ladyoftime | Entries tagged with community: theatrical muse

Standing in the doorway, arms crossed, a careful watch kept over her companion’s sleep. Buffy stirs, and the Doctor steps in another few feet. It’s not so much that she spies on her companion’s dreams as she can feel them, Buffy’s timeline twisting in her mind, compounded by the nature of the TARDIS drifting through the Vortex.

“Having dreams again?” she says, soft so as not to yank the human out of her sleep-sweet mist.

Buffy nods, tired, and starts to sit up, gathering sheets about herself in layers of protection.

“Past or future?”

When her only answer is the hum of the TARDIS, she nods, once, and leaves her companion to her peace.

( I'm gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back. )

Community:

theatrical_muse
Word Count: 1,031
Prompt: 330 - I.O.U. / Over-protective!Eleven for

gr8muppetyodin
Author's Note: Admittedly this prompt more to do with the fact that I saw "IOU" and went oh yeah, I do owe fic than, er, anything else IOU-ish, but that's what prompts are for sometimes! Or sommat. SORRY FOR BEING SO LATE.

( Spoilers for 'The Eleventh Hour' )

Community:

theatrical_muse
Word Count: 435
Prompt: 329 - Get out.
Author's Note: The definition of Doctor is 'time traveler babysitter'. Trufax!

There is a planet at the co-ordinates 10-0-11-0-0 by 0-2 from galactic zero centre. It has a name of its own, the one its people speak; and it has other names, too, the ones for being spoken by outsiders. They are not the same name. The outsiders can only capture snapshots of this planet; frozen in youth, in the heyday, or filled with awe for a mythical planet long since destroyed. Only one name encompasses the whole of its existence. That is the name its people speak.

This is not home.

Perhaps it would have been, once, in seconds lost to eternity, in the twist of decisions and relentless flow of time. It is, is not, once was but will soon never have been, home.

Humans have a saying, home is where the heart is. It is anachronistic to apply to a Time Lord; their hearts lie in their chests, reliable in the steady tandem rhythms. To speak it is as obvious and useless as it is to say that home is in the body. Of course it is. But it is not the true home, the one hidden in metaphor. And if it isn’t true, then it isn’t really home at all, but merely a place of dwelling.

Time. Is ever-changing. Must we really even consider it?

It would be unreasonable to assume someone accustomed to the evolution of existence, cells dying and regenerating, minds dying and regenerating, to consider something as stagnant as a fixed point home. Home is so much more, so much more amazing and fantastic than any one space. And in the traveling, the journey – that is home. That is right.

On one dark night on Gallifrey, a man who will come to be known as the Doctor steals an elderly, out-of-date TARDIS slotted for destruction. And for the first time in his life, he is home.

Community:

theatrical_muse
Word Count: 312
Prompt: 327 - "Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."

A List of Things the Doctor Has Invented, or Helped To Invent

(excerpt)

( Processing... )

Word Count: 209ish
Community:

theatrical_muse
Prompt: 325

This is a story about relationships, a study in relativity. Concepts defined and linked together in unbreakable bonds; without one, the meaning of the second is altered. One cannot exist without the other and retain its layers of meaning. And at the beginning of this story, the events that comprise it have already begun. Initial velocity in place, and acceleration, the two related to the final ending by only time.

He smiles, then, because he can; because he is inexorably caught in orbit; because once, long ago, he gave himself to the relation of tug and pull, dark and light, and in the acceptance of captivity there is a freedom. In the denial, too, there is liberty; and also constraint. She does not smile, because she is bound; because she, too, must take her place in the attraction of forces, or there is no equilibrium. And all relations must come to equilibrium. By chaos they come to rest, and thus to the deeper order. Push and pull, opposing concepts that, in dependence on their application, may work either together or apart.

( but the history books forgot about us, and the bible didn't mention us. )

Community:

theatrical_muse
Word count: 668
Prompt: 323 – "The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work it out themselves, they would never bother. They would just find what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought." --Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Author's note: So while I was writing this - yes, I had a word etymology dictionary open the entire time - I found the following veeeeery interesting items:
'Domination ... from dominus "lord, master," lit. "master of the house," from domus "home" (see domestic) + -nus, suffix denoting ownership or relation.'
'Meddle ... From mid-14c. to 1700, it also was a euphemism for "have sexual intercourse."'

I think we all know what this means: a botched proposal and extremely elaborate come hither message gone horribly, horribly awry. It all makes sense now!

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: "Samson", Regina Spektor

Schoolwork ated my brain, but I do actually have something written and would post it tonight were it not likely to collapse into an incoherent mess given that it is 1 AM and I should have been asleep ages ago.

