken as you could possibly get. So Owen shrugged, deciding to go with the simplest solution -because he had better things to do than get into a shouting match with an alien that could probably kill him without blinking.
"I seem to have gotten lost. Do you think that you could give me a lift back to Cardiff?"
The Doctor shook his head.
"I'm not a taxi service for you humans to just hitchhike on, you know!"
The woman muttered something, to which he turned to her, irritated.
"What was that, Peri?!"
She smiled and winked at Owen.
"Nothing important, Doctor. I was just thinking how I needed someone else around the TARDIS. Not that you aren't good enough company, but if I had someone else around for protection, I might not get captured by random aliens as much and you might actually have some peace and quiet."
The Doctor considered the idea, while Peri smiled at Owen again.
"I suppose it wouldn't hurt. Providing you tell me who you are and where you come from. And put your pistol on the table, I don't approve of weapons."
"Except your coat, that is." Peri muttered and Owen tried not to laugh. The Doctor seemed not to have heard her, or had obviously deemed it below his notice.
"I'm Dr Owen Harper and up until recently I was the team medic for the Cardiff branch of the Torchwood Institute."
"Up until recently? What happened? Did you get fired?"
He gave Peri a quick smile in response -Toshiko's not here, so he might as well flirt a little, especially as she had persuaded the Doctor not to toss him out of the TARDIS mid-journey- and shrugged.
"Worse. I died and was brought back. Don't ask me how, Doctor, because we had no idea how that specific piece of alien technology worked. Anyway, I was alive, but I had no pulse and no heartbeat. And then I died again, got blasted by enough radiation to put Chernobyl to shame, there was a white light and I was suddenly here instead."
"What year was it in your reality? And who are the Torchwood Institute? I've never heard of them, and I'm sure that I would have if they were important enough to be allowed to handle non-human equipment."
"2009. And...wait, you've really never heard of us? So if I mention the Battle of Canary Wharf, it won't mean anything to you? Queen Victoria and the lycanthrope? Captain Jack Harkness?" At each, the Doctor shook his head.
"I have never heard of any of them. Except Queen Victoria, obviously, but as far as I'm aware, she was never attacked by any lycanthropic organism. But that's only to be expected, of course, I rarely travel to the early 21st century. I prefer the 1960's. All of those colours."
Seeing Owen's confused look, the Doctor continued, "However, this does not mean that there was not a Timelord there, or even that a Doctor did not make an appearance. This is the thing about time-travellers, you see. You could be referring to a version of me far into my future. In which case, you must be very careful about answering any questions that I ask you, and I must be equally careful in what questions I ask. In fact, I should not indulge my curiosity with you at all; therefore if I forget myself and ask you a question, you must remember not to tell me. Peri, if you would make yourself useful by showing your new friend to a room before he dies of old age."
Once she had led him out of the main engine room and down a long corridor, Peri shook her head.
"Honestly, I wonder why I'm still here sometimes. The old Doctor was nothing like this. Then he had to go and die, leaving me with his unstable replacement. It's...well, never mind. So, Owen, how do you know about the Doctor if you've never travelled with him before?"
She did look interested, and it wasn't like he was actually stupid enough to attempt to kill or capture the Doctor under these circumstances, so he told her as much as he could about the Torchwood Institute, leaving out as many of the details as possible. He did not want to cause a time paradox. He didn't tell her about his team, apart from mentioning that Jack had been a companion of another Doctor. Or was it that he would be a companion?
Time-travel was starting to give him a headache.
