Fic: A Jolly Holiday (Eight/Charley)
Jun. 25th, 2006 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleTitle: A Jolly Holiday
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Eight/Charley, though not more so than the audios themselves
Rating: G
Notes: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
padawanpooh for ponygirl72’s summer solstice fic exchange. She wanted fluffy Eighth Doctor romance and a ringed planet. Set after Time of the Daleks.
Summary: In which the seventh attempt to return young Shakespeare home goes about as well as the other six.
“Well, it’s quite like Stratford-Upon-Avon,” Charley said consolingly, as the pair of them watched Will dart off into the crowd. “If it wasn’t for the two extra moons and the planet’s rings and all the aliens, I don’t think we would even have noticed yet.”
The Doctor strongly suspected this was a lie to make him feel better. He wondered whether to tell her that Will had been dropping hints that he wasn’t in any hurry to go home just yet and that landing the TARDIS here on Metoris had been more an accident of the on-purpose kind, but he decided against it.
“I was sure I set the coordinates for Earth,” he said, in his best whoops-what-a-forgetful-Time-Lord-I-am voice. “But then, the old girl’s getting along a bit. The chameleon circuit’s always the first to go, then the navigation: she’ll be forgetting her own internal structure one of these days.”
“And that means…”
“Oh, all sorts of things, Charley, none of them very nice. Rooms moving around or going missing, never knowing whether the wardrobe is the sixth on the left or the sixteenth or where the third spare bathroom’s gone to. Architectural anarchy. Chaos in the corridors.” He tried to convey in his tone, not quite successfully, that he thought this would be a bad thing, and certainly not something one might spend an entire afternoon with Jane’s Book of TARDISes trying to induce.
Charley raised a sceptical eyebrow. “In other words… exactly like it is at the moment?”
He grinned as though this utterly proved his point. Quod Erat Doctor. Off the hook for their temporary non-Stratford diversion, he clapped his hands and said, “I haven’t been to Metorios in a couple of centuries but there’s a nice little café on the square, shall we go and see if it’s still there?”
The nice little café was still in business including, he was delighted to see, the same waiting staff. “That’s astonishing, you don’t look a day over 600,” he told their waitress, and she clucked her ventricles and told him to get away with himself.
“There are humans down in the square,” Charley observed, leaning her chin on her hand as she peered out the open circle in the wall that served as a window. “I think they’re Morris dancing.”
“It’s probably Earth heritage week,” he said. “Proud descendants of human immigrants come together to celebrate everything that’s best about their culture.”
“They are Morris dancing. That one’s got the little bells and everything.”
“I hope there isn’t a Shakespeare festival going on in all this. Bad enough that Will’s read all of his own plays, thirtieth-century post-post-modernism turning up at the Globe could confuse generations of theatre critics.”
“Morris dancing, though. I assumed it was something we’d grow out of as a species, like war or disease.”
He had seen the human race a thousand years in the future, and ten thousand years past that, and hundred of centuries past that, to the point where (had the Council known about it) his console room would be stuffed with strongly-worded communiqués from Gallifrey pointedly reminding him about the laws on future event knowledge, possibly with a footnote asking whether he could produce a receipt for his TARDIS. He could have told Charley that the human race never outgrew war or disease or greed or a thousand other things.
Instead he reached for her hand across the table, clasped it in both his, and said, “A hundred years from now nobody has ever heard of Morris dancing, Charley. I promise you.”
“Thank you,” she said. Her smile was brilliant.
They took a stroll by the river after lunch. It let them keep an eye on Will, who was currently half covered in mud and engrossed in chasing what might have passed for ducklings, if they hadn’t had six legs and squeaked anti-Earth abuse at him every time they writhed out of his reach.
“It’s very peaceful here,” Charley said.
“Beautiful,” he agreed.
“No Daleks, no mer-people, no cooks stuffed to death with their own plum pudding.”
“Not that we’ve seen, anyway. That’s not to say they’re not further down the river.”
“In a punt, or something.”
“I love punting! Shall we go and ask if they have any boats? I can’t remember if they ever invented boats here.”
Charley tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. “I’m sure if they don’t you can invent them, and every year there’ll be a regatta named after you.” She looked back at the way they had come, and on down the river, and said, “There’s probably not really a flotilla of punt-bound Daleks around here, is there?”
He thought about it. “It’s quite unlikely,” he decided. “They’re not traditionally known as one of the great sea-faring races.”
“Good,” she said. “I don’t think I’d like it if it was always Daleks.”
He tried to indicate with not much more than a nod that a life that was always Daleks would no doubt be interesting, but also quite short.
“The thing is,” Charley said, “I don’t think I’d like it if it was always this, either.” She swept her hand around them, at the tranquillity and the beauty and the small boy toppling with a delighted shriek into the water. “That river’s safe for humans, by the way, isn’t it?”
“Completely. You can swim, can’t you, Will? Good, carry on.” Turning back to her, he said, “That’s my Charley. I wouldn’t like the peace and quiet all the time either. Too much of a good thing, as they say.”