PLEASE DO NOT BOOT ME. D: Groveling available upon demand.

theatrical_muse
Prompt: 319 - Friday, and best_served_hot 's first lines meme.
Word count: 997, not including the borrowed first lines..
Author's note: Idk what you mean when you say you want comprehensible plot.

the end.

The air was light and cool, blowing gently and ruffling their hair and clothes without being bothersome. The Doctor shut her eyes briefly, sharpening her perception to the feel of wind on her skin, then slowly allowed her senses to open outward, from the tips of her fingers to the sensitive skin of her bare shoulders.

The Master splayed his fingers out along her collarbone, and she shivered. He was close now, close enough that she could feel a distinct bulge pressing against her hip bone.

She tilted her head so she could see him better and smiled, a little cheekily. “Is that a banana in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

between.

Glass shattering roused the Doctor abruptly. She didn’t move or open her eyes at first - just the feel of time flowing around her was too much sensation right now, even without the addition of light, colour and motion. But someone kicked her in the ribs, lightly at first, then more insistently. “Rise and shine, Doctor,” the Master said, his voice grating on her mind. “It’s time to face the day.”

Her eyes opened, unfocused at first. His faced blurred and swam in front of her eyes, so she rolled onto her side and threw up a bit. It didn’t help, but at least some of it landed on his shoes, which was probably decent payback for whatever he did to her that she couldn’t remember.

Annoyingly, he didn’t seem particularly bothered by the presence of stomach acids on his leather shoes. “That’s it,” he said, purposefully too loud. “Detox! I should take pictures of you like this and broadcast them to your companions. They can make Christmas cards.”

“What happened?” she said, once she felt like she could speak and her head wouldn’t fall off or explode or anything inconvenient like that. He just laughed and pulled her to her feet, too fast.

And then the world exploded.

( Friday the Thirteenth (or, why the Doctor could never get the hang of Thursdays, cnt'd.) )

{Quiet and formless, a thought with no words yet to give it power; she waits.}

(Run, run, run-)

She hits the ground running because that’s what she always does, running and running forever and always. She lands on the ground, foot bent slightly the wrong way – but it’s alright, not that story, not this time – and she’s off again. It’s time to save the princess from her high tower because they never pay attention, no matter how many times she tells them to listen. Don’t touch, don’t stray, stay right where you are and don’t wander off. There’s a set of rules to follow in this world, rules she’s been learning since Susan went to school, since long nights reading fairy tales with her and puzzling out the inconsistencies.

(as fast as you can)

–And just. Fantastic, so very fantastic. She comes to a sudden halt, sighting the wolf in the middle of the path ahead; of course, she should have seen that coming. She can feel the thread of story tugging at her, but she doesn’t have time for this.

“Where are you going?” he asks, teeth bared in a smile as politely dangerous as can be.

She doesn’t smile back, not quite rude but not quite friendly, either. “What business is it of yours?”

“Oh, none, none at all,” he says, and sweeps a paw out at the woods beyond the path. “I just happened to find a patch of the rarest flowers around that corner, and I thought if I should find a pretty lady, I would take her to see them.”

“My,” she says, wry because this is a familiar tale, “What big teeth you have.”

( ever after (happily) )

Community:

theatrical_muse
Word count: 2,198
Prompt: 317 – What do you still have from when you were young?
Author's note: I hate RichText. I tried to use it for this, and then it decided my story was too long and froze the screen.

Time doesn’t run linearly, of course. Just because a Doctor occupies one point in time and space, doesn’t mean she can’t be occupying others simultaneously. Ten years is a long time.

He sits at her table, not the other way around. The reasons blur over time, but she thinks it was because she looked a little lonely. He smiles brightly, and chatters, and offers her a pastry. She buys him a cuppa, and the pastries, too, so he won’t have to steal money from a bank machine this time.

He chats with her for an hour, and then runs off to save the world (again).

)No.
Not quite.(

( every angel is terrifying. )

Community:

theatrical_muse
Prompt: 316 - What were you doing ten years ago?
Word count: 895
Author's note: This was supposed to be a silly Doctor&Doctor catch-up fic. My brain had other ideas. Sulk.

Crop circles in the sand. The universe always starts with riddles. They’re her downfall, the mysteries. She’s like an object caught in their orbit, endlessly looping them in messy circles, inspecting, taking the pieces of the puzzles in her hands and searching for the shape of how they’re put together.

Sometimes the pieces are made of glass, and they cut her hands. Sometimes– sometimes. But she can’t put them down, because she has to know, and that’s the paradox of her mind, endlessly drawn to that which will hurt her.

This is old. This is ancient, written in hieroglyphs only men with ghosts in their minds and dust on their hands can translate.

The universe is immutable. Energy and heat, these are forms that will always exist. Only the shapes change, become new in their paths. They fascinate her, the shapes of things. Like a child caught in the wonder of a colourful mobile, she is so dazzled by an unexpected turn that she forgets the endings will all be the same. Entropy takes hold, the constant of the universe.

This is not new. The newness is perceptions of the universe, ever-changing. The newness is the ability to look at a piece of the universe as if it’s never been seen before, as if it isn’t made up of the same matter, energy, heat as a million pieces before it, the same building blocks that have endured for time immemorial. She marvels in her companions’ abilities to make the old new, and in her wonder forgets her own talent for the re-imagining of the universe. From them, she learns, and that’s new; and with them, she forgets, and learns anew. It’s a borrowed gift, one she’ll have to give back someday.

For now, though, she has it. For now, the universe is full of mystery, even when it slices her hearts open to know it. And because it is so filled, she will always renew, always emerge in life. The day it ceases to amaze her is the day she’ll breathe her last, and become part of the immutable pattern.

Today.

Today is not that day.

And that’s new, too.

Community:

theatrical_muse
Prompt: 313 - Write about something old, something new, or something borrowed.
Word count: 360

Current Music: "On the Radio", Regina Spektor

I’ll Explain Later: insights, exploits, and considerably more than you wanted to know about the number of times the world almost exploded.

( Cut for 'Waters of Mars' + Christmas promo spoilers )

Community:

theatrical_muse
Prompt: 312; 250: Write page 57 of your 300-page autobiography.
Word count: 244

You collect people.

It’s true and not true. Each one is unique, each one is special to you and separate from the others in your memories. Each one has a personality, a history, each has gone with you to places no one else has been. Each one has done brilliant things that no one else could have done.

In the end, though, they’re all the same; they all leave you, in one way or another.

All of them did ordinary things, all of them ate chips and drank tea and went to shops. All of them had a shared history in the universe, a legacy of breathing in and breathing out, footprints of their lives scattered all over the galaxy. All of them blur together after time, Sarah-Jane Fitz Martha Jamie Frobisher, the details fade into the deep fog of your memory. It’s not true and true.

You collect people.

Community:

theatrical_muse
Prompt: 303 - Collection(s)
Word count: 150

Query application opened. Do you have a query?

> MADNESS?_

Processing question and calculating variables for 2300 variations of the language you have chosen.

…

Processing completed. 251 answers found. Proceed?

> YES_

1: A symptom of an unhealthy psyche, characterized by behaviour uncommon to the socialized norm, difficulty distinguishing reality from unreality, and an inability to walk past a shop selling $.25 rubber balls, no matter how many the sentient unit has amassed already.

Continue?

> YES_

2: A feeling of anger, characterized by grumpy noises and facial cues, complaints, raised voice, and a tendency to throw objects at or near the subject of the anger.

Continue?

> YES_

3: Madness, March. An inescapable compulsion to watch human beings chase other human beings around a strictly-defined area with an air-filled spheroid.

Continue?

> YES_

4: THIS. IS. SPARTAAAAAA!

Continue?

> NO, I THINK THAT’LL BE ENOUGH. THANK YOU, COMPUTER_

No problem, Dave.

> IT’S THE DOCTOR, ACTUALLY_

Good night, Dave.

Community:

theatrical_muse
Prompt: 300 - This is... (with more than a tip of the hat to 299, Madness)
Word count: 162
Author's Note: idek

Silence.

It’s the first thing she notices. Silence, heavy and thick, coating the planet. She accidentally crushes a pile of dead leaves under her boot; she feels the crunch, but doesn’t hear anything. The sound is snatched away before it can reach her ears, gobbled up the silence.

She stands still for a moment, considering possibilities, then climbs a nearby cropping of rocks for a better look at the place, her movements eliciting no sound. From the top, she can see a city, unnaturally still, and a road, and a sign that might once have read “5 miles” or “1 mile” or “Population 1,000,000” but is now blank.

She purses her lips and sets off down the road.

(This is not that story. This is the story of beginnings, and endings, and the bits in the middle. If it muddles, well. Once upon a time can be overwritten.)

( These are the scars that silence carved. )

Community:

theatrical_muse
Prompt: 297 - Crushed
Word count: 886
Serial: Through a Mirror, Darkly

“There’s a set of rules for this,” Bones says. “An entire set of rules in the Prime Directive that expressly forbid anything even remotely like what we’re doing now. And that’s not even getting into the court-martialable offenses.”