Gently, she said, “And Will’s a good thing, isn’t he?”
They watched for a moment as he was fished from the water by two natives, grinning muddily as he was given a ticking off.
“Doctor, we can’t keep him.”
She was giving him one of those sensible looks she’d been wearing more and more lately. “Don’t be silly, Charley,” he said. “Of course we can’t keep him. He’s William Shakespeare. He needs to go back to Earth and infuriate generations of English schoolchildren.”
“But apart from all that,” she said, “even if he wasn’t going to grow up to write all those plays he’s already read and memorised - he needs to grow up.” She pushed her hair back from her face, and he suddenly wondered when she’d stopped wearing clothing from her own time period. Whenever it was, he hadn’t noticed. “Come on, we should go and get Will before he gets us thrown into some dungeon or other.”
They ambled back along the path towards the two Metorians and Will, who was not looking at all contrite. “In town for the Earth heritage thingie, you two?” the taller of the pair asked. “Well, keep your son under control, he’s disturbing the punters.”
The Doctor stepped in to thank them for all their help, keeping an eye on Charley, who was sputtering with outrage that she could be taken for the mother of a boy ten years her junior. “S’alright,” the one who had spoken said, the spines on his head flattening a bit as he was mollified. “Just high-spirits, I know how it is. I’ve got three of my own, all under a hundred. Make the most of it now, that’s what I say.”
“Yes,” he said, “because they grow up quickly, don’t they?”
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Charley asked quietly.
It had been a long time since he was last lost for words. But Will sneezed, loudly and theatrically, and they both turned to fuss over him and the moment was lost.
Will caught a cold from his dousing in the river. Or rather, he said he had, and he sniffled a lot, and asked wasn’t this was reason enough to keep him on the TARDIS another week or two? Sending him back to his own time when he was ill, he said, would be cruel, and potentially disastrous for the timeline. The Doctor wondered where he had picked all of that up from.
Charley said nothing, and did it in a way that suggested she was thinking plenty of things.
Will asked if they could go to the 51st century, since he’d been looking up time periods in the TARDIS library and that one sounded great, for reasons he wouldn’t go into.
The Doctor, for the eighth time in a month, plugged in the coordinates for Stratford-Upon-Avon, Earth, 1572. He stood at the controls for a very long time as the screen blinked things about setting course for the Humanian Era and asked whether he would like to confirm?
For the eighth time, he changed the coordinates. Fifty-first century, this time.
1572 would always be there when they got back.
Xposted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
zagreuswaits.
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Eight/Charley, though not more so than the audios themselves
Rating: G
Notes: For
padawanpooh for ponygirl72’s summer solstice fic exchange. She wanted fluffy Eighth Doctor romance and a ringed planet. Set after Time of the Daleks.Summary: In which the seventh attempt to return young Shakespeare home goes about as well as the other six.
“Well, it’s quite like Stratford-Upon-Avon,” Charley said consolingly, as the pair of them watched Will dart off into the crowd. “If it wasn’t for the two extra moons and the planet’s rings and all the aliens, I don’t think we would even have noticed yet.”
The Doctor strongly suspected this was a lie to make him feel better. He wondered whether to tell her that Will had been dropping hints that he wasn’t in any hurry to go home just yet and that landing the TARDIS here on Metoris had been more an accident of the on-purpose kind, but he decided against it.
“I was sure I set the coordinates for Earth,” he said, in his best whoops-what-a-forgetful-Time-Lord-I-am voice. “But then, the old girl’s getting along a bit. The chameleon circuit’s always the first to go, then the navigation: she’ll be forgetting her own internal structure one of these days.”
“And that means…”
“Oh, all sorts of things, Charley, none of them very nice. Rooms moving around or going missing, never knowing whether the wardrobe is the sixth on the left or the sixteenth or where the third spare bathroom’s gone to. Architectural anarchy. Chaos in the corridors.” He tried to convey in his tone, not quite successfully, that he thought this would be a bad thing, and certainly not something one might spend an entire afternoon with Jane’s Book of TARDISes trying to induce.
Charley raised a sceptical eyebrow. “In other words… exactly like it is at the moment?”
He grinned as though this utterly proved his point. Quod Erat Doctor. Off the hook for their temporary non-Stratford diversion, he clapped his hands and said, “I haven’t been to Metorios in a couple of centuries but there’s a nice little café on the square, shall we go and see if it’s still there?”
The nice little café was still in business including, he was delighted to see, the same waiting staff. “That’s astonishing, you don’t look a day over 600,” he told their waitress, and she clucked her ventricles and told him to get away with himself.
“There are humans down in the square,” Charley observed, leaning her chin on her hand as she peered out the open circle in the wall that served as a window. “I think they’re Morris dancing.”
“It’s probably Earth heritage week,” he said. “Proud descendants of human immigrants come together to celebrate everything that’s best about their culture.”
“They are Morris dancing. That one’s got the little bells and everything.”