The Doctor doesn’t deign to respond at first, being a little too distracted breaking the Enterprise’s warp core with cherry chewing gum and a ball of twine. “You mean the same ones that ought to be preventing you from gallivanting around the timeline with a member of an extinct race?”

Bones clears his throat loudly and adjusts the collar of his uniform. “That’s them.”

She beams at him before returning to the task at hand. “Just checking.”

( These are the Voyages... )

Community:

theatrical_muse
Prompt: 294 - Passing
Word count: 625
Author's note:

do_it_in_three was going to get a trailer for his guest appearance, but instead all he gets is this author's note.

curedrainydays doesn't get anything because he's mine.

Community: theatrical_muse
Prompt: 291 - Take someone out.
Word count: 1,764
Author's note: O HAI I FINALLY WROTE THAT FUN!FIC WITH BONES I KEPT PROMISING.

One of the quirks of traveling with the Doctor is that you never know quite where you’re going to land. It’s one of the many variables that adds excitement, that influx of adrenaline when you step outside the TARDIS and realize that anything, anything at all, could happen.

“I don’t know how the hell you got a license to drive that thing.”

The Doctor sucks in a breath sharply and blows it out in the general direction of her traveling companion; it momentarily freezes in the icy air drifting through the open TARDIS door. Outside, the wasteland of frozen ground and gray-white sky makes for a bleak sight. “I could always let you have the controls next time, if you think you could do better.”

Bones slips a heavily insulated jacket over his blue medical tunic and smirks at her. “Far be it from me to contradict a lady.”

“Of course n–“

She cuts off in the middle of her retort, abruptly diving for the floor of the TARDIS. Bones crosses his arms, having recently decided he refuses to be startled by her random moments of distraction anymore. Too much potential for attention whiplash. “What is it?”

She waves a couple pair of shoes in the air with all the triumph of the Olympic torch-bearer. “Ice-skating!”

Refusing to be startled, however, is not the same as being immune to becoming completely flabbergasted. “What?”

The Doctor has already begun tugging off her left boot, pausing in her task only long enough to toss a set of ice skates to Bones. He catches the pair reflexively, coming within an inch of slicing his hand on the energy blades. “There’s miles of ice out there. Haven’t you ever been skating?”

“Well, no,” he admits, “not for a long– “

( The Doctors' Traveling Show )

except for some stubborn leaves (or, Domesticity for Dummies)

The Doctor is sprawled out on the grass, chin propped up in her hands as she listens to the soft tinkling of wind chimes in the distance, birds singing in counterpoint. Leaves born by gentle breezes paint swirls of colour on the wind; the overall effect is quite lovely.

“You realise, of course,” she says, “that this makes it a full month since you last tried to kill me.”

Her companion, clad all in black despite the hot suns in the sky, is seated stiffly with a tree trunk at his back. “Is that why you called for this ridiculous picnic?”

“It’s not ridiculous,” she answers, just a little bit hurt. “It’s quite nice, and I made sandwiches.”

As one, they turn their heads to examine the contents of the picnic basket. Several of the sandwiches appear to have grown legs, and are attempting to crawl away.

“Well,” the Doctor says, “I made them at some point.”

The two fall into silence as the Master uses his laser screwdriver to reduce the sandwiches to something resembling fried jelly.

“Well.” the Doctor says again, filling in the conversation lull, “I brought cheese, too, and apples.”

The Master fixes her with this look, this look that’s somewhere between frustration and horror and exasperation and just a touch of fondness (or so she likes to think). “Doctor,” he says, “if you attempt to feed me any more of your picnic lunch, I will slip aspirin into it.”

She rolls over onto her side and fixes him with the saddest face she can muster. “You don’t mean that.”

“Oh, but I do,” he says, and stands, wiping miniscule amounts of dirt from his clothing with gloved hands. “And I think I’ll be taking my leave from this ridiculous affair. Good day, Doctor.”

She means to object, she really does, but at that very moment, the tree the Master had been sitting against falls towards her. Only her fast reflexes prevent her from becoming a Doctor pancake.

“And I believe you’ll find it’s been five seconds, not a month, my dear Doctor,” the Master calls, without bothering to turn back.

She pushes a hefty tree branch off her stomach and huffs. “Git.”

Community:

theatrical_muse
Prompt: 288 - Is redemption truly possible?
Word count: 367

“The case,” announced a white rabbit with a trumpet and official-looking robes, “of Wonderland vs. the Doctor.”

The courtroom was packed with a bewildering array of animals and large, living decks of cards. The box usually occupied by jurors was likewise filled with non-human Earth life.

“What?” the Doctor asked.

Definitely not Cardiff.

Probably not.

Ninety… thirty percent probability it wasn’t Cardiff.

“You’re late.” A short chap wearing a lopsided white wig leaned over his desk and peered at her disapprovingly. Using her remarkable brilliance and powers of deduction, she guessed he was the judge. “The court frowns upon tardiness.”

( Or, Through the Looking Glass, and What the Doctor Found There )

Community:

theatrical_muse
Prompt: 286 - Under what circumstances, if any, is it okay to break the law?
Word count: 444

Jobs the Doctor has been fired from:

Manager, McDonalds. Alias: Foreman, Susan. Duration: Not actually an employee, just happened to be behind the counter at the time.

But I did get to keep the Happy Meal toy.

Professor of Divination, Hogwarts. Alias: Smith, Professor. Duration: 2.9 minutes.

Predicted that would happen.

Secretary, Torchwood. Alias: Foreman, Susan. Duration: 20 minutes.

Don’t ask.

Waitress, Sam’s Diner. Alias: Foreman, Susan. Duration: 2 days.

Really, don’t.

Sales associate, Victoria’s Secret. Alias: Foreman, Susan. Duration: 3 hours.

I mean really don’t.

Men in Black, WiB division (Women in Black). Alias: Agent D. Duration: 3 months.

Very nice people, actually. Mostly.

Nerd Herd, Buy More. Alias: Susan Foreman. Duration: 3.3333 days.

Apparently the NSA and CIA agents assigned there were guarding some poor chap with government secrets in his head, not covering up an alien invasion. Bugger.

Temporary commander, the Enterprise. Alias: Capt. Foreman, Susan. Duration: 6 weeks.

Q’s fault.

Temporary Chief Medical Officer, the Voyager. Alias: Dr. Foreman, Susan. Duration: 6 days.

Also Q’s fault.

Hula dancer, some little Hawaii tourist business. Alias: Smith, Jane. Duration: 6 seconds.

Goes between P and R, rhymes with ‘you’.

Professor of Scientologistically, University of the Prussian Empire. Alias: The Professor. Duration: 12 years/the time it took for that particular reality to blink out of existence.

Good riddance, too.

Manager, McDonald’s. Alias: Foreman, Susan. Duration: Not actually an employee. Again.

I kept the Employee of the Month parking space, though.

Community:theatrical_muse
Prompt: 284 - You're fired! Talk about a time you were forced out of something.
Word count: 253

The Doctor’s Guide to Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse

Wear sensible shoes. This is good advice anytime.
Always have something distracting with you, preferably something shiny. Zombies lack higher brain functions, and therefore are easily distracted by shiny things.
Most guides recommend sheer firepower when it comes to zombies. I prefer a more pacifistic stance, involving friendly negotiations and possibly a high-powered projectile mechanism or four.
1. But use them sparingly, for reasons that I will expound upon in the next step
There are many theories as to what causes Zombies, including several about certain species of fish, necromancy, mind control, and wearing ball caps with the bill facing backward. Regardless, it is important to remember that vodouism is a disease, and behind the awkward demeanor and hunger for brains is a person, just like you or me, only slightly rotting on the outside and not really like many living creatures at all, come to think of it.

1. Except for a few, many of whom may be related to your mother-in-law.

2. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

3. Especially that one time she woke you up in the middle of the night with the face cream and the zucchini and such.

4. But I digress.

· Basically, what I’m trying to say is it’s very important to thaw your chicken before you cook i-

· Wait, no. Sorry, got my notes mixed up with that recipe from Sarah Jane.

· I really ought to visit her again. I promised Luke a trip to the zoo.

· At any rate, the best way to go about dealing with an outbreak of zombies is to produce a cure and administer it to the area affected, which by now probably encompasses the whole of your planet and possibly a few nearby ones, too, depending on how developed your space travel is by now.

· If in doubt, contact your local Galactic Centre for Disease Control and let them handle it.

1. Come to think of it, that probably should have been the first step.

Community:

theatrical_muse
Prompt: 261 – In the event of a zombie apocalpyse, what would you do?
Word Count: 407

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The Doctor

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a traveler from an antique land

I like bananas. Bananas are good.

Entries tagged with community: theatrical muse

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for I go for ever, and come again no more.

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Linguistics in Retrospect.

TM prompt response placeholder for prompt 323

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after ever (happily)

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something blue.

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May 2010

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