“I hope there isn’t a Shakespeare festival going on in all this. Bad enough that Will’s read all of his own plays, thirtieth-century post-post-modernism turning up at the Globe could confuse generations of theatre critics.”
“Morris dancing, though. I assumed it was something we’d grow out of as a species, like war or disease.”
He had seen the human race a thousand years in the future, and ten thousand years past that, and hundred of centuries past that, to the point where (had the Council known about it) his console room would be stuffed with strongly-worded communiqués from Gallifrey pointedly reminding him about the laws on future event knowledge, possibly with a footnote asking whether he could produce a receipt for his TARDIS. He could have told Charley that the human race never outgrew war or disease or greed or a thousand other things.
Instead he reached for her hand across the table, clasped it in both his, and said, “A hundred years from now nobody has ever heard of Morris dancing, Charley. I promise you.”
“Thank you,” she said. Her smile was brilliant.
They took a stroll by the river after lunch. It let them keep an eye on Will, who was currently half covered in mud and engrossed in chasing what might have passed for ducklings, if they hadn’t had six legs and squeaked anti-Earth abuse at him every time they writhed out of his reach.
“It’s very peaceful here,” Charley said.
“Beautiful,” he agreed.
“No Daleks, no mer-people, no cooks stuffed to death with their own plum pudding.”
“Not that we’ve seen, anyway. That’s not to say they’re not further down the river.”
“In a punt, or something.”
“I love punting! Shall we go and ask if they have any boats? I can’t remember if they ever invented boats here.”
Charley tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. “I’m sure if they don’t you can invent them, and every year there’ll be a regatta named after you.” She looked back at the way they had come, and on down the river, and said, “There’s probably not really a flotilla of punt-bound Daleks around here, is there?”
He thought about it. “It’s quite unlikely,” he decided. “They’re not traditionally known as one of the great sea-faring races.”
“Good,” she said. “I don’t think I’d like it if it was always Daleks.”
He tried to indicate with not much more than a nod that a life that was always Daleks would no doubt be interesting, but also quite short.
“The thing is,” Charley said, “I don’t think I’d like it if it was always this, either.” She swept her hand around them, at the tranquillity and the beauty and the small boy toppling with a delighted shriek into the water. “That river’s safe for humans, by the way, isn’t it?”
“Completely. You can swim, can’t you, Will? Good, carry on.” Turning back to her, he said, “That’s my Charley. I wouldn’t like the peace and quiet all the time either. Too much of a good thing, as they say.”
Gently, she said, “And Will’s a good thing, isn’t he?”
They watched for a moment as he was fished from the water by two natives, grinning muddily as he was given a ticking off.
“Doctor, we can’t keep him.”
She was giving him one of those sensible looks she’d been wearing more and more lately. “Don’t be silly, Charley,” he said. “Of course we can’t keep him. He’s William Shakespeare. He needs to go back to Earth and infuriate generations of English schoolchildren.”
“But apart from all that,” she said, “even if he wasn’t going to grow up to write all those plays he’s already read and memorised - he needs to grow up.” She pushed her hair back from her face, and he suddenly wondered when she’d stopped wearing clothing from her own time period. Whenever it was, he hadn’t noticed. “Come on, we should go and get Will before he gets us thrown into some dungeon or other.”
They ambled back along the path towards the two Metorians and Will, who was not looking at all contrite. “In town for the Earth heritage thingie, you two?” the taller of the pair asked. “Well, keep your son under control, he’s disturbing the punters.”
The Doctor stepped in to thank them for all their help, keeping an eye on Charley, who was sputtering with outrage that she could be taken for the mother of a boy ten years her junior. “S’alright,” the one who had spoken said, the spines on his head flattening a bit as he was mollified. “Just high-spirits, I know how it is. I’ve got three of my own, all under a hundred. Make the most of it now, that’s what I say.”
“Yes,” he said, “because they grow up quickly, don’t they?”
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Charley asked quietly.
It had been a long time since he was last lost for words. But Will sneezed, loudly and theatrically, and they both turned to fuss over him and the moment was lost.
Will caught a cold from his dousing in the river. Or rather, he said he had, and he sniffled a lot, and asked wasn’t this was reason enough to keep him on the TARDIS another week or two? Sending him back to his own time when he was ill, he said, would be cruel, and potentially disastrous for the timeline. The Doctor wondered where he had picked all of that up from.
Charley said nothing, and did it in a way that suggested she was thinking plenty of things.
Will asked if they could go to the 51st century, since he’d been looking up time periods in the TARDIS library and that one sounded great, for reasons he wouldn’t go into.
The Doctor, for the eighth time in a month, plugged in the coordinates for Stratford-Upon-Avon, Earth, 1572. He stood at the controls for a very long time as the screen blinked things about setting course for the Humanian Era and asked whether he would like to confirm?
For the eighth time, he changed the coordinates. Fifty-first century, this time.
1572 would always be there when they got back.
Xposted to
zagreuswaits.